Here's the first episode of Our Cartoon President, a new animated series on Showtime produced by Stephen Colbert and folks around him…

At least, don't count on a Season Pass getting you what you want tomorrow night.

That's the night of the State of the Union address and several of the late night shows will be broadcasting live after it. This means they may not start and end when your TiVo or DVR thinks they'll start and end. I thought I'd take a look at the pages where one gets tickets to sit in their audiences and see when they're doing each show. Remember, the speech is at 6 PM Pacific Time, 9 PM Eastern…

In New York, the website for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert wants its audience there at 9 PM. They usually "tape" (that is no longer the right word) at 4:30 PM. In the past, most of the shows they've done "live" have only been partially live. They brought in two audiences and pre-recorded some segments of the program with the first, then did only some parts of the show live. Looks like they're doing the whole thing live this time.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah usually records at 5 PM but according to its ticket website…

PLEASE NOTE: The taping on Tuesday, January 30th, will be a LIVE SHOW starting with a viewing of the State of the Union followed by the taping. Check-in for General Guaranteed reservation holders will open at 6:30pm and close at 7:30pm.

…which I don't understand. To get a good seat, you have to be there at 6:30, wait around to watch Trump speak at 9 PM and then still be there for the live telecast starting at 11 PM or later? I thought for a moment the website was converting to Pacific Time for me but they wouldn't want people to get there at 9:30 to view a speech that starts at 9. So I dunno what's up there.

Meanwhile, the same company's website for The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, which usually wants people there at 5:30 for a 6:30 recording tomorrow wants them there at 10:30 PM for an 11:30 broadcast. Which makes sense.

(By the way: I didn't know this but apparently, Mr. Klepper's show — which further by the way, I like a lot — is done from the Hotel Pennsylvania on 7th Avenue, across from Penn Station. Weird.)

The website for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon doesn't have ticket listings for this week and I don't see anything online about doing his show live tomorrow night. His lead guests however are Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, who will undoubtedly talk about Trump. It would seem odd to record that conversation before the speech. Late Night with Seth Meyers is recording at its usual time of 5:30 PM according to its ticket website.

What about the two late night shows from Los Angeles? Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which I don't think has been live in many years, usually gets the audience there at 4:15 PM. According to its website, tomorrow night they convene at 6:45. James Corden is doing his show at its usual time of 4 PM.

Call me crazy but I have this odd feeling that the speech will be an awful lot about how everything is going as great as it possibly could and if it isn't, it's because of those damned Democrats — and did I mention there was no collusion, no collusion, no collusion? I'm hoping someone will take the whole speech and put it on YouTube captioned with fact-checking but of course, that could take a while…like until the next State of the Union speech. We can only wonder who'll be delivering that one.

The day after Christmas a little over a month ago, I posted this message here…

Note to self: If you go out for dinner on any future Christmas Day in the future, don't go late. Amber and I journeyed to one of our favorite restaurants last night for an 8:45 reservation. The gentleman who led us to our table informed us that service was running slow because "One of our chefs walked out on us" — he did not explain why — and whatever entree we ordered might take as long as an hour to get to us.

I felt sorry for our server who then had to apologize over and over for things that were not his fault…mostly the fact that they were out of so many items including bread. I have never before been in a restaurant that ran out of bread. I was on my cell phone at one point when he came by our table and I told him, "I'm having a pizza delivered." He said, "Good idea. Could you save me a slice?"

I feel sorry for our server again. I just received an e-mail that the restaurant has closed permanently. It was the McCormick & Schmick's in El Segundo and it was always good until that one evening…and even then, it wasn't that bad and the problems seemed to me forgivable. It's also a place I'll miss for a personal reason. The last few Christmases that my mother was able to go out for dinner, that's where Carolyn and I took her.

We started one year when my gift to her was the snazziest wheelchair you ever saw.

