Okay, here's one of the first things I'm going to do with my new playground, though there may be one or two other things before then.

Every year at WonderCon and Comic-Con International, I host one or more panels of top cartoon voice actors, discussing and demonstrating their craft. Since neither con is happening this year, we're going to try moving it online so you can watch them do what they do in real time.

Appearing live from their own home recording studios will be Bob Bergen (the voice of Porky Pig and many other classic characters and heard on Curious George and the Star Wars cartoons and more), Julie Nathanson (from Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay and Ubisoft's Far Cry 5, among other credits), Phil LaMarr (from Justice League Unlimited, Samurai Jack, Static Shock and many more), Secunda Wood (heard on Boss Baby, Fast & Furious Spy Racers and dozens of videogames) and Fred Tatasciore (The Hulk, Family Guy, American Dad, et al).

I'm frontloading this one with five of the best voice performers I know, which is not to say there aren't plenty of others if we do more of these. If you'd like to help there be more, spread the word. Repost the ad above wherever you can repost it and blanket your social media. And, of course, be there for it live this Saturday afternoon.

It will probably be online to watch later but it'll be more fun live, plus we'll be fielding your comments and questions. And if nothing else, you can watch me screw up the tech end of this and that will be highly amusing…for you, not me. Oh — and subscribe to newsfromme.tv and set a reminder for this webcast!

The last week or two, I've been setting up an online video presence for this blog. I'm still configuring this and that but we'll be doing a webcast next Saturday afternoon that you'll all want to see and maybe one or two before that. Also, during this week a few of my friends and I will be popping in and out of the channel for little casual chats and practice and testing. I'll try to post notice of them here and I may even try to embed them here. No special codes are necessary to watch. Just forgive me if I screw things up. And when you're over there, hit the subscribe button.

A musical moment from the world's most popular frog. That's Matt Vogel, the latest portrayer of Kermit…

Heritage Auctions is selling another batch of Stan Freberg memorabilia. But if you want a reminder of this great comedian/satirist, you'll have to hurry! Bidding closes in about 20 hours from the time I'm posting this. Go take a look. Stan would have written a much better commercial for this than I just did.

This is a soundie and in case you don't know what a soundie is, here's what a soundie is. Imagine an old jukebox in some public place like a restaurant. The juke box plays records. Now imagine that instead of playing records, it plays little movies in which musical performers of the day performed the songs they also performed on records. Those films were called soundies. Here's one featuring the great Fats Waller and I'm going to guess it was made around 1941…

I recently saw an interesting exchange on Twitter between someone named Ben Marcus and the stand-up comic Michelle Wolf. Mr. Marcus, who may be the acclaimed author with that name or may be a different Ben Marcus, wrote…

Vulgar comedy is just that — vulgar. It's tired. Grownups telling dirty, cheap jokes to appear edgy. Why do you think Seinfeld and Ellen have done so well? Because they are clean. They don't stoop to being dumb and vulgar. It's tired. So….

Well, I can't argue with his first point. Vulgar comedy is vulgar. When the man's right, he's right. And I'd certainly agree that some who tell dirty, cheap jokes are trying to appear edgy in lieu of just making people laugh. Last time I was at the Comedy Store, I saw a few who checked all those boxes…but they did make people laugh. Which brings me to Michelle Wolf's reply to him…

You know who's also incredibly successful? "Vulgar" comedians.

She's right, too. The suggestion that comedians should work clean because Seinfeld and Ellen work clean is kayoed by the fact that Dave Chappelle is successful, Jim Jefferies is successful, Kevin Hart is successful, Michelle Wolf is successful, etc. There's a long list of millionaire comedians Mr. Marcus would probably consider vulgar.

Ms. Wolf would be even righter if she'd inserted the word "some" into that tweet. If you want a real insight into the world of stand-up comedy, don't just see the best people. Go to some Open Mike Nights. I can pretty much guarantee you won't enjoy them and might sit through three or four before you even so much as chuckle.

If you have the slightest bit of empathy in you, your heart will break for a couple of the folks who get up there. You can see dreams shatter in real time…like those of some guy who has always been pretty amusing around his friends, saying witty and funny things. Maybe some of them even said to him, "You oughta be a professional comedian." On at least one occasion and probably more, that auditioner saw someone on TV who didn't make them laugh and so said to himself or herself, "If that loser can get on TV, I oughta be a professional comedian."

So they write an act and they perhaps try it out on that least-accurate barometer of funny…their friends. They may even break it in somewhere where it doesn't matter…and of course, that doesn't matter. But at some point, they take it to some place that is or resembles a real comedy club — a stage where professionals work — and they get on that stage, having imagined the raucous laughter that will follow each and every line…

…and two jokes in, they're thinking, "Say…this isn't as easy as I thought it was."

In those cases, even the "f" word can't save them. Vulgarity can't save them. One time, I even saw a guy who, five or six jokes in, suddenly began doing jokes out of George Carlin's act. I think what happened was that his original jokes bombed and he still had a few minutes up there before they gave him the "get-off-the-stage" signal so he thought, "Well, maybe it's the audience."

