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I'm not sure how much I want to write about the June Foray Celebration a bunch of us threw at the Motion Picture Academy last Tuesday night. The Internet is already close to bursting from all the self-congratulation crammed into it…but the five of us who threw the bash (Jerry Beck, Bob Bergen, Howard Green, Tom Sito and myself) are darn proud of what we done did, and lots of people seem grateful that we gave the late 'n' lovely Ms. Foray such a special, sincere salute. I was most impressed by the turnout. To see so many important folks from the world of animation assemble like that was really stunning.

Did I mention here that I was the M.C. for the evening? I was the M.C. for the evening…and also the person in charge of the rundown so I was able to minimize my on-stage time. The first rule of something like this is that it should be about the deceased and only about the deceased.

I go to a fair number of Show Biz Funerals and there always seems to be at least one speaker who cannot resist the urge to get up there and deliver an infomercial about themselves, especially if the hall is filled with Very Important People. One time at the send-off for a somewhat-famous stand-up comedian, a less-famous stand-up comic took the stage and began his speech by saying, "He was a great guy and very supportive of his friends. Every time I was on TV, he would make a point of calling me up and telling me how good I was."

We wanted none of that so I said no to a number of people who wanted to speak — at least one of whom is royally pissed at me for denying them the chance to perform before a crowd of industry folks, some of whom have hiring power. I said no to a greater number who selflessly wanted to salute our beloved June for all the right reasons. If I'd said yes to all of them, we'd still be there. Our on-stage speakers were Nancy Cartwright, Jerry Beck, Keith Scott (who came all the way from Australia on his own dime just for this), Bob Bergen, Charles Solomon, Tom Sito, Floyd Norman, Tony Bancroft, moi and the daughters of Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones and Jay Ward. That would be Hope and Sybil Freleng, Linda Jones and Tiffany Ward.

In the audience at one point, we had voice artist Misty Lee and a cameraman who was shooting video that was appearing simultaneously on the big movie screen. We gave Misty five minutes to get as many voice actors as possible to say something brief about June and among those who did were Bill Farmer, Russi Taylor, Gregg Berger, Teresa Ganzel, Fred Tatasciore, Bill Mumy, Tony Anselmo, Laura Summer, Debi Derryberry, Katie Leigh and Billy West.

The highlight of the show for most folks was when we brought up ten women to speak briefly about what June meant to their careers and/or their lives. Nine came up and after each one spoke, she moved over to pose next to a big picture of June we'd placed onstage on an easel. Then I asked several other women who'd participated in the show to come up and join them for our photo-op. Then I introduced our tenth woman who was going to speak in this segment…Lily Tomlin.

We did a fairly good job of keeping Lily's presence a surprise. She wanted to participate and we gave her the choice of sitting through the entire show or just sneaking in for her spot. She said she wanted to see the entire show so we snuck her into the second row during the first cartoon (Broomstick Bunny) and surrounded her with tall people, including me when I was seated. When I announced her name from the stage, there was a satisfying gasp of delight from the crowd. Then she came up, said the perfect things and joined the group for the photo. Here is a small version of that image. It'll get bigger if you click on it…

Here's who's who, L to R: Debi Derryberry, Marian Massaro, Nancy Cartwright, Grey Griffin, Debra Wilson, E.G. Daily, Vanessa Marshall, Lily Tomlin, Photo of June, Laraine Newman, Teresa Ganzel, Audrey Wasilewski, Candi Milo, Julie Nathanson, Kari Wahlgren, Misty Lee, Laura Summer, Russi Taylor and Katie Leigh. Let me know if you ever see another assemblage of talent like that in one JPG.

Of course, we showed cartoons…and some clips of June's work in front of the camera, along with footage of her being interviewed about her life and work. It was difficult to assemble some of that stuff — Jerry Beck did most of the heavy lifting — but even harder to decide what to leave out. For reasons of time, I cut a Fractured Fairy Tale at the last minute and our projectionist was not happy because she, like all of us, loves Fractured Fairy Tales.

Many, many people helped out. We read a list that evening but I wanted to mention two of them here. Seeking to not have the klutzy M.C. on stage much, I had most speakers introduced by our off-stage announcer — a lady whose voice you know from many of the major award shows — Marian Massaro. And other announcements were handled by another award show voice (and frequent cartoon actor) Neil Ross. Oh — and the clips of June talking about her life were excerpted from the documentary, The One and Only June Foray, produced by Gavin Freitas.

People keep asking if the event will be released on DVD or posted online so they can see it. No, it will not be, at least in full. We showed too many film clips for which we only had permission to run them then and there. Excerpts from the speeches will probably be released online but no decision has made yet about doing this.

