As I post this in Los Angeles, it is 2:22 on 2/22/22. Again.

This is from Ed Sullivan's TV program on September 27, 1953. The video says it's from The Ed Sullivan Show but in '53, it was still called Toast of the Town. It emanated from New York and back then, it was very common to refer to California — as Ed does here — as "The Coast." Something could happen in the Mojave Desert but to New Yorkers, it was happening on "The Coast," as if the Eastern United States didn't have a coastline of its own.

Stan Freberg and Daws Butler then had a best-selling comedy record. Both sides parodied Jack Webb's popular series, Dragnet, which was a radio series from 1949 to 1957, and which added a TV version in 1951. One side of the record was "St. George and the Dragonet" (Dragnet in medieval times) and the other was "Little Blue Riding Hood" (a Dragnet version of the children's story). Here's the latter with Ed assuming the announcer role done on the records by Hy Averback.

June Foray, who also appeared on both sides of the record, plays Little Blue Riding Hood and her grandmother. Daws Butler plays the other cop back at the station. It took a certain amount of ingenuity to do this live on stage with no sets or props and minimal costuming. On Ed's show that night, they also did the flip side of the record with the same no-budget staging.

The records were very popular and Jack Webb — who as Ed says, gave permission for it all — was delighted and felt that the parody upped the popularity of his series. But he was a bit annoyed that it planted in many minds that "We just want to get the facts, ma'am" or similar lines were heard often (or even at all) on his show. That was a Freberg/Butler invention which became part of Dragnet lore.

I was privileged to know and work with Stan, Daws and June…three people of awesome talent, amazing careers and vast amounts of sheer niceness. I miss all three of them very much…

As I post this in Los Angeles, it is 2:22 on 2/22/22. And it will be again in twelve hours.

• I'm having plumbing problems. I'm fairly sure Trump is sneaking into my house at night and flushing documents down my toilet.

So now I've seen all four parts of the documentary by W. Kamau Bell about you-know-who and you-know-what and the main revelation I had was that I approached it with unreal expectations…or maybe "hopes" would be a better word. I hoped it would give me some insight into a problem with which I've struggled. I hoped for an "aha!" moment when I would figure out how to deal with a conflict within my own private brain.

It's a problem based on the fact that few human beings are so overwhelmingly flawless or even overwhelmingly flawed that you can regard them wholly as one or the other. Some might get close…but even then, that may be because of what you don't know about them. Clearly for most of us, there was a time when the portrait of then-Doctor William Henry Cosby Jr. was purely a good one. Clearly too, there was a time when that became more arguable…and clearly now, there are those who would place him squarely and without hesitation in the Horrible Person category. He is hardly the only human who has undergone this change of image.

As a fan of so many things, chief among them comedians and cartoonists and comic book creators, I've formed opinions of so many people. I've gotten to know many of them, up close and personal…which means I've wrestled with a problem: How do you regard someone when 90% of what they've done is admirable and brilliant and maybe even wholly benevolent…

…and then there's that 10% that just won't go away.

Or maybe it's 80/20 or 70/30. I have no problem knowing what to think of them when there's no good and plenty of bad…but sometimes, the ratio is harder to measure. How do you quantify the good and bad? And even when, as in the case of Cosby, the bad pretty much negates the good, do you pretend the good never existed? Is it wrong to honor Cosby's accomplishments as a performer and a humanitarian and philanthropist? He was clearly a grand role model for a helluva lot of people. How much weight do we give that?

It's probably easier when the person in question raped at least sixty women — probably a lot more — because that's the kind of sin/crime that can't be spun in an innocent light. You can't say, "Well, maybe they gave consent while they were unconscious…" Some of the bad things I know other people have done are bad but not that bad.

Obviously, I'm not going to name names here but I can think of at least a dozen people I've known where the following was true: I admired them and even liked them for good things they did. Then at some point, they did bad things or I became aware of bad things. At times, I've almost envied those who, either due to naïveté or willful blindness, saw these people as All Good or All Bad. The naïve or willfully blind don't have to deal with the conflict.

