Monthly Archives: June 2017

Thank Fred Burke for this. A mother ferret wants to show off her babies…

I've been getting a flurry of questions that might serve as the basis for post #25,000 here. This one from Christopher Geoffrey McPherson will not be that post…

I've been a professional writer (journalist, mostly) most of my life. I am semi-retired, but still write (novels, mostly). There have been many times when I just wanted to stop writing, take a break, turn my mind off and stop putting words on paper. It always passes, but there are times….

Do you ever find yourself in a similar situation? I imagine with all your work and the length of time you've been writing, it must have happened quite a lot.

No, never…which I suspect is a function of writing a lot of different things. If I get tired of the comic book script, I can go work on the animation presentation. I recently found myself for a few months jumping back and forth between a comic book script for kids and a script for a much more adult audience — a script full of naughty words and steamy sex. I adjusted easily but my spell-checker got very confused at the extremes of vocabulary.

Basically, when I get tired of writing one thing, I write something else for a while. I love the sheer act of writing so after spending a solid six or eight hours on an assignment that's due next week, I will often switch to something I'm writing without an assignment — something I may or may not go out and try to sell. Whether or not I will may depend on if I like it enough to finish it and then if I can figure out someplace I might sell it. A mix on my plate of those two kinds of writing can be very fulfilling. What I write on assignment pays money and probably gets produced or published soon. What I write not on assignment allows me to stretch and go new places and write things I especially want to write.

I recently finished something that if I hadn't seen myself write it, I would never have believed it came from me. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's bad. It's merely different, which has a certain value even if all it ever is is a writing exercise.

So no…the answer to your question is that while I may get tired of a certain script or a certain project, I never get tired of writing. I really can't afford to since I have no skills for anything else.

One of the world's greatest stuntmen, Loren Janes, died Saturday at the age of 85. Janes founded the Stuntmen Association of Motion Pictures and Television, did stunts in hundreds of movies and thousands of television shows and justifiably bragged that he never had a major injury and never broke a bone. The list of stars for whom he doubled included Jack Nicholson, Kirk Douglas, Paul Newman, Michael Douglas, Charles Bronson, Robert Wagner, Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Yul Brunner, William Shatner, Frank Sinatra and even Debbie Reynolds, Shirley MacLaine and Esther Williams. Most notably, he did stunts for Steve McQueen in most of McQueen's films.

Actually for some of us, his most notable credit was that he did stunts all throughout It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. A lot of the stunt driving was Loren Janes and in the finale, when Eddie "Rochester" Anderson flies through the air and lands in the lap of an Abraham Lincoln statue, that's Loren in blackface makeup.

He was a superb athlete, competing in the Olympics in 1956 and again in 1964. He was also a good enough actor that he was occasionally given lines of dialogue and even hired for non-stunt roles. He was still working well into his seventies.

I got to spend time with Mr. Janes at two separate events relating to Mad World and he was a charming, fascinating guy who seemed to have been on the set of every movie made in Hollywood while he was active. Someone who was with us once made the comment that in Mad World, the biggest laugh may have been when the Three Stooges show up and do absolutely nothing. Janes told us he'd doubled for Moe in Snow White and the Three Stooges and he had plenty of stories from that filming.

He often lectured about his craft and one of the key points he made was that a stuntperson was an actor; that if he doubled the star diving through a plate glass window, he not only had to dive through the plate glass window — which in itself was difficult enough — he also had to do it with the body language of the actor he was doubling. Before he doubled Kirk Douglas, he'd spend hours studying how Douglas moved…and how he moved as that character.

He was one of the best and that's why he worked so much. And I think it's interesting that most of the stunt people in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World — though they spent their careers crashing cars and falling off roofs — lived to older ages than the stars they doubled. I hope the Academy includes Mr. Janes in the "In Memoriam" reel at next year's Oscars because he probably logged more camera time and participated in more memorable movie scenes than most of the actors they'll automatically include.

