Here's a batch of behind-the-scene pictures from the making of the movie Goldfinger.  There must be something wrong with the home video market because it's been at least six months since it was time for me to buy this film in a new format.

Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin explains why firing James Comey was an abuse of power and he also writes about the rules under which Robert Mueller will conduct his investigation. Apparently, it will be up to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to decide how much of Mueller's report will be made public. So we're looking at fights over what Mueller will subpoena and what he can learn, and then we'll have the battle over how much of it will be kept secret. This is going to take a while, people.

Alas, we can't ignore him for long, which is one of the things some of us don't like about D.J. Trump. I wake up each morning now, reach for the iPhone on my nightstand and think, "Well, let's see what horrible things he's done so far today."

Maybe I shouldn't say that here. I know that one of the things some of his fans like most about Trump is that he annoys people like me. There is a powerful "them or us" attitude in this country and to some folks, whatever "us" does is great and perfect and commendable if it upsets "them."  We don't even have to understand it to be happy about it if the right people are unhappy.

Browsing the 'net, I see a lot of people who figure anything Trump does that makes Liberals mad must be a good thing, especially if it undoes something Obama did. As long as he can, I don't think Trump will let those people down.

Some links…

• Trump has shown little talent for public speaking before audiences who aren't already on his side. If you already love him, he's kind of ingratiating and charming but if you don't, he's arrogant and contemptuous. He's about to deliver a major speech in Saudi Arabia. Jennifer Williams is, like a lot of us, thinking this will not help U.S.-Saudi relations.
• Rumor has it that Trump may install Joe Lieberman as the new director of the FBI. As Daniel Larison explains, this would be a terrible idea. So unless a worse one comes along, Trump will probably do it.
• Members of the House of Representative Committee on Science, Space and Technology recently sent a letter to Trump. It expresses concern that the information he is receiving — and on which he is presumably basing some of his decisions — is "misinformation and fake news." I'm imagining Trump reading the letter and saying, "So —?"
• Obamacare may actually fail soon, as Kevin Drum notes. If and when it does, there'll be a nasty debate in this country: Did it fail because it was always a bad idea? Or because Republicans, once they were in a position to do so, sabotaged it? I can't imagine most Americans believing the former unless the G.O.P. actually comes up with a plan that provides better health care for more people for less money. Which they really aren't even trying to do.

The death of Roger Ailes raised the oft-raised question of how respectful one should be of someone who was not respectful of others. A friend of mine once said, "When a person dies, you show the proper manners by following their lead." If you believe that, go ahead and read Matt Taibbi. If not, wait a week or so.

I told this story to someone the other day and they said, "Hey, you should put that on your blog." Okay, so here it is on my blog. It might not be the best anecdote I've told here but it is guaranteed to be 100% Trump-Free…

I have written here about my friend Bridget, a very lovely actress-dancer who for some reason was willing to go out with me for a few years in the late seventies and early eighties. That's Bridget on the left in the photo above, in which we were all trying to pretend we were posing for a soup ad. The lovely blonde lady on the right is Linda Hoxit, another actress-dancer who was a friend of Bridget's. The pic is from one afternoon when for some reason, they decided to come over and make me lunch, which is not what this anecdote is about. It is, however, from around this time…

In addition to acting and dancing, Bridget sometimes earned money as a model. Her biggest gig was a few years as a Nexxus Hair Care Girl but there were others. Two or three times a year f'ristance, she would spend a day or two being photographed for the catalog of a very popular seller of sexy lingerie. The pay was pretty good and there was a bonus in that the models were allowed to take home the remnants of any outfits which were destroyed in the process.

As she explained to me, to make the lingerie fit perfectly and to enhance how it enhanced the figure, she would sometimes be sewn into the garments along with much judiciously-placed padding. They didn't do this with bras and panties but anything that covered much of the body would have had most of its seams removed before the shoot. The photo stylist and dresser would literally construct that kind of lingerie on the models' bodies, using a hand-held sewing device to baste this and sew that and tighten everything where they wanted it to be tight. When they were done, it would be necessary to literally cut her out of it.

