We note the passing of the fine writer (and reporter) Thomas Wolfe. It's been a long time since I read any of his works but much in them has stayed with me. Jeffrey Toobin has some worthy thoughts about the man.

• Donald Trump now vowing to identify and fire all White House staffers who leak stories to the press, which by the way made up those leaking White House staffers who don't actually exist.

• Discourse in this country would be better if people would stop viewing any stupid Liberal who says something dumb as a spokesperson for all Liberals or any stupid Conservative who says something dumb as a spokesperson for all Conservatives.

Another high recommendation for those of you in the Los Angeles area! Every so often — but not often enough for me — my buddy Vince Waldron convenes a session of his funny, funny improv show, Totally Looped! Here's how Totally Looped works. Vince assembles a bunch of unusual video clips. Vince then assembles a bevy of funny people he knows — and believe me, Vince knows some very funny people. Takes one to know one, I guess…

Anyway, the funny people don't see the clips before the show or have any idea what they are. During the performance, they're called upon to dub in the voices, making it up on the spot. I've seen this a half-dozen times and always laughed that thing I call my head off…and that's about all you need to know except Where, When and Who.

"Where" is Dynasty Typewriter at The Hayworth Theater, which is located at 2511 Wilshire Boulevard in Westlake in downtown Los Angeles. "When" is Friday, May 25 at 8 PM. "Who" — the folks Vince will have looping the clips — amounts to Joe Liss (Curb Your Enthusiasm), Maribeth Monroe (Workaholics, The Good Place), Oscar Nunez (The Office), Rick Overton (I"m Dying Up Here), Angela V. Shelton (Frangela), Cole Stratton (Rifftrax) and Gary Anthony Williams (Boston Legal). Tickets and more info can be found here.

Sadly, I'll be outta town that night so go in my stead and encourage Vince to do more of these when I'm in town. Thank you.

A million people — give or take 999,993 — wrote to tell me about this article about a bar in New York with a wall that will interest any fan of quality cartooning. Note that the cartoon Sergio drew would make more sense if the photo hadn't cropped off the sword the guy on the left is holding.

I haven't posted a Seth Meyers "Closer Look" lately but they've all been pretty good. Here's tonight's…

Nell Scovell writes about the lack of female writers on David Letterman's TV shows. There's no real excuse for it but I think the imbalance was a smidgen better than most of these articles suggest. This particular one would make you think Letterman had Merrill Markoe, Nell Scovell and no one else of their gender. There were a few others. I know my wonderful friend Tracy Abbott was a writer on Dave's NBC show and if she isn't a woman, she did a great job fooling everyone, including the doctor who delivered her baby.

Like I said, no real excuse. One that Scovell's piece doesn't really get into but which I've heard is that some shows don't hire women because women don't submit sample material to them or agents don't submit their female clients. There's probably some truth to that but it's part of a Catch-22 situation: The show has never hired women so people think, "Well, there's no chance at a job there so why try?" And that's not an excuse because those who do the hiring oughta do whatever they can to break that roadblock. Even if you didn't create the obstacle, it's wrong to have it in place and it's foolish to not be open to a great new writer simply because she ain't a guy.

Also, these articles should note that Letterman is not the only offender in this area. Years ago at a Paley Center I attended, Bill Maher announced flatly that he would probably never have a woman writer on his show because he never found one who could write his kind of comedy well enough. I'm not sure he hasn't located one or two but his current staff seems to be all male. And the archetype late-night program, The Tonight Show, hasn't done too well in this area either…

Steve Allen never employed a woman writer and neither did Jack Paar. In fairness, it should be noted that those shows had pretty small writing staffs and fairly brief runs, and there just might not have have been anyone around if they had actively tried to find a lady joke writer. There weren't that many Sally Rogerses in those days.

But the number of women writers hired by Dave Letterman's hero Johnny Carson in thirty years on-air was zero. Not a one. Jay Leno hired the first ones and I'm not sure but I think the first-ever female writer in the long history of The Tonight Show was the aforementioned Tracy Abbott. I also seem to recall that after she was hired, someone at NBC Publicity asked her if she'd consider changing her first name…because, you know, what's the point of having a woman writer if people can't tell from the credits that she's a she?

