Remember this guy? That's Jon "Bowzer" Bauman of the retro rock group, Sha Na Na. What's he doing now? Well, he was a game show host for a while and he occasionally does "oldies" shows. But he has a new main profession and you won't believe what it is.

Cole's French Dip is a restaurant located on East 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. Its proprietors has just announced they're goin' outta business and a lot of Angelenos who probably haven't set foot in the place in decades — if ever — are lamenting its demise. It is commonly referred to as "the Oldest Restaurant in Los Angeles" — and it may well be that, just as it may be (as is also claimed) the place where the French Dip sandwich was invented.

Inventing the French Dip — which some treat as a scientific breakthrough the equal of penicillin or flight — is also claimed by Philippe The Original, another very old restaurant that's 1.3 miles from Cole's. I won't take sides on which one originated that sacred sandwich. I'll just say that on my visits to those establishments, I found the French Dips at Philippe to be delicious and wonderful, and I found the ones at Cole's to be like biting into a very old wallet.

I think I tried Cole's twice, the second time because given the place's longevity and rep, I couldn't believe the alleged sandwich I was served was typical. And there were two other reasons I never went back: It's in a pretty sketchy neighborhood and there ain't no convenient place to park. I just read a couple of online articles about its pending closure and none of them mentioned that. They talked about changing times and the impact of COVID and the rising costs of labor and rent.

But none of 'em said a word about the food or the parking, which I suspect are the two major reasons any restaurant closes. And fear of getting mugged is probably high on the list.

There's a kneejerk reaction in my town and probably everywhere to the news that a famous anything is going away. It's part of our history or our childhoods or some aspect of our world and its disappearance should not be allowed even though it's no longer viable financially or even practical. I've been guilty of some of that jerking of the knee and thinking, "No, no…I don't want my world changing like that!" Years ago, I briefly felt that way about the old Hanna-Barbera building on Cahuenga Boulevard — the place that made some of my favorite cartoons, the place I worked for several years.

It was about to be repurposed/remodeled into something that would not resemble its old self and a lot of us, including Joe Barbera, felt that shouldn't happen. But then I found myself thinking — though of course not saying this aloud to the man's face — "Then maybe you shouldn't have sold it, Joe!" The company that owned the studio's name and body of work had zillions of dollars but zero interest in spending any of it on the aging structure…why should it be up to the fans passing the hat and protesting? Especially when no one seemed able to say what the building should be except there?

There are renovations and replacements I think shouldn't happen. What was once CBS Television City is now being transformed into something that sounds more like a city — condominiums, restaurants, offices, etc. It will also be a place where television shows are done though that feels like they're just keeping a bit of that around to grease their way past zoning restrictions.

Some local groups protesting the whole plan are questioning the entrepreneurs' sincerity about remaining a television facility for long. Me, I signed some petitions and such against it because I think the streets in that area are woefully insufficient to handle the increased traffic. Those same streets came to screeching standstills whenever James Corden was doing one of his "Crosswalk Musicals" on them. The new configuration could be way worse and it won't be just for an hour or so every six weeks. It'll be all the time.

I love history and tradition and I like seeing L.A. continue to look like the city I've lived in all my life. But when you're talking about commercial enterprises, there has to be some financial justification for keeping them around when they're no longer profitable for someone. And having said that, let me know if you ever hear talk of Philippe The Original closing. I might run down there and chain myself to the door yelling that the bulldozers will have to go through me if they want to demolish that shrine.

Well, no. I probably wouldn't do that. There are other places in town to get a good French Dip that doesn't taste like an old wallet.

Jack Kirby was born on Essex Street in New York in 1917 and spent much of his early life trying to get away from those poor surroundings. His superhuman work ethic and talent got him out but those were developed in part through his involvement with the Boys Brotherhood Republic, an organization that helped many young men to put their youthful energy to constructive purposes.

In one way or another, he wrote a lot about the B.B.R. in some of his comics and about those surroundings. In the Fantastic Four comic, Ben "The Thing" Grimm fought an ongoing feud with the kids of The Yancy Street Gang, which was a thinly-disguised version of a real-life gang that claimed Delancey Street as their home turf.

