In 1978, the musical group Earth, Wind and Fire had a tremendous hit with a record called "September"…and it's one of those tunes that was not forgotten after it slipped off the charts.  People play it all the time.  Other musicians record cover versions of it…though I note that very few of them stray much from the original version.  People love "September" the way Earth, Wind and Fire performed it and don't want it changed much or at all.

Lately, every time I go wandering on the Internet into uncharted waters — when I'm not going to a known website and sometime even when I am — I run into videos of Earth, Wind and Fire performing "September," videos of people dancing to the Earth, Wind and Fire recording of "September" or other musicians imitating Earth, Wind and Fire performing "September."  It is truly inescapable.

We here at newsfromme.com — "we" being just me — like that this blog features things that you won't find everywhere else on The Internet.  I mean, how many websites discuss the histories of the logos and star billings for MAD magazine?  But every so often, we — and by "we," I still mean just me — feel the need to blend in with the rest of the World Wide Web.  So here's Earth, Wind and Fire performing "September" and you're certainly allowed to get up and dance to it.  I would but I'm not allowed to dance without filing an Environmental Impact survey with some governmental agency that Trump has probably just closed down…

And I have to admit that I never understood most of the lyrics of this song so I hunted down the *OFFICIAL* Lyric Video of it — and I still don't understand some of them but who cares? It's a great record…

Kamden Spies wrote to ask…

You are one of the foremost experts on MAD Magazine. Do you know if there is any story behind the celebrity introductions of the first three MAD paperbacks? Why did MAD seek out Roger Price, Bob & Ray, and Stan Freberg to do them? Was it to improve sales or prestige? Also, was there a specific reason why they stopped doing them after the third one? Also since you were close to Stan Freberg, did Stan ever discuss with you how he got involved writing the introduction to Inside MAD?

You named the reason they did this: To improve sales or prestige, probably both. Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein were very different men and they approached their respective editorships of MAD with different attitudes and very different skill sets. But they shared one premise: Both wanted to get MAD (and themselves) out of what was then seen as a comic book ghetto. The logo of EC Comics never appeared on MAD, nor did anything else that would tip off that that publication was from the same people who gave the world Tales From the Crypt comic books.

The difference between a magazine and a comic book may not seem that significant now but back then, there was a huge difference between the way the two forms were distributed, displayed and regarded. Both Kurtzman and Feldstein told me that they were embarrassed when they met people to say, "I do comic books." Saying "I edit a magazine" was so much better. And one of the ways you elevated the level of what you were doing — and it could only help sales, they thought — was to tie themselves and the magazine to folks like Bob & Ray or Stan Freberg who were well-known and not plying their trades in a ghetto.

Kurtzman wanted famous, respected people to be associated with his magazine.  Publisher William Gaines said fine…reportedly, "As long as it doesn't cost much."  In MAD's first magazine issue (#24), Kurtzman arranged to have material ostensibly by Ernie Kovacs, Roger Price and a few other humorists from the outside world. Price may not be well-remembered today but books of his Droodles cartoons were then pretty popular and he was appearing on a lot of TV panel shows and talk shows. Kurtzman (oddly) didn't advertise them on the cover but he listed them inside as if they were members of the magazine's staff. He did the same in #25 with Steve Allen, Doodles Weaver and Stan Freberg, and also billed Al Jaffee as if he were a celebrity of equal import.

Not long after this, Freberg wrote the foreword — which appeared at the end of the book and was billed as a "backword" — for the Inside MAD paperback. Stan said he was approached and a very low fee was offered but he liked the idea of helping out a new humor magazine and thought maybe some MAD readers would be moved to seek out his records. As he recalled, it was all by mail and phone so he never met Kurtzman in person.

In #26, Kurtzman again had material allegedly (though with his permission) by Kovacs and some work by Price. In #27, he had a song by Abe Burrows, complete with sheet music illustrated by Russ Heath. Again, Burrows was something of a celebrity then on panel and talk shows, plus #27 also had pieces by Freberg and Price. In #28, he didn't have anyone known from TV and then #29 was a transition issue. Feldstein was listed as editor but a majority of the pieces (including an Ernie Kovacs one) were obviously Kurtzman leftovers.