I don't see how anyone could watch even one installment of We Need to Talk About Cosby, let alone all four, and not be convinced that "America's Dad" is guilty as hell, sick as hell and that it's awful that he's not still behind bars. He was not in any way exonerated by the legal decision that let him out but I guess he and his more delusional fans are more comfortable thinking he was.

My only "Aha!" moment watching the doc — the moment I learned something from it — was that there was no "Aha!" moment, nor could there ever be. We will have to always deal with The Good Cosby and The Bad Cosby as two sides of the same human being. With the folks I've known who've led to mixed feelings, those feelings will forever be mixed. Those individuals are both of those people — the one I admire and even like, just as much as they're the one who disappointed me because I'd thought they were just the first guy.

You may think that's obvious and so did I. But it was worth the four hours to realize that I wasn't missing something; that there really is no other way to deal with someone like that. And I think I also learned about why so many people had so much trouble dealing with Cosby's dual nature. I was never a huge fan of him as a performer but I sure identify with those who were in agony coming to terms with the ugly side of the man. And I can sure get angry, as anyone watching the documentary would, that he got away with as much as he did.

If your answer is "never," skip the article I'm about to link to. In fact, skip this blog indefinitely. But if you're wrestling with this question, this article might help you wrestle.

More impossible feats from my pal Charlie Frye…

…how good it is to have John Oliver's show back.

Even though masking rules are still in place in Los Angeles, I see a lot of uncovered faces every time I go out. I sense a lot of wishful thinking there: It's over, it's all over, it's not coming back. It would be great if that's so but I'm not that optimistic. I have one of those milestone divisible-by-ten birthdays in ten days and I think I'll err for now on the side of skepticism.

I'm not watching much in the way of news or politics but when I turned on the TV this morning, I saw Ted Cruz denouncing the Biden Administration for the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan. I did not hear the reporter remind him that the agreement for the U.S. to do this was signed in February of 2020, nor did I hear Cruz reminded of who was president in February of 2020.

Jeff Zucker was ousted recently as the president of CNN because — and I quote — "…he had failed to disclose a romantic relationship with another senior executive at the network." A friend of mine asked me if I didn't think his firing was unduly harsh given the stated reason. I gave my stock reaction to this kind of thing: "We know what they announced but we probably don't know the whole story." That's proving to be true and I think it's almost always true when someone is fired like that. In fact, I think it's often a matter of "You're going to resign now for these reasons so all the other reasons won't come out." And sometimes, those other reasons don't come out.

If I make more typos than usual here lately, I'm going to blame it on getting used to a new keyboard. For most of my computing life, any non-laptop work I've done has been either on old Northgate keyboards or clones thereof. None of those keyboards are still made and while I had a good guy who'd fix and clean mine, the seven-or-so I had have just plain worn out. I tried a new Dell membrane-type keyboard but it had what I don't like (but tolerate) on a laptop…that kind of "spongy" feel without the sensation of individual keys. My computer guy recommended a new mechanical model and I like it so far. If I like it for another week, I'll tell you about it.

Here's one you might not know. In 1967, British singer-songwriter Jonathan King had a modest (exceedingly modest) hit with a song called "Round Round," which I stuck on my mixtape. I didn't have his much bigger hit, "Everyone's Gone to the Moon" on there nor did I have any of the dozens of other songs on there that he reportedly recorded under other names. He was quite prolific, though his career hit some major blocks some years later when it was alleged he'd had indecent contacts with underage boys. I won't claim I understand enough about it to say if he was innocent or guilty; just that he was charged and tried and convicted but there were appeals and some dismissals and…oh, go look it up yourself if you're interested.

