One of my current favorite musical comedy performers is a gent named Rob McClure who I saw in the national touring company of Something Rotten and wish I could see in more shows. Here he is performing a number on a recent PBS special edition of Great Performances…

The other day for no particular reason, I clicked on a YouTube video of a Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? from February 28, 2000 and I just clicked on the timeline to begin watching in the middle. This was all random.  And like you (probably), I think to myself how I would have fared if I'd gone on the show.  And like you (probably), I am pleased with the vast accumulation of cash and prizes I know I would have amassed. And like you (probably), I know that if I had gone on, I would have been lucky to go home with a case of Turtle Wax and the last vestige of my dignity.

On the episode I came across, I quickly came across this question: "Which of these medical conditions often causes sufferers to suddenly and unexpectedly fall asleep?"

The choices, as you may be able to make out in the fuzzy screengrab above, are (A) Sleep Apnea, (B) Epilsepsy, (C) Narcolepsy and (D) Eczema.  This was for $4000.  What's your answer?

You probably would quickly eliminate Epilepsy, which is a brain disorder that causes seizures.  You'd probably also rule out Eczema, which is a skin condition.  You're a smart person. So then, of the two remaining choices, which would you pick as your Final Answer?

My Final Answer: Both (A) and (C).  Narcolepsy is a condition that more famously causes people to suddenly fall asleep…but I have Sleep Apnea and before I began sleeping with a C-PAP machine, it caused me to suddenly fall asleep — suddenly and unexpectedly.

Deprived of a peaceful night's slumber by my then-undiagnosed condition, I stumbled through my days' activity in about a tenth of a stupor and sometimes did fall asleep. Once, it was during a network-type meeting at CBS all about a TV pilot I was writing. I was later told that one exec in the meeting took it as a sign of my not paying attention. Another, who had championed my hiring, successfully spun it as proof of how hard I was working, staying up all night to make the script as good as humanly possible.

Neither was the truth. I just had Sleep Apnea. If you don't know what that is, read this explanation. And note that one of the things it says is a symptom of Sleep Apnea is "Excessive daytime sleepiness." Doesn't that sound to you like it's a correct answer to the game show question?

Also listed on that page among the dangers of Sleep Apnea is "Car accidents from drowsy driving." That's what almost happened to me. I was driving home on the Ventura Freeway having just attended — here's some irony for you — a memorial service for a fine gent named Peter Ledger, a comic book artist who had been killed in a car accident at the way-too-young age of 49. As I passed Topanga Canyon Boulevard, I fell asleep at the wheel.

It was just for a second. I did not swerve. I did not crash. I woke up instantly, realized what had happened and promptly took the next off-ramp. I then quickly found a 7-Eleven store where I chug-a-lugged a cup of Pepsi that was about the size of one of the smaller Great Lakes. The Caffeine kept me alert as I drove cautiously home on surface streets and I didn't drive again until I'd had medical attention and solved my problem.

Anyway: I've written about my Sleep Apnea here many times and have been pleased to hear that it inspired others to find out that they needed treatment. My main point here is about the question on the game show. Narcolepsy turned out to be the correct answer to the question and the guy in the photo chose it and won the money. But Sleep Apnea would also have been correct and I don't know why I'm spending any time on this 23 years after the show aired but nothing is too trivial for this blog.

A few years ago, Paul Shaffer and his current band were playing at Cleopatra's Barge, a nightclub inside Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. One night, he had a special guest in the audience and you'll never guess who it was…

Baden Smith — who lives way off in Adelaide, South Australia — sent me the following…

Hi, Mark. Seeing that Dick Van Dyke compilation video reminded me of something I've been meaning to ask you: In the episode "Coast To Coast Big Mouth," it's revealed that Alan Brady is bald. The question: Was it known at the time that Carl Reiner was bald, or was this episode's tonsorial twist as much a surprise to viewers as it was the characters?

