In tribute to the late Debbie Reynolds, three extremely talented Broadway performers re-create the "Good Morning" dance number from Singin' in the Rain. They are Christopher Rice (The Book of Mormon), Clay Thomson (Newsies, Matilda) and Eloise Kropp (Cats, Dames at Sea)…and boy, do they do it well. Stay tuned for some outtakes at the end…and it wouldn't surprise me if they had a lot fewer of them than Gene, Donald and Debbie…

• Trump's next excuse for not releasing his taxes: "You wouldn't be able to understand them anyway. All the amounts are in rubles."

Jonathan Chait, who has become my favorite keep-an-eye-on-Trump guy, explains what's up with the elusive Republican plan to replace Obamacare with nothing…or as Donald calls it, "Something terrific."

When I was twelve or so, it was suddenly my Aunt Dot's birthday and I had neglected to get or even make a present for her. So I lied and told her I'd ordered "something terrific" and that they hadn't delivered it yet. In this case, I later managed to come up with something terrific enough that she was pleased. I suspect the G.O.P. will wind up doing what I did then. I gave Aunt Dot a sampler pack of Planter's Salted Nuts. The Republicans will probably send everyone cashews in lieu of health insurance.

A friend called to quarrel with my statement that Trump spokesfibber Kellyanne Conway doesn't believe the stuff she says on her boss's behalf. This is not worth a whole lotta debate time. Maybe she does. But look at her history and look at the way she has her spins prepared…and I can't help but think that if I could offer her the same salary and exposure, she'd be out there insisting that Groo the Wanderer was by all means the greatest, most popular comic book ever published.

Let's all remember this woman's job description. It's to go out and sell the idea that Trump is darn close to Jesus Christ in perfection, integrity and success, and that anyone who says otherwise about anything is a lying liar in the act of lying. The underlying premise is that the press must be discredited in advance of those moments when they'll be reporting that Donald has looted the U.S. Treasury, sold the states that didn't go for him to Russia and applied Liquid Paper to the original copy of the U.S. Constitution in the National Archives so he could add in some things about him having the job for life.

Meanwhile, a lot of folks on the 'net have said that the outfit Ms. Conway wore to the inauguration reminded them of Woody Woodpecker. As a one-time writer of Mr. Woodpecker's comic book, I don't see the similarity. When I saw how she was dressed, the first thing that came to mind was how they dress the people who work in the mall at the Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick stand. It's a shame Kellyanne couldn't pass the test to work at one of those because she'll need a job once Trump needs a scapegoat to blame for his lies…and she already kinda has the uniform.

I've been on hold with the mail order company that fills my prescriptions. Well, I've been writing something during that hour but I've also been on hold…thankfully not hearing a recording over and over that tells me how important my call is to them.

I got to someone almost immediately, explained the problem and he said, "May I place you on hold while I look into this?" I said that was fine. He then went away for 24 minutes.

When he returned, he apologized profusely and said everything seems to be in order. The prescription is in. The "prior authorization" is in. My insurance company has okayed it all. (I do not have Obamacare in any form, by the way. This is just a private insurance company.) But my page on their website and his computer still do not say that they are going to actually ship the medicine to me, which would be a nice thing for them to do.

Once again, he asked if he could put me on hold while he checked into that. Once again, I foolishly told him he could and he went away. When I typed the subject line of this message, it was an hour. Now, it's an hour and seventeen minutes. More to come.

UPDATE, after another nine minutes: Okay, he apologizes and says they'll send it out, though my page on the website may not say so 'til tomorrow morn. We shall see. We shall see.

It must be tough to be a spokesperson for Donald Trump. His ego demands that his inauguration be the biggest, most spectacular, terrific one ever so when it isn't, he sends you out to lie and insist that it wasn't. Kellyanne Conway — who has yet to convince me she really believes a smidgen of the spin she has to spin — said that the Trump machine was presenting "alternative facts." Hey, there's a self-refuting phrase we're going to hear for a while.

You can still believe in the stated missions of Donald Trump but you have to be leery of folks who offer "alternative facts" — as opposed to, say, ones they can defend as true. It's like, "If the real facts you're hearing bother you, we have some lovely alternative ones you can believe instead."

Yesterday's protests were truly impressive. I usually think marches and mass demonstrations accomplish little except to make the marchers feel like they're doing something. But these swarms of angry humanity established — within 24 hours of Trump simultaneously taking the oath and breaking it — that there's a huge part of this country that is not going to roll over and be Trumped. I feel more hopeful than I have in months.

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I still get way too many unsolicited sales calls from contractors who claim I talked to them months ago about doing work on my house and I asked them to call back about now because I'd probably be ready for their free estimate and blah blah blah. Lately though, the contractors are being outnumbered by companies that do solar-related installations and, since I turn 65 shortly, folks who want to assist me with signing up for Medicare.

