In the last week or so, we all had our opinions about the Not Guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse and the Guilty verdicts for the three guys responsible for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Whatever you think about those verdicts, it might be interesting to consider them in light of some other recent verdicts…

• Kevin Strickland always maintained his innocence. He'll walk free Tuesday for the first time since 1979, after a judge ruled he was wrongly convicted.
• On Nov. 23, just two days ahead of the holiday, [Pervis] Payne was formally removed from death row, where he has been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he's always said he didn't commit.
• Two of three men convicted in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X have been exonerated after a New York judge dismissed their convictions Thursday. The Manhattan district attorney and lawyers for the two men moved to vacate the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam in the 1965 killing, and Manhattan judge Ellen Biben tossed out the verdicts.
• Alice Sebold has remained silent after the man convicted of raping her was exonerated. The award-winning author is at the center of a heartbreaking saga surrounding a wrongful conviction that resulted in an innocent man spending 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Anthony Broadwater broke down in court this week when the rape conviction at the center of Sebold's memoir Lucky was overturned.
• Dontae Sharpe, a Charlotte, North Carolina, resident, breathed a heavy sigh of relief Friday upon receiving a pardon for a murder he didn't commit — after spending 24 years in prison.
• It has been 72 years since three black men and one teenager in Groveland, Florida were accused of kidnapping and raping a 17-year-old white teenage girl at gunpoint. Now, seven decades later, the four men have been exonerated by a Lake County Judge.

These are all in the last week-to-10-days and were easily found by Googling "wrongly convicted." Betcha there were others.

I've been paying attention to cases like these — and there are a lot of them — since many years ago when I heard someone say on a news program about one then-recent exoneration, "It's not amazing that someone could be wrongly convicted. It's amazing that they get exonerated. Once the government has convicted someone of a crime and sent them to prison — especially if they've been executed — the state has a compelling interest to not reopen the case and to not prove the system got it wrong."

I'm not drawing any conclusion here. I'm not sure what conclusion I would draw other than that it sure happens a lot. But I'm sure there's some conclusion in there.

Bob Newhart's performing career really began with a 1960 record called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart that still ranks as the 20th best-selling comedy album of all time — not bad for a guy no one had (then) heard of. Before that, he'd done a little comedy writing, including a monologue he submitted to Don Adams in which the comedian would play the commander of a submarine. As Newhart later told the story, Adams declined to buy the monologue…then went on TV and performed it anyway. There are other tales of Mr. Adams allegedly doing things like that.

Having his material stolen was among the factors that moved Newhart into performing what he wrote…and that first record of his did include a monologue in which he played the commander of a submarine. Here on The Ed Sullivan Show for January 8, 1961, Ed pretends that it wasn't decided in advance that Newhart would perform that particular piece on the program…and Bob pretty much gives away that it was planned. So here's Bob Newhart in one of his first TV appearances favoring us with "The Cruise of The U.S.S. Codfish"…

Reader Dan Kravetz sent in this correction to this item…

Thank you for sharing the article about the incident at Carmine's restaurant on September 16. However, it did not take place at the Times Square branch, but at another location, on Broadway at 91st Street.

The owners of Carmine's also own Virgil's Real Barbecue on 44th Street (across Times Square from Carmine's), which is my favorite dining spot in the theater district. If you haven't tried it, you should do so the next time you are in town.

Thanks. I have tried Virgil's and it was very good…but I think the last occasion I was there, it was before a show and though we were plenty early, so were a lot of folks ahead of us in line. There was no way we could get seated in the restaurant in time to be seated in the theatre when the curtain for our show went up. I'm not sure if that's a recommendation for the place or not.

I'm still thinking it'll be a long time before I travel anywhere…and a longer time before I travel anywhere by air. Masking up has brought with its other drawbacks, a certain amount of some minor mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia that I'm sure I can overcome but maybe not right away. Also, it seems like everyone I know who flies anywhere comes back with a horror story of ghastly delays and/or flight attendants having to go mano a mano with militant anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers. Close to home, I shall stay for a while.

