Like I said, I think Donald Trump's going to be arrested and/or indicted but I don't think it will be this week. Here's a piece by Hannah Docter-Loeb that explains why

Donald Trump is telling his supporters that he will be arrested on Tuesday and that they should demonstrate on his behalf and send him money. I think he will be arrested at some point, or at least indicted, and it may be this Tuesday but I wouldn't assume that. I think Donald Trump loves nothing more in this world than for his fans to demonstrate on his behalf and to send him money and that he wouldn't miss an opportunity to get some of that going.

And if he isn't arrested on Tuesday, he can say, "They backed down because of the enormous wave of support shown for me by true Americans who want me back in the Oval Office!" The guy is real good at this kind of thing.

WonderCon 2023 starts one week from today…

Friday, March 24 — 4:30 PM to 5:30 PM in Room 213AB
HOW TO WRITE FOR ANIMATION
Did you ever dream of writing cartoon shows? Well, here's your chance to find out how to do it from three guys who have written hundreds and hundreds of them. The secrets of animation writing will be divulged by WonderCon special guests Tom Ruegger (Pinky and the Brain, Disney's The 7D), Paul Rugg (Animaniacs, Freakazoid!), and moderator Mark Evanier (The Garfield Show, Dungeons & Dragons).

Saturday, March 25 — Noon to 1:00 PM in Room 207
THE ANNUAL JACK KIRBY TRIBUTE PANEL
Like we do at almost every convention, we remember the man some called The King of the Comics — the man who created or co-created many of the most popular characters ever in the medium. Discussing Jack Kirby are Marv Wolfman (writer/editor), John Morrow (publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector), Paul S. Levine (lawyers for the Kirby Trust), and moderator Mark Evanier (former assistant to Jack Kirby).

Saturday, March 25 — 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM in Room 207
CARTOON VOICES
It's another one of Evanier's popular panels where he gathers a bunch of top animation voice actors to demonstrate their craft, tell how they got into the business, and destroy the script for a beloved fairy tale. Appearing this time are Joe Ochman (current voice of Jiminy Cricket), Kaitlyn Robrock (current voice of Minnie Mouse), Neil Ross (Transformers, G.I. Joe), Cynthia McWilliams (What If?), and Brian Hull (Hotel Transylvania). Mark Evanier (of course) is your host.

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As always, times, rooms, panelists and just about everything is subject to change so check your Program Guide and this site to make sure. And as always, I refuse to sit behind a table at a convention for very long so I'll be wandering the hall. If you see me, say howdy. The entire programming schedule can be found online here and remember to consult the COVID policy here.

Read the following excerpt from this news item and then I'll tell you what amuses and interests me about it…

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina may be violating ethics rules by representing the former president in a case involving adult film star Stormy Daniels, according to a legal expert. Tacopina made the rounds on television this week to accuse Daniels of "extortion" in the $130,000 hush money payment during the 2016 campaign and argued that Trump was the real "victim" in the case.

But New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman discovered that Tacopina "has had an attorney-client relationship" with Daniels because she once reached out to him about representation, and his representation of Trump in the case may violate American Bar Association and New York state ethics rules.

If this case was about someone else, I'd pay it zero attention and have no reason to care much about which fake blonde who screws people for a living emerged triumphant. But the whole Stormy Daniels case exposes the emptiness of those who claim their support for D.J.T. is based on morals or character or even Christianity. I'll bet most of them felt Bill Clinton disqualified himself from public office because of Monica or other dalliances. But to them, Trump paying off a porn star and other admissions can be easily overlooked or dismissed as Fake News.

But what this particular news item does is to remind me that lawyers make passionate, personal arguments on behalf of their clients. They may earnestly believe what they say but that's not mandatory. Joe Tacopina has been all over the news, loudly trying to deal with all the contradictory statements uttered by his client. He was clearly hired as much for his skills on-camera as for his skills in-court. And he'd totally be on the other side, pushing narratives he now denounces, if Ms. Daniels was his client.

