Still trying to get some sleep and some pages done. Here's a rerun from 4/6/15…

As I've mentioned here many times, my father spent most of his adult life working for the Internal Revenue Service. It was a job and here were the good things about it:

The weekly paycheck was an absolute certainty. He and his family received very good health insurance. If he didn't do anything stupid, he would receive tiny raises from time to time and be able to retire when he reached 60 years of age. And when he did retire, he would receive a modest pension until he died and if his wife survived him — which she did — she would receive that pension until she died — which she did.

I cannot tell you how important and wonderful that health plan was for her. Without it, she would probably have died 5-10 years sooner, suffered more while she was alive, and worried constantly about medical bills costing her that lovely house he'd left her.

Those were the good things. Note that none of them had to do with what he would do each day when he went to work. All that, he hated. He especially hated answering to unqualified or bossy bosses. Obviously, I am giving you his description of his workplace here. He believed many of the policies he was ordered to almost blindly enforce were foolish, pernicious and unfair. Particularly during the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, my father was sent forth to wring every possible dime out of poor people (especially single parents) but to kiss the derrieres of wealthy folks and to not make too much of a fuss when a rich guy didn't want to pay what the law said he was supposed to pay.

According to my father, some of that was a matter of certain people in Washington rewarding their friends and campaign donors. And some of it was because affluent people could afford good lawyers and accountants. It was simply easier to collect from folks who couldn't…even when they didn't have the money.

The single parent thing really got to him. He did not have the power to waive or prune the tax bill of a delinquent taxpayer. At most, he could negotiate payment plans within predefined department guidelines and he needed the blessing of his superiors to go beyond those guidelines. More than once, he went to his bosses and said something like, "I'd like to forgive a part of this woman's tax bill and give her longer than usual to pay the rest. She was recently widowed. She has five children to feed and clothe and her husband left her in serious debt, above and beyond her taxes, and she has no source of income at the moment."

The reply to that kind of request was usually along the lines of, "Denied. Tell her that if she cares about those kids, she'll hurry up and find a new husband who can support them." Single male parents fared a little better but not by much.

That was one example of many reasons he hated to go to work most mornings. Even though he blamed the stress for causing his bleeding ulcer and many sleepless nights, he did the job. To men of his generation — he was born in 1910 — there was nothing more important than providing for your family both in life and death. He provided well when he was alive. There was never anything I really needed we could not afford, though I recall wishing when I got braces on my teeth, that my orthodonture had not been affordable. My father left my mother a home, a pension and that all-important health insurance.  Oh, yeah: And me but she was half-responsible for that.

It was around 1951 when he married the one and only love of his life. And it was no coincidence that was the year he committed to the I.R.S. job for the rest of his life.

Prior to that, he had worked in a number of different jobs. He worked as a copy boy at the Hartford Courant, then as now the largest newspaper in Connecticut. He worked as the Night Clerk at Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford. He worked on and off for the I.R.S. division in Hartford. He was originally hired, in part because of his limited experience at the Courant, to work in Press Relations. That was not a bad position, he said, but then they reorganized the division and moved him, much against his will, into being a Revenue Officer. He didn't like it but he did it there and later, he signed on to do it in Los Angeles for the rest of his working days.

Notice I use the word "job" here. My father had jobs. He never had a "career," at least the way he defined it. Once I began to work steadily as a professional writer, he'd sometimes say to me, "You've got a career." He always had a big grin on his face when he said it.

Don't write to me about the real definitions of these words. Around my father, the difference was simple: A job was something you did to buy groceries and pay the mortgage. A career was something you wanted to do. Not one child in all of America has ever said, "I want to grow up to be a Revenue Officer for the Internal Revenue Service."

In '51 when he took that job in L.A., he not only abandoned any hope of ever having a career, he gave up one other important thing. He gave up the dream of ever being rich.

He would henceforth receive a steady paycheck and a pension but the amounts involved would never buy much more than the necessities of life and an occasional vacation. You could not get rich working for the I.R.S.; not even if you took bribes. His best friend at the office tried that and even if he hadn't been caught and sent to prison, he would never have owned a mansion and a yacht. My father, who was so honest he returned found wallets with all the cash intact, would never have even tried it.

