Tomorrow morning, my cleaning lady comes and I know she's going to ask me to explain what happened in Washington today. I can't wait to hear what I'm going to tell her because right now, it's quite difficult to grasp.

This evening, I've been watching the alternating House/Senate coverage and heard some pretty fine speeches from politicians who never gave me much reason to respect them before.

I have learned this: If you want to riot and smash windows in this country, you'd better be white. If the same actions had been done in the name of Black Lives Matter, most of those pro-Trump protestors would have been sitting home wishing the police would just start shooting those damn rioters. There would at least have been a lot more arrests.

And those pro-Trump protestors sure shot themselves…in their feet. Their mission was to persuade legislators to vote for all the objections but their actions caused there to be fewer objections and less support for them.

But hey, wouldn't you love to know what they're saying in the White House tonight? Twitter probably did Trump a great favor by closing down his account.

I'm going back to watching the news. This is a day this nation will never forget.

Somehow, this doesn't look like Making America Great to me.

Yesterday, I posted one of the two short adventures on the Huckleberry Hound Movie-Wheel. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read yesterday's post.

This one is Felix the Cat and all the voices are done by Jack Mercer, who started in the cartoon business as an artist (and occasional storyman) at Max Fleischer's Studio and wound up as the voice of their most popular character, a spinach-eater named Popeye. Once he became a voice guy, he did less artwork, some writing and a lot of time at the microphone. He was pretty good as Popeye and did a lot more work as a voice actor than most folks think.

The video version of the Movie-Wheel was prepared by my pal Greg Ehrbar, who is one of the great experts on animation and especially on voices and music. By coincidence, the same day I chose to post his Movie-Wheel video, Greg has a new article over at Cartoon Research about Jack Mercer. Go read it here. And if you'd like to get a look at Mr. Mercer, here's a link I put up some time ago to a 1974 episode of the game show To Tell the Truth.

I got to meet Jack Mercer briefly in the early eighties when Hanna-Barbera was producing a new Popeye cartoon show and Mercer was residing from time to time in L.A. to do the voice. I gather the studio searched high 'n' low for someone local who could speak for the sailor man and finally had to cough up the bucks to fly him out and house him for a few months now and then…but I think they also recorded him at times with him at a studio in Manhattan. He was a nice, funny gent and though I didn't work on that show, I got to take him and Daws Butler out to lunch. Daws was on the show playing Wimpy, a role Mercer sometimes did in the old Fleischer films along with playing Popeye and other parts.

He does every voice in this…

• Went out today with a mask over about a five day growth of beard. The mask clung to my face like the female side of Velcro and when I peeled it off, it made the exact same sound.

A New Year's song from Kermit the Frog and Fozzie Bear. I think that's Matt Vogel as the green one and Eric Jacobson as the brown one, both pretty good at their difficult jobs…

Hello. I seem to be back…and just in time to celebrate (?) 300 days of not going anywhere except occasionally to a doctor's office, a supermarket, a restaurant that offers drive-thru or curbside pickup or a walk around my neighborhood. I'd like to think we're all well past the halfway mark on this kind of life.

Constantly reminding myself that there's nothing I can do about it, I'm trying not to pay a whole lot of attention to what's going on in Georgia today or Washington D.C. tomorrow. About the election, I'll only predict that whatever the outcome, Trump will say it proves he won the November election. If the two Republican candidates for the Senate win, it'll be "See? The state is reliably Republican and couldn't possibly have gone for Biden!" If the two Democratic candidates win, it'll be "See? The state's election practices are all f'ed up because Republicans couldn't possibly have lost three elections in a Confederate state like that where everyone came to my rallies." If it's a split decision, it'll be a mixture of both.

And can you imagine how messy this would all be if so many of the judges and officials of swing states who've ruled against Trump weren't Republicans? We now have this kind of automatic assumption in this country that every single person in the opposition party wouldn't hesitate to cheat on its behalf.

Lastly for now: Before my quickie hiatus, I was marveling here at the fact that James Corden does a five-nights-a-week show for CBS but still somehow finds time to star in movie musicals. A couple of you wrote to remind me that he takes five weeks off from The Late Late Show every summer. Okay, fine. It's still an awful lot of stuff to do in a year…and having seen The Prom, it's hard to believe he could do all that in five weeks.

Still way behind in e-mails and deadlines. Don't be surprised if I submerge again.