Material that was at least started by Kurtzman appeared in the next few issues amidst new stuff Feldstein was buying. There were Kurtzman articles in #30, including a photo feature with Carl Reiner. In #31, the Kurtzman material included pieces credited to Kovacs, comedian Orson Bean and Al "Jazzbo" Collins. Collins was a then-popular disc jockey who briefly hosted a strange version of The Tonight Show — it was called Tonight: America After Dark — between the stints of Steve Allen and Jack Paar. But Feldstein and probably Gaines did something with the "celebrity" names on #31 that Kurtzman had never done: The names were advertised on the cover.

In #32, there was a song by Tom Lehrer illustrated by George Woodbridge. Woodbridge was a Feldstein hire so at least the art, if not the arrangements with Lehrer or his reps, were post-Kurtzman. There was also another Orson Bean piece and one by humorist Jean Shepherd. The relationship with Bean seems to have been started by Kurtzman and continued by Feldstein, whereas Feldstein told me he inherited the Jean Shepherd article.

#33 featured what I believe was the last of the Kurtzman remnants but I don't think he was involved in any of the "celeb" pieces in it. The billed-as-by-Ernie-Kovacs article was the first of several pages illustrated by Wally Wood called "Strangely Believe It" parodying the newspaper feature, Ripley's Believe It Or Not. There were also adaptations of material by Henry Morgan and Eddie "The Old Philosopher" Lawrence.

In #34, MAD cover-billed Orson Bean and two guys who'd be in a lot of issues for a while, Bob & Ray. The Bob & Ray articles were adapted from material they or their main writer, Tom Koch, had written for their popular radio program. Koch soon became a regular freelancer writing non-Bob & Ray material for MAD for many years but the real interesting thing about those pieces had to do with who Feldstein assigned to draw them.

He'd had to add a lot of artists to the MAD talent pool to replace the ones that had left with Kurtzman. One he added was a guy who'd been mainly drawing comic books for DC and occasionally other companies. The artist initially balked at the assignment because it would call for him to draw Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding in almost every panel and he'd had little experience drawing likenesses of real people. But Feldstein and a MAD staffer named Nick Meglin urged him to try and the artist tackled the job and succeeded. In fact, he got pretty good at drawing famous people. His name was Mort Drucker.

On #35, no one got billing on the cover but #36 had Wally Cox, Henry Morgan and Bob & Ray. On #37, it was Kovacs, Bean and Bob & Ray. On #38, it was Kovacs, Bob & Ray and the cover artist.  The cover was a finger painting by J. Fred Muggs, a trained chimpanzee who, Strangely Believe It, was a regular on NBC's Today Show.

On #39, nobody made the cover but inside, there was another Bob & Ray piece. On #40, it was Kovacs, Andy Griffith and Bob & Ray. On #41, you got Kovacs, Morgan and Bob & Ray. On #42, it was Kovacs, Danny Kaye and Bob & Ray. On #43, it was Kaye and Bob & Ray. On #44, no celebs made the cover but Bob & Ray were inside. #45 and #46 were devoid of famous names on the cover or inside. #47 offered Sid Caesar and Bob & Ray. #48 and #49 had Sid Caesar and then Mr. Caesar reappeared on #55…and that was the end of famous names on the cover of MAD until (I think) June of 2015 when they cover-featured the participation of "Weird Al" Yankovic in the issue.

Feldstein and Gaines had looked at the sales figures on the issues which had celebrity contributors advertised versus those that didn't and concluded that MAD no longer needed them. It wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with agents and publicists and whoever arranged for someone famous to write something for MAD or, far more often, allow something of theirs to be adapted and credited to them. I suspect they'd realized that earlier with the paperback books which is why they'd stopped having forewords by famous folks. And I'm sorry. I know this is a lot longer an answer than you expected, Kamden, but I sometimes get carried away…or should be.

The Malibu home in which Johnny Carson lived the last few decades of his life is up for sale…for just a paltry $110,000,000. Interested in buying it? You can see some photos of the place here. One time, Johnny gave a tour of the house to Bob Newhart and when it was over, Newhart asked, "Is there a gift shop?"

Our friend Gary Sassaman has a new installment up of his must-click web series, "Tales From My Spinner Rack"…only this time, he isn't talking about comic books or anything that fit on his spinner rack.  Instead, apropos of the pending holiday, he's talking about the mania he and a lot of guys his age had in the sixties about…

It was a mania I largely escaped despite the fact that most of my comic-book-collecting friends were into it as deep as — if not deeper than — was Gary.  It was just something that only interested me a wee bit and I could horrify certain of my horror-loving friends by telling them that as far as I was concerned, the best monster movie ever made was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  I still feel that way and I suspect I'm no longer as alone in believing it was the most entertaining of the horror-themed movies of its era.  The local revival houses sure seem to show it more often than anything else Bela Lugosi or Lon Chaney ever did.

