I lost a bit of my loyalty to Nate Silver after the 2016 election. Yeah, most of the pollsters and poll analysts (Silver is the latter) called it wrong but I somehow expected better of him. But he redeemed himself with this past mid-term election and also with commentaries like this tweet…

And speaking of f'ed up: The Rasmussen Poll is often said to favor Republicans and that's the main one that keeps insisting that Donald Trump's disapproval rating is within a point or two of his approval rating. In the recent election, they projected that the popular vote for the House of Representatives would be one point in favor of the G.O.P. Looks like the correct answer will turn out to be eight points for the Democrats.

Here is Silver's take on whether the election can be called a Blue Wave. He says yes.

Getting back to the heinous crime of using a private e-mail server: Trump supporters won't care about this. They didn't care when it was revealed a few months ago. It's like what David A. Graham said in this article: When your guy does it, it's different from when the other guy does it.

That's my pal Christy Marx, who is best known for the Jem cartoon series, though goodness knows she's written lots of other TV shows, comic books, videogames and other things. She and her husband Randy could use some financial assistance.

They live just outside Paradise, California — or rather, they lived (past-tense) there. Paradise is that community in Northern CA that was almost completely obliterated by fire recently. They got out with their lives and not much else and though there'll be insurance money and maybe some government aid, you just know it ain't gonna be nearly enough or soon enough. That's why some friends of my friends have set up a GoFundMe campaign to try to get some bucks soon to these great people.

You've been watching the news. I don't have to tell you how horrifying it's been up there. If you're in a "Thank Goodness it didn't happen to me" state of mind, you probably want to help out some people it did happen to. You can read more and give whatever you can afford on this page.

I don't plug a lot of these things but this one is certainly worth your attention and your donation.

Matthew Yglesias summarizes the battle over CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta's press credentials. He also offers a solid (I think) view of it all and how it's to both Trump's and CNN's mutual benefit. Here's a little taste. Referring to how Kellyanne Conway is so often on CNN, Yglesias writes…

It's true that CNN hosts typically give [Conway] a hard time about the controversy of the day, and make various faces indicating disgust or outrage at her dishonesty. But they don't respond to that disgust or outrage by doing something sensible like declining to book her in the future.

Generally speaking, if you are interested in informing the public, you don't dedicate lots of airtime to letting a deeply dishonest person speak and then make weird faces as if you're surprised to discover she's a liar. You just go book someone more honest instead.

By the same token, if the Trump administration genuinely believed CNN was broadcasting "fake news," it wouldn't send its people to the network.

True. And by the way: Isn't it amazing that the person Trump sends out to try and convince everyone that he's a great, benevolent leader is a woman who hasn't even been able to convince her own husband of that? In the same way, James Carville couldn't convince his own wife that Bill Clinton was a force for good. Those both seem to be fairly happy, stable marriages.

If you're going to sit down for Thanksgiving Dinner with relatives or even friends who don't share your political viewpoints, this page might be useful for you. It's the Politifact people debunking some of the less-than-true talking points that might be served up along with the mashed potatoes.

I have decided not to weigh in on perhaps the greatest controversy raging in the United States at this time: Whether or not to brine a turkey before you cook it.

Eric Idle tells how he came to write that song that he sings darn near everywhere he goes…

In 1947, Stan Lee wrote an article for Writer's Digest, a magazine that is still very much in business. It caters to wanna-be writers, telling them how to sell their work and who might buy it. I've always been curious about (a) how many submissions it generates and (b) how many of them sell. My guess would be (a) tons and (b) a few but I may be quite wrong about this.

Stan's article was called "There's Money in Comics!" and while some of its advice about writing is still valid, very little of its advice about selling is. And the example of a comic book script format shown is way outta date. I have a lot of old scripts by prolific comic book writers like Otto Binder, Gardner Fox, Paul S. Newman, Jerry Siegel, Robert Kanigher and Carl Wessler and none of them are in that format. Stan certainly abandoned it.

