The 2008 Presidential Election seems to be over. Missouri's electoral votes have gone to John McCain and that means that Barack Obama's final total is 365 votes, a number that no one guessed in our Guess Obama's Electoral Total contest. Around fifty of you guessed 364 and Richard Bensam was the first of these. One person — Ellen Bischoff — guessed 366. So I hereby declare a tie. Richard and Ellen will share the total lack of any prize in this competition and may divide up the bragging rights as they see fit.

Turning to the Senate: Ted Stevens of Alaska has conceded and today, the entire Senate gave him a standing ovation in honor of his years of service. One wonders how many felony convictions you have to have not to get a standing ovation from your colleagues in the Senate. I'm guessing if your crime is money, there's no limit and if your crime involves sex, it's one.

I don't think it would be that big a Magic Number for the Democrats to reach 60 seats in the Senate, except maybe as a symbolic point. True, 60 Democratic votes means the Republicans can't easily filibuster but if the Dems have anything worthwhile to offer, they oughta be able to get one or two G.O.P. defections…so 58 or 59 oughta do it. Still, we watch the two remaining Senate races for the sheer "story" of it all. It would be nice to see Saxby Chambliss defeated in the Georgia runoff, not because he's a Republican but because he won in the first place with that shameful ad attacking Max Cleland. You know that ad…the one John McCain condemned as morally indefensible before he started campaigning for the guy who put it out.

I always look at these situations, at least in part, from the standpoint of "If this were a movie, what would make the climax most exciting?" In this case, it would be for Martin to beat Chambliss in Georgia so the "60" number would hinge on the recount in Minnesota. They're saying they might declare a victor there by the end of the year (!) and with a race this close, I'm guessing it'll come down to whenever that last vote is recounted and the election is certified.

(And by the way, isn't it just bizarre that Bill O'Reilly is telling his viewers that the election is over and that Norm Coleman has been certified as the winner? I know O'Reilly hates Al Franken — he's not alone — but doesn't everyone understand that they're doing this recount because Coleman hasn't been certified? Isn't that just, you know, a demonstrable lie on O'Reilly's part? I thought the guy was smarter than that.)

If you're interested in following the Coleman/Franken recount, this is the page to do that on. My guess is it's going to be up and down there for weeks, with a lot of court battles over whether Mrs. Harriet Turkeybaster's ballot, which she marked with lipstick, should be counted or if it should be discarded like Mr. Niles Hooperman's ballot, which he marked in pork gravy. It is significant that the recount is already showing that a hand recount yields inarguable differences from when the same ballots were counted by machine. If your bank found that a human audit changed the results of the counting of money even by a nickel, they'd instantly junk those machines. But in this country, we tolerate a little approximation in our elections. I mean, it's not like anyone's vote is that important…

I've wondered here occasionally if anyone ever actually falls for those Nigerian Inheritance e-mail scams we all get. The answer, it would seem, is yes.

Thanks to reader Charles Apple, I have some more for you on Stan Lee's medal at the White House.  You can see it on this page.

The relevant speechifying of the day found a Military Aide (that's what he's called in the transcript) announcing, "The 2008 National Medal of Arts to Stan Lee, for his groundbreaking work as one of America's most prolific storytellers, recreating the American comic book. His complex plots and humane super heroes celebrate courage, honesty, and the importance of helping the less fortunate, reflecting America's inherent goodness." Not a bad way to put it…but I'll bet Stan would still have rather received this next January 21.

I've been away and not reading comic book sites so maybe this is old news…but Stan Lee was among those honored the other day at the White House as recipients of the National Medal of Arts and the National Humanities Medal. Good for you, Stan, but I think it's a few months early. Barack Obama is the one who's said to be a big Spider-Man fan.

Legendary comedy writer Irving Brecher has died at the age of 94. Mr. Brecher created the radio and TV series, The Life of Riley, and wrote several notable movies, including Bye Bye Birdie and two with the Marx Brothers. (Brecher performed another service for the Marx Brothers, by the way. He looked a lot like Groucho and at least once, when that particular Marx Brother was unavailable for a publicity photo shoot, they painted the eyebrows and mustache on Brecher and had him fill in.)

