Category Archives: To Be Filed

David Daley explains why the Democrats, no matter how well they do in the presidential and senate races, ain't going to take the House.

For a change of pace, this is three women performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Want some proof that Trump knows he's losing? He's starting to try and drum up support from blacks, having apparently recently learned that they're allowed to vote. Some polls say he's getting about 2% of the black vote so if he can double his following with that group, it still won't do him a lot of good. I doubt he'll even manage that, especially if he keeps making his appeals to black voters from afar, behind podiums at gatherings that are whiter than a Pat Boone Fan Club meeting.

If he wants black people to vote for him he might try actually going and talking to some…but he won't. Trump's best argument that he's winning is the size of his rallies so he never goes anywhere they might not be huuugggge. (It helps to remember that Ross Perot got massive turnouts…and zero electoral votes.) His advocates point out that his rallies are open to people of all color — but as a mainly-Liberal guy, I sure wouldn't feel comfortable at one, even though I'm white and could pass for Republican.

The guy couldn't be doing a much worse job if he stood side-by-side with David Duke and promised free watermelons for all. And knowing him, he might. Philip Bump has more.

Ian Crouch adds to the chorus of voices saying bye-bye to The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. I said I'll miss the show and I will…though as I think of it, I think what I'll miss mainly is Wilmore's Act One monologue from the desk. Act Two was usually a sketch involving the show's regular contributors…and I liked a lot of those folks and bits, though I thought they had too many contributors. A few less and we might have gotten to know some of them better. And the fact that we didn't made the Act Three round table discussion in each Nightly Show a bit less than involving.

But my quibbles are small and I do think it was a good program. I wish they could have kept it around or at least retitled it The Weekly Show and run it once a week. I suspect part of the problem with the ratings is that Comedy Central programming is skewing younger and raunchier and it just wasn't fitting in.

Leonard Maltin and his daughter Jessie chat with some guy named Mel Brooks.

The first thing you need to know about Jack Riley is that he was a brilliantly funny man. The second thing is that he was one of the nicest people it has ever been my pleasure to know.

You might guess the first one since up until health problems curbed his ability to work and walk, Jack was constantly in demand for comedy shows and the occasional drama. Everybody in the business knew him or knew of him and was aware of how much he could bring to any TV show or movie. If you knew him first as Mr. Carlin, the neurotic complainer on The Bob Newhart Show, you might be surprised (and pleased) to know that wasn't the real Jack Riley. He was not an asshole but he was good at playing one on TV.

Jack was from Cleveland where he spent years on the radio. Around 1965, he relocated to Los Angeles where fellow Clevelander Tim Conway recommended him for performing and writing work. Very soon after his arrival, Jack won a regular slot on a one-season NBC sitcom, Occasional Wife, and then segued to guest shots on dozens of other shows. He was a semi-regular on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, usually doing his great impression of President Lyndon Johnson.

Friends used to kid Jack about having too much work. His close buddy and occasional partner Pat McCormick once said, "Any time I go a week without seeing Riley on TV, I figure he's dead and start writing a eulogy." Jack also enjoyed (if that's the proper word) a vast unpaid career as an emcee at various Hollywood events, including a lot of funerals, including Pat McCormick's.

The last decade or so of Jack's life was marred by bad news and tragedies, including medical problems that put him in a wheelchair and eventually fogged his wonderful brain. It's sad when that happens to anyone and it's a particular heartbreaker when it's someone who was so generous and helpful to others, and so witty. Still, for a time he had that great, expressive voice and his spot-on delivery. He was heard on The Garfield Show a few times, usually playing a callous and uncaring attorney. More often, he played the role of Stu Pickles on Rugrats…and there was a decade or so there when you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing Jack in a commercial.

As I often feel when someone dies after a long period of suffering, I'm sorry to lose him but glad it's over. He died this morning at the age of 80 and the cause is being given as pneumonia. I've lost a wonderful friend and the world has lost a very kind, clever man.

In the last hour, a couple of Trump supporters have sent me a link to this article which says that Trump is only two points behind Clinton. They seem to think it's a brand-new ballgame, that the presidency is anyone's to win and that Trump's gains prove he'll be the victor. They're forgetting two things…

1. The idea of polls is that you consider the totality of them, placing the most weight on the pollsters who've proven to be the best. It's not a matter of finding one whose numbers you like and declaring that the "latest" and therefore only accurate poll. There's always an outlier or two and there is such a thing as a bad pollster. One poll that says what you want to believe does not cancel out all the others that say what you want to ignore.
2. The poll in question in this article is the Zogby Poll. I wouldn't believe the Zogby Poll if it told me it did a through survey and concluded that I have ten fingers. It would more likely say fourteen. Go to the search window on this site, search for "Zogby" and see how many times I've told you it's wildly inaccurate. I don't even believe it when it tells me what I want to believe.

If you're going to follow polls, at least follow an aggregate. The best is Nate Silver's but it wouldn't hurt to look at a couple. If they're all roughly on the same page, that page is probably right. You just have to be willing to deal with what is instead of what you want to have happen.

I spent some time last evening reading some political-type websites and read a lot of opinions about Donald J. Trump and Hillary R. Clinton. Since I want Trump to lose and lose badly, I was amazed at how often I winced at cheap and juvenile attacks on the man. There were plenty about Hillary of course, but there's something really wrong when I think someone's being unfair to a man I don't think has a fair bone in his body.