Throughout the evening, I was busier than a Fact-Checker at a Donald Trump speech and I should apologize to the many friends and acquaintances who I either ignored or didn't give enough attention because I had 9,944 things to do at any given moment. It was an exhausting endeavor but well, well worth it. June deserved the best and I hope we came close to giving her that.

Wow. I'm home and exhausted from one of the longest days of my life but I had to thank everyone who made the evening so amazing. I'm talking of course about the event we did last night at the Motion Picture Academy. It was a pretty elaborate show and I'll leave it to others to say how it went.

In a day or two here, I'll post an amazing group photo we took of voice actresses who came up on stage to salute June. Let's see if I can do this from memory: Vanessa Marshall, Audrey Wasilewski, E.G. Daily, Julie Nathanson, Kari Wahlgren, Debra Wilson, Candi Milo, Grey Griffin, Laraine Newman, Misty Lee, Nancy Cartwright, Marian Massaro, Russi Taylor, Laura Summer, Debi Derryberry, Katie Leigh, Teresa Ganzel and our special surprise guest, Lily Tomlin.

Is that eighteen? I'm too tried tonight to count that high so you do it. In fact, I'm too tired to fix the typo in the preceding sentence. Anyway, if it's eighteen, it's all of them. I'll thank the men when I write more about the event.

As many of you know, I've been the Supervising Producer, Voice Director and Head Writer of The Garfield Show, a series which plays all over the world and which airs in the United States on the Boomerang Channel. Boomerang currently runs a half-hour containing two cartoons at 7:00 AM and another half-hour containing two cartoons at 7:30 AM. This happens Monday through Friday and the times I'm giving here are when they run on my cable feed. They might be different where you are.

As with most cartoon shows, they run an episode once and then they run it again and again and again and again, etc. I do not pretend to understand the pattern but I do know that the first airing of each episode on Boomerang has usually always occurred long after it's been run several times in other parts of the world. Sometimes, several years after.

This coming Monday, they're airing a special two-hour block of The Garfield Show. It starts at 1 PM on my cable service. The second hour features episodes that they've run before here and which have themes relevant to Halloween.

The first hour will be filled by the four parts of "Rodent Rebellion," which I believe are the only episodes we've produced which haven't aired before on Boomerang. I call it to your attention because to the best of my knowledge, they comprise the final cartoons to feature voicework by the late, great Stan Freberg. He doesn't have a big part but he's in there, mainly in the second half. The rest of the voice cast consists of Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo, Corey Burton, Laura Summer and Jewel Shepard.

Freberg did his first cartoon work in 1945 for a Warner Brothers cartoon released in 1946. He did his last cartoon work in 2014 for a cartoon released in countries other than America in 2015 and now in this country in 2016. You can score that a couple of different ways but by any math, it's a career of around 70 years. Stan was a genius at making funny voices, funny records, funny radio shows and funny commercials…but how about a round of applause for sheer longevity?

Okay, the rest of this post is for the people who maintain the Episode Guide for The Garfield Show on Wikipedia. The rest of you can ignore what follows…

For complicated reasons that would bore the heck out of you, Season 5 of The Garfield Show consists only of the four episodes of "Rodent Rebellion." There are not nor will there ever be any more in Season 5. We may or may not do a Season 6 but that's still under discussion. Season 5 is just those four cartoons which air as two half-hours.

There's someone who likes to post phony episodes titles and descriptions of as-yet-unaired Garfield Show episodes on Wikipedia. This person — and it may be a team effort — is quite clever and has sometimes made up episodes vaguely similar to real ones we had in the works. But his or hers are bogus and I'm told some of them were posted for Season 5 and then deleted like all the other fake ones because they could not be verified. I am the best source you're going to find for this stuff — this blog has been running for sixteen years, guys and my name is on every episode of the series — and I hereby testify under oath that Season 5 is just those four episodes of "Rodent Rebellion." Thank you.

The other day, I reran a 2010 post about a time I lost my American Express card. Here from July 18 of that year is another such tale. I have since managed to not lose my American Express card again, though once since then someone got its number and charged a whole mess of lingerie on it at a store in Las Vegas. The AmEx folks removed the charge when I assured them that (a) I had not been in Las Vegas on the date in question, (b) I never wear lingerie and (c) when I do, it's not in that color…

Last Thursday, I went to lunch with a wonderful, witty lady named Laraine Newman who has done many things above and beyond being part of the original cast of Saturday Night Live. I mean, that alone would be enough but there's been so much more.

