• White House says Trump "is personally paying for" event with National Champions Clemson tonight "to be catered with some of everyone's favorite fast foods." Yes, because what's a celebration without 5-hour old Big Macs, Whoppers and fries?

It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time! It's Randy Rainbow Time!

Here's the other question I received from Richard Pontius…

My other question relates to cartoons. How are decisions regarding a series cancellation made these days? Do ratings play less of a role? I've been quite impressed and enjoyed many modern-day shows like Batman: TAS and Batman: Brave and Bold, Superman: TAS, Avengers: Earth Mightiest Heroes, etc. but all get pulled from production before they seem to have run their course. In the case of The Avengers, I assume it was because Marvel/Disney wanted to retool the show to align with the movies. In other cases, I'm guessing somewhat arbitrary decisions from above, unless people like Paul Dini just get burned out after a while.

Well, Paul never gets burned out but I hope someday he does. As fine a writer as he is, he's an even better cook. I'd like him to give up writing — he can leave all those assignments to me — and open a restaurant, preferably one near my house. But that's not what you wrote to ask about. Sorry.

The decision to cancel a cartoon show these days always has at least something to do with ratings but generally more with how the show fits in with the over-all plans for merchandising and marketing the characters or property. Naturally, when a company or some division undergoes a major change in management personnel, that usually triggers a change in plans or priorities…and sometimes, what's currently being produced doesn't fit in with the plans of the new bosses.

Not long ago, I got a call inquiring about my availability to serve in some capacity on a new cartoon show based on an old, largely-dormant property that a company was planning to resuscitate. They were planning (and may still be, for all I know), this big promotional putsch to drive the characters back into public awareness with new toys and t-shirts and other merchandise and the advertising thereof. They had, they seemed certain, the funding to produce some double-digit number of episodes of a cartoon show that would display the "new look" for the characters.

For reasons they didn't tell me, the whole resurrection has been stalled-out so the cartoon show is on hold, perhaps forever. If it were to get on the air, the length of time it would be on would have a lot to do with whether it was aiding the overall fame and popularity of the characters and how many action figures of them were being sold.

Keeping a show in production can also have a lot to do with how many episodes have been produced…and this is where the ratings may really be important. If a show is still pulling down strong numbers on its sixth reruns, that can be an argument that new episodes aren't needed; that the company is better off investing that dough in the production of a new series rather than in more of a series that they think will continue to attract decent numbers without the expense of new episodes.

A friend of mine who signed on to work on a series once said, "I hope it does well in the ratings…but not too well."

If a show has made, say, 36 episodes, someone might say, "Hey, if we can get this up to 65, that will make this a much stronger package for reruns and overseas sales." Or if they've done 65 (or some other particular number), they might figure that exceeding that number will not be cost-effective in terms of raising the value of the rerun package. That was part of the reason we stopped making Garfield and Friends after 121 half-hours.

Also, some shows also get more episodes because they want to introduce new elements into the show (characters, props, etc.) that will be a part of the future merchandising. This is especially the case with shows that are financed, in whole or part by toy companies. They have new toys coming out that tie in with the franchise. They want the new toys to appear in the cartoon. That's why there were so many episodes made of properties like G.I. Joe and Transformers.

What may make the decisions seem arbitrary is that this is not an exact science and sometimes, one executive's rationale for ordering more episodes of a show is the same as another exec's reason for stopping a series. In the old days when TV networks bought shows for Saturday morning, all they really cared about were the ratings because the networks rarely shared in other sources of revenue like merchandising or overseas sales. Nowadays, most cartoon shows are funded by companies that do benefit from the merchandising and foreign sales so that has to figure into the decision-making.

Basically, that's your answer: It's not an exact science. These days, as far as some people are concerned, neither is science.

The FX Network has a new limited series (eight episodes) in the works called Fosse/Verdon. It stars Sam Rockwell as superstar director Bob Fosse, Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon and other people as known performers and personalities. I haven't seen a bit of it other than what's below but I can tell you that, unlike Stan & Ollie, there will be no need to make up anything to have conflict in the story. The trailer looks like someone's done a good job of replicating Fosse's unique styles of dancing and cinematography so I'm curious to see what else they'll do right. Episode 1 is expected in April..

Richard Pontius sent two questions and I'm going to answer one here today and one here tomorrow. Here's today's…

Back in the days before residuals, how did television character actors support themselves between jobs? Not the Charles Lanes, Burt Mustins or Vito Scottis who seemed to appear in every single network series every single season from the 50s to early 70s, but the folks without a recurring role who we might recognize but who weren't in as high demand.

In television, there weren't many days "before residuals" for actors because they started in 1952 and most of the shows before that were live and not rerun.

