Hey, I want to get off this topic as much as you probably do so I'll make this as short as I can…which will not be short enough.

If I haven't made it clear, I think what Will Smith did was — to use his own words in his too-little, too-late apology — "unacceptable and inexcusable." To let him get away with no formal punishment is to say that if you're rich or famous enough (he's both), the laws that apply to most of us don't apply to you.

My buddy Ken Levine has, as he often does, saved me the trouble of writing a longer post about this. Just read him. But I'm not as sure as he is that Smith's career is over and there's also this…

Ken and others have said that Smith should have been removed from the hall and not permitted to sit there, act like nothing had happened, and go up and accept his Oscar. Well, maybe. It would be fascinating to hear the conversation among those who had to converse about that option. What if he refused to go quietly? Were they prepared to have what could have been another physical altercation?

He might well have said, as he sat there awaiting the greatest honor of his life, "If you want me out of here, you'll have to drag me out." Even if it was done during a commercial, there was a huge live audience there to see it, some of whom were on Smith's side. We're talking here about dragging the real guy out of the Dolby Theater, not his stunt double.

Do you remove his wife along with him? What if she makes a scene? What if others get involved? The first concern of the police in a tense situation is to de-escalate the tension, not increase it.

So say he's removed. What happens when it's time to open the envelope in the Best Actor category? The folks who had to make the on-the-spot decision didn't know for sure Smith's name was in there but they knew it was pretty likely. You probably don't want to send someone out to say, "Will Smith couldn't be here right now because he's outside in police custody. The Academy accepts this award on his behalf."

It could have gotten even uglier in a hurry. Chris Rock seemed to be fine and at some point, he apparently said he didn't want to press charges or anything of the sort. That makes immediate action seem a bit less necessary. There are those who, when they're a victim in a crime but no lasting physical damage has been done, want to have it over with and forgotten, A.S.A.P.

So you might think, "The best thing is to not do anything now or without a lot of discussion and debate and checking with lawyers…because Will Smith can certainly afford the best." The Academy is not known for speedy decisions about anything or doing things to piss off the Big Stars and Big Studios that support the organization. Everyone there has to check with everyone else before they send out for pizza.

It's one of those moments when I'm glad I wasn't part of the decision on what to do. I still couldn't say what should be done now to Will Smith but I think someone ought to do something.

Here's a puzzler from Presh Talwalkar. The answer is at the end of it so pause the video at the appropriate moment to figure it out, then proceed to the end to see if you got it right. I got it almost instantly but that was because the form reminded me of similar puzzles I've faced…

Will Smith has issued a public apology for sucker-slapping Chris Rock on the Oscars last night. If you don't feel like clicking over to read it — or in case the link has expired — here's the second of three paragraphs…

I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness.

One does suspect this was the work of a squadron of agents, managers, publicists, perhaps a lawyer or two, and maybe one of those consultants who specializes in career damage control. But maybe Smith wrote it himself. It's not bad for what it is but I doubt it'll change the minds of lots of folks who lost their respect for Smith and maybe even their willingness to see his next film.

And yes, I'm aware that there are a lot of people out there who think Smith did the right, manly thing and/or that it was about time someone slugged Chris Rock or certain other comedians of his type. I would remind them that, first of all, what Rock said is not a crime but what Smith did is. And "he (or she) was asking for it" is the first line of a very bad defense in lots of cases of assault and battery…and even rape or murder.

No, I don't think the Will Smith/Chris Rock matter was staged or planned. For one thing, both of them looked like assholes in different ways. Rock handled the after-slap moment well but if he'd known it was coming, he'd have had a smarter line at the ready…maybe "Is it too late to change my vote for Best Actor?" Smith would not have been caught on camera grinning and giggling at the joke before (apparently) deciding that if his wife was upset by it, he was going to respond with a shot of toxic masculinity.

And how would either man have benefited from staging such a thing? Smith turned (potentially) the greatest night of his life into a spectacle where much of America is thinking he's a jerk. Here's a guy who's at the absolute tippy-top of his profession and he'd go along with a stunt to…uh, why? To liven up the ceremony? To change the discussion from whether he deserves the Academy Award to one about whether he deserves to be arrested? To be a bad role model for immature males? If it had been planned, he'd have had a much better speech, too.