So I respect the genre but didn't often stay up 'til all hours to watch The Mummy on TV.  I'll let Gary tell you why this kind of entertainment entertained him…

This fellow — who I believe is a staff writer named John Lutz — pops up in Seth Meyers' audience every now and then and always makes me laugh. Here's his most recent appearance…

There were a couple periods in my life — none of them in the last few decades — when I spent a goodly amount of time hanging around comedy clubs in Los Angeles, mainly The Improv and The Comedy Store. I had friends performing, some of whom I wrote for. Though I had zero desire to do it myself, I liked watching and studying the craft and there were some pleasant evenings when a bunch of comics would go out together after their performances and I was invited to be part of a group. Usually, we went to either Canter's Delicatessen on Fairfax or Carney's Hot Dog Stand on Sunset. Listening to those guys talk about their business taught me a little about my own.

One comedian I saw a lot at those two clubs was a pretty funny guy named Ritch Shydner. He was also one of the saner comedians around…which at the time was kinda like being the most dignified of the Three Stooges. But when he talked about the art of being funny and the skill of managing a career — two very different abilities, he usually made a lot of sense.

I hadn't seen him around for a while but I recently came across him on Instagram where he posts a lot of short videos reminiscing about past gigs, people he knew in the comedy world and what it takes (or took) to succeed in that world. Some of these posts are under the umbrella title of "A History of Stand Up Comedy" but they're all interesting…and quick. You might want to check them out over on the guy's Instagram page.

And if you want to see more memorable moments involving Johnny Carson, this website has a long list of them, many including video clips.  There is much there you will enjoy.

Here's an interesting moment from TV history. On May 23, 1991, NBC had one of their annual "up fronts" at Carnegie Hall in New York. Owners and representatives of almost all the NBC affiliates — and a lot of folks who did serious business with NBC — were present for a day-long show/convention to present and discuss the future of NBC. Stars of their current and pending shows appeared and then, near the end, Warren Littlefield — the guy then running the show and the network — introduced a surprise guest. It was Johnny Carson, who for three decades had been making NBC tons o' cash as the host of The Tonight Show.

As it turned out, Littlefield's surprise guest had a huge surprise for Littlefield. In his speech to everyone important at NBC at the moment, Johnny casually dropped the announcement that he was retiring at the end of his current deal. In hindsight, many of those present said, "We should have known" but no one did. The ones who sensed that Carson was nearing that moment did not dream that that was how they'd find out. Johnny's deal with NBC was structured so that when he did decide it was time to go, he'd still have another year (at least) on the air. They'd thought he'd tell them in private, then some sort of joint announcement would be made.

But that ain't how Johnny wanted to do it. He was going to announce it himself in a way that made it clear he, not NBC, was deciding it was time to step down. A lot of those at NBC weren't unhappy that Carson was going to go. His ratings weren't what they had been and his demographics were skewing older and older. It was easy to think that someone younger and a lot cheaper could do better in that job. Some of them were happy that it hadn't come down to the network having to ease Mr. Carson out the door. They just didn't like how and where he announced it.

Over at Rockefeller Center, David Letterman was taping his 12:35 show which followed Johnny's. He knew Johnny was in town and would, time permitting, be dropping by for a surprise appearance in the show they were taping but that wasn't definite. The second guest, Jim Carrey then a star of the Fox series, In Living Color, might get on or he might be bumped.  It depended on whether Johnny could get away from the affiliates gathering in time. During a commercial break though, Dave got the word: Johnny was en route to their studio, right on schedule. Dave was also told what Carson had announced from the stage at Carnegie Hall.

This is the segment that resulted. You'll see Dave start to introduce Jim Carrey, knowing full well a guy with the same initials is about to enter and Carrey isn't getting on. The camera even cuts to the door Johnny will be coming through just before he enters and Paul Shaffer is all primed to play Carson's theme song. It's a good piece of TV history with two men, obviously fond of each other, just chatting. Dave is prepared to ask Johnny a question about his time doing The Tonight Show in New York but most of it is pretty spontaneous.

And Johnny casually drops the info that he's heading into his last year on that show, not making a big deal out of it.

