This is not your typical Randy Rainbow video. It's him announcing an extension of his nationwide tour but it's funny anyway…

My "to do" list has enough items on it that I need to put up one of these soup cans that tells you not to expect much (if any) posting here today.

A friend of mine — a person of some prominence in the comic book community — once told me semi-jokingly that whenever he died, he hoped (a) that I would still be around to write an obit for him and (b) that it would be on a day when I'd put up a soup can to tell the world how busy I was. Then I would (c) start his obit with something like, "I know I said I wouldn't be posting today but the passing of [HIS NAME] is such big news that I had to put my work aside and post this long article about how important he was to comics and everyone who works in that industry or reads them."

If you are that person, do me a favor and don't die today. Because I'm really busy. Thank you.

Pro-Trump lawyer — who won't be a lawyer for long — John Eastman has been called one of the main architects of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election. He's been wrong at every turn including his most recent belief that going on 60 Minutes would make him look better.

This is from tonight's episode and it's brutal to watch someone get battered so, largely through self-inflicted punches…

A gent who, as you'll see, wanted me to call him "Doc Bedlam" wrote with the following question…

Longtime reader here who has so far not bothered you with e-mails, requests for money, or an impassioned defense of cole slaw…but I have a question. It's a weird question, so feel free to ignore it, but it is a subject in which I am interested. If you choose to reprint this on your blog, call me Doc Bedlam.

Recently, I was given a gag gift: The Little Golden Book…of Dungeons and Dragons, based on the old Saturday morning cartoon show, a thing you've mentioned on your blog a few times, to say how you had little to do with it other than hammering someone else's concepts into a form and format that fit your standard Saturday morning cartoon show at the time, and filing off some rough edges here and there.

This book was written and illustrated by people who claim to not be Mark Evanier…but in the second tiniest print on the page, it says, "Based on the episode "The Night Of No Tomorrow" by Mark Evanier."

Now, experience has taught me that the writer doesn't get any more credit than he's contractually obligated for someone to give him. My question is this: Did you get some sort of residuals for the reuse of your story concept in a Little Golden Book, and was it any significant amount? I mean, I'm not asking for your financials or anything, but would the $$$ be worth the trouble of endorsing and depositing the check?

I ask this because I'm aware you've been writing for TV for more than a few minutes now, and I have this image in my head of Mr. Mark Evanier, slipping on his shoes, strolling jauntily out to whatever he drives, and heading out to the Post Office once a week or so…and walking back out with an enormous mail sack full of envelopes.

Most of them contain paper checks…for amounts ranging from a few dollars to a few cents. Because clear back in 1980, someone signed a contract with Mr. Evanier that meant he got residuals of some sort whenever a given story was used…on a downward sliding scale based on how long it's been since the contract was signed (I've heard actors talking about how the residuals run out after a given period, and how they were getting checks for 89 cents ten years after a show was cancelled, and like that; my knowledge of how the writers get paid is somewhat sketchier).

If you're feeling indulgent, could you enlighten me as to exactly how this works?

I'll show you how observant I can be at times. When I got this message the other day, I thought, "There was a Little Golden Book adapting that script I wrote?" I started to write a reply here saying how I'd never seen a copy and certainly never seen a dime from it. But then I had the vague feeling that I had…somewhere, sometime. And then the vague feeling got a little less vague…

A few months ago, I was on a panel at Comic-Con about the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon show. The dais was decorated with Dungeons & Dragons merchandise and I went and looked at a YouTube video of the entire panel. Here — I'll let you have a gander at it if you're interested…

As you'll see if you gander its way, there was not only a copy of the book as part of the display, it was SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME FOR THE ENTIRE PANEL [Emphasis added to emphasize my cluelessness.] Well, at least I had that vague remembrance. But I never opened it and never looked inside and if I had, I might not have seen my name because I didn't have the electron microscope that I carry with me nearly everywhere I go. I found this image of the title page online…

If you still can't make out my name, clicking on the image will make it a wee bit larger. Or get out the electron microscope that you carry with you almost everywhere you go.

