Portions of this chapter were posted previously on this site.  To read this series from the beginning, click here. I still don't know how many chapters this thing is going to run.

Now then: When last we left me in this narrative, I had sweated profusely for many days to both write and draw a two-page feature for Laugh-In magazine. There were two reasons it took so long and both were my inadequate drawing ability. When you aren't sure what you're doing, it can take a lot more time than if you did know what you were doing.

It can also take longer than it should if you fear a negative reaction to the work. You might — consciously or unconsciously — be putting off handing it in to delay that ugly, possible/probable moment of rejection. As I probably was. A man named Chase Craig was my main editor when I later began writing comic books. I once asked him what was the toughest part of his job.  He said it was getting even seasoned pros to stop stalling and turn the damned work in.

He told me about an artist who did a lot of work for him. The guy would draw a whole story in three days…then it took a week and a couple of phone calls to get him to decide it was as good as it was going to get and to turn it over. Chase told me this because I was about to hire the guy for a job and, sure enough, he drew the whole story in three days…then it took a week and a couple of phone calls to get him to decide it was as good as it was going to get.

First Rule of Professional Writing or Drawing: You have to finish the job and hand it in, approximately on-time. I have met many writers and artists in my life who didn't fully grasp that concept.

I more or less finished my drawing for Laugh-In magazine, then spent a few days "polishing" it — which mostly consisted of staring at it and finding microscopic ways to improve it about an eighth of one percent. Finally, overcoming a fear my editor would say "This stinks" — which given my skills was a strong possibility — I worked up the courage to turn it in.

I went to the publisher's office where I was told my editor there was no longer my (or anyone's) editor there. He was outta there, not by choice. The receptionist who informed me of this then directed me to a gentleman who had some job description in management there. He sat me down in his office and told me that Laugh-In magazine had been canceled. They would pay me for the work I was turning in though, of course, it would never be published. In hindsight, I am very happy that it was not published. It was pretty bad and my name was on it.

Here's a slight aside: There are benefits to having a name that no one else has but there are also drawbacks. I used to think it would be nice to be, say, Bob Jones. That way, if someone hated what I'd done, I could say, "Oh, that was by the other Bob Jones.  People confuse us all the time!  Yeah, he's pretty bad!"

The exec at the company offered me work on some of their other magazines which were of the teen and movie gossip sort.  For around eight months, I wrote for them and it led to other jobs — all writing, no drawing — for other outfits. I was not writing anything that interested me or felt like it had much of a future.  Still, I was being paid okay money and getting experience. If nothing else, I was learning to finish a job and hand it in, approximately on-time.

It wasn't long before I was writing the kinds of things I wanted to write…mostly comic books. Occasionally, an assignment involved drawing. I was a lot less nervous about handing in writing than I was about handing in drawing. When I wrote comics for Chase Craig at Gold Key, he kept telling me he needed cover ideas and the only way to submit those was to roughly draw them out. Here are two of the covers I designed. Artists more experienced than I was — and everyone drawing for Gold Key was — tightened up and corrected my drawings. I was paid for writing and penciling.

It was exciting to see my handiwork on a for-real, sold-on-newsstands comic book but I also had an odd feeling about it. I didn't know what to call this odd feeling at the time but a few years ago in some article on the Internet, I saw a phrase — "Impostor Syndrome" — and I thought, "Hey, that might be what I was feeling back then. I quickly Googled the term and found this definition…

Impostor syndrome is a psychological experience where a person doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and fears being exposed as a fraud.

…and I thought, 'Yeah…that's it!"

I felt it most when whoever my girl friend was at the moment would take me to her friends' parties and introduce me around as the guy who wrote and drew the Bugs Bunny comic books. I'd ask her to just say I wrote them and then the following conversation would ensue…

SHE: But you draw Bugs Bunny. You drew Bugs Bunny on the paper tablecloth at the restaurant last week.

ME: Yeah but that's a paper tablecloth. I don't really draw him in the comics.