I've used the above graphic before here. I have an odd fascination with the story of the Sears and Kmart department stores, which have for some time been under the same management. Or maybe I should say "mis-management" because every time I read about them, I see that the proprietors have a new plan to reverse the chains' fortunes and restore them to their former glory…and each time, more stores close. As this article notes…

The two chains are only a shell of what they were when the holding company that owns both emerged from bankruptcy less than three years ago. At the time, the holding company — given the overly optimistic name Transformco — still had 223 Sears and 202 Kmart stores nationwide. That was already down 87% from the 3,500 stores between the two brands when they merged together in 2005 to form Sears Holdings. But the percentage drop in stores since the company emerged from bankruptcy in February of 2019 has been even steeper.

Today there are only 21 full-line Sears stores left in the mainland United States, and two more in Puerto Rico, according to the store locator on the Sears website, once recent closings are eliminated. Another seven stores listed on the site are limited to selling appliances, and in some cases, mattresses, rather than the full range of offerings that once was a hallmark of both chains. And by the end of the year there will be only six Kmarts left in the mainland United States, along with six more in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

I used to have a friend, also named Mark, who was genetically incapable of going into a business of any kind and not telling you how poorly it was run and how he could make it soar to new heights. Anywhere. No matter what it was — bank, restaurant, nail salon, porn shop — no matter how successful it was — the folks in charge were idiots and he, having placed one foot into the place, could tell you how to save it. At the time, his profession was stocking the shelves at a Montgomery Ward department store…and that chain would still be around if instead of having him stock shelves, they'd made him C.E.O. of the corporation. Or so he insisted.

I thought he was wacko then. Today, I figure that if he was running Sears and Kmart, he couldn't do a worse job. I also think a trained seal might do a better job, depending on who'd trained it.

Like most people, I haven't been inside a Sears in decades. But I did go to a nearby Kmart that is no longer nearby. The place was shabby. The merchandise was cheap in terms of prices but cheaper in terms of quality. Half the stuff on the shelves seemed to be items that had been purchased, taken home, returned to the store, sloppily resealed and put back out for sale. And it was just about impossible to find anyone to answer a question or help you with your purchase. As near as I can tell, the myriad "rescue" plans of the chain's management didn't include fixing most of these problems.

The locator on the Kmart website tells me there are no Kmart stories within 100 miles of me now and I don't feel like shlepping down to Puerto Rico to do my Christmas shopping. There is a Sears Media Center thirteen miles away and a full-size Sears about thirteen miles away but I'm not going there either. It's about an hour drive and there's no guarantee it'll still be in business when I get there.

This is the opening to the Batman TV show from the sixties except they don't sing the word "bat"…

At this link, you'll find a map of the world covered with little green dots. Every green dot represents a radio station at that location and if you click on the dot, you can hear that radio station. In some cases, you'll have your choice of many in the same city. That's enough radio to last you for the rest of your life…and several lives after that.

In a post here on November 7, I complained about the rising price of…no, not gasoline. Cashews. For years now, I've been buying a certain size box of Planters Salted Cashews. Each box contains eighteen little baggies, each of which holds 1.5 oz. of said nuts.

Recently, the boxes skyrocketed in price — from $11.24 a box to, at the time I wrote that post, $27.49. That was the price on Amazon and when I looked around online, other vendors had instituted similar increases.

I didn't understand why…just as I have no idea why the same boxes of eighteen 1.5 oz. portions went down to $15.06 for a week and are now back up to $24.69. Fortunately, I bought three boxes when they were $15.06. Hopefully, that'll hold me until the next price drop.

And this one's from The Ed Sullivan Show for November 10, 1963. Shelley Berman was still one of the hotter "stand-up comedians" in the country even though he did most of his bits sitting on a stool. Here he is with the plight of a man with a cut finger in a strange town…

Remember the reported incident last September at Carmine's Restaurant in Times Square? The way we heard it then, some people came in, the host asked to see proof of vaccination and they became physically abusive to him. This article suggests that maybe that wasn't exactly what happened at one of my favorite places to eat in New York. Correction.

I know you've been sitting up for nights, racking your brain for the answer to the question, "Why oh why is the label on a can of Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce upside-down?" Well, at last you can relax.

