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.

Hey, how do they make ice cream sandwiches?

Two other matters. My mailbox is jammed with messages from folks who want to know if I've heard that Steven Spielberg is making or may make a movie adapting the classic comic book, Blackhawk. Yes, I have. And since I wrote that comic for a while, they want to know what I think of this news.

I really don't think anything about this news that any fan of the comic book in any of its incarnations wouldn't think. If they proceed with the film, I hope it's good. There's a quote from me many years ago that has since been attributed to others and I want it back. It's "Never get possessive about characters you don't own." Yeah, I wrote Blackhawk. So have at least thirty other guys with many more to come. We all probably feel (or felt) we did it "right" at least in terms of a comic book published at the time we did it. That might or might not be the way to go with a movie made today…and since none of us get to decide that, I'm not going to spend the time to ponder that.

I hope it's good. That's my answer.

In other news: Remember that video I embedded of the Tachibana High School Marching Band from Kyoto performing at someplace Disney? This one? Well, Jeff Peterson writes to inform me — and I quote: "The Tachibana High School Marching Band visited Disneyland on December 29, 2017, just before their participation in the 2018 Rose Parade, the logo for which you can see on the tubas. The video you posted was taken on Main Street, at the intersection of Center Street, facing west. The eucalyptus trees in the background are original trees from the Anaheim orange groves, which now border the Jungle Cruise attraction."

Thanks, Jeff. That clears that up…but I still don't know why I'm up at this hour.

Just read about a half-dozen essays about James Comey, spanning a wide range of political viewpoints. I'm trying to decide for myself what I think of the guy and I think what I think of the guy at the moment is pretty much what Matt Yglesias thinks of the guy. Comey is a bit of a hero in that in the era of Trump, we need government officials who will say no to corrupt orders. And Trump is the perfect explanation of why we need that.

One key sentence from the Yglesias piece is when he quotes Adam Serwer…

"…the FBI is petrified of criticism from its conservative detractors, and is relatively indifferent to its liberal critics." And over the course of 2016, it showed — when Mitch McConnell wanted Comey to keep quiet about Trump and Russia, he did. When Trump-friendly elements among the rank and file wanted him to speak up about Anthony Weiner's laptop, he did.

Therein lies a lot of the reason why we have Trump in the White House. So it may be difficult for some of us to be glad there are/were people like Comey in our government. But at least he said no some of the time.

For another view of Comey, read Matt Taibbi. I'm not saying he's wrong; just that at the moment, I'm leaning towards the other Matt's characterization. Your mileage might vary as might mine as I think more about this. I'm also trying to decide why the hell I'm up this early.

Here's the uncut version of Stephen Colbert's interview with ousted FBI director James Comey. The cut version has yet to air in my time zone. If you haven't watched it yet, watch this version instead of that version.

You can and will draw your own conclusions about Mr. Comey. I'll just say that I think Colbert is a better interviewer than 95% of those who do this kind of thing on news programs…

Around two years ago, one could find on the Internet a lot of rumors that CBS was unhappy with Stephen Colbert's ratings and were fixing to either swap his time slot with James Corden's or dump him entirely. I never thought there was anything to those rumors other than that some people who didn't like his show just liked reading that it was doomed. But Colbert's still there and he's doing great. In fact, as this article notes, greater than anyone else on in that day part.

I like his show a lot, though I might like it a little more if he talked less about Trump and more about other things. But what he's doing is working fine so I don't expect a change.

I used to cook for myself from time to time but rarely do anymore. Apart from a severe Lack of Time, my urges have been killed by watching cooking videos online and realizing that I haven't the knowledge or patience to do it well. The unspoken subtext of every Alton Brown video to me seems to be "Everyone but Alton Brown is too dumb to prepare food properly." I actually like watching him in action because he's very entertaining, he does seem to know what he's talking about and once I see him make a meat loaf, I can tell myself "I don't have the time or skills necessary to make a meat loaf!" I rather enjoy being freed from feeling I should do that.

Lately, I sometimes watch Food Wishes videos from Chef John. Here he is telling you (a) how to make a ketchup at home and (b) why it's really, really stupid to make ketchup at home. This is the kind of cooking video I like: The kind where after you watch it, you feel really good about not doing it yourself…

Not long ago here, I had to report on the passing of cartoonist Lee Holley, who was best known for his comic strip, Ponytail. Lee was another one of those guys who did very fine work for a long, long time without getting a lot of notice. Our mutual friend Willie Ito sent me the following and I got his okay to share it with all of you…

I was absolutely shocked hearing of Lee. It was just last February that I was in Palm Springs and tried calling him for lunch. Unfortunately, the number I had was not the right number for Lee. I figured the next time I'm in P.S., we will connect.

