Is there a TV show on these days that hasn't had Chris Christie on? He's been pushing his book, which ought be called Donald Trump Is One Of My Closest Friends And Here Are Some Of The Shitty Things He's Done To Me And Others and he's everywhere. When they unmask The Rabbit on The Masked Singer, it's not going to be Joey Fatone. It's going to be Chris Christie, I tell ya.

I find the former governor of New Jersey kinda fascinating. He's a good talker and he's skilled at intertwining honest admissions with dishonest ones or, when he so chooses, dodging a question altogether. If he hadn't gotten caught in that Bridgegate flap, he might have wrested the Republican nomination from Trump. Maybe. Since he did get caught, he left office with an approval rating of something like 15%, which is like two points below botulism. It makes him one of those political figures who are fascinating because they really have nothing to lose.

Here's Matt Taibbi on Christie's book. The gov ain't going away quietly. I'm not sure he's capable of doing anything quietly.

Lots of people sing this song but no one sings this song like Audra McDonald sings this song…

Okay, so here's the hooker story from my latest trip to Las Vegas.  I always seem to have one…

Wednesday night of last week, my plane got in around 9:15.  By the time I was checked into the hotel, unpacked and done with e-mails I had to send, it was 11:15 PM and I decided I needed some dinner.  I went online to the website of Giordano's, a Chicago-based chain that makes terrific deep dish pizzas and — lucky me! — has an outlet in Vegas, right in front of Bally's Hotel and Casino. I ordered an individual-size pie which, their website told me, would be ready at Midnight.

At 11:30, I left my hotel and began the hike over to pick up my order.  On the way, I passed a lot of those folks in colorful costumes who line the streets in touristy areas, hoping you'll tip them for posing with you for a photo. There was a homemade Mickey Mouse and a homemade Minnie.  There were shirtless body builders.  There were almost-shirtless showgirls.  There was a guy made up as Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies.  Characters like that.

There were also guys trying to corral tourists — mostly male but some boy/girl couples — into agreeing to be whisked off to some strip club.  I heard one of the salesguys say, "While you're there, every third drink is free."  I don't drink but if I did, that offer would make me decide, "My, the drinks there must be very overpriced." And if two drinks are your limit, the club is now trapping you into a third which, among its other impacts on you, might cause you to spend a lot more money on the ladies than you intend.

One notch down the food chain from the strip club barkers, you had a couple of hustlers offering to fix single guys like me up on a "date." Having once been a teenage boy, I kinda understand the willingness to pay money for sex. I've never done it but I understand the feeling of necessity. What I don't get is committing to it without seeing the person you're going to be having sex with.  What if Ernest Borgnine has a surviving twin sister who's turned to prostitution?  Think about that but not for too long.

When I passed one of those fellows without showing interest, he yelled after me, "Don't like girls, huh?  Then how about some pot?  Everybody likes pot!"  Always nice to see an entrepreneur who knows how to diversify his business.

And then there were the dates themselves who had cut out the middle-men: Women who couldn't have looked more like hookers if they were holding "Will hump for money" signs. A couple of them struck me as ladies who could only make that sale to men who hadn't seen them. But a couple of them looked like if you were in the market for that service, you couldn't have done much better.

I navigated past all of these individuals and thoughts to get to the intersection of W. Flamingo Rd. and Las Vegas Boulevard.  There are elevated pedestrian walkways connecting these corners.  You do not cross on street level.  You take an escalator, elevator or stairs up to the walkway, cross up there, then take an escalator, elevator or stairs back down to street level. A trek like that would take me to my pizza.

The escalators were all outta commission and so was my knee which didn't like the whole concept of stairs just then, causing me to head for the elevator. The elevators don't get a lot of usage because they're out of the way and many people don't know they're there or that they don't double as urinals.  This one seemed clean so I got in, pressed "2" and just before the doors closed, another man slipped in with me.  He was ragged with zombie eyes…probably homeless, possibly crazy.

As we rode up, he was talking to someone — maybe even me — about killing someone — maybe even me. I wasn't particularly worried about him doing that between the first floor and the second but you don't want to engage with a being like that.

