…read William Saletan's meticulously-researched-and-footnoted history of the way Donald Trump has dealt with the novel coronavirus. It's a mind-boggling account of, at every juncture, making the decision to lie, deny and do whatever was best for business (as opposed to The People) and his reelection prospects. He was wrong every friggin' time…and for that, we are paying dearly.

We had a great Cartoon Voices Panel last night. It should be watchable in full just below this message and you can find it on YouTube if you rummage around among the piano-playing cat videos…and all my webcasts can be viewed on this page. They're in chronological order with the newest at the top.

Two things happened that took matters out of my control. We had a lot of enthusiastic folks in the chat room who kept posting the same questions over and over and over and over and repeat that about forty more times. I finally had to use the "time out" function to block some of them from posting for five minutes. As a result, a lot of people who had legit questions that they asked once or twice went unnoticed amidst the deluge.

Something that I think needs to be explained to some Internet users — especially younger ones — is that enthusiasm is great but often, less is more. If you keep screaming, what you're saying goes unheard. People just notice that you're screaming. Anyway, I apologize to those of you who sent great questions that I didn't see until the show was over because…well, I have a lot of things to pay attention to during these webcasts. It's easy to miss something.

Meanwhile, the Steve Sherman interview was briefly taken offline due to a comment thread, wholly unrelated to anything in the video, that violated rules or common decency. That's all gone and the video is back.

Featuring Corey Burton, Kari Wahlgren, J.P. Karliak, Kimberly Brooks and Jon Bailey…

They keep writing me…

Have you always wanted one of our ICONIC Make America Great Again Hats?

Well, you're in luck. President Trump just hand-signed one of them and, because you've always been one of his best supporters, he specifically requested that it go to YOU.

All you have to do is contribute ANY AMOUNT before 11:59 PM TONIGHT and you'll automatically be entered to win this BRAND-NEW 2020 Make America Great Again Hat that was signed by YOUR President.

We're only offering this exclusive opportunity to 700 Patriots — make sure you're one of them.

So let me see if I have this right: Donald Trump signed a hat and said, "Here — make sure this gets to Mark Evanier. He's one of my best supporters!" This makes me think that maybe the president isn't very well-informed or aware.

But instead of sending me the hat he wants me to have, his campaign staff has decided to put it into a raffle and let 700 people compete for it — and we all have to make some sort of donation before Midnight tonight. That doesn't seem fair.

What they should have done, so as to not waste this man's precious time — time he could be spending on the golf course or selling beans — is to tell him, "Mark Evanier is not one of your best supporters. He thinks you're a terrible incompetent and an awful human being who belongs in prison." I hope they do this but I hope they break it to him gently.

In the item preceding this one when I wrote about Stan Freberg, I thought I was typing "Stan was a huge influence on my sense of humor…which at times seems like the most precious thing I own." The "c" is next to the "v" on the keyboard and I accidentally wrote, "…which at times seems like the most previous thing I own."

Every human being on this planet (it seems) wrote me to point out the error and I fixed it. But there are times lately when my sense of humor is feeling kind of previous.

Ah, Day 150. I wish I could say we're nearing the end of this or even the halfway mark but I think you just frustrate yourself when you set a mental end-date and then have to keep moving it and moving it. I've usually been a big Advance Planner of Life but I've given that up. Last night, I got a grocery delivery including a lovely roast turkey breast which I expertly carved and Tupperwared. I'm thinking it'll be good for about four days, maybe five before what remains of it goes into the food processor and then to the cat dishes. Murphy is already asking when she can expect to see it there.

That's the kind of Advance Planning I do these days. My calendar is devoid of things like planned trips or theater tickets. There's no theater and I don't plan to travel — at least on a plane — for a very long time. About the only thing that lies ahead is an election which promises to get nutzo crazy in ways we never imagined. Eventually, I think, everything will move towards normality but I have no idea how long it'll take to get close to it. How close we'll get is also another good question.

