The Democratic National Convention to select their next presidential nominee will take place July 13-16, 2020. Someone might have a lock on it before then but maybe not too far before then. In any case, 7/13/20 is 1 year, 5 months and 15 days from now. I do not have to start thinking about whether I want it to be Bernie or Beto or Elizabeth or Kamala or any of the 7,244 others who will toss their chapeaus into the ring or be seriously mentioned.

In fact, I can wait at least a year before I have to start seriously thinking about which person I want to see get the nod. I can wait to see who else becomes possible and what all the contenders have to say, even about issues that do not yet exist. I can wait until the competitions and primaries and debates and — most of all — the inability to raise money whittles the field down to a dozen or so.

Right now, I'm thinking I won't pay much attention to this matter until a few weeks before the California primary, which will occur on March 3, 2020. That's like thirteen months from now.

As an aside: I'm not 100% sure of this but I believe the 2020 Comic Con International will be held July 23-26 with Preview Night on 7/22. So you won't have to choose between watching the Democratic Convention and attending whatever panels I do at the con next year. The Republican National Convention will be held August 24-27 and I have a hunch they won't be nominating an incumbent unless it's President Pence.

Lewis Black was great last night in a one-night stand at the Orpheum Theater downtown…but the photo above is of John Bowman who was Black's opening act. Why a picture of the opening act? Because he was terrific. No, let me rephrase that. I've seen Mr. Bowman before because he's usually Black's opening act and he's always been good. Last night, he was way better than that. If the man had a little more TV exposure, he'd do well to bag the opening-for-Lewis job and be the headliner of his own show.

He didn't use the ukulele — that was just the best photo I found of him online — but he did use a blonde wig and a delightful/savage sense of humor. It may have been the funniest Trump-bashing I've ever seen. The wig transformed him into Trump and then when he whipped it off, suddenly he was Rudy Giuliani. If they'd announced Lewis Black had taken ill and that Bowman was just going to do another hour, I don't think much of the audience would have complained.

Black was fine, of course. He mined a lot of the same topics Bowman had just discussed including stupidity — that which exists in our elected officials and that which exists in our electorate. He talked for close to 90 minutes then did one of his webcast segments. (They're free to watch here but they're only up for a few days after the does them.) Black didn't talk about Trump as much as the audience expected because — this is not a direct quote — "You've all been talking about him all day." He was right.

I see Lewis Black perform every year or so. He always seems to have fresh material, some of which feels warm from the oven and some of which seems to be created on the spot. He's always funny, often when reminding you about things you don't think are very funny. When he comes to your town — which he will some day — go see him. Especially if he has John Bowman opening.

Going to see this guy tonight. I hope he isn't angry about anything…

This coming Wednesday, January 30, I'll be doing a very rare bookstore signing at Atlantis Fantasyworld in Santa Cruz, California. The shop is located at 1020 Cedar St. — in Santa Cruz (of course) and I'll be there from Noon 'til 6 PM. Come by. Make a purchase. Keep me company. I think this is the first bookstore appearance I've made in about ten years.

In March, I'll be at two conventions, both of them in Southern California. March 7-10, it's the San Diego Comic Fest, a small (by Comic-Con standards) gathering that's intimate, friendly, unjammed and always a lot of fun. Details can be found on this website.

Then later in March — March 29 thru 31, to be precise — you'll find me at WonderCon Anaheim. Details here. At both of these assemblages, I'll be hosting panels and talking to people and doing my best to avoid sitting behind a table.

And I've accepted an invite to guest at this year's Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. It's June 14-16 and I don't know much more about it than that right now. Their website is over here.

And as you can probably guess, I'll be at Comic-Con International in San Diego, which is July 18-21 with a Preview Night on July 17. I still don't understand why they don't just say the convention is July 17-21 but then there are many things in this world I don't understand. This will the fiftieth of these conventions, which I find amazing. Even more amazing is that it'll be the fiftieth one of these I've attended. That is not humanly possible.