The Comic-Con Special Edition in San Diego takes place this coming weekend in San Diego. It will be taking place without me but I'm still interested and hoping it's a success for the attendees and for the folks running it. One of the folks running it is David Glanzer, who holds the title of "Comic-Con Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer." For our purposes, that pretty much translates to Spokesperson and Planner. Rob Salkowitz spoke to David about the event and here is what was said.

My longtime buddy Jim Brochu knows everyone who has worked in the legitimate theater in his lifetime and has seen every show. I should have expected the following e-mail from him…

Before I totally lose my powers of recall, I wanted to add a couple of things to the discussion of the original Odd Couple. I think I'm in a very unique position in that I saw Matthau and Carney do it five times together.

One of my high school jobs was selling orange drink at the back of Broadway theaters and my usual theater was the St. James when Ginger Rogers was appearing in Hello, Dolly! But my father took me to see The Odd Couple a few weeks after it opened and it was the one play where he almost got thrown out of the theater for laughing so hard. Truly, when everyone else had stopped laughing, my father was howling and still rolling in the aisle.

Then I became the substitute orange drink boy at the Plymouth for four weeks during the summer of 1965. Every Saturday afternoon, I got to watch art Carney and Matthau go through the play. Carney was like watching a movie. Every performance was so close to the other and it was magical that he kept it looking absolutely spontaneous. Carney was a heartbreaking Felix. Totally vulnerable. Matthau was the slob and did what Matthau did best. The one revelation was the last Saturday when I got to the theater and Carney was out.

Paul Dooley was going to play Felix. Of course, everyone was disappointed after the announcement but quickly it became apparent that Paul Dooley was going to be brilliant in the part. As good as Carney and maybe an edge better in some scenes. It was a great experience to watch those actors. It was like going to a master class.

Of course, I remember the famous story about the rehearsal where Walter Matthau turned to Art Carney and said, "You need to put some balls in this scene!" to which Mike Nichols yelled, "Props!"

Wish I'd seen that show. I did get to see Mr. Carney star in Prisoner of Second Avenue and he was perfect.  I mean really perfect.  I was told that Neil Simon loved Peter Falk in the role and loved Carney even more.

Never got to see Walter Matthau on stage unless you count the time that you and I, Jim, went to a one-night-only benefit performance of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It opened, you will recall, with Matthau coming out in a toga and reciting the opening speech — "Playgoers, I bid you welcome, et al…" — and then handing the play off to Danny Dayton to play Pseudolus for the rest of it. I offered to bet you afterwards that by the time they got to "Everybody Ought To Have a Maid," Walter was home in bed.

And here's one of those weird examples of how, as you know, people in my life keep intersecting with other people in my life.  A few years later, I became good friends with a comedy writer named Don Segall — not to be confused with the film director — who had a background writing comic books. Don was the producer of that benefit performance of Forum and I asked him how he persuaded Walter Matthau to learn a few lines, go down to the Variety Arts Theater, put on a toga and appear for as long as he did so that the charity could exploit his name to sell tickets.

Don said, "I promised him he could be out of there and home in bed before the first act was over."

This is the trailer for the 1970 re-release of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It is not one of the trailers produced by Stan Freberg for that film.

One odd thing about it is that Peter Falk gets better billing than he had in the movie and its original advertising. I have no idea how that came about. It might have made sense a year or so later when Columbo was a Top Ten TV show and Falk was a much bigger star than he'd ever been…but when this trailer was made, Columbo was a couple of as-yet-unsold TV pilots.

And the other odd thing about this trailer flows from the fact that Mad World was filmed in a super-widescreen format called Ultra Panavision 70. It was described at the time as Cinerama but some would argue it was not. I have no particular opinion on this.

But whatever you call its screen format, it's probably why this trailer was done in a little-used format called "Smilebox." The premise of Smilebox is that the screen gets distorted in a way that simulates the way you'd see the film if you were sitting in the middle of a Cinerama theater with the screen somewhat wrapping around you. I don't think it does that. I think it just looks weird.

I also think this trailer shows too much of the ending and the surprises in the film. If you've never seen the movie, don't watch this…

• I spent most of today changing channels over and over on my TV, trying to find a show that didn't have Chris Christie on it. The only one seemed to be a rerun of To Tell the Truth.