Usually, everyone was in a hurry to get onto the next item to be modeled but sometimes, there was time for Bridget to perform some deft surgery and free herself from a garment without totally destroying it. Later, she could re-sew it so it could be worn again — and the last thing she wore, she could wear home and take all the time in the world to get it off.

Naturally though, one does not drive home in a something black and lacey — though she and another model once discussed whether it would help if they got pulled over by the police or make the pulling-over more likely. Bridget thought it would make it more likely so she would arrive at each shoot dressed in a pair of baggy sweats. She'd look over the rack of lingerie she'd be modeling and select the one she wanted to keep most intact, then she would get the photographer to agree to do that one last. Once those pics were taken and she was done for the day, she could put the sweats on over the selected item, wear it home and carefully remove the temporary stitching.

Upon arrival at one session, her selection was instantaneous. Among the pieces she'd be wearing was a red satin bustier. Actually, she called it a bustier but I would have called it a corset. In fact, I did and whenever I called it a corset, Bridget said, "No, no…it's a bustier!" By any name, it was gorgeous and hand-made and covered with lace and jewels and gold piping and it was very expensive. The corset bustier was $2000 in 1985 and if the company is still making 'em, it's probably more than twice that by now. It looked great on its own and even better with Bridget in it and I'm kicking myself that I didn't take any photos of her wearing it.

Just trust me. Stunning.

She wore it for her last photos of the day, pulled her sweatsuit on over it, then realized it would be tough to escape from on her own. They'd sewn her into it from the back and she couldn't reach the stitching…so she phoned me. I didn't live that far from the photo studio.

She came over and I took a pair of nail scissors and an X-Acto knife and ever-so-carefully began removing stitches. This may sound like a fun pastime and I guess it was for about the first three minutes. After ten, my index finger and thumb were aching from the scissors. After twenty, it was agony. I did get a brief intermission when the phone rang. I said to whoever was phoning, "I can't talk to you now. I'm cutting a beautiful model out of her underwear." Saying that was the only fun part of the experience.

But we got it off her without doing too much damage to it. Bridget took it home and sewed up the parts of it that were supposed to be sewed-up and — voila! — she had herself a $2000 bustier — or as I put it, a $2000 corset. Sweet. A few weeks later, it got even sweeter.

She got a call to go audition for a part in a commercial for some brand of ale. The commercial was set in a saloon in the old west and Bridget was trying out to play a dance hall girl. She put on the thing I called a corset and she called a bustier, put her sweats on over it and went to the audition.

All the other ladies there to audition had dressed up real fancy and they were baffled by the one in the waiting room who had shown up in unflattering, baggy sweats. Then when it was Bridget's turn, she went into the room where the casting was done, pulled off the sweats and instantly got the part. The producer said, "You're our girl if you wear that — what do you call it? A corset?"

She said, "Yes, yes…it's a corset!" If I'd been hiring her, she would have let me call it that, too. So she wore the red satin whatever-it-was in the commercial when it was filmed and made about a thousand dollars.

The commercial was edited and shown to Arthur, the man who owned the ale company for his approval. He loved it but, alas, someone didn't. That would be Arthur's lady friend who was there when it was screened. She loudly announced, "Arthur, we have to talk!" Then she took him to one side and demanded to know, in a voice so loud with outrage that all could hear it, "Why didn't you have me play the dance hall girl?" She was young enough and lovely enough that she could have but the folks who made the commercial didn't know of her at the time and her wealthy male friend Arthur hadn't thought to suggest/demand it.

For days after, the argument continued and all his apologies and gift offers couldn't placate his lady love. She kept demanding that the commercial be reshot with her in lieu of Bridget, and after a week or so of withheld sex and angry and/or tearful upset, Arthur gave in. He called the agency that had made the commercial and said, "I know it'll cost me a lot of money but reshoot the spot with Helga" — or whatever her name was — "as the dance hall girl." And he added, "Oh — and she insists she absolutely must wear that same red corset thing."

So Bridget got a call. "We have to reshoot," they told her and she thought, "Oh boy! I get to make another thousand dollars." Then they explained they weren't going to use her. They just needed to borrow the corset.

