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.

Lost another friend, damn it. I don't know when or from what but Will Murray has left us. It had to have been recent because folks on Facebook are saying, "But I just saw him at a convention!" Whatever the details are, it's sad to lose a smart, good writer like Will. Most of his writing was for pulp-type paperbacks or articles about the pulps of yore. Under his own name or ghosting for others, he continued the adventures of characters like Doc Savage, The Shadow, The Spider, The Destroyer and Tarzan. He also wrote originals, sometimes in his style and sometimes summoning the voice of old masters in those genres. He was very versatile.

He also dabbled in comic books — among other things, co-creating the Marvel character Squirrel Girl with Steve Ditko. And he was a great historian of comics. He and I spent hours on the phone swapping research, figuring out some of the mysteries of the industry. He is among those I credit in my forthcoming book on Jack Kirby for unlocking some secrets. He was 73 and you can find out more about his highly prolific and fine output on his Wikipedia page. Boy, I hate writing these about people I liked.

Had he lived as long as his work is revered, Jack Kirby would have been 109 today..and the esteem in which he and his work are held is only increasing. To those of you who never had the honor of knowing this man, trust me on this: He was one of the nicest, most decent and brilliant man you could imagine. And his endless creativity was, to some degree, infectious. When you were around Jack, you just felt smarter and more imaginative.

Some of that was because he would treat you as an equal. And if you were interested in writing or drawing or doing just about anything creative, he would encourage you and give you advice, mostly about how to bring out whatever talents you might have had within you. The only way he wouldn't treat you that way is if he felt you were lazy — not giving maximum effort — or imitating what others did. As I've said many times, if I had somehow emerged from my employment with Jack able to draw just like him, he would have considered me a failure. Because I hadn't invented anything.

I'm finishing up a long-delayed (and very long) book about Jack that goes into way more detail about him and his life. I'm enjoying the writing of it a lot because it's a way of spending more time with him. I hope others will feel that way. He really was a remarkable man.

While his show is on a super-long hiatus, Seth Meyers is doing podcasts with one of his writers. I embedded a video of the first one here. If you want to watch subsequent ones, I'll try and post links to them. Here's a link to the second one and here's a link to the third one.

Voice actor and announcer Peter Cullen has died at the age of 85 — we do not know from what. Peter's was a voice you heard…well, everywhere. In the world of animation, he voiced dozens of deep, low-voiced characters but the three most identifiable would be Optimus Prime in the Transformers series, Venger on the Dungeons & Dragons show, and he was one of several actors that Disney called on to speak for Eeyore in the Winnie the Pooh franchise. But you also heard him in hundreds of commercials and movie trailers and promos and dubbing other actors in movies and…

…well, put it this way: You couldn't have not heard Peter many times. He was that successful at what he did and he was also a dream to work with. I did, several times, including on the first cartoon I ever cast and voice-directed. Obviously, some of that success was due to him just being blessed with an amazing deep voice but he really knew how to use it and was a good and utterly professional actor.

Here's Peter at one of the many Transformers fan conventions. This clip will give you a sense of how good he was with his voice, how much his fans loved him and just what a good, nice man he was…

The heat wave that much of this country is now experiencing has turned my life around. I'm mostly sleeping during the day and being up and/or at my desk at night. I sometimes live that way when it's not hot but when I have a rough deadline looming. I can get more written when the phone isn't ringing…which it doesn't do at two in the morning.

But if you have occasion to call me, please presume conventional hours. Don't call at 3 AM, figuring it's hot out so I must be up. Because I might not be and you'd wake me up and feel terrible for having done so.

The heat has also caused a lot of you to write and thank me for recommending the portable fans I recommended in this recent posting. I agree: It really is a must-have product.

Hey, can we stop this nonsense about celebrities always dying in threes? Yes, I know Dolly Parton, Tim Curry and Shelley Fabares makes three passings at around the same time but celebrities die all the time. There are so many of them, they'd have to. And we hear about them and when one of the more famous ones pass, someone takes note of two others — there are always others — and says, "Well, it's like the old adage…they always die in threes!"

And what about Jaye P. Morgan, the singer, TV personality and game show player? She just left us. Does this mean that people I've heard of always die in fours?