So no, no payment…yet. I may or may not be owed something but I'll have to haul out the contract to check…and with my filing system here, finding a paper from 40 years ago — and then, if any monies are due, actually collecting them — may be harder than finding one's way home from a mystic dimension based on a popular role-playing game.

The contract was with Marvel Productions, which has been sold and reorganized several times since then and I guess it's now part of Disney but not a part with any rights to the game and maybe the cartoons. It has been my experience that companies are pretty good about honoring deals that they (themselves) make. But when a company changes hands, the new hands either never receive the paperwork that delineates the contractual obligations that come with the acquisition or prefer to pretend that they didn't.

So that's part of the answer to your question, Doc. Here's a more complete answer…

From a writer's business standpoint, there are three kinds of cartoon shows — those that are covered by the Writers Guild of America contract, those that are covered by the Animation Guild contract and those that are covered by neither. The contracts for the first two are basically what we call "Minimum Basic Agreements," meaning that if the hiring entity wants your services badly enough, you or your representatives may be able to negotiate an additional contract that gives you better terms that are in the M.B.A.

So let's say that the M.B.A. specifies that for a certain-length script, you'll receive $8,000. Let's further say that your agent and/or circumstances persuade them to give you a better deal that adds in, say, $2000 more plus agreed-upon residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. In that case, you'd get $10,000 plus those residuals or royalties or bonuses or special credits. If you don't (or they won't) agree on an additional contract, you just get the $8,000 and whatever credit is dictated by the governing M.B.A.

If you know the story of how I came to do the Dungeons & Dragons pilot and bible — a brief version of it is in video above — you know that I had some extra clout to demand a better deal. This is what good agents are especially good at and mine got me a lot more money, a "Developed for Television By…" credit on every episode and I think there was a "series sale bonus" if/when the network bought the show plus some other rewards. I'll have to locate my copy of that contract and see if I'm owed anything more and if so, if it would be worth it to make the phone calls or turn it over to my lawyer.

It may not be. When I performed a similar service for a Disney cartoon show called The Wuzzles, they adapted my scripts into kids' books similar to Little Golden Books and also a record or two. That contract didn't promise me a cent if they did that so I didn't get money or even copies of the books or record nor was my name on them.

Marvel Productions at the time I worked on Dungeons & Dragons was a signatory to Local 839 of I.A.T.S.E., which has since changed its name to The Animation Guild. If I hadn't gotten that contract, my deal would have just been the M.B.A. of that union which, I'm pretty sure, did not allow for additional payments to the writers for anything.

And once, I worked on an ABC Weekend Special which was adapted by others into two books not unlike the Little Golden Book. My contract did not allow for this so I went to the studio's attorney and told her they should have gotten my okay and also asked me to do the adaptations. She said basically that if I made an issue of it, I would never work for the studio again. I chose not to make an issue of it but I also decided that I liked that part about never working for that studio again.

I think I've answered your basic question, Dr. Bedlam sir, but let me address your fantasy of me cruising to the post office to pick up sacks of checks. It wasn't even that way before a lot of this went to Direct Deposit. Money trickles in here and there, mostly from the two different Garfield cartoon series for which I was Producer, Writer and Voice Director…and I use the word "trickles" deliberately. There's not much there for anyone to envy.

Garfield and Friends now reruns 24/7 on some streaming services. On the streaming service called Pluto, there's literally an entire channel devoted to that show and it's on Tubi and others, as well. I worked on every episode and I've made a pact with one of the voice actors who was on every episode. At the end of this year, we're going to take all the money we've received in royalties and residuals for our work being streamed in 2023 and blow it all on one big lunch at Five Guys.

If we don't order the extra-large fries, the math may work out perfectly. This is a lot of what recent strikes in the entertainment industry have been about.

You've reminded me of one time I had lunch with the late (and loved by me) actor Howard Morris. We met at the restaurant and he hauled out a pile of residual checks he'd just received for voice work at Hanna-Barbera. I don't know (nor did he know) what period of time it covered but the stack was about an inch high, which is a lot of checks. I said, "Well, I guess lunch is on you" and he said, "Take a look at the amounts."

