I know a lot of people read this site, hoping to pick up tips that will lead them to a successful career in writing, acting, drawing, voiceover work or other show-bizzy areas. If there is one major bit of advice I can give to these people, it's not to be so desperate that you do stupid things, including believing con artists who want to exploit your eagerness to succeed. I have seen many, many scams based on this premise, getting people to do work for nothing or paying for worthless "coaching" or to have their book published. The list is endless.

During the time I was hiring voice talent for the various Garfield cartoon shows, I had a number of wanna-be voice actors practically beg for a part, any part. Two said I didn't have to pay them. One offered to pay me. I would never take them up on those offers but there must be someone out there who would. If you are an aspiring voiceover performer, please read and consider the following two sentences…

These days, there are so many people trying to get voiceover work, there can never be enough openings for 90% of them to make any sort of living at it. And if I'm wrong about that, it's because the situation is even more bleak than I say here.

I am not saying, "Don't try." I am saying, "Don't run your life so that you'll be homeless or personally devastated if you don't succeed. Have a Plan B. Work on a backup career." It's like gambling. It's fine to put $20 on Red at a Roulette table. It's not wise to bet everything you have on Double-Zero.

And for God's sake, avoid the people who want to exploit your need to "make it." In the voiceover world, there are many, including "Pay to Play" businesses. Basically, these are businesses that kinda look like agencies but they want you to pay them to try and get you work. They may or may not be able to do this and the "jobs," if any, will rarely be at union rates and will often pay less than the cost of a good cheeseburger. Marc Graue, who is an actual working voiceover guy and coach, put together this video to warn newcomers about the "Pay to Play" racket. He is not exaggerating…

Didn't Trump look, in his address tonight, like a P.O.W. who was reading the text he was ordered to read by men standing just off-camera with guns trained on him? And talk about Low Energy. This was a speech that pleased no one: The folks supporting him must have been disappointed he didn't pound the desk, vow to crush his opponents and tell them that he was going to build the wall, damn it, and if they didn't like it, they could all take a long walk off a short pier. The folks not supporting him were annoyed because it was Trump giving a speech.

Actually, what I think the Republican Party wants here is for Trump to get the money for The Wall and then never build it. Getting the money would enable him to look like a winner and a powerful man who should be re-elected in 2020. Never getting around to building the wall would keep cheap, subservient labor coming into this country for corporations to exploit. Win-win!

Anyway, here's David Frum on where we are now, post-speech. The sub-head on his piece says, "The president, trapped without a decent exit in a predicament of his own making, will yield everything and get nothing."

And while we're on the Atlantic website, here's David A. Graham analyzing the speech in greater detail and we also have James Fallows explaining why the TV networks should not have given Trump the airtime. Indeed.

• Wait? The border wall will quickly pay for itself? I thought Mexico was paying for it.

• Remember when they said Obama couldn't say two words without a TelePrompter?

• Is Trump doing this from the Oval Office or in front of a green screen?

I haven't been paying a whole lotta attention to Donald Trump lately but he makes it so damned difficult. Going on prime-time TV tonight with an address from the Oval Office? Well, I don't suppose he'll say anything that fact-checkers will be identifying as false afterwards.

But I keep thinking how tough it must be on those who work for this guy. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has the job of going out and saying what she's told to say, and if Trump claims that he personally has been to Saturn, she has to find some way to spin that as something other than a lie on his part. Tough way to make a buck.

And take a look at what Mike Pence had to say this morning. On Friday, Trump said of his border-wall proposal, "This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me. And they all know it. Some of them have told me that we should have done it." He says stuff like that without thinking or caring that reporters are going to check with all the surviving ex-presidents to find out who said that, exactly what they said, when they said it, etc.

They checked. Through spokespersons or on their own, all four living ex-presidents insisted they said no such thing. In theory, George H.W. Bush could have said that to Trump before he died but everyone knows he hated Trump, and Trump wasn't smart enough to attribute the alleged remark to the one ex-president in recent times who isn't around to deny it.

So now you're Mike Pence. You go on the Today Show this morning and you're asked by NBC White House Correspondent Hallie Jackson, "Which former presidents told President Trump, as he said, that he should have built a wall?" How do you respond to that? Here's what Pence said…

I know the President has said that that was his impression from previous administrations, previous presidents. I know I've seen clips of previous presidents talking about the importance of border security, the importance of addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Okay. So previous presidents saying on the news that we should address the issue of illegal immigration is kind of the same thing as them personally telling Trump they should have built this wall of his that is so unplanned and vague that even he doesn't know if it'll be made out of concrete or steel or uncooked lasagna noodles. That was the best the Vice-President could do within the parameters of what he was allowed to say.