The great Stan Laurel died February 23, 1965. One of those in attendance at his funeral was a man named Gene Lester, a professional photographer who had been a fan and friend of Laurel's. Right there, it is said, he began telling people there should be a big TV special/tribute to Stan, explaining to the world how important and wonderful he was. Many celebrities who were present said they'd gladly participate in such a thing, especially if — as Lester also suggested — all the proceeds went to the Motion Picture Relief Fund. When Dick Van Dyke volunteered to host, the idea really took off and CBS offered a time slot and the funding.

At some point, it is further said, control of the special was shifted from Lester to more experienced producers and the final product, which aired on November 23 of that year, had little resemblance to what Mr. Lester had envisioned or what Van Dyke and others had agreed to be in. It was done on the stage where Red Skelton usually taped with most of his production staff though, as Buster Keaton reportedly quipped, Red had the good sense to not be a part of it. Keaton was on it as were — among others — Lucille Ball, Phil Silvers, Danny Kaye, Louis Nye, Bob Newhart, Fred Gwynne in his Herman Munster suit, Gregory Peck, Harvey Korman and Cesar Romero. Yes, amazingly Cesar Romero was available.

What started as a tribute with Laurel and Hardy film clips and stars telling why they loved those men so turned into a semi-splashy variety special with a lot of material that had little to do with Stan and Ollie. I remember watching it when it aired — I was thirteen — with much the same look that we would all see four years later on the faces of the audience members watching "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers. Most of those in the show, especially Dick Van Dyke, had similar expressions and muttered how glad they were Stan wasn't around to see it.

This is the entire program and you will not watch it. I promise you: You will not watch it. But you might want to watch a little here and there, skipping around, just to marvel at how a very good idea can go so horribly wrong…

A lot of folks who were worried about the future of MAD magazine are real happy this morning to hear who its new editor is going to be. It's our friend Bill Morrison, who used to be the head guy at Bongo Comics and who is currently the President of the National Cartoonists Society.

There was this fear that they'd bring in a stranger who'd barely read MAD, let alone respected its heritage. We all know Bill well enough to know he's not that person. Here's the Hollywood Reporter announcing the news and here's Tom Richmond.

Congrats to Bill. I used to tell outgoing editor John Ficarra (and before him, Nick Meglin) that though they were friends of mine, MAD was so important to me that if they ever ruined it, I would not hesitate to publicly denounce them and put various curses on their heads. I can say the same thing to my friend Bill because I know I'll never have to do that with him.

Hey, remember not so long ago when the Writers Guild of America couldn't make a deal with the Producers and it looked like there might be a Writers Strike? Well, it looks like we're there again, only with the Actors…

We have presented reasonable proposals to address the critical concerns facing our members and that are integral to making a living in this industry. The AMPTP has responded with outrageous rollbacks that cut to the core of our basic terms and conditions. Despite our efforts, the AMPTP has failed to make sufficient progress on our most critical issues. The status quo is simply unacceptable and our members, standing together, will not give in to management's onerous demands nor back down on our critical proposals.

After a comprehensive update from the negotiating committee, the National Board of Directors today unanimously voted to authorize sending out a strike authorization referendum to SAG-AFTRA members, unless a satisfactory agreement is reached by June 30, 2017.

I dunno quite how to score this one. SAG-AFTRA is a strange beast because it has so many members who do not rely on acting jobs for their main source of income. They have a lot of folks in there who do something else to pay the rent and then the two or three acting jobs they get each year are kind of a bonus in terms of money and maybe ego. But then they also have a lot of people who are pretty militant about wanting to act…and i don't know how the two groups currently stack up against each other.

Also: Of all the unions, SAG-AFTRA has the widest disparity in income between the top folks and the bottom ones. They generally manage to unite pretty well against the whole idea of rollbacks. If major ones remain on the table, there will be a strike.

