You will notice there are no Beatles songs on my 1972 mixtape. That's because a long time before I assembled it, a friend gave me a copy of his own All-Beatles mixtape so I didn't need the Fab Four on the one I put together. There are also no Rolling Stones numbers on mine because it was only much later that I developed an appreciation of the Stones.

There was one song on mine from The Dave Clark Five, a band that briefly (very briefly) was hailed by some — and by "some," I mean "a few" — as the smarter alternative to The Beatles. Back around the time most kids in my age bracket were hailing John, Paul, George and Ringo as the most fabulously awesome band ever, some friends took the snob approach, which involves belittling what everyone else likes and insisting you've found something better.

I didn't think The Dave Clark Five were better or even equal, though I liked one song they recorded…"Catch Us If You Can." I heard it often on KHJ radio, though this was well before I began taping that channel and building my mixtape of songs they played. At the time, I considered buying the 45 RPM record of The Dave Clark Five performing "Catch Us If You Can" but before I did, I came across a cheaper alternative.

In a Von's Market one day, I spotted a rack of 45 RPM records for sale. It said "Hit Records" on the rack and indeed, they were. They were records produced by the Hit Records Company, a firm which took whatever song was big on the Top 40, had some unknown band imitate it and then put out a record at a much cheaper price. The Dave Clark version was 89 cents at my local record shop. But I could buy a version by The Jalopy Five right there at the Von's for 39 cents.

I decided to save myself a trip to the record shop and fifty cents by buying The Jalopy Five's version of it. In 1965, fifty cents could buy you four new 12-cent comic books (with two cents left for miniature Hershey bars) or that year's Superman and Batman annuals.

And there was a bonus. The flip side of the record was "Just a Little Bit Better" performed not by Herman's Hermits like the version on the charts. The Hit Records version was performed by that famous group, Hank's Hounds. It would not have surprised me if it had turned out that The Jalopy Five and Hank's Hounds were the same guys. For all I know, everyone on the Hit Records label — groups like The Roamers and The Beagles — were some of or all the same guys or same gals.

Here is "Catch Us If You Can" as performed by The Jalopy Five…

And here's the original version — the one I had on my mixtape — performed (and badly lip-synced on some TV show) by The Dave Clark Five…

At some point in the late seventies or early eighties, I noticed somehow that there was no "The Best of The Dave Clark Five" record album out. Every other one of those groups had all their biggest hits on one or two albums but there was no such thing for the DC5, as someone must have called them. I mentioned this one day to a guy I knew who was working for Rhino Records…just the kind of record company that would have put out such a thing.

I asked, "Is it just that they're so totally forgotten that there's no market for it? If there's a market for the best of Freddie and the Dreamers, I can't see why there wouldn't be one for the Dave Clark Five." He chuckled and then said approximately…

"There'd be a huge market for it and I think we went after the rights. The trouble is that Dave Clark made, like, a zillion dollars when they were hot and he's set some astronomical price for anyone who wants to put out the kind of record you describe. We could sell a lot of that record but we couldn't make any money on it."

I didn't know then if that was true but I just looked at Wikipedia and it says, "Between 1978 and 1993, none of their music was available to be purchased in any commercial format due to rights-holder Clark declining to license the band's recordings." So I guess it was true. The item also tells of a few releases that eventually did happen and it says that everything they did is available on Spotify. That's great but I'd really rather hear "The Best of The Jalopy Five."

Busy today finishing an article that stubbornly refuses to be finished. The following rerun is from July 5, 2010 — which I'll remind you is about eleven-and-a-half years ago. I'm picking this to post because in the next few days, I'll have a post up here that reflects on how it changed the way I write to move from a typewriter to a computer. So don't think of this as filler material. Think of it as historical context for the upcoming post…

I got my first word processor around 1981 — not a computer…a word processor. It was a Lexowriter and it did not play games or balance my checkbook or go online or even handle graphics. It just processed words and it did that very well for about three years. I followed this with my first computer, a Toshiba with a built-in monochrome (greenish) screen and no hard disk. It had two drives for 5¼" floppy disks. One disk always had to be the DOS-based word-processing software, a program called Spellbinder. You saved your work to the other floppy, then swapped things around and backed up that floppy to another floppy. If you were prudent or paranoid — with computers of that era, you were right to be both — you then backed-up your backup to yet another floppy.

Why did I use Spellbinder? It came with the computer…and I'll say this for it: It served me well, though for the longest time, its makers issued no upgrades and no improvements. I found out later that Spellbinder had been written by one man and he'd been killed in a car crash, casting his company into a kind of DOS-based limbo for a few years there. Those of us who used it had to sit and watch the industry evolve without us. When I moved to a faster computer, Spellbinder got slower, like I was trying to drive a horse-and-buggy on the freeway.

