A YouTube series I sometimes enjoy watching is Hellthy Junk Food, which stars the married couple of J.P. Lambiase and Julia Goolia.  They were not married when they started doing this and their website still refers to Julia as J.P.'s girl friend.  In each episode, they do one of two things…

They try to make something bizarre in their home kitchen…like a giant devilled egg or a KitKat bar the size of a Mazda.  Or they go to some fast food joint, order everything off the menu and critique each item.  In the first category, they're very big on putting one kind of food inside another — like a hamburger inside a giant French Fry inside a pizza inside another hamburger. Or something like that. A lot of what they deal in is what some would call "junk food" and none of it seems particularly healthy or even hellthy but I guess it's a success if they can knock 20 calories off something that has 2000+ of them.

So, uh, what's the point of making a Skittle the size of Hervé Villechaize? Just to see if they can do it and to entertain those of us who watch. I find them funny and if I ran the Food Network, they'd be on in prime time.

Today is apparently National M&Ms Day, at least around the M&Ms factory. In recognition of this, they decided to see if they could make the world's largest M&M. It turned out to be a lot more difficult than you might imagine…

The power came back on here at 3:05 AM and my life resumed. How come my computer can stay on for a while when the electricity goes out, thanks to my Uninterruptible Power Supply, but traffic lights don't?

Yesterday, I got a call from a gent who's running a comic convention in a faraway town, says he's a huge fan of my work and wants to fly me in to be a guest and he'll give me a nice monetary guarantee. I asked him, "Guarantee against what?" He said, "Well, you know…you sit there and sell sketches to your fans and if your gross doesn't hit the guarantee amount, we'll buy sketches from you to make up the difference so you're guaranteed to go home with that amount."

It's not that difficult to spot the people who are "a big fan of your work" but have no friggin' idea what you do. One tip-off: They use the words "legend" and "icon" a lot, as he did in every third sentence. Everything you've ever done or will ever do is "legendary" and/or "iconic." This morning, for example, I took a legendary shower and then ate an iconic bowl of cereal. I told the guy…

1. I don't do sketches.  I really don't draw much anymore and even when I did, what resulted was not the kind of thing discerning folks would shell out actual cash to acquire.  Long ago, I decided I had a future in writing and enjoyed it way more.  Also, lack of ability had something to do with it.  Had I stayed with drawing and practiced and practiced, I would now be about one-fourteenth as good as most of my artist friends (one twenty-eighth as good as Sergio) and I'd probably be homeless and sleeping on the back stairs of a Chipotle.
2. At conventions, I don't sit behind a table.  Been there, done that, bored silly by it.  Maybe when I get older, the "sitting down" part will matter more to me but right now, nope.  I can manage it for an hour or two here and there but not three whole days.

His reaction to these revelations was along the lines of "Then what the hell am I doing talking to you?"  He didn't say those words but it was there in his accusatory tone.  Ergo, I will not be a guest at this convention which, I see from its website, thinks anyone who works in comics is an Artist, including folks who don't even draw as much as I once did, which was not a lot.

Come to think of it though, I have a reason for wanting to go to Chicago some time between mid-April of 2019 and mid-October.  I'll tell you the reason shortly but for now, if any convention operator reading this would like to pay expenses to the Windy City (or anywhere near it) during those months for me and my lady friend, I will be a guest at your convention.  I'll even sit behind a table and sell sketches…but I warn you that if you give me a guarantee of anything over around twenty bucks, you're going to lose money on the deal.

Forgive any typos in this post. It's thunderstorming in Los Angeles, my power's gone out (as it does at the slightest sign of actual weather in this town) and I'm posting this on an iPad in a dark room with 11% power remaining.

As I've mentioned here, I'm a member of The Academy of Magical Arts, the group that operates the World Famous Magic Castle as its clubhouse and no, I won't (can't, really) give you a pass to go there; not if I don't know you really well. But I can show you this brief tour of the place hosted by the multi-talented Misty Lee.

I'm not sure why they made this. It feels like a recruiting tool but the Castle is now more successful than it's been since I joined 38 (!) years ago. Every night, it's packed to the point where members are complaining they can't get reservations. There's also a waitlist to become a new member. Still, the video will give you a good sense of the place. (Small Quibble: Not every magician performing there produces live doves outta nowhere.)