We are only days from the above-stated deadline. If there's no agreement by this Friday, there will be a strike authorization vote — not a vote to strike but a vote to authorize the guild leadership to call a strike if the two sides remain far apart with no hope for movement. This is what the WGA did and the massive support theirs got from the members seems to have unjammed things in the bargaining and led to an acceptable deal. The most likely scenario for SAG-AFTRA would seem to be following the writers' script…but you never know for sure with this guild.

One key difference between the guilds, of course, is that when actors go on strike, it immediately shuts down most production. When we writers go out, it sometimes takes everyone but the soap opera producers and late night watchers a little time to notice. If I had to bet, I'd bet on no strike. And if that happens, SAG-AFTRA will owe the Writers Guild residuals for replaying their plan.

A newly-hatched baby chick helps another chick out of its shell…

This coming August 28th, Jack Kirby would have been 100 years old and many, many tributes are occurring to celebrate the man. A few of them seem a bit exploitive of the man, including a couple that might be well-intended but which suggest that some who respect his life and work do not respect his family's privacy or copyrights.

One of the tributes that I'm sure Jack would have appreciated greatly is that on July 14 at the D23 Expo in Anaheim, he will be formally designated as a "Disney Legend." The other honorees at that ceremony are Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Oprah Winfrey, Julie Taymor, Garry Marshall, Disney artists Manuel Gonzales and Clyde Geronimi, and Stan Lee. The D23 Expo is kind of like a big Comic-Con that is only about things that Disney owns.

Some Internet commenters have carped that while Jack is a legend, he is not a Disney legend; that he only worked once for the company, back when he drew a limited series newspaper strip of the movie, The Black Hole. That's true but this award is not based on that and the folks who decided to honor him probably didn't even know about it. He is being honored for being the creator or co-creator of so many characters and concepts that, with the sale of Marvel to Disney, became Disney properties.

I would like to suggest that these commenters are overlooking the fact that the Disney Company has the right and power to decide what qualifies someone to be a Disney Legend and to change the rules any time they choose. They can bestow that honor on a guy who sells churros in Frontierland if they like. They obviously decided in recent years that it can go to anyone who was important to anything that is now a Disney property, regardless of whose payroll they were on when they made their contribution.

If you think that's wrong, don't piss on Jack's honor. Write a letter to Disney CEO Robert Iger. I'm sure he'd be pleased to consider your complaint and write you a personal reply. Heck, he'll probably even send you some Disney Platinum Cards and invite you to have lunch with him at Club 33. If he does, try the Sustainable Fish of the Day and try not to wonder if it had a speaking part in The Little Mermaid.

(Interesting bit of lineage: Robert Iger is related to Jerry Iger, who was Will Eisner's partner in the early days of comic book publishing. When he was starting out, Jack Kirby briefly worked for the Eisner-Iger operation. If you want to plot the tree, Jerry Iger's brother Joe had a son named Arthur who became big in the world of book publishing. Robert Iger of Disney is Arthur's son.)

Yes, yes…originally the Disney Legends trophies went to people like the famous Nine Old Men of Disney animation and to people who actually worked with Walt or on the lot pre-The Rescuers. There aren't that many of them left so it's been redefined just as the company itself has been redefined greatly since back then. I suspect we will live to see the day when most of the public will not know that Captain America and the Hulk weren't Disney characters from their inception, just like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Floyd Norman. Over at Time-Warner, there seems to be little recognition that Bugs Bunny, Tom & Jerry and Scooby Doo weren't all birthed at the same studio.

Jack is now being recognized as the co-creator of Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, Silver Surfer and a couple of zillion more. For decades, a lot of us — starting with Jack and his family — were bothered that he was not so recognized; that it was often denied that he was a co-creator at all. While I think there could (and should) be more recognition that he contributed more than just the visuals, I am utterly delighted whenever I see him credited at all. If Disney is going to do that loudly and proudly, my mouse ears are off to them. Or they would be if I had any…

The Cupcake Theater is out in North Hollywood on Magnolia across from the TV Academy. It's also across from Spumante, a fine Italian restaurant where we had dinner last night before crossing the street to see Legally Blonde: The Musical at the Cupcake. This is the third show I've seen at the Cupcake and my third rave 'n' recommendation.

