Ed Kilgore says that some Republicans are already prepping the post-election spin if/when Trump loses: "We're really the majority party…as would have been obvious if we'd nominated a real candidate." Or something like that.

And you know who's helping Hillary prep for the debates? The guy who ghost-wrote Trump's The Art of the Deal, AKA the best book ever written other than The Bible.

Douglas McEwan, who I quoted here recently, posted this to Facebook and I'm sure he won't mind if I stick it up here, too…

We all love Gene Wilder, and we all loved Gilda Radner, but can we dial back the on "Gene and Gilda are reunited in Heaven" stuff please? First off, no, they're not. They're dead. Secondly, it's an awfully queasy cliché.

And thirdly and most-importantly, it's disrespectful to his widow Karen, who nursed him through his final illness, and to whom he was married far longer than he was to Gilda. She's alive and grieving, and should be shown respect, not shunted aside because we all want to feel that Gilda was the Love of His Life.

This is another whole bunch of people performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Yesterday was the birthday of Jack Kirby but it was also the birthday of Chase Craig, who was my editor when I wrote comic books for Western Publishing's Gold Key line in the early seventies. Jack was very important to my life and career but so was Chase. Jack hired me as kind of a trainee-assistant. Chase hired me as a professional and treated me no different from guys who'd been writing comics for him for 15 years. Any writer who has ever been in both roles will tell you there's a big, important difference there.

Any professional writer will also tell you about an important moment in his or her life. It was the moment that he or she said to themselves, "Hey…I just might be able to make a good, steady living doing this." I told the story in this post of how I got to that moment…thanks to Chase.

He edited most of the comics for Western that featured the Warner Brothers characters — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, etc. He edited all the comics with Disney properties except for the movie adaptations, and he edited the Walter Lantz comics (Woody Woodpecker, mainly) and the DePatie-Freleng titles (Pink Panther and The Inspector) and the Hanna-Barbera books.

As I soon learned, an important thing he brought to that job, along with wisdom and experience, was that the various licensors trusted him and largely left him alone. The one time I met Walter Lantz, I mentioned I'd written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase Craig and Mr. Lantz went on-and-on about how wonderful Chase was and how he didn't even have to look at the books Chase edited. Not before publication, at least. He like the others knew his valuable property was in good hands.

Chase was also, as you may know, the main editor for Carl Barks when Carl was doing his legendary Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics for Western. First time I met Carl, he told me at some length about how lucky I was to be working with Chase.

I don't want this to be all about how great Chase was so I'll tell a story that I don't think has ever been in print anywhere.

Chase edited a few adventure-type comics — Tarzan and Korak, Son of Tarzan and Magnus, Robot Fighter. The other editor in the office, Del Connell, edited a few others. Both worked out of the Los Angeles office of Western which, when I worked for them, was located in the office building on Hollywood Boulevard directly across from the Chinese Theater.

Most of the artists who drew for them were guys moonlighting from (or retired from) working for the animation studios in town — Disney, Hanna-Barbera, etc. As a result, Chase and Del had access to a lot of guys who could draw funny animal and cartoony comics but not a lot who could do adventure stuff. For internal company reasons, they were asked to come up with a few new books in the veins of adventure and/or mystery.

Finding a writer was no problem. A local writer named Don Glut had some ideas that Del and Chase both liked. But the few adventure artists they had — like Dan Spiegle and Paul Norris — were already booked to capacity. They had to find someone new…and it would help if the guy could not only draw the interiors of the comics but also do paintings for the covers. Western liked to have painted covers on its adventure titles and the guy who was doing most of them, George Wilson, was also pretty busy.

One day when all this was an issue, Chase and Del went to Farmers Market here in Los Angeles — then as now, a great, historic place to eat and/or shop. They dropped in for lunch and as they were walking in, they saw a gentleman sitting at a little easel, doing caricatures for cash. You've seen such folks in venues that attract a lot of tourists. This gent was Filipino and though his work was good, no one was lining up to pay him money to draw them.

He had samples of his other artwork on display and one of the pieces was a painting with a science-fiction theme. Chase noticed it and wondered if this could be their guy. Conversation was difficult because the artist did not speak English well but Del and Chase managed to find out that he had been a comic book artist in his native Philippines. He had recently come to Los Angeles and had no idea where to get the kind of work he did back home…so he'd answered an ad in the newspaper and hooked up with a promoter who placed caricaturists in promising locations. It wasn't working out. The artist's income hinged on people buying caricatures and they weren't…so he was in some serious financial distress.

