Donald Trump believed that brilliance and leadership would blossom in his White House and he wanted to make sure someone would be around to record and report it. So unfettered access was given to Michael Wolff, a writer who specializes in gossip and stories of dubious sourcing and he was allowed to observe and interview and gather material which he used in a book called Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which is full of tales of chaos, interoffice hatred, incompetence and maybe even a little treason. The book depicts Trump himself as childish, mean and very interested in tricking friends' wives into having sex with him.

Trump's response has been to insist his lawyers — who presumably told him there was zero chance of this succeeding — use the court system to block publication of the book, even though there are plenty of copies around that would be uploaded to the Internet if they could somehow stop it from being sold at Barnes & Noble. And of course, the fact that he wants to suppress it has given tons of publicity to the book and catapulted it to the top of every Best Seller list. This is in addition to the fact that other reporters are already excerpting and spreading its more salacious and damaging sections…but somehow Trump will prevail. Do I have this right?

I'm taking a minor medical leave from the blog today. I have a tiny pain in my right shoulder which makes typing — and especially mousing — a bit painful. I think I can do a little but a lot will probably inflame it…so I'm going to limit my computer activity to non-blogging work that needs to be done this day. If it got worse and I wanted to write something here, I'd have to compose my posts using only the keys on the left side of the keyboard. That would mean no periods so a post would have to be a very long sentence which I could never end.

I will be back when it gets better on its own or with an assist from Ibuprofen. Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow.

Remembering everyone's favorite singing group…

Sorry I've been too swamped to blog 'til now.  Let's see if I can get through this entire post before the phone rings again…

I've received lots of nice remembrances from people who loved Frank Buxton in person and/or on the screen.  I hope I made it clear what a terrific person I thought he was.  Here's an obit for him that ran in his hometown newspaper.

Also, because of some obits I haven't written, I think I need to post the following periodic reminder: Just because someone dies and I don't write about them, it does not mean that I disliked them or have a negative opinion of them.  It might mean that I just plain have nothing to say about them that others aren't already saying on the 'net.  Contrary to what some folks seem to think, I have not met everyone in Show Business or Comics.  I also don't have interesting insights or anecdotes about some of the people I have met.

As some have noted, I write a lot of obituaries…and if it appears as if a lot of people I know die, that's mainly a function of how many people I know.  My Microsoft Office Address Book has, like, 3600 entries in it.  The larger your Rolodex, the greater the chance each day that someone in it will die.  Most of my friends are alive and I'm going to do everything possible to keep them that way.

This is a tough one for me. Actor-writer-director-producer and all-around great guy Frank Buxton died this morning at 11:45, surrounded by family and friends.

Frank was born February 13, 1930 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He was a self-described "child of the Golden Age of Radio" and quite the expert on the period. In fact, he authored the definitive book on old radio, Big Broadcast, 1920-1950. It's currently out of print but well worth tracking down if the subject interests you in the slightest. Here's a quick clip from a 1969 episode of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on which Frank appeared to promote the book. Earlier in the program, they'd done a re-creation of a script from the Superman radio show and you can see Bud Collyer, who played the title role on that series, sitting on the couch…

Frank was all over TV in the fifties and sixties, hosting this and that, including a game show or two. I still can't quite wrap my brain around the fact that I am friends with the guy who presided over the TV show Discovery when I was ten. Discovery, which aired in the late afternoon Monday through Friday on ABC, was one of the few truly entertaining "educational" programs ever done — like another from many years later called Hot Dog. Frank was also responsible for Hot Dog, which won a Peabody Award in 1970. He was also heard as a voice on many cartoon shows, most notably Batfink on which he played…Batfink.

