A good A.M. to you all but especially to those of you who've clicked on my little banner to donate any amount — small, big or damned generous. I'm going to hector you for a few more days and then not ask again 'til next September. Yesterday, you might have noticed that this blog had a brief outage. The reason it was brief was that the very expensive hosting company I pay to host this site of mine caught the tech problem and fixed it even as I was connecting on the phone to their support department.

That kind of super service is what I'm paying for and, by extension, what you lovely donors are paying for. If I was still with either of my first two hosting companies, you would not be reading this because this blog would still be offline and I'd be waiting for someone there to call me back. Longtime followers of this blog may remember those instances.

If you came here today seeking my "hot take" on the possible/maybe/looming progress in ending the Writers Guild strike, I'm sorry to disappoint you. In the immortal words of Sergeant-of-the-guard Hans Schultz…

Well, I do know enough to be cautious about what's being leaked to the press. I know this because — and I think it's okay to reveal this now — back in the even-longer-than-this-one Writers Guild Strike of 1988, one of my contributions to the WGA effort was planting stories in one of the two industry trade papers of the time. (They were Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety and they used to be on paper and come in the mail five days a week. They're now both websites with considerably less influence on the business.)

I never planted lies. I planted the truth spun the way the WGA hoped it would be spun. As negotiations dragged on — or didn't happen at all — the Guild's then-president George Kirgo would tell me what to plant. This was a tactic that surprised no one as we all knew the Producers were doing the same…and with more clout to get things reported the way they wanted them reported.

I would phone up a reporter whose name I do not recall and who I never met in person. He had phoned me a couple of times for help with pieces he was writing that touched on the comic book industry. That was how I knew him.

That was how I became his "Deep Throat" except that we never met at 1 o'clock in the morning in a parking garage and I would never be played by Hal Holbrook. But I'd phone him with a tip and while I never told him I was tipping at the request of a WGA official, I never dissuaded him from his assumption that I wasn't. He usually printed whatever we wanted printed pretty much the way we wanted it printed. At the very least, it balanced what the A.M.P.T.P. forces were planting.

I have no knowledge if that's going on now…but we also have no knowledge as to who (if anyone) is tipping various reporters off that a settlement is imminent. I hope it is but because of my little spy/snitch activities, I'm firmly in the "I'll believe it when there's a formal announcement" camp. If you don't like having your emotions feeling like they're on Space Mountain at Disneyland, it's a safer place to be.

There may still be time to have the '88 strike remain the longest Writers Strike ever but it's not likely. Even if they reach a settlement today, by the time the whole guild could vote to ratify, the current labor action may set the record. The '88 strike was 153 days and I think this one currently stands at 144.

Here's a policy I have that has saved you all a lot of frustration. Every so often, someone I know writes, phones or informs me at some gathering that they're starting a blog. Naturally, they want a plug 'n' link on this blog to drive traffic to their blog and there's a good chance that I will comply…with one condition. I tell them, "I'll link to you after your twelfth post" — or I may give a different number but it's usually between ten and twenty.

"Let me know when you reach that number," I tell them and they're quite pleased and then I never hear from them again. They lose interest or suddenly can't find the time after post #6 or #7. Whatever the reason, I don't have to link to it and you don't waste your time clicking over to what turns out to be an abandoned, moribund blog. No, don't thank me. Just click on the banner below.

Here's a great "then and now" look at Las Vegas, the "then" being 1988, which is about the time I began visiting that town an average of "all the time." It was, for me, a magical place for many reasons. Here are some of them in no particular order…

I was pretty adept at card-counting in Blackjack — a short term skill which I learned, did for a few years and then gave up forever. I wasn't like some counters who played 24/7 and intensely tried to rack up as many bucks as possible before the casinos got hip and barred them. I was only "backed off" (told to go play elsewhere) once and that wasn't even a time I was winning due to counting. I'd play 'til I was a few hundred ahead but still looked like a guy who was just lucky…the kind who'd give it all back when he kept playing. I just didn't give it back. I always went home in the positive.