"You can't have it," she said defiantly. "It's mine and I'm the only one who wears it. And by the way, it's a bustier."

They said they'd pay her the same fee again, plus she'd still receive whatever residuals might be paid when the ad aired. She said no. They offered her $1500. She said no.

They offered two thousand dollars. She said, "Let me get this straight. You want to pay me twice as much to not be in the commercial as you paid me to be in the commercial?" They said yes. She thought for a second and said, "Make it $2500 and you've got a deal." They agreed. Bridget was blonde but she was in no way stupid, except occasionally in her choice of male companions.

So a week later, Bridget was on the set again but only to keep an eye on her beloved bustier. Not only was Helga (or whatever her name was) there to wear it but Arthur was there to watch the love of his life make her acting debut. Helga looked fine in the bustier and Bridget, who'd emotionally committed to being a good, well-compensated sport about it, admitted that Helga was fine in the part.

After they wrapped, Helga herself carried the bustier on its hanger over to Bridget, who was going to drop it off at the dry cleaner's on her way home. Helga thanked her and said, "They told me they paid you again for it so look at it this way. We each got a thousand dollars for wearing it and you made another thousand for loaning it to us."

Bridget said, "Well, to be honest, they paid me $2500 to let you wear it." And as she left with it, she could hear Helga storming across the studio and yelling, "Arthur, we have to talk!"

I think I'll take the rest of today off from paying attention to what's going on with Donald Trump, the target of the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history. And don't you kinda admire in a strange way how everything Trump does is the single greatest ever? If he eats a piece of chocolate cake, it's the single greatest piece of chocolate cake ever and if he were to go bowling, he would probably throw the single greatest gutterball ever. Can't wait to see him bragging over the ratings his resignation speech will get.

One thing to note by those of us tracking how Trump's crisis apes and does not ape Watergate: A lot less of Nixon's problems were self-inflicted. Some were…but Nixon was a little better at taking a bad situation and not making it ten times worse. With his "witch hunt" claims, Trump is setting up in advance — as he always does — the excuses if he loses. If he'd lost the election, it was because the whole process was rigged, remember? He's still flogging that as the reason he lost the popular vote. He doesn't know enough to greet the appointment of a Special Counsel with "Happy to hear it! Robert Mueller is a man of integrity and I look forward to cooperating with him in every possible way to clear up this matter so we can get on with the nation's business."

But that's it for today…I hope.

Rowan Atkinson interviews Elton John. Or maybe it's John Elton…

So I'm figuring that if the current Trump scandals unfold the way Nixon's did — and they may not — what happens next is a flurry of polls which G.O.P. leaders read to say, "If we don't get on top of this and we look like we're protecting and enabling this guy, we're going to lose the House and/or Senate." One of the things that did Nixon in was that Republican lawmakers saw their base splitting. If you were a Congressperson or Senator of that party, you saw that you could lose half of the Republican vote if you protected Nixon and half if you didn't. It's almost impossible to win another term if anywhere near 50% of your own party deserts you. It also makes you extremely vulnerable to a challenger from your own party.

I always thought one of the key "Nixon is doomed" moments of Watergate came when an obscure, well-meaning little rabbi named Baruch Korff started turning up everywhere in the news, identified as "Nixon's Chief Defender." You would have thought that Nixon's Chief Defender would have been a prominent Republican Senator, Governor or Congressman — but no. All those guys were hiding under their desks, afraid to link their future with their president's. I thought of that last night when several news stories said that Fox News was having trouble getting anyone important to come on and speak on behalf of Trump.

Rabbi Korff suddenly got a lot of air time because there was this void. No one else wanted to be Nixon's Chief Defender and the media — especially the three major TV networks and especially CBS — were desperate to have someone speak on his behalf. If they hadn't, they would have given credence to the argument that the press was biased against Nixon and ginning up the whole Watergate mess. So Korff was suddenly everywhere and though he meant well, I thought he did Nixon more damage than good.

