Here, from Monday night on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, we have something I don't see often on TV: A civil, thought-provoking discussion between a Liberal and a Conservative. The Conservative is columnist Jonah Goldberg, who I remember from the Monica Lewinsky era as committing most of the same sins he now decries. But hey, the world changes and people can change with it.

Goldberg has been a big critic of Trump and of some of the excesses of their mutual party that have kept Trump afloat. I liked what he said about how some people are now cheering on deeds and speeches not because they're good for the country but just because they piss off certain people. I didn't like some of the other things he said but I was impressed to see two bright men talking on my TV without hysterics or wild, audience-manipulating rhetoric. More, please…

Well, let's see: Where do I start?  Last Thursday evening, I drove down to San Diego (130 miles) to attend the San Diego Comic Fest.  I had my great friend Maggie Thompson with me and we made it in about two and a half hours.  When I got to my room, I did what I always do upon arrival in a new hotel room.  I set up my CPAP unit without which I cannot sleep.  (If you don't know from CPAP, click here.)

Problem: My CPAP unit didn't work.  I spent about twenty minutes trying to get it to work and came to the wise, informed deduction that it was broken.  Fortunately, I have others.  Unfortunately, they were in Los Angeles and I wasn't.  So I notified my house-sitter than I'd be sitting (sleeping, actually) in my house that night and I hopped back on the freeway.  Since you can usually drive faster later, I made it home in two hours, (another 130 miles) slept there, got up the next morning and drove back to San Diego.  This time, it took 3.5 hours, bringing our total up to 390 miles in about 15 hours.  I brought along another CPAP which worked flawlessly throughout the trip.  If it hadn't, I was going to just go home and never leave again for the rest of my life.

That was the second thing that went wrong.  The first was that my lovely friend Amber was unable to accompany me due to a last-minute matter.  But then things started to go right.  The convention was great fun…quite different from the immeasurable Comic-Con International in San Diego each July but enjoyable, nonetheless. Smaller means smaller, not less fun. The pace is slower, the crowd is tinier (and somewhat older) and the focus is mainly on old comic books, not so much current product.

I like that I got to talk to a lot of people — and eat with many of them: Maggie and I had dinner on Friday night with Jackie Estrada and Batton Lash; on Saturday night with Steve Leialoha, Trina Robbins, Buzz Dixon and Buzz's terrific spouse, Soon-ok; and on Sunday night with Scott Shaw! and his friend (and mine) Jann Morris-Penrod.

Monday morning, Maggie and I went to brunch and to the offices of IDW Publishing for a visit, then up to Solana Beach where we observed/heckled Frank Ferrante's tech run-through for his show that evening. A lot of folks are unaware of the work that goes into a performance before the performance. Frank tours the country with his one-man-plus-pianist show as Groucho Marx and in every city at every venue, he has to preside over a very-long session to make sure the set is right and then to make sure that set and the guy in it are lit properly. There are cues to be rehearsed, decisions to be made about levels of light and sound, choices to be made about where he'll be on the stage and how he'll get on and get off it, etc. He doesn't just show up in a new town and commence Grouchoing.

So Maggie and I observed and when asked, offered our opinions. I also got to have a nice conversation with Frank's current accompanist, Gerald Sternbach. I've observed Gerry for years as he has established himself as one of the best musical directors for stage productions, most of them based in Los Angeles.

Have I mentioned here yet that Reprise! is starting up again? Reprise! is a company that stages revivals of classic musical comedies and if you search back on this blog, you'll see dozens of reviews and reports on their shows, most of which I liked very much. Due to financial complications, the shows stopped for a while but they're starting up again and a new season kicks off on June 20 with Sweet Charity, to be followed later in the season by Victor/Victoria and Grand Hotel. With Gerald Sternbach as Musical Director.

I will be there for all of them. If you want to be there for all or any, you can buy tickets right this minute right on this website.

Maggie and I then met up with a bunch of friends — Marv Wolfman, John Plunkett, Phil Geiger and Monica Walker Jordan — for dinner and were joined for a while by Frank before he had to run off and prep. Then came the performance and yeah, I know: I rave a lot here about how good this guy is at transforming into the man who was arguably the world's greatest comedian. But there's a reason I've now seen this show more than a dozen times. He's really good. Check this calendar to see if and when he'll be doing it in your vicinity.

