Jeffrey Toobin, who does not have a bad track record in this area, makes seven predictions about legal matters for 2017. He tells us who he thinks Trump will nominate to the Supreme Court and he thinks Bill Cosby is going to be convicted of assault. Let's see if he's right.

Looks like a busy day here at Evanier HQ so not a lot of posting on this here blog today. Might I remind you I'll be heard on the big Tenth Anniversary webcast of Stu's Show today at 4 PM my time? Details are in the previous post.

I'm not paying a whole heap of attention to Mr. Trump this week because a lot of what's going on sounds like posturing and speculation from all sides. It is beginning to look like one big aspect of the Trump Presidency is going to be our Chief Exec's regular temper tantrums when a large part of the country refuses to recognize him as legitimate or respectable. Any day now, he may start threatening to deport anyone who insists Hillary Clinton (or anyone who ever ran for the presidency) got more votes than he did.

It also looks like Paul Ryan would let Trump start robbing liquor stores and running a white slavery ring if wealthy Americans got a good enough tax cut. I somehow don't recall the Tea Party movement was about running America to benefit the rich and letting the president ignore the Constitution when he feels like it. But hey, if that's what they wanted…

I'll be TiVoing tonight's live broadcast of Hairspray for future viewing and discussion. I like these prime-time musicals but I wish more of the attention was on the shows, as opposed to the stunt of doing them live. In the advance publicity, it sometimes feels like a reality show about "behind the scenes," as opposed to a theatrical event. I expect it'll be a good show, though Hairspray is pretty broad comedy and it's going to be hard for Martin Short and Harvey Fierstein to overact their roles. Somehow though, I'm confident they'll each find a way.

A topic for a further post here: The other day, I came across an article on a forum about comic books in which some fellow was raving about a certain series that came out years ago. On and on, he went about that a brilliant, perfect, genius, fabulous comic this was…a series that I recall finding boring and quite unreadable. I also recall a lot of other people feeling as I did, including many at the company that published it.

Now, that's fine, of course. My tastes don't match up with many others', nor should they. What struck me was how this commentator didn't seem to really think his view is darn near unanimous and inarguable. That something is good and that something is widely recognized as good are two very separate things and the latter, unlike the former, is not utterly subjective.

The article reminded me a lot of a friend I have who continues to argue that in the election just past, vastly more Americans wanted Bernie Sanders than any other candidate. Even though I voted for Bernie in the primary, I don't think the evidence supports that, even if you're only talking about Democrats, let alone those who think liberal = evil. I guess I have a problem with folks conflating the two separate views — "I feel this way" with "everybody feels this way" — and think it leads to a lot of disconnect.

You'd think that if the Internet teaches us anything, it teaches us that there are a lot of viewpoints out there that are the inverse of ours. I think this gets back to the Trump voters out there who simply refuse to believe any numbers that show that more Americans — and not by a tiny margin — wanted someone else. More on this and everything else at a later time.

Ten years ago, I told you to give a listen to the first installment of something called Stu's Show, which my pal Stu Shostak was doing on the Internet — a talk show about the entertainment industry. It was mostly about television and mostly about older television and his first guest was me. His third guest was also me and I've been on many times since even as the guest roster has gotten better and better. I guess when you start with me, it would kind of have to.

In those ten years, Stu has welcomed onto his show the likes of Dick Van Dyke, Jonathan Winters, Bob Barker, Julie Newmar, Shelley Berman, Ed Asner, Shirley Jones, Stan Freberg, Carl Reiner, Monty Hall, Bonnie Franklin, Rose Marie, Pat Harrington, June Foray, William Schallert, Geoff Edwards, Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, Gregg Berger, Hank Garrett, Howard Storm, Marty Ingels, Gary Owens, Ken Levine, Bob Bergen, Sergio Aragonés, Jerry Beck, Bill Mumy, Robert Clary, Angela Cartwright, Joe Alaskey, Vince Waldron, Jerry Eisenberg, Floyd Norman, Scott Shaw!, Leonard Maltin, Carl Gottlieb, Kato Kaelin, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, Chuck McCann, Stan and Barry Livingston and so many others.

I will be back on with him — as will another frequent guest, TV historian Wesley Hyatt — for another in Stu's never-ending series of webcasts about the history of Late Night Television. This time, we're up to Tom Snyder getting fired and hired, Johnny Carson quitting, Jay Leno getting his job and David Letterman going elsewhere. There should also be time for some of the questions that Stu's loyal listeners will send in via e-mail. So won't you join us?

