22 Broadway musicals that opened and closed the same night. I once spoke about #22 on their list with Eddie Lawrence, who wrote the book and lyrics for it. He brought it up. I didn't. But it was chilling when he talked of how devastating it was to him, both personally and professionally. He felt sabotaged and I don't think he ever tried it again.

We had a link earlier to a lot of Groucho Marx on radio. Here's his brother — the one who didn't talk on camera — on an obscure syndicated TV show called Celebrity Golf hosted by Harry Von Zell, who some of you may recall from the George Burns-Gracie Allen radio and TV programs.

Wikipedia says "Harpo's two final television appearances came less than a month apart in late 1962. He portrayed a guardian angel on CBS's The Red Skelton Show on September 25. He guest starred as himself on October 20 in the episode "Musicale" of ABC's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a sitcom starring Fess Parker, based on the 1939 Frank Capra film. This show aired in October of 1963, less than a year before Harpo passed away. [UPDATE: Or maybe it aired in 1961.]

It's Harpo playing golf against Sam Snead, who a lot of people said was the best golfer in the world. I am incapable of watching more than about forty-five seconds of televised golf without lapsing into a coma, even if one of the players is Harpo Marx. Still, it's always nice to see something of him that you never saw before…

• Hurricanes, fires, quakes…if Hillary had won, Pat Robertson would be insisting God was punishing us for electing that horrible woman.

A lot of people first knew Groucho Marx not as a comedian but as a funny game show host. From 1947 to 1961, You Bet Your Life aired first on radio, then on radio and television and then finally just on television. Unlike most quiz programs, the main premise was not to watch people win a lot of money. The main premise of You Bet Your Life was for contestants to come on and for Groucho to be very funny interviewing them. After he did that, they'd get to the secondary premise which was people winning a modest amount of money, mainly as a means of thanking them for coming in and playing stooge to Groucho. At least, that's the way it always seemed to me.

Groucho was funny on the show in part because he was such a great ad-libber but he had a lot of help. There were a lot of lines pre-scripted by a team of comedy writers and to hide that assist, the writers were credited as Production Assistants or some other title. On radio, Groucho would have their lines on cards before him. On TV, they'd be projected on an offstage screen that only Groucho could see behind the contestants.

And then there was the fact that the show was recorded and edited for broadcast. Groucho would do a ten-minute interview with someone and that would be chopped down to the funniest four minutes. Some interviews were discarded altogether.

A number of uncut recordings have survived from the radio version and they're available online for your downloading 'n' listening pleasure. They include moments of Groucho talking with the crew or the audience — chatter that was never intended to make it to air. Here's a playlist for you. And while we're at it, here's a long playlist of You Bet Your Life radio shows as broadcast.

I've heard "The Impossible Dream" performed by a lot of singers who didn't have the voice for it. Bryn Terfel sure does…

Hey, when you have the time, read this piece by Dan Gardner. It's about how the press tends to make a big deal when someone makes a prediction and it comes true. But they ignore all the predictions that don't come true.

Back when I was working on That's Incredible!, we were deluged by so-called "psychics" who had made some amazing prediction that such-and-such would happen and it had. Now, I happen to believe that there is no such thing as the psychic power to predict the future…or even the present. There are lucky guesses. There are informed, smart guesses. There are magic tricks where it looks like you're guessing but you're not. But there are no psychic guesses. Someone would write or phone us and say, "I predicted that earthquake!" or "I predicted that celebrity death!" and often, they had. Sometimes, they were lying but sometimes they had.

And when they had predicted the celebrity death, closer inspection would show that they'd gotten one right and ninety-four wrong. Or, for example, there was the lady who wanted major kudos and publicity for predicting that Groucho Marx would die in 1977 — which, indeed, he did. He was 86 and she'd predicted he'd die in 1976 when he was 85 and she'd predicted he'd die in 1975 when he was 84…

Eventually, she had to be right.

Political-type pundits don't usually claim psychic powers and they generally have some good reason to predict what they predict. Still, they're too often celebrated for getting one right out of ten or twenty…or in the case of William Kristol, one of around eighty, and sometimes they predict both ways. Here's an example of that from this very blog…

When it was announced that David Letterman would be retiring, I immediately said, "If I were CBS, I'd send a Dodge Viper filled with cash to Stephen Colbert's door to see if he's ready to abandon his Comedy Central show and the character he plays on it." Then in the very next sentence, I wrote, "But I don't think it'll be Colbert. I think they're going to want someone fresher…"

Ever since he got the job, people congratulate me on predicting it would be Colbert. If it hadn't been, they'd probably congratulate me on predicting it wouldn't be. Sometimes, you just can't be wrong because they won't let you.

