Here's Steve Martin back in his stand-up days. This is from The Tonight Show for March 21, 1973…

The WGA leadership is saying they've reached agreement on a contract that they think is good enough for its membership to ratify. Read my post from earlier today about being cautiously optimistic and being wary of "the second negotiation." But this is certainly good to hear…for us and, probably, the actors.

And I have no idea if no strike news is good strike news or bad strike news. It may be neither. It may just be no strike news.

I should pass on one word of wisdom conferred on me by my second agent. He said, "Always beware of the second negotiation."

The first negotiation is the verbal one in which we all agree that I will write the script for $5,000. The second negotiation is when someone commits the agreed-upon terms to paper, often taking his own sweet time about it since I'll probably commence writing before we have a signed contract. On that paper, he writes that I will indeed receive $5,000…

…and he hopes neither I nor my agent will notice that he sneaks in a clause that says that they can reduce that amount if I'm late, if my script contains spelling errors, if I write it while wearing blue jeans, if the Dodgers win the pennant, if McDonald's brings back the McRib, if you knew Suzie like I know Suzie, if I use vowels or if the producer just feels like paying me less. Oh — and it also says that I have to deliver the script to the producer's home and trim his hedges while I'm there.

That's the second negotiation. With some employers, you don't have a deal even when you all agree you have a deal.

It's still September. Could you at least wait until October 1 before making sure every damned item in your stores contains pumpkin?

Dave Doty sent me this. I assume by "GH," he means the daytime drama General Hospital…

Strike questions on your blog seem to be slowing down. Or maybe they are continuing, but asking questions you've already answered. I thought I'd ask a couple I haven't seen before Both relate to the daytime soap situation, due to my being a GH watcher. (What can I say? There's a soothing regularity in that 5 day a week dose of melodrama.)

1. Both times I've seen a strike impact the soaps, the fi-core writers throw in strange twists that are clearly at odds with original intent. The most blatant this time is a mystery villain who had been repeatedly referred to as "she" being abruptly revealed as a male character who was already on the show. I assume the producers know where the regular writers were taking these plots, Are they not allowed to pass that information along, or are they just allowing the fi-core writers to do whatever they want? Or is there an answer I've overlooked?

2. There's no definite answer to this one, but I'm curious about your opinion. I've been wrestling throughout the strike with whether I ought to be boycotting the show. The pro-boycott argument is obvious, I suppose. But even some of the writers who are replaced as I type have said things along the lines of "I don't like that someone else is writing my show right now, but with the state of daytime, if they shut down they might not come back." I'm debating the degree to which I have an ethical obligation to stop watching until the regular writers come back.

Taking the second question first: I am of the opinion that most boycotts don't accomplish what the boycotters would like to think they accomplish. I always say, "If it makes you feel better to boycott, then by all means boycott." But it's like how in certain past years, there were reasons some folks wanted to boycott the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Diego because of political actions by its management. So some of those folks stayed elsewhere but the hotel was still filled to capacity and the boycott had zero impact on the hotel.

If you realistically can make a difference in their income, that's different. I just don't think anyone at the A.M.P.T.P. is going to say, "My God! Dave Doty and maybe a few of his friends aren't watching this one program! We have to settle this strike!" Maybe if you and your friends are all monitored for ratings and you have an awful lot of friends…

Now dealing with Question #1: Every time the WGA goes on strike, the writers of daytime dramas suffer in a way other TV writers don't: The continuity and storylines on their shows are corrupted by scabs. You call them "fi-core writers," I call them "scabs." Seeing their plans go awry and seeing their scenarios taken in directions that seem wrong to them is a pain that for some is just as great as the financial sacrifices.

As far as I know, the producers can share anything that has been planned and pass it along and I would assume some of it is followed. What you're probably seeing now is a combination of the scabs using what the striking writers had planned and the scabs trying to put their own stamp on the show. They probably think it will increase their chances of being kept on when the "real" writers return…and for some of them, it may work. Some producers may keep them around because, for good or bad, they want those storylines to be played out.