When I was a kid, I bought every record album I could find that featured characters from my favorite cartoons. Often, I'd get burned because I'd buy a Huckleberry Hound record, get it home, put it on my record player and discover to my youthful horror that Daws Butler, who did Huck's voice on the cartoons, wasn't on it. Some hapless mimic was doing his best to replicate Daws as Huck…and doing a very poor job of it. (Actually, I'm not sure if there was or has ever been any Daws Impersonator who could have satisfied me at that age.)

To me, it was like if you bought a Frank Sinatra record, took it home and found out it was some guy imitating Ol' Blue Eyes. That was the kind of unhappiness I experienced when I ordered a set of two Movie-Wheels, which as far as I know were the only ones produced.

A Movie-Wheel had a cardboard sleeve the size of an LP record but the actual record in it was a smaller flexi-disc made out of bendable plastic or rubber or some amalgam. In the cardboard sleeve, there was a little window with a dial as as you played the record, you would advance the dial when you heard a certain sound effect. Each time you advanced it, you'd see a different image in the little window, illustrating what was happening in the record at that moment. Since records and record sleeves have two sides, there would be two short stories on each wheel. You'll understand all this better if/when you watch the video below.

The two Movie-Wheels were sold as a set on local kids' TV shows. I think I saw the commercial on Skipper Frank's show on KTLA Channel 5. This was 1960 and I think it was something like $4.00 for the pair. One was Felix the Cat and it was faithful to the Felix cartoons that were then running on local TV. The voices were all done by Jack Mercer, who did almost all the voices in the cartoons, including Felix. The drawings were credited to Joe Oriolo, who was the main designer of those cartoons as well as the owner of the studio that did them.

The other record was Huckleberry Hound on one side, Yogi Bear on the other. As mentioned above, Daws Butler was not on the record. The voices were done by — amazingly — Jack Mercer along with an announcer-type gent named Jim Sparks. I know nothing about Mr. Sparks. The drawings were done by Frank Little and I don't know anything about him either except that he obviously never worked on the cartoons. I was disappointed in the art as I was by the absence of Daws.

And both records were written, produced and directed by Paul White and Ruth Roche. Mr. White is unknown to me but Ruth Roche was active in the comic book field as a writer and editor. Starting around 1940, she worked for the Eisner-Iger Studio, mainly on comics published by Fiction House like Phantom Lady and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.

I still have my Movie-Wheels…somewhere. But thanks to my friend Greg Ehrbar, who assembled video versions of one side of each. Here's the Huckleberry Hound one. Jack Mercer was great as the voice of Felix and the voice of Popeye but I don't think Huck and Yogi were in his wheelhouse. I'll post the Felix one tomorrow and you'll hear him being more properly cast…

There's a line that I've quoted before on this blog and often in talking to friends.  It's from Alan Jay Lerner and he said, "There are some people in this world who are absolutely brilliant at playing the clarinet and nothing else." Mr. Lerner, by the way, showed his own brilliance with some (not all) of the musicals he wrote like My Fair Lady and Camelot. He demonstrated a notable lack of brilliance at matrimony and probably some other things as well.

A lot of people ask me for advice and when I comply, I usually use the joke/disclaimer that "Free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it." In other words, "Follow this at your own risk." In Blackjack, if you're dealt two eights, it is always wise to split them but that doesn't mean it will always work. Most good advice is advice that is right a majority of the time, not all the time.

I understand why folks ask me for advice about writing or creating comic books. I have some expertise in that area, maybe not as much as some other people but I have some. (I should add here: I have zero expertise in what some old comic book should sell for or the best way to sell it. You might just as well ask me the best way to perform a triple Coronary Artery Bypass Graft.)

But I know a little in a few areas. A few. It's a number that's way smaller than the number of topics on which I am asked for advice.

One topic which for some reason I am asked about lately is apartment rentals — how to locate them, what to look for, rent vs. lease, what to look for in a contract, etc. This is an area in which I have delved exactly once in my life and that was in 1975. There is no earthly reason to assume that I knew what I was doing back then, no reason to assume the process has not changed in 45 years, no reason to assume I even remember much about it.

You could get as much learned knowledge about apartment rentals by interrogating a mynah bird. What you get from me is "I don't know" and if I ask, "Why are you asking me?," they usually say something like, "Well, you seem like a smart guy." If you ever said that to me, thanks for the compliment but my rejoinder was probably "Yeah, maybe about cartoon voices or Laurel and Hardy movies or Jack Kirby." And then I probably laid the Alan Lerner quote on you along with a reminder that I don't play the clarinet, brilliantly or otherwise.

