If you've been trying to "friend" me on Facebook and I haven't responded, it's not that I don't like you. Well, it's not necessarily that I don't like you. But I'm currently at 4,937 "friends," they only allow you 5000, I have over a thousand pending requests…and lately, when I do try to accept a friend request, their software won't allow it. It tells me I'm already over the limit. But that's only sometimes and…well, the reason I haven't accepted your request may be somewhere in that conundrum.

Some of you have noticed that I'm not talking much about Donald Trump and politics on this blog lately. That's because I get into moods when I don't want to think about Donald Trump and politics. This is probably not a permanent condition but it may last a while. I do think that Joe Biden is doing a pretty good job, especially when you consider how many people in public office are dead-set determined to not let him accomplish anything, including things they'd cheer if "their side" proposed them. And that's probably as political as I'll get for the next week or two.

The other day, a friend told me we all need to boycott In-N-Out Burgers because of their refusal to obey laws relating to vaccinations. I said, "I can't boycott them since I gave them up years ago." She asked, "Did you stop buying their product because of their opposition to gay rights?" and I answered, "No, I stopped buying their product because I decided I didn't like their product." She didn't seem to think that was a valid reason.

Also the other day — a different other day — I had a long phone call with my friend Paul Dini, who is briefly hospitalized with a fairly minor, soon-to-be-gone condition. Not that hospitals need more things to think about now but I got to wondering how long it will be before every hospital bed will be equipped with a webcam and monitor so doctors could check in with patients more often, friends and loved ones could call up to entertain the patients…or bored patients could easily go online into chat rooms and invite friends to "drop by." A patient concerned with his or her appearance could do this audio-only. I would imagine that because of COVID, fewer people are going in to see hospital-confined acquaintances…and some patients can't set up laptops or other devices to receive such calls. There may be a good idea somewhere in this notion. It wouldn't surprise me if it's already being tested somewhere.

That's all for now.

You know what we need? We need someone with a lot of free time to edit the opening titles of the TV series, The Love Boat, into a video showing every single guest on that program in alphabetical order. And I don't care if it runs 43 minutes…

• Just watched a few minutes of Newsmax. Near as I can tell, every bad thing that has happened in the past year is because Joe Biden is President and every good thing is because Donald Trump is really President.

"No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits came out in January of 1967, my first year of high school. At the time, all the kids my age had their favorite band and it wasn't chic for it to be The Beatles. That was too obvious…everyone loved The Beatles so you couldn't love The Beatles. A girl I knew then named Bonnie selected Herman's Hermits and fearlessly predicted that their music would still be popular long after everyone had forgotten John, Paul, Ringo and What'szisname.

I don't think Bonnie's forecast has fared too well but Herman's Hermits music is still played and a couple of their numbers were on my mixtape, partly because I liked them and partly because Bonnie's enthusiasm for the band was contagious and I very much wanted her to like me. Men have done far more destructive things to attract the affection of a good woman than to like Herman's Hermits records.

As you'll see, I had other Herman's Hermits songs on that mixtape…all for naught since Bonnie never went out with me. I believe this video is footage of the band performing at some venue but the audio track is an overdub of the record — which is why the lip sync is off in places. That's Peter Noone doing lead vocals, as he did on almost all their hits…

• Trump supporters have the right idea. They can insist he's still president. I can insist that I'm still in my twenties, comic books are still 15 cents, COVID never happened and Johnny Carson is still hosting The Tonight Show.

One monkey, one dog, two rabbits and a mess of ducklings…

My pal Tony Tollin meant well, I'm sure, when he sent me this link to an article in Consumer Reports on an important part of my diet…the rotisserie chickens they sell at Costco. Do not read it if you love those chickens and wish to keep eating them.