Frank was also an actor on stage and screen. He used to tell me stories about how at the age of 19, he appeared in a production of Three Men on a Horse with Buster Keaton and later spent a year touring Australia playing the Dick Van Dyke role in Bye Bye Birdie. He had a great many other credits but the one you may know best is that he was one of the perpetrators, led by his friend Woody Allen, of the movie, What's Up, Tiger Lily? Here he is a few years later interviewing Woody in the trailer for the film, Bananas…

Frank continued to act in regional theater but his main occupation became writer, director and producer of situation comedies including Love, American Style, The Odd Couple, Happy Days and Mork & Mindy. That's right: He directed Robin Williams, which he described as both a joy and a helluva challenge. When Mr. Williams passed, Frank wrote me a note about that experience.

For years, I assumed that the Frank Buxton who worked on all those sitcoms was a different Frank Buxton from the guy I enjoyed watching on Discovery. It simply didn't occur to me that one man could be so diverse and so talented. I soon learned they were one and the same and that he was one of the nicest, cleverest people I would ever meet. We became good buddies and whenever we were recording Garfield cartoons and Frank was visiting Los Angeles from his home up north in Washington, I would drag him in to join our voice cast. It made the show better and I got to spend more time with Frank.

Frank's close friend John Ellis just wrote to tell me…

He'd been struggling with heart issues for some time but had gotten stronger with a lot of work and support from his wonderful family and community. Things had been pretty damn good until very recently. He even got back on stage with The Edge in November, and a week before his final trip to the hospital, he was singing up a storm at a workshop.

His exit line was perfectly Frank! We sang some songs Christmas Eve and at the end of the last song, he closed his eyes, dropped his hand from his chest, opened his hand and whispered, "Rosebud." We all laughed (including Frank) and we left his room, but as far as we know that was his exit line.

The Edge is an improv troupe on Bainbridge Island in Washington. It was founded by John and Frank in 1993 and was among the many joys of Frank's life and, I'm sure, John's as well. Frank was always doing something — always writing something, always acting in something, always surrounding himself with wonderful, talented people. I want to go like he did…and I think I'll even steal his exit line. He was truly one of my heroes and it was an honor to know him.

The Washington Post fact checkers say that in his 347 days in office, Donald Trump has made 1,950 false or misleading assertions. It is perhaps worth noting that the URL for this article says 1,949 false or misleading statements so one of those numbers is wrong.

If we want to be fair to Trump — and I'm at a loss to explain why anyone would — a lot of items on the list of 1,950 (or 1,949) are repeats or statements which could be interpreted in some way that is technically true. But even if you whittle the list down to half its present length, that's still something like three a day, including all those days where he was playing golf like he said he wouldn't do.

Ah, I can remember when his political opponents called Al Gore a "congenital liar" who was not to believed even if he told you what day of the week it was. They had a list of around ten examples, some of which involving misquoting him a bit. Like, he said "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet" and his detractors got away with changing it to "I invented the Internet" and branding him a liar.

My take on all this is that we really don't care in this country if someone lies to us if they're on our team. "Liar" is a label you only hang on a political opponent and Trump found it very useful to refer to "Lying Hillary" or "Lying Ted" or any member of the press who wrote or said something he didn't like.

The other adjective he does that with is "failing." Any business he doesn't like is failing, regardless of how well they're actually doing…like the New York Times is the "failing New York Times" even though its circulation and revenues are on the rise. I suppose if you called Trump on his use of that descriptor, he'd say he meant that they're failing the American public by printing all those lies. And he'd probably claim credit for any increase in their business, claiming it's because they write so much about him. It must be nice to live in a world where when you win, you win…and when you lose, you insist you won and that's just as good.

The previous item here was a video shot back in the eighties in the offices of DC Comics when they were located at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York. My buddy Shelly Goldstein reminds me that that building has been in the news a lot lately.

This will only be of interest to folks who read comic books in the eighties but it'll be a lot of interest to them. It's a 22 minute promotional video made (apparently) in late 1984 in the offices of DC Comics back when their editorial offices were at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York and it gives you a chance to see and hear many folks who were working for them then. Among those who are sadly no longer with us are Dick Giordano, Julius Schwartz, Joe Orlando and Len Wein…

It's pretty long but you might want to read a long article by Michael Grunwald about what Donald Trump accomplished and didn't accomplish in '17 and what may lie ahead for '18. It's going to get worse for both sides before it can get better for either.