I had my first really good, practical laptop computer so whenever I gave up Blackjacking for that trip, I could just stay in my room and write scripts. It was kinda fun to work, untethered to a normal get-up-in-the-morning, work-until-night schedule. I ate, slept and wandered around Vegas whenever I felt like doing those things.

It was cheap. Food then in Vegas was cheap and shows were cheap. In 1991, expert magician Lance Burton opened one of the best shows I've ever seen at the Hacienda Hotel. It was $15.00 and I saw it many, many times. Hotel rooms were also cheap but because of all my Blackjack playing, I had plenty of "comps" to stay in different hotels for nothing. And to get to and from the city on Southwest Airlines was like taking the bus both in terms of frequent departure times and cost.

I had other reasons for visiting Vegas but I'll save them for a follow-up post. Right now, here's the video. It starts with a look at Bob Stupak's Vegas World, the tackiest hotel-casino on the strip. The interior of it looked like it had been decorated by a ten-year-old Star Trek fan and Mr. Stupak made all his employees — even the Asian and Hispanic ones — wear these badges that said, "Kiss me, I'm Polish." I miss that kind of place in Las Vegas…

Okay, PayPal has unfrozen my account. We're back on…

PayPal has put a temporary freeze on my being able to accept donations through them. I think I know what it's about and I should have it cleared up in a day or three. If you were about to send me money, hold that thought.

Here's footage of Los Angeles back in what they say is the twenties — not the current twenties but the previous twenties. The film has been tweaked and colorized and someone added a bogus soundtrack to it but it's still wonderful history. I especially like those old cars, every one of which looks like Laurel and Hardy should be stepping out of it…

There's a saying I don't like much that goes "The man who won't be beaten can't be beaten." It sounds good at arm's length but when you think about it, what if two men who won't be beaten fight a duel to the death? That's going to be a helluva long duel to the death. And in most battles, it takes more than refusing to be beaten to win. It might take, for example, skill or strength or maybe brains.

In every heavyweight boxing match, you have two guys who won't be beaten…and then one is.

Years ago, I had a friend who lived by that credo and he was enormously destructive, both to himself and to those around him. It was an obsessive necessity for him to succeed in everything he did…or at least, to never admit he hadn't. He often seemed to have those two things confused. And like I said, he was destructive. If you had, let's say, a mouse running around your house and you asked him to catch it, he would almost certainly catch that mouse. He might, in the process, destroy your home but he would catch that mouse.

Or if he didn't, he'd just insist he had. There was kind of a circular "logic" to his thinking. It was kind of like, "You may think I didn't succeed but as we all know, I always succeed so that proves you're wrong." Something like that.

Few if any of you would know this person or even know of him. He was not particularly successful in his life; not even in any one aspect of his life. But to hear him tell it, he succeeded in every single thing he did…or on those rare occasions when even he couldn't claim he'd achieved what he set out to do, someone sabotaged him, someone lied about him, someone cheated, etc. Sound familiar? I'm not talking about Donald Trump here.

Well, yes I am but I'm also talking about an awful lot of other people these days and not just people in any particular political party. I keep running into or reading about people who tell us how unbeatable they are…and they don't have to do this. If they really win all the time, we'll notice. But since they don't win all the time, they keep telling us they do, how they never lose, how they always "dominate." There's one writer acquaintance I have who just loves that word…"dominate."

He always sounds to me like he will not be satisfied if he is very successful. He must be more successful than someone else. If he won 20 million dollars in the lottery, he would be really pissed if you won 30 million.

My closest friends do not do this, which is one of the reasons they're my closest friends. They get joy from the success of others. They don't make everything into a contest in which you have to "one-up" the other guy. There's just too much of that in this world. Your goal in life should be to be happy…not to be happy when someone else isn't.

Here's the Legal Eagle in the video I promised. In the "pay" version of this, you don't get the commercial at the end and instead, he makes a slightly firmer summation about why the 14th Amendment will probably not keep Donald Trump off presidential ballots…

This blog began on December 18, 2000 so this is Day 8,311. When people ask me, "Do you have a pet?" I usually answer, "No, I have a blog." It's almost the same thing in that you have to keep checking on it and it requires constant feeding. If you are grateful for my pet…

This is Sara Bareilles who, with a fine orchestra and backup singers, delivers a nice rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star." I've always had a strange fondness for this song — strange because I really don't believe in its message. Wishing upon a star is harmless, I suppose, but if you want your dreams to come true, you're going to have to do a lot more than wish, especially because Fate is not always kind and often does not step in and see you through.

