A few years ago, the fine animation voice actor John DiMaggio and a bunch of his friends made a documentary on a bunch of his friends. I Know That Voice is all about folks who speak for cartoon characters and there are an awful lot of them in the film which has now been posted to YouTube and therefore to here…

A lot of folks think the Internet has too much porn and sex. That doesn't bother me half as much as this: I can't seem to browse any multi-participant website without seeing clip after clip of people falling down, crashing into things, colliding cars, having things fall on them…it's like every time someone injures themselves in the world there's someone there with a cell phone to catch it on video and post it somewhere. Sometimes it even looks like folks are injuring themselves just for the cameras and any possibly-lucrative clicks.

And if you sustain some real ugly wound or physical sign of injury, I really don't need to see it. Please.

Back in this message, I talked about Pea Soup Andersen's restaurant in Buellton, California. It was a place that my parents and I used to visit when we took vacations to the north back in the sixties. It was a friendly diner that served great pea soup…and I haven't been there since around 1967.

Looks like I might not have another opportunity. Despite the "We Are Open" sign in the above photo, Pea Soup Andersen's has closed, a few months shy of what would have been its one-hundred-year anniversary. No word on if it's permanent but I have to shake the feeling that it wouldn't have closed if I'd eaten there at least once in the last fifty-some-odd years.

Here's the Legal Eagle talking about the House Mouse: His "take" on the expiration of copyright on Steamboat Willy and what that definitely means and what it may not mean. I think some folks who are overjoyed about this are merely celebrating the notion of the Disney Company suffering any kind of loss and they might not be looking at the bigger picture…

The veteran character reportedly died in 1971 but somehow, he's back. He's now practicing law under the name of John Sauer and today, he was arguing before the three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that the President of the United States has total immunity from prosecution.

You're not fooling anyone, "Mr. Sauer." We all recognize your voice. And it's obvious you were too busy playing train conductors and creepy little murderers in movies to attend law school…

I know what you've been waiting for. You've been asking yourself and everyone, "When is Evanier going to show us Kermit the Frog's song from The Muppet Movie dubbed into Japanese?" Well, your long wait is over. Here it is with Kermit dubbed by Yasuo Yamada, who is kind of a superstar in the field of dubbing over there…

The other day for no special reason, I watched the first episode of a new prime-time game show called We Are Family. As I recall when this was announced, it was to have been hosted by Jamie Foxx and his daughter Corinne but Mr. Foxx has been having medical-type problems so the job has passed to Anthony Anderson and his mother, Doris. We Are Family struck me as a good half-hour game show which, unfortunately, is in an hour time slot.

Obviously intended to ape some of what makes The Masked Singer so popular, We Are Family is a game show with musical performances and a guess-the-celebrity gimmick. There are three main performers in the hour. Each performer is an unknown but they have a famous relative. The main performer does a song on their own which segues into a duet with their famous relative who is seen in silhouette inside something called The Sphere.

100 (I think) contestants in the audience get to figure out (or maybe just guess) who the Mystery Relative is and then everyone who's right shares in the prize money in the first and second rounds. One of them then has the third round to themselves and can win up to $100,000 if they can immediately guess who the third Mystery Relative is based on their voice and some clues. The gent who had this opportunity on Show #1 took home $75,000 for getting the correct answer on the second clue.

This might be a cute little show if they did it in 30 minutes or if they filled the hour with enough show to attain the pace of The Price is Right. But not that much actually happens and to pad out the time, they have Mr. Anderson saying the same things over and over and over and over…and then they have his mother saying them and then he says them again and…

Well, I'll give it a few more chances. I also finally sampled Celebrity Name That Tune, which has been on for a few years now, naming tunes and often stretching the definition of "celebrity" fairly thin. That seems like a fun show…and it was not as reliant on recent songs as I guess I expected. I actually recognized enough of 'em to hold my interest for the hour. I'm not sure if I'll be back but I liked it more than I expected.

