Gilbert, of course.  This is what purports to be his first appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien early in the show's run.  They were doing a Halloween theme I believe and the premise of the first part is that Dick Cavett is pretending to be Gilbert in a Dick Cavett costume.  Gilbert is off-stage live-dubbing the voice and one gets the feeling that Mr. Cavett was not thrilled with some of the words coming out of "his" mouth.

I believe the previous guest seated on the couch is Maureen McCormick of The Brady Bunch. She does not seem to know what to make of the crazy person who comes out and sits to her left.

Gilbert was hysterical on a lot of shows like this and I once asked a writer for one of them why they didn't have him on more often. The answer was roughly, "He upstages the host and doesn't give that host a chance to be funny." A host, of course, wants his comedy guests to get laughs but some of them don't like the idea of not getting plenty of laughs themselves during a segment. They don't like when this happens…

Still reeling a bit from the news about Gilbert. Here's one interesting thing about him. When he first came upon the stand-up scene, his act consisted of clever bits that he (I assume) wrote. Some of them were brilliant and quite unlike anything anyone had ever done…but his performance of that material was at least as funny as the material itself. At some point, he did a one-eighty and switched to just telling dirty jokes…material that he didn't write and that others had done. And again, because of the performance, he was just as funny. He wrote new stuff for those Comedy Central Roasts and other special occasions but if you went to see Gilbert at a comedy club, you heard — and enjoyed the hell of — a lot of old dirty jokes with some embellishment.  Most comics couldn't get away with that.

Folks are writing to ask me what I think of the "punishment" the Academy has decreed for Will Smith — banning him from the Oscars ceremony for ten years. The fact that I put the word in quotes should tell you what I think of it. It will be interesting to see if/when he gets nominated again if they make an exception that time. Otherwise, I think I'm past discussing that matter.

Some also asked me why I wasn't complaining about the omission of certain people from the "In Memoriam" reel. I'm already past that. It happens every year and it will continue to happen and no matter who they put in, someone will be mad they left someone out. What's interesting — and it might be maddening if I took that segment more seriously — is that when people bitch about So-and-So being "snubbed," they're only talking about actors and performers. They can leave out all the directors, producers, writers, cinematographers, set designers, composers, costumers, film editors, animators, studio heads, agents, etc., they like. No one even lists those omissions. But it's an outrage when they omit someone who was ever on a movie screen.

Lastly: Here's something I recently learned. I buy a lot of things from Amazon and sometimes, something has to be returned…like I bought some sweat pants and they sent me the wrong size. Amazon has always been good about taking things back but they've gotten really good about it as follows. If you have a return, you no longer have to wrap it up, find a suitable mailing bag or box or anything of the sort and maybe get some bubble wrap or padding. Instead, you can have them send you a QR code and then you take the item(s) to any Whole Foods Market, find the Customer Service desk and someone there will take the merchandise, scan the QR code on your phone and they'll wrap up the return and ship it back. I sent my assistant over to do it today and she said it couldn't have been easier.  Good to know.

Gee, I wish I could think of a joke in the worst possible taste to make at the moment. It would be highly appropriate and Gilbert would have loved it.

Though I met and talked with him on a few occasions and guested on his podcast, I can't say I knew Gilbert Gottfried all that well. Others will doubtlessly write longer and better about him than I could, along with wondering what it is that seems to be causing comedians in a certain age group to be passing at a frightening rate.

But Gilbert sure seemed to be a sweet guy, a decent family man, a great audience for other comedians (many good comics are not) and as you surely already know, one of those guys who could make anything funny…even tragedy. Oh — and I left out "brave." He was unafraid to face any audience and say anything he thought would make them laugh. I never saw him be unsuccessful in his mission.

There was a very fine documentary made about him a few years ago called, simply, Gilbert. If you want to know what he was like…or if you thought he was just a guy who squinted and yelled out rude things…I suggest you seek it out.

Tomorrow afternoon at 5 PM, TCM is showing Harold Lloyd's 1923 silent masterpiece, Safety Last. You've all seen the photos from it of Harold dangling from the clockface but how many of you have seen the movie? Well, you can tomorrow. 5 PM is when it turns up on my TV. Due to time zone differences, it may be different where you are.

It's a fine film, though one I'd prefer to see on a big screen with an audience.  You will instantly understand why Lloyd's name is often mentioned in the same sentence as Charlie Chaplin's or Buster Keaton's when folks talk of the great movie comedians of the pre-talkie era.  Lloyd did not seem to have the same comic instincts of either man but he was willing to work as hard as Keaton and he was a better businessman, producer and marketer of his work than any of them.  He made a number of fine films where he didn't hang from clocks.

