R.I.P., PAUL HENNING. The man behind The Beverly Hillbillies and (with Jay Sommers) Green Acres has died at age 93. Well, there's another giant of the 20th Century I'll never get to meet.

Hillbillies was a nice little show, for the most part Li'l Abner Lite, with unfailingly honorable, decent hill folk vs. deranged and greedy slickers. But in Milburn Drysdale's insane maneuverings (as when he tried to get Jethro out of the draft by dressing him as a Nazi) one detected a more maniacal gleam, which came fully out in Green Acres.

As I previously observed, Green Acres was genuine American surrealism: Oliver always refusing to accept the rubes' logic, and the rubes' logic always triumphing over -- well, logic. A pig, with the homely name Arnold Ziffel, is treated as if his gruntings were conversation -- and even prophecies. I remember with astonishment Eb dejectedly reporting that Arnold has predicted snow in July (an admission which, as Arnold only ever goes "oink oink," Eb could have easily evaded) -- and Eb's subsequent joy when it does snow in July, proving the pig right after all! This is the intersection of vaudeville and existentialism that interested Beckett, and you don't have to be an intellectual to enjoy it -- fun for the whole family, as they say. I nod in gratitude to the great man's shade.