I can make a very good case for myself that's it's not so bad right now, at least around here. I have things to eat, things to do, friends to talk to — mostly from afar, a select few from anear — as we all wait for some light at the end of the tunnel and I can endure it. I just wish we had some better sense of how long that tunnel is.

---

Yesterday would have been Birthday #94 for Stan Freberg had we not lost the guy in 2015. Stan was a huge influence on my sense of humor…which at times seems like the most precious thing I own. There was a time in my life where if you'd told me I would become friends and/or co-workers with most of the folks whose work I loved, I would have thought you were banana-wackie. Stan was high on that list. He was high on the lists of many people.

Stan meant so much to many of my friends that they've been bidding in the Heritage Auctions sale of some items from his estate — books, scripts, photos, keepsakes, etc. The last of these auctions is up now and it closes in a few days. Take a peek.

---

James Curtis wrote me to say…

I think you're wrong about The Joey Bishop Show. If I remember correctly, when the show premiered (Baxter Ward covered it on his 11 PM newscast) the gimmick was that it was live to the east coast and shown by tape delay out here the same night. And Regis' opening line was, "Live! From Hollywood!" At some point they apparently decided the "live" part wasn't doing much for them, and it may well have been seen on a day's delay in New York from then on.

My memory is also that the Carson show was seen on a one-day delay on the West Coast when it was based in New York. The story I remember reading was that it was taped and shown on the East Coast, then the tape was put on a red eye and collected at LAX for showing the following day. That may be why so many of the early Carson shows got erased — they were sent to Burbank and it was cheaper and easier to record Truth or Consequences or maybe Let's Make a Deal over them than to send them back.

I think the reason so many of Johnny Carson's shows got erased was that no one — and that included Mr. Carson — thought, "Hey! There might be some value to those things in the future." Johnny complained mightily that NBC had erased or simply thrown out his tapes but he might have said something before it was too late.

Carson's show was day-and-date (taped the same day it was aired) when it was from New York and when he made his occasional visits to Burbank, it was on a one-day delay. As I wrote on this blog before…

Johnny's show stopped being on a one-day delay whenever it emanated from Hollywood on February 9, 1971. That morning, there was a 6.6 earthquake in the city and Johnny called NBC Mission Control (or someone) and said they had to go "same day" that evening so the show could talk about the quake. Whatever had to be arranged was arranged and Johnny came out that night and started his monologue by announcing, "The God is Dead rally has been canceled," a much-quoted joke that has been credited to Pat McCormick, who was then on his writing staff. Thereafter, the show always aired the day they did it.

Before that, I don't know if they shipped tapes out or what. Someone who reads this will write it and tell me. I think Joey Bishop may have been live to the East Coast for a brief time when he first went on but they stopped. One problem with doing the show that way from Hollywood is that it means doing it at 8:30 PM. A few years before he retired, Johnny announced that they were going to start doing The Tonight Show live. I think he thought it was a stunt that might energize the show a bit in its waning days.

They never did it. And what I heard was that when they started talking to guests and their agents, they discovered it would interfere with a lot of good bookings. A desired guest star could tape a spot on Johnny's show at 5:30 PM and then go off to a premiere or a performance that evening. A lot of folks on Johnny's crew weren't that wild about not getting home from work at 11 PM also. I'm guessing maybe that was why Joey stopped doing it…if indeed he ever did. I don't understand why if they could do it live to the East Coast, they couldn't just replay a tape of that three hours later. But you might be right.

Someone who didn't include his or her name led me to this: It's from 1953 and it's a thirty-minute tour of CBS's then-new facility in Los Angeles called Television City. This was not, as you'll see, made for broadcast. It was an in-house thing and it was hosted by the esteemed newsman Edward R. Murrow. Television City opened on November 16, 1952, erected on real estate that had formerly been Gilmore Stadium. The Gilmore family owned a lot of the land around there and still owns Farmers Market which is on the same block as Television City.

Television City was and to some extent still is an amazing place. I only got to work there a few times but it's where I went to see Red Skelton do his dirty rehearsals and I also saw the final taping of one episode of that show and one of All in the Family and one of Sonny & Cher, etc. There's a lot of history in that place.

