Julien Neel, the one-man quartet, favors us with a song from the turn of the century — and not this century…

Here's a little something I'm curious about — a very little something. No one outside the Trump family circle seems to know how wealthy he is. He used to quote all sorts of numbers and it was obvious from how often they changed that he was just making them up off the top of his oddly-haired head. But it's safe to say the guy ain't sending Melania to shop at Food 4 Less.

It's also pretty obvious — I don't think he even denies it since there's hard evidence — that he had Michael Cohen make that payoff to Stormy Daniels and then Cohen got reimbursed via a series of checks from Trump. Cohen's lawyers turned one over to investigators a week or two ago and they just found another one. Michael Monico, Cohen's lawyer, appeared on an MSNBC show today and displayed it. Here's some of what he said…

"The president of the United States wrote a check — as president — to Michael Cohen. That was part of a scheme to violate campaign finance [laws]," Monico said during a live appearance on The Beat with Ari Melber. "This was a scheme, in part, to defeat the election…and the first check, by the way, which was referenced in Mr. Cohen's testimony, was a $70,000 check, which I have with me today — a copy of it I have with me today. A $70,000 check written on the Donald J. Trump revocable trust.

"When Michael Cohen went to see the president for the first time in the White House in February of 2017…The president said to Michael, at that time, you will be getting the two checks soon. The two checks meaning the two $35,000 checks," Monico said. "And sure enough it was on Valentine's Day 2017."

Monico said Cohen claims the check was signed by Donald Trump Jr. and [Allen] Weisselberg [chief financial officer of the Trump Organization]. He added that Trump told Cohen that the two checks of $35,000 would be forthcoming at the meeting at the White House.

Why was this paid off in installments? This is the way you and I pay off debts when we're strapped for cash. Shouldn't Donald Trump, one of the world's wealthiest men he says, be able to pay back $130,000 in one check? And wouldn't one check that he'd rather not see be made public be preferable to several checks that he'd rather not see be made public?

Was the premise that one $130,000 check might be too easily connected to the $130,000 that was paid to Ms. Stormy, whereas a number of smaller amounts that totaled $130,000 would fool any investigators? This is kind of lame way to hide a transaction that Trump's lawyers insist was not illegal in the first place. Was the idea that it would look like a regular retainer paid to Cohen? I guess it's something like that but it sure didn't work, did it?

And seriously, did Trump not have the dough to take care of this right away and not make his then-loyal, "I'd take a bullet for Trump" attorney not have to wait months for reimbursement? And who was Trump waiting for to pay him so he could write those two checks for $35,000?

I have about ninety things to do today and posting on my blog is around #81…so you may not see much here today. To save me the task of doing it, see if you can find one article somewhere on the 'net about how Donald Trump is even a worse person than we thought. It shouldn't be hard. (He's bragging this morning about how some polls show he's hit a new high in support among Republicans. He seems to have given up on anyone else liking him.)

One thing to add about online cooking videos: Is there some law that says if you make one, you're required to put cayenne pepper in whatever you make? The pizza video I just posted was one of the few I've seen without it and I'm thinking the chef just plain forgot and is now going to be pulled over and ticketed by the Internet.

I even see people putting the stuff in biscuits or puddings or meals where even a professional fire-eater might not want "that little extra kick." Some of us don't want that kick anywhere. Some of us don't like spicy foods and hot sauces and having the inside of your mouth feel like a pottery kiln. If you do, fine. Me, I'm waiting for someone to invent a little bottle on every restaurant table that can remove the tabasco, hot peppers, Jalapenos, Sriracha, etc. Maybe at the same time, it could calm down Alex Jones.

I'll be back later. When, I cannot say.

This is a cooking video from someone who has spent a lot of time trying to learn how to make "New York style pizza" at home. I have the feeling this guy has learned how to do that about as well as it can be done…but I also have the reaction that it is clearly more trouble than it is worth. And unless you value your time as being close to worthless, it's not even a way to save money.

