The show may be great but I'm already bothered by the hype…

I feel like I should write something here about today's verdict but I'm having a hard time figuring out what. You already know how you feel about it and if you follow this blog, you probably have a pretty good idea how I feel about it. And since every last person with a soapbox on the Internet is writing about it, you have plenty of opinions and conjectures to read. So I think I'll just predict that we will soon look back on this as a very good day for our country.

Nothing will ever convince the kind of Trump Supporter that Jordan Klepper is good at finding at rallies but the doubts have to be building in the minds of a lot of folks who might have voted for Donald in November. They may be doubts about the man's sanity or his honesty or even his competence to win. The thing the Trump supporters I know liked the most about him was his ability to win. And now he's been losing a lot lately and the losses are just getting bigger and bigger.

George Conway, who has become one of my favorite pundits on the subject of Trump — and whose every prediction so far has been proven out — thinks Donald Trump will die in prison. Kevin Drum, who's long been one of my favorite pundits on a wide range of subjects, thinks there's no way Donald winds up behind bars. I have no idea where I think Trump will go except that it will fall under the general heading of "Down."

Well, there you are.

I just heard a talking head on TV theorizing how the jury is leaning based on what they're having for lunch.

No, I take that back: He was theorizing based on rumors of what they're having for lunch. In case it tells you anything about how I'm leaning, I'm going to be having a beef dip sandwich on an onion roll and some potato salad.

I'm also going to turn off the TV. I may have to sequester myself until the real jury returns a real verdict. If they order in KFC, that probably means Trump is going to skate.

I have now been deliberating the Trump Hush Money Case for eight hours and sixteen minutes. In solidarity with the New York jury that is now eating lunch, I'm going to eat lunch.

So far, I have only come to the firm decision that the folks on TV and the web who are speculating on what the members of the jury are thinking have absolutely no idea what the jury is thinking.

Martin Scorsese is assembling a documentary on the old SCTV TV show…and hey, when I think of comedy, the first name that comes to mind is Martin Scorsese. But this article is right: That was a great show and the clips of it hold up as so many do not. Looking forward to it.

But I am taking time off from deliberating to post the latest Randy Rainbow video…

I don't mean the jury. I'm still deliberating if I think Donald Trump is guilty. It's a tough call because according to him, every single legal scholar in the world says the case is stupid and wrong and should never have been brought in the first place. Hmmm…

Audra McDonald is going to star in a new production of Gypsy opening just before Christmas this year. That oughta fill the Majestic Theater every night…but then again, if they just had her singing songs on that stage every night, there wouldn't be any empty seats either. I hope some of you watched the Audra concert I linked to yesterday here. She's really an extraordinary performer.

Not that it matters one bit but I dunno how I feel about another revival of Gypsy. Tickets will probably cost an arm, a leg and several other body parts. I get the feeling Broadway has adopted the new basic marketing principle of Las Vegas: "No matter how much we charge, someone will pay it!" One of these days, they'll mount a show starring Audra and Hugh Jackman and it won't matter what it is or how good it is, the ticket price will be a reverse mortgage on your home.

Gypsy is a show I admire from afar. Love the score. Love the book. Loved some off-off-off-off-Broadway productions I've seen of it. Didn't like the movie. Didn't like the one revival of it I've seen on the N.Y. stage, which was the one with Patti LuPone. The production had a cheap feel to me and though we had great seats, Carolyn kept whispering to me to ask what Ms. LuPone had just said.

The best version I've been able to see of the show was the video of the West End production starring Imelda Staunton. There was talk of her doing it in New York but that never happened. Here's a little taste of it. Imagine what Audra will do with this number…

This will only take a minute. If you're at all a fan of watching actual court matters on YouTube, you've probably seen the Honorable J. Cedric Simpson, a judge who currently presides over the 14A-1 District Court located at the Washtenaw County Service Center in Washtenaw, Michgan. A lot of Judge Simpson's trials are online and he's always struck me as eminently fair and wise.

Recently and amazingly, this happened…

Randall B. wrote to ask…

You have been fortunate to meet and even work with a lot of people whose work you enjoyed when you were younger. I heard you say one time that only a few of them had disappointed you as people. I can understand why you might not want to name them (tho I wouldn't mind) but could you tell how some of them disappointed you? Also, could you name five people who didn't disappoint you in any way?

I could probably name more than fifty who in no way disappointed me but since you asked for five, you get five: Daws Butler, Jack Kirby, Charles Schulz, Dick Van Dyke and Sergio Aragonés.

And you're right that I don't want to name folks who disappointed me but I'll say this: It has usually been a matter of seeing a side of them that I never got to see watching them on TV or reading their comic books or whatever. Some of them might have been on the Non-Disappointment List if I'd spent less time with them. The more contact you have with someone, the more you learn about them and the more you learn about them, the greater the chance of seeing or hearing something you can't unsee or unhear.

