Category Archives: Personal

I hang out a lot at a wonderful place called Farmers Market at the corner of 3rd and Fairfax here in Los Angeles. Farmers Market is full of restaurants and folks who sell produce and other edible things…so you'd figure there'd be no need around there for any other business that would sell you a nectarine. But no. Farmers Market is on the northeast corner and over on the southeast corner, there's a Whole Foods Market.

This has not made traffic completely impossible in the neighborhood. With much patience, it is still possible to get through that intersection, especially if you don't mind waiting through five or six cycles of the stoplights. In order to fully immobilize transit, they're about to open a Trader Joe's on the northwest corner.

The buzz was that it would open at the end of March 2012 and I'm getting skeptical that will happen. It's looking like the first week or two of May. As of last Friday, it was not a Trader Joe's yet. As you can see by the photo I took, it was just a Tr.

Assuming they add the "ader's Joe" this coming week, it might open soon…and I will shop there but I should warn you of something. Here's how it works for me with Trader Joe's…

1. I find something I like.
2. I go back to buy more of it.
3. I find out they don't make it anymore.

I'm not exaggerating.  Trader Joe's has a fluid, constantly-changing list of products.  As you may know, they make none of what they sell.  They buy it from little (sometimes, big) companies, slap the Trader Joes label on it and sell it in their stores.  And once they add a new item, they keep it in their lineup until I buy it and like it.  Someone at Trader Joe's HQ runs into the boss's office and says, "We just got a report from L.A.!  Mark Evanier just bought a package of those turkey meatballs we added last November."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.  I really like those and so do a lot of people.  They're selling quite well."

"I like them too but you know the Company Policy."

"I know, I know.  Okay, give the order to stop making them.  He didn't order any of the peanut cole slaw, did he?"

"Of course not.  You know Evanier hates cole slaw!"

"Good.  It's one of the few things we carry that's safe!"

You think I'm kidding about this?  Wait'll the place opens.  I'll go, I report on what I buy and what I like.  I'll report on what happens when I go back and try to buy more of the products I like.  You'll see.

Another thing that makes me think the climate is changing (and not for the better) is the size of the crows in my area. I tweeted the other day that they're the size of Winnebagos but that was just a joke. The average one is no larger than a 1974 Chrysler Imperial — the model that had the "Rich Corinthian Leather." If I were a little shorter, I'd be worried that one of them would swoop down and carry me off.

A few folks wrote in to suggest that they might not be crows. They might be ravens. I'm pretty sure they're not because I asked one if he was a raven and he said, "Nevermore!" In any case, ravens the size of Chryslers do not make me think the world is normal, either. If nothing else, I fear problems from their sheer size. If one of these birds was to alight on a telephone wire, it would cause the poles it runs between to collapse inward.

I try to ignore this but it's not easy; not with crows hovering about that look like they were bred to be sold at Costco. If nothing else, I wonder if we have the solution to the World Hunger Problem here. I understand crows often carry disease but it should be possible to purge that with the proper diet. The problem is that people who said they would never eat crow would have to eat crow in order to eat crow. Hmm, this is getting too complicated…

My good friend Scott Shaw! recently posted the following over on Facebook. Read it and then I'll meet you on the other side to discuss it further…

I was just asked to do an interview to be used on an upcoming Warner Bros. DVD…but without compensation. Here was my reply:

"Sorry, but no. I am a working professional and need to be compensated for my time away from writing and drawing cartoons.

"I've done over a dozen interviews for Warner Bros. DVDs and have never been compensated. In fact, I've rarely received a copy or two of the DVD my interview appears upon. The last few times I've been approached for an interview, I've had to turn them down, with great regrets. I'm sixty years old and am one of the last generation of cartoonists who personally knew such greats of animation as Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Pros like myself are already entering the age of mortality, so we won't be around much longer to impart our first-hand knowledge of animation history.

"I realize that your production company, in order to get these 'extras' gigs, have to make rock-bottom bids. But Warner Bros. is a vast corporation that refuses to pay a cent for the content of those extras. Please let your corporate client know that if they continue to refuse to respect folks like myself by refusing to offer any professional considerations, we professionals will refuse to contribute to their product. Again, I'm sorry, but I know I'm not alone in this opinion. Good luck with your project."