Korff was a bad surrogate. He didn't know how to speak in sound bites and give short, quotable answers. He knew very little about Washington and nothing about the "spin" Nixon and his people wanted to put on his actions, so often the Rabbi's "defense" admitted things Nixon was trying to deny and vice-versa. (There's another parallel there to Trump. A lot of the official spokespersons who've been out there saying things on behalf of Trump have immediately been contradicted by other spokespersons or by Trump himself.  Nothing makes you look guiltier than not being able to get your story straight.)

Korff also had been a genuine hero during World War II helping Jews escape the Nazi onslaught. There were so many such heroes that his deeds had gone largely unheralded and he sometimes seemed less interested in championing Nixon than he was in talking about his own accomplishments. When Dan Rather asked Korff for a thirty-second statement about the latest Watergate revelation, he often got a ten-minute story about liberating concentration camps.

The rabbi looked silly with his self-promotion and sillier still when some of Nixon's anti-semitic remarks on the tapes came out…and of course it was not lost on some people that Korff was out defending Nixon because no one else would do it.

It may not play out quite that way with Trump because due to gerrymandering and polarization, more Republicans are probably in "safe seats" and less afraid of losing them. Then again, even those G.O.P. officials are afraid of Democratic victories and with Trump's growing unpopularity getting in the way of tax cuts, Medicaid cuts and other items on the Republican wish list. Already, some Republicans are at least looking like they support full investigations and maybe a Special Prosecutor.  Depending on what James Comey says in the coming days, there may be a stampede.

My long-held view though is that Nixon wasn't forced out of office by Democratic attacks so much as he was ousted by Republican defections. When Barry Goldwater said even he'd be voting yea on at least one of the impeachment counts, Richard M. Nixon knew it was all over. One wonders if Donald J. Trump will be as wise.

Let's go to the links…

• Jonathan Chait reports on the latest Republican spin: Trump didn't mean it when he asked Comey to shut down investigations. He was just joking. You're in lot of trouble when that's the best your supporters can come up with to support you.  ("Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…when my client took that gun and the note demanding cash up to the bank teller's window, it was just a prank…")
• Dylan Matthews explains what happens when a sitting president is accused of a crime. It doesn't work the way it would if authorities found out that you and I are operating that series of illegal cockfights.
• Paul Ryan is still supporting Trump, says Steve Benen. I suspect Ryan will defend Trump to the death…or until he gets big tax cuts for the rich, whichever comes first. This seems to have been a dream Ryan has had since he was about seven. At that age, I was dreaming of working for Hanna-Barbera writing Yogi Bear and Paul Ryan was saying, "When I grow up, I want to take away the health insurance of poor people so that rich people get even richer!"
• And Daniel Larison thinks that Trump is about to make things a lot worse for America in its relationship with followers of Islam. Trump making something worse always sounds like a safe bet to me.

Jimmy Fallon sorta/kinda regrets that when he had Trump on The Tonight Show, it was all fun and games with nothing of a serious tone. Before we pillory Fallon for not being harder on the guy, we oughta ask if Jimmy Fallon is even capable of being harder on anyone. I suspect that once the booking was made, it couldn't have gone any other way. At least Fallon didn't try to get Trump to play a round of some old TV game show…although To Tell the Truth might have been an interesting choice.

Farley Elliott, who covers the Los Angeles restaurant scene and once interviewed me, argues with a recent survey that showed people preferring the Five Guys burger chain to In-N-Out. Naturally, since I have the same preference, I think the survey is inarguably correct. All polls and surveys are correct when they agree with you and they're deeply flawed and biased when they don't. That's Trump's Law.

In fact, I'll go farther with this: I used to be an In-N-Out fan, as I think long-ago posts on this blog will confirm. My last few visits to an In-N-Out left me deciding those would be my last few visits to an In-N-Out. I'm not sure if they've done something to their burgers or if my tastes have somehow evolved but I thought the burgers were pretty unimpressive.

One caveat: I take mine without most of the usual toppings. I'm allergic to some and don't like others. I suppose one could argue that an In-N-Out burger is not an In-N-Out burger unless it's dressed the way they usually serve them. Faced with that position, I might then argue back that any burger from anywhere can be made better or worse based on your topping selections and that the true test is of just the beef patty and bun. In that contest, not only does Five Guys beat In-N-Out handily but so do most chains.