We talked about mutual friends and our mutual birthday and we marvelled at how though it was a hundred-and-something degrees in Beverly Hills, Sylvester Stallone was dining at a nearby table wearing an apricot-colored three-piece suit. I've just completed my end of the second season of The Garfield Show, which includes the voice-directing, and I was fortunate to get Laraine to appear several times as a guest voice. What's fortunate about this is, of course, that I don't have to do any actual directing when I get someone like that. I just hand Laraine a script, point her at a microphone and tell her to be funny. She always is.

After we'd finished our meals, the check arrived in one of those little leatherette folders. We fought over it, I triumphed and I tossed my American Express card into the folder and a waiter took it away. Laraine and I talked for another hour or so…long enough that when we got up to go, neither of us noticed that our server had not brought it back to me for tip, total and signature.

Friday morning, I took my car in for routine servicing…and this dealership always makes me nervous because they always give me a "loaner" with, like, twelve miles on it. I don't like driving someone else's utterly pristine car and not just because I fear I'll scratch it, thereby taking its automotive virginity. I'm also afraid I'll enjoy the new car so much I'll want to buy one…which I guess is why they only assign out new loaners. Anyway, when I went to give the cashier my AmEx card to imprint for the security deposit, I discovered it was in absentia. It took about a minute to figure out I'd left it in that restaurant.

I cell-phoned them and a nice lady went away for what seemed like about six hours. Eventually, she returned to report that they'd searched the restaurant, high, low and in-between and they definitely did not have my American Express card. Sorry.

I waited fifteen minutes, called again and got someone else. This person went off, did a little search and came back in about two minutes to inform me that, yes, they had my American Express card. "I'll come by and get it later," I told her.

Later that afternoon, I drove the loaner (cautiously) to the restaurant. You may be interested to know that Sylvester Stallone wasn't there but Fabio was and I had to wait while they seated him. I don't know why he's more important than I am. Of the two of us, I'm the one who has a job.

The manager searched the restaurant like the first lady I'd called but eventually, he found the card, checked my i.d. and returned it to me. He thought I would take it and go but I said, "You know, I don't think I ever added a tip to the bill and signed it." This did not win me any points for honesty. It was more like, "You really are a troublemaker, aren't you?" Off he went to plow through all of the previous day's credit card slips. I waited there so long, I was sorry I'd said anything.

Finally, he came back with a slip and announced, "It's okay. You added a tip and signed the slip."

I looked at it and told him, "That's not my signature."

He gasped, "That is not your signature?"

I said, "That's not even my name." Someone else had added a tip (not a very good one) to the bill and signed their name to it. Fortunately, the confusion was only in the bills, not in the cards, and they hadn't given him my American Express card. Anyway, I added my endorsement and left.

On the way back, I stopped at the car dealership, turned in the unblemished loaner and went to pay for the work done on my auto. I opened my wallet, reached for the American Express card…

…and it wasn't there. Gone. Missing. Again. Second time in twenty-four hours.

My distress must have been pretty visible because the cashier asked me, "Something wrong, sir?"

"My American Express card," I said. "It's supposed to be here in my wallet but it has this habit of running off on its own. Excuse me, I have to call a restaurant and —"

She asked, "Have you looked in all your pockets?" I looked in my shirt pocket and there it was, hiding behind my iPhone. And I just went downstairs and looked and it's there in my wallet right this second. I've been checking every hour or so…

Here's a blast from this weblog's past — a post I posted on July 17, 2010. I don't have much to add except that the Benihana's on La Cienega is no longer there. I don't know why. It was way overpriced and usually very crowded. What more does a restaurant have to be to stay in business?

I like Benihana's anyway. A few decades ago, Sergio and I were at a comic convention in Texas and there was a Benihana's next to the hotel. A lovely man named Archie Goodwin, who bounced back and forth between editing from DC and editing for Marvel, took us to dinner there on whichever company's expense account he was then on.

Our chef came in and began cooking the shrimp and the chicken and making the fried rice and constructing the volcano out of onion slices…and Sergio, who is quite the chef himself, started asking questions about how he held the knife and how he drizzled the lemon juice and such. The chef was thrilled to demonstrate and to teach Sergio. He got him up and showed him the moves…and before we knew it, Sergio was preparing our meals under the chef's direction. He did a fine job but to date, he's resisted my suggestion that he dump that silly cartooning career and go cook Teriyaki Steak for a living.

Anyway, here's the story of something that happened to me once in a Benihana's that ain't there no more…

Credit cards are like children: You have to keep an eye on them because they have a tendency to wander away and thus cause you trouble. I don't have any children but my American Express card likes to go off on its own and I thought I'd share two of many anecdotes here — one today, another tomorrow. Today's took place about twenty-five years ago. I had lunch with a business associate at the little trattoria that Sonny Bono used to own over on Melrose near La Cienega. When the check came, I gave the server my AmEx card and he took it away to imprint as they usually do.

