John Rogers, who served as president of Comic-Con International since 1986, died today, He'd been suffering from glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. John began working for the convention in 1978 when it was but a fraction of the huge event it has become. He presided over its awesome growth, handling a very difficult job with great wisdom, great patience and a total understanding of what it takes to make something like that function so smoothly.

All of my memories of John are of him in a hurry. I only saw him at Comic-Con and they were quick chats because he always had a hundred and one things to tend to. The more I learn about how Comic-Con operates, the more impressed I am that so much goes right. John would have been the first person to remind you that this was not wholly because of his efforts. He was quick to give credit to everyone on the staff. But he sure did his part of it well. A real nice and hard-working guy he was.

I have something I have to do this afternoon. Maybe I'll tell you about it later.

If I were to write anything right now, it would probably be about the pains and frustrations over the deadly, destructive fires that aren't over yet. I might talk about the extreme assholishness of the President of the United States with his morning tweet. But I guess it was to be expected of a man who is incapable of thinking about anything except self-congratulations or the demeaning of his real or imagined enemies. With those people gaining power, we may be closing in on that scene in the movie Bananas where the dictator completely snaps and orders that all citizens will be required to change their underwear every half-hour and to wear it on the outside so this can be checked.

A real president would have tweeted his sorrow, his determination to aid the victims and a pledge to do more to prepare for disasters of this sort. Unfortunately, that might have meant doing something decent for people who didn't vote for him.

I love images of old Los Angeles. Here's a video tour from the forties displayed side-by-side with the same route as it looked just two years ago…

That's right — it's a Too Much News Day. When I went to bed at 3:30 AM, it felt like about a quarter of the state was on fire. I woke up at 8:30 to find that another quarter is being evacuated. None of this is anywhere near me but I must know fifty people whose homes are threatened or, in at least one case, gone. I know this is stating the obvious but it's terrible. Just terrible.

So I had to turn the news off. The local stations have had reporters on the scene all night and have pre-empted regular programming. The correspondents are right in the thick of the fires sending back incredible footage and dispensing a lot of valuable information about evacuations, shelters, blocked roads, etc., but I could do without the live "how does it feel to lose everything you own?" interviews. We can kind of assume it isn't a great feel-good moment for most people.

And I have to wonder if those newspeople and their crews aren't getting in the way of the fire fighters. Just before I went to bed, I saw a reporter talking live on camera turn to a passing fire official and ask, "Do you have time to speak with us?" and the official barked back a "No" with the loud subtext of "I can't stop to chat. I have something kind of important to do, you putz!"

Still, he was nicer than Trump talking to any reporter who steadfastly refuses to be his stenographer. That's his definition of Fake News, you know: It doesn't match the way he wants it reported. They stubbornly refuse to write that he beat Hillary in the popular vote and had the most-attended inauguration ever. When he makes his expected nasty comment about how California deserves this, the press will probably screw him over by quoting him accurately.

Trump and the instability that always surrounds him is the other reason there's Too Much News. I think the word "meltdown" is way overused these days, being applied as it is to any sort of disagreement or visible annoyance that can be exploited for YouTube hits…but it's really starting to apply to Trump. I'm thinking that if and when he ever holds another press conference, the news media should drive him completely out of his head by only sending black women to ask questions. So odd to see a man who couldn't say enough nasty things about Barack Obama demanding respect for the presidency.

And as predicted here, the election still isn't completed. And I just got a text alert about the fire that's popped up in Griffith Park saying they may be evacuating the animals in the Los Angeles Zoo. If they had pandas there, I'd call up and offer to house them in my house until this is over but I don't think they have pandas. And I have to stop watching TV because when I do, it's hard to remember that this will all be over. Someday.

I'm feeling bad for the folks who've been evacuated in Ventura County and up north in and around Paradise. I have friends in both areas and it must be agony to spend the night in a strange place, wondering if your home will still be there whenever you can return to your address. At this moment, the fires are at 0% containment so they aren't going to be gone soon.

At times like this, I always feel great amazement that we waste so much in terms of money and resource to battle non-existent dangers like a caravan of poor, displaced individuals who'll probably never get here…and we don't consider being better prepared for actual, for-real disasters like these. Or we're worried about Muslim terrorists (who are rare) and not about the Caucasian ones (who actually kill people).

I can't watch any more of this. I'm going to bed.

The melodious folks who call themselves Voctave sing the title song from Disney's Beauty and the Beast with guest soloist Sandi Patty…

Chuck Jones over at Forbes magazine crunches the numbers and shows that all the good news of the Trump Economy is just a continuation of the Obama Economy. But maybe Donald deserves some credit for not screwing it up…so far.

As Conor Friedersdorf writes, we are closing in on a series of moments when Trump is going to expect Republican officials and members of Congress to endorse the concept that he and his aides and family cannot be investigated or held accountable for any infractions of the law. He's just short of saying "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and Congress would let me get away with it!"

Call me a cockeyed optimist but we've just had an election which has shown that the backing of Trump is a liability in some areas for those running for office or another term. I'm thinking there are some Republicans who are going to think what Trump is angling for is going too far. Remember they're kind of being asked to protect Trump from criminal prosecution when they don't know what crimes he may have committed which may come out later. A lot of Republican Senators and Congressfolks during Watergate were leery of protecting Nixon for that reason.

