Fred Kaplan has an article up headlined "If Trump Doesn’t Fire Pete Hegseth Now, It’s Going to Send a Message Heard Round the World." If you're in the mood to get outraged by the latest atrocity of the Trump Administration, read it.

Randy Rainbow at this best…

Remember that debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden that didn't go so well for Joe? I think he should ask for a rematch.

Next year's Comic-Con in San Diego kicks off in 240 days but the Internet is already awash with posts from people who are furious that they couldn't get the tickets they wanted. I'm also seeing a lot of messages from folks saying it's an awful event, don't go, you'll have a miserable time, etc. I suspect at least some of them are thinking, "Maybe I can discourage others from going and it'll increase my chances of getting a badge or a hotel room!" Dealing with the awesome entity that is Comic-Con requires, I believe, an acceptance of certain realities. Here are the ones that come readily to this thing I call my mind…

1. It will always be crowded.  If crowds scare or discomfort you, don't go.  I repeat: Don't go!  Complaining about that is like complaining that you went to Disneyland on a clear summer weekend and didn't have the place to yourself.
2. It will always be tough to get badges and hotel rooms and parking spaces.  The San Diego Convention Center can hold a certain number of people and no more, and there's a finite supply of places to sleep and places to put your car.  Each year, months before the event and before the con has announced a single guest or event, all those things are at capacity.  This is not going to change.  Accept it as a reality or forget about attending.
3. You need to plan ahead.  You'd be amazed — or maybe you wouldn't be — how many people write or call me in early July and want to know how to get badges, hotel rooms, (etc.) for the event that starts in three weeks.  I've even had callers ask if I can help them get a panel on the schedule…you know, the schedule that went to press six weeks earlier.
4. Planning ahead includes many things.  In addition to securing badges, hotel rooms and parking spaces, there's how you're going to get there, where you're going to eat, maybe who you're going to go with, what you need to take with you and many more.
5. You need to find the convention you want to attend.  Within the vast convention center there, there are panels and sellers and events that cover a wide range of interests: Old comic books, new comic books, old movies, new movies, Star Trek, Star Wars, cosplay, video games, replicating everything in the world with Lego blocks, action figures, original art, old animation, new animation, cels, underground comix, people who dress like badgers, comic strips…well, it's a long list.  If any of that interests you, you need to find some time in advance to scour the convention schedule and the map of the exhibit hall to figure out where to find the convention you seek in that big mass of fandom.
6. Getting into Hall H is a challenge of its own.  There are people for whom getting into events in Hall H at Comic-Con is all that matters in their lives.  They'll line up days ahead and camp out all night to get in there no matter what's going to be on that stage.  If you hear about one event in there that you'd like to see, remember you're competing with them for seats.
7. You need to decide what you want to get out of the convention.  A lot of folks I've heard grouse about the convention strike me as having attended with unrealistic goals.  They wanted to find a great copy of the first appearance of Deadpool for under twenty bucks.  Or they wanted some quality time with some celebrity who might, at most, have time to scribble a quick autograph.  Or they wanted to make a connection to get work or sell some product.  That last goal, while not yet in the impossible category, is getting harder and harder.  (When I began to stop viewing Comic-Con through the filter of "What can it do for my career?" is when I really began to enjoy it.  I also began getting more offers but that might not have a cause-and-effect situation.)
8. Wear the most comfortable shoes you own.  Or you might want to try what I did, which is to break your ankle so someone has to push you around in a wheelchair.
9. It ain't gonna be cheap.  A lot of things you might want to do in this world cost more than you'd like.  Vendors, hotel managers, folks who sell you Auntie Anne's pretzels…they're all going to charge you what they think they can get.  And finally…
10. Remove all possible stress.  Don't let it become a problem in your life.  When you travel anywhere, you have to do a certain amount of planning and packing but you do it because you think the parts you'll enjoy will more than justify the parts that feel like chores. Comic-Con should be no different for you.  If getting the badges or hotel reservations you need become insurmountable obstacles, maybe this isn't your year.

Seriously: If you can't get what you want, you're not alone.  Hundreds of thousands of people — and I don't think I'm exaggerating — are in the same situation.  I believe that would be true even if the number of available badges and hotel rooms down there tripled.

Don't get any more upset about not getting in than you are when you buy a lottery ticket and don't win this week's $8,000,000 Powerball Jackpot.  There'll be another drawing next week and if you can't get into the 2026 Comic-Con, there'll be one in 2027, 2028, 2029 and so forth.  And they'll all be great even though everything will cost a little more.