I recognize this is heresy coming as it does from a native Californian. Not loving In-N-Out here is like not loving Vin Scully and, yes, you can be deported for it. But in this world, we have to stand up for what we believe and I believe that Five Guys makes better burgers than In-N-Out…and don't get me started on their fries.

Our pal Leonard Maltin mourns the demise of VHS tapes. Well, not really. He's actually mourning the loss of some great packaging and certain movies which were available in that format and haven't made it to DVD or Blu-ray.

I have a shelf downstairs of Betamax tapes of shows and movies available nowhere else and every so often, I have my assistant transfer a few more of them to digital format. One of these days, I'll start on the shelf of VHS tapes that I didn't toss once DVDs came out of the same material.

While we're on the subject of Maltin: Last Monday night, Leonard emceed a wonderful program at the Academy of Motion Pictures theater — a screening of Bambi preceded by some fascinating "extras." At the reception preceding the program, I got to spend some time talking with Peter Behn, who at age four supplied the voice of Thumper. I can't imagine what it would be like to be part of something so beloved and historic at that age, and to go through life with people telling you how what you contributed to at age four was so meaningful to them. It was a fun evening even though Bambi is far from my favorite Disney film.

• Trump just might be starting to think he can't stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot somebody and not lose voters.

If you're not watching Seth Meyers, you're missing maybe the sharpest political comedy on TV these days.  This "Closer Look" is doing the job that The Daily Show did in its Jon Stewart days…

Too much news. Here we go…

• David Remnick summarizes where we are with the new revelations about James Comey's memo and Trump's admissions of sharing info with Russia.  Not good for Mr. Trump.
• Jonathan Chait says that a few days ago, it was unthinkable that Republicans in Congress would ever allow investigations of Trump to get to the point where impeachment might become likely. Now, he says, it's becoming thinkable.
• Ross Douthat believes that it's time to invoke the 25th Amendment. That's the one where a majority of the president's cabinet declares the president unfit to serve and he or she is asked to step down…and if he or she won't, Congress can remove said unfit person by a 2/3 majority. This will never happen but it's amazing that a Conservative pundit is calling for such a thing.
• Dylan Matthews finds a helluva lot of similarities between Trump's actions and the actions that led to Richard Nixon having to resign lest he be impeached.  At least Nixon's defenders didn't pull the "He didn't know the laws" defense.

My feeling about impeaching Trump is that it will spare us from the worry that in order to divert attention from his problems or prove some point about how tough he is, he's going to do something really, really stupid, possibly involving nuclear weapons. If not for concerns like that, I might not care. I don't see President Pence as much better for this country.

Here's John Oliver with a "web exclusive" update on the campaign to maintain Net Neutrality. Since there's a chance here of some big companies making bigger profits if Net Neutrality goes away, I suspect it will. But it's still worth fighting to delay that day…

As has been told in many places, I met Bob Kane in 1968.  I was 16 years old and I spent a couple of extraordinary afternoons with this man.  In one, urged on by the vodka he was sipping, he rambled on for a couple of hours about his life and career, sometimes weaving dangerously close to what I now believe to have been the truth.

He went down a list of all the people he'd dealt with at DC Comics over the years, identifying which ones were idiots and which ones were pricks.  All fell into one category or the other.  I often note how some people use the same words over and over, and I couldn't help but observe that Mr. Kane did not seem to know any synonyms for "idiot" or "prick."  Those were the only words he used to describe anyone.  At one point, he identified one editor there as an idiot, then thought better of it and said, "No, come to think of it, he's not an idiot.  He's actually a prick."

He was not particularly nice to me, either.  He read some of my writing and told me that I had no talent and should just forget about this silly idea I had of doing what I've been doing for a living now for almost half a century.  Oddly enough, him saying that did not particularly bother me at the time, nor did I consider the possibility that he might be right.  A few swigs of Stolichnaya earlier, Mr. Kane became the first of five people I've met in my life who told me they'd screwed Marilyn Monroe.  Since I didn't believe that, I decided not to believe what he said about my writing.  (If you must know, the other four were Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, James Karen and Tony Curtis.  And as far as I can tell, these men didn't just tell me.  They told everybody.)

