I'm back. The script is in, though when I finish this, I have to start on another one that's gotta be in on Monday. The headaches have abated. Headaches are a big problem for me because when I have one, I'm still totally conscious that my thinking is not at its best and so I'm much more prone to do something foolish about…well, about anything in my world. Doing something foolish can lead to further headaches…and there's an endless circle you want to end before it begins.

My overall reaction to the whole Brett Kavanaugh thing is mostly one of sadness, as well as frustration that we keep doing this thing to ourselves. I keep remembering when prominent Republicans — Lindsey Graham, loudest of all — were damning Barack Obama as "the most divisive president of all time." Then as now, it seemed to me Obama's "crime" was not giving them every single thing they wanted. He was kind of stubbornly insisting on being President of the United States and to them, that was divisive.

You want to see "divisive?" Look at the guy we've got now. Obama may have had his flaws but saying whatever an angry mob wanted to hear, especially insulting his opponents and any reporter who didn't take dictation from him, was not among them. And now, folks like Jeffrey Toobin — who has a pretty good track record for this kind of thing — are saying Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned. Even if that doesn't happen, the battle over that one is going to make the Kavanaugh fight look like a polite difference of opinion.

One of these days, I'm going to write a piece here about abortion. It will be a very long piece, not something I can write now and still have that script done in 48 hours. But it'll be about an "adventure" I had 30+ years ago helping my then-current lady friend infiltrate an anti-abortion rally. It will also be about how some people want to ban abortion for moral issues and some only because it would be a victory for their side. I fear that's what politics in this country has come to be about: Not what is morally right for us and maybe not even what is good for us…but about who gets to drive the bus at the moment even if they don't know how to drive.

Imagine for a second a Supreme Court nominee who is not partisan; who would look at the laws and the facts of a case and would be a true "swing vote" every time. He or she would not be a reliable, predictable vote…and might well not side with the party of the president who'd appointed him or her. And imagine a Senate that would confirm that nominee unanimously. When I was much younger, that's what I understood a Justice of the Supreme Court was supposed to be.

I don't know how many of them were ever, really truly that or anything close to that…but I know we haven't had one lately and may not see another in my lifetime.

Remember when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the High Court? There were howls and protests and objections…and not from Democrats. It all came from Republicans who felt that while, yes, she would be Republican, she wouldn't be Republican enough. She wasn't someone Democrats would hate so Bush was forced to withdraw he name and instead, he gave us Samuel Alito. (Sam Brownback — who's been busy destroying Kansas by trying to turn it into a Conservative Utopia — and ol' Lindsey Graham were the leading Republican Senators complaining that Miers' paper trail didn't indicate a desire to always slap down Liberals.)

So that's what our Supreme Court has become. Democrats don't like it now. Republicans won't like it when the next Democratic President nominates they youngest possible version of Bernie Sanders or Maxine Waters they can find. And it won't change because the people against it will always, by definition, be the ones out of power.

Two Mushroom Soup Days in a row!  I've been battling a script deadline, dealing with computer problems and coping with an intermittently-recurring headache that feels like Desi Arnaz is playing "Babalu" on my cerebral cortex.  All of these should be gone in the next day or so and things will normalize here.

I also now turn out to have an e-mail problem.  The server via which I receive your (mostly) lovely mail has decided that everything is not only Spam but apparently the kind that you Return to Sender, rather than just divert into a Spam folder.  On October 1, they changed how they process mail and things you may have sent me may have bounced back to you.  This is not because I don't exist any longer on the 'net but because they stopped allowing "catch-all" addresses — some of you know what those are — and that screwed up how my mail was routed to me.  It took me a couple days to notice because some of it was getting through but not all. If something you sent me bounced back to you, please resend it.

In other news, I've found out that if Desi Arnaz is playing "Babalu" on any part of your body, a good way to stop it is to take a vacation from watching the news. I've only had a few peeks in the last twenty-four hours and I gather that (a) Mr. Kavanaugh is probably going to be confirmed, (b) even if he is, people will be campaigning against him and protesting for a long time and (c) if Republican officials are to be believed, the only opposition to him in this country that is not paid-for by George Soros is mine. Maybe George's e-mail offering to fund me bounced. Back soon.

Things must get written today and then this evening, I'm going up to U.C.L.A. to speak to a classroom of folks who aspire to be animation writers.  I will start by advising them not to become animation writers but instead to become professional writers who write many things including animation.  And then we'll see where it goes from there.

I've kind of given up following the battle over whether Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court.  It doesn't seem to have all that much to do with whether he's qualified and everything to do with Republicans wanting to prove they're in charge.  I feel like we'd be having the same arguments if they'd decided to seat a parrot who'd been trained to say, "Whatever the Conservatives want is fine with me.  AWK!"