Our dear friend Marvin Kaplan was one of the great character actors and cartoon voice artists.  He passed away in August 0f 2016 and I wish you all could have known this delightful gentleman.  He was very sweet, very funny and — most of all — very Marvin. He was also very active…the kind of actor who when no one's hiring him, he goes out and makes his own job. At age 89, he was working on a movie on which he was an actor, writer and producer.

It's called Lookin' Up and it stars Steve Guttenberg. It's about a bank teller (played by Guttenberg) who loses his job to an Automated Teller, snaps and decides it would be a good time to murder his wife, his mother-in-law and his daughter, all of whom are in serious need of murdering. He is unable to carry out his plans but then all three women die for other reasons and guess who gets accused.

Wanna see it? It's playing through Friday at the Laemmle NoHo Theatre out at 5240 Lankershim Blvd. in North Hollywood. It will play other dates in other theatres, here and in other cities but that's where you have to go this week to see lovely Marvin's final performance. I hope to get out there myself because nothing he did was without interest and it's always nice to have a little Marvin Kaplan in your life.

Here's a wise article about 17 Secrets of Magicians. I'll add one more: A lot of people think a trick is all about the secret of how it's done. That's true with some tricks but in most, the key thing is how well it's done. This is why magicians are often really impressed with other magicians. Frequently, you know how the trick is done but you're amazed with how well some guy does it. The real magic is not in the gimmick but in the split-second timing and the masterful manipulation that comes with years of practice. It's like in cooking. You might know the recipe but that doesn't mean you can make that item as well as someone who's been doing it for a long time.

We are 65 days from the start of Comic-Con International 2018 so this might be a good time for some of us to unpack from last year's con and begin packing for this one. And if you're going, I always refer you to the official convention website — where lots of helpful information has already been posted with more on the way. But I also refer you to the unofficial convention website, sdccblog.com, where folks who have zero to do with running the con post also-helpful info.

The San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog is compiled by enthusiastic con-goers, headed by a wonderful lady named Kerry Dixon. They can make your convention experience a lot easier with their tips, announcements, shared experiences, suggestions and insights. A lot of these are on the site itself and a lot of them are in their weekly video podcasts where they discuss what they've heard and what they think and every once in a while, they have a special guest on.

They're doing this week's video podcast tomorrow night at 6:30 PM Pacific Time, which due to some strange time-travel technology that I'll never understand is 9:30 PM in the east. Their special guest will be someone who attended the first San Diego Comic-Con in 1970 and has been to every one since and has moderated hundreds of panels and program items. That's right — it's me! I'll be discussing 48 years of schlepping down to S.D. each summer through worse and worse traffic to attend larger and larger conventions…and I'll explain why it's never not worth the hassle. In the meantime, Kerry and her crew will have wise counsel on how to lessen that hassle.

You can watch us live on The San Diego-Comic Con Unofficial Blog site and if you miss it, I'll either post the whole thing here or link you to it or something. All I know is I'll be watching too because I can't wait to hear what I'm going to say.

Since I know you all come to this site in search of great recipes, I have one for you…

As I've only mentioned eight million times here, I'm a big fan of the Classic Creamy Tomato Soup that the Souplantation chain serves during my birthday month of March and occasionally for one other week per year. This past March, it seemed a little less spectacular than the previous March and I decided the time had come for me to not be dependent on them for decent tomato soup. I'd already tried all the canned and boxed soups one finds in any market and found them lacking so I decided to find a recipe and make my own.

I've found one I like almost as much as the Souplantation version. I'm still experimenting with the precise spice components but it's already good enough that I don't care if Souplantation ever has theirs again. It's also pretty easy and, of course, I can make it any time I like. You can make it any time you like too if you can get your mitts on cans of San Marzano Peeled Tomatoes.

This is not hard to do. You can order them from Amazon. You can find them in lots of supermarkets and at least in my neck o' the woods, they have them at some Target stores.  Of note: I found my first cans in a gourmet-type shop where they were $7.50 a can.  Target sells the exact same thing for $3.69.