The Price is Right is still done there when it's done at all. Bill Maher's show was done there before he had to move it to his backyard. James Corden's show is there, The Young and the Restless is there…

…and it's been sold. An investment realtor recently bought the whole place and while many new mall-type businesses will be opening, it is said that much of the TV production will remain there. We shall see. In the meantime, enjoy the tour. There's a really fake script meeting scene in there with Jack Benny, two of his writers and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson…

This is a second encore for this item I posted here originally on October 31, 2003. Many of you watched my Conversation with my one-time partner Steve Sherman, part of which detailed our first visit to the offices of Marvel Comics in New York in 1970. But in the video, I left out a key part of that story. Here 'tis…

One day back in 1967, I was home from school with the flu and to pass the time, I decided to write some letters to comic book letter pages. This, of course, was back when comic books had letter pages.

Back when they did, I sent in a lot of letters and amazingly (for a time) had about 85% of them selected for publication. I told myself with grand pride that obviously, my prose was of such wit and insight that it stood out from the piles of what must have been hundreds, even thousands of letters. That track record stopped being so amazing when I started working in comics and saw the volume and quality of the mail that was received. Even a comic selling 250,000 copies only received about 25 letters, of which maybe eight might be printable, some with judicious rewriting by the editors. The rest were in Crayola® or said nothing deeper than "I love this comic!"

But I didn't know that back in '67. I just knew it was fun to open up a comic book and see your words — and better still, your name — staring back at you. So in a moment of fever-induced inspiration, I wrote the following letter and sent it off to Stan Lee. Months later, I was surprised to find it not in the letter page of one Marvel Comic but in Stan's Bullpen Bulletins page, which meant it ran in every Marvel that month. You can click on the image below and see a scan of the printed page or you can just read the transcript that follows it…

STAN'S SOAPBOX!
While we're waiting for your letters telling what you'd like us to editorialize about, we thought you'd get a charge out of this note which we just received:

Dear Bullpen: Enough! I have sat idle too long! I have watched the M.M.M.S. turn into disorganized chaos. (And that's the worst kind!) As a solution, I suggest we have some officers. By buying his first Marvel mag, a fan is automatically entitled to the rank of RFO (Real Frantic One). His first published letter elevates him to QNS (Quite 'Nuff Sayer). A no-prize raises him to TB (True Believer). Each additional no-prize raises one level: From JHC (Junior Howling Commando) to RH (Resident Hulk) to AAT (Associate Assistant Thing) and finally to the penultimate, the utmost status a fan can attain: MM (Marvelite Maximus)! Naturally, the artists all have the rank of DDD (Definitely Dizzy Doodlers), the editorial assistants are IPR (Illiterate Proof-Readers), art associates are VOD (Victims of Doodlers), the letterers are IWP (Indefatigable Word Placers), and Stan himself is at the summit – MEO (Marvel's Earthbound Odin). Each person would use his title at the start of his name – as I've done. (Signed –) RFO Mark Evanier

Y'know something, gang – we kinda dig Mark's idea. Let us know how it hits you and maybe we can really get the thing rolling! Fair ‘nuff?

And sure enough, they modified my titles a bit but soon, there were official ranks of Marveldom. To this day, when I run into Stan Lee, he rarely fails to mention that I came up with that and he treats it like it's the only important thing I've done in my life. Which it may well be. (The letter, by the way, was somewhat edited…as were most letters I had printed in comics back then. I don't believe I even knew the word "penultimate" at age 15. One of the reasons I stopped writing letters to comic books was that they were often rewritten, sometimes to the point of significantly altering my intended message.)

But it was not to be my only time in the Bullpen Bulletins. In 1970, I worked for a while for an outfit called Marvelmania International, which was selling posters and decals and other merchandise of the Marvel characters. Well, let me amend that: The mail order firm, which was disguised as a fan club, was taking orders for such items and cashing the checks, and once in a rare while, they'd actually produce an item and ship it out. But a lot of kids were shamelessly ripped-off and when it became apparent that this was happening, I quit, as did my friend Steve Sherman, who was also working there. A few months later, the guy who owned and operated the company upped and vanished to avoid a legion of creditors, and has not been seen since.

