Mushroom Soup Tuesday

mushroomsoup190

I have deadlines and doctor appointments today so I'm going to take another — probably futile — stab at not posting much more today than this message. I wouldn't bet money on me refraining.

Like you, I have no idea if Joe Biden will vault into the presidential race, nor do I know if I'll be pleased if he does. The more and more I think about this election, the more I think we're in for at least one big moment when someone or something kicks over the chessboard, the pieces fly in all directions and we start over again, almost from scratch. Well before voting day, we'll look back at those moments when Hillary had the nomination in the bag, Trump was way out there in the lead, some guy who's become a contender had single-digit support…and it'll be hard to believe that was all part of the same election. All I know for sure is that Lindsey Graham will still be able to fit all his supporters into a Mazda with room to pick up hitchhikers.

There seems to be a silly controversy raging over the new Captain America story arc in which a black guy dons the costume. Not that anyone seems to care about the character's creators in matters like this but co-creator Jack Kirby proposed long ago that Steve Rogers stop being Captain America and pass the costume on to others…including at times, a black man, a woman, a naturalized citizen and eventually one of every kind of human being that makes up the United States of America. Jack also had an idea that Mr. Rogers should be placed in suspended animation again and should awake in the far future to become the Captain America of a post-America world. I have a page or so about Jack's proposals in the new biography of him that I'm writing and hope to have published by the 100th anniversary of his birth, which is in August of 2017.

In the above paragraph, when I said "Mr. Rogers," I meant Steve, not Fred. But Fred Rogers would have made a great Captain America, too.

I will be a guest tomorrow on Stu's Show as part of a panel discussing the history of Late Night Television. We'll probably spend much of the show discussing the current state of that form, mainly with regards to Stephen Colbert. I'll post more details and a link late tonight.