Sorry I'm not posting more lately. Lots of stuff to do here and every once in a while, I succumb to this strange urge to actually sleep.

I find myself unable to turn loose of the election. I should look away until such time as Obama is in office and actually doing things but it's hard. And of course, parts of the election are still not over. Some but not all have called Missouri for McCain…and then you have things like the Senate race in Minnesota where Norm Coleman is, at last look, only 221 votes ahead of Al Franken with a mandatory recount ahead. I've met Franken and think he's a smart, serious fellow so, above and beyond the fact that it would give the Democrats a tad more clout, I'd like to see him win it.

But of greater interest to me is yet another piece of evidence on how sloppy our voting procedures are in this country. They're still finding votes that weren't tallied and the recount hasn't even started yet. When it does, thousands of ballots that weren't counted because the optical scanners registered "no vote" on them may yield even more votes.

Sadly, no one ever looks at these situations and sees anything more than their guy winning or losing. I wish someone would react by saying that regardless of outcome, we oughta do a better job of counting votes. You wouldn't put your money in a bank that days after people made their deposits was still finding checks that hadn't been processed…and which then said it would take weeks to get you an accurate balance. But we trust our votes to a system with that low a level of precision.

Protests are erupting all over California over the outcome of Proposition 8. I'm dismayed at it too but apart from blowing off steam, I'm not sure what the protests can accomplish. What might be meaningful is to use that anger to jumpstart fund-raising efforts to put this matter on the next ballot, whenever that is, and vote again. The previous time Californians weighed in on same-sex marriage, it lost by 22 points. This time, it was four — and in an election where, some claim, the loss was due to an unusual number of Afro-Americans turning out to vote for Obama. I dunno how much of a difference that made but it seems to me that if you lose by 22 and then by four, the next time is more than likely to go your way.

John McCain will be on with Leno on Tuesday. The Republican nominee needs to rehabilitate his image with some Americans so it'll be a lot of self-deprecating remarks and Good Sport platitudes about how "the voters have spoken" and "we all need to get behind our new president." I'm sure he'll be charming and funny and he may even be the "old" John McCain (as opposed to the old John McCain) who some of us might have supported if he'd been on the ballot. What would really impress me is if he sat down with Jay and said, "You know, I hope America will understand that all that stuff we said about him being a terrorist and socialist was just crap we made up to try and get votes." Somehow, I don't expect that to happen.

I think Sarah Palin has a huge future catering to the Fox News audience — TV deals, book offers, speaking engagements, etc. There's a lot of money and fame to be harvested there…certainly a lot more than you'd ever hope to realize as Governor of Alaska. There may even be more influence over the directions in which America heads. I don't think she has any future in being elected to any office voted on by non-Alaskans but it may advance that other career path to maintain her '12 candidacy for a while, and maybe even to get into the Senate if Ted Stevens gets elected and then expelled. But the G.O.P. leadership is not going to allow the ascendancy of a candidate they couldn't even trust to give a press conference or to sit down with any interviewer more challenging than Sean Hannity. Sixty-some percent of Republicans say they'd like to see Palin head the 2012 ticket but that number will plunge as soon as someone emerges who can offer her agenda and answer questions without providing monologue fodder. And don't think there won't be someone.

By the way: I'm not writing this stuff for your benefit so much as mine. Putting it up here seems to help me to stop thinking about it, which in turn enables me to focus on that which needs to be done in my life. I'm going to post another video link, then go try to do some of those things. Happy Sunday.

As part of the Bush administration's ongoing efforts to kick the poor and middle-class in the groin at every possible opportunity, they've just taken steps to reduce medical services available under Medicaid. It's never bothered them when a large corporation overcharged the government by zillions, or when vast sums simply disappeared into that end of the budget. But money spent on health care for the poor in this country? Can't have that.

This is just being mean. Obama and the Democrats are committed in the opposite direction and will presumably undo it all, and then some. But in the few months before that can happen, someone's going to suffer.

A newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska has awarded a rogue electoral vote to Barack Obama, bringing his total to 365. Still to be decided is where Missouri's 11 electoral votes will land. McCain is reportedly in the lead there but it's not definite…so Obama's final total will be 365 or 376. This brings us back to our little contest to guess the number.

