The other day, I showed you one of the private jet planes that a Vegas casino might send to pick you up if you had a ton o' money you wanted to gamble (i.e., lose) at their establishment. They would also probably put you up in one of what they informally call their "high-roller" suites. These are luxurious hotel suites that would cost zillions a night to rent but bupkis if they expect you to leave a lot of cash in their coffers when you check out.

The Harrah's organization owns or controls eight casino resorts in Las Vegas: Harrah's, The Linq, Caesars Palace, Nobu, The Horseshoe, Planet Hollywood, The Cromwell and The Flamingo. On this page, you can partake of 360° tours of some of their "high roller" suites. They vary a lot in size and lushness but the most impressive ones are probably at Caesars Palace. Check out the Hadrian Villa, which has four bedrooms, a grand entrance with stylish interiors, a baby grand piano and an aquarium. It's 11,850 square feet, probably at least thrice the size of wherever you live.

In my entire life, I have logged a grand total of one night in one high-roller suite in Vegas. It was at what was then called the MGM Grand before it was renamed Bally's when the MGM people built a new MGM Grand a few blocks down The Strip and sold the old place. Bally's has recently been renamed The Horseshoe and you can "tour" the fancy suites at The Horseshoe on that page but I don't recognize the room that a lady friend and I inhabited there in, I'm guessing, 1983. It was on a night when the casino was dead and I had a rare lucky streak and won a lot of money on Blackjack. (Don't be envious. I eventually gave much of it back though not all to that particular casino.)

My "win" for that night was way, way below what it usually took to earn such a room but a Casino Host gave it to us on a whim. I remember it was on a floor with tight security and a 24/7 staff of tuxedoed butlers. You walked into our suite and in the middle of the front room, there was a bathtub that could have housed ten people. My date vetoed my suggestion that I run out and find eight more ladies to join us. Instead, the two of us bathed, then slept no better and no worse than we would have in any room in the place, had breakfast served to us and checked out.

I think they said the room, if we'd paid for it which almost no one ever did, would have been $3,000 a night. That was a lot of money in '83…and really a lot of money for a bath, seven hours of sleep and a couple of omelets and juice. My companion decided later we should have found someone rich in the casino to sublet it to, charged them $2,000, rented a $60 room for ourselves that night and made $1,940 off the experience. If for some insane reason, Caesars Palace ever comps me the Hadrian Villa, I intend to do what she suggested but the rent will be a little higher…five figures instead of four.

Someone named Gary visited a Costco in Portland, purchased two copies of The Essential Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz: The Greatest Comic Strip of All Time — one for himself, one for a friend. He was then nice enough to snap a photo of the display and send it to me, author of said book. I'm just hoping the person at the exit who checks over purchases didn't mistake it for a case of toilet paper.

And I'm impressed that anyone was able to go anywhere in Portland. To hear our president tell it, the city is a hellscape of rioting and looting and buildings being burned and people being shot in the street…all by folks who didn't vote for him. I pray he sends in the National Guard to make it a safe place for decent human beings to go to Costco and buy my book.

If you're not near a Portland Costco or just plain afraid to leave your house, you can order it on Amazon or anywhere else. And if you're in certain northern parts of California, you can purchase one — and get it signed by me and its designer, Chip Kidd — in two weeks…

On Saturday, November 15, Chip and I and cartoonist Patrick McDonnell (the guy responsible for Mutts) and a few other superb cartoonists and Peanuts-related people will be at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa Rosa, California. That's a place you must (must!) visit even when we aren't there if you have any love for or interest in Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus, Woodstock and all the rest.

On that day, there will also be a panel discussion about the book at 2 PM which I think requires a separate admission fee. But if you're there at all, you can buy the book and get it signed — and I think they'll even have some of my other books for sale and signing. All the details you need are on this page.

What's that you say? You can't get over to Santa Rosa that Saturday? Well, most of the same people will be hawking and writing their same names in the same book at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco the next day. Here is the page you need to visit to find out about that event on Sunday, November 16. Hope to see you — or, to be honest, anyone in a book-buying mood at either event.