I'm not sure but yesterday around 10 AM, I swiftly got rid of one of the solar salespeople and then, just after Noon, I think the same person called to try and sell me on some sort of Medicare Advantage plan.

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The management here needs to remind readers of this site that when someone you've heard of dies and I don't post an obit and some anecdotes, it doesn't mean that I didn't like that person or care about him or her. It means I just have nothing to say about them beyond the obvious. I somehow managed to be around Miguel Ferrer on many occasions without ever actually meeting the man or exchanging two words with him. That's surely my loss since the many mutual acquaintances we have always spoke very highly of him. Many of them are remembering him lovingly on social media and you should seek out what they have to say. The act of remembrance belongs to them.

There's even a live touring version of Numberwang…

Jonathan Chait thinks Trump is already making Democrats — and probably a lot of people who aren't Democrats but think Trump is a horrible man — rise up and come together into a very potent, powerful opposition. Hope so.

In other news, Trump clearly had a tepid turnout for his inauguration but he threw a fit and sent his press secretary out to say, "This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe." You know, I don't think everyone who supported this man is stupid…but he sure does.

This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.

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The previous installment in this series was about meeting deadlines. Since I wrote it, I've had some more random thoughts about that challenge so here they are in no particular order, starting with a bit of advice…

Let's say someone calls up and wants to hire you for a writing job. He says, "I need an article written in a hurry. I have a file here with all the necessary research and I will FedEx it to you because it's too large to scan and e-mail. What I need is for someone to read it all over and distill it down to the main points in clear English." He tells you more about it, you agree on your compensation, and then he turns to the pressing question of how soon you can get it done.

It's May 1. Based on what you've heard, you think it ought to take you a week to do it. So you say to him, "I can write it and e-mail it to you on May 7."

If you do that, you have made a very big mistake, my friend. Naming any date is a mistake.

Why? Because you can't start writing until you receive the file and he has to ship it to you. What if he can't get it to FedEx until tomorrow? Assuming FedEx doesn't screw up and assuming no Sunday intervenes, you won't have it until May 3…so you'll have five days instead of the seven you expected. But he may just consider it late if he doesn't have it on May 7.

This is an error I made a lot before I wised up. The correct answer to when he'll have your draft would have been, "I will finish one week from when I get the research." Remember that when you receive the necessary material is out of your control.  You should only commit to the part of the process that is within your control.

How I wised up on this: On one project, I agreed to a date and then the editor (or his assistant, whom he blamed) took ten days to get me the material I needed before I could start writing. I got it done in fewer days than I'd told him it would take but it did get there after the date I'd originally promised to have it in.  The editor agreed that the lateness was his fault but around the office, all anyone heard was, "Evanier was supposed to have had this in last week."  And there was that extra pressure on me to get it done quickly because of his mistake.

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I'm thinking now of a writer whose career has been harmed by a reputation for missing deadlines.  I may have written about this guy before. He always has a good excuse for being late…but really, he doesn't.  This is the kind of thing that always seems to happen with him…

He gets an assignment with a deadline.  They give him three weeks but he knows he can write the thing in two or three days, no sweat…so he puts it off.  He goes to movies.  He goes to the beach.  If the Lakers are playing, he goes to see the Lakers.  There's nothing stopping him from starting on the script other than he'd have to miss something he wants to do.  If you were to suggest he not wait 'til the last minute, he'd say, "Naah…I got plenty o' time."

Then a few days before it has to be in — when he's just starting or just about to start — something happens. He gets the flu. A relative dies. His computer breaks. He gets in a car accident. Whatever. The script is going to be late.

He has a good excuse…"I'm sorry but my grandmother died!" He always has a good excuse why he's not at fault…but like I said: Really, he doesn't. That's because he has no good excuse for why he waited until he only had three days, thereby setting up a situation where a last minute problem would make him late.

If he'd started right off and then his computer broke or he got a bad cold, he could have recovered from the problem and gotten the script done on time. If I'd been his editor, I wouldn't have excused him for putting it off. Not even for a dead grandmother.

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Writers have been known to exploit deadlines. "Gee, I'm sorry I can't make your party, Phil, but I have a deadline…" That's a great excuse when you don't want to go to Phil's crummy party.

I stopped by a writer-friend's home one time and heard an exchange between him and his wife. She complained that he hadn't put the trash cans out like he was supposed to. He replied, "I can't be taking out trash cans. I'm on a deadline, remember?"

And he wasn't claiming he couldn't spare the six minutes it would take to put the trash cans out. His argument was that drudge work like that would put him in the wrong frame of mind to write his script. Yeah, right.