A bit later, he brought me a slip to sign, along with what I assumed was my card. It wasn't. It was somebody else's American Express card of the same color. In fact, it was also this other person's slip but I didn't notice that, either. I added a tip to the bill, totalled it, signed and slipped the AmEx card into the slot in my wallet where I always carried mine. At another table at Bono's, another gent did likewise with my bill and my credit card. Sonny was actually there at the time running things and while I have no proof that he personally got the cards confused, I like to tell people that he did. I mean, it was my fault for not noticing but why accept responsibility for anything if you can blame it on Sonny Bono?

For five days, I went about my business, using what I thought was my American Express card. I didn't notice and none of the stores where I used it noticed that my name was not on it. I charged about $500 worth of goods and services to someone else's American Express card. In the meantime, a total stranger was charging about $1800 to mine, equally unaware of the swap. Aren't businesses supposed to verify in some way that the credit card you hand them is actually yours? Apparently, not the kind of businesses I patronize.

Finally, I noticed. It was in the Benihana's on La Cienega. They brought me my check. I gave them someone else's card. They imprinted the card on the bill and brought it all back to me. I saw it was not my card and told them they'd made an error. Much searching and discussion ensued, and the Manager assured me that no one else there had concurrently used an American Express card and they could not possibly have caused a swap. "We returned to you the credit card you gave us, sir," he said.

I dug into my pocket and found an AmEx receipt from another purchase earlier that day. Sure enough, it was to the alien credit card I'd given them. Uh-oh.

Back home, I sorted my recent receipts into chronological order and figured out where the mix-up occurred. Fortunately, the name on the other card was a unique one and it was findable in the telephone book. I called the gentleman up and asked him if he'd eaten in Bono's the previous Tuesday. He said he had. I asked if he had his American Express card. He said, "Sure." I asked him to go and take another look at it. Puzzled, he went away and came back to the phone to ask, "Who's Mark Evanier?" Well, actually, he pronounced it "Even-nyer" but I'm used to that. I explained to him what had happened and he asked me, "Well, what do we do now?"

I told him we could either call American Express and have them cancel the cards and sort everything out or we could gather up our recent receipts and get together. Within the hour, he was at the table in my kitchen with his recent receipts. He was quite bemused by it all and eager to get it straightened out, the only unpleasantness coming when he looked at our respective receipts from Bono's and noted that he was a much better tipper with my credit card than I was with his.

We did the math and it turned out he owed me around $1300, mostly because of travel arrangements he'd put on his my card. He gave me a check for that amount, our credit cards went back to their rightful possessors and it was all over…except that I had to explain to my accountant several times why I'd bought a total stranger tickets to Disney World.

Moral of the story: Always know where your credit cards are. The other day, I didn't follow my own advice. I will tell you that tale tomorrow. Sonny Bono, being deceased, is not involved but the story does feature brief cameo appearances by Laraine Newman, Sylvester Stallone and Fabio.

This is the long-delayed fourth installment in a series of essays here about how professional or aspiring professional writers can and must cope with two various kinds of rejection — rejection of your work by the buyers and rejection by various folks in the audience. Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 can be read here and Part 3 can be read here.

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I may have mistitled this series because, as I'm going to explain in this chapter, a lot of what we think are rejections really aren't rejections. They're more correctly viewed as non-acceptances. Those may seem like the same thing but they're not and understanding why they're not may be vital if you are to keep your career in perspective.

What's the difference? Let's say you and I are going out to dinner and there are three restaurants nearby — an Italian place, a Chinese place and a Deli. I say to you, "What do you feel like?" You say, "I'm kind of in the mood for corned beef…how about the Deli?" I say fine and we go to the Deli. The whole discussion takes ten seconds.

Imagine then that the managers of the Italian and Chinese restaurants are standing outside their respective businesses and they see us drive by, park down the street and go into the Deli. Imagine too that they get upset and start wondering, "Why did they reject my restaurant?"

But we didn't. The managers of the Chinese and Italian restaurants didn't do anything wrong. We just decided that at that particular moment, we didn't want what they offered. That's not exactly a rejection and to the extent it is, it's a rejection that has nothing to do with them.

Writers — and actors, as well — have a tendency to think of every potential hiring opportunity as something they should get. When (as usually happens), they don't get hired, they think of it as a competition they lost for one of two reasons. Either they didn't receive proper consideration or the person doing the selecting wasn't wise enough to see that they were the best choice. These two views are especially prevalent among writers or actors who've never themselves been in a hiring position.

Either view could be correct and in a future installment of this series, I'll have a lot more to say about your work not getting proper consideration. But there's a third reason which is often the case. The person making the decision just had a hunch or a whim. The decision was made quickly because it didn't seem to merit a long discussion…just as you and I don't have to spend an hour weighing all possibilities before we decide where to have dinner.