What might be staged is an upcoming appearance somewhere of Smith and Rock together, making nice and acting like it was no big deal. Publicists for both are probably suggesting such a thing. And somewhere, some producer is suggesting they remake 48 Hours with Smith taking over for Nick Nolte and Rock in the Eddie Murphy part.

So now Will Smith's got us talking about hitting people. I am against hitting people. I probably said somewhere on this blog that I only did that once in my life but then I later thought of one other time. In both instances, I was in my teens so both were over a half century ago. In neither case was the person I struck injured. At worst, I caused them a bit of pain for a minute or two.

In both times, I was congratulated by others who were present and they said things like, "It's about time someone took a swing at that asshole." In neither case was I punished in any way. In both cases, the person I struck later apologized for their behavior and more or less said they deserved it.

Nevertheless: In both cases, I was ashamed of what I did. I suppose I can imagine situations where striking another person is warranted but it certainly wasn't in these cases. In both matters, I felt something had to be done in response to their bad behavior and the shame I felt had a lot to do with the fact that I couldn't think of something else to do. I hit out of frustration that I didn't have a better idea.

In the last fifty years, I've had people misbehave just as badly or worse in my presence but I haven't even thought of hitting them. I'd like to think that's because I've thought of better ways to deal with those situations. Among the options are to retaliate verbally…and sometimes, you can even explain your feelings to the other party in a way they understand and they'll stop.

Not letting them bother me has probably worked out best…and by "best," I mean "best for me."

I've always liked these kinds of number games that resemble magic tricks. Here's one — and stay tuned for the explanation of why it works…

Well, I told you that if anything memorable happened at the Oscars, it would be instantly viewable a hundred places on the Internet by Midnight.

• The world got a look tonight at what the Oscars would look like if they were produced by Vince McMahon.

Regarding the previous post, Andy Rose wrote to ask…

Your Carson video with Lance Burton got me watching a whole bunch of other videos of him doing the same performance many times over the next couple of decades, but with a noticeably evolving stage presence. Burton gradually goes from a somewhat vampire-like appearance to a much more standard-looking formal costume and hairstyle. He also changes from staring at the audience in a slightly unsettling way to engaging the audience with more of a pleasant grin and a wink.

My question: Did Burton deliberately change because the magician-as-madman look was starting to go out of style in the 80s, or is his evolution just the sign of a performer who naturally got more comfortable on stage as the years went on?

I think most magicians of his era started getting away from that creepy-guy-in-a-tux look…a style change that a lot to do with David Copperfield dressing like a "today" man and with Penn & Teller ridiculing old stereotypes of magic. But I believe Burton only ever took that posture for that dove/cigarette act and as soon as he was in venues that called for longer shows, he got out of that mode (and the tux) once he'd made his last dove appear or disappear in the opener.

He was and still is a very charming, funny guy from Kentucky and once his act ran past ten minutes, as it did when he began headlining in Vegas, he needed to connect more with his audience and, of course, talk. I don't think it was that he got more comfy on stage. I think it was that more was expected of him. One of the appeals of his Vegas shows was how likeable and friendly he was on stage.

I know I've written about this before here but I became a tremendous fan of Mr. Burton when he had a show at the old Hacienda Hotel, more or less across the street from the Tropicana in Vegas. He followed a Minsky's Burlesque presentation that occupied that showroom for many years. I saw that a couple of times because it starred two actual Minsky's veteran comics, Dexter Maitland and Irv Benson…the last of their kind. When Burton took over the hall, I recognized several of the old sets repainted and repurposed for his show.

It was a wonderful show which substituted ingenuity and hard work for the big budget they didn't have. The hard work included how long Burton was on stage for each performance — and he did two shows a night, plus sometimes a meet-and-greet signing program books for the audience outside. He was on stage for about 75% of the show, spelled briefly by a novelty act (usually the brilliant juggler, Michael Goudeau) or a number by six lovely dancers. The dancers were topless at the late show, covered at the early show.

Burton had a huge budget when he moved to the Lance Burton Showroom at the Monte Carlo and there were other magic shows nearby with huge, expensive tricks and special effects. I've still never enjoyed a magic show in that town as much as I enjoyed Burton's run at the Hacienda. I think the tickets were $19.95 each and it was not hard to find $5 off coupons. I got to know one of the ladies in the show and she got me in for the full $19.95 off, plus backstage.