At the time — this was mid-nineties, I think — it was said that to process and mail each residual check cost the studios about eight bucks. There wasn't one check in that stack that was for over about three bucks. Most were well under fifty cents. After we ate, as we waited for the bill, Howie began endorsing the checks so he could deposit them at his bank on the way home. Since I could forge his signature flawlessly, I took half of them to help out.

As we reached the end of the signing process, Howie said, "This is ridiculous. When I go to an autograph show, I get twenty dollars and up for signing my name. Here, I'm signing it for —"

And he flipped over the last check he'd signed to see the amount, which was four cents. The last one I signed was for three and the whole pile added up to a little less than forty dollars. I suggested he use some of that to buy a rubber stamp for future endorsements but he feared he might lose money on the deal if he did. He said, "I'm pissed off at having to do this but if I didn't get anything at all, I'd be even more pissed."

And then the check for our lunch arrived — which he grabbed and which he insisted on paying. With tip, it was for a little less than forty dollars.

We haven't had any Tom Lehrer on this site in many years so let's rectify that. Here he is on one of David Frost's eighty zillion TV shows in Great Britain many years ago, explaining our money to the folks over there…

Here are a few of many messages I've received about intermissions in movies as previously discussed here. We start with this one from Steve Replogle…

What bothers me about Scorsese is the hypocrisy. I bet he doesn't sit through a three-and-a-half hour movie. Or wait! Maybe I'm wrong. That could show this discussion in an entirely different light. If Martin Scorsese at 80 years old can indeed sit through a movie of that length, I really want to learn the secrets of his medical team. Urologist, orthopedist, ophthalmologist — let's hear from them!

And then we have this one from old friend Pat O'Neill…

As you are well aware, it is the rare stage production that does not have an intermission. I have never been to a professional performance that didn't have one and in my amateur acting career, appeared in only one show that was done without an intermission — and that one was only about 75 minutes long. If stage directors and playwrights can keep the audience's attention enough to have them come back from a 15 or 20 minute break, I fail to see why their cinematic counterparts cannot do the same.

Sports have half-times (even baseball has the seventh-inning stretch).

And this one from Mike Kyner…

Last movie I saw that had an intermission was Tess (I think, been so long ago I can't remember). I've run theaters off and on for a few years and here's something else you didn't touch upon…

When a movie is that damn long, chances are you can only show it once a weekday and on the weekends, maybe twice a day. Include ads/movie previews and you're looking at 4+ hours in the theater. I quit going to most theaters because there was literally forty minutes of crap on screen (I counted, 12 damn previews for upcoming movies @ roughly 2:30 minutes each, 30 minutes of my time being wasted) before the actual movie started. What that does is cut your concession sales down to about nothing, they'll buy stuff once they come in and you might have one or two come out to buy something during the show.

Two: Theaters prefer movies to be roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours long. More showings per day means more money coming in and more concession sales. When the studios take roughly 60% of your box office, you need as many people coming in as possible to buy was much stuff as possible at the concession stand.

Many times the studios force you to take X movie for 3 or more weeks and if it's a turkey, good luck trying to get out of it. Multiple screen theaters can just shift it to the smallest house and forget it, one or two screen mom & pop theaters are screwed.

And lastly, this one from Marcus Bressler…

In my semi-retirement, I manage the kitchen in one of those movie complexes that offer a full dinner menu as well as a bar. When a popular movie comes in, we can get really busy: like 600 lunch/dinner orders and, on the side that doesn't have service at your seat, a concession line that goes out the door! This was true of Barbie, for instance.

When the movie is very long in duration, we like it in the kitchen as there is down time in terms of food orders because people order in the first 30 minutes prior to the movie starting and for about 30 minutes after, depending on crowd size. It gives us a chance to regroup, re-stock, and catch our collective breaths.