My meetings with Kane occurred in his rented apartment on Wilshire Boulevard near Westwood Village.  He was in town for a while to close a huge TV deal, he explained — something he'd created that was going to be "bigger than Batman."  He didn't say what it was but I assume it was The Silent Gun, a 1969 TV-movie/pilot that did not become a series.  It was a western starring Lloyd Bridges as a "fast gun" who accidentally kills a little girl and thereafter vows to never fire his weapon again.  He carries it but does not fire it, relying instead on his wits to prevail in situations where he previously would have just yanked the pistol from its holster and shot somebody.  Not a bad little premise, I suppose.

Otherwise, Kane was doing a lot of public appearances at the time, most of them keying off a "Batman for President" campaign he was flogging to tie-in with the then-current presidential election in this country.  Around his apartment, he had big sheets of illustration board on which he'd drawn caricatures of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson and other folks who may also have screwed Marilyn Monroe or claimed they did.  Of all the claimants, I'd put my money on Nixon and maybe L.B.J., not because I think they screwed her but because I think they screwed everyone.

Kane actually drew them, I'm pretty sure.  He often signed his name to the work of others but these, I believe he did himself.

There was a Batman one and on my first visit to his apartment, which was with some friends, he gave us all autographed photos of himself holding the "Batman for President" drawing.  On my second visit, to which I went alone, he gave me the original.  I found it the other day at the bottom of a big drawer and I took a photo of my lovely friend Jewel Shepard holding it…

Kinda cute, huh?  I mean the poster, not Jewel, though she certainly is.  And I just noticed that after the first photo was taken, Bob added a box around his signature.  This is probably indicative of something though I have no idea what it is.  Anyway, I thought you might enjoy this trip back to a day when the notion of electing a cartoon character to the presidency was way past ridiculous.

It must be tough to be a Trump supporter. Yesterday, he robbed a liquor store. Today, you have to go out and deny he robbed the liquor store and say it's fake news concocted by those slimeballs in the media. And you have to know darn well by now that tomorrow, he's going to be saying or tweeting, "Yeah, I robbed the liquor store and it was the proper and legal thing to do and I was absolutely right to do it."

Wish I collected royalties on the phrase, "Throw [name] under the bus." Here are some links…

• Rod Dreher, who cheers Trump's stated agenda but not the man, writes about the disclosing of apparently-classified info to Russia and says Congressional Republicans ought to bone up on impeachment proceedings.
• More on the same topic from Daniel Larison, who is also not a Liberal.
• Andrew Prokop has a primer on impeachment. My assumption is that it would never come to actual hearings and trials; that as with Nixon, a delegation of Republicans would go to Trump and say, "We've got the votes to put you on trial and investigate everything, including your taxes and business dealings. You can get out now or risk going to prison." And then Donald J. Trump would do, as he always has, what's best for Donald J. Trump.  And spin it as just what he wanted to do.
• Matt Yglesias reminds us how ridiculous it is that folks who thought the worst thing in the world was how Hillary handled her e-mail are now defending Trump's treatment of classified material.
• Matt Taibbi thinks there's more to the whole Russiagate scandal than we know.
• Joe Conason notes that the whole scare tactic of saying that Obamacare would create "Death Panels" was always a lie. But if we have the kind of cuts in Medicaid and other institutions that Republicans want to make, we may indeed have agencies deciding who gets to live and who's going to die.
• And here's a long but fascinating article by Lisa Miller about the drive to bring manufacturing jobs back to this country. I somehow cannot see Trump ever truly getting behind anything that would cut into the profits of American businessfolks. If they can make more money sending jobs overseas, they always will in Donald Trump's America.

Even at this moment, Bill Maher and his staff are sitting in their offices, trying to figure out what Maher can say on his show Friday night that will cause Trump to attack him by name. It will soon be a mark of shame for anyone who considers themselves an edgy political comedian if they can't achieve that.