Well…tomorrow morning at 9 AM, there will be a ceremony in New York at the corner of Delancey and Essex. One block of Delancey Street for one day will be renamed — I hope I have this name straight — Yancy Street/Jack Kirby Way. How's that for an honor for a kid who used to sell newspapers and get involved in fist fights on that corner? Jack's son Neal and his wife Connie just called to tell me about it and we talked for a while about how thrilled Jack would have been to see it…even if it is a promotion for the new Fantastic Four movie.

Neal and Connie can't be there for the ceremony but Jack's granddaughters Jillian and Tracy will be there. I hope to have photos of the event or at least the street sign.

By the way: The Boys Brotherhood Republic is still operating and still doing good work. The main thing that's changed is that it's now the Boys & Girls Republic. I'm sure Jack would have approved. In fact, he'd probably say, "Why couldn't they have had girls there when I was a member?"

Dick Cavett visits the closet at the Criterion Video offices…

A note from my pal Mark Waid about this ASK me entry…

If I may offer: There's another, lesser reason why additional inkers who stepped in for a last-minute save (particularly at Marvel in the '70s, but certainly elsewhere) sometimes weren't credited: as a general rule, the lettering — and, thus, the anticipated credits — was applied to the boards before the inks, unlike today. And since Marvel in the '70s was a pretty loosey-goosey and down-to-the-wire operation in the editorial sense, what with so many writers editing their own books, I imagine there often wasn't the time, thought, or motivation to go to the trouble of amending the credits, yes? I know you know this, and I know it probably doesn't answer the question about Verpoorten and Colletta since John was also the production manager, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

A good point. Marvel was quite understaffed at the time — and to be honest, at later periods when they weren't understaffed, things still slipped by. I told a story about one incident in this post and something like that happened almost every day.

Here's one more example of many: It's Fantastic Four Special #5, which came out in 1967. When the story was lettered, which was before it was inked, they were planning to have it inked by Joe Sinnott. I dunno how well you can see it on your screen but they lettered Joe's name into the credits…

…and then for reasons long forgotten, they wound up having the story inked by Frank Giacoia. When the issue went to press, no one thought to change the credits — so there's Sinnott's name on a story he never touched.

For a long time, I would get calls from folks at Marvel seeking my expertise-of-dubious-value to ask who had drawn or inked or otherwise worked on a certain issue or cover about which they weren't sure. I would often answer the question, assuming I could, then tell the caller, "By the way…you just reprinted the lead story from Fantastic Four Special #5 and the credits on it are still wrong."

The nice person on the phone would (of course) say, "Oh, thanks. I'll make sure that gets changed in our records" and I don't know if it has been. At least once well after one of those calls, they reprinted it again with the wrong credits and paid the reprint fee to Joe Sinnott who I'm sure didn't notice. There were lots of times the published credits were wrong or incomplete.

Mark Waid and I will be doing one of our "Two Marks Explain Everything" panels at Comic-Con International in a few weeks. This is a panel based on the premise that if you have a question about how the comic book industry works — or ever did work — or even why it didn't work — and neither Mark nor I can answer it, no one can. This panel was a big hit at the last WonderCon and if you're at Comic-Con in San Diego on Friday, July 25 and you're anywhere near Room 10 of the San Diego Convention Center at 2:30 PM, Mark Waid and I will be in that room. There, we'll be answering to the best of our abilities, questions about things which will only matter to the kind of person who'd willingly attend a panel like that.

In fact, I'll be in that room from 12:30 PM until 5:30 PM that day hosting panels that fall roughly under the category of Comic Book or Strip History…five of 'em, back-to-back. So don't complain there's nothing in the convention programming about comic books…and that's just what I'm doing on Friday.

There's a local band that specializes in TV show themes and they call themselves The Remotes. In honor of the $1.20 residual check I just received from my writing contributions to this series, here's their rendition of the title tune from The Love Boat…

Dave Hockner asks me the following question…

I saw on Facebook where you were explaining about an issue of Thor where the inking was credited to Vince Colletta but the last few pages were actually inked by John Verpoorten. How does this kind of thing happen and why didn't John Verpoorten get a credit on the issue?

