I continue to be amazed and fascinated (in an odd way) at how Rudy Giuliani has managed to go from being one of the most respected men in this country (and a Time Person of the Year) to destroying his reputation, his career, his bank account…everything. Margaret Hartmann has written a stunning overview of all the lawsuits, indictments, personal embarrassments and rotten decisions that have brought the man who was once "America's Mayor" to where he is today.

And hold on. Because it's going to get much, much worse for him before this week is out.

Hey, are you a fan of the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!? The one directed by Norman Jewison, written by the guy who co-wrote It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, William Rose? The one starring Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters, Brian Keith and a host of others? The one with the great Jack Davis poster?

That movie? Are you perhaps thinking of buying it for someone for Christmas or even for yourself?

Well, hold out until January 16 next year. That's when Kino Lorber is bringing out a new Blu-ray of it with the best-ever transfer and a new commentary track by my pal Michael Schlesinger and me. I'll post an Amazon link for it here in a week or so.

T.J. White wrote me to ask…

Howdy, Mark. So a few years ago, soon after the announced official end of MAD Magazine, I asked if you had ever at any time submitted any articles to MAD for publication. I didn't get a response and then, after belatedly checking Doug Gilford's MAD Cover Site, realized you WERE published in MAD! You're credited for an idea in the Jan. '94 issue ("Sergio Aragonés Looks at Cars"…photos of him raptly gazing at actual cars, along with a letter from the editor telling him to stick with drawing) and a one-pager piece "What's The Difference?" in the end of the June '96 issue, accompanied by Rick Tulka's usual wacky artwork. (Also the first issue of MAD I ever bought!)

So I'm curious, how did your lone official MAD article come to fruition? Did you submit any pieces in the past and this was finally the one that made it to print? Any attempts since that one to get published? If it was your first attempt, did you just decide to be like "Why not give this MAD writing a shot?" or were you called upon/recommended by a MAD person to provide a one-page filler article to bump that issue's page count up to its usual 48 pages?

Every career has its regrets and one of mine is that I passed up a number of opportunities to probably/possibly join The Usual Gang of Idiots as a regular contributor to MAD. I loved MAD and still prize my complete collection of that publication. I have two original MAD painted covers — one by Norman Mingo, one by Frank Kelly Freas — on a wall of my home. I even managed to add an actual longtime MAD cartoonist to my list of Best Friends. The magazine was and in some ways still is a very important part of my life.

In a way, I didn't pass up trying to write for MAD as much as I put it off, figuring the opportunity would always be there.  Let that be a lesson to me.  I also, in a way, knew too much about MAD…like in the sixties and seventies, I knew how difficult to break in there.  Al Feldstein was the editor and I'd met him and knew enough about him to know how tough he was about buying from new writers.  They also had plenty of "regulars" who were part of the extended family that the publisher Bill Gaines liked to have around him.

They turned down a lot of good people because they really didn't need new people.  It was the same way with artists: Very few new ones got in because they had Drucker and Davis and Sergio and Dave Berg and Don Martin and Woodbridge and Jaffee and so on.

Later on, as some frequent contributors left or passed away, there were probably some promising times for me to pursue it but I didn't.  Feldstein retired in 1985 and his job was filled by John Ficarra and Nick Meglin.  I knew them both socially and liked them both and I should have submitted then but I was busy with this or that.  I just plain put it off.  In '94 or so, I finally sent them pitches for three articles and they bought one…just that one-pager.  They urged me to send more but I was again, suddenly too busy with this or that.  There were (and still are) a lot of things I wish I could make time for or did make time for.

None of this should be taken as a complaint or as me asking you to feel sorry for me.   For a writer, there are a lot of worse things than not having the time to do everything you'd like to do.  And right now, I think I'd like to have dinner.  Thanks for the question, T.J.

One of the first TV detective shows I liked watching was Richard Diamond, Private Eye. It was created by Blake Edwards as a radio show that ran from 1949 to 1953 starring Dick Powell and it later returned as a TV series that ran from 1957 to 1960 and starred David Janssen. It was the first of Janssen's four TV series, the other three being The Fugitive, followed by O'Hara, U.S. Treasury, followed by Harry O. As longtime readers of this blog know, Harry O is my favorite TV series about a detective.