Before that happened, back when we and everyone still thought the company was legit and functioning, Steve and I paid a visit to New York City and spent a few days hanging around the Marvel offices, meeting everyone and gathering material for the "club" magazine. This was in July of '70 and even though we, like everyone else who ventured near Marvelmania, never got paid what we were owed, there were certain perks to our association with it…not a lot but, hey, you take what you can get.

One was that we spent a few hours with Stan Lee and he stuck a little notice in the Marvel Bullpen Bulletins, which appeared in every Marvel title each month. Some of the later Bullpen pages were written by others imitating Stan but he wrote this one, which ran in comics dated January, '71. I know because I saw him sit down at the typewriter and begin banging it out in his inimitable style, which included forced nicknames and chatty familiarity. No one ever called Steve "Stevey" and no one else thought we were young, zingy with-it guys but, hey, he's Stan Lee. If he says you're young, zingy and/or with-it, you don't ask questions. Here's the way it appeared in all the Marvel books a few months later. And whether you click on the image to see the scan or read the transcript that follows, take note of the item after the one about Steve and me…

ITEM! Just thought you'd like to know – the outspoken young fan who gave us the idea for the Ranks of Marveldom a few years ago (R.F.O.'s, F.F.F.'s, etc.) is now a full-fledged editor, turning out possibly the greatest fan mag of all for our own MARVELMANIA INTERNATIONAL! His name's MARK EVANIER, and he and his assistant editor, STURDY STEVEY SHERMAN, came to visit us the other day from sunny California where Marvelmania has its headquarters. They're a couple of young, zingy, with-it guys, and after yakkin' it up with ‘em for a while it's easy to see why MARVELMANIA has become the toast of fandom! They were in town to attend the famous ComicCon '70, and speaking of conventions —

ITEM! We just have to tell you that our first open meeting of the ACADEMY OF COMIC-BOOKS ARTS, held during the summer, was really somethin' else! One of the cleverest entertainers of our time, none other than WILL JORDAN, the great monologist and impressionist (you've seen him break up the Ed Sullivan show a zillion times), provided some of the most hilarious routines we've ever howled at. Our most heartfelt thanks to Will, and to all the panelists and guests who made it such a memorable and meaningful affair.

Most of the comics Stan worked on in the sixties have been praised to Asgardian proportion and I certainly agree there was wonderment aplenty in there. But I also really liked the friendly editorial "voice" he established in his letter columns, house ads and especially in the Bullpen Bulletins. He put himself on a first-name basis with the readership at a time when the rival DC editors generally came across not only as adults but stodgy adults. He simultaneously bragged about the greatness of Marvel and expressed such humility that when they screwed up, as they occasionally did, you were willing to cut them a lot of slack. I will never forget the issue of Tales to Astonish where in the letter page, Stan admitted that the Giant-Man story had been done in such a rush that he wasn't sure it made a lot of sense (it didn't), nor will I forget the way he made it sound like he and the Mighty Marvel Bullpen lived to serve us 14-year-old consumers.

And there's a reason I included the item after the item about me. While I was in Stan's office that day in 1970, he got a call from Jim Warren, publisher of Creepy and Eerie. They were on the planning committee for the Academy of Comic Book Arts, a group that was then trying to elevate the form in cursory ways. Warren was calling to say he'd arranged for Will Jordan to entertain at the upcoming meeting and Stan replied, "That's great! He'll be terrific! Good work, Jim!" Then Stan hung up the phone, turned to me and asked, "Who's Will Jordan?"

I explained that Will Jordan was a comedian-impressionist who was best known for his appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, and Stan proceeded to write the entry you see above, talking about how great Will Jordan was, and how great he'd been at the meeting…which took place after this page went to the printer. Some would call this a bit of trickery but I thought it was a fine example of Stan's imaginative writing. Anyone can write a report on an event after it happens…

In 1970, my friend Steve Sherman and I went to work as assistants to Jack Kirby…arguably (but not very arguably) the most important creative talent ever in comic books. Earlier this week, Steve and I sat down in front of our respective webcams for a long conversation about what it was like to know this man. And you can listen in…

Hey, let's watch Regis Philbin tell a fib.

