Raccoons playing with soap bubbles…

…but only in one sense. Yesterday, I attended the funeral of my friend of 47 years, Len Wein. The thing I once had to get over about funerals in general was the erroneous assumption that your participation was some kind of acceptance that the deceased was gone and could no longer be part of your life. I think it flowed from a comment I heard from an alleged grown-up — a friend of my parents — when I was a tot. This woman said, "I don't go to funerals because I don't want to agree to eliminate that person from my world. If I don't go, I can still think of them in the present-tense. They're still alive in my world. I just haven't talked to them lately."

For a time, I thought that was what a funeral was. And since when you're young and not a lot of people you know die, I continued to think that way. Eventually, I learned my presence did not denote any admission of anything. You showed up because it was polite to show up…because it showed others that the person mattered to you…and maybe because it was a good place to process in your own mind how you felt about that person and their life and the loss of it. In my fields of endeavor, there are also folks who show up at funerals because they can be a good place to network, rub shoulders with important folks and maybe get some work out of it. Happily, I did not see any of that yesterday but I've certainly seen it elsewhere.

My thoughts yesterday were dominated by the many times over the years that some mutual friend told me, "Len's not going to be with us much longer." Dating back farther than our 47 years of friendship, Len had a series of ailments, mostly kidney-related, that made his demise seem imminent. Balanced against the sadness that the prediction had finally come true was the awareness of how many times it hadn't. It was like, "Good for you, Len, for proving them wrong and making it this far!" And it's hard not to appreciate, in a perverse way, that so many who told me Len would be dying shortly died before he did.

I wasn't the only one there thinking like this. Several others there who'd known Len a long time, like Elliott Maggin and Alan Brennert, mentioned having much the same thoughts. In the manner of the old glass half-empty/half-full choice, you could mourn that Len had died or — and I sure prefer this option — celebrate all the times he could have but hadn't. The latter selection allowed you to also smile at all the accolades (and financial rewards) he lived to see as characters he'd co-created became movie and TV characters known the world over. We all have friends who died too soon to reap certain benefits of fame and fortune that happened after they were gone. Len also lived long enough to have around a quarter-century of a very happy life with a woman he loved dearly…and she got all those years with him.

They say you can't cheat death. Well, you can in a way. You can decide that a friend is still part of your world even though he or she is no longer actively contributing. When I said here that I'd tell some stories about being with Len, I said there were a few I couldn't tell. Some of those are for reasons of decorum but some are because while they might mean a lot to me, they'd seem kind of pointless to you and/or wouldn't have good punch lines. When Len told or wrote a story, it always had a good punch line so I don't want to tell one about him that doesn't.

This one doesn't, I'm afraid…but then, it's not really a story about Len, isn't it? It's about me and how I felt about being at the funeral of my friend. To the extent a funeral can be lovely, this one was, and it was well-attended. I saw an awful lot of people I knew and an impressive number that I didn't. In sum, the turnout reminded me how good Len was at making friends. He did it better than just about anybody I've ever known. He did a lot of things like that.

A lot of you were impressed with the magic trick by Paul Gertner that I linked to here. Here's Mr. Gertner again, this time with his signature trick, the one for which he's most famous. It's called "Unshuffled" and it's kind of impressive in that it amazes everyone even though it's really simple to figure out how it's done. It's especially obvious if you know what a "faro shuffle" is. Here — I'll save you the time of Googling to find out if you don't.

You too can do this trick if you get the special deck and learn how to execute perfect faro shuffles. When Gertner did this on Penn and Teller: Fool Us, Penn admitted he'd purchased the trick from Paul, tried to master it but never got good enough to perform it. What he meant was that he couldn't do perfect faro shuffles every time. Paul Gertner sure can…

I'm way behind on a number of things including blogging. Last night, my friend Amber and I joined our friends Stu Shostak and Jeanine Kasun at the Upstairs room at Vitello's Italian restaurant in the valley. Yes, this is the place where Robert Blake was dining with his wife just before she was murdered by someone thought by many to be Robert Blake. I suppose the eatery will always be known for that…but it has decent chow and the upstairs is a small-but-serviceable cabaret area where folks perform. Tuesday and Wednesday night, they had a great band playing somewhat-old songs sung by a somewhat-old guy named Dick Van Dyke. Dick is fronting a superb six-piece band and boy, did we — the audience — love them.

