I never met the man but he always made me laugh.  So let's honor the mammary of Norm Crosby…a very funny chameleon who truly reached the pinochle of success!

As readers of this blog know, the Trump organization has been bombarding my e-mail box with mail lately — up to a dozen messages a day. They're under the misconception that (a) I'm a loyal supporter of Donald Trump and (b) that there's a chance in hell of me donating even one penny to his campaign.

I just got a link to a survey they'd like me to fill out. It says, "Because of your strong dedication to our President, he chose YOU to participate in our Official Election Integrity Survey." I didn't fill it out but here are the questions…

• Do you believe the Democrats are trying to STEAL the Election?
• Do you agree the Fake News media is working OVERTIME to make it seem like Joe Biden is in the lead?
• Do you agree Fox News should recall their Arizona projection for Joe Biden?
• Do you agree Fox News should apologize for projecting Arizona for Joe Biden when over a MILLION ballots were still outstanding?
• Do you agree media outlets, such as Fox News, should be held accountable for misleading the public?
• Do you agree that ballots postmarked AFTER Election Day should NOT be counted?
• Do you agree it's suspicious that states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan are "mysteriously" finding ballots for Joe Biden?
• Do you agree with President Trump that mail-in ballots lead to FRAUD and chaos?
• Do you agree with President Trump calling for a recount in Wisconsin?
• Who do you believe will win?

I thought the emphasis on Fox News was interesting.  Suddenly, they're the bad guys and we have to hold them "accountable," which I guess means throwing Chris Wallace in prison.

To quote the eminent philosopher Craig Ferguson, "It's a great day for America."

But we're all well aware that there are many who think the opposite. I hope some of them are willing to recognize that it will not be good for this country if more people die, the economy gets worse, the U.S. winds up in wars, etc. An "I told you so" is not worth that.

I'm happy but probably not as happy as some readers of this blog think. We're more acutely divided than ever and the vote totals for Trump/Pence make than undeniable. At this moment, Mitch McConnell is probably making plans to see that President Biden can't accomplish anything more significant than pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey.

A lot of voters probably bought into the bullshit that Biden-Harris were going to institute a Socialist agenda dictated by Karl Marx and A.O.C. But a lot of them simply thought the past four years were pretty good for them. Let's not forget that. There's a lot of healing to do and it won't be helped if we treat everyone who voted for Trump like one of those clueless clowns that Jordan Klepper always seemed to be able to find and interview at Trump rallies. There are idiots in every political movement and it isn't constructive — or accurate — to always characterize the opposition by its worst members.

Got this about an hour ago and just noticed it…

Mark,

President Trump needs your help.

The Democrats are trying to STEAL this Election and the Fake News can't be bothered to report on it. It's madness. The Left knows the American People want FOUR MORE YEARS of President Trump, and they just can't handle it.

We're emailing you now with a very urgent request. We need YOU to step up and publicly stand with your President. With your help, we'll send a RESOUNDING message to the Liberal MOB that REAL Patriots support President Trump 100%.

President Trump needs you right now, Mark. We're going to send him a list of EVERY supporter who adds their name in the NEXT HOUR.

Please add your name IMMEDIATELY to stand with your President and to DEFEND the Election from the Radical Left. >>

Hey, if the American People wanted FOUR MORE YEARS of Trump, he would have won the popular vote…something he didn't do last time, either. And maybe nobody's reporting on the plot to STEAL this election because even Trump can't seem to say where the stealing is, which votes have been stolen, who's arranging all this stealing, how they're doing all this stealing, anything. I once heard Bob Woodward speak and he said something like…

I always have people coming to me and saying such-and-such a politician is involved in some crime and I ask them, "Who told you this? What information do you have? What evidence do you have?" And they reply, "Hey, you're the investigative reporter! It's your job to find all that stuff out." In other words, I have this fantasy and I want you to prove it's true.

I assume they'll find some sort of irregularity somewhere. Trump is probably screaming at his lawyers to come up with something and they'll find some poll worker in Scranton who recalls seeing suspicious-looking men outside the polling place and that will be the proof of a massive conspiracy in every state Trump lost. But so far, even that ain't happening.

This past week, my work/sleep patterns have been wildly askew. Last night, I turned in just after Biden pulled into the lead in Georgia. This morning when I awoke, he also had the lead in Pennsylvania. I'm not sleeping or waking because of things like that. That's just when my body felt like snoozing and stopping. Since I got up, both leads have grown as has his lead in Arizona, which was looking fragile last night.

They're saying Trump will never concede. I don't really care if he does just as long as he gets his ass out of the White House and lets the country get on with repairing as much of the damage he's done as is possible. There's a whole lotta fixin' there to do.

