I'm not going much of anywhere until my ankle is a lot better so there's very little chance of me being in New York in the next six months. Even if I could be there, I don't think I'd be rushing to see the new production of Gypsy there starring Audra McDonald as Mama Rose. It's in previews now and getting mostly raves from online folks who, since they aren't professional theater critics, aren't honor-bound to not review it until opening night. Opening night is December 19 and I doubt that what the critics say then will make a bit of difference at the box office.

This is "theater as an event" and people want to go to an event. The (arguably but not too arguable) biggest star on Broadway today is playing what some would say is the greatest "diva" role ever written in one of the best musicals. It's got a huge budget and Danny Burstein in the Jack Klugman role and Sondheim's name is on the marquee and…well, how could this thing not sell out every night? Even at a top price of $471 per seat?

That's for tickets straight from the box office. I just looked and someone on Stubhub is asking $893 each for two tickets in Row F for this evening. It'll probably be worth that to someone to be able to say to their friends, "Why, yes…I saw Audra in Gypsy…you mean you haven't been yet?" but it's not to me. I felt the same way about Hugh Jackman in The Music Man, which I also didn't want to see.

Anyway, it's a little before 4 PM out here and the curtain goes up on Gypsy in New York in one hour and ten minutes. They're still asking $893 for each of those two tickets in Row F and I'm wondering if and when the seller is going to drop the price just in case there's no one in Manhattan in the moment willing to cough up $1768 plus whatever Stubhub tacks on as a processing charge. I'm going to check back in a little while and I'll report here.

UPDATE, A LITTLE BEFORE ONE HOUR BEFORE CURTAIN: I did a little more sleuthing and it turns out the guy asking $893 each for the tickets has four of them for sale, all together. I also see folks offering Orchestra seats in Row G for $799, in Row K for $752, in Row M for $705 and in Row P for $658. I also see that if you buy the $893 tickets, each has a $248 service charge on it bringing the total to $1141 per seat. Wow.

UPDATE, A FEW MINUTES LATER: Hmm…At 4 PM — i.e., one hour before showtime — all the Gypsy tickets for tonight that cost more than $205 disappeared from Stubhub. Usually when tickets are purchased, the listing stays there and is marked "sold" but the ones I just listed are gone. I wonder what happens to those seats. Do they go to some other vendor or what? Can anybody explain this?

I'm trying to work but my mind keeps drifting to friends who have been evacuated from their homes by the wildfires in and around Malibu. When we talk about the proper role of government in our lives, I wish there was more concern given to dealing with natural disasters. Among the responders who are called into action in such situations, there seems to be unanimous agreement that they could use more manpower, more equipment, more preventive maintenance, etc. But somehow when there's no fire, no flood, no earthquake (etc.), it seems real easy to save money on those kinds of things.

Several folks have written to ask me what would be the best method to purchase a copy of the Space Circus hardcover if they want to put maximum bucks in the pockets of its makers. Anywhere is fine, thank you. Your local comic book shop would probably appreciate the business but if you don't have one, use my Amazon link. We have no signings planned. At the moment, the only place I expect to be appearing in the next six months is WonderCon in Anaheim next March and I don't bring books to sell. I leave that to the dealers.

When I write here about all the spam calls I get from people trying to sell me stuff, I always forget to mention that a lot of those calls ask for my mother. My mother passed away over twelve years ago and every time she was hospitalized in her last years, I put her phone number on Call Forwarding to mine and after she died, I never took it off. The phone company has long since reassigned it to someone else but — and I have no idea how this works — I now get calls for her at my number. Yesterday, I told a solicitor (a home improvement guy) who asked for her that she died in 2012 and that he'd bought a badly-outdated list of potential pigeons. He yelled "Shit!" and hung up. Didn't even try to sell me his services.

So now it looks like the plan to convert the Norms Restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard in L.A. into a Raising Canes is off. Good. I'm still largely leaving my home only for doctor appointments but when I get back to eating out, one of the first places I'll hit is that Norms.

I'm not following the news much but I see that authorities have arrested a man who they think is the man who murdered that United Healthcare CEO…and they seem pretty sure they have the right guy. I saw a few things online where people said this was good because it might prevent more people from wanting to kill CEOs. Okay…but that's not a crime that happens very often. I'm more concerned about people who want to kill mail carriers, Uber drivers, retail employees, the neighbor across the street, someone who plays their stereo too loud, comic book writers, Walmart greeters, police officers, ex-spouses, current spouses, anyone with a very different lifestyle, kids sitting in classrooms…you get the idea…

Ignoring the links in the right-hand margin, there are 32,390 posts on this site. Less than 2% of them plug anything you can purchase or watch in a manner that will make me any money. I'm not even sure this will make me any money but I'm going to tell you about Space Circus anyway. This is a new graphic novel that's arriving in bookstore this week. It's a collection — on bigger pages on better paper with hardcovers and better printing — of a long-outta-print mini-series done some years back by myself, Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai and Tom Luth.

In fact, coloring Sergio's new wraparound cover for this book was the last coloring job Tom did before his way-too-early passing. The last page of this book is about him.