This is not a big theater. It seats less than 200 in a building that was not built to have plays put on in it. The company operates on very limited budgets so orchestras are small, sets are sparse and they're trying to raise money for a new sound system which they desperately need. Another playhouse might confine itself to four-person shows with maybe a piano like Forever Plaid and Nunsense but not the Cupcake. Their Legally Blonde has a cast of about the maximum size that could fit on their stage and I think the last show I saw there, which was Hairspray, had even more.

So — low production values and not enough performance room…but they cast tremendously talented performers and have clever directors and it all works. I liked their Hairspray a lot more than the one NBC spent umpteen-million on.

I'd never seen the musical version of the movie, Legally Blonde. Heck, I've never seen the movie. Still, I had a very good time, largely because the cast was so energetic and expertly-selected and just real, real good. I looked up some of the reviews of the Broadway run and they all said it was a very lightweight show with a special appeal for young teen girls. That's true but that doesn't mean others can't enjoy it and last night, a lot of folks who were neither teen nor girls were standing at the end and clapping their hearts out.

They do four performances each weekend and they're currently scheduled through August 6. They may extend but if this sounds like something you might like to see, don't take the risk that they won't. You can get the cheapest tickets at Goldstar but if you can afford it, buy your seats through the theater's website because they do need that new sound system. And you might also consider dinner at Spumante for a very fine, not-expensive evening. You'll love it even if you aren't a teenage girl. I'm certainly not, nor have I ever been.

However good or bad your Sunday is going, it can certainly be improved by ten and a half minutes of Gershwin music…

I was busy with other matters when TV producer-host Chuck Barris passed away last March and I got a lot of messages asking me if I had anything interesting to say about him. You can be the judge of that.

Barris was at least an interesting guy. He started in television as a page, worked his way into programming and then quit and tried to sell shows to the folks who'd filled his old job. His first sale, The Dating Game, is said to have gotten on the air partly by accident. Some other new series that was supposed to go into ABC's daytime schedule was suddenly not and a replacement had to be found in a hurry. Barris had submitted his and while the programmers were semi-indifferent to it, it had two big things to recommend it: It was really cheap and it was so simple, they could throw it together and start taping almost immediately.

So it went on and I'm told most folks at the network thought of it kind of as a placeholder and immediately began discussing what would go into that slot for real…but it found an audience. Better still, it found an audience and it was still cheap. And before long, they were asking Chuck, "What else you got?" and a mini-empire was born.

Barris founded that mini-empire on a couple of principles, the main one being the one that started things off: Do it cheap. You get as much money as possible from the network or syndicator or whoever's paying for it…then you do the show for as little as possible. There was no such thing as a high-budget Chuck Barris Production. There were only higher-budget Chuck Barris Productions, which were the ones where he was a little less frugal.

Some of his shows were done for almost no money because that was the only way to sell them. There are producers who go for The Impossible Deal, meaning that some buyer wants a show but it's either going to be done on a rock-bottom budget or they ain't buying. Other producers might say, "I can't make anything doing a show for that" and pass. Impossible Deal producers figure out a way to pocket some bucks doing a show for that.

And some of his shows were done on the cheap deliberately to make up for the money he didn't make on the shows where there wasn't much. That's where Mr. Barris made his money. The network will pay X for a show. You produce it for Y. Subtract Y from X and what's left is your profit. Barris would get Y low…real, real low. Another producer might not get Y that low. He'd figure that it would be a good investment to not make shows for as little as possible. If you spend a little more money, those shows might have lives.