Here's a link to an obit. I'll just add that I met Mr. Brecher on a couple of Writers Guild picket lines and he was funny and feisty and loyal to his union and he had great stories about working with the Marx Brothers, Milton Berle and others. I hope some of them are in that book he has coming out.

I never hesitate to complain about airlines here so, in fairness, let me tell you about our flight home from New York. Carolyn and I flew back on American Airlines flight 21 this evening. It was supposed to take off at 7:15 PM. It did. Actually, it took off a few minutes early.

It was supposed to arrive at 10:50 PM. When we touched down, the pilot announced that our gate was not available to us so we had to wait. The plane sat on the tarmac for a good ten minutes, then finally rolled into a gate and we got off. I tell time by my BlackBerry/cell phone, which was off until I got into the terminal, but when I finally did look, it was 10:12. I phoned the limo driver who was coming to pick us up and he was still twenty minutes away. Here's the flight status which I just grabbed off the American Airlines website…

As you can see, it shows us landing at 9:58. I'm not sure if we actually landed at 9:48 and then we had the ten minute wait or if we landed at 9:58 and it took us until 10:08 to get to the gate. But we got in either 52 or 62 minutes early. I tend to believe the 52 just because…well, come on. Over an hour early on a New York-Los Angeles flight? But the 52 is pretty impressive, too.

I often cruise restaurant review boards, not so much for the food info as the sheer drama of the arguments. It's fun to see people debate something as inconsequential as where to get the best veal marsala…and it can give you insight into the illogical ways in which some people bicker. You can observe the same silly tricks of evasion and myopia that they then apply on other forums to mud-wrestle over important stuff like abortion, guns, Iraq or Best Episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show.

People really like to argue food. Someone once told me, and I think it's true, that the best way to get information on a restaurant chat board is not to ask a question but to start a brawl. Let us say you'll be travelling to Jerkwater, Alabama and you want to know where to get great ribs. You will learn little if you just post a query that says, "Hey, could someone suggest some good places to get ribs in Jerkwater?" Instead, you should do the following. Google "Jerkwater AND ribs" and get the name of any rib joint in the area. Let's say it's Murray's BBQ. Then under some anonymous handle, you post, "Had dinner the other night at Murray's. Boy, that's the best 'Q within a hundred miles of Jerkwater and anyone who'd eat ribs anywhere else is an idiot with no taste."

That will get you plenty of insults but it'll also get you plenty of recommendations.

Another thing that amuses me is that there is little recognition that restaurants can vary from day to day, meal to meal, even hamburger to hamburger. If you write from the heart, "Rosie's Cafe is great. I had the best hamburger of my life there," someone will feel the need to debate this. It will be like, "That's ridiculous. I had a hot turkey sandwich three years ago at Rosie's that was terrible." People like to believe that their favorites are consistently good and that once a restaurant has done wrong, it cannot possibly do right.

A subset of that is something I call The Latke Rule. It flows from the widespread belief among us Jews that the way your mother made potato pancakes is the only correct way to make potato pancakes, and that all future potato pancakes you encounter are to be judged not on their own merits but as to how much or how little they deviate from The Way Mom Made Them. In truth, you can apply this to any kind of food, even when your mother was a lousy cook. But her goal was always correct…so if she put American Cheese atop your tuna noodle casserole, then a tuna noodle casserole with, say, Cheddar is just wrong.

Lastly, one thing that has always fascinated me about restaurant discussions is that while people can debate anything edible, there are seven categories that seem to draw blood. Those seven are…

1. Hamburgers
2. Pizza
3. Chinese Food
4. Barbecue (ribs, especially)
5. Philly Steak Sandwiches
6. Hot Dogs
7. Clam Chowder

People do quarrel over where to get the best Prime Rib or Tostadas but they do so in a civil and calm manner. These seven seem to bring out the shrill and vituperative disagreements.