I've been using the Cento brand but I have no reason to believe theirs are any better than any other.  If your store only has Crushed Tomatoes, I believe they'd work just as well since the whole thing's going through a blender before it reaches your mouth.

To make two or three servings, you need one can of those, half a yellow onion, a tablespoon or two of butter and whatever spices you like.  I've also been experimenting with tossing in two crushed cloves of fresh garlic.  Oh — and it might be nice to have a stove, a pot to cook all this stuff in and the aforementioned blender. A food processor would also work.

Chop the onion up a bit and toss it in the pot. Throw in the garlic if you like. Sauté them if you like in the butter or a little olive oil but I've tried it without sautéing and it doesn't seem to make much difference.  Toss in whatever butter you didn't use for sautéing if you sautéd.  Empty in the 28 ounce can of tomatoes and break them up a little with the wooden (not metal) spoon you'll be using to stir your soup occasionally throughout the cooking process.  Add a little water to the can, swish it around to get all the remaining tomato remnants off the inside, then dump that water into the pot.

Add some salt and then turn on your burner and adjust until you have this mixture simmering.  Let it do that for 45 minutes, then run it through your blender.  Blend it a lot if you want it silky smooth.  Blend it a little if you want it a bit chunky.

The last step is to play around with additives.  You'll probably need more salt and I always add onion powder because I somehow have a big, big jar of it and that's a fine reason to add anything to whatever you're making.

The online recipes from which I stole the components of mine all demanded Cayenne Pepper and sometimes Red Pepper Flakes but I don't like spicy anything.  I get the feeling there is no one who posts recipes online who is humanly capable of not adding Cayenne Pepper to every preparation including French Vanilla Ice Cream and baby food.  I guess they must all have big, big jars of it to use up.

I've also tried adding — not all to the same batch — a dash of sugar, a little bit of cream, a half-cup of chicken stock and when I don't add fresh garlic, some garlic powder. My experiments continue but so far, I like it best with just the salt and some onion powder.

Once it's done, let it rest a while before consuming. Last time I did this, I ate half of it an hour later. I then refrigerated the rest and then microwaved it back to life twenty hours later. It was a little better the next day as some prepared foods tend to be.

When I first swooned for the soup at Souplantation, I asked them to show me the recipe, foolishly thinking I could make it at home. They'll show it to you if you ask but you can't copy it and you can't remember it because it has around thirty ingredients in it, some of which have long, chemical-sounding names like Something Benozate and Something Else Mononitrate. I really like that this has less than a half-dozen components…and really all it is is tomatoes with a few flavor add-ons. If you can get some cheese 'n' garlic croutons in it, that's a great combination.

In honor of what day it is, here's a piece that ran here about five years ago…

My mother died a year ago last Friday. Today, the doctor who took such wonderful care of her for more than the last third of her life phoned to see how I was doing. He was never my doctor. He was my mother's. But that's how strongly he felt a connection to her…and thus, to me.

The answer is that I am fine with it. Do I miss her? Sure…but I miss the woman she was when she could walk and see and do things without me or a caregiver assisting her. But by the time her heart stopped beating on 10/4/12, that person was long ago and far away. So for me the mourning period hasn't been one year; more like ten.

I felt so sorry for her the last decade of her life. It was all about surviving — taking pills, going to doctors' appointments, etc. — and not much else. She couldn't eat the foods she wanted to eat. Couldn't read a book. Couldn't walk without a walker…and then, not very far. She couldn't even get down the front steps of her home without someone to help and couldn't get down the rear steps to go out in her backyard even with assistance.

She hated it. She hated being so reliant on others. And when I had to run over there or haul her into the hospital at 4 AM, she hated what she felt she was doing to my life. Over and over, she talked about how there should be some simple, painless way she could choose to just be done with it. (My mother is not the best example in my life of the sheer humanity that would be involved in allowing the elderly and ill to make that decision. Before long here, I'll post the tale of some neighbors we had whose story makes the case even better.)

