It's the Voctave folks singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"…and singing it quite well. Have I ever written here about how I think the whole ending of The Wizard of Oz is wrong? I mean, I know most everyone loves the film but it always bothered me that in the second reel, Dorothy sings this beautiful "wish" song about finding a better place and a better world and then the rest of the movie basically proves that there isn't one and you should just stay in Kansas where they have tornadoes and old ladies seize your dog and take it off to be put to sleep and you'll never amount to anything better than what you've achieved by age 13 or so.

And yes, I know that it's a classic and none of this matters to the people who love the movie. But I think of its strange logic every time I hear the song, even when performed as elegantly as these folks…

Nate Silver is to me, the pollster of pollsters. He doesn't poll himself but he kind of polls the pollsters and parses their polling to arrive at a wider look. He's now saying Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris are about equally likely to win the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders is one tier below them and that no one else stands much of a chance. If that's so, then all the shrieking and moaning about a 24-candidate race was unnecessary because we got down to a four-way contest in record time. Now, we just have to get through debates where Michael Bennet and Andrew Yang get equal time with the actual candidates.

But I also question if the field is really that predictable. The rest of this election sure isn't. We have a volatile political atmosphere and a volatile incumbent and I doubt even Trump's staunchest supporters would be surprised if he said or did something outrageous or if any of the umpteen ongoing investigations turned up more scandals and possible crimes. We may still find out he committed some wild, still-prosecutable financial fraud or that he was born in Kenya or that he really did shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.

That's my position: That things will happen that we can't possibly imagine now. There will be numerous game-changers and some of them may make all conventional political wisdom and polling — the kind Nate Silver employs — irrelevant. Too many things that could never have happened have already happened.

I have often mentioned my beloved friend Shelly Goldstein, whom I count among the most talented people I know…and I know some damned talented people. Shelly is a fine writer of comedy and a fine vocalist of songs. She combines these things at which she's so fine into a cabaret show called "How Groovy Girls Saved the World." It was great when she performed it to sold-out crowds here in Los Angeles. I see no reason to think it won't be as great or greater when she performs it on Saturday, August 3 at Studio 5 in Evanston, Illinois.

You will love it if you love female vocalists of the sixties like Petula Clark, Mama Cass and Jackie DeShannon. You will love it if you love funny songs because Shelly intersperses the hits of the sixties with her own compositions. If you love both those things, you will go and never leave.

You can get ticket information here. I will probably not be there because Studio 5 is 2,034 miles from my house and after my recent trip to North Carolina, I'm giving up air travel for a while. Shelly's show might almost be worth crawling that far. I guarantee you no trauma counseling will be necessary.

I've been watching America's Got Talent lately — occasional peeks at the show on NBC and, more often, on YouTube. I like a lot of what goes on there. Sure, much of the show is configured to create inspirational, tearjerker moments. Fine. But they do it well, certainly better than any of their imitators. That show James Corden did a few months ago was so forced and unreal that it made me appreciate the simplicity of AGT all the more.

But you know what I don't like? I don't like "Watch me risk killing myself" acts.

I didn't always feel this way. In fact, I worked for a few years on a TV show that featured some of them and it didn't bother me there, possibly because my behind-the-scenes position enabled me to see that the stunts weren't as dangerous as their performers (and my show) made them out to be. There sometimes was an element of danger and a few people did get hurt on our program but you think, "Well, this is the profession they chose for themselves. They all weighed the possible risks versus the possible rewards and decided to go ahead."

I still feel some of that way but I less and less want to watch it. My thought process now goes more or less like this: Is it an out-and-out magic trick that looks dangerous but in reality, there's zero chance of actual harm? I can enjoy some of those but at times, there's an element of deception that bothers me. On the other hand, is there a real chance that the performer will be injured or killed? Increasingly, I don't want to watch it and don't think it should be encouraged.

I started writing this piece a few days ago, stopped with the paragraph directly above and decided to get back to it some other time. I'm back finishing it because I just read this news item…

A magician was taken to hospital over the weekend after reportedly being struck on the head with an arrow during an on-stage performance gone wrong. Entertainer Li Lau, who works under the name "One Crazy China," suffered an injury at the 2019 National Arts Festival in Makhanda, South Africa.