The band was great but I'll bet the musicians will forgive me this comment: It was Mr. Van Dyke who made it one of the best evenings I've ever spent in a supper-type club. Just being with him was wonderful because, first of all, he's Dick Van Dyke. That right there is enough. Secondly, he is age-defying. He sang. He danced a little. He was very funny just talking. And there was just a pure joy in his performing. He was having the time of his life and it was infectious.

I can't embed it here but here's a link to about 22 minutes of the show. In some shots, you'll see a big guy with a bald spot who was sitting about three feet in front of Mr. Van Dyke just enjoying the hell out of the show. That's me. I'll let you know if and when he does it again but I'll warn you: The two performances this week sold out in about twenty minutes. When word gets out how good he is, they won't last twenty seconds.

At times, it seems like the only "policy" Trump has is to blindly undo whatever Barack Obama did. But as Perry Bacon Jr notes, Donald's not doing a very good job of that, either.

Thomas D. Edsall writes about how white evangelical Protestants have changed their stance on how much the personal morality of a politician or public figure matters to them. In other words, winning political victories is way more important than any concept of morality. If you ever get into a discussion of why young people in this country are turning away from religion, make sure to mention that.

As German Lopez notes, Trump's loudest supporters are furious about him making a deal that protects immigrants in any way. I assume he'll soon do something about something else to make them very happy.

A lot of folks out there are comparing Bernie Sanders' call for single-payer health care to the Republican promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare. As Matt Yglesias explains, these aren't even close to the same thing. Both promises were pretty bald of details but Sanders' goal is at least theoretically achievable. It will be complicated and perhaps very expensive but it is a single-minded goal. The Republican goal was to do something impossible: Simultaneously please one constituency that wanted less government support for health care and another that wanted more.

And Frank Rich reminds us that even if Donald Trump makes some deals with Democrats, he's still Donald Trump, elected by a party that has zero interest in actual bipartisanship.

It's not my joke but a lot of folks on the 'net are noting that Hillary Clinton has written more books than Donald Trump has read. And that may not be a joke.

Our pal Frank Ferrante, known for playing Groucho Marx, is currently playing Pseudolus in a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia. Frank also directed this production of my favorite musical. I have not seen it yet. I will be seeing it a week from today. But the reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer saw it and he says "…at the end, my face muscles, diaphragm, and throat all hurt: I'd been groaning and laughing for two-hours-plus. So had a packed, delighted house. Old-fashioned, inappropriate, vulgar as can be, this Forum is about as good as the thing can be done: It's headlong, merry, madcap, paralytically funny, and full of life." That's about as good a review as you can possibly get.

If you want to take that reviewer's word for it, tickets can be ordered here. If you're there a week from tonight and you're tall, don't sit in front of me or I'll kick the back of your seat.

Y'know, there are some things you laugh at even though you know you probably shouldn't…

An interview with John Cleese.  I'm not sure I agree with all he says about Political Correctness.  When people use this term, especially to refer to something they don't like, I'm not always sure if they think the particular instances of Political Correctness they abhor are actually correct or only correct in a silly political sense.  And a lot of people — and I'm not talking about Mr. Cleese here — decry Political Correctness as a demand that audiences only take their remarks in the spirit in which they wish audiences to take those remarks.

Haven't done one of these in a while, in part because I've been way too busy and in part because we had that brief period when Donald Trump didn't feel like the biggest threat to the lives of Americans. As nature calms itself down, he regains the title…

