It's gotten so when there's another mass shooting, no one has anything new to say. I certainly don't. Today's was in El Paso, where it's kind of pointless to ask, "How did the shooter get the gun?" I think they sell them in vending machines in that neck of the woods or you get one free when you buy a patty melt at a Whataburger in Texas.

At the moment, they're saying there was one shooter…maybe two but one is in custody. He was apparently young and white, which means this will be treated as an isolated incident. If he was black or Muslim, that would have all sorts of significance to some people but white killers, even when they're part of known hate movements, are treated as crazed loner individuals.

As of a few minutes ago when I turned off CNN, no one seemed sure if there was that second shooter or how many people had been killed or injured. Politicians are already though writing about Thoughts and Prayers, which means they have no intention (or in some cases, desire) to do anything to stop this kind of thing from happening — as it will — someplace else and soon.

Actually, I should have said "to lessen the frequency of such incidents" because stopping them altogether is impossible. And some people like to argue that since you can't prevent every single mass shooting, there's no point in doing anything to make them less likely. It's just like how, since we can't stop everyone from driving recklessly and running over people, there's no point in stopping anyone from driving recklessly and running over people.

That's about all I've got right now. Some time ago, I adopted the position that nothing meaningful will ever be done about shootings. Yeah, it's cynical but it saves me an awful lot of disappointment.

We're thinking a lot about the recently-deceased Hal Prince, the great Broadway producer-director who was involved in all those shows I mentioned in this post.  I was going to describe him as "legendary" but I've pretty much given that word up as hopeless.  People apply it so casually to folks who have very little history or importance that it's become just about meaningless…and it will probably be joined soon in that uselessness by "iconic."

Anyway, here's almost a half-hour of Mr. Prince being interviewed by producer Kurt Peterson and by my good buddy Jim Brochu.  This is from when Jim was starring in a play he wrote, Zero Hour, in which he portrayed the amazing Zero Mostel — a wonderful, wonderful play and re-creation. I'd say I hope Jim does it again someday but he'd have to add about sixty pounds to his current svelte self to do it right and I wouldn't want to see him do that.

After one performance of Zero Hour, they got Hal Prince to come in and talk about working with Zero on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof, both of which Prince produced. His remarks are, of course, fascinating.

At one point, Prince gets a bit confusing, talking about Forum when it sounds like he's talking about Fiddler. The history, as recounted by others who were involved in Forum, is that the show was originally to star Phil Silvers and then when he opted instead to do Do-Re-Mi, they got Milton Berle in his place. Then when Berle demanded too much control of the show, they got rid of him and Zero opened it on Broadway. That's how the show's co-author Larry Gelbart told it to me. That's how Phil Silvers told it to me one afternoon at Nate 'n Al's deli in Beverly Hills with Milton Berle at the table. That's how various books tell it. But as you'll see, it's not exactly how Hal Prince tells it in this video.

Make of that what you will. It's still a great conversation with one of the most important people in Broadway history. I wish I could call him legendary but that would just put him at the level of every single guest on James Corden's show…

As I get older, I find that the list of things I can't do is increasing at an alarming rate. I was never a great artist but I'm a lot worse now than I used to be. I used to be able to do enough sleight-o'-hand card tricks to entertain at a party but I haven't dared do that in a while. I used to be able to cook…not well but well enough that I'd eat my own cooking. Now, not so much.

The drawing and the magic got worse because…well, because I stopped doing much of either. I blame that a bit on mild arthritis in my hands and a little on this hard fact: I increasingly found myself surrounded by guys who were so good at each that it was like, "Why bother?" Seeing someone else do something way, way better than I'll ever be able to do it might inspire others but it's always been discouraging to me.

Another factor: Learning and playing on computers increasingly has consumed the time I might have spent working on my drawing or magic. And I think I simply came to love writing a lot more than drawing or practicing fake shuffles. As of last month, I've been a professional writer for fifty (that's five-oh) years and I enjoy it more and more. Each morning, I have to write something — anything, even something like this — before I can do just about anything else.

And I've given up all but the most basic, simple, mix-two-things-together-and-stick-them-in-the-microwave cooking. I was never that good a chef but I've gotten to be really bad at it; so bad that now, that the only two things I make on a regular basis are reservations on Open Table and orders on Grubhub.