Most people in my line of work (writing) never achieve anything even vaguely resembling a steady paycheck. A good many never earn half as much money as my father did at the job he hated. But in writing, there is at least the theoretical possibility of wealth. It may be unlikely but it's not utterly impossible that your next writing job will lead to you publishing a best-selling novel or writing a screenplay that will bring in millions.

That's not why most of us do it. I do it because I never came across any profession that seemed preferable or within my limited skill set. I sometimes pause to consider that fundamental difference between what I do and what my father decided to do. I've never had the job security he had but I've also never had a cap on my potential earnings. There's the trade-off.

As you might imagine, I know a lot of writers. I know writers who are unsuccessful and happy. I know writers who are unsuccessful and unhappy. I know writers who are successful and happy. And I know writers who are successful and unhappy. That last group is generally the saddest of the four.

I suspect some of the unhappy ones (successful or otherwise) would be happier if they had a job instead of a career. Not knowing what your income will be next month — or even if you'll have one — can cause stress and bleeding ulcers and sleepless nights. My father's problem was not that he had a job. It was that he had the wrong job and was never able to find a better one — and once he had the responsibility as the Bread Winner, unwilling to risk the security he'd found.

He retired at the age of 63, just in time to watch and cheer the televised Watergate hearings. There were many revelations in them about how the Nixon Administration had used the I.R.S. to reward its friends and punish its enemies and he was so, so happy to see much of that exposed even if it didn't lead to total reform. Mostly though, he was happy to be out of that damned job.

His last few years at it, he looked more like he was in his eighties than his sixties. The day he retired, he dropped the extra twenty years from his face and maybe five or ten more just out of sheer relief. He lived another 20.5 years in fairly good health. They were not free of stress as he could always find something to worry about but it was never as bad as his years at the I.R.S.

Which is not to say retirement did not have its downsides. The main one was that he was bored out of his mind.

He followed a couple of stocks he owned, more for the hobby than for the money. He rooted for the Lakers and never understood how it was possible for them to win a game if it wasn't televised and he wasn't in front of his TV yelling at the screen. He prayed for jury duty, got it a few times but discovered that his past profession disqualified him from ever actually getting on a jury. At times, I would find busy work for him, giving him errands to run for me. They usually did not turn out well as I've explained here before.

He never wished for a second he was back at his job. But he did wish he had something to do all day and really feel like he was doing something.

I turned 63 last month. Only about a week ago did this dawn on me: I am now the age my father was when he retired. It has never for a second occurred to me to do that.

I consider myself fortunate that I have a career and that every morning, I not only have something to do…I have something I want to do. That's another difference between a job and a career…and it may be the reason I don't feel 63 except sometimes around the knees.

Alex Hassilev — the last surviving member of the original lineup of the folk group, The Limeliters — died last April. I always liked those guys and still play their old records once in a while. (Well, to be accurate: I still play MP3s of their old records…)

He was also in one of my favorite movies — The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming — and he produced a helluva lot of great record albums. There are still Limeliters but he was the last of my Limeliters.

Okay, here's a story I'm fairly sure I haven't told here. In late 1998, the hottest ticket on Broadway — the one scalpers were getting actual scalps for — was a revival of the musical Cabaret. It was directed by Sam Mendes, co-directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall and it starred Alan Cumming as the decadent and bizarre Master of Ceremonies. Getting seats to it at the time was nearly-impossible and the time in this case was when my dear friend Carolyn and I were going back to New York for a business/pleasure trip. It would be pleasure for her and a mix of business and pleasure for me.

Naturally, we wanted to see Cabaret on that trip. Here is a commercial that was made for it much later in the run when to get tickets, all you had to do was phone Telecharge and have your AmEx card handy…

But also naturally, I did not want to spend umpteen kazillion dollars for tickets that would, at best, put us in the back row of Studio 54, which is where the production was doing eight shows a week. Fortunately, I thought I might have an "in" to get house seats. In case you don't know what they are, they're real good seats which are sometimes available, often at the last minute, for face value. You generally need to know someone important who's associated with the show to get them.

