It's not Christmas without The Randy Rainbow Christmas Special — a long-running annual tradition which I guess starts this year…

I woke up early this morning and, as I usually do these days, scanned the news and certain YouTube channels I find reliable to ask the question I ask myself every morning now: What's he done today? You know who "he" is. Apart from all the offenses involving self-dealing, nuking the social safety net, killing people on boats just for show, dragging non-white people off to cages also just for show, lying his ass off and managing to out-senile Joe Biden as Chief Execs go, he occupies way too much of my time.

I've decided to try and self-restrict the time I spend thinking, writing and talking about D.J.T. to maybe a half-hour a day. That's a serious cutback but I think I can do it. I just have to be a little strict. When friends insist on discussing the guy, I have to say, "I'm sorry…I've already spent 28 minutes today, thinking/talking/blogging about that man. This conversation can proceed but only for two minutes!"

Since I was up early, I've already spent twenty-nine minutes and forty seconds on The Worst President Ever. That leaves me just twenty seconds, which is exactly the amount of time it takes to post a Randy Rainbow video. Then on to other concerns…

And now we have Carly Ozard singing a Simple Christmas Wish song with David Friedman (the song's author) at the piano…

Today, we rewind to the era of live television where they had one chance to get it right in front of all of America. This is from the January 9, 1954 episode of Your Show of Shows and it's a sketch starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca and Howard Morris — three people I was honored to know and work with.

Sid, talking about the perils of live TV, often told a story about how on one episode of Your Show of Shows, the producers changed the running order and that information somehow never got to Sid's dresser. Thus, he got Sid into the wrong costume for one of the sketches. As Sid told it, he was waiting backstage to go on, dressed as a circus strongman in a leotard and a body suit with fake muscles and circus-style boots. About a minute before the sketch was to start, he looked out at the stage and saw the set for the sketch set at a bus stop. In a panic, he managed to find a shirt, coat and pants but when he went on, he still had the circus boots on.

He told this story on the Caesars Writers special hosted by my pal Bob Claster. I'm sure many of you have seen but you haven't, you may — depending on the level of your YouTube account — be able to watch the whole thing at this link. There's a shorter version of it that anyone should be able to view at this link but if you can, watch the whole thing. I was there for the taping and it was a wonderful night.

Anyway, the sketch below doesn't exactly match the story Sid always told but it is a sketch at a bus stop and Mr. Caesar does seem to have strange boots on.

It's a funny sketch, in large part because Howie Morris was such a great physical comedian and was willing to let Sid throw him all over the stage.  Sid did that in many memorable skits from that series including the famous This Is Your Life take-off. But you may notice some mistakes and fast ad-libbing in it. In the sketch, Sid and Imogene are arguing over whether Howie should take the #5 bus or the #6 bus but Sid gets confused and says the wrong number at times and Imogene then has to come back with what is for her character, the wrong number. Don't watch it for that, though. Watch it because it's funny…

Here's Laura Dellis with a simple Christmas wish…

We did 121 half-hours of the Garfield and Friends cartoon show that ran on CBS sometime in the previous century. Each half-hour had three cartoons so when people ask me, as they often do, "What was your favorite episode?" I have a lot to pick from.

Picking just one is impossible but if I made a Top Ten list — I haven't and probably won't — "Truckin' Odie" would probably be on it. If you're interested in the credits: I wrote it, Ed Bogas supplied the music, Bob Nesler did the storyboard and the voices you hear are Lorenzo Music (Garfield), Gregg Berger (Odie) and Desiree Goyette (female vocalists).

I'm going to embed it below but if you watch it — and I'll still be your friend if you don't — do yourself a favor and watch it a second time with Brandon watching it for his first time…

"Who's Brandon?" you ask. Why, this is Brandon…

This should be a short one but it probably won't be. "Class Warrior" — that's how he, she or it asked me to identify him, her or it — wants to know…

What late night talk shows do you watch? Do you watch The Daily Show when Jon Stewart isn't there?"

My DVR — or whatever you call it on YouTubeTV — is set to record every episode of The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver and Seth Meyers. I watch clips of the other guys on YouTube if someone calls something to my attention and I think it's been over a year since that led me to something with Jimmy Fallon in it.

Maybe once a week on the average, it's Jimmy Kimmel. I admire the guy for his guts and courage and willingness to take a stance but there's just something very fratboy about him that rubs me the wrong way. I had one unpleasant encounter with Kimmel a long time ago and you try to turn loose of those things and say, "He's changed since then" and I'm sure he has. But sometimes, it still gets in the way for me.