I discovered Richard Diamond in syndicated reruns in the early sixties and I was sometimes puzzled by various elements. That was until I discovered that the show had run four seasons with major format changes from time to time, and the local station didn't air them in sequence. The shows were on a very low budget but the scripts were clever, a lot of notable actors guest-starred and it was hard to take your eyes off Mr. Janssen for two seconds.

I also liked his mysterious secretary "Sam," played by an uncredited actress who for a time was Mary Tyler Moore. You heard her voice and saw a little of her face or legs but not enough to really know what she looked like. My crush on Ms. Moore started before I know to whom the voice and legs belonged and I definitely noticed when someone else took over as "Sam."

It's Mary in this typical episode, which was the first in Season Three. It also features Barbara Bain, Ross Martin and the role of Mort Sahl was played by Mort Sahl…

On May 1, 2011, Albert Brooks appeared at the Barnes & Noble bookstore at The Grove, a big L.A. shopping center. He was promoting his then-new novel, 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America and someone captured it with a shaky cellphone.

Mr. Brooks started off by saying that as a kid, he went to Kiddyland, an amusement park that was on the same ground on which that Barnes & Noble now stands.  He was wrong. Kiddyland was torn down to build The Beverly Center, another big L.A. shopping center a mile or so away. He then talks about the book.  He then takes questions from the audience and some of it's pretty interesting.  Some it is pretty amusing.  You can decide which is which…

Every year around now, Time magazine names its Person of the Year and a whole lot o' people who never read nor care about Time the rest of the year get outraged. No matter how Time explains it's for the person who "for better or for worse…has done the most to influence the events of the year," people want to see their fave win it. Never mind that in the past it went to Hitler, Stalin, The Ayatollah Khomeini, Vladimir Putin and all sorts of folks who probably fell into the "for worse" category. As far as some people are concerned, it recognizes greatness no matter what its awarders say.

This year, it went to Taylor Swift. Fine. None of the folks protesting the selection care what's inside Time. Why should they care who's on its cover? If it was my decision and make the cat Person of the Year.

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Among my fondest wishes for 2024 is that some part of politics, however small, will be about what's best for human beings, not about "owning" the opposition and making their heads explode.

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I worked on 121 half-hours of the cartoon series, Garfield & Friends. There's a sub-channel on the Pluto streaming network that runs the show 24/7. As far as I can tell, they don't run all 121 in sequence and then repeat them and repeat them. They select something like a six-hour block of episodes and then run them four times a day, then run a different six-hour block the next day and a different one the next day and so on.

If they ran them all in order, they'd be repeating them all every two-and-a-half days. Either way, it means running every episode a little over 144 times a year. The voice actors who worked on the show and I each get enough money from this to buy the occasional can of Spaghetti-O's…but not too often. The animators and artists and others who worked on the show don't even get that.

Rumor had it that someone is trying to set up a streaming channel to run the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show that I also worked on. If they do and they run the show 24/7…well, there were only 27 episodes of that series so they'd be going through the entire run almost twice a day.

One of these days, Warners is going to set up the What's Opera, Doc? streaming channel that just runs What's Opera, Doc? over and over, every hour of every day so you can tune in any time and watch What's Opera, Doc? It's seven minutes long so if they put two minutes of commercials between each showing, they could run it 160 times a day, which would be 58,400 times per year except in Leap Year when it would be 58,560 times.

I don't think the families of Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, Mel Blanc and the artists who made that film will even get a can of Spaghetti-O's. Well, they may get the O's part but they won't be seeing any of the spaghetti part.

Because there are some scenes from movies you just can't see often enough…

…is the first night of Hanukkah so here are reruns of my two favorite Hanukkah videos…

I watched some of the Republican debate the other night and I don't seem to be able to go to any current events website without it showing me a clip of Chris Christie. If I didn't know this man's history, I might be impressed with the guy. There was a reason he left the governorship of New Jersey with an approval rating only slightly lower than that of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Chris Christie calling Donald Trump a bully is like…well, like Donald Trump these days accusing someone else of cognitive decline.

I also watched a little of a town hall meeting Christie did recently and about 80% of what I heard was the kind of straight talk I wish we got more of from politicians.  You can watch a little of it here.  Actually, you could watch all of it there but you won't.  Believe me, you won't.

I had to keep reminding myself that some of the best con artists and crooks in the world can say all the right things 80% of the time. Some of them can even do it 99% of the time and then turn around and screw you on the remaining 1%. They lull you into a false sense of trust…then you blink and suddenly they've got your pants.