On this trip, we also wanted to see a revival of the show Little Me, which originally starred Sid Caesar but in revival, it was starring Martin Short. I had a friend in the cast and I called and asked her if she could arrange for house seats to see her in Little Me. She said, "No problem."

Then I asked her if there was any way on God's Green Earth she could arrange for me to purchase house seats for Cabaret. She thought for a second and said, "I'll ask Rob." She was referring to Rob Marshall, who was the director of that revival of Little Me…the same Rob Marshall who, as you'll note above, also co-directed and choreographed the revival of Cabaret.

And ask him, she did. The next day, she called and said it was all arranged — for the date I'd requested — Little Me on the Wednesday evening of our trip, Cabaret for the following Friday. I just had to go to the shows' respective box offices, show I.D. and pay for the tickets. I knew from past experience I should do that as soon as I arrived in New York and not wait for those evenings. The longer those tickets sat in the box office, the greater the chance someone who worked in that box office would take a bribe or crib them for a friend and we'd wind up in worse seats.

On the Sunday before those dates, Carolyn and I flew to Manhattan and checked into my favorite hotel there. Monday morning, I had a lunch appointment with an editor at a comic book company for which I was writing.  As we left the restaurant, I asked him, "Do you mind if we make a slight detour to Studio 54 so I can pick up some tickets they're holding for me?"  It wasn't that far out of the way so he said, "Fine with me."  We went to Studio 54, I told a man behind a window who I was, he found the tickets he had for me…

…and he said, "Wow.  You must know someone."

I paid face value for the tickets — I think they were $75 each — and I took them over to the seating chart to see why he said what he said.  Cabaret, as you may know, takes place in a night club in Berlin during the Nazis' rise to power.  At Studio 54, management had taken out the first few rows of theater-type seats and replaced them with the kind of tables and chairs one finds in a night club, which more or less put the occupants into the show.  My tickets were for AA1 and AA2 — two of the four seats at the front table.  The best seats in the house.

When the gent in the ticket window said, "You must know someone," he was wrong.  I got those great seats because I knew someone who knew someone.  The director of a show would, let's face it, have access to the best house seats.

Later that day, I stopped in at Criterion Center Stage Right. That was the name of the place in which Little Me was playing. I picked up and paid for our tickets for Wednesday night. They were also great seats but nowhere near as hard to get as any seats for Cabaret.

That was a good show and we saw some other good shows on that trip. Friday night was our last night in Manhattan and I didn't tell Carolyn in advance where we'd be sitting for Cabaret. When we got to the theater, I handed our tickets to the lady at the front door. She looked at them and said, "Wow. You must know someone."

Then we went in and I handed the tickets to a lady who was seating people. She looked at the tickets and said, "Wow. You must know someone." Then she led us to the front table where two young men were already seated in AA3 and AA4. As soon as we sat down, I turned to them and I was about to say, "Who do you know?" but before I could, one of them said to me, "We paid $700 each. How much did you pay?"

I stammered out, "Oh, not quite that much."

The first act was quite wonderful — most deserving of all the praise this production had received and its four Tony Awards including Best Revival of a Musical. The second act was equally wonderful but between them, there was a moment with a bit of silly tension.

During the intermission, one our tablemates said to me, "I wonder which one of us Alan Cumming will pick." I didn't know what he meant so he explained, "Before the second act starts, he comes out and chats with the audience and selects a woman from the front to dance with him briefly. Then he selects a man to also dance with him briefly."

The other gent said, "And usually, he picks them from this table. That's one of the reasons we sprung for these seats."

And then the first one told me, "The other night, he picked the man sitting right where you are…and it was Walter Cronkite! A friend of ours who was here than night told us!"

That was an interesting revelation. I didn't think Carolyn would mind the honor but I sure would. As I've probably said somewhere here on this blog before, I am not the worst dancer in the world but I'm certainly in the bottom two. Even being picked by a lady to dance with would have been unbelievably awkward and embarrassing. Being picked by the androgynous emcee of the Kit Kat Club…well, that could easily be the most humiliating moment of my life. And believe me…my life has had some pretty humiliating moments.

