It's Monday and the only reason I know that is that John Oliver was on last night…and wonderful, as usual. But one day's pretty much like another here in isolation, especially since I'm watching very little live TV and have no appointments. I am supposed to get a delivery tonight from Amazon Fresh and I guess they've got everyone working overtime because it's scheduled for between 10 PM and Midnight.

I wish I had something interesting to write about here. Actually, it's kind of interesting that I have nothing interesting to write about here.

Watching a musical performance one time, a friend of mine turned to me and whispered, "This is the show-businessiest number I've ever seen." She didn't mean that as a positive comment or a negative one; just a recognition of how what was before us was all about show business and nothing else. It wasn't even trying to be anything else. The folks who staged it just wanted to give us, as Mr. Fosse once did, the old "razzle-dazzle."

I thought of that comment as I was watching this number from Liza Minnelli's 1992 show at Radio City Music Hall. Very show-businessy…

And then this next video is what I believe followed it…

I've been experimenting with Zoom conferencing software lately and I'm going to try to set up some online conferences where readers of this website can log in and ask me questions and I may have some interesting friends in the conferences, too. Over the next week or so, I'll be doing some little test conferences with a limited number of participants. If you'd like to be invited into one, drop me a note at this address (and only that address) and tell me.

Depending on how many of these I do and how many volunteers I have, you may or may not get an invite. Don't feel slighted if you don't. If I start doing these more seriously, everyone will have a chance to participate…but first, I have to decide if I want to do these more seriously. In the tests, we'll mostly be talking about the kinds of entertainment I write about on this blog and I'm in the mood these days to steer clear of politics.

You'll need to have Zoom software on your computer and a free account with them. You'll also need a webcam that will show your face and a microphone that will transmit your voice and you'll have to know how to do make this stuff work. Zoom is pretty easy to operate as a participant in an online meeting and you may not need a tutorial but if you do, there are about ninety of them on YouTube, all of which will tell you a lot more than you need to know. I'm not sure yet when the first test conference will be but it will be in the coming week.

A lot of folks online are worried that one casualty of The Pandemic could be the U.S. post office. Everyone's preoccupied with masks and gloves and hand sanitizer and TOILET PAPER and getting their groceries and with the prospect of vote-by-mail looming, this might be a good time for those who have always hated the institution to do it in or seize control of it or something.

It is true that by some measures the U.S. Postal Service loses money but that's only by some measures…and that's with the folks in Congress who want to see it eliminated or privatized doing everything they can to make it lose money. I think that given what it costs to mail a letter, the U.S.P.S. does an extraordinary job. People who are not computer-savvy (there are plenty of such people) rely on it to communicate, pay their bills, etc.

Want to do something to keep it around? Buy a lot of stamps. You'll use them eventually and they won't be any cheaper in the future.

I have a whole mailbox full of messages about the shortages of toilet paper. Many of them point to or repeat the wisdom of this article.

In my garage is, as usual, enough to last me for a few months. I've placed an order that Amazon claims they're going to fill for one more package with which I can supply a few rolls to each of my friends who seems to be desperate for a few rolls. I am now done with this topic.

Just got my Instacart order and yes, I got eggs — non-organic instead of organic but in these times, we all have to make sacrifices.

They were out of the frozen pizza I like and I got a few other second choices. They also cut my order for bottled water down from eight gallons to two. And the frozen chicken breasts they delivered say "Best if used by March 25" on them so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that. But I got most of what I ordered.

One other no-show was toilet paper. I actually have enough of it to last me a month or two, even after giving a few rolls to needy friends. I always have a little stockpile because if you've got the room to store it, it's a dumb thing to run out of. But a couple of folks I know are getting desperate to have another roll or two on hand and I figured if I was fortunate enough to score a package, I could put some minds and sphincters at ease by saying, "Come over. I'll leave a couple of rolls on my porch for you." One person I know would have been here in a nano-second.

But the stuff is still in short supply and hoarders are the only conceivable reason. I mean, is it possible that Americans are now using five times as much of it as the norm? The news plays havoc with your digestion but not that much. I see that a lot of the T.P. that Amazon still has in stock is the overpriced "gag" kind imprinted with the faces of Trump, Biden, Bernie, etc. Is there a stupider, more sophomoric joke gift than that?