Chase and Del asked him to bring samples of his comic book work up to their office. The man came in the next day, they liked what they saw and they put him to work. His name was Jesse Santos and among the comics he drew for Western were Don Glut's Dagar the Invincible and Doctor Spektor. Jesse also painted the covers for the books and readers were very happy, as was Jesse to be back doing the kind of work he loved and earning enough money to bring his family over from the Philippines to join him.

I didn't hear that story first from Chase. Jesse told it to me — sort of — but since his English hadn't gotten much better, I wasn't sure I understood it properly. So the next time I saw Chase, I asked him about it. He told me the tale but shrugged off any suggestion that he and Del had done something nice by rescuing a fine artist from menial, poorly-paying employment. He said, "We needed an artist. He was a good artist. We weren't doing him a favor. It was good for us."

Then he added — and I've never forgotten this — "My job is to hire the best people I can find. You don't deserve any special credit for just doing your job."

Maybe so. But Chase did so much good for my career, I have a hard time not thinking of him as having done me a favor. A big one.

Ken Levine has a great guest post from writer-producer Tom Straw, who knew Gene Wilder in a way that you envy.

Boy, I wish I had a personal Gene Wilder story. I met him only once for about two minutes and didn't even have time to tell him how absolutely marvelous he was in everything he did but especially in The Producers and Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles and Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and — oh, hell — everything he did. He was in some bad movies but he was never bad in anything.

I would have told him that. I might have told him that I've heard more than one actor and acting teacher suggest that actors who want to better themselves would do well to watch a movie with Gene Wilder in it and pay particular attention to him in a scene when someone else is speaking, someone else has the focus. He was always acting in those moments too, reacting or listening in perfect character and supporting the scene with his presence. A lot of good actors are good when they have something to do. Gene Wilder was good all the time.

And I'm not sure what else I would have told him. I heard him speak a few times and I remember he was asked, "When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?" He replied, "I wanted to be whatever Danny Kaye was" and I thought that was a great answer. I also thought he'd achieved it. If Danny Kaye had been younger and easier to work with, wouldn't they have cast him as Willy Wonka? He would have been great. But Gene Wilder was better.

The above photo is (of course) from The Andy Griffith Show, a series that has had one of the most stunning afterlives of anything that ever appeared on television. There probably isn't a moment any day in this country when some station somewhere isn't airing a rerun and though five of its eight seasons were in black-and-white, people are watching. The man in the picture is Don Knotts and the lady is Betty Lynn, who played his lady friend, Thelma Lou.

Betty Lynn now resides in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, a town which has patterned certain streets after Mayberry, the fictional city in which The Andy Griffith Show took place. For years, various Mt. Airy events and promotions would fly Betty in to be a guest and its citizens and tourists were thrilled to meet her. She finally decided to move there and now she spends a lot of time making personal appearances, posing for photos, signing autographs and telling people about that iconic TV series.

She's doing a lot of it today. Today is Betty's 90th birthday. I hear they have her booked for a full day of parties and honors and signings and personal appearances…and given the time difference, she'll probably have done about eight of them by the time I get this piece posted to my blog.

When she finally gets back to her home there, I hope someone has delivered the flowers I sent her. Yeah, other people are doubtlessly sending her gifts and flowers but they can't possibly love her as much as I love her. Here's a photo that may help explain why…

That's a photo of Betty that I took when I was around fourteen years old. I took it in my back yard and it's of her in her back yard. Betty was my neighbor when I was growing up.

You may have an "aunt" or "uncle" to whom you are not actually related but you feel like you are. Betty was like an aunt to me — a wonderful, sweet aunt who was always doing things for me. I always tried to be a good "nephew" and do things for her.

Our homes were not far from the Twentieth-Century Fox movie studio in West Los Amgeles. Fox had her under contract starting in 1947 and her first two movies, both released in 1948 were Sitting Pretty, which also starred Clifton Webb, Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young, and June Bride, featuring Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis. In 1950, her family bought that house and in 1953, the Evaniers moved into the home next door with their one-year-old son, me.

The Lynns were wonderful neighbors, always coming to our aid and vice-versa. One time back when I was in high school, another kid punched me in the mouth. I'm not sure why he did that…maybe because I had punched him in the mouth first. (He's still the only person I've ever struck in my 64 years.) Anyway, the school nurse helped stop my gums from bleeding and being over-cautious, she suggested that I go see my orthodontist and have him check the damage. My parents were both working so when I got home, I went next door and got Betty to drive me to Dr. Seltzer's office in Beverly Hills where he said everything was fine.

A day or two later, I got to return the favor. Betty had locked herself out of her house and I knew how to jimmy open a certain window, climb in and open the front door from the inside. She locked herself out at least a dozen times over the years. I got to be pretty good at breaking into her house.

