Matt Taibbi reminds us that Muhammad Ali was more than just a great athlete. He was also an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and the man whose refusal to be drafted changed the way a lot of people looked at that war and the draft.

I used to be one of the writers of That's Incredible! One day, we booked a very special guest star…a man who according to surveys was then the most famous living human being on the face of this planet and also, I believe, the most admired. It was Muhammad Ali.

I don't know if I can possibly convey, in this short a space, how admired this man was and is…how much more important he has been to lives and to history than your average, garden-variety World Heavyweight Champion. I am not even sure I fully understand it, myself. Suffice it to say no other athlete will probably ever be held in the awe and reverence that a generation or two reserves for Muhammad Ali. The day he appeared on our show, everyone was excited. Everyone was concerned that it go well. We always cared about that but we cared a lot more since it was Ali.

During the afternoon rehearsals before he arrived, a little question came up, namely, "How do you address him?" "Muhammad?" "Mr. Ali?" What? (When someone asked me this, I answered, "Sir." It didn't get a laugh and it didn't satisfy anyone.) There had recently been some sort of incident on the news where Ali had snapped at a reporter who addressed him by his first name, as if they were bosom buddies. Everyone, obviously, wanted to avoid a similar situation on our stage.

Our show was hosted by John Davidson, Fran Tarkenton and Cathy Lee Crosby. Fran is no small figure in the Sports Hall of Fame himself. Many of the records he racked up as a Quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings may never be broken. He may not be as singularly-honored in football as Ali has been in boxing but Fran is and was certainly a super-sports star in his own right. He had met our guest on several occasions and always addressed him as a peer, as "Muhammad."

Cathy Lee Crosby had a not-undistinguished sports career of her own in the tennis world. I'm not sure if she said it or if one of her associates said it but it came down to this: If Fran was going to address our guest by his first name, she would, too. Naturally then, John Davidson didn't want to be the only one addressing our guest as Mr. Ali.

I know this sounds trivial but…well, welcome to Television. On the other hand, if you're doing a show, getting someone like Muhammad Ali to drop in and tape an appearance is a major coup and no one wanted to be the one to muck it up. Some members of the crew — like the make-up lady and the Stage Manager — also approached me and asked how they should address the former Heavyweight Champion of the World.

I went for a little walk to try and think of a solution. Outside the studio, I ran into Ali's advance man, whom I had met earlier, and I asked him how people addressed his boss. He gave me a wonderful, brilliant answer…

You just call him, "Champ."

Who could object to that? What man who had ever stepped into a boxing ring and won could be offended at being called "Champ?" I ran back in and told everyone, "Call him Champ!" Everyone liked the notion.

That evening, a limo pulled up and Muhammad Ali got out, looking every inch The Greatest. The man who opened the door for him said, "Good evening, Champ!"

Our producer ran up to greet him: "Great to have you here, Champ!"

John, Fran and Cathy Lee hurried over and welcomed him: "Thanks for coming, Champ!" "It's an honor to have you here, Champ." "Hey, you look great, Champ." Ali seemed pleased but we couldn't be sure.

I spent some time with him going over what he'd be doing on the show and I called him "Champ." He asked, by the way, that he not be too prepped. He said, "It's better if it's spontaneous."

Everyone wanted to meet him and everyone treated him like a superstar. I've been around some pretty famous, successful people and I can't think of one who matched him in sheer luminance. You just felt you were around someone very, very important. Maybe "significant" would be a better word.

I should have thought to keep count of how many times he was called "Champ" but I'm sure it was at least once a minute, maybe twice. All the way out of the building, across the street for dinner at Roscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles and then back to the limo, it was "Champ This" and "Champ That." The only two times his real name was heard during his visit were (a) when the hosts introduced him on the show and (b) when an Associate Producer noted for her huge chest ran over to meet him and I muttered something about the mountains going to Muhammad.

The next day, Ali's advance man came around to pass out some autographed photos that The Champ had promised folks. I asked him if Ali had any reaction to everyone calling him "Champ" like that so abundantly.

"It's funny," Ali's man said. "He was a little touched by it…he took it as everyone's way of saying that even though someone else currently has the belt, as far as we're concerned, you'll always be The Champ."

"That's nice," I said. "Don't ever tell him that everyone called him that because we didn't know what else to call him."

"Hell, no," the guy said. "I want to keep my job and my teeth."