I got out on 2, relatively unkilled and walked across the pedestrian bridge to the elevator that would take me down. When it came, I noticed my unsavory elevator mate coming towards it so I stepped back and let him get in by himself. I figured I'd take the next ride down or maybe the one after.

Just then, a short black lady — obviously marketing her body that evening — started to board the elevator. I stopped her with a whispered "Don't get in."

She didn't get in but asked me, "Why not?"

I nodded at the guy and just then, as the elevator doors closed, he pointed at her and yelled, "I'm gonna fuckin' kill you, bitch!" And then the doors shut tight.

She thanked me and said, "You saved my life!" I said I didn't think so but maybe we both oughta wait a few minutes before the ride down. "Let's give him time to wander back to his penthouse suite," I said. So that's how I wound up talking to a Vegas streetwalker for about five minutes. It was an interesting five minutes.

She was very young and quite attractive and it was all I could do to not say, "What the hell are you doing in this profession?" She asked me where I was from — I suspect they all ask that — and when I said Los Angeles, she said, "We have something in common! I'm from San Diego!"

That's right: We had something in common! We were both from Southern California! Just us and 23.8 million other people.

I told her I was going to San Diego next weekend and, well aware she was leading up to offering the rental of any or all of her body parts, I decided to preempt that by saying, "We can't talk long. My girl friend's back in the room starving and I need to get back there with a pizza before she eats the little soaps in the bathroom."

It was a lie — Amber was back home in L.A. — but the lady bought it and the trajectory of the conversation changed. "Are you going there for Comic-Con?" she asked. I told her no; Comic-Con's not 'til July. "Though I have been to Comic-Con a lot." She asked me how many of them I'd been to and I said, "All of them." That was not a lie…and boy, does it impress the ladies.

(Fun Fact: She told me her age and the year she was born, the Guests of Honor at Comic-Con included Ramona Fradon, Neil Gaiman, Gil Kane, Stan Lee, Irv Novick, Harvey Pekar, Stan Sakai, Joe Sinnott and Jeff Smith.)

She told me she loved San Diego but she couldn't find work there that paid decently so a year ago, she moved to Vegas where she also couldn't find a job that paid well enough…until she turned to her current occupation. I asked, "Do you like it?" She said, "Most of the time. Some guys are psycho but so were some guys I waited on when I worked at Sunglass Hut."

I thought but did not say, "Yeah, but I have a hunch there was a lower rate of disease transmission at Sunglass Hut."

About then, it occurred to me that anyone passing us, as lots of people were, would assume she and I were negotiating prices. One time late at night in New York, I got into a conversation with a lady of the same vocation at the corner of W. 56th Street and 7th. Some friends of mine were coming from the Carnegie Deli and they spotted me there and probably still think I was — you should excuse this choice of word — dickering.

That's when I fibbed again to this lady in Vegas whose name I never got. I said, "Listen, I have to really save a woman's life — a woman in dire need of pizza." We took the elevator down and since there was no sign of you-know-who, said our goodbyes. She went her way and I went to Giordano's and got my order.

On my way back with it, I took the walkway again and spotted her back up there, talking with a fellow I guess was a potential customer — or maybe he was on his way to pick up a pizza. She saw me and she waved and yelled, "Thanks again!" I yelled back, "Any time!" And a lot of folks heard that and I knew just what they were thinking.

I've complained about this before and I'll complain about it again and nothing will change but — well, just let me rant. That, after all, is why God and Al Gore invented the Internet…

I have a lot of trouble with hotel showers. I've stayed in fancy, expensive hotels and cheap, crummy ones. I'm usually not happy with the showers in either but generally have less problems with those in the cheap, crummy ones. In the upscale kind, design seems to be way more important than practicality. I can imagine the chief planner for a new hotel talking with the fellow who was brought in to design the bathrooms. They're looking at the prototype and the following words are spoken…

"I don't know, Leon. This shower you've built looks like it would be real easy for someone to fall in it and injure themselves…and there's no place to put your shampoo and conditioner when you're in there…and water's going to spritz all over the bathroom…"

"True. But look how nice the lines are…how beautiful the walls are…"

"You're right. Okay, let's order the parts to install 1,200 of them in the new building."