SHE: Yes, you do. You showed me that issue with the cover you drew.

ME: And I explained to you that all I did was the rough sketch for that cover. Someone else — a real cartoonist — did the finished art.

SHE: Okay but the point is you drew Bugs Bunny on that cover. You showed me the sketch you did. It was a drawing of Bugs Bunny. I don't know why you don't just draw the finished comic books.

ME: Maybe it has something to do with me not being good enough…

SHE: Nonsense! You did that drawing of Bugs Bunny for my niece. She loved it!

ME: She's nine years old.

SHE: And how old are the kids who read those comic books?

ME: Oh, they're much older. They're like…ten or eleven.

SHE: You see what I mean?

And she'd go on introducing me as the guy who wrote and drew the Bugs Bunny comics. Depending on my mood, I might stop arguing the point, especially around people who couldn't grasp the concept that those might be two separate jobs. I'd say, "Yes, yes…I do the pictures. I make up the words in the 'bubbles.'" (Folks who don't know comics always call them "bubbles." Those of us who know better call them "word balloons.")

Or she might say I wrote and drew the Donald Duck comic books or the Goofy comic books. For some reason, any time at a party I was passed off as a Disney artist, someone would ask me if I would do a drawing for them of Donald and Daisy or Mickey and Minnie having sex. No one ever wanted a dirty picture of Porky Pig and Petunia getting it on but there was some repressed sexuality attached to the Disney characters.

I did no such drawings of Disney Ducks for anyone, partly because I had integrity and respect for those characters…and partly because I didn't draw well enough to put them into those poses.

It took a while for me to decide that I really wasn't an artist on a professional level and was never going to be that. What I really was was a pretty decent forger. I shall elaborate in the next part.

In the past here, I've raved about Puppet Up!, a mostly-improvised puppet show for adults (only!) here in Los Angeles. Just thought I'd let you know that it's going on tour. Presently, the list includes Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC and New York City. If you live in or near Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC or New York City, you might want to check it out.

A number of my friends are recommending (highly!) that I see the newly-released Coyote vs. Acme movie. Actually, that should probably be "newly-escaped" because, as you probably know, the Warner folks who commissioned it in the first place tried to bury it for some sort of tax write-off. If I read properly between the lines of the praise it's now receiving, it feels like some of that is because the movie is real good and some is because its success shows how wrong powerful corporate giants can be.

With that success comes renewed talk about the oft-injured Wile E. Coyote and folks are occasionally noting that the "E" stands for "Ethelbert." Well, it does and it doesn't. So this would be a good time for me to rerun the following post which first ran on this site on 2/20/07…

We all love Wile E. Coyote, the long-suffering Road Runner chaser. But, uh, what does the "E" stand for?

I guess I don't know. I mean, none of the cartoons directed by Charles "Chuck" Jones and written by Michael Maltese ever said. Only a couple of them ever even said his name was Wile E. Coyote.

But it has just (this morning) been brought to my attention — thank you, Devlin Thompson — that more than a thousand websites say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert. The source for this is a 1973 story that appeared in the comic book, Beep Beep the Road Runner, published by Western Publishing Company under its Gold Key imprint. This is noted by Jon Cooke over on this page and as he also reveals, it was the question/answer to the Final Jeopardy question on the 1/18/07 episode of the game show, Jeopardy!

In the story, which was called "The Greatest of E's," Wile E. Coyote realizes he doesn't know and gathers together some of his relatives to answer the question. One is an uncle named Kraft E. Coyote who informs him and the world that the "E" stands for Ethelbert. That is, as far as I know, the only piece of fiction licensed or otherwise blessed by the Warner Brothers company that ever said such a thing.