I find myself watching a lot of cooking videos these days and as a result, I have just about given up cooking myself. I was never very good at it and about 35% of the time, the end product was such a total disaster that a few bites into it, it went right into the garbage. I'm not a good cook and while I would enjoy the satisfaction of doing it myself, a better course of action for me would be to let some professional make my meal and for me to spend the time 'n' effort on something that will give me more satisfaction because I stand a better chance of having it turn out well.

I really like old photos of Las Vegas. Most of the pics on that page remind me how the place looked when I first began going there in the eighties.

In some, you'll see the Frontier, which was the first Vegas hotel I stayed in. It was closed and then imploded in 2007. Every year or two since, someone announces plans to build a new mega-resort on that land…and then they don't build it. It's a pretty expensive piece of real estate to be sitting empty all these years.

Hank Gillette sends this question my way…

As someone who has cast actors for animated cartoons, maybe you have some insight on this: Why do the people at Warner Animation keep recasting the parts in the DC animated universe?

For example, if you had the choice, why would you cast anyone other than Kevin Conroy as Batman? Is it because Kevin Conroy is too expensive? Is it to keep Kevin Conroy from getting too expensive? Is it just to keep any one actor too identified with a character, the way Mel Blanc was?

Well, there can be a number of reasons starting with the fact that creative control of corporate-owned properties keeps getting passed around the firm and not everyone who is in charge of some project may see the character(s) in the same light as those in charge of a previous project. They want to put their personal stamp on this project and that may involve abandoning much of what their predecessors did.

Or to come at it from another angle, someone doing a new Batman film or show may not like what Kevin Conroy did. That's not my opinion but it could be someone's.

Not long ago, I was contacted by a producer who thought a deal was 99% set for him to helm a new cartoon series starring a very famous character. This was not a character controlled by Time-Warner but it was one as famous as some of theirs.

Now, as you know if you follow this site, when someone in Hollywood tells you a project is "99% set," that means it's maybe 10% set, maybe less. It might happen but it's more likely that it will not, at least for a while. But I met with the guy and it quickly became clear, because he said it pretty explicitly, that he was determined to do such a unique, renovated, different take on the character — simultaneously taking it back to its primal roots and far from everything that had ever been done with it before.

Everyone, he believed, would hail him as the character's savior and greatest custodian ever. I'm hearing now that it ain't gonna happen but if it had, he wouldn't have wanted anyone who ever voiced (or wrote or drew, etc.) the character involved in HIS version. He was new to the character so everyone else had to be.

And of course, sometimes actors become unavailable…or they want too much money. I don't know that Kevin Conroy has ever done either but he was just your example and you wanted to know about how come that happens a lot there. It certainly has with some actors.

Since the great Mr. Blanc left us, at least ten different actors have done the voice of Bugs Bunny. I think some of them are better than others, don't you? If you were put in charge of a Bugs Bunny project there, might you say, "No, I don't want that guy, I want this guy?" And you're right: They don't want anyone to ever be The Voice of some character the way Mel was. Even if that person doesn't demand more money, he or she is a temp.

Batman, like Bugs and all these characters, are viewed as corporate assets for all eternity. Whoever does their voices now is just the person doing them now. Personally, I think they make a mistake by changing the voices and other things about the characters as often as they do. It makes the characters more generic, less special. But that's the way characters are treated when eighty different people control them and those eighty can be replaced by eighty others next year.

For more on this, listen to or watch the episode of Stu's Show I appeared on last week with my pal Bob Bergen. Bob has been the voice of Porky Pig in most but not all of Porky's appearances for the last several decades. As new Porky projects come up, he is often asked to audition for them. They have hundreds of hours of recordings of him doing Porky but every so often, he has to satisfy someone new that he can sound like The Pig. That's the way the game is played. Like most games in this world, some rules may not make sense but you either play by them or you don't play.

It will come as a surprise to…well, no one I can think of that Fox News is very much in the bag for Donald Trump. But it might come as a surprise to…well, again no one that I can think of just how "in the bag" they are for the guy. A new article by Jane Mayer details some of the more alarming ways. You can read the article here or if you don't feel like reading or get blocked by a firewall, you can read a summary of the some of the more outrageous parts here.