Sorry to have to report the passing of author-historian Allan Asherman. He was 76 and the cause of death is being reported as related to a recent fall. Allan was a very smart guy — a respected author among comic book fans, film buffs and lovers of Star Trek. Among his many books were The Star Trek Compendium, The Star Trek Interview Book and The Making of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. But Allan was an expert on all sorts of things.

I knew him when he worked for DC Comics, sometimes as an editor and sometimes as their in-house librarian. He started there almost five decades ago as one of the "Junior Woodchucks," which was kind of an intern/assistant program. Paul Levitz, who was also part of that group, wrote on Facebook and will not mind me stealing his words and posting them here…

Allan was a good soul, a historian of much of what had gone on in comics and science fiction, a teacher, a writer, and a part of DC for many years in many guises. His first tour of duty was an assistant editor, working with Joe Kubert, Bob Kanigher and Joe Simon, and that was his role in Woodchuck days, cut short in one of the mid-70s layoffs that swept through. He returned again and again (I lost track along the way, but I think he may have been the "most hired" person at DC), including tours in the department that stored our film negatives for reprinting and international use, and a very long and vital tour as the company librarian, ending only when the company moved to Burbank. In all of these roles, he was one of the people who would be turned to with an "Allan might know…" question and often he did.

Allan did so many things that it's hard to list them all. He wrote articles and books, mostly about his favorite movies and TV shows, he helped program film festivals, he contributed supplementary material to DVDs and Blu-rays, he was just one of those walking encyclopedias. We often consulted each other about comic book history and he was a fine gentleman. Our sympathies go out to his friends and especially his wife Arlene Lo, who was a proofreader at DC Comics.

I'm going to let this run for a few more days. In the coming week, followers of this site will see a long article about a great (I think) and underrated (I know) comic book and strip artist named Frank Robbins, a Las Vegas story I don't think I've told here before, and I'm going to try to finish up the series of articles about Western Publishing and Gold Key Comics. Plus, I assume, there'll be strike news and other fun stuff…

One of the reasons Las Vegas is so crowded these days is that around a quintillion people (give or take two or three) are producing Vegas podcasts telling you where to stay, where to eat, where to play, etc. The best of these by far — and the one whose success seems to have inspired most of the others — is a lady named Norma Geli who I've written about here before.

She's a former concierge at some Vegas hotels who knows the city well and also knows how to shoot, edit, produce and host weekly videos like the one below. She also does weekly live podcasts where she walks up and down The Strip showing you what's going on and chatting with folks she encounters. She's become enough of a Vegas celebrity that people are always stopping her to say hello. There are other folks doing similar live Vegas walks too.

Getting back to the weekly not-live ones, I find them fun to watch even though little of the info is of use to me. Norma spends an awful lot of them discussing where and what to drink of an alcoholic nature. I don't drink and, having food allergies and living in fear of exotic meals, I wouldn't dine at about 80% of the restaurants she visits. That makes it all that remarkable that I enjoy her videos. She really knows how to do this kind of thing well.

Below is her most recent, which is atypical of her output. It's about finding the best lobster and for once, she doesn't confine her search to Clark County in Nevada. Because she gets so many hits and often has commercials (like the one for deodorant in the middle of this video), she makes enough money off her productions to be able to spend more money on her productions. You'll see what I mean. Even if you don't have any interest in where to find the best mimosas in Vegas, it's great to see someone who has learned how to make professional-quality videos on the kind of equipment you may already own — and to use the Internet for fun and profit…

The Los Angeles Times is reporting…

The Writers Guild of America and the major Hollywood studios are closing in on a deal that would end a 145-day strike that has roiled the film and TV business and caused thousands of job losses. Lawyers for the two sides were hammering out the details of a tentative agreement on Saturday during a meeting that began mid-morning, according to people close to the discussions who were not authorized to comment.

I'm going to assume that those "people close to the discussions who were not authorized to comment" are folks like me in the '88 strike planting stories in the press. However, "closing in on a deal" is not the same thing as actually closing a deal. Deals fall apart all the time after one or both sides are sure they're as good as done. It's an old negotiating tactic: After the other side thinks the deal is set and they're writing the press releases to say it's over and done, you throw in a last-minute demand hoping they're so far into "it's all over" mode that they'll just nod and accept it. Happens all the time.

