Busy with more deadlines…and when I get around to it, I'm going to write a long piece here about deadlines. It won't tell experienced writers anything they don't already know but I think a lot of beginners get very confused about when it's vital to meet a deadline and when you just have to come close. The work I'm doing today is about 85% vital.

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An article someone should write — and it won't be me — is how those of us who were horrified by Mr. Trump's election can or should deal with folks we know who did support him and are now kinda mystified as to what they're getting for their vote. As I mentioned the other day here, every time I turn on MSNBC — admittedly, not that often — I see Trump supporters saying things like, "Uh, we thought he was going to 'drain the swamp' of the kind of people who've run Washington and he seems to be putting them in charge." Or someone is waking up to the idea that their health insurance or Medicare may now be in jeopardy.

Yelling at these people, "Didn't you listen to this man? Didn't you notice how often he lied?" isn't going to help anyone. Nor is hollering at the folks who are thrilled he's in office because, you know, unemployment was at seven million percent under the black guy and that's why Trump got the biggest landslide ever. But there may be a more constructive way to talk to these people than hurling insults…although come to think of it, people hurling insults are doing pretty well in America these days.

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Sorry to hear of the passing of Alan Thicke. I never met the man. I have no anecdotes or observations. Just sorry when anyone dies before they get to be really, really old unless of course they prefer it that way.

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If you live in the Los Angeles area, there is an Instaplay this weekend. And if you don't live in the Los Angeles area, there will still be an Instaplay this weekend and I'm hoping to be there for it. Instaplay, as I've explained here, is something done now and then by the best comedy improvisers I've ever seen. They take a suggestion of a title from the audience and then proceed to create an entire musical comedy — complete with songs that sometimes rhyme — right before your astonished, laughing eyes.

I wrote about them here and everything I said there still applies. It's Saturday evening, it's in Culver City, it's in a tiny and unfancy theater. It's cheap to attend and the entertainment value is very, very high. Come and bring along a title to suggest for the play, preferably of a holiday, non-political theme.

Today's the day when Stu Shostak does his annual Christmas Gift Webcast. He'll have on four guests, each to discuss something that you might give someone you either love or feel an obligation to remember this Christmas. Actress Kathy Garver, who I'm sure you remember from TV's Family Affair, will be there to talk about her new book, X Child Stars, about what's become of kids who, like her, once starred on TV and movies. Former CNN legal correspondent Mark Shaw will be discussing his new book about Dorothy Kilgallen, The Reporter Who Knew Too Much. Julia Benjamin, who appeared on the YV series Hazel, will be on to talk about her book, Susie…Ain't She a Doozie? My 'Hazel' Years and Beyond. And MAD magazine's own Dick DeBartolo, aka The Giz Wiz, will tell you all about new gizmos and gadgets — which ones you wanna get, which ones you wanna avoid.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there and then. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Then shortly after a show concludes, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three. You can save so much money, you can afford to send your favorite blogger a lovely Christmas present…or I'll settle for Hanukkah.

Despite a widespread belief in Hollywood that there's little market for movies based on Broadway musicals, a whole lot of them are at least in development, including remakes of West Side Story, Little Shop of Horrors, Gypsy, Guys & Dolls and Oliver! Here's a list of what's in the works. Keep in mind that all of these won't get made and it's not unlikely that most of them won't get made.

You probably know about this but the New York Times has published a long, detailed article on the computer hacking that was done by Russia to help elect Republicans…and not just Donald Trump. This is not something that can be denied any longer, though I'm sure Trump and most of his supporters will forever deny it as pure fiction. A lot of people don't care how you win as long as you win.

And I'm sure Trump will throw a lot of his tantrums as more and more people suggest that his "win" was not legitimate. Hell, the guy still insists that he won a huge landslide and, I guess, that all those records that show what past landslides really looked like are phony.

If you don't want to wade through the whole Times piece, Kevin Drum has a brief summary in two messages — this one and then this one.

I've been very busy and am only now getting around to reporting on what I did last Saturday night. Some friends and I went to see Lewis Black at the Orpheum Theater in downtown Los Angeles. He was very, very good.

This was, I think, the fifth time I've seen him perform live. The first was in a tiny theater and he was great. The second was in a way-too-big theater with bad sound and I'm not sure how good he was because I couldn't hear half of what he said — and we did not have bad seats. Since then, he seems to be working venues that are large but not too large.