People ask why the G.O.P. is pushing this guy so hard, as opposed to someone else from the Federalist Society list who didn't have a history of heavy drinking and possible rape attempts.  There have to be a dozen names on that list who'd cast all the same votes on the High Court without Kavanaugh's shortcomings…and if he gets voted down, we'll probably get one of them.  One reason is Trump picked this guy and Trump is big on this "none dare defy me" stuff.  The other is that there's a large part of Trump's base that, given the choice of two nominees who'll vote the same but one will do a better job of pissing off Liberals, will opt for the Liberal Pisser-Offer.  It is, after all, why they voted for Donald.

I may or may not be back later today.  Gotta focus on finishing a script.

Eric Idle is everywhere these days promoting his new book. Here, he sits for a discussion of many of the characters he's played…

• I think Trump's new strategy is to rally his base against women who report sexual assaults. That'll get him off a number of hooks and then if Kavanaugh doesn't get confirmed, Trump can nominate Bill Cosby.

Some of you have been fretting about the fate of Andre's, that little Italian cafeteria in Los Angeles that I like so much.  Let us review…

Last July, I told you that the owners of the shopping mall wherein Andre's resides have big expansion plans.  What they want to do is tear down a rather decrepit Kmart when its lease runs out and erect a massive structure, variously described as between 19 and 26 floors and full of new retailers and housing units. It didn't look like there was room in their plans for Andre's.

Last August, a whole bunch of us appeared before the Mid City West Community Council to argue that the development should not be permitted.  I think a pretty strong case was made that evening — only a tiny bit of it by me — but it doesn't seem to have stopped anything.

Last September, it was announced that the Kmart is indeed closing.  Something else is going to go there and it looks like it's going to be that huge retail/housing building.

So here it is October and the Kmart is having a massive going-outta-business sale.  Everything in it is marked down somewhere between 30% and 60% and a sales clerk told me that prices will be going lower as they near their closing date, which is the last week in November.  I went in and bought a whole lotta cheap things and there's no need for you to be jealous.  If there's a Sears or Kmart (they're owned by the same company) near you, it'll probably be having one of these sales in the next year or so. They just announced even more closures.

But here's what's up with Andre's and it's not terrible.  The owners of the shopping center are reportedly impressed with the place and its loyal clientele so they've given them a lease extension to the end of 2019.  During this time, they'll be drawing up plans for the big new complex and trying to work out a way to incorporate my favorite place for cheap pasta into the layout.  It will almost certainly be necessary for Andre's to close during construction but there seems to be a good chance it will return and live on indefinitely.  So that's good news…not as good news as if they just left it the way it is but good news, nonetheless.

In the meantime, the owners of Andre's will be opening a new restaurant, regardless of what becomes of Andre's.  It'll be called the Grandi Italiani and it will be located in Canoga Park near the intersection of Topanga Canyon Boulevard and Sherman Way.  It will have the same menu and cuisine as Andre's and, one hopes, close to the same prices.  I'll let you know here when they announce an opening date. It's too far from me but already a few of my friends who live out that way are happy and eager to get in line.

If you live or travel anywhere near The Grove, Farmers Market or CBS, you're close enough to Andre's that you oughta go get a meal there. Just in case.

Don Messick was an amazing talent…a guy who could sound like ten different people in a cartoon and carry on conversations with himself. I had the pleasure of working with him a few times and he was a joy. He got it right on every take and there wasn't much he couldn't do.

This isn't the greatest interview of him. I think that's Bill Tush, who was usually pretty good at this kind of thing but he didn't seem to know what to ask Don. Nevertheless, I think you can get the idea of how the voices just came out of him like magic.

I wrote a cartoon special once where we needed to find two voices — a cat and a dog who were very much opposites and who'd be bickering for most of the show. Dozens of actors auditioned for each of the parts. They were recorded and the voices were numbered so that when the folks who made the final selections listened to the tapes, they had no idea who was who. Looking for the perfect contrast, they finally settled on the 9th guy who'd auditioned for the cat and the 14th guy who'd auditioned for the dog.

And when someone went to look up the actors' names and book them, they discovered that both of them were Don Messick.

The Vice-President at the network didn't believe that both of those voices came out of the same guy. They were so totally different. Finally, they decided — don't ask me why — to not hire Don to do either. Here's a few minutes of conversation with this lovely man…

That's right: It's 287 days until Comic-Con International convenes in San Diego. Time to start planning for it again. I haven't even bought what I won't be giving out this Halloween to trick-or-treaters because none of them ever show up at my house but here we are in early October, looking ahead to the Brigadoon of my life, Comic-Con International. This will be a very special Comic-Con because it's #50. It'll be the fiftieth they've had down there and the fiftieth I've attended.