Management only likes long movies if they are very popular and draw in high food and beverage and candy/popcorn/soda sales. Otherwise they have negative feelings toward them because it means one less movie in that theatre (we have 14 theatres). Since we don't earn any real money from admissions, the ancillary sales matter.

Some of the more recent superhero movies have bombed. We expected large crowds for the Taylor Swift concert movie and we got them. Funny though, they hardly ordered any food! One night we had 58 people at an 8 PM showing and we had one dinner order!. Typically, it would be about 40-50%.
I would like an intermission, personally. I never make it through a movie without a visit to the restroom, even if I curtail my consumption of fluids beforehand. But if my doctor needs a urine sample, guess what?

These messages and others I've received caused me to think more about this issue…but not much more. Obviously, there are marketing reasons for keeping a movie short. A director can't ignore the economic needs of the theaters any more than he can shirk his or her responsibility to do a certain amount of promotional work to help drive folks to the box office.

Mr. Scorsese must have that end of his job under control. He's been at this long enough and he doesn't make movies to not be shown in theaters. After two weekends in release, Killers of the Flower Moon is the third highest-grossing film following Five Nights at Freddy and the the Taylor Swift film. That's probably about where Paramount expected the new Martin Scorsese film to be. As he keeps telling us, he doesn't make "comic book movies" that young filmgoers line up for the first weekend.

I guess what I'm thinking here is that okay, I'm not fond of the idea of a 3.5 hour movie. The sheer length will probably keep me away and this doesn't feel like the kind of movie I want to watch here at home where so many distractions abound. But I didn't go to see The Irishman (which ran only three minutes less, also with no intermission) and I don't think Scorsese or his studio missed my patronage. So I think I'm going to stop thinking about this.

A Saturday Night Live blast from the past: Phil Hartman as The Anal Retentive Chef. Phil didn't know it but he was impersonating a guy I worked with once…

This article by Nardos Haile argues that real long movies don't need to have intermissions if the filmmaker doesn't think they should have them. I am all for creative people having a strong, perhaps dictatorial say in how their films are exhibited…but let's say I want to see Killers of the Flower Moon, which is the film under discussion here. If I understand Ms. Haile correctly, she thinks I have three choices…

1. See it in a theater in one three-hour-and-twenty-six minute sitting and don't leave to use the restroom or do anything else or…
2. See it in a theater where it's being shown with no formal intermission but in this option, I just make my own by leaving when I want to and coming back when I've done, probably inconveniencing others in the theater and missing some large chunk of the film or…
3. Wait until it's available on streaming and then I watch it in my own and pause it once or twice or ninety times if I need to pee or take phone calls or have a pizza delivered or stop for the night because I'm getting sleepy and/or serialize it over several days.

In other words, my options are to experience it exactly the way Martin Scorsese would like it to be seen or to see it (1) the way its director wants it seen or (2) missing one or more chunks of the movie — including possibly key, important scenes — entirely or (3) seeing it on a smaller screen without the same undivided attention we muster in a movie theater but not in our dens and inserting pauses anywhere I, not Mr. Scorsese, would like. And let's not forget (4) don't see it at all.

Option #1 gives him close to total control of how I see his film.  Option #3 gives him absolutely none.  I don't think Option #2 would please him.  If he thinks an intermission would distract from my enjoyment of his film, how would he like the fact that my bladder or I pick a random time to miss fifteen minutes of it?  And distract other audience members in the process of exiting and re-entering?

I feel odd suggesting how Martin Scorsese should make his movies but I wish those who make long, long films would consider not just our bladders but other concerns.  I had a couple of years there where either my girl friend or my mother had serious medical needs to which I had to be responsive.  If my phone vibrated with a call, I didn't want to check who was calling while others around me were trying to watch a movie…but it would have been damned irresponsible of me to wait three hours to do it.

I also have problems with my knees if I sit too long.  When I work here at the computer, I make a point of getting up every hour and doing some chore or task that involve a little walking.  A three-and-a-half hour movie with no intermission can be bad for my health.