Still, it's a great song. Like almost everyone else, I liked it best when the cricket sang it but this is pretty good too…

I'm not looking at the news much these days but every time I do, I see articles about how the prosecutors prosecuting Donald Trump want him to shut up and I see "legal scholars" (the quotes denote that some of them are dubious in their expertise) saying that every time Trump opens his mouth, he confesses to something and hands them evidence to use against him. What is wrong with this picture?

Earlier today, I started writing but did not finish or post an item about how all this stuff about how the 14th amendment could get Trump disqualified from many ballots. I'm thinking that the wording of it seems too vague or arguable to me to achieve what many are hoping it will achieve. I'm still not convinced he'll be the Republican nominee but if he is, he'll be on all or most state ballots.

But I'm not going to finish or post what I started writing. A little while ago, I watched a new video by Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone. It's members-only at the moment but it should be on YouTube (and on this site) later this evening or tomorrow. He basically says the same thing but says it better with more backing in laws and precedents. So I'm going to let an attorney speak for me…which is something Mr. Trump oughta try.

This image seems to be ricocheting around Ye Olde Internet and several folks, knowing of my dislike for candy corn, have sent it to me. It's a sign for MJ's Steel City Sports Bar & Grill, which Google tells me is located on Cliff Mine Road in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania.  Next time I'm in that area which I've never been to and can't imagine why I would ever have reason to visit, I'll have to drop in and try their Chicken Parm Hoagie.

Actually, I have stopped belittling candy corn since my sweet tooth went away, which mysteriously happened a year or so after my 2006 Gastric Bypass Surgery.  I am still repulsed at the remembered taste of candy corn but now I also feel that way about Hershey Bars, M&Ms, Butterfingers, Reese's Pieces, Raisinets, Snickers, Milky Ways, chocolate-covered anything, etc.  So it seems unfair to pick on candy corn.  Cole slaw is, of course, quite another matter.

Once I post this post on this blog, there will be 31,182 posts on this blog. 238 of those are "encore" reruns so as you are reading this, there are 30,944 unique posts on this blog. There's also an additional 174 pages of other articles and essays. I cite these numbers partly to inform anyone who might be curious about this kind of thing but mainly to make those of you who haven't clicked on the banner below think you really oughta…

When a longtime politician reaches the stage of life when he or she knows they're never going to run for public office again, some of them become very honest and outspoken. Mitt Romney seems to be in that stage these days. There was never a moment when I wanted to see him become President of the United States but if in 2012, he'd talked like he does now instead of how he talked then, I'd have been less afraid of him winning.

Actor-musician-comedian (he did just about everything) Greg Lewis passed away this morning — peacefully, I'm told — after a long stay in post-hospital convalescence. If you're old enough to remember some of the great variety acts of the past, you may remember the world-famous Jerry Murads Harmonicats and The Harmonica Rascals starring Little Johnny Puleo. They appeared on every variety program back when there were variety programs including The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Merv Griffin Show and The Mike Douglas Show. Greg was a part of both groups starting with the former at the age of 15.

Later, he was an actor, mostly of the comic kind, on shows like The Bob Newhart Show, Love Boat, Night Court, Everybody Loves Raymond and How I Met Your Mother and he always seemed to be busy. One of his big accomplishments late in life was an autobiographical one-man show called Some Greeks Are Not in the Restaurant Business which brought him great acclaim.

I have no idea what he died from or precisely how old he was. I just know that he was a fellow member of the group Yarmy's Army, that he was in show biz all his life, that he did a zillion different things in that biz and that he was a very nice, funny man.

P.S. ADDED SOMETIME LATER: Greg's daughter Anastasia informs me Greg was 88 years old, having been born on April 21, 1935 and the cause of death was heart failure.