This raises one of those moral issues that has no firm answer. What makes something like this an "official" fact in the world of animated cartoons? I mean, we know Bugs Bunny is named Bugs Bunny because…well, we just know. But what is the name of the frog that sings and dances in the Jones-Maltese masterpiece, One Froggy Evening? It's Michigan J. Frog, right? Apparently…but that name appears nowhere in the cartoon. As I understand it, the moniker was coined years later when there was some merchandising interest in the character…or maybe when W.B. decided to try and generate some merchandising interest. Chuck or Mike may have come up with it then or someone at WB may have and then Chuck and Mike endorsed and used it…but anyway, that's the frog's name. I suppose. I mean, if the guys who made One Froggy Evening didn't argue the point, who are we to say it isn't?

For that matter, even if some "fact" appears in a cartoon that doesn't make it inviolable. There were WB cartoons where Sylvester the Cat could talk and was owned by Granny. There were others where he couldn't talk and was Porky Pig's cat. Quick: If I asked you, "Who owns Sylvester?," you'd probably forget about all cartoons to the contrary and say it was Granny, who also owned Tweety. There were Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons where for no apparent reason, those characters lived in other eras. Elmer Fudd had a couple of different middle initials in different shorts and characters' appearances were often changing and we could list hundreds of other inconsistencies. The films weren't intended to have an airtight continuity from one to another. Some "facts" were meant to be forgotten.

It was the same with the comic books. Western Publishing licensed the right to do comics of those characters for around thirty years, and the editors at Western thought of the comics as separate entities from the cartoons. The Donald Duck that Carl Barks and others wrote and drew for Western's Disney comics was not exactly the same Donald Duck that appeared in the Disney cartoons. They adapted the character, rethinking and redesigning him for a different medium. (It's a funny thing: When I was a kid and read Bugs Bunny comic books, I always "heard" the wabbit's dialogue in Mel Blanc's voice from the shorts. But when I read a Donald Duck comic book, I never thought that duck spoke with the voice Clarence Nash supplied for Donald in his cartoon appearances…maybe because I understood so little of what the animated duck said and I could read every syllable of the comic book Donald's word balloons.) In some ways, the Donald of the comics was the same character but in others, he was a different but similar creature. And I never quite related the Mickey Mouse of the comic books or strips to any of his animated appearances.

While Western was doing the Warner Brothers-based comics, they changed a lot of the characters to make them — they thought — more workable for print media. They didn't think matching the cartoons closely mattered because, for one thing, those films weren't on TV every week then. During the forties and early fifties, they weren't on TV at all. Many of the kids who bought the comics rarely, if ever, saw the animated shorts and certainly didn't see them over and over and over, like they would in later years. So it didn't matter a whole heap if the comics matched the cartoons; only that they worked as comic book reading experiences. Back then in the Bugs Bunny newspaper strip, which was read by millions, Elmer Fudd rarely appeared and I don't think Yosemite Sam ever did…but Sylvester was a regular. He was a hobo who wasn't owned by Granny, didn't chase Tweety Birds and who had a British accent. Someone thought it made for a better strip that way.

This is why, for instance, the Road Runner in comic books differed so much from the Road Runner in cartoons. When I was a kid enjoying both, I was puzzled. I'd seen Road Runner cartoons. They were tough to come by then but I'd caught one or two and in them, there was one Road Runner and one Coyote and neither spoke. In the comics, the Road Runner not only spoke, he spoke in rhyme. He had a name — Beep Beep — and in some stories, he had a wife and a family of either three or four youthful road-running kids. The Coyote spoke too, though not in rhyme, though that didn't bother me as much. The Coyote had spoken in a couple of non-Road Runner cartoons.

I wondered aloud back then if the folks who made the comic books had ever viewed one of those hard-to-see cartoons — but of course, they had. As I learned much later, Michael Maltese wrote many of those comics and the early ones were drawn by Pete Alvarado. Pete handpainted all the backgrounds for the first Road Runner cartoon, Fast and Furry-ous. Almost all the other writers and artists who did the comics (Phil DeLara, Don R. Christensen, Warren Foster, et al) had worked for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio, if not in Jones's unit then right down the hall. They knew that in the cartoons, the Road Runner didn't talk — in rhyme or at all and it had been a conscious decision to change it for the comics. The editors and creators had also decided to not worry about consistency from comic book to comic book. In some, there was a Mrs. Road Runner and four kids. But there were several years there where the wife and one of the kids disappeared…except that every now and then, they'd inexplicably turn up for a story or two or in a reprint sandwiched in among new adventures.

