We have a new entry this year…Lou Monte's 1960 Xmas novelty tune, "Dominick the Donkey." I have a special fondness for Christmas carolers, especially the little quartets who are hired to serenade diners at restaurants at the holiday season. When I'm dining and they're going table to table taking requests, I always ask them, "What's your silliest song?" and the answer is always "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" (which we'll get to before the week is out) or "Dominick the Donkey." I guess diners of Italian heritage remember it from their childhoods and ask for it.

Here's a recently-made (I believe) music video for the song and I love the fact that someone went out, found a donkey and dressed it up to make this…

Lou Monte (1917–1989) was an Italian-American singer of Italian-American songs and he actually managed to have a couple of big hit records on the charts over the years. One that you may be familiar with was "Please, Mr. Columbus." If you go to YouTube and search for that title, you will find not only many, many uploads of Mr. Monte's recording but a staggering number of interpretations by choral groups, barbershop quartets and just guys in their living rooms with guitars. It has nothing to do with Christmas but it's the season for giving so I'm giving you the chance to hear Lou Monte's recording of it again or even for the first time. Please forgive a bit of heritage insensitivity therein…

If anyone's ordering tickets off Telecharge to see Audra McDonald in Gypsy, try entering the promo code "GIMMICK" and see if that gets you a discount. Can't hurt to try.

Someone who signed their message "Comicspies" wrote to ask me…

In a 1974 radio interview with Jack Kirby, Jerry Connelly asked Jack what his influences were and he responded: "The masters in comics, certainly, are the ones in the newspaper field: Milton Caniff with Terry and the Pirates and Alex Raymond, who did Flash Gordon. There were the fellows who did the funny strips, too. They all influenced me because their product had such appeal."

Who were Jack's favorite artists who specialized either specialized in humor (like Walt Kelly) or both adventure and humor storytelling (like Segar)?

Elzie Segar — who for anyone reading this who doesn't know, did the Thimble Theater newspaper strip which was later renamed in honor of its main character, Popeye the Sailor — was the one Jack mentioned most often. He loved Al Capp's work, though not the man himself. He loved Billy DeBeck's Barney Google and pretty much anyone who was on the funnies page back in the thirties. I don't recall him ever mentioning Walt Kelly or anyone who came along in the forties or after except Charles Schulz. He did like a number of guys in comic books who combined humor and adventure like Jack Cole or Dick Briefer. (Briefer was a friend and he worked with Jack on some early comics.)

One cartoonist Jack sometimes named as an inspiration was Will Gould — no relation to Chester Gould, who did Dick Tracy. Will, who I knew through a brief telephone-only friendship, did funny strips in the thirties along with a hard-boiled detective comic strip called Red Barry. I think Jack favored Red Barry over the humor work but he admired the guy in both genres. Will was very flattered when I told him Kirby was a fan of the work he'd done long, long ago.

That's all that comes to mind. I wish I could give you more names but by the time I worked with him, Jack rarely looked at what other contemporary artists were doing. He respected anyone who created anything that was popular, especially if it was highly original…but I don't think he paid much attention to newspaper strips in the seventies…or even to most comic books unless there was a specific reason for him to read one of them.

I'm still a little puzzled and curious about this thing with Stubhub and the tickets to Gypsy. The best seats are $471 each at the box office. At the moment, the Stubhub site has someone offering up to four seats in Row F for tonight for $940 each. Lately, there always seem to be four tickets available in Row F for varying high prices and others in the next few rows for slightly lower prices. But to add to the mystery, the site also has a line that says, of tonight's performance, "3 tickets were sold in the last 7 days."

So what I'm thinking — and please correct me if you have direct knowledge or a better hunch — is that these higher-priced seats are being offered by some person or agency with ties to the box office and that they're house seats. House seats are tickets that folks involved with the show can arrange for their friends or contacts to buy at face value at the last minute. So if they sell on Stubhub for more money, great…but if they don't sell by an hour or so before the show, they go off Stubhub and the box office offers them for face value or less at the ticket window.

The point is that somebody is going to sit in those seats for that performance and someone will make money off them. But maybe I'm wrong about this.

Meanwhile, one of my frequent correspondents here, Prentice Hammond, wrote to say…

I don't know why ticket pricing is not more like Comic-Con. Maybe it would not work because Comic-Con tickets are always in demand. However, Comic-Con has made it so external players cannot profit by buying all the tickets and reselling them for a much higher value.

Well, someone is trying to sell Comic-Con 2025 tickets on Stubhub. Right now, someone is offering four-day passes with Preview Night there for $2873 each and there are other offerings for slightly-less outrageous sums. I have no idea who this is or if these passes would actually get a buyer in the door. I do know though that there's a Kosher, legal way to get badges for less money. The Comic-Con Museum sells what they call Legend memberships which give you all sorts of privileges and discounts and access and special invites to the museum but it also includes a 4-Day + Preview Night SDCC 2025 badge.

