And today, kiddos, we bring you the tale of Walt's Bran Muffins as told by the man who stole them, Floyd Norman…

Just another day or two of reduced posting before I should be back to my normal pace. In the meantime, let me call your attention to the New York Times obit for our friend Ken Spears. It contains a lot of things I didn't even know about him.

Years ago, I worked for a man who was being sued…and he could have made the whole suit go away by paying $100,000 to the guy suing him but he decided to fight it. It wasn't a matter of principle. He just kept talking to lawyers who told him they could make it cost-effective to fight: Pay the attorney $10,000 and he'd win or at least and get the settlement price down to $25,000 or thirty.

So he paid the lawyer and he didn't win. And he paid another lawyer who said he could win and that lawyer didn't win either. And then there was another lawyer who said he could win and that guy didn't win either. The man being sued wound up paying the whole danged $100,000 plus court fees and penalties and (of course) the lawyer fees and his outta-pocket costs easily topped $200,000.

I think a version of this is now happening with the outgoing (no matter what he does) President of the United States. But maybe he considers the loss of money and respect from most of America an acceptable trade-off for keeping his base thinking he didn't lose and that he got cheated…and admiring him as a fighter to the end.

And he may also have been wrong when he said that we wouldn't hear any more about "COVID, COVID, COVID" the day after Election Day. For some reason, I still see occasional mentions of it in the news.

Here's our friend Floyd Norman with a story from back when he worked at the Disney Studio — back when it was really the Disney Studio because Walt ran it…

Dealing with stuff I gotta do today…

Jordan Klepper filed this report on the "Million MAGA March." And of course, it wouldn't really be a pro-Trump rally if they weren't claiming they had a million people there and all the official sources were saying it was more like 5000-7500. And these are the people who are now claiming the votes weren't counted accurately…

I hope you folks like pictures of mushroom soup cans. I'm busy with something so I may not be posting much more than these for a few days. But you don't need me to tell you that Trump's "Stop the Steal" campaign is ridiculous and that it's crashing and burning or that people are dumb not to wear masks when they mingle. I'll be back to regular posting when I get some assignments done and — dare I fantasize about it? — a few good nights of sleep.

And you just knew Randy Rainbow was going to do something like this…

Yesterday (Monday) I received nineteen e-mails from the Trump organization telling me…

• I'm a true patriot for my past support of my favorite president, Donald Trump…
• He got over 73 million LEGAL votes whereas "Sleepy Joe" got mostly illegal ones…
• Leftists hate me and wish I was dead…
• Every single thing printed by the FAKE NEWS is a lie…
• If I don't want to see those hateful leftists steal the election, I need to step up and donate money…
• …because they have mountains of proof of the cheating and crookedness.

…and in one message, they addressed me several times by my first name, which was sometimes "Mark" and sometimes "Gary."

How ugly was Rodney Dangerfield?

In the last few days, I've received something like twenty fund-raising e-mails from the Trump campaign telling me that they have incontrovertible proof that the Trump-Pence team won big. I don't get why they don't seem to be presenting any of that to judges. They keep losing and/or withdrawing cases due to lack of evidence…or the fact that even if the ruling went their way, it would only change less than half-a-percent of the votes.

There's good (we hope) news about another vaccine for COVID-19. This one from Moderna seems to be even more effective and a lot easier to transport and administer. But I still think we shouldn't cheer too much about any of these announcements until testing is over. Me, I'm waiting until my personal physician thinks there's something I should take. Then I'll decide for me.

Years ago, I began receiving e-mails from students saying they're writing some sort of master thesis or report on either the comic book business or the cartoon business or the writing-for-teevee business and they want to interview me for whatever the thing is that they have to write. I said yes to the first request and then when others came in, I said to myself, "Well, I did it for the last guy…I guess I have to do it for this guy."

I've done a number of them. Some took a little of my time and some took a lot and a few took way more than necessary. (One supposed student, I suspect, wasn't writing an assignment but just said so to get me to answer questions about how he could get a job in the comic book business.)

This year, I've received a sudden flurry of these requests — so many so that I had to say no to someone. And after I did, when others came in, I said to myself, "Well, I said no to the last guy…I guess I have to say no to this guy."

So while I'm flattered that someone thinks I have some knowledge worth basing a class paper or thesis on, I've decided to stop doing assisting everyone. I actually don't think anyone has ever asked me for my "take" on anything (that's the word most of them use — take) that they couldn't find out by spending some time on this blog.