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The lights came up for Act II and Alan Cumming came out and began talking and dancing around…and then he strolled over to the table next to ours and selected a lady — one he apparently knew — to dance a few steps with him, ballroom style. He returned her to her seat and then he sashayed over to our table to select his next partner. He headed straight for me…our eyes met…

…and I think he saw the look of sheer panic in my retinas. He gave me a look that I took to mean "Don't worry" and moved instead to the gent seated to my right. They waltzed a bit, the show proceeded and after it was over, Cummings' male dance partner told us that brief moment was one of the great thrills of his life…well worth the $700 at least.

On the way out, Carolyn told me she would have paid twice that to see me selected. And I told her that the next time we came to New York and took in some shows, I was going to skip the house seats and get tickets way in the back.

From CBS Sunday Morning for this Sunday morning…

I have several e-mails asking me why there's no mention in the piece of MAD's longest-running illustrator, Sergio Aragonés. I would imagine that he was mentioned in the interviews but the piece only runs six and a half minutes so there wasn't time to include anything about him. Or Jack Davis. Or Will Elder. Or Don Martin, Dave Berg, Antonio Prohias, George Woodbridge, Bob Clarke, Norman Mingo, Frank Kelly Freas, et cetera…

In 1966, a producer named Steve Krantz and an animation studio called Grantray-Lawrence produced 65 half-hours of The Marvel Super-Heroes — a syndicated cartoon series featuring Captain America, The Hulk, The Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Thor. Years later when I asked Stan Lee, "Did anyone like that show?" his reply was, "Yeah, Steve Krantz. He got all the money." Stan believed that Marvel publisher Martin Goodman had made a rotten deal in order to get his characters on TV in the hopes that (a) a flood of merchandising deals would occur and (b) it would make Marvel look more successful because Goodman was then hoping to sell the company — which he did just a few years later.

The stories and artwork were mostly adapted from the actual comic books, infuriating most of the artists who had drawn and plotted those stories for low comic book rates and now saw their work used on television without a cent of additional compensation. It and a subsequent Spider-Man TV cartoon done under the same deal seems to have been among the main reasons why Steve Ditko left Marvel.

And the animation wasn't very good. When the cartoons aired in Los Angeles, they were initially on a kids' show called Shrimpenstein and the host would introduce they by saying things like "And now, here's another one of those cartoons where nothing ever moves" or "and now, another Marvel mediocrity." (I have been accused of making those lines up but ask anyone who watched Shrimpenstein on Channel 9 back then. They will confirm.)

The voice work was variable — done on the cheap in Canada — but the stories were pretty good. And for comic book experts like myself, it was kinda fun to watch the show and identify the drawings used. If the Hulk was standing in profile, that might be a Ditko drawing and then he'd turn full face and that would be a Jack Kirby drawing and then he'd turn the other way into a Bob Powell drawing.

And you know what else wasn't bad? The music. The cartoons had catchy theme songs written and supervised by a New York composer named Jacques "Jack" Urbont.

There is no good release of these cartoons on home video but bootlegs abound. If you've never seen these cartoons, you can watch some prints of varying quality on this page. Also, someone has come across good recordings of the opening and closing themes and Disney has recently released a vinyl (vinyl!) record of them which may interest you if you have something to play it on. Or you can listen to those recordings in these two online videos…

Mark is a little under the weather and also a lot under a deadline so I'm taking a day or three off from this blog. But I have some inventory goodies and a rerun or two to post so you won't miss me. There may be no current events and I'll probably be even lousier at replying to mail than I already am but worry not.

There's nothing wrong with me that sleeping and finishing an assignment won't cure. I just need to figure out how to do both at the same time.

Kamala Harris has agreed to another Presidential Debate, this time on CNN with the same rules as the ABC one. Donald Trump is reportedly considering it but has not agreed. If I were Trump, I'd decline to show up but ask that the debate proceed with Harris debating an empty podium. Donald would do a lot better that way.