Little known fact. I was responsible for Lee getting in the animation business. I was attending Chouinard and in T. Hee's cartoon class. Lee was sitting in the back of the room very quiet and seemingly out of place, especially since he was in his full white Navy uniform. He was just mustered out of the Navy and checking out the school. I approached him and started a conversation. He was very soft-spoken especially with a classroom full of rather hippy, Bohemian, oddly dressed cartoonists around. Even the instructor T. Hee was dressed rather unconventional.

I saw the drawing Lee was working on and was rather impressed. I asked to see his sketch book and I was blown away by it! I was working at Warner Bros. Cartoons at Termite Terrace at that time and although production manager Johnny Burton said he was not hiring any inexperienced artists, I convinced him to see Lee's portfolio. The rest is history. Lee was hired on the spot. He advanced very quickly and soon found himself in Friz Freleng's unit assisting Gerry Chiniquy, one of the premiere animators for Friz.

Lee and I became fast "cartoon" friends. We would spend the evenings at my kitchen table working on our own comic strip ideas. He was working on a teenage strip that looked very promising. I was freelancing for Petersen Publishing at that time and referred Lee to the editor of Teen Magazine. The strip was published as a two-page feature that brought great reaction. Meanwhile, Warner's would close up shop during summer vacation. Lee, who was from the Monterey area, went home but made a visit to Carmel Valley to visit Hank Ketcham.

When we all returned from our respective vacations, Lee confided in me that he'd gotten an offer from Ketcham to assist on the Dennis the Menace strip. Hank finally found an assistant he could entrust and he himself could move to Europe. Lee did the Sunday pages as well as the spinoff licensed merchandise. He worked at Ketcham's Carmel Valley studio by the swimming pool. That is where he acquired his love for sports cars. He had a little MG and later a red MGA and then a Porsche. It was the ideal car to tool around Carmel.

He would meet fellow cartoonists at the Cracker Barrel which was a hangout meeting place for local cartoonists who would show up in sports cars also. Lee tried to interest Post-Hall Syndicate, the syndicate for Dennis, in his teenage strip now called Ponytail. Post-Hall was a bit discouraging since Lee was now too important to Hank. Lee, being a bit discouraged, sent it to King Features Syndicate and they jumped at it.

Now Lee was faced with a dilemma. To sell to a competing syndicate was a big "no-no!" How to tell Hank, especially long-distance? Meanwhile, Post-Hall was up in arms and threatened to buy out Ponytail from KFS. They (Post-Hall) should have had first refusal. Eventually, the smoke cleared and Ponytail was a hit.

Lee and I were very close friends both socially and professionally. He had a getaway place in Palm Springs but his home was in Aptos, California. Unfortunately, Lee must have been flying to his home in Aptos when he crashed.

In a follow-up message to me, Willie wrote…

When Ponytail started, Lee found himself extremely busy. Post-Hall Syndicate needed a good healthy lead time on the Dennis Sundays also allowing for time to train a new artist. King Features needed a six-week lead before the launch on both the Sundays and dailies. With Ponytail, Lee drew and also had to write the strips.

During one of his decompressing breaks at the Cracker Barrel, Playboy's Eldon Dedini suggested he submit one of his cute "girly" cartoons to Playboy. It was any cartoonist's greatest dream. At Dedini's urging, Lee submitted a one page, color gag cartoon and he expected the usual reject or extensive creative changes. Much to his surprise, Playboy bought his first time out cartoon and a few months later, it was in print. The Cartoon Editor suggested he might consider being a regular contributor. Needless to say, much to Lee's reluctance, he had to decline.

He finally left Ketcham and his whirlwind career started. It wasn't too long before Ponytail was up to 300 papers.

Aww. I never met Harry Anderson but I saw him perform a number of times — at the Magic Castle and other venues. He was always slick, funny and able to send the audience out chuckling. I always thought it was interesting that he basically played two roles in his performing career. One was as an unscrupulous con man who would bilk you of your last greenback if he could get away with it. The other was as a judge.

To be truly great at magic, you need more than the ability to deal off the bottom of the deck or palm a coin or misdirect an audience's attention while you hide the potato under the cup. You need a talent for delivery and it's not far removed from the talent needed to tell a joke effectively. Most magic tricks have punchlines and like an expert comedian, you have to be able to time them just right. Mr. Anderson was an expert comedian and an expert magician and no one did a better job of intersecting those skill sets.