I had a post in work that I kept meaning to finish and put up here. But not for the first time or the last, my pal Ken Levine has said the same thing before I did and probably said it better. Go read Ken as he explains how to improve your life. [SPOILER ALERT: It involves recognizing that most pundits on TV don't know what the hell they're talking about…including some who tell you what you yearn to hear.]

This coming weekend, I will be a guest-type person at the San Diego Comic Fest, which is not to be confused with the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego. In fact, the whole point of the San Diego Comic Fest is not to be confused with the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego. I love 'em both but as they say, "Vive la différence!"

Comic-Con International started life in 1970 as The Golden State Comic Con in San Diego. Total attendance? Well, the official number is 300. I was there for one day of it and I thought it was a little more…but not too much more. It was small, it was intimate, it was exciting. It was also way too much fun to stay that size forever…and it didn't. It just got bigger and bigger…and these days, it's more like 135,000 — which is again, an official number I think is too low. It surely is if you add in the folks who don't make it into the convention center but who flood into San Diego just to be near it and to enjoy the street fair outside.

A few years ago, some of the founders of that convention (no longer involved in it) decided they missed the early days. They missed the intimacy and the focus on comic books in comic book form, instead of TV and movies. So they started the San Diego Comic Fest. You will find few (if any) movie or TV stars at Comic Fest. You will find few (if any) sold-out panels, long lines or problems securing a badge or a room. You will find a dealers' room that does not span two zip codes and a slate of programming, almost all which is about comics, science-fiction or animation.

I find it just as much fun as Comic-Con but in a different way. If you want to find it just as much fun as Comic-Con but in a different way, there's still time to sign up. All the info is at this website.

One other thing it has in common with its big, unaffiliated brother is that I appear on a lot of panels there. The entire schedule is on the webpage but here's what I'm doing those three days…

Friday, Mar 8, 2019 — 1:00 PM
Marvelmania: The 50th Anniversary (Palm A)
50 years have passed since Marvelmania International made its debut. The iconic fan magazine featured art from some of the comic industry's biggest icons and resonated with the fans. However, there are many stories to be told about the rise and fall of the iconic fan magazine. Join Mark Evanier, Mike Royer and Arlen Schumer for Marvelmania: The 50th Anniversary.

Friday, Mar 8, 2019 — 3:00 PM
Scott and Mark Comic Stories (Palm A)
Scott Shaw! and Mark Evanier are longtime friends who have shared many experiences in the comic industry. These guys are always informative and entertaining so we thought we should give them an hour to talk about comics.

Friday, Mar 8, 2019 — 4:00 PM
Scott and Mark Animation Stories (Palm A)
Scott Shaw! and Mark Evanier have worked together a lot in comics but they have also spent a lot of time together working in animation. We love these guys and we love their stories so sit down with them for an hour and hear some great stories about their time in animation.

Saturday, Mar 9, 2019 — 10:00 AM
Legends of Hanna-Barbera (Montgomery Theater)
Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera brought a host of classic, beloved cartoon shows to TV in their heyday and there are a lot of stories to be heard from behind scenes at Hanna-Barbera, so why not hear it from guys who were there? Please welcome Hanna-Barbera greats Tony Benedict and Willie Ito. Mark Evanier moderates.

Saturday, Mar 9, 2019 — 11:00 AM
The Editors Panel (Palm B)
Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes when you're working with the biggest names in comics? Well, you came to the right place. We are bringing together some of the comic industry's most seasoned editors to tell some very cool tales — Mark Evanier, Barbara Kesel and Chris Ryall.

Saturday, Mar 9, 2019 — Noon
Spotlight on Sergio Aragonés (Montgomery Theater)
Sergio Aragonés is a man who needs no introduction but we'll give him one anyway. Few would argue with calling him the world's greatest cartoonist, he has worked at MAD magazine for nearly 60 years, he has won just about every major industry award, he is an amazing entertainer and storyteller. Join us for the spotlight panel for our Guest of Honor, Sergio Aragonés.  Mark Evanier moderates.

