In 1967, there was a comedy program on British television called At Last the 1948 Show starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Marty Feldman. It was a pretty clear antecedent of Monty Python's Flying Circus and not only because it had Cleese and Chapman in its cast and on the writing staff. For a long time, At Last the 1948 Show was not rerun anywhere and so its cast members did not hesitate to repeat some of its better material on other, later shows they did.

One sketch from the show which had an amazing afterlife was The Bookshop Sketch which usually — but not always as you'll see — featured Marty Feldman. It's a very funny sketch and — consider yourself warned — you may get very sick of it if you watch all the incarnations of it in this post. I have five of them for you.

Here is The Bookshop Sketch as performed on At Last the 1948 Show by Mssrs. Feldman and Cleese. This is actually the entire episode and you may want to stop the video after the sketch is over because we have a long way to go here. The skit starts right after a short opening gag and an intro by three women, one of whom I thought at first was Carol Cleveland but it isn't…

Here is a version of The Bookshop Sketch done three years later on a 1970 Marty Feldman special for the BBC. The proprietor here is played by John Junkin…

And now we have Mr. Feldman performing The Bookshop Sketch on a 1971 episode of The Flip Wilson Show with the star of that program. This was probably the first time it was ever seen on American television and as you can see, it loses much when the bookstore proprietor is played by someone who isn't very good at playing straight man — or maybe very willing to do that…

And now we have another version of The Bookshop Sketch done for American TV and this refry of it features neither Feldman nor Cleese. Graham Chapman, who was one of the authors of the sketch in the first place, performs it with Joe Baker on The Big Show in 1980. I actually met and had lunch with Mr. Chapman the week they taped this, though he didn't mention to me what material they'd be doing.

I also knew Joe Baker a little. He was a British comedian and impressionist who some of you may remember for a series that ran on American TV but was shot in Great Britain. It was called The Kopykats and it was a troupe of impressionists (Rich Little, Frank Gorshin, George Kirby and others) practicing their craft. Baker lived for a time in America where he did cartoon voices and I met him when he did a darn good Lou Costello imitation for a character named Hula Hula on the Plastic Man series. I'll bet this version of The Bookshop Sketch would have been funnier if he'd done it as Lou Costello…

Lastly, here's John Cleese doing about half of The Bookshop Sketch in 2014 with Eric Idle. This is a reading they did as part of a long interview Mr. Idle did with Mr. Cleese at the Alex Theater in Glendale. I was among those you'll hear laughing and I would recommend that you clear an hour and seventeen minutes sometime and watch the entire interview, which you can do at this link. But for now, here's just The Bookshop Sketch — most of it…

As you can see, The Bookshop Sketch is pretty funny when performed by a bizarre little man and a stuffy, easily-irritated bookseller. It loses a lot when you don't have both of those roles properly cast.

Not long ago, I was the guest of Ike Eisenmann and Jonathan Rosen on their popular podcast, Pop Culture Retro where we talked for well over an hour and a half about stuff I've done. I enjoyed chatting with these gents though I think I'm going to start making a rule: If you want me on your podcast, you have to promise not to describe me as "legendary." These days everyone who's been around for more than about three years is "legendary" and that word is moving from being over-praise to something quite underwhelming because it's being used to describe everyone. I feel uncomfy with it by either measure.

But that's not the fault of Ike and Jonathan. They're good interviewers as you'll hear if you make it through most or even much of this long, long conversation with me…

I also recently talked for a while with Frank Morano on his late night show, The Other Side of Midnight with Frank Morano, which is heard on WABC radio. This is radio and the whole show can be heard here. I come in around 1:13:42. I enjoyed talking with Frank too and I hope at least one of these shows asks me back.

The late Kirk Alyn was, as Wikipedia will tell you, "an American actor, best known for being the first actor to play the DC Comics character Superman in live-action for the 1948 movie serial Superman and its 1950 sequel Atom Man vs. Superman, as well as fellow DC Comics characters Blackhawk from the Blackhawk movie serial in 1952, and Lois Lane's father Sam Lane in 1978's Superman: The Movie."

And he was responsible for another "first," I think…

These days when you go to any kind of comic book convention or any con that looks a little like a comic book convention, you see a lot of actors sitting behind tables, often with huge banners listing their credits. And they're sitting there, signing autographed photos for money and sometimes autographed books for money.

It's really a huge industry. There are actors who maybe haven't had many acting jobs lately who are supporting themselves and their families through such appearances. There are also actors who work steadily, maybe even on TV shows currently in production who, when they aren't on the set can be found on the convention circuit, supplementing their incomes. A couple of cartoon voice actors who are working steadily on weekdays have told me they make more money doing conventions than they do doing cartoons.

And this thought dawned on me recently: I think Kirk Alyn invented this industry.

I don't mean all by himself. I'm sure someone will send me the names of some performers who were appearing somewhere before him but he was the first one I ever saw at anything resembling a comic convention. And there were many who heard about this and said, "Hey, if he can do that, I can do that." And from there, it spread.

I don't remember when he started but he was a fixture at most cons, both large and small, that I went to in the seventies in Southern California. In 1971, he self-published an autobiography that was at least for a time only available from him at conventions. I can't find my copy at the moment but I know I have one. Somewhere.

