The Fabulous Chickies are eleven ladies who all have extraordinary voices and other talents of the musical stage. All have extensive credits in musicals and cabarets and other places where they sing their ever-lovin' hearts out and they're doing an online concert tomorrow evening. That's Saturday, October Three starting at 5 PM Pacific Time. A couple of them are friends I've mentioned before on this blog. All of them are worthy of your time and attention and maybe even a donation to the Actors Fund, which is the reason they're assembling to raise their uvulas in song.

The Actors Fund helps a lot of folks — and not just actors. With so much of show business shut down, many folks are hurting and could more of a hand than just clapping your mitts together for them. Anyone in the industry may receive much-needed aid and here's a fun way to motivate giving.

Watch the show here or in the box below. The price of your ticket is whatever you can spare…

I've been trying all day to write…something. At first, it was going to be my views on the situation with Trump and the First Lady and The Virus but I surfed a few other sites and discovered that others were saying everything — E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G — I was going to say so what was the point?

So then I tried writing something for this blog that had nothing to do with Trump or The Virus or Washington or The Election and that didn't work. My mind kept drifting back to Trump or The Virus or Washington or The Election or that kind of stuff. And incidentally, I had the news on for a while and realized it was one of those days we have so often where they feel they have to keep talking about one subject incessantly but they only have about twelve minutes of actual news about it…

…so you're waiting and waiting for some new information and there isn't any. It's the same information over and over, tweaked this way and that way, with gaping shovelfuls of speculation about things that either have happened before (so the speculation yields obvious answers) or hasn't (so the speculation in no way relates to reality).

Could we add something to the Hippocratic Oath so it says "first, do no harm" and then that's followed by "second, when on television do not diagnose a patient you've never been in the same room with, especially if you haven't even seen the notes of a doctor who has"?

Then I tried writing something not for this blog…something for a current assignment of the kind that results in me at some point getting a check…and I didn't get very far with that. I kept thinking things like how Mike Pence is standing by with a 9 iron and a list of childish insults in case he needs to assume the president's duties.

I've been saying all along on the blog that between now (whenever "now" was when I said it) and Election Day (whenever Election Day effectively is), we were going to see a lot of sudden, outta-nowhere events that no one could anticipate and which would completely change things. I just didn't think there'd be so many of them and they'd come so close together.

There's too much news. There's just too much news. Please…less news.

Carroll Pratt was one of those guys who adds laugh tracks to TV shows. Here, he's asked about the longest real laugh he ever "saw"…

Just got off the phone with a friend who called to ask, "What does this mean?" My reply: "Who the hell knows?" That's how this whole year has been. That's how this whole administration has been. One of the nine thousand things some of us dislike about Trump is how volatile everything is with him around. Things keep happening that make you say, "This has never happened before!" No precedents. No historical guidelines. And not much logic. Who'd have thought that a presidential candidate who bragged about planting unwelcome kisses on women and wanting to grab them by their privates would cause a lot of self-described Christians to say, "That's our guy!"?

It's been that way so long that a lot of us wake up and turn to the news to answer the constant question, "What's he done now?" There's too much Karma in this newest twist to even begin to unpack it. The man who mocked Joe Biden for wearing masks has tested positive for COVID-19 and so has his wife.

Or have they? I'm reticent to believe anything this man says.

My friend on the phone said, "I don't how to react." I told him, "You don't have to have a reaction now. You can wait a few days and see what kind of additional twists 'n' turns this story takes." It goes one way if tomorrow they test again and say "False positives!" It goes another if Trump and the First Lady make miraculous recoveries and yet another if they get sicker or if one of them gets sicker. And yet another depending on who else who's been around them gets it. And yet another if they infected others…

Do they cancel the debates? Who knows? This has never happened before.

Does this affect the ballots? Who knows? This has never happened before.

Whatever your reaction is, wait. It may be different tomorrow. Something will be. And it will never have happened before.

Speaking of the 1980 movie Fame (as I was the other day), here's the title song sung by Irene Cara and illustrated with clips from the film. Thanks to Gary Greenfield for pointing it out to me.

There were a lot of these "young people trying to become stars" movies and TV shows and this was the only one that felt kinda/sorta authentic to me…

Ever since I watched The Debate, I've had trouble getting my mind off it and into things I should be writing. Oh — and before I forget, I linked the other day here to the Washington Post fact-checker's fact-check on The Debate but there were so many false statements, he had to do a Part Two. Remember when Trump said "Many car companies came in from Germany, went to Michigan and went to Ohio"? Well, it turns out no car companies came in from Germany, went to Michigan and went to Ohio. There's a lot more of that and even some things Biden got wrong.

I am more and more buying into the theory, advanced elsewhere, that someone reminded Trump that Biden was once a stutterer and still occasionally has problems with it, and that Trump's main goal heading into The Debate was to harass and badger Biden into stuttering, thereby seemingly proving the smear that guys like Rudy Giuliani were spreading that Biden has serious dementia. Even Brit Hume of the Fox News Division — that's the news division, not the opinion division — was saying, pre-debate, that Biden was senile.