• As Kevin Drum notes, Trump could make life much, much better for insurance companies and the poorer people they insure. But Trump said Obamacare was dead and/or dying and Donald Trump's political health is more important than anyone's actual health.
• Daniel Larison notes that among Trump's Big Lies is this notion that he can scrap the old nuclear deal with Iran and negotiate a better one. It doesn't seem to me like our putative president even knows what a "better" deal would be except that it would be one for which he could claim credit. Even his most ardent supporters have to be a little disappointed in what The Great Dealmaker has done at the bargaining tables so far.
• Fred Kaplan applies some common sense to the problem of North Korea. Since what he says is common sense, you can bet a year's worth of Trump Steaks that this is not what the current administration will do.
• I agree with Michelle Goldberg. Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio mainly because it would piss off the people his base wants to piss off. And send certain messages about who's in charge.
• Ezra Klein interviews Hillary Clinton. I do not side with those folks who feel she'd do the country a huge favor to go away. I mean, I understand that sentiment coming from the ones who've never liked her and who have these long lists of crimes they're absolutely certain she committed and who've been telling us for a decade or two now that she will definitely be in prison next week. I have a little trouble understanding why folks who voted for her — or now wish they had — want the person who got the most votes in the last election to not have a place in the public dialogue.
• I really like Bernie Sanders and I will start to love him if and when a lot more of his rhetoric starts shifting from what should be done to how realistically to achieve it. I believe I will live long enough to be covered by national Single-Payer health care insurance. I don't think Bernie will; not unless someone starts getting more into the "how to get there" details than he has. There are a dozen articles up today by pundits who want to see us go where he wants us to go and wish he had a map to get us there. Here's Jonathan Chait expressing this view and here's Sarah Kliff with a detailed explanation of how Sanders is deficient in detailed explanations.

Lastly: Stephen Colbert hosts the Emmy Awards this Sunday night and there are a lot of Trump-bashing shows up for honors.  The usual folks will all decry that Hollywood is "elitist" (a word which has become largely meaningless) and out of touch with America.  The folks who feel that way might try looking at those polls that show The Donald hovering near a 60% disapproval rating.  And my guess is that if he has 38% of the country, half of those wish they had a more competent, less embarrassing leader fighting for their causes.

In 1987 when Jack Kirby turned seventy, a bunch of us decided to throw a surprise birthday party for him at the Comic-Con in San Diego. Everyone was invited to attend and everyone was invited to contribute money to the cost of it. Flyers were circulated that said if you wanted to donate, just find Mark Evanier and give cash to him…and you'd be amazed how many people did.

The convention was much, much smaller then than it is now so I was a lot easier to find on the convention floor, which was in the old convention center in San Diego. They had just begun building the current convention center in '87, it was completed in 1989 and Comic-Con began happening there in 1991. During this time, downtown San Diego transformed into a major tourist destination with great hotels and restaurants.

Before that, there were a few great hotels and restaurants but a lot of the city catered to off-duty sailors so you had a lot of sleazy bars and strip joints and there were neighborhoods you didn't want to be in after dark. Not unless you were a hooker or you wanted one.

Friday night of the con that year, most of us were at a Holiday Inn down by the ocean, which is where a lot of the parties were. I wandered through them, partly to see friends and partly so people could hand me ten and twenty dollar bills "for Jack's party." I was wearing one of those safari coats with lots of pockets and since I'd come there directly from the con, I had thousands of dollars on me, all in old, crumpled bills.

Around 2:30 AM, I decided to head back to my hotel, which was the Westgate. Len, who'd been with me much of the evening, was heading back to the Westgate at the same time so we went out and tried to get a cab. When none could be found in twenty minutes or so, we decided to walk it, foolishly forgetting that the route would take us right through Pimpsville. We were both pretty frightened, more so when I reminded Len that I had a couple thousand dollars in loose bills in my pockets. If you'd been there and you were looking to rob someone, I was your dream-mugging.

Lacking alternatives, we just decided to press on, walking briskly — but not too briskly, lest we look like we were packing currency. We were stopped by several ladies of the evening (I'm being polite; they were whores) who offered to show one or both of us a good time. One looked like she'd just come from an open call to play Lurch on a remake of The Addams Family.

I said, "Sorry but we're both gay and we're only looking for dick." We scurried past this person and then Len punched me in the shoulder and said, "Why did you tell her that? She probably had one!"

We passed a bunch of guys on a corner, any one of whom looked like they'd have knifed you for twenty bucks. Miraculously unknifed, we made it back to the Westgate. Len came up to my room and I emptied my pockets, we counted and it turned out I had a little over three thousand dollars. That's in addition to the six bucks I had in my own wallet. It was then that Len pulled a knife on me and stole all of the money that had been donated for Jack Kirby's birthday party.

