Here’s another story of an innocent man, long-imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit, now freed after DNA evidence has proved he couldn’t have committed. The man in question spent 35 years behind bars. At age 54, he finally is able to begin a normal adult life.

Imagine how much worse it would have been had the victim of the crime  been murdered — and this convicted innocent man had been executed. (As may have happened in Texas.)

It’s circumstances like these that over the years turned me from someone who favored the death penalty into someone who strenuously opposes it.

Today I was delighted to have lunch with the well-known photographer Harry Langdon. Go to his website and you’ll see that Harry has a long and legendary career as a celebrity photographer. He’s done sessions for people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Foxx, Ronald Reagan, Stevie Nicks, B.B. King, and so forth. But when a mutual friend told me some months ago that her photographer was Harry Langdon, I said:

“Is he related to the Harry Langdon?”

She thought he was “the” Harry Langdon. But I was thinking of the great silent-film comedian often ranked with Keaton, Chaplin, and Lloyd:  Harry Langdon, the gifted clown who had run away to join the circus as a boy, became (briefly) one of the highest-paid stars of his era, wound down his career writing jokes for Laurel and Hardy (and, once, substituted for Laurel in an “& Hardy” film), and made a total of 96 films. That Harry Langdon.

She didn’t know. She’d never heard of that Harry Langdon.

A  few days later she emailed to say that yes, he was the son of that Harry Langdon, and would I like to have lunch with Harry Langdon, Jr?  So, today, there I was in Beverly Hills pulling mussels from their shells while discussing senior with Harry Langdon, Jr.   Lunch today was on a near par with the evening 15 years ago I spent in the company of Eleanor Keaton.   I may not care about what Tiger Woods or Lady Gaga are up to, but summoning the distant celebrity past of the silent comedy era is something I can get into.

We talked for a bit and Harry Langdon, Jr. said, “You do seem very well informed about my father.” I told him how much I love silent film comedy; how it represents a specific style of comedy that cannot be done since the introduction of sound; how I grew to love it when watching it as a small boy with my own father; how thrilled I was in college to learn of the connection between silent film comedy, vaudeville, theatre of the absurd, and existentialism (Beckett, who grew up admiring vaudevillians and clowns, based Didi and Gogo on Laurel & Hardy; Keaton’s deadpan comedy of menace is purely existential; Beckett made just one film — and it was with Keaton as the star); and how wonderful and funny an actor I thought his father was. Finally I let the subject wind down because I was afraid I was starting to come across as an obsessive. But then Harry told me where he was last night:

“I was a holiday party. At Stan Lee’s.”

“You were at Stan Lee’s holiday party?” I asked.

“You know him? He made a lot of money in comic books.”

Trying not to do a spit take, and worried again about how I was going to come off, I said, “Um… the other thing you should know about me is that I’m a huge, huge comic-book fan.”

And then that topic went on for at least several minutes.

I’m happy to report that my beloved dog Gem is not on her last legs.

The past couple of days, I’ve noticed her limping around the house. My wife and kids have noticed too. No one has been happy to see it. I called the vet all day yesterday  and despite an answering machine that said their hours on Friday were 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., no one ever answered, leaving me with a trembling dog and the worst imagined fears. The dog has been a part of the family since February 2000 and, in these parts, is famous for being my favorite member of the family. I like my whole family, but the opinion is that I like her even more.

This morning the vet’s office finally called my  cellphone and I sprang out of bed to answer, quickly dressed, and hurried the dog over. She was noticeably happy when I got her harness and leash, and delighted when I encouraged her to spring into the back of our van with my two younger kids: Generally, this means we’re going to an hours-long hike. You can imagine her canine response when I opened the back of the van a couple of miles distant and she found herself outside the building where many dogs go to die. She tried to run cowering in all four directions at once.

The vet looked her over and then decided to keep her for a while and run x-rays, and at 2:30 he reported that the x-rays showed nothing, but she had a small gouge on one paw. He gave her some shots and a painkiller and said that if the limping didn’t go away in 10 days, then it wasn’t the little gouge, it was early arthritis. All things considered, that didn’t seem so bad for a 12-year-old dog, especially when I had already envisioned all sorts of canine medical horrors. I drove back home, relieved, and I guess visibly so, because my wife gave me a hug and then decided to personally bathe the dog, which is not her forte.

Meanwhile, I ruminated on what the vet had said when I dropped off the dog as she stood there shaking and trembling and as I told him that she had been so eager to cavort around town the past two days but that I couldn’t bear the sight of her limping. His comment applied to her and seemed to presage my own future as well:  “The legs are weak,” he said, “but the head still wants to run.”

I just stumbled across the Jersey Shore Nickname Generator, which offers a salute of sorts to my old stomping grounds. My Jersey Shore name comes up as:  The Sausage Party. How did they know?

 In 1967, Mr. David Bowie (nee Jones) got his first fan letter from an American, in this case a 14-year-old girl in New Mexico whose father received a copy of Bowie’s first album from the radio station that employed him.

Mr. Bowie’s response to the girl is very sweet, and reminds us that behind the iconoclastic rock god we’ve come to know for four decades lurks the 20-year-old striver who was excited to discover a new fan on a distant continent.

Here’s the letter, which was recently discovered.

Go here.

Werner Herzog gets interviewed on KCRW’s “The Treatment.” (Thanks to Ross Kendall for letting me know about this.)  Here’s the link (and yes, there’s a downloadable podcast.) I haven’t seen “The Bad Lieutenant:  Port of Call New Orleans” yet, but I assume that like all Herzog’s other films it’s strangely compelling and somewhat badly made.

I hope the nation’s employers are finished with layoffs. But for those who, sadly, aren’t, here’s some good advice for HR managers, especially if they’re doing business in Gotham City.

Thanks to Brendan Carter for letting me know about this.

I guess I should add this to itinerary for friends and family who come to visit:  On Tuesday nights we now have porn-star karaoke.

So remember when you’re making reservations to book that extra night.

It’s almost midnight and I just came back inside from my back yard. It’s getting cold out there. I know it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and now it’s chilly outside. We could actually get snow, if the temperature drops just another 25 degrees. It is December, after all.