And yes, I still enjoy them very much — last year, maybe more than ever. There was a brief period in their history when I felt the fun diminishing and I started thinking of skipping every other year or just going for a day…but that mindset reversed itself before I missed a year. At some point in the next 286 days, I'll write a blog post explaining about my brief disenchantment. For now, I'll just tell you it had everything to do with me and nothing to do with the convention itself. Once I performed an Attitude Adjustment on myself, the joy came roaring back, bigger than ever.

So now some of you need to begin thinking about next year's because Returning Registration happens on Saturday, October 13. This is for folks who were there for the 2018 con (the one you haven't unpacked from yet) and who were general attendees — not professionals, not volunteers, not press, etc. On 10/13, you have a chance to become a general attendee in 2019. Read all about it here. Later on, those of you who weren't there this past year will get your shot.

By the way: The 2019 Comic-Con International runs July 18-21 with a Preview Night on July 17. I do not know why there's a Preview Night and they don't just say the thing opens at 6 PM on the 17th but there's probably a very good reason for that.

I smiled when I saw on the convention website what I suppose is the first of several logos they'll be using for the 50th con. The one above is a slight modification of one that was designed by my old pal and collaborator, John Pound — a popular cartoonist who was involved in the early days of the convention. Somewhere in my house, I'm pretty sure I have my 1980 badge with that logo. The con went through several names before becoming Comic-Con International. To this day, a lot of people still refer to it that way or as S.D.C.C.

If you can't wait 287 days, by the way, the same skilled-at-convention-staging folks put on WonderCon in Anaheim and in 2019, it'll run March 29-31 with no Preview Night. It's not as big as the San Diego affair but it's more than big enough to keep you busy for three days…and tickets will be easier to procure whenever they go on sale. I don't yet know when that will be so keep an eye on this page. Last year, they began hawking them just before Thanksgiving.

• Mitch McConnell, who was proud of the endless delay and obstruction of Merrick Garland's nomination to the Supreme Court, is furious about (in his own words), the "endless delay and obstruction" of Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Raising baby pandas ain't easy…

Some of you have been wondering what's up with one of my favorite producers of musicals in L.A., the Reprise! Theater Company. So was I. First, the word was that they were closing down and would not even be staging the third and final show on their current subscription season, which was to be Grand Hotel with Hal Linden and Sharon Lawrence. Then we heard that that is not so. Now, official word from Reprise! is that Grand Hotel is being delayed. It will not open on October 24 as planned but they're expecting donor funding which will enable them to reschedule and stage the production. Hope so. We need them in this town.

Also: As I mentioned here, my favorite movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World will have it's 55th anniversary screening the evening of Wednesday, November 7 at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. That's 55 years to the day since the movie premiered and 55 years to the day since the Cinerama Dome opened. Tickets are disappearing at a brisk clip so if you want to be there, get your seats pronto at this link. Looks like the house is about 75% sold with over a month to go.

If you can't wait 'til then or you can't get to Hollywood that night, the film is being screened this coming Sunday at 5 PM at the Warner Grand Theater. That in San Pedro, a town where several scenes from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World were filmed. This presentation is the closing event of the San Pedro International Film Festival and details are available here. See how informative this blog can be?

At last, I have something in common with Donald Trump. He said this morning, "I'm not a drinker. I can honestly say I never had a beer in my life." Neither have I. Honest to God, I'm 66 years old and I've never had one. Never had a sip of wine, either. I'm sure I've had traces of both in, for example, beer-battered fried shrimp or French Onion Soup made with wine…but I've never had an actual glass of either or anything harder. I had a NyQuil once when I was around twenty and it did worse things to my system than the ailment it was supposed to soothe.

I'm sure all those things are wonderful to some people, especially if they know when to stop consuming them and can. I have nothing against social drinking. I just don't want to do it.

Friends sometimes ask me why. "Because I just don't want to" is my answer and to me, that oughta be sufficient…but it usually enough isn't for them. "Don't you want to at least try it?" they ask — and my answer is no. I have some very bad mental associations with excessive drinking — friends who took it to self-destructive levels — and non-excessive drinking reminds me of excessive drinking. I know there's a big difference but I can't always shake the association.

Moreover, I don't like trying new foods or beverages. No, let me rephrase that: I don't try new foods or beverages. You get to be like that when you have serious food allergies and even just the wrong hors d'oeuvre at a party can lead to long hours of stomach cramps, painful vomiting and worse. Surely, no matter how bulletproof your tummy may be, you can grasp the concept of "It ain't worth the risk."