With a few minor adjustments, I could have written that. I would have emphasized the many times I've done such interviews and been told, "Oh, we'll send you copies of the DVD when it comes out and of any other DVDs we do that you want." My experience has been that that's true less than half the time. I haven't received copies of most of the DVDs I was on. The person who makes the promise is probably sincere at that moment but by the time the product comes out, he or she is either not around or not involved…and no one else knows anything about it.

Usually in this world when people say, "It's not the money, it's the principle," it's the money. But in matters like this, it really isn't because there's a lot of principle and there isn't much money. For a while when I was asked to appear on DVDs, I didn't ask for compensation but I did take it if they offered. A few times — and I think at least one was a Time-Warner project — I got $200 or $300. That's not a lot, given that they expect you to go to them, all shaved and photogenic, then wait around while they finish eleven other people being interviewed that day. Sometimes, they want to bring their cameras to you, which means an hour of setting-up and the need to rearrange every piece of furniture you own…including that old end table you have in a Public Storage locker.

The DVD is being put out by Time-Warner or Sony or Disney or some huge, cash-heavy entity but the person who contacts you usually doesn't work for them, even if they're shooting their little documentary on the studio lot. You're called by a young filmmaker who just loves your work and you were the first person he thought of and, oh, this featurette wouldn't be complete without you…and even when you don't believe a word of that, the guy or gal is so nice that you'd really like to help them out.

He or she got the contract to make the DVD featurette by being the lowest bidder; ergo, they can't afford to pay interviewees. Or at least they say that. Actors, because they're actors and have actors' agents, are more prone to demand money for appearing before cameras. Sometimes, they wind up doing it for free but sometimes, they get paid. I appeared sans compensation on an animation DVD where the producer volunteered to me the statement that they weren't paying anyone because they couldn't afford to pay anyone. I later found out two voice performers who were interviewed just after me were receiving $2000 apiece.

I don't really mind not being paid on something like this but I don't like being lied to…especially because I hadn't even asked the guy about money. He brought it up to tell me there couldn't be any.

Often, they tell you, "It's good exposure…good publicity." That doesn't matter to me but if it did, I'd remind myself how often it happens that you do free interviews and then they either don't use the footage or just use ten seconds. When interviews don't cost them much, they tend to do a lot more of them than they need. What I think I like best about being paid is that those interviews are more apt to actually appear and I may even get to say something. (Three times in my life, I've gone to the trouble to get fancied-up and to drive many miles to be interviewed for something that was going to go on a DVD as a Special Feature. And then a week or two after that, they decided not to have any Special Features on the DVD.)

That I do them at all is not because I love appearing on camera. I dislike it to the point of wondering about the character of anyone who does. No, I do them because I fear that on some projects, if I didn't go in and talk about the history and about the people who made history, no one would. I guess it bothers me that some folks exploit that.

It bothers me more that this methodology creeps into so many other areas of writing and other creative arts. Lack of pay for appearing on a DVD is not a big deal and it doesn't affect many people. Alas, more and more in this Internet era, one encounters the mindset that content has little value…and if the content can be passed off as "promotional," no value at all. There are things we write and do from the heart or because we think they're good for mankind. I gross about a dime an hour on this blog, which is fine. You don't have to make a buck off everything you do. But there are some things in this world that are done for a profit and by not insisting on a share, all you're doing is charity work for Disney. Or Time-Warner. Or some other financial force of nature.

Scott is right. Those of us who were privileged to work with guys like Bill and Joe and Bob and Tex and men like Jack Kirby…we have an obligation to share what we heard and observed. That's one reason I have this blog and do other things like articles and convention panels, gratis. But I have to remember not to be so quick to do it for free for people who are going to turn around and sell it…because that's not a commitment to history. That's a commitment to being a chump.

Here's something you won't want to buy.  A dealer on eBay is selling a copy of my high school yearbook.  What's more, he's making a fuss about it being mine, even though I think there are several (now) more famous students in there.

No, I won't be bidding.  I have one…filled with autographs from my classmates.  About every ten years, I flip through it…and while I have fond memories of certain friends, I really didn't like high school.  I had long since decided what I wanted to do with my life.  I think I knew when I was ten.  From that moment on, I was acutely aware of how irrelevant most of what I was learning in school was to what I wanted to do.  The most valuable class I took there or in junior high was probably Typing.