So as far as I'm concerned, it's no more a "fact" that the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert than it is that the Road Runner is named Beep Beep, has a wife and kids and speaks in doggerel. It said the "E" stood for Ethelbert in one comic book story but that's just one obscure comic book story…and even the guy who wrote it didn't intend it as anything more than one joke on one page of one story in one issue.

How do I know this? Because, as some of you may have guessed by now, I was that guy. I wrote that story. I think I was around twenty years old at the time. I'm pretty sure, by the way, that that one was conceived in a lecture hall at U.C.L.A. while I was simultaneously jotting down script ideas and feigning attention to what a tedious Anthropology professor was teaching. Mike Maltese had been occasionally writing the comics in semi-retirement before me…but when he dropped the "semi" part, I got the job and that was one of the plots I came up with. For the record, the story was drawn by a terrific artist named Jack Manning, and Mr. Maltese complimented me on it.

Still, I wouldn't take that as any official endorsement of the Coyote's middle name. If you want to say the Coyote's middle name is Ethelbert, fine. I mean, it's not like someone's going to suddenly whip out Wile E.'s actual birth certificate and yell, "Aha! Here's incontrovertible proof!" But like I said, I never imagined anyone would take it as part of the official "canon" of the character. If I had, I'd have said the "E" stood for Evanier.

Fred Kaplan has a solution to the Iran War…

President Donald Trump is reportedly having private discussions with senior aides about whether he should end his war with Iran. The story, in the Wall Street Journal, rouses memories of Vermont Sen. George Aiken's suggestion, early in the Vietnam War, that we should just "declare victory and go home." Aiken didn't really say quite that, but it would have been good if President Lyndon Johnson had taken up the idea then. And it would be very good if Trump followed his instincts — at least this instinct -— now.

I'm wondering if anyone would believe anything Trump says about the war by now.

Every so often, I treat myself to one of George Carlin's stand-up comedy specials. There was a period there where he was showing a bit of a nasty streak and I didn't find him as funny and perhaps not as honest. But most of his career involved a stunning quantity of solid, perceptive comedy, There were other guys who, if you went to see them live, you got to hear a lot of material they'd already done on a record, a cable special or a talk show. Carlin always seemed to have something new. That was one of the many things about him that was to be admired.

I met him a few times. He guested on Welcome Back, Kotter on an episode my partner Dennis and I mostly wrote and he was funny off-stage, too. His old specials hold up pretty well and I probably should link you to some of them here. But one thing he did you might not have seen or heard was this appearance in 1999 at the National Press Club in Washington. It's more speech than stand-up but if you liked Carlin, you'll like this…

My complaints about Walmart's delivery service seem to have reached someone in their corporate structure who wants to improve their system. I got a call today from a gent who seems to actually have the power to fix things and who wanted me to walk him through what went wrong and why. He gave me more store credit and his direct phone number and he seemed to understand when I told him, "I don't want apologies from folks who didn't cause the problem and can't do anything to rectify matters. I want the problem fixed!" He promised me it would not happen to me again and maybe not to anyone. I was impressed.

Jim Held read my recent piece about my first attempts to write comic books and asked,"When you submitted your first script, how did you know what a comic script should look like?" Answer: At first, I made up my own format — a combination of writing and sketching — and then I saw a Gardner Fox script in some fanzine of the day. I do not recall which one.

Others wrote to ask if they could see a copy of that wretched Jimmy Olsen script I wrote. No. I really don't want to experience what it feels like to have every single reader of this blog simultaneously lose every last bit of respect they might have ever had for me. Also, I'm not sure I could find it.