Saturday, Mar 9, 2019 — 2:00 PM
Remembering Batton Lash (Lunar Cafe)
Batton Lash was a cartoonist that the comic book community adored. Sadly, he left this world too early, but his legacy endures. We invite all of you to hear stories from friends and collaborators as we celebrate the life of the late, great Batton Lash. Anina Bennett, Jackie Estrada, Mark Evanier, Paul Guinan, Rob Salkowitz, Arlen Schumer, Scott Shaw!

Saturday, Mar 9, 2019 — 4:00 PM
Celebrating 70 Years of Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil (Montgomery Theater)
In 1949, Warner Bros. animation great Bob Clampett created a puppet-based television program about a boy in a beany cap and a seasick sea serpent. Audiences all over the world were hooked and even Albert Einstein would cut lectures short when it was Time for Beany. A decade later, the animated Beany and Cecil Show premiered. Bob Clampett's son Rob Clampett and daughter Ruth Clampett are joined by Mark Evanier, Scott Shaw! and Willie Ito to celebrate the 70th and 60th anniversaries of these beloved shows.

Sunday, Mar 10, 2019 — 11:00 AM
Thundarr The Barbarian (Montgomery Theater)
In the early 1980s, Steve Gerber joined forces with Ruby-Spears Productions and brought forth the fan favorite cartoon, Thundarr the Barbarian. The short-lived show attracted a cult following and was celebrated for its creative storylines and characters. Join series writers Mark Evanier and Buzz Dixon as they tell everything and anything about crafting the stories behind Thundarr the Barbarian.

I hope to see a lot of you there. We will actually have time to sit and talk.

Dealing with a lot of birthday wishes this morning and advice not to feel old upon hitting the age of 67. Believe me, I don't. Even though I'm having trouble walking due to foot and knee problems, the rest of me thinks I'm 24.

As I've written here lately, the older I get, the more annoyed by friends who hit what seems like an advanced age to them — I know one guy who started doing this at 50 — and start acting like their lives and/or careers are nearly over.

I just do not understand why people do that to themselves. Nature will make you old enough without you helping it along.

Things change in this world. They always have, always will. They changed between the time I was 18 and 21. As I tell all my friends who are around my age, you have two choices: You can change as the world changes and accept what's different. Or you can moan about how the world you knew is gone and you're a dinosaur in the current one.

Years ago, I was friends with a great comic book artist who was super-ultra-mega sensitive about the fact that younger men (and even — gasp! — women) were invading his field. He kept using the "d" word, constantly referring to himself as a dinosaur, thinking everyone in the industry regarded him as one. Editors still loved his work but they (and all his friends, including me) got a little sick of him setting himself up for extinction.

Once, I honestly praised his latest job and he shrugged and said, "I don't know why I bother. I should just crawl into the tar pits and get it over with." Since then, I've tried real hard not to do that. And now, I find myself in an interesting year for me in terms of fiftieth anniversaries. Fifty years ago, it was 1969…a year when an awful lot of things changed in my life. Taking them in no particular order…

1969 was the year I graduated from High School, which meant that my daily routine changed, I lost a whole set of friends and I could no longer think of myself as a kid who was intent on someday becoming a professional writer. (Though I graduated in June, the 50 Year Reunion of my class is tonight. I'm not attending.)

1969 was the year I decided to do something about actually becoming a professional writer and began putting my work out there and, happily, selling things I'd written — not everything, of course, but enough to keep at it. So this year marks fifty years not only as a professional writer but as a professional freelance writer, which is like being the world's oldest mayfly. Mayflies have a life expectancy of about 27 hours, which is even less than members of the Trump cabinet.

1969 was the year I got to know the man who went on to become my best friend in the male category and still holds that title: Sergio Aragonés. We met in '68 but didn't have enough contact for him to learn my name until 1969.