How it happens varies from case to case but usually, it's because the first/main artist simply can't complete the job by the time it's needed. Maybe he took ill. Maybe he took on too much work. Maybe he had some personal problems that prevented him from getting to his drawing board for a few days. Maybe we can all think of a dozen other scenarios. (Here's another Maybe: Colletta often helped out friends by giving them work. That wouldn't have been the case in this instance but Vinnie usually had a lot of work and in at least a few occasions that I know of, he threw some of his over to a friend who didn't have work as a way of giving that friend some money.)

In this case, Verpoorten was then Marvel's Production Manager…the guy in charge of getting books to the printer on time. I would guess that for any of the above reasons, Colletta called up and said, "I can't get this issue done when you need it" and Verpoorten said, "Send in what you have and I'll finish it up here." It was something like that.

Comic book artists often use ghosts or assistants and sometimes the reason the ghost or assistant isn't credited is that the editor of the comic didn't know about the ghost or assistant. Sometimes, the guy who got the job doesn't want his employer to know that he needed help or that he didn't do the job himself. Sometimes, the artists just want to keep it among themselves.

There was a comic book artist named Sal Trapani who did a lot of work for all the major publishers. Usually, he was credited as — or signed the work as — the sole artist. The vast majority of the time though, he engaged some friend to do the penciling for him and then Sal inked. A lot of that work was ghost-penciled by his brother-in-law, Dick Giordano…and a lot of Dick's work was ghosted or assisted (whichever term you choose) by others. Sal Trapani work which appeared in comics in the sixties — and a little bit before and after — was sometimes penciled by, among others, Charles Nicholas, Jack Abel, Rocke Mastroserio, Bill Ely, Bill Fraccio, Bill Molno, Jim Aparo, Jack Keller, Jose Delbo, Paul Reinman and even Steve Ditko.

When I visited with Ditko in 1970, I asked him about some of the jobs where he had ghost-penciled for Trapani and he wouldn't discuss them. He didn't deny it but his attitude was that Sal Trapani got the assignment, Sal Trapani was responsible for turning in the finished work, Sal Trapani was paid by the publisher…and how the work and pay were divided up was none of anyone else's business. Nowadays, when those of us who can spot ghost work credit Ditko for, for example, doing the pencil art for Dell's Get Smart or Hogan's Heroes comic books, we're doing something that would probably have pissed Mr. Ditko off.

A lot of things pissed Mr. Ditko off. He occasionally had his studio-mate Eric Stanton help him with a job (and vice-versa) and Ditko objected and sometimes denied the obvious when someone pointed out the assist. Some of the work with Stanton was the kind of thing one might not want his name on.

None of this is treachery. Most of the great newspaper comic strip artists — almost everyone except Russell Myers and Charles Schulz — at one time or another would employ helpers. A lot of comic book guys did it or still do it. Before comic book companies began paying reprint fees to artists, no one minded much if they didn't receive credit. Now, because it may mean money, everyone is a little more conscientious about accurate and complete credits. When John Verpoorten inked those pages in that issue of Thor, no one imagined Marvel would ever pay for reuse. In fact, the guys running the company then vowed Marvel would never in a zillion years do that. Now, they do.

Buster Keaton was one of the greatest comedians and filmmakers in the world until around 1929 or 1930. His work and his life took terrible nosedives then due to problems in his personal relationships, the consumption of alcohol, financial mismanagement, the coming of "talkies' and the decision to leave his own independent production company and make his movies thereafter for M.G.M. Film historians argue as to whether the problem was that the studio didn't know what to do with him or that he didn't know what to do with himself.

It was probably a combination of both but he worked for M.G.M. for four years making movies of varying quality and declining success. In 1934, he found himself out of that huge studio and laboring for smaller companies on smaller budgets. Still, he occasionally, now and then, once in a while managed to make films that almost lived up to his old standard. He made sixteen two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures, which was like Sandy Koufax pitching for a farm team. (I should be able to come up with a better analogy than that but you know what I mean. How about "Gordon Ramsay flipping burgers at a Wendy's?" Or "Laurence Olivier working with Ed Wood?")

When Educational went out of business, Keaton moved over to Columbia where a few other once-great comedians like Harry Langdon and Charley Chase made two-reelers when no other studio would have them. Mostly though, the big stars at the Columbia shorts department were The Three Stooges. It was for Buster yet another notch down and one of these days, I'll link you to a few of those films and you can judge for yourself how good they were.