Got home late Monday night. Got up early Tuesday morn and headed down to L.A. City Hall with John Plunkett and Maggie. We went not to fight City Hall (you can't do that) but to attend the proclamation of yesterday as Leonard Maltin Day in the city. The L.A. City Council, whose next order of business was to debate some bill about spaying and neutering, took time out to honor my friend, the best film historian-critic in the field. A whole mess of his colleagues were present and being film buffs, we all kept talking about how City Hall was filmed for the exterior shots of the Daily Planet Building on the George Reeves Superman show.

Leonard, who I've known for many a year, is a valuable and wholly benevolent asset to the film community. He cares deeply about movies and about doing his job right…and I hate to think how much history we would not know if not for his efforts. I can't think of anyone I know more deserving of having a day designated in his honor. Even if he did insist that even though it was Leonard Maltin Day, he still couldn't fix a parking ticket.

It took a long time to get back to my place after the ceremony. First, we stopped at this wonderful place for lunch. Then we encountered oodles of traffic, especially in my neighborhood, because it was Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day with massive demonstrations. It was so bad in my area that I called the office of my City Councilman — who by the way did not show up for the proclamation of Leonard Maltin Day. I complained about that while I complained about the way the police were blocking off what seemed to me like the wrong streets and detouring traffic down other wrong streets. (The situation was not helped because other streets near me were blocked off because James Corden was shooting a Carpool Karaoke segment nearby.)

Complaining on the phone was frustrating because most of the folks I spoke to — I kept getting referred from office to office — could not grasp the fact that I was not complaining about the marchers. Almost everyone I spoke to was telling me, "This is a First Amendment matter, sir. We can't prevent people from marching in protest" and I had to tell person after person, "I'm not calling to complain about the marchers. From what I know of the history, I think I support their cause. I'm calling to complain about how the police are handling the increased traffic. I think they're making it worse out there, not better."

And every time I did make someone understand what I was griping about, they'd say "I need to transfer you to another department" and then the person in that department would tell me, "This is a First Amendment matter, sir. We can't prevent people from marching in protest." Eventually, the traffic began to dissipate along with my patience and I gave up. Later, one of those folks called me back and said, "We're still looking into it, sir, but it looks like someone got confused and closed off the streets on one list that were supposed to be open and left open all the streets on that list that were supposed to be closed." Yeah, that might do it.

So I guess that brings us up to date. Blogging here will resume at its normal pace as soon as the rest of my life does. Oh, yeah — and I still have to unpack.

Mark Bernstein suggested this soundie. It's Louie Armstrong with (I think) Velma Middleton favoring us with "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You." And who among us hasn't at one time or another wanted to sing that to someone?

My friend Paul Harris tweeted the following…

If the FBI believes you're such a threat it takes away all your guns & gives them to your father for safe keeping, but he then he gives them back to you, & you use one of them to kill four people in a Waffle House, then BOTH you and your father should be charged with murder.

I agree. And I'd add that if an unarmed black guy risked his life to take away the shooter's gun and stop him from killing even more people, that unarmed black guy ought to get at least as much recognition and praise as would be heaped on an armed white guy whose actions would buttress the old "good guy with a gun" argument.

I'm in the council room of Los Angeles City Hall, awaiting the commencement of today's session. First item on the docket: The designation of today as Leonard Maltin Day in L.A. I'm guessing he'll give it three and a half stars and say he saw the ending coming.

First of all, I'd like to wish you all a very Happy Leonard Maltin Day. No, it's not his birthday but it is Leonard Maltin Day in Los Angeles. I will be reporting later on the festivities honoring my good friend and the best film critic/historian in the field.

Secondly, I am back from the San Diego Comic Fest and will also be reporting on that event. (SPOILER ALERT!) I had a very good time, including a stop off last night for a performance of An Evening With Groucho starring Frank Ferrante.  I'll be reporting about that too but right now, I need to go beddy-bye.  Have to be up early for the big Leonard Maltin Day activities.  Hope there's a float and an enormous helium-filled balloon of Leonard.