Brian Phillips liked the video of the openings to all those TV westerns. He tells me that he has the TV Guide that was previewing the fall season in 1958 and between shows that were on the air and the ones premiering, there were twenty-six (!) westerns on television each week. I can believe it. That's an awful lot of testosterone on horseback and Frankie Laine theme songs.

Lastly for now: Happy Birthday in about thirty-nine minutes to my friend and occasional collaborator, Scott Shaw! How long have I known Scott? We met at Jack Kirby's house in early 1971. He was not yet a professional cartoonist but you only had to look at what he was drawing in those days and know it was just a matter of time — and not much more of it. I'm awfully glad I know this man.

Here we have the openings for forty TV westerns…and I can think of at least a dozen that aren't in here. Enjoy all the horseback riding and the theme songs sung by male choruses, Frankie Laine or someone trying to sound like Frankie Laine…

To read this series from the beginning, click here.

When I embarked on my chosen career — Professional Writer — there were a few jobs that, depending on one's definitions, I could count as my first sale.  I choose to say it was some work I sold to a short-lived publication called Laugh-In magazine, based on what was then a pretty popular TV show. The magazine was so short-lived that it went out of business before it could print more than a few nuggets of my writing.

That was kind of how my early days in the marketplace went.  Before that, I had an amazing 1-2-3 near misses trying to write for comic books published on the other side of the country.  I don't guarantee the order in which these things happened and you will note a common theme throughout…

NEAR MISS #1: Dick Giordano, editor at Charlton Comics, liked a script I'd submitted for Ghostly Tales or The Many Ghosts of Dr. Graves or any of the comics his company published in that genre.  He wrote back that there was a short buying freeze there because they were overbought. But he liked my script so — with my permission — he'd hold onto it and the moment he was allowed to buy more scripts, he'd buy mine. I wrote back that that was fine with me.

A month or so later, I received a letter from him that he was leaving his job for a better one with DC Comics…but he assured me that his replacement would purchase my script the second he could.  I never heard from that replacement, nor did I hear from Mr. Giordano after he was ensconced at DC.  Two years later when I met him in person, he had no memory of my submission.

NEAR MISS #2: I developed a pen-pal type of relationship with Jack Miller, an editor at DC.  He was impressed (he said) with the thoughtfulness and verbiage of my correspondence and invited me to submit ideas to him.  He had just taken over the Metal Men comic book from its co-creator/writer/editor Robert Kanigher and was told to find a few writer and give the book a serious makeover of some sort.

He asked if I had any thoughts and I quickly sent him a letter outlining what I would do with it if given the chance.  He wrote back that he loved my idea and would pitch it to his "boss," which I assumed meant Carmine Infantino, who had recently taken over as Editorial Director. Once this boss said yes, I would be engaged to write the first of what Mr. Miller and I both hoped would be many scripts for Metal Men…

…and of course, I never heard from Jack Miller again.

Kanigher continued to write the comic with a new direction that was not unlike my proposal. In fact, it was very much like my proposal. I later learned that Kanigher had been demoted from his editorial position at DC but given a contract to write a hefty number of scripts for them. That, I'm sure, is why he was writing Metal Men and I wasn't. And soon after, Jack Miller was fired. (And yes, I briefly thought my idea had been purloined but eventually decided it was more likely coincidence.  Either way, it was no sale.)

Are you noticing a pattern here? Editor decides to hire Evanier…but before he can, editor is out of his job. Here's another example…

NEAR MISS #3: Mort Weisinger, editor of the Superman comics, was also impressed with my letter-to-the-editor writing and invited me to submit to his books. I believe this was the period when a number of DC's longtime freelance writers were making unionizing-type noise about demanding things like health insurance and reprint fees. Mr. Weisinger was probably thinking, "Hmm…I might need some new writers soon."  That might have been what was on Jack Miller's mind as well.