I'll watch any film that starred Buster Keaton. When he was at his best, he was one of the most brilliant comedians ever on film. And when he was at his worst — which, sadly, he was later in his career — there were always moments that echoed him at his best. There are some such moments, mostly repeated from his earlier movies, in the industrial film he made in 1952 for the John Deere company.

It's called Paradise for Buster and he made it with some of his cronies including Harold Goodwin, who wrote for and appeared in a lot of Keaton's fifties TV work. And it was directed by Del Lord, who got into show biz as one of the Keystone Kops and went on to become a director of comedy films including a lot of what The Three Stooges did. The result is not a great film but like I said, I'll watch any film that starred Buster Keaton. If you feel the same way, here's your chance to see one you might not even have known existed…

For the recent weekend that included November 15 and 16, my lovely friend Brinke Stevens flew up to Santa Rosa. It was the first time I'd been on an airplane since, I believe, January of 2020 when I flew to San Francisco for the funeral of a wonderful man named Lee Mendelson.

There are several reasons for my long lack of air travel, COVID and my broken ankle among them, but the big one was that I've simply had no reason to get on a plane since then. I've gone a couple of times to Anaheim for WonderCon and to San Diego for Comic-Con but those cities are better reached by car than by air.

I went to no other conventions in that time. I turned down a few that merely wanted to fly me in, furnish me a hotel room, give me some sort of appearance fee or financial guarantee and park me behind a table. From that table, I would sell autographs or books or kisses or smashburgers or sexy photos of Harry Von Zell or anything I wanted…and I just don't wanna do that.

I like meeting folks who read my books or my blog and I don't mind signing stuff as long as I don't have to haul it to the con and then haul the unpurchased goods home. But if the line is long, I don't get to talk much to the folks in it and if it's short or non-existent — as is more often the case — I feel bored and stupid sitting there with my pen waiting for someone to wander by and say, "Hey!  There's the guy who does something or other on Groo!".

(Another reason I don't go the cons as often as I used to: A joy of conventions for me once upon a time was getting to meet and spend time with folks who'd created the comic books I loved as a kid. I'm afraid they're all now either extinct or not going to conventions at their present age.)

Okay, so where else did I once go that I'm not going now? Well, there was a time when I flew to Las Vegas at least once a month, sometimes twice or thrice. I've written here several times — here's a recent one — why I have less-than-zero interest in returning to that city.

And I used to go to New York once or twice a year to visit friends, visit publishers and see Broadway shows. Now, most of those friends have either passed away or moved to L.A. so that's one reason gone. I used to spend time at the offices of DC Comics, Marvel Comics and MAD magazine…but now DC and MAD are out here and I'm not involved with or, I suspect, even welcome at Marvel.

Which leaves Broadway and I'm not seeing much on the list of current shows that entices me.  Also, what they're asking for decent seats these days feels too much like what Vegas is asking for you to park a car or eat a slice o' pizza. And it's not the money as much as it's that feeling of being played for a rube..

So I stay home a lot and I'm fine with that.  It's a controlled environment and here, I'm the guy in control.  And frankly, I've never been one of those people who loves to travel just for the sake of being somewhere else, seeing new things, eating new things…

Eating new things is an especially frightening activity for me.  You may love it but you don't have the food allergies I have.

The only thing scarier to me than having an I-ate-something-I-shouldn't-have-eaten attack in a local restaurant is having one in some faraway place.  One of the worst experiences I ever had was in Chinatown in New York some years back.  My dear friend Carolyn, who usually knew better, dragged me to a restaurant there.  The menu was full of characters like these — 饭 面 菜 鸡 猪肉 鱼 — and what little English there was didn't begin to describe what I'd find on my plate, nor could the servers answer a single question I had.

Carolyn didn't know any Chinese either but somehow, she managed to order something she loved.  I thought I was getting Lemon Chicken, which is a menu item that's usually safe and free from mystery ingredients…and it did kind of look like Lemon Chicken.  It even tasted a little like Lemon Chicken but there was something in there that agreed with my tummy the way Alex Jones agrees with Gun Control advocates.  I spent at least a half-hour in a squalid men's room, making noises that sent the restaurant staff into full panic mode.  They thought someone was dying in there and for a while, I thought that too.

When I finally felt human enough to emerge, I was unable to explain to any employee there or even the manager what had happened.  In fact, the manager kept thrusting a document at me, all in Chinese of course, trying to get me to sign it.  Between my diminished state and her diminished English, I could not get her to understand that I was not going to sue them and put them out of business.  Finally though, a bi-lingual patron of the restaurant came over and convinced her.  He also read the check to tell me what I'd eaten and it was something like Moo Goo Gai Kerosene.