In 1967, ABC decided to compete with Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. They put The Joey Bishop Show — ninety minutes of pretty much the same format — on opposite him. Since Johnny had a sidekick/announcer, Joey had to have a sidekick/announcer. It was said that Joey personally made the selection of Regis to be his Ed McMahon. Prior to that, Philbin had worked various jobs in mostly-local but some national television. He did a syndicated talk show that never caught on and soon after it went off, he was hired by Joey.

Mr. Bishop's show barely made a dent in Carson's dominance of the time slot and went off after 33 months of finishing usually in second place and sometimes in third in what was then a three-network race. In the clip below, you'll hear Regis attribute its failure to NBC having more stations…and while I'm sure that's true, I would think the main reason was that it wasn't a very good show.

Bishop was not very warm or pleasant and occasionally, his jokes about others, especially his sidekick, erred on the side of mean. Via his "Rat Pack" connection, he could occasionally get a Dean Martin or Sammy Davis to come on as a guest — though never Sinatra.  Joey was said to be quite bothered that his old pal Frank declined all invites.

And he had the problem that most talk shows have when they're not in first place: The best guests have something to plug and they and their publicists want it plugged on the show with the most viewers. Johnny got the big names and then when CBS added The Merv Griffin Show to the late night lineup, Merv got second-pick of guests and Joey had to settle for Jack Carter and below.

If anyone involved was not responsible for the failure of Bishop's show, it was Regis. He simply didn't contribute enough to have been a factor. But at the same time, he didn't contribute anything that would make you think he'd ever have a successful career, let alone become one of the most "seen" human beings ever on television. He did though figure into the most memorable occurrence on the Bishop show and it led to some of the few nights they outrated Johnny.

On the show for July 12, 1968, Regis made an announcement early in the proceedings. He said, to the genuine shock of the studio audience and the professed surprise of Joey Bishop, that he was quitting. Then and there. He said he'd heard too many rumbles about how the network thought he was a big reason the show wasn't making it and he didn't want to be where he wasn't wanted…and he certainly didn't want to hold back his loyal friend Joey. And with that, he walked off the stage and out of the studio.

In several places on the 'net where this is mentioned, it says this was during a live broadcast but I don't think Bishop's show was ever live. In fact, I remember always thinking that one of the things that did hold it back was that while Johnny's show was done "day-and-date" in New York (meaning they taped it earlier the day it aired), Joey was out here in Hollywood on a one-day delay.  The show they taped on Tuesday didn't air until Wednesday…so things couldn't be as topical. In any case, it was definitely on the news on that July 12th that you could tune in that night's show and see Regis make his startling announcement. I know because I tuned in to see it.

There was much written in the press and the network put out statements that absolutely no one there had wanted to get rid of Regis. A few days later, it was announced that everything had been worked out and he returned, somewhat and somehow triumphant, to the show. I, of course, also watched the night he returned. Even at the less-cynical age of fifteen, all I could think of was that it was a clumsily-planned-and-executed publicity stunt.

If it wasn't, I thought, Philbin did something very unprofessional. If you want to quit a TV show, you don't do it on the TV show. You have your agent call and try to negotiate you out of your contract. It would also have been a rotten thing to do to his friend Joey unless Joey was in on it.  Also, 7/12/68 was the first night of one of Johnny's occasional visits to L.A. and his show that evening had a killer, star-packed guest list.  That was the night Regis just "happened" to pick to quit in the most attention-getting way possible.

