So in the space of twenty-four hours, Amazon's price for this certain box of Planter's Salted Cashews has gone from $17.09 to $21.98 and then to $24.11…and now it's at $28.99. The last time I purchased them, they were $15.06 and the time before that — not that long ago — I paid $11.24. You can check on the current price here.

I'm going to stop tracking this because I've made my point: Some items on Amazon just go up in price and down in price rapidly and for no visible reason. If a couple of bucks matter to you, you have to keep your eye on this.

I've received a number of interesting e-mails from folks telling me how to track prices on Amazon,. I'll post some of it in a few days. My thanks to all who wrote in.

I am of Jewish heritage but only on my father's side. Because my mother was Catholic and both families frowned on two such people getting married, they basically raised me to be nothing in particular. This has worked out a lot better than folks who are devout to one faith or another would probably admit.

When asked what I am, I say I'm Jewish even though there was never any thought of me being Bar Mitzvahed and the last time I set foot in a synagogue it was to attend a Purim Festival when I was around fifteen.

When I was young, we did a few of the Jewish traditions and ceremonies…like I did have a Menorah and for a few years, we'd light the candles each year until one year when we just plain forgot. For no particular reason, I've decided that this year, I'm going to celebrate the eight days of Hanukkah by posting a different Hanukkah video each evening. Cover your head and watch this one…

There are an awful lot of articles online about Mr. Sondheim and I won't pretend I've read all of them or even most of them. But the best one I've come across that attempt to explain about what made him special was this one by Isaac Butler.

A few hours ago in Times Square in New York, there was a memorial for Stephen Sondheim with Lin-Manuel Miranda speaking briefly and then an assemblage of (mostly) Broadway performers singing the most appropriate Sondheim song. Someone posted two video clips on YouTube and in the unlikely event I configured things correctly, they should play — one after the other — in the window below.

I still have very little desire to leave my home, especially since the plumber just left and I now have hot water again. But as I watched this, I kinda wished I was in Times Square instead of sitting here obsessing on the price of cashews…

The price is on the rise. Last night, it was $17.09. When I got up four hours ago, it was $21.98. Now it's $24.11. You can watch it go up and down for yourself here.

I wonder if someone has invented "snipe" software for Amazon. It would be a program that constantly monitors the prices of things you buy regularly and then alerts you or places an order when an item's price hits a certain level. I also wonder how Amazon's price guarantees apply when you buy something at one price and six hours later, it's cheaper.

I'm home this weekend as opposed to being at the Comic-Con Special Edition down in San Diego. What I'm hearing from down there is "Low attendance on Friday, some bottlenecks with getting in (badges being issued, vaxx cards being checked, etc.) and a pretty good crowd there yesterday." One friend who asked I not quote him by name wrote me…

I guess it's a success. I had a very good time but it was a little eerie with everyone wearing masks including some very creative ones. It's just a little strange to be in that room at what looks a lot like Comic-Con as we know it, and not be elbow-to-elbow with people in Klingon suits and on a Saturday, no less. I wouldn't have thought I'd miss the crowds the way I did. But there were dealers around and I did score some bargains.

There wasn't much in the way of celebrity encounters and the panels upstairs seemed to be displaced by a lot of gaming. There wasn't much on the schedule that intrigued me and everything that did was highly promotional. But I'm glad I went for one day.

I'm hoping it'll be regarded as a success. I felt a smidgen of guilt at not attending and therefore supporting the con committee's efforts towards normalizing our world. It's just that I'm not quite ready to be in a building with lots of other people…even way less people than are usually in said building when I'm present. If I hadn't withdrawn, I would have spent the last few weeks wondering if I wasn't making a really dumb mistake.

So I'm glad I didn't go and I'm glad other people did. Best of both worlds. Besides, I've been very busy here tracking the price of cashews.

Like all of you, the first thing I do in the morning is check the current price of that box of Planters Salted Cashews I order from Amazon. Right now, it's $21.98. You can check it for yourself here.

I won't be doing this forever but I made up the graphic and I feel I have to get some use out of it.

This afternoon at 2 PM (my time), the box of Planters Salted Cashews I order from Amazon via this link was $28.99. Now, less than eight hours later, you can get them for $17.09 apiece. Is this the work of Insider Cashew Trading?

At a birthday celebration for Stephen Sondheim, Marin Mazzie — another great talent who is no longer with us — performed one of the composer's most powerful songs. This is from Follies…

At a concert in London, Bernadette Peters sang another of Sondheim's most powerful songs. This is from Into the Woods…

In a concert performance of Sweeney Todd, Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone performed this amazing tune…

Under the opening titles of the movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Zero Mostel and a chorus sang this lively number. (Caution: I do not recommend any part of this movie after these three minutes…)

And in the 2008 Broadway revival of Company, Raul Esparza had this wonderful musical moment…

Last night at 7:15 PM, I posted this item here (click or scroll down a little) about the fluctuating price of a certain box of Planters Salted Cashews on Amazon. At that moment, the price of a box was $15.06 and I wrote, "Click here to go see if it still is."

I just went to see if it still is and it isn't. As I post this less than nineteen hours later, that box is now $28.99.

Folks have sent me different theories as to why the price of this product goes up and down and up and down and up and down and sometimes, up and up and up before it goes down and down and down. The only suggestion that sounds possible to me is that it might have something to do with how many boxes they have in inventory in their various fulfillment centers. If lots of people place orders — possibly including people motivated by my posts here — and Amazon's reserve supply goes down, the price goes up until they get more in stock.

Or something like that. I am still — to use that word again — discombobulated about this. So stay tuned to newsfromme.com for the latest Cashew Price News. Reporting live, I'm Mark Evanier.