There is, of course, no earthly reason why we can't make resolutions on August 14 or May 23…but New Year's Day is such a tidy day for them. If you resolve on September 3 to henceforth stop doing something and then on September 8 you start doing it again, you might find yourself wondering, "Hmm…did I make this resolution — the one I've now broken — on the second or the third? Did I manage to keep it for five days or six this time?"

Make 'em on January 1 and it's easier to figure how long you held out before you decided one little milk shake now and then won't hurt…or that it's okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while.

Today, I'm resolving to listen to fewer complaints in 2018 — especially complaints where the complainer doesn't really (or shouldn't really) expect me to solve the problem(s); they just want to tell me how distressed they are. They're wasting their time and it's their time, they have every right to waste it. But in doing so, they're also wasting my time and I'm going to try to put an end to that part. Sometimes, they're also dragging my mind way far away from the script I'm trying to write and forcing me into a mood that'll make it hard for me to resume my writing.

My resolution has exceptions to it, of course. Certain friends complain to me so little and only with enough good reason that I'll hear them out. Sometimes, the complaint is part of a genuinely funny or interesting or enlightening story. Sometimes, the complaint is brief and it's the kind I (and maybe no one else) can quickly eradicate for them. Those are all fine.

But otherwise, I don't need to hear a half-hour of your problems just because (a) you haven't even tried to solve them; you just figure it's easier to ask me to…or (b) you just want to vent and you think "Evanier's a good listener." I'm really not. I'm going to stop pretending I am.

Now, let me interrupt here because I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking, "This guy is complaining to us about people complaining to him." A good point but it's not the same thing. You don't have to read this blog. You can stop whenever you like without hurting my feelings at all. If this topic bothers you at all, now would be a great time to click elsewhere and here — I'll even make it easy for you. This is a link to a page of Funny Names to Give a Duck.

Go there instead of reading the rest of this. Funny duck names are great. I especially like "Quack Galifianakis."

But really, please. If I never tell you my problems — and I almost never tell anyone my problems except for comedic purposes — don't tell me yours. Here are a few tips though that may help you solve yours without my (or anyone's) help…

I have found that I can't solve a problem until I can gauge it at the proper scale. Treating it like it's way less serious than it really is makes it difficult to solve. Treating it like it's way, way more serious than it really is usually makes it impossible. Step back and ask yourself, "How big a problem is this really?"

Differentiate between problems that can be solved with one phone call and those that can't. If you can't get a job, that can feel like the biggest problem in the world but it's one that can totally disappear if the phone rings in five minutes and someone offers you the right position. If you have a serious illness or physical condition, there is no one phone call that can make that one go away.

While you're at it, ask yourself if this is really and truly a problem at all. Just because it looks like a problem or feels like a problem doesn't mean that it is one or that you have to treat it as one. I would say a good third of the problems people bring to me are in the category of "Just ignore it and it will go away" — and it does.

I have also found that, at least for me, if I can't solve a problem, the problem is that I really and truly don't understand the problem. Try asking yourself, "What's actually happening here?" The answer may be something that's painful to admit but you probably need to admit it if you're going to solve it.

And the painful admission might be that somewhere in the past, you tried to solve this problem the wrong way. You might need to accept that you made a mistake before you can find a solution that works.

Also, one must remember that if the problem is what you're afraid might happen, it might not. In my life, I have worried about many, many problems that never happened.

There are also problems that can only be solved by not letting them occur in the first place. There are many freeways we could all name which, if you get on them at certain hours, you are almost always giving yourself the problem of sitting in bumper-to-bumper stasis for long periods of time and being late for something. Fuming about the traffic when you should have known better is only good for reminding you to know better in the future.

And there are also downsides which inevitably flow from upsides. I once met a guy who'd won something like $30 million in a state lottery and he seemed like the most miserable person, droning on and on about how everyone was asking him for loans or gifts of cash. Winning all that money was such a horrible thing. It's like if someone spends his or her life trying to become famous and then complains about how they can't go anywhere — for God's sake! — without being recognized. Some good things come with bad things attached and they can't be separated. Just accept both as a package deal and stop whining.

