Dispatches From the Fortress – Day 200

200 days…wow. When I started my little stay here in the Fortress, I had no idea how long it would last and, amazingly, I still don't. None of us know when this thing will be behind us even if some of us think we do.

I'm seeing announcements for in-person comic conventions in the coming months including a supposed-to-be-big one at the L.A. Convention Center shortly before Christmas. At the moment, their website lists no guests. This does not sound like a good idea to me.

Today was an especially difficult day to not read or hear about Donald Trump. Is anyone really surprised that he's a terrible businessman and that everything he touches fails? The only thing that has really brought him revenue in recent years was appearing on The Apprentice and that wasn't his financial acumen at work. He earned that money by pretending to be a successful businessman. Kevin Drum has a chart of Trump's net gains and losses. Wasn't the big argument for this guy that he would run this country like a business?

Early Friday morning, Turner Classic Movies is running Go West, The Big Store, Double Dynamite, A Girl in Every Port, A Day at the Races, At the Circus, A Night at the Opera and The Story of Mankind. That's eight movies that Groucho Marx was in and you can also see Harpo and Chico in six of them. Then next Sunday, they have The Great Buster — a good documentary about Buster Keaton — followed by four of his best silent features. It's also a big weekend on TCM for screenwriter Irving Brecher since he wrote At the Circus and Go West, and also the screenplay for Bye Bye Birdie, which they're running on Sunday just before the Keaton fest.