As you may recall, I was a big fan of a restaurant chain that was called Souplantation in some areas and Sweet Tomatoes in others. It was a soup-and-salad (and a few other things) buffet…and like many a buffet, it was put outta business by The Pandemic. 97 locations shut down, seemingly forever.

Is it coming back? Someone's trying to make it happen. This article tells us about a new Sweet Tomatoes that has been announced to open later this year in Tucson. It says "ST Three LLC purchased the intellectual property rights and chose to reopen the Tucson location because it was the most popular location in the state."

Meanwhile, another group has been announcing and delaying a reopening of Souplantation in La Mesa, California, which is not far from where the old Souplantation had its corporate headquarters. I dunno its current status but I'm rooting for anyone who might someday open something like Souplantation near me…even if they don't have my favorite, the tomato soup. Out of necessity when Souplantation closed, I figured out a way to make a pretty decent one on my own.

We've been talking a lot here lately about Phil Silvers so my pal Bob Elisberg suggested I feature this video here. In 1967 — on a budget that looks like it was around $19.67 — a TV version of the musical Damn Yankees was produced for NBC. It starred Mr. Silvers as Mr. Applegate (aka The Devil) and Lee Remick as Lola, and the rest of the cast included Jerry Lanning, Jim Backus, Fran Allison, Ray Middleton, Fran Allison, Bob Dishy, Linda Lavin and not enough other actors.

Ray Middleton was a seasoned Broadway actor and he may have been the first person to ever dress up in a Superman costume. See here, here, here and here.

The original 1955 Broadway production of Damn Yankees had a cast of 40. This TV version had, by my count, fifteen. To make up for the shortfall, a lot of it was done with a technique some call "kinestasis" — a mix of still photos and limited animation that I don't think ever works in anything longer than a sixty-second commercial for chewing gum. What kinda/sorta makes this video kinda/sorta worth watching is that you have good orchestrations, Lee Remick being sexy and Phil Silvers being Phil Silvers. And of course, Jim Backus was never bad in anything.

Plus there's also a cameo appearance by Joe Garagiola. Can your heart take the excitement?

This aired as an episode of G.E. Theater on NBC on April 8, 1967. It was shot in New York and since there are no credits on this video, I'll tell you that it was directed by Kirk Browning with choreography by Ernie Flatt. No one was credited for adapting the Broadway script for television even though some fiddling was obviously done. I'm not recommending this; just putting it here in case you want to click and watch some of it. Some scenes with Phil Silvers will remind you of how good he could be…

This is one of those posts where I assume 99% of the people who'd come to this blog will agree with my position. If you don't, you might be happier reading some other blog. My position is that the current move to restrict drag shows and people dressed unlike the norm for their gender — whatever that is these days — is ridiculous.

I grew up loving comedians and, at one time or another, I think I saw just about every male one in a dress…and a few of the ladies passing for men. A man dressed as a woman is usually funnier than a woman dressed like a man.

A guy on TV the other night was touting a proposed drag ban by saying, "We've got to protect our children," a line that ought to always make you suspicious. It is, after all, the exact thing Professor Harold Hill said when he was trying to bilk the parents of River City out of money for band instruments. The scam started by panicking them into thinking their kids were in terrible, terrible Trouble — with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "P" and that stands for "Pool." The sales pitch started like this…

Protecting the kids is a noble cause but there oughta be even a smidgen of evidence that they're in any way threatened by what the seller is selling.

And here's another problem that Kaleigh Rogers points out: How do you define "drag?" Think of all the movies and TV shows and Bugs Bunny cartoons that might have to be restricted under some definitions.

Chaplin. Laurel and Hardy. Milton Berle. Corporal Klinger, Mrs. Doubtfire. Milton Berle. Some Like It Hot. Dame Edna. Tootsie. Milton Berle. Johnny Carson. Jonathan Winters. Buster Keaton. Charley's Aunt. Flip Wilson. Jack Benny. Bob Hope. Rudy Giuliani. Milton Berle. Milton Berle. Milton Berle. You can keep the list going just as well as I can. Even Miss Piggy is a female played by a male.

