The newest Fred Kaplan column is about how Lindsay Graham kissed a lot of Trump Butt to persuade the orange prez to aid Ukraine against Russia…and now that Graham's gone, Trump is aiding Russia against Ukraine. Sample paragraph… If it's possible for a dead man to roll over in his grave, Lindsay Graham must be [...] Read More... from Fred Sez

Here's a reminder: If you had a paid membership to Comic-Con International in San Diego this past July, you're eligible for Returning Registration for the one next July! The scramble to get those badges takes place this coming Saturday. Find out how it works and make sure you have a Member I.D. in advance. You [...] Read More... from This Coming Saturday!

This blog may be offline and unreachable for short periods of time over the next few days. Someone along the path between me and you is upgrading some things and fixing others. Any outages you experience should not last long. [...] Read More... from Maintenance Notice

Randy Rainbow is back with a new musical lament and it's one of his best… [...] Read More... from Rain Man

Here's another great song from the musical, Camelot by Lerner and Loewe. In the late seventies, I had a brief pen-pal relationship with Alan Jay Lerner which surprised me in that he spent a fair amount of time writing replies to a total stranger thousands of miles away. I have no idea what became of [...] Read More... from More Happy Ever-Aftering…

A reader of this blog named Mark Crowther wrote to ask me, "If The Floor is filmed in Ardmore in Ireland, where are the contestants from? Are they Irish, are they Americans flown in for the recording or, worst of all, are they Irish pretending to be American?" I really don't know. But I'll bet [...] Read More... from A Good Question

Here's another show tune by Lerner and Loewe that I like — and not just because it decrees that Winter ends each year on my birthday. It's the title tune from Camelot, which is one of those musicals where I love certain moments but perhaps not the totality. It doesn't get produced often, in part [...] Read More... from Some Happy Ever-Aftering

The Price is Right was one of the zillion-and-eight beloved TV shows that taped at what an announcer often announced was "Television City in Hollywood." It was actually more like "Television City, Hollywood Adjacent." This was when it was the L.A. home of the CBS TV network. Among the shows I saw taped there were [...] Read More... from Price Points

The latest from Our Man in Great Britain, Jonathan Pie… [...] Read More... from Pie In The Face

That's all this is: A funny Letterman bit… [...] Read More... from A Funny Letterman Bit…

Jesse Jackson (not that Jesse Jackson) wrote the following… I've been following the blog for years, I always appreciate your perspective on Comics, Politics, Entertainment and our mutal hate of Kandy Corn (though when you mix it with Spanish Peanuts, it is not horrible). One of the things I love reading about is your Brushes [...] Read More... from ASK me: Close Encounters

The Los Angeles Times has an article about the second coming of Souplantation and it confirms that they'll be reactivating the old, vacant-since-all-the-Souplantations-closed location in Fountain Valley. It's at 11179 Talbert Ave. — which is right near a Costco, as I recall — and the Times says that building is 7,800 square feet. This is [...] Read More... from The Latest Souplantation News

When I was very young and very small, one of my favorite people to see on television was Paul Winchell. He was a ventriloquist with (primarily) two dummies — Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smif. He and his wooden pals were on TV a lot and my most treasured toy might have been a kid-sized Jerry [...] Read More... from Upside Down Man

Forty years ago today, my friend Frank Ferrante got into the Groucho business with both feet and a painted-on 'stache. It was the debut of Groucho: A Life in Revue, an off-Broadway play written by Arthur Marx and Bob Fisher. It wasn't the first time he'd played the man but it was when he really [...] Read More... from Perfectly Frank

Here's another video of the "bows" at the end of Boop! The Musical when it was on Broadway. This is from a different performance than this one. I am not as obsessed with this show as it may appear. [...] Read More... from More Boop! Stuff

The folks who now own the Souplantation business have revealed that the one they're going to open in California will be in Fountain Valley. That's a town about 45 miles south of Los Angeles. They used to have one at 11179 Talbert Ave. in that city and that building has been vacant ever since the [...] Read More... from More Soup News

In the window below, I've embedded a video of an episode of The Red Skelton Show from sixty (60) years ago but I've set it to start playing in the middle of the episode when Red introduces his musical guests, Simon and Garfunkel. This has to be one of their first TV appearances, perhaps the [...] Read More... from Seeing Red

