• Donald Rumsfeld has endorsed Hillary. I thought she was a thousand times better than Trump but because of this, I may have to reconsider.

Here's an awesome bit of video — a musical number from The Steve Allen Show for February 9, 1958. Give it a look and then we'll discuss what you just saw…

Okay, first off: That was a four-minute song that was done, I'm fairly sure, live from the NBC Studios in Burbank. The singers are all lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track but they really do wander out of Studio 1, down through the scenery docks, then back around to Studio 1. Studio 1, by the way, is where Johnny Carson did his show for many, many years.

The number involves Steve Allen (who wrote the song they're singing), Ann Sothern, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Dinah Shore and a man some probably thought was Frank Sinatra. It's actually a Sinatra impersonator…almost certainly Duke Hazlitt, who was then doing a Sinatra "tribute" act in Las Vegas.

But the real stars of the number were the director and the camera operators and crew. There were no lightweight TV cameras in those days and certainly no Steadicams. It also had to be a bitch to light this thing…and remember they had to get it in one take.

I'm guessing they had a real, real long cable on a camera and a whole bunch of guys who were pulling it taut so it never got into the shot while other crew members guided the cameraman backwards. From the shadows at the beginning and end, you can also see there was a cue card guy who was presumably walking backwards through the entire number…and probably a stage manager or choreographer who was pacing the entire thing. I have no idea what kind of speakers they had and how they were placed so the performers could hear the track.

But it's one camera, one take, no edits…not easy to do now, even more difficult to do back then. Hope you're as impressed as I am. (And by the way, I don't think this was a "first." I'm pretty sure Spike Jones had already done something like this a few times…and from the same studio.)

The real polls — as opposed to the ones Donald Trump sometimes cites — suggest a good chance of him going down to a smashing defeat. Now, let's acknowledge that it's possible the polls are wrong and also that it's possible that in the next three weeks, someone will come up with THE SHOCKING REVELATION THAT WILL FOREVER DESTROY HILLARY CLINTON AND PUT HER BEHIND BARS that right-wing sites have been promising their followers for a decade or two now.

But it's at least possible that analysts like Nate Silver who give Hillary a 90% chance of winning are right. I'm curious what they believe in those little rooms where Trump meets with his advisors. I understand him saying in public that the polls are bogus, the media is lying, the election is rigged, it's everyone's fault but mine. What do they really think in there?

They've decided not to campaign in certain states. Some reports (like this one) say they're giving up on Virginia, for instance. They have limited resources and using them to best advantage requires that they have a realistic assessment of where there's a chance and where there isn't. When this campaign started, Trump declared he would campaign in California and New York and would win them but he never meant that. His campaign gave up on them on the first day.

If you or I were running for President — and I'm not sure we both shouldn't have this time — we'd have a big chart or map of all the states and we'd mark off which ones we had in the bag, which ones we couldn't possibly win and which ones were worth fighting for. Every time something changed, we ask the question, "How do we get to 270?" But does Trump do that? I'm not saying he doesn't. I'm genuinely curious.

In 2012, Mitt Romney allowed a documentary crew to film in the suite as he awaited the results on Election Night, watching as he found out if he was going to become President of the United States or Walter Mondale. I'm not sure any other major candidate has ever allowed that and the Netflix documentary — it was called Mitt — showed why not. The clip I'm about to link to doesn't show you the full extent of despair and disappointment in that suite as Romney and his family came to see what the outcome would be.

Watching the full documentary, I felt like he really believed he would win and I thought, "I knew he wasn't going to win…why didn't he?" Or at least, why did he seem so unprepared for it? Was he surrounded with people who told him what he wanted to hear? Or what they thought he wanted to hear?

I suppose after the current election is over, several folks in the Trump campaign will write "tell-all" books in order to cash in and to give their explanations of why they weren't responsible for the mistakes. I'll be curious to see what they say was really on the candidate's mind…assuming something was. For now, here's the trailer for the documentary on Romney…

Well, I got through all of yesterday without posting anything about the election. Give me some credit for that.