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One good reason for a writer to live on the West Coast is that it often gives you an extra, phantom day if you're working for someone on the East Coast. Suppose your script is due on Monday. Monday afternoon at 1:00 Pacific Time, you call your editor in New York. Now, remember: You're not late yet. You said you'd have it on Monday and it's still Monday.

It's 4 PM where your editor is. He or she says, "I really need it." You say, "It's done. I just want to give it a little more polish…go over it a few more times. But really, it's done."

Your editor probably wants to go home at five so he or she will probably say, "Okay, fine. Just have it in my e-mailbox when I get in tomorrow morning at nine." That means you have until around 5:30 in morning (your time) to finish it and send it off. No one would ever consider you late.

But don't count on this too often. It's one of the reasons, as I explained in the previous chapter, that you need to learn the difference between a soft deadline — where you can get a few more days if you need them — and a hard deadline when you can't. If it's a hard deadline, your editor may just say, "Okay, do as much as you can in the next hour because I'm going to stay here and wait for it."

So suddenly, you go from having seventeen and a half more hours to having one. Type fast.

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Some editors and producers don't mind you being a little late if when it does show up, it's perfect or close to it. Obviously, they're better off if you hand in a really good manuscript two or three days late, as opposed to being on time with something that's going to need a week or two of editing and rewriting by them or you. But don't presume that you can be late because you know it'll be wonderful. For one thing, just because you think it will be doesn't mean they'll think it is.

But also there's a certain professional courtesy here. Editors and producers can get real nervous if they thought they were going to have your script on Wednesday and then Wednesday comes and goes with no script and no word from you. I've had producers and editors send me off on my assignment with the plea, "If you can't make the deadline, for God's sake, call me." One told me a story about a writer who'd turned in a script weeks late and had been incommunicado until he was done with it. The producer said, "People in the office kept asking me, 'Isn't that script in yet?' and I looked like a real ass when I had to say I had no idea when or if we'd get it."

So don't disappear. Don't hide. Don't make your editor worry about the problems he's going to have if you hand it in late. He may already be worried about the problems he'll have if when you do hand it in, it's awful and he has to pitch it and find someone else to write it overnight.

Don't make him look like a real ass.

Also, sometimes you think it's a soft deadline but it isn't…or it turned into a hard deadline unexpectedly. On one of my first comic book writing assignments, I delivered the script right on time. Delivering on time is always good form but it matters especially when you're in a new situation and need to prove reliability. There was an old pulp writer I knew casually named Frank Gruber. When I was starting out, he said to me, "Don't get a reputation for being unreliable. You will never lose it!" Wise words.

In this case, the editor was especially jubilant. When he'd assigned it to me, he thought it wasn't going to go into production immediately but then another script fell out and mine suddenly had to take its place on the schedule.

One of the ways to endear yourself to an editor or producer is to come to their rescue when they get into a bind. That editor gave me a lot of work after that.

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Don't be afraid of deadlines…and especially don't let fear of missing the deadline make you so anxious that it's difficult to work. That guy who went to Lakers games instead of starting on his script had a little bit of the right idea. He just went too far with it.

Unless it's one of those "we need it yesterday" jobs, you probably don't need to start immediately. If you have any experience at all, you should have some sense of how long you need to do the job right. Personally, I need to feel like I'm not a prisoner of my assignment; that I'm working on it when I feel like it, not because I'm manacled to my keyboard and doom is imminent if I don't torture myself a little. I want to pace myself so I feel I'm in control and also so I can stop and put it aside for a little while if I feel it might be going awry.

If you can afford to take a brief vacation from a script…well, that can be a great way to figure out where and when you made a wrong turn. Let it sit for a few days if you can, then go back to it. Read over what you wrote, not as the guy who has to pick up where he left off and continue but more like another person reading it for the first time.

You may solve some problem more easily then. I almost always find at least a few places where I could have phrased something better. Sometimes, I get a better feel of what it is I'm writing. Sometimes, I realize I took a very bad wrong turn on page 14.

This is another reason for not waiting until the last possible minute to start writing. You forego your vacation time. You may even lose your ability to toss out everything you wrote after page 14 and take a different approach.

I must admit not everyone works like this. I used to have this great friend named Steve Gerber and we talked about this a lot. I can write with or without a looming deadline. Steve always had to turn it into a crisis, going with little or no sleep, chain-smoking incessantly, putting a symbolic gun to his own head. I am not faulting him for this. He believed he did his best work that way and his best work was pretty damned good.

But at least try it my way before you try it his way.

And I have one final thing to say here: There is such a thing as an impossible deadline. Once in a while, you do need to say no. There may be a temptation to be a big hero and agree to write more than you can write in the time they have for you to write it. The money may be an even greater temptation.

You should have a sense of what you can and cannot do, and you should not commit to do what you cannot do. Being able to meet your deadlines starts with only accepting the ones that are humanly possible. If you want those who buy your work to treat you as a human being, you have to start by not pretending you're a machine.

