Everyone out there seems to be trying to identify the moral of the presidential election. Jonathan Chait thinks the moral is that there is no moral.

I dunno. I think one is that the American people will decide emotionally that they like or dislike a candidate and then will steadfastly believe any story or claimed "fact" that supports that selection, no matter how ridiculous it is. And I expect those who backed Trump will soon find a moral that has something to do with being careful what you wish for.

Some friends and I went to see The Black Version, a troupe of improv players I've raved about before here. The working premise of their shows — and this is grounded in sad reality — is that there aren't enough decent roles for black actors in Hollywood. So what they do is take some movie suggested by the audience and improvise "The Black Version" of it. Last night, it was "What if Love, Actually had featured all black actors?" I can't tell you how funny it was.

Directing it all is Karen Maruyama, who is real good at setting up scenes, getting out of the actors' way and then knowing when to call for the blackout. The performers occasionally vary but last night, the cast consisted of (left to right in the above pic) Cedric Yarbrough, Phil LaMarr, Nyima Funk, Jordan Black, Gary Anthony Williams and Daniele Gaither. Usually in an improv company, you have a couple of stand-out performers and the rest work in support. Not with these folks. No one stood out because everyone stood out.

I already knew how brilliant Phil LaMarr was, having worked with him a few times, plus he often appears on the Cartoon Voices panels I host at conventions. And I'd seen Gary Anthony Williams, who has been on a lot of episodes of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, where he's been indecently funny. Like all the folks on the stage last night, he's amazing when he takes whatever he's given — the briefest suggestion of a character, the slightest plot situation — and surprises the hell outta you with where he takes it.

And so fast. Most improv comedy doesn't stand up to retelling the next day because it's of the moment and it works in context. It's like I can tell you what a great magician did but if you weren't there to see him do it, you just plain won't be that impressed. The next performance of The Black Version in Los Angeles has not yet been scheduled but they'll be at Sketchfest in San Francisco on January 21, plus some of the players will be in other shows there. You can find out about that and read bios of all these funny thespians here.

I'll let you know when they're up in L.A. again because if you're close enough to see them, you really oughta see them. I think they're kinda good.

Here are some excerpts from a longer interview with Eric Idle about how the troupe is dealing with the sad dementia of its beloved member Terry Jones.

The conversation includes Idle talking about how they helped Jones get through the O2 concerts. It occurs to me that at the time, a lot of us wondered why the Pythons were insisting those would be their final appearances and why they weren't scheduling a few more in America. Well, now we know.

I wrote back here about The Illusionists, a show full of great magicians now playing on Broadway. Here's a little preview. The fellow stuck in the rings is my pal Charlie Frye and the lady helping him is his wonderful spouse Sherry…

Okay, now I'm starting to get pissed. As you may recall, I am perpetually plagued by unsolicited phone calls from people who want to sell me things. My being on the Do Not Call list means nothing to these people and no, it doesn't work for me to just not answer calls where the Caller I.D. doesn't display the name of someone I know.

I occasionally get calls that I would not want to miss. When my mother was in her last years, they were occasionally from her doctors or other parties concerning her health and there was no way to differentiate them when the phone rang. And one time not long ago, it was from a friend who was using a stranger's cell phone to call me about something urgent. I remember thinking, "I'm glad I answered that call." So I answer the phone when it rings…usually.

I do not like the sales calls and will never ever in a million years buy anything that way. Still, my dislike of them in no way diminishes their volume. Most come from folks repping Contractors and others involved in home repair and about half of those start with this script…

Hello, Mr. [My surname, mispronounced], this is [The caller's name] with [Name of company]. I spoke with you last May about possible improvements on your home and you were very nice to me then and you told me to call back about now. If you're ready now, I'd like to send one of our people out to give you a free estimate…

Depending on my mood at the time, I may call the person a liar or I may say something like, "Oh jeez, I'm sorry you didn't call back last month. I've got a crew here right now doing a hundred thousand dollars worth of home repair. You could have gotten the commission on it!" I have other things I say to them too but none of them involve letting their estimator come over.

A lot of those callers are pushing solar panels and want to explain to me how government tax credits will pay "most" of the cost. I usually tell them I don't use electricity — only flashlight batteries.