1969 was the year I met Jack Kirby. The other day on Stu's Show, I misspoke and referred to Jack as my "mentor." By some definition, I guess he was and I sure learned a lot from him, as much about being a human being as being a writer, when I went to work for him the following year. But I don't like that word "mentor" because it's usually claimed by someone who had a relationship with a person of greatness and they want everyone to assume they inherited some of that greatness just because they talked with the guy or got him coffee.

1969 was the year I became financially independent from my parents and paid off the mortgage on the house in which we lived. 1969 was the year I was accepted into U.C.L.A. 1969 was the year a young lady decided she liked me enough to terminate my virginity. (That may be Too Much Information for some of you but that's a pretty big, life-changing moment for most of us.)

So I have trouble accepting that 1969 was half a century ago. Seems more like a decade ago, maybe two at most. I don't believe in lying about your age or trying to disguise yourself as someone much, much younger but you don't have to feel you're the age on your drivers license. You also don't have to feel the way someone thinks you're supposed to feel at your age. Me, I feel 24 —

— except when my knee replacement is giving me trouble. That's when I think they stole mine out of the Triceratops skelton at the Natural History Museum. It's the only way in which I ever feel like a dinosaur.

My man Fred Kaplan on what happened in the big Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi. Short answer: Nothing. But Fred will tell you why nothing happened and why that's probably a good thing.

It's March, it's March…and that means that my favorite soup is on the menu at all Souplantation restaurants across the country. In some places, Souplantation goes under the name Sweet Tomatoes. A place that features this soup is by any name a good place to dine this month.

Here's a map page that will allow you to find out if there's one near you. If not, you should probably sell your house and move to some city that has a Souplantation. You can always move back when the month is over.

Beginning in 1980, Hanna-Barbera produced a Richie Rich cartoon show that aired on Saturday Mornings on ABC. The show ran through four seasons and three names. Fred Silverman, who was then in charge at the network, liked to "marry" two or more unrelated shows to create a block. The theory was that while you might be inclined to watch a half-hour of Richie Rich followed by a half-hour of Scooby Doo, you were less likely to change channels during the one-hour Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show. I have no idea how valid this theory was.

So the first and second seasons, it was The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show which ran an hour and gave each element thirty minutes. The third season, it was The Pac-Man/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show, which was a 90-minute show with each component getting 30 minutes. And the fourth season, it was The Monchhichis/Little Rascals/Richie Rich Show with the Monchhichis getting half the hour and the other half being split between The Little Rascals and Richie.

The show was developed for television by a fine gentleman named Norman Maurer, who had drawn comic books before he moved to Hollywood, managed The Three Stooges, produced movies and worked on other cartoon shows. Norman was the story editor the first season and I wrote several episodes for him. When the second season started, Norman was too busy with his ninety-six different other endeavors so the story editor job was given to a very funny man named Bob Ogle.

Bob and the folks at ABC didn't get along and after a few weeks and by mutual agreement, he was rotated to another show on another network. Replacing him was Jack Mendelsohn, another former comic book guy and another fine gentleman. I didn't work on the second season.

When the third season started, Jack was brought back as story editor and went to work but after about two weeks, CBS picked up Meatballs & Spaghetti, a cartoon show that Jack had created for Marvel Productions. Jack wanted to go work on that so he asked out of his Richie Rich contract and ABC said they'd release him if — and only if — an acceptable alternative could be signed in his place. They gave Hanna-Barbera a list of acceptable alternatives and the only one on it who might be available was Yours Truly.

"Might be" is right. At the time — this would be February of 1982 when I got the offer — I was a staff writer on That's Incredible!, which was an hour-long (and pretty popular) weekly show on ABC's Monday night schedule. By any standard, that was a full-time job but I was also still doing a few comic book scripts for various publishers as well as animation scripts for Ruby-Spears, plus occasional shows for Sid and Marty Krofft. I still don't know why I said yes except that Jack asked me real nicely.