I've been busy the last day or so finishing a script and also working on the June Foray Celebration. Yes, there are still seats available. That's a big theater. No, we don't care how much June loved you, you may not speak at this event. The program is full. And please understand that this is not a funeral. It's kind of a memorial but we're avoiding that word because it suggests something sombre and sad. We decided to go with "celebration" because it's not going to be that serious. And it's not going to be that serious because June was never that serious. She had a marvelous sense of humor and it would be inappropriate not to use that as our guideline.

The info on how to attend is all over this blog. Send your request for an invite to friendsofjuneforay@gmail.com — and by the way, that address does not go to me. If you write to me there, a nice lady who has more than enough to do has to forward your message to me so please don't make more work for her. And in case we haven't made this clear, admission is free.

I will be a guest at the Baltimore Comic-Con, which runs from September 22 thru 24 and, yes, I will be moderating some panels. What a surprise. I will also be showing my face, such as it is, at the New York Comic Con, which is October 5 thru 8. So far, I think I only have one panel there but that may change.

As part of the Baltimore expedition, my friend Amber and I are making a day trip to Philadelphia and we're taking along Marv Wolfman, who will also be a guest at the Baltimore Comic-Con. Amber has never been to Philadelphia nor eaten a cheesesteak so I'm going to show her the Liberty Bell, take her to Independence Hall (assuming it hasn't been razed and replaced by another Trump Tower) and buy her a cheesesteak. Marv can buy his own damned cheesesteak.

We will also take in the production there of my favorite musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum at the historic Walnut Street Theater. Its director and star are both my favorite Groucho Marx impersonator, Frank Ferrante. Yes, he does other things besides shooting an elephant in his pajamas. The production is now in previews, it opens September 13 and it runs through October 22. If you want to be there the same night Amber, Marv and I are in the audience, that would be September 21. They're selling tickets over on this page.

It goes without blogging that we — and by "we," I mean me and everyone I've talked to locally here — feel for the folks who may be in the path of not just Irma but any other hurricanes that may follow it. On the news, I hear people saying "Well, there's nothing we can do to stop hurricanes" and that's probably true but I bet there's a lot more we can do to prepare for them, mostly in the area of Infrastructure. How about building roads that are less likely to collapse from flooding? How about building drainage systems that will do a better job of handling inches of rain in the double-digits? We can do that if someone is willing to pay for it.

I'm not even mentioning Climate Change…but how about mentioning Climate Change? In any case, you don't have to believe the world's getting warmer and that Man is causing some of that to believe we should do more to prepare for disasters. If ever there was an issue that ought to be non-partisan…

The Souplantation restaurant chain — known in some areas as Sweet Tomatoes — sometimes offers a dish I like called Classic Creamy Tomato Soup. Usually, it's only available there during the month of March but I just found out most of their stores will have it for all of September. Guess where I'm going for lunch tomorrow.

You can find out if there's a Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes near you over on this page.

One of the great things about having a blog is that you don't have to buy greeting cards. Yeah, I could go to the CVS Pharmacy, scour the aisles for a witty card, buy it and then mail it to Sergio to note his birthday today but that takes time and money. You don't need to buy gifts, either. Instead, I can just slap a photo of him up here on the ol' blog — and it isn't even one that I took. Bruce took it so it really doesn't represent any actual effort on my behalf.

I post it there and then I bat out some meaningless text to go with it…something about how I've known Sergio for 49 years now and he's been my best friend for most of that, at least in the category of male friends. I'll also tell you throughout almost five decades, if you added up all the time we've spent arguing or not getting along, it would equal about the time it takes to boil an egg — and not even a hard-boiled egg. More like one of those eggs where the white is kinda set but the yolk is still runny.

Anyway, I could write about that, I could write about the joy of collaborating with someone who's so innovative and funny, I could write about seeing how beloved and charming he is or about how even when he's angry — and believe me, I've seen him furious — he's still kinda beloved and charming. There are so many nice things I could say about this man that…well, praising him is a whole lot easier than going out and buying a dumb card or a present. And cheaper.

