• I can think of few things that will make Donald Trump madder than if Greta Thunberg gets a Nobel Peace Prize and he doesn't.

These are the Swedish Royal Guards. I believe that all music should be performed like this…

• One benefit to having absolutely no interest in football: On Super Bowl Sunday, you can get any table at any restaurant that isn't showing the Super Bowl.

John Oliver answers questions…

The New York Times has an online quiz where it asks you how you stand on certain issues. It then tells you who your ideal candidate would be, picking from among those still in the Democratic race. It matched me with Pete Buttigieg and said that I had the least in common with Bernie Sanders. I think my views aren't as far from Bernie's as that.

But you see, here's the problem with a quiz like this. I have to answer each question Yes or No and I don't think either choice correctly describes my position on most of these questions. For instance…

• Is it important that your candidate makes it a priority to work with Republicans? My answer isn't Yes or No. It's more like, "Well, that would depend a lot on how many seats the Democrats wind up with in the House and Senate. To get anything done, my candidate may have to."
• Do you view President Trump's election as an anomaly? My answer isn't Yes or No. It's more like, "I'm not surprised that a lot of Americans wanted what he was offering. I think it's an anomaly that so many people became convinced he was presidential material and could or would deliver on those promises."
• Do you want a candidate who doesn't pursue money from big donors? My answer isn't Yes or No. I think there are big donors and there are big donors. There are some who don't expect legislation that benefits them financially. The point is that the government should not be bribable…and that's a real word, no matter what my spell checker is telling me.
• Do you want a nominee who would make history based on race, gender, sexual orientation or religion? My answer isn't Yes or No. I want a nominee who can beat Donald Trump and is equipped to be a very good president. If that person is the first gay president or female president or Jewish president, fine. I just wouldn't put that high on my list and certainly not above getting the best possible administrator.
• Do you want to replace the private health care system with a universal, government-run health insurance system? My answer isn't Yes or No. I want everyone in this country to have access to highly affordable quality health care. I really don't know if we have to replace the existing system to arrive at that or whether something like a public option alongside the private system will do it.
• Do you think four-year public colleges and universities should be tuition-free for everyone? My answer isn't Yes or No. I think college should be highly affordable and people should be able to get it without going into serious debt. That might mean tuition-free or almost free for some. When I went to college, I paid tuition but it was within my means. If I hadn't had an income then, it was well within my family's means…and we were far from wealthy. We need to bring the costs down to that level. But the question suggests a binary choice: Make it free or leave the costs the way they are.

And so on.  As you can see, a Yes/No answer doesn't convey my opinion.  Also, the quiz seems to weigh all these issues equally.  I care a lot more about some of them than others…and so will you if you take it. I might care the most about some issue that's not on there at all…like, say, Climate Change, Immigration or preventing World War III.

I just got my first notice about the primary here in California, which is March 3.  They sent me a list of polling places but I'll probably vote by mail, which means I have about three weeks to decide.  I really don't know who I'm going to vote for.  I don't even know if the question I'm answering is "Which of these people would be the best president?" or "Which of these people would be the best candidate?"

I haven't even ruled out Mike Bloomberg.  This article makes an interesting case that he ranks high as answers to both of those questions.  Oddly enough, as I was reading that article earlier today, I received two identical text messages from someone I've never heard of who said his name is Joe…

MARK, This is Joe from Mike Bloomberg 2020 asking for your support.  Txt 1 for YES, 2 for more info, 3 for NO and 4 to Stop.

And then it gives me a link to Bloomberg's website.  I texted 4 and then blocked that number.  I dislike people coming to my door uninvited trying to sell me things and I'm not much fonder of them doing it on my iPhone.  I would love to know how they got my name and number.  I'm not ruling out Bloomberg because of this but I wish he hadn't done this.

Not so long ago, the lawyer Michael Avenatti — the guy representing Stormy Daniels, the guy on all those cable news shows — announced he was running for president. He expected to be in the Iowa Caucuses right about now but instead, he's in solitary confinement in the jail where Jeffrey Epstein died…which, I'll admit it is almost the same thing.

How the hell did he wind up there? If you're curious, this article will tell you.

Well, the biggest news in the world today is probably what's going on with the feral cats in my backyard. Yesterday, Murphy spent much of the day about sixteen inches from Lydia's house while Lydia slept in it, ignoring Murphy's constant howling. I don't understand how she could sleep through that but she becomes instantly alert from the sound, about eight yards away, of me popping the pop-top on a tin of Friskies® Mixed Grill.

There is still no sign of Lydia wanting anything to do with Murphy but she doesn't mind Murphy approaching the cat dish and eating the untouched portions of Lydia's lunch. I see no indications of what Murphy wants with Lydia or my yard. It may just be a search for a cat-friendly yard with a complimentary cat buffet. I'll letcha know what else I observe out there.

We probably should have known Mitch McConnell had the votes to block witnesses in the impeachment trial a few days ago when he said he didn't have the votes to block witnesses in the impeachment trial. Mitch likes to do that…lull the opposition into a false note of hope and then win at the last minute, thereby making himself look like the guy who wins the tough ones. But I don't think anyone's too surprised.