As you may know, I sometimes voice direct the cartoon shows I write…which means I do the casting.

Now, I happen to know a lot of voice actors and actresses. I know a lot of them personally and even more of them professionally. When it comes time to cast a major, ongoing role, I will spend a lot of time considering and auditioning different folks but most of the time, I'm casting non-recurring, small parts…and those, I cast quickly. On The Garfield Show, we have a regular cast — Frank Welker (who voices Garfield), Wally Wingert (who plays Jon), Gregg Berger (who plays Odie the Dog and Squeak the Mouse), Julie Payne (who plays Liz) and others. Sometimes, one of these folks will also voice a new character. Sometimes, I need to book another actor.

Booking another actor usually works like this: As I write the part or go over the script, I suddenly "hear" a voice in my head…and then I see if the actor who matches that voice is available. It might be Neil Ross or Joe Alaskey or Bob Bergen or Laraine Newman or someone else but if I can get them, I'll get them. If not, I'll think of someone similar. It's not hard since I have hundreds of actors to pick from…and frankly, almost anyone can do one of these smaller roles. It's just like in a live-action show. If you need someone to play a cop who has six lines and your first choice isn't available, your second or third choices are probably just as good. Occasionally, you even find out they're better.

There's a voice actor I've hired a few times who doesn't grasp this. He persists in seeing every possible booking opportunity as a contest between him and someone else. I really dread it when I get these calls and in what follows, I am not lying to him in the slightest…

HIM: I ran into Neil Ross the other day at an audition and he said he'd done a Garfield for you the day before.

ME: Yeah, Neil's very good.

HIM: I don't understand. What can he do that I can't?

ME: Probably nothing. You're very good, too.

HIM: Then why didn't you hire me for that part?

ME: Because I had my choice of dozens of guys who would have been fine in it. You two aren't the only ones. I went with Neil.

HIM: Because you thought he was better than me.

ME: No, because as I wrote the part, I kept hearing his voice in my head.

HIM: And you thought I couldn't do it.

ME: No, I'm sure you could have. So could Rob Paulsen. So could Maurice LaMarche. So could eighty other guys we could both name.

HIM: But you decided not to hire me.

ME: No, to be honest, your name didn't cross my mind in connection with this job. I thought of Neil. I hired Neil. If you're thinking I considered every possible person who could have done the part, you don't understand how this works. I don't stop and think, would you be better than Neil? And those times I hired you, I didn't stop to think, would Neil be better than you? I just book someone — and in a lot less time than this call is taking.

HIM: I just want to know what you have against me. Did I displease you somehow? The last time you hired me, did I not take direction? Wasn't I on time?

ME: You were fine. So was Neil. The only thing you ever do that displeases me is to make me have this same conversation with you every time you hear that I hired someone else for something. Some decisions are just whims or hunches, not contests. When I decided to wear a blue shirt this morning, that doesn't I mean I have anything against my green shirts.

HIM: I just wanted to get it straight. You knew I could do the job but you hired someone else for it.

Whether you're an actor or a writer — or even in some other job where people sometimes go eenie-meanie-minie-mo to make these decisions — you're going to drive yourself crazy if you think like the above-quoted actor. Don't do that to yourself. Don't view every employment opportunity as you dueling to the death with the Other Guy. That contest only exists in your mind. The person making the decision is not viewing it from that perspective.

I not only know lots of voice actors, I know lots of writers. Sometimes, one of those writers gets hired for something that I might have wanted to do. I've learned not to take it personally because I know it probably wasn't meant personally. My name just didn't come up…or if it did, someone had a hunch that the Other Guy might be better for this one than me. And who knows? Maybe they're right. I'm not dumb enough to think I can write anything…or that there aren't others who might not be a better fit on some assignments.

The Other Guy (could be a Gal) might have a better feel for certain projects…or might be more available or have a better rapport with others around. The Other Guy (Gal) might be cheaper than me or have done really good work in the past for some of those involved.

But more than likely, it didn't even come down to someone thinking, "Should we hire Evanier or hire The Other Guy?" They might not know me or my work…or maybe they did and my name just never came up. You have to understand how this works for the person making the decision. It's really a lot like you and me deciding to go to the Deli. And not only did we not decide to eat Italian or Chinese, we also didn't consider that new barbecue place over on Melrose or the seafood place up on Santa Monica Boulevard or the Japanese place or the burger joint or…

If you're a professional writer or you want to be one, you will at times lose out on things because of actual either/or decisions. Someone will decide to buy someone else's screenplay instead of yours. That kind of decision does happen. But it doesn't happen every time you don't get the job. Stop creating those bogus competitions in your head. You'll lose enough real ones without setting yourself up to lose imaginary ones.