In more and more ways, Trump reminds me of a couple of producers I've known who would go to the network and promise anything — A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G — to sell a show. One in particular I'm thinking of would say, "I can get Sean Connery, Roger Moore and all the other James Bonds to come out, strip to their skivvies and perform a Chippendale's dance routine" without the slightest thought as to to how he was going to deliver on that promise. Making the sale at that moment was all that mattered. If they did buy the show, his next challenge would be to convince the network that getting Charles Nelson Reilly to come on in shorts was pretty much the same thing.

So tonight, Trump's going to go on TV and make his case for why anyone who opposes The Wall is for open borders at a time when thousands of terrorists are streaming in from Mexico to kill us all. Then Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer — two of the most boring speakers in politics today — will deliver a rebuttal, perhaps hampered by the problem that they probably won't get Trump's prepared text in advance and he might not stick to it anyway.

I think Trump's on the ropes on this issue but if the Democrats really want to finish him off, they shouldn't send Pelosi or Schumer. They should get Seth Meyers to do it. He will…tomorrow night and it'll be much more effective.

I've posted videos before of Sonny Vande Putte (AKA SgtSonny), who I believe is from Belgium. He's one of those one-man harmony groups I enjoy so much and here we have him doing a song I like…and it was smartly arranged by Will Hamblet, a frequent reader of this blog and e-mail buddy. Enjoy…

Writer Donald Liebenson ranks every episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show, best to worst. None of us who love the show will ever agree with anyone else's list but I do concur with his first place pick ("Coast to Coast Big Mouth") and his last-place selection ("Uncle George").

I would place "All About Eavesdropping" and "Somebody Has to Play Cleopatra" way lower and "The Gunslinger" and "Talk to the Snail" way higher. I would move up most of the episodes that have Alan Brady in them and move down most of the ones that are in any way about the marriage of Rob or Laura being in any way threatened by either being jealous. The episode that I went to see filmed is #133 and I think that's about right. Interestingly, his Top Ten includes both episodes that call upon us to imagine Laura Petrie naked.

Yesterday, I had a problem of a kind I seem to have often…and I'll bet some of you do, too. It has to do with people not understanding or remembering the limitations of technology.

I was talking to someone — my cell phone to their cell phone — and suddenly in mid-speech, the call was cut off. Dead air. When I redialed them, it went to voicemail. It took about five minutes to reconnect and when we did, the first thing this person said was, "Why did you hang up on me like that?"

It took about another five minutes to convince them that I hadn't; that cell phones are fallible and that they don't only cut off when you're driving through a tunnel or getting into an elevator. Even then, I'm not sure I did more than half-convince them.

I keep dealing with people who either forget or don't understand that sometimes, phones don't work right or text or e-mails disappear or stall out. We all curse our cell providers and say they all stink — Verizon, A.T.&T., T-Mobile, Sprint, all of them. But we often expect our messages to arrive instantly and our connections not to drop. I don't quite get that.

This problem came up a lot during the years when I was taking my dear friend Carolyn to hospitals for tests and treatment. At least half the time when I was in the rooms where they did radiation therapy on her, my cell phone said No Service. It was not connecting for what was sometimes an hour or more.

And then when I would go outside, I'd get a flurry of text messages or voicemails that had been sent 45 minutes earlier. Sometimes, there's be a series from someone: There would be the initial message and then, time-stamped ten minutes later, there'd be "Hello?" followed by one delivered ten minutes after that which would say, "WHY ARE YOU AVOIDING ME????"

This kind of thing has also happened when I wasn't in a "No Service" situation…where I was getting calls and texts and e-mails but someone's weren't coming through promptly or mine weren't. It seems to be fixed now but for a year or more, when Leonard Maltin sent me an e-mail, I would receive it with within a minute or so. And when I wrote back to him, it either bounced or took two days to arrive. Leonard, wise man that he is, understood. Not everyone does.

Quite a few people who text or write me seem to expect an immediate reply. But their messages sometimes don't arrive instantly for whatever reason.

Or they arrive and you don't see them immediately because you're asleep or in the shower or in an important meeting where you can't check your phone or on a treadmill in your doctor's office getting a stress test or in a "No Service" area or watching a play with your phone off or in the middle of sex or attending to some emergency that requires your complete, undivided attention or your phone's broken or you went out and accidentally left it home or it got stolen or all of these at the same time. An acquaintance of mine once got pissed at me because I didn't respond right away to a text message from him that arrived while I was in the middle of running the Quick Draw! panel at Comic-Con.

Sometimes, you just can't give someone a rapid response…and this also applies to e-mails and voice messages. It used to be that if someone phoned you and you didn't answer, the caller assumed you were away and didn't have an answering machine. Now, they presume you have your phone with you and if you don't pick up, your voicemail should.