But I didn't know anything about that; just that an editor told me if I wrote a script, he'd consider buying it. When you're just starting out, you can't ask for much more than that. So I wrote a Jimmy Olsen story which, in hindsight, was an amazing piece of work. I mean, you just don't see many scripts that make every single friggin' mistake a fledgling writer can make in one story. Usually, you have to write a whole pile of scripts to do that many things wrong and here, I'd somehow managed to run the board in one try.

It was outright (and properly) rejected but with some useful criticisms that helped me an awful lot with my next submission — a Krypto story for, I hoped, the back of the Superboy comic that Weisinger edited. He wrote back that when he returned from a vacation, he would send me notes to revise it and that if I couldn't fix it to his liking, he'd buy it and have it rewritten in-house.

That was exciting news but — say it with me, now — I never heard again from Mort Weisinger.

DC Management had decided — for office-political reasons, I was later told — to take one of the Superman titles away from him and the one they took away from him was Superboy. Not long after, Weisinger left the company. I happened to meet him on his last day with DC and he had no memory of my script. And I subsequently realized that the person who'd been sending me those letters signed with Weisinger's name was more likely his assistant, Nelson Bridwell, writing what Weisinger told him to write. Nelson was the author of that fine critique of the rotten Jimmy Olsen story.

So that was the pattern for a while and there were a few other near-misses with submissions that weren't for comic books. I never got depressed or discouraged by all the near-missing. I took comfort in the fact that, with the exception of that Jimmy Olsen monstrosity, my scripts were not going unbought because someone thought they were poor. The no-sales were due to circumstances beyond my control. Even if it was because I was a jinx to editors, that was beyond my control.

And it happened again in a way with Laugh-In magazine. The editor there bought a bunch of things from me and then gave me an assignment — to write and draw a double-page spread. It would be a big mob scene of people at a cocktail party as seen weekly on the TV show and there would be jokes all throughout it.

You might be wondering why he wanted me to draw it. I was wondering that, too. I had rough-sketched out some of the pieces I'd submitted to him, not because I was expecting to draw them for publication. I did it just because that seemed a better way to present the ideas. He thought the sketches showed more artistic talent than I thought I had. I told him, "You must have artists who could draw this better than I could" and he said, "No, I don't."

That might have been true. He showed me an illustrated article he'd just bought and the illustrations were pretty awful. There were two guys in suits and ties and I asked if they were supposed to be recognizable. He said they were supposed to be Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. This was Laugh-In magazine and the drawings were so bad that the notion they might be Rowan and Martin did not occur to me.

Ergo, I decided to take a crack at drawing my piece and I spent a couple of days penciling and erasing, penciling and erasing on this big two-page crowd scene. I didn't try to draw Goldie Hawn, Judy Carne, Henry Gibson or any of the Laugh-In cast members. Mort Drucker or anyone else then working for MAD, even that Sergio guy, could have done that but I sure couldn't.

I drew generic partygoers and really, really slaved over it. Long after I should have turned it in, I finally decided it was as good as it was going to get. Then I took it up to the office, asked to see the editor and the receptionist told me he didn't work there anymore.

I was not the least bit surprised.

A lot of folks who are roughly my age and who, like me, lived near Santa Monica are nostalgic for an attraction called Pacific Ocean Park that was out on the beach and operational from 1958 to 1967. '67 is when the Internal Revenue Service shut it down before it could fall down under its own power. I am not among those who remember it fondly. I thought it was a shabby place full of crummy rides and bad food. My father was part of the I.R.S. Strike Force that put it outta its misery and I wrote about that in this post some time ago.

One reason I think some people remember it fondly is that it looked pretty good in its commercials. They also had jazzy music that at least sounded like it went with a wonderful place. Here are two of the radio jingles accompanying photos that make it look way better than it was, at least its last few years…

Last Saturday, I posted this item about how I ordered something from Walmart.  They somehow couldn't deliver it but they kept telling me it was on a truck and would be delivered to me shortly (it wasn't) and I discovered that when you call any Customer Service number for Walmart, one of three things can happen. You get an A.I. phone-answerer who can't solve your problem…or you get forwarded on to a human being in a faraway country who can't solve your problem…or you get a recording that due to heavy call volume, no one is available to take your call so call back later.