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. Tomorrow's will probably go to three and beyond. In any case, 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, which is a better bargain than you'll find at Costco. Stu, however, does not make you buy a ten-year supply.

Back when the Playboy Channel started on cable, they had a series of executives who operated on the false principle that there were things their subscribers wanted to watch other than nude women. This was apparently what they had to tell certain higher execs (especially Mr. Hefner) in order to get the job. Hef always wanted to believe that the Playmates were just one reason of many that people bought the magazine…and that may have been so but it wasn't true of the channel.

When there were no nude women, there were no viewers. But for a few years there, they produced and programmed a lot of shows that either contained no nude women or at least long periods when there were no nude women. Eventually, as Playboy's fortunes declined, they surrendered and began giving the audience what it wanted. Before that capitulation, they ran a lot of really odd shows.

I got the station for free back then and I remember many cheaply-produced roasts starring older comedians. In one, Comedians A, B and C would roast Comedian D…and then in the next one, Comedians B, C and D would roast Comedian A and then in the next one….well, you get the concept. The budgets apparently did not allow for writers so little or nothing was prepared specific to the person being roasted. The comics would just get up, do their usual acts and try to work the name of the "honoree" into the jokes somewhere.

The following is an example. It's from a roast of Milton Berle…and I suspect if you were a comedy writer back then, there was no easier assignment you could get than to write jokes about Milton Berle. You could write about his dick, about his age, about his thievery of everyone else's jokes…it was a cinch. As I recall, almost no one had much to say about those topics. They just told dirty stories and tossed Uncle Miltie's name in here and there. Here's Jackie Vernon doing that…

As Jonathan Chait notes, Mike Pence is really impressed with how Donald Trump's shoulders qualify the man as a great leader. That's right: His shoulders.

One of the many things I think some Trump supporters got wrong about Trump is that they thought he was a macho, strong man…which is all some people seem to want in a candidate. Knowledge…good judgment…basic understanding of human needs? Who cares about that stuff if he's John Wayne? The two times I've seen Trump in person, he did not strike me as that. He struck me as a bully who expects to have his ass kissed and throws tantrums when he doesn't get his way. I imagine we're about to see a lot of that.

Jimmy Kimmel has been tagged to host the Academy Awards next February. I doubt this has much to do with his hosting skills and everything to do with his network's new deal with the Motion Picture Academy. It gives ABC much more control over the broadcast and they, of course, decided it would best be used to promote their late night star. Also, Kimmel has the advantage that the telecast is literally across the street from where he does his show.

My own feeling is that the host is largely irrelevant to the ratings of that event. What matters is whether it's a year where people really care who wins Best Picture or Best Actor or Best Actress. Once in a while, they even care who wins Best Director. I'm not sure that any of the films of this year, including those yet to open, are the kind that generate intense loyalty and emotions. We'll see.

I think history has shown that the best Oscar hosts are those who are either Big Movie Stars or Johnny Carson. But there is no more Johnny Carson and I wonder how many Big Movie Stars would risk their Big Movie Stardom on a highly-visible gig that is not what they do best, nor is it one that is really in their control. If I were in charge of picking a host, I'd try to get Kevin Hart, and not just to make sure there'd be a least one black person on the stage. And if I were Kevin Hart's agent, I'd tell him he'd be insane to accept.

• Paul Ryan says it'll "take time" to craft a replacement plan for Obamacare. Guess we're lucky all his instant repeal attempts failed.

Jonathan Chait on how some Republican leaders aren't even pretending to care about Donald Trump's ethical transgressions, especially the ones that relate to personal enrichment from public office.

Let's see if I understand how this works: If Hillary Clinton is accused of something shady, we investigate it and if the investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing, we investigate it again and if that investigation uncovers no wrongdoing…

But if it's Donald Trump, hey, the American people don't care about that…

A song from Kristin Chenoweth…

• I hope at the end of four years, Trump's record on job creation shows more than the one he seems to have created for Alec Baldwin.

What do you think is the all-time best-selling album/CD of a Broadway-style musical? I took two guesses before I looked at this list of the 41 best-selling ones and I was wrong. My first guess turned out to be #8 and my second guess came in at #3. Betcha #5 is eventually #1.

Last night, I went to see a new production of Merrily We Roll Along at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills. It's there through December 18 and tickets are still available — though apparently not many since it's real good. Director Michael Arden has reconceived the show in a way, staging it on a unique set. There are areas like small backstage dressing rooms all around with mirrors ringed in light bulbs, and sometimes you see actors at them getting ready for their next entrance.