No one guessed 365 but as explained here, a lot of people — starting with Richard Bensam, guessed 364. We also had one person, Ellen Bischoff, guess 366. Richard's guess came in before Ellen's so if 365 is the final tally, I'll declare Richard the winner, Ellen the runner-up and the next ten folks who picked 364 as Honorable Mentions.

One and only one person guessed 376: Jim Ellwanger.

Before I forget, I want to again plug the website of Bob Claster, who was one of those who picked 364. Bob is a writer and historian of comedy, and also of other things. He once hosted a very fine radio show called Bob Claster's Funny Stuff on which he interviewed many of the giants in the mirth business and he's been nice enough to put a number of these broadcasts online for your pleasure and edification. Among those he interviewed were John Cleese, Stan Freberg, Douglas Adams, Peter Cook, Quentin Crisp and Tom Lehrer. If you go to his page, you'll find an interview with someone you think is or was a genius in the world of comedy…probably several someones.

Several websites are reporting that Forrest J Ackerman, sci-fi legend and founding editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, has passed away. As far as I know, this is NOT true. It is true that Forry is 91 and ailing. It's also true that friends of his have circulated e-mails saying this would be a good time to write or visit Forry to say the kind of things you want to say to someone before they depart. But the news now circulating that he has died is apparently premature…and if Forry has heard about it, I'll bet he's having a chuckle.

In 1932 and 1933, Groucho and Chico Marx starred in an NBC radio series called Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel, which we assume was a very funny show. We have to assume this because not many recordings of this program have survived. The series was written by two close Marx associates, Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, sometimes with the participation of George Oppenheimer and Tom McKnight. So it had that going for it and of course, it's Groucho and Chico. How could that not be worth listening to? (Though audiences of the time found sufficient reason to prefer Ed Wynn, who was on opposite the Marxes' show. Which is why it only lasted one season.)

Like I said, most of the shows are lost but fortunately, copies of all but one of the scripts still exist. In the early nineties, BBC Radio hired Groucho and Chico impersonators and a full cast and crew to replicate the old series. The thirties' material was freely adapted, in some cases with two or more of the original scripts combined to make new episodes. Material from the Marx Brothers movies also found its way into the BBC versions. In one, their Groucho sings "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" which the real one sang in the 1939 movie At the Circus. The tune probably hadn't even been written when Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel was originally airing.

Despite the tampering — or maybe even because of it — the BBC shows are pretty darn entertaining. Wanna hear one or more? BBC Radio 7 is presently rerunning them, which means they also turn up on that network's website. If you go to this page, you can listen to the first episode…though only for the next week or so, at which time I expect it will be replaced by the second episode and so on. Various sources disagree on how many the BBC did but 18 seems like a good number. One hopes they'll keep this run going 'til they've replayed them all. Enjoy. And thank Mike Rea for letting me know about these.

Every election, there always seems to be some big race decided by eleven votes…just to remind us that sometimes, whether or not we take the time to cast a ballot can make a difference. This time, it seems to be the Senate race in Minnesota. As of last night, Norm Coleman led Al Franken by 477 votes. Today, heretofore uncounted ballots have been added in and the difference is now 337. There will be more counted and this is all before they commence the recount that is mandatory in that state when an election is this close.

I also should have mentioned that while the polls were generally accurate, most of 'em were way off with all the races in Alaska. Polls predicted that the career of convicted felon Ted Stevens would be going down a series of tubes…and Stevens seemed to be hastening his loss the other night when he went around announcing that he hadn't been convicted of anything. It made him seem not only crooked but delusional, as well. Polls had him losing by 7-10% and at the moment — with some amount of ballots still outstanding — he has a slight lead. The pollsters were off with other Alaskan contests as well. There's no reason (yet) to suspect tampering but you have to wonder: Why Alaska and nowhere else?

Hey, remember the other day when I told you how MAD printed an issue that came out right after the 1960 election with congrats to JFK on one cover and to Nixon on the other? Well, in 2000, an interior page also had to be done in two versions but for a different situation. The acclaimed drawer-of-faces Tom Richmond, who produced the two versions, tells us all about it.

I see a lot of pundits and bloggers today telling us what's going to happen with the 2012 presidential race. This is all good to know.

Could someone point me to some of the predictions made just after Election Day in 2004 that said that in four years, this nation just might elect a black guy and Joe Biden in a landslide?