Here's an excerpt from an interview with Carl Reiner. He's talking about the decision to end The Dick Van Dyke Show in 1966. Watch it and then I want to discuss something in it…

Okay. Mr. Reiner says, referring to Dick Van Dyke, "He did Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" while he was doing the Van Dyke Show, during the summer…"

No, he didn't. After the pilot for The Dick Van Dyke Show was shot on January 19, 1961, the series went into production in June of that year and filmed its last episode on June 1 of 1966. Nobody hired Dick for a film in the summer of '61 but he shot Bye Bye Birdie during the summer hiatus in 1962, Mary Poppins and his part in What a Way To Go in 1963, The Art of Love in 1964, Lt. Robinson Crusoe in 1965 and then after The Dick Van Dyke Show finished, he took a month off and started shooting Divorce American Style.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang began filming in June of 1967 at Pinewood Studios in the U.K. But that's an easy mistake for Mr. Reiner to make…the kind we all make, the kind you find in any interview. What it gets me to thinking about though it this: What should the interviewer do when that happens?

I do a lot of interviews, often in front of live audiences. I am helped, I'd like to think, by a good memory and the ability to throw in a name or a date when an interviewee can't remember and is grasping for it. But sometimes when they get something flat-out wrong, as Reiner did in the above video, I correct them as politely as I can…and no matter how politely I do it, it throws some people off. I can feel them tense up and they sometimes lose the thread of where they were heading.

Or sometimes, I don't correct them because I'm afraid of making them uncomfy…but then down the line, things get confusing. If there's a live audience, I can see people getting puzzled by the false information.

By the way, this is not about anyone lying. I don't even think Carl Reiner thought Dick did Chitty Chitty Bang Bang while on hiatus from the Van Dyke Show. I think he just meant to say Bye Bye Birdie and out came the wrong movie title. Happens all the time to all of us.

And I'm not asking anyone for advice on how to handle this kind of thing. Obviously, it's a matter of a case-by-case basis. Sometimes, I do correct people and sometimes, it makes the conversation flow better. And sometimes I skip it and sometimes, it makes the conversation worse. I once really pissed off an important comic book creator by correcting four or five of the kind of error Reiner made in the video. I don't have a foolproof answer for this and neither do you. I just thought I'd mention that it's something I think about.

As I expected, several readers of this blog searched newspaper archives to find out if Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew had indeed mentioned the song "One Toke Over the Line" by Brewer & Shipley in a speech on September 15, 1970. If so, we'd like to know how since the song hadn't been released then.

Well, it turns out Agnew didn't. This is from The New York Times for that date. The speech was actually the day before…

LAS VEGAS, Nev., Sept. 14 — Vice-President Agnew said tonight that American youths were being "brainwashed" into a "drug culture" by rock music, movies, books and underground newspapers. He called these part of "a depressing life style of conformity that has neither life nor style." After describing himself as a "bumpkin" earlier today in San Diego, the Vice-President came to the capital of American gambling to lecture against "creeping permissiveness" and urge the election of "square" Republicans.

Mr. Agnew said in a speech to 1,000 Republicans at the Space Center Auditorium of the Sahara Hotel that popular songs such as the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" or the Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" were a message of drug use.

Ira B. Matetsky was one of the folks who looked up contemporary coverage of that speech. He found one report that Agnew also cited the songs "The Acid Queen," "Eight Miles High," "Couldn't Get High," "Don't Step on the Grass, Sam," and "Stoned Woman." No mention there either of the Brewer & Shipley record.

But Agnew gave lot of speeches. That was just about all he did while Veep apart from accepting bribes for past favors to contractors in his home state of Maryland when he was governor. He went around the country, often to fund-raisers, and explained how America was going to hell and the only way out of it was to elect people from his party. I'm sure glad no one does that these days.

It is very easy to believe that when "One Toke" was on the charts months later, Agnew mentioned it in some of his speeches. The quote from Brewer did not say Agnew had mentioned the song in the September 1970 speech. Ira found that the erroneous date on the Wikipedia page was only inserted a few days ago and unless further evidence is uncovered soon, he's going to have that date deleted there. Thanks also to Rob Davis, Bob Gillian and others who sent me links.

I was wondering if Mssrs. Brewer and Shipley are still performing. Their website, which hasn't been updated in a while still says, "Due to the Corona virus and concern for our fans' well being, as well as our own, we have canceled all shows for 2020." So they had bookings then and Jeffrey Morris sent me this link to a piece November of 2021 about them still performing so they went back to it.

I can't find anything online that they're out there now but the Brewer & Shipley page on Facebook was just updated the other day with a remembrance of David Crosby, which was also featured on Tom Shipley's personal website, onetoketom.com. So at least one of those guys is blogging.

