I don't feel good about leaving this blog devoid of content all day so I'm just back long enough to say hi, to tell you I'll be back full time in a day or three and to plug tomorrow's edition of Stu's Show, on which the topic will be "Archiving the Stars." Once upon a time, Stu worked as a personal assistant to Lucille Ball and he'll be telling what that was all about. Not only that but he'll be joined by Steve Stoliar (who performed similar duties for Groucho Marx), Gary Kaskel (who did likewise for Milton Berle) and Christopher Bay (who still does this for Shelley Berman). By now, you should know how to listen to Stu's Show but if not, all the details are here.

And I'll be back soon to tell you of my latest adventure. Here's a hint: I am not camping out to be first in line to see the new Star Wars movie.

I have to tend to a personal-type matter which will keep me from blogging for a day or three. I'll probably tell you all about it when I return but in the meantime, you'll have to look elsewhere on the web for your Donald Trump insults, attacks on cole slaw and plugs for Frank Ferrante. I'm sure you'll do just fine.

This is an entry to Mark Evanier's list of the twenty top voice actors in American animated cartoons between 1928 and 1968. For more on this list, read this. To see all the listings posted to date, click here.

Most Famous Role: Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Other Notable Roles: Mr. Peabody, Dudley-Do-Right, Fearless Leader, Tom Slick, Super Chicken, George of the Jungle, Gruffi Gummi (on Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears), Moosel (on The Wuzzles) and others.

What He Did Besides Cartoon Voices: Bill was primarily a writer, gagman and producer for animation.  Before he became the main creative talent for Jay Ward Productions, he worked for Warner Brothers animation and U.P.A.

Why He's On This List: Maybe the best-ever acting ensemble in animation was the crew on the Jay Ward shows and Bill was the keystone player.  On the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, William Conrad was the narrator, then Paul Frees, June Foray and Bill did all the voices, each often expertly playing a half-dozen roles in one short cartoon.  No guest actors were ever needed.

Fun Fact: Bill was credited on-screen as producer and sometimes as a writer on the Jay Ward cartoons but never as a voice talent even though he usually played the star characters.

I'm busy with something today so I may not get back here for a while. If it turns out to be interesting, I'll tell you about it when I do.

As I look at my recent blog postings, I see two contradictory themes. One is that the presidential election is far, far away and that I believe much will change before any of us get near a voting booth. The other theme is me paying a lot of attention to all these current politic matters that I don't think matter much. I'd rather not devote much of my brain to what's going on now but it's like one of those traffic accidents you have to stop and look at. Or better still, it's like one of those high speed chases where (a) the newscasters have no idea what to say so they say nothing over and over, and (b) you're just watching to see who's going to crash and how. Better analogy.

People keep writing to ask me what I think of the new Supergirl show. If and when I get around to watching it, I'll let you know. It seems to be pleasing a lot of people.

I have a folder on my computer with downloaded podcasts — mostly interviews with people in and around show business. The folder is so full, I know I'll never get around to listening to a third of them but in the last week or so, I whittled the "unheard" list down a bit, sampling about a dozen different ones. I came to the conclusion that a good podcast is one that has a good host…and a good host is someone who doesn't need or have any co-hosts. Every one I listened to had at least one unnecessary extra person there, perhaps someone who'd do great as an interviewer on their own.

Whenever you start your own podcast — and sooner or later, we'll all have them — don't have a co-host. You don't need someone else to jump in and divert the conversation from what you're asking about. You don't need all the in-jokes that are only meaningful to you and your buddies. You don't need someone else to talk over you, especially if you have those cheap microphones that make three or more people sound like stock brokers on Wall Street yelling out buy and sell orders. Just you is fine. Or if just you is not fine, maybe you shouldn't have a podcast.

Gotta go. Back soon.

I have a few messages piling up here that seem worthy of answering here. This one is from Andy Rose…

This is a little random, but I've always enjoyed the fact that you can appreciate the history of a medium without getting into "everything sucks these days" hypernostalgia about it. But when I look at links to other people you recommend (Stu Shostak, Ken Levine…maybe even Floyd Norman to a small degree), they seem to have a dismissive attitude about the present that I don't enjoy.

