Josh Barro discusses the most divisive, class-oriented issue in the country today — the order in which we get to board airplanes. I never really understand it on any airline other than Southwest and I'm not always certain I understand it on Southwest. I just know I need an overhead space for my carry-on and I will certainly get it if I'm in Boarding Group A, probably get it if I'm in Boarding Group B…and there's a chance (but not a good one) I'll get it if I'm in Boarding Group C.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to criticize the Trump Administration's foreign policies because they don't even seem to know what they are. It sometimes seems like Trump himself doesn't want to get into a lot of foreign wars…but he picked John Bolton to be a national security advisor. You can mention just about any country on this planet to John Bolton and he'll tell you why we need to be dropping bombs on it, sending troops to it, seizing its assets and installing a government we control. Steve Benen has more.

I can't place the date exactly but around June of 2007, a little multi-colored kitten began showing up in my backyard, partaking of the free food that I put out there for other feral cats. I posted an item about her and this photo in September of that year. She's the one on the left…

We called her The Kitten and she turned up almost every night. At the time, I'm fairly sure her main hangout was across the street from me. It's a fairly busy street so she was risking her pretty little life every time she came over here for chow and then returned over there. At some point though, she seems to have relocated her base of operations to my yard.

In April of 2008, she was still dining here…but perhaps dining for at least two. She was either putting on serious weight or she was pregnant, mostly likely the latter. I called a friend who was involved with charities that care deeply about feral cats and asked what, if anything, I should do. He told me I should capture her, take her to a vet to get her "fixed" and to terminate the pregnancy. Each year, hundreds of thousands of feral cats in this country either starve to death or are "put to sleep."  It is better, he said, not to let them be born than to make the problem worse.

I thought about it and decided he was correct. The catching of The Kitten was a long, difficult process which I reported on in diary form on this blog. The diary ends with me succeeding and I have collected those listings over at this page if you want to read them. Below is a photo from that mission…

During the adventure, The Kitten got an actual name. I named her Lydia. When I brought her back from the vet, she seemed so angry in that cage/carrier that I thought she'd never come near me again. But when I turned her loose in my yard, it took about two minutes before she was on my porch asking for food.

That was April of 2008. Since then, I have posted many items and photos of little Lydia. There have been times when for some reason unknown to me, I didn't see her for a long stretch of time and I feared she was gone, probably in the mortal sense. I've had a lot of feral cats out there and sometimes, we find them dead but more often, they just stop coming around.

At one point, I was up to four regulars and an occasional guest for dinner. Then it was three. Then it was two. One of those two, Sylvia, died last August, leaving Lydia alone out there.

I haven't mentioned Lydia lately here and I recently received three messages from folks who feared the worst and wanted to know if there's any chance she's still dining on my porch. After all, feral cats aren't supposed to live long. You can find all sorts of different stats online but most would say that an outdoor stray will survive 2-9 years.

Well, here's a photo I took of Lydia Tuesday afternoon…

She doesn't look all that different from the way she looked when I first saw her wolfing down Friskies on that step back in mid-2007. Assuming she was born around the beginning of that year, that would make her a little over twelve years old now — and yes, I know it's rude to discuss a lady's age but she won't know. She almost never reads this blog.

The main change I notice in her over those years is that she's less active and especially less likely to climb up to high places. She used to chase squirrels and butterflies and sometimes even feral cats she didn't know who found their way to the buffet I provide. Now, she doesn't bother. She also used to like to sit on the roof of my garage, peering over the edge like a gargoyle. I haven't seen her up there in years.

She's out in the yard there 24/7 except when the gardener or the pool guy comes by. When one does, she relocates into an adjoining neighbor's property until they leave her turf and she can come back and resume licking herself. It's a pretty good life and I don't know how much longer it will last. I just know it always makes me smile to see her out there. When I get up in the morning and go to my bathroom, I look out the window and usually see Lydia outside, napping or cleaning some part of herself. It's a reassuring way to start my day.

I'll probably get back to New York in the next few months. I'm not sure what I'll be doing there yet but I'm fairly certain I won't be eating any deli food. That used to be part of my New York Experience but since then, the Carnegie Delicatessen has closed, the Stage Delicatessen has closed and my go-to alternative, the Ben Ash Delicatessen has closed. For years, no trip to New York was complete for me without meeting Joe Simon at the Ben Ash…and now they're both gone.