Whenever I get the slightest urge to cook anything, I can easily suppress it. All I have to do is watch a few of the 73 gazillion cooking videos on YouTube. Not every last one makes me think I don't know enough to poach an egg but most do. Often, the sheer amount of time 'n' energy someone takes to make a meat loaf gets me to thinking that the place here in L.A. that makes my favorite meat loaf can deliver in a tenth of the time and I know I'll like what I get. But I have learned a few things from all those cooking videos…

One is that you can spend a lot of time and effort making meatballs and they won't come out that much better than the little frozen ones they sell at the supermarket. I'm amazed how many professional chefs who think they can make cranberry sauce better than Ocean Spray and ketchup better than Heinz concede on little frozen meatballs.  They'll tell you how to improve them but they'll also tell you to buy them.  Most chefs, that is.

And most who do Italian cooking will surrender one point on "homemade is always better."  They'll admit they can't do anything with fresh tomatoes that isn't bested by the canned San Marzano kind.

I've also learned that to be a great cook, you have to love chopping things and standing over the stove for twenty minutes, stirring and stirring and stirring.  I could never learn to love that.

Lastly for now, I often feel that the person teaching me to cook is not cooking for me.  That becomes clear when they add chili powder or chile powder (either one) to most things and cayenne pepper to friggin' everything.  Some of these guys add a pinch of cayenne to strawberry ice cream, for fuck's sake or to buttermilk pancakes.

Yes, I know there's probably a fair amount of undetectable cayenne in many of the restaurant-prepared meals I eat but I dislike spicy/hot foods so much, I can't bring myself to add it in.  Instead, I become convinced that this chef has such a different (from me) concept of what makes for good eats that I shouldn't listen to him about anything.  Not logical, I know, but on some topics, I'm not as logical as I'd like to be.

I'm probably not logical about most things that relate to cooking.  Which to me is the biggest reason I shouldn't try it any longer.

Some amazing footage of Disneyland being built — and Walt walking around, supervising the construction of his Happiest Place…

If Donald Trump came out and said he was going to drastically lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans and raise them on the middle-class, there would be massive outrage and it would become a major issue against him in the election. But apart from phrasing it that way, that's what he's done and he's now about to do more of it…counting on, I guess, the fact that most of his supporters will never figure that out.

People who knew Hal Prince remember Hal Prince.

Thank you, Mr. Prince, for The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, New Girl in Town, West Side Story, Fiorello!, Tenderloin, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, She Loves Me, Fiddler on the Roof, Baker Street, Flora the Red Menace, It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman, Cabaret, Zorba, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Candide, Pacific Overtures, Side by Side by Sondheim, On the Twentieth Century, Sweeney Todd, Evita, Merrily We Roll Along, The Phantom of the Opera, Kiss of the Spider Woman and all the rest, including the flops. They'd be dimming the lights on Broadway if you'd only been involved in any three of them.

I didn't watch the debate last night. I'm more and more convinced that just about nothing in current events is going to have much significance in the presidential election next year. It may just come down to a simple referendum: Trump or no Trump? Most voters may cast their votes not on who has the best health plan or who had the best vision for the economy…but if they think Donald Trump is a very good man or a very bad man, end of thought process. It might also be about one divisive issue like whether you think the U.S. should welcome refugees or keep them out.

Who "won" last night? I dunno. Amanda Marcotte thought Cory Booker did great and Joe Biden did poorly. Eric Levitz says Biden won the night. Take your pick. The many diverse opinions out there suggest to me that no one scored a meaningful gain…and I'm not sure at this point, any of this matters.

There was talk about different health care plans. I kinda agree with Kevin Drum that debating this is silly and needlessly divisive. The Democrats may have several different plans but they all have roughly the same goals and much in common. The Republicans meanwhile have no health plans and no real desire for there to be one. They'd like to get rid of the government-backed ones that already exist. That's the divide here, not whether Kamala's plan takes longer to phase in than Bernie's.

Maybe the thing that interested me most was how rapidly Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers were able to generate material about the debate between the time it ended and the time they went on the air. They had to really scramble to pull that one off.

And to segue to another frequent topic on this blog: That's one of the problems MAD magazine has faced. The last few years, one of the things the MAD crew realized would boost their circulation was a cover ridiculing Donald Trump and promising more of the same within. Just as calling Trump a moron raised Stephen Colbert's ratings, Trump caricatures on MAD clearly goosed their sales. He may have been a better mascot for them than Alfred E. Neuman.

And why not? They're equally qualified for the presidency.

But it's nearly-impossible to do topical humor in a magazine. It was never easy and now in the era of the Internet and immediacy, why even try? If later today, Trump says something that cries out for parody and scorn — and of course, the odds are pretty good he will — there'll be a thousand jokes on Twitter and Facebook within the hour. Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel and maybe Trevor Noah will all be on it tonight. Depending on which day of the week it is, they'll be closely followed by Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Bill Maher, Saturday Night Live and ten or twelve others.