The price for one of these is $1900, which is steep but not as steep as $2873 or some other current asking prices on Stubhub for badges of questionable validity. I'm thinking of putting up a Stubhub offering that won't get you into Comic-Con but Sergio Aragonés and I will come to your home and sing the entire score from Gypsy. It won't be cheap.

And we begin this year's countdown of Christmas-themed videos with one of my faves, "Jingle Bell Rock," recorded by Bobby Helms in 1957. There is some dispute as to who wrote it — Wikipedia, of course, has all the deats — but no dispute about its popularity. Here's a video that was made to Mr. Helms' version of his big hit…

There have been countless covers of this song, both professional and amateur, and I could fill this page just with videos of folks imitating its presentation in the movie Mean Girls. We'll settle for a peppy version that Lindsay Lohan did for a film she did for Netflix…

But my favorite is still the glitzed-up, guest-star-laden version done by Emmanuel, an entertainer often described as "The Barry Manilow of Mexico." I'm not certain if that's a good thing to be or a bad thing but he and his friends are sure having fun here. They're pretending to lip-sync and/or play instruments that most of 'em obviously can't play…

Tomorrow night, TCM is showing Life is Beautiful at — on my streaming service — 7 PM. This is the 1997 movie starring and co-written by Robert Begnini, who plays a Jewish-Italian bookshop owner trying to keep his son out of a Nazi concentration camp. It won a surprising number of Academy Awards including one for Best Actor and it reminded some of the infamous Jerry Lewis movie, The Day the Clown Cried.

Before it — at 5 PM on my streaming service — my streaming service guide says they're running From Darkness to Light, a documentary about the infamous Jerry Lewis movie, The Day the Clown Cried. I mention this because (a) I know a lot of us are fascinated with this movie we've never seen and (b) the online TCM guide doesn't mention it. It doesn't even say what's on at that hour.

You may wish to program your DVR for one, both or neither. But at least I've alerted you and you can make an informed decision. Check your listings for the correct start time on your source for TCM for Life is Beautiful and if it doesn't list the film before it, assume it's probably From Darkness to Light.

It's Randy Rainbow. Oh yes, it's Randy Rainbow. Definitely Randy Rainbow…

A new week…a new Randy Rainbow video…Mark busy on a script. But we'll be starting our annual countdown of great Christmas videos later today. Stay tuned…

Here's another one that fits into the "novelty" category. "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" was recorded in 1966 by Jerry Samuels, a man of many occupations including songwriter. At the time, he was working as a recording engineer so he had access to all the studio equipment he needed to make this strange record. It was released under his other identity of "Napoleon XIV"..and talk about a "one-hit wonder." The flip side of this single was the exact same track played backwards and it was called, "!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er'yehT." On this side, the artist was identified as ""VIX noelopaN."

This is a promotional video that Samuels made for his record company. CORRECTION: I am informed that Jerry Samuels had nothing to do with this video…

Mr. Samuels recorded other pieces as Napoleon XIV, mostly having to do with the topic of insanity. This one wasn't on KHJ radio or my mixtape but I thought I'd throw it in here. This is "Split-Level Head" from his album…

This feels like a good day to try to finish some things. Don't expect a lot of content here today.

Just to show you that not everything Dick Van Dyke ever did was wonderful, let's flash back to October of 1958. Thanks to "Orange Apple" for sending me this link but I wish you folks would all sign real names…

There used to be this organization called the Friars Club which was basically a social club for comedians. There was a branch in New York and one in Los Angeles and while they put on shows (usually for good causes) in each, their main function was to be a place where members could hang out, dine, play cards and sometimes enjoy a gymnasium. The L.A. club was rocked in the sixties by a scandal when it turned out that the card games — which since they involved gambling, were probably illegal in the first place — turned out to have often been rigged.

The L.A. branch closed down in 2008 and the building that housed it was demolished a few years later. I wrote about it here. The New York branch closed down in 2022 after its own money-related scandal but it was on the way out anyway. Members kept dying off and there simply weren't enough new ones to sustain such an expensive-to-run organization.

Just recently, the lovely old building that housed the club in New York was sold to a creditor for $17.2 million. Here's a news story about that. Because the building has landmark status, it'll be difficult for its new owners to tear it down but they don't seem quite certain what they can do with it. They seem to want to resurrect the Friars Club or something similar.

I visited both Friars Clubs a number of times and the Manhattan one had more history, more character and — when I was there — a daily round table of old Jewish comedians usually headed up by Henny Youngman. It will be hard to replicate that table.

