So this penguin escapes from a leopard seal and then hitches a ride on a boat so it can rejoin its friends on a nearby iceberg…

At 2:16 this afternoon, I posted the following line here: "I have a 2:30 PM Zoom conference today and that's about as far ahead as I feel plans can be firm in the world in which I live."

Four minutes after I posted that, the conference was postponed. Apparently, 14 minutes is too far ahead to plan in the world today.

It's something like 255 days until the 2023 Comic-Con convenes in San Diego. I expect to be there…but then, I expected to be there in 2020 and none of us were. I have a 2:30 PM Zoom conference today and that's about as far ahead as I feel plans can be firm in the world in which I live.

If you weren't able to score the badges you wanted this past weekend, please remember — first and foremost — that I am not the Complaint Department for the convention nor do I really have anything to do with its operations. I just go, do my silly little panels and go home.

There is no way to measure this but I suspect the number of people who fall into the category of "Want to Attend Comic-Con" is far greater than most of us imagine. If miraculously, the size of that convention center could be increased ten-fold and that many more people could attend, you'd still have folks grumbling about getting shut out.

This is anecdotal but just about every time I meet someone who's never been and they find out I'm a regular, they say something like, "Geez, I'd love to go sometime but I hear it's impossible to get in." The online lottery to try for badges may feel like it pits you against an overwhelming number of badge-seekers but you're not even competing with hundreds of thousands who aren't even trying.

Invariably after it sells out each time, the question gets asked if the con can move somewhere else so as to accommodate more people. I have long insisted that the answer to that is no. First off, there aren't that many larger convention centers in this country. Secondly, Comic-Con isn't just that one convention center. It's all the hotels and other facilities and the cooperation of darn near the entire city of San Diego. You're never going to get that from Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

And speaking of Las Vegas, they're looking at its biggest-ever event next year. I stole this text off a website…

The greatest racing spectacle on the planet and the sports and entertainment capital of the world collide as Formula 1 will light up the Las Vegas Strip on November 16-18, 2023, for an unforgettable race cutting right through the neon heart of the city. The Las Vegas Grand Prix's 3.8-mile track will weave past world-famous landmarks, casinos and hotels as drivers push their luck to breaking points at speeds of up to 212 mph.

Ticket prices for Formula 1 fans run from $500 to $10,000. That's if you buy a year in advance. You can imagine what tickets will cost next October. The hotel room at Caesars Palace that's usually $150 a night will be $1500 and up during the Formula 1 week…and by "up," I mean some of them are going for more than $10,000 a night. The casinos are orgasmic when they think about how much someone who'll pay that kind of money to see people drive fast will then lose at the crap tables while in town.

That's kind of what's required to take over Las Vegas the way Comic-Con takes over San Diego.

And besides, it isn't 120° in July in San Diego and the folks who run Comic-Con are experts at how to run that convention there and they've established all the necessary relationships with the hotels and the police and the transit people and everyone. So discard any dreams you have about Comic-Con moving somewhere large enough where you can easily get badges. Ain't gonna happen.

The unofficial attendance stat for the Comic-Con last July was "130,000+" and I don't think anyone knows how much that "+" denotes. That's been the easy-to-calculate statistic for the past few cons because that's capacity. I don't believe, by the way, it includes the immeasurable people who go to San Diego those days without badges and just hang out and enjoy the street fair and various off-site events and exhibits.

One evening a few conventions ago, I was in the Ralphs Market at 1st Avenue and G Street near the convention center. I had neglected to take off my badge and maybe that's why a nice lady — kind of a motherly type — came up to me and asked, "Are you going back to the convention tomorrow and if not, could I have your badge?"

I did not say to her, "Yes, but if you wear it to the con tomorrow, you have to go host eleven panels." Instead, I told her why she couldn't have my badge and she said, "I'm sorry but I've been here five or six years now and I've never gotten to see the inside of that convention."