I won't quote any of them but perhaps you've seen these Naked Trump statues that some artist made and is installing in major metropolitan areas. I get the message but I don't think it's much more profound than an eight-year-old calling someone a doody-head.

You do understand, I hope, that I am not calling for censorship. People have a right to do that kind of stuff. I have the right to say I wish they wouldn't do that kind of stuff.

Then this morning, I awake to read that Trump said…

Sometimes, in the heat of debate and speaking on a multitude of issues, you don't choose the right words or you say the wrong thing. I have done that. And believe it or not, I regret it. And I do regret it, particularly where it may have caused personal pain. Too much is at stake for us to be consumed with these issues.

Well, of course he regrets it. He's seen the polls and what he was doing has him on the verge of losing big and maybe being widely disowned by his own party. And of course, an apology that vague — not specifying what is regretted — is pretty worthless. Sounds to me like the new strategy of the Trump campaign is Good Cop/Bad Cop. Others will call for Hillary Clinton to be hanged in the public square while Trump himself tries to look presidential. Anybody going to buy this? Anyone?

Speaking of comedians who perform what some would consider Bad Taste: Publicist Extraordinaire and Comedy Expert Jeff Abraham sent me this link to a BBC Radio documentary about Lenny Bruce.

Having heard so many comedians I respect hail Bruce as a brave pioneer, I acknowledge his importance in the history of stand-up comedy…but I have yet to hear much that makes me think of him as a great entertainer. Perhaps his best work, along with 99% of all he did, was simply never recorded. Or maybe he's one of those comedians that, well, you had to be there. I don't think any of the videos I've seen of Sam Kinison fully capture what was great about seeing him perform live in an intimate setting.

For years when I was around comedians, I was afraid to say that I didn't find Lenny Bruce funny or even all that clever. It seemed like Comedy Sacrilege. Eventually, I came to realize that others around me felt that way but were not saying it out loud for the same reason. Lately, I hear more and more of them saying it out loud. Of course, even if all he did was to make possible guys like George Carlin and Mort Sahl (back when he was Mort Sahl), that's quite a contribution.

This article may not be a safe link for all workplaces. A writer for Playboy asked various comedians to name offensive and daring jokes and routines they heard and admired by others. I'm kinda surprised at some of the answers.

Bette Midler and three more women performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof."

I know some of you think I'm writing too much about the election and about Trump but my blog is about whatever's on my mind and what's there now is the Electoral College.

Right now, every major pollster has Hillary Clinton with what would seem to be an insurmountable lead in the following states: New York, California, Vermont, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, Hawaii, Virginia, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oregon, Maine, Delaware, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, plus the District of Columbia. In most, she's up around ten points.

Those states total 258 electoral votes…so she's twelve shy of the 270 it takes to win.

Now, you hear a lot about Ohio (18 electoral votes) and Florida (29) and even North Carolina (15) and how Trump needs those states to have even a chance of winning. He does…but the point is that Hillary doesn't. She can get the twelve votes by winning Minnesota (10) and any one other state or just by winning Georgia (16). She can get it by winning Iowa (6) and Nevada (6). She can get it by winning Arizona (11) and any one other state. There are many routes.

At the moment, she's either ahead or neck-and-neck in all of these plus a few others. She probably already has Minnesota but there haven't been many polls there so you can't really award her the state…yet. The latest Monmouth Poll — that's one of the better pollsters — has her up nine in Florida…so there's more than double your twelve votes right there.

Trump is solid in seventeen states that will give him 139 so he's 131 short of the 270. There are thirteen "toss-up" states where neither is far enough ahead to claim a near-lock and those have 141 electoral votes. So Trump would need to win almost all of them or maybe flip a few states where Hillary has a solid lead.

As Nate Silver notes, Trump seems to be about to ratchet up the nastiness and accusations. That's the approach that got him where he is today — on the verge of being on the wrong end of a landslide. Still, my thinking is that Trump has no other choice.

If he suddenly starts acting statesmanlike and polite, it's not going to change the minds of anyone who already decided he was unfit. They remember…and in case they forget, there's loads of video around for the Hillary people to replay. Undecideds won't believe there's a new Trump…and of course, there's the very real question of whether he is actually capable of performing any other act. All he'd do probably is disappoint his base and cause less of them to turn out on Election Day.

Seems to me Trump's only hope is to sell hard the "Crooked Hillary" theme and hope something emerges that has a lot more substance than any of the allegations hurled so far. Even then, I think a lot of people would opt for Crooked Hillary over Crazy Donald.

Is a big Broadway show (or Broadway-like show) coming to your town? Here's a list of touring companies across America and where they're touring.

People often write to ask me what comics I read. I tend to follow creators, not characters, and one of my favorite creators is cartoonist Carol Lay. Carol was responsible for years for the wonderful syndicated feature, Story Minute. Her approach and style are all hers and they're always entertaining. If you have a Kindle or a device that can function like one, you now have the chance to build a mini-library of Carol's comics.

There are eight available. This link will take you to a page where you can order one and easily find your way to pages where you can get the other seven. Order one, enjoy it and then go back to get the rest. You'll want them all.

Here are three more women who are all the same person performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…