What interested me was "Round Round," which was an anti-drug tune released at a time when there were a lot of songs glorifying drugs.  It felt to me like Mr. King's song was getting some airplay on KHJ on something like an "equal time" basis…so the station wouldn't be pilloried for some of the other records they were broadcasting to a young, perhaps impressionable audience.  Or maybe I was just imagining this about a song that was about people imagining things that weren't there.  Here it is…

Here's another not-good review of the Jackman/Foster Music Man that explains pretty plainly what the reviewer didn't like about it. The notice may ring through for those of us who haven't seen the production but we shouldn't assume it's spot-on. Then again, it does remind me of some of what bothered me about that revival of My Fair Lady a few years ago.

The passing of Stephen Sondheim does not mean the end of Stephen Sondheim interviews.  D.T. Max conducted this conversation which may have been the composer's last one.

It may come as a surprise to my neighbors but Spectrum — the big cable provider around here — carries the Decades channel. It's tucked away, at least on my block, on Channel 1294 where no one will spot it and if I look at the Program Guide at any hour of the day, it will tell me that the show currently airing is Title Not Available, and it will be followed by episodes of Title Not Available, Title Not Available, Title Not Available and Title Not Available — in that order.

When I tune in, I might catch what looks like a vintage episode of The Phil Silvers Show, Family Affair, The Best of The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Cheers, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I Love Lucy, Here's Lucy, The Millionaire, The Dick Cavett Show, Our Miss Brooks, The Odd Couple, Taxi, Petticoat Junction, Newhart, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Love Boat, Get Smart, The Donna Reed Show, The Abbott and Costello Show or Car 54, Where Are You?

That is not a complete list of what they air but it is a list that includes some real good programs. Most of them are on other cable channels but this is a nice selection to find all in one place.

You can learn what's on when (and where Decades is viewable in your area) on the channel's website but since it isn't in Spectrum's program guide, it's not on my TiVo's program guide.  This makes their programming hard to record and watch at my convenience…which reminds me.  My favorite show, Title Not Available is on right now.

From Late Night with David Letterman for November 16, 1983: Larry "Bud" Melman welcomes arriving visitors at the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal…

My buddy Bob Bergen continues to release wonderful videos on Instagram…tips on voice acting for those who wish to enter that profession. Some of them are worth watching if you're aspiring to any kind of job anywhere. If you haven't checked them out, go to this page and start watching.

I spoke with Bob last week to suggest a topic and it turns out he already covered it on a video I missed…but I'll tell you a story that illustrates it. In fact, I'll tell you two of them. The first occurred a number of years ago when in my occasional role as a Cartoon Voice Director, I had to hold auditions and find just the right actor to do the voice of a new character in a new series. I had written some audition copy for the actors to read.

These days, almost all those who audition do so from their home studios but this was back when they used to have to come in to a recording studio as per an appointment made through their agents. I think I auditioned about twenty actors that day. It was a long day.

An actor would arrive, usually while I was auditioning the guy before them. My assistant would welcome them and give them the audition copy which included a few drawings of the new character and a brief explanation of who he was and what he was like. They could study it until it was their turn to come in and record something to show how they'd handle the role.

So midway through the day, in came an actor I knew (sorta) from TV and some on-camera roles, though he did have credits for voice work. I was not the one who asked his agent to send him in to audition. An executive producer of the show thought this might be The Guy and that was how his audition was arranged.

When it was this actor's turn, I welcomed him, told him a bit more about the character and asked if he had any questions. He said no and went into the booth and positioned himself in front of the microphone we had in there. I was outside the booth, seated at a console next to the engineer who controlled all the buttons and dials. In such a set-up, I have a button I can push and communicate with the guy in the booth and I used it to ask him if he was ready. He said he was "more than ready" and he launched into…

Well, he was supposed to be reading the audition copy he'd been given but he wasn't doing that. He was instead ad-libbing a speech based vaguely on the same premise. What he was giving me was not the copy I'd written nor was it even close to the character he was supposed to be playing.

I hit the talkback and told him — nicely, I thought — "You might like to know that I wrote the audition copy you're not reading." "Nothing personal," he said, 'But I never follow the copy."

I said, "Well, if you do this show, you'll have to."