My first time there — this would have been in the eighties — I was back in New York on business and one of my meetings involved a lunch at the Friars Club. During this trip, I was also trying to connect with a wonderful comedian lady I knew (and know) named Louise Duart. I was supposed to call her when I got into town and she was waiting for my call…but somehow, the phone number I had for her was wrong and I couldn't find a correct one.

So one very rainy day, I took a cab to the Friars Club at 57 East 55th Street, between Park Avenue and Madison Avenue for this scheduled luncheon with a TV producer. As I headed in, there was a lady struggling with a rolling suitcase that wouldn't roll, trying to get it up the front steps. I went over to help her and it turned out to be Louise…another of the incredible coincidences in which my life has abounded.

We got in and she invited me to join her and her friends at their lunch table. I told her thanks but I was there to meet someone, then I told the Maître d' who I was there to meet. He then told me the producer had called and said he'd be about a half-hour late due to an emergency…so I happily joined Louise's table. Seated around it I found not only Mr. Youngman but also Corbett Monica, Mal Z. Lawrence, Freddie Roman, Dick Capri and Jackie Gayle. I said almost nothing…just sat there listening to these folks swap jokes and anecdotes, hoping my producer date would never show up.

Alas, he did. We had a nice lunch and then after he departed, I wandered around the club a bit until Freddie Roman spotted me and offered to give me the grand tour. There was a great story about every piece of furniture, every wall ornament, every doorway, every pay phone…even every stain on the carpet. It was one of the most fascinating and funny afternoons I ever spent. I sure hope that place survives in something resembling the way it was then. Unfortunately, Freddie Roman died two years ago and there may be no one else alive who could tell all those stories with any sense of authority. I sure couldn't.

I haven't seen the movie Wicked yet. I'm still largely confined to my home and even if they send me a link to watch it online (so I might vote for it to receive some award), this feels like a film that oughta be seen in a big screen with a big audience in a big theater.

It does seem to be — to use the name of one of its songs — popular — with some bad reviews but not many. And I see people singing its tunes everywhere online, even in synagogues…

Donald Trump has announced he wants to end Daylight Saving Time. That's not a bad idea. I'll set my clocks back to half-past the Obama administration.

In 1976, Dick Van Dyke had a weekly variety show on NBC that not nearly enough people watched. It went on the air on September 20 and the last of its eleven episodes aired on December 30. I wrote about it in this post earlier this year but I'll save you the trouble of clicking your way to that page. Here's the relevant part of it…

It was produced by the team of Bob Einstein and Allan Blye and it got generally good reviews but I don't think the network gave it much of a chance, plus it was in a rough time slot. It aired at 8 PM on Thursday evenings opposite The Waltons on CBS and Welcome Back, Kotter on ABC at the peak of those two shows' popularity.

I was working on Kotter at the time and everyone on our show liked Van Dyke and Company. We'd sometimes take a break during Thursday night rewrite meetings — which could last into the wee hours of the morning — to watch not our show but Mr. Van Dyke's. His show won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Series that year…unfortunately, after it was yanked off the air. It's only barely remembered and when it is, that's usually because Andy Kaufman was a semi-regular — his first real presence in prime-time.

A few years later with its ratings at a disastrous low, NBC hired the famed programmer Fred Silverman away from ABC to try and reprogram the network and raise its viewership. A month or three into his command, I was in a meeting with Silverman and he was rattling off some of the reasons why NBC had dug itself into such a deep hole. There were quite a few reasons but a big one was, he felt, that his predecessors had been too quick to cancel certain shows. These were good shows, he said…and if they'd been given more time, he believed they'd have found viewers (or vice-versa). I remember him saying, "They certainly would have done better than whatever the guys before me replaced them with."

He named four shows which, he said, should not have been canceled. I remember the names of three of them: Baa Baa Black Sheep, Sirota's Court…and Van Dyke and Company. His predecessors, he insisted, were too cowardly — the descriptor he used was "chickenshit" — and panicked. And there was some talk about shows which networks almost canceled when the early ratings were disappointing — M*A*S*H being the textbook example — but which turned out to be huge hits.

I should also mention one other thing that I thought hurt Mr. Van Dyke's show. It was mostly or wholly taped without a live audience and then they dubbed in the worst "canned laughter" I've ever heard on a TV program. I honestly believe that if they'd given the series a better time slot, stuck with it for a while and it had had more of a "live" feel, it would have run a long time. Much of the material was very clever and Dick was superb on it.

Here's a little less than a half-hour of clips from the show featuring Dick dancing a lot and interacting with guest stars like Mary Tyler Moore, John Denver and Tom Smothers. There are also bits in there with Andy Kaufman and Bob Einstein, and that's Chuck McCann playing Oliver Hardy…

And here's another of my favorite episodes of my favorite TV show…