Who knows? Maybe Jimmy Fallon will even mention it.

By the time MAD could get an issue to its readers, the topic will have been strip-mined and then forgotten. Trump could molest a nun and when the MAD article mentioning it finally came out, even Trump enemies would say, "Aw, that's old news." The pre-2018 crew of MAD did a good job finding timeless Trump humor…like making fun of his hair. That's always good and it never changes, just like his rotten business track record or his mistreatment of women. They did some good pieces but these days, we not only want today's news today, we want the jokes about today's news today. Or sooner, if possible.

Here's a nice print of "The Silent Partner," a 1955 episode of the TV series Screen Directors Playhouse, which was one of the last things the Hal Roach Studio produced.  It was directed and co-written by George Marshall, who honed his craft working on the Roach lot with Laurel and Hardy before becoming an important director elsewhere.

"The Silent Partner" stars Buster Keaton, Joe E. Brown and frequent Roach player Zasu Pitts.  You'll also see a lot of familiar character actors including Jack Elam, Jack Kruschen, Evelyn Ankers, Percy Helton and Charles Horvath.  Enjoy…

Thanks to Joel O'Brien for sending me this link to a 1985 interview with Bill Gaines, the original publisher of MAD. There are a few errors in it. Alfred E. Neuman's usual name before he was named Alfred E. Neuman was Melvin Cowznofski, not Melvin Paslovsky. Harvey Kurtzman is mentioned in passing but not in the section which describes how MAD was created. Somehow, Al Feldstein who became editor a few years later gets the credit. Gaines did not sell MAD to Warner Communications in 1960, etc.

I get asked a lot of questions about the history of MAD and often, the answer includes, "You have to know a lot about Bill Gaines to understand why things were the way they were." Gaines was an eccentric who wanted to keep his company small enough so that he could preside over most of the business matters himself, not work too hard and not have a lot of strangers around him. He didn't write or draw for the magazine but had an undeniable influence on its creative content.

His business practices were not much different from any comic book publisher and in that sense, somewhat unfair to the talent. And yet at the same time, he loved the writers and artists who contributed to MAD, treated them as a family, took them on expensive trips and treated them to swank dinners and so forth. You could work for DC and Marvel for decades and never meet the publisher or be granted an audience if you requested one…but Gaines' door was always open and if you dropped in at the proper hour, he'd take you to lunch. A very colorful, complex man.

Usually, I just plug live performances in Southern California — i.e., those I can get to. But two of my best pals are playing in or near Chicago and I'd go to these shows if I was there.

One is a one-time-only (for now) appearance by the glamorous, gifted Shelly Goldstein who'll be doing her cabaret show, "How Groovy Girls Saved the World" this Saturday evening at Studio 5 in Evanston, Illinois. It's a delightful assemblage of the kind of songs sung by female vocalists of the sixties like Petula Clark, Mama Cass and Jackie DeShannon, plus some of Shelly's own witty compositions. Tickets are going fast but you may still be able to snag a deuce (that's theater talk) at this website. I've seen her many times and always attend any performance within 2,000 miles of my home. This one, sad to say, is 34 miles too far for me but possibly not for you.

My buddy Frank Ferrante has been getting rave reviews for the new show which Teatro ZinZanni has opened in the heart of Chi. Teatro ZinZanni is an outfit that stages dinner shows with gourmet food, a great live band, luscious surroundings and wonderful entertainment between the courses. Your genial/outrageous host Caesar is your guide and Caesar is Frank when he's not being Groucho. This show isn't as urgent a go-see as Shelly's because Caesar will be Caesaring through the end of September but don't miss it, either. Info and tickets can be found at this website. It's an evening you won't soon forget.

Those of you who want to know about all the sturm und drang in the halls of DC Comics would do well to read Rob Salkowitz on the topic. There is much more to be said about this topic but everything Rob writes here is, as far as I can tell, absolutely on target.

We're still thinking about Minnie Mouse and about the lovely Minnie-like actress who did her voice, Russi Taylor. Esteemed Disney historian Jim Korkis sent me this…

Like Mickey Mouse, Minnie only did squeaks and squawks provided by Walt Disney himself in the earliest cartoons. Marcellite Garner from the ink and paint department began doing Minnie's dialog in 1930. Thelma Boardman took over from approximately 1940-1942 followed by Ruth Clifford from around late 1942 to 1952. Russi Taylor became Minnie's official voice in 1986.

