And speaking of Wicked and politics…just after I reposted the video of Wicked cast members urging you to vote in the 2020 election, I stumbled across this — and I can't believe I never saw it before. It's Kristin Chenoweth singing a repurposed song from Wicked to urge voting for Kamala Harris in the last presidential election. How did I miss this?

This is labeled as a special dispatch from the land of Oz but it's also a dispatch from October of 2020 when COVID was still keeping some of us home and when it seemed imperative to vote against the Wicked Witch named Donald Trump. I posted it here on October 7, 2020 and I just like it as a piece of performance art.

It gathers everyone they could find who'd been in a production of Wicked — and no, I'm not sure who "they" are or were. The message is to register to vote and vote early, perhaps by mail and it may be too late to do that if you don't already have a ballot. But just make sure to vote. That's the message. And don't let predictions of a Blue Tsunami make you think it's not necessary to make the effort; that others are already dispatching that Wicked Witch…

I'm getting — and I assume I will continue to get all week — many text messages, e-mails and paper-type flyers warning me of the disaster that will result if this certain candidate wins or that certain proposition does or does not pass. I think my attitude towards these alerts is along the lines of "If it was so vital that I know this before I voted, why didn't you tell me this before I voted?"

None of these dire catastrophes became apparent in the last few days. The ones that warn me away from a certain candidate emphasize that he or she has always been the kind of person I shouldn't vote for.

There was also one phone call in which a recorded message that was obviously an A.I. voice warned me that if California doesn't elect Republicans, Donald Trump will never send us any federal money to help with any disasters in our state. That may be so but doesn't Trump claim if the votes has been counted honestly, he would have carried California in a landslide two years ago? So now he wants to punish all those people who voted for him and maybe even donated to his campaign…do I have that right?

I'm curious to see how many ballots were cast when. It's possible some candidates and propositions already have enough votes that the ballots still to be cast don't matter.

If you dwell in or around where I dwell (i.e., Los Angeles), you might want to keep an eye on PlayTodayLA, a website that tracks what plays and musicals are playing or musicalizing in and around our area. Lately, I've missed some promising-sounding productions because I didn't hear about them until it was too late.

Donald Trump, who is too busy with National Security matters to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against the B.B.C., is out giving campaign speeches. I'm trying to tune in on some of them because I need to know which Republican men have great asses.

Since we were in a Julie Andrews mood here lately, I thought I'd treat you to this video of her 1995 Broadway musical version of the film Victor/Victoria.  It was directed, as was the movie, by her husband Blake Edwards and it had Michael Nouri in the role James Garner played on screen, Tony Roberts in the Robert Preston part and Rachel York imitating Lesley Ann Warren — who I thought stole the film. Shortly after seeing the show on Broadway, I met Ms. Warren and she asked me how her replacement had done. I thought for a second and told her, "It's kind of like you're Elvis and she's a real good Elvis impersonator."

This video was shot at the Marriott Marquis Theater in New York during a performance so that's genuine audience reaction you're hearing. Actually, I believe they shot several performances and then edited them together. It was done with robotic cameras on robotic arms which swung out over the audience and the reason I know that is because my wonderful friend Brinke Stevens and I were in one of those audiences.

There was an announcement before the show assuring us the robotics would not get in the way of our enjoyment (they didn't) and that the show was being recorded for Japanese television and the video would never be seen in America. A few years later of course, it was.

We thought it was a pretty good show but as some of you may remember, there was a brouhaha when the Tony nominations came out that year and it only received one — for Ms. Andrews, not for the show or anyone else in it. Ms. Andrews was incensed and at a performance soon after, she announced, "I have searched my conscience and my heart and find that I cannot accept this nomination, and prefer instead to stand with the egregiously overlooked."

The "snub" (if you want to call it that) kind of shocked the Broadway community. It had been expected that the nominees for Best Musical that year would be: Rent, Big, Victor/Victoria and Bring in 'Da Noise, Bring in 'Da Funk. Instead, Victor/Victoria wasn't nominated and neither was Big. The other two slots went to two musicals that had already closed after short runs — Swinging on a Star (96 performances) and Chronicle of a Death Foretold (37).