Not long ago, this group of merry contractor callers was joined by another industry that likes to phone me at ungodly hours. I am soon to turn 65 so various companies now want to sign me up for add-on programs for Medicare or for insurance plans that interface with my Medicare. These, of course, presume that there will still be Medicare next March…which is looking kinda iffy. Last I heard, Republicans want to repeal and replace it with a plan that will give you half-off on the walkers that are sold at Walgreens

But today, just about a half-hour ago, I got a new entrant in the "Let's Phone Mark and Annoy Him" Competition. So far, this is the most annoying of them all and I assume it keys off my approaching milestone age. A woman called representing some company with "Senior" in its name to offer me a package deal on "final expenses." In other words, plans for what's going to happen to my body when I die.

I was about to tell her, "I will welcome that moment because then these calls will stop" but then I realized: When my mother died four years ago, I switched her mailing address to mine. I receive all mail addressed to her and a lot of it relates to Medicare and insurance and other things that won't do her a whole lot of good these days. Some of it is even offers to handle her "final expenses," even though she was cremated in 2012.

So I guess these calls will go on for all eternity. In this country, death does not mean the end of someone trying to sell you something you don't need.

One of my favorite 60's musical groups, The Turtles, has settled a big, whopping lawsuit against Sirius XM Satellite Radio for playing their records without compensation. Good for them.

Like everyone else, you've probably wondering what would have resulted if instead of writing and starring in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the rest of that cast had instead done Sweeney Todd. Well, we need not wonder any longer. This past April, the cast of Hamilton opened the 30th Annual Easter Bonnet Competition with their interpretation of the classic tale of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

The Easter Bonnet Competition of one of many fund-raising events staged each year by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, one of the nation's leading nonprofit fundraising and grant-making organizations. A few days from now, they'll be presenting their annual Gypsy of the Year shows in New York and I sure wish I could be there for one of them. They always feature several things as clever and creative as this…

Much of the Trump ascendancy was built on preaching against illegal immigrants, especially illegal immigrants who take jobs from real Americans. The facts say those numbers are low but facts don't matter a lot these days, especially to people who are afraid of foreigners or who aren't working and like that as a reason. Personally, I don't care that much about "the illegals" and I cringe at the racism that is sometimes expressed against both legal and illegal immigrants.

If I did think it was vital to purge our population of illegal aliens…well, there's an easy way to do it that would be more effective than building a wall or sending a lot of armed guys who think they're Chuck Norris to guard the border. You create an efficient way — unlike the current one, which is easy to work around — to verify that someone is in this country legally. Then you require employers to use that method and verify legal status, plus — and you have to do this part — you impose stiff fines and even jail time for employers who don't verify.

You do that, illegals can't get jobs in this country. And if they can't get jobs in this country, they'll go to some other country or don't come here in the first place. Simple as it could be.

But as Wayne Cornelius notes, Republicans don't want to do that. Much of their base demands they do something about the illegals but Republican leadership isn't about pleasing its base. It's about pleasing rich people, corporate owners and employers — and those people like illegal aliens because they work cheap.

Also, those people don't want to be slapped with stiff fines or face jail. As Cornelius notes, employers who do hire illegals face less than a microscopic chance of being caught under the current system and if they are caught, the penalties are mild.

Let's see what Mr. Trump will do to change this…but I kinda doubt we'll wind up with anything that would ever cause any Trump business — most of which have employed illegals — to have ever faced fines or jail. They also won't threaten fines or jail against the businesses that hired Mrs. Trump when she worked without the proper work visa.

12/08/80 was the day John Lennon was murdered outside his New York apartment. There are a lot of ugly events that jolted the world but that one hit very hard. It's surprising I guess that someone waited this long to do a movie about that day but someone has. The Lennon Report is a docudrama about it and I'm going to be seeing it on 12/08/16 at the Los Angeles premiere. According to the press release, "Red carpet and musical guests are scheduled prior to the screening and director Jeremy Profe will take questions after the film along with Karen Tsen Lee who plays Yoko Ono."

It's at the Crest Theater in Westwood, a place where I saw movies as a child but I haven't been inside since around 1975. I hear it's changed. The press release also says…

The Crest is a unique combination of historical charm and modern performance technology and capabilities. Commissioned by Francis Seymour Fonda in 1940, the 460 seat theater houses a single movie screen with the ability to show 35 and 75mm films, a 4K digital projector, Dolby Digital sound, and an entertainment stage for live shows. In 2008, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted unanimously to recommend the theater as a City of Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. The theater is gearing up to present a compelling mix of programming to the Los Angeles community in 2017 and invites programmers to creatively use the space.

