Why is the first state to hold its presidential primary the first state to hold its presidential primary? The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper travels to Idaho Iowa to find out…

Real Time with Bill Maher returns from hiatus tomorrow night.  A pity there's been nothing in the news he can talk about.

There are many things I don't like about Bill Maher, including viewpoints he has that strike me as very wrong.  But in almost every episode, I hear him utter at least one thing that makes me say (a) that's very, very perceptive and (b) wow, I've never heard anyone else have the smarts and/or guts to say that before.  That's one more than I get from almost any other show I watch apart from Seth Meyers's or John Oliver's.  (Mr. Oliver's show, in case you've been wondering, resumes after its hiatus on February 16.)

In a related topic, NBC has just announced that its new streaming service called Peacock will be making available The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Late Night with Seth Meyers at earlier hours — Fallon at 8 PM, Meyers at 9 PM. They'll also be offering all nine thousand seasons of Saturday Night Live during each of which people said, "It's not as good as it used to be."

The last decade or so, folks looking at the ratings of the late night shows have been predicting the demise of late night as a playing field in television. I'm thinking what will be going away is the "late night" part of "late night comedy shows." When a program airs is becoming less and less relevant as more and more people time-shift. 11:35 might be when your DVR records The Tonight Show but you're going to watch it when you damn well feel like watching it… hours, days, even weeks later. I just watched some Colbert shows from back when Kirsten Gillibrand was still in the Democratic race.

If the day comes when most people are watching The Tonight Show during the day or prime-time hours, is it still a "late night" show? And if it isn't, what is? The morning news shows wouldn't be considered morning news shows if you watched one at night…right?

This will only be of interest to certain friends of mine. Hey, Certain Friends of Mine! Remember that great little restaurant I took you to over on Pico Boulevard a block west of Beverly Glen? The little hole-in-the-wall place called The Main Course? You were skeptical at first but one bite of their food — especially if you took my advice and ordered the turkey meatloaf — prompted you to thank me for introducing you to a great, albeit tiny place to eat.

They've closed and they posted this message on their webpage…

Dear Customers! The Main Course restaurant is out of business due to changing circumstances surrounding our lease. We want to thank you for your continued support over the last 37 years! We will miss you!

We'll miss you too, Main Course. I assume "changing circumstances surrounding our lease" means a landlord raising the rent sky-high, which seems to be happening more and more these days. It won't be long before every little, independent merchant will be displaced by a big chain. I wouldn't mind that as much if Applebee's or Outback could make a turkey meatloaf a tenth as good as the one served at the Main Course.

Their statement makes no mention of looking for a new building in which to reopen. In the past, every time a favorite restaurant of mine has shuttered, they've said they will find a place to again flourish…or sometimes, they say they already have a location and are just dickering to nail down the fine points of the contract. I can't recall one that ever actually reappeared, at least in anywhere near its previous form. Sad…but that's just how it is.

Some of you probably think this is a photo of Lydia, the feral cat I've been feeding in my back yard for most of this century. It's not. Say hello to Murphy.

I started putting out food for strays decades ago with a cat named Jackie. By the time Jackie passed away, there were others who'd been attracted by the dishes of grub on my back porch so I put out food for them. Cats died or disappeared but others found their way to Mark's Cafe and there was always at least one who seemed dependent on me putting food out. At one point, I was up to four: Lydia, The Stranger Cat, Max and Sylvia.

The Stranger Cat died in May of 2012. Max, who was about as Alpha Male as any cat could be, stopped showing up and was presumed dead later that year. For a while, it was just Lydia and Sylvia but Sylvia was killed by something — we'd need Jack Klugman as Quincy to know what — in August of 2018.

Lydia has persisted and if she's been lonely out there, she's shown no signs of it. I say that having no real idea of how a cat might indicate loneliness. She sleeps a lot and eats a lot but she always did that.

In the last two weeks, this new cat has found its way into my yard. I don't know why. It doesn't seem to be after food. It nibbles now and then out of Lydia's dish and she doesn't seem to care. In her youth, she would have chased it far, far away but the new cat doesn't eat much and she doesn't care.

Murphy does not seem to be in search of love. I'm not even sure if it's a he-cat or a she-cat which is why I opted for a name that works for either gender. Lydia is pretty old and was fixed long ago. I think Murphy just wants to be in my yard. He or she sits not all that close to Lydia and just howls a lot like it wants…something. It flees if I get within ten feet and when I'm at least 10.5 feet away, it sometimes approaches Lydia perhaps seeking some sort of companionship.

The other day — and I'm really sorry I didn't get a photo of this — Lydia was in her little house and Murphy was walking around it and maybe dancing a bit. At one point, Murphy jumped up on the roof of the house as Lydia was inside, curled up as if in bed. If it was a panel in a comic book and I had to write dialogue for it, Murphy would have been saying, "Aw, come on! Let's play!" And Lydia would have been saying, "Leave me the hell alone. Can't you see I'm trying to sleep?"