No, I take that back. It wasn't a wheelchair. What my mother needed and what I got her was what's called a companion chair. The difference is that a wheelchair has the big wheels so the person in it can roll themselves around. A companion chair only moves if someone pushes it and the one I got her was a metallic cobalt blue and it glistened and made her feel very special. She called it her "Nascar Wheelchair."

Around the time she hit the age of eighty, walking more than about twenty steps at a time became impossible for her. She could get around the house but not out of it and when I told her, "I'm getting you a wheelchair," she agreed it was necessary but she was worried that, confined to the chair, there would be so many places she just couldn't go.

I assured her that the world had become very much wheelchair-friendly and to prove the point, on Christmas afternoon that year, I gave her the chair and then we took her down to that McCormick & Schmick's. I picked it partly because she loved the food there but also because I recalled the place had a very nice, functional wheelchair lift. You can see it in the above photo. It looks like a copper-colored box and it aids those who cannot climb those stairs to the right of it.

I pulled my car up front into the valet area, which is what you're seeing in this photo. Then I got her chair from my trunk and got her into it. As I did, the parking attendant said I had a choice. I could take her in via the wheelchair lift or I could roll her around to the other side of the restaurant where there was a ramp that would get her inside. I said, "We're using the lift" and then I wheeled her into it, got into it with her and we rode it up.

And then we rode it down.

And then we rode it up again. And down.

I did this over and over — up and down, up and down — three or four times to show her how simple it was, and I showed her how she could work the controls herself. A couple came by as we were doing this and they looked puzzled as to why this this weird guy was taking the lady in the wheelchair up, then taking her down, then taking her up again. I told them, "She wanted to go to Disneyland today but I'm not spending that kind of money" and then I began singing, "It's a world of laughter, a world of tears! It's a world of hopes and a world of fears…"

My mother laughed, asked me when we could go on the Matterhorn and then she said, "Okay, you've made your point. It's easier than I thought." We went in, had a lovely dinner and then I took her out via the ramp on the other side of the building, just to show her how, even when there wasn't a wheelchair lift, there was almost always a way to get her in and out of wherever she wanted to go. That made her very happy.

My mother died in 2012 but I left her companion chair in my trunk for years after and it sometimes came in very handy. I now take it along when I go someplace where it might. In the years since, I used it to transport June Foray, Stan Freberg, Jack Riley, Marvin Kaplan, David L. Lander, Rose Marie, my dear friend Carolyn and several others, and I loaned it out to friends who needed one for a short time. One day right after my knee replacement, Sergio Aragonés pushed me in it to a doctor appointment and one time in a mall, I got it to help out a couple of strangers. A woman had fallen and hurt herself and her husband needed to get her to a hospital. My mother would be happy to see her Nascar Wheelchair used to help others.

What she wouldn't be happy about was to hear that that McCormick & Schmick's had closed. The entire chain of steak and seafood eateries was founded by Bill McCormick and Douglas Schmick in Portland, Oregon in 1974 and eventually expanded to almost 100 locations. The company was acquired by the Landry's Restaurant corporation in 2011 and I don't know how they're doing elsewhere but since then, they've closed the fancy one in Beverly Hills, the huge one in downtown Los Angeles, the ones in Burbank and Pasadena and now the one in El Segundo. I wish I'd known a month ago it was the last time I'd ever eat there. I would have taken the wheelchair lift for one last ride — up and down, up and down, up and down…

• Had a dream the other night: Trump ends State of the Union speech by putting watermelon in front of podium, smashing it with the Sledge-O-Matic. I'm thinking this probably won't happen but with him, you never know. Might also twerk or declare war on Toronto.

Cartoon voice actor Doug Young died January 7 at the age of 98. He was heard in many Hanna-Barbera cartoons between 1959 and around 1965 but is surely best known as the voice of Doggie Daddy in the Augie Doggie cartoons on the Quick Draw McGraw series. When the show was created, Joe Barbera and the writers decided that Augie's Dear Ol' Dad should sound like Jimmy Durante. They furthermore decided that Daws Butler — who played Augie and every other recurring character on that program — would supply that voice.

