Neither rain nor snow nor sleet will stop Dave Portnoy from reviewing every damn pizza place he can find. One bite. Everybody knows the rules…

Dave Gordon writes to ask…

Given your comments about Trump and the Nobel Prize, I wonder if you would like to comment on the awarding of that prize to Barack Obama two months after he became president the first time. Since that means he was nominated at least six months before he was elected, it seems…rather presumptious, certainly premature. I'm no fan of Trump, etc etc, but as I've said elsewhere, he was elected by the same system that gave America Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K., and (insert name of any other president you think was a good one). A lot of people, probably in what you guys call the "flyover states" (that name is probably another symptom of the problem) think Trump is at least doing what he promised before the election.

Abraham Lincoln and J.F.K. were elected due to Russian meddling and a ginned-up phony scandal about their opponents' e-mails? Wow. You learn something new every day.

I don't think much of any awards, especially those where the process — who votes, how they vote, what criteria is applied — is generally unknown. The Nobel Prize certainly qualifies for my indifference. Do you know how it's determined? I sure don't, though I do get that if a lot of people say you and I deserve it, we're misunderstanding or misrepresenting the actual nominating process if we then go around and say we were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So my answer is that I don't really think much of Obama's prize or any selection. It's an award, it's well-known and there's some money attached. That seems to be enough for some people (especially when they win it) to treat it as a great honor. But his was, like you said, certainly premature. If he ever deserved one, he probably didn't deserve it then.

And hey, before we wrap this up, let's discuss two other things, one being your idea that "you guys" refer to "flyover states." I don't know who "you guys" are but I've never used that term. This blog has 25,416 posts in it and that phrase never turned up in any of them. If you're talking about people in Hollywood or Los Angeles thinking that way, I've never heard that term used by anyone around me. With the whole world connected by the Internet these days, I can't imagine why anyone would think that way.

As for Trump doing what he promised before the election…well, he promised a great universal health care system that would cover more people than Obamacare did and be much cheaper. We haven't seen a trace of that. He promised a new prescription benefits plan that would save $300 billion a year and drastically lower the cost of medicine. The plan he's supposed to announce today does almost none of that. He promised to invest more money in U.S. infrastructure than Hillary Clinton was proposing and the White House has just announced he's not going to do any such thing.

He promised to renegotiate NAFTA into a much better deal for the U.S. That was supposed to be one of his highest priorities and that hasn't happened. He promised to "drain the swamp" of lobbyists and influence peddlers and then he recruited from their ranks for his cabinet and administration. He promised tax reform that would hurt people like him and he promised a wall which ain't being built and today's news says that he's been screaming at his staff about their inability to close borders as much as he promised. I think he even promised not to play a lot of golf, didn't he?

The same cynicism I have for awards extends to my not expecting any elected official to make good on all or most of their campaign promises. I think though that Trump has had a lower score than most and a profound belief in his ability to fast-talk his way around admitting when he's reneged or reversed. I'll start changing my mind about him when we see even a semi-workable proposal for that health plan where "everybody's going to be taken care of, much better than they're taken care of now and the government's going to pay for it."

Boy, Chita Rivera is amazing. I know it's not polite to mention a lady's age but last night at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills, every single one of us in the audience was thinking, "She's 85 and she can still sing and dance!" No, not with the vitality and flexibility of when she was in the original West Side Story or Bye Bye Birdie or any of her huge Broadway hits…but even at a reduced capacity, she's still amazing. On the way out, a lady in front of us said, "I'm going to still be tingling tomorrow morning" and I don't know if she is but I sure am.

Broadway historian-accompanist Seth Rudetsky does these shows every so often at the Wallis and perhaps elsewhere. He brings in some legendary diva of the musical theater and it's half-interview, half-performance. Chita answered questions charmingly and amusingly about her career and she sang eight or nine of her tunes from her many stage triumphs, closing with "All That Jazz" and "Nowadays" from Chicago. ("Nowadays" featured a funny, loving impression of her late co-star in that show, Gwen Verdon.) Her sheer energy impressed us all, all the more so when we remembered that she did two performances last evening and we were at the second.

Mr. Rudetsky is also a very fine host and pianist. I said the same thing about him a year ago when he did the same kind of show on the same stage with another pretty talented woman, Audra McDonald. Can't wait to see who he drags there next season.

