In the past 637 days, I've learned to be very comfy — and to even enjoy in some ways — not leaving my house much. Or maybe I should say "my neighborhood" because I do go out and walk around my block and surrounding blocks and sometimes over to local merchants for supplies and eats. And I have been out for a few lunches — mostly eaten outta doors or in a restaurant with no one else in it but my dining companion(s) and masked servers. And I go to the occasional doctor appointment…

…but I've been here a lot and I recognize that that's not the healthiest lifestyle in the world. Avoiding viruses is healthy. Never getting out is not. I've known people who in non-COVID times were terrified to leave their homes and it damaged their careers, made them socially distant from others, impacted their health and generally made their world smaller and smaller and smaller. I need to enlarge mine judiciously.

I'm still adhering to my belief that the true answer to the questions "When will this all be over and when will life be normal again?" is "Nobody knows." When I say I'm expecting to be at WonderCon next April, there's a little implied asterisk (*) on that statement and a footnote that says "Coronavirus permitting." And it's based on the assumption that there will be an in-person WonderCon next April.

This dispatch is being written, like many things that appear on this blog, more for me than for you. I expect to look back on this and other posts here and kind of chart my Pandemic Experience. This is to remind me of when it was I became a little more assertive in slowly and safely getting out of my house.

But it is kinda nice here…

Now that we've gotten past the Hanukkah Channuka Chanukah Hannukah video links, I've decided to post a lot of Sondheim video links. Some will be him being interviewed and I'll try to minimize the number in which he tells the story about Oscar Hammerstein telling him his first play was terrible, which he got trapped into telling almost every time he was interviewed. Some will be folks singing his praises or, better still, his songs.

Here's fifteen minutes of him being interviewed on The Mike Douglas Show in 1977. In those minutes, he mentions that when he and his collaborators were working on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, their "dream cast" — not that they had any delusions they could get all these people — was as follows: Phil Silvers as Pseudolus, Danny Kaye as Hysterium, Bert Lahr as Senex, Buster Keaton as Erronius and Zero Mostel as Marcus Lycus.

They wound up with Zero as Pseudolus. Mr. Mostel repeated that role in the movie where he was joined by Silvers as Marcus Lycus and Keaton as Erronius. As Sondheim notes, Mostel was playing Silvers' part and vice-versa.

He also gives a neat little explanation of the song, "Send in the Clowns" and (of course) he tells the story about how Oscar Hammerstein told him his first play was terrible…

• Back when I was doing all-night group rewrites on sitcoms and variety shows, I learned that anything we thought of between Midnight and 2 AM was funny and anything anyone thought of after 2 AM was not funny.

Hello. This first ran here on December 14, 2010. Everything in it is unchanged except for the line in the first paragraph where I said, "I don't need to spend money now for mustard I won't use until 2022." I am now spending money for mustard I won't use until 2022, which commences a little less than four weeks from today…

Costco has loads of stuff that I need and plenty of items I don't need. It also has many items I need but not in those quantities. Every time I'm in there, I see the multi-pack of French's Mustard they offer and I think, "Oh, I use French's Mustard" and make a move to put one package in my cart. Then sanity (or my reasonable facsimile) prevails and I think, "Wait a minute. I don't need that much French's Mustard! That's enough to douse ham sandwiches until the decade after next." Yes, I know the stuff keeps. Food these days does not deteriorate. Food these days is so well-packaged and filled with preservatives that it can sit on your shelf for eons. That doesn't mean it should. At the very least, I don't need to spend money now for mustard I won't use until 2022 and I could use the storage space.

First rule of Costco Shopping: Never buy anything without first answering the question, "Where am I going to put this?"

Once in a while, I see a group of friends who've gone to a Costco together as a kind of collective. They've decided to buy things they all need, split the low prices for buying in quantity, then divide up the items later. This makes a lot of sense if you can make it work for you. My last visit, I saw a kibbutz of three out in the parking lot trying to divide their purchases and it looked contentious and friendship-ending to me. One was upset that in their communal purchase of blister-packs o' batteries, they'd gotten plenty of AA and AAA but no 9-Volt, which is what he required. You know how ugly it can sometimes get when pals try to split up a restaurant check? This was worse. I actually overheard the strident phrase, "My needs are not being met."