I continue to be amazed at how Trump, his lawyers and cohorts like Rudy Giuliani are losing darn near 100% of their legal filings and motions.  When all these arraignments and trials started, I figured they'd win some but lose more…but they're losing just about every single one.  Christie's been getting booed, at the debate and elsewhere, for saying Trump is going to be convicted of at least one felony.  I wonder how how many of those who booed think…

1. Trump's innocent of all charges so he can't possibly be convicted
2. Trump's guilty of something but he shouldn't be convicted because the prosecution is dishonest
3. Trump's guilty of something but he shouldn't be convicted because they want him as President anyway
4. Trump's guilty, he'll probably be convicted of something but Christie should be out there supporting him anyway
5. Christie's right but we don't like being reminded of it
6. Some other combination that makes even less sense than any of these

Christie's probably right when he says that Haley and DeSantis are running to be Trump's Veep or in his cabinet…and/or to position themselves for the 2028 Presidential Election. If the latter, it would mean they assume Trump will lose this time — because if he wins, there might not be a 2028 Presidential Election. Ramaswamy looks like he's running just for the attention, the way Pat Buchanan used to. But what the heck is Christie running for? Among all voters nationally, he's polling at 2.7%

The polls don't mean much yet. At this point in the election that gave us President Trump, Ben Carson was ahead of him in fighting for the Republican nomination. But still…2.7%? That's about what Mickey Mouse gets in protest write-ins. It's half of where Ramaswamy is at the moment and no one even thinks he's a serious candidate.

If you announced your candidacy tomorrow, you'd be within the margin of error of tying or beating Christie. The man's in the same lonely boat as Rudy: Republicans don't like him since he broke with Donald and Democrats haven't liked him since he signed on with Donald in the first place.

I always try to tell my fellow Southern Californians when It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is being shown in our area and I always try to point out when my pal Frank Ferrante is Groucho-Marxing around these parts. He'll be at the Laguna Playhouse for five performances from January 4 through January 7. Get more info or get some tickets on this page. And tell 'em Marko sent you.

For those of you who live in Southern California — say, anywhere between Crockett County and Santa Rosita — the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood is showing my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on Friday evening, December 22. Tickets are on sale now at this link and they will probably sell out. Every time some local theater shows this movie, tickets sell out quickly and I am at a loss to explain why more houses don't show it more often.

And yes, I've bought my tickets. As you may know, this is a movie that I believe needs to be seen on a big screen with a big audience that appreciates its big cast of big stars. Watching it at home without a big audience and/or a big screen is okay if you've already seen it a few times The Right Way and you're just refreshing your memory of that viewing. And if you do, watch the Criterion Collection DVD or Blu-ray of it which, among its other features, has a really, really long and detailed commentary track by Yours Truly and my pals Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo.

Some of you, by the way, have clued me in that the film can be viewed for free on YouTube. The reason I haven't embedded it here is that I can't think of a worse way to experience this film, especially if you watch it on your phone while waiting for a dental appointment.

And there's another reason why I'm going to the Egyptian that evening. That theater has been completely remodeled and it's supposed to be beautiful and a grand place to watch movies now. We're going to get there early to see the place…and by the way, they're running Mad World as a 70mm film print. That's about half the size of Jimmy Durante's nose.

There are dozens and dozens of articles online about Norman Lear, who has died at the impressive age of 101. They all talk about how many hit TV shows he had and how they changed the landscape of American television…so you don't need me to tell you that. I'll just direct you to this article, this article, this article and while we're at it, this article.

So I'll just add these personal thoughts: There were folks who didn't like how television changed because of Mr. Lear's influence and there were those who didn't like his politics. I think though that if any of them had met him, they would have had a hard time disliking the man. He was genial, charming, funny and not the kind of human to act like he was any better than you were, even though he probably was.

And one of the secrets as to how he could have so many shows on the air at one time, as he did for number of years there, is that he was very good at delegating. I worked on two shows for which he was Executive Producer and never met him on either. The few times I did meet him were strictly social and we spent most of one encounter talking about The Night They Raided Minsky's, a movie he co-produced which I liked and which he liked talking about. I doubt we could have had a conversation about All in the Family or Maude or Sanford & Son or some of the others that he hadn't had with others a thousand times before…but he was not bored with talking about Minsky's.