And that's about all I have apart from my assumption that Murphy has someone nearby feeding him or her because s/he doesn't ever seem hungry. Lydia has not always been at the back porch waiting to be fed when I expect her to be so maybe she's following Murphy to that cat's feeding place. I'll let you know if/when I find out more but I'm not sensing a Love Connection.

Every Wednesday, our pal Misty Lee declares it's Unicorn Wednesday and posts a magic trick to celebrate. Here's yesterday's…

Take a few minutes and read this interview with Rick Wilson, former Republican strategist turned Trump-basher. He believes that in order for Democrats to win in November, they have to forget about national polling, focus on the swing states, not nominate Bernie, and ratchet up the hatred of Donald Trump. I'm not saying he's right but I have a tough time saying he's wrong.

Komodo dragon destroyed BBC camera by trying to have sex with it

Read all about it.

• Lawrence O'Donnell points out that "We are the first Americans to see 2 presidential impeachment trials in our lifetimes." I'm thinking we may also be the first to see two (or more) in the same year.

Volume 6 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips has been out for about a month, slowly dribbling into comic book shops everywhere as copies — apparently delivered by Churchy the Turtle — made their way to retailers. I think Joe Ferrara's store in Santa Cruz got some in and sold out immediately a month ago today. But within two or three days, they should be to every dealer that ordered 'em.

Amazon got them in in dribs and drabs and has been quietly filling mail orders in an order I do not pretend to understand. But they're now promising that if you order right now, your copy will ship in 1-2 days. So order right now.

I almost never blow my own horn on this blog about my work but I'm just co-editor of these books. It's not my work that makes 'em wonderful. Long before I met his daughter, I was telling people that Walt Kelly was my favorite cartoonist and I was hardly alone in this choice of favorite cartoonists. On the walls of one room of my house, I have framed originals of Pogo, Peanuts and Krazy Kat. If I'd ever come across a good Sunday Popeye by Elzie Segar that I could afford, it would join them.

The strips in this volume cover the years 1959 and 1960 so, as I noted in an earlier plug, Mr. Kelly had plenty of world-changing topics in the newspaper to work with. Pogo and his merry mob addressed many of them but the strip was also delicious when Walt was just being silly for silly's sake.

This volume is subtitled Clean as a Weasel and it features a foreword by Jim "Garfield" Davis plus other extras. The titles come from a list we found in Kelly's own handwriting. Most are phrases he'd used in the strip at least once and he was intending to use them as titles for some sort of series of "Best of Pogo" reprints in small paperbacks…I think. The next of our volumes, Pockets Full of Pie, will be in stores well before the end of 2020.

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post about the 1966-1968 Batman TV show. This part focuses on Burgess Meredith, who played (of course) The Penguin…

In the early eighties, I worked several years on a show on ABC called That's Incredible! We did it at a studio in Hollywood, taping two shows every other week. The same company produced a kind of spin-off called Those Amazing Animals, which shared offices with us and they taped two shows each week that we weren't taping, using the same stage and most of the same crew. Burgess Meredith was one of the hosts of Those Amazing Animals.

On their tape days, I could wander down to the stage and there were long stretches when Mr. Meredith was just sitting around, waiting to be called before the cameras. Our casual friendship began with this exchange…

ME: Excuse me. My name is Mark Evanier and I'm one of the writers on That's Incredible! I thought if you weren't needed right now, this would be a good chance to meet one of my favorite actors.

HIM: By God, you aren't a fan of the Batman show, are you?

I was momentarily thrown by that but I managed to say, "A little but I was more interested in Of Mice and Men and The Twilight Zone, and I've also found that anyone who's worked with Zero Mostel has a dozen wonderful stories about him." Burgess laughed and extended his hand.

Now, they don't generally get cited here but there have been countless instances in my life of me saying the absolutely wrong thing to the absolutely wrong person at the absolutely wrong time. Once in a while though, I get it right. This, since I'm telling you about it, was one of those way-too-rare times I got it right.

His response to me…well, I don't recall for certain if he said this aloud or if I just read his mind. One way or the other, I heard, "Thank God! Someone under the age of seventy who knows I'm a serious actor!" And I noticed his face lit up when I mentioned Mr. Mostel, who had left the world stage and the world with it only a few years before.

We sat and talked a little that day and again on others. For the first few visits, I avoided the topic of Batman and instead savored his dozen wonderful stories about Zero (whom he loved) and other tales about working for Otto Preminger (whom he didn't always). He was defensive about being part of Skidoo and pleased that I had a certain fondness for Preminger's oddest film.