Okay, enough about that topic. I need to get my mind off it…though I am curious as to what the Commission on Presidential Debates will come up with when they say they'll be tinkering with the format of the remaining contests. Let's see…Trump will have to agree to any change and he'll say, "Why should I let them change the rules since I won so handily? They just want to help that loser, Sleepy Joe." He'll threaten to not appear if they change any rules but he's behind in the polls (and getting behinder) so he can't afford to lose those last two debates…very intriguing…

Were you wondering what Donald Trump and Joe Biden said to each other after the debate? No, I know you weren't but just play along so I can introduce this video for you. Here they are in the elevator after all that mud-wrestling, courtesy of Master Impressionist Jim Meskimen…

I think we could all use this song this morning. Here's my favorite one-man singing group Julien Neel with some changed lyrics but the message is the same as it ever was…

Countless online comments and articles today are suggesting that in subsequent debates, the Moderator should have a mute button of some sort to cut off the microphone of a debater who goes over his time limit and/or keeps interrupting. That might be nice but, first of all, the rules of these debates are drawn up in advance and all parties must agree to abide by them. Trump would never agree to that if only because his ideal world is one in which the office holders can silence the reporters, not the other way around.

Secondly: If Chris Wallace had had such a button last night and had used it, Trump would have gone right on ranting and his voice would have been picked-up by Biden's microphone and Biden would have heard him and been just as distracted. They weren't that far apart. And of course, Trump would have also gone off on how the proceedings were rigged against him. He's incapable of not complaining he's being mistreated.

Okay, I get it. You want to see them in little glass booths like on a quiz show and the Moderator can turn their microphones on and off. Good luck getting Trump to agree to that.

I agree it was a shitshow but that's the point. Trump turns everything into a shitshow. He's like the blind guy who always wants to plunge the room into darkness because he's used to functioning in that situation and others aren't. If you're good at screaming and bullying, you always want to create that environment. It gives you home court advantage. I don't think it's a bad thing that the world saw that last night.

This Friday evening, our pal Frank Ferrante is hosting a two-hour event to note the 130th birthday of Julius H. Marx, better known as Groucho. It's a good excuse to get together a buncha folks — including Dick Cavett, Leonard Maltin and Harpo's son Bill Marx — to talk about the man AKA Otis B. Driftwood, Rufus T. Firefly, Wolf J. Flywheel, J. Cheever Loophole, Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush and Captain Jeffrey Spaulding.

Why does this manner matter? Because he was funny and because he was irreverent and because he was influential and because he continues to matter. That's right: He matters because he continues to matter. Some of us will never let go of him. I'm sure Frank and his guests will have plenty to say about why. I'm just not sure he can keep it down to two hours.

Tune in to the Evening with Groucho Facebook Page this Friday at 4 PM PDT. And tell 'em Groucho I sent you.

A few days ago, I posted a link to an indiegogo campaign for a book some friends of mine are doing and I stand by that recommendation. However, it prompted a flurry of messages from good friends, casual friends and some total strangers asking — and in one or two cases, almost demanding — that I promote their book, event, video, project, whatever. I have had such flurries in the past and with each flurry, I get more and more annoyed.

When such requests some, they come in such volume that if I acquiesced to them all, this blog would have so much advertising that you wouldn't want to read it. Hell, I wouldn't want to read it.

It's annoying when strangers (or folks who barely know me) ask because I like to think I do this blog to entertain whoever happens by, not to sell them stuff. I've turned down a number of offers to "monetize" this blog by accepting paid advertising and/or putting it under the umbrella of some big, commercial website. I like the fact that it's no more commercial than the occasional cut I receive if you order something via one of my Amazon links.

And it's annoying when friends ask for that reason and because…well, sometimes my friends do things that I don't feel like recommending. That's awkward.

So please don't ask and don't send me photos and graphics that you want me to post to support your endeavor. I don't even plug my endeavors that much on this site. (I also have a general distrust of crowdfunding efforts, having been ripped-off by a number of them that sounded like they'd deliver what my credit card was charged for…and didn't.) You can tell me what you're doing and I might (might!) be moved to write about it. But if you ask for a plug and especially if you send me advertising you want me to post, the answer is no. If you saw the flurry that's presently in my e-mailbox, you'd understand why.

Here's the Washington Post fact-checker.

I agree with Jonathan Chait's review of The Debate. And with Eric Levitz on why Biden (probably) won the debate.

And while I would have liked to see Chris Wallace be more forceful in getting Trump to play by the rules, I don't think there was much he could do. And a case could be made that he did his job by letting Trump be Trump. That's who the guy is and the world got to see it. Why is that a bad thing?

Trump apparently thought he scored some points against Biden by repeatedly bringing up Hunter Biden. Now, the fact-checkers are saying Trump was wrong about Hunter B. being "dishonorably discharged" from the military and the claim of a multi-million dollar payoff is, at best, arguable. But even if Trump was right, is that going to move votes? Hunter Biden isn't on the ballot and he isn't on any list of issues that voters care about.

I have the feeling there'll be a lot of uncomfortable questions put to Republican Senators and Congressfolks tomorrow and a lot of evasive non-answers.

And now, I'm going to try to go back to not paying attention to the guy in the White House who, I hope, won't be there much longer.

The busiest humans on the planet this evening were professional fact-checkers. If you're interested, here are links to Politifact and The New York Times. It is perhaps worth noting that they got these online quickly because so many of Trump's fibs are ones he's made over and over and over…