As I explained here, I get a weekly delivery from Costco and it always includes two chickens — one for my cleaning lady to cut up for me, one for her to take home for her family. I've been doing this for most of The Pandemic and even with the reduced physical activity that comes with not leaving one's house as much as I did pre-COVID, I'm down about 22 pounds. It's clear to me that swapping out some of the things I was eating for Costco chicken is a major reason. The article suggests this alternative…

Of course, people buy rotisserie chickens when they don't want to cook at home. But Amy Keating, RD, CR's resident nutritionist, says a roast chicken can be a simple meal to prepare once you get your recipe down. It can be healthier, too.

"You can roast your own chicken using the oven, multi-cooker, grill, or even convection toaster oven," she says. "But skip the salt, or use just a touch, and season it with a variety of dried herbs and spices, such as pepper, thyme, rosemary, sage, and garlic powder. For extra flavor, you can put several garlic cloves and a lemon sliced in quarters in the cavity of the bird."

I'm sure Registered Dietitian Keating also means well and she's probably right for people who can cook. I can't. I really can't.

And I'm not one of those "I can do anything if I work hard enough" people. I long ago accepted the simple realities of my limitations. I'm not going to be a jockey or a ballet dancer or an opera singer or a nuclear physicist or a fine surgeon or anything else that requires skills I simply do not have. My life is a lot better because I chose to pursue what I was least lousy at…i.e., writing. I'm not saying I'm great at that; just that I can name hundreds of professions for which I have even less natural talent.

I also don't have the interest or the time. And every time I see an article that urges folks to cook at home because it's less expensive, I think, "Not if you spend two hours cooking something (plus a half-hour of clean-up) and when it's done, you take two bites, throw it all in the trash and call up Grubhub on your phone."  I've done that many times. I'm not even sure all of the so-called "healthy alternatives" would be healthy if I cooked them.  I once cooked chicken breasts that were like leather on the outside and almost raw on the inside. And into the garbage they went.

I'm not happy that Costco chickens have so much wrong with them.  But I suspect a lot of things I eat have moral or health issues and I just don't know about them.  The Consumer Reports nutritionist recommends that if you're determined to eat chicken from Costco, you buy their more expensive Kirkland Signature Organic version which sells for more than twice the price at Costcos in New York.  If they had them out here, I would.  I have tried the organic rotisserie chickens from Whole Foods but found them sparse on meat and so untasty that I thought maybe I'd cooked them.  They always seem to have been sitting there since before Jeff Bezos bought the chain.

The fact is that we put up with a lot of products that are not as good (or ethically produced) as we'd like. Making your own is not always an option. Tomorrow, if you found out that the shoes you like are made in a sweat shop somewhere by children making a buck a week, I don't think "I'll make my own shoes at home" would be a viable solution. I'm not saying there aren't alternatives but making your own is not always practical.

As if Alec Baldwin wasn't having enough trouble, Saturday Night Live has found a guy who does a much better Donald Trump impersonation. His name is James Austin Johnson and he comes into last Saturday night's cold opening about four minutes in…

I admire the impression but having made the decision to not pay much attention to the former (and in too many minds including his, current) president, I'm not sure I could take much of a reasonable facsimile.

Meanwhile, I'm also not following the Baldwin shooting case much…just enough to suspect that a lot of speculation is filling in for the real investigation that hasn't yet concluded. No matter where culpability may lie, I think the outcome for the movie business will be a lot of realistic-looking prop guns that can't possibly fire live ammo, blanks or anything. Smoke or pyrotechnics will be added via C.G.I. or they won't be there. This may become a law in every state or it just may be a de facto rule because those who insure or bond a film won't insure or bond any movie that won't comply. And it's about time.

I meant to post this yesterday since yesterday was the 58th anniversary of the premiere of my favorite movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. And every time I say that here, someone — often, the same guy — feels it's his duty to write in and inform me, like I have made some sort of factual error, that I'm wrong and it's not a very good movie. Apparently, I'm not entitled to my own opinion…only to his.