So yeah, I miss her. But the elation at seeing her out of pain drowns a lot of that out and so does this: Had she lived another few months, she would have been totally blind, as opposed to legally blind, and she would have lost the last crumbs of the independence she so dearly loved. And to be honest, I would have had to make some hard decisions about where and how it was best for her to live. Nothing I would have decided would have been to her liking…and I'm glad for me I didn't have to pick the least painful alternative.

Every so often, it hits me that she's gone. Most days around 5:30 or 6 in the afternoon, I get the odd sensation that I've forgotten to do something I was supposed to do. And then I remember: Any day I didn't see her earlier, I'd phone her around then to check in, say hello (and usually, something very silly) and just connect. That's what I'm remembering I haven't done yet.

The other day, I was talking about her with my dermatologist. I had an "atypical mole" removed and I was there so he could yank out a few stitches. He said, "It looks like you've been doing a good job cleaning the sutures." I said yes, "I've been washing the area off with Bactine."

He looked surprised. He said, "Bactine? Do they still make Bactine?"

Yes, they do. It's not always easy to find in the First Aid section but it's usually there, just to the left of the Neosporin. Bactine is what my mother used to spray or daub on any cut, scrape, abrasion or place on my body that hurt. It usually stopped hurting within moments and I'm not sure if it was the magic healing/cleansing powers of Bactine Pain Relieving Cleaning Spray or just the fact that my mother was fixing the boo-boo. It may well have been a combination.

My mother could heal anything with a bottle of Bactine. Anything! If I'd needed a heart transplant, she would have just sprayed on about a tenth of a bottle and — poof! — new heart! I'm sure of it.

I always keep a bottle of it in my medicine cabinet. It doesn't work quite as well when I spray it on. I just don't quite have her touch. But it does help, maybe because it reminds me of her. I hope something always does.

Our magical friend Misty Lee does a mystical feat every Wednesday over at this website. Here's last Wednesday's, in which she reminds us all never to listen to baked goods…

• Kansas just passed a law banning police officers from having sex during traffic stops. How often has this been happening that they needed to pass a law?

I'm seeing a batch of discussions on the web about racism at the moment, more specifically about whether — to quote Kevin Drum — "liberals call out racism too often, which just alienates conservative white people and makes them even more sympathetic to racist arguments."

I don't have a strong opinion about that. I would guess some folks are unfairly accused and some folks aren't and some of the people who are sympathetic to racist arguments were going there anyway and didn't need to be driven there. I just thought I'd toss out a thought I've had over the years. It's that there are some folks in this world who are fingered as racists when the truth is that they're just bigoted towards anyone who isn't them. They just aren't capable about giving a damn about anyone but themselves. They might be able to fake concern for others on occasion if and when it seems advantageous…but really, down deep, they simply don't care.

I'm recalling a fellow who worked in an animation studio wherein I once labored. There had been one of those stories in the news — the kind we now see with appalling frequency — where a bunch of white police officers had beaten the crap out of some poor black guy. The poor black guy had done something to warrant arrest but it was, like, shoplifting a Mars bar or a crime of equal severity. It wasn't anything to warrant the kind of beating that leaves permanent damage.

The incident was talked-about at the studio and everyone was appalled…everyone except this one artist. He just kind of just shrugged and said, "Well, he probably deserved it." Or maybe it wasn't even that bad.

People started making remarks about this guy being a bigot. Some took to calling him Archie Bunker. Someone else said he'd rushed to see the movie The Great Race because he assumed it was all about Caucasians. Comments like that. Me, I thought the guy was just the kind of alleged human being who wouldn't have cared if it had been a white guy or an Asian or anyone else, just so long as it wasn't him — one of those "somebody else's problems are somebody else's problems" kind of person.

Calling him out as a racist did no good because he knew he wasn't one; that he had no particular feelings about one race over another. I wonder how many other seeming racists fall into this category…and please understand that I am not saying anyone's any better or worse a human being because what looks like racism is actually a combination of self-obsession and misanthropy. I'm just suggesting that if you're going to deal with assholes, it might be helpful to understand just what kind of assholes they are. We have a great many species.