When he moved to the bigger theater down the Strip, a lot of intimacy was lost…and while the tricks got more elaborate, a few of them were like most of those in Siegfried and Roy's show. By that I mean you had the feeling that the magic was being done not by the magician but by the folks who build the illusions and by the stage crew pulling levers and pushing buttons. Lance still opened with his dove act but it was a shorter version and at some point, he began talking during it, which I think distracted from the fact that he was up there doing some of the best sleight-of-hand in the world.

I liked the show…and I guess I liked the fact that Burton was not working as hard and probably making eight times the money or more. I just liked the show at the Hacienda more and not because the dancers had their bras off. I liked that you were seeing one of the best magicians ever doing it the hard way. He's semi-retired now and contributing his time to help and encourage young magicians. I don't know anyone in the magic community who doesn't admire the man…and as I think you've figured out by now, I do too.

We've all heard stories about how a young, largely-unknown stand-up comic went on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, did well, got some signal of approval from Carson and, the next day, that young comic had a different, highly successful career. These days, no one appearance on any show — possible occasional exception: America's Got Talent — has anywhere near the star-making power of a thumbs-up from The King of Late Night.

The power of The Tonight Show was actually fading in Johnny's last years on that beat. The rise of channels like HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central, and a flurry of new talk and comedy shows opened up new paths to stardom. Success in stand-up comedy also changed from getting your own sitcom (Seinfeld, Carey, Prinze) to packing huge auditoriums (Hart, Chapelle, Burr). Six good minutes on a talk show where you can't use the "f" word ain't that much help filling stadiums.

But for a few years there, Carson had star-making power…and it wasn't just for comedians.

In 1981, 21-year-old Lance Burton was winning awards for his magic, most notably for a wordless 12-minute routine in which he made cards, doves, candles and other items appear and disappear to Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." His breakthrough came on October 28th of that year when he appeared on Carson's show.

As the story is told, Burton came in that afternoon and did his entire 12-minute routine in rehearsal so that the show's producers could select the six-or-so minutes that he'd perform on that evening's show. But Johnny, himself a fan and practitioner of magic — came down to watch that rehearsal and when it was over, he said, "Let's have him do the whole thing."

When Freddie Prinze did his first stand-up spot with Johnny, he got five-and-a-half minutes. Burton got twice that much and, obviously, the biggest possible endorsement from Mr. Carson. The magician was instantly flooded with offers and he selected headlining the "Folies Bergere" show at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. He stayed there for nine years and could have stayed longer except that he moved across the street to the Hacienda to headline his own show. Then that led to him having his own showroom at the Monte Carlo for the next 26 years.

I saw him many times in Vegas and even got to hangout backstage. He always started each performance with some version of this routine which he did on the Carson show. A lot of magicians would tell you it is the all-time best of its kind…

Like most (all?) of you, I'm not watching the Academy Awards tomorrow night. Haven't even set the ol' TiVo, though I might just in case I hear about one or two memorable moments. Then again, if there are any, they'll be viewable a hundred places on the Internet by Midnight so maybe I needn't bother.

That's one reason why a record low number of folks tune in the ceremony with each passing year. If you scan the 'net for articles, you can probably find eight dozen other reasons, all of them valid to some degree. At the top of my list would be that people these days are more conscious than ever of the financial end of films. Once you know that Will Smith got $40,000,000 for starring in King Richard, it's hard to get that excited over whether he wins or loses as Best Actor. Is anyone going to feel sorry for him if he doesn't?

There's also a certain pomp, circumstance and phoniness to watch all these rich, famous people giving honors to each other. No matter how humble some of the speeches try to be, there's always that air of Jerry Lewis explaining how people in show business are the greatest human beings and so are deserving of more reverence.

I think also in the era of videogames and YouTube and all the other forms of entertainment we now have, movies are just not as important. They also don't have the sense of timeliness they once had. We're all aware: Every movie we want to see will always be there. I don't have to go to theaters — increasingly, even movie lovers don't — and I don't have to see them now. I have not seen any — not a one — of the Marvel movies since the first X-Men film. If and when I want to, I can. Most people don't watch The Tony Awards because they haven't seen any of the nominated shows. It's becoming the same way with the Oscars.

And I could go on and on about this until some orchestra plays me off. I just think that for the last decade or three, the world has steadily been losing interest in awards ceremonies. We heard a lot about how one host might attract more viewers than another, or how one ceremony wasn't as well-produced as another.