But I said yes on one condition, which was that I wanted to be paid by the show instead of by the week. H-B usually paid their story editors by the week and that might sound like a better arrangement for the story editors. If the network started demanding lots of rewrites or they completely rejected scripts, a job that might have taken twenty weeks to complete could stretch to twenty-five or more. So didn't it make more sense to get paid per week? I decided it didn't, at least for me.

A story editor's contract there did not specify a minimum or maximum number of weeks. It just said you'd work until all the episodes for the season were declared done in the opinion of…someone. While freelancing for the studio, I had observed that Bill Hanna, who was in charge of schedules, often manipulated them to cut down on how long his company would be paying you. His right to adjust those schedules was absolute…and it kind of had to be.

Once a script was completed and approved, it went to an assembly line of artists, some in the H-B studio, others around the globe working in studios that had subcontracting deals with H-B. Wherever they were, they were being paid by the hour or the week. To Bill Hanna and his associates, there was no greater disaster in the vast H-B production machine than artists sitting around on the payroll with nothing to draw.

So let's say I was three weeks ahead on Richie Rich scripts and suddenly, the Scooby Doo show was having trouble getting scripts approved by the network. There might suddenly be a day when the artists working on Scooby — who might be in the H-B building or might be in Korea or the Philippines or anywhere — would have nothing to animate. They couldn't allow that to happen so Mr. Hanna, without consulting me or anyone, would send all the available, approved Richie Rich scripts — or whatever other scripts he could find — off to be done by the Scooby crew.

The next morning, I'd get a memo that my show was no longer three weeks ahead. It was now, shockingly, a week behind so I suddenly had to work like crazy. If I was going to be juggling so many different jobs, I needed to cut down on that kind of surprise and I thought getting paid by the show might do it. It would give Mr. Hanna some incentive to rush some other story editor since he wouldn't be saving money by rushing me.

It was not a bad idea but it led to a very messy, protracted negotiation over my fee since H-B had either never done that before or hadn't done it lately. Finally though, I got roughly what I wanted and I went to work.

This has been Part One of the story. One of these days — no promises as to when — I'll get around to writing Part Two.

Here's something that struck me as…well, not so much odd as puzzling. In 1974, Walter Matthau and Jack Benny were cast in The Sunshine Boys, the movie version of Neil Simon's play of the same name.

Benny died before the film began shooting and he was replaced by his lifelong friend, George Burns. MGM should probably have put Burns up for an Oscar in the Best Actor category but they figured he and Matthau would split the votes of those who liked the movie and neither would win or even get nominated. So they put Matthau up for Best Actor and Burns (and Richard Benjamin) up for Best Supporting Actor.

This may have been unfair to Mr. Benjamin who did not get nominated. Matthau though was indeed nominated for Best Actor but he was beaten by Jack Nicholson for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest…and how could he not be? I'll bet he also finished behind Al Pacino for Dog Day Afternoon, as well. But Mr. Burns was nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role and as you'll see in the clip below, he won.

We never know why the Academy voters vote as they do and it would be silly to suggest they all have the same thinking process or reasons. It did however seem like people liked the idea of an old guy finally getting recognized this way and they thought George would give a great, memorable acceptance speech.

He was indeed a favorite. The folks who seat the nominees at the telecast have no actual information on who's going to win but you'll notice they gave Burns the seat that provided the quickest access to the stage. Maybe that was because he was the oldest nominee that evening but maybe they also suspected he'd need to get up there. I remember noticing the seating at the time.

I also remember hearing Burns start his speech and I was pretty sure I knew how he was going to end it. I was certain his last line would be something like, "The only thing that would make me happier tonight would be if I was sitting home right now watching my dear friend Jack Benny win this." But as you can see, he didn't mention his best friend at all and I still don't know why…

I just watched an hour or so of Michael Cohen testimony and the reactions to it. Cohen seems like one of those guys who always sounds like he's lying. If he told you his mother was dead, you'd think, "That guy's lying." And then if ten minutes later, he told you she was alive, you'd think, "That guy's lying again." In some ways, the most damning thing evident today about Donald Trump was that he employed a guy like that to represent him for so long.