I said, "You've been in the Ralphs Market for five or six years now?" She laughed and said, "No, every year I bring my sons here while the con is on. We can never get badges. I'm not even sure we could afford them. But there are lots of things to see and do around the convention center and my sons just love being here and oh, they get so much free stuff!"

She told me they live in San Ysidro so it's not a big commute. They come up on the trolley and go home the same way at night. Round-trip is around five bucks so it's actually cheap entertainment. Her sons are now old enough to come on their own but she still accompanies them. She said she so enjoys being around the convention with all the happy people out there, many in costume.

I'm not suggesting that anyone who can't get badges for the con just go there and hang around. The streets are crowded enough. I'm just reminding you that Comic-Con is difficult to get into because it's so popular, not because anyone's plotting to keep you out. That's just the nature of the beast. WonderCon Anaheim, which takes place next on March 24-26 is also pretty wonderful in many of the same ways. And it's a lot easier to get into.

I haven't done one of these in a while. This installment brings you "Never My Love" performed by The Association, a group I kinda liked back then although I knew absolutely nothing about them. Didn't know their names, didn't know where they came from…I don't think I even knew how many guys were in the group. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know there were six of them, the band was from California and that the membership changed a lot over the years.

"Never My Love" came out in 1967 when the band members consisted of Terry Kirkman, Russ Giguere, Brian Cole, Ted Bluechel Jr., Jim Yester and Larry Ramos. This appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was December 8, 1968 when, says Wikipedia, they'd added Jules Alexander to the group. But there are still six guys in the video so your guess is as good as mine, possibly better.

Here's a mystery that interests me more. I was in high school at the time this song was popular and there was a student talent show in which a young lady I knew from Algebra was going to sing it. At one of the rehearsals, the faculty advisor supervising the show declared that three songs — this one, "Young Girl" (recorded by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap) and "Light My Fire" (by The Doors, of course) had lyrics that were "too suggestive."

I worked on the show and I was the one who argued, ever-so-politely, that every kid in the audience knew these lyrics and heard them, ad nauseum, on the radio. What was the harm of singing them in the school auditorium? It was a solid argument but this faculty advisor was one of those "I am always right" types and he insisted that certain lines be laundered or the songs had to be cut.

It fell to me to rewrite the lyrics in question. The changes were approved by him at the last rehearsal…and then when the actual show was performed in front of the audience, all the singers (as planned) went back to the original lyrics. He said nothing. No one complained. The matter was forgotten. And the same situation would play out years later when I argued — again, ever so politely — with Standards and Practices people (i.e., censors) on TV shows I worked on. It was one of the more valuable lessons I learned in high school.

But what puzzles me now is what did he make us change in this song? I don't recall and the lyrics on the Sullivan show are exactly the same as on the record. I don't hear anything more salacious in them than we heard in half of the most popular tunes of the day. It just sounds to me like two people madly in love and the line about "spend your whole life with me" even suggested marriage to most people back in 1967, not recreational sex. Maybe he objected to a female singing that line because ladies weren't supposed to ask that of men back then. See if you can figure it out…

I'm almost never late for work. This is because with rare exceptions these days, I get there each morning by walking all the way from my bedroom to my office — a commute of about seven seconds…or up to ten if there's traffic. The traffic would usually consist of my cleaning lady vacuuming the hallway.

Back when I did have to drive to an office that wasn't in my home, it wasn't that easy but I usually managed to make it on schedule. This was just a matter of leaving my home at the proper time and being wise enough to avoid certain streets which seemed to be in perpetual reconstruction. The city seems to have a standing order to its maintenance people to always be tearing up any portion of Wilshire Boulevard on which I am likely to travel.

Years ago when we were all just getting used to The Internet, I came across a website full of maps and a tool with which you could find out the time it would take you to get from Point A to Point B. I entered the addresses necessary to measure what was then my 5-day-a-week commute and it said I could get to my current place of work in 14 minutes. I was startled because my experience had been more like a half-hour or a bit longer.