I agree though with David A. Graham when he writes, "But if Democrats didn't get what they'd hoped for, [Republican Senator Lamar] Alexander gave them the best outcome they could have expected."

And I say that as someone who's always suspicious of phony silver linings…like when the party that loses a big vote says, "This is the best thing that could have happened to us." I hear that and I always think, "You would have said that if you'd won." But this time, when there was zero chance of the Republican Senate ousting D.J.T. no matter what he did, the best Democrats could do was peel off a few consolation prizes. And with several G.O.P. Senators saying the Dems proved what they set out to prove but that it didn't justify removal…well, that's something. Guess that "perfect phone call" wasn't completely perfect.

Alexander's statement is not a great act of courage. He'll still vote to keep Trump in office and he really chickens out when he writes, "There is no need to consider further the frivolous second article of impeachment that would remove the president for asserting his constitutional prerogative to protect confidential conversations with his close advisers." In other words, it's perfectly fine to stonewall a Congressional investigation if it might reveal more wrongdoing.

And Trump will still say this vote and the one to acquit him prove he was utterly innocent, the whole thing was a hoax, Schiff is corrupt, the phone call was perfect, etc. I'm just glad to see a couple of Republicans — not just Alexander — take some cautious baby steps off the "Trump never does anything wrong" bandwagon.

Allow me to introduce you to one of the greatest optical illusions ever…the Ames Window!

Go read Jack Holmes. The article is entitled, "The Republican Senate Just Wrote Donald Trump a Blank Check to Ratf*ck the 2020 Election." Opening paragraph:

Who will stop him now? Donald Trump knows the answer after Lamar Alexander announced Thursday evening that, yeah, the president used taxpayer dollars to extort a foreign government into ratfucking the 2020 election for his personal gain — so what? A couple of Republican senators will vote to hear from eye witnesses to the American president's attack on American democracy, but not enough to actually hear from the witnesses. Mitch McConnell has surely arranged for that. Soon enough, they will vote to acquit him having acknowledged that he did it. And so the Republican Senate will rubber-stamp the president's activities with respect to Ukraine, and offer him a blank check to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, between now and an election in November that we cannot in any way expect to be free and fair.

Okay. This impeachment didn't work. Let's see if the next one does.

That's a very old photo of Fred Silverman, the superstar network programming exec who passed away today at the age of 82. It's a pic from when he was programming Saturday morning cartoons for CBS and I picked it for the following reason. Years later, when Fred was programming every single daypart for NBC, he told me that the Saturday morn position was the only time in his career he was truly happy.

I don't know how true that was but I do know that he was heavily involved in the creative end of the kids' shows he supervised back then…so much so that a lot of people credit him with creating characters like Space Ghost and Scooby Doo. That I know is not true. He put them on the air but didn't create them.

Fred's career included executive positions not only at CBS and NBC but at ABC, as well. He was probably the most famous programmer ever but as an associate of his once told me, "Fred probably gets way too much credit for the shows that were hits and way too much blame for the ones that were flops." I worked on some of those hits and flops but didn't have too much contact with Fred himself. Most of it was done through his underlings — nervous folks, all.

One time, a script I'd worked on had been handed in to one of Fred's Vice-President who had read it but also passed it on to The Man Himself. I asked the Veep what he thought of it and I am not joking and he was only half-joking when he gave me this reply: "I'll know what I think of it when Fred tells me what I think of it."

Fred liked that particular script which was a relief. I saw what happened when he didn't like a script. You might just as well forget about working for — or even watching — that network again. Still, I liked the guy.

Not that it will do you any good now but I'll tell you what I learned about the way to please Fred with a pilot script for Saturday morning. First off, at least the germ cell had to come from him. Either that, or he'd take your idea and turn it inside out so it became his idea. Secondly, put in everything. The more characters, the more dogs, the more gimmicks, the more villains, the better.

A Saturday morning cartoon pilot script should run 35 pages, 40 max. Unless you did one for Fred, in which case it could wind up running 70 or 80. One friend of mine did a script that ran 110 because there were so many characters and super-vehicles and dogs and gizmos and every one had to get some attention in the teleplay. My friend said it was a real good script until it came time to produce it and it had to be hacked down to 38. He said, "It was so terrible after that, I wish I'd put your name on it."

That was one reason some Silverman-bought shows weren't that wonderful on the air. Another was that he liked to mix and match. Often, Hanna-Barbera would have a half-dozen projects in development with Fred and he'd finally say, "Take this character out of this show and this character out of this other show and put them both in that other show along with the dog from that show we developed last season…" He sometimes thought that way when he programmed live-action for prime-time, too.

I only have one real Fred Silverman story. A friend of mine was working on a cartoon show for Fred that was marginal in the ratings. This was when Fred was running NBC. They'd done Season 1 and were waiting to find out if he was going to order a Season 2. My friend had been offered a definite job on a show on another network and he was trying to decide if he should grab the sure thing or wait in the hope that Fred would pick up the NBC show. He preferred staying with the NBC show but was worried it would be canceled and he'd wind up unemployed.