It is impossible to discuss this film without noting that Lloyd did those amazing physical feats with a severely-compromised right hand.  Years ago here, I wrote about that and about meeting him in the unlikeliest of circumstances…

It was around 1964 and I was attending Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles. I didn't know it at the time but Emerson was apparently built on land that Mr. Lloyd had once owned and he was visiting the campus for some reason connected to that. The principal, Mr. Campbell, had Harold Lloyd in his office and it dawned on him that there was one person on campus who would know who that was and would be thrilled to meet him. That one person was 12-year-old me.

I was sitting in Mr. Cline's English class when someone came in and gave Mr. Cline a "summons slip" (that's what they called them): Mark Evanier to the principal's office, A.S.A.P. I knew I wasn't in any kind of trouble because I was never in any kind of trouble but I couldn't imagine what this was about.

I reported to Mr. Campbell's office where he introduced me to his visitor and my immediate thought was, "Oh, this man has the same name as the great comedian." I mean, he didn't look like the Harold Lloyd I knew from the films, nor was he hanging off a big clock. There was an awkward moment because I didn't immediately go, "Oh my God! The greatest comedian in the world!" Mr. Campbell looked disappointed and Mr. Lloyd looked disappointed. I'm guessing the principal had assured his guest that, yes, there was a 12-year-old kid on campus who knew who he was and now they both thought I didn't.

Trying to salvage the moment, Mr. Campbell said, "I thought you'd enjoy meeting him because you're such a fan of silent movies." I then did a double-take worthy of anyone who ever worked for Hal Roach and I said, "Harold Lloyd from Safety Last?" and Lloyd broke into a big grin. The principal continued, "And I thought you might like to ask him some things about his films."

If I'd had that opportunity a few years later, I'd have deluged the man with curiosity. At that moment, I couldn't think of a thing. I was unprepared, I was scared to be in the presence of Harold Lloyd…and I really didn't know that much about him. He owned most of his major films and rigidly controlled their exhibition so I hadn't seen most of them. There were then few books about him, either. When we shook hands, he grasped my right hand in his left and I didn't know why he did that. A few years later, I obtained a biography that explained. An accident during a photo shoot — a prop bomb turning out to be real — had cost Lloyd a couple of fingers on his right hand so he wore a flesh-colored glove with prosthetic fingers and he hid the hand as much as possible. (The physical feats he did in his films are even more impressive once you know that, along with the fact that he was right-handed.)

The only major Lloyd film I had then seen, I'd only seen in part. A company called Atlas Films sold 8mm versions and, almost certainly with no legal right to do so, they'd released Safety Last in a one-reel, 12-minute abridgement. The entire movie was 70 minutes but the Atlas folks got it down to twelve…and it played fine at that length. You wouldn't have sensed there was ever more to it than that. So I asked him a few obvious questions about that movie without mentioning that I'd only seen (and had purchased) an unauthorized and seriously-trimmed print of it. About all he said was that he'd worked real hard on that film and was very proud of it, which is pretty much what you'd assume.

At Mr. Campbell's suggestion, I walked Mr. Lloyd to his car and we chatted a bit about how Hollywood had changed and he asked me what I wanted to do with my life…and that was about it. I'm sorry, as much for my sake as yours, that the conversation yielded no quotable tidbits. He shook hands with me left-handed again, then got into a big Cadillac (I think) and drove off. Later that day, I told some of my classmates that I'd met Harold Lloyd and they didn't know who that was. So I tried telling a few teachers that I'd met Harold Lloyd and they didn't know who that was, either. No, wait. I believe Mr. Cline said, "Is he still alive?"

So enjoy the film if you care to. If you aren't aware how they did the trick photography that showed Mr. Lloyd apparently many stories up climbing a building, the folks at Criterion Collection made a video explaining it when they released the film — which you can still order here. Here's an excerpt from that video…

• Do people still ask questions without wanting you to know they pertain to them by saying, "Asking for a friend?" I am, of course, asking for a friend.

As some of you may know, I am a longtime member of the Academy of Magical Arts, which few people ever refer to as the Academy of Magical Arts. They instead talk about the organization's clubhouse, The Magic Castle, an Edwardian manor up in Hollywood built in 1908 but now serving as our clubhouse. It's a magnificent place to tour, dine in and see some of the world's greatest magicians demonstrating their artistry.

For as long as I have been a member — more than four decades now — there have been concerns about the future of the Castle and controversies over its management and finances. I don't know how many times in those 40+ years, members who should have known better have told me the Castle might not be around in X years…and X was always a frighteningly low number. The number was also dead wrong because the Castle is still here, better than ever in some ways, and its future may at last be stable.