On Those Amazing Animals, they had a little penguin — a live mascot who'd sometimes follow Burgess around on the stage. One day when he'd just completed a brief scene with the little penguin, Mr. Meredith ambled over to where I was standing and I told him, "You know, you're lucky that on Batman, you didn't play The Rabid Hyena." He laughed and that led to us talking about that show for the one and only time.

All of these quotes are from memory but I have a pretty good memory. He said, "I was very idealistic when I entered the theater but I soon learned a necessary amount of pragmatism. Sometimes, you have to do three plays you don't want to do before you can afford to do the one you do want to do." Referring to the job he was doing that day, he said, "I didn't spend all those years studying with Eva Le Gallienne so I could introduce clips of chipmunks farting."

Later, he said, "I enjoyed doing Batman. It's rare that an actor gets a role where it's acceptable to devour so much of the scenery. But I could do without the people who think that's the length and breadth of what I do." He asked me what I thought of the Batman show and I told him a little of what I said in yesterday's post and added, "I think you were the second-best thing about it."

He asked me what was in first place. I said, "Julie Newmar and Yvonne Craig in skintight outfits." He chuckled just like The Penguin and said, "You're so very right, my boy. So very right."

I asked him if he'd ever read a Batman comic book and he said "No." Or maybe he said, "God, no." That was the attitude. He said, "Every now and then, they thrust one into my hands for some publicity picture but no. Nothing against them but I don't think they had much to do with what I was doing." He said he didn't like the make-up they slapped on him, nose extension and all, and as the series progressed, he got them to put less and less on him. He also didn't like sitting around while stunt people brawled, which sometimes took a very long time, forcing the director to rush his scenes.

For the most part, he enjoyed the show but said with a note of regret, "When I die, that will be the headline — 'Penguin Actor Croaks.'" Turned out, he was wrong. When he died in 1997, his Batman credit was usually at least secondary in the obits to his role in the Rocky movies. His importance to that series is perhaps best indicated by the fact that his character died in Rocky III but still managed to turn up briefly in Rocky IV and Rocky V.

And that's about all I remember. Nice man except for the occasionally-cranky moments. Great actor…and boy, did he work a lot. When I think back on the Batman series, he's one of the main things I liked about it…though of course, not as much as I liked Julie and Yvonne.

I'm past due to tell you about my pal who tours the world with his amazing one-man-and-a-pianist show, An Evening with Groucho. If you haven't seen it, you've gotta see it. And you can see Frank Ferrante if you're in Bellport, NY (February 1-2) or if you're in Louisa, Virginia near Charlottesville (March 21) or if you're in Morristown, NJ. which is not too far out of New York City (March 27).

And this may interest some of you: He'll be doing his Groucho thing here in California…in Solana Beach (it's near San Diego) on April 13 and 14. Why this may interest some of you is that WonderCon in Anaheim ends April 12 and Solana Beach is only 60 miles from Anaheim. I may go from one to the other and you can, too.

Later this year, rumor has it, Frank will be back in Chicago at the new outlet of Teatro Zinnzani for an extended run so there may not be that many opportunities this year to see an Italian kid transform himself before your very eyes into one of the greatest comedians of the previous century. So if you get the chance, grab it. And after the show, if you approach Frank and say the secret words — "I heard about you on Mark Evanier's blog" — he'll pose for a photo with you. Just see if that will work with Paul McCartney!

This message is just for anyone who has the occasion to phone me in the next week or so. For some reason, a few friends who do that have not been able to reach me. They get a recording saying that I have blocked their number, which I have not done. I don't think I've ever blocked any phone number except for a couple of incessant robo-callers who tried ringing me up every eleven seconds.

I've just spent way too long on the phone with the phone people being routed from one phone person to another phone person. None of them knows how to fix it. They only know how to forward me over to someone else who has no idea. The last guy said he's going to "run some tests" and call me back. I'm guessing there's about as much chance of that as there is of Trump getting that Nobel Peace Prize he's sure he deserves but right now, I don't know what else to do.

If you try to phone me and get one of those messages, e-mail or text me and I'll give you an alternate number. It's the gas station at the corner but they'll come and get me.

Jen Peikoff wrote to ask, with a note of desperation in every pixel…

Please, please, you must help me understand something. When it comes to understanding Hollywood and show biz, I figure if you can't explain something, no one can. In the Oscar nominations just out, Little Women was nominated for Best Picture but its writer-director Greta Gerwig was not nominated as Best Director. If it wins as the Best Picture, doesn't that mean she was the Best Director? Why wasn't she nominated?

Well, first of all, I doubt it will win for Best Picture. I don't get that there's a lot of "buzz" around it in that direction but that's just a hunch. You're right that it would be an injustice if it did win and she didn't win Best Director right alongside it.