My favorite recent prime-time game show, The Wall, may have reached its end on American TV. They recently finished airing Season 5 which I suspect was recorded a long time ago and it was a difficult year. A few decades back, a friend of mine was working on Win Ben Stein's Money and she told me (correctly) it would probably be its last season.

Why did she think that? Because the ratings were dropping. Why did she think that was? Two reasons: They hadn't been able to find the right host after Jimmy Kimmel left it…and Ben was winning too often. She said, "Audiences want to see the contestants walk away with decent winnings more often than not and that's not happening." That was also the problem with the short-lived Million Dollar Money Drop game show. It felt like no one was ever going to win a million dollars or anything close to it.

The Wall has had a rough fifth season. It's a show where people stand to win a million-bucks-plus or if not, they usually at least go home with a few hundred thousand. In the fourteen shows aired, one couple won $1.3 million (significantly on the first show aired this season), one couple left with zero and the rest went home with between $100,000 and $250,000. That consolation moola is still a nice piece o'change but not on a show where the players seem extra-extra-deserving. And not on a show where anyone would feel like a loser taking away much less than seven figures.

I liked the show when players were winning more and I think Chris Hardwick is one of the best game show hosts to come along in quite some time. But I haven't heard anything about a Season 6. If there is one, I bet it'll have some rule changes. And someone will win over a million on the first episode they air.

Kevin Mummery — who assures me that's his real name — asked me this…

You're the go-to guy for questions about The Tonight Show, especially during Johnny Carson's tenure, so I thought you might be the guy to direct this inquiry to. I remember seeing a guy who was a member of the band that either Johnny or Tommy Newsom would bring out who did these weird dances…bizarre stuff, kind of like interpretive dance but without the interpretive aspect.

Usually he was brought out to fill in a gap between the monologue and the introduction of the next guest, or to fill time that would otherwise have gone by without anything more interesting to occupy that space. A few times when Bill Cosby guest hosted he had the guy come out from behind the bandstand and perform, and if anything he was even weirder then…I guess Cosby had the gift of bringing out the best in other people, or at least he did before we all found out what he spent his free time doing.

But I digress. Do you recall seeing this guy? Or have any idea or insight as to why Carson even had the guy perform this way apart from his normal duties as a band member?

The guy you're asking about was Ernie Tack, who played bass trombone on The Tonight Show for a very long time. Before that, he was in Ray Conniff's band and was heard on an awful lot of records, some of which are itemized here.

Along with his trombone skills, Tack did this weird dance that greatly amused Johnny and everyone on the crew, and they'd often have him do it to amuse the audience during commercial breaks. Every so often — usually when they were playing "Stump the Band" — he'd do it on the show. He does it near the end of this rousing game of "Stump the Band"…

The previous post featured a cartoon I wrote many years ago and it had in it a character named Aloysius Pig…and yes, I named the character for the role that William Demarest played in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. If you aren't familiar with the fellow who supplied the voice of Aloysius Pig, it was this guy. And I miss him…

Another "Name Withheld" person — but I know who he is and he worked on a lot of cartoon shows back in the eighties — sent me this…

I marvel at your occasional remark that during your seven seasons of Garfield and Friends you never had any interference from the suits at CBS or even from Standards and Practices. Did you ever write a cartoon that you thought would prompt them to demand changes?

Yes. This one. And they said absolutely nothing…

The voices, by the way, were done by Gregg Berger, Thom Huge, Howard Morris, Julie Payne and Kevin Meaney. I cut a few jokes because the cartoon was running long but the network folks didn't say a word. To their credit.