The producers of Victor/Victoria were upset because since their show had not been nominated for Best Musical and Julie was taking the stand she did, they couldn't have a number from their show on the Tony telecast — usually good for business. The producers of that telecast were also upset. They were sure that having Julie Andrews performing a number from that show would have been good for ratings. Nathan Lane, who hosted that show, did turn up on stage dressed as Julie Andrews and announced she couldn't be there that night because she was hosting a telethon for the Egregiously Overlooked. The Best Musical award that year went to Rent and though Julie's name stayed on the ballot for Best Actress in a Musical, the award went to Donna Murphy in a revival of The King and I.

Anyway, here it is. Enjoy…

Here's the trailer for the National Tour of Boop! The Musical. They're in Cincinnati tonight, Saturday and Sunday and then it's on to St. Louis. Thanks to Ben Varkentine for sending me this.

I briefly knew Grim Natwick, the animator credited with designing Ms. Boop when he worked at the Max Fleischer studio in 1930 — and she wasn't the only great cartoon lady he brought to life. He was later the primary animator of Snow White for Mr. Disney. I wonder what he would have made of his 1930 creation starring on Broadway almost a hundred years later…and his drawings of her on posters and playbills.

Here's Jordan Klepper doing what he does best: Finding the most clueless Trump supporters and getting them to look that way on camera…

A Halloween Special from Randy Rainbow…

And here are some times Julie Andrews performed on Ed Sullivan's program. Some of the video is not great but all of the performances are…

My current favorite talk show host, Dr. Z…

Donald Trump cheering on the Vivek Ramaswamy ad. I can’t wait to see what The Daily Show will make of this, probably tonight.

I’ve been posting links to some videos featuring great (I think) show tunes penned by Alan Jay Lerner and Fritz Loewe. Here’s a few minutes of those two gents telling — well, it’s either Will Jordan or Ed Sullivan — how they wrote My Fair Lady…

I hoped Vivek Ramaswamy would lose the upcoming election for the same reason I hope all the Trump supporters/enablers will lose.  But now I’m especially hoping Ramaswamy will lose and people will say “It was because of that dirty, misleading attack ad he hurled at his opponent” and that will make future elections a bit cleaner. It’s a lot to hope for, I suppose.  But elections in this country have become a festival of sliming and misrepresenting your opponent and anything that could tone that down would be a good thing.  When the current Republican governor of Ohio condemns an ad by someone running to be the new Ohio governor, that’s proof the guy who wants to be elected the new governor shouldn’t be.

I never thought Donald Trump’s approval rating could sink this low.  It’s down around the national approval rating for Painful Rectal Itch and the way he’s acting these days, it wouldn’t surprise me if it sank lower.  Even people who approve of the man’s political agenda have to be concluding he’s outta his freakin’ mind.

Are the polls wrong?  Any individual pollster can be and some certainly have been.  But almost all of them?  Including Fox News and others that have kissed this man’s keester?  I don’t think so.

What made me think he’d never lose this much of his base is a couple of encounters with now-former friends I thought wouldn’t abandon him if he gift-wrapped the nuclear codes and presented them to Putin for his birthday.  But I see on Facebook that at least one of those ex-acquaintances is praying  for a sky-colored tsunami.  I’m guessing it was the cost of a full tank for his Hummer that did it. 

I try not to be dangerously optimistic but the polls make that difficult — especially the ones that say around 66% of Americans think Trump is using his position for monetary gain.  I haven’t seen him asked about that but I assume he’d say that as the only good president this nation has ever had, he deserves every cent he’s made plus his name and/or face on everything he wants it on.  It’s going to be an interesting Election Night.  I can’t wait to see him simultaneously claim the vote was rigged and that every single thing that’s gone wrong is all Joe Biden’s fault.