It was Daws who decided the part should be played by Doug Young. Daws was capable of playing both roles as he proved on the 1965 record album, Doggie Daddy Tells Augie Doggie The Story of Pinocchio. But that kind of voice was hard on Butler's vocal cords and he decided to tell Hanna-Barbera to get someone else for the job. Before he could do that, he ran into Doug Young in a record store.

Doug had been a working actor in the days of radio dramas — among many other shows, he was heard on The Cisco Kid, Red Ryder, Sherlock Holmes, The Lux Radio Theatre and The Whistler — but had not made the transition to television. Daws knew him from at least one of those shows on which they'd worked together and he remembered that Young did great impressions and could easily handle the kind of roles that voice actors called "throat-rippers." He also thought that Doug should be back in show business. So they went into Daws' home studio, put together a new demo tape…and that's how Doug Young became Doggie Daddy. I thought the result was one of the most memorable characterizations ever done for a TV cartoon.

Doug was in H-B cartoons for much of the sixties — he was Hokey Wolf's loyal sidekick, Ding-a-Ling, Yippee in "Yippee, Yappee and Yahooey," plus he played tons of supporting roles on The Flintstones and other shows including Jonny Quest and Hanna-Barbera's Laurel and Hardy cartoons. In '68, he moved to Seattle where he became very active with several groups there that keep alive the art of radio-style dramas and comedies. In one of these groups, he met and became friendly with my pal Frank Buxton, who sadly left us a few days before Doug did.

It was Frank who put me in touch with Doug for some long, pleasurable phone conversations, including one that took place on Stu's Show. I enjoyed chatting with him and letting him know how many of us there were around who loved his work. That is, whenever I could get him to stop telling me how much he loved Daws.

My thanks to Georgi Mihailov for letting me know about Doug's passing.

Watch this. It runs less than a minute…

I've been having trouble writing the Woody Allen piece I want to write. In the meantime though, my cousin David — author of this fine book on Mr. Allen — appeared on the radio show of our friend Paul Harris and explained a lot of the things I was going to say. Give it a listen.

I will say for now, I'm disappointed in how hysterical some discussions become on social media. A person ought to be able to oppose a specific piece of civil rights legislation without being branded a racist. A person ought to be able to say they think Donald Trump is a bad president without being called a Trump-hater. And a person ought to be able to say they think Woody Allen is not guilty without being accused of siding with all the folks who have been accused of sex crimes.

While you're over at Paul's site, check out his disappointment with Stephen Colbert giving over a large hunk of his show to Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop line. My reasons are the same as Paul's.

• If Trump wants his wall, it's real simple. He should get together with a lot of other billionaires, they should fund it and then when Mexico pays for it (like he promised), they can all be reimbursed!

One of the world's most-read cartoonists, Mort Walker died early this morning at the age of 94.  He was a professional cartoonist for eighty years.

That's right.  I said he was a professional cartoonist for eighty years.  He was selling 'em from the age of 14 and drawing them years before then.  In September of 1950, he launched his first of his many syndicated newspaper strips, Beetle Bailey.  Originally set at a college, the feature didn't really take off until a few months later when he shifted it to an army setting, drawing on his own military experiences.

It soon became one of the most popular comic strips of all time and Mort could have had a very fine, lucrative life just producing it until he could draw no longer. Instead, he began expanding.  He and his friend Dik Browne began Hi and Lois in 1954 and then he and Frank Roberge started Mrs. Fitz's Flats in 1957.  In 1961, Mort and Jerry Dumas gave us Sam's Strip, which only lasted two years but which was revived (somewhat changed) as Sam & Silo in 1977.

There was also Boner's Ark, which Walker started in 1968, signing it with his real first name, Addison.  There was also The Evermores, which he started in 1982 with Johnny Sajem.  There was also Gamin & Patches which "Addison" launched in 1987.  Some of these strips didn't last long but Mort still had an amazing track record…and Beetle Bailey, Hi and Lois and Sam & Silo still persist to this day.

