Yesterday I submitted to anesthesia and the ministrations of a professionally distinguished group of people in a Prague clinic. They all wore lab jackets and spoke softly and were gentle with me, and they had soothing music (including the greatest hits of Edith Piaf) playing all the while. In Berlin I was crashing around 2:30 am or 3 am but in Prague I’ve been waking up between 1:30 am and 3 am, so I was fairly whipped and actually dozed off during the procedure. I don’t think I’m alone in having a problem with pain. I was feeling a tiny bit woozy when I got back to the apartment (Liliova 946/14) around 4:30 or 5 pm, and so I took a half-hour nap which lasted until 1:30 am. And then I woke up. It’s now Thursday, 1.13, at 7 am.

Apologies to the ghost of the great Sid Caesar for not posting sooner about his passing, which happened earlier today. (Or yesterday if you’re in Prague, where it’s currently 5:10 am on Thursday.) A comic genius of live television who peaked between ’50 and ’57 (or from the ages of 28 to 35), Ceasar was a mountain, a creative collossus and a reflector and definer of the Eisenhower zeitgeist. “In the’50s Caesar was to comedy what Marlon Brando was to drama,” it says on a blurb of Ceasar’s 2004 autobiography. Ceasar was “the ultimate…the very best sketch artist and comedian that ever existed,” said Carl Reiner. Mel Brooks, who worked as one of Caesar’s sketch writers, called him “a giant…maybe the best comedian who ever practiced the trade.”

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