Other programs were emerging and every one of them did oodles of things Spellbinder would not do…and another problem was that I seemed to be the only human being on the planet using it. Friends would give me discs containing things they wrote in Wordstar, Word Perfect or Microsoft Word and I couldn't open their files, nor could I convert my Spellbinder files to anything they could open on their computers. When my pal Steve Gerber and I collaborated on a script, we might as well have been writing in different languages.

Finally, Spellbinder announced a major upgrade that would morph it from plain old word processing software to full-fledged desktop publisher. I sent the money and eagerly awaited its arrival only to experience a massive disappointment. The new, improved Spellbinder was a disaster — slow, clunky, complicated and likely to crash if you wrote a word containing more than three syllables. In fact, the program not only crashed, it took the Spellbinder company with it.

Orphaned, I migrated to Wordstar 3.0. Why? Well, for one thing, it was the Number One word processing software at that time. Having felt like an alien presence in the growing world of personal computers, I yearned for maximum compatibility. Foolishly, I thought, "Well, Wordstar's never going away on me." Also: For twenty bucks, you could buy a program that would convert all your Spellbinder files to Wordstar. Wordstar 3.0 was soon followed by Wordstar 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0. Each had more features and each was less useful to me.

At one point in there, the Wordstar people came up with something called Wordstar 2000 which a lot of us bought, foolishly thinking it had something to do with Wordstar. It was a completely different program that served no purpose except to make the last version of Spellbinder look workable by comparison. If you wanted to write the word "cat" in Wordstar 2000, you had to type the "c," save the file, reboot, reload the program and then type the "a."

Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad. But it felt quite that bad.

There was also along the way, a program I thought was a great idea. It was called Wordstar Easy and it was basically Wordstar for Absolute Friggin' Idiots. An otter could have written a Harlequin romance novel on Wordstar Easy…and many probably did. It was Wordstar stripped-down to its raw skeleton — no fancy fonts, no fancy formatting, no inserting pictures. For the sheer act of writing prose, nothing I've worked on has been as fast and simple. I'd mastered the current version of Real Wordstar and it was actually fine…but I'd write in Wordstar Easy and then if I needed to format something for a fancy printout, I'd load it into the full program and make it pretty-pretty.

A great idea…but since no one else seemed to think so, its failure added to Wordstar's decline. Then came Wordstar for Windows, which wasn't even a fair fight. The Wordstar people had to compete with Mr. Gates' Word on Mr. Gates' operating system. The ref stepped in, stopped the fight and that's when we all knew it was time to abandon ship.

Battered and bloody, I fled in desperation to where I should have gone years earlier — to Microsoft Word. What had kept me from it, I suspect, was that when Gerber had me test-drive the current version on his computer, it seemed awfully mouse-oriented. The muscle skills involved in writing had not yet fully evolved for me from my typewriter days. Barring the growth of a third hand (somewhat unlikely), I didn't think I could work with a mouse…and Word then didn't seem too efficient without the active involvement of one of them little plastic rodents.

Still, I felt I had to learn it even if it took forever. Forever, in this case, turned out to be about a day and a half. Also, by then Microsoft Word was a better program and we PC users were all now living in a world of Windows. I've been generally happy with Word, though I liked Word 2000, which I used until last year, better than the version I'm currently using, which is Word 2007. The main advantage though is that I no longer have to worry about being incompatible with anyone else. Almost everyone I work with can open and use a file in Microsoft Word, and for the few who can't, I merely need to export my file in Rich Text Format or import their RTF files. I can even swap with someone who works on one of those MAC things you hear so much about.

I feel oddly, and I'm sure foolishly, secure with what I have now. Intellectually, I know that twenty years from now, I'll be writing this same piece recalling the primitive, long-defunct software of 2010 and I'll be struggling to convert my current word processing files to whatever the format is then. (I still have stuff in Wordstar 4.0 I need to translate to Word.) But for now, it feels like settled law and I'm relatively in sync with everyone else in my little corner of the technological universe. This really is what it's about. The fact that I can write scripts with all this software and make a living is of secondary importance…if that much.

The good folks over at MeTV have assembled a brief end-of-the-year obit reel. It leads off with my unofficial aunt…

On New Year's Eve this week, 300,000 people are expected to crowd the Las Vegas Strip to party, get roaring drunk, ring in 2022 and watch what I'm sure will be a spectacular fireworks show. Every major hotel is expected to send a fortune in pyrotechnics aloft, starting at one end of The Strip and moving down until The Stratosphere will launch the final display.

I did N.Y.E. on The Strip one year. It was back before any of us heard the word "coronavirus" and it was still a horrible place to be. Adding in the possibility of catching a disease makes it even worse.