As this article in the L.A. Times reveals…

In a move to preserve the historic Magic Castle in Hollywood, video game mogul Randy Pitchford is buying the famous home to the Academy of Magical Arts. The purchase, which is expected to close by the end of the month, will ensure the prime property in the heart of the tourist district remains the academy's clubhouse and performance venue, Pitchford said. The price has yet to be disclosed.

If you read the piece, you'll know as much about this as I do but it sure sounds like happy news. And the folks who told me about it recently, requesting I keep it secret which I now don't have to do, all seemed to think it was a good thing. I sure hope so.

Jimmy Kimmel ran this the other night…

We're 101 days from this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. For the purposes of this post, I'm being optimistic and assuming some unexpected variant of you-know-what won't force a cancellation of this year's event which I sure hope to attend.

And yes, I know that could mean battling crowds…and not just crowds of people dressed like Klingons and The Joker and characters out of the summer's big "tentpole" movies. According to many reports from San Diego, it could mean navigating around or otherwise dealing with a rising homeless population.

Here's a report on them with emphasis on the folks with nowhere to go who've elected to camp out near Petco Park. And let me remind you that Petco Park is right next to the convention center where Comic-Con takes place. I really hope someone does something for homeless people — not just in San Diego but everywhere…

• Every so often, I get a craving for Chick-Fil-A. Fortunately, it only happens on Sundays.

I have these friends — Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun — and I've written about them here before. Stu is a longtime expert and preservationist of classic television shows, and he's worked as a warm-up guy on TV shows and he had a much-envied job as Lucille Ball's assistant and archivist. Many of you follow an online program he does every other week. I don't know if you'd call it a podcast or a TV series or what but we have long been plugging Stu's Show on this blog.

If you've never seen it, go over to his website, click the Archives link and take a gander at the famous people who have appeared on the 612 episodes of Stu's Show. To steal the joke that Neil Simon admitted he stole from fellow comedy writer Gary Belkin, I'm the only one there I've never heard of.

Stu's career in warm-ups and working for Lucy make him interesting. So does his history of preserving and honoring TV programs of the past. So does the online shows he's been doing since December of 2006. I was his guest on Stu's Show #1 and I plugged it here. Back then, it was not on TV (as it is now) and it was part of a whole network of shows about old television.

So that's all interesting and so is the fact that Stu met this lady named Jeanine through their mutual love of old TV programs (Lucy's, especially) and they became a couple. And a little while after that, something happened which I wrote about here and will quote here…

Less than a year ago, our friend Jeanine Kasun suffered a completely unexpected brain aneurysm. She was alone in her mountain home at the time and if she hadn't been on the phone with her friend (in the romantic sense) Stu Shostak at the time, I would have had one more obit to write that month. Fortunately, she was talking to him when it happened. He was at their home in Chatsworth and he quickly called for help and emergency services were dispatched.

Jeanine was in a coma for many weeks. When she woke up, she couldn't talk, she couldn't walk, she couldn't make any part of her body do what she wanted it to do. She had no memory and no ability to retain information. Eventually — thanks to good doctoring, therapy, surgery and sheer determination, some of that started to come back. All of that was made possible by the heroic and selfless efforts of Stu Shostak. If you ever had a medical emergency like that, you couldn't do better than have someone like Stu as your advocate and protector.

I helped him out a few times but it was 99% Stu arguing with doctors, double and triple-checking hospital arrangements, dealing with the insurance companies, being at her bedside and watching her back.

She got better. They got married. And it all makes for not one interesting story but many: Stu's warm-up career, his hobby preserving old TV, his career with Lucy, meeting Jeanine, hooking up with Jeanine, saving Jeanine, doing 600+ shows with guests like Dick Van Dyke, Ed Asner, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, etc., etc. Sounds like a movie, doesn't it? Well, it is.

Documentarian C.J. Wallis and his able crew have made Stu's Show, a film about Stu, his life, his love, his saving his love's life, his friendship with Lucy…there's an awful lot to tell here and C.J. packs it in well. The story is told by Stu, Jeanine, a bevy of former Stu's Show guests and TV stars, and even me. It will be available on all major streaming services and pay-per-view points on May 2nd. Here's the trailer…

We all have little terms we don't understand at first. Not being all that savvy about baseball, when I saw YouTube videos talking about "walk-off home runs," I somehow thought that meant the batter came up to the plate and hit the first pitch clear out of the park. I don't know why I thought that but I did.