As with most of the past times I've seen him, the show was opened by comedian John Bowman, who is very funny. When you're an opening act, a certain percentage of the audience tends to treat you like Muzak. They talk or check their cell phones and some are in no hurry to get to their seats before the headliner takes stage. Bowman was good enough that most people paid proper attention but when four people strolled noticeably to their second-row seats, he got a big laugh by saying to them, "Nice to have you here but you missed Lew. He went on first tonight!"

I liked John Bowman a lot. So apparently does Lewis Black. From our third-row seats, we could see him in the wings, watching the first half of Bowman's set from backstage. I thought that was nice. A lot of headliners don't treat their opening acts with a whole lot of respect.

The audience erupted when Black took stage. If you haven't seen him live, you haven't seen him. He's truly a great monologist and he always seems to have not only new material but timely material. About half of his act was about Donald Trump and his cabinet picks. As you might suspect, Black thinks Trump is an idiot and that the people who voted for him could not possibly have understood what they were getting. (If you haven't watched MSNBC lately, they seem to be finding a lot of Trump voters who are saying, "I never dreamed he'd really do most of those things he said.")

Black covered other topics, as well. He shares my dislike of Candy Corn and delivered an update on his previous rant against the stuff. He spent a lot of time talking about religion. His time on stage was not too short and not too long. It was just right.

You may be wondering how I got such good seats…third row center! And for face value. I'll let you in on the secret. Black has a fan club and you can join it at his website for $20 a year.

You get all sorts of perks and special offers but it's worth it just because you get early access to tickets for his concerts and you get great seats for face value. I paid $75 apiece (plus some handling fees) for the four seats a few months ago. Comparable tickets (or worse ones) were being scalped in the last few weeks for $150-$300 each. Go ahead. Tell me the fan club fee isn't a helluva bargain.

Among the other perks you get is access to the full online library of The Rant Is Due. I've explained about this before here but just in case you weren't paying attention…

Black closes each live show with a little webcast he calls The Rant Is Due. It's 20-30 minutes of him answering questions that have been e-mailed to him and on Saturday night — and this is a new addition — it also included an opening theme song by John Bowman and a few minutes of Bowman doing standup as well.

Everyone can watch these live at his website but that kinda means guessing when he's going to finish the main show. His Twitter feed may also tell you. It's easier to watch them several days later when they're posted to his site. The one I saw Saturday night has not yet been posted as I post this.

They only seem to ever have the five or six most recent ones available in the "free" part of the website. Anything older than that is in the section which can only be accessed by fan club members. There are well over a hundred there and some of them are very good…and those too are worth the $20 membership fee even if you never buy tickets.

However…well, I might as well post a small complaint here; not that Mr. Black or anyone close to him is likely to read this or heed my advice. I wish he wouldn't close the proceedings with these segments. The one he did Saturday night was fine but it was nowhere near as fine as what preceded it…so the evening didn't end on its highest note. If I were him, I'd do a half-hour, stop and do his webcast, then shut down the cameras and finish the show.

This is a very small gripe since everyone there, myself included, had a great time anyway. If he comes your way, join the club, score some good seats and go sit in them. He may be the smartest, funniest makes-you-think comic working today.

I was just reading this news report about the Bill Cosby trial in which he stands accusing of raping a lady named Andrea Constand. They're arguing over the prosecution's plan to bring in thirteen other women who claimed to have been molested by Cosby. The idea is to show a pattern of behavior. The defense opposes this and my eyebrows did a Groucho when I read this from the article…

"To come up with the required showing of a 'signature,' the commonwealth reaches for a cliché: a giant in the entertainment industry using his power to take advantage of young aspiring actresses. Even if proven, the age-old 'casting couch' is not unique to Mr. Cosby," defense lawyer Brian McMonagle wrote in an October defense brief opposing the testimony.

In other words: Even if he did his position of power to pressure women into having sex with him, that's not proof of anything since a lot of big stars and producers do that. What a wonderful defense.

And by the way, I don't think that's as common these days as some people think it is.

Fred Kaplan writes about Trump picking ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to serve as Secretary of State. It will not surprise you since it's Fred Kaplan and I'm linking to this article that Fred sees a genuine problem. It's the probability that Tillerson believes that what is best for the country will line up with what maximizes profits for the oil industry.

Apparently in the Trump White House, there will be no such thing as a Conflict of Interest. We seem to have elected General Bullmoose.

