Some of you are probably already tired of playing Numberwang. So for a change of pace, let's play Numberwang!

• Ringling Brothers Circus closing down. Apparently, it's because all their clowns quit to accept positions in Trump's cabinet.

Republicans talk about "repeal and replace" with the Affordable Care Act but they've had seven years to present a good replacement and all we've heard from them are a few different partial plans which they themselves can't agree on.

So while they're in a hurry to repeal, it's looking like it'll be a long time — maybe never — before we get the "replace" part. And what of those whose lives depend on decent, affordable health care now? Well, if the Paul Ryans of the world cared in the slightest about them, they'd have a solid replacement in place before they even thought of repeal.

Actually, while Obamacare needs some improvements, it's way better than what we had before and way, way better than nothing. Why do many people think otherwise? Because this stuff is hard to explain and folks like Paul Ryan keep lying about it and quoting bogus statistics.

I'm just going to link you to Ezra Klein on this one. Donald Trump is having a war of words with Congressman John Lewis. There is no way Trump can win such a battle with Congressman Lewis but he can knock his 37% approval rating down another notch or two.

I had the pleasure/honor of meeting Mr. Lewis at Comic-Con last year. He is a man of substance, achievement and courage and he continues to be that.

My first obit of 2017 and it's going to take a while.  That's because Dick Gautier did so much in his career.

You may know him best as the star of the short-lived sitcom, When Things Were Rotten, or as the recurring character of Hymie the Robot on the long-running sitcom, Get Smart.  He was on dozens of other sitcoms as a guest star and sometimes as a regular.  Mr. Terrific was one of the latter.  His was often the first name to come to mind when some producer said, "We need a real good-looking guy who can do comedy."

He was also a stage actor, most notably the original Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie.  If you wanted to hear a hilarious mix of bitterness and admitted denial, you only had to ask him if he was bothered he didn't get the role in the movie.

He was also a screenwriter and a stand-up comedian and a cartoonist and a very good joke-teller…a very funny man.  Now and then, he even played Superman or Batman in a sketch of a commercial.  (Some folks referred to him as "The guy you get when you can't afford James Garner."  The first time I heard that someone was considering turning Will Eisner's great comic book The Spirit into a TV show, I was told, "They're hoping to get Jim Garner, which means they'll probably end up with Dick Gautier."  Years later when a pilot was finally made, "they" got neither.)

He was serious about his cartooning, by the way.  He even published several "how-to" books about caricatures and the few times I got to really talk one-on-one with him, that's what we talked about.  I always thought he had the talent to be another James Garner but given the choice, would have preferred to be Mort Drucker.

I have, of course, a story.  When we were doing Garfield and Friends, I needed an actor for one episode to play two roles — an unctuous game show host and a snotty French waiter. If this had been live-action, I would have hired Dick for the latter so I booked him to do both voices. When he came in, we talked about cartooning for about three minutes, then he asked about his parts. I told him about the waiter and he went immediately into the perfect attitude and accent. Okay, fine.

Then I told him about the game show host and said, "Chuck Woolery on Love Connection." He nailed it instantly, adding the proper soupçon of oiliness. I was impressed with how instantly he nailed both characters…and then it was into the studio.

This was a seven-minute Garfield cartoon and we recorded those very fast. Most shows would take 30-60 minutes for a seven-minute cartoon. All the actors though were sharp, their first reads were fine and as far as I, the director, was concerned we had everything needed in about thirteen minutes. Dick was not in the other cartoons we were recording that day so I told him he could leave, thanked him for a great job and had my assistant get him to sign the paperwork.

He looked kind of odd but he signed and left without saying much. I suppose if I hadn't been so preoccupied with prepping the next thing we'd record, I would have paid more attention to it.

Twenty minutes later, I got a call from Dick's agent. "What was wrong with Dick?" he asked. I said nothing was wrong with Dick. He was perfect. The agent said, "Well, he's sitting here in my office, concerned. He said you let him do one take, then threw him out. He's sure you hated what he did and got rid of him so you could get someone else to come in and redo his lines."

I said, "Put him on." The agent did and I told Dick, "I'm using what you did. I threw you out because I had everything I needed. You did it right the first time."

He said, "That's such a relief to hear. I was just disappointed because, you know, when I left you, I was out of work again. I was just hoping it would last longer. And besides, I still had three and a half hours on the parking meter outside."

Dick was 85 and he passed last night at an assisted living facility where he'd been for some time, fighting a long illness. Here's an obit from the Hollywood Reporter but if you really want to know about him, read the four-part interview our pal Kliph Nesteroff did with him. Here's Part One and you should be able to find your way to the others from there. He was a very clever, nice man.

A couple of folks have sent me a link to an essay by Adam Gopnick about the beautiful music of America…beautiful music that the Trumps of the world cannot hear.

Mr. Gopnick suggests (somewhat) that the reason Trump can't get any great musicians to play at his Inaugural Gala has something to do with him lacking a certain music in his soul.  There might be something to that.