Need I go on? Of course not. No one who's even vaguely rational thinks that, after centuries of tradition, a man in a dress has suddenly become an actual problem in need of a solution. There are just some people out there who think it has some political value for them. Maybe some of them think it's a way of taking a swipe at trans people who aren't hurting anyone in any way by course-correcting their lives.

Still, the folks who like to spread fear are out there, reaping whatever benefits they can with this scam. They're telling parents that their kids are in terrible, terrible Trouble — with a capital "T" and that rhymes with "D" and that stands for "Drag."

I think I linked to this years ago but it got deleted. This is a clip from, I'm fairly sure, the Hollywood Palace TV show. The host is Arthur Godfrey and he introduces Shelley Berman who comes out and does my favorite of all his wonderful routines…

I wish everyone understood that when I say "How are you?" or "What's up?" as a greeting, the proper response should probably be under thirty seconds, sixty tops. It is not an invitation to tell me every single thing that's happened to you since we last spoke, especially if we last spoke more than a year ago.

If your TV gets the Decades channel, enjoy it while you can. Monday, March 27 it changes to a channel called Catchy Comedy which, from what I see, carries nothing that I'd watch that I can't get on half a dozen other channels or online: The Carol Burnett Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Lucy Show, I Love Lucy, Love Boat, The Bob Newhart Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show…

I love many of those shows dearly. I own complete sets of some of them on DVD. I think I can watch some of them on six or seven other channels I receive…and that's not even counting online. Every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show is on YouTube in good, compete prints with no commercials. If you were to name any episode from that series, I could be watching it on the screen in front of me in about ten seconds…or less time than it takes my office TV to warm up.

Pluto even has an "all Dick Van Dyke Show" sub-channel that runs 'em 24/7. I just checked and at this moment, they're running "The Square Triangle," my least-favorite episode of my favorite sitcom.

This is not to in any way berate the folks who run Decades Catchy Comedy. I've met a few of them. They're nice, smart people who seem to truly love old television programs. If anything, I'm berating a system that doesn't seem to incentivize programmers to seek out shows that everyone else isn't running. A lot, I know, aren't being run because it doesn't seem cost-efficient to restore the old prints to current broadcast quality.

And a lot might not draw an audience right away. There might be a Catch-22 in play here: I'd love to be able to watch all the episodes of The Defenders, the 1961-1965 dramatic series that starred E.G. Marshall and that guy who later starred in The Brady Bunch. I suspect though it would cost an awful lot of money to get all four seasons in rotation on some channel and then it might take an awful long time for enough people to discover it and start watching to justify that investment. If I owned a channel, I doubt I'd take the risk.

I don't have any solution to this. I don't have any suggestions. I hope some other channel picks up the Dick Cavett Show reruns which were one thing I could watch on Decades and nowhere else. I guess all I'm saying is that I'll miss that channel.

But you know, when I was much younger, if you'd told me that someday, my TV set could bring in hundreds of different channels for my viewing pleasure, I would have thought that was Heaven. I wouldn't have imagined they'd all be showing The Dick Van Dyke Show…and probably when I tuned in, "The Square Triangle."

And here's another song parody that scores a bulls-eye, this one courtesy of a certain Mr. Rainbow…

A musical interlude that I think hits some solid marks. Thanks to Prentice Hammond for telling me about it…

I recently had a birthday and this is one of those years when I can't renew my driver's license by mail and/or Internet. So I went into the Department of Motor Vehicles the other day to get a new license and an anecdote. I always seem to get an anecdote there along with my license.  I got one in 2008 and another one in 2018. Here is this year's.

I went to the D.M.V. office where the wait, even with an appointment, turned out to be as long as the Oscars. I don't mean the televised ceremony a couple nights ago. I mean the entire history of that award.

I was lulled into the false hope for a speedy in-and-out because they started me through the process about twenty seconds after I walked in…but then there was a long wait for the next step, then a longer wait for the one after that and the longest wait after that. Before I was halfway to having my photo taken, I began to understand why people become Sovereign Citizens and foolishly argue that you don't need a driver's license to operate a motor vehicle.