But I had to take a lot of other stuff that has never mattered.  For instance, I had to learn how to balance a Redox Equation in Chemistry…something I managed to do without ever quite learning what a Redox Equation was or why they had to be balanced.  What's more, I learned what I learned in "Final Exam Mode," which means that after you commit it to paper for the final exam, it's instantly and forever erased from your head…like someone picked up the film on one of those Magic Slates we all had when I was eight.  (The analogy today would be to flushing the Recycle Bin icon on your desktop.)

So I couldn't wait to get out of high school and I only look back to remind myself that the Good Ol' Days weren't all that good and things got better as soon as I put them behind me.  A week after graduation, I made my first real sale as a professional writer — a real sale meaning I submitted something to a stranger and he bought it and paid me real money. That was the moment I decided the preface was over and my life was finally beginning.

The seller of my yearbook notes that there is but one photo of me in there. This is because I was a notorious non-participant in high school. I wasn't interested in inside-the-classroom activities, let alone outside-the-classroom endeavors. I did briefly let myself get drafted into serving in Student Government, a silly faux-democratic organization that tried to act like the United States Government…which is to say it got nothing done. I sat there for several long meetings while representatives debated a proposal to raise money to buy paint and then to solicit volunteers to come to the campus some weekend and paint all the trashcans.

I got so annoyed with the process that I introduced a proposal to abolish Student Government. I insisted I was not kidding and that I expected my proposal to be voted upon with the same seriousness as the one about painting the trashcans. A student who served as President sighed and granted my demand, and this led to several more meetings and much debate before we came to the conclusion that Student Government did not have the power to abolish Student Government. I'm not even sure we had the power to paint the trashcans but anyway, that's when I got out.

The seller notes "Mark's listed in the Speech Club Photo but looks like he was a No Show." I think that's because I never signed up for the Speech Club and didn't know until I got the yearbook that I was considered a member. I'm not even sure I knew there was a Speech Club before that.

Anyway, I thought I'd tell you the story of the one contribution I made to this yearbook. I didn't work on its staff but I had a good relationship with an art teacher named Mr. Nikirk who supervised its assembly. Mr. Nikirk had wanted to be a professional cartoonist at some past point in his life and we talked often about that profession and how hard it was (he said) to break into it.

He got into a certain amount of trouble over this yearbook because costs got out of hand. When it went off to press, the printing company began sending back little notes that certain things would incur extra charges — this would cost more or that would cost more, etc. The final damages came to around $500 more than expected and while Mr. Nikirk wasn't on the hook for that money — the school was and would have to take it out of something else — he had a lot of administrative-type people mad at him. One of his extravagances had been to have an aerial photo taken of the campus — a photo that, as you can see in the pic below, ran as the endpapers in the book.

When I got my copy of the yearbook, I noticed something. I was far from the first person on campus to see the yearbook but I was the first person to point this out. I went to Mr. Nikirk and knowing of his overcharge problem, I suggested he demand at least a bill reduction from the printers. "For what?" he asked. I told him, "For printing the big aerial photo backwards."

He grabbed the book I was holding out of my mitts and stared at the endpapers. With his finger, he tried to trace the route from the Teachers' Parking Lot to his classroom. It would not trace.

Sure enough: The photo was flipped over, printed mirror-image. East was West and West was East.

He dashed to the nearest phone, which was in the Teacher's Lounge. I tagged along to eavesdrop (with his permission) as he called the printers and told them of the error. They replied that it was his fault as he'd approved the proofs they'd sent over of the book. And he had…but there was a look of pure triumph on his face as he reminded them that the proofs had not included the endpapers. They, therefore, were responsible.

Over the next day or three, much arguing ensued along with threats of non-payment and legal action. The school finally told the printer that they were going to have the students all turn in their yearbooks and the lot of them would be shipped back. Uni High was rejecting the print job and it expected the books to be reprinted with the endpapers corrected. The printers, who stood to lose many thousands of dollars if they had to do that, offered to knock $1000 off the bill if the school would accept the books "as is." The school agreed…and that's how my high school yearbook not only didn't lose money but actually turned a nice profit.

It's also how we wound up with an apt metaphor in its endpapers. That school really was a backward place to get an education.