The article says — and remember this was '47 — that writing comics paid from $6 to $9 a page. Twenty-three years later when I sold my first comic book script, I got $10 a page but there were still companies paying those 1947 rates. I think some small publishers still are but rates at DC, Marvel and other major companies are much, much higher today.

Anyway, Writer's Digest has posted Stan's article here for all to see.

I continue to have my odd fascination with the demise of the Sears and Kmart chains, which are now one company which is vanishing faster than Bill Cosby Fan Clubs. They were once retail giants and Sears actually dates back to 1893 — I did not mistype "1993" — and was once an American institution. I've read just about everything online I could find about this crash-'n'-burn and the consensus seems to point to one reason: Bad management by folks who did everything wrong but will somehow still walk away from this disaster with millions. Why can't you and I get a job like that?

Last night, I walked through the one nearest me, the Kmart in which I occasionally shop. As of today, it's seven days 'til closing. I don't know if that includes Thanksgiving but don't stop in. Everything is 80% off and about 80% of the store is empty. What's left on what shelves are left is a lot of stuff you wouldn't take at any price.

It looks to me like the goal was to sell off everything in the building, fixtures included. And once they had a good amount of it out, I think they brought in the contents of a warehouse or two and put out tons of stuff they couldn't even sell in the store when it was an ongoing business.

80% off is quite a jump from the last time I was in there a month or so again. Items were 20%-40% off their marked prices and I did find some bargains. Last night, I literally could not find one thing that was worth carrying home for free. The book rack was loaded with copies of one of those novels allegedly written by Glenn Beck. I should have gotten a photo of one of them with the "80% off" label and captioned it "Sticker refers to author."

I did take this shot of Wonder Woman and Frozen flip-flops in toddler sizes for $2.00 a pair. I'm guessing that's still about a 60% markup…

I wish I could describe the eerie mood in that place. A fair number of people were roaming around and they all seemed to be muttering, "There must be something here I can use." Mostly, it was cheap clothing, largely unsorted or unlabelled as to size.

I got to chatting briefly with an older lady who had found one shoe that she liked. I helped her rummage through a table of other footwear, searching desperately for its mate. I guess it was worth the gamble to spent fifteen minutes searching because if she'd found it, she would have scored a decent pair for about three bucks. She stopped when I suggested to her that maybe there was no matching shoe.

There were also a lot of toys, not a one of which I'd heard of, many of which looked like they'd been sold, returned and had their boxes taped closed. Completely cleaned out were the departments selling anything you might want to "stock up" on like canned goods, pet food, cleaning supplies, shampoo, toothpaste, etc.

They did seem to have a lot of extra-large brassieres in day-glo colors for a buck apiece. If this had been before Halloween and I ever got any trick-or-treaters in my neighborhood, I would have bought a bunch of these and handed them out, maybe along with some of those Glenn Beck books.

All in all, it was an odd experience and I think I can explain why it interests me so much. I'm really bad at so many things — math, science, physical labor, interpretive dance, getting Sergio to pay me for my work on Groo, etc. Every so often, you read a news item like "Man Goes to Dentist for Cleaning, Winds Up Dying" and you think, "My God, I could have been just as good a dentist as that guy." I could have run Kmart into the ground and they wouldn't have had to pay me millions of dollars to do it. Just gimme fifty bucks and a couple of them bright orange brassieres.

In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, let's find out about where cranberries come from…with the help of Cookie Monster and Gonger…

And here's a man who could have used the above video to teach him all about cranberries…

Before I write anything else, let me note that a little counter that I can see but you can't informs me this is post #25,999 on this blog.

Folks are asking me to comment on a piece Bill Maher wrote the other day in which, they say, he trashes Stan Lee. It's here it you want to read it. Personally, I think he's trashing everyone of a certain age who writes or even reads comic books. That would include me and it might even include you.