I don't have much to say about Stephen Sondheim that others aren't saying. Greatest composer of our lifetimes…greatest composer of all times…the man who made lyrics matter…all of that is true to some extent. I'd write about how he and his work impacted me but everyone who knew his work has their version of that story and no one's is that important. It's the collective impact that matters.

The thing I feel should be underscored is how many actors owe him for the jobs they got…and the witty, meaty roles that came with that employment. When Neil Simon passed, a lot of people said he'd rebuilt the audience for comedy on the legitimate stage. Sondheim surely did the same for musicals. Though he was famously tutored by Oscar Hammerstein, he took the form in which Hammerstein worked and elevated it to new levels, new possibilities, new everything. He had a lot to do with the advancement of musical theater that was not musical comedy.

I remember years ago on a theater discussion group, there was a small group of Sondheim fans who were honestly furious at him for not writing more shows, not giving us more songs, not taking the form to greater and greater heights. Some of us argued back that the guy's only human and we should be grateful for what he did give us. Here's one of the best things he left us…

As you may remember (here and here), I was discombobulated — I think that's the first time I've used that word in anything I've written — by a fluctuating price on Amazon and elsewhere. It's the price of a box that contains eighteen 1.5 ounce packages of Planters Salted Cashews. Those little packets are, as I said, "just the right amount for a quick snack."

The box was $11.24. Then it was $22.50. Then it was $27.49. Then it was $15.06 and that's when I bought three boxes to hold me for a few months. Then the price went back to $24.69.

A number of you wrote to ask me why I didn't, for example, just buy the 2.5 lb. canister that Costco sells for $19.27. Here is the reason I didn't buy the the 2.5 pound canister that Costco sells for $19.27…

If I open up 1.5 ounce package of Planters Salted Cashews, I eat 1.5 ounces of Planters Salted Cashews. If I open up the 2.5 pound canister of Kirkland Salted Cashews, I eat 2.5 pounds of Kirkland Salted Cashews. These are salted cashews we're talking about, people.

I think it is better for my health if I don't eat 2.5 pounds of Kirkland Salted Cashews a day. Don't you? And yes, I suppose I could reapportion the 2.5 pounds into little baggies of 1.5 ounces each but that would involve having the 2.5 pound canister on the premises and opening it and…well, I think you can imagine what would happen.

And if you would do the same thing I would, I should point out to you that the box with eighteen 1.5 ounce packages of Planters Salted Cashews, which has been $24.69 since my previous post on this topic is, as of this moment, mysteriously down again to $15.06. Click here to go see if it still is.

In the last week or so, we all had our opinions about the Not Guilty verdict for Kyle Rittenhouse and the Guilty verdicts for the three guys responsible for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Whatever you think about those verdicts, it might be interesting to consider them in light of some other recent verdicts…

• Kevin Strickland always maintained his innocence. He'll walk free Tuesday for the first time since 1979, after a judge ruled he was wrongly convicted.
• On Nov. 23, just two days ahead of the holiday, [Pervis] Payne was formally removed from death row, where he has been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he's always said he didn't commit.
• Two of three men convicted in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X have been exonerated after a New York judge dismissed their convictions Thursday. The Manhattan district attorney and lawyers for the two men moved to vacate the convictions of Muhammad Aziz and the late Khalil Islam in the 1965 killing, and Manhattan judge Ellen Biben tossed out the verdicts.
• Alice Sebold has remained silent after the man convicted of raping her was exonerated. The award-winning author is at the center of a heartbreaking saga surrounding a wrongful conviction that resulted in an innocent man spending 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Anthony Broadwater broke down in court this week when the rape conviction at the center of Sebold's memoir Lucky was overturned.
• Dontae Sharpe, a Charlotte, North Carolina, resident, breathed a heavy sigh of relief Friday upon receiving a pardon for a murder he didn't commit — after spending 24 years in prison.
• It has been 72 years since three black men and one teenager in Groveland, Florida were accused of kidnapping and raping a 17-year-old white teenage girl at gunpoint. Now, seven decades later, the four men have been exonerated by a Lake County Judge.

These are all in the last week-to-10-days and were easily found by Googling "wrongly convicted." Betcha there were others.

I've been paying attention to cases like these — and there are a lot of them — since many years ago when I heard someone say on a news program about one then-recent exoneration, "It's not amazing that someone could be wrongly convicted. It's amazing that they get exonerated. Once the government has convicted someone of a crime and sent them to prison — especially if they've been executed — the state has a compelling interest to not reopen the case and to not prove the system got it wrong."

I'm not drawing any conclusion here. I'm not sure what conclusion I would draw other than that it sure happens a lot. But I'm sure there's some conclusion in there.

Bob Newhart's performing career really began with a 1960 record called The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart that still ranks as the 20th best-selling comedy album of all time — not bad for a guy no one had (then) heard of. Before that, he'd done a little comedy writing, including a monologue he submitted to Don Adams in which the comedian would play the commander of a submarine. As Newhart later told the story, Adams declined to buy the monologue…then went on TV and performed it anyway. There are other tales of Mr. Adams allegedly doing things like that.

Having his material stolen was among the factors that moved Newhart into performing what he wrote…and that first record of his did include a monologue in which he played the commander of a submarine. Here on The Ed Sullivan Show for January 8, 1961, Ed pretends that it wasn't decided in advance that Newhart would perform that particular piece on the program…and Bob pretty much gives away that it was planned. So here's Bob Newhart in one of his first TV appearances favoring us with "The Cruise of The U.S.S. Codfish"…