William Saletan discusses Trump's speech at today's inauguration. It was so devoid of compassion and poetry that I can believe Trump wrote or at least edited it. Harry Shearer tweeted, "To be fair, it did sound like a speech written with a Sharpie."

A comment I'm seeing/hearing today — I think someone even said it on Bill Maher's show — is that it's time to face reality. The presidency is not ennobling this man. Not campaigning for office anymore isn't, either. He is not turning into anything that he wasn't all last year, picking petty feuds, describing a false reality and making it clear that in his world, "we need to work together" means "everyone has to kiss my ass and do what I say."

I dunno if they can be separated in most folks' minds but I'd be curious to know what percentage of those who are raising Trump's disapproval rating are more bothered by what they fear he'll do or simply who he is.

Bill Maher returns to the air this evening. Gee, I wonder what he's going to talk about.

This guy returns February 12…

The other day here, I mentioned how few photos exist of the late Bill Finger, the finally-acknowledged co-creator of Batman. If you want to see all the ones that are known to exist, Marc Tyler Nobleman has them on his blog…which is only right because he found almost all of them. Marc is the diligent researcher and author who has uncovered and documented nearly all the biographical material that exists on Mr. Finger.

If you're over on his blog, take the time to order his book, Bill the Boy Wonder, which tells the story of unsung hero, Bill Finger. And keep your eye out for a forthcoming documentary about Finger and the battle to get him proper recognition. I'll let you know here when and where you can see it.

• Trump was in office for three minutes before he began turning the presidency into the Home Shopping Network.

Robert Rowe writes to ask…

Is it true that Hanna and Barbera in the later years of their partnership came to the studio on different days and worked on different floors because they seldom agreed when they discussed business matters in person?

Not to my knowledge. I wasn't around them in the last few years of their lives but when I worked there in the late seventies and early eighties, what I saw was two men who had divided up their business. Joe Barbera was the absolute monarch of selling the shows, developing the shows and getting them up to the stage of completed scripts. Then Bill Hanna was totally in charge of taking those scripts and turning them into animated cartoons to be delivered to the client.

They did have offices on different floors but that was because they headed different departments. Joe had a fancy office right near the entrance since he was the one who entertained buyers and important people. Bill was upstairs near where the animators were. Bill worked in shirt sleeves. Joe dressed like he was on his way to lunch with the head of the network. Here's a photo that was taken in Joe's office one day…

I doubt that story about coming in on different days. Bill Hanna — whatever anyone else may say about him — was a very hard worker. If there was a day when he wasn't in the building, he was probably visiting one of their subcontracting studios to check on things. Joe came and went as his meetings dictated.

I'm sure they disagreed on things — I witnessed a few discussions — but the working premise always seemed to be that each man had the final say in his area. For the most part though, they kept their arguments to themselves.

It may well have been different in the earlier days when they owned the studio along with George Sidney. They sold it in 1966 — a year some might say was a sharp dividing line in the merits of their output. Thereafter, the two men were employees — well-paid, powerful employees but still employees. When I was there, it sometimes felt like the agents and merchandising people were running the place…with the approval (usually) of Bill and Joe. At times though, it seemed more like acceptance than approval.

They were both extraordinary men. I fought with both at times and was so uncomfortable doing that because of who they were, I decided to stop working there. I respected many things about them and one was how well they made their partnership work for sixty (sixty!) years.

So no, I don't think they were enemies like the rumor made them out to be. But given how far apart their offices were in that building and how little interaction they seemed to have except for social events and photo sessions, I can see why someone might think that.

Even Fox News has Donald Trump at a 37% approval rating. That's low when you consider that he could probably do every horrible, bad-for-America thing that his detractors worry about short of nuclear war or mass genocide and he'd be at 25%. Soon, we will surely see polls that say an awful lot of people who voted for him are sorry they did. He hasn't even taken the oath of office yet and he already has his first two major scandals — the Russia thing and his refusal to divest or put his company in a blind trust. Doesn't look like either one of those is going away soon.

That is, to use the word that he appends to an awful lot of his tweets, sad. Even if you're among the 37% or so, you've got to think there's something really wrong when we're inaugurating a man who most Americans don't like. It's especially worrisome when it's a man whose modus operandi seems to exclude ever admitting when you're wrong or changing your approach. Everything is "double down" with this guy, along with "deny, deny, deny." I didn't see either Bush as a very good president but at least they both could sometimes — not often enough but sometimes — realize that what they were doing wasn't working and change course.

I sat down here to try and write something kinda positive but it just wasn't coming. The best I can do is to say that I don't think it'll be as bad as some fear…but that feels uncomfortably like the kind of confidence I had when I was confident there was no way this guy could win. I think I'll sit here and hope I'm wrong about a lot more stuff.