There were two good things the evening I was there to ring in 1997. One was some pretty spectacular fireworks…though what they're planning for this year will make what we saw that year look like a couple of guys with sparklers.

The other thing was a very impressive police presence. The Strip was crawling with 'em and they were nice and friendly and helpful and you'd wish that every encounter with law enforcement could be that pleasant. They were making necessary arrests and breaking up fights but it was wholly benevolent and very much appreciated by the masses. More than a few drunken ladies were running around trying to hug and/or kiss the male officers.

But other than that…

As you may know, I don't drink alcohol. I don't like being around people who do…and my date and I had to wade through an awful lot of them to get to the few places we were able to go. So I didn't like being there. The thought of being crammed in around those people in the time of COVID is extra-horrifying to me.

I just looked it up and, picking Caesars Palace as more-or-less the center of the party, my home is 285 miles away. I'm thinking of spending New Year's Eve on the West side of my house because that will put me a tiny bit farther away.

I love videos of stand-up comedians of the past.  Dave Astor was pretty hot in the sixties.  Reportedly, he was the first comic to perform at Budd Friedman's Improv in New York as the club morphed from a place where people sang to a place where people told jokes.  This is him on The Ed Sullivan Show for December 31, 1961…

This is from The Carol Burnett Show for 12/13/91. Ms. Burnett, Tony Roberts and Bernadette Peters perform a Sondheim medley in a roadside diner. And yes, that's Richard Kind in there…

I just watched The Super Bob Einstein Movie on HBO Max — a 75 minute tribute/retrospective about Bob Einstein, who passed away about two years ago. It's a lot of clips of his work…talk show appearances, scenes from Curb Your Enthusiasm, clips from shows he produced and/or wrote on and so forth…interspersed with interviews from those who knew and worked with him. There are even interviews from folks who were related to him, including brother Albert Brooks. It's a well-made and fitting compilation.

And there's plenty of Super Dave clips, the sum of which led me to a conclusion about the man: The funniest things he did were probably the ones that cost the least. Some of those Super Dave "stunts" must have cost a bundle and taken all day to tape…and they aren't half as wonderful as Bob Einstein just talking, especially when pissed-off about something. As he usually was.

Give it a look if you get a chance.

We have the solution to the problem of actors in Broadway shows being out. We'll get Liza to fill in for them! Here's my pal Christine Pedi…

So now Hugh Jackman has tested positive for COVID and The Music Man has shut down until such time as he's ready to perform again.

When I saw his statement announcing it on Twitter, the next message was a reply to him that said, "Hugh, I love your work,your awesome as Logan, but please, covid isn't real,it's just your basic common cold. Take some cold medicine,eat some hot soup and rest for a few days, you'll feel better after that. I just got over my cold,and I feel great."

Yes, there are still people who believe COVID is just the common cold.

Hopefully…presumably…Mr. Jackman has a mild case and he could be back Music Manning in a week or two. It would be nice if every case was like that.

I mentioned here that with the passing of actor Nicholas Georgiade, Barrie Chase becomes the last surviving cast member of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World who had a speaking part. A couple of folks wrote me to say that Ms. Chase did not have any lines in the picture and they're just plain wrong…and probably unaware how many times I've seen my favorite movie. She answers a phone call in Dick Shawn's "pad" when Ethel Merman calls and passes the phone over to Shawn.

Another reader who apparently has never heard of things like Google and The Internet Movie Database wrote to ask me what else she'd done. Barrie Chase had a very long career as both an actress and a dancer. On TV, she gained much attention as Fred Astaire's dance partner in several acclaimed specials.

She was in dozens of movies. The picture of her above is from a memorable bit part in the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye film, White Christmas. She had a pretty large role in Cape Fear with Gregory Peck, which was in release at the time Mad World was being filmed. In fact, near the end of Mad World when the two cabs full o' comedians are chasing Spencer Tracy's car through the streets of Long Beach, they pass the State Theater and Cape Fear is on the marquee. You need to look real fast to see it but it's there.

Finally, a reader named "Brian12" asks, "Do you know if there is any significance to the character name "Mrs. Halliburton?" That's what her character is named in Mad World and he asks if she and Sylvester Marcus (Dick Shawn's character) are married. No, they're not.

Script material that never made it into the film tells us that Mrs. Halliburton is the wife of an undertaker named Calvin Halliburton. It is inferred that she is at Sylvester's place because she is cheating on her hubby, who is never seen. When Sylvester gets the call from his momma and decides to rush to her aid, he leaps (literally) into the convertible that Mrs. Halliburton drove to his pad and races off in it.

