Today is the mumble-mumble birthday of the lovely Betty Lynn, who had a grand career in movies and television and who is best remembered as Thelma Lou, the romantic interest of Deputy Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show. But to me, she'll always be that wonderful lady who lived next door to the house in West L.A. in which I grew up. She was not a relative but she always felt like one and it was a joy last year to travel to Mt. Airy, North Carolina (where she now lives) to see and hug her once again. I wrote about that trip here.

Betty was a wonderful neighbor and there are still people who think that the coolest thing about me is that I lived next door to Thelma Lou. Sadly, they may be right. I just tried to call her to wish her a happy day and got her voicemail. I figure she's out, celebrating painting Mt. Airy red or at least a decadent shade of pink. I'll try again later but at least I can wish her one now, here on the Internet. And I can say that I hope she has many, many more.

The comedian Jim Gaffigan has been tweeting some fierce (and sometimes very funny) lines about Donald Trump lately. That causes pushback, of course, from Trump supporters and there ain't nothing wrong with that. Free Speech is only Free Speech when it's a two-way street.

But can we all agree that "Celebrities should shut up about politics and just entertain us" is a pretty lame argument unless — note the italics for emphasis — you also condemn celebrities who say things with which you agree? I wouldn't endorse that principle but at least it's a principle and not a hypocritical way of trying to get the other side to just shut up. Have any of the folks telling Jim Gaffigan he has no right to be heard said that about James Woods?

I actually can understand that some people think like this: [Name of Celebrity] didn't get famous because of his political punditry. He got there because he told great, funny jokes about eating at McDonald's or he starred in some movies or whatever. How come that buys him a soapbox that I, a guy who drives a truck for a living, doesn't have? Sports figures became famous because they can run or shoot free throws or hit a ball. What entitles them to be heard so loudly about who to vote for?

And I get that but it's simply the way fame works and always has. What entitles them to get paid megabucks to endorse products? Answer: The public responds to it. Tom Selleck — an actor I like and one who probably wasn't starving — must be getting paid a fortune to sell those stupid, evil Reverse Mortgages. Why are they paying him so much? Because he gets more results than an anonymous, unknown spokesguy would. So why can't Jim Gaffigan — who is not being paid to do so — sell us Joe Biden?

After all, Scott Baio was at the Republican National Infomercial selling us Trump. I'm guessing he'd rather be selling the Reverse Mortgages. It pays better and either way, the result is the same: Lots of people losing their homes.

Remember last week when Mei Xiang, the female giant panda housed at the National Zoo in Washington D.C. gave birth to a cub? Well, here's what the newborn panda is looking and sounding like these days. It's pretty much how you looked and sounded when you were one week old…

I am under no delusion that this blog — or perhaps any blog — can change the minds of those who want four more years of what we now have in this country. But I sometimes feel better when I post things like this observation from Ezra Klein…

So this is the core of Trump's reelection message: You should give him credit for the economic recovery he inherited from Obama. And you should blame someone else for the disastrous response to the coronavirus.

I think that's absolutely right. Mr. Klein explains at greater length here.

Today, Jack Kirby would have been…I think it's 103, though so much about him remains timeless. I have written zillions of words about this man and I find myself talking about him every day and thinking about him more than that. I probably should have saved this Conversation with Steve Sherman and released it today. If you want to hear two guys who really knew Jack talk about Jack, most of the discussion is about him.

If you don't have the ninety minutes, here's a quick summary: He was a great guy with a huge heart and some of the biggest ideas to ever come out of a human being. When you were around him, you felt smarter and better and totally treated as an equal even though you knew you weren't one. You can see on paper how well he drew. If you met him, you'd have been amazed at how well he thought. Idea after idea poured out of him and his observations were mostly brilliant, even though they weren't always the easiest concepts for we mere mortals to understand right away.

There's a reason he has the reputation he has. If you don't see it, you need to read more Kirby.

My pal Shelly Goldstein told me I would appreciate Stephen Colbert's remarks last night and want to link to them. She was, as she usually is, right…

• This morning's newspaper is so full of anger and hatred…I'm afraid to do the crossword puzzle because it might be full of racial slurs.

Joe Ruby was a very important person in the history of TV animation and — of way less importance — my career. A native of Los Angeles, Joe graduated from Fairfax High School, spent time in the Navy and eventually wound up at Disney Studios in a program that trained young artists to become animators. That had always been a dream of Joe's — to work in cartoons or comic books — but the immediate financial prospects at Disney forced him to transfer to a more lucrative position as an editor in their music department.