And I wonder how the folks who operate movie theaters feel about this.  A lot of theaters have closed in recent years due to declining revenues.  Maybe some of them would like a nice little intermission to sell some of their overpriced popcorn, overpriced sodas, overpriced candy bars and maybe a couple of those overpriced hot dogs that have been sitting that in little roller display since the last time a new Walter Matthau film came out.  If I had the chance to talk to Martin Scorsese…

No, I wouldn't do what I was about to write what I'd do.  I wouldn't tell that man how to make movies.  I'd probably just slather him with praise for most of the ones he's made.  But I might sneak in something like, :"You know, you're so good at creating mood and dramatic tension in your movies that I bet you could give the people a ten-minute intermission and then get them right back into the story as if they'd never left it."

But someone's probably already said that to him and he's decided to do it the way he's going to do it.  And if he and other directors keep making movies that last longer than Mike Pence's presidential campaign, I more and more may have to go with Option #4.

The Legal Eagle is back with an interesting video about all these one-time associates of Donald Trump flipping on the man to whom they pledged their unreturned loyalty. Devin Stone turns most of the duties on this one over to his own associate, Spencer the Scowl Owl, but comes back at the end to add to the discussion…

My post about the Some Like It Hot sitcom pilot brought forth a lot of mail including this one from someone who signed their message "LJS"…

Longtime fan from many venues, but I'm not going to bore you with all of them now. Just wanted to follow up about the Some Like It Hot pilot. I've never seen it either (I wish I had), but Laurence Maslon has. He writes about it in his book on Some Like It Hot.

Besides the cast members you mentioned, Robert Strauss, Jack Albertson, and Jerry Paris (you might be able to find a Dick Van Dyke Show connection there…) all appeared. Anthony Caruso played Spats Columbo's brother (although Maslon has a source that says George Raft wanted to do it as a twin) and Rudy Vallee plays a character called "The Millionaire" who was apparently meant to recur.

Besides Ms. Shawlee (whom Maslon said only got one line in the episode), Mike Mazurki and Sandra Warner returned from the movie. The pilot was written by Herbert Baker, who had a lot of experience in comedy, and directed by Walter Grauman, who didn't. (He was a very fine director of dramatic television shows, however.)

Billy Wilder was supposed to consult, but unsurprisingly, he got busy. He did retain 20% ownership of the show, though. It was a co-production of Ziv and The Mirisches, filmed at NBC. The most interesting trivia Maslon shared was that Curtis was paid with a painting he liked at a local gallery and Lemmon was paid with a shopping spree at a men's clothing store.

Please let us all know if any of your readers know a source for seeing the pilot anywhere. It must still exist somewhere because Maslon has seen it.

Thanks for everything on the blog and for your many other contributions, too.

I hereby let you know that it turns out that a friend of mine has a copy of the pilot and I'll probably see it next time we get together. I shall report on it here after that happens. The friend does not however know the answer to a question that others in my e-mailbox asked me: Did this thing ever air? Back then, it was not uncommon for the networks to burn off unsold pilots, usually in the Summer and usually in "anthology shows" with names like Vacation Playhouse.

But not all unsold pilots made it to air and I would think that if this one had, we'd know more about it. If it never aired, that might explain why there's no mention of it on IMDB.

Interesting that Herbert Baker wrote the pilot. I picketed with Mr. Baker during one of the many Writers Guild strikes and we talked about his work with Danny Kaye (didn't like the man) and Henry Morgan (did). I wish I'd known about the pilot then so I could have asked him about it. He died in June of 1983 so this must have been the 1981 strike. There have been so many, it's hard to keep track.

As followers of this site know, I really like a cappella singing combos and one of the best I've found is Voctave, an aggregate of great singers whose membership seems to change a bit with every video. Here's whoever was in the group when they made this one performing a song from Meredith Willson's The Music Man. Don't write me thinking you've found a spelling mistake, Brent. He spelled it with two "L's."

A Google Maps user has created an interactive online map of older restaurants in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Jake Hook's map lists over 1,000 places to eat that have been in business for at least twenty years and he singles out what he considers the true classics. I've only been to a small percentage of these places but he sure brings up a lot of memories of places I've been and places I've always been meaning to try. Here's the map.