I probably should have started this by saying that I don't like these shower/tub combinations and I wonder how many people use the tub function at all.

The tubs all seem pretty small unless you specifically upgrade to some sort of "spa suite" with whirlpool jets, and such accommodations are usually costly and often unavailable. I don't like tubs anyway, partly because I don't fit in most of them and partly because even when I was younger, they always seemed tough to get into and tougher to get out of. When I travel alone to some hotels, I often book the cheapest room not so much to save money but because they usually have a shower that isn't also a tub.

Often at the desk, the check-in clerk asks if I'd like a free courtesy upgrade to the next level room. I always ask, "Does the next level room have a shower/tub combination?" They always say it does and I always decline the upgrade and they always look surprised. Above and beyond not trying to impersonate a bathtub, I would like my shower to meet four requirements…

1. I would like it to be designed so I can take a shower without spraying water all over the bathroom and having to step out into Lake Mead.
2. I would like it to have some sort of rack or shower caddy so I can have a place to put my little bottle of shampoo, my little bottle of conditioner, my large bar of soap and anything else I might need in there like a razor or my tube of facial scrub. I'm really amazed how many showers have no place whatsoever to put your necessities when you're in there and naked and wet.
3. I would like it to have a place to hang a small towel or washcloth.
4. And I would like it to have a couple of smartly-placed grab bars. Even those of us who don't qualify for what we used to call a "handicapped" room and now call an "accessible" room have the capacity to slip 'n' fall on wet, unfamiliar flooring.

That's all I want: Just four things. Not too much to ask, I think. Now with those in mind, let's evaluate the room I had on my most recent Vegas stay, and keep in mind that this is a new room in a recently-refurbished hotel. I'll embed a photo of the shower and fix things so you can make it larger by clicking on it…

So what do we see there? Taking them in reverse order, there are no grab bars…nothing to hold into if you feel you're going to fall. I don't get why those are not standard equipment in every shower. We all understand the upside of having them. What's the downside? The price? They're twenty bucks.

So we don't have #4.  We also don't have #3.  No bar on which to hang a face cloth or anything.  We kinda have #2.  See those little corner shelves?  My shampoo. conditioner and soap are on the top one and they fit, just barely, mostly because the bottles are tiny.  I'll give them half-credit for the shelves.  I guess they thought they didn't need bigger ones because they installed that little dispenser that's filled with shampoo, conditioner and body wash, all of unknown brand or formulation.

If you've been looking at the photo I took, maybe you've noticed by now that something else is missing.  Can you see it?  Or maybe I should ask, "Can you not see it?"  What's missing in this shower?  There is a showerhead but I didn't get it in the shot.  Something else is missing.

Give up?  A door.  There's no shower door to close and keep the water inside.

Instead — and I think this was deliberate — they installed shower heads that don't have much force so you have to stand right up close to them, putting you as far from the entrance as you could be. Maybe with a small showerer, that would work but the water was bouncing off me and going right out the opening where a door would have been. Even a plastic curtain would have stopped a lot of it. When I stepped out, it was like stepping into a wading pool. I threw down all the towels I wasn't using to dry myself and they soaked up some of the H2O but it was still messy, a bit unsafe for me and a lot of extra work for the maid.

I don't get why they make a problem out of something as basic as taking a shower. Yeah, I could ask for one of those "accessible" rooms but I feel like I might be taking one away from someone who'll check in later and really needs it. Also, there are drawbacks to them, like the last time I stayed in one, the bed was so low that it made getting into bed and out of it more difficult. And in that one, while I had grab bars, the shower also had no door on it.

I will probably complain about this again and then, as now, nothing will change so I'll complain about it again. And again. And again. And though while nothing will change, complaining about it will make me feel like I'm doing something about this. As we all know, feeling like you're solving a problem is almost as good as actually solving it. That's kinda what I'm doing here.

Coming Tomorrow: This trip's hooker story.

I always wanted to embed a video with 11,000 marbles in it…

The best commentary I've come across so far on Trump's State of His Greatness speech tonight comes from Ezra Klein. Here's just one paragraph of it…

I liked when he called on the country to "reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good." But then I remembered America is only 10 days past the longest government shutdown in history, which Trump triggered when he refused to compromise or cooperate with Democrats. And I remembered that Trump's acting chief of staff just said the president is willing to do it again.