From time to time, I have the opportunity to meet with people from the Old Days of a medium that I'd love to talk to about history, but I find that when I do, it quickly degenerates into them complaining about how the kids today don't know what they're doing. (I guess I'm partially exempted from being one of those "kids" because my interest is flattering to them.) Any attempt to politely suggest that maybe things today aren't all that awful is usually met with a frown, at best.

Yet when I listen to you on Stu's Show, you always manage to parry Stu's ad hominem complaints without getting into an argument about it. So I guess my question is, how do you do that? Is there a way to make that kind of point without putting the other person on the defense, or have you encountered others with that attitude with whom it's impossible to have a civil discussion?

Well, I might disagree with you about your examples. Ken Levine sure seems to love a lot of current shows. You may be reacting to his complaints about how the networks today micro-micro-manage shows these days to the point of smothering them. In those remarks, I think Ken is spot-on.

The "funny" thing about the situation he's complaining about — and I put "funny" in quotes because I'm sure it doesn't seem like that to those whose work is burdened by it — is that network folks are so transient. Today, if you're producing a sitcom for one of the majors and you're not yet the kind of smash hit where you can demand they leave you alone, they won't let you cast a one-line walk-on role without doing auditions and getting the approval of some guy at the network. His judgment is so much better than yours.

Six months from now, that guy at the network will be out of the network and trying to produce a show for them…and his successor won't let him cast a one-line walk-on role without doing auditions and getting approval.

I know Stu and Floyd well enough to know they too don't feel everything today is awful…but I do meet folks who often rant monotonously in that direction. Often, it's because of diminished or denied employment. I have learned to avoid one writer-acquaintance because to say howdy to this guy is to listen to a twenty-minute diatribe about how the cop/detective shows today are all "crap" and he can't believe they put this "shit" on the air. His subtext is way too obvious. Such shows should be more like they were in the seventies…which coincidentally is when he was getting hired to write them.

And sometimes, the subtext is that the person just plain doesn't like that the world is changing, period. He or she is getting older and they don't feel that things revolve around them the way they once did. My view, as I've expressed here before, is that the planet keeps turning and you have two choices: You can turn with it or you can spend your time trying to shove it back in the other direction. Since no one has ever succeeded at reversing its spin, I don't see the point in trying, especially since it's so much fun to hop on and go along for the ride. At the very least, it's much better than being left behind. I once heard someone refer to one of these "things were better in the old days" guys and say, "He likes to self-marginalize."

I rarely (if ever) refer to specific creative work as "crap" or "shit" even when I don't care for it. I think that's needless overkill and usually a conversation-stopper. All you can do when you encounter such rancor is to register your disagreement with it and move on. You certainly can't have a reasonable discussion in those situations. If there's any reasonable point there which can be argued it's probably that one of us is thinking his opinion is way more than just his opinion. So I guess the trick is to just remember that and to be aware that to mud-wrestle with someone means that even when you win, you wind up covered in mud. Or crap or shit or something you definitely don't want to be covered in.

As I've written here before, I don't like Halloween. I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.

I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.

Also, I've always been a fussy eater — an extension of my many food allergies. Even before I knew I had them, I was aware that some foods made me not feel great and I tried to avoid them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve was stuff I simply didn't want to eat…and I would have gotten very sick if I had. Into the trash can it went and I felt bad about it. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.

And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. I promised to stop bashing candy corn on this site so that's all I'll say about that.

So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."

I'm not writing this to try to change your mind about a holiday you might love. If you do, great. As long as you stay off my property, knock yourself out. But over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.

So that's why I'm home tonight and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Kim Davis costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.

The original Monty Python's Flying Circus TV show consisted of four seasons adding up to 45 episodes. The last season of six episodes was done without John Cleese (unless you count a brief cameo or two).

Cleese has often been asked why he left and I've heard him on many occasions just say he was bored with the repetition. Recently when he was asked about this, he gave a longer answer…

You may have heard that the Republican National Committee has announced that after the CNBC debate the other night, they will participate in no more debates involving NBC. Why? Ted Cruz gave the game away on Fox News on Thursday when he suggested debates moderated by Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Rush Limbaugh…

…in other words, moderators who will ask them questions they want to be asked. No one will ask anyone how come the math on his or her tax plan doesn't add up or how they can defend a past vote or financial association or why they seem to advocate one thing and do another. What they want is pure infomercial. With moderators like that, the candidates could have their answers prepared and just read them off TelePrompters.

