I’m waiting for the little fat one to scream “Obaammmmaaaaaaaaa!”

I was in Hollywood last night at the Hollywood & Highland complex for the 125th anniversary of Hollywood. (And if you think that’s a lot of ways to say “Hollywood,” well, welcome to Hollywood.) While I was there, I noted yet again the scores of amateur costumed characters pestering tourists to get their picture taken with them — and then insisting on a “tip.” One guy couldn’t even bother with a costume; a semi-fit black guy wearing a black muscle shirt emblazoned with the sobriquet “Mr. Muscles” commandeered a section of sidewalk near the Kodak Theatre and bellowed out “Mr. Muscles! GIT your PICture with MR. MUSCLES!” Nobody seemed eager to do so.

Tonight, once again, and once again in front of the Kodak, a brawl erupted. Someone posing as Jack Sparrow got into it with Catwoman (my money’s on her) and an alien and another pirate. Here’s the story in the LA Times. (If this other pirate is the one I’m thinking I’ve seen there, I’m not surprised he was involved.) Spider-Man was led away in handcuffs, and SpongeBob was detained. You can’t make this up.

Here’s a prediction:  The police and the city and the local merchants are going to get more involved in this. Exercising your free rights to parade around in a costume is one thing; presenting a public nuisance and menacing passersby is another. And my experience every place I’ve been, inside the U.S. and out, is this:  Whenever it threatens the tourist trade, the local authorities swing into action.

Roseanne Barr is running for President.

(I don’t think Obama is sweating this.)

I’ve seen I don’t know how many films now with my friend Richard. He hasn’t liked any of them. (Not even “Snakes on a Plane”!)

I think I have finally found something with unarguable artistic merit.

Here it is.

What does it say for us when we rely on a puppet to come out and speak the truth?

Courtesy of a friend visiting China.

During a recent debate in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich said the “Stop Online Piracy Act” was unnecessary because “We have a patent office, we have copyright law. If a company finds it has genuinely been infringed upon, it has the right to sue.”

So the composer of “Eye of the Tiger” has taken him at his word and is suing Gingrich for using his song without permission at campaign events.

Turns out that some women object to the urinals in the new Rolling Stones museum.

I have to admit some personal trepidation about putting myself in there.

The Los Angeles Review of Books gives us this discussion between two historic figures — Art Spiegelman, the first comic-book writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, and Van Dyke Parks, the lyricist and Brian Wilson collaborator behind some of the best Beach Boys music (“Cabinessence,” “Heroes and Villains,” and “Surf’s Up,” to name just three). It’s an interesting discussion, to say the least.

Microsoft word kept underlining my use of the word “forfend” in red today, suggesting that I’d misspelled it or, heaven forfend, made it up. (And, indeed, WordPress keeps doing the same thing as I write this.) So I took a minute to consult my friend Webster’s New World and discovered that “forfend” is now considered archaic. It may well be, but I’ll continue to use it, and I contemn anyone who would caution me against it.