I would like to highly recommend two current projects by two friends of mine. You should be familiar with both of them and their work…and if you've ever attended one of our Quick Draw! games at Comic-Con International or WonderCon, you probably saw one or both of them drawing as fast as they could. This is the type of work they do when they take their time…

Tom Richmond is the guy who's been doing most of the movie and TV parodies for MAD since this century began. MAD is now almost all reprint so Tom has been filling some of his freed-up time to collaborate with one of MAD's best writers, Desmond Devlin, on a whole, beautiful book of the kind of thing they did for Alfred E. Neuman's favorite magazine. The difference is that now they get to have fun with movies that they wanted to spoof instead of what's current.

That's what it's called — Claptrap — and it's a dandy book that is now available. It contains Devlin/Richmond mockeries of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Shawshank Redemption, Psycho, Goodfellas, The Big Lebowski, Toy Story 4, Unforgiven, Blade Runner, The Blues Brothers, The Princess Bride, Citizen Kane, Die Hard and other films. It's first-rate funny.

Now, here's how you get a copy: You can order this lovely hardcover volume for $29.95 direct from Tom on this page but don't do that. Because he also offers a copy signed by the author and the artist for $75 and Tom will even personalize it to you.

But wait — there's more! The real deal here is on that same page. It's the $200 edition which includes a tip-in plate with an original sketch by Tom Richmond…and I happen to think Tom woefully underprices his sketches. That alone is worth the two hundred smackers and just think how impressive your copy will be!

Act now! I don't know how many they printed of this book but I know that once they run out, it might be quite a while before they got more in…that is, if there is a second printing. If I were you, I wouldn't even read the end of this sentence before I ordered my copy. Oh, wait. You just did.

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I would also like to highly recommend a terrific new feature from my longtime friend Scott Shaw! If you have a lick o' sense, you already purchased this fine collection of Scott's past work. Well, here's what he's been doing lately…

Scott has logged a lot of time the last few years in hospitals and health care facilities as well as being visited in his home by caregiving nurses or maybe nursing caregivers. He's gotten to know a number of such folks and gotten friendly enough with them to inspire his new comic strip, Kilgore Home Nursing.

It's a been there/done that strip based on folks he's met, stories he's heard, adventures he's lived through and it's very funny and very insightful. If you haven't interacted with the people in that world, good for you…but your time will come. I've certainly seen enough of it to appreciate the humor and the truth in what my buddy has written and drawn.

This is a feature you'll have to follow online and it costs…but not a lot. It's certainly worth it as are many other goodies you'll find over at Aces Weekly. Check it out.

In 1970, when Jack Kirby moved from Marvel to DC, he became the writer-editor-artist of his work. There was some criticism of his drawing, though most of that went away when Mike Royer became his inker. What was left was mainly folks who simply didn't like Jack's style…or were horrified to see Marvel-style art in a DC Comic. There wasn't much he could do about that.

The dialogue and captions in his DC work, which definitely did not sound much like Stan Lee, proved to be more controversial. Some folks loved it. Some did not. I gave one interview in which I said some negative things about it and I can't for the life of me understand why I said that. I didn't really feel that way and in the years that followed, I came to really love the unique voice that Jack put into his work.

My pal David Seidman sent me this question to be answered here…

How did Jack Kirby respond to criticism of his work? I'm particularly interested in the criticism of his dialogue. From the 1970s to this day, readers have said that Kirby was a visual genius, but his characters spoke in ways that were too cornball, old-fashioned, or overblown even for the hyper-stylized world of costumed heroes. Did Kirby know about this viewpoint, and did it affect him?

As I said, some people liked it and some didn't. I think those in the "didn't" group would be shocked at how many there were (and now are) in the other group. I feel quite certain that over the years, the tide has swung wildly in his favor. There was a time there where it felt like DC was calling me every few months because they were reprinting that material again and wanted to consult with me and/or have me bang out a foreword. You don't reprint something that often unless people love it.

Even at the time Jack was doing that work, he got plenty of praise for his writing, much of it from people within the industry that he respected. What criticism he got from within DC was from the same folks who insisted that he should try to draw more like Curt Swan. In some cases, he felt (as did I) that the folks offering that criticism just wanted that end of his job for themselves.