This is the main title sequence which was designed by Saul Bass with animation by Playhouse Pictures. In the sixties, your movie was not considered a movie in some circles if Saul Bass had not done your opening titles. Enormous amounts of technical ingenuity went into finding a way to animate for that big, elongated Cinerama screen format. (If you're experiencing a twinge of déjà vu here: Yes, I featured a clip of these titles on this blog before and wrote about them but that video was long ago deleted from YouTube and anyway, the last post about this here was 2008.)

This video was made from source material on which the colors were somehow altered. I am told that the colors on the Criterion DVD and Blu-ray are correct. Yes, I am considered by many an expert on this film — I'm heard on the commentary track of that Criterion release — but there is much about it I don't know…like how and why those colors were changed.

As I have said many, many times on this blog and elsewhere, I first saw this movie at the Cinerama Dome Theater on Sunset Boulevard near Vine the day after Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy and the day before Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Those were life-changing days for this country and the movie was a life-changing experience for me.

I remember so much about that evening. My parents and I were seated in the front row — a row that was later removed from the theater because it was too friggin' close. I could count the pores on Jimmy Durante's nose. I could also notice something hidden in these credits. The crew at Playhouse Pictures were not credited anywhere so they decided to sneak their names in.

At 2:15 into the titles when the world "blows up" and the names rain down, there are other names in there for a fraction of a second…

As any fool can plainly see, there the names of Ade Woolery, Bernie Gruver, Bill Melendez and other folks who worked for Playhouse. I asked Bill about this once and he said, "Yeah, we made up a list and we stuck in our names and also the names of our wives, girl friends or both." You may see some different names in there if you freeze-frame it for yourself…which of course you're going to do.

I have always been blessed with great eyesight so, yes, I caught the fastest glimpse of them when I saw this movie in 1963. I couldn't freeze-frame it there in the Cinerama Dome, nor could I stop it when I saw the movie years later in a conventional theater. I had to wait until it came out in Betamax format to satisfy myself that I had really seen what I was sure I'd seen at the age of eleven. Take a look and then I'll have some words about the Cinerama Dome…

People keep asking me if there's any word on the Cinerama Dome Theater, which has been shuttered since about the time we all donned our first COVID masks. As far as I know (and I don't know very far), it is still owned by Christopher Forman, owner of Arclight Cinemas, and rumor has it he plans to reopen it next month. I have no idea where that rumor came from, if Mr. Forman ever said it or if so, if he's changed his mind.

What I'm getting at is that your guess is at least as good as mine and it may even be better. If the rumor is true, I would expect an announcement very soon but I won't be surprised if there isn't one.  I've seen my favorite movie in that building several times since '63 and it's always a joy.  If they reopen and show it again, it might be the first time I venture into a theater in years.

I really don't care that much about who's in the movie version of Wicked. I think it would have been nice if they'd made it many years ago when Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth were more "age appropriate" to the lead roles and could have played them. And I will note that the most popular stage-to-film transfer of all time might be the movie of Grease where no one who played a high school student looked like one.

But really, a lot of this reminds me of the story of the novelist who sold his book to Hollywood, they made a terrible movie out of it and people said to him, "They ruined your book!" To which he replied, "My book is right there on that shelf, exactly the way I wrote it." Musicals that are great on stage easily survive substandard film adaptations. You can name examples as easily as I can.

I am though irked that someone has started a petition to keep James Corden out of the movie of Wicked.

The petition really doesn't say why, apparently because the initiator of the petition thought it was self-evident. Not to me, it isn't. I think Corden's a very talented, funny man. I gather those signing the petition didn't like the movies made of Into the Woods, Cats and The Prom, all of which he was in. I kinda liked all three of them…and what I thought was wrong with them had nothing to do with Corden, except maybe that he wasn't ideally cast in The Prom.

I assume they don't have him in mind for Glinda or Elphaba but there are several roles in Wicked I think he'd be fine for. And as far as we know, the filmmakers may not have him in mind at all. I just think they should.