We seem to be having a debate as to when the song "One Toke Over the Line" came out. I have a lot of e-mails about it but I suspect my old pal Mike Tiefenbacher has it right…

According to 45cat.com (the site to go to to determine such things for any of your future mixtape posts), "One Toke Over the Line" was issued in January, 1971. It first charted in Billboard January 30, which means it was charting locally the week of January 16th. (Like comics, the paper trade magazine cover dates are the off-sale dates, reflecting airplay dates plus the time it took to compile, publish and distribute the magazines to the newsstand; the copyright dates are two weeks prior to the chart dates).

From my personal records, it began charting in Milwaukee February 24. It peaked at #6 in Cash Box and #10 in both Billboard and Record World. One-hit wonders Brewer and Shipley issued five singles before that never charted, while three of the six issued after "Toke" charted in the Top 100, only the immediate follow-up ("Tarkio Road") hitting the top 40 (#39) in Cash Box. The album which included "Toke" ("Tarkio") came out in November of 1970 but only made the charts after "Toke" became a hit in March.

In other words, if Spiro actually made that speech in September of 1970, he was either psychically prescient, or he never mentioned this song. Or that speech came in September of '71. (It's Wikipedia, after all. Every fact has a 50% chance of being right or wrong.)

The Lawrence Welk Show is still shown every Saturday on PBS affiliates in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and I suspect it has been on PBS continuously since the late '80s, though that's only from distant observation and a memory that's become less dependable every year.

Obviously, the most likely explanation here is that the date cited for Agnew's speech is wrong in Wikipedia. Agnew gave a lot of those speeches and someone may have gotten confused as to which speech mentioned the Brewer & Shipley tune. We may find out for sure if/when one of my readers with access to old newspaper databases checks it out.

Incidentally, in the many years of this blog, I have occasionally referred to some recording artist or act as a "one-hit wonder." With the exception of the group Yellow Balloon, that always brings some very angry mail from fans of the recording artist(s) insisting they were not that. So folks, please note that Mike said that. I didn't.

I know a lot of folks who come to this site aspire to work as voiceover actors, especially for animation. I have a limited amount of advice in that area…but you know who has a lot? Bob Bergen. Bob is one of the most in-demand, works-all-the-time people in that field and only part of that is because he's really good in front of a microphone. He also understands the business — and understands it is a business — and he teaches and gives excellent advice. From time to time, he posts invaluable tips on his Instagram page and you oughta be reading them.

In fact, if you want to be an actor of any kind, follow this man. And some of what he says might even be of value to wanna-be writers, artists, poets, directors…really any creative endeavor.

Here's another song that I had on my becoming-infamous mixtape but I never knew anything about the song or the folks who'd recorded it. The folks were Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley and they were reportedly in a coffee shop somewhere when they got the idea for "One Toke Over the Line," which Wikipedia says came out in 1971 but then on the same page, they also say — and I quote…

On September 15, 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a televised speech condemning songs that contained references to drugs. Among the songs he mentioned were "With a Little Help from My Friends" by the Beatles, "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, and "One Toke Over the Line."

…and The Great and All-Knowing Wikipedia further states that Agnew's speech caused a lot of radio stations to stop playing that kind of song. Agnew, of course, was an outspoken defender of morals when he wasn't taking bribes.

Here are Brewer and Shipley performing the song as per their record…

Wikipedia also gives us this quote from Mike Brewer…

The Vice President of the United States, Spiro Agnew, named us personally as a subversive to American youth, but at exactly the same time Lawrence Welk performed the crazy thing and introduced it as a gospel song. That shows how absurd it really is. Of course, we got more publicity than we could have paid for.

We were just talking on this blog about Lawrence Welk and I have been informed by quite a few e-mailers that Lawrence Welk Show reruns are on one of their local stations — usually PBS stations apparently.

My pal Pat O'Neill also reminded me of that performance on Mr. Welk's program once — one of Welk's awkward attempts to be "contemporary" which I featured on this blog way back on this page in 2009. I'll save you the trouble of clicking on it by embedding it again here. Welk did not introduce it as a gospel song. At the end though, he said (as you can hear) that it was a "modern spiritual." In any case, this is how this song oughta be sung…

If you ask someone versed in TV history to name the longest-running programs, they'll probably forget about The Lawrence Welk Show, which began on local TV in Los Angeles in 1951 and, through a maze of syndication and network deals, managed to produce new programs until 1982. And that wasn't the end of it because it lived on in reruns for a long time and may still, for all I know, be on somewhere. None of those episodes would probably look any more dated today than when they were first broadcast. The show always looked like a relic of the past.

Mr. Welk was a bandleader and showman and a very awkward host who never got any better at it. He was, like Ed Sullivan, one of those guys who started in television when most hosts looked stiff and not terribly articulate…then stayed around as more professional people moved into the medium. His on-air malaprops were legendary but much of America found him and his show delightful

Once in a while, Welk would dance — ballroom style — with one of the many dancers he had on his program or with a lady from the audience. Once in a while, he'd play the accordion. It was his specialty but he usually left the real accordion-playing to a gent named Myron Floren who is the soloist featured in our clip today.