All the Souplantations in California went away in 2016 and some of us really miss 'em. They were wonderful soup 'n' salad restaurants. Since then, a few copycat places have opened, though far from anywhere my limited travels would ever take me. Also, the company that acquired the operation after it filed for bankruptcy has [...] Read More... from Exciting Soup News

A couple of my correspondents were a bit confused about what I was saying about how the Boop! The Musical national tour has to simplify its sets to be able to go from town to town. This will be of interest to them. Below this paragraph is a clip of the bows from the Broadway [...] Read More... from Boop! Simplified

To go back to the start of this long, wandering essay, click right here. I'm 74 and comic books have been an important part of my life for about 70 years. My parents bought them for me because…well, I think if I'd asked for a Goodyear blimp and a live hippopotamus, my father would have [...] Read More... from Why I Gave Up Drawing – Part 7

The making of Fiddler on the Roof… [...] Read More... from Documentary of the Day

Our man in Rochester, Dick Halsey, attended the first performance of Boop! The Musical Saturday evening and he filed this report… Boop! opened their U.S. tour last night in Rochester, NY. Before the start of the show, the director welcomed the audience and then said that this was only the 2nd time they have run [...] Read More... from The Boop! Report

For the first time since July 1, I'm taking a day or two off from blogging to attend to matters that need my attention. When I do this, I post an image of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup — an ancient Internet tradition that dates back to the year 1507 and the [...] Read More... from Mushroom Soup Sunday

It's very hot lately here in Los Angeles. Actually, it's very hot in a lot of places and I know this because around half the people I know — and I know a lot of people — feel the need to call or write me and tell me how hot is it and how miserable [...] Read More... from Weather Report

This is kind of a gang "thank you" to about a dozen of you who catch typos on this site and write to tell me. Often, I wake up in the morning and find five or six e-mails from folks who've spotted someplace where my typing fingers went clumsy on me and I correct what [...] Read More... from Good Blogkeeping

I used to love buffets, not because of the volume but because when you have as many food allergies as I do, it's wonderful to be able to examine food before you commit to eating it. I can't tell you how many times I've ordered something in a restaurant and when it comes, it has [...] Read More... from The Biggest Buffet

The finale of the musical Annie as performed in Korea! And doesn't the man in the wheelchair look just like F.D.R.? [...] Read More... from A Musical Moment

It is with mixed feelings that I've decided to track a little of what happens with the National Tour of Boop! The Musical. The feelings are mixed because it's a non-Equity tour and you'd like to see the producers able to draw from the talent pool that doesn't work non-Equity and you'd like to see [...] Read More... from Opening Night (Tomorrow)

Before he passed away last year, Tom Lehrer released all his witty songs into the public domain and told the world, "Help yourself!" That has resulted in a lot of folks putting together revues of his work. There's a group in New York doing "A Tom Lehrer Cabaret" every so often at local clubs and [...] Read More... from Who's Next?

On the Dana Gould Hour podcast, I told the story of how I discovered, long after we'd begun dating, that my girl friend was related to one of my favorite performers, Spike Jones. Here's Spike and his orchestra in the movie, Thank Your Lucky Stars. When I worked at Hanna-Barbera in the late seventies, I [...] Read More... from Spiked!

I dunno how many readers of this blog will be interested in this but I figure there must be at least one… Between 1934 and 1959, The Three Stooges made 190 short comedies for Columbia Pictures. Those were years when short comedies slowly went out of fashion in movie theaters. Laurel and Hardy, for example, [...] Read More... from How To Make Movies For 25 Years

Seth Meyers has fun with yesterday's senate hearing… [...] Read More... from Not a Perry Mason Moment

By now, I'm sure you all know about the mess yesterday when Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, during a Senate judiciary hearing, accused former special counsel Jack Smith of perjury for saying he hadn't been in Atlanta on February 3, 2024 and it turned out that Smith was in Maryland that day. I just wanted to [...] Read More... from The Whole Truth…

And I should note here that badges for the 2027 WonderCon Anaheim are now on sale. This is kind of the junior version of Comic-Con in San Diego, run by the same folks at or around the end of March each year. If you can't score admission to Comic-Con or are just afraid of the [...] Read More... from WonderFul WonderCon

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is appearing before a Senate committee and Republican members trying to put him on trial for special prosecuting you-know-who. Here's Senator Cory Booker saying that which should be said… [...] Read More... from This Just In…