I love the place even if I do have to put on a tie to go there in the evenings. I'd tell you more but I'm at 8% power. No, make that 7%. See you when my electricity's back on. Given the swiftness of the DWP, we might be looking at Thanksgiving and maybe not the next one. Good night.

It used to be fashionable to refer to Broadway dancers as "gypsies" but that noun has gone out of fashion. I kind of understand why but it doesn't seem like a huge slur. Then again, I'm down with the idea that people should be called by whatever name or term they choose…and there doesn't seem to be any outcry among the folks in question over the rebranding. So the "Gypsy Robe" — a famous Broadway tradition which I wrote about here — is now the Legacy Robe…and it's probably a better name of it.

Also, there is or was this annual event called "The Gypsy of the Year Awards." If you're ever in New York at the beginning of December, try to attend this. It's only two performances and both are filled with folks from the theatrical community both onstage and in the audience. The companies of the most of the currently-running shows each put on a little sketch or musical number, often burlesquing one another and they're always very entertaining.

If you go from now on though, look for the Red Bucket Follies, which is also probably an improvement in the Name Department. Again, this does not seem to be a controversial change. The term I'd like to see changed is "Ticket Resellers." Let's call them why really are: The Unofficially Sanctioned Ticket Price Raisers. But I'll settle for just "pirates."

I linked the other day to a video about a gent named Igor Vovkovinskiy and said he was the tallest man in the world. That was the title of the video posted by the folks who do the version of 60 Minutes in Australia but many of you have informed me that that's wrong. Mr. Vovkovinskiy, at 7'8" is the tallest man in America but not the world.

The Guinness Book of World Records people say that honor belongs to a Turkish-Kurdish farmer named Sultan Kösen, who is 8'3". Both men are still growing and both apparently have the same condition: A tumor that is pressing against the pituitary gland, causing it to secrete an abnormal amount of growth hormone.

Apparently, there are also a few other men who are an inch or two taller than Igor. I am correcting the record because I don't like having people get pissed at me, especially if they're over seven feet tall.

A movie is coming out shortly in which Tom Hanks plays the popular kid show host, Fred Rogers. I don't think there's a better actor working today than Tom Hanks but if we were ignoring box office heat — as few films can afford to do — I think there might be someone around more suited to play Mr. Rogers. It would be someone who didn't keep looking or sounding like Tom Hanks.

Maybe it's just me but I have trouble with well-known people playing well-known people. They rarely seem to disappear into the roles for me.  I feel the same way when someone familiar acts with a lot of makeup on…Billy Crystal in The Princess Bride or Mr. Saturday Night, for example.  In those cases, I didn't see an older man on the screen.   I saw Billy Crystal with a lot of stuff on his face.

When I watched the movie of Lenny, I did not see Dustin Hoffman becoming Lenny Bruce. I saw Dustin Hoffman doing Lenny Bruce's material. When I saw Will Smith playing Muhammad Ali, I saw Will Smith telling people he was Muhammad Ali.

In Saving Mr. Banks, we were supposed to buy Tom H. as Walt Disney and I'm afraid I didn't.  To me, one of the charming things about the real Walt was that he was so non-slick in front of a camera; like they'd randomly picked someone's uncle to host a TV show. He was not a natural for that position, whereas Tom Hanks just twinkles with stardom on screen.  He can dial it down but he can't shut it off.

I'm not saying those weren't great performances or great movies. I'm just saying that the better known the actor is — ofr for that matter, the person he or she is playing — the harder it is for me to stop seeing it as an actor playing a role. I did a little better with Bryan Cranston in Trumbo (though I didn't much like that film) and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Capote, in large part because I didn't know the sound of Dalton Trumbo's voice and I had no particular memory of this Hoffman in any other role.

I am trying not to pre-review a movie that isn't finished and which I haven't seen yet…but it would seem to me that the same thing applies with Hanks as Rogers, only more so. Fred Rogers' every word and gesture reminded you that he was not an actor; that he had never attended the Columbia School of Broadcasting or any other place to give him a polished, professional screen presence. It just seems to me he shouldn't be played by a fellow with two Oscars, four Golden Globes, six Emmys and a whole mess of other awards and nominations.