I found out about it shortly after the taping when a friend of mine on Letterman's staff, Rick Scheckman, called and told me to watch and record the show that night. I would have anyway because the news was all over TV news programs before Letterman's show aired. You could kind of feel the generations shift and The Late Night Wars commence…

As we all know, Carl Reiner created, produced, wrote and sometimes appeared on The Dick Van Dyke Show which debuted on October 3, 1961. It was on five seasons on CBS and the first run of its final episode aired on June 1, 1966. That series was enough to keep Mr. Reiner occupied throughout those five years…but it was hardly the only thing he did. He wrote and appeared in the movies The Thrill of It All and The Art of Love and did a cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. He also starred in the movie, The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, did voices on the Linus the Lionhearted cartoon show and guest-starred on a lot of other TV programs.

And, like that wasn't enough to keep a man busy, he had another TV series in addition to The Dick Van Dyke Show. Back in this post, we showed you a sample of The Celebrity Game, a weekly prime-time game show which bounced around the CBS schedule from April of '64 to September '65. It was used as times as a filler to replace some canceled show and was on and off the schedule at different times. CBS also did this with another prime-time game show, Stump the Stars.

Here's another episode. It's from 1965 and someone has colorized it. If it reminds you of the original Hollywood Squares, that may have a lot of do with it coming from the same producers and employing a lot of the same behind-the-camera people. Enjoy…

Every time I have to deal with some company's Customer Service people on the phone lately, I'm asked to stay on the line for a brief survey. When I do, they ask me questions about how satisfied I was with the person to whom I spoke…and that's all they ask. They never ask questions that would allow me to tell them in some way…

• Your automated service sucks and it took me an unacceptably long time to reach that person to whom I spoke.
• The person to whom I spoke was very nice and seemed eager to help but he or she couldn't get their computer to help me with my problem or they had to tell me they weren't empowered to help me or answer my question and they couldn't refer me to someone who could.

In other words, the problem wasn't with the human being I spoke to. It was with your crummy "let's hire as few humans as possible, perhaps even in some remote foreign country" policy.

In the incident this morning that prompted this message, I was trying to change the delivery date of something I ordered. The website would not let me change the date or cancel the order. The company's app on my iPhone also would not let me change the date or cancel the order. Finally — on their app for my iPad and only on their app for my iPad — I found a way not to change the date but to completely cancel the order. So I did and I then ordered the same thing from someone else.

I wonder how much business this cost them. They not only lost that sale but any future business I might give them.

My pal Jason Graae is one of the great stage performers…heard on an indecent number of original cast albums of musicals and in a great many shows. Also, for several years, he was the voice of the Leprechaun in the Lucky Charms commercials. After he lost the gig, he was motivated to sing about what it was like…

More medically-unsound and inaccurate assertions from Robert Kennedy, Jr., the Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz of our National Health System. Whatever he says, the opposite is true.

Why U.S. farmers are so pissed about the huge bailouts to and meat imports from Argentina…and what it all has to do with soybeans,

FactCheck.org has compiled some "final" statistics about the economy under President Joe Biden. As I'm sure you'd expect, there are some pretty impressive numbers there, contrary to the hysterical claims of You-Know-Who and those who parrot what he says.

Mike Johnson and others keep claiming that the government shutdown is wholly because Democrats are insistent about giving free health care to undocumented immigrants. Not true.

Here's some info on the Vindictive Prosecutions of James Comey, Letitia James and John Bolton. Once upon a time, I never would have believed I'd be on the side of John "Let's bomb everyone!" Bolton but he's changed his views a lot.

JD Vance claims there's way more political-themed violence from The Left than there is from The Right. Here's why that ain't so.

Donald Trump, who claims to solve wars between nations that don't even know they're warring, insists "We’ve never had a president that solved one war, not one war." Why that's a load of crap.

Donald Trump claims that every time we sink a boat off the coast of Venezuela and kill most or all of the people on it, "we save 25,000 American lives." Why that's a load of crap. And here's Fred Kaplan explaining, to the extent anyone can explain it, why they're doing this.

Which Chief Exec secured the release of more hostages from Gaza, Biden or Trump? I'll bet you can guess.

And here's some probably-solid info on this year's COVID vaccines.