As some of you may know, I was the Supervising Producer of The Garfield Show, which is seen all over the globe. I'm still not sure what a Supervising Producer supervises but I wrote a lot of the series and directed the voices and did various producer-like chores. We did…well, I'm not sure if I should say four or five seasons. Seasons 1-4 consisted of approximately 26 half-hours each. "Season 5," as they called it, was four 11-minute episodes that could also be described as one four-part story.

The 78 half-hours that comprised Seasons 1-3 have been running for many years in the United States on Cartoon Network and/or Boomerang. Both channels are owned by the same company and they've sometimes run them on one or the other or for a while on both, usually four half-hours a day, seven days a week. They have run these over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

They do quite well in the ratings, which is why they run them over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Though they've had Season 4 and "Season 5" sitting on the shelf for a long time, they haven't aired them because Seasons 1-3 do so well as they run them over and over and over, etc. 4 and 5 have been broadcast all over the world; just not in the U.S. of A.

Right now, the shows from Seasons 1-3 air on Boomerang Monday through Friday at 10 AM, 10:30 AM, 10 PM and 10:30 PM. On the weekends, Boomerang has them at 2 PM, 2:30 PM, 10 PM and 10 PM. These are all Eastern Times I'm giving you.

And starting tonight, there's an additional half-hour every Tuesday night which will be airing the never-before Season 4 and (I think, later on, "Season" 5). This half-hour airs on Boomerang at 8:30 PM Eastern and then the same episodes air at 11:30 PM. Now, here's where it gets complicated…

Each half-hour of The Garfield Show contains two 11-minute episodes. Some of the 11-minute episodes in Season 4 are standalone 11-minute stories and some of them are 11-minute chapters of five-part stories. Tonight, for example, they're airing Part 1 and Part 2 of the five-part story, "The Lion Queen." Next Tuesday, you get Part 3 and Part 4 and then the following Tuesday, you get Part 5 of "The Lion Queen" and…well, I'm not sure. Maybe one of the standalone episodes or maybe Part 1 of another five-parter.

This is not the way I'd have chosen to air the shows but I do want to recommend them to you anyway. These episodes feature some of the best CGI animation I've ever seen on television and I was real happy with how the stories came out. (There are also songs; I wrote the English lyrics for tunes written by others in France.) "The Lion Queen" also has a superb voice cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Julie Payne, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr, Misty Lee, Laraine Newman and Stan Freberg.

I'm not comfy plugging my own work so this is as much as I'll say now. I hope you enjoy them and I hope one of these days soon, they run all five parts of a five-parter, one right after the other. I really like them that way.

Boy, that was long and self-congratulatory.

Gee, some people haven't aged well, either in terms of age or comedic ability. I was pleased that Laraine Newman looked so good because she's the same age I am. (Well, actually I'm about twenty minutes older.)

I think there were more technical errors in this special than they have in an entire season. It must have been a nightmare to service all those celebs, rehearse the ones who did things that needed rehearsal, get the ones who needed hair and makeup through hair and makeup, etc…

I'm not sure why they felt they needed musical numbers from Kanye West, Miley Cyrus, Paul McCartney, Paul Simon and a few others. I hope the Pauls were just having a bad night and that's not what their voices are like these days.

Shelly Goldstein messaged me that if anyone needs proof that Sarah Palin is focused on celebrity (as opposed to holding public office), you needed only to look at her participation and especially her gown.

You get the feeling Eddie Murphy had the limo double-parked outside with the engine running?

They gave about as little attention as possible to the period when Jean Doumanian produced the show…and Eddie Murphy aside, to the Dick Ebersol years. I think they missed a bet: Bring Gilbert Gottfried out and let him spend three minutes yelling about the period he was on the show. He would have stolen the evening.

I'll bet a lot of the folks who've written for this program weren't amused at the joke about not devoting any time to the writers. The inattention to them was really a slap in the puss.

Some of the clip packages remind you how highly SNL has always valued catch phrases. To some extent, the measure of a cast member is how many they manage to accumulate.

I kept waiting for them to bring Jon Lovitz out as his liar character and introduce himself as Brian Williams. But Seinfeld got to do the Brian Williams joke.

Some odd picks as to who got camera time and who didn't. There are folks who did 5+ seasons who got less attention than Jerry Seinfeld, Betty White, Louis C.K. and a dozen other stars who haven't been a particularly important part of the show.