Also, as you may know, the show is about three Old Friends — played here expertly by Wayne Brady, Aaron Lazar and Donna Vivino. But they're also played by three younger actors who appear and reappear, dancing about like real-time flashbacks, a la the dream sequence in Oklahoma! or maybe the ghosts in Follies. It seemed to me like an effective way to underscore the conceit of Merrily, which is that we are watching key moments from the Old Friends' lives in reverse. I've seen this show several times but never a production with this much unity and grace as it rewinds three lives.

And yes, that's Wayne Brady from Let's Make a Deal and Whose Line Is It Anyway? playing Charlie the Lyricist. I would not have thought of him in the role as Charlie is usually played by someone weaker and more nebbishy than Mr. Brady but it worked fine, maybe even a little better that the traditional way. His partner Franklin seems less unlikeable, less like he's taking advantage of a partner who can't fight back.

(Brady inserts a few moments of mime and improvisation that were not in the book by George Furth. They're funny but reviewers seem to think they're out of character. I'm not sure. Maybe they change the character for the better, just as the casting of someone who seems less a victim does.)

Merrily We Roll Along is, of course, one of those Sondheim musicals that didn't work on Broadway — it lasted 16 performances — but which lives on in production after production, each trying to find a way to finesse its inherent structural problems. This version did that for me. I stayed with it, fully engrossed, in a way that I don't think I did in previous versions I've seen.

It's not a happy story. It's about the failure of idealism — three starry-eyed kids who envision doing great things with their careers and though they achieve some of what most would call success, wind up unfulfilled and unhappy. Because the story is told in reverse, we see the unfulfillment and unhappiness at the beginning and the youthful idealism at the end, which makes the idealism seem sappy and naive.

But along the way, you also see things happen which change the context and explanation for events and clashes you've already seen and with that comes a kind of understanding of how deeds and decisions have consequences — an effect-and-cause relationship. If that's what the playwrights intended when they said "Let's tell the story backwards," this production achieved it. I really liked it. It also helped that the cast is so strong and that they sing Mr. Sondheim's lyrics with expert clarity, which not every singer of Sondheim can manage.

Like I said, some seats are still available. Goldstar has some of the cheaper seats but I doubt they have many. And if you've never been to the Wallis, it's not only one of the newest theaters in town, it's also one of the nicest. I guess you'd call this a real good review.

This is a "quote-along" for a classic Monty Python sketch. For those of you who weren't quite sure what some of those lines were, I guess…

On Monday, Turner Classic Movies has quite the buffet for lovers of obscure, early talking pictures, especially shorts which in some cases have had little to no televised airplay.  I suggest you go look at the entire schedule but here are some nuggets…

• Paree, Paree — This was one of Bob Hope's earliest talking shorts…and it's full of Cole Porter tunes.
• Art Trouble — A 1934 comedy with Shemp Howard and a bunch of comics you never heard of. But there's an unbilled bit player in there making what may have been his screen debut…kid name of Jimmy Stewart.
• Seeing Red — A 1939 short that showcased Red Skelton and some variety acts of the time. One of the acts was A. Robins, "The Banana Man," who I wrote about back here.
• Ups and Downs — A 1937 short with Jule Allyson and Phil Silvers. I'll watch anything with Phil Silvers in it.
• Cab Calloway in 'Hi De Ho' — Twelve minutes of Cab Calloway. How can that not be wonderful?
• Home Run on the Keys — I've never seen this 1937 short but how can you pass up a musical starring Babe Ruth?
• An All-Colored Vaudeville Show — From 1935, it's a chance to see black performers from that era, including the Nicholas Brothers when they were quite young.
• Buzzin' Around — Contrary to popular belief, the screen career of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle did not end with his 1921-1922 murder trials. He did make something of a comeback, including a few talkies. This was one of his last films, released the same year as his death, 1933.
• Ramblin' Round Radio Row 4 — Radio stars of the day (1932) including Baby Rose Marie, who would grow up to be one of America's great comediennes.
• Baby Rose Marie: The Child Wonder — And here she is, three years before Ramblin' Round Radio Row 4 in her own short.
• Lambchops — This is from 1929 and it's George Burns and Gracie Allen doing their most famous vaudeville routine. Gracie does all the heavy lifting.

And there are many others, including a lot of shorts that are just filmed vaudeville acts or big bands doing their stage shows.  Check out the list.  It may be a long time before they or anyone runs most of these films again.