My friend wanted to know what I thought the chances were of Fred green-lighting Season 2. I said I didn't know but I had a meeting with Fred the next day about a project. "Maybe I'll pick up a clue for you," I told him.

The next day, I was in the meeting with Fred and several other folks. One of the several other folks mentioned the show my friend was worrying would be axed. Fred said — and this is a quote — "I can't wait to cancel that piece of shit."

That's a pretty definite declaration so I felt safe calling my friend that evening and telling him what Fred had said. Based on that, my friend signed on for the show on the other network, told the NBC show that he was leaving and thanked me profusely for helping him make a wise and informed decision. And two days later, Fred picked up the NBC show for a second season. Network TV is often like that but it was more often like that around Fred Silverman.

The only late night show my TiVo grabs every night is Stephen Colbert's. I catch most of the segments I like from the other shows (mostly Seth Meyer's) on YouTube but Colbert is my only late night One Pass.  I like the show a lot but a few little things bug me and I'll mention one here…

I know there are a few folks who work on the show who follow this blog so…would one of you ask your producers or someone to move the guest chair forward about four inches?  Tell them their host spends an awful lot of his interviews turned mostly away from the camera.  I cannot think of any reason why this is a good thing.

Maybe even show them the above side-by-side comparisons of how Colbert often looks when he's talking to a guest and how David Letterman looked when working on that same stage.  Come to think of it, maybe there are plans around that would show you just where the guest seat was placed in relation to Dave's seat.  It worked fine for him for more than 21 years.

Mr. Colbert is a handsome guy with an expressive face.  Unless you're doing a "twin" thing like The Patty Duke Show or Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap, why make him look like a stand-in has taken his place and you can only shoot him from the back in a two-shot?

What I did last night was to attend a party celebrating the release of the new book, Betty Boop's Guide to a Bold and Balanced Life. It's subtitled "Fun, Fierce, Fabulous Advice Inspired by the Animated Icon" and it would appear to be an attempt to establish the lovely Ms. Boop as a woman of today, not of the thirties. If that's the authors' goal, I'd say they're doing a good job of it.

It's nice to see Betty doing well, especially since she quit that job she had working for Hooters. She's certainly remaining popular in merchandise and t-shirts and not long ago, I even met a lady in her twenties who had an honest-to-God, permanent Betty Boop tattoo on her thigh. (I tried to teach her the name of Grim Natwick, who designed Betty, but the young woman wasn't interested.) Betty's had a good career for a woman who doesn't really have a profile.

The book looks like a great thing to give someone who loves Betty…and that's an amazingly large group given that she did her most memorable work from 1932 to 1939 and it hasn't been that easy to see it for about the last three decades. Here's a link to order said book.

Speaking of lovely women who never age, I ran into my friend Judy Strangis at the party. A whole bunch of guys roughly in my age bracket are reacting right now, remembering her from her Barbie commercials, her role on the fine TV show Room 222, her performances as Dyna-Girl on ElectraWoman and Dyna-Girl, her turning up on so many other TV shows, etc. I introduced her to my pal Jerry Beck, who was also there, and he — being a guy roughly in my age bracket — immediately rattled off much of her IMDB listing without consulting IMDB. Here's a pic of the three of us…

The party was full of interesting people who, like 90% of such parties, was in a room too small for the number of people in it so I couldn't get over to some of the folks there I wanted to talk to. But I did have a lovely conversation with George Chakiris, who has been in dozens of movies and stage productions, and who seems to be aging at about the same sluggish rate as Judy. He was quite surprised at what I wanted to talk to him about.

In 1956, an actor named George Kerris appeared in the film Meet Me in Las Vegas and did a wonderful dance scene with the film's ingenue, Betty Lynn. They rehearsed for many weeks and worked hard on it. This took a certain amount of patience on Kerris's part because he was an accomplished dancer (two years later, he was playing Riff in the British production of West Side Story and he later played Bernardo in the movie) and Ms Lynn was not.

But they got through all the rehearsing and filming, only to see the dance go unseen when it was cut from the movie. As we discussed here, it has been partially restored for the DVD release. They put in what leads up to the dance and what follows it but not the dance itself.

As you know, I'm close with Betty Lynn, who is now retired and living in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, delighting locals and tourists who want to meet Thelma Lou from The Andy Griffith Show. And as you've guessed, George Kerris became George Chakiris.

His face lit up when I mentioned Betty and he asked me to please give her a hug from him, which I'll do next time I get back to Mt. Airy. But I just called Betty and told her and she couldn't have been happier. She said, "He was so sweet and so nice and so patient putting up with me having to learn the dance." It's kind of fun to reignite a happy memory from 60+ years ago.

And speaking of James Corden, here from his show tonight he "comes clean" on the subject of whether he drives the car in his "Carpool Karoke" segments. We discussed this issue back here and back here and came to the conclusion that he does drive it all or most of the time. Since then, I have seen him with some star cruising my neighborhood and at least at that moment, Mr. Corden was driving…