I met Jaye P. years ago on the set of The Gong Show and she was charming and funny and profane…and I had the feeling she'd be that way even if she wasn't a bit drunk or high on something. I usually don't like being around people who are even a little inebriated but she'd stopped her consumption of whatever it was before she reached the state of being outta control or obnoxious. She had taken just enough to be a good panelist for The Gong Show.

She was answering a question someone had put to her — one that she was obviously sick of answering. It was, "Hey, there was a time you were in Johnny Carson's guest chair all the time. Why'd he stop having you on?" Carson would do that. He'd decide some frequent guest had worn out their welcome or their supply of funny talk show panel stories or something. Tony Randall…Charles Grodin…Orson Bean…Charles Nelson Reilly….there was a long list of them. I'd post what Jaye P. said but it would get this blog kicked off the Internet and they'd send someone over to wash out my modem with soap-and-water. You can guess all the words — or if you can't, hit your thumb with a hammer and they'll come to you.

Lastly before I get back to a script: Thanks to all who've contributed to my little digital telethon. I'm within a couple hundred bucks of the amount it cost me this past year to keep this blog online, functioning and ad-less. So this might be the last time until next year you'll see this banner…

Here's a new article by Fred Kaplan. It's entitled "Trump's Canada Trade Fiasco Shows the Dark Side of 'America First" and basically, it says…

Trump critics have long warned that "America First" means America Alone, but now the proof is flashing neon-bright before our eyes. To a degree that even critics could not have foreseen a year ago, the United States struts and frets on the world stage alone. There are very few, if any, leaders in the world who respect or admire America in the Age of Donald Trump — who would serve U.S. interests to the point of compromising their own, whether out of loyalty to our alliance, gratitude for our security umbrella, or fear of our sheer power.

It comes from the same place as "Engrave my name on the Kennedy Center or I'll tear it down!"

Since there's no tariff (yet!) on embedding Canadian video clips, I thought I'd link to this one from a show hosted by Juliette Cavazzi, a big star up there once up a time. She was usually known just as "Juliette" and this clip isn't really about her. It's about a singing/dancing team called The Good Company that appeared with her. You may be able to find better singers and dancers but what you won't find is any who look happier to be doing what they're doing.

This, as if you couldn't tell from the clothes, is from a 1968 variety show. In the last twelve months, I've lost sixty pounds and as soon as i drop ten more, I'm getting me one of them green suits like the men are wearing…

Sorry to say, I have no first-hand stories about Dolly Parton. I never met the lady though I came kinda close. In 1980, Sid and Marty Krofft had a commitment from NBC to produce a pilot for a new variety show. No one knew who would star in this variety show and different stars were being discussed and in some cases, approached. The only person who had been hired was me to the Head Writer of the pilot, whatever it turned out to be.

There were endless meetings to decide who the star(s) might be and Ms. Parton was briefly discussed — and by "brief," I mean about ten minutes. Everyone who had a say in the matter thought it was a great idea. Her agents or managers were called and they apparently didn't even have to check with her. Back came the answer that Dolly Parton had absolutely zero interest in top-lining a weekly variety series. If she'd said yes, that commitment would not have gone on to yield a variety show starring two ladies from Japan who didn't speak English.

Seven years later, Dolly had a change of heart and agreed to a weekly variety series on ABC. My agent received what he called a "soft offer" for me to work on it. They would negotiate a fee for my services and then I'd be flown to Nashville — or wherever Dolly was at the moment — to meet her and see if we got along. If we didn't, no job. At the time, I had other things I preferred doing and I stalled accepting or declining the soft offer. I didn't want to work on the show but I considered letting them fly me to Nashville (or wherever) just to meet the lady. And while I was deciding, they hired someone else and the soft offer was withdrawn.

But that's a story about me, not about Dolly Parton. Like I said, I don't have a story about Dolly Parton — just good thoughts about her and her music and the fact that she had one of the most delightful presences I've ever seen on TV. I guess I wanted to go meet her just to see how authetic it was. I'll bet it was pretty darned authentic.

From some long-ago production of Brigadoon, Kelli O'Hara and Patrick Wilson sing one of my favorite tunes from the Lerner & Loewe catalog. Gee, I wish I could sing like Patrick Wilson…

Just about everything Donald Trump says about Canada — especially that they're all dying to become our 51st state — is untrue.  I am shocked, I tell you.  Shocked.