And I remember Trump ranting about "Crooked Hillary" and beaming when his crowds started chanting "Lock her up! Lock her up!" This is the guy who's against investigation and revenge.

I'm not sure anything ever gets changed by these things. Trump sounds incoherent when he's not reading from a prepared text, boring when he is and inaccurate in both circumstances.

So far, I've found fact-check articles on Politifact, The Washington Post, ABC News, CNN News, The New York Times, NBC News, The Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, National Public Radio and FactCheck.org.

They all seem to have found that most of his claims of economic good news involved either dubious statistics or taking credit for trends that began (and often performed better) in previous administrations. It's about what you'd expect of the guy. And every time he talked of the two parties working together, I found myself thinking he was saying "Both parties have to work together to pass my agenda."

Like I said: Nothing gets changed.

I've been to Vegas with friends and alone. What I like about alone is that for the time I'm there, I can pretty much live by my own time clock. If I go to a show, I of course have to be a certain place at a certain hour…and I do have to check out of the hotel and get myself to the airport at a specific time. But other than that, I can sleep when I want to sleep, eat when I want to eat, work or take a walk when I choose, etc.

This doesn't work so well at home. My cleaning lady comes when she comes. My assistant John comes when he can. I can't take a five-minute walk at 5 AM and get a hamburger. I have appointments. In Vegas though, I hang out the Do Not Disturb sign, plug in the laptop and once I do those two things, I can write three hours, nap for four, go get something to eat when my stomach demands, write another page or three, take a walk when my legs seem to need it, etc. I can even be around people if I like.

Around 3 AM one day/night on my latest trip, I suddenly realized I hadn't really interacted with another human being in person for a good twenty-four hours. A fellow at a place called Lobster Me sold me a lobster roll with the absolute minimum of conversation and that was all I'd eaten, all I'd communicated. So I left the computer and went downstairs. With no particular destination in mind, I walked through a few hotels, searching for something light to eat and maybe someone to talk to for a few minutes.

After wandering a brief while, I found myself at a lounge show where a gent seated at a piano was playing the Billy Joel song, "Piano Man." He was surrounded by maybe a hundred people, standing or sitting, most holding pretty large beverages and having just the best time. I don't drink — never have — and I'm often uncomfy around those who do but this crowd seemed mellow and in control. The performer was singing the first person lines from the song…

And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone

And then everyone in the place — including, once I caught on, me — joined in on this part…

Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you got us feeling alright

And we went through the whole song that way as a very happy group experience — a group that was probably a lot of strangers only minutes before. I don't know who you'd call the Greatest Entertainer Working Today — Springsteen? Beyonce? Regis Philbin? — but whoever it is, they couldn't have made that audience any happier than the guy who was at that keyboard. And it did occur to me that he probably does that same bit three or four times a night, five or six nights a week.

Maybe it's standard to do "Piano Man" that way in bars. I've been in so few bars in my life, I wouldn't know. I just know that I wandered into that lounge in no particular need of cheering-up. I was fine going in but I was finer going out. In a little all-night cafe in the same casino. I got a cup of chicken noodle soup to go, then I went back to my room and resumed a script. I don't know why that little sing-along in the lounge made me feel so good but it did.

Here's a bit I thought was very funny on David Letterman's show back on NBC and I believe the date of it was November 20, 1991. It involved the Rockettes from Radio City Music Hall and the one who speaks is Dottie Belle — isn't that a great name for a Rockette? — who was part of the troupe from 1974 to 2000. In this article she wrote about it, she said they took 60 Rockettes to Dave's show but I only count 58 in the video.

Reportedly, a cameraman sustained a kick to the head as he shot either this bit or another similar stunt in the same episode. If true, it was worth it…

Whoa, what's this?  "Vegas Diary – Part 1?"  Didn't I post "Vegas Diary – Part 1" on this blog a few weeks ago?  Yes, as you confirmed if you just clicked that link.  So what's the deal here?