They will not suffer the loss of Mort because for years, they were produced by a squadron of Walker friends and relatives, with Mort writing and drawing as his health allowed.  King Features Syndicate distributed all but Gamin & Patches, and Mort's output was so much a part of King's offerings that the New York office referred to his Connecticut studio as "King Features North."

Mort himself was a cheery, affable fellow who was also very involved in the National Cartoonists Society (serving as an officer and winning many awards from it) and in 1974, he opened the Museum of Cartoon Art, said to be the first museum devoted to the art of comics.  The times I encountered him, he was delightful to be around and always willing to draw Beetle or Sarge for any of his fans.  He sure had a lot of them.

If you'd like to know more about this extraordinary fellow, I would recommend a book he wrote in 1974 called Backstage at the Strips.  It's kind of an autobiography up to that point, and a look at how he and others produced their strips back then.  Here's an Amazon link to a paperback version that's still in print.  It's also a love letter to the cartooning profession — a profession that served him well (and vice-versa) for, like I said, eighty years. That's right: Eighty years!

Here are two articles that say the Obstruction of Justice case against Donald Trump is getting stronger. One is from Jeffrey Toobin and the other is from William Saletan. The two pieces say pretty much the same thing and I don't think there was any, as they say, collusion.

Matt Yglesias analyzes a recent interview of Donald Trump and concludes that the man isn't really president. He's just kind of a front for the people who are actually doing the job.

Jonathan Chait says that Trump promised to raise clean air standards and has instead lowered them. Anyone surprised?

Rick Lax is a magician but he's also something of a consumer crusader. I'll post some of his magic one of these days but for now, watch this exposé…

The Academy Awards nominations came out earlier this week and there is probably no one in my area code who cares about them less than I do. I don't get to a lot of movies the same year they come out. I generally get to them a year or three later.

That's the great thing about movies: They never disappear and they never change. When I take Amber out for entertainment, we mostly go to plays, concerts and other live events since those do go away. Next year or the year after, we'll probably watch the screener I received of The Post or the one here for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri or the one for The Shape of Water. They'll be just as good then.

That explains why I can't muster a whole lot of rooting interest in the Oscars. What does interest me is how people try to predict who'll win in this game for which we don't have any idea who votes or why. Analysis of political elections involves knowing how blacks between the ages of 18 and 40 voted or the past voting trends of people who make $200,000 a year or more and what they thought was the Number One Issue. Data like that. With the Oscars, all we know who's won in the past — and we don't even know whether they got 51% of the vote or 99%.

We also don't know who voted or how many. Did 90% of eligible Academy members vote or did 10%? It's probably somewhere in-between but where in-between? There are indications that the key to winning our political elections is turnout. It's not how many people are on your side. It's how many of them went to the polls. So what was the turnout for last year's Oscars? How many people returned their ballots? Answer: You have no friggin' idea.

And here's the thing I'd really love to know: What is the criteria for a category like Best Actor? I mean, I assume it's different with everyone but how different?

Some years, it seems to me — and remember, I'm basing this on no data whatsoever — that a lot of voters are voting for the actor who most successfully tackled a controversial, non-glamorous role in a film that didn't seem like a shoo-in at the box office. The Oscar, it seemed to me, was about taking big risks…which is why you see so few nominations for raunchy comedies or movies with a lot of CGI. (General rule of thumb: If the movie's up for Best Visual Effects, it'll get zero acting nominations.)

But maybe some people are voting for the actor they think is overdue to win for past work. And some are voting for the actor they just plain like more than the others. And maybe some are voting for the actor they think will give the most exciting acceptance speech. And maybe a lot of 'em are voting for the only nominated performance they saw last year.