I think Maher's a pretty smart guy about certain topics. Even when I disagree with him about politics — which I do, at times — I usually think he's raised a good point that's worthy of discussion. I don't care much about what he has to say about health and nutrition and I guess we can add comic books to that list. If I did care, I might point out that just about everything he thinks about grown people fawning over Stan is true of grown men who used to hang around the Playboy Mansion and suck up to Hef. But I don't care so I won't point that out.

By the way: One gent who wrote to me asked me to also give my views of Maher's repeated insistence that if/when Donald Trump loses the 2020 election, he ain't leaving; that he'll just declare it "rigged" and "fake news" and he'll try to go on being president. This, to me, is based on a number of unwarranted assumptions including that Trump will even be on the ballot that year. But if he is and if he loses and if he then barricades himself in the Oval Office, then I think it would depend on what G.O.P. leaders do about it and what military leaders do about it. If they all back him then we wouldn't have a country. Which is why I can't believe they'd back him.

Because it wouldn't be a new day without an obit for someone I respect, let us sadly note the passing of William Goldman. I never knew Mr. Goldman but having read just about everything he ever published and heard him speak a few times, I'm pretty sure he would have liked all his obits to refer to him as NOVELIST William Goldman, and then to refer to his acclaimed screenplays as kind of a side product.

It was the screenplays that made him wealthy and famous of course but he seems to have been fonder of the novels. The Princess Bride was a wonderful movie but I liked it better when it was a book. In fact, I liked it best when it was specifically the book in this picture…

That was the first edition — the one with the red cover and the red type. If you ever come across a copy of it at a reasonable price, grab it. I'm not sure I can explain it but it really seemed extra-magical in that edition. After that, my favorite of his novels was Boys and Girls Together and of course, I loved his non-fiction book, Adventures in the Screen Trade. I often recommend the latter to anyone pursuing any sort of career in any sort of writing and also mention The Season, a book Goldman wrote in 1969 discussing all that was recently on Broadway.

A fine writer. Of novels and other things.

In my many years in and around show business and comics, I've met or worked with a few people I thought were truly wretched, nasty human beings. I am amazed sometimes when I read a mention of them on the Internet or hear someone say what great, charming people they were. This usually comes from one or both of two sources…

1. The person who found them so wonderful met them ever-so-briefly and in a context of fan-worship. I would guess that even Hitler could be a helluva great guy if you spent five minutes with him and started those five minutes by saying, "I'm one of your biggest fans and I've always admired your work."
2. The person who found them so wonderful was never in a position of being threatening in any way to them, nor could they have profited from hostility or dishonesty. One of the main people on my "nasty" list was Mr. Wonderful until he thought he could make twenty bucks by screwing you over.

And I suppose there's a third situation, where someone is kind of irrationally bi-polar, coming across like Mr. Rogers in the morning and Mr. Hyde after sundown.  Meet him at 10:30 AM and you would have thought he was the greatest guy on the planet.

All that said, I met Roy Clark exactly once.  We spent about 45 minutes together when there was a possibility he would be starring in his own variety show pilot for NBC and I would be its Head Writer.  He was, at least in those 45 minutes, the greatest guy on the planet.  He was funny and he laughed at just about everything I (or anyone) said with one of those rollickin', genuine laughs that makes you feel so good when you induce it in another human being.  It was altogether consistent with the jolly, jovial air he projected on TV.

I always thought he was a great entertainer and that day, I thought doing a show with him would be a fine, fine experience.  I was quite disappointed a few days later when the folks at NBC decided they really weren't interested in The Roy Clark Show after all.

Now, I guess it's possible that my 45 minutes with him were atypical and that an hour later, he was out kicking cocker spaniels and small children and bragging about grabbing women by the pussy.  But I'd sure like to think not.  I think the world is a little worse off for him not being in it today.

So now Trump is explaining away the big losses on Election Day saying that Democrats vote, then they change clothes and vote again, then they change clothes and vote again, etc. He can't point to one person who did this, of course. The guy always claims Voter Fraud whenever a vote doesn't go his way and he never has any evidence.