But then I realized: That was fourteen minutes if (big, impossible IF) mine was the only car on the road and I never had to stop for silly things like traffic lights or stop signs or even pedestrians. Later, more sophisticated map programs online took those things into account. I just checked out that same commute on Google Maps and it says that drive is a lot longer…from 28 to 39 minutes depending on the time of day.

And of course, it can be even longer if traffic is worse than normal, if there are accidents along the way…or road construction which no one told Google Maps about…even some not on Wilshire Boulevard. Twice in the last few years, I've tried to drive past CBS Television City and there was a massive wait because James Corden and a bunch of actors were performing a musical in the middle of the intersection of Beverly Blvd. and N. Genesee Avenue.

Also, I may discover a need to stop for gas or some other necessity.

Or I might not be able to leave my house exactly when I planned. An important I-have-to-take-this call might come in. I might suddenly remember something I had to do before I departed. I might oversleep. My car might not start. One time, I couldn't get it out of the garage because there was a traffic accident right outside and it blocked me until a tow truck came to haul one of the cars away. Another time, my electricity went out and the manual switch — which is supposed to allow you to open the garage door anyway — didn't work.

Things happen. And one of the ways I learned to minimize lateness is to recognize that things happen, to allow for them to happen and to not cut it close. It's like the difference between the commute I described a few paragraphs above this one taking 14 minutes and it taking 28-39. These days, you can't get anywhere "as the crow flies," even if you're a crow.

In my life, I have had three separate lady friends who, though smart in every other way, were unable to understand that concept. In two out of those three cases, the incessant lateness was a key reason those relationships ended. We missed flights. We'd get to a restaurant and find that our reservation was no longer valid. We missed the first 10-15 minutes of plays and live shows…and one time, we were so late they just plain wouldn't let us in nor give me a refund. On more than one occasion, we were running so late for an event that I realized there was no point in going and I tore up tickets for which I'd paid good money.

I have also had friends who were not of the romantic variety who harmed their careers by being late constantly — some writers, a few artists, a producer or two, one magician…the magician, when he had a gig, would get there too late to do the prep necessary to put on the best show he could do. So the folks paying him never got to see his best stuff. That does not help a career.

They usually had good excuses. One of the writers always had a good excuse. But he was always late and at some point, people just stopped dealing with him because he was causing too much trouble for others involved in the TV show he was writing. The good excuses didn't matter. And it wasn't that they didn't believe him. It just came down to "He's always late."

With the three separate ladies, I'd say, "We need to leave for the event at 5:00" even though the actual mandatory departure time was more like 6:00. They'd say, "Fine. It'll take me 45 minutes to get ready so I'll start at 4:15."

And then something would come up and something else would come up and something else would come up and they wouldn't be able to start until 4:45. And then it would take two hours.

You can't fix a problem when you don't recognize that you're the cause of it. But the way they saw it, Fate had made them late. Or other people had made them late. That damn computer broke and so it was the computer's fault. With the lady I just described, it couldn't possibly have had anything to do with her deciding to not start prepping until 4:15.

With that writer I mentioned, he'd get an assignment due on Friday and think, "I can do that in two days so I'll start on Wednesday"…and then it would take longer than he thought and/or the power would be out in his area and/or his computer would break and/or his mother would need him to drive her to the doctor and/or a thousand other things…

…but his lateness couldn't possibly have had anything to do with his decision to not start writing the assignment until Wednesday, right?

I could go on and on with stories like this. I could even include some where I made this mistake which I try real hard not to make. We can all screw up now and then. We can all be forgiving of others now and then. It's just lately I've had a lot of plans screwed-up and opportunities missed because someone was sure they could be ready by 6 PM and they couldn't and it caused problems for them, me and everyone else. But they always had a good excuse.

Every so often on this blog, I repost the tale of the Idaho Spud candy bar that one of my friends bought for another one of my friends once at a movie theater. It's not time to repost this story yet again but if you're not familiar with it, here's a link to its most recent posting here. If you're too lazy to click on that link, don't worry. I'll post it again here in a few years.