Then again, Mr. Rogers did win five Emmys, one of which was a lifetime achievement award. Another was a writing award which he got in 1985 and one of the nominees he beat out for it was me. I was not unhappy about that.  To the extent such trophies actually recognize achievement, he probably deserved it way more than I did. If he'd been at the ceremony, I would have told him so.

A few years later, I was at the Licensing Show in New York and he was there to sign autographs for a few hours. Someone I knew there knew him and asked me, "You want to meet Mr. Rogers?" Well, of course I did.  How could anyone pass up that opportunity?  (At another one of those conferences, I met "Buffalo" Bob Smith of Howdy Doody fame.  Have I told that story here?)

Introductions were made…and I was instantly struck by how Mr. Rogers was exactly the same in person as he was on-screen. Exactly. He talked the same, he smiled the same, he acted the same — which meant that on TV, he wasn't acting at all. I should have known better but, trying to get a chuckle out of him, I said, "It's an honor to meet you even though you beat me out for an Emmy Award."

Big mistake, Mark. Mr. Rogers suddenly acted like I was in need of medium-level grief counseling. He said, oh so kindly, "Now, young man, you shouldn't feel bad about such things. Awards are not the measure of what we do. I'm sure you did something of great value if it was nominated and the pride in that work should be your reward…"

"Well, I was just kidding. Actually, I thought it was great that you won and —"

"Because if you feel good about yourself, that's all that should ever matter.  The approval of others is nice to have, of course, but it should never be a necessity in your life."

"It isn't," I said — and at that moment, all sorts of smartass quips, most of them self-deprecating, were racing through my mind. They were drowned-out by some part of my brain shouting at me, "Don't try to be funny! He takes things literally!"

So I said to him, "I'm sorry. I gave you a wrong impression. I was just trying to say it really was an honor to meet you."

And so help me, he grinned and said something that to him at that second I'm sure was absolutely true. He said, "Well, it's an honor to meet you, too!" And then he turned to some people near us and introduced me to them as his new friend. Even remembered my name and pronounced it properly, which I don't always do.

Even if Tom Hanks is the best actor alive — and I'm not saying he isn't — I don't see how he or anyone in show business could capture the total delight and complete lack of guile or sarcasm or artifice in Mr. Fred Rogers at that moment. In life, we sometimes play roles, acting nicer or more sincere than we really are because that seems to suit the situation.

I will keep an open mind and cheer if Mr. Hanks can make me accept him totally as Mr. Rogers. But in my one Mr. Rogers moment — the one I've just described — my then-new friend was totally honest and not playing any sort of role of any sort. Tom Hanks will be.

Here's a nice remembrance of Neil Simon that was assembled upon his recent passing…

Lately, almost every time I talk on the phone with some employee of a large company, I am asked afterwards to rate that employee on their knowledge, their courtesy, their efficiency, etc. Sometimes, I'm asked to remain on the line after the call with the live person so that I can take a brief survey, rating them 1-to-5 or 1-to-10. Sometimes, it happens in a follow-up call to me. Both kinds of surveys are conducted by a computer voice.

With rare exceptions, these surveys are only about the specific staff member to whom I spoke. They are almost never about my total experience dealing with the company. They do not ask how many times I had to call and how long I waited on "hold" to get to that staff member. They do not ask how confusing it was to determine which button to press to be connected to the proper department or even what the proper department was. Yesterday, I was asked to rate a woman I spoke to at Spectrum Cable, a firm I believe has as its only goal to make you wish you were back with Time-Warner Cable.

Yesterday's Spectrum journey began with a robocall to me. It was a message delivered by the recorded voice of their lady-who-answers-the-phone — the one who sounds like she's still bitter she didn't get to be Siri. She informed me that there was a problem with my system and that I should call the "800" number she gave me to resolve the situation. There was no hint as to what was wrong or even what division it was in — my Internet service, my phones, my cable TV, me paying my bill, etc.

