Here's a short piece from the Writers Guild newsletter about how some of the late night shows are being written in this Time of Crisis. When this thing hit, I suggested here that they'd try what they're doing — a pretty obvious prediction if you ask me — but I haven't been all that thrilled with the results. Most of the interviews seem disconnected and in some cases, heavily edited. Many of them seem like awkward chats about how awkward the chats are, and a few that I've seen have been reminders that when things in this country are bad, wealthy celebrities don't have it so bad.

Here's thirteen and a half minutes of S. Sondheim's show Into the Woods performed quarantine style…

I do not have any webcasts scheduled at this time. I'm going to do some more. I just don't know when yet.

When Murphy the Cat began appearing in my yard, she would patiently wait until Lydia (who's been here since George W. Bush was president…ah, those were the days) finished eating. Only when Lydia had left the supper bowl would Murphy cautiously approach it and then eat every last bit of leftover Friskies.

Since Murphy has become a regular, I decided to start setting out two bowls, side by side, to see if they would dine side by side. That did not happen. Murphy still waited until Lydia had left the buffet, then quickly ate everything remaining. The other morning, I tried placing the dishes on opposite sides of the water dish and that made a difference. As you can see above, they feasted simultaneously…

…and then when Lydia left, Murphy went back and forth between the two bowls, dining alternately until they were both licked clean.

By the way, as you may have noticed, I've decided Murphy's a she. What's more, since her ear doesn't have the notch that indicates the cat has been spayed, she's a cat who may turn up preggo one of these days, as Lydia once did. I went through a lot to catch Lydia and take her in for a spaying and a feline abortion. Murphy seems impossible to ever catch and I sure don't want a yardful of kittens who take after their mother and meow constantly for no visible reason.

Hope it doesn't come to that. Heck, for all I know, she might already be eating for two. Or more.

Several folks have sent me this and the last one suggested, "You'd better caution your readers that it contains language." Consider yourself cautioned…

My favorite singer, Audra McDonald, sings a medley from the show Carousel…

Our pal Eric Goldberg from the Disney Studio teaches you how to draw Mickey Mouse. It's pretty easy when all you have to do is copy your shirt…

I've been leaving the Fortress of Solitude a bit. Thursday afternoon, I drove an elderly neighbor to her bank. She was masked and gloved and if she wasn't in her nineties, I would have wondered if maybe she planned to rob the place and I'd been tricked into driving the getaway car.

Friday, I walked to a CVS Pharmacy for a few necessities and while I was there, stopped into a nearby restaurant for some to-go food, which of course is all they offer these days. Signs outside the place stated clearly that no one would be admitted or served without a mask and I, of course, had mine on. But as some of us in there were waiting for our orders, a man walked in without one. If he wasn't homeless, he was certainly dressed to make people think he was.

The restaurant staff was too busy to notice his masklessness as he approached the counter to order so I called their attention to it. The cashier told him he had to leave and he began arguing with her: "That's a lot of hooey and I want a meatball sandwich!"

I happen to think the "no mask, no service" policy is totally wise. But even if it's silly, he was still in the wrong to not comply with it and to think arguing would change anything.

I've seen this at banks. I've seen this at the airport and in hospitals and doctors' offices and other places. There are plenty of pointless or dumb rules in this world but it's even more pointless and dumber to debate them with someone who has no power whatsoever to change or not enforce them. Go challenge the mayor or the governor or whoever made the rule and can fire or punish underlings who don't follow orders.

The probably-homeless guy argued a bit. The mask thing is stupid because as anyone with half-a-brain knows, there is no pandemic. This whole corona thing is a hoax. No one's dying because of it. The death tolls are wild exaggerations and the people who are actually dying are just…you know, well, people die every day.

You want proof? People die every day from traffic accidents and cancer and heart disease and that most certain of deadly killers…natural causes. You're not hearing one word about that, are you? If you had a half-a-brain, you would have noticed.