Every time I do post it, I get at least a few e-mails or in-person questions that ask, "Is that a real candy bar or something you made up?" I've made up a lot of silly stuff in my life but I couldn't come up with anything like that. It's a real candy bar…one I've never seen in any store, one I've never tasted and one I wouldn't eat if I did have one. I gave up all candy around 2007 and even when I did consume such items, my food allergies required me to avoid anything containing coconut.

But I swear it's a real product. If you don't believe me, watch this news story…

A person who asks that I identity him (or her, I suppose) as "A. Nonymous" sent me the following…

I know you have been to every San Diego Comic-Con since the first one in 1970 but have you been to every day of every one? Have you ever paid to get in? If you did, what did it cost back then? Have you ever known the sad feeling of not being able to get tickets to one or not being able to get a hotel room? How many panels do you think you've hosted? Have you ever been a panelist on a panel someone else hosted?

But my main question is this. A friend of mine insists that you are paid a handsome fee for hosting all those panels you host. I told him he was wrong but he did seem sure of it. Can you set one of us straight?

Boy, you ask lot of questions, A. To be technically accurate, I have been to every Comic-Con International in San Diego even before they were called that with these exceptions: I did not attend the one-day mini-con they held on March 21, 1970 as kind of a test and fundraiser for the first full-out convention, which was held August 1–3 later that year. I was at that one for Saturday only.

I also did not attend a small con they did in November of '75 to raise money. The receipts from the convention in August of that year were stolen and they needed to make up those funds somehow if the con was to continue. I also didn't go to the "Special Edition" con they had right after Thanksgiving last year.

I have not attended every day of every con since then. I believe my pal Scott Shaw! has been present for every day of every con except for the one year he had to miss for medical reasons. Scott has been to more days of San Diego Cons than I have and there may be a few others who have. There have been a few years when I skipped the first day or the last day for various reasons. One year, a TV show I wrote was taping on the Thursday that the con opened so I went down to San Diego that evening.

In 1988, the Writers Guild was convening on Sunday, August 7 to vote to end its 153 day strike. That was the last day of that's year Comic-Con but I wanted to be at the strike meeting and I wasn't doing as many panels back then so I didn't have one on Sunday. I checked out of my hotel Saturday night, stashed my gear in my car, then spent the evening with friends and at parties. Around 2:30 AM, I hopped on the freeway and made excellent time getting back home to Los Angeles. I got a little sleep and was at the Strike Meeting at 11 AM.

And there were a couple of other years around then when I began getting a little bored with the con so I'd skip the first day or the last day. This year, my lady friend and I drove down Thursday evening. We skipped Preview Night and Thursday, thereby reducing the number of days we were risking exposure to a certain well-publicized dread disease.

When I attended my first Comic-Con in 1970 — logo above — I was a guest by virtue of being Jack Kirby's assistant. So I had a free invite and after that, I got more such invites informally until 1975 when the con presented me with an Inkpot Award. An Inkpot includes admission to the convention forever…so I've never really known what it costs to get in, nor have I had to sweat getting a badge or a hotel room. They need me there to host all those panels so they make sure I have a place to sleep. Each year, a certain number of people are designated as Special Guests and I'm usually among them. Special Guests get their hotel rooms, meals and travel expenses covered.

I have no idea how many panels I've hosted but it's gotta be more than 200, maybe 300. Each year, I'm usually on one or two I don't moderate.

No, I am not paid anything — a handsome fee or even an ugly one — for what I do there. There are people who host panels and are paid but they're not paid by the convention. They're paid by some company which has arranged a panel to promote some product of theirs.

To conclude all this Full Disclosure: I do get some perks but I do all those panels because I enjoy doing them. I also just enjoy being at the convention…but I don't sell anything, I don't want to sit behind a table signing much of what Sergio has signed — boy, does he sign a lot of stuff — and my knees could never take 4.5 days of wandering around that building. Doing panels gives me a place to be and something to do and I feel like I'm contributing something.