So Happy Birthday, Sergio! I was going to get you that new car you've been talking about but I decided that you'd be a lot happier with this blog post. Or at least one of us would be.

Not much to say about Trump's announcement that he'll revoke (or at least revisit) DACA in six months.

What I don't get is this idea that he'll leave it to Congress to decide the future of DACA.  Hasn't Congress shown it's not capable to deciding the fate of a plate of spare ribs?  And will Trump extend DACA if they don't act?  Kevin Drum writes…

I'm a little puzzled about why anyone thinks Congress will act anyway. Back in 2010 every single Republican voted against the DREAM Act. Every one. Today a few of them are saying that DACA should be preserved, but how are we supposed to interpret this? As evidence that they've changed their minds? That they voted against it originally just because Obama proposed it? That they were OK with not enacting it in the first place, but not with taking it away once a million people are depending on it?

Trump is, of course, playing to his base, which is about all he ever does lately.  His idea of how the nation should come together is that we should all pin on TRUMP IN '20 buttons and join his base.  I guess it all plays well if you're a white guy who'd like to blame "those damn foreigners" for the fact that you're not doing better.

In other news, Trump has slashed the budget for advertising the open enrollment period for Obamacare.  He could probably do even more damage if he handed the account over to the agency that did the promotion of Trump Steaks.

Trump reportedly told his people that advertising Obamacare was a waste of money because "everyone already knows about it."  Since "everyone knows about Trump," I guess he won't waste a lot of cash on his re-election campaign.

When Bette Midler leaves the current Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! in January, she will be replaced by Bernadette Peters.  But of course.

I'd rather see Bette but Bernadette Peters is not exactly chopped liver.  Victor Garber will take over for David Hyde-Pierce.

During the original run, producer David Merrick kept the show going forever by casting one great lady of Broadway after another, eventually bringing in an all-black cast with Pearl Bailey as Dolly and Cab Calloway as Horace.  Wonder if this one will run long enough for Audra McDonald to play Dolly with…I don't know…Ben Vereen as Horace?  Today in the era of the race-blind Hamilton, they probably wouldn't bother making the cast all-black.

Hey, while I've got you here: Where did that "chopped liver" expression start?  It's like a saying…"What am I?  Chopped liver?"  Who started that?  Why isn't it "What am I?  Tuna salad?"  Or "What am I, a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich on pumpernickel toast?"  Why chopped liver?  It doesn't make any more sense than any other food.

Today, we have the Masters of Harmony and they're sittin' at the top of the world…

More Barbershop. This is Zero8, the same group we featured yesterday…though this configuration has about half as many members as yesterday's. This is their "Acceptance Song" from the SNOBS Nordic Chorus Championships in Nyköping in April of 2013. I gather that when a group wins something over a certain level, they come on stage and perform another tune as a kind of "thank you" or victory lap.

Zero8 is based in Sweden and it is (they are?) very popular. On their website, it says…

Zero8 — A choir formed in 2007, directed by Rasmus Krigström, the Lead singer of Ringmasters, the 2012 World Champion Barbershop quartet, has since then consisted of 20-50 of Stockholm's best choir singers and shaped world-class Barbershoppers in double digits. Having merits such as placing Top 5 in the International Barbershop Chorus Competition, winning the Rimini International Choral Competition, having produced several full-length A Capella CD's and being on Swedish National Television multiple times, Zero8 proudly stands out as one of Sweden's best and most versatile male Choir. Concerts are hosted at least twice every year, and gigs are accepted on demand. Zero8 can, upon request, deliver world class quartet performances as well as the full experience of the whole powerful choir.

Yesterday's video was at a competition in Las Vegas in 2014. I'm curious as to why their membership doubled and about the finances that get fifty singers plus any family members and entourage to Las Vegas. Maybe someone can enlighten me. In the meantime, here they are…

Some folks on Facebook asked if the fires ravaging Southern California are anywhere near me. Thanks for your concern, some folks on Facebook, but I'm a good twenty miles from the nearest one. The fire would have to burn down about two-thirds of Hollywood, including Universal City, to get to me.

So I'm not worried for me. I'm worried for friends who live much, much closer including a few who've been evacuated. One called to ask if they could house their dog with me if they had to. I said yes and I'd come out and get it…but then they found someone closer. Last I heard, the fire made a left turn and their home was no longer threatened but others still are. Scary stuff.