Here's another number from L.A. Now and Then, the fine revue I wrote about here. The show's creator Bruce Kimmel has great feelings for C.C. Brown's, an ice cream parlor that was on Hollywood Boulevard that was beloved for its hot fudge sundaes. Legend has it that its founder Mr. Brown (the C.C. stood for Clarence Clifton) invented the hot fudge sundae. Well, maybe. They served a great one…though now that I think of it, I don't think I ever had not-great one anywhere and…

Well, okay. I'll risk getting Bruce mad at me and say it: I was never a big fan of hot fudge sundaes and when I did have one, I usually thought it was just too much dessert to be consumed in the amount of time you had before it all melted into something runny and problematic. Also, the fudge so overpowered the ice cream, you could have poured it on a ball of chilled Minute Rice and had much the same dining experience.

My fave H.F.S.? The now-defunct (in L.A.) restaurant Ed Debevic's used to serve what they called "The World's Smallest Hot Fudge Sundae." It came in a tiny cup, cost $1.95 I think and was consumable in two small bites. It was, for me, the perfect after-dinner bonus and, matters of size aside, it wasn't much different from the ones at C.C. Brown's. Here's Robert Yacko singing about another lost landmark in the City of Angels…

Hello. I'm back. I was away. Yesterday, I took an Amtrak train up to Santa Barbara where my buen amigo Sergio Aragonés and I spoke to a class of undergraduates who are maybe-perhaps interested in careers in the entertainment industry. This was at the University of California, Santa Barbara where the class is taught by my longtime pal, Cheri Steinkellner. Cheri knows the field well. She and her husband Bill are Emmy-winning TV writers and producers (Cheers, The Jeffersons, many others), Tony-nominated playwrights (Sister Act) and they've done loads of other impressive things.

The class seemed to enjoy hearing about Sergio's and my careers, together and apart…and they enjoyed watching us do a mini-version of the Quick Draw! game we do at Comic-Con. Afterwards, Sergio and I went to dinner with Bill, Cheri and two of their friends. Sergio went home. I spent the night at the Steinkellners' lovely home and then today, Bill drove me back home to Los Angeles. And that's where the heck I've been.

I'm taking the weekend off from thinking/writing about the presidential election. I wish I could take June, July and August off as well but I'll probably be back following the thing by Monday. Tomorrow, I have a Muhammad Ali anecdote to share with you.

• "We need credibility in the political arena. Let's hire the guy who was so certain Romney would win in a landslide!" http://tinyurl.com/za7nwub

For those of you new to this blog: A mushroom soup day means that I may be too busy to post much today. What does that have to do with mushroom soup? I may also be too busy today to figure that out.

So what's up with the Trump News? He and his staff continue to throw reporters out of campaign rallies and Trump continues to make promises about controlling the media. All of this is loudly cheered by that certain section of the population that doesn't like it when the press — as it occasionally does — points out that people are believing things that may not be true.

As Fred Kaplan notes, Hillary Clinton is starting to show that when Trump slams her, she can slam him back pretty well. I smell a battle ahead when it comes time for these two folks to debate and Trump tries to control the format and moderators to his advantage. He'll do that, you know.

A lot of Mr. Trump's business practices remind me of a TV producer I worked for who viewed every business relationship as a negotiation…and every negotiation as a battle which he had to "win" in some way. If he was prepared to pay me $5000 to write a script and my agent called up and said, "Mark wants $5000," that wouldn't do. Any other producer would have said "Fine" but this guy wouldn't because he had to control the negotiation. He had to dominate it some way and make certain that I was giving in to his offer. So in that case, if we thought he was prepared to pay me $5000, my agent would say, "Mark demands $6000 or he won't do the show" and the producer or his rep would say "$5000 and not a penny more" and we'd give in. He'd be happy because he'd be able to pretend he beat me. He'd even be happy if we'd demanded $7000 and his guy got us to come down to $5500.

It was all about who's the boss and that's how Trump rolls. Watch. When they begin to plan the debates, he'll try to play things so that he can tell his supporters, "She was so desperate to debate me that she gave in to my demands."

Meanwhile, one of the things occupying me at the moment is planning the panels I'll be hosting at Comic-Con this year. The schedule seems to be pretty much set — a fact I mention because people always contact me in June and even early July to ask if I can help them arrange a panel or event they want to do at the con. That's wrong two ways, the first being that the convention has a whole, expert Programming Department and I'm not part of it. I'm just a guy who does a lot of panels there. Also, the schedule gets set around two months before the con and there's very little chance of events being added after that. I have to now figure out who's going to be on my panels but the times, room assignments and such are all pretty much locked.

The schedule and event descriptions will be released about two weeks before the convention. We're not supposed to announce things before that but I think it's okay if I tell you that I'm hosting all the same panels I usually host — at the same times and in the same rooms — plus some others.

Lastly before I get outta here: Some jokes just write themselves. This is a true item…

The National ENQUIRER today announced that renowned Author and Political Commentator Dick Morris would be joining the magazine in the role of Chief Political Commentator & Correspondent. The appointment of Morris to the editorial team further establishes The ENQUIRER as one of the leading voices of this political season.