It turns out a "walk-off home run" is any home run that a batter hits that wins the game for his team and therefore causes the opposing team to have to walk off the field in defeat. I would imagine it is a powerful fantasy of every ball player to do this, especially in the World Series.

Fifteen men have hit walk-off home runs in World Series games, sometimes even in the game that clinched the trophy. Here are the fifteen in chronological order…

It's hard to believe it's been five years this evening since my lovely, loving friend Carolyn Kelly left this sphere of existence. The last few months of battling cancer were gruesome, sad, maddening…I could go on and on listing synonyms. Her doctors knew it was a lost cause, I knew it and she pretty much knew it, certainly by the last month or so. Still, she still battled until she lapsed into a long sleep from which she never awoke. One of the fine hospice nurses who sat with her in the final weeks said to me, "People keep fighting because they don't know what else to do." I absolutely understand that.

Carolyn was in my life for about twenty years. We broke up. We got back together. We broke up. We got back together. That happened several times. It was hard, as they say, to quit her. She was so delightful and so sparkling when she was happy. Moments when I thought we could never be together again were followed shortly by moments when I felt we could never be apart. Then fate settled that conundrum.

Her famous father loomed large in our relationship. A lot of people would rank Walt Kelly as among the greatest cartoonists of the previous century. Woody Allen, no matter what else you may think of him, knew great humorists and he once named the ones he most admired as Groucho Marx, W.C. Fields, Elaine May and S.J. Perelman. He then added, "Oh, and don't forget Pogo. Walt Kelly's comic strip was touched by genius." A pretty good endorsement, I'd say.

Carolyn was also a cartoonist and if people hadn't kept comparing what she did to her father's work, I think she'd have done more of it. Once when our friend Stan Freberg was talking about his friend, Frank Sinatra Jr. and his struggles, she said, "I know what he feels like." But I thought her drawings were wonderful and I wish she'd done more of them. Here's a little one she did as a birthday gift for a friend. I think it's charming…

I inherited from her the job (make that "honor") of co-editing the reprint volumes of the Pogo strip now being issued by Fantagraphics. Volume 8 has been delayed, like everything else in the world, by COVID — extremely bad in all the countries where we can print stuff like this. But the set will be finished as Carolyn had wished. Amazon for some reason gives the Reading Level as Age 9-12 and the Grade Level as "4 and up." I think you need to be a lot older and wiser to understand 90% of it.

I don't want to turn this into a commercial because it's about Carolyn. I want you to know how terrific she was, how much I loved her and how much I miss her. In a sense, she is still with me because I also inherited crates and crates of drawings, writings and documents from the life of both her and her father. I'm still going through them all and every week or two, I come across another wonderful "message," be it a letter or drawing, that was either done by her or very meaningful to her.

She wanted me to share her father's work with the world and I want to share hers. A few weeks ago here, I shared a wonderful article she wrote. This time, I'm sharing a beloved drawing that her father did for her.

Her childhood nickname was "Tony Bug" and she said she wasn't sure why. You will occasionally find "Tony" or "Tony Bug" turning up in a Pogo strip and that's a reference to Carolyn. One day — I don't know if it was a birthday or Christmas or if there even had to be a reason but her father offered to do a drawing for her to fit a sadly-empty space on her bedroom wall. He asked, "What would you like?" and she said, "Two dogs and a mouse." Her father was good at drawing everything but he particularly excelled at dogs and mice.

It must have been wonderful to have a father who could do that. If my father had tried to fill an empty space on my wall, the only thing he could have put up there was an income tax form.

I'm about to give you a link to view this drawing but I want you all to promise me not to post it on Facebook or Twitter or anywhere else and do not give others the direct link. Instead, give any Walt Kelly admirers this link so they have to come to this site and read what I wrote about Carolyn. And if you came here for that reason, also please read this piece that I published here five years ago about Carolyn.

Do I have your word you won't post it anywhere else on the Internet? Good. I knew I could count on you. Here's the link to see the drawing. Isn't it beautiful? His daughter was too…in every way. If I could draw like that, I'd have sent her one every day when we were together…and maybe even when we were apart.

Were it not for cigarettes and all the damage they can do to a human body, my mother might have been 100 years old today — emphasis on the word "might." So many things were wrong with her when she died at the age of 90 that the doctor who made out the death certificate told me he was trying to decide between about eight different causes he could put in the appropriate space. I suggested "Marlboros" and he gave a grim chuckle, told me that probably covered all eight…and then wrote down "Cardiopulmonary Arrest." Fine. Whatever.