(A "two-reeler," by the way, was a short film, usually around 16-24 minutes in length. They became less and less popular with moviegoers over the years but for a while, all the great movie comedians made them…somewhere.)

What I have here for you today was probably the best short Keaton did for Educational — Grand Slam Opera. Made in 1936, it spoofed the then-popular radio program, Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and also some scenes in the 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers feature, Top Hat. Grand Slam Opera is a pretty good little film though every print of it I've ever seen obviously came from the same source material with the same frustrating splices. There are a couple of bad ones in its opening song, a parody of George M. Cohan's "So Long, Mary." (Educational refused to pay for the rights to use the tune so Buster paid the fee out of his own depleted pockets.)

This is not Buster at his best but it is him at his best when he was at his worst. That's still better than a lot of comics' best when they were at their best…

One of those folks who opts to remain nameless — to you, not to me — read this post here and then sent this my way.  But before I get to it, lemme warn you: This is going to be long and it'll get kinda sappy and most of you are smart enough to know what I'm about to say in reply to my anonymous correspondent…

I was very intrigued by your post about having crushes on women in comics or on TV. I've had more than my share of both and as I get older, they feel to me like they aren't healthy but I'm not sure why. I would be interested in your take on this. Did your crush on Mary Tyler Moore have negative repercussions for you, especially when you finally met her?

"Met her" is too strong a term. What happened was, as I wrote in this obit about her, I stepped on her foot at a screening. I apologized every way I could, she politely accepted my groveling… and that was the end of my contact with the former Laura Petrie and Mary Richards. I felt bad as I always feel bad when I do something as dumb 'n' clumsy as that and it had little to do with her ever being what we're calling here a "crush."

But I don't think there's anything wrong with finding someone attractive…not that it's a voluntary thing. It's kind of built into our DNA as an incentive to find happiness and/or propagate the species and if you find someone attractive, you find someone attractive. That's just how it works.  What I think can be dangerous is when you convince yourself it's not what it probably is: A placeholder until you find someone with whom you can have an actual relationship.

My crushes on the TV stars I listed were quite different from the ones I had on girls in my high school. I could never have asked Judy Carne out on a date…and not just because at the time, she was married to Burt Reynolds. I could (theoretically) have asked one of the girls in my Geometry class to dinner and movie…not that I thought there was a chance in Hades of any of them saying yes.

I didn't ask any classmates out but I at least talked with them.  They knew my name.  Most of them giggled at the proper moment when I said something funny or when I drew a passable Fred Flintstone on the brown-paper-wrapping cover of one of their textbooks.  (There are many reasons some of us learn to draw and a big reason for a lot of us is that it impresses people you might want to impress.  It's the same reason a lot of us at an early age took up magic.  I did that too.)  One of the many, many dumb things I did in high school — not to be confused with the many, many, many I've done since — is that I never asked a girl out on a date.

Why the hell not?  Three reasons, one being that I was sure whoever I asked would say no…so what was the point?  Another was that I knew that if I did and got the inevitable turndown, I'd re-experience the pain every time I saw that girl — the one who said no — on campus.  That might be (shudder!) several times a day.  Lastly, I felt that if I asked one out and got the expected turndown, no matter how gracious it might have been, it might be a long time — somewhere between Years and Never — before I mustered up the courage to try, try again with someone else.

What was I waiting for?  Beats the heck outta me.  Maybe for some misguided young lady to ask me.  I don't know if it works that way for that age bracket in current times but it sure didn't in 1969.  (Thought I'm reasonably certain that however it works today, it works the same way when both parties are of the same gender.)

Other classmates of mine were dating back then. In the boys' locker room, guys were even bragging/lying about what happened on those dates.  Having read many an Archie comic book, I understood the concept of a "date."  And from the fibs in the locker room, I had some sense of things that could happen that never happened 'twixt Archie and either Betty or Veronica.

I was just plain afraid.  Fortunately for my life since, I had one of those "it's now or never" impulses on Graduation Day.  It led to me asking three different young ladies for their phone numbers and some indication that they wouldn't phone the police and demand protective orders if I called.  I wrote about that day here in three parts, the first of which you can find here.  Warning: It's kinda long and I come across as a real jerk in it.