It's a match made in heaven: A newspaper and a reporter, both of whom are constantly defended with the cry, "Hey, they're not always wrong." Except, of course, that Dick Morris is. See you later.

My favorite musical group, Big Daddy, is back with a music video of their interpretation of the song, "New York, New York" — a version that will probably send John Kander to his grave and cause Fred Ebb to roll over in his. But maybe not. I prefer Big Daddy's arrangement of the tune over Frank Sinatra's.

Big Daddy, in case you didn't know, is a group founded on the principle that the only acceptable sound is the fifties sound…so when they come across a song that doesn't sound like a fifties song, they fix it so that it does. If you're anywhere near Burbank, California and you'd like to hear them performing live, they're playing on Friday evening, June 24 at the Burbank Music Academy. Tickets can be purchased on this site. They'll be doing lots of great songs including perhaps even this one…

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum lists all sorts of things Trump does that a presidential candidate is not supposed to do — and with good reason. The worst is probably this one…

Trump is running not to be president of all Americans, but to be the clan leader of white Americans. Those white Americans who respond to his message hear his abusive comments, not as evidence of his unfitness for office, but as proof of his commitment to their tribe.

Nice of Frum to spell "clan" with a C instead of a K there. And while I'm at it, I'll link you to Jeffrey Toobin explaining how Trump doesn't understand how the Supreme Court works. He only understands that those who support Donald Trump must be rewarded and those who oppose him must be slapped down hard.

Bernie Sanders keeps vowing to fight all the way to the convention. Matthew Yglesias thinks he won't; that before it convenes, Sanders will face the reality of numbers, drop out of the race and endorse Hillary Clinton. That seems like the most likely scenario to me…though I do keep in mind that a lot of most likely scenarios have not happened with this election. I just can't imagine how Sanders can have any sort of effective future in politics if he doesn't do that…and he hasn't been running his campaign to become ineffective.

Then again, it might not be as neat as all that. The polls for California are still all over the place. The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll has Clinton at 49% and Sanders at 47%, which is within the survey's margin of error…in effect, a tie. Okay — but even if Sanders wins California, he won't have more delegates than Clinton, nor will more Democrats have voted for him. His path to the nomination would still involve persuading the so-called "Superdelegates" to switch their allegiance from the candidate with the most delegates and the most votes from rank-and-file Democrats to the guy who finished second in both categories. Hard to imagine that happening.

The Marx Brothers made their Broadway debut in a 1924 revue called I'll Say She Is. They did two other Broadway shows — The Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers — which were made into movies and otherwise had lives after they closed in New York…but I'll Say She Is disappeared, never to be seen again. Well, not until recently when a gent named Noah Diamond led the way to bring it back, first in a 2014 workshop production and now in a fully-staged off-Broadway production which opens tonight.

Since I'm in Los Angeles and it's at the Connelly Theater on East 4th Street in New York, I won't be seeing it any time soon…but of course, we're quite intrigued by the whole project. This article by Adam Gopnik makes it sound pretty wonderful but it also makes it sound like the folks behind it only found a few pieces of the original script and score and so have had to make up a lot of it anew. That doesn't mean it isn't a good show. It just makes us wonder how much of what they present is what the Brothers Marx did back in '24.

(One error in the article: Gopnik writes of the search for pieces of the material and discusses "…a version of the Napoleon scene that had, improbably, been made into a rather mediocre episode in a long-forgotten, cheaply made cartoon special in 1970, with the very elderly Groucho supplying his lines and Hans Conried doing the other brother's voices." That was The Mad, Mad, Mad Comedians produced by Rankin-Bass back then and while Groucho did supply his own voice, the other guy wasn't Hans Conried. It was Paul Frees. Paul did a better Chico Marx than Chico Marx. I linked to a copy of the show back here.)

Anyway, I hope the show's terrific. I also hope that the publicity about it causes someone someplace to think, "Hey, I think I have an old, complete script called I'll Say She Is in my attic…"

Keith Olbermann on how the media goes too easy on Donald Trump because he's good for their ratings. I doubt there are many folks in the business who would disagree with his premise even as they commit the crime.

I have me a busy day ahead. Dunno when I'll be getting back to the blog here so I figured I'd better soup things up and give you warning. But before I go…

A couple of folks have written to quibble with my premise that saying Donald Trump is deliberately lying is nicer than saying he's a pathological liar. This isn't worth a whole lotta debate but I do think the latter is the more insulting view. A deliberate liar could theoretically stop lying. The pathological one probably cannot.