The guy who gave me the vision test seemed skeptical that I, a person of 71 years, didn't use eyeglasses or contacts for the exam but I aced it. I only missed one question on the written test…something about the rules when someone under the drinking age transports liquor in his or her vehicle. It was not information I would ever have a reason to know.

While waiting in line for that last test, I got my anecdote. The line put us right near the vision testing area and there I witnessed a "Karen." This, as you probably know, is a recently-invented descriptor for a person — usually female — who creates a big public spectacle insisting on all sorts of entitlement and privilege. I used to think the name was unfortunate because I've known some ladies named Karen who were as nice as nice could be.

But from what I overheard, this "Karen" was actually named Karen.  In fact, if they didn't name the descriptor for her, they should have.  The line to have your photo taken had about a dozen people in it.  When told she should join the line, she marched to the front of it and tried to join it there.  Someone told her to go to the end of it but she announced — as if saying this would entitle her to do what she did — "I don't wait in lines!"

A roving D.M.V. employee told her that if she wanted to get her photo taken — and therefore get her license — she was going to have to wait in this one. They would not take it until she did. After running through a list of words that get bleeped on most TV shows, she grudgingly trudged to the end of the line, pulled out her cell phone and began texting someone angrily.

That line moved quickly. I was still in mine when I saw her reach the camera station, complaining all the while quite loudly about how she couldn't wait to get the hell out of this place. All of us watching her felt the same way but we didn't feel the need to say it and with such volume. They took her photo and then there was some sort of squabble because she demanded to see it and to have it redone to her liking.

I did not hear how that was resolved but it was resolved and she took her place in the line for the written test, about three folks behind me. We all waited a long time to go into a little room where we would each take our written test standing at one of several little computer work stations. As rotten luck would have it, a whole bunch of us in line were finally called in at the same time and she wound up at the station next to me.

I was taking my test. She was taking her test. You're not supposed to get help from notes or books or anyone else but she turned to me and asked out loud, "What the [f-word] is the level of blood that means you're too drunk to drive?" and you would have been proud of me. I did not reply, "I don't know but whatever it is, you're over it!" I said nothing as another D.M.V. staffer scurried over to her and told her politely that she was not allowed to ask for help. (In case you're interested, the answer is that's it's illegal to drive if you're over 21 and your Blood Alcohol Concentration is 0.08% or higher. I looked that up online before I went in for my test.)

She resumed answering the questions, spending three seconds on each one, not stopping to carefully read each question and consider each multiple-choice. So it was not surprising that the screen suddenly told her she'd failed and would have to wait two minutes to take another test. She however announced she was not waiting and stormed from the room.

Soon after, I passed my test. I proceeded to the desk where a clerk would process my final paperwork and give me my temp license, good until the real one shows up in my mail. I asked said clerk, "Does that happen often?" and she knew I was asking about Karen and her grand exit.

The clerk sighed and said, "Once or twice a day. Where they get real upset is when they realize that instead of waiting the two minutes to take another test, they have to come back and start the whole process all over again from the top."

This may seem trivial and unnecessary to some of you but that's kind of how much of my life — and therefore, this blog — is. I was just lying in bed, wide awake and thinking over the list o' things I have to do today and the proper order in which to do them. I decided I had to post this before I did anything else…

Yesterday around 4:30 in the afternoon, I was standing on a street some miles from my home waiting for an Uber. A tall gentleman walked past me, stopped and then came back and said, "Are you Mark?" I said I was and he told me his name was Bob, that he was a fan of this blog and he was looking forward to seeing my panels at WonderCon. I thanked him, we shook hands and he was on his way.

I had something kinda serious on my mind at the moment so I wasn't as friendly as I like to be with people and I'm feeling uncomfy about that. Bob, if you really do read this blog and you're at WonderCon and you see me there, please say hello. You were nice enough to stop and say what you said. I'd like to be as nice in response.

Your local PBS station may be showing this wonderful documentary about the man behind The Music Man, Meredith Willson. If you can't watch it there, you can watch it here — but only for a limited time…