Some of you probably check in with this blog several times a day, waiting for me to feature a group of ukulele players performing the song, "Build Me Up, Buttercup." I never want to disappoint my readers so…

I've become a fan of the Jimmy Awards and you're probably wondering what those are and who the hell is Jimmy? Well, the Jimmy Awards are The National High School Musical Theatre Awards and they've been doled since 2009. The goal is to elevate theatre arts education in schools and reward excellence in student performance. So every year, they put on this one-performance show honoring and showcasing performers from high school productions. A great many of those on that stage soon wind up on Broadway stages.

In these annual shows, they do a lot of medleys where a number of kids perform songs from different shows. The numbers don't fit together and that's kind of the point. Here's an example and I'll link you to some others in the coming days. And, oh yes! You probably want to know who Jimmy is or was. It's a "was." It was James M. Nederlander of the Nederlander Theatrical Company that owns nine Broadway houses and many theaters around the country…

The no-one-saw-it-coming death of Eric Bauza has hit a lot of people, in and outside the animation industry, hard. That's in part because the man was so accessible and friendly. He said yes to every event, every panel, every request for his participation. When I asked him to appear on the Cartoon Voices panel at Comic-Con last July, it was an instant yes and he acted like I was doing him a favor. What he did professionally, he did very well and he was delighted to demonstrate his skills for anyone and everyone.

I'm getting questions about the future of the many characters he voiced in recent years. One was from a reporter who seems to want to sensationalize the matter into an article that could be headlined with the highly clickable question, "Is this the end of Bugs Bunny?" No, no and no. The deaths of Greg Burson and Joe Alaskey, who had those jobs before Eric, didn't harm Bugs for one carrot-chomping second.

More to the point: If the passing of Mel Blanc didn't mean the end of such beloved, highly-merchandisable characters as Bugs and Daffy, the death of any given Blanc imitator won't. I can think of more than a dozen actors who've been Bugs and/or Daffy and/or Porky and/or Tweety and/or all the rest, post-Mel. Unless and until A.I. claims the job — which I sure hope will never happen but probably will — there will always be a job for a soundalike and those who wanna fill the position.

And most likely, none of the human beings involved will be the voice of Bugs Bunny. They'll, at most, be a voice of Bugs Bunny: One of several. Having a deep bench makes it possible for each person put in charge of a Bugs project to select the actor he or she thinks cam give them the Bugs voice they want. It also makes it difficult (if not impossible) for any one of them to demand markedly-above-scale fees. Mel could but he was Mel.

As I must have written here before but am too tired to go find, there was a time years ago when the Warner Brothers Cartoon Studio, such as it was, was run by a lovely, long-suffering film editor named Hal Geer. And if you're wondering why a film editor was in that position, this was a time when the primary Bugs Bunny output was old Bugs Bunny — specials made up by pasting-together vintage clips with a minimum of new footage as the glue. Mel was still alive and his services were necessary for that glue.  He did not come cheap.

Hal, who was always almost about to hire me to script said glue, would invite me to lunch with him at a now-defunct Burbank restaurant called the Kosherama. It was a two-menu eatery — one for Chinese Food, one for Jewish Deli grub, both darn tasty.  Every single time Hal and I met there, the producer Ray Stark was at the next table, sometimes with Neil Simon. They'd be talking about hiring Walter Matthau, who wanted way too much money. Hal would be complaining about how much Mel Blanc commanded.

Me?  I thought Mel was a bargain at any amount. And after all, he was receiving bupkis when Warners monetized "What's Opera, Doc" for the umpteen jillionth time. Upcharging for his new services was how Mel made back the money he wasn't being paid for those reruns.  He was not exactly starving widows and orphans with his demands.

Once he passed, there was this group of a dozen-or-more guys filling his shoes, some surprisingly well but never to the total exclusion of the others.  Noting the "too soon" deaths of Burson and Alaskey — both of whose funerals I spoke at — some are now suggesting that if not a curse, voicing Bugs (et al) is such a taxing, demanding job that it has now claimed another victim.  I think that's nutty.  They, like Eric Bauza, died for the same reasons lots of people die before they're 90+.  Those reasons include not taking proper care of one's self.  I don't know that Eric did or didn't but either way, that's a mistake lots of people make, including many doing their dream jobs.

Whether I know you or not, please take good care of yourself.  Find yourself a good physician and see that person whenever something about you doesn't feel right and from time to time, when nothing seems to be wrong.  If you're not going to do this for your own well-being, do it for those who love you and would like to have you in their lives for as long as possible.

When Hal Geer finally got around to making actual offers to me to write those Bugs Bunny cut-and-paste specials, I was too busy to accept.  The job passed on to a pal of mine named Jack Enyart.  I'm not blaming this on working on Bugs specials either but I spoke at Jack's funeral too, many years before he should have been taken from us.

I don't imagine that a lot of people who come to this website are enthusiastically voting Republican in the current election. But just in case there are some of you, Jon Stewart has just made the perfect case why you should not do this…

And if you need further convincing, watch the endless, 24/7 reports posted by Ben Meiselas on The Meidastouch Network and Michael Popok on Legal AF. Those two gents and others on those channels have terrific track records at telling us what's going on…and Mr. Popok's predictions of how court cases will go are uncanny and accurate.

Yeah, it's been confirmed.  Hypertensive Cardiovascular Disease.  Damn. Here's a better photo of him…

Eric Bauza is — and maybe I have to say was — a hugely-talented Canadian voice actor who quickly became one of the most in-demand performers.  He even landed the plum job of speaking for the major Warner Brothers characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Tweety. His Facebook page has this message allegedly from his family…

Eric Bauza, Emmy Award-winning voice actor and the modern voice of iconic Looney Tunes characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, along with dozens of other beloved cartoon characters, has passed away suddenly. More details to come.