They thought the CNBC moderators were disrespectful and interested in confrontation. That may be true, though I would think folks who brag about how they'll stand up to Putin could face a little of that. The CNBC interrogators sure didn't impress me as great journalists, not that a lot of folks do these days. But I think the real problem is that they did ask some questions that caused candidates to give answers they regretted and which may have hurt them. That's what the candidates want to stop.

As I've said repeatedly, I don't like these "debates." I think they distill important issues down to quick, incomplete sound bites. They always remind me of Miss America finalists being asked to summarize their plan for World Peace in 90 seconds. In every one, too many questions are answered, "I have a plan to fix this" and we never get around to hearing what that plan is.

I, for one, would like to have heard Mike Huckabee — an opponent of fetal tissue research and many scientific programs — explain what he would do to hasten the finding of cures for diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's. My guess is it involves prayer, not raising taxes, eliminating F.D.A. regulations and creating new ways for private sector researcher firms to claim any damn thing they want and to soak sick, desperate people for remedies of questionable effectiveness.

You know Al Molinaro as Murray the Cop on the Odd Couple TV show (the Klugman-Randall version) and as Al on Happy Days. He appeared a lot of other TV shows including an NBC special that I wrote. I'd always heard he was very nice, thoroughly professional and that on a set, everyone loved him. During the two days I worked with him, that was exactly how it went.

Al was one of those great character actors — like Jack Somack and Burt Mustin — who came to it later in life. Al was successful in other businesses like real estate and he was in his forties (and financially successful) before he decided to pursue a new field…acting. He spent a decade or two doing bit parts and non-paying gigs before he finally began making a decent living in his second career.

I don't recall where it was but I once heard a story about how Al got discovered. I can't verify that it's true but it's such a good story I'm going to tell it anyway.

The way I heard it, an actors' group was putting on a play to showcase their members. They were going to invite every producer and agent they could there in the hope that they would get representation and/or jobs out of it. They selected a play that had lots of juicy, showy roles…but there was one part that no one wanted to do. It was tiny one with only three or four lines and it would not show anyone off in a way that would prompt a producer or agent to leap to his or her feet and say, "I want that person!"

So someone in the cast knew Al, they asked him and he agreed to take it. You've probably already guessed where this is going.

Opening night, they had the house packed with important folks. None of the main actors got any nibbles out of the event but at least one of the agents, seeing Al in his few minutes on stage, rushed back to the dressing room after the final curtain and asked Al, "Do you have an agent? If you don't, I'd like to be your agent." Al signed with the guy and within a week had several national commercials…which led to bigger, better things.

Is this story true? I dunno…maybe not. But I'd sure like to believe it is because Al seemed like such a good guy. He passed away yesterday at the age of 96 but will live forever in reruns.

I've already recommended my pal Kliph Nesteroff's fine new book, The Comedians, here. Now let me recommend that if you're in the Los Angeles area, you plan to attend his kick-off party. It's Wednesday, November 3 at the Cinefamily — or as some of us prefer to call it, The Silent Movie Theater over on Fairfax. Kliph will be showing rare and astounding clips of great comedians in action. Included will be Comedian Backstage, the notorious 1963 ABC documentary about Shelley Berman that he later felt had ruined his career.

Details and tickets are available on this page. If my schedule and my new knee permits, I'll be there.

Jonathan Chait explains how Marco Rubio, in selling his tax proposals, is counting on the fact that Americans don't know how to add. Hey, it's worked before for other candidates. Kevin Drum flat-out calls Rubio a liar.

My right-wing buddy Roger has been telling me that Hillary Clinton will lose because Americans don't trust her. Even if I buy some of the claims against her, who's going to beat her in the integrity category? Rubio, who seems to be deliberately misrepresenting his own proposals? Ben Carson, who says it's "propaganda" that he had an association with that company for which he did all those endorsement videos? Carly Fiorina, who swears by videos and statistics that no one else can see? Donald Trump, who keeps rewriting his own history and insulting whoever points that out? Hey, how about Jeb! Bush, who likes to pretend 9/11 didn't happen while his brother was president and that the Iraq War "kept us safe?"