Getting back to frozen pizza: I know some folks think it's an abomination and that fresh is the only way to go but frozen has two advantages. One is when you just want the equivalent of a slice or two and it's 1 AM. The other is when you're living in isolation — as (ahem!) some of us are — and you only ever want a slice or two. If it was during business hours and I had three friends here, I'd get a fabulous one from Vito's. If I were to order one today when they open, I'd either wind up eating the whole thing myself or throwing much of it away. I'm not sure which would be more painful.

I tried all the personal-sized ones at the local markets and the best one for me was Red Baron. If you bite into one expecting restaurant-quality, you'll be disappointed but it's that way with all frozen pizzas. And I have had pizza fresh from pizzerias, including a couple times in New York, that I liked less than Red Baron from my microwave. Maybe you have better brands in the markets near you.

And speaking of frozen pizzas: You may remember Dave Portnoy, the Internet zillionaire who founded Barstool Sports, and who's been doing daily pizza reviews on YouTube since Lou Malnati was in high school. I linked to a video or two of his long ago and I still check in when he reviews a place I might conceivably be near some day. While self-quarantined in his fancy New York flat, he's taken to reviewing frozen pizzas and this somehow led to companies sending him pizzas to review which somehow led to companies that make other things and his fans sending him stuff.

And this has all led to some of the weirdest videos ever posted on the Internet. He gets so much stuff that it has led to him doing live "unboxing videos" where he just opens the gifts for — I am not exaggerating — over three hours. Why is this interesting? Well, for one thing, you can usually count on him physically injuring himself and/or destroying a large part of his apartment. People send him a lot of weapons which he tests out. They send him food which he samples. One time, someone sent him an ax and he used it to open the next carton which turned out to be full of wine bottles that he shattered.

It's all really strange and that's about all I'll say. I'm not recommending them and I'm not not recommending them. You can decide for yourself. But if you like watching chaos and occasional self-destruction by a very wealthy guy, his videos are posted on the YouTube channels of Barstool Sports and One Bite Pizza Reviews. He wasn't wild about Red Baron pizza, by the way.

Stephen Sondheim has eight Tony Awards, more than any other composer who ever composed. One was a Lifetime Achievement Award. The other seven were for six of his shows. His first two were for Company back when they gave out one Tony for lyrics and one for the music and he did both. After that, there was just a Tony for "Best Score" so he got one each for Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods and Passion.

A lot of folks think his best score was Sunday in the Park with George but the year he was up for that one, the Tony went to Jerry Herman for La Cage aux Folles. Mr. Herman's acceptance speech, which is included in the clip package below, was interpreted by many as a dig at Mr. Sondheim.

You can see all of his wins (and his one loss) in this collection of excerpts from each year's ceremony…

A few days back, I linked to this video and Steve Bacher wrote me to say…

This is the second time you've posted a video from Alton Brown explaining the difference between baking soda and baking powder and the second time he's made the same mistake of saying "baking soda contains baking powder" instead of "baking powder contains baking soda." No wonder his audience is confused.

Hey, if you can't trust Alton Brown, who can you trust? And in other news: Our friends over at The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog are running a WonderCon-themed Scavenger Hunt. This may be the only time you can win a prize because you follow this blog. So commence scavenging.

Meet baby elephant Mkhaya in her first month of life…

Simone Biles takes her pants off…the hard way. There must be something this woman can't do…

Here's another one of those Cirque du Soleil specials…

The most interesting thing I have to think about today is probably that Instacart says they'll deliver my big grocery order either today or tomorrow…and the suspense is killing me. When will it be, when will it be? I also can't wait to see what they'll be out of. I ordered 18 different items and will consider myself fortunate if I get three, especially if one of them is eggs.

I'm continuing to avoid politics and D.T. as much as I can. But someone let me know when William Barr announces the investigation to prove that Joe Biden personally invented that coronavirus thing that Donald Trump personally cured.

I've been having some very nice phone (and occasionally, FaceTime) conversations with friends…and occasionally friends I haven't spoken with for some time. There's an odd silver lining to Shared Suffering and it has to do with the "sharing" part.

Today, I'm working on an article for the souvenir book for this year's Comic-Con International. Like you, I'm skeptical there will be a this year's Comic-Con International, at least in July, but it has not officially been canceled or postponed yet and I promised to have the article to them in a few days. We always try to meet our deadlines, at least when we have zero social engagements on our calendar.