Matt Taibbi has a good essay up on how Trump is the by-product of a lot of tensions in our political system and especially in the Republican Party. Here's my favorite paragraph from it…

The House speaker [Paul Ryan] had held a conference call with elected Republicans, telling them they were free to yank support from Trump if they thought it would help them win in November. This sounds like a good decision, until you consider that it's one he should have made the moment Trump sealed the nomination. As always, the Republicans acted far too late in disavowing vicious and disgusting behavior in their ranks. Then again, it's hard to keep the loons out when you're scraping to find people willing to sell rich-friendly policies to a broke population. The reaction among hard-line legislators was predictable: You're telling us now we can't be pigs?

Nate Silver says that Hillary's lead is pretty solid, though not to be taken for granted. Frankly, I'm getting more interested in the chances of the Democrats recapturing the Senate, which Silver currently pegs as a 65.2% chance.

Hey, if you know any Bernie Sanders supporters who are still hesitant about voting for Hillary Clinton, remind them of this: Right now, the best thing that could happen to advance the positions on which Sanders campaigned would be for the Democrats to control the Senate. That would install Bernie as the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, a very powerful perch indeed. He and President H. Clinton could work together to pass the proposals of his that she has adopted and if she didn't push for them, he'd have the clout to retaliate. It's unlikely the Democrats can take the Senate if Hillary doesn't take the presidency.

I'm not looking forward to the Wednesday debate and I suspect even people who pay to see mud wrestling are asking, "Does there have to be a third one?" I have no idea what Trump should do or will do except that those will probably be contradictory choices. I keep looking for areas of agreement with him and I found a partial one in this tweet this morning…

He's wrong of course that the media is rigging the election, unless you think it's rigging to give him a little more air time than his opponent instead of a lot more, like they used to do.  He's also wrong that the Alec Baldwin impression isn't good.  But "the boring and unfunny show"?  Hey, when the man's right, he's right.

And hasn't it been kind of interesting watching this election morph from a referendum on Immigration to a referendum on Women's Rights?  In a sense, those are the same issues because they're both about controlling the power of white male privilege…or even acknowledging that there is such a thing.

Twenty-two days until the election. One of the less-important annoyances I want to have be over is the use of the word "meltdown" to describe any slight displeasure or lack of a smile on the part of anyone running for office or speaking on behalf of someone running for office. Remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy threw water on the Wicked Witch? How about the scene in The Terminator where the titanium skeleton of the title character turned into molten metal? Those were meltdowns. What we're seeing identified as such these days are someone getting a little flustered or pissed. And lately, we all have good reasons to be flustered or pissed.

As some of you guessed, the lady in the Anacin commercial I featured here yesterday was Janet Waldo, the wonderful cartoon voice actress best known as the voice of Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and so many others. I had seen that commercial 72,569,102 times (actual count) but until I saw it at Janet's memorial a few weeks ago, it hadn't dawned on me that was her. Janet did a fair amount of on-camera work over the years and she hated it. She was much more comfortable doing voiceovers in radio and later in commercials and animation. The commercial was a surprise to me. I guess I didn't expect to ever see sweet, lovely Janet losing her temper.

I suppose it says something about unemployment or the economy but in many large cities, areas have sprung up where almost anyone who can work up a neat-looking costume can hang around and pose for photos with tourists in exchange for tips. This reportedly goes on a lot in Times Square in New York and on Fremont Street in Las Vegas.

In Los Angeles, the main place is on Hollywood Boulevard near the famed Chinese Theater and the massive Hollywood-Highland entertainment center. Right now if I was broke, I could make myself a Batman costume, go up there every day and charge people five bucks — or whatever the market would bear — to take a selfie or snap with me.

As this article explains, there are those who don't like these street performers. They block traffic (some say) and there are occasional reports of fights or accidents or tourists who are somehow ripped-off for more than a modest tip. There is talk of limiting their presence or requiring permits or something. In Vegas, only a certain number are allowed at a time and they're confined to little painted areas on the street. Since in Vegas everything has to be some sort of gamble, the performers "win" certain assignments of time to certain areas via a lottery.

New York also limits them to certain areas. L.A. is still considering what, if anything, to do about them. At the moment, they are regulated but not limited.

