William Saletan notes that while many polls say Bernie Sanders would fare better than Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz, that's the Unattacked Bernie Sanders — the one Republicans haven't even tried yet depicting as a dangerous commie socialist who'd raise your taxes, redistribute wealth, put the government in charge of your health care, weaken the military, etc. Even though I'm voting for Sanders, I can't deny that his popularity would take a sharp hit if he were the nominee and the folks who brought you the Willie Horton ads and the Swift Boat Veterans went to work on him.

Looks like it's going to be One of Those Weeks.

Not that I think anyone cares but I've decided to vote for Bernie Sanders in the California primary. I love the idealism of his rallies and supporters but I look at the hard numbers and see the slimmest of chances he'll be the nominee. Unlike some who are voting for him, I do not see Hillary Clinton as a terrible alternative. Senator Sanders himself once said — and I trust he still believes — that on her worst day, she was better than anyone the Republicans were going to put up.

The Sanders backers who are now out trashing Hillary and vowing not to vote for her remind me too much of the Nader supporters who in 2000 told us that if Ralph couldn't be president, there wasn't a bit of difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush. I think history has shown us that this was dead wrong…about as wrong as electing President Trump this time out.

In other news: Jeffrey Stackhouse wrote to remind me that Baayork Lee is not only choreographing shows now but directing many, as well. He says, "I was privileged to be directed by her in the 1995 try-out of MacGregors, a musical about a Scots clan (with a supernatural twist), written by Italians Robert Steiner and Max Bartoli, with music by the terrific Gianluca Cucchiara." He also writes that she "was very gracious and professional." I would not expect anything less from such a gracious and professional performer.

I find myself enjoying Larry Wilmore's show a lot these days. It seems to have found its groove and they've assembled a great bank of supporting players and contributors. I especially like a gent named Rory Albanese who I believe used to write for The Daily Show. He's very funny and very perceptive. I don't find much wrong with the current Daily Show but I also don't find enough right that I don't let several episodes stack up on my TiVo before watching them. I watched almost every Jon Stewart episode A.S.A.P.

Wednesday evening, Antenna TV is running a Johnny Carson episode from June 12, 1984 with guests Dick Cavett, Jimmy Brogan and "comedian Dave Barry," sez. I assume this is not the Dave Barry who is now well known for writing humorous books since he wasn't very well known in '84. I'm assuming it's Dave Barry, the stand-up comedian who played all over the U.S., with frequent appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, until his passing in 2001. This Dave Barry was a prolific performer in night clubs and hotels and — of special interest to us around here — he also had a lot of jobs doing voices for animation. You heard him in a lot of cartoons from Warner Brothers, Max Fleischer and other studios.

I'll be back soon. I promise.

Time now for another installment in this series wherein I write about writing. Part 1 can be read here, Part 2 can be read here, Part 3 can be read here, Part 4 can be read here, Part 5 can be read here, Part 6 can be read here, Part 7 can be read here and Part 8 can be read here. Which brings us to Part 9…

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When I was in my twenties, I went out with a lot of actresses, including some who were, to my astonishment, capable of talking about topics unrelated to their careers. With a few, the conversation ranged all the way from bad agents to evil casting directors, with sidebars about parts they should have been submitted for, auditions they should have won, producers or directors who coyly hinted at sex as a prerequisite for a role, producers or directors who went way past hinting, other actresses who beat them out for jobs by allegedly complying, where to get good photos shot or printed, good acting coaches, bad acting coaches, how to pay for groceries when acting jobs were scarce, etc. A question that some put to me was, "Will you come speak at my support group?"

I guess these support groups are still around but I personally haven't heard of one in years. In the seventies and eighties though, the way a lot of young actors coped with the challenges of mounting a career without mounting a producer was to band together. All over Hollywood, there were these little clubs that met in community rooms and church buildings and theaters.

They'd meet every Tuesday night or every second Thursday or on some other schedule and they'd all chip in a buck or three per meeting for the room and/or refreshments. A dozen or more aspiring thespians would sit around in folding chairs and discuss what was up or not up with their careers and they'd share advice. Whenever possible, one of them would bring along someone working in the industry to answer questions and give them another viewpoint on the curious institution that is Casting.

Casting is a very strange process, based as it is on so many subjective factors and hunches and inexplicable decisions. If you are an actor, you spend much of your life trying to get auditions, performing your heart out at the ones you get, and then (usually) being bewildered as to why you didn't get this part or that part. You're usually even bewildered as to why you get the parts you do get.

