Here’s a joke I’ve shared with friends for years: When I die, I’ll know I’ve made it to Heaven if someone there says, “You’re just in time. We’re screening the new Buster Keaton film.”

Today, I almost got that wish. (Except without the dying part.) Someone has unearthed a different version of Keaton’s 1922 short, “The Blacksmith,” that’s a European version — one that is substantially different, with different scenes, than the ones we’ve seen.

Read the story.

Then imagine my jubilation. I can’t wait to see this restored.

Check them out here.

This week is Comic-Con. But before I get fully immersed in comic books, I thought I’d share this profile of comic writer Jack Handey (he of “Deep Thoughts”). Handey has a comic novel coming out, of which the title alone compels me (“The Stench of Honolulu”). I think I’m going to read that, and suspect at least a few of my friends might want to too. (RCR, are you listening?)

So, I own a marketing firm. One of the things we do when you’re a new client is this: We perform a search on you. Find out what we can, and how to improve it. In fact, when you call us up or email us to see about becoming a new client, in other words, even when you’re just a prospect, we do this. It just makes sense.

Which leaves me wondering why whoever it was who rebranded the professional services firm Ernst and Young didn’t do even the smallest search — even using this thing called “Google” — to see what “EY” might turn up, before they branded their client as “EY.”

What they might have found is that “EY” brings up a site for “sexy boys.”

An actor friend from New York was in town Monday night, so another theatre friend and I joined her for drinks. I proposed the Dresden Room, a favorite old haunt of mine, because it’s classic Hollywood, because neither of them had been there before, and because I thought the one friend might enjoy saying she’d had a drink where they shot so much of “Swingers” and so many other movies. Plus, I just like the joint. I only wish Marty and Elayne had been on that night, but they don’t play Mondays. (The guys who do Monday nights were pretty good, but completely lacked the wonderful kitsch and showmanship brought to the Dresden Room by Marty and Elayne for 31 years now).

Anyway, we had some drinks and a very nice time. My friend who’s local I get to see all the time, but the other one I get to see only once a year. Thoroughly enjoying myself, when the tab came, I decided just to pick it up. The drinks, plus tax and tip, ran $53.

Late this afternoon I had a drinks meeting at a lounge in Burbank. This was a business meeting, and also a friend meeting (as in, my one companion said, “Why do we always have to wait for business to socialize?” Precisely.). I ordered some appetizers, and then we ordered more appetizers, and we each had some drinks, all of it, it turned out, at happy hour prices. And it was a pretty happy hour — the end of a day successful in many ways (a good prognosis for my friend in the hospital who got released; a good bill of health on my dog, recovering from surgery; financially a good day; and more) that I was now celebrating while having this meeting, in preparation for something I’m starting in two weeks. That project is through my company, so I rightly figured I’d be picking up the tab. When I turned away, it turned out that one of my companions had already asked for the check and slipped the server his credit card. So he picked it all up. I watched as he signed it. The total: $53.

While I don’t believe in karma per se, I do believe that when you do something nice for no good reason, the next time someone does something nice for you, you tend to notice it better. And, hey, the coincidence of the dollar amount was certainly eye-catching.

Here’s something nice I’m going to do for you. Here’s Marty and Elayne. Next time you’re in town, you should check them out.

Either this is flat-out the best drink I’ve ever had, or I really needed this.

No matter what you thought of Wendy Davis’ 12-hour filibuster, I’ll bet you it wasn’t what people in Taiwan thought of it. (But hey, this makes more sense than most of what you see in the news.)

My hatred for AT&T isn’t a new thing. But they continue to invent new ways to be infuriating.

About a month ago, they summarily shut off our Internet at my company. When one of the staff called to try to get this resolved, they wouldn’t speak with her because she wasn’t me — and given that I was out, I guess they just figured we could do without Internet service until I was somehow reachable. (And doing without connectivity shouldn’t be a problem for a digital marketing firm that does all its business via the Internet, I guess.) My partner was finally able to talk them into talking to her. They claimed we hadn’t paid the bill, so she put it on a credit card and we got service restored. Needless to say, when I got in I ran a report that showed that we had indeed paid the bill, and they had cashed the check. So I got on the phone and switched everything here over to Charter — our landlines and our Internet; absolutely everything except my iPhone — and canceled AT&T. Net gain:  Internet service that is six times faster, a savings of $190 per month, and no more dealing with AT&T.

I should also add at this point that I sit on a board with an executive from AT&T. When I, or anyone else, describes our problems with AT&T, here’s what he says:  “I know.” Sometimes he adds, “I know” again, so it’s “I know, I know.” As little as that is (i.e., it’s nothing), it’s more than AT&T has ever done for me; they don’t even seem to know.

So I just came into my office today (Saturday) for a half day and found a delightful little notice from AT&T. They’re saying we owe them another $10.65. I just checked online with our bank:  We don’t. AT&T cashed our final check, and by the way, that final check was for an amount they prorated (because I canceled mid-month) to about $192. So, in other words, not only do we not owe them $10.65, by their accounting, they would now owe us $182. And I want it. Boy, do I want it. I live to see a check coming back from AT&T.

So I did what the letter instructed me to do:  call them, Monday – Friday 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., or Saturdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Well, it’s Saturday. So I figured I’d save myself or my assistant some time, and I just called them. Here’s the net result:  four minutes of wending my way through their automated phone tree. Then, after it promised to connect me with a billing agent who could resolve this, it announced that all lines were busy and I should call back another time. And it disconnected me. So now my assistant will be calling them on Monday, because no way I’m going through this again.

I thought I’d end by leaving  you with some AT&T marketing slogans that to me seem straight from Jonathan Swift in their irony:

“Fits you best.”

“Raising the bar.”

“Rethink possible.”

I especially like the last one. Because if you think something is possible for AT&T, you’d better rethink.