Residuals weren't a lot at first…then they were raised but they were finite. After a certain number of reruns, the performers got bupkis. That changed during the 1973-1974 season and if you were on a show after that, you get residuals in perpetuity. (Don Knotts made a lot more money off the residuals from his five years on Three's Company than he made for his five years on The Andy Griffith Show even though the latter has rerun many, many more times. He, like most, was quite sore about not being paid for the rerunning of his earlier work.)

Anyway, the answer to your question is that acting is not a lucrative profession for most of its practitioners. Never has been, never will be. Residuals from TV appearances help but regardless, a large percentage of actors always need some sort of supplemental income. I know a lady who did a fair amount of television in the sixties but was never a regular on a series. She acted under her stage name while selling real estate under her real name…and when she met clients as a realtor, she would put on a wig, do different make-up, change her voice a bit and hope few people said, "Hey, didn't I see you last night on Mannix?"

In the seventies, her agent left the business and since she wasn't working a lot then, she couldn't get another. So what she did was to invent her own agent. She put in an extra phone line in her home. Then she made up the name of a mythical manager and listed it with SAG and AFTRA. If you called one of those unions wanting to hire her, you got that name and number. And if you called that number, you got her using a fake voice and she'd arrange an audition or booking for her client.

Also, there are a lot of acting jobs you never hear about. I'm thinking now of an actor friend who managed to get four or five days of scale work per year on TV shows and from the infrequency of seeing him, you might wonder how he was able to pay his rent. He was lucky: He got picked to do a series of regional commercials that were filmed in Hollywood but never run on this coast. He made way more from those than he did from guesting on national TV programs. There are also voiceover jobs, industrial films, stage work, stand-in jobs and other sources of income. Some try teaching their craft.

But acting has never been the steadiest of occupations and I guess the answer to your question is that some of them didn't support themselves between jobs…or had to live very frugal lives. It will probably always be like that.

• Press reports say there's no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trump's face-to-face interactions with Putin over the past two years. Maybe there is and it's in a file somewhere with Hillary's e-mails.

What an awful, awful piece of news today: Batton Lash — cartoonist, writer, friend and usually the best-dressed guy at Comic-Con — died this morning at the age of 65.  He'd been battling brain cancer for a couple of years.

Bat was a charming, gracious man who was disliked by absolutely no one and our hearts ache for his beloved wife of a quarter-century, Jackie Estrada. Together, they produced and promoted some wonderful comics and creations, most notably Wolff & Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre and Supernatural Law. You never saw a more perfectly matched couple.

We knew he was sick but he was also one of those people you couldn't imagine not having in your world. It had a lot to do with a love of comics that extended to all the people around him in the comic book community, along with a laugh that made you want to hang around the guy, just to hear it. If anything could make that big hall at Comic-Con seem empty, it's this.

In the last hour or so, six different people have sent me what is essentially the same message. Here's the version I got from Mike Martin…

You wrote, "That's what politics in this country has become. The next time a Supreme Court seat has to be filled, most Democrats want the person who will most reliably vote as per the Democratic line and most Republicans want the person who is guaranteed to always vote with the G.O.P." I have to disagree with this statement as it falls into the "both sides" trap.

If you look at the last pick for the Supreme Court that Obama made, that was ignored by the Republican Senate, Merrick Garland was by all accounts the kind of centrist that you call for and most Democrats (myself included) would have been very happy to have such a centrist on the Supreme Court. We don't want a left wing dictatorship. We just want a fair shake.

I'm going to stand by what I said. I think most Democrats (myself included) would like folks like Garland on the Supreme Court if — and it's a big "if" — the Republicans weren't so determined to put men like Bret Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas on the court. This is one of those "if they'll stop it, we'll stop it" confrontations.

It used to be that we didn't want ideologues. Heck, it used to be so non-confrontational that the Senate confirmed Supreme Court nominees by voice votes. It's quite arguable how and when that changed but it did change and now we have Justices who just squeak by and every vote is fought-over. Kavanaugh got in, 50-48.

I submit to you that Obama nominated Merrick Garland because facing the kind of Senate that would have to confirm his nominee, the President decided that Garland had a slim chance, whereas anyone more Liberal would have had no chance whatsoever. Also, to reject Garland would mean that a lot of Republican Senators who in the past had supported him and said he was a good man would have had to reverse themselves. There might still have been a Republican or two who would be embarrassed to do that.

If Obama had had a Democratic senate, he'd have nominated someone more Liberal, if only to balance against the next right-wing nominee we'd get whenever Republicans seized the White House. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. And I think the one way to stop this kind of game would be to change the rules so every nominee had to be satisfactory enough to the minority party that he or she could be confirmed by two-thirds. Which will never happen.

Not that anything I post here will ever change the world but I've been trying to think of what the endgame might be for the government shutdown.