What I glean from the news is that just about everyone is agreeing that the "Haitian immigrants eating pets" meme is untrue but some folks think it has some value to them so they're going to keep saying it no matter how much it harms the city of Springfield, Ohio.

Here's another video to remind you what this election is all about…

And another reason is that Trump is getting more and more antisemitic…as Joe Conason notes.

So one day I was in Vegas, playing Blackjack at the Barbary Coast — a pretty good place to play back then. This was the early nineties and the Barbary Coast was located on the northeast corner of Flamingo Road and Las Vegas Boulevard South (aka "The Strip"). Since then, it's been sold and bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and finally remodeled into a much fancier place called The Cromwell. It's probably a much worse place to play Blackjack now but I can't be sure since I gave up the game several decades ago and the city several years ago. I also, on the day I'm describing, decided to never go into the Barbary Coast again.

That day, I was counting cards but, as per my modus operandi, not winning so much that anyone would notice. I'd get a few hundred ahead — enough to cover the cost of the trip and a little more — and then it was on to another casino or back to my room to work. They only stop you when you accumulate enough chips that it might not be sheer luck. I was a few bucks shy of quitting and had just put out a twenty dollar bet when an Asian guy came outta nowhere, leaned over me, called out "Money plays!" and threw ten thousand dollars down on the table.

Translation: He wanted in on the next hand and was wagering cash…a lot of it.

This is a standard move by gamblers who are either card counting as spectators or have been signaled by someone who is counting. You do it when the count is extremely good for the player…but the casinos, for obvious reasons, usually don't allow it. What's odd though was that I was counting and one of the reasons I was about to leave was that the count wasn't especially good. It was a strange time for someone to be doing this.

The dealer turned to the pit boss — the guy in a suit and tie who keeps an eye on all the gaming — and repeated "Money plays" and he checked the stack of bills on the table and announced "Ten thousand." That was over the table limit at the moment but the pit boss nodded to okay it all. I still don't know why. If he'd been playing more attention to our table, I might have thought he was counting and he knew there was no advantage at the moment. Or maybe he knew the Asian gent as a frequent loser. Or something.

The dealer dealt. I got a soft 18 — an ace and a seven — and the Asian gent, who would play his hand after I played mine, got a hard 12 — not a good hand. The size of his wager had caused a small crowd to instantly assemble at our table and they all winced audibly at the guy's bad luck.

Then again, the dealer's up card was a two. So the dealer's going to have to hit at least once. The dealer hasn't won…yet.

With the count near zero, I was playing Basic Strategy which meant doubling my bet, which they let you do on any two cards at the Barbary Coast. That's one of the rules that usually works to the player's advantage, which is why most casinos in Vegas no longer allow it. They've made the game much harder to win in the last few years, which you'd think would make for fewer players. Or at least, you'd think that if you don't know gamblers. For every me who's given up the game, there are a thousand folks who can't wait to play, no matter how bad the rules are.

I hesitated momentarily before doubling. I've seen it happen that a player in my position takes another card and it's a card that might help the next guy win and he gets mad. This makes no sense because I could just as easily be taking a card that would make him lose but gamblers are sometimes illogical about this kind of thing. So I doubled and got one more card — face down. Now it was the Asian gent's turn to play his hand.

Basic Strategy said he should hit. He did and got a ten so he busted out and lost his bet. When the dealer flipped over his own hole card, it was also a ten so he had twelve, which meant he had to take another card. He did and got a ten — so he busted and I won. My face-down card, not that it mattered at that point, was a five.

Everyone looked at the fellow who had just lost ten thousand dollars. How did he feel? What would he do now? He didn't seem all that bothered that he just lost ten thousand dollars on one play of the cards. Instead, showing no particular emotion, he pulled out another ten thousand and announced, "Money plays…again!" There was a big gasp from the spectators.

I decided to stop right there but I had to stay and see how he did. Answer: Much, much better.  He got a Blackjack — an ace and ten-value card — and there was a big cheer from the onlookers. Blackjack then paid three-to-two, meaning that he won back what he'd lost on the previous hand plus 50%. A lot of casinos now pay six-to-five on Blackjacks — another rule change which works against the players but doesn't seem to have made fewer of them play the game.