In hindsight, I think it's easier to see that those concerns were ignoring the core issue: People have just lost their interest in this kind of thing, just like they lost interest in beauty pageants. And westerns on TV. And Playboy magazine. And Donkey Kong and water beds and Cabbage Patch Dolls and circuses and video rental shops and Toys R Us and a long, long list of other things we could all itemize. At the very least, we have matters to think about that impact us more.

For those of you unfamiliar with this centuries-old Internet Custom that I invented and which no one else follows, the posting of a picture of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup on a blog means the blogger has a busy day and may not be able to post much, if anything today. It is an advisory to you that you might want to go see if there are any sites other than this one on the World Wide Web. I hear there are.

You may enjoy this…

• The Senate hearings remind me that folks who complain mightily about "judicial activism" or "legislating from the bench" are complaining about the results, not the activism itself. They think it's great when it gives them a desired outcome.

Hey, let's talk about Stan Berman, a cab driver from Brooklyn who attained a smidgen of fame in the early sixties as a "crasher." He went to parties and weddings and important public functions without a ticket or invite but with a lot of chutzpah, cleverness and occasionally a tuxedo. And we can start this discussion by watching his appearance on an episode of I've Got a Secret that aired on 2/12/62…

You'll notice Mr. Berman is very evasive and often absolutely wrong with his answers to the panelists' questions. I suspect this was a habit he picked up in all those event-crashings. He seemed to have learned to be evasive and to lie when asked anything. (Another interesting point: His New York Times obit said that he also sometimes worked as a private investigator.)

Want to know more about Stan? Donald Liebenson has written a fine article about him for Vanity Fair. But Liebenson missed one of Stan's greatest moments. MAD did an article in its December, 1962 issue called "Celebrities' Home Movies" in which various celebs — John Wayne, Alfred Hitchcock, Lloyd Bridges and others — narrated brief snippets of their home movies. The last one was Stan Berman and here are the first two and last two panels of it…

That was drawn by Wally Wood, the subject of much discussion on this blog lately. A year or two later, he got himself bounced out of MAD — not entirely to his regret — and wound up wandering over to Marvel Comics. It does not look like he had much if any reference on what Stan Berman looked like.

The timing on this intrigued me the way some odd things intrigue me. The December '62 MAD would have gone on sale around October so it went to press around late August. Back-timing further, it seems possible that Larry Siegel and/or Arnie Kogen, who were credited as writers of the MAD piece, saw that I've Got a Secret episode and it gave them the idea to include Berman. Larry's no longer with us but I just got off the phone with Arnie.

He only vaguely remembers it but he said, "I'm pretty sure I didn't see that I've Got a Secret. I think I read about him somewhere. I probably wrote the article and then they asked Larry to add more material to it but I think I was the one who put that guy into it."

I don't know how I feel about that guy. You could view him as a prankster, I guess. You could also consider all the meals he ate that others paid for, and shows he went to that others paid to attend. I mean, there's a certain amount of thievery in what he did, and he did sometimes disrupt public events. I know people who are sad that they can't afford — or can but are unable to get badges — for Comic-Con in San Diego. How should we feel about the people who sneak in?  I don't admire them or write them off as harmless.

Like me, you've probably had times when at some event, overzealous security personnel tried to keep you out of someplace you were supposed to be. I once had to practically fight my way into a building at Comic-Con to get to a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel I was supposed to be hosting in three minutes. I had the proper badge with the big GUEST ribbon on it but the guy thought I was trying to cut the line to get into Hall H, which is not at all where I was headed in such a hurry.

Every time that happens to us, we can "thank" people who crash and sneak their way into things for it. And on I've Got a Secret, he bragged about crashing some strangers' wedding and kissing the bride. I wonder if that recently-married couple was watching the show that night and how they felt about his "hobby."

And yet in my youth, I occasionally "crashed" (I guess you'd say) a TV or movie studio and went where I had no permission to be. I think I even helped myself to a donut from the craft services table at a Laugh-In taping at NBC. It's not exactly the same thing but it's close. I wonder how the I've Got a Secret people who put Stan Berman on their show and sort of glorified what he did would have felt about someone crashing their security.

And also,  there's this: The game show treated it as a kind of admirable accomplishment that Berman was able to crash the inauguration of President Kennedy and get into the presidential seating area. Would that have seemed so harmless and fun after 11/22/63? He probably couldn't have done it after that and maybe that's a good thing.