Others are suggesting it's because entertainers are mostly Liberal and even the ones who are Conservative are afraid of being blacklisted or shunned within their industry.  There might be a little more to that but I would suggest that there are more Conservative folks in The Industry than may seem apparent. Seems to me they aren't more vocal because they just plain don't want to have the conversations.

I have a few friends who still believe that Trump will be far better for America than Hillary would have been.  They just don't want to have to defend the "grab them by the pussy" video (and others) and the lies and insults and all the flip-flops on promises and the increasing likelihood that Trump is going to leave the presidency many billions richer for having exploited it.

It's awkward to argue that someone will be a great leader while at the same time having to admit that in some areas, he's a pretty slimy, rude S.O.B.  One of those friends used to insist that Obama had to release his birth certificate, college records and every other document he had…and if he didn't, that was a prima facie admission that that was something incriminating in those papers.  Okay, so how does one now explain why it's fine and dandy for Trump — a man with a history of crooked business dealings and mounting evidence of Russian money — to withhold the tax records that are commonly made public?

Which brings me to what I think is the main reason they can't get entertainers to appear at his gala. I think people — and this includes many who are really, really glad he got elected — are afraid to gamble on being linked with Trump unless they see a good possibility of a really, really big payoff.

Remember the aforementioned "pussy" tape? There are rumors of other tapes around that are as bad or much worse. And that Russian dossier may be partly or wholly phony but given Trump's reckless "I can do anything and get away with it" attitude, how confident can anyone be that it's not real or that there won't be a similarly-bad real one released next Tuesday?

One of the things that brought Nixon down was when it became known that (a) there were tape recordings of hundreds of hours of private White House conversations and (b) that they'd probably be made public. At that point, lots of prominent Republicans who might have continued as Nixon defenders dove under their desks and stopped backing the man. They all thought, What if I throw all my integrity and effort behind this guy on Tuesday and then on Wednesday, a tape is released showing he ordered the Kennedy assassination? Or even the Watergate break-in or anything clearly illegal?

Some might even have worried the tapes would yield proof that Nixon had interfered with the peace talks to end the Vietnam War in order to boost his election chances. That sure seems to be confirmed now but it was rumored then. Would you put your reputation on the line for that guy?

You might gamble it on Trump if you thought he could make you zillions of dollars, as many do. I don't think you'd risk it to sell a few thousand more CDs. Imagine if you agreed today to appear and then next Monday, someone released one of those rumored tapes from the set of Celebrity Apprentice with Trump using racist epithets. Imagine reporters pounding on your door to ask if you're going to take a stand against that by canceling your appearance. There's a no-win situation.

I'm not saying such tapes actually exist but there have been so many embarrassing revelations about Trump that you can't be all that sure. It's not a gamble most people would take with so little possible upside.

In the early eighties, I got to spend an hour or two with Sammy Davis Jr. Someone else in the room asked him about the famous photos of him hugging Richard Nixon and he said with a note of real shame, "I'll never live that down." A lot of entertainers are refusing to perform at Trump's coronation because, like most people in this country, they didn't want him as president.  But some of them are thrilled he won and they're saying no because they don't want to be linked with a guy who has a 37% approval rating…with a great many easy-to-imagine scenarios out there that could drive it even lower.

And by the way: I really am trying to think less about this stuff, which will lead to writing less about it. But I'm not doing very well at that, am I?

And as we all know, it's customary for the 24,006th post on a blog to be a rousing game of Numberwang! Let's go!

• Oops. Paul Anka dropped out.

• Inaugural Gala show now down to 3-4 Rockettes, "water" ballet by Russian whores, flute-playing unicyclist, trained seal act and Paul Anka.

• Trump disapproval at 51%. Know what might help? Signing bill that takes away millions' health care and gives huge tax cuts to rich people.

• Gallup places Trump popularity behind cholera and slightly ahead of projectile vomiting. Of course, that's during his "honeymoon" period.

Following the grand Internet Tradition, the 24,001st post here is an episode of everyone's favorite game show. Let's play Numberwang!

Once I put up this post, a little counter that I can see but you can't will say that there are exactly 24,000 posts on this blog.

And despite what you might think, less than half of them are about Donald Trump, Frank Ferrante, people who've just died and/or cole slaw.

The San Diego Chargers are moving to Los Angeles.  There is no human being on this planet who cares less about football than I do so this is of interest to me for one and only one reason: It ends any possibility that the demands of that team's owners to make more money will jeopardize Comic-Con.  In fact, it means that Comic-Con is now probably the most important "event" in San Diego and has more clout than ever.

In an e-mail to me, my pal Douglass Abramson reminded me that San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer really, really wants to be Governor of California.  As is, he probably stands about the same chance of attaining his goal as I do of becoming Lord Great Chamberlain of the United Kingdom but Faulconer could lower his chances if he presided over the loss of both the city's NFL franchise and its biggest tourist magnet. So maybe that convention center expansion will finally happen.

Apparently, I was wrong. Republicans did everything humanly possible to support Barack Obama when he took office and all that crap about blocking his agenda and him actually being born in Kenya came from racist Democrats.