Thursday and Sunday badges for Comic-Con 2023 are now sold out also. Congrats to those of you who got in. The convention may put some more memberships up for auction on eBay as a fund-raising move but if they do, those will not be cheap.  There may be a few other ways to secure admission but I'm not an expert on them.

Sales started a little after 9 AM so they sold out in about 75 minutes.  That's probably a function of how smoothly the software handled orders but it still indicates a massive, impossible-to-serve-everyone demand.  There are people who saw the notice and (of course) gave up while still getting the notice that their wait was "more than an hour."

I have a number of e-mails from folks with theories as to why Johnny Carson didn't have Jonathan Winters on his show more often. A couple of folks speculate that Johnny was uncomfy with having Mr. Winters on the premises because Johnny's "Aunt Blabby" character was so blatantly derived from Jonathan's "Maude Frickert." That might be a good reason to never have Jonathan Winters on the show but it doesn't explain having him on only occasionally. I've decided that there is no explanation that we're likely to discern these days.

I also have a lot of e-mails asking me about recent political matters. Sorry but I'm not paying enough attention right now to the news. I have voted because that's something I can do influence the direction of things, however infinitesimally…but there are times when I think it's good for my health and work to not spend much of my time and stomach lining on following the news. This is one of those times.

So I just peeked into the Open Registration for Comic-Con International that's taking place right now. The wait time to get into the registration area where you actually get to purchase badges is, the screen says, "more than an hour." Preview Night, Friday and Saturday are sold out so I would guess that "more than an hour" means you ain't getting badges today. I feel bad for those who want to go and can't…but the con can only hold so many bodies and there are way more than that number that want to be there. It's one of those sad facts of life.

I'm going to spend today writing stuff and some of it will be for this site, whether I post it today or not. Remember to set whatever clocks and timers you have that don't automatically adjust themselves back an hour tonight.

Sorry to hear of the passing of Danny Bulanadi, a fine comic book illustrator who was born in 1946 in Manila, Philippines. He broke into the field as many did — as an assistant for Tony deZuñiga working for all the top-selling "komiks" in the Philippines until he relocated to the U.S. in 1975. DC and Marvel put him to work, primarily as an inker but I employed him as a penciler and inker for some foreign Tarzan comics I edited around the time he got here and I was very happy to let him do the entire job. His work was quite good and it was always on time.

In 1988, he moved to Southern California and worked a lot as a storyboard and designer, primarily for Hanna-Barbera (and especially on Jonny Quest) and for Marvel Productions (especially on The Transformers) and a great many videogames. He did just about everything a comic book artist can do and even dabbled in painting nature and old west scenes. The industry could use more people who are that versatile and that dependable.

• I wish the Kroger company would start a 2nd Customer Service Hotline where you could instantly connect with someone to complain about how you can't reach anyone on their 1st Customer Service Hotline.

B. Monte read what I wrote about how Jonathan Winters didn't appear that often with Johnny Carson even though those appearances always went well…

I can think of one reason that might explain why Johnny didn't have Jonathan on more often.

You have written about how Johnny tightly controlled the show and that almost every impromptu story and surprise stunt was pre-approved. While the Winters segments were very entertaining, I can imagine that Carson had a love/hate relationship with having Winters on the show — they were great segments, but Johnny had no control over what would happen (and had no chance of regaining control).

I dunno. Johnny had Rodney Dangerfield on as often as he could get him and Rodney was pretty much on auto-pilot. If you watched Rodney on talk shows, he came out with a list in his head of the jokes he wanted to tell and the order he was going to tell them. A host could knock him off his script by trying to get him to not go straight on to the next one. All Johnny would do was to interject a quick question like, "Have you seen your doctor lately?" and Rodney would say, since the doctor jokes came later, "I'm going to the doctor later" and plunge right into the next joke on the list.

Other hosts tried to actually participate in Rodney's "act" and to actually interview him. It killed his rhythm. And Johnny did the same thing in that clip with Jonathan: just laid back and let the guest soar. He also did it when Robin Williams was on and he let guests like Charles Grodin control the conversation if the audience was laughing.