A few weeks ago when Florence Henderson died, I wrote here that she was very smart, utterly aware of her image and quite ready to screw with it and act "against type." She had a good sense of humor about herself and everything and was totally professional. I should have linked then to this video.

It's from the Broadway Backwards show for 2015. Broadway Backwards is another one of those shows staged by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS to raise dollars for their most worthy cause. The premise of Broadway Backwards is that male performers sing songs usually performed by females and vice-versa…so here we have Ms. Henderson singing a tune sung by a buncha sailors in South Pacific.

She was getting up in years, her voice was not what it once was — but she still managed to delight the audience…

Fred Kaplan writes about the Russian hacking to influence our presidential election and what can be done about it. (SPOILER ALERT: Not much.)

Is there anyone who thinks that if the Democrats had benefited from illegal Russian efforts, Republicans would ever stop screaming about it? They'd have Hillary impeached and charged with treason before she got her hand on the Bible.

According to this morn's ratings reports, The Dick Van Dyke Show – Now in Living Color! did great in total viewers, attracting more of them than a Simpsons episode on Fox and the movie Frozen on ABC. NBC had on a football game so the ratings there are a little more complicated, what with different things airing in different time zones.

But Rob, Laura, Sally, Buddy and Mel did attract 7.41 million viewers, which is pretty good. (Frozen got 6.50 but then again, everyone who loves Frozen or might love Frozen has already seen it thirty times and owns the Blu-ray.)

However! In the coveted 18-49 demographic though the Van Dyke rainbow extravaganza did pretty poorly, finishing a distant last in its time slot. Is this a calamity? I don't think so. 18-49 is a big deal because most advertisers want their commercials to reach that age group but there are sponsors who want to reach older folks…or at least don't mind. That's why there are channels like MeTV and Cozi TV and Antenna TV.

CBS is probably delighted. They had to know the show was going to get demos like it did and they scheduled it anyway. We seem to be reaching a time when there are so many channels and alternatives splitting up the viewing audience that a lot of networks will be happy to have anyone watching…even ancient, near-death people over the age of 50.

Bill Cosby's assault trial is set for next June. Here, the New York Post cites Fox News citing a "source close to the disgraced comedian" that he "plans to ask his attorneys to seek a plea deal to avoid a trial."

So one news source I don't trust cites another news source I don't trust saying that someone whose identity is unknown says that Cosby's going to do something he apparently hasn't done yet. Are we a wee bit skeptical this is so? It might be true. It also might be a completely bogus story but it could be predicting something that will actually happen. I believe all psychics are phony but occasionally, their guessing matches what turns out to be reality.

I'm just kinda wondering why any "source close to the disgraced comedian" would leak something like that.

But it is worth discussing: Would those who think Bill Cosby is guilty of some or all of the accusations feel justice was served if he avoids jail time? Suppose he confessed, apologized, paid some huge amount of money to the victim and paid a huger amount to some appropriate charity. And suppose you were satisfied that he really was almost blind and/or in failing health at age 79.

Would it matter to you if he promised to retire from performing? If the victim in this case said she was satisfied?

Or might you think that for such a high-profile star to not get prison time for such heinous deeds would make a mockery of Justice and the premise than no man is above the law? Theoretically, his wealth and power should have no impact on the verdict but we all know it does, and that it works both for him and against him.

I really don't know how I feel about this. If he didn't do time behind bars, I wouldn't think he'd "gotten away with it." But I also might feel he'd gotten off easy because he's a once-beloved star who has done some good in the world…and he shouldn't.

There's a certain kind of chain restaurant I tend to avoid except at Breakfast like Denny's and IHOP — and in Southern California and Vegas, there's DuPar's. They do eggs and French Toast well but come lunch hour, you might as well stay home and microwave a TV dinner. Back East, it's Bob Evans. Until recently, I lumped the local (to me) chain Norms in with the others.

But recently, I had occasion to have supper for reasons of convenience at the Norms over on La Cienega and it was surprisingly good, especially when the check came. It was about 75% as good as some so-called better restaurants that charge three times as much. The last time there, I ordered a steak and fried shrimp special that came with my choice of potato, soup and salad for around twenty bucks. The portions were not small and the food was not bad. The time before, I had a combo plate with chicken tenders, ribs and fried shrimp with the same extras for about the same price. Same opinion.