• Broadway superstar Kelli O'Hara completed the New York Marathon in under four hours. Okay…so you might think, "What's the big deal? Lots of people did!" And that's true but how many of them did it after launching the Marathon by SINGING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM?

Wow. We're at Day 608. And in case you're interested, this is post #29,428 on this blog. I started it 7630 days ago so we've averaged 3.856880733944954 post per day. At that rate, I'll hit post #30,000 about 148 days from now, which would be right about the time I get back from WonderCon in Anaheim next April…assuming there is a WonderCon next April and assuming I go, which means assuming The Virus is down to a trickle then.

And it's assuming I can snap out of this "I don't want to go anywhere" mode into which I've settled. I do go out. I take walks in my neighborhood…though not very far from my house. I go to doctor appointments. I drive over to a market and let them load the groceries I've ordered into my trunk. Once in a while, I actually go into a market or a restaurant to pick up edibles to take home and consume.

But I've gotten way too comfy staying home…helped by the fact that there are very few places I want to go. This past weekend, one of my favorite comedians, Jim Jefferies, was performing down at the Ace Hotel downtown. I thought of going to see him but then realized there might be other people in the room. It's not exactly Agoraphobia…I think. And I'm confident I'll shake it soon.

My feeling is that if I can make it down to WonderCon in Anaheim next April 1-3 — that's about 40 miles from where I live — then I can make it down to Solana Beach next May. That's where Frank Ferrante will be doing his Groucho show next May 2-3 and that's 110 miles…and then I can go the full 140 miles to Comic-Con International in San Diego, July 20-24. One step at a time.

I see no air travel in my foreseeable future. There's nowhere I really want to go and every friend of mine who's been on a plane lately seems to have a horror story (like Ken Levine's today) about late and/or canceled flights and waiting forever, and maybe even some obstreperous "I will not submit to tyranny and wear a mask" passenger. I'm real sick of people who (a) think the rules don't apply to them and who (b) scream at people who didn't make those rules and don't have the power to not enforce them. The Freedom Fighters probably all like to go to crowded theaters and insist they have a right to yell "Fire!"

In my limited outings lately, I haven't run into one. The last such specimen — and I don't think I mentioned this here — was about six weeks ago when I went to the building where my podiatrist works wonders on all parts of me below the ankles. There was a sign in the lobby that said there should be no more than three people in an elevator car at the same time.

Someone I was happy to not share the ride up with was complaining to no one in particular that, once again, her Constitutional Rights were being violated. In this case, it was the right of the people peaceably to assemble as per The First Amendment. Yes, that's just why James Madison put that in there.

Okay, I posted a link to a video where Liza Minnelli might not have realized how silly her performance was. Here she is being silly on purpose — with a song written by Kander and Ebb…

• Two hyenas at the Denver Zoo have been diagnosed with coronavirus. It's not surprising when you consider than none of the other animals at the zoo wear masks. Except the raccoons.

Just saw this news item…

Top cashew producer Ivory Coast is to open three new processing plants with the aim of tripling its output of shelled nuts by next year, its Cotton-Cashew Council said Tuesday. The African country last year produced a record one million tonnes of nuts, up from 850,000 tonnes in 2019, but just 10 percent have so far been processed domestically. Ivory Coast aims to process more of its own crop for sale in the huge American market.

This interests me because I like cashews and have recently noticed their price soaring higher than Jeff Bezos in his spaceship. For a few years now, I've been purchasing this from Mr. Bezos' company. It's a box containing eighteen little baggies, each holding 1.5 oz. of Planters Salted Cashew — just the right amount for a quick snack.

For quite a while, they were $11.24 a box but the last time I got them at that price was an order I placed on 5/24/21. When I ordered a box on 8/12/21, the price had doubled to $22.50. And right now, they're $27.49. Other, non-Amazon vendors, seem to have had similar price escalations. I dunno if this is COVID-related or climate-related or what. All I know is the price of cashews is going up and up. Will the new competition from Ivory Coast bring the price down? That would be nice.