Here are 11 false claims Trump made to the troops in Japan. The man also keeps claiming grocery prices are down when every unbiased source says they're way, way up.

I think he just reflexively always claims whatever puts him in the best light and doesn't care about the truth, Then again, but I do remember articles that said some (not all) of Richard Nixon's many lies resulted from him creating an atmosphere in the White House where underlings felt the only way to please him was to tell him what he wanted to hear. Is someone telling Trump that he has the highest poll numbers he's ever had? That would not be an excuse for him claiming that when it's not true. In fact, it might even be worse than if he knew the truth and chose to lie about it.

Kristi Noem — who sounds like one of those people who'd make up Trump's lies to please him — claims that the big roundup of folks to be deported, sans due process, has not seized any American citizens. Those who track such matters say that ain't so.

Fred Kaplan discusses how seriously we should take Trump's orders for the U.S. to resume the testing of nuclear weapons. Quick summary: It all depends on what he meant by that, which is often the case when Trump says something he means to sound important.

It will be interesting to see Trump's popularity ratings with his base over the next week or two. There have to be a lot of his folks who are depending on SNAP payments and food banks and/or The Affordable Care Act for food and/or medical treatment who aren't happy with Trump spending money on parties, his ghastly ballroom, playing golf, sending tax dollars to Argentina, etc. while they worry. If he doesn't lose them over this, what's it going to take?

The other day here, I featured two Yogi Bear anti-smoking commercials. Little did I realize that the second one was the handiwork of two good friends of mine — Scott Shaw! and Mike Kazaleh. Mike wrote me to say…

Just a note about the Yogi Bear Spots you linked to yesterday. The first one was animated by Irv Spence and was likely directed by Art Babbitt. The second one I know more about as it was made by Scott Shaw! and myself. That was indeed Greg Burson as Yogi and the actual Don Messick as Boo Boo. We recorded it at the H&B studio on Cahuenga. Scott did the storyboards and layout. I directed and animated. Playhouse Pictures did the ink and paint and photography. The budget was very slim which may be why Scott and I were called in.

Thanks, Mike. You guys did a great job. Yogi and Boo Boo looked like Yogi and Boo Boo. These days, I don't see a lot of animation of Hanna-Barbera characters that isn't trying to be different on the dubious premise that "different" is more modern and therefore will attract more fans. I don't see much evidence that it does.

The Cinerama Theater in Hollywood — the place built in 1963 to show my favorite movie — has been closed since 2020 and a lot of us have been hankering to see it brought back to life. (In case you're new to this blog: My favorite movie is It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I first saw it there a few weeks after it opened and when they've shown it over the last few decades, I am usually in attendance.)

Recently, folks who yearn for the theater's reopening got excited. Its current proprietors have filed for a permit to sell alcohol. That is not a rumor. You can read the application online. But I think those fans are jumping the gun to declare that the Dome will now really, for certain, no-kidding-around-this-time reopen soon. Maybe it will but maybe it won't. I think they (or someone) has filed for this before and then not opened.

I hope it's for-real this time. I'll celebrate as loud as anyone when it is, especially if the announcement of reopening includes an announcement of them showing Guess What Movie. But I'm gonna wait 'til it's official.

Recently here, we looked at a situation comedy pilot starring singer Vic Damone that was unsold and, in the opinion of many who wrote me, unwatchable. This post is about another, slightly more successful TV series that starred Vic Damone…and I may be one of the few people alive who remembers it. It was called The Lively Ones and it was an unconventional music series that served as the summer replacement for the popular sitcom Hazel for two seasons — 1962 and 1963.

I have not seen this show since 1963. As far as I know, it was never rerun anywhere and if there are videos from it online, I haven't been able to find them. So what follows here are memories from when I was eleven years old. They may not be completely accurate but I'm pretty sure I liked the show.

