Well, Donald Trump didn't get kicked out of his trial today so we'll put another $10 in the jackpot. He pulled this miracle off by not showing up for the trial but he's still very much in "the rules don't apply to me" mode. A reporter who was in the courtroom the other day tweeted this…

Perfect little detail illustrating Trump's disrespect for process, judge, and jury: he walked out of the courtroom at the end of court day rather than standing for the jury and waiting for them to exit, as every litigant, lawyer, audience member knows to do.

What kind of man is he? Well, let's find out from seventeen people who worked for him and, before they criticized him, were referred to as "the best people in the world."

I'm about to go to bed and I have the feeling that tomorrow will be the day that Donald Trump gets himself ejected from the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial currently going on in New York. He sure seems to be trying to get tossed out so he can complain that the trial is illegitimate because the judge wouldn't let him participate. You have here a man who will never ever learn that being loud is not the same thing as being right.

Meanwhile, Nikki Haley was asked, "How do you feel about your party's frontrunner being found liable for sexual abuse?" Take a look at what she said…or rather, didn't say.

I don't make any money off this unless you purchase it through an Amazon link like this one…but you can now purchase a nifty Blu-ray of the 1966 movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming!. What? You say you already own a copy of it? Well, you don't own this one which has a commentary track by Yours Truly and my pal Mike Schlesinger.

This is the 1966 movie directed by Norman Jewison, written by William Rose (the guy who co-wrote It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) and starring, among others, Alan Arkin, Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Jonathan Winters, Paul Ford and Brian Keith. Personally, I think Brian Keith steals the film…and don't think that's easy, stealing a film with all those other folks in it. But everyone is real good and I'm not saying that because I'm on the commentary track. It's the other way around: I'm on the commentary track because I so love this movie.

Because someone asked: No, there is no DVD being released now of this new edition and I doubt there will be one. If you do not have a Blu-ray player, you're going to have to go Blu-ray sooner or later. I sympathize. I held off moving from Betamax to VHS as long as I could…then held out moving from VHS to Laserdisc…then from Laserdisc to DVD…

Been there. Done that. I held out going from records to CDs until the day something I desperately wanted came out on CD only. I've learned not to fight this. And really, you can pick up a decent Blu-ray player for under forty bucks and will also play all those DVDs you have. There are many battles in this world that are worth fighting. This is not one of them. And if you finally accept that and buy one, do it through my Amazon link over in the right margin of this page. Thank you.

P.S. ADDED LATER: Just to clarify, Kino Lorber does have a DVD version of The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. This new Blu-ray has our commentary track and the DVD does not.

Quite a few of you have written to tell me that you first encountered The Bookshop Sketch on the 1980 Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album. Oddly enough, three people told me it was performed there by John Cleese and Terry Jones, whereas five of you said it was John Cleese and Graham Chapman. I just listened to it (which you can do here) and I'm with the five.

Jeff McGinley wrote to day he recalls the sketch being done on The Dean Martin Show by Dom DeLuise and Dean. I don't but I can believe it. There was a period when the show's producer Greg Garrison seemed to have acquired the right to use Python material…or at least he thought he had. I vividly recall the Python sketch, "How Not To Be Seen" being aired with a voiceover by Dean replacing the one by Mr. Cleese. I seem to be the only person on the planet who remembers this.

Its usage may or may not have something to do with the fact that Mr. Garrison produced Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers, a Summer replacement show for Dean's weekly series in 1970. It was shot in England and featured Marty Feldman, Charles Nelson Reilly and Tommy Tune along with The Golddiggers and others. Much of what Feldman did on the show was sketches he'd done before elsewhere, often with Mr. Reilly taking a role previously played by John Cleese or someone else on the At Last the 1948 Show show. Those episodes do not seem to be available anywhere but it would not surprise me if The Bookshop Sketch was in one of them.

And then the following year, Garrison was involved with Marty Feldman's Comedy Machine, an hour-long series done for both British and American TV, though for America it was chopped to a half-hour and Garrison inserted some comedy routines with American performers. Feldman also appeared a few times on The Dean Martin Show — sometimes even with Dean — and I think some sketches that were shot for the Golddiggers show or for the Comedy Machine were also edited into Dean's show. At least one of them from the former is on the home video collections of material from Dean's show.

If it sound like I don't understand the connection between various Greg Garrison shows and Marty Feldman and Monty Python, that might be because I don't.

Lastly for now, we have another version of The Bookshop Sketch and my thanks to Luke Menichelli, who told me about it. In 1977, some fine British comedians appeared in a benefit show supporting Amnesty International. It was called An Evening Without Sir Bernard Miles and it was staged at the Mermaid Theater. When it was turned into a TV special and a record album, it was retitled The Mermaid Frolics.