So he did some Carlin jokes and when they didn't get laughs either, he left the stage thinking, "It's just a crappy audience. My jokes are just as good as George Carlin's." I'm guessing that it didn't dawn on him that doing George Carlin's material doesn't make you George Carlin nor would working clean, a la Seinfeld or Ellen. That guy could have split himself in two, done both parts in "Who's on First?" and not gotten a single giggle.

In the Twitter exchange above, Mr. Marcus is correct that some comics are vulgar and trying to appear edgy. Ms. Wolf is correct that some comedians Mr. Marcus would call "vulgar" make audiences love them and laugh at them and new comedians are going to follow in their well-compensated footsteps. And I think I'm correct that it's all about what makes an audience laugh. If a comedian can do that and the jokes aren't stolen, that comedian is doing the job right. Even if some people think they're telling dirty, cheap jokes to appear edgy.

This is another of those Cirque Du Soleil specials featuring beautiful images of people who are more physically fit than you doing things that you can't believe a human being can do. In that sense, they're a lot like most porn. This one's a sing-along, inviting you to sing along with songs you don't know, often in languages you don't speak. So not only will you not be able to do anything the performers do physically, you won't be able to do what the chorus does, either…

I follow a number of people online and often check in with J.P. and Julia, who star on not one but two YouTube channels — this one and this one. Both channels are filled with their adventures, all of which are food-related. For a while lately, they were traveling to exotic locations and doing things like checking out a McDonald's in Vietnam but now they're home and quarantining and what do you do when you're a foodie and you have to stay at home?

That's easy. You open a Five Guys in your apartment…

Sorry I didn't post this yesterday. You have less than 24 hours to watch this, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. This is Love Never Dies and it fell way short of either the acclaim or the turnout for Phantom. It opened in London in 2010 and went through a couple of post-opening rewrites and other productions without ever venturing to Broadway. Given that Phantom has now played there to mostly-packed houses since January of 1998, you can imagine the meeting in which they decided there was insufficient interest in the follow-up…

I actually feel sorry for supporters of Donald Trump. Each morning, they must awake and wonder what incredibly stupid, destructive thing he's going to say or do that they'll then have to explain with "He didn't mean that" or "He didn't say what's on the video" or "The press is lying about that." I understand they believe that they believe supporting this guy gives them the kind of government they think they want but it's gotta be a lot of work to pretend grandpa has all his marbles.

And notice I'm not doing a very good job of ignoring him.

Hey, why has nobody handed Randy Rainbow a half-hour of prime (not necessarily prime-time) TV acreage? The guy's funny and topical and there are television programs with huge staffs that couldn't have put together that Trump parody video in a week, let alone in — what was it? A day and a half? Rainbow reportedly does them by himself in his Manhattan apartment. And it's not like he could have been working on it for weeks, figuring that sooner or later, Trump would probably start telling people to mainline Lysol…

In a day or so, I'm going to be announcing a couple of online video chats that I'm going to be doing. You will not have to sign up for these. They'll be open to all to watch live and then they'll be archived online so you can watch them at your leisure, not-live. If you'd like to get a jump on these videos, go to my new YouTube page and subscribe. I've put a few things up there that you might enjoy now.

You knew this was coming…you knew this was coming…

Josh Groban performs one of Stephen Sondheim's best songs from Sunday in the Park With George — "Finishing the Hat"…

Tomorrow at 5 PM Pacific Time — which unless Trump has changed it is 8 PM Eastern — our pal Frank Ferrante will be live on Facebook discussing and taking questions about his career impersonating Groucho Marx. Frank is always interesting on this topic. I think you can watch him on this page.

Boy, it's hard to not hear (or hear about) Donald Trump…even here in the fortress. You turn on the TV, there's Trump or someone talking about Trump and showing clips. You go online, same deal. You answer the phone and somebody wants to talk about the guy. I really don't want to write about him here but I'll allow myself this one paragraph stating something that seems to me quite obvious…

His base will not desert him until they have an acceptable alternative. At the moment, they don't. Mike Pence might give them most of the same government they want but Mike Pence won't be throwing out red meat and calling people names and telling all their enemies to screw off. Analysts are noting that once upon a time, George W. Bush was almost as popular with his base but eventually, his incompetence and inability to form coherent thoughts got to them and his approval rating dropped to about the same level as painful rectal itch. True…but they could then look at other prominent Republicans and see plenty of acceptable alternatives. Giving up on "W" didn't mean giving up on their goal of controlling government. I believe a lot of Trump supporters cringe like all of us about what he says and much of what he does. But a mass defection won't occur until they have someone else to defect to. End of Trump paragraph.

Do you see that thing in the above photo? You probably think it's a vitamin caddy…and it is. But during this isolation, it's also become my main way of knowing what day of the week it is. This morning, mine told me that today is Turquoise.

I'm working on the Pogo book today and planning for a special online event that will be happening a week from tomorrow. I'll tell you about it shortly. Stay safe and have a Happy Turquoise.

Twelve Julien Neels wearing three different ties sing the song that every good barbershop quartet should sing, even if there are a dozen singers in it and they're all the same person…