I actually kept thinking about this: They reportedly invited everyone who was ever a cast member to be in the audience. For some, that was an invite to spend their own money for travel and lodging, plus expenses for dressing up and grooming, to sit in the back, be mostly ignored and maybe experience the awkwardness of being asked, "So, what are you doing these days?" Some of them had to be sitting there during the obit reel thinking, "I would have gotten mentioned if I'd died." (Which reminds me: Uh, Jim Henson?)

A friend of mine who was a regular on Laugh-In once told me (Oh, hell, I'll tell you who it was. It was Larry Hovis.) that those reunions were uncomfortable in the same way high school reunions can be uncomfy but ten times as much. Once upon a time, you were all more or less equal and making the same money. Now, one of you is getting a million bucks a movie and one of you is auditioning for laxative commercials.

Careers in show business can be capricious things having a lot to do with management and timing and factors that have little to do with how good you are. After Larry was off Laugh-In and Hogan's Heroes, he actually made a very good living for himself as a producer and writer and was in many ways happier…but he said there were folks who treated him like he was a derelict because he was no longer on a series. That must be the case with many former cast members of SNL. I'm sure some didn't show up for the special because they didn't want to subject themselves to an evening that made it clear the show didn't rate them as worthy of a mention, especially if they did their best work during the years Lorne Michaels wasn't in charge.

I understand why the special did that. Show Business does involve a kind of Natural Selection. When those folks were on SNL, they had to battle for screen time against peers who seemed to be eclipsing them in heat, if not in talent.

Still, I just have to wonder. Some former cast members weren't there because they're working. (Hey, did you know Tim Kazurinsky is playing The Wizard in the national touring company of Wicked that's still at the Pantages in Hollywood?) I wonder how many who weren't there weren't there because they're actively employed or happily retired…and how many weren't there because they didn't need the reminder that they're no longer a part of the most important comedy show ever on television?

I feel a bit bad that I couldn't write as nice a piece about Marcia Strassman as she probably deserved. I therefore direct you to what my friend Laraine Newman had to say about her over on Facebook. Laraine knew her at a happier time.

I spent yesterday (a) voice-directing The Garfield Show and (b) catching up on sleep I didn't get over the weekend working on the script. The session went well thanks to a superb cast: Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, Wally Wingert, Jason Marsden, Laraine Newman, Candi Milo and Corey Burton. Today, we have all those folks back plus Laura Summer, Jewel Shepard and the legendary Stan Freberg. As I am fond of saying, when you hire the best actors, a rhesus monkey could direct one of these things. Normal blog posting should resume shortly.

Many of you have noted the new headers on this page — not just one but several new drawings of me by a man of mystifying talents. His name is Sergio Aragonés and I'd hoped the new art would go quietly unnoticed for a time but no. (I love the folks who are writing me to ask if I noticed it had changed.) There are more drawings yet to come.

Also to come on this blog: In the next day or three, I hope to post a long piece about the situation by which Bob Kane is credited as the sole creator of Batman while his collaborator Bill Finger is not equally heralded on the strip or the movies or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I shall mount the best defense I can of Mr. Kane and make a few points in his favor on this. But you'll still conclude, as I did, that it's awful that Finger's name is not there.

Also, I haven't forgotten that I promised more tales of working on Welcome Back, Kotter and witnessing, live and in person, a Battle of the Network Stars. And there's that long essay about the late Al Feldstein I said I'd get around to. And a few other things..

As usual, I will be doing more than a dozen panels at Comic-Con International this year down in lovely San Diego. There will be all the usual ones plus a few new things and I'll post my schedule here as soon as the convention is ready to release the total list.

By the way: Please don't write me about three things. One is getting into the convention. Another is helping you find lodging during the convention. And the third is suggesting programming, especially long after the schedule is locked, which it pretty much was a few weeks ago. You'd be amazed at the number of people who write or call me each year a week or less before the con to ask if some panel they want to do can be added. I don't program that stuff. There are people paid to do that and they have to do it way before the con.

I gotta get to the studio. Back later.

The wondrous Laraine Newman misses Tim Russert.

An awful lot of well-known comic actors got their start or a good boost because of their involvement with an L.A.-based workshop/show/school called The Groundlings. I was involved with a lot of these folks and a big, very fascinating book could be written about the organization and all the folks who've participated in it over the years. For now though, you'll have to settle for this article which is pretty good even though someone doesn't know how to spell Laraine Newman's first name.

No one has had a longer, more glorious career in show business than Rose Marie. She started as a child singing star — so young, some doubted that that great voice could possibly be coming out of a kid of single digit age. She worked with everyone: Al Jolson, W.C. Fields, Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, You Name Them. I first became aware of her when she played comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the sixties — maybe the first strong woman character on a sitcom who wasn't a servant or spouse, and boy was she great on a great show. And later she was a regular on The Doris Day Show and Hollywood Squares and so many others.