Sometimes, pronouncements are geographic — the only decent pizza is in New York, you can't get a good hot dog outside Chicago, etc. Debates about Philly Steak Sandwiches usually start with the understanding that the best are in Philadelphia and then they diverge into sub-topics (Where in Philly? Anywhere outside of Philly worth a mention? And what about Cheez Whiz?) Just outside Los Angeles, there's a community called Monterey Park that is famous for a cluster of superior and authentic Chinese Restaurants. There are Angelenos who will karate-chop you if you suggest that any Chinese Food from anywhere in California but Monterey Park is fit for human consumption.

The Great Clam Chowder Controversy is probably the most interesting one. I have seen death threats hurled over the question of white versus red, let alone where one might procure the finest of either. Years after we finally bury the issue of race in this country, foodies will still be wrestling with that color question.

I was going to end this by posting my list of places I like in L.A. for the above seven but I got enough hate mail during the recent election. So let us all live in peace. Let us link hands, respect our divergences of opinion and recognize that just as people are different, tastes are different and there is no right or wrong answer to any of this. And then let's go beat the crap out of anyone who thinks Vito's on La Cienega doesn't make the best pizza in Los Angeles. Thank you.

Revivals of Gypsy are like cab drivers who don't speak English: You can almost always find one coming or going in Times Square. The latest, starring Patti LuPone as the maniacal Momma Rose, will close soon but Carolyn and I got to see it Saturday night and had a very good time, indeed. It really is an expertly crafted work with many a show-stopping tune and an overall unity of purpose that tells a strong, emotion-laden tale. This version reportedly recreates most of the original Jerome Robbins staging as well as the original orchestrations (which, I somehow only recently learned, were done in part by John Kander). The cast is generally solid so it pretty much comes down to a matter of Momma. A production of Gypsy is only as good as its Rose.

So how's Patti? Pretty wonderful, I'd say but with one quibble. Her Momma Rose is ruthless, unsentimental and all too human in an inhuman way. I saw a semi-professional production once in which the actress playing Rose — the woman who practically tortures her daughters in becoming stars so she can live vicariously through them — wanted us to love her. She kept winking (not literally) at the audience, as if to say, "You know I'm only doing this for their own good" and softening every rotten thing she could soften about Momma. To her credit, Patti LuPone does none of that. I am not discounting the possibility that the play's author, Arthur Laurents, who staged this production is largely responsible…but the point is that Momma Rose, as played by LuPone, is every bit the monster her makers intended her to be. Which is the only way the story really works.

She also succeeds in something that I always thought was the Catch-22 of Momma Rose: The role calls for a big, huge musical comedy star who can come out and belt out the best Broadway tunes and send shivers up our spines…but still convince us that she's a woman who could never have been a star herself. I never saw Ethel Merman play the role but she always seemed to me like perfect casting. Merman was a big, huge Broadway star who looked nothing like a big, huge Broadway star. One of several reasons the movie version never worked for me is that you look at Rosalind Russell and you see this tall, glamorous woman of accomplishment and breeding, and it's like Warren Beatty trying to play a guy who can't get laid. Ms. Russell just can't convince me she's an uneducated broad who's fighting her way out of poverty and failure, desperate for her first taste of success.

Patti LuPone obviously is a star with all the equipment to be a star…but she pulls off that sleight-of-hand. For 2 hours and 45 minutes of misdirection, she fulfills the demands of a star while making you believe she herself could never be one. Amazing.

So what's my quibble? You may think this is silly but even though we had great seats (fifth row, center aisle), I couldn't understand an awful lot of what she said.