I remember watching the show with my parents — which is to say, they had it on and I was on the living room floor in front of the TV reading comic books. And I remember that Welk often featured polka numbers on his show…though not as many as Dick Sinclair's Polka Parade, a similar series with a more polished host and all-polkas, all the time. It seemed like one out of every three polkas on the Welk show was "The Pennsylvania Polka."

Here then is "The Pennsylvania Polka" as performed endlessly on The Lawrence Welk Show. You get a fast glimpse of Mr. Welk before he turns the floor over to his singers and dancers plus Mr. Floren. The word was that the performers on his show were paid as little money as Welk could get away with paying, which may seem difficult to believe. They always looked so happy…

Johnny Carson and Don Rickles. From January 12, 1989…

I always liked the 1957 movie The Sweet Smell of Success, which was written by a fine writer I was privileged to know a little, Ernest Lehman.  In 2002, a musical based on its screenplay opened on Broadway with a book by John Guare, lyrics by Craig Carnelia and music by Marvin Hamlisch. It closed three months later so I never got to see it.

If I had, I would not have heard this song which was written for the show and included in workshops and outta-town tryouts…but cut before the show got to New York. Usually, songs that are cut from musicals disappear forever but this one is often performed in cabarets and concerts. It's one of those songs — perhaps you have a few of these — that connects with a personal moment in my life and reminds me of it. A lady I liked a lot — and who seemed to like me — had to go away.

I don't mean she died. I mean she had to go away, not by her choice and certainly not by mine. Last I heard, she was living in a country I almost certainly will never visit, nor is she likely to come back this way…but I think of her when I hear it. I don't think I ever heard her sing but I can imagine her singing this song. This is Idina Menzel actually singing it…

This lecture by Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone is long but if you're interested in copyrights or A.I. or both, you probably oughta watch it…

Sorry…I've been busier today than the guy at the National Archives who's in charge of keeping track of all the classified documents and who has which ones in their garage. And I have lots more to write before I sleep. This is just me popping in to try and put at least something up on the blog while it's still Thursday where I am.

Someone who noticed I've been announced as a guest at WonderCon in Anaheim in two months wrote to ask if my partner-in-crime Sergio Aragonés will be there too. No, he won't. But I'll be there for at least some of the days and yes, I know this doesn't sound like something I'd do but I'll be hosting panels. Badges are still available for WonderCon but that will not be true forever.

And while we're on the subject of conventions in Southern California, there is now in progress an "early bird" hotel room sale for rooms during Comic-Con International down in San Diego this July. These are rooms you may want to grab if (a) you have admission to the convention and (b) don't mind staying some distance from the Convention Center. Some people like to not be too close to the Convention Center because it's more peaceful. And less expensive.

I've gotta get back to work but I'll dig into my little folder of interesting Video Links and post something I hope you'll enjoy. More stuff here soon along with more remodeling work.

Here's fifteen minutes of Andy Kaufman guesting on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The date is 8/04/1977, a little more than two years after he'd made his first TV appearance on the first Saturday Night Live and a little more than a year before Taxi went on the air. I still have pretty mixed feelings about him as performer…

Mike Cagle sent me this link to a taste test that the Washington Post did of store-bought marinara sauces. Mike thought I'd like it — and I do — because my favorite brand, Rao's, was the clear winner. I did though notice that Trader Joe's Tomato Basil Marinara Sauce finished a respectable second…and it costs an awful lot less.

Also perhaps worth mentioning here: The cheapest place to buy Rao's Marinara Sauce near me seems to be Ralphs Market (known in other climes as Kroger) which sells a 24 oz. jar for $10.19. Walmart, which is not too near me but does deliver, sells that jar for $6.88. There are markets where you can pay double the Walmart price. I get mine from Costco — again, not near me but they deliver — a twin-pak of two 28 oz. jars of the stuff for $14.92. And they often sell it cheaper than that, which is when I stock up.

We are still fiddling with things on this blog, fixing this and that. Nothing is being deleted. Some things may not be accessible for a week or so. I appreciate your patience.

People keep writing me that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is on TCM. It's often on TCM and an employee of said channel told me not long ago that it's one of the most popular films they run. I still don't think that's a good place to see it unless you're really familiar with the picture and just want to be reminded of that time you saw it on a big screen with a big, appreciative audience. But please, please — for your sake — don't make a TV showing or even a home video version of it the first or only place you experience it.

I keep getting e-mails asking me what I think of the new revival of the TV series, Night Court. I think I haven't seen it and, not having been a fervent follower of the original, I'm in no rush. Unless something's newsworthy and especially time-sensitive, I'm in no hurry to see anything on TV or streaming. My attitude is that if it pleases anybody, it will always be there to see…somewhere.

