Jim Henson died on May 16, 1990 and a lot of people cried…including a lot of people who never got to actually meet this extraordinary man but felt like they had. I did once — I'm sure I've told that story before on this blog — and he was just as nice and smart a person as you would have thought from his many television appearances.

A few months after we lost him, all of his associates pooled their talents to create a special called The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson. It aired on CBS on November 21, 1990 and I thought they did a great job…and one that couldn't have been easy, especially for those closest to the man. Here's the whole special. It's difficult to watch the last ten minutes with dry eyes…

I used to occasionally do a post on this blog where I'd identify a "Person I'm Glad I'm Not Today" or words to that effect. Then I'd name someone who was in a whole lot of trouble with no chance of belief in sight. Well, for the record, a person I'm glad I have never been and never will be because he has nothing but misery and financial ruin ahead is Mike Lindell.

Study this man. He's showing you every single thing not to do when you're being sued for defamation including being unable to even pronounce to word "defamation." I'm also glad I'm not one of his lawyers.

Here's someone who's not Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post fact-checking a lot of the things Trump and his mob have been claiming about California. I'll quote this one paragraph…

In California, violent crime is down, and the unemployment rate is close to the national average. The state recently overtook Japan as the world’s fourth-largest economy. It has the highest number of immigrants — both legal, most of them citizens, and undocumented. But in recent years, the state has lost hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants to their homelands or to more-affordable states. Unauthorized immigrants in California remain well below the peak of nearly 3 million more than a decade ago for reasons that often have little to do with enforcement — or Trump.

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Fact-Check.org debunks the claim that protestors are paid and notes that Trump is now citing murder statistics he used to insist were "Fake News." Also, there's a graphic making the rounds of the Internet that fibs about what's in the so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill."

You can also find an awful lot of videos on YouTube where Congressfolks are arguing with members of the Trump team over what's in the bill…and the Trumpers' responses are pretty unconvincing. It's like even they don't believe what they've been told to say. This has become the norm since Trump was sworn in by placing his hand on that book he's never opened except to autograph copies for sale.

Hey, could someone who knows how to correct Wikipedia make a fix on this page about the San Diego Comic Convention? People keep writing to me to point out that it says that in 1992, there was a celebration of Jack Kirby's 75th birthday and that Phil Foglio was the host. That wasn't Phil Foglio. That was me. [UPDATE: Thanks to whoever fixed it.]

Some folks affiliated with the Peacock Network were producing these "Everything You Need to Know About Saturday Night Live" videos which take a look at each season and the backstage details — who hosted, who was fired, how the show changed, etc. They mysteriously stopped with Season 20 back in January of this year but now here's Season 21, which I remember as a season I don't much remember because my interest in the show hit a new low. Maybe you were a steady viewer this year but I wasn't…

Michael Grabowski wrote to ask me this question about Mae Questel, who did loads of cartoon voices in her day…and commercials such as for the product she's clutching in a photo below. She voiced a lot of popular characters but the two biggies would be Betty Boop and Olive Oyl. In fact, she even voiced Popeye in one short…

All your talk about Boop! lately got me wondering if you ever had the chance to direct, work with, or otherwise encounter Mae Questel. Tangentially related, can you say anything about what it's like to get voice actors to sing in character when there are musical bits? I'm thinking of the typical voice actor, such as Ms. Questel, Mel Blanc, or Dan Castellaneta, rather than professional singers hired just for the musical parts.

Nope. Never met or had any contact with Ms. Questel. When I was voice-directing and casting the Garfield and Friends cartoon show, I indulged my inner child — who usually is not that "inner" — and hired a lot of veteran voiceover specialists including Shep Menkin, Marvin Kaplan, Dick Beals, Dick Tufeld, Bill Woodson, Stan Freberg, Julie Bennett, Don Messick, Larry Storch and others. Our producer Lee Mendelson was nice enough to pick up the considerably-added expense of me going to New York to record a couple of cartoons with New York based talent including Arnold Stang and Eddie Lawrence and I tried to book Mae Questel but she was unavailable — for what reason I do not know.

Since she was based in N.Y., I didn't have much opportunity to cross paths with her. When Hanna-Barbera out here did a new Popeye show in 1978, I did get to briefly meet Jack Mercer, who voiced the sailor-man for many decades. He flew in from the East Coast several times to record shows and I think he also did some from New York. I didn't get to meet Mae Questel who reportedly auditioned to play Olive but didn't get the job. The rumor in the H-B halls was that the studio didn't want to pay the cost of dealing with (and sometimes, flying in) more than one actor who lived that far away.

Even then, Ms. Questel was pretty busy for most of her long career. She was really good at what she did, which was acting on-camera and off.

As for having voice actors sing…it's just like anything else we might ask them to do. Some of them do it real well, some don't. When a voice actor isn't an A+ singer, studios often bring in someone to be the singing voice of, for example, Yogi Bear in Hey There, It's Yogi Bear…and I always think that's a mistake. I've never had any trouble getting an acceptable singing performance out of any voice actor. Even if the voice actor isn't the greatest singer, he or she can always at least sound like the character and that's what matters.