I spoke to Customer Service folks in Nicaragua, The Philippines, Egypt and India. Each one said they'd solve my problem and no one could.

Several readers of this blog wrote to tell me that they had some way of contacting actual, humans in Walmart management in this country and had forwarded my piece to them. And sure enough, yesterday I received a call from an actual human in Walmart management in this country who put everything right, apologized with a Walmart gift card and — and I don't know whether to believe this or not — said they were taking my case up with people whose job it was to fix the system so this kind of thing didn't happen again. So I'm satisfied…for now. Thanks to those who helped.

Here from 1986 is the entirety of Robert Klein on Broadway, one of Mr. Klein's terrific comedy specials. There was a period when almost everyone who decided to get into stand-up comedy did so at the inspiration of one or more of these three men: Klein, Carlin or Pryor. I thought Klein's specials were terrific…

If you look at what Donald Trump is posting on Truth Social, he seems pretty darned angry and unhappy. He should be rejoicing that the late night shows that he hates so much are not broadcasting new episodes reporting and mocking his latest missteps. Seth Meyers is in the middle of an unprecedented seven week hiatus. Meyers is doing occasional podcasts but he's not on each night lambasting Donald. Meyers' next new episode seems to be scheduled for September 21.

The Daily Show is on a five-week hiatus. It'll be back September 8, the same night Jimmy Kimmel is scheduled to return. John Oliver is on a brief vacation. Saturday Night Live is in reruns until September 26. Fallon is off for I-don't-know-how-long. (I don't think Trump is particularly enraged when Fallon ridicules him.)

The Oval Office Inhabitant does have much to be upset about with polls saying he's about as popular as Urinary Tract Infections. And what probably worries him most is that a lot of MAGA folks don't seem to be under his spell the way they once were. Paying record prices for food and gas can do that to you. Here's a link to an on-target (I think) article by Ben Jacobs and here's a key paragraph from it…

Throughout his political career, Trump's signature skill has been to drive the conversation where he wanted it to go. He declares victory when things have not been won. He ducks attribution with the rhetorical tic "many people are saying," frequently followed by things that people are decidedly not saying. He posts outrageous graphics on social media. And, of course, he renames things: Political opponents get nicknames, buildings get Trump's name, and bodies of water get America's name. For the past decade of political life, moves like those have been enough to commandeer news cycles, sometimes for days or even weeks. Except, of late, it's running out of steam.

And then he goes on to give examples. Oh — and while you're over there on Slate, check out this from our guy Fred Kaplan…

A remarkable story in Monday's Washington Post dramatizes how deeply the Iran war has degraded the U.S. military's ability to fend off attacks by adversaries elsewhere in the world. The story is based on the leak of a little-known classified document, which itself signifies that we've reached a new stage in the growing turmoil among the senior officer corps over the chaotic reign of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The leaked document reveals that the three four-star commanders in charge of U.S. military operations in Europe, the Pacific, and South America, as well as the Navy's top admiral, all informed Hegseth that because so many of their planes, ships, and other weapons systems have been diverted to the war in Iran, they could no longer perform their tasks if a war broke out in their part of the world.

If there's one issue that matters most to the kind of folks who support Trump, it's having a kick-ass military that can defend us anywhere against anything. This news will not make them happy.

Some company that seems to have the legal right to do so has put the entirety of Elaine Stritch at Liberty on YouTube. They've made it un-embeddable so I can't put it here.  If you want to see it, you'll have to go there.

This is the onstage musical autobiography of Elaine Stritch, one of the more colorful — and at times, controversial — Broadway performers.  She was a fairly constant presence on Broadway stages for fifty years (!!!) starting in 1946.  She did this one-woman show on Broadway around 70 times in 2002, then did a limited run at the Old Vic in London, which is where this video was recorded.  She passed in 2014.