One of the things that occasionally annoys me about Costco is something I call The Kellogg's Variety Pack Frustration. It harkens back to the day when my parents would let me pick out the cereal I wanted at the supermarket. Naturally, getting a sufficient quantity of one I liked was less important than getting those neat little boxes of them that you could stack up and play with. Why get a decent-sized box of Rice Krispies when I could get the Kellogg's Variety Pack and get a little Rice Krispies and a little Sugar Smacks and a little Sugar Frosted Flakes, etc.? It looked so great but there was that drawback…

Shredded Wheat. The cole slaw of breakfast foods.

A Kellogg's Variety Pack contained ten boxes, five to a side. On each view, I found three cereals I loved…one I could tolerate (Special K, for instance) and one I just plain didn't want. Shredded Wheat was always one. On the other side, there'd be one, as well…usually something with "bran" in the title like Raisin Bran or All-Bran. Whatever it was, it was Shredded Wheat to me. The contents changed from time to time or Kellogg's would issue other samplers. There was a variation called the Request Pack which wasn't bad but the ones I saw in our market only had six boxes and if you did the math, you paid more per little box. I really wanted the ten-pack but I didn't want the Shredded Wheat. It spoiled everything.

I remember standing in the cereal section of a Safeway once — I must have been six or seven — examining every Kellogg's Variety Pack on the shelf. Surely there would be one where someone in the plant in Battle Creek, Michigan erred…one V.P. with no Shredded Wheat and maybe an extra Sugar Corn Pops. That Shredded Wheat spoiled everything for me but I never found a package without it.

I feel that way often in a Costco. They have this nice-three pack of picnic condiments: A bottle of mustard, a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of relish. In this case, the relish is the Shredded Wheat. I never use relish. They have cases of Progresso Soups, every one of which contains two of this one I like, two of that one I like, and so on…but also has two that might as well be Cream of Shredded Wheat. There's a box of little bags of various kinds of Baked Lays chips that I'd buy except it includes Doritos…which are, after all, made out of Shredded Wheat. Or maybe All-Bran, which is just Shredded Wheat in a clever plastic disguise.

Having told you how much I love Costco, I am now attempting to be fair and balanced by telling you I don't like these assortment deals. I don't know why the case of little cans of Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs can't be all Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs…why it has to contain Beefaroni. Or in a non-food aisle, why the 20-pack of Gel Pens has to have 14 black, three blue and three red. It is far more likely I will need just black pens than that I will need black, blue and red in precisely that ratio. Come on, folks. Why does everything have to have Shredded Wheat in it?

If there's anyone in the L.A. area who loves to go to Costco, needs roughly the same kind of things I need but loves Shredded Wheat, let me know. I think we can work a deal and I promise you won't hear me crying, "My needs are not being met."

John Oliver is off until February 14th. Here's something his show just released to hold you over until then…

• Those Q-Anon supporters are getting more and more confused. Right now, a band of them is camped outside a screening of the "Airport" movies awaiting the promised resurrection of George Kennedy Jr.

This is the group known as Six 13 again, this time bringing our eight days to a close with a familiar Bohemian tune…

The New York Times has a long article on Nathaniel Woods, a 43-year-old black man who was executed on March 5, 2020 for his role in a 2004 police raid on a crack house in Birmingham, Alabama. Three police officers were killed in that raid and the man who shot them is still very much alive, albeit on Death Row, whereas Woods — who never touched a gun at the time, was put to death. The piece by Dan Barry and Abby Ellin may put you through a roller coaster of feeling that Woods was or was not wronged or that justice was or was not served. I don't even know where I come down on it.

The Three Stooges — with Joe DeRita as the third Stooge — appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 14, 1961. They did the "Stand-In" sketch, an oldie that was older than they were. It's a sketch that Milton Berle worked to death on his show but, hey, some routines just hold up to repeated viewing…and stooging…

I haven't started watching the big Beatles documentary because I have other things to do in the next year or two. But if/when I do, I'll be disappointed that they didn't include the footage that comedian Bill Scheft describes.

Here's just what you need: A history of paintings of dogs playing poker.