While we're on the subject of talented folks singing show tunes, I've been too busy 'til now to report on another peachy evening. Last week, I took Amber to the Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood to see my pal Jason Graae performing with his pal, Liz Callaway. I felt a little inadequate there. The place was packed with performers and I was maybe the only one present who wasn't qualified to get up there and do a number. (We were sitting with Frank Ferrante.)

If you know Graae and Callaway, I don't have to rave about their talents, individually or collectively. If you don't know them…well, you oughta. Jason probably won't be doing a lot of cabaret performances for a while. He joins the National Tour of Wicked when it opens next week in Omaha. Unless he gets his ass fired, he will be in it when it plays Toledo, Toronto, Detroit, Tulsa, San Antonio, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles and other cities. He is playing, of course, The Wizard but I'm betting that if he's still in it when it gets here they'll have upgraded him to Glinda or Elphaba. Touring schedule here.

I could tell you how good Liz Callaway is but I already showed you back here…and here's a link to a video I posted of Jason in performance. Put these two on the same stage and it was another reason to wake up the next morning still tingling. Audra McDonald, by the way, is performing down at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown L.A. the afternoon of May 20 and there still seem to be cheap tickets available on Goldstar.

Just got back from seeing an 85-year-old woman sing and dance…and boy, was she wonderful. Tell you all about it in the morning.

I get into an elevator in a Beverly Hills building that's full of doctors, including my own.  Before the car heads upwards, another man gets in with me.  My keen eye for recognizing people tells me it's Paul Shaffer, famed bandleader-sidekick to David Letterman.  He's wearing dark glasses and a hat that does not completely cover his totally-bald head but it's definitely Paul Shaffer.

Except that it isn't.  In the second glance I take at him, I see that he is not Paul Shaffer but rather an incredible facsimile.  I say nothing but he says to me, "No, I'm not Paul Shaffer."

I say, "I realized that on second glance.  How many times a day do you have to tell people you're not Paul Shaffer?"

He says, "When I'm out in public, about once every half-hour.  Sometimes, I can hear them whispering or I know from their faces and I just let them think that."

I ask, "Is it better now that Letterman's gone off?"

He says, "A little, yeah. For a while there, I was thinking of flying to New York, robbing a bank near where Letterman tapes and watching them arrest Paul Shaffer."

And that's when I get off on my podiatrist's floor. Except that before I get off, I tell him, "I know how you feel. I'm sick of telling people I'm not Jon Hamm."

As the doors close, he says, "I wasn't fooled."

Some folks are upset this morning that Trump is saying "everyone agrees" he should get the Nobel Peace Prize for a peace that has barely begun to happen. What they don't get is that Trump means everyone on Fox News agrees he should get it. It's just the way the guy talks. Everything he does is perfect. Everyone agrees. What is that lying media talking about when they suggest otherwise? Meanwhile, in other Fake News…

• Joe Conason on why pulling out of the Iran deal might not be good for America but it could be great for Russia. Of course.
• And Daniel Larison writes at some length here and here why it'll be bad for America. Apparently, the main reasons the Iran agreement is "the worst deal ever" in the eyes of Trump and folks like John Bolton are that (a) Obama negotiated it and (b) it somehow doesn't make Iran cease to exist.
• George Will says Donald Trump is not the worst person in our government. That honor, he argues, now belongs to Mike Pence. Frankly, I think the difference between Trump and Pence is about as meaningful as the difference between the Chicken McNuggets at McDonald's and the Crispy Chicken Nuggets at Wendy's.
• Frank Rich is asked if Trump will face any political penalty for his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear pact. Rich replies, "Honestly, I doubt Trump will still be in office when the full fallout of this blunder is felt. The blunder, one should add, is not only to pull out of a deal that was working but also to have no "better deal" (or policy at all) to take its place. But the interesting political piece about both this decision and the onrushing summit with Kim Jong-un is that Trump has persuaded himself that big bold foreign policy moves, however harmful to America and its allies, will rescue him from the rampaging scandal at home."
• A number of corporations gave huge, suspicious cash amounts to Michael Cohen…for what? Andrew Prokop runs us through some of their explanations of what they thought they'd be getting for that money.

