God, the internet is so amazing.

I just got back from work — “Ten Things” is shooting again, and I’m awfully glad, and not just because it’s a job I like.

Well, I didn’t “just” get back from work. It’s been two hours, and I’ve hugged the kids and dog and my wife, and then hugged a couple of martinis, and now I’m hugging your comments.

This is Monday night, by the by.

Debby, that’s amazing that you sent a note. Folks, I was driving back from San Diego, good shows and a great city, and a good breakfast and good coffee, and the 5 freeway was a little sterile, so I got off — somewhere — to try the coast highway, and stopped at Debby’s cafe and immediately knew I should’ve had breakfast there. It just looked perfect. I got a coffee to go, and she and I chatted, and a couple of other folks who worked there. It’s right near Camp Pendleton, and they have a flag in the window, so they know who really counts in Southern California, and it’s one of those places where the second you walk in you think, “Okay, this place knows what a grit is.” A guy was eating bisquits and gravy (or very old eggs with very old cheese), but boy, it looked great. Debby, you’ve got a deal. If I can ever find the place I pulled off again, and your town isn’t Brigadoon (and just appears in the mist every hundred years), it would be a pleasure. You can buy me a mean corned beef hash (well done) with poached eggs (not well done) and rye toast (any way it comes out), and Cholula hot sauce. The only caveat is that I get to buy your other friends a breakfast. Then, perhaps, we can all repair to a local publican and toast the fellas who train so hard nearby to protect us.

Scott, (That would be Scott number two, I guess), you’re right about the Stooges, but my wife — whom I love, and who is right to have gotten a new TV… I think — didn’t know that the new one doesn’t have a built-in VCR. I have two dozen old (really old, uncirculated Stooges stuff) videos, and I said, “But now the boys and I can’t watch our Stooges videos,” and she had roughly the same amount of sympathy as Osama Bin Laden when someone said, “You do know a lot of innocent people will be killed, right?”

So here’s what happened Sunday.

I saw a couple of football games on our gigantic, new TV, which is so clear you can see pimples from junior high. But then I turned on “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and that wonderful story, so well told, was on, and I saw the last half hour, and it moved me the same way it has on so many much smaller TV’s over the years.

I trust completely — and that’s not lip service; I mean completely, completely — the worthy voices since who have said it’s not full or valid for this or that reason, or told from only the white perspective. But to me it stands forever as a great piece, and it’s a perfect American snapshot of where we were, and anyone who isn’t thrilled by the great writing and acting and directing just isn’t watching and listening.

Spencer Tracy may be my favorite actor. Like Johnny Carson in comedy, he made it look easy. He was only sixty-seven when it was shot, but he came from a harder-living school of life, and looked much older; and, indeed, died just 17 days after shooting ended. But he was never better, and the scene with his big speech, which must be ten minutes, just him speaking and acting alone, is a high-water mark of thoughtful, reflective work.

Sometimes younger actors say, “Oh, I don’t know this fellow or that one,” or, “I haven’t seen ‘Casablanca’,” or I don’t know Katharine Hepburn,” but I always say: That’s like a heart surgeon saying, “Oh, I haven’t been to medical school.”

Tracy had the best acting advice, which I learn again and again: “Just say the words, and don’t bump into the furniture.”

The thing about that movie that is so huge to me, though, has nothing to do with the story it tells, nothing to do with the racial moment in the United Stated (the mid-sixties), nothing to do with the way the writing and the acting and the simmering move the characters.

It’s the acting of such great actors. Of course, the story is the hugest component; none of the actors would be standing in that particular place in those clothes looking at each other in it hadn’t been for that story.

But such GOOD acting. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, of course. Over thirty years of such great starring work, a lot separately and a lot together. Hepburn was, to me, best in her deeply manipulative Queen in “The Lion in Winter” — the perfect match for Peter O’Toole. Spencer Tracy was so good in “Captain’s Courageous”, but did, I think, the best “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” I’ve ever seen, a part that had so little special effects or makeup or lighting (enough, but just the right amount), and really was just the astonishing work of an actor becoming very, very bad before our eyes, and changing back again. This guy was so good no one even noticed.

Then, of course, he and Hepburn fell in love. He was married and didn’t get divorced, but their love was so important and obvious, and carried them both through the rest of their lives and work, in great movies like “Adam’s Rib” and “Woman of the Year”.

Right up until their last, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”. Hard living had caught up to him, I guess, and he almost couldn’t get insured, and you can see every time she looks at him in it, she knows on some level they’re saying goodbye to each other. He died just those two weeks after it.

Beah Richards was so, so good. Good acting really moves us all, doesn’t it? I’m a writer, and I have more respect and awe for good directing than I can say, and all the craft aspects of movie and TV work are essential to make the work sing, but, in the end, it’s the acting that takes us all away; and that’s probably the way it should be.

Sidney Poitier was terrific, a great actor who did so many different things, but certainly stepped into the right cultural moment not just for himself and Hollywood, but for the country as well.

PERHAPS THIS WILL WORK OUT: As I’m typing this, my office is even more cluttered than usual, because I’ve moved our old, Stooges-playing, VCR loading TV in here. My wife said, “TV’s don’t even play VCR’s anymore,” but I’m not throwing the tapes out. I have old interviews with Moe, and the three of them laughing at nothing at all, and I’ll keep this silly old TV here until someone shows me how plug the damn thing in. Oh. I guess I can plug it in.

REMEMBER: IF YOU WALKED OUT OF BED TODAY, AND FOLKS YOU HAD A CUP OF COFFEE WITH KNEW HOW TO GET IN TOUCH… FOLKS, THE GAME’S STILL PLAYING, AND DON’T THROW OUT YOUR TAPES.