It's going to be a long 374 days until the election.

The other day here, I linked to a video of Main Street, a barbershop quartet that did a funny medley of recent hit songs rendered in the barbershop style. Here they are on more traditional ground, performing "Lida Rose" from The Music Man, accompanied by a female barbershop troupe, the Treblemakers. I like this a lot…

Comedian and comedy writer Greg Fitzsimmons has come up with a novel way to punish Bill Cosby: Steal his material. I don't think I approve of this.

So I see a lot of online commentators saying Jeb! Bush is toast, as if he hasn't got a chance since he needed to change the game with last night's debate and failed to do so. His chances of winning the Republican nomination may be down around Bill Maher's but politics — at least this kind of politics — doesn't work like that. In sports, as the late Yogi Berra said, it ain't over 'til it's over. In nomination-seeking, it ain't over until your big donors tell you it's over.

It wouldn't surprise me if he got out tomorrow but it also wouldn't surprise me if he stayed in the game — denial apparently being hereditary to the Bush clan — a few more months. He may just think the guys ahead of him in the polls are all so unstable that they could all self-destruct before long. As I understand it, Jeb! still has a lot of money to spend on his campaign. You'll know he's in trouble when he starts selling that exclamation point on eBay to raise funds.

Speaking of which! Mark Thorson, one of my correspondents here who catches a lot of my klutzier typos, sent me this link to an article about a California man who won the right to have an exclamation point in his name. Scott Shaw!, are you listening?

One thing that bothered me about last night's debate was the tremendous amount of factual errors that were made by candidates. There are some in any debate, G.O.P. or Dem, but I don't recall this volume before, nor do I recall them being so defended as some sort of plot by the Liberal Media. Donald Trump denies something that's clearly stated on his website and it's not, "Oops, sorry, I misspoke." It's an attack on the questioner's fact-checking. That's real high school.

During the Bush-Kerry election, I lost a friend…well, first I lost the ability to talk with him and then I lost the friendship. He was hysterical in his belief that within weeks of a Kerry inauguration, America would be a scorched wasteland with the few survivors staggering about looking for others to eat. To him, there were no unflattering lies about Kerry. Everything negative was inarguably true. I had pro-Bush friends (I still do) with whom I could discuss matters. They had misgivings about their guy as I did about Kerry and I think we all voted for the lesser evil, even though we didn't concur on who that was.

But the Kerry-hating acquaintance? Anything bad about Bush was "Liberal Propaganda," not to be considered because, you know, it came from people who were not Bush supporters. That alone proved it was a lie. He really had a trouble having his good/evil views diluted in any way.

I've never backed a candidate who I didn't think had negatives. I have a lot of reservations about Hillary Clinton's plans regarding foreign policy and about Bernie Sanders' lack of very many plans in that area. I don't really want to listen to anyone who thinks their candidate can't do anything wrong because I find those discussions invariably go nowhere except maybe Fantasyland.

Last night, Ben Carson told a lie that even some leading right-wing commentators (like this one) can't paint over claiming media malpractice. If that howler had been uttered by a Democrat — an Al Gore or a Clinton or Obama — we'd be hearing that the person was a Congenital Liar; not just that he or she was a liar but that they had some deep emotional flaw or mental illness that compelled them to spout falsehoods the way a Tourette's victim hurls "f" bombs. I understand the political strategy there. Convince people your opponent can't speak the truth to save his life and you don't have to rebut the true things he says that you don't want your supporters to consider.

There are a lot of good fact-checking sites out there like Factcheck.Org and Politifact. Since they're manned by humans, they can make mistakes — though I've never thought they were all wrong about anything. When I hear someone say they're all biased and not to be believed, I think someone is really, really afraid of being exposed as a fibber. If you hear anyone say I'm wrong about this, don't believe them because they're surely a biased congential liar.

• If I ever run for office, my motto will be "Don't trust the media — especially when their so-called 'fact-checkers' say I was wrong!"