Boy, that's a shocker. 68 years old. With a new musical (The Nutty Professor) just opened.

I can't recall ever hearing a bad word about Marvin Hamlisch, not even from Theater People who can be enormously bitchy and quick to pounce on anyone's failings or failures. I don't recall that he had any failures that seemed to be due to his failings. He had shows that didn't fly but no one seemed to feel those were due to Mr. Hamlisch not doing his job properly. He was the guy who wrote the tunes for A Chorus Line, after all. And so many other fine works.

The first time I saw him or heard his name was when he was Groucho's pianist for those sad one-Marx shows near the end of the comedian's career. At one point during the L.A. one, Groucho suddenly went off-script and, apparently to give himself a brief rest, he turned to his pianist and asked Marvin to do his Johnny Mathis impression for the audience. Hamlisch was clearly thrown by that and he muttered something about how "They didn't come to hear me." But sensing Groucho needed the Time Out, he pressed ahead and it was a pretty decent impression, as I recall. We all felt for that kid on stage at the piano. We didn't imagine then that Marvin Hamlisch would go on to become Marvin Hamlisch. But we should be grateful that he did.

All this talk about the Olympics (I think they're going on) made me want to watch this again. And if I'm going to watch it again, you might as well watch it again…

Kevin Drum explains this whole silly charge that the Obama folks are trying to suppress or undermine or do something to the military vote in Ohio. Quick explanation: No, they're not but the Romney camp has figured out a way to sell what they are proposing as an anti-military move.

As Ezra Klein notes, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center characterizes the Romney tax plan in two words: Mathematically impossible.

So Harry Reid says he has it from a good source that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes for something like ten years. I'm not sure if he's claiming it's exactly $0.00 or if he means Romney paid so little that given his income, it seems like zero. If it came out that Romney had paid $11.38, would that mean Reid was wrong?

And what kind of good source might this be that Reid trusts him as much as he does? If it were Romney's accountant, okay. I can see believing that guy. But it seems to be a Bain investor of some kind. How could that person know? Reid isn't claiming he himself has actually seen Romney's taxes. Something sounds wrong there.

What I'm waiting for is the statement from John McCain when he says, "When we were considering Mitt for my running mate, he supplied 23 years of tax forms to us for vetting. As far as I'm concerned, that information is privileged and so I cannot be specific but I can say Harry Reid is spreading erroneous information." Why isn't McCain saying that?

I dunno if Reid has solid information or not. But he sure seems to be going out on a limb based on data that he himself has not seen.

Highlights from a production of the James Goldman-Stephen Sondheim show Follies — as performed in Spain…

Photographer Jill Greenberg offers up Portraits of This Generation's Brilliant Comedians. I don't necessarily agree with all the selections but they sure are good pictures. The one of Colbert is backwards.

I agree with a lot of this piece by Oliver Burkeman on the overemphasis some place on Positive Thinking. I don't think Negative Thinking as the default state is all that much better. Some situations warrant Positive Thinking, some warrant Negative and some warrant simple logic instead of a blanket application of optimism or pessimism.

If Anthony Robbins pointed to a bed of red-hot coals and told me to walk across them with the right attitude and I wouldn't get burned, I think my response would be along the lines of "Don't be ridiculous." I'd figure that while the trick might work, it might not…and there was no possible "up-side" to its success that warranted risking the "down-side" of its failure. It's fine to take risks that make sense but some simply don't.

I saw an interview of one of the folks injured on that recent Robbins firewalk — a lady who said she was trying to learn to go through life saying, "I will succeed. I will succeed. Failure is not an option." If that works for you, mazel tov. What seems to work best for me is to have a pragmatic assessment of any situation, to recognize that failure is an option and that it's up to me to try and avoid that option. Positive Thinking just makes me forget that it's up to me to actually make things go right.

Here's something I've always thought would be interesting but it'll never happen…

Let's say there's an election. For the sake of example, let's say it's between two guys named Obama and Romney. Let's say both claim to want a clean election based on facts and free from scurrilous fibs.

So up front, they agree to appoint some kind of Truth Committee. They will pick three or five or any odd number of distinguished journalists, jurists, professor-types or former elected officials whose wisdom and integrity is inarguable. They would jointly fund its operation including the hiring of a squad of researchers selected by the Truth Committee. The candidates would agree that this Truth Committee will be the arbiter of what's factual and what's not. Before either runs a TV ad, it will be submitted to the committee and if they say it's not honest, it doesn't run.

If one candidate makes a claim the other believes is dishonest, the latter can ask the Truth Committee to rule and if the committee says it's untrue or misleading, the claimant would stop saying it. Obviously, his surrogates and boosters could and maybe would continue saying it…but I'd think it would go a long way to knocking down a bogus assertion if authorities that the candidates had agreed were impartial and honest had so ruled.

Imagine if our hypothetical Romney claimed that Obama had raised taxes. Obama invokes the Truth Committee and it demands to see proof and then rules that no, he hasn't. Romney would have to stop saying that and I don't think his supporters would get much traction on the claim after that if they continued saying it. I would think a lot of voters, weary of all this arguing over dueling statistics and conflicting "facts", would accept the verdict of the Truth Committee as pretty definitive.

Or imagine if, say, a hypothetical Harry Reid claimed Romney had not paid taxes for years. Romney doesn't want to release his tax forms for his opponents to wade into but he could divulge them to the Truth Committee and they could say, "No, Harry Reid is wrong. Hypothetical Mitt paid loads of taxes."

There are surely loopholes in this idea and I'm not claiming it's perfect. A candidate would claim that the Truth Committee was biased and wrong but I think he'd look pretty weasely if he did. I'm just thinking it might be a lot better than what we have now and I'm also thinking it will never happen.

Maybe they couldn't or wouldn't even be able to agree on three people they both trust to be fair. Or maybe it's they don't want fair. If a candidate thinks they have a line of attack that will work against their opponent, they don't want to lose it to a silly technicality like there being insufficient evidence it's true. But the idea still intrigues me.

Dick Cavett talks about his days as a joke writer.

PBS has put online — and it may only be up for a short while — their American Masters spotlight on Gore Vidal. I have somewhat mixed feelings about Mr. Vidal. I liked his essays and non-fiction writing once upon a time though I never warmed to his "historical novels." Those were the ones in which he felt free to fictionalize large chunks of America's past and to argue in non-specifics that he was getting closer to What Really Happened than any author who foolishly insisted on sticking to what was actually known. And maybe on some pages, Vidal managed that but I never knew which pages and I don't think he did, either.

I enjoyed his lectures and TV appearances for a while. He was witty, articulate and almost impossible for anyone to argue with even when he was dead wrong. It seemed to me that in his last decade or so on this planet, he was wrong an awful lot. I'm not sure if he knee-jerk believed the most outrageous view of something was always the one that was correct…or he just thought it was the one that brought him attention and fit his aging curmudgeon role. My suspicion is that he didn't know the difference…or care.

This documentary steered clear of some of the nuttier remarks against those he thought threatened his caste and heritage so it may not be an accurate portrait of Vidal to his dying day. But up to a point, it's quite good. If you want to watch, watch soon since like I said, it may not be online for long…