I also liked the classic decor and the mood…and the servers were awfully friendly 'n' funny, plus it's open 24/7. Definitely a place I now have on my "Places I Dine" list — and it looks like it'll be there indefinitely. A little less that two years ago (as reported here) it looked like it would be razed and replaced by some commercial enterprise of which L.A. probably already has more than enough. But there was an outcry, some sort of special Historical Status was bestowed on it, and it looks now like Norms on La Cienega is here to stay.

Alas, the same cannot be said for the Norms over on Pico, near where I grew up. That's it in the photo above and according to this report, it has only about two weeks to live. I hope that's not so and just not because of its history or architecture. In a time when a lot of poor people are really poor and the incoming regime in Washington seems concerned only with the income level of those making a grand or more per day, it's nice that there are places where someone can get a decent meal for twenty dollars.

The musical Jersey Boys will close on Broadway in a little more than a month, going into the books as one of the longest-running musicals there ever. And of course, it will continue to play elsewhere and it'll be back in a Broadway revival, faster than you can say "Frankie Valli."

Recently at the Gypsy of the Year Awards, various cast members staged a little tribute to their show. Here it is…

Okay, I watched it.  The colorization seemed okay to me. Everyone looked to me like they were wearing too much makeup and the Petrie living room looked too busy.  Those may have been the actual colors of the set but that set was designed to look right in black-and-white.

After a few minutes though, I stopped thinking about the color and just enjoyed the episodes.  What I didn't enjoy were the cuts in both episodes.  They each lost a couple of minutes — the top of the hospital scene in "That's My Boy," for instance.  The opening scene and tag in "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" were absent as were a few other bits.

I'm going to guess that later today, we'll hear that the ratings weren't great and the demographics were worse.  I was going to write that the numbers were probably fine given how cheap it is to air two old half-hours…but then I got to wondering what the colorization cost.  I have no idea what that costs these days.

I received a number of e-mails from foes of colorization but — no offense, people — none of them seemed worthy of posting here.  They all basically just said, "Colorization is bad because it desecrates the material" with no further argument.  Not much of a discussion there.  One person did write, "A movie should only be presented exactly the way its director intended."

Okay, if that's the way you want it, stop watching them on your home TVs and seek out theaters that still have 35mm (or in some cases, 70mm) projectors.  I don't think you're going to see very many movies and the ones that do turn up will probably have a lot of splices, scratches and missing scenes.  But if you want to do that, I admire your purity.

I knew that somewhere on my harddisk, I had a better photo of Richard Kyle and I found it. That's Richard on the right and I took this at one of the earliest San Diego Comic Cons. You now know that annual media-orgy as Comic-Con International but this was back when we convened at the El Cortez Hotel down there. This is probably from 1972 when we are all impressed that attendance topped 900. I did not accidentally leave any zeroes off that number.

The man on the left was the great comic book artist — best remembered probably as the creator of the Jonny Quest cartoon show — Doug Wildey. I have a vague recollection of the conversation that day.

I believe I introduced Doug to Richard and vice-versa, and Richard — who was quite familiar with Doug's work — began talking about how much he admired it and its value as creative art. He noted how Doug, who'd begun like so many as a Milton Caniff imitator, had developed a unique approach to the language of comics and graphic storytelling.

Doug was having none of that. More so then than later in his life, he'd pooh-pooh talk of enduring art and using the visual language to convey ideas. Richard often talked like that but Doug was more likely to hit you with "Hey, I just do it for the money. I just give the editors want they want, hand it in and cash the check!" And Richard just grinned — as you can see, he had a great smile — because he didn't buy a word of that. He knew Doug's work and knew how much passion and caring went into it.

Doug's defense mechanism — saying he didn't sweat over his work when clearly he did — was understandable, given the mores of the business in which he worked. The guys who really thought that way — and I encountered very few — may have been happier than those who gave every job their all, then watched it be badly-inked, needlessly-corrected, poorly-colored, cheaply-printed and quickly forgotten. It could break your heart if you didn't at least occasionally try to convince someone, including yourself, that the dough was all that mattered to you.

I knew Doug a while before I fully understood that about him. Richard got it immediately.

Richard was a very perceptive, good person. He was probably one of the first people ever to write about comic books from the viewpoint of an adult who understood and appreciated the form. He loved good comics but did not get childish or petulant about the bad ones. Almost instinctively, he seemed to understand the handicaps of the industry and so respected anyone who labored in it…even a guy like Doug Wildey whose work belied his claims about grabbing the cash and fleeing.