Not Barris. He did The Dating Game for his low, low version of Y. If he could persuade the network or syndicator to pay him 2X, he would still do it for the same Y and just bank the extra dough.

I knew a fellow who worked a long time for Barris and he told me dozens of stories like this…but he was still happy working there. The pay was low but it was constant. Barris always had a new series. Whenever one got canceled, another one would come along and as long as he wasn't missing a chance to get the show done even cheaper, Barris would hire the same people. He was loyal to those who did their jobs well and didn't demand more money.

That is a powerful thing for a TV producer…to always be in production on something. Most jobs in TV are very transient. You work 13 weeks here, then 26 weeks there. Then there's nothing for six months. Then you get four weeks on this show. Then nothing for a long time as you nervously watch your savings and your career dwindle. Then another short job. Along the way, there are a lot (a lot) of near misses. You're up for this job that you don't get, then you're up for that one that disappears on you. Then you're told "we'll definitely use you on our new show" but then that new show doesn't happen. Even when you're working on a series, you're well-aware that it could end unexpectedly and then what are you going to do?

This is not the greatest way to live, especially if you can't build up a little cushion in your checking account. You tend to be really appreciative of jobs that feel almost permanent, at least for a while. You think: So what if the money is low? At least it's pretty dependable. At least I'm not spending half my life worrying what I'm going to do next month.

I actually knew a number of folks who worked for Barris and thought that way. One or two resented the hell out him: He made four million dollars last year off the shows we sweat to make happen. The least he could do is pay us a few more dollars a week. Most though were very glad to be working there…and every once in a while, someone would prove to be so valuable that even the cheapest boss in the world would see the value of paying them a few more dollars a week.

Never having worked for Barris, I never really knew him. Still, I was around him on several occasions, including visits to the set of The Gong Show when my friends Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall were panelists. Those tapings were enormous fun and I think one of the reasons that show was so successful was that a lot of that fun seeped out onto the screen.

ABC has just revived The Gong Show in an hour format with big celebrity judges and a host who is apparently Mike Myers doing his least-interesting character ever. I usually love Myers in his various guises but I don't yet get what he thought was fun about this guy. Then again, I only made it through about a third of the first episode. It struck me as having some amount of fun but not enough to last a whole hour.

This is not the first time the show has been revived. In 1988, there was a version hosted by San Francisco disc jockey Don Bleu. It only lasted one year.

Ten years later, there was a version called Extreme Gong done for Game Show Network. It was hosted by George Gray, who's now the announcer on The Price is Right and it was another one seasoner.

In 2008, Comedy Central gave us a Gong Show hosted by Dave Attell. That one got gonged after eight weeks.

I wonder how many of these failed revivals failed because their makers underestimated the importance of the camaraderie and chemistry of the host and panelists on the original. I wonder how many of the revivers thought it was just a matter of putting a fresh spin on a proven format. I don't think the format was ever what made the Gong Show work. I think that to the extent it worked, it worked because of the atmosphere…and that atmosphere was set by Chuck Barris. He was an unpolished, amateurish Master of Ceremonies but he ran a happy set and he had one thing going for him that others didn't: He was willing to look as stupid as they wanted everyone else on the show to look.

On the old Truth or Consequences, host Bob Barker loved it when the contestants got hit with pies…but nobody dared lob any meringue at ol' Bob or even muss his hair. Monty Hall on Let's Make a Deal never came out dressed as a large radish. Nobody on Candid Camera ever caught Allen Funt in the act of being himself.

I really don't like shows where the idea is to make people look ridiculous. Increasingly as I get older, I don't like pranks or most hidden camera stunts or anything where the whole point is to laugh at people making fools of themselves. The Gong Show as hosted by Chuck Barris at least had the sportsmanship to make its host and owner look as ridiculous as anyone on it…and it occasionally had moments of genuine entertainment.