Learn to differentiate problems that are caused by luck of the draw or circumstances beyond your control from problems that are of your own making…or which are beyond your power to solve. You probably can't remove Donald Trump from office or cure some disease, at least by yourself. There may be some where the futility is a little less obvious.

Which brings us to this last one: That there are some problems that just plain cannot be solved. Medical problems can be like that but so can many other kinds. In those situations, your thinking probably needs to change from "How do I solve this?" to "How do I minimize the suffering?" It can be tough to make that transition because most of us don't like the idea of giving up but this gets back to the part where you need to a realistic answer to the question, "What's actually happening here?" and the possibly-painful answer that may come with it. It may not be cost-effective to keep fixing that old, broken-down car of yours. You may need to give up on it and get another…or begin taking the bus.

And I probably should have included something about not thinking life is meant to be without problems. Light bulbs do burn out, tires do go flat, you do sometimes have no toilet paper in the house. Once in a while, a whole bunch of those things will all occur at about the same time. That doesn't mean life is awful. It just means you need to go to Costco. You'd be amazed how many problems I have sometimes solved at the same time with a trip to Costco.

I'm telling you all this because whoever you are, I'd like you to have a better year in 2018. But more important is that I'd like me to have a better year in 2018 and I've decided that one way to do that is to give myself fewer problems…like, say, just mine and no one else's. This is me trying to make that happen. And by the way, it is not okay to do a little crystal meth once in a while. Just in case you were thinking it was.

The PBS series American Masters has a two-hour look at Bob Hope that's airing these days and it's well worth the two hours. There are clips of Hope's work, including some rare stuff, and his story is told in large part "by him" as Billy Crystal reads excerpts from Hope's (ghostwritten) books. There's also testimony from Woody Allen, Brooke Shields, Dick Cavett, Leonard Maltin, former Hope writer Bob Mills and — via vintage footage — writers like Larry Gelbart, Mel Shavelson and Sherwood Schwartz.

It's a rags-to-riches story with few rags and a whole lot o' riches as Hope becomes something more than just another skilled comic, actor and song 'n' dance man. It may go a long way to answer the question, "What was so special about that guy?" — a question which must have occurred to a lot of people who knew him only from what he did post-1975 or so. He seemed to some like a legend only because so many people said he was one.

Much of the documentary is pure hagiography, making Bob out to be perhaps a bit more than he was but they did deal with two possible negatives about the man which have gone largely unmentioned before, at least on TV…

One was Hope's legendary (but whispered) unfaithfulness to his wife of 6+ decades, Dolores. It was well-known to those in the industry, including folks who would not have kept the secret of a lesser star's peccadilloes. I think they were afraid that Bob was too much a symbol of decency and "family values" to America and that they would have been accused of (a) lying and (b) smearing all that is sacred and holy had they talked about it.

It was just something that much of this country would have refused to believe and would have been angry to hear. Today, it is less of shocker that wealthy, powerful men do things like that.

The filmmakers are to be commended for not evading the issue since it was very much a part of Mr. Hope. If anything, they went easy on him since some of the stories — one of which happened to a close friend of mine — aren't just of a man who cheated on his wife but of a man who sometimes ventured near Harvey Weinstein territory.

The show also dealt with Hope's support for the Vietnam War, which always struck me as flowing from Hope's need to be the Star Comedian in any president's court. Larry Gelbart and I talked about this once and he felt as I sensed that Hope's personal politics were secondary; that his assumed role of America's Preeminent Comedian had led him to one of those "America is never wrong" postures. You couldn't go against the President of the United States because then the President of the United States might not play golf with you and refer to you as a National Treasure.