Simple:  This is Part 1 of a new Vegas Diary.  After I was in San Jose and Santa Cruz, I Southwested it back to Las Vegas for a few more days of writing in a cheap room on the Strip, walking around a lot, keeping weird hours and, of course, running into hookers.  Yes, I have a hooker story this time and it'll be in Part 3.

So I stayed in that town until all eyes focused on this year's Super Bowl and my plane home took off just before the kickoff.  I thought I'd get a nearly-empty airport and flight but as it turned out, everything was as jammed as usual.  It's just that everyone was watching the Super Bowl on every piece of technology on which someone could watch the Super Bowl.

I spent most of this trip alternately writing in the room and taking long walks. Friday evening, I had a wee bit of a scare: My iPhone stopped working as a phone. No one I called could hear me nor could anyone who called me hear me. I couldn't go two more days there without a working phone so I jumped on the Apple Store website and found an open Genius Bar appointment at the location they have in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace.

I walked over there, they took me early and I walked out fifteen minutes later with my phone working properly. All it took was opening it up, cleaning out some dust where the microphone is and then doing a factory reset. Shoulda thought of the reset myself. I might have spared myself the long, long trek through that mall. I also might have spared myself a slice of real disappointing pizza.

On my way outta that endless corridor of merchants, I passed the Caesars Palace food court and spotted a stand for DiFara's Pizza. Do you know about DiFara's Pizza? If not, go up to five long-time New Yorkers and ask them where to get the best pizza in town. You might get five different answers, each from someone who'll tell you you'd be f'in' nuts to go anywhere else. But at least one of those answers if not all will be DiFara's Pizza — either of its two locations in Brooklyn.

In the Midwood store, a man hailed as a true artist of the pizza — Dom DeMarco — made every pizza himself by hand for decades. In the last few years, he's trained an assistant and also trained whoever runs the DiFara Pizza in Williamsburg. The standard is said to be as high as ever and five months ago, Dave "One bite, everybody knows the rules" Portnoy went there and gave it his highest rating. (Here's the video. Some of his remarks on the ethnicity of the neighborhood will not endear him to you.)

I have never been there. Why? Because from Times Square (where I usually stay) to the original DiFara's is over an hour on the subway, whereas it's 17 minutes to my fave N.Y, pizza place, John's of Bleecker Street. Mr. Portnoy gave DiFara Pizza a 9.4 and he gave John's a 9.3. Is the longer ride worth pizza that might (might, mind you!) be a tenth of a point better? I say no…but I've long been curious.

So I had to check: Did the DiFara's in Caesars have any connections to the one in Brooklyn?  Yes.  Signs proclaimed they were one and the same, promising the same recipe developed by Mr. DeMarco.

I wasn't expecting 9.4 pizza.  All I wanted was better pizza than you usually find in a food court…and what I got there was not unlike Little Caesar's.  Well, why shouldn't it be?  I was in Caesars Palace.  But I don't think that's what all those New Yorkers rave about.  That was the only real disappointment of the trip.

Not long ago in this post, I told a tale from back in 2013 when I was in Las Vegas with a lady I liked a lot. The other day, I told a friend the story of how that lady and I got to Vegas that weekend and the friend said, "Oh, you've got to tell that part on your blog!" So here is that part on my blog…

On Tuesday, May 28 of that year, I flew back to Indiana for meetings on The Garfield Show, which I was then working on. Muncie, Indiana is where Garfield's creator Jim Davis lives and works and during the thirty some-odd years I've been involved with The Cat, I've occasionally had to fly back there for planning meetings. The Garfield Show was produced and animated in France and some of the key people from there were also headed for this conference in Muncie — a much more difficult trip for them than it was for me.

So on 5/28, I flew Delta to Memphis, changed planes and continued on to Indianapolis. I rented a car there and drove to a Hyatt near the airport where I spent the night. The next morning, I took the rental car back to the airport and exchanged it for one that worked better, then drove to Muncie, Indiana, stopping en route at a great, not-there-anymore barbecue place for lunch. Later that day, I checked into a motel in Muncie and that evening, Jim, his wife Jill, some of the folks from France and I dined at a country club where Jim's a member. No, we did not have lasagna.