If you ever want to get a lot of e-mail and you don't care how angry some of its senders are at you, tell the world that you like Shemp more than Curly.

Once upon a time, the May Company was the sacred place to shop in Los Angeles — especially the formidable outlet at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. It marked the west end of a strip of Wilshire full of department stores and that strip was known as the Miracle Mile. It's still called the Miracle Mile even though there isn't a single department store left there. Orbach's is gone. Harris & Frank is gone. Desmond's is gone. Mullen & Bluett is gone and so on. The May Company's lovely building is still there but inside it now is some sort of off-shoot of the L.A. County Museum of Art which is next door.

This memory takes place back when it was still the May Company, inside and out. For two or three years running, they did a special Easter promotion involving Bugs Bunny. Ads would appear giving a special phone number that kids could call to "talk to Bugs Bunny." Well, naturally, I had to call. I think I was six or seven the first time this happened but I knew how to dial a phone. And note that I said "dial," as in running one's finger around on one of these:

So I dialed and got a busy signal. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Isn't "cut-and-paste" wonderful? Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again.

And finally, it rang. And Bugs picked up.

Well, it wasn't Bugs, of course. Even I knew then it was Mel Blanc. But it also wasn't Mel Blanc. It was the recorded voice of Mel Blanc. But even that was exciting. In later years, it would be no big deal to call some number and hear a recorded announcement. Heck, there would be times when it would be a novelty to dial a number — any number — and not get a recorded announcement. But at the time, this kind of thing was kinda rare…and the fact that it was a cartoon character was very special.

I remember the first thing he said. It was, you may be surprised to hear, "What's up, doc?" And I remember the last thing he said. It was an admonition that I should hang up now so that someone else could get through. In-between, there was a pitch to get my parents to take me to the May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax where Bugs would have a special gift for me and a special, personal message. Well, you can guess where we were going…the next day, in fact. This was a few days before Easter.

That night, I was lying wide awake in bed, as I often did. I didn't sleep much as a kid. I would lie there half the night it seemed, making up incredible stories involving cartoons and characters I saw on TV or read in comic books. They were all about my phone buddy Bugs Bunny that night and I suddenly got the idea that I'd like to hear his message again…and also, I was curious. Was there just the one message or were there several and they rotated? And what would have happened if I hadn't hung up immediately? Would the message have repeated? Would Bugs have said something else?

I checked the clock by my bed at it said it was 4:10 in the morning. I had a hunch the phone might not be quite as busy at 4:10 in the morning.

So as not to awake my parents, I crept carefully out to the kitchen, which is where our only phone was. From all that dialing earlier, I had the number memorized so I called, worrying slightly that Bugs would answer and say angrily, "Hey, didn't you call earlier, kid?"  Or maybe, "What the big idea, waking me up at this hour?"

I got a busy signal. At 4-friggin'-11 in the morning. Someone else obviously had the same idea.

I put some peanut butter on a cracker, ate it and then dialed again. This time, I got through and heard the exact same message I'd heard earlier. At the end, when Bugs said to hang up so someone else could call, I risked him getting mad at me and didn't. And I heard…absolutely nothing. After about a minute, I hung up and went back to bed.

The next day, we went to the May Company. Near the center of the top floor, there was a huge display with big cut-outs of Bugs and Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig and other Warner Brothers characters. The phone message had made it sound like I could actually meet Bugs Bunny there and while I knew that wasn't possible, I figured there'd be something like a guy in a Bugs Bunny suit or a big robot or — and I knew this was a longshot but you tend to dream at that age — maybe they'd have Mel Blanc there.

They didn't. There were two cute young girls dressed in bunny ears and tails. This was a year or two before the Playboy Clubs opened with waitresses in bunny ears and tails and I always wondered if Hugh Hefner or someone working for him drew any inspiration from Bugs' helpers at the May Company. Probably not but you never know.

One gave me a little Bugs Bunny coloring book with a bag of crayons and candy attached. The other was in charge of a telephone on a pedestal. She held out the receiver for me and I took it and heard another message Mel Blanc had recorded. It was something about how he was sorry he was so busy he couldn't be there in person but you know, "us rabbits" are pretty busy just before Easter, painting eggs and figuring out where to hide 'em. He told me to be a good little kid and eat all my carrots and to make sure his helpers gave me his special Easter gift. And then he hung up on me and his assistant yanked the receiver from my grasp.