Sarah Smallwood Parsons is a singer, an Internet Star, a cabaret performer and a member of the Upright Citizens Brigade. Here — called to my attention by my buddy Vince Waldron — she favors us with a song we've all sat through at too many musical comedies…

I mentioned here the other day that I would love to see — or at least read the script of — an unsold pilot from 1971 (give or take a year) called either Bel Air Patrol or Eddie. It was written by Larry Gelbart and starred Phil Silvers and several other familiar actors including Fred Clark. Several folks wrote to tell me that it couldn't have been done in 1971, even giving or taking a year, because Fred Clark died in 1968.

One of the things I love about doing this blog is that I can mention something and my readers respond with a lot of additional information. Reader Mike Tennant also pointed out that another cast member, Nathaniel Frey, died in 1970. Tennant also located some info that the airing of the by-then-unsold pilot was originally scheduled to run on August 15, 1971 as an offering on a series called Comedy Playhouse. That was that season's summer anthology series via which CBS burned off unsold pilots they had on the shelf.

But it didn't air on that date because it was pre-empted by a news report and it instead wound up airing as the last episode of Comedy Playhouse, which was on September 5. His source — which is this webpage — refers to it as The Phil Silvers Show (aka Eddie) and says, "Silvers starred as Eddie Skinner, a security guard for a gated community who gets to live the life of a millionaire thanks to his employees. Patricia Barry co-starred."

By the way — and yes, I know I'm veering wildly off-topic in this post — I think I know why the 8/15/71 pre-emption. That was the day President Richard M. Nixon took America off the Gold Standard. This blog can be so educational at times.

It's also called The Phil Silvers Show on the cover of a copy of the script which is soon to be up for auction on eBay. It's advertised there now but bids haven't opened yet. When they do, I may try to purchase it but maybe one of you would like to buy it, scan it and send me a copy. If you do, here's the link to it which was sent to me by another reader of this site, Thomas Adams. The script, let us note, is dated November 10, 1966, which probably means it was a candidate for a mid-season pick-up that would start airing in early '67.

The earlier date is significant because Silvers suffered some sort of breakdown in the late sixties and spent many months in a sanitarium. He bowed out of a Don Knotts movie, The Love God, because of his problems and that film began shooting in September of 1968 with someone else in the role that was written for Mr. Silvers. It makes you suspect that a reason — and maybe the main one — for the pilot not selling is that its star wasn't up to performing. Or, I suppose, the failure of the pilot may have contributed to Silvers' depression.

In any case, he overcame the depression and then his agent began searching for some job via which Silvers could demonstrate that he was well and able to work. This led to Silvers starring in a limited-run revival of the musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, that played the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles. I have written many times here about this production because I saw it on its second night — October 13, 1971 — and it's still the most wonderful, entertaining thing I ever saw on a stage. It later went to New York, opened on Broadway and was a smash hit that won Silvers a Tony Award…but it didn't have a long run because he had a stroke and show closed.

The whole story intrigues me and I talked about it with Gelbart (co-author of Forum) and with Silvers. Oddly enough, when we talked about the unsold pilot, neither one of them referred to it as The Phil Silvers Show. You'd think at least Phil would have.

If the show had run and had that title, it would have been the fourth series with that name (sorta). Silvers' first TV show, which didn't last long, was The Phil Silvers Arrow Show which ran for three whole weeks in 1948, the "Arrow" referring to its sponsor. Then the legendary show we know as Sgt. Bilko had three names during its four-season run — that, You'll Never Get Rich and The Phil Silvers Show.

Then Silvers tried to make the Bilko magic happen again with The New Phil Silvers Show which only lasted from September 28, 1963 to April 25, 1964. Oddly enough, though it flopped, it made Silvers more money than anything else he ever did. The deal he got from CBS that lured him back to weekly television included a provision that would give him half-ownership of some other series and that series wound up being Gilligan's Island. At the end of every episode in the credits, you'll see it identified as a co-production with "Gladasya Productions." That was Silvers' production company, named after his famous catch-phrase. It was also the reason he guest-starred on one episode.

I'm wandering off through Trivialand here so let me just wrap this up. I'm sorry he didn't get to do that fifth series about the security guard in Bel Air. After he recovered (mostly) from the stroke, he was able to act occasionally but he was never well enough to star in another weekly program. Hey, one of you buy that script on eBay and send me a copy. Or at least, let me know if it's any good.

John Oliver is off this week but he left us an online-only video to watch which is a sequel to this video he did some time ago complaining about sequels…