Well, actually, it was a comb and he didn't really take the money but it was a good, funny thought on which to end our adventure.

The next night, a couple hundred people yelled "Surprise!" at Jack Kirby in a ballroom at Hotel San Diego, which ain't there no more. I had a great time. Len had a great time. Jack and his wife Roz had the best time. No one who was there will ever forget it and I have a lot of good memories of that evening.

One never-to-be-forgotten moment occurred after it was over, and Len and I and about eight other people were walking through Downtown San Diego, heading back to our respective hotels. We were in the same crummy area Len and I had walked through at three in the morning but now it was 10 PM, a largely-different crowd was peopling the street, I didn't have three thousand dollars on me and we were in a large group so we were pretty safe.

And we passed the hooker who looked like Lurch. She (maybe he) was out there early, Len spotted her (him?) before I did and yelled out, "You missed a great party!"

Don Yost wrote me and this is what he wrote…

My barber has some Jack Davis' old west prints in his shop. When I identified them, he said that Jack pronounced his last name "Day-vees." I always thought it was "Day-vis." Also, I somehow thought Len Wein's last name was pronounced "Ween," but I thought, when I saw his passing, that it might be pronounced "wine."

Jack Davis pronounced his last name "Davis." I never met anyone named Davis who pronounced it "Day-vees." Len Wein's last name rhymes with "keen," "clean," "green," "serene," "machine," "bean," "teen" and even "Wolverine" — but never "mean."

June Foray was the leading voiceover actress in America for something like half a century, lending her talents to countless cartoons, radio shows, commercials, TV shows, movies, records…everything. The evening of September 19, the Southern California voiceover community is gathering in Beverly Hills for a big celebration of this lady who left us just a few months ago. This is not a funeral. It's not even really a memorial service. It's a big show about June and all she did. There will be cartoons and guest speakers and surprises and all sorts of fun goings-on…and it's free to attend!

Seats are going fast but this is a real big theater so we may still have room for you. If you want to attend, send an e-mail to friendsofjuneforay@gmail.com and tell them who you are, if you have any connection to June and whether you'd like one seat or two. A connection to June is not required. We'd just like to know who-all is in the house. (Note: This address does not go to me.)

Then wait for a confirmation which may not come for a few days. If you receive one, be there early. If you don't receive one, watch this space for info about a stand-by line. This event will not be live-streamed on the web and because of all the copyrighted films being shown, it cannot be posted online, at least in full.

If you go see a lot of magicians perform — and I do — there are certain tricks that you tire of seeing because most performers do them pretty much the same way. At the Magic Castle, when the magician hauls out the Linking Rings or launches into the Torn-and-Restored Newspaper, you can almost hear a lot of the audience thinking, "Oh, not this again." I have seen some fun innovations on those two chestnuts but most of the time, they're doing it the way everyone does it.

This is not the case with the trick that some say is the oldest magic trick ever — The Cups and Balls. Most magicians who do that trick (and they all have at one time or another) have come up with interesting variations. It's also the kind of trick where there's no end to how much better you can get at the physical dexterity involved…case in point: Paul Gertner. Mr. Gertner is one of the most respected close-up guys around and here's how he does it. I think he does it this week on Penn & Teller: Fool Us, as well…

Around 1977, give or take a year, Len Wein was living in New York but visiting Los Angeles with increasing frequency.  We both knew it was only a matter of time before he rearranged his East Coast life so he could move out here and start a West Coast one.  When he was in town, I played host to him and I'd say things like, "Hurry up and move out here so I can stop playing host to you."

Before one trip, he told me he wanted to go see a TV show being taped or filmed. At the time, I knew a lot of people who worked on comedy shows then in production so I said, perhaps showing off a bit, "Name any sitcom or variety show you want to go see and I'll get us in."  Even as I spoke those words, I realized I should have added, "Except M*A*S*H" because M*A*S*H filmed without a live audience and its soundstage was not all that welcoming to visitors.

I was one syllable into adding the "Except M*A*S*H" when Len said, "M*A*S*H!" I asked him to pick something else. He said, "You said to name any show I wanted and I want to go see M*A*S*H." He was not going to change his mind.