Thinking back over some disappointments — there were a few comedians and at least one writer-producer who I'd thought were marvelously funny and inventive. I came to feel that their main skills were in getting credit for the work of others and/or knifing those who stood in the way of their success. A couple of men turned out to be of the "Dirty old…" variety, maybe not quite at Cosby levels but enough to lower my opinions of them. A few just plain did not treat others well, especially others who couldn't fight back.

The list might be even longer than it is but I'd like to think that at some point in my life, I learned to recognize Early Warning Signs. That's when I felt it was time to leave some distance between myself and a person I had reason to admire before it became impossible to overlook the reasons not to. It took a while to develop my personal radar in that area and it still doesn't work all the time.

In solidarity with the jury in the Trump Hush Money Trial, I have decided to spend today deliberating all by myself. So far, it's not looking good for Donald.

Here's a pretty interesting article — well, it was interesting to me, at least — about how PBS goes about capturing a stage performance for airing and home viewing. It's mainly about David Horn, a producer and director for Great Performances over more than four decades.

One of the shows he and his crew recorded was the Broadway version of Victor/Victoria starring Julie Andrews. My friend, the lovely Brinke Stevens, and I were in the audience at a performance that was shot with a number of robotic cameras on cranes over our heads. I believe they did this for several performances and then edited them together. This was in the first week of December of 1995, just a few weeks after the show had opened –and I forget how I learned this but it was not going to be shown in this country soon, if ever.

Someone did a lot of swift editing because it debuted on Japanese television just a few weeks later — on 12/23. Bootlegs made their way into this country and then it was finally shown on PBS and released on DVD much, much later. I wish everything on Broadway would get recorded like this.

Mr. Horn's team is still recording shows, including the recently-debuted concert, Audra McDonald at the London Palladium. You can view it on your local PBS station or on this website or directly below this paragraph. Everything this woman does is worth watching and/or hearing.

I'm watching the Closing Arguments in the Donald Trump Hush Money Trial…only I'm not. What I'm really watching is the CNN coverage which consists of someone who's actually in the courtoom texting (I guess) summaries of what's being said and a few selected quotes to the CNN newsroom. Then reporters report and analysts analyze based on those summaries and selected quotes. So we're hearing how things are going in the courtroom from people who are not actually in the courtroom.

I don't have time to follow it all today because I have too much to do. There also won't be too much here today.

I have a number of e-mails asking me (a) if I had anything to do with the new Garfield movie, (b) if I've seen the new Garfield movie, (c) if I'm upset about not having anything to do with the new Garfield movie and (d) if I'm happy that it's getting not-great reviews and not-great reports that people are not flocking to see it. The answers to those questions are, in this order: (a) no, (b) no, (c) no and (d) no.

One thing I learned long ago about writing comic books and cartoons is that you should never get possessive about characters you don't own. I have friends who have made this mistake; who forgot that they were baby-sitters and not the actual parents. They wrote Marblehead Man for many years and perhaps did great work that brought Marblehead Man to new heights and new popularity. They may even have had people tell them, "You did the definitive Marblehead Man stories!"

But in a legal sense, Marblehead Man belongs to others and one day, someone else is writing Marblehead Man. The company that owns it is sold or it has a new CEO or…well, it really doesn't matter why. One content-creator is out and another is in and the old one no longer has the income or bragging rights. The new guy or gal might be following his or her template — in which case, the ousted creative person feels someone else is reaping the benefits of his or her hard work. Or the new guy or gal might be changing everything — in which case, the ousted person feels his or her hard, acclaimed work is being disrespected or ruined.

Either way, there is reason to suffer if they made that mistake of forgetting they were baby-sitting. I watched one friend go through some genuine pains when he was no longer The Writer of Superman.

I had a great time writing Jim Davis's great character on and off for about twenty-five years but I was careful to remember it was Jim Davis's character and Jim was still in charge, still doing the insanely-popular newspaper strip, still supervising everything done with his cat. He has since deeded some of that over to others and that's his right.

I have no idea if I'll be involved with the lasagna-eater again. If I am, great. If not, I'm delighted to have had such a long run as the baby-sitter.

In 1997, a music historian interviewed Stephen Sondheim at length about his work for the Library of Congress. I've linked you to dozens of Sondheim interviews on this blog but this one is kinda different. For one thing, he didn't tell all the same stories he told in those other interviews. For another, he goes over his manuscripts with the interviewer and discusses in depth why he did what he did. And for another, this interview runs over six hours.

Let me say that last thing again and put it in all caps, boldface and italics and underline it for emphasis: THIS INTERVIEW RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!! And I also put in seven exclamation point. Don't say I didn't warn you.

If you want to watch it — and I can understand how you might not — you have two choices. The embed below is of the entire interview which, in case you've forgotten since the paragraph before last, RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!!

Or you can go to this playlist and watch it in thirteen segments. If you do that, be aware that the playlist is for fourteen videos, the last of which is the entire interview which, as you may recall, RUNS OVER SIX HOURS!!!!!!! Again, don't say I didn't warn you. Here's the whole thing…