If you were then a watcher of talk shows, it was no shock. I don't know exactly when Mr. Reiner began losing his hair but he never made it a secret. He was known to go on shows with and without his hairpiece and ask the studio audience to vote on how they preferred to see him. Even when he had the toupée on, he would often say things like, "This is such an important event that as you can see, I wore my hair!"

Carl Reiner had an amazing career, always working as an actor, writer, producer and/or director on something…and usually something widely respected like Your Show of Shows or The Dick Van Dyke Show. The man got 18 Emmy nominations and won 11 of them, plus there's a bust of him in the Hall of Fame Garden at the TV Academy. Yet in a business where jealousy can be as potent a driving force as money, he was utterly undisliked by anyone.

That may have been because he had one of the healthiest egos in Hollywood. He spent most of that long, long career making others look good. He made Sid Caesar look good. He made Dick Van Dyke and everyone on that program look good. He made Mel Brooks look good. He made everyone who starred in a movie he directed look good. He was on television for many decades yet he never did anything called The Carl Reiner Show. There are some stars who obsess about getting their names in the title.

And when he did create something that could have been called The Carl Reiner Show and it was suggested that someone else star, he said, "Fine. I'll just produce and write it!" Not keeping his baldness a secret was just another sign that he may have been The Most Secure Man in Show Business.

When all the current political chazerai is over, someone is going to write a book I want to read. It will be the story of the bizarre life choices made by a man named Rudy Giuliani who somehow went from being the most beloved, respected man in America to the least.

The Left hates him because he tried to steal the last election for Donald Trump. The Right hates him because he didn't succeed. He had a successful law practice but now he's fighting to keep his license and he's the target of a number of investigations and the butt of so many jokes. If his enemies had plotted to sabotage his life, they couldn't have done a better job of it than he has.

And I probably need to provide a link for those of you unfamiliar with the Yiddish word, chazerai. Like most Yiddish words converted into English, there are about ninety different ways to spell it.

Someone named Laura assembled this nice little montage of clips from my favorite TV show. All I know about her is that she used Adobe Premiere to do it…

I missed an interesting anniversary last Friday. It was seventeen years to the day from when I had a Gastric Bypass operation. It reduced the size of my stomach therefore reducing the size of me. Depending on now you figure it, I lost somewhere between 100 and 135 pounds. Some of it eventually came back and some of what came back was lost again, this time through more organic means. Nothing I say in this piece should be taken as a recommendation or encouragement for you to rush out and get this done. I'm just telling you how well it worked for me. In those seventeen years, there has not been one second in which I regretted having it done.

Except maybe for this: My physician warned me about this at the time and he was very wise but somehow, I didn't think this would actually happen to me. He warned me that there would people who, though purportedly friends of mine, would feel the urge to tell me some possibly-bogus story about some possibly-non-existent person they knew who had the surgery, felt fine for a while, then dropped dead. Gosh, that was helpful information.

And here's something I realized the other day and wanted to share with you or someone: I recall three different people in my life doing that to me. One was a fellow comic book writer. One was a not-too-famous stand-up comedian. And the third was a guy…I don't really know what he did but I kept running into him at comic book conventions. All three of them tried to plant in my mind that I had perhaps made a fatal mistake by having the surgery…

…and all three of them have since dropped dead. I, at last report, was still around.

This post is not about the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump in the Classified Documents matter. Not really. It's about all the messages and articles and conversations and such I see about how solid or not solid the case against him is.

It was revealed today that — well, you probably heard this already if you care about this case but here it is. This is a CNN exclusive…

Federal prosecutors have obtained an audio recording of a summer 2021 meeting in which former President Donald Trump acknowledges he held onto a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran, multiple sources told CNN, undercutting his argument that he declassified everything.

Most of the articles say that Special Counsel Jack Smith — the man heading up the Justice Department investigation into Trump — has had this tape for a while. And most of the articles also quote some legal authority like this…

In a reaction to the news of this further damning evidence against Trump, Los Angeles Times Sr Legal Affairs Columnist, Harry Litman, tweeted, "Trump saying that he's limited in his ability to show classified documents is game, set and match as far as intent and guilty knowledge go. Blows the various 'I am entitled' claims out of the water."