Secondly, there are two very real reasons for the discrepancy here, one being that a different pool of voters vote in each of those categories…

Imagine you go to party one evening and you poll everyone at that party as to what their favorite candy is. There's some debate and a wide range of opinions but at the end of your voting, it's determined that most people at this party like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Okay, fine.

Then the next evening, you go to a different, larger party. Some of the same people who were at last night's party are there but so are a lot of other folks. Again, you poll the assemblage and this time, the clear winner is M&Ms. Would you be stunned and wonder why the two polls yielded different results? Of course not.

But that's how Oscar nominations work. The Best Director nominees are selected by the Directors Branch of the Academy and the Best Picture nominees are selected by the entire voting membership. That's how come there were two different outcomes…that and the fact that the Academy nominates five directors for Best Director and between five and ten movies for Best Picture. There's the other reason.

They nominated nine films this year for Best Picture. That means that at least four of the men and women who directed movies up for Best Picture were not going to be nominated for Best Director. Simple math. The directors of Best Picture nominees Ford v. Ferrari, Jojo Rabbit and Marriage Story also did not make the cut.

It's a basic fact of something like the Oscars that a lot of good work doesn't make the cut. They nominate five men as Best Actor. If there are twelve outstanding performances in a given year, they nominate five of them. If some year the acting is really lousy and there are only three good performances, they will still nominate five.

This kind of thing can never be without its anomalies. Consider the fact that nominations can have less to do with what the person did than something like when the movie was released…which is out of their control. If Bohemian Rhapsody had come out a few months later and been part of this year's Oscars instead of last year's Oscars, Rami Malek probably would have snagged one of the five Best Oscar nominations this time and either Antonio, Leonardo, Adam, Joaquin or Jonathan would not have made the list even though the work they did would have been just as fine.

You can't take this stuff that seriously. If your concern is that women are getting "snubbed" (that's the wrong word but everyone uses it), that's a valid concern but probably more about being hired at all than winning awards. Greta Gerwig helmed a very successful movie that was very well reviewed, there's a good chance she'll take home a Best Screenplay statuette…and she probably already has plenty of offers, as well as a lot more clout than she had before. I would be more concerned for the women who aren't getting the opportunities to direct or write. Or at least the same opportunities they'd have if they were guys.

An e-mailer is furious at me because I didn't note here that last Sunday was the anniversary of the day the Batman TV show — the one with Adam West — debuted in 1966. I dunno why he's mad this year. I've ignored it most years in the almost-two-decades I've been doing this blog and he's the first person to flag that as a shameful omission. Besides, he won't like most of what I have to say about it here.

I had and still have very, very mixed feelings about that series. I liked Adam West and Frank Gorshin and Burgess Meredith and Victor Buono and a few other folks seen on it…and I lusted after Yvonne Craig and Julie Newmar. But as a kid who loved comic books and loved Batman even at his worst in those comics, I wrestled with the feeling that the makers of that show didn't; that they thought it was crap worthy only of ridicule. Later on, as I got into their industry myself, I met a number of those makers and found that I'd been right.

Throughout my early life, I often heard from fellow comic book collectors in my age bracket that they had to deal with scorn and condescension for their passion; that they had parents or teachers or colleagues who thought that comic books were trash made for and appreciated only by the mentally-impaired. The only time I recall ever really encountering that attitude was from the people behind the Batman TV show.

In 1966, I was 14 years old — young and naïve enough to even wonder why the folks at DC Comics would allow an outside company to do that to a wonderful (and valuable) property like Batman. I was probably all of 15 when I came to realize that in this world, the answer to the question, "Why would someone do such a thing?" — no matter what that thing is — is almost always "Money." Once in a while, it's "Sex" and/or "Power" and/or "Fame" but usually, it's "Money." Bob Kane, needless to say, was fine with that and because of that teevee show and the attendant merchandising, DC Comics not only sold a lot of DC Comics, they even sold DC Comics the Company.

Even as I was coming to realize that, I still watched the show but I watched it less and less. My opinion descended further and further, especially after I saw the movie based on the series. It was one thing to watch it at home alone and suspect they were ridiculing something I cared about; quite another to sit in a movie theater and hear an audience hooting and laughing at, not with the Caped Crusader.

But I had to watch because of Yvonne and Julie. I would have watched a test pattern if it had Yvonne and/or Julie in it. One of my adolescent fantasies that was partially filled decades later was getting to meet and talk with those ladies. And I also liked — for very different reasons, I assure you — some of the actors I mentioned, especially Burgess Meredith, who, as we all know, played The Penguin.

Around 1980, I got to spend a little time with Mr. Meredith. I don't think I've ever talked about it before but I will in this space tomorrow.

Here's the opening number from one of the most-performed musicals ever written — Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye in this is Anthony Warlow fronting a production done in Australia a few years ago…