His whole political career is based on the premise that you can make an accusation or a promise on Monday and just forget about it on Wednesday. Do you see any sign of that middle-class tax cut we were going to have before the election? Is that caravan of Evil Aliens still a threat? He may have to do some special back-pedaling on that one because we actually spent millions of bucks sending troops to places where, if the threat was true, they still wouldn't do any good…and they're still there because it would be too embarrassing to pull them off the job now.

And what the hell was that about how you need a voter I.D. (or any form of I.D.) to buy cereal? Didn't Orwell have something about that in 1984?

We seem to have a new outburst of utterly phony drawings by famous comic book artists and cartoonists on eBay. There are a lot of them and while diligent experts keep reporting them, eBay takes no action. Some of the sellers of the bogus sketches have been eBay sellers for a long time and have 100% positive ratings…but they're selling "Charles Schulz" drawings that were done years after his death and which sometimes even misspell "Schulz." There seems to be nothing we can do about this but to alert as many folks as we can to beware.

I still like Stephen Colbert a lot but his recent shows have been piling up unwatched on my TiVo. I'll get around to watching them soon — with much fast-forwarding — but I find myself in no great rush. My problem with him may surprise you: Too many Trump jokes. I'm all for ridiculing the guy but so many people on TV (and the 'net) are doing it that it's getting harder and harder to come up with good ones.

It's like on Colbert's show, they've decided the audience expects about twelve Trump jokes a night so they do twelve Trump jokes even when the writers can only come up with five good ones that day. Even Seth Meyers, who I see as the best guy doing this kind of thing lately, sometimes reaches too far. Something's wrong when I think they're picking on the guy.

Either comedians have to pull back a little on this or Trump's going to have to do stupider things or go for even more transparent lies. I fear I know which is more likely.

Lastly for now: I went to Costco yesterday. You can tell because I have a partially-eaten barbecued chicken in my refrigerator and my shelves are stocked with multiples of certain necessities. It still seems wrong to me that they'll sell you a jar containing a two-year supply of — let's say — vitamins but it's stamped with a notice to "use or discard" in two months. Don't get me wrong, though. I still love shopping there. Nothing beats excess except more of it.

A lot of you seem to like the videos I embed of great close-up magicians. Here's the skillful Takumi Takahashi not shuffling cards…

Several of you have written to tell me that you keep checking in here every few hours to see if I've posted a big piece about Stan Lee. Save yourself the trip. If I do one, it won't be for at least a week or two…and I may not do it at all. I am happy to see so many folks celebrating the guy as I've always thought he deserved to be rich and famous and to be praised for so many things he did. I am dismayed to see that for some, that celebration involves minimizing and even denying the contributions of others, particularly the artists who are now officially (finally!) recognized as co-creators.

Stan was a very charming, friendly guy most of the time and he did lovely things like send little thank-you notes and if you showed him something you'd made — a drawing, a story, anything — he'd usually praise the heck out of it and make you feel like a star. Many, many people owed their careers to him and he was a great, witty interviewee — a skill most others around him lacked. You can apply any measure of weight to all that good will and gladhanding but it's certainly not nothing. He made a lot of people love him and I don't mean that in a bad way. Like all of us, he was a multi-faceted person even if he usually managed to show but one facet. The time will come when it's easier to talk about the others.

In other news, the fires in California rage on. At the moment, the one they're calling the Woolsey Fire is only at 40% containment. That probably sounds better than it is because — remember — a fire being "contained" is not the same thing as it being extinguished. "Contained" means the firefighters have established lines around, in this case, 40% of the fire perimeter. It will not spread past those lines but can still do damage within that containment and still spread in directions where it is not contained. Some of the reporters on TV need to explain this or, in some cases, have it explained to them.

People say of those who are out fighting those blazes, "Whatever we pay them, it's not enough." No, it isn't and I wish folks who could make it happen would make what always seems like an impossible leap to "Hey, let's actually pay them more." "Let's get more of them and more equipment" would also be nice and if the obstacle is "We can't afford it"…well, how many fires like these can we afford? I don't think letting whole city blocks and communities burn to the ground can possibly be cost-effective.