Back in 2006 here, I wrote about visiting the set of the Gong Show and experiencing the sheer electricity when they brought on an NBC stagehand named Gene Patton and let him dance. When Barris died, an online columnist named Zachary Leeman wrote about that and said the following…

There may never be something that quite captures the mix of creative freedom and wacky randomness of the show as Gene, Gene, The Dancing Machine. Gene Patton, a stagehand, would get in front of the cameras and start boogying. He wasn't all that good — and audiences were known to throw junk at him. It was another odd segment that strangely clicked with viewers.

Blogger Mark Evanier once recalled on his since-discontinued site, News From Me, how weirdly exciting the segment was if you were in the live audience. "I've been on many TV stages in my life. I've seen big stars, huge stars — Johnny, Frank, Sammy, Dino, Bob, you name 'em. I've seen great acts and great joy, and if you asked me to name the most thrilling moment I've witnessed in person, I might just opt for 'The Gong Show' electrifying Stage 3 for all of 120 seconds."

I am amused that this seems to have caused Leeman to think this site was closed forever and he was also wrong that it was the audience that threw junk at Gene while he was dancing. It was the stagehands who were told to do that. But the article was right about creative freedom and wacky randomness. I suspect if the new Gong Show fails, it'll be because it's too polished and perfect, and also because its host does the exact opposite of what Barris did. He tries to lend dignity to the program instead of meeting it on its own level. Myers would have been better off as Wayne of Wayne's World, especially if they'd broadcast from his basement on a Public Access budget.

Anyway, one thing I liked about Chuck Barris was that he wasn't trying to be a polished, perfectly-coiffed host on a show that expected everyone else to wear chicken suits. One thing I didn't like about him, apart from the tales I'd heard of his niggardliness, was that every time I was around him, he was complaining about the same thing.

Barris built his fortune on shows like The Newlywed Game, which encouraged newly-married couples to embarrass themselves on network television in exchange for a new Maytag washer-dryer combo. People who applied as contestants for that and other Barris game shows learned that the way to get on was to make them think you might say something really mortifying on the air. That alone would have made me not like the guy but every time I was around Barris, he was complaining about people criticizing him or mocking him for putting stupid shows on television. Two of the four times I was in his presence, he was upset because Johnny Carson had done yet another joke about how Chuck Barris was a schlockmeister who put junk on television.

Once, he said to an imaginary Carson in the room, "Hey, Johnny! The same people who bought my show bought yours!" And clearly, he thought Johnny did some pretty undignified TV at times, booking airhead starlets and making jokes about their low I.Q.s and high breast measurements. He wasn't wrong that the line between The Gong Show and The Tonight Show wasn't always as bright and thick as Carson made it out to be but "Come on, Chuck," — you wanted to say to him — "Those jokes are the price you pay for cashing your profit checks from Treasure Hunt!"

He was a good sport on The Gong Show playing stooge to The Unknown Comic but he wasn't a good sport about that…and I'm afraid the shows Carson and others mocked are his legacy; that and being a good Job Creator for decades for an awful lot of people.

And I suppose I should add that every time they revive The Gong Show — and no matter how long this one lasts, there are more in our future — he looks better and better to me in that capacity. Maybe they should have seen if Mike Myers could just do a good Chuck Barris impression.

We've been talking about Al Franken here.  This is almost an hour of him being interviewed at Google earlier this month when he was there to promote his book.

Obviously, I like the guy but he's a politician and politicians I like tend to eventually disappoint me. In fact, so many of them disappoint me that they've almost ceased to disappoint me because I expect the disappointment. It remains to be seen if Franken turns out to be one of those who doesn't disappoint me by disappointing me. Or something…

I'm sure some folks who come to this site would rather find a post about comic books or TV or where Frank Ferrante is appearing than more stuff about Trump. I would too and I'm going to try to strike more of a balance. But if Trump's main goal is to have everyone talking and thinking about him — and at times, that does seem to be the only non-monetary thing he craves — he's got to be getting sick of winning. I spend an unhealthy percentage of my life with him in my brain and conversation.  And since this blog is about what's on my mind…

(Hey, if you want to know where Frank Ferrante's appearing, I'll tell you where he'll be today at 12:30. He'll be lunching with me at the Magic Castle in Hollywood.)