He said, "I don't do that. Like I said, nothing personal. But there's no one in the business who can write dialogue better than what I come up with."

I said, 'Even if that's true, you're not doing the character we need. He's nothing like what you're doing."

He seemed strangely uncaring about that. He just shrugged and said, "So change the character."

I said, "I think we're both wasting our time here." He agreed…and in an oddly friendly manner, came out of the booth, shook my hand and said, "Okay, thanks." He headed for the door, then stopped and looked back at me. "Someday, someone's going to try it my way and have the best friggin' cartoon show ever done." Then he left. The guy who got the part was terrific and just what we wanted.

The funny thing about this was that what he did in the booth was very colorful and I could imagine someone somewhere building a good show around what he was doing. It just wasn't the series we were doing.

(And just for context: I was also the main writer on this show so I did have some power to alter the script and I suppose I could have gone back to the network and the producers to suggest minor (minor!) changes in the character. But I didn't want to in this case, and in most instances, the voice director doesn't have the power to do that. We're hired to supervise the recording of the show the network bought and the script everyone has already approved.)

Up until a few years ago, every cartoon show I voice-directed was recorded in a studio in Los Angeles with all the actors present. It was technically-possible to record an actor via what they call a "phone patch" where he or she is in another studio in another city but except once in a rare while, we didn't do that. It took more time, it cost extra money, the results were not as good and I could probably think of a few other reasons we only did it in an emergency.

All that time, you'd be amazed how often I got a call or an e-mail or someone approached me at a convention to urge me to hire them for a voice job…but they would have to do it over the phone from far, far away. And when I told them, "That's not the way we do it," their reply was, "Well, you can change the way you do it."

And the reply to that which I usually didn't say aloud was: "Why should I? I can get the absolute top voice actors in the business to come into the studio and work the way I like to work." I wasn't going to change things to accommodate some beginner.

COVID has changed the way most cartoons are recorded. Most voice actors have now installed small state-o'-the-art recording studios in their homes and they record from there. Usually, it's with all the actors online at the same time in a ZOOM conference or something similar…so it doesn't matter as much where they are. But it changed because it had to, not because some kid way outta town wanted it to for his sake.

So now here's the other story…

For a brief time in the seventies, I edited a line of Tarzan and Korak comic books for the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate. These were comics published overseas and, so far, never in this country. One day, a young man who had never worked in comics before showed up at the office with his portfolio seeking work on these comics. That portfolio consisted of about two dozen drawings of the way he saw Tarzan. There were two things wrong with his work…

One was that all he had were figure drawings of the character — no backgrounds, no other characters, just a guy in a loin cloth in action poses. If he was drawing Tarzan swinging on a vine, he didn't even draw the vine. And there were no comic book-style pages that told any sort of story to demonstrate that he could do that.

I told him I'd need to see all that — actual panel-by-panel storytelling, backgrounds, the character interacting with others, etc. He said, "I don't want to draw that. I just want to draw Tarzan. Can't you just have some other artist draw all that other stuff?"

No, I told him, I couldn't.

The other problem was that everyone in this project was drawing the version of Tarzan depicted by Russ Manning. In fact, Russ had been the editor, making sure all the artists drew Tarzan roughly as he did. When he got too busy, I took over but the rule was still that the artists were drawing that Tarzan. The young man applying for work was drawing his own version of Tarzan who looked nothing like the same character.

And when I told him that's what I needed, he just shrugged and said, "That's the way I see Tarzan." Okay…but that wasn't the job.

When I said I couldn't even give him a tryout, he grabbed up his samples and walked out. The receptionist later told me he'd stormed past her desk and out of the office, cursing me out and muttering something about how when he was a big, famous illustrator, I'd be humiliated for having turned him down. I've since been humiliated for many things but I don't recall that being among them.

I have more examples but you get the concept. Audition for the job they offer, not for what you wish someone would offer. There are times when someone comes in and they're so spectacular that those doing the hiring will change their minds about what they're seeking but it's like winning the lottery. It happens so rarely that you shouldn't expect it.