I'll warn you that it's almost two-and-a-half hours and if you start watching, there's a good chance you'll get hooked and have to watch the whole thing. Some of it is very funny. Most of it is fascinating. Now and then, it says a lot about alcoholism and/or an addiction to performing.  If you can spare the time, you'll probably enjoy the hell out of it.

The other day, I ordered something from Walmart and the order was totally screwed-up on their end. I've been trying to unscrew it for two days now and they seem to have their Customer Service deliberately crafted to make sure Customer Service never gives any customers service.  I could not explain the situation to anyone who is (a) in this country and (b) has the power to do anything.

By calling the main Walmart Customer Service number, I get a "lady" who introduces herself as their A.I. Customer Care Agent and who starts off our relationship by warning me that she's "still learning" and may get things wrong. I almost gave up the moment I heard that.

And then she proceeded to get everything wrong, starting with the current status of my order. In fact, when I just called up to verify the exact title she says he has, she assured me that my order is "on the way" — their app says it is not — and that it will be delivered to me by 11 PM last night. Which it wasn't. So "she" doesn't even know what day it is.

She's programmed with a number of different responses which in no way respond to the questions I'm asking her. I tried asking to speak to a human being and she understood that but her reply was something like, "I know sometimes, you'd like to talk to a human being but let me try solving your problem." Eventually though, she figures out that it's just one of those problems she hasn't been programmed to solve so she connects me with a human being not in this country.

I've tried this a number of times just to see what would happen. The first person she connected me to was in Nicaragua. The second was in The Philippines. Neither one could solve my problem but the lady in The Philippines agreed to connect me to her supervisor who, in turned out, was also in The Philippines. The supervisor said she would fix the problem and if I don't receive an e-mail within the hour fixing things, I should call back.

Of course, I received no such e-mail so I called back…which meant calling the A.I. Customer Care Agent and going through her trying to solve the problem and refusing to send me to a human until finally, she connected me to a human. this time in Egypt. The Egyptian lady was very nice. In fact, all the folks I talked to in other countries were very nice and they dutifully read their scripts apologizing for the problem that they didn't cause and were powerless to fix. Later, I talked to another person in The Philippines and one in India.

The problem is not that they're in another country.  It's not even a language problem.  It's that they simply haven't been given the power to do much more than apologize.

During this time, I also tried calling the Walmart store in Burbank which is theoretically fulfilling my order. I got a voice that told me to press "1" for this department, "2" for that department, etc. I tried several of those numbers but each time, the phone would ring and ring and ring…and after twelve or thirteen rings and no one answering it, I'd get a recorded message telling me that "due to higher than usual call volume," no one could take my call and I should call back later. I called back later a few times and got the same recording.

If you're wondering why I didn't just give up…well, I did. I'm just writing this because it helps me to stop thinking about it. Please don't write and tell me of your experiences in similar situations. I'm not thinking about it anymore except to wonder how many complaints Walmart must get that they need call centers in at least four countries to deal with them and not solve my problem. Maybe if they empowered someone — A.I. or human – to actually fix things, they wouldn't get so many calls.

I should have posted this here yesterday on Jack's birthday. With Kirby family members in attendance, a plaque was unveiled then on what they call the Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure park. It says — well, here, read it along with me…

The important thing as far as I'm concerned is the reference to "the characters you created," something that no one in any position of power at Marvel Comics was willing to say while Jack was alive or even as Stan Lee outlived him.  Stan was willing to say — in private when no tape recorder was running — how much of the creation of all those characters was Jack.  But, swell fellow that Stan could be — and he could be very charming and ingratiating — he didn't want anyone who could affect his compensation or continued employment to believe he was anything less than the sole creator.

And yes, whoever owned Marvel at that moment might have liked it that way but I don't buy that as an excuse.  It is so pleasing to me to see what everyone at or around Marvel knew being formally acknowledged.  Too little too late is still better than never.