I don't prod you to buy most things I do. I haven't even mentioned half of them. I'm mentioning this and prodding you because I'm really happy with this one. It might be for an audience younger than you are but, heck, you can regress yourself to the appropriate age and enjoy it. It's the story of a young boy who runs away from home to join the circus…only it's not a circus of this planet. If that premise sounds intriguing, wait'll you see what Sergio drew.

That's all the sales-pitching I will do. It should be at your local comic book shop but if you want to order a copy here's an Amazon link. I hope you'll be even 15% as delighted with this as I am.

Pringles — factory-stamped potato "crisps" in a can — first hit the marketplace in the early seventies. I remember trying them and liking them and eating them and then deciding there were other snacks I preferred…so I stopped buying them. As of the other day, it had been a good forty years since I'd bitten into one. This was back when they had only a few flavors and now they seem to have thousands.

What changed the other day? I came across the video below, watched it and wondered if I'd still like them. So I got a little sampler pack of three flavors — original, cheddar cheese and their sour cream & onion — and guess what? I found them just this side of inedible. My taste buds could not possibly have changed that much even in 40+ years. I'm thinking they must have seriously changed the recipe, perhaps substituting corrugated cardboard for the potatoes…or something.

I'm guessing it'll be a good forty years before I try another Pringle. I'll be 113 years old by then and the remaining ones I have here should be just as edible then as they are now. But I am impressed by one thing. I have a new-found respect for the effort that goes into making one. It's lot harder than, say, making a real potato chip…

Everyone who was ever a billed-in-the-opening-titles cast member of Saturday Night Live. I'm amazed how many of these people I've never heard of…

I'm not closely following the investigation of the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare…but it does look like there's a lot more investigation of that case than there would be if you or I or some non-wealthy loved one of ours was to be ambushed and murdered. There's apparently even a big cash reward for info that will lead to the gunman and I don't think they do that with most murders…do they?

I gather some people are hoping it will turn out that the killer did it in revenge. The storyline would be that UnitedHealthcare turned down someone who died because the insurance firm refused coverage or compensation or made some other money-saving decision that led to that person's death. And it may turn out that was the motive but then you'd figure maybe the shooter would make that known; not the specifics but that he views it as a life for a life and wants to put the insurance industry on notice.

And I wonder if, as part of their manhunt, the investigators are looking at recent cases where someone was denied coverage by UnitedHealthcare and then died. Just wondering.

Brian Dreger wants to know…

I am reading your post about Lorenzo Music, and I’m curious about why the voice actor scripts do not have any descriptions of what the scene is about. Is an animation script not like a traditional movie or television script? Is there a reason why it’s better for the actors not to know what’s going on, requiring the director to explain it to them? Does a traditional formatted script exist for an episode but the actors just don’t get to see it? Just curious…

There are exceptions to all of what follows but generally, an animation script is full of descriptions of the characters, suggested camera angles, notes to pan from this to that, all sorts of details that are irrelevant to what the voice actors do. They don't need to know when their character has a close-up. So what generally (there's that word again) happens in that someone prepares a script for them that strips all that out and just gives them the dialogue.

This enables the Voice Director to control the flow of information to them and not overwhelm them with information that doesn't impact what they do. The Voice Director can describe the actions to them where that is relevant or show them the appropriate pages of the storyboard if the storyboard has already been done. (On about 95% of the cartoon shows I've voice-directed, work has not yet commenced on the board when the track has been recorded. In part, that's because I usually wrote the script and I wrote it the night before the recording session.)

You can give more information to an actor but once they know something, you can't take it away. That's one of the reasons I usually don't give the actors the script in advance. I don't want them deciding how to read a line before they have all the info I intend to give them. There is a value to a largely-cold read. On a lot of the shows I voice-directed, I had Howie Morris in the cast and Howie was the kind of actor who, if you had him read a speech seven times, he'd give you seven totally different readings…and often come up with a reading I had not imagined but loved.

Sometimes, there'd be another actor in the room who I felt needed more explanation so I'd send Howie out to the lobby while I explained a scene to the other actor. (This was back when we recorded with all the actors in the same room at the same time, obviously. These days, more shows work in what they call "splits," which means that you record one actor at a time and then the editor makes it sound like conversation. Also these days, even when you record all the actors at the same time, they're usually in their home recording studios.)

You just do what you think works for the particular recording with those particular actors…generally.

Hey, I'm back doing these!

Another song I had on my infamous mixtape a long, long time ago was "The Letter," a hit for The Box Tops in 1967. In fact, it was their biggest hit by far and it later became a hit again when Joe Cocker recorded it. I didn't know anything about the group in '67…just that this was a good song and KHJ played it with a frequency that felt like every ten minutes.

I later heard that The Box Tops was a group that, at least at times, was any five musicians that the group's managers could get to show up at any concert venue, play the group's hits and be passed off as the guys on the records. I guess it helped that we, the public, didn't hear much about the original band members and it always made me think about that Rocky & Bullwinkle storyline about a plot to flood the world with counterfeit box-tops from cereal boxes.