I've been privileged to become friends with Rosie and I'd love her even if she wasn't an endless stream of great anecdotes. (And people say I have a good memory…) So I was going to wish her a happy…wait for it…ninetieth birthday today. But she doesn't want that. She asks that instead, I urge you all to make a donation in her name to the Doris Day Animal Foundation, an effort that does great work for cats, dogs and other creatures who don't have someone to care for them. You can thank Rose for all the wonderful work she's done by giving some bucks over here on her website. You can also learn a lot more about her there, as well.

We celebrated her birthday with a small, lovely dinner last Friday night. Let's do this clockwise: The lovely lady in the lower left is Arlene Silver, AKA Mrs. Dick Van Dyke. The gent next to her is Mr. Dick Van Dyke. Next to Dick is Rose and next to Rose is the charming Jeanine Kasun. Jeanine is the host of Baby Boomer Favorites, a fine radio show you can hear the same place you can hear Stu's Show, which we often plug on this site. Next to Jeanine is the host of Stu's Show, Stu Shostak. Then next to Stu is me and next to me is, at lower right, the splendid Laraine Newman from the original Saturday Night Live and oodles of current cartoon shows.

We all convened at a fine seafood eatery in Santa Monica to toast Rose and tell stories. I can do none of theirs justice and if you read this blog, you've heard most of mine. But I wish you could have heard Dick tell about Maureen Stapleton getting plastered at the wrap party for Bye Bye Birdie or Rose tell about complaining to the hotel owner about her paycheck being $11 short when she played a Vegas hotel in the early days of that town. The hotel was the Flamingo, the owner was Bugsy Siegel…and somehow, she not only survived, she got her eleven dollars.

But that's Rose…truly a survivor. I asked her how it felt to be middle-age because I can't grasp the possibility that she won't be around for another ninety years. Here she is with a little tune about getting older…but before you watch it, go over to her website and send some money in the name of Rose Marie. And don't do it for the cats or dogs, although goodness knows they need it. Do it for this fine lady…

My friend and birthday-sharer Laraine Newman recently starred in a web video parody of the TV series, Girls. Here's part of what she wrote about it over on Huffington Post…

I am a fan of the show Girls. I've seen every single episode. I think Lena Dunham is an astonishingly talented writer and performer. My older daughter, also named Lena, is around the same age as the girls portrayed on the show and about to be in that no man's land of "We've graduated college, now what are we supposed to do? There are expectations of us, not to mention the ones we have of ourselves and we're trying to find our way." It's so well presented and heartbreakingly funny I feel hurled back to that time as I watch it.

I'm also aware that Girls is incredibly polarizing, which bewilders me because not only do I think it's good but I think it just gets better and better. That's why, when Gail Lerner, the writer and director of Girls: Season 38, sent me her script, explaining to me that it "wasn't just a parody but also a valentine" to the show, I was curious to read it. Without giving anything away, let me just say I think that Gail is a truly original and extremely funny writer and the script was as solid as they come. But here's the catch; she wanted me to play the role of Hannah.

I think the parody and Laraine are quite wonderful. Here it/she is…

Two weeks ago today, I experienced the worst pain I'd ever had in my life — worse even than the time I wandered into that Fran Drescher impressionist Karaoke competition. I was supposed to drive up to Santa Barbara with the fiercely-talented Laraine Newman to address a bunch of college students who are considering careers in show business. (I planned to just point at Laraine and say, "If you're not at least half as good as this person, don't bother trying.") An hour or so before departure time, I was in the shower when my right knee, which had been giving me trouble for several days, suddenly went all Tonya Harding on me. I cancelled S.B. and gritted my molars in agony until my doctor injected said knee with cortisone. The person who invented this drug is the greatest human being in the history of mankind.

The knee hasn't really hurt since the cortisone kicked in a day later but something is still not right with it. Today, an MRI revealed that I have a complex tear of the medial meniscus with a radial component in the mid zone, and a horizontal component in the posterior horn. The midzone is subluxed medially out of the joint and I also have a separate radial tear of the midzone of the lateral meniscus.

Well, I don't have to tell any of you what that means — especially about the midzone being subluxed medially out of joint. In a couple of weeks, they're going to do a surgical procedure and correct all this…and it doesn't sound like that big a deal. If it is, please don't write and tell me that.

I should be fine and up to all that walking by the Comic-Con International…where as of this moment, I am moderating fifteen panels. They'll include all the old faves plus some new faves. Yes, Sergio Aragonés will be at the con and participating in Quick Draw! along with Scott Shaw! — and wait'll you hear who we have as our Guest Artist this year. If I were you, I'd get in line now. Details to follow.