The cast included such Peter Cook, Terry Jones (who also directed), Peter Ustinov, Jonathan Miller…and John Cleese and his wife of the moment, Connie Booth. Mr. Cleese and Ms. Booth were then in the Fawlty Towers business and I think Cleese comes off more like Basil Fawlty in this version starring both of them.

What I have embedded below is the entire special but I've set the video so most browsers will open it at 42:15, which is when The Bookshop Sketch begins. After you watch it, you can watch the rest of the show if you want. You can also move the little slider back and watch the entire show. Right now, I'm only interested in The Bookshop Sketch…

So I just saw this news item online…

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced Tuesday that he is suspending his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, dropping out after failing to register in the Iowa caucuses.

…and I thought, as you probably did or are thinking now: "Asa Hutchinson was still in the race?" Admittedly, I didn't watch the last few G.O.P. debates but I don't think I've heard or read that name in a month or two. I guess I heard Chris Christie saying, "I'm the only one in this race telling the truth about Donald Trump" and I just kind of assumed that Hutchinson, who was doing some of that, was out.

And I see that he got 0.2% of the vote in yesterday's caucuses which isn't all that far from how you and I did in them. He finished behind someone named Ryan Binkley whose name I don't think I've read or heard before. It sounds like one of those character names we used to make up at Hanna-Barbera. I may have written an episode of Scooby Doo where one of the suspects was named Ryan Binkley.

The strangest thing I saw in the news this morning was this statement from Nikki Haley — and this is an actual quote: "When you look at how well we're doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race." This is a very odd statement coming from the person who finished in third place. She also said Iowa demonstrated that her campaign has "momentum." Okay…but so does someone falling from a very tall building.

Meanwhile, there seems to be some controversy over the media calling the race for Trump when they did…

The Associated Press called the race just about 30 minutes after voting began, projecting Trump as the winner with only nine of 1,657 precincts reporting results, or 0.54%, according to Axios. Fox News, NBC News and CNN all projected Trump as the winner before 9 pm as well.

"Absolutely outrageous that the media would participate in election interference by calling the race before tens of thousands of Iowans even had a chance to vote," tweeted DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo. "The media is in the tank for Trump and this is the most egregious example yet."

I kinda agree about calling the race before everyone had a chance to vote but they've kind of been doing that for months now. That same media has been telling us that Trump was going to crush all challengers and he did. What they did on Election Day or Caucus Day or whatever you'd call it ain't all that different from what they did the day before that and the day before that and the day before that…

And much of that media has been telling us that Trump was found to have sexually molested a woman and that he's likely to be convicted of one or more felonies in the coming months. If they're "in the tank" for him, they're doing a good job of disguising it.

Anyway, for an interesting take on what the vote in Iowa means, go read Mona Charen. She thinks there's a growing movement among Republican voters to vote for anyone else even if anyone else is Joe Biden.

My favorite musical is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and one of the better productions I've seen of it — out of about forty — was when it was revived on Broadway in 1996. The cast included Nathan Lane, Lewis J. Stadlen, Mark Linn-Baker and Ernie Sabella. I saw it twice — once just before it opened and again about eight months later.  I don't know how much of the wonderfulness that was on that stage comes through on this, the Press Reel for reviewers.  But just trust me.  It was a real good show…

In 1967, there was a comedy program on British television called At Last the 1948 Show starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Marty Feldman. It was a pretty clear antecedent of Monty Python's Flying Circus and not only because it had Cleese and Chapman in its cast and on the writing staff. For a long time, At Last the 1948 Show was not rerun anywhere and so its cast members did not hesitate to repeat some of its better material on other, later shows they did.

One sketch from the show which had an amazing afterlife was The Bookshop Sketch which usually — but not always as you'll see — featured Marty Feldman. It's a very funny sketch and — consider yourself warned — you may get very sick of it if you watch all the incarnations of it in this post. I have five of them for you.

Here is The Bookshop Sketch as performed on At Last the 1948 Show by Mssrs. Feldman and Cleese. This is actually the entire episode and you may want to stop the video after the sketch is over because we have a long way to go here. The skit starts right after a short opening gag and an intro by three women, one of whom I thought at first was Carol Cleveland but it isn't…

Here is a version of The Bookshop Sketch done three years later on a 1970 Marty Feldman special for the BBC. The proprietor here is played by John Junkin…

And now we have Mr. Feldman performing The Bookshop Sketch on a 1971 episode of The Flip Wilson Show with the star of that program. This was probably the first time it was ever seen on American television and as you can see, it loses much when the bookstore proprietor is played by someone who isn't very good at playing straight man — or maybe very willing to do that…

And now we have another version of The Bookshop Sketch done for American TV and this refry of it features neither Feldman nor Cleese. Graham Chapman, who was one of the authors of the sketch in the first place, performs it with Joe Baker on The Big Show in 1980. I actually met and had lunch with Mr. Chapman the week they taped this, though he didn't mention to me what material they'd be doing.