The Box Tops had a few other records on my mixtape which we'll get to. In the meantime, these are the original musicians — I think…

And while we're on the subject, here's the way Joe Cocker sang it…

My pal Gary Sassaman is back with another look at comic books from my favorite era. In this video, he discusses some of the best covers from that period and I don't disagree with too many of his selections…

So I'm getting a number of text messages lately from strangers that say things like this. I've redacted a few words…

Hello, excuse me, I'm Sarah from XXXXXX. Your background and resume have been recommended by multiple online recruitment agencies. Therefore, we would like to offer you a great remote online part-time/full-time job to help merchants update data, increase visibility and bookings, and provide you with free training. Flexible part-time and full-time jobs allow you to work 60 to 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week, earn extra income on weekends too. You can work anytime and anywhere according to your schedule, and earn $50 to $500 a day. The basic salary is $950 per 4 days worked. Paid annual leave: In addition to maternity leave, paternity leave and other statutory holidays, ordinary employees are entitled to 5-15 days of paid annual leave. If you want to participate, please contact me by Whats-App at XXXXXXXXXXXX (Note: You must be at least 20 years old)

Does this sound even remotely like an actual job to anyone? I'm assuming that a gig where you can work as many hours as you like and earn a widely-variable amount per day is a job where you make cold calls to strangers trying to get them interested in some product or service. Then you might — and that's a big "might" — earn a commission if they buy. But how can you get any "basic salary" on a job like that, let alone one that gives you paid days off? Also, the Whats-App number suggests it's either overseas or that someone is worried about being located…probably both.

Is anyone likely to fall for something like this? I suppose someone is. I get all these texts and voice calls, many of them from people trying to persuade me they're from Medicare or some real official-type agency affiliated with Medicare. Or they're from Walgreen's — a pharmacy with which I have no prescriptions — and they want to discuss my prescriptions there with me. The minute I start asking questions about their company, they hang up. One of them actually said, "I don't answer questions, I only ask them," then hung up.

The calls are a minor annoyance, though not when they come as one did this morning, at 6 AM. The area code for the number was the same as mine but obviously in this era of cell phones, area codes no longer denote where the caller is located. Still, even when they're a minor annoyance, they're an annoyance. Once in a while, you can even have fun with them. One clueless-sounding solicitor asked if I have diabetes. I made like I wasn't sure what that word was and asked him to spell it. He replied, "D-I-E-A-B…" and then added "Oh, shit" and the line went dead.

This is kind of interesting. I'm watching a police chase online and I'm seeing something I've never seen before. The fleeing suspect, identified as being armed, has pulled over to the side of the road and stopped. A fleet of cars from the San Bernadino Police Department and the California Highway Patrol is around him and look what they're using.

The little thing you see to the left of the suspect's car is a drone. The police are using a drone to peer into the car and see what the suspect is doing and perhaps they're somehow communicating with him. And after about ten minutes of the drone spying on him and being quite visible to the suspect, he's now out of his car and surrendering. Never saw that before.

You may have seen Dick Van Dyke on Jimmy Kimmel's show last night.  If not, here's what you missed: A preview of a new music video with Dick Van Dyke and Chris Martin…

And here's the entire video. Thanks to the trillions of people who sent me one or both of these links…

Here's the latest one of these…

So it's looking like the beloved Norms Restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard here in L.A. may not be transformed into a Raising Cane's…

Raising Canes announced Wednesday that it will no longer present its case to take over the Norms at 470 N. La Cienega Blvd. The chicken chain was slated to present its case during the Cultural Heritage Commission meeting Thursday morning.

The oldest surviving Norms, built in 1957, is known for its famous Googie architecture. In 2015, it was designated a Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monument. After news broke that Raising Canes was considering potentially taking over the historic site, the public expressed displeasure with this possibility.

Incidentally, a few folks wrote me to discuss whether the name of the restaurant in question is Norms or Norm's with an apostrophe. Their website spells it Norms so I'm going with that. There also seems to be some confusion as to whether the fast food chain is Raising Canes or Raising Cane's. Their website spells it with the apostrophe. I know you're all staying awake at nights worrying about this so I'm glad to set things straight.

This is another great movie that's currently free on YouTube but it may not be there, free or free of ads for long. It's Irma La Douce, the 1963 Billy Wilder movie that reunited Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine after The Apartment. It's a bit long but well worth the trip if you've never seen it. Just about anything Billy Wilder did before his last few films is worth watching, especially if it has Jack Lemmon in it. The one time I got to speak with Mr. Wilder, we got to talking about Lemmon and he said, approximately, "I wish I had a nickel for every actor whose agent tried to sell him to me as The New Jack Lemmon. But there's only been one and I got him…several times."

Amidst the opening titles, Shirley MacLaine sells her services to a man with a mustache. That's Lou Krugman, one of those always-working-but-you-never-knew-his-name actors I've mentioned here before. The guy was in everything…even an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which Rob Petrie tried to buy a fur coat from him for Laura. I'm more interested in this kind of actor than I am in Big Stars…and I'll bet his agent never tried selling him as The New Jack Lemmon.

Here's the link to watch Irma La Douce. Hope it's still there and ad-free.