He threw out a nice tip for the dealer then walked away from the table as I did. We exchanged a few words — me congratulating him, him thanking me for congratulating him — then we parted ways and I never saw him again. But what I did see was two beefy men in suits coming up and briefly detaining me, asking if that man was a friend of mine. Obviously, they thought we might be in collusion — maybe me signaling him that the count was high so he should leap into the game at that moment.

I couldn't say "The count was not good at that moment" because that would have been admitting I was counting.  I did say, "I never saw that guy before in my life," which was true.  They asked me a few more questions: Where was I staying? Where was I from? Did I gamble a lot in that town? There was no reason not to give them honest answers so I did. After a bit more interrogation, they decided they had no reason to hassle me so I went over, turned my chips into cash and never set foot in the Barbary Coast again…just in case the same kind of thing happened again.

In my years of playing Blackjack, that was pretty much the closest I came to getting into trouble but it was not the main reason I quit. The rule changes and my growing boredom with Vegas and Blackjack (even when I won) were of greater importance and those are the ones I've mentioned here in the past when this topic arose. But now that I think of it, maybe that day at the Barbary Coast was a factor. I won about $300 that day there. That wasn't worth having any more trouble with them.

One of the zillion-and-a-half things I don't like about Donald Trump is his mania to have things both ways: "Everyone agrees" he won the debate against Kamala Harris but she cheated with some sort of earpiece that told her what to say and the moderators were biased in her favor. And the proof that he won is that she immediately asked for another debate, which is what you do what you lose…even though after the debate with Biden — which he says he won and probably did — he immediately asked for another debate.

And so on. I understand that there are people who are always going to vote for the Republican over the Democrat, no matter who they are. There are also people who feel they did well for whatever reason during the four years Trump was in the White House. I only wonder if they listen to his incoherent rantings now and wonder what they're going to get this time.

I also understand there are folks who have their pet issues: They're always going to vote for the candidate who seems more likely to keep their lives and neighborhoods free of immigrants, legal or otherwise. A lot of them don't think it makes any difference.

But then I have my pet issues. A big one for me is Health Care. I have real good health insurance and I believe everyone should; that it would not only be more humane but in the long run, both cheaper and better for society. As Kevin Drum and Jonathan Chait both note, Trump has no plan to do anything like that, even though he has for years claimed he did and he was only "a few weeks away" from unveiling it. To the extent Trump has any plan for health care at all, it's to cut people loose, including those with pre-existing conditions and/or who are in need to treatment they cannot afford.

I also think the guy is bad on Abortion, bad on the Economy and that he'd serve Ukraine up to Putin on a very large silver platter. Oh, yeah…and he's nuts, too. Did you know windmills cause cancer?

Anyway, here's another news-type story to remind you what's at stake in this election…

Hey, it's a new episode of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live and it's about Season 12 when the show was reborn with a batch of great new cast members, two of whom were friends of mine — Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson. They also brought in several terrific new writers and…well, it was the first time I'd really enjoyed the show since the original cast left and the first time it seemed credible that SNL might go on indefinitely. No one wrote "Saturday Night Dead" opinion columns and said it was time to put a dying show out of its misery…

I always try to remember — and it isn't always easy — that the Internet is all about clicks and clicks are all about clickbait. In a time like now with an important election looming, a great way to get clicks is to tell people either (a) what they want to hear or (b) what they don't want to hear. And that's why some of those articles get posted to the web; not because they're true but because they'll attract clicks.

Right now, I see a lot of potential places to click that will tell me Kamala Harris is surging and that the latest polls put her increasingly in the lead. That may be so…and Donald Trump is sure acting like she's clobbering him. If I were a candidate right now, I'd absolutely rather have her numbers than his numbers. But I'm going to adhere to the old "It ain't over 'til it's over" mantra. And given Trump's longtime habit of calling every loss or setback a fraud, it may not even be over when it's over.

So my mood is optimistic, not celebratory. You set yours where you want it to be.