Some people don't. I know I've written about this before but you'd be amazed that a lot of folks don't see the difference between "I won't eat that because I might not like it" and "I won't eat that because it could put me in the hospital." A woman once, unasked, cooked asparagus for me. When I told her asparagus did awful, awful things to my system, she asked, "Well, what if I put a sauce on it so it didn't taste like asparagus?"

I get offered beer and wine and harder stuff all the time. At a party at Comic-Con a year before last, a fellow writer walked up to me, thrust an uncapped bottle into my hand and said, "Here — I bought you a Corona." When I returned it to him with a polite "Thanks, but…" explanation, he acted like since he'd paid for it, it was awfully rude and unsporting of me to not chug-a-lug his gift.

But I really have no desire to try beer, especially since about ten years ago when I also gave up all liquids except water. Today, if you handed me a Pepsi-Cola or an apple juice I'd gently decline those also. I've decided my body just runs better that way and you should not think I'm condemning you in the slightest for enjoying something I choose not to put into my system.

Actually, I started this post before Trump's quote because the other day, we saw a Supreme Court nominee testifying of his love for beer and the evidence suggests it was a very big thing in his life, once upon a time. It might still be. Another thing that scared me off alcohol is the way some people seemed to need it so badly.

I can't think of anything I ever put in my body for pleasure that I care about as much as Brett Kavanaugh — and let's be fair, many others — cares about beer. I've made a fuss on this blog over the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup that's occasionally available at Souplantation but over the course of a year, I maybe consume eight bowls of the stuff and I go through no withdrawal symptoms or cravings during the 10-11 months per year it's unavailable. As of today, it's unavailable for an indeterminate time and I'll be fine 'til it's back.

It will be back, won't it? Please tell me it will be back soon. Please.

In case you didn't see last night's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, here's last night's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in full. It's a 29-minute look at Brett Kavanaugh and the hearings and it makes many solid points I have not seen anywhere…and even manages to be funny at the same time. I am stunned by how good it is, especially given how little time they had to write it, edit the footage, construct the graphics, etc. If you did see it, you'll probably want to watch it again…

Not that anyone's going to listen to a guy like me but I would like to suggest that the battle over Brett Kavanaugh points out a fundamental problem with the way we now select our Supreme Court Justices. It's that only a simple majority vote is required to confirm or reject a nominee. You can do it with 51 votes. You can do it with 50 and a Vice-President breaking the tie.

Before filibusters got eliminated a year or two ago, it took 60. If it still took 60, Brett Kavanaugh would never make it. And before you say, "Who would?", well lots of people have. Barack Obama's two nominees were confirmed 63-37 and 68-31. John Roberts, nominated by George W. Bush, was confirmed 78-22. (That Bush's other nomination, Alito, got in with 58-42 because Democrats declined to use the filibuster that was then possible.) Bill Clinton's two nominees were confirmed 87-9 and 96-3.

George H.W. Bush nominated two men to the High Court. David Souter was confirmed 90-9 while Clarence Thomas got in with 52-48. Guess which of those hearings involved screaming and charges of character assassination.

I submit they should not only reinstate the filibuster but even consider raising the number of necessary votes to 67. Even 60 though would mean that any President who sits down to select a nominee would have to come up with someone who could pass muster with more than a few members of the opposition party. They could still be a little left-leaning or right-leaning but it would get rid of the overt desire to put someone in place who would reliably, always and without exception on any important matter, vote according to the "proper" party line.

That kind of partisan justice is the problem. Even before questions of Kavanaugh's drinking and temperament and alleged molesting were raised, Democrats were opposing him for the same reason Trump and the Heritage Society picked him: Because he'd be that kind of always-vote-one-way judge. Merrick Garland had past support from quite a few Republicans but that didn't matter. They wanted an always-vote-Republican justice and since no Obama nominee was going to be one, they decided to block any Obama nominee.

It's a game that can't help but backfire on both parties eventually, hurting Democrats now and Republicans some time down the road whenever Democrats retake control. That's when they'll get an always-vote-Democratic justice onto the bench and it'll go back and forth until there's no such thing as "settled law" in this country.

We oughta reinstate the filibuster or even go to 67 before that occurs but I expect the chances of that happening are about the same as the chances of me getting nominated to the Highest Court in the Land. Hey, but at least there wouldn't be a big battle then. All the opposition would have to do to defeat me overwhelmingly is give everyone the URL to this blog or tell them I was involved with the birthing of Scrappy Doo. I could be the fastest unanimous vote ever.