If it really does apparently end in a day or two, that will mean that the WGA negotiators feel they have a deal that they can present to the membership for ratification. Whatever's in it, some faction of the Guild won't like it. There's always some subset of the Guild — soap opera writers, variety show writers, etc. — who will be upset that some issue that pertains to them has not been addressed or fought to the finish. There are also members for whom no deal is good enough.

I have enough confidence in the current WGA board and negotiating committee to believe they won't recommend a deal that isn't good enough to pass with a solid majority vote. But someone will be pissed.

Assuming the WGA deal passes, the next question is how long will it take SAG-AFTRA to get a deal that will end the actors' strike. Obviously, that depends on how well the terms that the WGA finds acceptable apply to actors. I assume though that if there's a deal on A.I. to the writers' liking, it will be easier than it once was for SAG-AFTRA to translate it into terms that will appease them.

Guard your optimism well. It may be put through the wringer before this thing is over.

Here's a question I've received a few times over the years. Dave Mackey was one of several folks who wrote to ask about an aspect of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show…

Was thinking tonight about the old Tonight Show and the comedy troupe known as The Mighty Carson Art Players came to light. And then I start searching around for who these people were, and come up pretty dry.

Here's what I know: From their involvement with the Tea Time Movie sketches, both Carol Wayne and Teresa Ganzel were members. There was also an actor named Fred Holliday who was part of the troupe; he hosted an ABC daytime show called The Girl In My Life (sort of a 70's rehash of Queen For a Day, with just as much schmaltz), and a few commercials for some auto parts company (maybe AC/Delco) with character actor Norm Alden. But who were the others?

The answer is basically that there was no actual troupe of people called The Mighty Carson Art Players. It was a way of billboarding at the top of the show that Johnny was doing a sketch later during the proceedings. The actors they hired to be in said sketch were the actors they hired for that sketch. There was no roster from which they were drawn. That said, there were performers who were used over and over like the ones you mention.

When Johnny's show as based in New York, they drew from the local talent pool there and after he moved the show to Burbank in 1972, they used actors from out here. The two Matinee Ladies you mention were probably on more than anyone else and I would guess the most frequent male player was Peter Leeds. But I don't know of any way to formally figure this out.

Originally, the Matinee Ladies in the Tea Time Movie Sketch were whatever good-looking lady was otherwise booked as a guest on that night's show. I remember Paula Prentiss doing it a number of times. At some point, Carol Wayne did it and Johnny and his writers seized on the comedy potential from a lady who had prominent breasts and an odd, clueless way of delivering whatever lines she was given. So Carol did it regularly until her death in 1985.

As I recall, once he thought enough time had passed, Johnny brought Art Fern back and did the sketch with a couple of different ladies before my pal Teresa Ganzel got the gig. I wrote about her back here but here's an excerpt for those of you too lazy to click…

Teresa had become a recurring occupant of Johnny's guest chair. She had first turned up there in 1983 when she was on to promote a situation comedy on which she was then a regular — Teachers Only, which not coincidentally was produced by Carson Productions. Johnny found her amusing and charming, and had her back several times. She fit the eye candy requirement but was smart-funny as opposed to stupid-funny.

Finally, around late '86, they tried her out as the Matinee Lady and not only kept her in that esteemed position but began using her in other sketches, including a very funny series where she and Johnny played salesfolks on a channel not unlike the Home Shopping Network and another batch where they played TV news co-anchors.

Someone wrote once to ask me why Johnny even bothered to do the Mighty Carson Art Players sketches. They were obviously a lot more work than just doing another segment chatting with some guest. Here is my understanding, gleaned from talking with several of Johnny's writers and also his long-time producer, Fred DeCordova…

Johnny grew up in an era when the highest achievement a TV comedian could reach was his own show in prime-time…like The Red Skelton Show (for which Johnny briefly wrote) or The Jack Benny Program. That was his goal and he got it in 1955. The Johnny Carson Show failed and after it was axed, Johnny became determined to get another shot at it and to not make the same mistakes. Everything he did thereafter career-wise was done with an eye towards getting another prime-time variety series.