It was a trick wherein "One Crazy China" (apt name) was supposed to escape from some kind of restraints so that a crossbow fired by an assistant would not strike him in the head. Something went wrong and it struck him in the head. This line in the news report helped shape my view of the incident…

The art organization's chief executive, Tony Lankester, told the paper that trauma counseling would be made available to members of the audience who witnessed the accident.

There is something wrong with an act for which trauma counseling is ever necessary. And why didn't they offer it that time I went to see Jackie Mason perform?

In the seventies, a lot of folks were shocked and disbelieving when it came out that Dick Van Dyke — sweet, funny, wholesome Dick Van Dyke — was an alcoholic and had been one for some time. In 1974, he starred as an alcoholic businessman in the TV movie, The Morning After, and later revealed that it was based on his own addiction. On November 14 of that year, he talked candidly about it on The Dick Cavett Show. Here's an excerpt from that program…

And from the same show, here are Dick and Dick talking about Stan and Buster. My thanks to Robert Brauer for telling me about the first link.

There is a bit of good news about Donald Trump: He may be about to rid himself of the foreign policy of John Bolton, a man who demands war and regime change everywhere from Iran to Sesame Street. Fred Kaplan thinks it's likely.

Kaplan also thinks that Trump's obvious jealousy of dictators who can kill those who cross them is no longer a joking matter.

Okay, I seemed to have massaged my sleeping hours back to normal and I got all my pressing, must-go-to-press work in so maybe things will be more normal around here for a while. It'll get tougher as we inch towards Comic-Con which begins, let me remind you, sixteen days from now. The news of what panels will occur when is supposed to be embargoed until the convention itself announces the schedule but I seem to be about the only person honoring that. In any case, they'll begin posting the schedule on their website on Wednesday and going day-by-day until it's all up.

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In light of our last Video Link, a couple of folks wrote to ask me what my favorite candy was back when I ate candy. I never consumed a lot of candy but when I did, there was nothing I liked better than the Russell Stover Cashew Patty. It looked like a coaster you'd set a drink on but it was just cashew pieces covered in quite-delicious chocolate. If a law was passed that criminalized all forms of candy except that one, I would have been fine with it. Simple. Tasty. And oh so satisfying.

They stopped making them decades ago. I heard or maybe I assumed that the Cashew Patty was swept away when the Russell Stover folks started a line of low-fat, low-sugar candies. They now offer the Russell Stover Cashew Cluster pictured above which I assume is the same chocolate and the same cashew pieces, though possibly not in quite the same chocolate-to-nut ratio. In any case, I liked chocolate-covered cashews as much as I ever liked any treat but I haven't had that kind of thing in twelve years. I haven't even had my favorite cookie, though friends still occasionally buy me a sack of 'em.

I gave up candy around 2007 when my love of sweets mysteriously disappeared. But even when I did eat candy, I never sampled any of The 10 Candies That You Forgot Still Exist in this video. I didn't forget about half of them because I never heard of them. The rest didn't sound like something I'd enjoy…or at least, wouldn't enjoy as much as my other immediate options…

It's like: Here's a candy bar you've never tried. Here's a candy bar you know you love. Which one are you going to pick? I always picked the one I knew I loved.

I'm a little fascinated by old candy bars and I'm also a bit fascinated by the editing on videos like this where someone goes through twenty clips a minute of visuals, some of which are only remotely pertinent. How long must it take someone to find all those videos and edit them together? It looks like it would take about a month per minute. Here, take a look…

This is the problem with working all night as I did last night: It resets your body clock in a different way and suddenly, your life is Day for Night.

My father used to go to bed each night on schedule. If he didn't have to go in to work the next day, he'd hit the sack between 11:30 and Midnight. He always had to watch the 11:00 news and then maybe a little of Johnny Carson or some other late night show. Then it was off to beddy-bye. If he did have work the next day, it would be an hour earlier, i.e., the Ten O'Clock News. His body seemed to need between 7.5 and eight hours of sleep per night so he'd be up at eight…or on work days, seven. Like clockwork.