The one song for this holiday I knew as a kid — and I think I learned it during my disastrous period in Hebrew School which you can read about here — was "I Have a Little Dreidel." I don't think I ever had a dreidel and if I did, I sure didn't make it out of clay. I didn't even know how the game was played. But here are the Maccabeats with a modern twist on that tune…

Now playing on Broadway, just in time to mourn its composer/lyricist, is a new production of Company which makes two major changes, both with Mr. Sondheim's blessing. One, which Sondheim said in many interviews would be a big mistake, is to move it from being set in 1970 to being set in Today. The other is to engage in some gender-reversal, making the hero (Bobby) into the heroine (Bobbi) and flipping sexes elsewhere as applicable.

Does it work? Don't ask me. I haven't seen it and it may be a long time before I'm back in Manhattan. But also don't ask me because, as I wrote here, I don't really like Company as a whole. I like (love, really) a lot of its scenes and songs but after seeing umpteen productions, I decided I don't like it much as a whole.

A tiny part of that may be personal. Bobby (male) is/was a 35-year-old who has never been married. The first time I saw this show, I was probably around 35 and I'd never been married. Nothing that Bobby says, does, experiences or sings relates in the slightest to anything in my life. I don't know if I understand his reasons or issues but I'm pretty sure they in no way approximate mine…and now as I am close to twice that age and still don't want to marry, that's still true. But apart from that, I still don't think the tales of Bobby coalesce into the changes he undergoes leading up to "Being Alive." The character just doesn't make sense to me and neither do a lot of the explanations friends have tried to lay on me. I think they're fabricating something that is not there.

When I first heard about the gender-flip, it struck me as — and this is true of a lot of new approaches to old plays — a stunt or gimmick. But after reading some of Sondheim's comments — such as in this interview of him and the new version's director — I'm curious if this version would come together for me more than the original. And that's what I may never find out.

• Chris Cuomo provides another reason I'm glad I'm an only child.

As I explained back here, I've never been a big fan of Little Orphan Annie in her long-running newspaper strip…or most of the other places she's appeared. The Broadway musical and the umpteen movies based on the Broadway musical are okay by me…just okay.

So I guess it's high praise from me that I enjoyed NBC's live telecast the other night of that musical. But what I liked was not the musical itself but a lot of the performances and the clever way it was staged and shot for television.  The kid playing Annie (Celina Smith) was great.  The lady playing Miss Hannigan (Taraji P. Henson) was great. I saw someone online wonder why the show didn't have more scenery and I suspect that was because Ms. Henson devoured it all during rehearsals.

The ensemble of dancers and bit players, young and old, were all great. Even the dog was great. Harry Connick Jr…

Aw, I felt a little sorry for Harry Connick Jr. He's a great performer but I thought he lacked the underlying "wealthy asshole" quality that Daddy Warbucks needs to have. Part of the storyline is that the almighty, all-wealthy Warbucks doesn't "get" what it's like to be poor at first and slowly learns a different side of humanity by having Annie on the premises. Connick seemed so nice from the moment he stepped into his first scene that he didn't seem to need to learn that.

And every review I've seen has mentioned the unconvincing bald cap they had on him. I think it looked phonier because of the glaring microphone they had on him. Its lines made it look like the bottom edges of the bald cap were peeling up. But he sure sang well, especially in the "N.Y.C." song.

All the songs sounded good and some of the choreography was amazing. Dance numbers on Broadway these days always seem to be infused with acrobatics and awesome physical prowess. In the recent revival of My Fair Lady, they more or less turned "Get Me To The Church On Time" imto a Cirque du Soleil finale. I just hadn't expected to see little girls turning hands-free cartwheels. Arguably, there was a little too much of that too early…and I guess what I was thinking was, "What do all those orphans have to turn backflips over?"

But I have to admit I enjoyed watching it all. That was about as good a job as anyone could do with the source material…which can't be said of most of these stage-to-one-night-TV-event musicals. I'd still like to see someone tackle A Funny Thing On The Way To The Forum, maybe with Nathan Lane and James Corden as Pseudolus and Hysterium — and either one could play either part. Wouldn't it have been nice if they'd had any Sondheim musical ready to air this week?