A reader of this site who calls himself (or herself, I suppose) "Stickmaker" suggests I feature this soundie. It's the Mills Brothers singing "Paper Doll" with Dorothy Dandridge as the paper doll…

Back in this blogpost, I made some points about the colorizing of old movies and TV shows. It brought the following message from my pal Glenn Hauman…

How can you write about this and not discuss recoloring old comics? Would Jack Kirby have wanted his stuff recolored the way it has been over the years?

Recoloring old comics is done a lot these days because so many are being reprinted on much better, whiter paper than was available for their first printings, and with much more sophisticated coloring tools available. In some cases, if you precisely replicate the original coloring on the whiter paper, it looks too loud and garish. That coloring wasn't designed for that paper. And the original line art wasn't designed for all the extra modeling and rendering and gradations and textures that it's now possible to add.

To me, it's a case-by-case thing. Some of the older comics look better with flatter color and the colorist is not being faithful to the work try and add in the coloring, musculature and form-shaping that the original artist(s) did not intend. But following the original color schemes may not be faithful either because you start by changing the underlying paper color and that changes everything.

In the case of Mr. Kirby, he generally liked the way his art was colored before 1970 and generally disliked the way his work was colored after 1970. There were exceptions to that but not a lot. Among the many ways in which he clashed with the management at DC Comics when he began working for them in '70 was that they thought they were doing the best coloring ever in comics and he thought they were doing the worst.

So when I was asked, as I was for some reprints, if Jack would have wanted them to follow the original colorings, my answer was no — because he didn't like the original colorings and maybe the folks who did it back then would have done different things if they knew the work would be printed on whiter paper with brighter inks. But I also think Jack would have wanted a limited use of the new tools…not a lot of figure modeling and added textures. He'd want most of it to be flat coloring but better flat coloring. I think.

By the way: Glenn Hauman is one of the folks who's helped me keep this blog up and running, assisting with tech advice and even doing some of the configuration. I'm glad he sent that question in so I have this opportunity to thank him again for his aid and assistance.

It's been a long time since I featured a soundie in this spot. Soundies were the original music videos. They were films in which recording artists performed their records and they were shown mostly in a once-popular kind of jukebox that projected short films instead of playing records.

It's also been a while since I had something up here featuring one of my favorite musical acts, Spike Jones and the City Slickers. Here's their lusty lip-sync to their hit, "The Shiek [sic] of Araby"…

This week, Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth became the first sitting senator to give birth. Because a Senator must be present to vote, she had to bring the kid onto the Senate floor soon after and this required a rule change. The rules were changed but couldn't you have anticipated that several old male Republicans would have a problem with this?

Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah asked one of those science-fiction, never-gonna-happen Slippery Slope questions that people come up with when they can't come up with a real argument against something they just plain want to oppose. He asked, "What if there are ten babies on the floor of the Senate?" All I can think of is that the average level of maturity in that place would go way up.

I'm a busy panel moderator (and today and tomorrow at this event) so here's a not-so-instant replay of a piece I posted here on 6/16/10…

"When do you sleep?" is an oft-asked question in my e-mailbox. It comes from folks who notice the timestamps on my posts here and on my Twitter and Facebook activity. I average about five hours a night, which is down a bit from a few years ago when I was heavier, and way down from about twenty years ago, before I was diagnosed with Sleep Apnea and began sleeping with a CPAP mask strapped on my puss.

Five now seems to do it for me but about once every two weeks, I lie down for a quick nap and wake up many hours later. That happened to me last night, plunging me into a state of deep hibernation. I should have known this would happen. At the moment, I have no immediate deadline. I have things due next week but at the moment, no script that absolutely has to be done tomorrow. That's usually when my body goes all Rip Van Winkle on me.

But as I get older, I increasingly find my need to sleep is linked to my having the time for it. Not always. There are times when I'm up into the wee small hours and I realize things are going way too slowly and I think, "I can plod along here at eight miles an hour or get some sleep and maybe do sixty in the morning." So off to bed I go…sometimes. Or sometimes I just lie there fidgeting and thinking of what I'll write next…and I do it so long that I finally decide to get up and just write what I'll write next.