So I called someone I knew at Twentieth-Century Fox Studios and she arranged to take four of us — Len, me and two of our friends — to the set and leave us there. We stood near the cameras and watched about an hour of shooting — mostly Hawkeye arguing with Colonel Potter while Radar O'Reilly ducked in and out. Len was a bit disappointed that the whole cast wasn't around but I told him, "I said I'd get us on the set of M*A*S*H. I didn't promise Loretta Swit or Jamie Farr would be here." The four of us observed until the crew broke for lunch, at which time our plan was to dine in the studio commissary and then depart.

I haven't dined on that lot for many years so I don't know if it's still like this but the Fox commissary then was split into two parts. On the left was the fancy dining room where smartly-dressed serving folks took your order. I wasn't the only one who found the place stuffy and pretentious and a good reason to drive the four blocks to Factor's Delicatessen down on Pico. If you weren't starring in a series shot on the Fox lot, you could wait an hour for your cheeseburger and it would come with toppings you didn't want.

That's how it was on the left side of the building. On the right was a cafeteria-style section with much better food and, since it was self-service, better service. This was where the stage crew and lesser players lunched. I decided that was where we belonged.

Len and I argued…a little. In all the time I knew him, we almost never argued and never for very long. This may have been the longest one and it only lasted about two minutes. We settled it by arriving at what I now call a Republican Compromise, which means that one side gets everything it wants. In this case, it was me and Len was not happy about it.

There's a Yiddish expression, "Hakn a tshaynik," which English-speaking folks have corrupted into "hocking the chainik." It has many definitions but the relevant one here is to keep talking and talking about something that is not going to change. We were in line at the cafeteria and Len was still carrying on about how we should be on the sit-down, order-from-a-menu side.

Our party had four people and four trays. Our two friends had the first two trays, then came my tray and then Len's tray. As we waited for line to move, Len was saying — and loudly so others around us heard — "If we were eating on the other side, we'd probably see some movie stars. The movie stars never eat on this side." And as he said that, he was facing me so he didn't see who was right behind him, sliding the next tray along the line. It was Gene Wilder.

Mr. Wilder was on the lot shooting a film called The World's Greatest Lover and this was not long after Young Frankenstein and Silver Streak. He might not have been the biggest movie star in the business but you weren't likely to encounter a bigger one on either side of the Fox Commissary.

Try and imagine my point of view. I'm looking at Len and he's going on and on, "hocking the chainik" as it were, about how you'd never find any self-respectable movie star in this silly cafeteria line. And over his shoulder, I can see Gene Wilder smirking and trying to not laugh out loud. Our eyes connected and I could tell he was truly enjoying the moment. Then with the expert timing of a comic master, he signaled me with his eyes that it was time for the big reveal.

I pointed to a dish of cooked carrots and asked Len, "Would you ask the man behind you to pass that to me?" Len asked Gene Wilder to pass the carrots, Gene Wilder passed them to Len and then Len passed them to me. And then Leonard Norman Wein did what may well have been the greatest double-take ever performed in or around any motion picture studio in Hollywood. Even Jimmy Finlayson in his prime never topped this one.

Don't remember Jimmy Finlayson? He's the guy at left in this photo…

Nobody could do a double-take like Jimmy Finlayson. Nobody until Len Wein noticed Gene Wilder standing 12" from him, that is.

And Len began to laugh. He laughed and he laughed and oh, how he laughed. When I heard Len had died, I asked myself what were my favorite memories of Len? And that was the first one that came to mind: Len doubling over in laughter at what had happened, even though the joke was kind of on him. It was like a gift…and one of those that keeps on giving because for the next year or so, you could make Len fall over laughing by whispering, "Don't look now but Gene Wilder is right behind you."

That day in the cafeteria, we had a very nice, albeit short conversation with Mr. Wilder. All I remember him saying to Len is, "Your reaction did not disappoint me."

That was the first memory of Len that came to mind yesterday when I heard the news. I have others and I'll be sharing them here.

• John McCain can't understand why some Republicans deny climate change. Maybe he could ask his 2008 running mate to explain it to him.