One time on a show I worked on, we auditioned about twenty ladies for a bit part…and I would guess that at least twelve of them would have been fine for it. Sometimes, you read folks for a role and one is just so outstanding that it's No Contest but often, especially with small roles, you can eliminate some who are clearly wrong and then go eenie-meenie-minie-mo to select one from the rest. In this case, the mo turned out to be a red-haired young lady who was as good as we could have hoped for.

We got to talking on the set and she asked me, as someone who'd been on the "inside" of the casting session, why her? I told her the God's honest truth…

"The producer adamantly wanted a certain blonde lady who'd auditioned…I think because she reminded him of a girl he had the hots for in high school. The director fiercely wanted a certain brunette for some reason of his own. They argued about it and it turned into one of those arguments which wasn't about what it was about. It became about which one of them was running the show. Finally, to settle it with neither of them having a 'win' over the other, they decided to hire neither of their picks and to bring in someone they both liked. You were the second choice of both."

In other words, she got hired for a reason that was somewhat out of her control and there was no way she would have guessed why. A lot of casting decisions are in that category. (The blonde actress, had she been picked, probably would never have imagined that while her acting certainly mattered, what got her the part was reminding the producer of an old crush.)

A few weeks later, there was another small part for the same kind of actress. The Casting Director brought in twenty ladies, some of whom had been in the earlier sessions. Wanna guess which one got picked this time?

Answer: None of them. The producers agreed on one but before anyone called to say she had the part, someone at the network phoned. They had an actress they were looking at for some other show and rather than spend the money on a screen test for her, they wondered if we could give her a small role on our show. She seemed fine, our producers agreed and none of the twenty ladies who came in to read were hired. I wonder how many of them wasted a lot of time wondering what they did wrong.

As you may have realized, the casting process for actors has a lot in common with the hiring process for writers. Often, you have no idea why you succeeded in one situation and didn't in another. And often, the reasons are in no way visible to you.

I was a guest at about, I would guess, eight or nine of these Actor Support Groups. This meant I showed up and sat through the discussion that preceded my part of it. Some of it was "Hey, I found a great place to get photos duplicated cheap" or "There's this play casting and here are the details." But a lot of it was wanna-bes sharing their frustrations with The System.

The System is maddening. You want to act for whatever reason you want to act — love of the art, love of the fame, love of the pay, love of all three and more — but for the most part, someone has to pick you. Someone has to let you act, at least in the jobs that pay. You have to please them and you never really know what the hell they want, often because they don't know what the hell they want. Once in a casting session for a situation comedy, an actress read the scene, left the room and then simultaneously, one of the producers said, "She's exactly right for the part" while another producer said, "Who asked her to come in?  She's all wrong for this!"

Imagine if your life depended on winning over that room.

So in these Actor Support Groups, I heard one aspiring Brando or Bernhardt after another vent their frustration with The System and there'd be a lot of asking why it had to be that way and why did so much of it not make sense and couldn't it be changed?  One gent, frantic and agonized over his inability to land anything with more than three lines, ranted on about how casting directors keep bringing in the same people because they're too lazy to do the work to find and learn about new talent.

"We have to get a law passed," he said, "that for every part that's open, they have to see at least five people they've never seen before!"

Everyone nodded in agreement though no one knew who was going to pass this law or enforce this law. When it came time for my part of the festivities, much of what I did was to tell them that, no, The System can't be changed. Or if it can be, you ain't gonna be the one to change it.

The System may not make sense to you but it wasn't designed to make sense to you or to anyone in your position. It was designed by and for the folks with the power, the folks who do the hiring. And even they aren't in a position to change much about it since that's the way the whole industry operates.

So forget about trying to change it and stop bitching all the time about how it's not fair. Instead, channel that energy into learning to live with it and to the extent possible, learning to circumvent its more malleable aspects. Also — and I'm a lot more serious about this than you'll probably think — learn to be amused by it. This is not easy, especially when not getting a job in the next few weeks may mean you won't be able to pay your rent, but see if you can't accept some of the insanity as just a colorful, unavoidable aspect of the profession you've chosen.