For a while after, Regis insisted it was all for real and that Bishop was completely unaware it was going to happen.  Eventually though, both men began admitting it was a planned stunt.  In 1995, in the first of several autobiographies he put out during his life, Regis (or his ghost-writer, Bill Zehme) wrote of rumors that folks at the network thought the show might be better off without Mr. Philbin.  Before each taping, he and Joey would go for a walk around the streets of Hollywood and chat…

Early that week during our afternoon walk, I brought up all these rumors.  "Do you think it's me?" I asked Joey.  "Should I quit?  If you think I'm hurting the show, I'll go."  I reminded Joey that he had stuck his neck out for me and the last thing I wanted to do was be a noose around that neck.  Joey gave me a surprised look.  "No, I don't think it's you," he said evenly.  But I saw a little light go off in his eyes.  Coincidence or not, we both knew that the following week, Johnny Carson would be bringing The Tonight Show out to NBC's facilities in Burbank, our own backyard.  Whenever Carson came west, it was a big event and his ratings soared.

Joey, for his part, hated network politics and didn't much like his ABC bosses, especially the ones who wanted my blood.  So he said to me, "I'll tell you a way to get back at them.  Why don't you — only if you feel like it — walk off one night? Walk off right on the air like Jack Paar used to do. You'll show them." Then he said, "Just know that if you walk, I'll make sure you come back."

Then he goes on about how they discussed it and adds, "More than anything, Joey was envisioning the publicity value of a televised resignation. After all, Carson was coming west and we were sitting ducks for a ratings massacre." He finally told Bishop, "What the hell, I'll go for it" and a few days later — timed so it would air opposite Carson's opening show from Burbank, he did it.

That was how he described it in his 1995 book, I'm Only One Man — now outta-print (I believe) but I have a copy. On the tour to promote it, he talked a lot about how he and Joey had planned it and how it provoked an outcry from fans, demands that he come back and a joyous, highly-rated return. Okay, fine. Far more dishonest things have occurred on television. If you turn on any news channel right now, you can probably watch a couple.

But on November 1, 2006, Philbin sat for a long interview with the TV Academy folks and here is how he described it eleven years later…

I don't get it. Why confess in a book and all over national television that it was a prearranged stunt and then later try to spin it as all your idea? And before you wonder: Joey Bishop didn't pass away until 2007.

"So," more than a few people write me to say, "what's up with those cats you feed in your backyard?" Well, they're all fine. Lydia (not pictured this time) kind of lives out there 24/7, departing only when the pool guy or the gardeners come by.  Once the intruders depart her yard, she reclaims her rightful place as its monarch.

Murphy shows up about once a day whenever she feels like it and just howls and howls. I have been awakened around sun-up by the sound of her out there, demanding that I get up and put out food for her. I do this whenever I'm good and ready, which is often more like 10 AM.  She howls before I feed her.  She howls after I feed her.  I never know what the hell she wants.  Here's a photo I took of Murphy earlier today…

We also have occasional guest stars out there. The cat below has turned up out back more than a few times and I have no idea if it's a he or a she or where he or she comes from or who else feeds him or her.  Someone must.  As you can see, he or she has a tag but there's no way he or she will ever let me get close enough to find out his or her gender, let alone read that tag. I had about two seconds to take this photo before he/she sprinted off…

I'm calling this one The Mystery Cat, although I could have hung that moniker on about thirty others since I first turned my yard into a Hometown Buffet for homeless felines. You'll notice that The Mystery Cat and Murphy have pretty much the same expression on their faces. This is the way all feral cats seem to look…or at least, how they look at me.  It's also the way I look when I watch the current President of the United States.  I sometimes feel like sprinting away, too.

A couple of folks have written to ask for my "take" on what's going on with Ellen DeGeneres and her afternoon talk show. With all the important, life-threatening things going on in the world right now, I kind of envy being able to think at all about a topic like that.

I have absolutely no inside info on that operation. I watched her show a few times — usually to see a specific guest — and I liked what I saw but felt that there wasn't enough of it between commercials. Then I watched a few times not to see a certain guest…just to watch. Those times, it seemed to me that an awful lot of the time they did have was spent with non-celeb guests and members of the audience talking about how Ellen is the most incredible, super-terrific, awesome, fabulous human being who has ever walked this planet.