I am sure many people have shared Russi and Wayne stories with you. One of mine was that back in the 1990s when I worked at Walt Disney World, I got to be their unofficial tour guide and helped them do things like get V.I.P. viewing for the fireworks at Epcot. I joked to them that they could never get divorced because it would break the hearts of every Disney fan knowing Mickey and Minnie got divorced. Wayne took the offhand remark very seriously and started explaining in great detail why he could never divorce Russi because she was so important in his life. Russi, realizing it was just a joke, kept laughing and laughing. I still hear that joyful laugh decades later.

Russi did have a great laugh. Meanwhile, I got this from Jon Balogh…

It's disturbing to hear about all those voice artists lining up to get a crack at Russi Taylor's job. Could you advise on the ethics of such matters? I'm not a voice actor but I'm curious. When would it be okay to apply for that kind of job? What if the actor is still alive but just can't do the voice any longer?

If the actor who voices an established character dies, a potential replacement should wait a suitable interval — and no, I can't tell you what would make an interval suitable but I know it's more than a week or two — before even thinking about moving in on the role. I would think one should wait longer if the deceased actor originated the voice in question. Something like fifteen people have now been the voice of Bugs Bunny and no one's had the job exclusively like Mel Blanc did. If the current guy dies, it's not as big a deal.

If the actor is alive but the studio thinks he can no longer do the voice well, that's where it gets dicey. When Don Messick had the stroke that ended his acting career, he had his agent notify the studios than he was retiring and they should go ahead and recast Scooby Doo and other iconic parts he played. That is rare. Usually, the actor doesn't want to give up that important part of their lives and careers and admit they can't do it anymore. And sometimes, they don't agree that they can't.

June Foray wanted to keep working until the day she died. She was polite to a vast number of actresses who did their imitations of her for her, perhaps hoping she'd endorse them as her replacement…but she was privately pissed about every one of them. I don't think any voice actor really wants to hear that you can imitate them well, though most will be too polite to tell you that.

I was in the room one day when a noted voice actor decided for some silly reason to do his Bugs Bunny voice for Mel Blanc. At the time, Mel was getting paid very well every time Warner Brothers called on him to do Bugs — and deservedly so. The execs there used to weep and wail over what it cost to hire Mel and I thought that was petty and greedy of them. There were a number of people who were responsible for Bugs becoming a character worth billions and if Mel wasn't at the absolute top of that list, he was right behind whoever was.

Still, at least one of the WB suits talked to me like Mel was shamefully holding a gun to their heads. The exec was very well paid himself and used the old "it'll only take him twenty minutes" line to justify his resentment of Mel's asking price; no recognition that there was a special value to WB to have Mel Blanc voicing a Mel Blanc character. Even leaving aside the horrendous publicity that might have resulted, some good mimic doing Bugs was not — and still is not — the same thing as Mel friggin' Blanc doing Bugs.

So when that noted voice actor showed Mel he could do a great Bugs, Mel did not take it as the sincerest form of flattery. The guy might just as well have said, "Hey, Mel! One of these days, some dunce at WB will decide to save money and have me replace you!" Oddly enough, the noted voice actor in this story had been in Mel's position. He was holding out for a raise to do a famous character he voiced, they hired an imitator for less money and he was furious with that "scab" (as he called him) forever after.

Generally speaking, most good voice actors will tell you that you don't imitate another actor while he's still live and available. You just don't. If the reason they want you to do him is because they think he's just too old, that gets dicey and you have to really analyze and discuss the situation. Ideally, what should happen is that the studio should deal with that actor before they seek out a replacement; maybe pay him a fee, maybe find him other work which he can do.

If the reason is just that he wants a raise, you don't undercut him. It's that simple and most successful voice actors will tell you this. I know of at least three separate occasions where Actor A was offered serious money — in one instance, millions — to imitate and replace Actor B but Actor A said absolutely not.

In every case, the Actor A was working steadily and didn't need the dough. Still, there's a certain amount of integrity and decency involved in turning down a job worth six or even seven figures for reasons of principle and it is to be admired. By me, at least.

Ultimately, all this is one of the things agents are for. An actor who covets someone else's job will always (always) look like an asshole of some dimension for campaigning on their own. The way to avoid that is to have your agent contact the person who does the hiring and say, "Hey, I know one of these days, you may need a soundalike for Abercrombie Alligator. If and when that happens, I hope you'll read my client before you make a final decision."

That's how professionals do it. If you want that kind of job, professionalism is a great quality to display.

As we noted here, Lenny's Deli — a fine establishment in West Los Angeles — has closed. We are pleased to report the news that it will be replaced by…another delicatessen! Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, a popular place in San Francisco, is moving into the building soon. Let's hope they can make a go of it!

A few items back here, I said that I thought Carol Burnett was a lot less than good in the 1974 film version of The Front Page. And that's not just my opinion. It's Carol Burnett's opinion, too…