My mother went to bed when he went to bed. They were, as I've written here many times, a perfectly-coordinated couple. It may have been the happiest marriage I've ever seen. Both were willing to bend as necessary to the needs of the other person and my mother bent to make her sleeping habits coordinate with him. Those hours were not organic to her.

After he died, she began sleeping on the schedule which felt more natural to her: No schedule at all. She'd sleep when she felt like sleeping and be awake when she felt like being awake. Except when doctor appointments or the arrival of her cleaning lady (or, later on, caregivers) required she be up at a certain hour, she'd sleep in no discernible pattern. She might be up all night and go to bed at 10 in the morning. She might sleep two hours, then be up for four hours, then sleep three more, then be up for nine…

No pattern. No schedule. When I asked her how many hours of sleep she got a day, she answered honestly, "I have no idea." I'm pretty sure it was not the same every day. When I took her to Las Vegas, she'd ask me to make sure to pick a hotel where there was a coffee shop that served breakfast 24/7. She loved a full, restaurant-cooked breakfast — eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, etc. — and wanted to be sure she could get it at any hour, not just in the morning.

I did not inherit my father's sleep-on-a-schedule trait and I rarely sleep more than six hours a night. Five is more often the case. 10 PM until about three in the morning are sometimes my most productive hours for writing…and then the phone starts ringing with calls I don't want to miss between 9 AM and 10 AM. So 3 AM is a good time to go to bed but I sometimes go earlier or later.

It can vary because of a script deadline. It can vary because I have someone sleeping with me. Or it can vary just because I feel like it. Once in a while on a script, I'll hit a brick wall. I have no idea where to go with it next so I'll go to bed and worry about it the next morning. Sometimes, that works great and sometimes, I find myself lying in bed, wide-awake and thinking for what feels like hours about the next part of the script. If I come up with what feels like a great solution, I might get up and trudge back to the computer and do some more…

…and yes, I've been known to get up the next morning, re-read my 4 AM "solution" and decide, "Well, that wasn't such a hot idea…"

The last decade or so, I find my sleep pattern increasingly resembling my mother's after my father passed. That is not always a great idea because it can put you seriously outta sync with the rest of the world. Sometimes, I've found myself in sync with other time zones and not my own. On the various Garfield shows, I often had to interface with Jim Davis (who started his workday in Muncie at 6 AM his time, aka 3 AM my time) or animators in France or Taiwan. It has also been my experience that about one in five editors in New York will forget that when it's 9 AM where they're working, it's 6 AM where I'm sleeping. Or trying to.

Speaking of 6 AM here: I'm going to wrap this up, take the dishes that held my dinner down to the kitchen, feed Lydia if necessary (and it will be necessary) and turn in. It's Sunday so maybe I won't be awoken by someone calling or coming to the door. With careful planning and judicious napping, I might reprogram myself tomorrow to get back to the normal hours I'll need to be up on Monday. I could maybe have made a better start at that goal by not writing this. Good night.

The numbering on my three posts about My Graduation Day got some folks confused so I've retitled and reposted the three chapters. Now, it's as easy as one…two…three!

You're reading the third and final part of the story of my Graduation Day at University High School in West Los Angeles. The date was June 19, 1969 and you can read Part One here and Part Two here…or, at least, you should have. Do that before you plunge into this chapter if you haven't already. It will begin after this brief cautionary banner…

As I'm sure you remember, the ceremony was over, I'd shed the silly cap 'n' gown and now my Aunt Dot was insisting that me, my parents, my uncle and her — the five of us — head off for downtown L.A. She'd made a reservation at an Italian eatery called Little Joe's and it was important to her that we get there on time. It was important to me to say goodbye to my fellow classmates and to locate three young ladies I wanted to stay "in touch" with.

In the above paragraph, "in touch" is a euphemism for getting their phone numbers and some sign that it was okay for me to call on them for dating purposes. In all my years before that day, I'd never asked a lady out due to a cowardice of which I am now ashamed. It also felt to me like it would be wrong to not say more goodbyes to students I'd known for the past three years at Uni and, in some cases, since Junior High or even Elementary School.

When last we left me, I gulped and said, "I need some time to say goodbye to some people." She said, "Well, okay. But make it quick."