One time, she and her mother went off on a trip to Europe and her mother somehow left a big pot of ox-tail soup cooking on the stove. Her mother was the sweetest woman who ever walked this world but she was sometimes a bit — shall we say? — forgetful.

A few days after their departure, my mother came running into my room in a panic and said, "I think the Lynns' house is on fire!" There was a thick, black smoke billowing out of all the windows near the kitchen that had been left open a crack. My mother called the Fire Department but by the time they got there, I had broken into the house, made my way through the smoke to the kitchen and turned off the soup. Most heroic thing I ever did in my life. I would have done anything for the Lynns.

I'll tell some other stories about my lovely ex-neighbor one of these days. Right now, I just want to wish her the Happiest of Nineties. She really is an amazing lady.

As an actress, she did lots of things besides playing Thelma Lou. She was in quite a few movies, including Meet Me in Las Vegas, which I wrote about here. She was in quite a few TV shows, including Texas John Slaughter, which I wrote about here. I'm glad they're celebrating her entire career today. You can read about the celebration and about her life in this article.

In it, you'll notice they say that her home in West L.A. was robbed twice, which helped prompt her move to North Carolina. Yes, I was good at breaking into that house but I have airtight alibis for both dates. Besides, I would never have done anything to harm this woman. She was…and still is so wonderful.

We — and by "we" of course, I mean "me" — would like to see Comic-Con International remain in San Diego forever and ever. It's the perfect town for an event like that and as I've explained in other messages here like this one, I think the con would be greatly harmed by relocation elsewhere. I've also said that I think it will remain there indefinitely as long as the city doesn't do something really, really stupid.

Something really, really stupid might be to pass Measure C on the November ballot in that town. Measure C would raise San Diego hotel taxes by more than $1 billion to build a new NFL stadium and convention center annex in downtown S.D. It would be the new home to the Chargers and would keep that team in San Diego for decades to come. It would also make a ton of money for the owners of the Chargers and would put the city on the hook for all sorts of cost overruns and revenue shortfalls. Has anyone ever built a stadium and convention center without cost overruns and revenue shortfalls?

Now in the interest of Full Disclosure, I should probably stop here and tell how I feel about football. I don't care about football. In fact, I can't think of too many things I care about less than football. I don't just mean I wouldn't care if my local team moved away. I wouldn't care if the whole sport ceased to exist. If you love it: Fine, great, whatever. Its extinction wouldn't bother me and I'd be happy if cities in this country no longer raised taxes and cut social services and schools in order to ram more tax money up the buttocks of zillionaire team owners, lest they take their lucrative franchises elsewhere.

It sounds to me like Measure C could cause San Diego to lose a fortune and maybe have to divert money that should be used for street repairs and other civic improvements. It also could be very bad for the continued future of Comic-Con in that burg. They might be able to find a way to carry on there but they also might not.

Not being a San Diego resident, I can't vote on Measure C but I'm sure someone reading this can. For more info, this website has been set up by opponents of the measure. And this article summarizes what the whole battle is about and will link you to a piece giving the Chargers' view of all this. It sounds to me like the Chargers' view is that they'll make acres of cash from this new stadium and that they feel about the well-being of San Diego the way I feel about football.

This is another bunch of men performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

There's a Red Skelton movie called A Southern Yankee in which he plays a spy who goes back and forth between being a soldier for the North and a soldier for the South. At one point, he has to walk the battlefield between the warring factions and he gets cheers from both armies because he's wearing a uniform that is half-and-half — a Yankee costume on one side, a Rebel costume on the other, plus he's carrying a flag that is North on one side, South on the other. So each army sees him as a patriot for their team. It's a great joke, one that is often attributed to Buster Keaton, who was employed as a gagman on this and other Skelton films.

And I keep thinking of it as I hear Donald Trump attempting to walk the line on Immigration, trying to convince one side he'll throw "criminal illegal immigrants" outta the U.S. within an hour of being sworn in as prez but also trying to convince folks who are against mass deportations that he is, as well. It didn't work for Skelton and it won't work for Trump.

Here's a piece about just a few of the many, many TV shows that cannot be rerun today because someone didn't have the foresight to preserve the tapes or films. The one on this list that's really a shame is The Shari Lewis Show, which was on Saturday morn from 1960 'til 1963…and which I remember as a wonderful, clever program full of great stories and songs. Some of it has been preserved though. I wrote about it here and linked you to a few brief clips.

Jack Kirby would have been 99 years old today. I write and talk a lot about the man because I think a lot about the man and I get asked a lot about the man.