I doubt there's a lot of peace of mind in this country today. Trump supporters can't believe he didn't win in a huge, incontestable landslide. Non-Trump supporters can't believe there are Trump supporters. And once more, there are way more reported cases of COVID-19 than ever.

Every so often on this blog, I've asked whatever became of Ed Bluestone. He was a very funny stand-up comic (in my opinion) and he was all over TV in the mid-to-late seventies and early eighties. Before that, he was a writer for National Lampoon during its best period and was credited with conceiving their most famous cover — the one with the dog with a gun to his doggy head and the ominous threat, "If you don't buy this magazine, we'll kill this dog."

For a while, Bluestone was everywhere and then suddenly, you didn't see him. I've asked at least three times on this blog and no one has written in to give me any information on his whereabouts, current doings, health, anything. Well, I finally spotted him. He was in that documentary about The Comedy Store. He was interviewed and identified very, very briefly in what appeared to be a recent clip shot at the club…so I guess he's still around. Good to know. Here he is on Norm Crosby's Comedy Shop, a series which ran from 1978 to 1983 and featured stand-ups performing on a stage with awkward cutaways to Norm and the audience, probably to mask edits…

Showtime recently ran a five-part documentary-type series on The Comedy Store, a place where I logged many hours during its earlier — and more interesting than it is now — days. The five parts do not seem to be scheduled for more runs right now but will surely be back and they're available for online streaming and such. I had a very mixed reaction to it…which may be entirely appropriate since I had a very mixed reaction to The Comedy Store and how it was run during its days of glory.

The place made a lot of great careers; no doubt about that. It also made a lot of low-level ones possible. I said this on several occasions and I'm not sure if I said it first or was repeating what someone else said…but to succeed in that environment, you had to be either (a) really, really good on stage or (b) adequate on stage and really, really good at kissing butt.

And of course, The Store ended at least a thousand times as many careers as it helped. There's no way of accurately gauging the number but I'd be fascinated to know how many wanna-be comedy stars were in roughly this position: They wanted to be George Carlin or Richard Pryor or someone like that. They may or may not have done some performing in way-outta-the-way places that made them think their goal was not unreachable. They rearranged their lives so they could move out to Los Angeles, get a cheap apartment and start competing for stage time at The Store…

…and before long, they were heading back to Louisville to take that job at their uncle's store and to figure out what to say to all those folks they'd told, "Next time you see me, I'll be on The Tonight Show."

You could look at that as Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, "they weren't funny enough," whatever…and you'd be right most of the time. But it did strike me in my days 'round The Store as a rare didn't-wanna-be-on-stage observer that a certain amount of regulars there weren't funny enough but they were good at kissing butt. Or painting Mitzi's porch.

Mitzi Shore, who owned and ran The Comedy Store, was a fascinating figure and I'll bet someday we see a movie or mini-series with someone playing her. Her family's name is all over the credits of this five-parter and it was produced and directed by Mike Binder, a real nice guy who owed much to Mitzi. So you'd expect it to be slanted in her direction and much of it was, especially the segment on The Comedy Store Strike.

But there were a few surprising exceptions. And of course, the focus was on the guys who made it really big elsewhere. (I don't think a couple of the guys — Richard Pryor for one — owed as much of his success to The Store as the documentary made out. If anything, I think The Store owed much of its success to guys like Pryor.)

I didn't get along with Mitzi but I also didn't not get along with Mitzi. We were introduced a half-dozen times and she never remembered my name. That never bothers me and I only mention it because I believe it was for an interesting reason. With her, everything seemed transactional: It was all about what she could do for you in exchange for what you could do for her. I didn't want anything from her and she didn't seem to relate to people like that.

She did a great job running The Store and exploiting the fact that for a while, it truly was The Road to Stardom for some people. That's "some." Not "all," not even "most." If the subject interests you, I suggest you watch all five parts or none of them because the whole thing paints a more accurate picture than any one part. But I think it's also a much bigger story than could be told in five hours.

Good morning. I've been up since six trying to write but I peek occasionally at the ballot-counting. An interesting situation seems to be developing.

All the news sources agree that Biden has reached 253 electoral votes and two biggies — Associated Press and Fox News — have also awarded him Arizona, which has 11 electoral votes. So on A.P. and Fox, he's at 264 and has been for some time. The other networks and scorekeepers have him at 253 because they don't think Arizona is settled yet. Polling analyst Nate Silver has said, essentially, that while Biden may win Arizona, it's too soon to make the call that A.P. and Fox have made.

Now, it's looking like Biden is about to take Nevada, which has six electoral votes. If you're A.P. or Fox, you might be reticent to add that to his total because that would mean he'd be at 270 and victorious…which would make it especially embarrassing if he turns out not to have won Arizona. Saying "We were wrong about Arizona" would be way less a screw-up than having to say "We were wrong about who won the presidency."