I also knew Joe Baker a little. He was a British comedian and impressionist who some of you may remember for a series that ran on American TV but was shot in Great Britain. It was called The Kopykats and it was a troupe of impressionists (Rich Little, Frank Gorshin, George Kirby and others) practicing their craft. Baker lived for a time in America where he did cartoon voices and I met him when he did a darn good Lou Costello imitation for a character named Hula Hula on the Plastic Man series. I'll bet this version of The Bookshop Sketch would have been funnier if he'd done it as Lou Costello…

Lastly, here's John Cleese doing about half of The Bookshop Sketch in 2014 with Eric Idle. This is a reading they did as part of a long interview Mr. Idle did with Mr. Cleese at the Alex Theater in Glendale. I was among those you'll hear laughing and I would recommend that you clear an hour and seventeen minutes sometime and watch the entire interview, which you can do at this link. But for now, here's just The Bookshop Sketch — most of it…

As you can see, The Bookshop Sketch is pretty funny when performed by a bizarre little man and a stuffy, easily-irritated bookseller. It loses a lot when you don't have both of those roles properly cast.

Not long ago, I was the guest of Ike Eisenmann and Jonathan Rosen on their popular podcast, Pop Culture Retro where we talked for well over an hour and a half about stuff I've done. I enjoyed chatting with these gents though I think I'm going to start making a rule: If you want me on your podcast, you have to promise not to describe me as "legendary." These days everyone who's been around for more than about three years is "legendary" and that word is moving from being over-praise to something quite underwhelming because it's being used to describe everyone. I feel uncomfy with it by either measure.

But that's not the fault of Ike and Jonathan. They're good interviewers as you'll hear if you make it through most or even much of this long, long conversation with me…

I also recently talked for a while with Frank Morano on his late night show, The Other Side of Midnight with Frank Morano, which is heard on WABC radio. This is radio and the whole show can be heard here. I come in around 1:13:42. I enjoyed talking with Frank too and I hope at least one of these shows asks me back.

The late Kirk Alyn was, as Wikipedia will tell you, "an American actor, best known for being the first actor to play the DC Comics character Superman in live-action for the 1948 movie serial Superman and its 1950 sequel Atom Man vs. Superman, as well as fellow DC Comics characters Blackhawk from the Blackhawk movie serial in 1952, and Lois Lane's father Sam Lane in 1978's Superman: The Movie."

And he was responsible for another "first," I think…

These days when you go to any kind of comic book convention or any con that looks a little like a comic book convention, you see a lot of actors sitting behind tables, often with huge banners listing their credits. And they're sitting there, signing autographed photos for money and sometimes autographed books for money.

It's really a huge industry. There are actors who maybe haven't had many acting jobs lately who are supporting themselves and their families through such appearances. There are also actors who work steadily, maybe even on TV shows currently in production who, when they aren't on the set can be found on the convention circuit, supplementing their incomes. A couple of cartoon voice actors who are working steadily on weekdays have told me they make more money doing conventions than they do doing cartoons.

And this thought dawned on me recently: I think Kirk Alyn invented this industry.

I don't mean all by himself. I'm sure someone will send me the names of some performers who were appearing somewhere before him but he was the first one I ever saw at anything resembling a comic convention. And there were many who heard about this and said, "Hey, if he can do that, I can do that." And from there, it spread.

I don't remember when he started but he was a fixture at most cons, both large and small, that I went to in the seventies in Southern California. In 1971, he self-published an autobiography that was at least for a time only available from him at conventions. I can't find my copy at the moment but I know I have one. Somewhere.

He was always wearing a suit and tie, looking very handsome, sitting in the dealer room with a pile of his books and piles of several different photos. You had your choice of two or three of him as Superman, one of him as Blackhawk and one that was your basic actor headshot. At one con, I saw a collector present him with a Superman still he didn't have and Mr. Alyn's eyes lit up and he was very, very grateful. When next I saw him at a con, he'd had that photo mass-duplicated and it was now available for purchase.

The man was cordial and glad to talk to anyone and to pose for a photo if you happened to have a camera with them. Not every single person did in those days. And it did not seem to bother him in the slightest that most of his patrons hadn't seen his movies. That didn't seem to matter. He was a movie star (sort of) and he'd played Superman. That was plenty.

I had a few great conversations with the man and he couldn't have been nicer…and he really seemed to enjoy being asked about anything other than Superman. We talked about the actress Virginia O'Brien, to whom he was married for a time. We talked about his friend Red Skelton and how they kind of broke into show biz in Hollywood together.