A guy who sells cars, if he has any perspective on his job, learns not to expect to sell everyone who comes into the showroom or even a majority of them. A certain percentage are just plain going to go down the block and buy some other make and model. A certain percentage won't buy at all, at least in this decade. Still, the salesguy learns to go through the ritual with each one, greeting them with a smile and delivering the sales pitch. He knows it's a waste of time with 80% or more of all those who wander in but still he does it. It's part of the job and, besides, it's good practice. If he can sell 10% or 20%, he's content…or he should be.

This is not just good advice, I think, for actors. It's good advice for writers and good advice for everyone. As we go through life, we frequently find ourselves trapped in Systems that don't work for us and we can see all sorts of things that are wrong or wasteful or unfair about them. I thought about this a lot last year during the two times I was hospitalized. At first, I complained to myself and everyone who wandered into my room about how impractical so much of it was from my point o' view.

Eventually though, I realized what a waste of time that was. I was in no position to change anything about it. My first few days after surgery, I couldn't change my own gown.

What I had to do was to, first of all, understand that System. Once I more or less did, I then had to figure out how to operate within it…to get good at it, rather than expect it would change to suit me. The same thing was true of the writing profession when I got into it. I am not saying there isn't a lot wrong with how editors decide what to buy or how producers decide which writers to engage. I just decided that it was a waste of time to bitch about it and pretend like I could do anything to modify it.

What I could do however was modify how I viewed it and how I operated within it. I could stop trying to figure out why I got one job and not another. I could stop expecting a fairy tale "fairness" in the selection process. I could stop fantasizing over where every possible project might lead. Most of all, I could stop wishing the business worked the way I wanted it to. That's never going to happen. I was a lot happier as a writer once I accepted that. And not that this is a separate group but I was also happier as a human being.

My buddy Bob Elisberg found this on YouTube and linked to it on his fine blog. It's the most talked-about song/dance from the 1973 Broadway musical Seesaw, which starred Michele Lee, Tommy Tune and the recently-deceased Ken Howard. The songs were by Dorothy Fields and Cy Coleman and it was directed by Michael Bennett after the original director was fired during outta-town tryouts, along with much of the cast.

The book was also tossed out, replaced by one credited to Bennett, though rumors abound of considerable Neil Simon involvement. In his autobiography, Simon reveals that he did some significant uncredited rewrites on the book for A Chorus Line, also directed by Bennett, but he makes no mention of working secretly on Seesaw. So make of that what you will.

As Bob mentions, there isn't much film or video of Seesaw but he came across a video of Tommy Tune and others from the Broadway cast doing this dazzling number on a telethon. This is quite a find.

Bob wonders why there's no applause from anyone at the end and I think I can explain that. From the point where Mr. Tune tosses his microphone away, the audio is all pre-recorded, taken from what was recorded for the cast album. The live musicians on stage aren't even trying to pretend they're playing. So my guess is that the audio engineers on the telecast had all the microphones off during the performance and didn't get around to turning them back on promptly when it was over.

By the way: I think the featured balloon-clad dancer is the wonderful Baayork Lee. Betcha when this number was staged, Michael Bennett had to pick out one dancer to perform alongside Tune so, natch, he picked the shortest one he had. Ms. Lee later originated the role of Connie Wong in A Chorus Line. Her character was based of course on interviews with her about her own life and she had a song called "Four-Foot-Ten." It itemized the personal and professional challenges of her lack of height but it was cut before the show debuted, though it has been heard on at least one recent CD reissue. Lee later became a top choreographer and even staged the dances for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line. She's quite charming in this number as are all the performers…

• Prince fought hard to protect his and other artists' control of their music. Sad to see people "honor" him by bootlegging his records.

When I was younger, one of my favorite places to dine was a local burger chain called Woody's Smorgasburger. There are, alas, no more Woody's Smorgasburgers but there are places that emulated their then-unique format of serving you a nude burger and allowing you to dress it yourself at a little bar that offered ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, mayo, etc. Or maybe some of those places came up with the idea on their own, I dunno. Anyway, Sam Gnerre writes about these fine eateries which have been discussed aplenty at one of our sister websites, Old L.A. Restaurants.

Hey, here's another story of someone who had a memorable moment with the late musician. Richard Schultz is a follower of this site who has sent me tips on linkable articles that were not about him. This one is about him.