We also talked a bit about Jerry Lewis. In his early days in television, Lear and his then-partner Ed Simmons wrote for Jerry. An interviewer once asked Lear how it was that he treated the people who worked for him so well and he said something about remembering how Jerry had treated people and just doing the opposite.

Nothing in our conversations was particularly memorable or quotable. You can get the memorable and quotable stuff and a sense of what he accomplished by reading the articles linked above or the many others appearing online at the moment. I just wanted to get on here and tell you how he struck me as a very nice and very wise man.

Earlier this year, a bunch of us got together and created a book called Comics For Ukraine. It's a benefit comic to benefit folks in Ukraine whose lives have been devastated by the ongoing war there and many of the stories in this book address their plight, directly or indirectly. My partner Sergio Aragonés and I contributed a new tale of Groo the Wanderer and there are stories by others whose names appear below.

Many of you already procured copies by contributing to the crowd-funding campaign. Now, those of you who didn't get in on that have a chance to buy copies and, of course, help those over there in dire need of assistance. There are NINE (9) different editions of this book, all with the same interiors, and they're all available for immediate purchase at the Zoop HQ Platform. Here are the nine versions…

1. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover — $60
2. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover signed by Ross — $100
3. Hardcover with Alex Ross cover signed by 13 creators (Anderson, Aragonés, Busiek, Chaykin, Evanier, Layman, Sakai, Sharp, Louise Simonson, Walter Simonson, Tucci, Waid, Wagner) — $175
4. Softcover with Arthur Adams cover — $40
5. Softcover with Arthur Adams cover, signed by Adams — $60
6. Softcover with Dave Johnson cover — $40
7. Softcover with Dave Johnson cover, signed by Johnson — $60
8. Softcover with Bill Sienkiewicz cover — $40
9. Softcover with Bill Sienkiewicz cover, signed by Sienkiewicz — $60

There are 15 brand new stories, each created for this book featuring well-known creations like Howard Chaykin's American Flagg, Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson's Astro City, John Layman and Rob Guillory's Chew, Matt Wagner's Grendel, Sergio Aragonés and Mark Evanier's Groo the Wanderer, Billy Tucci on The Rocketeer, Jill Thompson's Scary Godmother, Walter Simonson's Star Slammers and, Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo.

There are also original creations by Colleen Doran, Larry Hancock & Michael Cherkis, Gabe Rodriguez & Mark Waid, Liam Sharp, Emil Ferris, Louise Simonson & June Brigman, as well as single pages by pin-ups by Greg Hildebrandt, Joe Jusko, Joseph Michael Linsner, and political cartoons by Pia Guerra and Peter Kuper. The book was tirelessly and magnificently assembled by its editor, Scott Dunbier, and the money is being prudently distributed by the folks at my favorite charity, Operation USA.

Here's your chance to get a superb book for yourself and help some people in need of help. And since I know you want to immediately order a book, here's that link again. I am proud to be a part of it and you can be, too.

I know you probably don't come to this blog seeking advice on what to eat…and the truth is that I don't care what you eat as long as it's not another human being or cole slaw.  But I recently found a great breakfast item that I love and if you don't want this kind of recommendation from me, you don't have to read any farther.  If you do, here it is…

It's Jones brand Chicken Sausage and if you try them, read the instructions. They come frozen and they're delicious, especially once you learn to heat them properly, which will probably involve turning the Power Settings down on your microwave oven. They're real easy to overcook and you'll find that after you heat them, they should be consumed immediately. If you leave them around for a few minutes, the taste becomes increasingly less special.

Costco, when they have them, sells them in my area for $15.29 for a bag of approximately 45 sausages. This works out to about 34¢ per sausage. The Costcos in my area have been out of them lately so I've turned to local markets where I find them in boxes of ten for $3.50 which is 35¢ per sausage. The Costco version is organic and what the local markets have is "all-natural" without nitrites, nitrates or preservatives and they're made from chickens raised without added hormones. That's close enough to organic for me.

Jones also makes a turkey version but I tried those and they're good but not as good as the chicken. And if you are into cannibalism and/or cole slaw, just know that the chicken ones probably taste better than anyone you're likely to consume, and everything tastes better than cole slaw.

I just received a royalty check from Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. It was for something I wrote many years ago for Marvel which they recently reprinted and I have no idea what it is. I could figure it out from the invoice they e-mailed me and perhaps I will just for my own accounting purposes.  But unlike when DC reprints something I wrote for them, Disney/Marvel doesn't send me a copy of the new book. In this case, I might lose money on the deal if I went out and bought a copy.