Impressionists do Patti LuPone mumbling her way through numbers, slurring dialogue and being generally unintelligible. It's not true all the time but if I didn't know this show fairly well, I wouldn't have been able to make out about a fourth of what came out of her mouth. That's not fatal because not only do I know it, but I think most of the audience could recite much of the dialogue and all of the lyrics by heart…and I guess if you didn't know the material, there's still more than enough there to savor. But you'd also be frustrated because what you could comprehend seemed so perfect and you'd wonder what you were missing. It's a shame they can't have the whole stage closed-captioned or something.

As I said, that's a quibble. If you're thinking of going before it closes, don't let that stop you, even if you don't have the play memorized. And if you do miss it, don't worry. Another revival of Gypsy will be along before you know it. I'm guessing either Rosie O'Donnell, Liza Minnelli or everyone's favorite…Harvey Fierstein in drag. Hey, ya gotta get a gimmick.

I'm still without a working Internet connection in our room and you wouldn't imagine the machinations I go through to get these deathless postings up onto ye olde website. But you're worth it.

I had a very good time at The National, which is the giant, economy-size version of New York's popular Big Apple Comic Conventions. I did two panels, starting with a war comics panel (with emphasis on Sgt. Rock) featuring Russ Heath, Dick Ayers, Billy Tucci and Mark Sparacio. Billy's responsible for a new Rock mini-series from DC Comics that's just coming out (with Mark assisting on covers) and if they're all as good as the first one, they'll have a real winner there.

The other panel was — and I know you'll find this hard to believe — a Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. This one featured Roy Thomas, Joe Sinnott and Stan Goldberg, answering questions about the legendary comic creator. One thing I learned is that when Joe inked a page of Jack's, and I suppose he did this with everyone's pencil art, he'd ink the bottom panels on a page first, then work his way upward. This is because if he started at the top, his hand might smear the pencil work below it. I've known Joe for close to forty years and interviewed him thirty times and this was the first time I heard that. Makes sense.

A few other folks I saw: Herb Trimpe, Ken Gale, Richard Howell, Irwin Hasen, Neal Adams, Chris Claremont, J. David Spurlock, Steve Saffel, Jim Salicrup, Danny Fingeroth, Bob Smith, Larry Hama, Elayne and Robin Riggs, Dan Gheno and I forget who else. I ran into Richard Bensam. Richard was the first person to offer 364 in our contest to guess Barack Obama's final electoral total. We do not yet have a winner. Obama is currently at 365, which no one guessed, and Missouri is still out. They say it'll report by Tuesday. (This'll make someone mad: A lot of us arrived at our guesses by figuring out which states might go black and not go back, and how many electoral votes each represented. Richard may have beaten us all by, he says, picking a number that just sounded about right.)

Speaking of political stuff: I spent a fascinating hour-or-more with Fred Kaplan and his lovely wife, Brooke Gladstone. Those who listen to NPR know Brooke from her program on that fine network. Those who read this weblog know Fred because I'm forever hectoring you to go read his articles on Slate, which have been concise and pragmatic insights into what's going on in our government, particularly with regard to matters of nation defense and Iraq. Fred actually understands things like military budgets, even if no one at the current White House or press corps seems to. Other reporters let our leaders get away with promising to send soldiers we don't or won't have but Kaplan has accurately predicted much that has happened, just by being aware of how many troops we had and when their tours were up.

He has other good insights…so it was a pleasure to meet the man and get to know him a little. People ask me why I go to the time and trouble of this weblog. There are a lot of answers to that but one is that because of it, I get to meet people I respect and can maybe learn from.

That's about everything I have to report about the con. Saturday evening, Carolyn and I went to see Gypsy and I'll post a review in a little while. More to come from New York in a day or so.

Well, I'm not at home but the house sitter assures me all is well…and yes, the cats are being fed.

But every time there are big brush fires in Southern California, as they've seen the last few days, I get a number of concerned e-mails asking if my home and I are in any danger. Answer: Never. I'm in an urban area. A fire up in Malibu would have to burn down all of West Los Angeles and Beverly Hills to get to me. The ones in Sylmar would need to take a couple of freeways. I appreciate your concern, dear correspondents, but you fret for naught.