Here's Dora's World, a half-hour TV special from 1974. It stars Dora Hall and — in a bevy of cameos — Dave Barry, Harry Hickox, Milton Frome, Pete Barbutti, Stubby Kaye, Sid Melton, Sammy Shore, Nick Navarro, Scatman Crothers, Roy Stuart, Pat Priest, Ronald Del Barrio and Aaron Ross. If you're anywhere near my age [...] Read More... from Dora, Not the Explorer

You may have seen this before but I hadn't. It's a video that takes footage from It's A Wonderful Life, Dirty Dancing, Don't Knock The Rock, Gold Diggers Of 1935, Good News, Dames, Babes On Broadway, Panama Hattie, Follow The Fleet, Bye Bye Birdie, Lady Of Burlesque, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Show Boat, I Love Melvin, [...] Read More... from Lotsa Stars Dancing

Damn Yankees is coming back to Broadway next year, considerably rethought and rewritten. It's one of those shows that seems to invite not doing it the way it was originally done. I saw the 1994 revival — which changed a lot — especially after Jerry Lewis joined the cast — several times. I don't recall [...] Read More... from Goodbye, Old Girl

Robert Rowe wants to know — hey, that rhymes — "Following up on your MAD magazine post, were economics the main reason the magazine had machine lettering instead of hiring letterers?" My answer? Nope. In fact, typeset lettering then was much more expensive than paying a hand-letterer and required a lot more effort by the [...] Read More... from ASK me: Lettering in MAD

In the last year or so, I've become buddies with one of my favorite stand-up comedians, Dana Gould. If you're not a huge fan of this man, go watch this hour of him performing and you'll become one. Among the many things he does is a bi-monthly podcast, The Dana Gould Hour, which never runs [...] Read More... from me on radio

Just in case the latest Randy Rainbow video made you eager to see an unparodied version of the musical Oklahoma!, here's the 1999 London West End production of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! starring Wolverine Hugh Jackman… [...] Read More... from Chicks and Ducks and Geese Better Scurry…

Fred Kaplan summarizes what is known about Trump's little party for Chinese President Xi Jinping. I'll summarize what Fred says: Very little of substance was achieved. Here's the most interesting (to me) part of the article… Trump thinks he can gain favors by tapping personal friendships, then compounds the mistake by believing that certain leaders [...] Read More... from Fred Sez

In the sixties, one of my heroes — Stan Freberg — masterminded a big advertising campaign for Chun King Chow Mein. Here's a little promo they made to alert retailers it was on the way… [...] Read More... from Freberg Flashback

If you want to start at the beginning of this long, meandering memory piece, click here. As I've mentioned, I used to be real good at forgery…imitating the handwriting and occasionally the drawing of others. There are a number of skills I've lost and not just because of age. In 1979 or thereabouts, I switched [...] Read More... from Why I Gave Up Drawing – Part 6

Time for another Randy Rainbow video complete with a commercial for his sponsor, Ground News. I subscribed to that service and it seems to me to be exactly as advertised and very useful. Use Randy's link if you want to give it try… [...] Read More... from Handy Randy

The Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario (that's in Canada) puts on a lot of musicals that, if their YouTube videos are representative, are pretty damned expert. They're currently doing one of my favorite shows, Something Rotten. I won't be attending because I can't there and if I could, I'd have to spend all my time [...] Read More... from Something That's Not Rotten to Watch

Hey, it's another installment of "Tales From My Spinner Rack!" In this one, my buddy Gary Sassaman focuses on DC Comics' romance comics of the sixties with special attention to the fine work done in them by John Romita, Sr. I've long thought that one of the weaknesses in the pre-1968 DC line was that [...] Read More... from Spinning Wheel

It's kinda fun to wake up each morning and see which judge — including many that Trump appointed — is ruling against Trump today. The nab seems to think that laws don't apply when he has something he wants to do and that he should be allowed to do it, whatever it is, just because [...] Read More... from Wednesday Morning

Tonight on TCM, they're saluting Chuck Jones, the director of many a great animated cartoon. That's not a photo of Chuck above. That's my pal Jerry Beck and he's co-hosting tonight's salute which includes a number of great short cartoons Mr. Jones directed along with features Gay Purr-ee and The Phantom Tollbooth. It all kicks [...] Read More... from Jonesing for Good Cartoons

Let's get off the subject of Trump and back to comics and other fun topics. Let's remind you that if you had a paid admission to Comic-Con International this year, you're eligible for Returning Registration for next year but you'll have to act soon. Our friends over at the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog — [...] Read More... from Stuff Not About Trump