I'm a big believer in seeking out expertise…recognizing what you don't know much about and seeking out folks who have more experience and knowledge than you do. When I read biographies — auto or otherwise — of successful people, I am often struck by how often they got good results by doing that…

…and I don't mean that they asked someone for advice. I mean that they asked the right someone. If you're going to ask the wrong someone, you might just as well ask me how to perform that triple Coronary Artery Bypass Graft. Or play the clarinet. And for God's sake, don't ask me how to perform a triple Coronary Artery Bypass Graft while playing the clarinet.

I am fine. Please do not write or call to ask if I'm all right. I'm all right and I may not be too responsive to e-mails. I just have to deal with a matter that is more important than blogging because, you know, some matters are. Your toleration is appreciated.

P.S. Happy (Better) New Year!

I'm sitting here with a friend watching an advance screener I got the other day (like, three days in advance) of the new movie, The Prom. And here's what I want to know…

James Corden hosts a five-shows-a-week TV series on CBS. Where the hell does he find the time every year to appear in a major motion picture musical that gets horrible reviews but I think it's got a certain charm and is better than the critics say?

As if we need any more depressing news this year, the voice community has been saddened by news that one of its best, Tom Kane, has…well, here's part of the message that his daughter Sam posted on Facebook…

About two months ago, he had a left side stroke that gave him right sided weakness and damage to the speech center of his brain. This means right now he cannot efficiently communicate verbally, nor read or spell. He is still competent and very much himself, but can only get out a few words right now. As many of you might know about strokes, it is possible for him to gain these functions back and we have found him excellent care in Kansas City for speech, occupational, and physical therapy, but for now, we have been warned by his Neurologist that he may not do voiceovers again.

Tom is a great guy who's had the kind of bookings that other actors envy. You've heard him in countless commercials, he's announced the Academy Awards, he's heard on dozens of cartoon shows and as Variety notes, "During his career, Kane has lent his voice to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, delivering lines for numerous characters including Yoda, as well as the blockbuster film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, where he voiced Admiral Ackbar." Just take a look at the list of places you've heard him…and that list is far from complete.

And like I said: A great guy. You can get a certain amount of work in this business if you're sensational at the microphone and another if you're great to work with. You get both if you're as good at both as Tom Kane…as all hope he will be.

I'm afraid I don't have the perfect Dawn Wells story to post here. I thought she was wonderful on Gilligan's Island, a series I followed more for the cast than the stories. They were all just fun people to watch, especially Jim Backus. I was twelve when the series went on and that's a good age to watch Gilligan's Island and to appreciate the two cute ladies on it. It's chic to say you favored Mary Ann over Ginger but the truth is that at twelve, both were starting to look real good to me. Since I was never going to have to choose between them for mating reasons, why choose at all?

My one encounter with Ms. Wells came when I was voice-casting a cartoon series. The network and studio were insisting I audition on tape, a large quantity of actors. Usually, the way it works is that I bring in three or four actors for each part, read them all, pick the one I want and then the network and studio okays my selections and we hire the person I picked. This time, I had to bring in ten for each lesser role and twenty for the main ones. Then I picked the ones I wanted, the network and studio okayed my selections and we hired the exact same actors we would have hired if I'd only brought in three or four per role.

So I spent a lot of time calling agents and asking each of them to send in several of their clients, mostly of my choice but you let each agent suggest a few you don't know. One agent insisted I read Dawn Wells for one of the smaller parts. I thought she was wrong for the role in question but sometimes, you get surprised. And I did have to audition ten actresses…

…so Dawn Wells came in. This was 1993 and she was 55 years old but if I hadn't known when Gilligan was on, I would have guessed 35. I was also instantly struck by a certain Star Quality. She had a beautiful smiling face, a charming manner and a certain aura of "special" about her. The word "radiant" comes to mind. At that moment, when it still didn't matter, I'd have picked Mary Ann over Ginger or almost anyone else.

As I'm sure I've written here, it's good form when you meet a movie or TV star to not ask them about the one credit that everyone asks them about, the one that makes them feel you think that's all they've ever done. That's especially true if it's a long-ago credit. When I met Robert Morse, I did not ask him about How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, when I met Ray Walston, I didn't bring up My Favorite Martian, etc. So I quickly racked my memory for something Dawn Wells had done besides Gilligan's Island…

…and I couldn't come up with anything. Looking now at her IMDB listing, I still can't come up with anything apart from some one-shot guest spots here and there. But I made the best of it and she gave a fine, professional reading that I'm afraid just wasn't what we wanted for the character. It wasn't that she wasn't good. Her agent had just sent her in for something she wasn't right for.