He was always wearing a suit and tie, looking very handsome, sitting in the dealer room with a pile of his books and piles of several different photos. You had your choice of two or three of him as Superman, one of him as Blackhawk and one that was your basic actor headshot. At one con, I saw a collector present him with a Superman still he didn't have and Mr. Alyn's eyes lit up and he was very, very grateful. When next I saw him at a con, he'd had that photo mass-duplicated and it was now available for purchase.

The man was cordial and glad to talk to anyone and to pose for a photo if you happened to have a camera with them. Not every single person did in those days. And it did not seem to bother him in the slightest that most of his patrons hadn't seen his movies. That didn't seem to matter. He was a movie star (sort of) and he'd played Superman. That was plenty.

I had a few great conversations with the man and he couldn't have been nicer…and he really seemed to enjoy being asked about anything other than Superman. We talked about the actress Virginia O'Brien, to whom he was married for a time. We talked about his friend Red Skelton and how they kind of broke into show biz in Hollywood together.

The only taboo in anyone's conversations with him seemed to be "What have you appeared in lately?" His IMDB listing sure doesn't show much. His buddy Red had a TV series for nineteen years and a radio show before that and he doesn't seem to have given his buddy Kirk a job on either. Fortunately, most of those who stopped at Kirk's table were polite enough to not mention his lack of employment. I got the feeling he was waiting for someone to say, "Hey, I'm producing a TV series now and we have a part in next week's show you'd be perfect for" but that does not seem to have happened.

Slowly but surely, there were more actors at cons. I remember a San Diego one where Kirk shared his table with Robert Shayne, who'd played Inspector Henderson on The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. (Mr. Alyn had a stock reply to those who asked why he hadn't done that series and if he regretted turning it down, which is what he claimed. You could tell there were some hard feelings there but that he felt he had to be a good sport about it.)

And now, every convention seems to have actors…and if you want to know why that seems appropriate, I think it's because it started with Kirk Alyn. An actor who'd played Superman was certainly "on topic" at a comic book convention. And if he could be there and Inspector Henderson could be there, why not someone who was in one episode of a show based on a comic book? Or an episode of Star Trek? Or, eventually, anything?

Mr. Alyn passed away in 1999. If you're an actor who makes money signing your name at conventions and posing for photos, you probably owe him your gratitude. If he wasn't the first to unlock that revenue stream for actors, he certainly set down a business model that most others have since followed.

The last polls out of Iowa show Trump getting around half the vote with Nikki Haley at 20%, Ron DeSantis at 16% and everyone else down in Chris Christie territory. I suspect this is not an indication of how much G.O.P. Republicans love Trump but of how much those who want a Republican in the White House don't see any credible alternative. And I recall some pundit somewhere saying that early primaries and caucuses like this don't have much to do with who'll get the nomination but a lot to do with whose donors will stop donating.

What's happening on the ground in Iowa? I don't know how important it is in the big picture but this article by Lisa Lerer discusses how it is there right now.

Most Broadway shows make up something called either a Press Reel or a B-Roll Reel. By either name, it's a bunch of video clips of the show that reporters and reviewers can use if they make videos discussing the show. This is one that was made for the original production of the Broadway show, Wicked, when it starred Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. The show opened on Broadway in October of 2003 and shows no signs of closing. Perhaps these few moments will give us a clue as to its enduring popularity. Or maybe they'd just be fun to watch…

I continue to be amazed at the losing streak Donald Trump is on with his various court cases…and I'm curious. Are his lawyers really that bad? Or is their client forcing them to file so many obviously-doomed motions and offer so many insane positions because of a certain image he wants to maintain and even intensify with his followers?

Or is it just that he's even more crooked than we thought? Or that he's bad at not leaving evidence of crimes and at not confessing when he's trying to defend himself?

There's a great temptation to write a lot about this here but I know that, first of all, there's so much out there about it that the last thing the Internet needs is a lot of opining by that guy who does something-or-other on the Groo the Wanderer comics. At the same time, a lot of you have written that you want more political stuff on this blog. So here's what I'm gonna do…

I'm gonna write less about politics but post referrals to articles and videos that I think have something valuable to say. For instance, here's a chat with "Conservative Lawyer George Conway," as he's usually described, explaining that colloquy the other day between U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan and that Trump lawyer who talks like Percy Helton about whether the President can send Seal Team 6 out to kill his political rivals. This video might come in handy if you ever have to argue before a U.S. Circuit Judge.

Mel Brooks received an honorary Oscar at the Academy's 14th Governors Awards last Tuesday. Watch the first part, then watch the second part…

Most original musicals en route to Broadway lose a song or two along the way. At the 2007 Broadway Easter Bonnet Competition — a charity show held shortly after Monty Python's Spamalot had opened — the cast presented a number that was no longer in the show…

I've never been a big chewer of gum. I don't think I've had a piece in my mouth this century. But back when I did, my favorite was Adams Sour Orange Gum (which we talked about here) and I also sometimes bought Beech-Nut Fruit Stripe Gum…but only liked the orange, lime and lemon flavors. Back then, a package of Fruit Stripe Gum contained cherry, orange, lime, mixed fruit, and lemon.

Fortunately, there was a girl I knew at school who liked the cherry and mixed fruits flavors. So I'd buy packs and I'd give her all the cherry and mixed fruit ones. Yes, I could have just thrown them away but giving them to that girl caused her to like me a little bit.

Adams stopped their sour line in the early eighties and a later trial at bringing back Sour Apple and Sour Cherry didn't last long…and now, Fruit Stripe Gum has ended. It's not something I will miss unless I someday decide I need it to get some girl to like me a little bit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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