We're aiming for a Trump-free weekend here at newsfromme.com but first, I feel compelled to do this…

• The best article I can point you to today is Andrew Sullivan's essay on how Trump doesn't really seem to care what happens to health care in this country or to the people who find themselves without it. It's all about the win. I have no doubt that Sullivan is right and that if the Trump Team gets what they want — and they're certainly in a good position to — a lot of Americans will suffer and perhaps die due to being unable to afford needed treatment.  Oh, yeah — and a surge of medical bankruptcies.   I also have no doubt that the response of the folks who made that happen will never be "We did the wrong thing." It will be to insist that it's a lie; that health care is better and cheaper than ever before and that the statistics about people who have lost their lives are all a hoax. You know, like the Sandy Hook Massacre and all those imaginary dead children…
• And here we have Matthew Yglesias expanding on the same theme.
• Doug Bandow explains how Trump is acting against American interests (and in support of Castro's communist dictatorship) by reversing what Obama did about Cuba. But I guess he can't resist reversing something Obama did. He probably has people working night and day trying to figure out how to bring Osama Bin Laden back to life.
• As Steve Benen reports, Trump continues to tout and brag about supposed job growth where there either is none or where it was achieved during the Obama administration. No doubt Trump will eventually have some legitimate successes in this area but it's too early for that to happen, though not too early to try and set up the narrative that everything he does is wildly successful.

Do you ever get the feeling that I'm not too pleased with this president? Me and, as of today, 55.7% of the country.

So Trump's saying now that he never recorded James Comey. I was pretty sure that despite his tweet, he hadn't and I told you so here. But this is the kind of thing Donald Trump has done to us: Now that he's denying he did, I'm kind of half-wondering if maybe he did.

You could make the case. I mean, he posted that Comey had better hope that there were no tapes of their conversation. Who might have taped them besides Trump? Was he trying to hint that maybe Obama was "still" spying on him — inside the White House now? So the theory would be that Trump did tape Comey and then when he had aides check those tapes, those aides reported back that they confirmed — not disproved — what Comey said was said, so now Trump had destroyed them and is denying they ever existed.

I don't believe that but it's at least as sound as any proof ever offered that Obama was not born in Hawaii…and that was a charge that had to be investigated eighty-seven different ways and left as a very real possibility. The Mysterious James Comey Tapes deserve nothing less. And now, this…

• Sarah Kliff explains the "Better Care Plan" and why it sucks in some detail.
• If that gets too deep into the weeds for you, you can read Ezra Klein and his simpler explanation: "Poor people pay more for worse insurance." And somewhere, there's a Republican saying, "Hey, they should feel lucky we let them have health insurance at all!"
• Trump explains why his cabinet is full of rich people. It's because they'll give him better advice. Leaving aside the question of whether he'll follow it, that almost makes sense on certain issues. The question though is whether those rich people advising him will then only give him advice on what's good for rich people. I mean, no matter what you do, wealthy folks are going to run the government to a very large extent. The question is whether they'll be wealthy folks who give a damn about non-wealthy folks (i.e., those who need that kind of help).
• Ronald A. Klain says Trump will never accomplish all or most of the items on his stated agenda because he's lazy and indecisive. I don't think I buy this but it is a nice thought.

At this very moment, someone at Saturday Night Live is writing a sketch in which Sean Spicer, as played by Melissa McCarthy, is in some other job trying to employ the same evasive hostility as he displayed as press secretary…like he's working in a market and every time someone asks him where to find the peanut butter, he lectures them on bias, claims it's a stupid question that he already answered, and then calls on someone who'll ask him a question he prefers to answer.

A crab eating chips or crisps or whatever they are…