Years ago, I read an interview with some writer (forget who) who said he always kept a pad and pencil on his bedside table. That was so if he had a brilliant idea, he could write it down and have it in the morning and not lose it. That sounded logical so even though I couldn't recall ever having such a thought and losing it, I placed a pad and pencil bedside and at the ready. It stayed there for about three nights. I never wrote in it but the feeling that I should be jotting something down was a powerful inducement to remaining awake. It was like taking my work into the sack with me, making me feel like I should still be writing. When I took the pad away, I slept better.

That was at least fifteen years ago and in all the time since, I've never lost a brilliant idea. That's because you can't lose that which you don't have in the first place.

• A lot of Americans think the F.B.I. is out to get Donald Trump…but is that a bad thing? Once upon a time, the F.B.I. was out to get Al Capone and it took a while to prove one of his crimes, too.

Here's one of the best songs ever written about a luncheon meat…

Nice obit for our friend Don Pitts in Variety.  I meant what I said in it: "Before the voice business exploded, everybody was with Don Pitts."  In the sixties, it seemed beneath the dignity of on-camera actors to do voiceover work, especially on cartoons.  Thus, folks like Daws Butler, Mel Blanc, June Foray, Paul Frees and Don Messick had a large share of the cartoon and commercial business to themselves.  If you needed a funny voice, you called Don Pitts and he had your guy or gal.  I can't believe anyone will ever dominate that marketplace like Don did…or be any better to his or her clients.

I'm a great customer of Amazon. I order from them several times a week and this is not because I support the Washington Post or anything else Jeff Bezos owns, although I do support the Washington Post. I just find that they always have what I need at the best price and they deliver it to my door with remarkable speed and efficiency. About once in every forty orders though, I get burned and it's usually because I didn't pay enough attention.

I have a bunch of webcam interviews coming up and I decided to get a better, newer camera for them. I ordered the Logitech HD Pro Webcam C92. How good is it? I dunno. I've been too busy to even open the package. That's not the problem.

While I was ordering it, I saw a suggestion for an add-on and it was an Amazon Pick. It was the Logitech Privacy Cover for C920 and C930e — a device that fits over the lens to prevent anyone from peeking at you through your camera when you might not want them peeking at you. I really didn't need it because I always unplug my webcam when I'm not webcamming but it had a lot of positive reviews and on an impulse click, I bought it too — for $25. With my free Prime shipping.

Two days later, both items were here. The Logitech Privacy Cover for C920 and C930e turns out to be a tiny plastic cap that fits over the lens. It's about the size of a quarter and if it costs them more than a quarter to make one of these, I'd be shocked. Upon closer inspection — the kind I should have done before I ordered — I discovered…

1. Most of those positive reviews are from when they used to sell the same thing not so long ago for $12.
2. There are still plenty of vendors on Amazon selling identical items for $10-$11. Which is still way more than this thing should cost.
3. What it really should cost is nothing. It would cost the Logitech people almost nothing to include this with their product…or even to build it in.

So someone said, "Wow! We're making a fortune selling these little caps for twelve bucks! Betcha some suckers will still buy 'em if we more than double the price!" And it worked, at least in the case of this sucker.

Needless to say, I've already arranged to return mine for a refund. But then I wrote a fairly civil online review on Amazon and about ten seconds later, I received this e-mail…

Thanks for submitting a customer review on Amazon. Your review could not be posted to the website in its current form. We encourage you to revise your review and submit it again. A few common issues to keep in mind:

• Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at www.amazon.com/feedback.
• We do not allow profane or obscene content. This applies to adult products too.
• Advertisements, promotional material or repeated posts that make the same point excessively are considered spam.
• Please do not include URLs external to Amazon or personally identifiable content in your review.

I adhered to all those guidelines. You know me. I don't offer profane or obscene content except when the subject is cole slaw. To Amazon's credit, they're swift to give me credit when I return something and they couldn't make it much easier than they do. But I'm disappointed in their pricing of this item and I'm disappointed in them disallowing my review of it and I guess I'm most disappointed in myself for not paying better attention before clicking.