Speaking of the man everyone's speaking of: The newly-unsealed documents in the Trump University lawsuit do not speak well of Mr. Trump. It's looking like a pretty blatant swindle there with Trump only concerned with his profit and his image, not whether his business actually delivered that which was promised. I don't think this will cost him a lot of votes but it may make him seem even more hypocritical when he refers to "Crooked Hillary."

I can't believe I'm planning panels for this year's Comic-Con already. Wasn't last year's Comic-Con about a month ago?

Lots of folks online are bashing Mrs. Bill Cosby for standing by Mr. Bill Cosby. I guess it's easy to say "Well, if I was in her position…" but you're not. We don't know what that marriage is really like and how much they mean to one another or what it would mean to either of them to separate. I don't think abandoning a loved one in trouble is usually a great thing and I don't think staying with them is always "enabling" and like I said, we don't know much about their relationship. We just don't.

Want to know who's going to win the California Primary, Bernie or Hillary? If you search a bit online, you can find a poll that will show he will or one that will indicate she will or one which says it's too close to call. I sure have no idea. I'm not even that sure what kind of outcome — him winning, her winning, the winner winning by a lot or a little — I'd prefer. At this point, I just want one of them to win and for the loser to rally his/her supporters behind the victor.

I just hope all the Bernie-backers who've been saying they'd never vote for Hillary, and all the Hillary-supporters who say they'll never cast votes for Bernie will take their lead from Marco Rubio and promptly reverse themselves. Rubio's been apologizing for saying Trump had small hands and a smaller penis and I expect any day now, he'll be apologizing to Donald for even running against him. Hope we're not going to see Jeb Bush saying, "Donald was right…I am low-energy" and Carly Fiorina announce, "I'm sorry, Trump was completely right about my face."

See you folks later…maybe.

A few weeks ago, I praised a new musical revue I saw called L.A. Now and Then. It was up for a limited engagement and it's closed now…but that's no reason not to let you see its opening number. The first gent you see there is Robert Yacko and he's soon joined by the entire company, most of whom are theater students at Los Angeles City College. The song was written by the show's conceiver and director, Bruce Kimmel…

This may be the nicest post I ever write about Donald Trump. I keep seeing people describe him as a "pathological liar" and I don't think he is; not as I understand the term, at least. What I understand is more in keeping with this paragraph I found on Wikipedia…

Lying is the act of both knowingly and intentionally/willfully making a false statement. Most people do so out of fear. Normal lies are defensive, and are told to avoid the consequences of truth telling. They are often white lies that spare another's feelings, reflect a pro-social attitude, and make civilized human contact possible. Pathological lying is considered a mental illness, because it takes over rational judgment and progresses into the fantasy world and back. Pathological lying can be described as a habituation of lying. It is when an individual consistently lies for no personal gain. The lies are commonly transparent and often seem rather pointless.

Does anyone think Donald Trump's fibs are told for no personal gain? And it strikes me that Trump is not knowingly, intentionally or willfully making false statements so much as he just doesn't care if the statements are true or false just so long as they get applause from his base and allow him to avoid hard truths that may not be good for his candidacy.

The other day, he said there was no drought in California. I don't think he believed that or cared if it was true or not. I think he just knows his audience and he knows that a lot of them revolt against government and liberalism because government and liberalism often tell people they can't have certain kinds of spray cans or use certain kinds of light bulbs or that they have to put certain items in the blue trash can instead of the black trash can. A realtor who calls on me frequently in a futile effort to persuade me now is the time to sell my house told me of a neighbor I have who has been ticketed for overwatering his lawn. She says he told her, "I don't give a shit if there is a drought. If I want to water my lawn, no one's going to tell me I can't."

Betcha a hundred bucks that guy's voting for Trump.

What The Donald says is a lie but I don't see where it's a pathological lie. There's no reason to believe he said it due to mental illness and every reason to believe he said it because that kind of thing seems to be succeeding for him at the moment. He has paid no obvious price for past distortions of fact so he goes right on distorting. That's not being pathological. It's just sticking with what's worked so far.

I tried — I really tried not to get swept up in the back-and-forth between those who think Woody Allen, once upon a time molested his adopted daughter and those who think there was no molestation but that his "ex," Mia Farrow, convinced the daughter there was and has been trying to convince others and…well, it's not a pretty story, no matter which side you believe.

It long ago moved out of the judicial system and into the Court of Public Opinion. The main public accusation was made by the adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, in this article and given wider support by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a few pieces in Vanity Fair and others. Woody Allen himself wrote a response to these accusations and there was a longer, more detailed one from his friend, Robert Weide.

More recently, Ronan Farrow (brother of Dylan) wrote a piece for the Hollywood Reporter reviving the discussion. And now in the newest installment of this drama, Bob Weide has posted a pretty strong response to Ronan. Stay tuned for the next chapter.