Two weeks from tonight is Preview Night at the 2018 Comic-Con International in San Diego. This will be the 49th convention there and by an incredible coincidence, it will also be the 49th one I have attended.

If you're attending, I suggest that in the next two weeks, you take some time to study the convention website and especially the Programming Guide which will be posted over the next few days. Tomorrow, they will put up the schedule for Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, they will post the schedule for Friday. On Saturday, etc. If you have any interest, make a list of the events you want to attend and also make up a list of second and third choices in case you can't get into something. Read this about how the meeting rooms work.

It would also be a good idea to study the map of the main exhibit hall. Get a sense of where the exhibitors that interest you are located. More important for your health and sanity, get a sense of where the videogame companies are located and stay the hell away from that area!!! You will not be able to hear again for years to come and you will not be able to find your way out until the next Comic-Con or maybe the one after. Someone should design a videogame in which you, the player, embarks on the most deadly adventure imaginable: Getting through the videogame section at Comic-Con.

If you do not have passes to the convention, a place to stay or a mode of transportation, I don't know what to tell you except don't write or phone me. I can be of no help to you.

And yes, it will be crowded. You don't have to tell me that like neither of us expected that such a thing was possible. If crowds make you uncomfortable, do yourself a favor by not attending. There are plenty of places you can go and not be surrounded by others…like Toys 'R Us outlets, meetings of the Bill Cosby Fan Club and screenings of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Many tips and nuggets of good advice can be found on the official Comic-Con website and also on the SDCC Unofficial Blog. And I'll post a few more here over the next two weeks. That's in-between packing.

There are millions of cooking videos on YouTube, many of them devoted to "copy cat" recipes of famous food items. These can be valuable. I mean, why spend ten minutes and two bucks to go to a McDonald's for a burger when you can spend more time (and probably more money) replicating one of their burgers at home?

But I understand the challenge. What I don't get is why a skilled chef would spend several days trying to make her own Lucky Charms cereal…

• If Donald Trump was a football coach, every time his team lost he would tweet, "Big win! Won by huge margin! Don't believe lying sportscasters and their FAKE SCORES!"

• Alex Jones says Democrats are going to launch a new Civil War tomorrow. If that doesn't happen, I may begin to lose some of my respect for Alex Jones.

One of the best close-up magicians alive is no longer alive. Brian Gillis passed away yesterday, a few days after suffering a massive heart attack. I have no idea how old he was but he did magic for an awfully long time.

Brian was a casual friend. I'd see him at the Castle and we'd talk about magic…and he knew more about it than just about anybody I've ever known. He made some memorable appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and it was obvious that Carson — a former magician, as you probably know — was in awe of Brian's skills.

A few months ago, I took some friends to the Castle promising them three of the best close-up guys around. Two of them were Richard Turner and Paul Gertner, both of whom "won" on Penn & Teller Fool Us. In fact, Paul won twice and the second time was on the episode that aired last night. Brian was there that night but not on the performance schedule and as a favor to me, he arranged a special show — essentially the act I've embedded below — for me and my friends, plus some Castlegoers who were invited in so we had a substantial audience. If you think the act looks good on video, you should have seen it live. I'm sorry you'll never get the chance.

Here's 22 minutes of Brian in the Close-Up Gallery in the Magic Castle a few years ago. See if you can catch when Brian steals a guy's watch without the guy knowing it…

Here's a conversation between Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the Broadway show Hamilton, and William Daniels who starred in an earlier musical about the Founding Fathers, 1776.

Eric Idle sells and sings about his forthcoming book, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography. Here's a link to pre-order it.

Larry Kudlow is the director of the National Economic Council for President Donald Trump and the Captain Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz of Economics. He is always wrong. He was wrong when he was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan. He was wrong when he was a CNBC TV host. He was wrong when he was an economic consultant to Bear Stearns and he does not limit his wrongness to matters of finance. He was a leading exponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, proclaiming it a dead certainty that Saddam Hussein had those Weapons of Mass Destruction that no one was ever able to find.