I watch my recordings of every minute of John Oliver, whose show is (I think) one of the best things ever on television. I always watch the opening, including "A Closer Look" of Seth Meyers and I may watch interview segments depending on my interest in the guest. I think both of those men are terrific at what they do…

…and I'd include Stephen Colbert in that description but I don't always enjoy his show. His Trump jokes seem forced and obvious to me, especially compared to what some of the others offer. If you're bashing Donald Trump and I'm thinking, "Get on with it," there's something wrong. I know people who despise Trump but don't want to watch as much of that as late night TV offers…especially since it is late night and some people need to get a peaceful night's sleep and not lie awake with Trump's Latest Outrage in their heads.

Colbert's a brilliantly clever, talented man but the strongest weapon in his arsenal is not his stand-up and, like Letterman in the same building in his later years, there's a very real difference in his interviews when he has an offstage relationship or great respect for a guest. He's wonderful when he loves who's in the chair next to him and you can kinda tell when they're just there because they have something to plug and the show thinks their fans will tune in…and that's all there is to the segment.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Mr. Colbert's show is how edited it feels. He honed his skills in the word of Improv where there was no editing, no prep, no starting over when you get lost…and now he's doing a show where the moments which should be spontaneous feel edited and sometimes scripted.

Perfect Example: He has this bit called The Colbert Questionnaire which is often a lot of fun but — here's the "but" — he does these long, dull introductions to get into it. Then he used to say it was fifteen questions but he doesn't say that anymore because they obviously edit out many of the ones that don't evoke funny answers. Sometimes, it's eight or nine. It feels like they do that with most interviews, too. On an Improv Stage, no one gets to say, "That didn't get a big laugh…edit it out in post!"

I love The Daily Show when Mr. Stewart is present and I love a lot of it when he isn't…especially when Jordan Klepper, Desi Lydic or Michael Kosta have the com. All three of those folks are good at switching between roles. One minute, they're the anchor playing Straight Man (or Straight Woman) to the correspondent in the Green Screen Field saying nutty, often clueless things; next week, they're the correspondent in the Green Screen Field saying nutty, often clueless things.

Some of the other members of the cast are only good in one of those positions. But the writing is almost always sharp and I have vast admiration for what they come up with about something that occurred in the news only a few hours before they had to record that night's show.

In many ways, we really are in a Golden Age of Late Night TV. It used to be you just had Carson and maybe one other guy or Letterman and just one other guy. Now, you have more of a selection and most of 'em are pretty good. And I was right: This wasn't a short one.

Today's Christmas video is from our friend April Stewart. Remind me to get April on one of our Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con soon…

Here's another visit to Johnny Carson's show by Charles Grodin. I have a bunch of these and I think I'm posting them here in chronological order. Grodin is starting to ease into the more hostile character we'll see from him in later visits…

Daniel Klos wrote about the televised performance of a bit of the Just in Time Broadway show from the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving…

In your recent post about the Just in Time cast possibly lipsyncing and the band miming to a pre-recorded track at the Macy's parade, maybe you can answer this based on your experience working on TV variety shows. How does a drummer mime to a pre-recorded track? I can understand how all the other musicians do it, but with a drummer, you can tell if s/he is actually playing his/her instrument or not, especially with cymbal crashes (which you can't fake). I've always wondered that, but this post inspired me to ask someone who might know.

Well, first off, most of that performance was definitely lipsynced and the band was miming to a prerecorded track. Take another look at that segment…

If you were recording a live band on the streets of New York like that, you'd need a ton of microphones and a great audio mixer and it would be a lot easier to do it all via prerecord. And I don't see any microphones on any of the musicians or their instruments, do you? Every bit of the band is a prerecorded track.

We can divide the performance into sections. First Jonathan Groff comes out and sings a bit into a wireless microphone and interacts with Bowen Yang. I think this is Groff singing live to track. The interaction would have been hard to coordinate…and also, Mr. Groff is singing a little flat. They would have redone it if they could have but they couldn't because he was singing live.

Then I think the rest of the singing is lipsyncing. The ladies sure look like they're mouthing the words. They're doing it pretty well but you can tell. Then Groff comes back in and he isn't even holding a microphone for the rest of the number. And the proof that he doesn't have a body mike hidden on him is that when the hosts come in to interview him, you can't hear him fully until one of them holds her microphone up to his face.