The two best delis remaining there are the Second Avenue Deli — two locations, neither on Second Avenue — and Katz's. I usually stay in or around Times Square and all three of those locations are tough to get to from there. Katz's is always mobbed and noisy — and while the food is pretty good, there's just too much of it. The sandwiches especially are too big and priced accordingly. Since my Gastric Bypass, I can't finish half of one let alone a whole one. Unless you're splitting it with a friend or heading from there back to your hotel room and your hotel room has a mini-fridge, don't order a sandwich.

Also, I like mustard on my corned beef sandwich — not deli mustard, not honey mustard, not dijon mustard, not brown mustard, not spicy mustard, not hot mustard, not German mustard, not whole grain mustard…just plain mustard, the yellow kind. If you ask for it at Katz's, they act like you want to smear your sandwich with bat guano or worse, mayonnaise. If you don't mind, I prefer my deli food without cole slaw or attitude.

Here's a video about the place featuring a young woman who is a little too impressed to be there. I mean, I like the place but not as much as she does…

Just a reminder that I'll be a guest on on the podcast of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog in a few hours. It all starts at 6:30 PM Los Angeles time at this link. I'll be discussing the past 49 years of attending Comic-Con International in its various incarnations since 1970 and what may happen 70 days from now at the fiftieth such gathering. Who knows? I may even tell an anecdote or two. I've been known to do that on rare occasions.

And now, Playbill has up some photos from the original production on Broadway of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened May 8, 1962 at the Alvin Theatre. That's 57 years ago today.

I was at a party once where everyone was playing Theatrical Time Machine: "If you could go back in time and see one production from the past…" I think this might be it for me.

We've had a lot of televised car chases lately here in the City of Angels.  That's meant many opportunities on the web and on TV to watch/hear Stu Mundel in action.  Stu, who I've mentioned before here but not lately, is an "Aerial Correspondent" for local stations KCBS 2 and KCAL 9.  Those two stations are owned by the same company and share the same newsroom and crew…so coverage on one is often duplicated or handed over to the other.

"Aerial correspondent" means Stu's the guy in the helicopter covering and narrating the action below.  He's the fellow I dubbed "The Vin Scully of Televised Car Chases," and others have picked up on the analogy, including someone in the video below.  Like the now-retired Mr. Scully, Mr. Mundel is really good at making boring action on the screen interesting with his colorful play-by-play narration.  Here's a little story that ran on at least one of the two L.A. stations that employ him…

The New York Times has been looking into Donald Trump's past finances and come to the conclusion that he was a terrible businessman…and often when he did succeed, it was with deals where he got others to invest heavily, they lost big and he got out with a lot of their money.

I'm not sure any of this really matters. The people who don't like the guy couldn't have a lower opinion of him than they already do. The people who do like the guy won't let anything change their mind. When any evidence comes up that shows he's shady or incompetent, Trump or his minions just deny it as "fake, fake, fake" without explaining or offering proof that it's fake.

I am reminded of back when I was attending U.C.L.A., there was a lecture announced by an author who insisted the Holocaust was a myth. It never happened, Hitler and his mob never killed a single Jew…it was all a hoax. And this author was offering a cash prize — I think it was $10,000 which was a lotta money in those days — to anyone who could prove by rules he set down that the Holocaust was true. And what were his rules? They stated that you had to prove it without using "phony evidence." And what constituted "phony evidence?" Well, since the Holocaust had never happened, anything that indicated it had was "phony evidence."

And here's a reminder that Maltinfest — a celebration of some films my pal Leonard Maltin thinks have not received enough attention — kicks off this Friday at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. I'm not sure when I'll be there but I'll be there. You should be there, too. Here's an article about this very special event.

We're 71 days from the start of this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego and one day from my appearance on the podcast of The San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog. The folks who run that blog have nothing to do with the operation of the convention. They're just enthusiastic congoers who report on all the news and gossip about the con. If you're attending or just interested in the event, you should of course be reading the official convention website but you should also be reading the unofficial site.

As the con draws near, the unofficial blog does weekly podcasts to keep you informed on what's likely to happen there. Tomorrow night (Wednesday) their guest is me and I'll be discussing things that have happened at the last 49 of these cons I've attended. That's right: I said 49. I've been to all of them and expect this year to attend the fiftieth one. I also expect to set a new personal record for appearing on and/or moderating panels, beating my old record of sixteen in four days.