I like that people seem to be getting that while he was an extraordinary artist, the great drawing was an extension of something more remarkable about Jack: He was a great thinker. He had ideas and visions and insights on a whole different level from the way most of us have ideas and visions and insights. Jack's were vast and prescient and always about what he called The Big Picture.

A teacher I had back in high school used to say that the mark of a great writer was not fully evident when you read their work but rather when you re-read their work. Was there something there the second time you didn't get at first read? The third time? The tenth? Because, she said, a great writer sets you to thinking about the characters and the concepts…and as you think, you get more and more out of what's on the paper.

I was 17 when I met Jack. At the time, I admired how he drew. Just about everyone did. But working for him for a few years and knowing him for the rest of his life, I came to more admire how he thought. A fellow I knew back then — a devout Marvel fan — went out and paid a visit to the Kirbys, who were sometimes way too hospitable in terms of inviting strangers into their home. The fan had but one goal: He wanted a free, original sketch from Jack.

Didn't want to talk to him. Didn't want to ask him questions. He just wanted Jack to do him a drawing, preferably of all his favorite Marvel heroes in a big crowd scene.

He came away disappointed that he didn't get it. Jack did do a lot of free sketches for people over the years, largely because he liked pleasing people. But he cut way, way back on that in the seventies because of several incidents where he realized that all he was doing was giving someone something they could and would sell for a lot of money. His profession — writing and drawing comic books — did not pay him so well that he could indulge in that kind of philanthropy; not when he was constantly worried about being able to provide for his own family.

So instead of spending a half-hour drawing something magnificent for his visitor, Jack spent a couple of hours talking with the guy, telling him stories, etc. The fan left angry, unaware he'd been given something far more valuable than a pencil sketch of The Hulk.

You cannot go visit Jack since we lost him back in 1994. Still, a pretty high percentage of his work remains in print or is easy to find because it was recently in print and will soon be again. It has a wonderful endurance and an ability to speak to new generations, far more so than other concurrently-created work which was perhaps more celebrated at the time. I like reading Jack over and over and damned if there isn't something new there every time I revisit a story I read before. It's not as good as actually talking to him but it's still pretty good.

At the moment, I'm revisiting a lot of his staggering output because I'm trying to finish a long-promised book that will tell the world everything I know about Jack. When you see it, which I hope will be some time next year for his centennial, you will understand why it took so long. Some of that is because I had to keep stopping work on it to wait out certain legal matters. Most of it is because he is such an awesome subject that it takes a lot of pages and a lot of thinking to get anywhere near close to The Big Picture.

Happy 99, Kirby. I just started to write, "You left us too soon" but with someone like you, any time is too soon. I'm so glad we still have so much of you around — what you did and what you inspired.

This is a whole bunch of people in sequins performing "Up the Ladder to the Roof"…

Ol' pal Andy Ihnatko wrote in about the Marvin Kaplan Story I posted here the otherday…

What an amazing story you posted this morning! It left me with a couple of questions, though I imagine that they're unanswerable. I'm blown away that he tried the same trick twice, even after it cost his client a job the first time. Do agents of that ilk have terrible memories, or are they just that dumb?

And have you ever wanted to reach out to one of these clients about their rep's behavior? I have a book agent and I'd hate to learn at her funeral that I was the top pick to write George Lucas' official biography, but she insisted that I get cast as Darth Andy in a future film and made it a dealbreaker.

Your story reminded me of something that occurred to me while listening to an interview with the principal screenwriter of WALL*E. He talked about how everything clicked into place when he happened to listen to that song from Hello, Dolly and how intensely he and the rest of the team hoped Pixar/Disney could make a deal to use it. I immediately imagined a Broadway Danny Rose type of agent, fantasizing that he was back in the good old days when he routinely held the big boys' feet to the fire, smelled blood and an infinite checkbook in Disney…and ruined everything.

Ego is a terrible thing when aimed in the wrong direction, isn't it?

There are agents who harm clients' careers by being greedy. More often in Hollywood, I think that happens with managers who don't just want to get their clients a job but want to get one for themselves.

A friend of mine, a stand-up comic, was picked for a regular role on a new situation comedy. It was not the lead role, but it was a good one and the money offered was quite acceptable — or at least, it would have been had the offer reached my friend. When they called his manager to present it, he did not check with his client before demanding twice as much, plus he [the manager] had to be credited as Executive Producer and paid even more. The show said hell, no. The manager stood firm. The show hired someone else for the role.