It's been a while since I posted a video from the "Legal Eagle" but here he is, discussing the case against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland immigrant who was deported to El Salvador last March and has now been brought back to the U.S. to have the trial he should have before his deportation.  Devin Stone has an awful lot to say about this matter which may now seem like Old News because so much has happened since March — but it's still pretty important…

In my piece about the ABC's Wide World of Entertainment program, I meant to mention the two times they aired Monty Python material and wound up in court because of it. This Wikipedia page explains the matter in rather simple terms but to make it even simpler: ABC got hold of the last six episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, edited them badly, broadcast them and then lost a lawsuit. If you went to delve deeper into the matter and can understand lawspeak, here's the history of the case as written up for a law journal.

There were other interesting shows on ABC's Wide World of Entertainment. I remember one in which Dick Van Dyke visited the estate of Harold Lloyd and introduced a lot of clips from that great comedian's work. I remember one that was kind of a Battle of the Network Stars with two or more teams of quasi-celebrities competing in a treasure hunt contest. There was a special covering the premiere of the movie, Tommy. And there was this salute to Walt Disney hosted by Julie Andrews with contributions by Dean Jones, Fred MacMurray, Buddy Ebsen, Annette Funicello and others…

There was also this wonky TV adaptation of the short-lived-on-Broadway play, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman…

ABC News was then trying a series of programs they called At Ease which covered the lighter side of covering the news. ABC's Wide World of Entertainment featured at least one of them…

There was a roast of Howard Cosell with Merlin Olsen, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Alex Karras, Don Adams, Redd Foxx, Ted Knight, Steve Allen, Slappy White, Don Meredith and (of course) Don Rickles among the roasters, with David Steinberg as Roast Host…

There was Vincent Price hosting The Horror Hall of Fame with, among others, John Carradine, John Astin and others. Forrest Ackerman is mentioned and also listed as a technical advisor…

And there were other shows on ABC's Late Night array of just about everything but those are all I could find on YouTube…more than enough for now. If you see any more of these posted in full online, lemme know,

Snopes debunks a lot of things people are claiming about the National Guard and other military presences in Los Angeles. I especially like this one which to me, kinda sums up the whole Trump modus operandi: "Just keep insisting we're successful even when we're not!"

In June 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to be mobilized to quell protests in Los Angeles, despite California Gov. Gavin Newsom's objections. In a June 8 post on Truth Social, Trump claimed the troops had been successful even though the troops had not yet been deployed on the ground at the time of his post.

Being really inept at every show of force it attempts, the Trump administration dispatched troops to L.A. without arranging for enough food, housing, water…all those little things that soldiers need to survive. California governor Gavin Newsome tweeted photos of some of the troops sleeping on the floor, looking like a well-armed homeless shelter. Trumpers did what they always do and cried "Fake news!" but Politifact says the photos are legit.

From the folks at CNN: Trump makes multiple false claims to the troops at Fort Bragg.

The Washington Post says that the Vice President and Secretary of State are twisting facts about foreign aid while the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget is twisting facts about deficit reductions.

I'm not a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel but every so often, he speaks truth to power in a simple, clear way that everyone can understand and perhaps even laugh at. This is what he said on his show last night and I think it's spot-on perfect. It's a bit long but stick with it…and the montage at the end is something that should be shown to anyone who thinks that all immigrants are threats to our way of life…

Here in Los Angeles, things are a lot quieter than Donald Trump and his enablers want you to believe.  There are a few car fires and loud protests going on in a small portion of Southern California…apparently nothing the L.A.P.D. couldn't handle, especially if they didn't have all these unassigned Marines and National Guard soldiers scurrying about trying to inflame the situation.

Trump seems desperate to sell the scenario that L.A. is a hellhole of crime and destruction, most of it caused by people who weren't born here or were but they look like they weren't born here.  Ever since he was trying to sell the idea that Barack Obama was a Kenyan, Donald's had trouble with the concept that non-Caucasians can be and are birthed in the U.S.  Anyway, his operating premise seems to be that only he has prevented Los Angeles from being reduced to ashes and only he can save the other 49 states from that fate.  It's more "They're eating the dogs!  They're eating the cats!" bullshit.

Here's the first part of tonight's Daily Show with Desi Lydic.  The last few minutes of this are especially clever…

Every year, a few shows with marginal ticket sales hold on until the Tony Awards, hoping some win or exposure there will drive buyers to the box office.  When it doesn't happen, they announce they're closing…and the first one this year is Smash, which will be giving its final performance on June 22.

It got decent reviews but this was a highly competitive season with many new shows clawing for playgoers' money.  Perhaps it will have an afterlife but for now, some of us will only experience its cast album…which is for sale now and which you can hear streamed for free at this website.  Too bad…it sounds like a good show.