That happens all the time in show business. In fact, it happens a lot more often than they come in and they're perfect for the role. I had the feeling it happened way too often for Dawn Wells. I'm sure she was still terrific at playing Mary Ann parts but there aren't that many of them, plus she was too old to play them anymore, at least on camera.

You feel sorry for someone trapped in that situation. I do, anyway. But then I remember how many actors and wanna-be actors would sell their soul to be on even a three-season TV series that was rerun and rerun and rerun and rerun and rerun, ad infinitum. And while I'm sure her residuals ran out long ago and weren't that huge to begin with, she was well-known and loved by so many generations. Just look at the Internet yesterday and today and probably for the next few days. Everyone adored Mary Ann. You can work your whole life in the acting profession and not achieve that kind of loving immortality.

Here's Bert Lahr doing a sketch on The Ed Sullivan Show on April 23, 1967. I think the other guy in the skit is Danny Dayton.

If this wasn't Lahr's last performance on television, it was close to it. He passed away later that year while shooting the film, The Night They Raided Minsky's. Neil Simon once said among his greatest regrets was that he didn't write The Sunshine Boys ten years earlier when Bert Lahr was alive and active enough to star in it. It would have been great to see him working with great material instead of what he has to get by with in this sketch. But you can still see that once upon a time, he was a great comic actor…

Amazon has become so much a part of our lives that when you say the word, people think of the online retailer and not a warrior woman or river. I do not understand why they do some of the things they do but I do know a bargain when I see it.

Last August, Abrams ComicArts brought out this neat little boxed set of the six Marvel Mini-Books of the sixties, reprinted in larger, hardcover format and including a seventh book in which a Noted Expert explained the history of the original six. The Noted Expert was, of course, me. The set got great reviews and praise and Amazon is now playing games with its price.

It was originally thirty bucks and well worth that. Lately, they've been lowering the price and raising the price and lowering it and raising it and I have no idea why. It's like someone on The Price is Right playing The Clock Game: Higher! Lower! Higher! Lower!

The cost briefly got as low as $8.95 and as I write this, it's a tad under twelve dollars — still a great price. By the time this is posted and you click on this link, only God and Jeff Bezos know what it'll be and I'm not so sure about God on this one.

I was thinking of writing here, "If you've been considering purchasing one of these, it'll never be cheaper" but I'm not sure that's true. It might be free by now or they might be paying you to take one off their hands or one could cost thousands and thousands of dollars, none of them trickling down to the Noted Expert. I have no idea. Just thought I'd mention it is all. Thanks to the very talented Terry Beatty for taking time out from producing the Rex Morgan M.D. newspaper strip to keep me apprised of the latest price fluctuations.

I've been meaning to write a post about people who are always late; who say they'll meet you at 3:00 and show up around quarter-to-four, often with the lamest of excuses…or no apology at all. Embarrassingly, I find myself late in writing this post because my friend Ken Levine wrote it before I could.

Go read his…and by the way, you should know that Ken and I often meet for lunch — or at least, we did before the world stopped meeting for lunch. I am almost always on-time, especially if you give me a five minute grace period. And Ken is almost always there ahead of me.

I'll add that in my experience, two things cause people I know to be late. One is a complete inability to make an inconsequential decision like what to wear. I had a lady friend once who would spend twenty minutes deciding whether to wear the blue t-shirt or the green t-shirt. She looked just as adorable in one as the other — not a scintilla of difference — but each time it came time to decide between them, she spent more time deciding than I did deciding to buy my house. I am not exaggerating.

We missed airline flights, came in after the opening numbers of musicals, made awkward journeys to our seats fifteen minutes into plays…once, we weren't admitted at all to an event, nor would they refund what I'd paid for the tickets. That wasn't the only reason that relationship didn't last long but it was a contributing factor.

Second problem: In another relationship, she always had a couple of crises in her life and every time she was late — which she always was — it went like this: "Sorry. I was ready to leave on time but then the phone rang and it was that landlord of mine, the one I've been trying to reach for days, calling to do something about fixing the hot water…" One tries to be understanding but when it happens every single time, it's hard.

Anyway, I agree with Ken and I thank him for writing the piece I was going to write. Sorry I didn't get around to it earlier but just as I was about to, the phone rang and it was that landlord of mine, the one I've been trying to reach for days, calling to do something about fixing the hot water. And that's maddening, especially when you don't even have a landlord.