Always remember that when your iPhone tells you a message you sent was delivered, that doesn't mean it was seen. And if it was seen, that doesn't mean the recipient was in position to answer you back then and there.

Do not allow any Abandonment Issues you may have to kick in. There are explanations besides someone trying to avoid talking to you. It is possible that someone wants to avoid talking to you but don't put that one first. Or second. Or even ninth. Unless you're really, really obnoxious in which case, yeah, they just don't want to talk to you…and I wouldn't blame them.

In 1985, Michael Nesmith (of Monkees fame) put together a comedy series for NBC that came and went in a flash. It was a kind of rambling, free form show called Television Parts and I suspect that the problem it had was that America then had a pretty rigid idea of what a network show should be and Mr. Nesmith's show didn't fit that idea. He was, as too many people are, ahead of his time.

Whatever was taped was burned off quickly and some of it later had an afterlife in the home video market. Here's a sketch starring one of my favorite stand-up comics of that era, A. Whitney Brown…

Herbert Jack Rotfeld sent me this…

You often write in the blog that "(a) writing is all I've ever really wanted to do, (b) there's really nothing else I'm any good at." But the second part isn't really true.

Writing might be a starting point, but you have also described hiring and directing voice actors for animation. There are probably other job titles or credits you have held over the years, but I'm not familiar enough with publishing or video production to pick them out. The point is that you must be good at those other jobs since you keep getting hired to do them. These are jobs that some other people probably make the core of their careers. And while it is not the center of your work, you keep doing them.

Do you not enjoy these other jobs? Are they just a distraction from writing? Do you consider them an extension of the writing?

To go by the blog, we read more about your non-writing work and the animals in your back yard than any significant writing project. Even on the writing, the stories here describe the non-writing problems or benefits. You are good at other things. And if you don't enjoy them, why to you take them on?

Interesting question. I have been an editor of comic books and in that capacity, also an occasional artist, inker, letterer and colorist. I always thought of the last four jobs as extensions of the first…and the first as an extension of being the writer of those comics. Actually, on some comics where I have been credited as a writer (or on Groo the Wanderer where my job title keeps changing but rarely denotes a specific function), I have sometimes gotten involved in lettering or coloring as an extension of being the writer — or whatever I am on Groo.

On live-action TV shows, I have occasionally done audience warm-ups or little bit parts. On one of the shows I worked on as a writer for Sid and Marty Krofft, I actually — may God help us — was briefly seen dancing. I am to dancing what a load of wet cement is to dancing except that I am less fluid. Someday, remind me to tell you the story of how I got roped into that. I also occasionally worked puppets when, say, the crew of puppeteers had but six hands and needed eight. I occasionally did the job of a floor director, working with the actors on their physical blocking and how they'd deliver lines I wrote.

On animated TV shows, yes, I've hired voice actors and directed them…even did a few lines myself. I story-edited cartoon shows (which to me was a writing job with a bit of hiring capacity added and a middleman eliminated) and once, I storyboarded a short Richie Rich cartoon. I did that mainly to better understand the challenges and needs of the storyboard artists who translated my scripts into pictures. I treated that like if I was working on a script about a dairy and I went out and milked cows for an afternoon in order to apply that experience to my writing. That would not make me a farmer.

In my mind, I was never a director or an artist or a puppeteer or any of these, especially a dancer. Make that especially a dancer. I was a writer doing some directing, a writer doing some drawing, etc. I don't think I could ever do any of these other jobs full-time…and I don't just mean I wouldn't want to. I don't think I could. When some politician goes on Saturday Night Live or Colbert's show and participates in a bit, that person is still a politician. They don't become a professional comedian just because they do something else once within narrow parameters.

So why did I do these things which you might think were other than writing jobs but I see as just add-ons? Usually to protect the writing and have more control over the work. When I was the writer (only) on some projects, I would hand the script in and someone else would do whatever revisions were deemed necessary after it left me. I always volunteered to come along and do them but sometimes, they don't want the original writer around or it's not practical. By becoming the editor of the comic book or the voice director and/or producer on a cartoon show, I could be involved farther down the assembly line. If I was not given the title, I often stayed involved anyway.

When I'm the voice director on a cartoon show I write, I have a lot of control over casting so we usually cast the voice that the writer (i.e., me) wants. And once the actors start reading my lines, I think, "Gee, maybe we don't need that speech" or "Boy, that line sounds lousy and needs to be rewritten." A couple of times when I hear something, I've told the actors to all go out and drink coffee while I rewrite a scene. You may think this is a directing job but it feels like a writing job to me.

By contrast, when I've written cartoon shows that I didn't voice-direct, I had little to say about casting and often wasn't welcome at the recording session. I think in some cases, someone was worried I'd want to stop the recording and have the actors all go out and drink coffee while I rewrote a scene. Or I'd get into an argument with the director about something. Whatever.