Ezra Klein says Trump doesn't care about The Wall. If he really did, sez Klein, he would get it the way most politicians get something they want: They dicker and offer the other side something in return…

Trump doesn't care about the wall. He cares about being seen fighting for the wall. From that perspective — Trump's perspective — Tuesday night's speech was a success. His base saw him fighting for them. And that may have been all he really wanted.

Trump cares about being seen as a winner, which he seems to believe is in tension with compromising. His sense of negotiations is fundamentally zero-sum: One side has to lose and one side has to win. If Trump gives Democrats anything they can present as a win, he will look like a loser. As such, he can't give them the concessions that might get him the wall because what he'd be giving up — his image as a winner — is more important to him than the policy he'd be gaining.

I would amend Mr. Klein's theory a tiny bit. I think Trump desperately wants The Wall because if he gets it on his terms, he looks like a big winner who gets everything he wants or promises. He just doesn't want The Wall on anyone else's terms.

Klein's line about Trump's concept of negotiations — "One side has to lose and one side has to win" — struck a note with me. I've run into too many people on the business side of show business who play that way. The object of a negotiation is not to arrive at a deal that works for both parties. The objective is the deal that makes them happy and you unhappy. In a way, it's more about power than money and about making (or keeping) you subservient and afraid of them.

That's what politics in this country has become. The next time a Supreme Court seat has to be filled, most Democrats want the person who will most reliably vote as per the Democratic line and most Republicans want the person who is guaranteed to always vote with the G.O.P. Somewhere out there, there are folks who have the proper experience in Law to sit on the Highest Court and also have open minds. They'd look at each question in a non-partisan manner and be a true Swing Vote. Almost no one wants that person even though we all know that's what a Supreme Court Justice is supposed to be.

The other day, I got into a little verbal scuffle with an acquaintance who is pro-Wall. Ostensibly, he's for stopping illegal immigration and drug importation but he's not open to expanding E-Verify or increased scanning for drugs at airports, which is where most of them come in. That's because Trump is not at the moment demanding those and this is not to most people, a debate over whether The Wall is the best way to deal with the problem. We're not even really debating whether there is a problem.

This is really just a battle over whether Trump can get whatever he wants and the Democrats can't stop him. In a saner context, it would be settled with a compromise and maybe, ultimately, it will. But compromises can result in a win-win situation and Trump doesn't want that. He wants a win-lose with himself in the first position. I hope there are Traffic Controllers when I fly to Santa Cruz at the end of this month.

Here's a thought-provoking article about the government shutdown and about negotiating. The part of it that provokes thoughts is the discussion of the difference between private bargaining and the political kind which is done in public with each side trying to make a deal but also trying to score points with the audience. This doesn't get us any closer to reopening the government but it does make you think about the problems from a different angle, doesn't it?

Here's one you'll love. A couple years ago, there was a ceremony in Walt Disney's old office at the Disney Studios. A select group was invited in to experience, among other things, a brief piano recital by Richard Sherman. And not only were they in Walt's office but Richard was playing the exact same piano on which he and his brother Robert had demonstrated their songs for Walt.

Here are two of the tunes he played for that event. One is "Feed the Birds" from Mary Poppins (the original, of course!) and not only did the Shermans demonstrate that song for Walt on that piano but he often called them in and asked them to play it because he loved it so. The other song is one of Richard's more recent compositions, heard first by the public in a local show called L.A. Then and Now, which I wrote about here.

Yes, that's Dick Van Dyke sitting next to the piano. Also in the group of lucky listeners, you may spot Arlene Silver (Mrs. Van Dyke), Karen Dotrice (the little girl in Mary Poppins), John Lasseter, Leonard Maltin and my buddy Howard Green. Savor this…

Not long ago, I posted this inadequate obit on our friend Tom Williams. The L.A. Times has a more complete one. (Thank you, Stu Shostak)

This article by Alissa Wilkinson is entitled "Why no one wants to host the Oscars" and that's wrong. I'll betcha there's fifty thousand people in Hollywood who would say yes in a minute if they were asked but they'd never be asked. The Academy doesn't want them. The problem is that anyone on any list of folks the Academy would want really doesn't need the job.

If you're on that list — and I can't imagine you aren't — you don't need the probable grief that will come when critics pan the whole show.  They almost always do because the Oscarcast can never be as good as we want it to be or remember it to have been, Once Upon a Time.  You also have to be prepared for the headlines that say you hosted the lowest-rated Academy Awards ceremony ever. That's likely no matter who does it and it won't do your reputation as a star with a huge following any good.

Kevin Hart has more offers for films than I have comic books and when he plays a live stand-up date, tickets go on sale at Noon and the scalper sites are asking $800 a seat by 12:05. The question is not why he no longer wants to host the Oscars. It's why he even considered the damn job in the first place. My theory? When it was first mentioned, it sounded like a great affirmation of his stardom, elevating him to the stature of a Bob Hope or Johnny Carson. Then he realized it hasn't been that for a lonnnng time.