Basically, it was thirty minutes of what we'd now call music videos. It was just people singing — often with Damone, sometimes solo — in interesting settings. I don't think any of them were in studios. It was some popular performer performing a number on a beach followed by some other popular performer performing on a roller coaster or on top of a mountain or somewhere. The music was jazzy and upbeat. Both seasons were before The Beatles had appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and American popular music began changing.

It was sponsored by Chevrolet or Ford and the opening and a lot of the music segments involved people driving and sometimes singing while driving fast in open convertibles. There were a lot of young blonde ladies with their hair flapping in the breeze and the whole show was kind of a commercial for buying a convertible and driving around in it with someone young and beautiful.

I remember Allan Sherman appearing a couple of times, singing song parodies with Vic Damone, one involving new lyrics to "Consider Yourself" (from Oliver) while the two men ran all over a navy battleship dressed in sailor uniforms. In fact, I'll tell you the end of the song — and remember, I haven't seen this since I was eleven or maybe ten…

Sherman and Damone are dancing all over this aircraft carrier and Sherman is fiddling with some huge gun and Damone sings — and this is to the closing bars of the song from Oliver — "Whatever you do, don't shoot!" And Sherman sings back, "Don't worry, my lad — I dig! I'm simply trying to disengage the safety switch!" Then they cut to stock footage from somewhere of a gun firing and it hits another ship and sinks it —

— and then they cut back to Damone and Sherman being dragged off by some sort of military police and the two stars sing the last line: "Consider yourself…in the brig!"

I don't know why I remember this but I remember this. I also remember noticing a credit for Billy May, who was responsible for some or all of the arrangements and I knew that name because I was already a huge fan of Stan Freberg, and Billy May's name was on a lot of Freberg's records.

And I will never get out of my head the theme song to the show, sung by Damone and arranged (I assume) by May. Damone sang it on an album based on the show and I think it got some radio airplay as a single. It seems to be just about the only remnant of the series. If anyone knows of any others, I'd love to hear about them. In the meantime, here's the audio (only) to that theme…

This is my almost-annual post about why I don't like Halloween. I run it each year and usually I change the name of the anti-gay person in the last paragraph but I put in Mike Johnson last year and he'll do just fine for this year. If you can think of a worse person, just mentally substitute their name…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, 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.

When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. 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. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against trick-or-treating. In earlier versions of this essay, I used to say, "Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year." But I haven't had anyone at my door for three or four years now so I don't bother.

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."

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'll be home for Halloween and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Mike Johnson 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.

Because there are some songs you just can't hear too often…

Kermit the Frog sings "The Rainbow Connection" backed by a choir of as many people as could fit into Lincoln Center…

I'm not a big fan of the stage musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and even less a fan of the 1982 movie version of it. They took the heart out of it with stunt/star casting and sanitizing the brothel for our protection…but I do like four minutes and twenty-nine seconds of it. Those are the ones in which Charles Durning performs the "Sidestep" number. Here are those four minutes and twenty-nine seconds…

Hey, how about a song from Wicked performed by the melodic music makers of Voctave?

A number of what we think of as classic Monty Python sketches didn't originate with Monty Python. They were birthed on earlier shows featuring Monty Python members or performers who appeared at some point with one or more Monty Python members. I don't know the origin of the "Last Supper" sketch but I know John Cleese performed it with a number of other British comic actors — in this case, Ade Edmonson, who starred in a lot of Brit sitcoms and other programs. This may have been done for some benefit…

Here's one of my favorite magicians, Daniel Roy, demonstrating his skill with what magic folks call "color changes," even though a more correct name would be "turning one card into another." When I was more into magic, I mastered a few such tricks but I was about one-eight-thousandth as good as Daniel Roy is…which is one of the reasons I don't do much of that anymore. But I still love watching folks like this…

Felling sad? Feeling blue? Well, cheer up! If you don't, I'll send the Slop Sisters to perform in your living room…