One of the things Carson learned from Jack Benny — one of the things that kept Johnny on the air for so long — was the principle that if the audience is laughing and it's your show, it doesn't matter who's getting the laughs. Benny let Don Wilson get the laughs. He let Dennis Day get the laughs. He let Mary Livingstone, Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson and all the others — and especially Rochester — get the laughs. Johnny loved it when a Don Rickles or a Mel Brooks got on a roll.

And you can see how delighted he was with Jonathan in that clip. I'm wondering if Jonathan didn't resent what The Tonight Show paid and turned down requests to come on the program…and only accepted them every so often when he felt the need to remind the industry that he was still around and still funny.

Then again, the guy loved to perform. I once saw him do 20 minutes for customers in a Honeybaked Ham shop on Riverside Drive. So like I said…I dunno.

This turned up on Max Maven's Twitter feed this morning…

I made my life about words, reading them and writing them. I wish I had a more elegant way of telling you all that I love you.

I had a good run, made wonderful friends, shared many laughs, and I learned a great many things. I learned that magic allows us to be so much bigger than we are. I learned we should be kind to one another and forgive people for being flawed and prideful.

The one thing I know is that we can all do better, and I think we will.

Elon Musk will probably try to charge Max's ghost for this.

Later this month, the acclaimed production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish will reopen at the off-Broadway New World Stages on West 50th Street in New York. I know about eight words of Yiddish but I think I also know Fiddler on the Roof — on stage and screen — well enough to know what the actors are saying up there.

It's not my favorite musical and it might not even make my Top Ten…but I'm fascinated with the fact that this show, which its makers felt would have a limited run playing only to a niche market, has been the worldwide, universal success it's been. They never thought it would play in any city without a hefty Jewish population but before long, it was a smash hit in Japan, for God's sake! And everywhere else.

Even after it opened on Broadway in 1964, they didn't know. Zero Mostel was the first Tevye and when his initial contract was nearing expiration, he demanded a huge increase to stay on, confident the producers knew that he was the show and that it would close quickly without him. They said no and after he left, it ran another seven years and has had six Broadway revivals since then. It may be the most-produced musical of all time.

Here's a little video of rehearsals for the reopening. All the things the actors say about how universal it is and how it speaks to everyone — that's all true but when the show was first produced, no one suspected that. They just thought it would run until every theater-loving Jew within commuting distance of Manhattan had seen it…

Someone asked me recently what Jonathan Winters was like off-camera. In my experiences, he was very much like Jonathan Winters on-camera. For some of the time I had an office at Hanna-Barbera, I was located right outside the recording studio and when a Smurfs voice session ended, Mr. Winters would go prowling in search of an audience. He learned he could often find one in my office where other writers were known to congregate. I didn't go into the studio every day but for a while, I would try to be there when The Smurfs was recording, just in case Jonathan was in and wanted to play.

There'd be three or four writers in my office and when he poked his head in, we'd never greet him by name. I'd say, "Hi! Are you the local game warden" or something like that…and Jonathan would instantly become the local game warden and commence a lecture about how to not have a bear eat your face off. Once in a while when he was Jonathan Winters and not a character, he would tell show biz stories. The ones I recall best were the ones that expressed his distaste for Bob Hope…

…and when you think about it, he and Hope were pretty much opposites. Jonathan could not work with pre-scripted lines and cue cards while Hope — at that age — couldn't perform without them.

Here's Jonathan on with Johnny Carson. The date is 12/8/1988 and I doubt you'll ever see anyone do better sitting in Carson's guest chair…and you can see the delight on Johnny's face throughout. And yet I wondered why he didn't have Jonathan on very often. Winters at the time was living in Toluca Lake, I think…literally about a five-minute drive from where Johnny taped. And Jonathan was rarely unavailable. You'd think that when a guest scored this well, Johnny would tell his people, "Let's have that guy on every three or four weeks." But I'd be surprised if Jonathan was on more often than once every other year or so.

Don't ask me why. I have no idea…