So here's what I'm wondering about. We get this steady stream of stories about Trump off-camera being pissed about this or furious about that…stories that obviously have been leaked by sources within the White House. Who's leaking these and how have they been able to remain within the White House?

Another duck story with a happy ending…

I used to spend a lot of my life in second-hand book stores…and not just hunting for old comic books.  I bought books on old movies, books on popular culture, books on politics and history, fiction by favored authors and sometimes just books that looked interesting if they were cheap enough.

This more or less stopped with the rise of the Internet.  I once carried a little list in my wallet of rare books I was seeking and for a long time, I was lucky if I came across one of them every two or three years.  I had more or less written the rest off as ungettable until one day, I located and ordered every single one of them via the worldwide web.  And that really did happen in one day.

I have rarely been in such a store since, partly because I have been seeking no old books I could not find on eBay and partly because since everyone else buys theirs that way now, such stores have largely disappeared.  We're about to lose another.  Robert Spina — thank you, Robert — sent me this link to an article about the closing of Book Castle-Movie World out in Burbank. It was the domain of a gent named Steve Edrington and as you'll read, he is closing it after being in that line of endeavor for 51 years.

I don't think I ever even went to Steve's present store but I was in a previous one, at least two decades ago. He remembered me from his first such establishment, Bond Street Books on Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood. I was at Bond Street a lot back in the sixties buying old comic books and many non-comic books.

If there's a skill to running that kind of business — and obviously, there is — Steve had it well-mastered. I hope he doesn't regret his decision to close down, though I'm assuming he didn't have a lot of choice. It's sad in a way that there are so few of those places left. True, I haven't supported any of them this century but it's hard to not be nostalgic for something that once upon a time brought you such joy and added value to your life.

One bite. Everybody knows the rules…

• I think Michael Avenatti's just out to see if he can be on TV more times this year than Steve Harvey.

Fred Kaplan on why it was wrong for Trump to decide to opt out of the Iranian nuclear deal. I think Congress should have intervened. They might not have been able to stop him but maybe they could have passed a law that said that in the event of war, the first men drafted to go fight it would be older ones who play a lot of golf…even if they have bone spurs.

In the immortal words of Deep Throat: "Follow the money!"

Staggering Revelations

Tonight we have what I'd say may be the most staggering revelations since the tangle of "Trump/Russia" investigations began almost two years ago. This is not hyperbole.

The most important ones are that a Russian oligarch paid more than $500,000 into the shell company that Cohen earlier used to make his payment to Stormy Daniels. The money is nominally from the US affiliate of Viktor Vekselberg's holding company. But this is a direct connection.  AT&T made payments totaling $200,000. Novartis, the drug manufacturer, chipped in almost $400,000. In what still must be considered preliminary reporting, The New York Times now says that transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed into "Essential Consultants LLC", the shell company Cohen used as the vehicle to pay Stormy Daniels and then later used to arrange another hush agreement at least nominally for billionaire Elliott Broidy, a then-RNC deputy finance chair who is tied up in the Trump/Russia probe through fixer George Nader. The payments all end in January 2018. That's when the name "Essential Consultants LLC" was first published by The Wall Street Journal as part of the Stormy Daniels story.

Click here to read the whole thing.

And by the way, I don't think the real "Deep Throat" (Mark Felt) actually said "Follow the money." At least, no one ever said in public that was a direct quote from him so it may have been invented by William Goldman for the movie, All the President's Men. But someone said it.

My pals who form the musical group Big Daddy have been busy doing what they usually do: Taking recent hit songs and rearranging them so they sound like records from the fifties. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you might like to catch them performing live at Boulevard Music in Culver City on June 30. Here's where you go to get tickets.

In the meantime, here's what they did to "Uptown Funk" by Bruno Mars. They're right. It would have been a much better song if it had been recorded by the Statler Brothers…

In a few hours, Donald Trump will announce what, if anything, he's going to do about the deal that blocks Iran from going nuclear for the time being. I wouldn't presume to guess what that announcement might be except that he will, of course, insist he's making the absolute right decision and that the world will be a lot safer because of him and we should all praise him for that.