Friday, for reasons too trivial even for this blog, I had to walk amongst them to get to somewhere I had to go. I've seen them while driving by — and it is kinda funny to spot a guy in a Spider-Man costume and someone dressed like a giant Elmo from Sesame Street waiting for a bus together. This was the first time I'd walked through the gantlet.

There wasn't a lot of diversity in costumes Friday. There were maybe twenty costumed folks wandering about and posing and around a third were ladies dressed as Catwoman. At least two were dressed and made-up as Marilyn Monroe in the white outfit she wore in famously in The Seven Year Itch. There was one ambitious homemade Minnie Mouse costume and a large, elaborate Transformer…and a half-dozen Spider-Mans.

Most of the Spider-Men wore store-bought costumes but there was at one guy who'd made his own — and not too well, I'm afraid. It looked good from afar but up close, it was pretty amateurish and unimpressive. In the comic book origin story, young Peter Parker — after being bitten by a radio-active spider and discovering it had given him awesome powers — sewed his own costume. I couldn't help but think that his probably looked about as unprofessional as the one this street performer had made for himself.

There were also a couple of street musicians, a few artists offering to do your caricature for a fee, and one sculptor who was ready to render your likeness in clay — also for a fee. MAD magazine artist Tom Richmond, who I know reads this blog, will no doubt be just thrilled (but unsurprised) to hear the following. All of these artists had samples of their handiwork posted to demonstrate the skill they offered. One of the caricaturists was demonstrating his by displaying a number of Tom Richmond drawings as if he'd done them. Not the first time I've seen Tom ripped-off like that.

If I were asked to vote on whether these folks should be banned, I have no idea how I'd vote. Here's a page where some Yelp! reviewers tell of their experiences and post some photos. The experiences are mostly negative but I suspect what would drive someone to post a Yelp! review would more likely be a negative encounter than a positive one.

There was something rather festive about the scene. A lot of tourists head for Hollywood Boulevard and are usually disappointed. It's not a glamorous place, you don't rub elbows with movie stars and there isn't that much to see or do. Clearly, a lot of people were happy the costumers were there.

One thing that struck me: Everyone was taking photos — of the costumed people, of the footprints in the Chinese Theater courtyard, of the stars embedded in the street, of each other. Years ago when I was up there, you saw a lot of cameras but now everyone had a smartphone out and was snapping like crazy. It was a little difficult to walk down the sidewalk because of all the bodies out there but it was impossible to get through without ruining a photo someone was attempting to take. I couldn't help but get in a number of folks' vacation pictures and videos.

The only unpleasantness I saw was that someone snapped a photo of one of the Catwomen without asking permission or offering a tip. She immediately turned on the photog and said, "That'll be five dollars!" The camera wielder didn't want to pay her the five dollars so he started apologizing and saying "I didn't know" and she berated him saying, "Hey, this is how we make our livings. Do you think we're out here for your pleasure?" I didn't see if he forked over any currency but I did notice children staring at Catwoman's apparent villainy.

As I said, L.A. is apparently deciding what to do about this. I have a hunch how it will end.

I'm thinking that one of these days, the folks over at Disney are going to decide that they're missing an opportunity for some free advertising. They'll hire some kids, dress them up as characters the studio is currently promoting, and send them out to Hollywood Boulevard to pass out discount ticket and pose — free! — with tourists. Other studios will follow suit and once there are folks out there in better costumes, not charging and also giving out freebees, the non-pros will not be able to compete and will vanish.

I don't think I like this ending. Corporate America can take the fun out of anything.

Here's an Anacin commercial I must have seen hundreds of times back in the sixties. The lady who played the housewife has been mentioned many times on this blog. If you don't recognize her, don't worry. I'll tell you who she is tomorrow…

I mentioned here about the endless stream of phone calls I get from strangers trying to sell me construction work, solar panels and other things I neither need nor want. And if I did want need or want them, I wouldn't hire an unknown vendor who called me out of the blue, ignoring my Do Not Call status and (usually) lying to me about how they called me last year and I told them to call back now.

My longtime buddy Joe Brancatelli writes to ask…

Why do you pick up the phone?

I swear, that is a serious question. No one in this day and age answers these marketing calls. I'd really like to know why a smart guy like you does?