Ben Sternbach sends me an awful lot of questions and this morning, I decided to respond to this one…

I'm sure you watched Bill Maher's show last night so you must have seen his New Rules rant about how comic books are infantile garbage. If you'd been a guest on that show and had thirty seconds to rebut him on air, what would you have said?

I would have said something like, "You're right that there are a lot of childish, stupid comic books out there. There are also a lot of childish, stupid stand-up comedians and even some childish, stupid TV shows where people sit around discussing politics. I wouldn't judge everything in a form of communication by its worst examples.

"As for your point about how people should outgrow that kind of thing, I kinda feel that way about smoking pot but since I've never smoked pot, I'm not really in the ideal position to judge those who do. Since you proudly have not seen the best of what's being done in comic books, maybe you don't understand what people get out of them."

And then I'd pretty much forget about his comments. People say lots of things on television which strike me as wrong or simply uninformed. If you get upset about every one of them, you'll be upset a lot over things that you can't do anything about…and which don't have any impact on the world except to get you upset.

A profile of Mr. Eric Idle…

• Oh, great. They end the shutdown "temporarily" so we get to go through this again in three weeks. Meanwhile, Bill Maher has Ann Coulter as a guest tonight so we get to hear what she thinks about all this…

As I'm sure you've heard, Trump adviser Roger Stone was arrested this morning when FBI agents went to his Florida home…FBI agents who aren't being paid, apparently. There's devotion to duty.

There's news footage of them swarming all over his property but, alas, no video of Stone being taken away. I was hoping to see someone frog-marched. I still don't know what that is and won't until I see it actually done. Please, Robert Mueller, before you file your final report and the fight starts about whether anyone will get to read it, frog-march at least one person you take into custody. I'd really like to see it done to Jerome Corsi but you can even do it to me if you have to. I just want to see what that looks like.

If you want to know what Mr. Stone did to warrant all those warrants, Andrew Prokop has a full explanation. Basically, he's guilty of associating with Donald Trump, which apparently no one can do without obstructing justice.

I'm not sure who "Mr Dooves" is other than that he's someone who does a cappella renditions of TV theme songs. I love good a cappella singing and here he provides that for the theme from a show I wrote and co-produced for seven seasons…

If you're really interested in what Trump's doing wrong when it comes to a president achieving his objectives, spend the time to read this piece by Ezra Klein.

Put simply, it's that Trump is oriented towards the "big win" in every battle. That was always the raison d'être of business dealings. He's never been as interested in the deal that's a win/win for both sides as he is in the one that's a Big Win for Donald Trump and a humiliating defeat for the other guy. (Anyone remember how loudly he bragged about getting the advantage over Merv Griffin on that casino deal? The one which eventually turned out to be a lose/lose for both men?)

Whether that works in the business world is a separate argument but as Klein notes, citing the works of author Frances Lee, it sure doesn't work for someone in the White House. Merely by being president, you become The Enemy of an opposition party whose votes you need to get anything passed these days…so they oppose your win and it doesn't happen. As Klein explains, it's a lesson Barack Obama had to learn and one which Trump, by his personalization of every issue, probably can't.

William Saletan runs down a partial list of incoherent and inconsistent things that Rudy Giuliani has said in defense of his client, Donald Trump. There are a number of these articles online and I don't see that their authors have considered the possibility that Giuliani is saying these stupid things because his client has ordered him to.

It is of critical importance that we build a wall along our Southern border because it will eliminate all crime and if we don't, rapists and murderers will keep coming across that border and will be raping and murdering. It will even stop drug trafficking into our country even though every agency that deals with the drug problem says that more than 95% of all illegal drugs that are brought into this country come in through airports.

But the wall is still of vital importance. It wasn't that important two months ago when Republicans controlled the House of Representatives and would do anything the president asked for but as soon as Democrats took control, it became an absolute necessity.