When he took on the game show Who Do You Trust? on ABC, it was with the thought that succeeding there would improve his profile well enough to segue to a prime-time program on ABC. Then when he was offered The Tonight Show, he saw that as a better route to a better network's prime-time schedule. The idea was that he would do The Tonight Show for a few years and then tell NBC that he wanted to give it up for the series he really wanted to do. Towards that end, he insisted his Tonight Show regularly feature sketches with him playing characters.

That was how The Mighty Carson Art Players came to be. His predecessor Jack Paar never did sketches or played characters but this was Johnny's way of reminding all that he could do more than deliver a monologue and then sit behind a desk. He also at times insisted the Tonight Show promotions and the show's opening include clips not of him behind that desk but playing characters in sketches.

If I'd ever been able to interview Carson, one of the questions I would have asked him is "At what point did you realize that going from The Tonight Show to a prime-time variety hour would be a step down, not up, and a risky one?" I would guess it was some time after the move to California but I'm really not sure. I am though pretty sure that he came to that realization. He could do The Tonight Show for huge bucks and stardom for the rest of his performing career or he could risk it all on that prime-time dream and perhaps end that career in failure. Sometimes, following your longtime dream is not always your best alternative.

From that point on, the sketches were a part of the show just because they were a part of the show…and maybe because Johnny wanted to remind people that he was a comedian hosting a talk show and not someone like Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas who were talk show hosts, pure and simple. So the Mighty Carson Art Players weren't a troupe of comic actors. They were Johnny's way of reminding the world and maybe himself that he was capable of more than the monologue and interviewing the starlet of the week.

I received a nice donation the other day from a friend I haven't spoken to in an awful long time…and by "awful long time," I mean the previous century. I can't tell you why we haven't spoken since then. I know we didn't have a fight or any sort of disagreement. I just didn't get around to calling him and he didn't get around to calling me. If I had called him in recent times, I wouldn't have gotten him since his phone number has changed but he was nice enough to include the current one in a note accompanying his donation — "just in case you ever want to catch up."

So I gave him a call and we caught up, which was mostly a matter of him catching me up on what he's been up to these years. I started to tell him some of what had happened with me but he said, of the first few things I tried to tell him, "I know…I read your blog." It had never occurred to me he might be among those following this silly thing. I think we're going to get together once our respective schedules unclog a bit.

What I was going to write here before I spotted his donation was how pleased I am to see donations from folks I don't know. I guess I thought of my "readership" as the people who write in but it isn't. It's apparently a pretty substantial percentage and that pleases me. But it's also pleasing to see a donation from someone I know…and today it was especially pleasing to get some bucks from someone I know but haven't heard from in way too long a time. When it's the right someone I haven't heard from in way too long a time, that's way better than money.

This happened back in January of 2022 and maybe you heard about it then but I didn't. Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster were starring in The Music Man on Broadway and it came time for one of those regular pitches to donate cash to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, a most worthy charity. If you go to Broadway much, you've heard these fund-raising speeches at the end of more than a few shows. On this occasion, they decided to auction off a pair of gloves signed by Mr. Jackman and Ms. Foster and it was a very entertaining and spirited round of bidding…

But that was nothing compared to the previous November when they auctioned off Jackman's straw hat…

Gee, I wish Nicole Kidman was reading my blog this week.

A good A.M. to you all but especially to those of you who've clicked on my little banner to donate any amount — small, big or damned generous. I'm going to hector you for a few more days and then not ask again 'til next September. Yesterday, you might have noticed that this blog had a brief outage. The reason it was brief was that the very expensive hosting company I pay to host this site of mine caught the tech problem and fixed it even as I was connecting on the phone to their support department.

That kind of super service is what I'm paying for and, by extension, what you lovely donors are paying for. If I was still with either of my first two hosting companies, you would not be reading this because this blog would still be offline and I'd be waiting for someone there to call me back. Longtime followers of this blog may remember those instances.

If you came here today seeking my "hot take" on the possible/maybe/looming progress in ending the Writers Guild strike, I'm sorry to disappoint you. In the immortal words of Sergeant-of-the-guard Hans Schultz…

Well, I do know enough to be cautious about what's being leaked to the press. I know this because — and I think it's okay to reveal this now — back in the even-longer-than-this-one Writers Guild Strike of 1988, one of my contributions to the WGA effort was planting stories in one of the two industry trade papers of the time. (They were Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety and they used to be on paper and come in the mail five days a week. They're now both websites with considerably less influence on the business.)