So we may be about to see the situation where the A.P. and Fox are saying Biden is at 264 since he's won Arizona but hasn't won Nevada while everyone else is saying he's at 259 because he has won Nevada but hasn't won Arizona. Aren't you glad you aren't in that line of work?

To get all our minds off…well, I forget what. But here's my pal Jason Graae singing to us and his dog…

Feeling a little better now that I've slept a bit and eaten something. How I am now reminds me of times in the past where to meet a critical deadline, I had to stay up all night and I paid for it over the next few days. The scripts suffered, as well.

I know you don't come here for election news but here's where I think we are now. All the decision desks have decided to put Wisconsin in the Biden column and some (Associated Press and Fox News) have awarded him Arizona, as well. If he has Arizona, he's at 264 and if he doesn't, he's at 253 since Arizona has 11 electoral votes. The most likely source of the last six that will get him to The Magic 270 is Nevada, which has exactly that number. He seems to have a lead there which will be difficult for Trump to surmount but who knows? They may find more ballots in Wayne Newton's hair or someplace.

We may know about Arizona and Nevada later tonight. If either or both fail him, there seems to be a good chance of him winning Pennsylvania's 20 votes but not such a good chance of Pennsylvania being decided today or tomorrow. And then there's the possibility of Georgia's 16 or North Carolina's 15 but those two could go either way.

I was waiting until I had more of my brain functioning to try and write a piece about why this whole election is so depressing to me but Fred Kaplan did it for me. WARNING: It should depress you too, even if you're pro-Trump. The divisiveness in this country has made everything contentious — people are dying and we can't even get everyone to agree there's a pandemic — and our country is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Which makes things worse for everyone.

I've been sleeping in about 90-minute spurts and I still need another spurt or two today. I didn't post the last two times I got up.

The news at this moment looks good for Biden but it would be a narrow win, contested with court challenges and recounts for a while…and even if it holds up, we'll have to listen to Trump and his loyalists insist for years that he wuz robbed. I think if you beat Trump in a game of tic-tac-toe, he'd dispute it 'til his dying day.

I may be more depressed at the prospect of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announcing, as he will, that he will take great pride in blocking every single thing President Biden tries to accomplish.

Hey, could someone explain to TV newspersons that if you voted early by mail — perfectly legal — and your state isn't counting those ballots until the end, that does not make them "new votes?" Trump managed to convince a lot of people that if there was less testing — and therefore, fewer cases of the coronavirus being identified — there were less cases of the coronavirus. Now, he seems to want to try convincing them that if votes are being counted after Midnight of Election Day, they were cast the next day.

Oh, well. According to Trump, today's the day we won't hear any more about "COVID, COVID, COVID," because the news was only mentioning it so often to make him look bad. And he's right. Nobody's talking about the 91,530 new cases reported yesterday.

I think I need another spurt of sleep…

I'm having trouble sleeping. Up and down, up and down. I don't feel anxiety. I just can't sleep.

If you want to obsess (as I've been doing) on which uncounted votes in which areas are likely to go which way, the best place I've found is this blog page over at Nate Silver's 538 site.

Different networks have called different states so Biden it at either 224, 225 or 238 electoral votes while all have Trump at 213…so naturally, Trump has declared he's won.  Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin have yet to be called by anyone and they're all still counting ballots except for where they've decided to turn in for the night and resume counting tomorrow.  Turning in for the night is sounding real good to me right now so I think I'll go do that. Good night.

So it's looking like…

• Predictions of chaos and physical threats at polling places did not come to pass for the most part.
• People will be even less likely to trust pollsters in the future.
• We won't have final results for Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and perhaps two or three others until at least tomorrow. So we won't know tonight who won.
• There could still be court fights over admitting some ballots, including military ones.
• The predicted-by-some Democratic landslide ain't happening.
• Everyone is at least a little horrified that so much of the country didn't vote their way.

That last one will probably be the case for a long time.

This just in…

GARDENA (CBSLA) — Caltrans crews worked Monday night to clear 30,000 pounds of noodles from the northbound lanes of the 110 Freeway after a semi-truck overturned. The truck overturned at about 1:55 on the freeway near Rosecrans Avenue, according to California Highway Patrol. One person was taken to the hospital with unknown injuries, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Caltrans District 7 reported that crews were still working to clear the noodles at about 8:30 p.m. and were expected to remain on scene until 10:30 p.m. The three right lanes of the freeway were closed for the cleanup.

Quick! Somebody get out there and overturn a truck loaded with mushroom soup and one loaded with tuna fish. We could have the greatest casserole of all time.