I called the number — and it would have been nice if it had connected me directly to someone who could tell me what the heck this was all about. It did not. It connected me to the same Main Menu you get when you call Spectrum without being asked — you know: the one you call when your Internet is out, your phones are out, your cable TV is out…

The wanna-be Siri told me to press 1 for Technical Support, 2 for Billing, 3 for God Knows What, 4 for Something Else, etc. Having zero idea what this was about, I punched 1 for Technical Support, whereupon I was asked to press 1 for Internet Connectivity, 2 for Telephone, 3 to Get Ready, 4 to Go, 5 for Texas and so on. Since I still had no idea where the problem was, I picked one at random.

Then the lady's voice told me that due to a high volume of calls (i.e., they don't have a large enough staff), there was a wait time of 6 to 9 minutes. Given the choice of having them call me back (I would not lose my place in line) or spending 6-9 minutes being told my call was very important to them, I went for the callback…and they actually got back to me in about four minutes. I found myself talking to a live lady who asked me how she could help me.

I said, "I was hoping you could tell me that" and I explained about getting a call telling me there was something amiss but it didn't tell me what. She looked me up on her computer and it took about three minutes for her to load my information. Apparently, the Spectrum company's technology doesn't work any better for them than it does for me. I wonder who they call to complain.

Finally, she told me what the problem was. It's a problem we fixed a week ago.

So they wasted some of her time and a lot of my time for no reason. Shouldn't someone there be able to fix this computer problem — sending out alerts for things that are no longer alert-worthy — in about twenty minutes? And if they can't fix that, what makes them think they can fix the problem on my cable TV that causes the signal to pixelate every time Steve Harvey is on? That's not a bad thing in itself but, jeez, that's like half the shows on TV these days. He has the talk show, he has the game show, he has the show with the kids…any week now, I expect them to reboot Gidget with him in the title role.

I hung up and then some computer at Spectrum waited just long enough for me to get back into working before it called me to take a brief survey. Thinking I might get an opportunity to complain about the previous waste of my time, I plunged into yet another. All the questions were about how nice and polite the lady in Tech Support was.

Well, I didm't want to give her a bad rating. She didn't do anything wrong except to go to work for that company. It wasn't her fault the computer called me about a non-issue. It wasn't her fault the callback number didn't reach the department I was supposed to talk to. It wasn't her fault that Steve Harvey just signed to put on a fur coat and take over for Smokey the Bear…

So I gave her a good rating and then I had sixty seconds to record comments. I was about twenty seconds into itemizing my complaints for whoever listens to such things — and I'm not convinced anyone does — and then the computer hung up on me. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Too bad they don't do follow-up calls to their follow-up calls.

This runs close to 14 minutes but I think you'll find it worth at least that much of your life. It's the heartbusting story of Igor Vovkovinskiy, the tallest man in the world.

The story was produced for the Australian version of 60 Minutes. I don't know if it's run in America…or if not, why not. But I guarantee you, it'll give you a lot of things to think about…

For an hour or so a few weeks ago, there seemed to be a fad of burning one's Nike shoes because…well, it never made a whole lot o' sense and I wonder if all the shoe-burners were clear on the concept. Somewhere online, I found this explanation which raises as many questions as it answers…

A day after Nike unveiled their new "Just Do It" ad campaign featuring former NFL player Colin Kaepernick, several Americans shared photos and videos of them burning Nike products in protest. Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, gained attention for taking a knee during the American anthem in the 2016 NFL season. He was protesting against the way the state police treated people of color. Since then, he kneeled in protest in several other games.

It has always struck me that the folks who are irate over players "taking a knee" are deliberately misrepresenting the protesters' statement to make it more attackable and less defensible. They're taking a protest that's clearly defined as being against the way some police departments mistreat minorities and reframing it as "Those players are showing disrespect for the flag and all those who have fought for it in our armed forces." It's a lot easier to whip up hatred of the protesters for the latter than for the former.

And when we make it about shoes, we're really changing the subject from the issue that this is all about: Police mistreating minorities. They really don't want to talk about that.

