Monthly Archives: July 2018

Here's my favorite one-man singing group Julien Neel with the song I would have posted on Independence Day if I'd noticed this video before then…

A lot of folks out there who don't like Trump are yearning for the political figure who can fight just as dirty as he can, including all the personal insults and nastiness. Matthew Yglesias is toying with the idea that that person could be Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti. And yeah, it's a remote notion but so was Donald Trump in the White House.

The Republican-controlled Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has agreed unanimously that the government of Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to help elect Donald Trump. The response from Trump supporters ranges from "No, no matter what anyone finds, there is no evidence to indicate that" to "So what if they did?" and in a few cases to "Well, if that's true, let's tell them not to do that again." Heather Digby Parton has more.

Meanwhile back in North Korea, Trump's squad is demanding that the government there give up its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program but doesn't seem to be offering any reason why it should. One wonders if this kind of "negotiation" ever worked for Trump when it was just about condominiums and not the entire future of a nation. Read Daniel Larison about this.

And read him here about how Trump had to be talked out of his idea that we should go to war with Venezuela. How close did this great land of ours come to doing that?

Ezra Klein on Donald Trump's poll numbers. They're not as bad as some think nor as good as others insist.

And lastly for now: Donald Trump believes 100% in Jim Jordan's innocence against the charges that Jordan ignored or looked the other way in a massive string of sexual crimes. Well, of course. Donald Trump believes 100% in anyone who believes 100% in Donald Trump and he believes 0% in anyone's claims of having been molested by anyone who isn't an enemy of Donald Trump. And as Ed Kilgore notes, that's just how it works with Donald.

…and they've posted the programming schedules for Preview Night and for Thursday. I suggest everyone who's setting foot in that place take the time to look over the schedules and notate what they want to see and what they'll go see instead if/when they can't get into their first choices. The schedules for that Friday, that Saturday and that Sunday will be up this Friday, this Saturday and this Sunday.

And then I'll post the list of just the panels I'm on so you can know the real important ones to attend.

• How ironic that Scott Pruitt felt he had to resign because of the toxic environment in Washington these days.

The other day, Fox Newsguy Brit Hume — who you'd think would know better — tweeted that Democrats don't love America. Based on the backlash — some of it presumably from folks whose opinions he respects — he has deleted the tweet and claimed he was misinterpreting a poll that said that a high number of Democrats are not proud of their country at the moment.

At other times when such polls showed a high number of Republicans feeling that way — say, when a Democrat was in the White House — Fox talking heads have spun that as an indicator that the president was doing bad things. And of course, this was the Gallup Poll which they rarely believe on that channel when it tells them something they don't want to believe is so.

If an individual were to say "I hate America" or even "I wish America would go out of business and be replaced by the biggest Walmart in the world" then it would be a fair comment to say that someone hates America — but only then. And it is certainly never true as a blanket statement about millions of people who have expressed no such thoughts. As many a tweet pointed out in response to Mr. Hume, it's a helluva thing to say about Americans who served with honor in the military, lost loved ones or limbs in wars, distinguished themselves in other ways, etc.

It's really an assholish thing to say, right up there with likening someone to Hitler (especially if that person is not committing or advocating mass genocide) or the insistence that God is on the side of your political party. Discourse in this country is sinking low enough without grown men — particularly grown men with vast audiences and great influence — sinking to those levels.

I do not live near "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" (as the great Gary Owens called it) but I fear for it. What's going on there, as described in the video below, is happening all over this country. It's the squeeze-out of non-chain businesses being replaced by cookie-cutter corporations.

I'm not totally against the changes. I can think of small businesses not far from me that I'd be happy to see replaced by a Costco…and if I owned a lot of land, I'd want to maximize my income from it. But I think we all lose when it becomes impossible for a small business to exist anywhere. Take a look…

William Saletan argues that Republicans — at least the ones in positions of power — don't really want to repeal Roe v. Wade. His case is quite logical but I haven't seen a lot of logical thinking in politics these days. If Donald Trump was logical, he'd take the five minutes to have someone spellcheck his tweets before he sends them and he'd have someone in the White House coordinate positions better so we didn't have this endless stream of one W.H. official saying something one minute and another saying the opposite or walking it back the next.

I read a lot of articles about abortion from all sides and I have watched the arguments drift from what's right for the mother and the baby towards overturning Roe v. Wade as a symbol of who's running this country. In fact, I increasingly get the feeling that a lot of Trump supporters don't really like him that much except for one thing: As long as he's in charge, they're in charge. Or at least they feel like they are. On some right-wing forums, there's this exuberance every time something Obama did is reversed, not because they think it was the wrong thing (or even know what it was) but because it enhances their feeling that this is a new country, owned by them.

There are smart people who are "pro-life" for reasons of principle and genuine religious motivation. I don't think they're right but I also don't think they're disingenuous or demagogues. If you add them to the folks who want to see Roe reversed because it'll piss off exactly the kind of person they enjoy seeing getting pissed off, I don't think Trump can miss the chance to get that wave of love from his base. But this is not a prediction because the only thing I feel confident predicting about this administration is that whatever they do, I won't like it.