The podcast kicks off tomorrow night at 6:30 PM Pacific Time and you can watch it live on this page. Join us, won't you?

Hey, if you're interested in the history of the theater — especially musical theater — they always seem to have something interesting over on the Playbill website. Recently, they posted some great photos of the original production of Damn Yankees with Gwen Verdon and Ray Walston. And in connection with a forthcoming revival of 1776, there are some pics of the original staging of that show.

Last Saturday evening, the sparkling Shelly Goldstein and I attended a benefit for the Alcott Center for Mental Health Services and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. It was the second and final of two performances and I wish there were many more so you all could see "An all-star reading of Jacqueline Susann's Valley of the Dolls."

Valley of the Dolls was the best-selling book of 1966 and it was turned into a pretty popular movie in 1967. The film starred Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Paul Burke and Sharon Tate, and the screenplay is quite wonderful when you recast it for a live reading with, for example, Alec Mapa in the role Ms. Parkins played. They are, as you can see below, pretty much the same type…

And they had Wilson Cruz in the Patty Duke role and Bruce Vilanch playing the role Sharon Tate played, with other parts filled by Steve Bluestein, Mo Gaffney, Robert Cant, Tom Lenk, Greg Louganis (yes, the diver), Sheryl Lee Ralph (she played the character Susan Hayward played in the film), Gordon Thomson, Joan Van Ark and Marissa Jaret Winokur, with Laraine Newman as the Narrator.

Sometimes, men played women. Sometimes, women played men. Sometimes, the genders matched up. All the time, it was hilarious. The production was produced by Jon Imparato and Steve Tyler, and directed by Richard Hochberg. (By the way, the original screenplay for the movie was by Dorothy Kingsley.)

How hilarious this all was is hard to describe except to say that everyone in the Renberg Theater in Hollywood laughed from start to finish. Some of that was due to the performers expertly camping it up but a lot of it was that many of the lines and situations in the film haven't aged well. Even read the way they were supposed to be read, they were quite ridiculous.

There was a reception before the show and a reception afterwards and it all made for an enormously fun evening. I'll try and let you know if they ever do it again. If they do and you go, you might just see Shelly and me there in the audience again. Bruce Vilanch as a slinky supermodel was worth the price of admission alone.

Matt Taibbi discusses "electability" and doesn't really make the point that all the old definitions have been proven false by the fact that You-Know-Who is now in the Oval Office. I agree generally with Taibbi.

There are really two questions about any candidate: Can he or she win? And would he or she make a good president? They're obviously related but I don't think anyone's going to think too hard about the second one this time around.

Gary Conrad was one of the storyboard artists (and one of the best) on the Garfield & Friends cartoon show. One time, he brought a video camera to one of our recording sessions and captured these few minutes. This was one of the times Jim Davis came out and was the voice director. Thanks to Bob Bergen for telling me about this…

Reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show have just returned to the cable channel MeTV, kicking off with what are supposed to be Carl Reiner's ten favorite episodes.  For the record, they are…

1. "Coast-to-Coast Big Mouth" (The one where Laura went on national TV and told America that Alan Brady was bald.)
2. "That's My Boy?" (The one were Rob and Laura brought Ritchie home from the hospital and Rob was convinced they had the wrong baby.)
3. "It May Look Like a Walnut" (The one where Rob had a nightmare in which the world was being conquered by Danny Thomas.)
4. "The Curious Thing About Women" (The one where Rob, Buddy and Sally wrote a sketch about women being too curious and Laura lived down to it.)
5. "Never Bathe on a Saturday" (The one where Laura got her toe stuck in a bathtub faucet.)
6. "Where Did I Come From?" (The one where Laura went to the hospital to have a baby and Rob went insane.)
7. "October Eve" (The one where a painting for which Laura once posed turned up at a Manhattan art gallery.)
8. "All About Eavesdropping" (The one where Ritchie's toy intercom caused Rob and Laura to overhear their neighbors in conversation.)
9. "4 1/2" (The one where Rob and Laura got trapped in an elevator with Don Rickles.)
10. "The Alan Brady Show Goes to Jail" (The one where Rob, Laura, Buddy and Sally went to entertain at a prison and Rob got locked up.)

Those are ten pretty good episodes, though I might have swapped out the last three for three others.  But hey, it's Carl Reiner.  If he says those were the ten best, fine.