Richard saw trends coming. He and a fellow named Fred Patten opened a shop in Long Beach — a newsstand that specialized in comics and imported comics. Nowadays, you walk into a comic book shop and see hardcover comics, magnificently-printed comics, high-ticket comics. When Richard and Fred opened the Graphic Story Bookstore in Long Beach, it was amazing to see so many comics not printed on the cheapest paper stock. They'd scoured the world to find them and I recall Jack Kirby at the grand opening, holding court and predicting (correctly) that soon, there'd be comic book shops in every city filled with graphic novels and deluxe collections.

The store went through several names and locations, and Richard delved into publishing. I mentioned his magazine Graphic Story World, which he later retitled Wonderworld. He published other things, such as when he obtained the rights to the then defunct Argosy magazine and revived it with disastrous financial failure. Still, he was proud that he'd done it and of several things that were done for it.

Richard had become friends with Jack Kirby and had heard Jack tell long, wondrous tales of his childhood and of his service in World War II. For Argosy, he went to Jack and offered him a modest fee (though still a lot of money for Richard at the time) to draw a short story for the magazine — but he didn't want super-heroes or monsters. In fact, he didn't want to tell Jack at all what to draw. He said, approximately, "Just do something like one of those great stories you tell people."

What Jack produced was a tale called "Street Code," which a lot of people thought was the best thing he did late in his career. They also wished he'd done more like that and I still kick myself that I didn't arrange something like that. But Richard did. He was also wise enough to insist that he printed from Jack's pencil art instead of having someone else render it in ink.

When I did my 2008 book on Jack and his artistry, I knew I had to include that story. I didn't need his permission but I called Richard to tell him what I planned to do, to ask that he let me interview him about how it came to be…and what did he have in the way of stats or reproduction materials?

Before I knew it, he'd made the hour drive to my doorstep. He gave me the photostats and original film negatives he had, then we sat in a deli for hours talking about the origin of the story, as well as other topics. He did not ask for any money or even that I say anything in particular about him or his vital role in making the story happen. He was just so proud to see it published again and to have it in a fancy book about Jack. That was Richard.

(He did Jack another favor, too. When Jack found himself at one point without anyone local who could ink his comic book work for DC, Richard helped arrange for an artist friend who occasionally worked in his store, D. Bruce Berry, to audition for the job. Bruce inked Jack's work for several years.)

There is much more I could write about Richard Kyle but someone else already did a better job than I could. Our mutual friend Alan Brennert is an acclaimed novelist and TV writer-producer. He also made some brief forays into writing comic books that were so memorable that DC Comics recently brought out a book that collects just about everything he ever did for them.

Alan is a true hero for all the aid he gave Richard in the last few years but does not mention that in this piece he posted last night on Facebook. He gave me permission to quote it in full here — so here's another testimony to what a great, important guy Richard Kyle was…

My friend Richard Kyle passed away this morning, after the latest in a long series of aftereffects from a stroke in 2014. He was 87 years old. He had been living in a nursing home in Long Beach, California, which is where I met him back in 1974.

I was a recent immigrant to California and knew virtually no one on this coast; I walked into what was then called Graphic Story Bookshop, began talking with the jovial, smart, funny man behind the counter, and we kept talking for most of the following 42 years. In addition to owning a successful bookstore for over 20 years, Richard was a brilliant writer and critic and a founding member of comic book fandom.

It was he who coined the term "graphic novel" that we now see labeling bookshelves at Barnes & Noble. He and Dennis Wheary published George Metzger's Beyond Time and Again, which was the first self-labeled graphic novel, and as publisher of the revived Argosy, he solicited and published Jack Kirby's famous story "Street Code."

I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than I to talk about his seminal work in comics fandom. Personally, I can't begin to say how much Richard meant to me — from giving me a job at his bookshop when I was a college student to letting me type up the manuscript of my first book on the Selectric typewriter in his office, to simply being a friend to me and to so many creative types who wandered into Wonderworld Books (later Richard Kyle, Books) in the 1970s.

It was a magnet that attracted talented people like Phillip Dana Yeh, Glen Murakami, Roberta Gregory, Greg Bear, Herb Patterson, LeClair Pearson, and many others I'm probably too scattered to recall just now. Richard encouraged all of us to pursue our dreams and always had something fascinating and illuminating to say on almost every subject. He was a kind, generous, deeply honest man, and I will always treasure his friendship.

Goodbye, Richard; goodbye my old friend. Thank you for welcoming the 19-year-old me into your bookstore. My life has been the richer for it.