I'm having computer problems today and the tech support person I got on the Dell Tech Support line was about as useful as a map of the East Wing of the White House. On top of that, I have a vital deadline…so I won't be posting much (if anything) here the rest of the day. Sorry…I'll make it up to you tomorrow.

I'm all for this…

In case you didn't see how the ridiculously-long World Series Game ended the other night, here it is.  We pick things up in the bottom of the eighteenth inning.  That's right: I said eighteenth inning…

Here from 1978 is one of the earliest made-for-cable-TV programs…Orson Welles at the Magic Castle. The special — and I apologize that the video isn't clearer — was largely assembled by a magician named Abb Dickson. Mr. Dickson appears a lot in it and also kinda stunt-doubles Orson Welles in the opening and some other shots. It's Welles' voice in those shots but the visual is Dickson made up like Welles.

The other magicians featured in it are Kuda Bux, Ger Copper, Albert Goshman, Jay Marshall and Peter Pit, a couple of whom I saw perform at the Castle when I joined in 1980. Kuda Bux, who was probably the best known of the performers, retired shortly after this but came out of retirement to do one more performance a couple years later. As I wrote in this blog post, it turned out to be his last performance and a friend and I happened to be in the audience to witness it.

One of the more interesting things about the video — and a reason I'm frustrated that it isn't clearer — is that it's a chance to see what the Castle looked like in 1978. I think it had changed a lot before I joined but it's always been an amazing place full of mesmerizing curios and magic history and…well, it's just a neat place to be able to take people.

I know it's changed a lot since I joined and it's about to change a lot more. On private member forums, there are debates as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing — and I don't know enough about the plans to have a firm opinion on them. But the physical real estate there has a new owner and he's planning to invest a lot in upgrades which, no one disagrees, the place needs. The building was built in 1909.

I love the Castle as it's been for the 45 years of my membership and I expect to love it after all the renovations and transformations. What I haven't loved is 45 years of hearing every so often that the Castle was doomed, the Castle was getting evicted, the Castle needed money desperately, etc. Actually, to get technical, what I joined was not The Magic Castle. It was The Academy of Magical Arts, a professional organization/club which uses the Magic Castle as its clubhouse.

Disputes with the previous landlord led to worries every few years that the A.M.A. would be evicted from its clubhouse and would have to find a new place just as wonderful — which was and is, of course, impossible. At the Magic Castle, sawing a woman in half or escaping from a locked trunk was possible. Relocating was not. If the new ownership and all the makeovers that go with it can stabilize things, I'll be a happy member. And despite the Castle's oft-suspended rule against cameras inside, there are plenty of videos like this one to remind us what it used to be like. My thanks to Andy Rose for letting me know this was online…

Here's my buddy Charlie Frye doing the kind of thing my buddy Charlie Frye does so well…

Paul Krugman explains that no, despite what Donald Trump is screaming, Ronald Reagan didn't love tariffs.

Yes, my friends…we're "only" 275 days from next year's Comic-Con International in San Diego, so this is traditionally when I finally unpack from the previous Comic-Con International in San Diego. It will take place, like it says above, July 23-26 of 2026 and there's a Preview Night on July 22.  Preview Night is a fine time to get access to the Exhibit Hall full of merchants and to spend all the money you planned to spend over the full length of the con and then not have any funds left to eat for the rest of the event.

We recently had the Returning Registration sale in which folks who had paid admissions to the last con had the chance — and chance it was — to maybe purchase badges for the next one. I dunno how many tickets were available but they were all gone in a little under 90 minutes. Next up is Open Registration when anyone who wants to take a stab at it can get into the online lottery to buy badges. That takes place this year on November 15 and if you're thinking of trying, I highly suggest you study this page well in advance.

There are other ways to score badges. There are press and professional badges. There's a program where you volunteer to do some work for the con and earn a badge. Info on that program is here. You can also spend the bucks to become a Legend Member of the Comic-Con Museum and that comes with a badge, though it's a little pricey. There are a few others. (One I don't recommend is buying your badge from some online ticket resale deal offer. Among other problems with that is that the badge you buy may turn out to be bogus.)

To answer my most-asked questions about the convention: I expect to be there — I haven't missed one yet — and I don't know if my B.F.F. and collaborator Sergio Aragonés will be present.  Also, I intend to break my previous record of panel-hosting by, at the 2026 con, hosting all the panels — every single one of them. Even if there are thirty panels happening simultaneously, as there will be, I will find a way to host every one of them.  Also, to dispense with another oft-asked question: I have no idea how or when you'll be able to secure a hotel room and/or parking space and what you should do if/when you can't.

I will also be present for and hosting panels at WonderCon Anaheim, which takes place March 27-29 next year. Tickets for this con, which is run by the same fine folks who run Comic-Con in San Diego, are not as difficult to get.  Matter of fact, you can get yours right this very nanosecond by going to this page.  WonderCon is not as big or as overwhelming as its San Diego counterpart but some people like their cons to be a bit smaller and more manageable. I always enjoy both these conventions and hope to see you at one or both.

I was going to move indefinitely off the subject of "September" as performed by Earth, Wind & Fire but eight of you sent me the link to this cover version of it.  The group is Leonid & Friends, fronted by Leonid Vorobyev, and his band specializes in offering — I'm cut-and-pasting from their website there — "the timeless music of Earth, Wind, and Fire, Blood Sweat and Tears, Steely Dan, Tower Of Power, The Ides of March, Chaka Khan, Deep Purple, The Brecker Brothers, Stevie Wonder, and the Black Russian band."

In other words, they're a "cover band," in this case from Russia. They received some attention because some of them hail from the Ukraine and because they do some real good cover versions of songs that a lot of us love. They're currently on tour. In fact, they're currently in California and will be performing in Los Angeles this Sunday night. If it were another night in a different theater and my walking was better, I might go.

What I find interesting about this video — and almost all of the cover versions of "September" I've come across — is that they don't deviate much from the original version by Earth, Wind & Fire. I think that's because part of the appeal of "September" was the arrangement; not so much what they sang but how they sang it and arranged it. Some cover bands wring exciting variations out of the songs they cover, often modernizing them in fun ways. "September" seems to be a recording that no one wants to — or thinks they can — improve upon…

Here's a short piece on the story behind Earth, Wind and Fire's recording of "September." It unlocks the secret of what "Ba-di-ya" means and — spoiler alert! — it turns out if doesn't mean anything. Thanks to Gary Dick for sending me this link.

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

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

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

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

Kamden Spies wrote to ask…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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