It was fascinating to hear in the show a tape of Hope expressing his doubts — in private, of course — about that war to Nixon. And to hear Nixon — who clearly prolonged the war for personal partisan advantage — selling Hope the same load of dung he sold the public and even advising Hope on how to sell it himself. People say that one of the main factors that turned this country against the Vietnam War was when Walter Cronkite spoke out against it…

Imagine what might have happened if Bob "Mr. Saigon" Hope had done what Walter "Most Trusted Man in America" Cronkite did. And remember what they said earlier in the doc about how Hope, through actions and words, told his fellow stars that if you were famous, you had a duty to use some of that fame for good causes.

And I can't let one part of this pass without comment. Tom Selleck, who served in that war, said in the documentary that Hope's support of the troops meant everything to himself and his fellow soldiers because of the hostility many of them felt from those opposed to the war. That's probably very true and very much to Hope's credit. But Selleck also said, "I think the great lesson that came out of Vietnam is we must never blame our troops for a mission that is unpopular."

That's also correct of course but one of the big problems was how hard it was for those of us protesting the war to express any disapproval of the mission or how our leaders were leading it without supporters of the war firing back with "You hate our troops! You cheer when they get killed!" That dishonest conflation was one of many factors that moved me from supporting the war to marching against it. So as not to get this post irrevocably off the topic of Mr. Robert Hope, I may write a separate piece about this here in the next few weeks.

Getting back to him: I liked Hope but as with many of his contemporaries — Jack Benny, George Burns, Lucy, et al — it wasn't that I found them funny as that I found them entertaining. They projected stardom and history and a total command of the stage. I chuckled at Hope's rhythms and attitude more than at his jokes — and even at a young age, I was aware that when I did laugh at something Bob Hope said, I was laughing at something his writers had given him. I think I just liked how good he was at being Bob Hope.

One of the folks behind the American Masters special was Richard Zoglin, who wrote this very good book about Hope. I recommend it if you enjoy the documentary and wish to delve deeper into the subject. Whatever Bob Hope was, he was the only one of its kind and that alone makes him kinda fascinating.

This Thursday evening, 1/4/18, Jay Leno's Garage on CNBC has its season premiere with an episode about dangerous things people do in cars. In it, Mr. Leno attempts perhaps the most daring feat of all: He attempts to teach Gilbert Gottfried how to drive…in a Ferrari!

The listings are screwed-up on my TiVo but if you want to record this, I think the episode you want is entitled "In Harm's Way."

Speaking of Gilbert: I continue to enjoy listening online to installments of Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. If you love the kind of show biz trivia into which this blog often descends, you'll enjoy the conversations that Gilbert and his co-host Frank Santopadre have with folks like (recently) Mario Cantone, Art Metrano and Bill Saluga. Coming up some time in January: Me. That's about as scary as teaching Gilbert how to drive…in a Ferrari!

John Green has some interesting facts about candy…

Two days ago, Donald Trump did an impromptu interview with the New York Times that has people again talking about his mental health. One of those is Ezra Klein who explains why he believes "The president of the United States is not well."

Want to get a second opinion? Glenn Kessler — fact-checker for the Washington Post — says that Trump made 24 false or misleading statements in thirty minutes. A few of these seem nitpicky to me but there are enough inarguable howlers in there to make you wonder if he really believes this stuff and is making decisions based on fantasy information.

And Trump has started arguing that the U.S. Postal Service should be charging Amazon more for transporting its parcels. The problem with that accusation, as Jen Kirby notes, is that the U.S.P.S. makes money transporting parcels. The post office is in bad financial shape because delivering First Class Mail is becoming increasingly unprofitable. You'd think a great businessman like Donald Trump would understand something like this but he's apparently too angry at the guy who who owns Amazon because he also owns the Washington Post that prints things like Glenn Kessler's article.

Meanwhile, Roy Moore hasn't conceded and will probably never concede an election that has now been certified for his opponent. A problem I always have with these "God is in control" people is that what they really believe (or insist is so) is that "God is in control and He wants me to always win." When they lose, that's apparently because God is not in control which cannot be because God is always in control…or something. William Saletan dismembers Moore's current argument which is so incoherent, it reads like Trump wrote it for him.

And through it all, no one gives a shit about a part of America known as Puerto Rico.