That kind of thing happens a lot but I'll tell you what happens more often: The client and agent playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with the agent as Bad Cop. In the story I told, we don't know (and will never know) if it was the actor calling the shots, telling the agent what to demand. Sometimes, especially when the actor has a rep for being nice and easy-going, it's because he stays out of those battles, pretends he's totally uninvolved and lets his agent be the heavy.

The actor may have been unaware of what his agent was doing. Or maybe the actor told his agent, "I don't want to do any jobs for under X dollars." That's a perfectly ethical thing to say. Everyone has the right to set his or her own price. There are even offers in this world so low, I won't accept them.

The actor may have done that and the agent, wanting to earn a commission, may have been trying to manipulate me into an offer that his client would accept. Or maybe the actor was telling the agent, "Agree to it, then call them at the last minute and raise the money." There are people who do that. There was a famous stand-up comedian who was notorious for trying stunts like that. His agent would agree to, say, $1000 for the gig. Then the client would show up at the job, ask to confirm the fee and when told what it was, feign shock: "That's not possible! I don't work for that and my agent knows it! Either you pay me $2500 or I walk right out that door!" Occasionally, he got away with it, getting a small raise if not the whole thing.

Come to think of it, I had a comic book artist do that to me once back when I was editing funnybooks. He agreed on the rate and accepted the job…then he handed it in late and knowing I was desperate to get the material to press, told me we'd agreed on a different, higher fee. We argued and I told him I was paying what I said I was paying and he backed down. Later, he apologized and told me that one of his mentors — a rather famous comic artist — had told him to always try that.

While I was writing the above, this message came in from Jim Houghton…

The ethics-challenged agent for the unnamed actor may have been using these tricks with his client's full knowledge, but it seems like maybe not. Is there any ethical and/or socially acceptable way for you, as a producer, to check with the actor and let him know what happened? Obviously, a producer going around an agent to "talk" to an actor directly is potentially an ethical red flag. But if the guy was not that famous and maybe didn't have enough work, and if his agent was losing jobs the actor needed through the use of sleazy tactics, well, it sure feels like the actor is entitled to know. And of course, one can imagine what the agent might have said to his client: "Sorry, this Evanier guy cancelled your job at the last minute again!" So you may even have had a personal reason to let the guy know what really occurred.

I suspect I know the answer to my question — no, unless you run into the guy and he asks what happened, you can't reasonably take pro-active action. But this isn't like going out of your way to let a friend know their spouse is cheating on them (not necessarily a "favor"), and — if the agent had, say, asked for a kickback, I assume it would be your moral or even legal responsibility to let the actor know. Still, this wasn't fraud in the stricter sense. How does it work in this case?

You answered your own question: Unless you run into the guy and he asks what happened, you do nothing. The actor has a right to designate the person who is going to negotiate on his behalf. If he picked wrong — if the agent is not representing his interests the way he wants them represented — it's his problem, not mine. It's not ethical to go around the agent (or lawyer or manager) to the client and it isn't like a child who is disciplined by Mommy rushing to Daddy to see if he can get better treatment. It's trying to change the rules of the negotiation. You shouldn't do that.

Now, if the actor had contacted me directly and asked, "Could you tell me why I didn't get that job?"…well, that's different. I should also have mentioned that I believe this agent had represented this actor for quite a long time. That led me to believe that the actor knew he was setting his price higher than the market might suggest, even if he didn't know about the last-minute extortion attempts. There are actors who would rather do two or three high-paying jobs a year than twenty jobs for scale that would collectively pay a lot more.

If I had to guess, that's what I'd guess…but like so many things in life, we'll never know for sure.

It must be tough to be a Trump backer these days. There are a few polls like this one that show him neck 'n' neck with Hillary or even a point up…but clearly he and his campaign are behaving like they believe the vast majority of surveys. I don't think there are any sites tracking the state polls that don't show Clinton with at least a near-lock on the Electoral College and there are many that say she's got it with 10+ point advantages in enough states.

It's also getting tougher to define what it is that he stands for and to say with a straight face that he's a straight talker. I thought the one issue on which he'd never budge or backpedal was immigration…and I don't think anyone is clear as to what his position is on that at the moment. It seems to vary from hour to hour depending on which audience he's addressing.

The other day when Trump was addressing the imaginary black voters who will swing to him en masse and boost him from 2% black support to — oh, I dunno, maybe 3%? — he was shouting at them, "What the hell do you have to lose?" I keep thinking that that's his new mantra for campaigning. No matter what insane, groundless accusation someone can invent about Hillary Clinton, he might as well hurl it because what the hell does he have to lose?

It looks like despite some waffling, he'll be in the debates after all because, you know, what the hell does he have to lose?