He worked as an audio and film editor elsewhere before landing at Hanna-Barbera where he met his lifelong friend/partner, Ken Spears. H-B needed writers so he and Ken submitted some story and gag ideas…and I'm pretty sure Joe said they started with interstitial gags for the Huckleberry Hound show. Eventually, they were writing (not cutting film on) many Hanna-Barbera shows and their work found great favor with the networks. This was at a time when the studio was selling shows to CBS, NBC and ABC and there were many instances when the execs at one of those networks would say, "We'll buy this show if you put Joe and Ken on it."

At one point, Fred Silverman at CBS reportedly told H-B that they would buy nothing from the studio unless Ruby and Spears were employed exclusively on what CBS bought. Fred did the same when he moved over to ABC and finally, ABC just hired them…which is why Joe and Ken created and supervised, for example, segments like Electra-Woman and Dynagirl or Wonderbug on The Krofft Superstar Hour…on ABC.

They worked on many shows but their biggest hit, of course, was Scooby Doo. I don't know if Hanna-Barbera and its various owners ever formally acknowledged Joe and Ken as the creators of TV animation's longest-running character but almost everyone in the industry seemed to. They were also responsible for a dozen or more shows at H-B including Dynomutt and Jabberjaw, for The Barkleys and The Houndcats for DePatie-Freleng and on both the live-action and animated TV versions of Planet of the Apes. I am leaving out an awful lot of credits here.

In 1977 with the financial backing of Filmways and a commitment from ABC to buy programming from them, Joe and Ken founded their own studio, Ruby-Spears Productions. Their output included dozens of shows including Fangface, The Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Hour, Thundarr the Barbarian, Saturday Supercade, Mister T, Alvin and the Chipmunks and the 1988 Superman series.

They also produced a number of ABC Weekend Specials and it was for one of those that Joe Ruby hired me to write my first animation script. He also hired me to write my second animation script, my third, my fourth…I wrote a lot of material for that company. At that point, Joe and Ken — somewhat replicating the division of labor between Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna — had things divvied up so Joe handled most of the selling of shows and writing of them, while Ken handled the actual animation and production. So I worked with Joe a lot.

He was bright, honest and great to work with, especially over lunch, especially when he grabbed the check. He had very definite ideas of what should and should not be in a script but once you understood those parameters, it was a joy to write a script for Joe. At the time, the studio paid its writers and artists a bit better than its competitors but I would have worked for them if they'd paid a bit less…maybe even more than a bit less.

I did not think the studio was well-served by its business people and at times, I think it was undermined by the mighty H-B. It was then bought by the corporation that owned Hanna-Barbera, whereupon it was treated even worse. Some of what happened then caused me to leave but I was always fond, personally and professionally of Joe. And Ken, for that matter.

And I should mention the following for the benefit of Comic Book Historians reading this: At a time when Jack Kirby could not find a good place to work in the comic book industry, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears kept him working and drawing and very, very happy with how he was treated.

Joe had been in poor health for some time and he passed away yesterday at his home, surrounded by a large and loving family. He was 87 and one of the best people I ever knew in the cartoon business — or any business, come to think of it.

Let me see if I can post a few things that aren't about the hurricane or the pandemic or the Republican Convention or protesters being shot…

Hey, Nate 'n Al's Delicatessen in Beverly Hills is functioning again. I even got a take-out order from them a couple weeks ago. It's one of those establishments that not only serves comfort food but the place itself kind of is comfort food…if you know what I mean. You used to be able to go there and see Doris Day and Bob Newhart and Harvey Korman and Red Buttons and George Burns and Walter Matthau…and once, I had brunch there with Phil Silvers and when he started telling me a story about Milton Berle, the door from the street opened and Milton Berle walked in — and joined us!

The last decade or so before it closed, the "celeb" list was pretty much Larry King, Larry King, Larry King, Larry King and — every once in a while — Larry King. There's about a four-block area in that part of Beverly Hills where it was pretty much impossible to eat without seeing Larry King. I figured out that there had to be about eleven of him wandering the streets there.

Anyway, here's a little video report on the current status of Nate 'n Al's. The building it's in was supposed to have been torn down by now to make way for something wholly unnecessary but The Pandemic has thrown a lot of plans into chaos so who knows? All I care about is that Larry King is eating well.

A couple of features on this blog may not be working for the next week or so. As you may know, we run on a great software called WordPress and as you might imagine, the fine folks who make WordPress are always updating it and improving it…and their latest update doesn't seem to like a number of things in the way I set this blog up, lo these many years ago.

If I had all the time in the world, I could fix them all, A.S.A.P. but I seem to be absurdly busy, especially given the fact that the world is about two-thirds shut down. So I'll get to them, I'll get to them. In the meantime, many of the special articles I have on this site — like my old POV columns and the I.A.Q. section — may be unreachable for a while.