Three reasons, one being that I occasionally get a call from an unknown Caller I.D., answer it and it's a call I'm glad I didn't miss. When my mother was in the hospital or the nursing home, the call was occasionally about her…or once, even from her. Now and then, these calls were really, really important.

Yeah, 95% of the time, a mysterious Caller I.D. means someone who wants to give me a free estimate on encasing my home in aluminum siding. But I don't want to take the risk of missing the 5% calls that really matter, especially since I have a number of friends who are not in great health and occasionally need my aid.

The second reason is that it's annoying to get the calls but it doesn't cost me any more of my time to answer them and tell the person to get lost than it does to not answer the calls. If it's a recording, I can dump the call in ten seconds and then go back to work. If I do answer and it's a human being or something very close to one then I spend thirty seconds telling the caller to buzz off. If I don't answer, then I spend thirty seconds wondering if I should have answered it and considering who it might have been if it wasn't a sales call.

Lastly, my experience is that if I do answer it and tell the salesguy I will never need his service and not to call me again, that particular company usually doesn't call back. Others will call but not that one. If I don't answer, they call back again and again until I do. I recognize the same Caller I.D. over and over again for days of calling after.

So if I don't answer, it's thirty seconds and there's a good chance they'll call again. If I do answer, it's thirty or less and they might not call again. So I do.

Haven't had one of these for a while.  (For those of you who don't get the soup can bit: It's a pointless tradition I decided to start.  Whenever my life seems too busy to post a lot on this blog, I put up a graphic of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.  It's my way of saying there may not be a lot of posting here for a day or two.  I do not remember why I selected a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup to denote this and do not assume that I actually had a reason.  But there it is.)

Before I go about my day, a few floating thoughts…

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Well, Hillary looks to have a lock on it but I can't help but think that with all the mulch they're going to fling at her between now and Election Day, there won't be a moment or two when a Trump victory feels possible enough to unnerve a lot of us.  I also think I'm on the verge of having to use my Lost Friend graphic at least one more time.

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This week, I tried watching a few episodes of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah out of the two dozen or so that have accumulated on my TiVo.  I saw a few clever bits, almost all of which involved correspondent Jordan Klepper, who — perhaps not coincidentally — was the lone holdover I saw from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Overall, the show was not bad and if the Stewart version had never existed — if they'd gone straight from Craig Kilborn to Trevor — I'm sure I'd think it was a good program. But it just doesn't command my attention the way it once did. It's more a matter of goofing on things in the news rather than using the format to make a strong but hilarious point about something going on in our country. That's why so many episodes have piled up on my TiVo.

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In the past, I have told you of my troubles with contractors who phone me up and try to sell me their services. I'm still getting a lot of those calls, including the kind where the caller pretends we spoke last year and I was so nice and begged them to call back around now because I'd certainly be ready to hire them to do all sorts of things to my home. Alas, I'm also getting a lot from people who want to install solar panels on said home and are trying to sound like some official government agency that's going to do all this for free or almost free. (As I've learned in many ways about many business dealings, "almost free" always runs into a lot of money.)

And now I have a new flavor of unwanted phone solicitors. Next year, I turn 65 so I have all sorts of insurance agencies and others who seek to "help" me with my important Medicare decisions. I think some of these are the same folks who want to put in solar panels and then paint my house.

Excuse me. The phone's ringing and I think it may be one of those very people. Back later…or tomorrow…or sometime…

I've linked you to pieces of this before but I don't think I've ever linked to the entire thing…or to the show in color, for that matter. If you're interested in theater, this is a much-watch. It may be the best video I've ever embedded here.

In 1962, Norman Jewison produced and directed a wonderful one-hour TV special about the work of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. It was hosted by Maurice Chevalier and featured Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, Robert Goulet and Stanley Holloway. This aired on 2/11/62 when Lerner and Loewe were represented on Broadway by My Fair Lady — it closed in September of that year — and Camelot, which ran until the following January. I believe Burton had just departed the cast of Camelot when this special aired while Andrews and Goulet followed soon after.