So don't be even a smidgen impressed that I got this check. It did though give me two immediate memories from half a century ago. One came the first time I wrote a comic book story for Disney. This was for the Disney Studios, not for Western Publishing Company, which published the American Disney comics in their Gold Key line. I went to work for Western later.

Western Publishing was not publishing a vast amount of Disney comic books in the early seventies. The company was on the downside then, having great trouble getting their books distributed to newsstands. The marketplace for comics was shrinking and one of the execs there told me — and I'm still not sure how much I should believe this — that DC and Marvel were getting relentless in squeezing competitors off the racks by all possible means. In fact, "relentless" was the word he used.

A year or two later, Western gave up even trying to get distribution in several states, including New York. Their best bet, they thought, was selling their comics in bagged lots to toy and department stores via the same channels they sold their Whitman line of activity books (coloring books, puzzle books, etc.). This method worked for a little while. In fact, they even sold some of their competitors' products that way. Eventually though, it stopped being practical and Western got the hell out of the comic book business.

In 1969, Western wasn't publishing a lot of Disney comics and some of them were all or partially reprints. Western did commission new stories and when they did, the Disney organization could sell photostats of those stories to foreign Disney publishers to reprint overseas. For Disney, the cash that came in from that was almost pure profit since Western had paid for the writing, drawing and lettering. Furthermore, the demand for Disney comics in other countries was so great that a division on the Disney lot began commissioning comic book stories just to sell to the overseas publishers.

I began submitting scripts to them and I think my first sale was a Three Little Pigs story. Western wasn't doing any Three Little Pigs comics at the time. One day, I received a check from Disney for it — a very handsome (in design, not amount) check with a full-color picture of Mickey Mouse on it.

I showed it to my parents…and I could have shown my father a Nobel Peace Prize or a Pulitzer I'd won and he couldn't have been any prouder than he was of his son at that moment. Come to think of it: An hour later, he walked into my room and said, "Mark, could I see that check one more time?" He had me promise that before I deposited it, I'd make a Xerox of it — and he didn't say this part but I think he was thinking, "…just in case no one ever pays you for your writing again."

The next day, I walked up to the branch of California Federal Savings where I had my savings account. I stopped off at a drugstore where you could make copies for a dime each and made two copies — just in case no one ever paid me for my writing again — and then it was on to CalFed, which at the time seemed like the most solid, wealthy financial institution in the state. Which it was until 1994 when it was shut down by federal regulators.

I endorsed the check, filled out a deposit slip, took them to a teller and she began staring at that check. And staring. And staring. And it took me a minute or two to figure out what the problem was…

She thought it was a toy check.

It had Mickey Mouse on it and a 17-year-old kid had brought it in. She was wondering if maybe it was part of a toy set called something like The Mickey Mouse Bank that came with toy money, toy deposit slips, toy free calendars and toy notices of foreclosure. I was getting $20 in cash back from my deposit and for a second there, I thought she was going to try to give it to me in bills with Jiminy Cricket on them.

Instead, she took the check over to some superior who told her it was real. It dawned on me later that she was just new on the job and had simply never seen a Disney check before. They must have had a lot of them there…a hunch which was confirmed for me a few months later when I went in to make another deposit and found myself waiting in line behind Sebastian Cabot. Mr. Cabot was, among his other job, the narrator of the Winnie the Pooh cartoons for Disney. He lived two blocks from that outlet of California Federal Savings and might have deposited a lot of Disney checks there.

So that was one of the two memories that today's check from Disney resurrected. The other was a few years after that and for this memory, I want you to get a certain tone of voice in your head. Imagine for a moment that you are a very small child and you are being lectured by an older person in a position of power at a big company.

You have just asked an innocent question and the older person is not only telling you that what you ask is impossible and will never-in-a-million-years happen, he is trying to make you feel like you know less-than-zero about what you're talking about. And he even says in these very words, "If you understood anything about this industry, you'd know that it would cease to exist if we ever did what you are asking!"

Okay, so you've now got that tone of voice and that italicized quote in your brain. And my Disney check today for something I wrote years ago for Marvel reminded me of that tone and that quote from a senior executive at one of the big two comic book companies. He was responding to my question about whether they might consider paying reuse fees to their writers and artists when their work was reprinted.