The only taboo in anyone's conversations with him seemed to be "What have you appeared in lately?" His IMDB listing sure doesn't show much. His buddy Red had a TV series for nineteen years and a radio show before that and he doesn't seem to have given his buddy Kirk a job on either. Fortunately, most of those who stopped at Kirk's table were polite enough to not mention his lack of employment. I got the feeling he was waiting for someone to say, "Hey, I'm producing a TV series now and we have a part in next week's show you'd be perfect for" but that does not seem to have happened.

Slowly but surely, there were more actors at cons. I remember a San Diego one where Kirk shared his table with Robert Shayne, who'd played Inspector Henderson on The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeves. (Mr. Alyn had a stock reply to those who asked why he hadn't done that series and if he regretted turning it down, which is what he claimed. You could tell there were some hard feelings there but that he felt he had to be a good sport about it.)

And now, every convention seems to have actors…and if you want to know why that seems appropriate, I think it's because it started with Kirk Alyn. An actor who'd played Superman was certainly "on topic" at a comic book convention. And if he could be there and Inspector Henderson could be there, why not someone who was in one episode of a show based on a comic book? Or an episode of Star Trek? Or, eventually, anything?

Mr. Alyn passed away in 1999. If you're an actor who makes money signing your name at conventions and posing for photos, you probably owe him your gratitude. If he wasn't the first to unlock that revenue stream for actors, he certainly set down a business model that most others have since followed.

The last polls out of Iowa show Trump getting around half the vote with Nikki Haley at 20%, Ron DeSantis at 16% and everyone else down in Chris Christie territory. I suspect this is not an indication of how much G.O.P. Republicans love Trump but of how much those who want a Republican in the White House don't see any credible alternative. And I recall some pundit somewhere saying that early primaries and caucuses like this don't have much to do with who'll get the nomination but a lot to do with whose donors will stop donating.

What's happening on the ground in Iowa? I don't know how important it is in the big picture but this article by Lisa Lerer discusses how it is there right now.

Most Broadway shows make up something called either a Press Reel or a B-Roll Reel. By either name, it's a bunch of video clips of the show that reporters and reviewers can use if they make videos discussing the show. This is one that was made for the original production of the Broadway show, Wicked, when it starred Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. The show opened on Broadway in October of 2003 and shows no signs of closing. Perhaps these few moments will give us a clue as to its enduring popularity. Or maybe they'd just be fun to watch…

I continue to be amazed at the losing streak Donald Trump is on with his various court cases…and I'm curious. Are his lawyers really that bad? Or is their client forcing them to file so many obviously-doomed motions and offer so many insane positions because of a certain image he wants to maintain and even intensify with his followers?

Or is it just that he's even more crooked than we thought? Or that he's bad at not leaving evidence of crimes and at not confessing when he's trying to defend himself?

There's a great temptation to write a lot about this here but I know that, first of all, there's so much out there about it that the last thing the Internet needs is a lot of opining by that guy who does something-or-other on the Groo the Wanderer comics. At the same time, a lot of you have written that you want more political stuff on this blog. So here's what I'm gonna do…

I'm gonna write less about politics but post referrals to articles and videos that I think have something valuable to say. For instance, here's a chat with "Conservative Lawyer George Conway," as he's usually described, explaining that colloquy the other day between U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan and that Trump lawyer who talks like Percy Helton about whether the President can send Seal Team 6 out to kill his political rivals. This video might come in handy if you ever have to argue before a U.S. Circuit Judge.

Mel Brooks received an honorary Oscar at the Academy's 14th Governors Awards last Tuesday. Watch the first part, then watch the second part…

Most original musicals en route to Broadway lose a song or two along the way. At the 2007 Broadway Easter Bonnet Competition — a charity show held shortly after Monty Python's Spamalot had opened — the cast presented a number that was no longer in the show…

I've never been a big chewer of gum. I don't think I've had a piece in my mouth this century. But back when I did, my favorite was Adams Sour Orange Gum (which we talked about here) and I also sometimes bought Beech-Nut Fruit Stripe Gum…but only liked the orange, lime and lemon flavors. Back then, a package of Fruit Stripe Gum contained cherry, orange, lime, mixed fruit, and lemon.

Fortunately, there was a girl I knew at school who liked the cherry and mixed fruits flavors. So I'd buy packs and I'd give her all the cherry and mixed fruit ones. Yes, I could have just thrown them away but giving them to that girl caused her to like me a little bit.

Adams stopped their sour line in the early eighties and a later trial at bringing back Sour Apple and Sour Cherry didn't last long…and now, Fruit Stripe Gum has ended. It's not something I will miss unless I someday decide I need it to get some girl to like me a little bit.