That scene where Sylvester drives off in her husband's car and she screams for him to come back was in the original version of the movie when it was first released but it went away when the film was trimmed down a few weeks later. It is now "lost" but in the highly-recommended Criterion DVD (or Blu-ray) edition of the movie, there are two versions of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — the general release version and a reconstruction of most (not all) of the original release version.

The brief car-stealing scene is represented in the reconstruction by the audio track heard over some production stills of the scene. And if you're listening to the commentary track — as you should — the voice you'll hear describing the scene is mine. Listen to the whole thing and you'll also learn an awful lot more about this movie. Experts Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo join me on the commentary track.

• Alex Jones has been suggesting that Donald Trump is being "blackmailed" into endorsing COVID vaccinations. How do you blackmail a man who's convinced he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose a single supporter?

Back in the sixties, "home video" for most of us consisted of silent 8mm (and occasionally 16mm) movies. They were all old films, many of them in the public domain, and they were usually dupes from not-the-greatest source material, often edited via meat cleaver. Still, the idea of owning a movie and showing it on your home projector was very tempting. I had a bunch of Castle Films as I explained way back in this post.

I also had a lot of Blackhawk Films, many of them starring my faves, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Blackhawk — based in Davenport, Iowa — was the class act for those of us who cared about film history and preservation. They put out a lot of very old films that no one else would have issued and they usually secured very good source material and treated the movies well. I no longer have an 8mm movie projector but I have a box of Blackhawk Films in a closet here. Some things mean so much to you that you can't bear to throw them away.

One thing they put out was an excerpt of the 1927 Laurel & Hardy film — one of their earliest — The Battle of the Century. This is the one which was held up as containing the biggest pie fight ever in movie history until the 1965 film, The Great Race. The latter cost a helluva lot more money and time to shoot and involved a helluva lot more pies…but didn't yield anywhere near the same laughs.

For a long time — while Blackhawk Films was around and for years after — Battle of the Century was a "lost" film. There were no known prints anywhere of the complete two-reel short. The only known footage was the end pie fight scene and I believe the reason that much was available went something like this…

Robert Youngson was a man who produced films featuring highlights from other films. For instance, his 1957 feature, The Golden Age of Comedy, gave us moments from some of the great silent films of Will Rogers, Harry Langdon, Ben Turpin and others, including Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy. Among the clips of Stan and Ollie he included was the famed pie fight scene…and in duping that scene from the negative in some studio vault, he was unaware he was saving that footage. A few years later, that negative had rotted away…but the scene was still there in Mr. Youngson's film.

That's presumably where Blackhawk Films got it. Here is their release of the what they had — the last few minutes, silent and with no music. (By the way: Ignore the opening cards which say that Hal Roach wrote, produced and co-directed the film. The official credits said it was "Directed by Clyde Bruckman" and "Supervised by Leo McCarey." "Supervised by" meant a number of different things back in the days when movie credits were not such formal titles. It sometimes meant "Directed by" but more often meant "Produced by.")

Decades later, some of the rest of the movie was found and later, all or most of it was located. There are a couple of different restored, "complete" versions around with newly-added music and here's one of them. If you look real carefully in the prizefight scene, you might spot a very young Lou Costello working as an extra…

One of my favorite Sondheim moments is in the show Merrily We Roll Along. Longtime best friends Charley Kringas and Franklin Shepard have become a very successful lyricist/composer team writing Broadway shows and movies…but with success has come tension. They're growing apart as you'll see in this scene when they agree to appear on a live TV interview show.

This is from a production done in 2013 in a theater called the Menier Chocolate Factory in London. The actor doing most of the talking and singing is Damian Humbley…

Boy, I hope the headlines the next few days don't read "Holiday Gatherings Cause Massive COVID Spike." Like a lot of you, I don't get why some people aren't taking this thing more cautiously. I don't think some folks have grasped the concept that the more we vaccinate and isolate, the sooner we won't have to isolate. A third shot is not a license to go back to doing everything you did pre-COVID.

A former lady friend of mine is on Instagram and every day, she posts a video of her out with friends at some party or night club or restaurant — somewhere that's packed with people, masked or not — acting like coronavirus never existed. She may avoid the virus. I hope she avoids the virus. But I also hope she isn't spreading and therefore prolonging the virus. When we spoke the other day, I tried to…well, I was reminded of the old expression that I quote too often: "You see that chair? Tell it to dance. See if it listens."

And I see an awful lot of people on the 'net who believe that if someone is triple-vaxxed and still gets the virus, that's prima facie proof that there was no point in getting vaccinated in the first place. Because if something isn't 100% effective, what the hell good is it?

I'm dreading the thought of people crammed into New Year's Eve celebrations this week. It may not be their best New Year's Eve ever but for some of them, it will be their last.