I dashed off to an area where many of my classmates were gathered and I suddenly saw something I hadn't expected, something that will seem trivial to you but which had a big impact on me at that moment.

I saw my classmates kissing.

Girls were kissing guys goodbye.  Guys were kissing girls goodbye.  I'm sure we must have had some gay students there but it was 1969 and no one was "out," at least at Uni. I assume that has changed.

We were all, allegedly, not only heterosexual but vigorously so. By '69, magazines like Time and Newsweek had had a year or three of articles about how freer These Kids Today were about sex and how teens weren't waiting for marriage anymore. Such pieces were full of quotes from anonymous kids my age about how even the homeliest among them were losing any and all virginity well before they got out of high school.

My friends and I would read those articles and ask The Heavens, "When, pray tell, is this trend getting here? And for God's sake, can you do something to hurry it up?" We'd debate whether it was true anywhere except in Newsweek. Our school, after all, was in Los Angeles, California and had no small amount of rich kids with parents in show business. I'd argue, "If this is not going on here, how could it be happening in Kansas?"

Oh, sure: I knew guys who couldn't change in or out of their gym clothes without boasting about who they'd banged the previous date night and how many times. Locker room talk, we called it then as our president does now. I didn't believe very many (if any) of my bragging classmates. I still think Uni graduated 500+ virgins that day and I know for certain one of them was me. I hadn't even kissed a girl for real…a condition I rectified then and there. I decided Aunt Dot and Little Joe's could wait forever.

What pulled me away from that was the realization that none of the three ladies I wanted to find were in that group of goodbye-kissers. I began running around, searching for them. A lot of families were moving towards the parking lot and to get there, I had to run past my family. "Mark, we need to leave," Aunt Dot called to me and I pretended not to hear her.

In the parking lot, I found Potential Girl Friend #1 with her family. We hugged — I didn't have the courage to kiss her in front of her parents — and I pulled her to one side so they couldn't hear.

Mustering every bit of bravado I could muster, I asked: "Is there any chance you'd go out with me some evening for dinner and maybe a movie?" She said, "Sure." She said it so directly that I was startled. I'd expected to use every tactic of persuasion I'd learned studying Sgt. Bilko reruns to con her into it…but there it was. If only I'd known it was that easy…

"Let me give you my phone number," she said and I wrote it down — which was wholly unnecessary since I still remember every digit. We couldn't say much more than that because her aunt, who I'm assuming was named Dot, was urging them all to head for the restaurant where they had a reservation.

We parted and I began looking around for Potential Girl Friends #2 and #3. There was no sign of them but I ran into my friend Bill and asked if he'd seen them. #2, he said, was up in the tables area outside the cafeteria just a few minutes ago. I thanked him and scurried off with the speed of Barry Allen with two seconds to save the world from total destruction. My mission, of course, was more important.

Getting to the cafeteria required passing Aunt Dot again. She was angrily yelling, "Mark, we have to go! Mark, we have to go!" I yelled back, "One more thing I have to do" but I don't think she heard it.

Potential Girl Friend #2 and her family were just wandering away from the cafeteria when I ran up and we played out the exact same scene I'd just played with Potential Girl Friend #1. I asked her. She said "Sure" and began rattling off another phone number I still know. Everything was identical except she didn't have an aunt with a restaurant reservation. She had a party back at home to get to before other relatives arrived.

Clutching two phone numbers in my head and hand, I began racing around the campus, looking here, there, everywhere but not finding #3. A lot of folks had left by now and I was thinking I was too late and, hell, two outta three ain't bad, right?

I had just given up on ever seeing #3 again when I saw her again. She and several members of her family were walking towards a gate to the street. With an energy I'd never been able to muster in gym class, I sprinted towards them. When I was within ten feet and they hadn't yet noticed the hysterical kid running towards them, I braked to a casual stroll and tried to act like I was just walking and I happened to run into them.

Potential Girl Friend #3 saw me there, turned and threw her arms around me. This is a moment I still recall vividly. I thought of going for the lips but my peripheral vision showed me her father eyeing us so I thought better of it. She quickly introduced me as "that boy I've told you about who says all those funny things and draws all those funny pictures." At my best moments, that was me in high school. Or at least, that's who I tried to be.