I don't think there's anything on film I like more than the best work of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. Even their weakest work is pretty darned good, too. I wish there were more opportunities to view it the way it should be viewed: Good prints, big screen, live audience. Early in May, the American Cinematheque group in Los Angeles will make that possible for a few days…

• On Friday, May 6 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, there's a showing of four Laurel and Hardy shorts — Helpmates, Their First Mistake, County Hospital and The Music Box, followed by the feature, The Flying Deuces.
• On Saturday, May 7 at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, they're running a 4 PM matinee of four shorts: Busy Bodies, Scram!, Me and My Pal and One Good Turn.
• Then in the evening, also at the Aero, they're running two features: Bonnie Scotland and The Devil's Brother.
• On Sunday, May 8 at the Aero, they're running four shorts — Come Clean, Twice Two, The Midnight Patrol and Towed in a Hole — and what many consider The Boys' best feature, Way Out West.

So we've got a big screen and I assume there'll be a live audience.  What about good prints?

Answer: They seem to be getting the best available, which are a lot better than the best available for a long while.  Wonderful work has been done to restore some of these films and that's what this festival is showing.  Here's a little side-by-side comparison of what we've had to make do with for some time as opposed to what we now have for some, not (alas) all their films.  This is the first minute or so of Me and My Pal, before and after…

See?  Much better.  (By the way: On that clip after the traditional Laurel and Hardy theme — "The Ku-Ku Song," aka "Dance of the Cuckoos" — the tune you're hearing is one of my favorites, "On to the Show." We all have little songs that get into our heads and happily stay there forever. That's one of mine.)

I don't know if I'll be able to get to any of these showings since I'm swamped with work and responsibilities these days but if you're local and you aren't, you might have a very good time at one or all. And maybe you'll see me there.

Corporations are not people but they are doing a pretty effective job fighting for social change, especially with regard to Gay Rights. Or so says James Surowiecki.

• If aliens study our media, they must believe that the biggest problem on Earth is deciding which restroom Caitlyn Jenner should use.

William Saletan deals with complaints from Donald Trump (who's winning his primary) and Bernie Sanders (who isn't winning his primary) that the primary system is unfair. Yes, absolutely, it is…and it's supposed to be. I think a lot of folks forget that this is not just a preliminary vote for the general election. The party sets the rules, not the government, so the rules are filled with oddities and vary from state to state. Some of those oddities have benefited Trump and Sanders and they're fine with those. They just don't like the oddities that benefit their opponents.

I don't have any anecdotes about the fine musician Prince who died today. But MAD's star caricaturist Tom Richmond does.

Another day when Mark won't be posting much. But hey, even when I don't post much, I still post more than most blogs.

A number of you wrote to quibble with my assertion here a week ago that Bill Nye is a scientist and Sarah Palin, who said "He's as much a scientist as I am," is not. Hey, don't argue with me. Go argue with Factcheck.org.

Timothy Hill reveals something which may surprise you as much as it surprised me: Candidates who get elected to public office have a fairly decent record of trying to keep their campaign promises, at least to some extent. What's not surprising to me is that Donald Trump tends to make verbal promises, then his office releases details of plans which do not keep those promises. Well, at least he isn't waiting 'til he gets into office to break them.

A young artist named Gavin Aung Than has done a wonderful comic book story based on an interview with one of his heroes, Jack Kirby. I'm pretty sure that Jack would have been delighted by this effort…and even more delighted by whatever Gavin creates in the future. He would especially like the fact that Gavin does not seem to be growing up to be a Jack Kirby imitator. Being inspired by him to be creative was great. Trying to create art that looked like Jack had drawn it was, in Kirby's eyes, an act of non- (or at least, limited) creation.

Tom Galloway sent me this link to an article about the growing legal battle over the ownership of Sea Monkeys. That's right: Sea Monkeys, the most disappointing product you could ever order from an ad in the comic books.

If you live in Brooklyn, it is still possible to get seltzer delivered to your home. For some reason, the website makes no mention of its main usage, which of course is to be sprayed whenever possible in the face of Larry Fine. Apparently though, people actually drink the stuff. These kids today…

Back later or maybe tomorrow. I can't plan my life these days more than about an hour in advance, if that.

Staying in a political mood, here's one of the smartest guys on the Internet, John Green, with one of those videos he makes in which he has a conversation with his brother Hank. He makes a pretty sound argument, I think, about not only the wrongness of comparing a political foe to Hitler but the ineffectiveness of it, as well…

• How to Tell If Someone's a Racist and/or Sexist: They decide that from now on, they won't use any $20 bills.