It also wasn't so important that the Trump Administration has drawn up any firm plans as to what we'd build or even what it would be made of, nor did they say who would do the actual building. I'm guessing Trump Construction and they'll do it with the same efficiency we know from Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Casinos, Trump Mortgage Co., Trump Steaks and Trump Travel.

Congress must okay the building of this wall even though there's no real budget for what it will actually cost, nor any plan on how to deal with all the private property that must be acquired to build the wall or the places where the wall cannot be built because there are rivers in the way. But it will be a great wall and no one will be able to go over it or under it or even through it, even if we won't spend the money to have armed guards patrolling it 24/7.

This wall is so needed that Trump said he'd be proud to shut down the government over it and not blame Democrats and of course, it's their fault the government is shut down now. Do I have this right?

I have no particular opinions or rooting interest in the Academy Award nominations that were announced yesterday. But every year, I feel compelled to remind y'all that you can't read much into such things other than that in category, certain numbers of unidentified people cast more votes for some choices than others. You have no idea how many votes anyone got and that person you think got "snubbed" may have missed a nomination by one vote or many. And you have no idea if the folks who didn't vote for him or her even saw the film in question.

I saw several people write that since Julie Andrews won for Best Actress in the original Mary Poppins and Emily Blunt wasn't nominated for the sequel, the Academy was saying that Julie was a better Mary than Emily. I think she was but the voters didn't say any such thing. It said that in 1964, more of the people voting that year thought Ms. Andrews gave the best performance that year, as opposed to the different set of voters this year who preferred at least five other performances this year to Ms. Blunt's. Emily was competing with a different group of voters against different competition.

She was probably also competing with The Black Panther in the category of where Disney would spend its bucks to secure Oscar nominations.

And the thing to remember about "snubbed" is that the Academy has an arbitrary number of nominations in each category. In a year when there are three outstanding performances by Actors in Supporting Roles, they nominate five. And in a year when there are nine outstanding performances by Actors in Supporting Roles, they nominate five…and everyone says that four guys got "snubbed."

And some or all of those four guys might have secured Academy Award Nominations if — and they themselves have no control of this — the films they were in had been released a few weeks earlier or a few weeks later so they'd qualified in a different year. It's not just what you do in a movie, it's when that movie opens.

I won't be posting much today here. Remember that script I finished last week in Las Vegas? The one I wrote in-between eating at a White Castle and watching a Dean Martin impersonator who wouldn't fool you into thinking he was Dean Martin even if you were as drunk as Dean Martin? Well, it looks like I only thought I was finished. Today, I hope to be finished with it. But before I dive back into it, a few quick topics…

In this post, I said that the Crystal Geyser Water folks bottle their water for Southern California (and probably some outlying areas) at a bottling plant on Mt. Shasta in Olancha, CA. Well, reader-of-this-site John Schrantz informs me that "Mount Shasta is a good 500 miles away from Olancha, way up in Northern California. Olancha is a small desert town in the Owens Valley of Eastern California. The water bottled there comes from the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains."

Darryl Musick wrote to tell me much the same thing and I guess I got confused. Crystal Geyser has two plants in California. One is at Olancha Peak in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the city of Alancha. The other is on Mt. Shasta in the city of Weed, California. I regret the error.

I also regret eating at the White Castle that's part of the Casino Royale on the Las Vegas Strip. I liked White Castle burgers when I had them back east…but the last time was more than ten years ago, more like fifteen. They were pretty awful in Vegas. So this leaves us with three possibilities…

1. White Castle has changed the recipe.
2. They haven't but the place in Vegas doesn't make them very well or…
3. My tastes have changed over the years.

I'm going with "c" here.  Since my sweet tooth went away around 2008, I don't like a lot of foods I liked before then.  In-and-Out Burgers got very untasty to me in the same way.

I wish I'd seen this yesterday: Dana Milbank lists the uncanny similarities between Martin Luther King and Donald John Trump. He left out the fact that these days, each man is saying about the same number of wise things.  See you tomorrow or maybe later today after the script is done…again.

Hurry back, John Oliver! We need you…