If your professor-type person insists you actually interview an expert, just tell them I answered your questions and referred you to paragraphs you could quote from my website. I won't tell.

You may have wondered how they make Hostess Cupcakes. Well, amazingly they're all baked one-at-a-time by an elderly woman in Greenwich, Connecticut who carefully mixes the batter, pours it into a cupcake tin, bakes it, lets it cool, then frosts the top and hand-draws the squiggle and…

No, I'm lying. It actually works more like this…

My best friend (not counting those who lack facial hair) Sergio Aragonés has been drawing his silly cartoons for MAD ever since the January 1963 issue and the next issue — which should be in comic book shops on or about December 8 — is devoted to him. So are a lot of us.

That's the cover above and you can see it larger on your screen by clicking on it. Much of this issue is reprinted Sergio, recycling some of his best work from past issues but there are some new pages he did for it, and that cover is new. Some of you may be wondering what's up with MAD…

Will it be all reprint from now on? How long will "from now on" be? Will they ever try to re-establish it as a magazine and brand-name that satirizes the world today? It is not impossible that there does not exist a man, woman or child today who can answer those questions. I hope somebody sees its value, or at least its potential value. But in the meantime, you can enjoy a lot of Sergio in this issue. Watch for it.

Lots of interesting tweets today…

Daniel Larison
"Look at all the morons I hired" is not the clever defense that Trump seems to think it is.

Robert Reich
We have become so inured to Trump's dereliction of duty that we hardly bat an eye when he's golfing while America has surpassed 240,000 deaths from coronavirus.

Eric Boehlert
media 2016: omg we missed the Trump wins story so we need to interview Trump supporters! media 2020: we knew Trump would lose so we need to interview Trump supporters!

NBC News
@chucktodd: "We invited every single Republican senator to appear here on @MeetThePress this morning. They all declined."

Bernard Silverman
Instead of mindlessly chasing people to get comments on Trump's concession, spend the time interviewing very sick people who thought the virus was bogus and went maskless. Frankly, much more important than Trump.

Bernie Sanders
No figure in history has done more to undermine American democracy than Donald Trump. His "birther" movement tried to delegitimize the Obama presidency. His refusal to accept defeat now is trying to undermine the Biden presidency. Goodbye, Trump.

The Hill
Poll: 38 percent of Americans plan to have Thanksgiving dinner with 10 or more people.

Keith Olbermann
And thus, 38 percent of Americans don't realize they also plan to have Christmas funerals for some of their Thanksgiving guests.

Alex Baze
Bringing a deadly disease to people with little to no immunity is a very authentic Thanksgiving reenactment.

Kelly O'Donnell
And the president has just arrived at his Virginia self branded golf property for a second straight day and his fourth golf outing since the election.

Matt McDermott
Joe Biden made history by flipping the historically Republican states of Arizona and Georgia from red to blue. Not a single Sunday show held a panel with voters in these states to understand why they voted out the incumbent President.

ABC News
Former National Security Adviser John Bolton urges GOP leadership to "explain to our voters… that in fact Trump has lost the election and that these claims of election fraud are baseless."

John Fugelsang
And after that, it would be swell if someone could explain to John Bolton that those claims of Iraq WMDs were baseless.

Maggie Haberman
"We're enduring censorship," Giuliani says to Bartiromo on a heavily-watched television show about the president's statements about the election.

Nate Silver
Even accounting for the fact that there was considerably more underdetection in the spring when urban, coastal states were being hit harder, the pandemic really has turned out to be quite a bit worse in rural, conservative states.

Ivanka Trump
The media's near total silence about the physical violence being perpetrated against conservatives is shameful & dangerous. Just image the outrage and indignation if this went the other way. Violence is never the answer and instigators must be condemned and prosecuted.

Amee Vanderpool
I don't seem to remember you speaking out in this manner when Heather Heyer was killed in Charlottesville.

Yeah, I know I'm not doing a good job of not talking about Trump.  No one is.

• Donald Trump's Five Stages of Grief: (1) I won, (2) I really won, (3) You'll see I won when all the legal votes are counted, (4) I won but everyone conspired against me to rig the outcome, (5) I'll win in 2024.

This is the trailer for Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, a long-overdue documentary on the making of the 1964 Broadway smash, Fiddler on the Roof. The documentary played in theaters last August and it's been on pay stations ever since…but you can see it for free on PBS this week. Consult, as they say, your local listings. Wish they'd made it when Zero was still around to be interviewed…