I don't expect this website to change a single vote but I am going to post links to a few videos that may remind folks of what this election is about. Here's one…

The folks who bring you Last Week Tonight with John Oliver have uploaded the entirety of Season Five to YouTube.  You can watch 'em here.

This coming Saturday is Returning Registration for next year's Comic-Con International in San Diego…which is a mere 311 days away.  If you purchased a Comic-Con 2024 attendee badge, this is your chance to score one for next year.  I suggest you study this page to learn what to do and when.  There will be opportunities later for you if you don't get what you want this Saturday and there will be a chance for folks who didn't purchase a badge last time to purchase a badge for next time.  But it all starts here.

Comedy writer Hank Bradford died January 18 at the age of 88 and the cause of death was heart failure. I have a fairly-good excuse for not noting this at the time. I was then in the hospital with my stupid broken ankle and not keeping up on the news as much as I usually do. I only learned of Hank's passing when I saw that scroll on the long-form "In Memoriam" list on the Emmy Awards site.

I didn't know Hank all that well but he was a top-rate comedy writer who, among his other gigs, was Johnny Carson's head writer on The Tonight Show from 1970-1975. People always marveled at Carson's long run as host of that program for thirty-some-odd years but I would think being his head writer for five might have been the greater feat of endurance.

When I was around Hank, he made it sound like he was the main reason Carson fared so well…and not just in those five years but afterwards, as well. I thought he was exaggerating but once when I mentioned Hank's name to Fred DeCordova, who was Carson's producer during that period and after, he said that Hank was maybe not exaggerating as much as I thought. (Fred did not remember why Hank left the show and Hank kept saying that someday we'd sit down and he'd tell me the whole story…but he never did.)

I met Hank at a meeting when we both went in for "audition" meetings about writing for a new program which wound up hiring neither of us. He was gone from The Tonight Show by that point but he recommended me to whoever then had his old job there. As I think I've written here before, I wound up turning down a writer job there several times and I had four reasons. One was that each time I got an offer, I had another job current or looming that I decided would make me happier — especially in light of the other three reasons.

Number two was Hank telling me war stories about what it was like there. Number three was that I knew another former writer for Carson. He'd been fired in what he thought was a more-unpleasant-than-necessary manner and it ruined watching The Tonight Show for him for a long time after. He said, "I used to love watching Johnny but after I got kicked out, it was too painful to enjoy after that." And the fourth reason was that I simply didn't think I was strong enough in the kind of monologue joke writing it would require…so I would not last long there.

Hank told me he had trouble watching Johnny after his severance too…so I'd like to think I made the correct decision. But Hank did eventually start watching again and he also watched Johnny's successors and those inspired by The Great Carson. He rarely liked what he saw.

He called me one time — and I don't remember the precise numbers but it went something like this: "Last night, Leno did seventeen jokes in his monologue. We experimented with Johnny and found out that fourteen was the right number. Do you know anyone over at Leno? Can you call and tell them Jay is doing three too many jokes in his monologues?" Hank was also upset that David Letterman was doing too few.

Another time, it was this: "These guys — Dave, Jay, Conan, all of them — they say Carson was the best, Carson was the greatest but they don't want to have an Ed McMahon on the couch. They all think they can do it without an Ed McMahon! Johnny never went out there without an Ed McMahon!" I thought Hank was wrong about the number of monologue jokes but not wrong about the need for an Ed McMahon in some cases. Conan O'Brien, I thought, was better before Andy Richter left the show. Before that, he'd done well playing Abbott to Andy's Costello. After that — and even when Andy returned — O'Brien was trying to be both Abbott and Costello by himself.

In fact, I thought Hank was right about most of his critiques about the late night shows. He'd call me every so often and ask, "Did you see Letterman last night?" or "Did you see Conan last night?" And he'd point out something they did that Johnny would never have done. Mostly, it involved stepping on a guest's punchline or interrupting the flow of a story. A good interviewer knows when to shut up and he didn't think most of the new guys did.

De Cordova didn't think Hank got enough credit for the success of The Tonight Show in the early seventies when it truly was must-see TV. I suspect he was right. My apologies for the belated obit.

Sometimes, I post a video here just because it made me smile…