But wait. It gets sillier. And more off that topic…

Back when Donald Trump was President-Elect Trump, the folks who make New Balance shoes showed some support for him, mainly because he was promising to cancel the Trans Pacific Partnership, which had been championed by the Obama administration. This is not exactly a hard-right position. There's reason to believe that President Hillary Clinton or President Bernie Sanders would have done much the same thing. From what I can gather though, some of the shoe-burners — angry at Nike for treating Colin Kaepernick as the kind of hero you feature in advertising — vowed to henceforth buy only New Balance because (a) New Balance has made like 98% of their shoes in America and (b) they backed Trump.

(b) seems like an exaggeration to me but I'm all for (a). I've been wearing nothing but New Balance shoes now for close to forty years and the "Made in America" reason is a big one. Remember back when the news was full of footage of President William Jefferson Clinton out jogging? He was always wearing New Balance running shoes, possibly because he liked them as much as I do, probably because they were the only shoes he could wear without risk of reporters noting, "The president was wearing shoes made in Bangla Desh by eight-year-olds being paid a nickel a day."

Honestly though, a more important reason I wear New Balance is that I think they make real good shoes and my feet like them.

They're odd feet — so odd they might have kept me out of the Army had I been drafted. From about age 10 until I was about 27, I had to wear special shoes that cost a lot and didn't last long. They were only available as one model of leather dress shoes so that's what I had to wear all the time, including in gym class or when engaging in exercise or sports. Only two or three stores in all of Los Angeles sold them.

There were two good things about shopping at the one we went to, one being that they gave out March of Comics giveaways. My father (and later, I) was shelling out tons of cash for my shoes but at least they came with free hard-to-otherwise-procure comic books.

And the other was that I was buying shoes from real experts; not some kid who was in his second week working at a Foot Locker because he got fired from Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick.

One day around 1979, one of those experts did some re-examining and then said that a kind of athletic shoe they carried might work fine on my feet. I said, "When I was ten, I was told I couldn't wear athletic shoes."

He said, "That was probably correct…then. But your feet have changed and so have athletic shoes. They now have more structure and sole support and they're much, much better made." The best, he said, was the one brand his store stocked — New Balance. I tried on a pair, they felt fine and after a few weeks of them feeling fine, I bought two more pairs and abandoned forever the expensive leather ones. In fact, I abandoned the stores with the experts because New Balance shoes were much cheaper at other shops.

The other day I was in my bank and a lady customer spotted my New Balance shoes and asked, about 90% jokingly, "Are you a White Supremacist?" I did a double-take that would have been over-the-top on The Benny Hill Show and asked her to explain. It seems she read online somewhere that since Nike has shown themselves as unAmerican by lionizing Mr. Kaepernick…and New Balance had demonstrated its patriotism (albeit for business reasons) by backing Mr. Trump on something…and since there are no other shoe companies in the world except those two…

…well, of course. New Balance shoes are the official shoe of White Supremacists anywhere. A bit of Googling shows that some of this has been going around for a while, even before the whole Kaepernick thing. The rest of a man may be covered by a sheet but you can always identify a racist by his New Balance shoes.

I don't think I'm a racist. I can't recall a single moment in my life when I treated anyone differently or had the slightest fear of anyone because they weren't Caucasian. My best male friend is Hispanic. My lady friend is black and one before her was, as well. When I've been in hiring positions, I've hired folks of all races and genders. But I do like these shoes I'm wearing at the moment, the ones which have a big "N" on the sides.

To steal an oft-said line from Donald Trump and others, I don't have a racist bone in my body. But apparently, that doesn't include my feet.

Hey, we haven't had a barbershop quartet on this site for a while. This is a group called After Hours and they're favoring us with "Butter Outta Cream," which is a song I really liked in the Broadway show, Catch Me If You Can. The songs in that musical were by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman and most of them were pretty darned good. I don't know why it didn't run longer.

Here are the After Hours boys…

Okay, the fifth volume of Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips is officially on sale at Amazon. In fact, they're telling me that I can get FREE delivery Today if I order $35 of qualifying items within 2 hrs and 11 mins. I've also heard from folks who already had copies delivered by Amazon or bought copies in bookstores last weekend. I am quite pleased because getting Pogo books off to press was a major problem in my life for several years and now it's pretty darned simple.

Would someone who loves them even half as much as I do please go do the first review on Amazon?