This piece by Alex Ward explains why Trump hates the existing Iran deal. I'm sure everything Mr. Ward says is true but two other reasons occur to me, one being that Trump's campaign for the presidency was largely based on the premise that every single thing the Obama administration had done was wrong and stupid and terrible and in bad need of reversal. Much of what Trump has done in office seem to me to flow from a need to change what he condemned on the campaign trail even though he has no better plan or idea to put in place. Obamacare, he said time and again, was a disaster that had to go and he'd replace it with something better and cheaper that would cover more people…and so far, we haven't heard even the bare bones of a plan.

The second reason is closely related. In my career as a professional writer, I have often been courted by agents who wanted me to leave my guy and make them my guy. The pushiest ones were the ones I was least likely to consider and one of the things the pushiest ones all did was to tell me that I was robbed blind on every single deal my previous agents had made for me. It was like if you sold your old Honda Accord for $2000 — or about what comparable cars always went for — and I said, "My God! You got taken to the cleaners! If you'd let me sell it for you, I would have gotten you Fifty Thousand Dollars for that car!!!!" (To convey the hysteria in some of those pitches, I probably should have typed that in ALL CAPS and BOLDFACED ITALICS.)

Your sleaziest agents always seem to say that. No deal is any good if they didn't make it. Some of them even seem to believe their own bull or take it as some kind of personal incentive to promise you the moon plus several planets and then set themselves the goal of achieving it. They often do great damage to their clients because they're not satisfied to make you a good deal. They need, for their reputations and/or egos, to make you the best friggin' deal in the history of mankind. Nothing less will satisfy them, never mind satisfying you. Trump, who continually tells us that he's the greatest negotiator and deal-maker who ever lived, reminds me way too much of that kind of agent.

Hey, I tried one of these. Just Crack An Egg is a new idea from the folks at Ore-Ida who specialize in frozen potatoes and it comes in four variations: Denver Scramble, All American Scramble, Rustic Scramble and Ultimate Scramble. With each, you can whip up a quick omelet in your microwave just by adding one fresh egg.

I'm one of those rare freaks who isn't wild about cheese in my omelets — a preference that seems to always horrify restaurant waiters or the person at a breakfast buffet who mans the omelet station. They always look at me like I asked them to leave out the egg. Also, for allergic reasons, I don't want peppers of any sort in anything I eat. All four variations of Just Crack an Egg, like 95% of all breakfast sandwiches available in the U.S.A. contain cheese and all but the All American Scramble contain peppers. So I went with that one and decided to make it "as is," including the cheese.

You open the cup and in it, you find three little packets — one each of cheese, bacon and potatoes. You take them out. You crack your egg into the cup. You open the three packets and empty them in. You stir the uncooked omelet. You put it in your microwave for forty seconds. You stir what's in the cup then put it back in for another thirty seconds and it's done…or at least it's supposed to be. My microwave runs hot but my omelet-in-a-cup still seemed to need another fifteen seconds…but fine.

Any good? Yeah, I guess. The end product was what you'd expect: A microwaved scrambled egg with that stuff in it. But I decided I still don't want cheese in my omelet and the potatoes really didn't bring anything to the taste or texture. So what I may do in the future is crumble some cooked bacon into my own cup, crack my egg and save two and a half bucks.

This reminds me of the problem I have with all these new prepared meal services that are advertised on half the web pages I visit — services like Home Chef and Hello Fresh and Prepped and all the others who offer to deliver ready-to-heat (or sometimes, ready-to-cook) entrees to your door. Due to their relentless promotions (and my food allergies, which are many), I often feel like there's an industry out with the sole purpose of feeding me food that will kill me. Almost every carefully-selected-by-their-gourmet-chefs dinner contains something I'm allergic to and often, some component which I could eat but just plain don't like. At least with Just Crack An Egg, I could leave out the little packet of red and green peppers.

Wikipedia, which is never wrong about anything except most things, tells me that "up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, including 5.9 million children under age 18." That sounds right to me and gives me comfort that I am not alone in this world. When I get some time, I think I'll write a few more posts here on this topic. I need to explain better to certain friends of mine why I'm not being anti-social when I don't want to go with you to an Indian restaurant and why you should never-ever-ever buy me something to eat without my advance consent.

And as for Just Crack An Egg, I guess this is a good review of a product I will probably never buy again. The best part of it for me was the separate packets.