That's all I know. Well, I know he was a hit on the Cartoon Voices panels I recently hosted at Comic-Con, where the above photo was taken.  And I know we talked about grabbing lunch one of these days. I also know he made appearances at some conventions this weekend.

And I know this comes as a shock to everyone who knew him and knew his work and that a lot of people online think this is some kind of hoax. I'd sure be pleased if it turns out to be.

And speaking of Wicked and politics…just after I reposted the video of Wicked cast members urging you to vote in the 2020 election, I stumbled across this — and I can't believe I never saw it before. It's Kristin Chenoweth singing a repurposed song from Wicked to urge voting for Kamala Harris in the last presidential election. How did I miss this?

This is labeled as a special dispatch from the land of Oz but it's also a dispatch from October of 2020 when COVID was still keeping some of us home and when it seemed imperative to vote against the Wicked Witch named Donald Trump. I posted it here on October 7, 2020 and I just like it as a piece of performance art.

It gathers everyone they could find who'd been in a production of Wicked — and no, I'm not sure who "they" are or were. The message is to register to vote and vote early, perhaps by mail and it may be too late to do that if you don't already have a ballot. But just make sure to vote. That's the message. And don't let predictions of a Blue Tsunami make you think it's not necessary to make the effort; that others are already dispatching that Wicked Witch…

I'm getting — and I assume I will continue to get all week — many text messages, e-mails and paper-type flyers warning me of the disaster that will result if this certain candidate wins or that certain proposition does or does not pass. I think my attitude towards these alerts is along the lines of "If it was so vital that I know this before I voted, why didn't you tell me this before I voted?"

None of these dire catastrophes became apparent in the last few days. The ones that warn me away from a certain candidate emphasize that he or she has always been the kind of person I shouldn't vote for.

There was also one phone call in which a recorded message that was obviously an A.I. voice warned me that if California doesn't elect Republicans, Donald Trump will never send us any federal money to help with any disasters in our state. That may be so but doesn't Trump claim if the votes had been counted honestly, he would have carried California in a landslide two years ago? So now he wants to punish all those people who voted for him and maybe even donated to his campaign…do I have that right?

I'm curious to see how many ballots were cast when. It's possible some candidates and propositions already have enough votes that the ballots still to be cast don't matter.

If you dwell in or around where I dwell (i.e., Los Angeles), you might want to keep an eye on PlayTodayLA, a website that tracks what plays and musicals are playing or musicalizing in and around our area. Lately, I've missed some promising-sounding productions because I didn't hear about them until it was too late.

Donald Trump, who is too busy with National Security matters to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against the B.B.C., is out giving campaign speeches. I'm trying to tune in on some of them because I need to know which Republican men have great asses.

Since we were in a Julie Andrews mood here lately, I thought I'd treat you to this video of her 1995 Broadway musical version of the film Victor/Victoria.  It was directed, as was the movie, by her husband Blake Edwards and it had Michael Nouri in the role James Garner played on screen, Tony Roberts in the Robert Preston part and Rachel York imitating Lesley Ann Warren — who I thought stole the film. Shortly after seeing the show on Broadway, I met Ms. Warren and she asked me how her replacement had done. I thought for a second and told her, "It's kind of like you're Elvis and she's a real good Elvis impersonator."

This video was shot at the Marriott Marquis Theater in New York during a performance so that's genuine audience reaction you're hearing. Actually, I believe they shot several performances and then edited them together. It was done with robotic cameras on robotic arms which swung out over the audience and the reason I know that is because my wonderful friend Brinke Stevens and I were in one of those audiences.

There was an announcement before the show assuring us the robotics would not get in the way of our enjoyment (they didn't) and that the show was being recorded for Japanese television and the video would never be seen in America. A few years later of course, it was.

We thought it was a pretty good show but as some of you may remember, there was a brouhaha when the Tony nominations came out that year and it only received one — for Ms. Andrews, not for the show or anyone else in it. Ms. Andrews was incensed and at a performance soon after, she announced, "I have searched my conscience and my heart and find that I cannot accept this nomination, and prefer instead to stand with the egregiously overlooked."

The "snub" (if you want to call it that) kind of shocked the Broadway community. It had been expected that the nominees for Best Musical that year would be: Rent, Big, Victor/Victoria and Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. Instead, Victor/Victoria wasn't nominated and neither was Big. The other two slots went to two musicals that had already closed after short runs — Swinging on a Star (96 performances) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (37).

The producers of Victor/Victoria were upset because since their show had not been nominated for Best Musical and Julie was taking the stand she did, they couldn't have a number from their show on the Tony telecast — usually good for business. The producers of that telecast were also upset. They were sure that having Julie Andrews performing a number from that show would have been good for ratings. Nathan Lane, who hosted that show, did turn up on stage dressed as Julie Andrews and announced she couldn't be there that night because she was hosting a telethon for the Egregiously Overlooked. The Best Musical award that year went to Rent and though Julie's name stayed on the ballot for Best Actress in a Musical, the award went to Donna Murphy in a revival of The King and I.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy…

Here's the trailer for the National Tour of Boop! The Musical. They're in Cincinnati tonight, Saturday and Sunday and then it's on to St. Louis. Thanks to Ben Varkentine for sending me this.

I briefly knew Grim Natwick, the animator credited with designing Ms. Boop when he worked at the Max Fleischer studio in 1930 — and she wasn't the only great cartoon lady he brought to life. He was later the primary animator of Snow White for Mr. Disney. I wonder what he would have made of his 1930 creation starring on Broadway almost a hundred years later…and his drawings of her on posters and playbills.

Here's Jordan Klepper doing what he does best: Finding the most clueless Trump supporters and getting them to look that way on camera…

A Halloween Special from Randy Rainbow…