I'm also playing around with Zoom because I'm thinking of hosting some online chats and interviews. If anyone out there is really facile with this program and wants to tutor me a little, I just might accept. At the moment, the main thing I don't like about it is the feeling of obligation to shave I have every time I'm in front of my webcam. You can almost see my beard growing and I look like those time-lapse close-up shots of Lon Chaney turning into the Wolfman.

Last night, I got to thinking about a time when Howard Hughes was living in near-isolation on the top story of a Las Vegas hotel he owned. Hughes loved watching movies but in those days, to see one at home meant watching them on TV — which meant you were limited to what was on when it was on — or finding and buying 16mm prints of the ones you wanted to see and threading a projector.

Neither really worked for Hughes so he bought one of the local TV stations and he'd call up or have an aide call up and tell them what to air. He'd actually phone the station and say, "I'm bored with the film you're running. Stop it and put on Ice Station Zebra again!" And the movie that some Vegas residents were watching would suddenly stop and Ice Station Zebra would just start with no announcement or anything.

He might even tell them to skip the commercials and once he reportedly called up and asked them to stop the movie for ten minutes because he had to go take a dump. Now, with DVRs and pause buttons, every one of us can feel like a billionaire.

When I get really rich, I'm going to buy Turner Classic Movies and do that. I'll call up and yell, "Who the hell wants to watch Lucille Ball in Mame? Take it off at the end of the next song and start showing Ace in the Hole with Kirk Douglas…and yes, I know I've had you run it four times this month already. Just do it!"

Yes, I have all my favorite films on DVD but this would be so much more fun.

A baby panda with a sense of distrust…

Chris Juricich wrote me an e-mail with the subject line "Do you think you're funny?" and followed it with this…

I don't mean that as a challenging statement; merely a general question. As a writer, one isn't always necessarily called on to write humor per se, and at your young, tender age of 18, had you any general preferences as to what kind of writing you wanted to do?

Were you initially enamored of becoming a comic book writer/scripter (wouldn't surprise me given your "roots") but as it would "seem" that a lot of your writing for TV ended up being for variety shows, animation shows where gags were somewhat requisite. Did you have that self-confidence to believe "I can write comedy?" I am curious!

It didn't work exactly like that. I decided around the age or six (maybe seven) that I wanted to be a writer. At the time, my skills for reading and writing were way more developed than my skills at anything else and that pointed me in the direction. I don't recall ever seriously angling for any other profession, though there was a time when I aimed to be more of a writer-artist than I have been. I more or less abandoned drawing in the eighties as I became more proficient at computers.

But for a long time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to be a writer of. I always loved the idea of writing comic books but various things I read about the business made me feel that (a) I couldn't succeed in that line of work unless I moved to New York which I didn't want to do, and (b) the business didn't treat people all that well. It's a long, long story but I kind of stumbled into comic book writing because of an unexpected chain of events starting with the fact that Jack Kirby moved to Southern California the year I graduated high school.

I guess I thought I could write comedy but it was not with a huge amount of confidence. I knew I'd written and said things in fanzines or at school that had made people laugh but I also knew that that didn't mean I could write comedy on a professional level. I guess my attitude was, more or less, "Well, I'll try to do it and see how it goes." And it worked out.

One thing that I learned early-on was that it really doesn't matter if you think a joke is funny. What matters is what the audience thinks and even if you become the greatest comedy writer who ever lived, you will still write a lot of stuff that doesn't get the reaction you think it will.

There's a reason Neil Simon did heavy rewrites on most of his plays after they were first seen by audiences. When I hear a comedy writer say, "I always know what's funny," I think, "If Neil Simon didn't, neither do you." Overconfidence is dangerous in this profession.

As mentioned here, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber is making available online videos of his shows but each is only on YouTube for 48 hours. As I post this, you have about 46 hours to watch Jesus Christ, Superstar below.

This is a production staged in the U.K. in 2012 and it stars Tim Minchin, Ben Forster, Spice Girl Melanie Chisholm and Chris Moyles. Sunday night, NBC is rebroadcasting last year's concert/production which starred John Legend, Sarah Bareilles, Alice Cooper and others. I'm not a huge fan of the show itself but I thought the NBC version did it about as well as anyone could ever do it. Watch either one, both or neither. Here's the version from 2012…