I mention this because I believe that the musical numbers in this show were authentic re-creations of what was on the stage with those two shows using the same sets, costumes and staging…and probably the singers and dancers who were then in those productions. Mr. Holloway, for instance, performs "Get Me to the Church On Time" the same way (I bet) he did in on stage a few years earlier in New York.

Ms. Andrews performs "Show Me," also from My Fair Lady. Mr. Burton performs the end of Act I from Camelot. Mr. Goulet sings a song from Paint Your Wagon (which he was not in) and there are all sorts of other numbers, some of them a bit too "modern" for their own good. Make sure you watch the charming section where Mr. Chevalier sings songs from musicals he wasn't in.

And check out the sketch which was obviously written by Lerner, who famously complained about the kind of theatrical rabble depicted. The lady in it is Frances Sternhagen and you'll also recognize a very young Charles Nelson Reilly who at the time was featured on Broadway in the original production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

But watch the whole thing because the whole hour is really a video treasure…

Paul Kanton asks…

When you are writing a script or story, how do you come up with proper names? Obviously common names like John Smith or Mary Jones can't be used all the time — or even often. Do you randomly look through a phone book, or use a name from your past, or what?

I've used names from my past, often combining the first name of one acquaintance with the last name of another…but that's usually when I need a name of no consequence. The trick there is to find one that's not too generic like Mary Jones and not too distracting in its oddness like Lucretia Frelinghoyzen.

Years ago, I had a little 39-cent book I found in a supermarket checkout line. It was on the rack of "impulse buy" items they place there hoping you'll grab one a whim and then you'll have paid for it by the time you come to your senses and ask, "Do I really need this?" This book was one of baby names and it gave me a lot of first names for characters. Once I'd settled on a first name, it wasn't hard to think of a last name that sounded natural following it.

I have no idea how or when I lost that book but I never got around to replacing it. I suppose now on the Internet, it would be easy to find web pages full of names but I never seem to need it.

With important characters, you look for a name that tells us something about the person. You ask what quality you'd like to convey in the name. Is the person rich? Angry? Continental? A stuffy character can have a stuffy name. A super-friendly character might have a first name that sounds more like a nickname. So I pick out a trait or quality of the character and I work from there.

The reality level of the project dictates some rules. If what I'm writing is broad comedy then I can get away with having a con-man character named Al Swindler or a rich guy named Jonathan Gelt. In a more realistic situation, that kind of stuff seems silly…though I did once have a driving instructor named Mr. Break and there was once a football quarterback named Tommy Prothro.

And though I wrote on this topic to avoid typing his name once again, I have to note this: Imagine if you wanted to name a character and we knew this about him…

1. He's very rich.
2. He uses his name as a brand name so it has to be unique but also short and punching.
3. He's obsessed with winning.

Well, how about Something Trump?  There are a lot of people out there whose real names sound like Charles Dickens came up with them.

Here's a story that will make you mad and not at Donald Trump or his surrogates. On a Delta flight out of Detroit, a passenger got ill and the flight crew asked if there was a doctor on board. One doctor — an OBGYN — rushed to help but a flight attendant wouldn't let the doctor help the passenger. Why? Because the doctor was a black woman and the flight attendant couldn't believe the black woman was a doctor. The passenger survived but the story may make you need medical attention.

• Just received my vote-by-mail ballot. I somehow feel like I have the power to end this nightmare of an election right this minute.

Nate Silver on why Trump is going to have a hard time coming back from his current vote deficit. And it helps to remember that in some states, ballots are already being cast.

Honest, folks. I'd love to write about other topics. More seriously, I'd love to think about other topics. I'll try to post something later that has nothing to do with the election.

Did you hear Michelle Obama's speech today? You need to hear Michelle Obama's speech. It's about the guy running against Hillary Clinton, the way he treats women and how his election would be an endorsement of that kind of disqualifying behavior. The First Lady is a wonderful orator and her speech is dead on target.

This is a video of a rally and there's a lot of stuff before she comes on that you don't need to see but of course you can if you want to. I have this bookmarked so that in most browsers, it will start when she begins the speech. If it doesn't start there, you'll need to manually advance to 25:20. This is well worth your time — and it's unfortunately what a lot of this election has come to be about…