You're right in a broad sense that I have done other things professionally besides write. But I still think I was a writer who was doing a little something else on the project because it protected the material and because no one could stop me.

I won't pretend I know who the Saw Doctors are. But when they did a music video of the song "Downtown," they brought the wonderful Petula Clark in to be a part of it so they're fine with me…

They still don't seem to have one…someone to host this year's Academy Awards. According to this article…

[Kevin] Hart is reportedly also concerned that if he returned to the job, he wouldn't have enough time to prepare before the Feb. 24 award ceremony. Deadline reports that the Academy, which still has not named a host, is approaching multiple stars to split the duties.

The "not enough time" concern probably only matters if the host is going to do one of those elaborate openings that Billy Crystal made (almost) standard with a pre-filmed piece that puts the host and a raft of big-name cameo stars into film clips. Or if they want to do one of those elaborate special material production numbers that Billy Crystal and Neil Patrick Harris made (almost) standard. If they just want the host to come out, do a monologue, introduce the first presenters and then disappear for the next thirty minutes, there's plenty of time.

The problem is that there's no upside for someone like Kevin Hart. It's not like the exposure is going to get him more movie offers at higher fees. And if he's controversial, one section of the audience is going to slam him for bad taste, offending certain groups, dragging politics into it and so forth…and if he isn't controversial, another section is going to slam him for playing it too safe and (probably) not being as funny as he usually is. If I were him, I would never have accepted the gig. I'd have asked myself, "Why do I need that?" and not had a very good answer to give me.

I can think of two people who are bona fide movie stars who would probably rise above any criticism just because of who they are. Those would be Tom Hanks and Steve Carell. But again, they have nothing to gain. They've probably turned it down. Actually, I'll bet you James Corden could do a great job but the trouble is that the show is on ABC and he's on CBS and ABC isn't about to promote a CBS star. And he'd also want to do one of those big opening numbers.

After I wrote the preceding paragraph, I sat here for a few minutes, trying to think of a really great suggestion and I suddenly realized something: I don't care. Most of America doesn't care, which is why the Oscars ain't drawing the ratings it used to draw. There are too many awards shows and much of the public is getting tired of seeing (to them) overpaid lucky sons o' bitches fawning over one another and thanking their agents. Ignore this post. It doesn't matter to me and if you consider it for a moment, you'll realize it doesn't matter to you, either.

Joe Ankenbauer ASKS me…

Here's a question for you. I read numerous comic strips each day. Some comic strips continue their story line through the comics that appear on Sunday, while others put a Sunday strip that has nothing to do with the current story line. What is the reasoning behind that?

It's one of those decisions that, like so many in the popular arts, meets at the juncture of Creative and Business. Usually when a new strip starts up and the syndicate's salesfolks try to get newspapers to carry it, they can't get every paper to carry both the dailies and the Sunday page. Each paper had a certain number of open slots on their page of dailies and a certain number of slots in their Sunday section and those numbers rarely coincide, especially if they're carrying one or more of the strips that are daily only or Sunday only.

So the question becomes do we link the daily and Sunday continuities of our strip and hope that causes the papers that only want one to feel they need the other? Or do we make them separate so they read better for readers who get one but not the other? Obviously, the nature of the material itself has a lot to do with this decision as does the preference of the cartoonist. But at some point, they have to consider what the sales force thinks may be best.

Also, this isn't so relevant these days but back when a newspaper strip was more work (i.e., they were larger), it was not unheard-of for a cartoonist to choose to just do the six daily strips each week and turn the Sunday page over to someone else. Hank Ketcham did his Dennis the Menace strip Monday through Saturday and had ghosts produce Sunday's strip. I don't know that he ever wanted to have a day-to-day continuity in the feature but it would have been difficult with that split.

Roy Crane's strip Buz Sawyer dealt with the problem by making its Sunday page a completely different, slightly-connected feature. Monday through Saturday, it was an adventure strip featuring Buz drawn by Crane and later his assistants. Sunday, it was comical, self-contained exploits of Buz's pal, Rosco Sweeney who was rarely seen in the daily continuity. Rosco's pages were written and drawn by Clark Haas (and later, Al Wenzel) but signed by Crane. The decision to separate the storylines that way enabled Crane's uncredited writer, Edwin Granberry, to write Buz Sawyer adventures as a six-day-a-week continuity strip without worrying about readers who didn't get the Sunday page.

The current Popeye strip consists of reprints on Monday through Saturday — old strips by Bud Sagendorf. The other day each week, Hy Eisman produces a new Sunday page. I would imagine a lot of the papers that carry it only carry one or the other…but there are not enough total to warrant making it all-new. That was one of those Business-type decisions.

How to bathe your sloth…