Thursday, May 30, I checked out of the motel, then spent all day at Jim's studio discussing vital Garfield matters. We all went to dinner at a local restaurant that evening where again, we did not have lasagna. I then drove back to Indianapolis and checked back into that Hyatt by the airport for the night.

The next day, I was not flying home. I was flying to Las Vegas to spend the weekend there with this friend of mine. She and her current beau might be happier if I didn't give her name here so we'll call her Kathy. We're still friends. We're just involved with other people now.

From here on, much of this story is me bragging about the rest of the travel arrangements I made. It will all sound trivial and No Big Deal to you but at the time, I was insufferably pleased with myself at what I'd been able to configure. Keep in mind that none of these flight numbers correspond to current flights and the date of this was Friday, May 31, 2013. Here was the dual itinerary for that day…

• 1:30 PM EDT: Mark arrives at Indianapolis International Airport. He turns in his rental car, checks his baggage and secures his boarding pass for Flight 619 on Frontier Airlines, scheduled to depart at 3:41 PM.
• 3:41 PM EDT: Mark's flight takes off from Indianapolis, heading for Denver International Airport.
• 3:00 PM PDT: Kathy arrives at San Francisco International Airport, checks her baggage, claims her boarding pass, (etc.) for Virgin Air Flight 910, scheduled to depart at 4:45 PM.
• 4:20 PM MDT: Mark's plane lands in Denver, Colorado and he changes to Frontier Airlines Flight 787 which departs at 5:00 PM.
• 5:00 PM MDT: Mark's flight takes off from Denver, heading for McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
• 4:45 PM PDT: Kathy's flight takes off from San Francisco, heading for McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
• 5:53 PM PDT: Mark's flight arrives at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas at gate D16.
• 5:55 PM PDT: Kathy's flight arrives at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas at gate D18 which is next to gate D16. They are just far enough apart so an airplane pulling into one will not prevent another plane from pulling into the other.
• Though they are flying in from different cities on different airlines, Kathy and Mark arrive at adjoining gates at almost the exact same time.

I don't know about you but I think that's kind of romantic. I imagined us running towards each other, her hair bouncing as she runs, and we embrace there in the airport. I knew it wouldn't actually work like that. For one thing, I'd be toting a heavy carry-on with my laptop in it. But doesn't it sound like one of those glorious reunion moments you see in movies? I decided it would be a personal triumph if I could pull it off; if we would achieve simultaneous arrival.

Before the day, I e-mailed Kathy a detailed plan along with her ticket info. I think she thought I was kind of looney but that was some (not all) of the basis for our whole relationship. At least, I hope not all. She was willing to go along with it and she followed her instructions to the letter. Virgin Air did nothing to foil my scheme. They took off on time. They landed a few minutes early. They did everything right, which is probably why there's no more Virgin Air.

On my end, it wasn't so simple.

I got to the airport in Indianapolis right on time, only to be informed that my flight had been rescheduled. Instead of leaving at 3:41, I was told it would be 6 PM and the fellow at the ticket counter suggested it might be even later. It was one of those cases where the plane on which I'd be flying was in another part of the country where there were delays due to weather. During the day, it went from one city to another and another and another before it got to Indianapolis and the problems were between the first two cities.

I asked the man, "Has Frontier considered investing in a second airplane?" He chuckled and said something like, "Oh, if only we could afford it."

Since I was now going to be getting to Denver at least two hours and forty minutes later than planned, what would happen to my connecting flight to Vegas? I asked him that and he said, "You'll miss it." I believe this man has since gone to work for hotels.com under the name Captain Obvious.

He informed me that since they weren't sure when I'd get to Denver, they couldn't (or wouldn't) reschedule the second leg of my journey. Once they knew, they would figure it out…and I should discuss this with the attendant at the gate when I arrived there.

"But I will get to Las Vegas tonight," I said in a voice desperately in need of reassurance. "We'll do our best, sir," he replied. It was that unlikely. I asked about other flights that might get me there that evening. There didn't seem to be any on Frontier and when I set up my laptop at a table in the airport food court and checked online, there didn't seem to be any on any other airline.

The food court was where I would wait and I had a lot of waiting to do…and rethinking. Like, the hotel room in Vegas was in my name. Could I arrange for Kathy to check into it without me and my credit card?