Every few years, I get an invite to be an all-expenses-paid Guest of Honor at some Comic Book Festival in some city, long ago and far, far away.  I always politely decline, remembering that incident in Chinatown.  I figure if things can go that badly for me in New York, what's going to happen on another continent where English is not the first language, nor the second, third or even ninth?  Don't write and tell me you love to travel.  I'm not saying you shouldn't.  I'm just telling you how I feel about it for me.

Okay…what do these movies have in common?

Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Lost Boys (1987), 13 Going On 30 (2004), Beaches (1988), Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), Coco (2017), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Dirty Dancing (1987), Summer Stock (1950), The Greatest Showman (2017), The Karate Kid (1984), La La Land (2016), Purple Rain (1984), Sing Street (2016), Thelma & Louise (1984) and Trading Places (1984). Oh — and throw in the TV series, The Nanny, which ran from 1993 to 1999).

There's the list. Now, what do all those films and that one TV series have in common? — and I'll give you a hint: It's not that Michael Caine was in all of them. In fact, I don't think Michael Caine was in any of them and that's not the answer either. If you can't figure out the answer, drop by here tomorrow and I'll tell you.

The years I was in high school were years when America was seriously rocked by protest demonstrations, mainly about (a) the war in Vietnam and/or (b) officials trying to stifle protest demonstrations against the war in Vietnam. I was largely indifferent to both causes which, in hindsight, seems odd to me. My age was such that I was soon to be draftable and sent off to fight that war…so you'd think I'd have cared a lot about it. Somehow, I didn't. For no particular reason, I just felt things would work out and I wouldn't have to go…and when it was my year, things worked out and I didn't have to go. +

But in my high school days, I was largely apathetic to that issue and many others that were then protested by folks my age. And to the extent I had political views they were largely — you may find this hard to believe — Conservative. Not too Conservative but Conservative. I was not however supportive of the many Conservative leaders we had.

You can do that, you know…support a cause but not everyone who advocates for it. In many a case, I agree with what a politician says he or she wants to do but I don't think they'll really do it. Or sometimes I feel they're exploiting the matter for votes and/or donations but don't believe what they're saying.

In 1969 — the year I graduated from University High — the mayor of Los Angeles was a man named Sam Yorty who was pretty right-wing, as were many members of the L.A. City Council. I thought they were all pretty inept and dishonest, Yorty especially.

I also felt that way about the Governor of the great state of California, as well. His name — you may have heard of him — was Ronald Reagan and as you may have heard, he went on to become President of the United States. I thought wrongly he would forever be the worst person to ever occupy that position in my lifetime…but then I'd thought that about Richard Nixon too. Those men were not the only reason my politics changed but they were certainly contributing factors.

A lot of my memories of University High School involve campus unrest, protests and the odd hills some people chose to die on. The same would be true in my didn't-stick-around-long-enough-to-graduate days at U.C.L.A. but this is about my time at Uni. Some of those tumultuous times involved a little underground newspaper called The Worrier. The official school newspaper at Uni was called The Warrior but a tiny cabal of students got together and published a cheaply-printed counter-argument to it called The Worrier.

They gave it out, preferably but not exclusively for a dime donation, on street corners one block from the school. If you accepted one on your way to class, its distributor would caution you to keep it hidden from teachers and school administrators. Interestingly, some of my teachers then found ways to let it be known that they admired the spirit behind the paper and, occasionally, certain articles in it. I doubt that anyone on this planet would agree with everything in it. Its editor and publisher certainly didn't. They just felt that Free Speech involved extending that right to everyone.

At heart, The Worrier had two main goals. One was to end the war in Vietnam and the other was to get the principal of University High, a Mr. Foley, fired. It pursued these goals with equal fervor as if both were within its reach and they did sorta manage the latter. Mr. Foley wasn't fired but he was transferred to a different high school. One of the loudest arguments involving The Worrier was how much credit it could claim for his reassignment. (In my opinion: A little.) Another was how much better things were at Uni with him gone. (In my opinion: Not a bit of difference. You know the term, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?")

Most of those who wrote for The Worrier did so under pseudonyms but the main guys behind it signed their real names to it and paid some price for that. Most were transferred to other schools — in at least one case dripping with irony, to the school Mr. Foley was now running. I heard third- or fourth-hand of other punishments that were levied against those who contributed to the paper but no one punished one of its columnists, Charles Marvin. That may have been because he was not as Liberal as others who wrote for this underground paper…though he did take a lot of shots at "Ronnie Raygun," as he insisted on calling our then-governor. It may also have been because no one knew who Charles Marvin really was.