My mother did not want to live to be a hundred; not in the condition she was in those final years. She was unable to walk without great effort, a walker and a constant fear of falling. She was unable to travel. She was unable to eat any of the foods she liked. She would half-jokingly ask me to bring her a platter of chili dogs because that was the way she wanted to go: Assisted Suicide by Chili Dog. I did not do this though I was aware she was at least a little bit serious about it.

And she could barely see. Couldn't read, couldn't see the TV screen no matter how close she sat to it. Six more months and she would have been totally unable to see, a prospect that horrified her. I genuinely think that if/when she realized she was minutes from death, she thought something like, "Good. I should have done this months ago."

She was all a person could ask for in a mother: Sweet, smart, good sense of humor, willing to do absolutely anything for her husband and kid. Like my father, who passed a little more than 21 years before her, she almost never scolded or raised her voice. I was the kind of son who never gave either a lot of reason to but they still didn't yell when another father or mother might have.

I have lots of stories on this blog about my mother but I don't believe I ever told this one…

The last two decades of her life, she spent a lot of time in hospitals and hospital emergency rooms. A lot. There was a lockbox on the back door with a house key in it and when paramedics (or usually, firemen) were summoned to her home, either I or the dispatcher would supply the combination via phone so her rescuers could get inside and take care of her. Eventually, if it was the fire department, we didn't need to tell them the combination. The lead fireman remembered it.

When he told me that, I said, "You must have written it down." He said no, they never did that — and it might have been some department policy. But they were there so often and they liked my mother so much that at least this one man remembered it.

But that's not the story I was going to tell here. One time in the middle of the night — maybe three or four in the morning — I was in the emergency room with my mother and she was in tremendous pain. The attending doctor gave her a shot that, he said, would put her to sleep but before it did, it might make her incoherent for a few minutes. "Don't be surprised if she starts babbling nonsense before the drug fully kicks in," he told me and then he left the room.

I was there with my mother…and she did indeed start babbling nonsense. Weird nonsense. Strange nonsense. It was like she'd been possessed by evil demons or something and it scared the heck outta me. I knew it was just the drug but I stepped out into the hall and stopped a passing nurse. Remember this is like 4 A.M. and I'd gone to bed at 2 and been summoned at 3. I was not at my sanest which, as followers of this blog know, is not that sane.

I told the nurse what the doctor had said about how she'd start babbling and I asked, "Could you just listen to a little of this and tell me if this is normal?" She said "Certainly" and stepped into the room, listened to twenty seconds of my mother's ravings and said, "Perfectly normal. She'll be asleep any second now."

The nurse left and my mother — still sounding like she was auditioning for a role in The Exorcist, said to me, "That's a very pretty nurse."

I said, "Yes, she is."

To which my mother replied — using a word I'd rarely heard from her and never in a sexual context — "Do you think you could fuck her?"

And then she fell fast asleep.

The next day, when I told her what she'd said, she had no memory of it…but she thought it was hilarious. In her own way, she always was…that and wonderful and perfect and gee, I was lucky. Oh so lucky.

Tomorrow on this blog, I'll be remembering someone else I was fortunate to have in my life.

Here's yet another clip of Allan Sherman performing on The Ed Sullivan Show, this time the telecast for April 24, 1966.

The song is "Second Hand Nose," a parody of "Second Hand Rose," a popular tune from 1921 which Barbra Streisand was performing in '66 wherever she performed. The original recording of it was by Fanny Brice, the personality Ms. Streisand portrayed in Funny Girl, the Broadway show from '64. It was probably just too tempting for Sherman, doing a "nose" song associated with Barbra.

A couple of interesting points about it here: Sherman himself had had a nose job when he was much younger and at time of this show, he was doing everything he could to alter his current appearance — losing weight, swapping glasses for contacts, letting his hair grow out, etc.

Also, he changed some lyrics. In "Second Hand Nose" as it appeared on his then-current album, in the part about him going to the plastic surgeon, he sang, "I've been to this office once or twice and / All his patients look like Barbra Streisand." Here, he sings — and he stumbles a bit on the words as if they're new to him — "He said if I can handle the finances / My nose will be the same as Cary Grant's is."

Near the end on the record, when he's singing about sitting with girls in his car, the line goes, "We'll sit there sniffing glue." Here, it's "They'll meet their Waterloo."

One suspects Mr. Sullivan demanded the changes…

Rene Lavand was an Argentinian magician specializing in close-up magic. His skills amazed others in his profession because he invented all the moves and sleights he did himself. He had to. There were no magic books for magicians with one hand. Here he is on The Ed Sullivan Show for December 29, 1963…