I recently tried the new, limited-time-only Italian Mozzarella Chicken Sandwich at Wendy's and I won't make that mistake again. "Limited-time-only" apparently refers to how long you'll think it sounds tempting.

Years ago, there was a department store chain in Southern California called The Akron. It more or less operated on the principle that if all your neighbors had a bird bath, you had to have a bird bath…or if all your neighbors had tiki gods in their yards, you had to have tiki gods in your yard…or if everyone else on your block had a chaise lounge, you had to have a chaise lounge. Operating on that principle, I think I need to have some classified documents lying around my house. You know, for when the F.B.I. drops by for drinks and a search.

Comedian-podcaster Marc Maron wrote the foreword for Maverix and Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comics, a new collection of the fine drawings of Drew Friedman. I love caricatures and Friedman's were terrific when he burst onto the scene and he has just gotten better and better.

One of the many things that will astound you if/when you buy this book — and you should buy this book and not on Kindle — is the level of detail. I don't mean detail just in creating a drawing that really looks like someone but detail in meticulously surrounding them with an environment and backgrounds that say so much about them.

But I'll get back to what Drew drew. Maron writes that underground comix shaped his worldview. He says they "…laid the psychological groundwork for my entire life and how I see the world." I probably read most of the same ones Maron did and they didn't have that impact on me, possibly because I was born eleven years before he was.

The main impact they had on me came from merely being exposed to lot of diverse worldviews — some banal to the extreme, some brilliant — and most of them personal to an extreme that almost never happens in a comic book created by hordes (or even herds) of people and copyrighted by a corporation.

That some undergrounds were amateurish didn't matter. In fact, some of the crudest-looking ones had the most to say…and enjoying a stranger's free expression can be vitalizing even when their worldview connects in no way with your own. Paging through Drew's book, looking at all the pretty portraits, I found myself thinking over and over, "Oh, so that's what the guy who did that story looks like." (I also discovered that one or two underground cartoonists I thought were black weren't.)

Not to slight Drew's drawings in any way but this book is much more than a collection of great drawings. It's a visit to a time so long ago that some of its prime movers have died of natural causes. The text portions of this volume are very important and if you don't know what was so special about underground comics — or think it was all just R. Crumb and the Freak Bros. — this book will clue you in. Buy it for the artwork. Stay for the history.

Here's a link for purchasing. And for another rave review and some interviews with Drew and his subjects, read what John Kelly wrote.

This year's Oscar nominations are out and I have no reaction to any of them.  I didn't see that many movies that came out last year and nothing in the ones I did see cried out to me as so deserving of honor that I want to go picket the Academy building over their omission.  There are all these articles appearing on the 'net this morning about "snubs" and the work that was supposedly snubbed strikes me as having been done by folks who were well-compensated and probably getting all sorts of good offers.  Some of them will doubtlessly snag one or more of those little statuettes when it's their time.

My favorite actor of all time might just be Jack Lemmon.  He made, by some counts, 48 movies.  He was nominated for Oscars eight times and won two. So was he "snubbed" forty times or forty-six?

"Snub" has always seemed to me the wrong word for this situation.  Makes it sound like all the voters got together and said, "Hey, Tom Cruise is getting a real swelled head.  Let's teach him a lesson he'll never forget and not nominate him for Best Actor in Top Gun: Maverick.  And everyone else says, "Yeah, that'll show him!  He'll have to be content with a producer nomination and only $100 million for his next movie!"  The man is probably inconsolable.

Of course, this is what happens when you have categories where you nominate five people.  If eight people do superior work, three get "snubbed."  And to nominate Cruise, they'd have to not nominate someone else who made the cut and then that person would be "snubbed."  (Then again, if only three actors give Oscar-worthy performances in a year, two guys get nominated who didn't.  Simple math can be so maddening.)

Some people seem to find it incredulous that the film Elvis scored seven nominations including Best Picture and Actor in a Leading Role…but its director, Baz Luhrmann, wasn't nominated.  "Did that picture direct itself?" they ask, forgetting two things…

One is that the Academy nominates ten movies for Best Picture and five for Best Director.  So every year, and there's no way around this, at least five people are going to not be nominated for directing a film nominated for Best Picture.  Again, simple math.

And the other thing is that while everyone who votes gets to vote on Best Picture, only directors nominate directors, only actors nominate actors, etc.  It's a different block of voters.  It's like being amazed that one county in a state voted for Joe Biden and another county voted for Donald Trump.

And this is already way more than I really care about these nominations.  I don't think most people do these days.  Just take a look at the ratings when they do the Oscar Telecast on March 12.  Even if they guarantee that some superstar is going to get up and slap someone, a large part of America won't be watching.