We're all familiar with the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. But how many of you know that in 1961, there was an attempt to turn it into a weekly situation comedy for NBC? I sure didn't but recently, my assistant Jane Plunkett called it to my attention. Even weirder is the fact that as a favor to its producer Walter Mirisch, Lemmon and Curtis made a cameo appearance in the pilot and…

Well, here's where it gets real weird. As you may recall, the movie directed by Billy Wilder was about two musicians — Jerry (played by Mr. Lemmon) and Joe (played by Mr. Curtis) on the lam from The Mob. In the pilot, they're still on the lam so what do they do? They get plastic surgery and it not only changes their appearances, it turns them into two completely different actors! After the surgery, Jerry is played by actor-comedian Dick Patterson and Joe is played by the singer Vic Damone.

Thereafter, Patterson and Damone played Jerry and Joe for the rest of the pilot and for all episodes thereafter. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — there were no other episodes. No sponsor picked it up nor did NBC. The character of Sugar Kane Kowalczyk — played so memorably in the film by Marilyn Monroe did not appear in the pilot but Tina Louise, later of Gilligan's Island fame, played a similar type of lady named Candy Collins.

And Sweet Sue, played in the movie by Joan Shawlee, did reappear in the sitcom version. She was played by — wait for it — Joan Shawlee.

Dick Patterson was another one of those actors who appeared in bit parts in almost TV show of the sixties…and the seventies and the eighties. He was part of the troupe of performers who appeared in Billy Barnes revues in the early sixties so he turned up once on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He played talk show host Stevie Parsons there before Richard Schaal took over the role. Patterson was later a frequent sketch player on The Carol Burnett Show when they needed an extra man. He had performed on Broadway with Burnett in Fade Out, Fade In. Dick Patterson passed away in 1999.

Vic Damone was, of course, a popular singer of popular music. He also turned up on The Dick Van Dyke Show and I remember a fun little "summer replacement" show he did in 1961 and again in 1962 on NBC. It was called The Lively Ones — the same name as a hit song he recorded — and I've never seen a trace of it since it originally aired.  Mr. Damone left us in 2018.

So now you're probably wondering: How was the Some Like It Hot sitcom pilot? I'm wondering that too. I've never seen it and didn't even know of its existence until just the other day. Maybe someone reading this knows where there's a copy. I wouldn't get my hopes up for a masterpiece, considering the icy response it seems to have gotten from the network and potential sponsor. But it might be interesting to see…especially the sequence in which Lemmon and Curtis turn into two other actors.

Television has adapted (or tried to adapt) a lot of movies and I wonder if anyone ever thought of that. Somehow, I don't think when they were prepping the TV version of M*A*S*H, anyone said, "Hey, what if we got Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould to appear and in one scene, Hawkeye and Trapper John were severely injured in a shelling and after extensive plastic surgery, they turned into Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers?"

This is my almost-annual post about why I don't like Halloween. I run it each year and sometimes I change the name of the anti-gay person in the last paragraph — but if you've read it before, there's no need to read it again…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.

I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.

When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.

And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against trick-or-treating. In earlier versions of this essay, I used to say, "Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year." But I haven't had anyone at my door for three or four years now so I don't bother.

So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."

Over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.

So that's why I'll be home for Halloween and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Marjorie Taylor Greene costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.

Here's a Woody Allen rarity. In 1965, reportedly when he was in the U.K. filming his role in another Woody Allen rarity — Casino Royale — he hosted a special for Granada Television. It consisted of him doing stand-up interrupted by one musical act. Wikipedia says the show runs 38 minutes but this video (which seems to be complete) runs 27 minutes.

If any of this seems familiar, I linked to some excerpts from this show many years ago. If you don't have time to watch the entire thing, he does his Moose routine at 21:25, then plugs the record album on which it appeared. Thanks to a reader of this site who calls himself or herself "Orange Apple" for pointing me in the direction to find this…