Years ago, I had a chilling jolt when I found myself debating an acquaintance ("friend" is too strong a word) about the Death Penalty. He was for it and I was against it…and I remember thinking that he was a bit too enthusiastic for it and that I was not as unenthusiastically against it as he was enthusiastically for it.

We finally reached the stage where I played the last card I had in my hand…the one which common sense would tell you should make even the fiercest advocate of the Death Penalty a little uncomfortable. I said something like, "And there's way too much evidence that this country has sometimes erred and executed innocent people. Surely you're not in favor of that."

Usually, the response to that was outright denial — "No, no innocent person has ever been executed" — which even then was impossible to believe given the number of last-minute exonerations. These days, it's pretty much a proven fact due to DNA testing. My jolt of the chilling variety came when he replied, "I don't give a fuck!"

I said, "You do realize that when an innocent person is executed for a murder, that means they close the case, stop investigating and the real killer has gotten away with it? In fact, then The State has a compelling interest in not locating and arresting the killer." To this he didn't give another one of those things he didn't give a moment earlier. He thought it was a great deterrent to crime that The State periodically executes people for committing crimes. He felt they should execute more people even for lesser crimes than murder. If the people turn out to be innocent, so what? It's still a deterrent.

I don't recall precisely where the debate went after that. I think I pointed out that though his main issues were his distrust of Big Government and his belief in rampant government incompetence, he was fine with government incompetence killing innocent people. Or maybe I was so stunned by what he'd said before that I couldn't get that out. I do know that the talk ended without either of us changing our minds one millimeter about the Death Penalty.

I'm not bringing this up to argue about the Death Penalty. That's one of those quaint retro issues we never seem to have time for anymore. I just lately have been reminded of that discussion as I see people on the news cheering on the idea of the government going all Gestapo on us in the service of deporting people who are even vaguely suspected to be in this country illegally. Too many of those who support ICE don't seem to give that same fuck if innocent people are detained and/or deported…and once someone is deported, they don't want to hear that maybe it was a mistake, even if the deporters admit it. Just so long as the people who have their lives ruined aren't white.

You could maybe (maybe!) convince me that deporting "illegals" is the right thing to do. It's not like the current administration is the first one to do it. I'm pretty sure that you could never convince me it's right to do it in a sloppy, sometimes-inaccurate manner ignoring the part of the U.S. Constitution that says it must be done with Due Process…or that it doesn't matter if innocent people have their lives and families destroyed along the way.

And you certainly could never convince me it's okay to do deportations or lock-ups just because you think they'll help your party win elections.

Last Thursday marked 500 days since I broke my ankle. I'm still not quite sure how I did that but I know that since then, things have gotten steadily better and I can now walk semi-okay, though not for great or even medium-great distances, plus I have some trouble with stairs. I will still need some wheelchairing at Comic-Con in San Diego next month but not as much as I did last year. (I'm currently scheduled to moderate or appear on 17 panels, plus I'll be doing three signings. Some of you may think of 17 panels and three signings in four days as insanity. To me, it's twenty opportunities to sit down.)

I have been in my home (95% of the time on the second floor) since I checked out of a Rehab Center at the end of February, 2024. I go downstairs — cautiously — when I go to doctor-type appointments and I've also left here to go to last year's Comic-Con in San Diego, this year's WonderCon in Anaheim, a Jay Ward Film Festival, the memorial for my friend Mike Schlesinger, the opening of the Jack Kirby exhibit at the Skirball Cultural Center and then last Friday, I went to the Magic Castle for the first time in over two years.

In earlier posts here, I said "It hasn't been that bad." I still feel that way. Yeah, I've missed out on some things I might have liked to do but in their stead, I got a lot of work done. I put an awful lot of those bonus hours into the forthcoming book on Charles Schulz and Peanuts and some other things I hope you (or someone) will like.

Here is some probably-obvious advice to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation: Plan. Think about how to modify your life to fit your new limitations even if they're temporary. If your body and what you can do with it has changed, maybe your living and working environment need to, as well.

While in the Rehab Center, I had my fantastic plumber (have I mentioned I have a fantastic plumber?) convert the shower in the master bathroom into something like those A.D.A. showers in select hotel rooms and install some grab bars and handrails there and elsewhere. I bought a microwave oven and a small refrigerator for upstairs since it's been tough for me to go downstairs. Another very handy thing was to have a couple of these around…

Also very helpful are all the things that I've installed — some because of the accident, some before it — that enable me to control lights and door locks and my garage door and my water heater, etc. via my iPhone. As I mentioned in my first post about the broken ankle, the app which allowed me to lock and unlock my front door remotely was one of those "What would I have done without it?" blessings.

You may never become a patient in your own home — for your sake, I hope you never do — but it isn't a bad idea to look around and consider what you'd do if it happened. You may even think of some things that could prevent it from happening.

Last night on this blog, I was highly critical of Donald Trump. In keeping with current journalistic practice, I am suspending myself from this blog for an indefinite period of time. "Indefinite" in this case probably means "Until I get my current script assignment done."