I think what bothered Jack was that the folks saying he couldn't write were under the impression that writing a comic book was only about writing dialogue. When I discuss this with people, I'm reminded of something that screenwriter William Goldman wrote in his book about his craft, Adventures in the Screen Trade. The following excerpt is edited somewhat to get to the point quicker. Goldman was talking about a lesson he'd learned while writing one of his early scripts…

…I was approaching what I believe to be the single most important lesson to be learned about writing for films and this is it:

SCREENPLAYS ARE STRUCTURE.

Yes, nifty dialog helps one hell of a lot; sure, it's nice if you can bring your characters to life. But you can have terrific characters spouting just swell talk to each other, and if the structure is unsound, forget it.

Writing a screenplay is in many ways similar to executing a piece of carpentry. If you take some wood and nails and glue and make a bookcase, only to find when you're done that it topples over when you try and stand it upright, you may have created something, but it won't work as a bookcase. The essential opening labor a screenwriter must execute is, of course, deciding what the proper structure should be for the particular screenplay you are writing.

If you read the rest of that book and/or listen to some of Goldman's interviews, you'll see that he divided the role of screenwriter into two parts: (1) Writing the Dialogue and (2) Everything Else. And "Everything Else" included the plot — what the story was about — and what should be established in each scene in order to tell the story…in other words, The Structure.

I doubt Jack ever read Goldman writing about writing but it was clear to me that Jack looked upon writing a comic book in much the same way. I'm not sure that in his entire career in comics, he ever got any criticism whatsoever for the part of writing a comic book that he felt was most important — i.e., The Structure.  So he was satisfied he was doing his job well.  And he was annoyed that there were people who talked about "the writing" as something that did not include The Structure.

As mentioned in this article, we seem to be closing in on the day when some members of the public will see a print of the notorious Jerry Lewis film, The Day the Clown Cried.  As I understand it, this never became a finished movie.  The underfunded production shut down with many scenes unfilmed and after a while, it simply became impossible to go back and resume shooting.

A friend of mine who was for a while obsessed with knowing everything there was to know about this movie told me, "If it's ever made public, you'll probably see a mess of someone trying to an arrange an incomplete batch of clips into something coherent."  For a while, Jerry refused to discuss it but late in life, he did talk about it, acknowledging it as a failure on his part.  I just smell disappointment coming.  It may not even be bad enough for those who are dying to chortle at its rumored awfulness.

Several folks have messaged me that in the movie Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, there is a brief reference to the Beverly Cinema showing dirty movies. I missed it even though I saw the movie at the Beverly Cinema.

Just for the record: I never met Jeffrey Epstein and never got an invite or a ride to his island. I just thought I'd say that because I see so many other people saying that.

My computer runs a piece of software for which I have a subscription that is expiring on January 17. I have decided to let it expire not because I don't use the service or like it but because they're now sending me three pop-up reminders per day to renew and there's no way to turn them off.

I see threads popping up online wherein folks are saying they didn't like that Dick Van Dyke Birthday Special that I liked. This is not the kind of thing that I feel compelled to defend but I would remind some of these folks that (a) a pre-recorded show like that is edited so a lot of things were probably said that didn't make it to air, (b) it's not easy to round up "more people who worked with Dick" when Dick is 98 years old and (c) a birthday party is for the person whose birthday it is and Dick looked pretty darned happy.

Someone once said, "The single stupidest thing a person can do is to run out of gas." And he or she was right that it's stupid unless your gas gauge is malfunctioning. It may be equally stupid to allow your cell phone battery to get down to zero.

And as I was typing the previous paragraph, I got yet another pop-up reminder that my subscription to that program expires on January 17. Grrrrrrr.

I have met no one in my life who epitomizes the word "glamour" more than does Julie Newmar, especially if we expand the definition of that word to include "smart." She's really quite an amazing lady and this documentary will tell you all about her amazing career…