And there have got to be some current Republican leaders who are thinking there could be a big opening to run for President in 2020 if Trump is too mired in scandal to run or there's a sizeable G.O.P. movement out there to get a guy who'll advance their agenda without all the scandal Donald brings to the party. You couldn't take advantage of that opportunity if you'd voted to shield him from the law.

At least, I hope someone's thinking like that.

Last night was the 55th anniversary of the evening the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World had its world premiere at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.  It was also the 55th anniversary of the evening that the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood opened.  A packed audience was there to see the movie in its natural habitat (where it ran for 66 weeks!) and to mark the birthday of a wonderful place to watch cinema on a wide, wide screen.

The ceremonies were hosted by a couple of gents involved in the history of the building, followed by Karen Sharpe Kramer, the widow of Stanley Kramer. Mr. Kramer produced and directed so many fine films, Mad World among them.  Karen then introduced two special guests — the lovely (still and forever) Barrie Chase and Sandy Hackett, son of Buddy.

Barrie is one of only three people who had speaking roles in the film who is still alive. The other two are Nick Georgiade, who played the detective working with Norman Fell's character, and Carl Reiner. Mr. Reiner, who is 96.7 years old, is reportedly not going much of anywhere these days…and if he did make an appearance, it might not be to celebrate this movie which he wasn't all that wild about. It was great though to hear Barrie talk about the film. In the past when she appeared at screenings of Mad World, Mickey Rooney was usually there and not inclined to let her or anyone else say anything.

The film was the film…which I love for reasons I've written about here in the past. It's not the slapstick I like so much as just seeing all those great comedians interacting with one another and performing at the height of their comedic powers. Everyone is just so good in it…even Milton Berle, who otherwise did not leave behind much supporting evidence for his status as an important comic.

Mad World is available in a DVD/Blu Ray set from Criterion and even though I can be heard on the commentary track along with my pals Mike Schlesinger and Paul Scrabo, I only recommend this set as something you watch after you've seen the movie on a big screen with a big, enthusiastic audience. It's quite a different film watched alone or with a small group on your home TV. It was quite different on screen last night at the Dome.

You may be wondering how my friend Amber liked it. As you might recall, I held off showing it to her because I wanted her to experience it for the first time the way I did, 55 years ago — at the Cinerama Dome with a full house. Well, sadly, she wasn't feeling well enough to go. I may have to keep fooling her into liking me until the 60th anniversary screening.

An hour ago, I was lying in bed looking occasionally at news headlines on my iPhone. The "active shooter" at last night's horrible murder spree in Thousand Oaks had not been identified and I was thinking how so many people are waiting for that info to see if it can be of any use to them. Like if it turns out he's a Muslim, those who want to ban or restrict Muslims will be happy they have that new little weapon to add to their arsenal. Or if he's a militant Vegan, that could be useful to any hostile carnivores or maybe to the meat industry.

And of course, these incidents are always helpful to the cause of those who simply want to make guns — especially automatic and semi-automatic weapons — harder to acquire. Since I'm more or less on their side, I can temper my horror at the news with a sliver of silver lining and think, "Well, maybe this will convince more people we need to do something about guns." Which is a kind of baseless optimism because it never does. (Actually, it isn't so much a matter of convincing more people we should do something. It's a matter of convincing them to do something, which is not the same thing. I do not expect this to happen in my lifetime.)

So now they just said the shooter was "a former Marine who may have had PTSD." I'm not sure what anyone can do with that but someone will try.

This has been Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting. Stay tuned for the next installment of Today's Post About Yesterday's Mass Shooting…coming sooner than you'd like to your computer screen.

• This just in: Trump fires Jeff Sessions. Also claims "My dog ate my tax returns!"

Trump's about to give a press conference where I expect he'll keep saying, "We won, we won, we won!" That's part of his personality. Heck, it's part of his success. He convinces people, "Stick with me because I always win." This morning, I'm even happier than I was when I went to bed last night. I'm reading pieces like this one and this one by Kevin Drum, who is a sane, non-spin Liberal who I think has the right take on what just happened. It was an "about as good as could be realistically expected" night for Democrats.

And things could still get better for them with recounts and late results. Any election where Dana Rohrabacher loses is a good election. He'll be free to go work full-time for V. Putin.

What I'm waiting for now is for Nancy Pelosi to announce, "Our No. 1 priority is to make this president a one-term president" and for Mitch McConnell to say what a sleazy, unAmerican thing that is to say.

Someplace tonight, one Republican Senator turned to another Republican Senator and said, "Well, we've got good news and bad news.  The good news is that Ted Cruz is being returned to the Senate.  The bad news is that Ted Cruz is being returned to the Senate."

Results have been coming in earlier than I expected and, so far, being contested less than I expected.  I'm happy Democrats have taken back the House.  I'm unhappy that the lesson many will take away from certain races is that Trump-style campaigning — smearing your opponents, blatant lying and stoking racial fears — can work.

It's closing in on Midnight here in California and there are still people standing in lines here and there waiting to vote. Vote by mail, people! Vote by mail!

I think this country is better off today than it was yesterday if only because Trump won't have both halves of Congress rubber-stamping his whims and unlikely to hold him accountable for high crimes and low. Yeah, it could have been better but think how much worse it would have been if the House had gone the other way. And though Trump will surely hail today as a big win for him — because he says that about everything — he can't get rid of the Mueller investigation now or bury its findings. That could be, as he says, yuge.

Baby sloths learning to climb…