The changes in WordPress seem to have played havoc with the many comment threads on one of my other websites, oldlarestaurants.com, so I'm closing it down altogether. The essays that I wrote there about favorite eating spots in my past will be moved to the articles section here once I fix the menus here that get you into the articles section here. Just think of it all as yet another thing in our world that ain't functioning the way it's supposed to.

• So…which makes you feel older? That Macaulay Culkin is 40 years old? Or that Sean Connery is 90?

Over at Esquire, Charles P. Pierce notes that the National Weather Service alert for Hurricane Laura actually includes the word "unsurvivable" in it. I think they only mean that for the hardest-hit sections which may (let's hope) be sparsely-populated areas. But it's going to be awful. Pierce then goes on to write…

Meanwhile, of course, huge hunks of Northern California are burning down. And all of this happens during a worldwide pandemic. I may be crazy, but this doesn't seem like the best time to have an administration that believes the climate crisis to be a Chinese hoax and that, generally, judges science to be whatever makes the president look less bad.

Oh, well. At least the folks in the path of Hurricane Laura can take some comfort in the fact that whatever happens, Trump will stop by and lob some rolls of paper towels at them.

Here's Jonathan Chait with the latest Trump outrage. The headline is "Trump Sabotaged Coronavirus Testing to Keep Numbers Low." Here's a key paragraph…

There has been a weird reluctance to take Trump's comments seriously or literally. But the accumulation of evidence is quite clear. Trump's public comments, reports of his private position, and the reports by officials of the latest change all point to the same conclusion: Trump is overruling public-health officials and sabotaging coronavirus testing because he believes keeping the case counts misleadingly low will make him look better.

In other news, Trump insists that if we all stop going to the dentist, America will be free of cavities.

I am of the opinion that these political "conventions" (actually infomercials disguised as conventions) don't matter a whole lot. Last night's combined coverage of Night #2 of the Republican National "Convention" on NBC, ABC and CBS totaled 5.46 million viewers. That may seem impressive until you hear that America's Got Talent, all by itself on one channel, got 5.58 million. Maybe Melania should have done some backflips. I wonder how many of the folks who tuned in the infomercial aren't yet sure who they're going to vote for. I'd be surprised if it's more than a few dozen.

Trump's gotta be pissed at the numbers. He sometimes acts like cares more about TV tune-in than actual votes. If his convention was clobbering the Democrats', he'd be citing that as proof the election is over and he gets renewed for another season.

On the 'net, you can find plenty of articles and headlines that say Trump can or will win. They come from three sources. You have your Trump supporters who want to believe he can still win and are trying to convince themselves and others…and in some cases, I think they just like saying it because it pisses off people they like to piss off.

Secondly, you have the folks who want Trump to lose but who subscribe to this theory: Even when your guy is way ahead, take nothing for granted. Act like he's way behind and campaign accordingly. Elections have been lost by folks on the winning side getting so complacent, they turned it into the losing side.

And then there's the Ancient Science of Clickbait. News organizations can't keep running the same "Biden's ahead by 8-9 points" news story. At some point, it stops being news.

I've been looking at the polls and relating them to the electoral college totals and I think political analyst Charlie Cook is correct as of today…

Go through the top-line results of high-quality polls such as those from ABC News/Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, and NBC News/Wall Street Journal, to name just four, and you'll find that majorities of voters do not like Trump personally, they do not approve of his handling of the job overall, and they disapprove of his entire approach to the coronavirus. When asked about personal attributes, Trump fares poorly in most surveys and trails Biden in most of the categories when the two are compared. He trails Biden by about 10 percentage points nationally in the higher-quality surveys and is behind by at least 5 points in all 20 states that Hillary Clinton carried (plus D.C.), as well as Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Those states alone total 307 electoral votes.

Of course, the key phrase there is "as of today." In a normal year, we wouldn't be too worried that something would come along to change the whole dynamic of the race between now and the time the votes are counted. Throughout the Trump Administration, we keep finding ourselves dealing with major issues — like the virus and the George Floyd matter — that were nowhere on our radar two weeks before they began filling the entire screen. And we also haven't been as worried about the votes being counted or the loser respecting the will of the voters. These are strange times indeed.

My longtime pal Rob Word occasionally digs into his vault or his closet or wherever he keeps old tapes of interviews he did in the past. Here, he resurrects an interview he did a long, long time ago with Steve Allen. The other day here, I alluded to how NBC threw away almost all the episodes they had of Mr. Allen's Tonight program. And here we have Steve talking about that and other topics…