I never planted lies. I planted the truth spun the way the WGA hoped it would be spun. As negotiations dragged on — or didn't happen at all — the Guild's then-president George Kirgo would tell me what to plant. This was a tactic that surprised no one as we all knew the Producers were doing the same…and with more clout to get things reported the way they wanted them reported.

I would phone up a reporter whose name I do not recall and who I never met in person. He had phoned me a couple of times for help with pieces he was writing that touched on the comic book industry. That was how I knew him.

That was how I became his "Deep Throat" except that we never met at 1 o'clock in the morning in a parking garage and I would never be played by Hal Holbrook. But I'd phone him with a tip and while I never told him I was tipping at the request of a WGA official, I never dissuaded him from his assumption that I wasn't. He usually printed whatever we wanted printed pretty much the way we wanted it printed. At the very least, it balanced what the A.M.P.T.P. forces were planting.

I have no knowledge if that's going on now…but we also have no knowledge as to who (if anyone) is tipping various reporters off that a settlement is imminent. I hope it is but because of my little spy/snitch activities, I'm firmly in the "I'll believe it when there's a formal announcement" camp. If you don't like having your emotions feeling like they're on Space Mountain at Disneyland, it's a safer place to be.

There may still be time to have the '88 strike remain the longest Writers Strike ever but it's not likely. Even if they reach a settlement today, by the time the whole guild could vote to ratify, the current labor action may set the record. The '88 strike was 153 days and I think this one currently stands at 144.

Here's a policy I have that has saved you all a lot of frustration. Every so often, someone I know writes, phones or informs me at some gathering that they're starting a blog. Naturally, they want a plug 'n' link on this blog to drive traffic to their blog and there's a good chance that I will comply…with one condition. I tell them, "I'll link to you after your twelfth post" — or I may give a different number but it's usually between ten and twenty.

"Let me know when you reach that number," I tell them and they're quite pleased and then I never hear from them again. They lose interest or suddenly can't find the time after post #6 or #7. Whatever the reason, I don't have to link to it and you don't waste your time clicking over to what turns out to be an abandoned, moribund blog. No, don't thank me. Just click on the banner below.

Here's a great "then and now" look at Las Vegas, the "then" being 1988, which is about the time I began visiting that town an average of "all the time." It was, for me, a magical place for many reasons. Here are some of them in no particular order…

I was pretty adept at card-counting in Blackjack — a short term skill which I learned, did for a few years and then gave up forever. I wasn't like some counters who played 24/7 and intensely tried to rack up as many bucks as possible before the casinos got hip and barred them. I was only "backed off" (told to go play elsewhere) once and that wasn't even a time I was winning due to counting. I'd play 'til I was a few hundred ahead but still looked like a guy who was just lucky…the kind who'd give it all back when he kept playing. I just didn't give it back. I always went home in the positive.

I had my first really good, practical laptop computer so whenever I gave up Blackjacking for that trip, I could just stay in my room and write scripts. It was kinda fun to work, untethered to a normal get-up-in-the-morning, work-until-night schedule. I ate, slept and wandered around Vegas whenever I felt like doing those things.

It was cheap. Food then in Vegas was cheap and shows were cheap. In 1991, expert magician Lance Burton opened one of the best shows I've ever seen at the Hacienda Hotel. It was $15.00 and I saw it many, many times. Hotel rooms were also cheap but because of all my Blackjack playing, I had plenty of "comps" to stay in different hotels for nothing. And to get to and from the city on Southwest Airlines was like taking the bus both in terms of frequent departure times and cost.

I had other reasons for visiting Vegas but I'll save them for a follow-up post. Right now, here's the video. It starts with a look at Bob Stupak's Vegas World, the tackiest hotel-casino on the strip. The interior of it looked like it had been decorated by a ten-year-old Star Trek fan and Mr. Stupak made all his employees — even the Asian and Hispanic ones — wear these badges that said, "Kiss me, I'm Polish." I miss that kind of place in Las Vegas…