Let's see what else I can put in this post. I'm not paying much attention to politics this week. Even more than usual, it seems to be one of those periods when no matter what you believe is happening or want to believe will happen, you can find some sage pundit who'll tell you exactly what you want to believe. I'm not going to nag you about registering to vote or actually voting because I like to believe that anyone smart enough to come to this site is smart enough to not need that urging.

I haven't mentioned it lately but I continue to get 3-4 calls a day from building contractors or their representatives. Each of the contractors purchased somewhere a list of people who've recently had work done on their homes and much to my displeasure, I'm on that list. They want to know what my next project will be and to tell me that they have someone in my neighborhood who'd be glad to pop in and give me a free estimate. Some are polite and honest about it. Some lie and read a script that goes, "We spoke six months ago and you were very nice to me and asked me to call back about now because you'd be ready to do more work on your home, blah blah blah…"

I am polite to the polite ones and uncharacteristically rude (for me) to the liars. I told one this morning, "Do you really think I want work done on my home by someone who started our relationship by lying to me?" It bothers me that obviously, this works sometimes. So obviously does lying in politics.

Amazon is still listing October 9 as the official release date for Volume 5 of Pogo – The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips by Walt Kelly but I'm hearing from folks who pre-ordered and received their copies today. So I guess it's out. You can order your copy right here and you'll probably receive it quickly. That is, unless Amazon runs out of their initial shipment and needs to wait for more.

It contains two prime years of what I think is the best newspaper strip ever…and even folks who disagree with me on that don't usually disagree by much. The volume also has historical info on Kelly and the strips in this volume plus a foreword by Pogo devotee Jake Tapper.

As most of you know, we had trouble getting these books out on their announced release dates. For the early volumes, it was difficult to locate good source material to scan and much of what we could locate had to undergo major surgery and restoration. Then one of the book's two editors died of cancer. Then the other of the book's two editors died of cancer. All of that is behind us now and I'll soon announce when Volume 6 will be published. I couldn't be happier that they will come out on schedule from now on.

This is Mike Wally Walter, the world's foremost Don Rickles impersonator. Let's see if he drops his pants and fires a rocket…

I was up 'til four or five A.M. — at that time o' day, an hour one way or the other doesn't matter — and now I'm back at the computer, determined to get a script done before four or five P.M. One of the benefits of writing comedy when you should be in bed is that after about 3:30 in the morning, everything is funny…then. After a few hours of sleep, you may look back at it and wonder, "Why did I think that was amusing?" But at least for a while there, you wrote the funniest joke in the world. If I could only get everyone who reads this manuscript to read it at four in the morning.

So for the next hour or two, I won't be writing. I'll be rewriting.

Speaking of things that aren't funny: I'm not going to link to one but I've noticed that YouTube is suddenly full of videos that are based on the idea, "Let's find some beautiful women who will let us shove pies in their faces!" And then in some, they hit them with a second pie and a third pie and sometimes a dozen and then they dump various colors of slime on them. Hitting someone in the face with a pie for comedic reasons usually involves the target being surprised or at least pretending to be surprised…but there seems to be a market out there that doesn't care about the comedic element. They just want to see attractive ladies covered in real or simulated food. This is another in the never-ending series of Things Mark Doesn't Understand.

That ever-expanding series of course now includes wondering why any female in this country would vote Republican, especially if they aren't really wealthy. But I think I'm going to have one of those "Don't think too much about politics" weeks.

Some time ago here, we posted some items about the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a venerable institution in downtown L.A. carrying on the work of the late Bob Baker. It was such a happy place, inexorably linked to so many childhoods, that there was a battle to keep it from being demolished so someone could build a new Burger King or something equally necessary. In 2009, it seemed the battle was won when it was designated a historical cultural landmark but now it seems historical cultural landmark status ain't what it used to be. It's being torn down and the theater will reportedly relocate in some as-yet-undetermined location. I hope it actually does.

If you're thinking of attending the November 7 screening of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood, get your tickets now. They're almost gone. 11/7 will be 55 years since my favorite movie debuted at the Dome…and 55 years since the Dome opened. I just started to type "and it'll be the 55th time I've seen it" but I must have passed that milestone long ago.

And now, I have to go write. No, I have to go rewrite. (See? I'm even rewriting this paragraph!)