All those discussions folks were having before today…all the articles about how Trump was or wasn't toast…were written before the discussers and commentators knew about this supposed tape. We all have a tendency to make up our minds about these things on the presumption that we know all the facts, we know all the evidence. But clearly we don't. We didn't know about this tape and that should remind us that Special Counsel Smith may have a lot more damning evidence. Or he may have or know of evidence that is in some way exculpatory. Or more evidence may still be found.

Some of us might like to believe Smith has an airtight case against The Donald…and he might. But newspaper accounts have been wrong, judges and juries sometimes surprise us…and bombshells are called that for a reason. They tend to explode without advance notice.

That's kinda what happened with the Watergate Scandal. All these folks, pro-Nixon and anti-Nixon, were absolutely sure how it would turn out. But the "pros" and the "antis" didn't agree and a lot of what they insisted was rendered inoperative or at least moot when the tape of June 23, 1972 came to light. (Click here if you don't know what it was and how it changed everything.)

I'm not saying this new Trump tape is in any way comparable to that tape; just that they both came out of nowhere as far as we spectators were concerned. Today, I see all these commentators, many of the esteemed legal experts, saying that Trump is certain to lose. But most of them seem to be overlooking something that was in the original CNN report I quoted way above, the one that started "Federal prosecutors have obtained…" In the article, it also said this…

CNN has not listened to the recording, but multiple sources described it. One source said the relevant portion on the Iran document is about two minutes long, and another source said the discussion is a small part of a much longer meeting.

So the reporters didn't hear it and it was a small part of a much longer meeting. They're quoting sources and it doesn't even say, "According to sources who actually heard the tape." Maybe it's being accurately described, maybe not. I just think we oughta withhold absolute certainty until we have a better idea of what the evidence is…and whether we have all of it. "Presumed innocent until proven guilty" is still the law of this land…and it will continue to be unless Trump gets a second term or Ron DeSantis gets his first.

Former Vice-President Mike Pence is about to announce that he is a candidate for the office of President of the United States. No matter who you are or no matter what you've done — and even if you do not campaign in the slightest — you will either tie him in electoral votes or receive more.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is about to announce that he is a candidate for the office of President of the United States. No matter who you are or no matter what you've done — and even if you do not campaign in the slightest — you will either tie him in electoral votes or receive more.

Here's restored/colorized/enhanced video footage of Los Angeles in the early fifties. Most of this was shot on Wilshire Boulevard…which for some reason turns up a lot in old footage. The first part is of the section of Wilshire that was known as the "Miracle Mile" — some promoter's idea to spotlight a section that was full of clothing stores. My father used to shop at many of these places, all of which are long gone…

I was recently asked 'n' honored to be a guest on Michael Brodie's fine podcast, Cinema Splash Page. We talked for 61 minutes about some of the weird things I've done and you can listen in either here or here. And check out the list of more impressive people he's had on.

I've been telling you here how businesses in Las Vegas who cater to tourists have discovered something: That raising prices on food and shows or adjusting the odds on games to favor The House more are not keeping people away. The buffet charging $40 per person finds out that upping the price to $50 doesn't dissuade customers so why not raise it to $60? Or even higher?

It's the same with gaming. Here's The Wall Street Journal explaining how subtle changes in the rules of Blackjack, Roulette and other games have enabled The House to take more dough away from bettors. And it doesn't seem to scare off any bettors. (I gave up the only game I ever really played, which was Blackjack, before the rules were altered. I've never thought of diving back into it again but if I did, this would keep me away.)

The Angel City Choir — which is based of course in Los Angeles — favors us with a medley of memorable TV theme songs…

Shirin Ali has an interesting take on why Donald Trump has the fans he has. I think there's some truth to it but I suspect the explanation for some of Trump's odder behavior is that he's just doing things that have worked for him in the past. The trouble (for him) is that he's now in different situations and what worked for him in a real estate deal may not work in an indictment for sedition or mishandling classified documents.