I'm not saying she's not a great talent and host but if you're not name-checked in the Holy Bible, you cannot possibly be as godlike as some Ellen fans make her out to be on her show — and it is her show. She could tone that down if she wanted to. It felt to me like Donald Trump demanding that all meetings start by everyone around the table taking turns saying what an honor it was to be in the same room with him and to serve him.

It makes you think there's some ego problem there somewhere. Maybe that's not fair but it sure gives credibility to allegations of tyranny, arrogance, being mad with power…the kind of thing of which Ellen is now being accused.

She has plenty of defenders in the media but most of them are celebrities, which makes them kind of worthless as character witnesses. No one is accusing her of mistreating celebrities. In show business — in probably any business, actually — the test of The Boss's character is not how he or she interacts with important people but how they treat the ones who can't fight back; who need the job so when they're treated like crap, they have to apologize for things they didn't do and keep kissing the butts of the rich 'n' powerful.

Is Ellen guilty as charged? I dunno. I do know that if she is and this had happened twenty years ago, she would have gotten away with it as long as her show was making money. Today, there's more concern about toxic work environments, including the ones where no sexual crimes are committed. Many Big Stars of the past got away with behavior that would not be tolerated today.

I'm not 100% confident that the process by which this kind of thing is evaluated is completely fair to the accused…but then I'm also not confident that juries always decide rightly that someone is or is not guilty of First Degree Murder. You just hope they get it right most of the time. If Ellen and her show do survive, she might want to dial down the segments that are all about how just meeting her is by far the single-greatest moment of someone's life.

I was going to refrain from videos about Trump for a while but then along comes one that's too good to not post here…

Like you, I keep coming across these lists on social media where you're asked to specify which of a number of activities you've engaged in. Here's one with my answers…

1. Smoked weed — Never smoked anything, not even one joint, one cigarette or one ham.  Honest.
2. Popped pills — Only what a doctor of mine said I should take and sometimes not even then.
3. Went streaking — Once with some others when it was age-appropriate and kind of a current fad.  Be glad you weren't there to see it.
4. Skinny dipped — Yeah, many times.  Be glad you haven't been around.
5. Been arrested — Never.  I don't care what the people who watched Pink Lady & Jeff demanded.
6. Gotten into a fist fight — Once in my high school locker room but it only lasted one punch (from me) and the guy admitted later he deserved it.
7. Gotten drunk — Though the sheriffs who occasionally stop my car for one of those random sobriety tests don't believe it, I've never had even a sip of alcohol.  Honest.
8. Wrecked a car — Nope. Part of that may be because I've never had even a sip of alcohol.
9. Egged someone's house — I can't imagine doing something that juvenile and stupid even back when I was juvenile and stupider.
10. Played Ding Dong Ditch — I don't know how to play that but I bet I haven't.
11. Been suspended — No.  I assume this means "from school" and not "on a rope" but I haven't done either.
12. Been expelled — No. The way they tried to get me out of school was by having me skip grades.
13. Pulled a fire alarm — Once when there actually was a fire. I suspect the person who made up this list didn't have that possibility in mind.
14. TP'ed someone's property — See #9.
15. Stolen something — A glance, a base, a kiss…but nothing of value.
16. Gotten a ticket — A few times for parking and once, when I backed off an obviously-drunk driver on the freeway, cops didn't stop him but they stopped me and gave me a ticket for driving too slow.
17. Drag raced — Of course not.  I'm the guy who once got a ticket for driving too slow on the freeway.
18. Gotten a felony — Yeah, right.  I just look like a guy who has done hard time.
19. Graffitied something — Only once when a bunch of us were asked by a school principal to decorate a wall.  At least, he said he was the principal.
20. Been kicked out of class — Never…and what is it with all these questions about being kicked out of school? I didn't even get punished the time at University High when I punched that kid. (See #6)

Okay.  I'm done with this.

For the last week or so, I've been keeping an eye on a little counter here that I can see and you can't. I wanted to be able to note Post #28,000 on this blog and I missed it. This is Post #28,003.