His columns got a tad more attention than what others were writing for The Worrier. The comedian Mort Sahl was then hosting a local radio show in Los Angeles and the Worrier's editor, who worshipped Sahl and tried to emulate him in some ways, would take each new issue down to the radio station and present Mort with the latest copy, hot off the press.

Sahl praised the paper as a whole, more for its very existence than its content. He would occasionally single out Charles Marvin's writings and even read them aloud on the radio. And Newsweek, when it wrote a piece on underground student newspapers, quoted the mysterious Mr. Marvin. He didn't get a lot of attention but the fact that he got any at all — and was not aligned with the politics of the paper as a whole — soon led to him no longer appearing in The Worrier.

A few years ago, I went rummaging through my crates and crates of stuff to see if I could find any copies of the paper but I couldn't. I may have thrown them away without realizing it. But oddly enough, I recently found two issues of The Worrier, scanned and posted to the Internet. The edition for February 7, 1967 can be found here and the issue for November 11, 1967 can be found here. Only the first of these carries a Charles Marvin column. He was gone long before the other one was published.

His writing is crude and nowhere near as clever as he thought it was at the time…but he kept on with it. Under his real name, he later had a decent career as a professional writer and, amazingly, he's still at it. Why, just this morning, he wrote and put up the blog post you're reading at this very minute.

This is just to remind you about my favorite thing to watch on my computer — the live feed from a watering hole a waterhole in the Gondwana Namib Park in Namibia. Sometimes, there's absolute nothing happening there for a long stretch of time but every so often, you see animals wandering by for a drink. It helps to keep the time difference in mind. There's less activity when it's the middle of the night here…although even then, there's a stunning visual when a band of zebras stop by for an H2O nightcap.

And here's a tip: If you do click over there at any hour and there's nothing happening, you can move the slider back over several hours and find something interesting to spy upon.

The folks who set up the live camera there sometimes post recorded moments. Here's a few minutes of giraffes, including a very young one, and some oryx…

Here's what the opening titles of Love American Style would have looked like if they included everyone who starred in a segment in Season 1…

Yesterday here, we asked you, "What do all these people have in common?"

Desi Arnaz Jr., Jan Berry (of Jan & Dean), Jeff Bridges, James Brolin, David Cassidy, Sandra Dee, Annette Funicello, Judy Garland, Jack Jones, Werner Klemperer, Gary Lewis (son of Jerry), Lorna Luft, Betty Lynn, Roddy McDowall, Marilyn Monroe, Randy Newman, Frank Sinatra Jr., Nancy Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.

The answer is that they are all listed, as are many others, as graduates of University High School — a school in West Los Angeles from which I graduated in 1969.

The only one of the folks whose names appear above who I know was there when I was was David Cassidy, who I knew ever-so-slightly. As I understand it, he was expelled from Uni — as everyone called it — for missing too many classes, then at some point a year or two later, he was back at Uni for a while, during which he auditioned for a talent show and wasn't selected. I was on the committee that rejected him.

That was our only contact. I never saw him again after that audition, not even a few years later when in one of my earliest writing jobs, I ghost-wrote a "David Cassidy Gives Advice to Teenagers" column for a teen fan magazine. I wrote the column, the publisher printed what I wrote, Cassidy — though he was a pretty big star by then — neither had nor wanted to approve what the magazine printed under his name.

The rest of the folks on that alumni list were either at Uni before I was there or they were never actually at Uni at all. Many of them were working at local movie studios and going to classes with tutors on campus. When it came time for them to graduate, their diplomas had to come from a real, full-fledged, run-by-the-L.A.-Board-of-Education high school so they were officially graduated from University High without, in most cases, ever once setting foot on its campus.

For years, I always assumed Marilyn Monroe was a Uni grad on that basis but every so often, someone on eBay or at some auction house sells a copy of the University High School yearbook for 1942 and her photo, as Norma Jean Baker, is in it. (Here's a link to one such sale.) By contrast, Betty Lynn, who as you may know was my neighbor when I was a kid, had a diploma from Uni but only attended classes on the lot of Fox Studios when she was a contract player there.

Anyway, I thought you might find this interesting. And tomorrow, I'll have another interesting (I think) story about Uni Hi.