If it feels like I'm forcing Too Much Information on you, forgive me.  I just recall that day as a major turning point in this silly life of mine…and I see a very strong connection between Mark getting up the guts to ask a girl on a date and, a few weeks later, Mark walking into the office of a big publishing company and for the first time, trying to sell something I'd written.  Amazingly, I got the answer I wanted there too and it was another major turning point.

I know a lot of people — and thanks to Social Media, can see a lot on Facebook and other forums — who are clearly unhappy with their relationships and/or their careers.  There are many reasons for each dissatisfaction and I've written plenty on this blog about why I think careers go askew or just plain don't happen…and don't worry.  I haven't the time or the experience to list all the possible reasons why marriages fail or couples split up or never get together in the first place.  I'll just say that Unrealistic Expectations have to be a major factor…and I don't see how anyone could not have Unrealistic Expectations about someone they lust after from afar.  Some even have them from lusting anear.

In my teen years, I probably had "crushes" on about fifteen or sixteen movie or TV stars.  I probably got to actually meet about ten of them eventually…and by "meet," I don't mean stepping on someone's foot.  I mean talking to them, sometimes for a little while, sometimes for more.  The total number of them who turned out to be the people I thought they'd be was approximately zero.

Some of them were very nice.  A few became actual friends in some loose sense.  But none of those ladies turned out to be, when not performing, precisely the person I'd had the crush on…which is the problem with crushes: You're not infatuated with an actual person.  You're just infatuated with a figment of your imagination — one perhaps built around the visual of the crush but not much more.  To have a real relationship, you kind of need to fall in love with a real human being.

But you already knew that.  Most of you, anyway.  This was just for anyone out there who somehow didn't and especially for the guy who wrote me.  The next e-mail I answer here will be about comic books or cartoons or something I'm more qualified to discuss.

I used to post a lot of Stephen Sondheim interviews on this blog but eventually, I would come across one online and not be sure if I'd linked to it before…and then I'd decide to not post it because I wasn't sure. Here's one I'm pretty sure has never been posted here before…

Last night, a friend of mine and I watched My Mom Jayne, a new HBO documentary that's basically Mariska Hargitay taking us all along on her journey to find out stuff about a mother she never really knew.  We both enjoyed it a lot more than we expected.  I must admit to not knowing a lot about Jayne Mansfield, a bonafide movie star who I think some have dismissed (unfairly) as the person producers hired when they couldn't get Marilyn.  Ms. Mansfield did not have an easy life and it can't have been easy for her daughter to conduct this inquiry and to keep finding out so much she didn't know either.  The story takes some stunning twists and turns…

…and even if it didn't, it's fascinating to look at the life of a Sex Symbol of that era through the prism of today.  There are moments when it felt to me like some people who (admittedly) didn't know Jayne well were taking some questionable leaps into knowing what was going on in her heart and mind.  Still, if you took all those theories and speculations and mashed them up, they might well have arrived at an accurate portrait.  It's hard to say.  Certainly, Jayne Mansfield was a lady who did what she had to do to get where she wanted to be.  Or at least it was what she had to do in those days…and if it wasn't a spot-on accurate picture of her, it probably was of those days.

It's running on HBO an awful lot in the coming weeks.  You might like it as much as we did.

This ran here before on this blog and it will probably run here again…

When there's bad news on the political front — like, say, Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" passing — you try to look for some good aspect. The lining you find may not be silver but maybe it'll at least be shiny and worth something. Most folks I see online today trying to come up with something are anticipating a moment when people who backed the current G.O.P. wake up and realize that their loss of health care, rising prices and maybe even being plunged into a new war or two are not a good swap for a brief feeling of "owning the libs."

Well, maybe. But that means a lot of pain and suffering and loss for everyone — not just Trump supporters — before that happens. What buoys my spirit, and I'm afraid it doesn't buoy it nearly enough, is the vast number of people I know to be worried, not for themselves but for others. I mean the folks who will suffer no personal damage and might even profit from the direction our nation is taking…but they're worried about the poor, the elderly, the folks who have dire medical problems now and those who will.

They're worried about the people who need groceries, housing and medical care but are unable to work. A lot of Republican spokespersons I see on the news lately don't seem to believe there are such people. Or maybe they don't want to think about them. It gives me hope that there are so many people in this country who do.

Have a Safe and Sane Fourth. Enjoy watching Yankee Doodle Dandy or 1776 or whatever you select. I'm taking the day off.