And maybe — and I have a hunch this is true in more cases than one might imagine — they vote for the performance that "the buzz" (industry chatter) says is the most outstanding. Since we have zero data, my hunch can never be proven right or wrong but there are folks out there who do a pretty good job of predicting the Oscars and most of them seem to basing their predictions on "the buzz." I think that may be it.

Then again, maybe they're all voting for the movie star they last saw in a fast food restaurant…and Meryl Streep wins so often because she eats every meal at a Burger King. Yeah, that could be it.

He's coming back February 18. Not soon enough for me…

One way or the other, I think we're going to be talking about the Donald Trump presidency for the rest of our lives…which Trump would probably consider a "win" for him, even if we're all saying what a monster he was.   He strikes me as the kind of guy who would prefer that to not being mentioned at all.

You may find this hard to believe but there are moments lately when I kinda feel sorry for the guy.  I know he's the cause of a lot of his woes and I know he gleefully did the same things to his opponents but, for example, I didn't think any pundit or commenter from afar knew as much about the Clintons' marriage as they pretended they did.  I didn't think any pundit or commenter from afar knew as much about the Obamas' marriage as they pretended they did.  And I don't think any pundit or commenter from afar knows as much about the Trumps' marriage as they pretend they do.

I also think there is such a thirst out there for jokes and insults of Trump that the Stephen Colberts and Seth Meyerses of the world are faulting him for every stupid thing he says (which is fair) and a lot of picayune, arguable ones (which is not).  There are plenty of the legit kind, guys.

The other night, Michael Wolff was on with Trevor Noah, and I didn't get that Mr. Noah had a high opinion of Mr. Wolff.  He kept pressing Wolff on his new allegation that Trump is currently having an affair with someone on the White House staff and that you can figure this out if you "read between the lines" of Wolff's new book.  It sure sounded like Wolff has insufficient proof to say it out loud but he's suggesting it anyway because, hey, the idea is to sell books, right?

I haven't made it all the way through Wolff's Fire and Fury yet and I may not.  Much of it feels a little too National Enquirer for me…and by the way, I flipped through the latest Enquirer while waiting in the supermarket check-out line lately and I think their new Mission Statement is to make Fox News look fair and balanced by comparison.  Did you know that every bad thing you hear about Trump is a lie planted by Barack Obama?  Apparently, he's even found a way to make Trump say stupid, racist things.  If Obama could do that, how come he couldn't get us real, bulletproof Universal Health Care?  Now this…

• Fred Kaplan has one of those Good News/Bad News columns.  The good news is that with regard to foreign action and military operations, Trump is doing what the generals tell him to do.  The bad news is what the generals are telling him to do.
• Trump has been tossing red meat to his base, warning them that to let one immigrant in is to let in dozens.  Politifact explains how it really works and — surprise, surprise! — it's not the way Trump says it does. Also, immigrants have a much lower crime rate than he'd like you to believe.
• Here's two views on the same matter.  Zack Beauchamp says the Obstruction of Justice case against Trump is pretty strong.  Andrew Prokop thinks otherwise.
• Jonathan Chait makes a good case that "Trump Hasn't Destroyed Obama's Legacy. He's Revealed How Impressive It Was."  Part of the reason Trump's approval rating isn't in the twenties is that most of the economic news is fairly good.  But if you look at any chart of any indicator, I don't think there's one that doesn't show the good news is all continuing some trend from the Obama years or before.
• Matt Taibbi discusses the Trump News Cycle, where it's All Donald, All the Time.
• And finally: Evangelical leaders are still standing behind their boy Trump despite the story about him cheating on his wife with a porn star and paying hush bucks to cover it up.  I'm sure they'll apply the same standards of judgment to the next Democrat who gets enmeshed in a sex scandal.

Speaking of that scandal: The porn star, Stormy Daniels, was out of the business but she's back now, touring strip clubs with her "Make America Horny Again" tour.  Donald always was a great Job Creator.

This is the work of Michael Zajkov. Stunning…