I sent Kathy a text message explaining that my genius plan (ha!) had run into a few problems but she should get on the plane and await further instructions. There would be some on her phone by the time she landed in Vegas, I told her. I really hoped there would be but at that moment, I had no idea what they would be, hopefully not "Find another guy to spend the weekend with."

I turned back to my laptop and buried myself in a script. Every so often, I'd glance over at the flight board that announced arrivals and departures. Flight 619 was now scheduled to leave at, fittingly, 6:19. A check of the Frontier schedule (available online) indicated that if it arrived in Denver on time, I might (note the ominous italics) catch a flight that would get me to Vegas just after Midnight. Maybe.

But then the 6:19 departure turned into 7:05. Then ten minutes later, it was 6:19 again. Then 7:22.

Around then, I was distracted by visitors. The producers from France — the one I'd met with in Muncie — spotted me there at my table in the food court. Their plane back to Paris was delayed, too. We sat and ate bad pizza and talked for around an hour and a half. Around 3:35, we said our goodbyes (again) and they headed for the international side of the terminal to wait there. Realizing it was about the time I expected to be aboard my flight to Denver, I turned to check on the latest departure time for Flight 619…

…and it wasn't there. Nowhere on the flight board was it listed. I hauled out my cell phone and used an app called Flight Board to see what it said…

It said Flight 619 to Denver was Now Boarding.

I replicated several "takes" from Tex Avery cartoons, leaped up, packed my laptop in about fifteen seconds and sprinted down a corridor to the departure gate. As I sprinted, I heard my name being paged and handily mispronounced, followed by "Last call for Flight 619 to Denver!  The doors will be closing!"

"Not without me," I yelled to the amusement of those I was running past. I got in just as a flight attendant began the speech about how to inflate your life jacket. And just before they ordered us to turn off our cell phones, I sent Kathy an e-mail: "Back to original plan!  Everything OK!"

When we landed in Denver, I checked Flight Board and it said that her flight out of S.F. would be taking off on time. My flight out of Denver took off on time. Halfway there, our pilot informed us we'd be arriving in Vegas eight minutes early. When we landed there, before we were allowed to deplane, I checked Flight Board again: Her flight was landing ten minutes early. I was on the right side of my plane to see a Virgin Air jet taxi into the gate next to us.

I'd done it! We were actually arriving simultaneously!

I could hear the love theme from the movie The Apartment swelling within my head as I got off at Gate D16 and began running towards Gate D18. Before I reached it, I spotted Kathy, stunning in a yellow dress. She was running (well, walking) towards me with a grin that was too wide to fit into the overhead compartment. I probably had the same look on my face.

As we came together, I threw my arms around her, whacking her in the back with my laptop. She didn't mind…much. And just at that most romantic of moments, she said the exact same three words to me that I said to her, again perfectly in sync. We both said, "Where's a restroom?"

This has been, I swear to you, a true story.

Recently when Fox did their "live" performance of the musical Rent, they would up airing a dress rehearsal recording instead. But, feeling that some aspect of a show announced as Rent: Live should be live — and because they had that live audience coming in, expecting to see something — they arranged to do a live add-on concert at the end, reprising some of the numbers.

My buddy of more than half a century, Joe Brancatelli, urged me to take a look at this brief moment from this concert. It's "Seasons of Love" with Keala Settle singing the hell out of her end of the number. And I urge you to take a look too…

I link to columnist William Saletan often because he's real good at taking evidence that is right before our eyes and noting that this statement does not jibe with that statement and that other statement over there contradicts both of them. Here he is reporting what Virginia governor Ralph Northam has been saying about that racist photo that seems likely to end his political career and certainly his term as governor.

This is one of those cases where you can take your pick: He should resign for reasons of racism or just for colossal lousy judgement. There's also that ineptness he's demonstrated the last day or so for crisis management. His press conference this morning may stand a long time as the Gettysburg Address of Self-Destructive Press Conferences. When you gotta go, you gotta go.

• The ghost of Al Jolson says he's just realized that wasn't Al in all those photos.

• I've never watched a Super Bowl but I may start tomorrow if I can't find anything else on TV that doesn't have Chris Christie on it.