So I'm interested to see the movie and the movie theater. You may be able to score tickets for the premiere at the Crest's website.

Dozens of people sent me e-mails about my post which said — tongue planted firmly in cheek — that toilet paper should always come off the front of the roll, not the back. One of them, Doug Edwards, came up with the clever subject line above so I'm running his e-mail here. They all said pretty much the same thing…

There's a very simple, practical reason for having the leading edge of the toilet paper hanging from the back instead of the front, at least for those with toddler children and/or pets: it keeps the toilet paper on the roll in the event of pawing, swatting, or other (typically downward) gestures that would otherwise unroll the TP onto the floor.

At least some of us who've come into a bathroom to discover such unrolled toilet paper would rather not re-experience that grief, and thus indulge ourselves in an apparently patent-violating roll reversal. But believe me on this: the reason is practical, not esthetic or general contrariness.

As many surmised, I don't have cat in my home or, for that matter, a child. (I do still feed feral cats in my backyard.) Okay, fine. Whatever. It's not like I was about to pass a law as to how you had to put your toilet paper in the holder. Donald Trump probably is but I'm not.

Matt Taibbi interviews Bernie Sanders on where we go from here. I'm impressed with most of Bernie's goals but he doesn't seem to have much of an idea right now as to how to achieve them.

I keep forgetting to plug what's on Stu's Show. Tomorrow, Stu has on my good buddy Michael Schlesinger, one of the great authorities on motion pictures and, in his past life as an exec for what is now Sony Pictures. Mike's a guy who saved many great films from disappearing forever and caused others to be released on home video. He hosts film festivals and creates the wonderful Biffle & Shooster comedies I've mentioned here before and he does all sorts of neat things. If you're a Godzilla fan, you'll especially want to hear about his involvement with some of those films. If you aren't a Godzilla fan, listen in anyway because you'll learn a lot about the movie biz and film history.

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, which is always nice. I've had one knee replacement. If I ever need to have the other knee done, I'm going to pay for one more so I can get four for the price of three.

This is important enough for me to interrupt the script I have to finish today and come back here to post it.  As all of you are aware I'm sure, it matters a lot which way the toilet paper comes off the roll.  It should hang off the front (as in the photo at left below) not the rear (as in the photo at right).

As I wrote back here, I once did a show with Jerry Lewis and we were warned that he would walk out on the taping if the john in his dressing room had an incorrectly-mounted roll of toilet  paper.  I do not think the person who told me this was kidding.

In this world, there is no fact or truth so universally accepted that someone won't insist on the opposite.  Well, we have now have proof — or at least as much as we're ever going to get — that the front overhang is the correct configuration. Writer Owen Williams dug up the 1891 patent for perforated toilet paper and the device that holds it. It clearly shows how it was supposed to work.

I can't think of any reason to have it hang down the back unless it's that you want to get Jerry Lewis out of the building. Then again, that might be a great reason.

I'm sure I'll have more before long but these will do for now…

1. People who hated Barack Obama, spread the idea that he really wasn't President because he was a Kenyan (i.e., not a white guy) and prayed for the Congress to block every single thing he did just because he was the one doing it…and now say that for the good of America, we've all got to forget everything Trump said and did during the campaign, come together and root for him to succeed. I could and would get behind most of that if they'd done it for Obama and also if their idea of "working together" wasn't to give them every single thing they want.
2. People who voted and campaigned for Trump, cheered his election and are now starting to say, "They're going to do what to my Medicare (or other health insurance) and Social Security?" Bonus peeve points if they believed, as most Americans do, that Climate Change is a real and present threat but they still celebrated the election of a guy who said it was a hoax engineered by the Chinese. Trump's not going to let anything happen that will lessen that danger until at least three of his golf courses are underwater and several caddies drown.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be mud-wrestling a script deadline for the rest of today and another one tomorrow.  I'll get back here when I can.

William Saletan writes a guide on How to Manipulate Donald Trump. Basically, Saletan says, you pat him on the head, tickle him under the chin and tell him he's great. Then he'll do anything you want.

Which would be nice if it were true. The trouble with that is there are other people with opposite goals patting him on the head, tickling him under the chin and telling him he's great. Also, I suspect you could kiss that man's ass for a month and he still wouldn't do anything that would prevent a guy like him from making as much money as possible.