Understand: I'm not faulting them for doing this. It's the way it's usually done because of all the technical problems with getting quality sound and a good mix of singers and musicians on an outdoor, not-in-a-studio TV broadcast. And usually, they don't bring the band out to pretend so the sound of a dozen or more musicians is just coming from nowhere. Here, they at least made believe it was all a live performance.

Turning to your question about the drummers: It may seem impossible but sometimes, they can keep pretty damned close to the recorded tracks. And also, directors know not to let the cameras linger on the drummers or anyone who might not be doing a great job feigning.

Years ago, I did a series with the Bay City Rollers — you may remember what a huge hit they were until they did a show with me. They had to lipsync and pretend to be playing their instruments to prerecorded tracks. Most of those tracks were from records they'd released in the past and because the membership of the Rollers had changed every now and then, a couple of 'em were pretending to sing and play along with the voices and playing of other guys who'd been in the band.

On a taped show like we were doing, you often in post-production slide the voice tracks a half-or-so second later. When singers are lipsyncing, they're usually that fraction of a second behind the recorded voices and making that adjustment trues things up and puts their mouths in closer sync with the vocals. But we had the problem that their drummer, a real pro named Derek, was always right in sync with the tracks, including tracks on which someone else had been the drummer. If we just moved the whole vocal track a teensy-tiny bit later, it put the singers in sync but threw the drummer off.

They couldn't do all-encompassing moving of the audio track. They had to do a number of editing tricks to slide the singers but not slide Derek. It took a while but it came out okay…I thought.

The blog software hiccupped here last night. It posted this, then immediately unposted it so let's be clear: This is yesterday's Christmas Video Link and the singer is Ali Romig…

Hey, did you ever see the edition of American Masters on PBS which was all about Dick Cavett's relationship with Groucho Marx? No? Well, here's your chance to rectify that…

Netflix is buying Warner Brothers Discovery — or whatever that company's been calling itself lately — for $82.7 Billion. This only pisses me off because it's obvious that no one there even looked at my bid.

How will this affect things at WB? I dunno but every contact I've had with that company for the last few years has been with someone who was clearly worried they'd be fired at any moment…or just was. So things there probably won't be a lot different for a while, if ever.

Frankly, I think all these entertainment conglomerates are just marking time until they're acquired by Disney…as we all will be some day. I'm just hoping that when they acquire me, I'll be assigned to wander around a theme park in a Clarabelle Cow suit. Luckily, I have one so I can practice.

Jollibee is a fast food chain that migrated here, there and everywhere from the Philippines. It started there in 1978 and now there are 1700+ of them across seventeen countries including — I swiped this list off Wikipedia — Southeast Asia, East Asia (Hong Kong and Macau), the Middle East, North America, and Europe, including Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom.

As someone who has not budged off this continent, the first one I ever saw was in San Francisco, across the street from the Moscone Center where a WonderCon was being held. Having a deathly fearful of consuming strange and unfamiliar foods, my reaction was predictable. I wandered in, noticed a lot of things I'd never tasted on its menu and walked right out. That was sometimes between 2003 and 2011 — before WonderCon relocated to Anaheim — and that was the last time I set foot in a Jollibee. It still is.

But I'd heard good things about it…not in comparison to great sit-down-and-be-waited-on restaurants but compared to places like Wendy's and McDonald's. So the other day, of all the fine eateries we could have chosen, my assistant Jane and I had lunch delivered from the only Jollibee within seven miles of my home.

We got their unusual (to me) Jolly Spaghetti which, as their website states, includes ground beef and pieces of hot dogs, topped with their sweet tomato sauce and "melty cheese." Jane kinda liked it. I kinda didn't. (Isn't all cheese "melty" if you crank up the temperature sufficiently?) Jane was indifferent to what they call Adobo Rice. I thought the mashed potatoes and gravy were okay — just okay.

But what I really liked was their fried chicken. It was as good as or better than any other fast food fried fowl I've had, including what KFC is currently passing off as The Colonel's recipe. Crunchy on the outside, juicy on the inside, even after what was probably a thirty-minute DoorDash by a DoorDasher in a Prius. I'd order it again…maybe not the other stuff but certainly the chicken.

Our pal Gary Sassaman has released a new installment of his popular series, "Tales From My Spinner Rack." In this edition, Gary takes a look at some of his favorite comic book covers which appeared on his favorite comic books in the years his favorite comic books were published…