Hey, you know what I sometimes do? I try to think, "What would make for the most interesting plot twist?" I'm a writer after all and that's a lot of what we do. We ask ourselves what would take this plotline in a sudden bizarre direction. On the matter of abortion, I think right now it would be if there was actual evidence supporting that theory from Paul Campos. He's that reporter who thinks that maybe when Republican lobbyist Elliott Broidy paid a Playboy model to keep quiet about an affair they had — an affair involving an abortion — he was covering up not his affair with the lady but Donald Trump's.

I have absolutely no idea if it's true…but it is the kind of weird plot development that stories involving Donald Trump seem to take. There are, of course, other possibilities.

Two weeks from tonight is Preview Night at the 2018 Comic-Con International in San Diego. This will be the 49th convention there and by an incredible coincidence, it will also be the 49th one I have attended.

If you're attending, I suggest that in the next two weeks, you take some time to study the convention website and especially the Programming Guide which will be posted over the next few days. Tomorrow, they will put up the schedule for Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, they will post the schedule for Friday. On Saturday, etc. If you have any interest, make a list of the events you want to attend and also make up a list of second and third choices in case you can't get into something. Read this about how the meeting rooms work.

It would also be a good idea to study the map of the main exhibit hall. Get a sense of where the exhibitors that interest you are located. More important for your health and sanity, get a sense of where the videogame companies are located and stay the hell away from that area!!! You will not be able to hear again for years to come and you will not be able to find your way out until the next Comic-Con or maybe the one after. Someone should design a videogame in which you, the player, embarks on the most deadly adventure imaginable: Getting through the videogame section at Comic-Con.

If you do not have passes to the convention, a place to stay or a mode of transportation, I don't know what to tell you except don't write or phone me. I can be of no help to you.

And yes, it will be crowded. You don't have to tell me that like neither of us expected that such a thing was possible. If crowds make you uncomfortable, do yourself a favor by not attending. There are plenty of places you can go and not be surrounded by others…like Toys 'R Us outlets, meetings of the Bill Cosby Fan Club and screenings of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Many tips and nuggets of good advice can be found on the official Comic-Con website and also on the SDCC Unofficial Blog. And I'll post a few more here over the next two weeks. That's in-between packing.

There are millions of cooking videos on YouTube, many of them devoted to "copy cat" recipes of famous food items. These can be valuable. I mean, why spend ten minutes and two bucks to go to a McDonald's for a burger when you can spend more time (and probably more money) replicating one of their burgers at home?

But I understand the challenge. What I don't get is why a skilled chef would spend several days trying to make her own Lucky Charms cereal…

• If Donald Trump was a football coach, every time his team lost he would tweet, "Big win! Won by huge margin! Don't believe lying sportscasters and their FAKE SCORES!"

• Alex Jones says Democrats are going to launch a new Civil War tomorrow. If that doesn't happen, I may begin to lose some of my respect for Alex Jones.

One of the best close-up magicians alive is no longer alive. Brian Gillis passed away yesterday, a few days after suffering a massive heart attack. I have no idea how old he was but he did magic for an awfully long time.

Brian was a casual friend. I'd see him at the Castle and we'd talk about magic…and he knew more about it than just about anybody I've ever known. He made some memorable appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and it was obvious that Carson — a former magician, as you probably know — was in awe of Brian's skills.

A few months ago, I took some friends to the Castle promising them three of the best close-up guys around. Two of them were Richard Turner and Paul Gertner, both of whom "won" on Penn & Teller Fool Us. In fact, Paul won twice and the second time was on the episode that aired last night. Brian was there that night but not on the performance schedule and as a favor to me, he arranged a special show — essentially the act I've embedded below — for me and my friends, plus some Castlegoers who were invited in so we had a substantial audience. If you think the act looks good on video, you should have seen it live. I'm sorry you'll never get the chance.

Here's 22 minutes of Brian in the Close-Up Gallery in the Magic Castle a few years ago. See if you can catch when Brian steals a guy's watch without the guy knowing it…

Here's a conversation between Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of the Broadway show Hamilton, and William Daniels who starred in an earlier musical about the Founding Fathers, 1776.

Eric Idle sells and sings about his forthcoming book, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography. Here's a link to pre-order it.

Larry Kudlow is the director of the National Economic Council for President Donald Trump and the Captain Peter "Wrong Way" Peachfuzz of Economics. He is always wrong. He was wrong when he was an economic advisor to Ronald Reagan. He was wrong when he was a CNBC TV host. He was wrong when he was an economic consultant to Bear Stearns and he does not limit his wrongness to matters of finance. He was a leading exponent of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, proclaiming it a dead certainty that Saddam Hussein had those Weapons of Mass Destruction that no one was ever able to find.

Kudlow was a major advocate of the Trump tax cut for the wealthy, insisting it would bring the deficit way, way down. He's been insisting lately that it's working but no one else seems to think that. Politifact just awarded his claims the coveted "Pants on Fire" designation.