Kudlow was a major advocate of the Trump tax cut for the wealthy, insisting it would bring the deficit way, way down. He's been insisting lately that it's working but no one else seems to think that. Politifact just awarded his claims the coveted "Pants on Fire" designation.

• We need a three-strike rule for politicians claiming "the offensive remarks [or cartoons] on my social media were posted accidentally by someone on my staff without my knowledge." The third time, they need to own it.

Alan Longmuir, a founding member of the Bay City Rollers music group, has died at the age of 70. Once upon a time, the Rollers sold — depending on which account you believe — somewhere between 120 and 170 million records. Even the low-end estimate qualifies them as one of the most successful acts of their day.

A very minor footnote in their career is that in 1978, they hosted thirteen episodes of The Krofft Superstar Hour for American television and I was the Head Writer. There are all sorts of stories around about the Rollers then and since, some of them creepy or sad…and I have no idea how much truth, if any, there is to such tales.

I just wanted to say, in case it matters in the slightest, that during our long-ago four (or so) month association, Alan was an absolute professional and the cause of zero problems. In fact, when there were problems within the group, he was the guy who solved them. I have nothing but good memories of the man. Sorry to see he's left us.

• There's something oddly comforting when I think that no matter how bad my day may go, it's still a lot better than any day in the recent life of Harvey Weinstein.

• And my spell-checker converted "tariffs" to "taxes," which suggests it was programmed by a Democrat.

• Apparently, someone told Trump he could raise tariffs on other countries but didn't tell him that they could raise taxes on us.

Reprise is a company here in Los Angeles that stages short-term musicals, reviving old and well-remembered shows for brief glimpses.  They mount them with minimal sets, minimal costumes and minimal rehearsals…and all of their productions are amazing just for being thrown together in so little time and for so little money.  To see one, you have to act quickly because there are only around fifteen performances of each show.

Reprise went away for a while due to financial problems but it's back now.  Last night was the final performance of their season-opener, Sweet Charity and later in the year, they're doing Victor/Victoria and Grand Hotel.  Fortunately, all that minimalism does not include minimal talent.  I had a real good time. If I hadn't, I would have titled this review, "There's Gotta Be Something Better That This" but I didn't.

I wish I'd been able to tell you sooner about this so some of you could have gone on my recommendation.  I'm an opening-night subscriber but their opening night coincided with the Sherman Brothers Tribute at the Motion Picture Academy so I moved my tickets to a later performance.  Then that later performance was canceled when one of the lead performers had a death in the family — there are no understudies when you only do fifteen performances — so I wound up on closing night. If I'd gone earlier, I'd have suggested you rush to see it.

Kathleen Marshall directed and Laura Bell Bundy performed the hell out of the title role. This is the kind of show where if you don't have someone incredible in the lead, you might as well not do the show at all. Ms. Bundy — who got super-famous in the lead in the musical of Legally Blonde — was utterly electric, supplying a lot of personality and humanity that was maybe not all there in the play as written. Sweet Charity does not have the greatest book. Neil Simon wrote it and even when the original show was a hit on Broadway, he wasn't all that proud of his contribution. It has not aged well and I suspect that one of these days, someone's going to "update" it because the score by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman is just too good.

As is not surprising with Reprise shows, the whole cast is great. I was especially impressed with Barrett Foa as Oscar Lindquist, Krystal Joy Brown as Helene and Yvette Gonzales Nacer as Nickie. Mr. Foa is a regular on an NCIS show I don't watch and whenever he's done with that, someone's going to star him in a comedy series and have a very big hit. The guy is funny.

I could go on but what's the point? It closed last night. You can't go see it. If you live anywhere near Los Angeles, you might consider a two-show subscription to the rest of the Reprise season. In speeches before and after the show, they made it clear they're kinda desperate for money. A lot of good theater is these days and this enterprise is highly deserving of support. Here's a link.

Unless I need to post a sudden obit, there might not be new content here for a day or two. Lots of things I've got to get done.  When I do return, I have some other tales about Harlan Ellison and some info and further clips of That Was the Week That Was.

Comic-Con International convenes in seventeen days.