Her father had a big grin as he shook my hand. He said, "She's told us over dinner every funny thing you ever said to her!" I froze and quickly tried to recap what I'd said to her, some of which I'm sure was strewn with sexual innuendoes and double entendres. But Dad seemed to like me. He actually said, "I was always kind of hoping you two would go out on a date so I could meet the young man who said —" and here he quoted some quip of mine I'd be embarrassed to quote here.

I turned to P.G.F. #3 and said, "Well, to make your father happy, I guess we'd better go out some time." When she eagerly agreed, I felt like I should go give back the diploma due to sheer stupidity on my part. What the hell had I been so afraid of? I could have been taking this girl out all semester. I could even have been hinting in the locker room that we'd been doing far naughtier things than would probably ever have occurred.

She did not give me her phone number. She didn't have anything to write on but her father pulled out a scrap of paper and wrote it down. I gave his daughter a final (for now) hug, promised to call and did a sporty victory lap back to Aunt Dot.

"We can go now," I announced. She apologized for rushing me so and then the five of us crammed into my father's car and spent a long, long time getting to Little Joe's. I thought the food was pretty mediocre there — way worse than my pick, Zito's — but maybe that was because I was so lost in thought. I was trying to readjust my mind to just how much of my life had changed in the previous few hours. I hadn't expected it be as emotional as it was. I hadn't expected to actually feel my life changing.

But I was out of high school. That was a good thing. And I'd said goodbye, probably forever, to a lot of friends, plus I had my first dating opportunities. I also now had no excuse not to begin pursuing my lifelong plan of becoming a professional writer.

I'm not going to tell you what happened on the dates. This isn't that kind of website and, besides, I'm still in touch with one of those Potential Now-Former Girl Friends and she reads this blog. I will however tell you what happened when I made my first really-truly serious attempt to sell something I'd written, therefore embarking on whatever this career I've had has been.

I'll tell you that on the fiftieth anniversary of that day, which occurs later this week. I'm sure hoping the President declares it a national holiday but knowing him, he probably won't and I'll have one more reason to dislike him. Like I need more.

The last part of my three-chapter remembrance of my high school graduation will be up later today. Yesterday was very busy and I've been up all night writing a script that has to be in on Monday. The third chapter is done but I want to give it a final read 'n' tweak before I post it here. And before I give it a final read 'n' tweak, I want to get some sleep so I'll have some idea of what I'm reading. Good night, Internet.

A lot of folks this morning are talking like they've forgotten there are many more debates ahead. They're also forgetting the many times someone has done well in one debate and poorly in others — or vice-versa. I'm not particularly a fan of Joe Biden but I haven't seen anyone say "he hurt himself last night" who wasn't eager for Biden to hurt himself last night.

Maybe he did. But if we've learned nothing from Donald Trump's success, it's that it's possible for a candidate these days to say something that sounds like it'll cost him a lot of his support…and then not lose any support. Let's wait and see the polls…and let's remember that at various points in the last election, they had Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Jeb Bush in the lead for the Republican nomination.

People today are laughing today about some of Marianne Williamson's more bizarre ideas and I wrote a tweet that lumped her in with Michele Bachmann. But let's take note of this tweet from Robert Maguire…

If you think Marianne Williamson's ideas are kooky, wait til you hear about the guy who says windmills cause cancer, thinks you need to show ID to buy cereal, and doesn't exercise because he thinks the human body is like a battery with a finite amount of energy.

And I don't get all this talk about what someone might do on Day One of their administration. Has anyone from any party in any past presidential election ever done anything important on Day One of any administration? I mean, apart from having the Oval Office fumigated?

I know we're eager for this thing to be over but it'll be a long time before this thing is over. Please remain in your seats for the duration of the flight with your seat belts fastened.

It is a custom at Wrigley Field in Chicago that during the Seventh Inning Stretch, someone leads the crowd in singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Here from last night is the best-ever musical performance at a baseball field. As far as I'm concerned, this easily beats out The Beatles at Shea Stadium…

• I don't know who's going to be the Democratic candidate for president and I'm not even sure about the Republican nominee. But I hope there'll be at least three debates between Marianne Williamson and Michele Bachmann, preferably on this planet.