Sad to hear of the passing of Tony Benedict, a great animation writer especially in the early days of Hanna-Barbera. Tony never talked much about his early life but we know that after he got out of the Marine Corps, he drove his 1948 Studebaker out to Hollywood to get into the animation business. He started at Disney in 1956 and worked as an in-betweener (assistant animator) on Sleeping Beauty and on some of the animation done for the Disneyland TV show. In 1959, he moved over to the U.P.A. cartoon studio and worked on several Mr. Magoo cartoons.

Then in 1959, he sold a script to Hanna-Barbera for a new show they had going on the air — The Flintstones. They brought him in on staff and he worked as a storyman and sketch artist on that show and pretty much everything they produced after that for several years including The Jetsons, Top Cat, Yakky Doodle, Magilla Gorilla, Secret Squirrel and many more. Later, he worked for other studios (including DePatie-Freleng) and produced and wrote several animated features.

He was just one of those guys who worked everywhere in town and was liked by everyone. Those of us who got to know him found him to be a talented and very clever gentleman. He'd been ill for some time and we think he was 88 years old. The animation community has lost a beloved figure indeed.

47 years ago tonight, The Brady Bunch Variety Hour (a Sid and Marty Krofft Production) debuted on ABC. Descriptions of that first episode usually go something like this…

The Bradys return to television with their very own variety show and realize that their father Mike Brady (Robert Reed) is "stinking up the act." Starring Florence Henderson, Barry Williams, Chris Knight, Maureen McCormick, Mike Lookinland, Susan Olsen and Geri Reischl as "Fake Jan." Also seen on that first episode were Guest Stars: Donny and Marie Osmond, Tony Randall, Ann B. Davis, along with the Krofftetts and Water Follies.

That first episode aired as a special but the ratings were so impressive that more episodes were hurriedly produced. Eight more aired under the name The Brady Bunch Hour but not every week. It shared its time slot with The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries and as the weeks went on, both shows lost viewer share. Fred Silverman at ABC finally decided The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries would do better if it appeared every week and they pulled the plug on The Brady Bunch Hour.

A lot of people loved The Brady Bunch Hour and the reason I know that is that every now and then at a convention or somewhere, someone tells me that under the mistaken impression that I was on its writing staff. Apparently, it said that in some articles and/or on some websites but the last episode aired in May of 1977 and I didn't go to work for the Kroffts until March of 1978. I did however then work with a lot of the same folks both in front of and behind the camera. (In the opening number of the first episode, one of the Krofftetts — that's what they called the synchronized swimmers/dancers — is dropped from the rafters into the pool. That was my wonderful friend Susan Buckner.)

You can see that opening number and all of the first episode below. Bruce Vilanch, who was a writer on the show, writes about that experience in his new book, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote. I'm working on a book that kinda picks up where Bruce's book leaves off.

When the day comes that Donald Trump is outta power and maybe outta sight, half the folks who were part of his administration will try to cash in and maybe rehabilitate their images by writing books about their time with him. I probably won't buy any of 'em but there are a few things I'm curious about. One is that when Trump claims his approval ratings have never been higher, does he know that even Fox News says they've never been lower? Does he know he's lying or did one of this flunkies tell him his polls are glorious and he's simply never heard otherwise?

Can't be that, can it? He trashes so many reporters and talk show hosts that he must be watching some public news source — and if he watches any outside media, he can't help but hear how bad the numbers are for him. So does he not know that claiming the opposite shreds his credibility with so many of his on-the-fence followers and/or makes him seem, at best, uninformed and out of touch? Or is it this genetic trait he has to never admit bad news could be genuine? Every time a vote doesn't go his way, it was rigged. Every time a reporter writes something that if not flattering to him, it's Fake News.

I understand the principle behind lying but all the good liars I've ever known have had enough sense to not lie about things that could be so easily disproven. If I had to guess, I'd guess Trump has gotten away with so many lies during his professional career that he just figures he's invincible in that area. And in a sense, he has been: He's very rich and very powerful. If an aide said to him, "Sir, with all due respect, maybe you should issue a correction for that thing you tweeted that isn't true," he'd say or maybe just think, "I didn't get where I am today by admitting I was wrong."

But that's just a guess on my part…just like I'm guessing that a future book by some Trump friend or employee will tell me what I'm curious about. It may well be that none of them know, either.

What do all these people have in common?

Desi Arnaz Jr., Jan Berry (of Jan & Dean), Jeff Bridges, James Brolin, David Cassidy, Sandra Dee, Annette Funicello, Judy Garland, Jack Jones, Werner Klemperer, Gary Lewis (son of Jerry), Lorna Luft, Betty Lynn, Roddy McDowall, Marilyn Monroe, Randy Newman, Frank Sinatra Jr., Nancy Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.

I'll tell you tomorrow.