And then you have the fundamental question of what the host is supposed to do. Is it his/her job to guide the proceedings with respect and rise above controversy and politics and chaos? Or is it to get tune-in and eyeballs? I don't think you can do both…and I'm not sure the latter is possible at all.

People just don't care about the Oscars as they once did. The linked article is suggesting that deploying multiple hosts — as is now apparently the plan — is likely to be a disaster. This is true but it'll be just as true if they get [INSERT NAME HERE] to step in and Master that Ceremony.  At least with many hosts, people will blame that decision if (when) they pan the telecast and the shame won't fall mainly on one brave star.  Maybe that's the best of a lot of bad choices.

That is, if they won't get Gilbert Gottfried. I still think that's a great idea.  Really.

I don't do a lot of bookstore signings but I'm making an exception later this month. On Wednesday, January 30, I will be at Joe Ferrara's popular shop, Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz, California. I'll be there writing my name on almost anything people want me to write my name on from Noon to 6 PM that day. I've never seen Joe's store but everyone who has tells me it's well worth visiting even when I'm not there…probably especially worth visiting when I'm not there. You can find the place at 1020 Cedar St. in Santa Cruz so drop by, chat and see if I can sign my name. If you prefer, I'll sign your name. I'm not fussy.

This first appeared on this blog on Sunday, July 29, 2012. It's about due for a rerun…

Many years ago, I was strolling down The Strip in Las Vegas around 3:45 in the afternoon and I was passing a grungy little casino called the Westward Ho, which was next door to the Stardust. As a point of reference, neither the 'Ho nor the Stardust are there anymore. There are Ho's in Vegas but not the Westward kind.

Outside the smaller casino, there was a man imploring passers-by to come in and see the 4:00 show they had there. As another point of reference, there are no good shows that perform at four in the afternoon. I don't mean just in Las Vegas. I mean anywhere.

The one in question was "A Tribute to Wayne Newton." In Vegas, the way you pay tribute to someone is to do their act. They had a guy who kinda looked like Wayne Newton and he probably sounded a little like Wayne Newton. That, by the way, is pretty much the popular description of Wayne Newton these days.

Anyway, the barker (I guess you'd call him) outside stopped me and told me what a wonderful time I'd have if only I'd plunk down the bucks to come in and hear this guy performing all of The Midnight Idol's hits. He closed his sales pitch with "So, how about it, Sport? Show starts in ten minutes. There are some good seats available." I had the feeling all seats were available including some in the band and maybe "Wayne's" but I didn't have the time or the interest.

Plus there was this: Standing there in front of the Westward Ho, I could turn my eyes about 20 degrees and see the Stardust next door. And on the huge Stardust sign, it proclaimed the name of the superstar then appearing in the showroom there: Wayne Newton. Presumably, the real one.

In this world, there are some questions you just have to ask. I knew I was not the first person to ask this question or the second or the five hundredth…but I had to ask it because I knew the man had to have an answer for it and I wanted to hear what it would be. I asked the barker, "Why should I pay to see your Wayne Newton when I can walk across that parking lot and buy a ticket to see the real Wayne Newton?"

He said, "Our Wayne Newton is $14.95 and includes a buffet, Sport."

And I thought: You know, that's a pretty good answer.

I mean, the buffet was usually $5.95. The real Wayne was getting $49.95 per ticket. With tip, we'll call it fifty bucks. Now, let's say the imitation Wayne was only 20% as good as the genuine article. I don't think it would be that hard to be 20% as good as Wayne Newton. I can't sing at all and I'm at around 14%. If he's one-fifth as good as Wayne, you're getting $10.00 worth of Wayne Newton plus a $5.95 buffet — a $15.95 value — for $14.95. That's a better return on your money than Keno.

But that's only if you want to see Wayne Newton and I didn't. Didn't want to see the real one and didn't want to see a reasonable facsimile. I also wanted him to stop calling me "Sport" so I needed a way out. My eyes scanned a photo of the Newton doppelgänger and on it, his image was surrounded by the names of some of Wayne's big hits like "Daddy, Don't You Walk So Fast," "Red Roses for a Blue Lady" and "Shangri-La." I turned to the salesman and said, "I'm sorry but I can't go see a Wayne Newton impersonator who doesn't sing 'Danke Schoen.' That's, like, malpractice."

The barker looked around to make sure no one could hear him. No one could. Then he whispered to me, "He does 'Danke Schoen' as his surprise encore!"

I was telling this story to someone the other day and I wasn't sure if I'd told it here or not…but if I have, it's been a while. And it prompted me to try and figure out who that Wayne Newton impersonator was. I did a little Internet sleuthing and it might have been Rusty Davis, who still performs in casinos and other venues around the country. Here's a sample of Mr. Davis. I think he's more than 20% as good as Wayne Newton was then…and probably better than him these days…