That's because they need to report those deaths as "COVID-19 deaths" to prop up The Big Lie that's being swallowed whole by people with half-a-brain. If fifty people die in one city one day from those real killers, They (the ever-present, ominous "They") say it's five hundred corona deaths.

I remember saying to myself, "It's thinking like that that got that man where he is today."

He yelled and berated employees who were just doing their jobs and I somehow became the spokesperson for all those around me who wished the guy would go away. At one point, I told him in the tone you'd use to lecture a toddler, "This is not going to get you a meatball sandwich!" He went away, then came back two minutes later holding a tissue over his mouth — not even his mouth and nose — to demand his meatball sandwich.

The gent taking orders told him to get out and he finally did. A few minutes later when I left with my order, he was standing in front of the restaurant talking to himself about those "half-a-brain" people. I walked right past him with my meatball sandwich…which, by the way, was real good.

It's been a busy day here in the fortress — prepping for the Cartoon Voices Panel, doing the Cartoon Voices Panel, recovering from the Cartoon Voices Panel…

Recovering involved a long nap but it also involved a lot of nice phone calls and e-mails and texts, including a few from friends I haven't heard from in quite a while. That was an unexpected bonus. I thought it went pretty well, especially considering the inevitable last-minute tech problem. One of our five panelists, Bob Bergen, suddenly couldn't hear me. He could hear the other four panelists but not me…and how can you be on a panel if you can't hear the host?

If you watch it — and I hope you will — you'll see how we coped with it at first, then fixed it. From that point on, everyone seemed to have a pretty good time, though I came up with several thoughts about things we could do better. If and when we do more of these, we'll try to perfect the form…and it's starting to look like a when, not an if. Stay tuned for more details…and thanks to everyone who watched us in real time. It made a difference, wholly positive, to know we were doing it for a live audience, even one we couldn't see or hear.

Featuring Bob Bergen, Julie Nathanson, Fred Tatasciore, Phil LaMarr and Secunda Wood…

That's right. We're doing it live at 1 PM Pacific Time today, which is of course 4 PM Eastern and 3 PM Central. I have no idea if we'll be able to make this work but tune in and see what goes wrong, as I'm sure many things will. This could be the one and only time I'll attempt this or it could be the start of a series.

If you want it to be the latter, do me a favor and post the ad above on every social media you can. I'll be too busy in the morning to do it myself. Or at least post the link (https://youtu.be/v2QtT8U9x9E") and use it yourself at the proper time. After the webcast concludes, the entire video should be at that link and you can watch it then and probably forever after. Oh, how I hope someone wants to watch it forever after.

Speaking as we were of people doing well on The Tonight Show, here's a clip of the guy I'm interviewing tonight at 7 PM Pacific Time…

Before most of us locked ourselves into The Isolation Booths That Are All Our Lives Now, I used to get a lot of spam phone calls. A lot of spam phone calls. Tons of spam phone calls. Vast quantities of spam phone calls, many of the robotic variety. Others were live human beings who were, you kind of assume, unable to find real jobs.

Simultaneously with me confining myself to my quarters, the calls largely stopped. Both kinds. Instead of getting seven every one day, I was getting one every seven days or thereabouts. I was curious to know why and I still am.

Pondering the matter, I decided that it probably had nothing to do with the fact that most folks in this country were isolating. You'd think if anything, the opposite would true. You'd think those evil, evil people who sic their spammers on us would say, "Hey! Everyone's home and a lot of them are bored and lonely! Good time to bombard them with sales pitches!"

And then there's the fact that so many folks' incomes suddenly stopped and unemployment soared. You'd think a lot more people would need the income they'd think (wrongly) they could make from those ads that engage them to make calls on commission. But no. I didn't get a single call from someone who wanted to install solar panels all over me and my house.

My theory — and I don't have any certainty in this — was that phone companies had instituted some controls and technology to suppress spam calls and the latest move just happened to coincide with us all deciding to let GrubHub feed us. But lately, the spam calls have been creeping back — I got two this morning — so I'm now less certain of that theory of which I was not certain at all. Anyone got a better theory?

And maybe I'll even figure out when I'm on the air…