I didn't feel cheated by this since I'd known going in I wasn't going to really meet Bugs Bunny. I remember being rather thrilled to have gotten that close to him. And then my parents went shopping.

That's about everything I remember about the Bugs Bunny promotion. I'm going to guess they did it the first time in 1958 or 1959 when I was six or seven. If I had to bet, I'd bet the latter. I know they did it at least one following year, maybe two. Same ad in the paper, same message on the phone. We only went to the May Company in response that one time, presuming that since the phone message was the same, the pay-off when you got to the store would be the same. In 1961 or so, they did the same deal with Fred Flintstone, even though, having lived before Christ, his connection to Easter was at best tenuous. A recording by his voice Alan Reed was on the phone and when you went to the May Company, they had two cute ladies in ratty cave girl outfits filling the same function as the bunnies.

What they did have, I think in lieu of a phone message, was a robotic Fred Flintstone. It was a very good likeness about five feet high. His mouth opened and closed, not particularly in sync with a constantly repeating voice recording — Fred welcoming us to the May Company and wishing us Happy Easter. His right arm went up and down. My mother took a photo of me next to him but, damn it, the pictures didn't come out. A day or two later, they trucked the Robot Fred over to the local ABC studios and I saw it "perform" on the morning cartoon show hosted by Chucko the Birthday Clown. The voice didn't work and the moving arm kept stopping and starting, and Chucko (who was a pretty funny guy) kept warning Fred that if he didn't talk, ABC would cancel his prime-time show. I assume that robot is long since gone but I'd give about a year's pay to have it in my living room.

This has been an Easter Memory…and just about the only one this Jewish kid has from his childhood.

That's a photo of my mother taking a photo of me taking that photo of her. It was shot outside the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, the last time I took her there, which was more than a decade ago.  Carolyn and I took turns pushing her around the town in a borrowed wheelchair and we all had a very good time.  I wish I could take her there again but her health isn't quite up to it.

Where I can take her is out for lunch or dinner here in L.A.  Yesterday, we took her to the Musso & Frank Grill up in Hollywood to celebrate her 90th birthday, which is today.  We went yesterday instead of today because today is Easter and restaurants are too crowded on Easter.  Also, she wanted to go to that restaurant and it's not open on Sundays. She had fried scallops and a lovely bread pudding covered in strawberries, and enjoyed both very much.

For reasons above and beyond longevity, my mother is an extraordinary woman.  She's also pretty funny. Recently at a party where a lot of my friends met her for the first time, I heard the following from many of them: "Oh, it's easy to see you got your sense of humor from your mother, Mark."  I disagree and so does she.  She got her sense of humor from me.  Growing up, I got mine from a bevy of sources: Comic books, MAD, Soupy Sales, Laurel and Hardy, cartoons on TV, Stan Freberg — fittingly, Stan was at that party — and others. And I think my mother learned to talk like me so we could communicate. We still do…and I think the last time we had any sort of argument or reason for anyone to raise their voice, I was still in junior high school. My father didn't yell much, either. I think we had less than a dozen angry moments, the last of which occurred when I moved out and into my own place at age 23. That was more than half my life ago.

I keep reading about dysfunctional families and hearing horror stories from acquaintances who were reared in one. At times, I think I grew up in one of the few functional ones of the 20th century. I had friends…I'd go to their homes and in two or three visits I'd literally hear more yelling and tantrums and threats of discipline than I experienced in my entire childhood. My father was half the reason for that and my mother was the other half.

She's amazed to be 90. Absolutely, utterly amazed. Her mother darn near made it to 100 but my mother didn't expect anything close to that, especially since she's been smoking since she was a teen and has never fully quit. She's cut way, way down but can't give it up altogether. She still has all her wits about her. The body doesn't work so well and she spends an indecent percentage of her life at or in the hospital for check-ups and tests and occasional stays…but she's still well aware of the world she lives in and how long she's lived in it. Yesterday at the restaurant, I asked her what her earliest memory was of something "new" they had in her household. She thought a minute and answered, "Sliced bread." At the time, it was the biggest thing since…well, sliced bread.

One reason she's still around is that she has this great doctor. If you could invent the perfect doctor to take care of an elderly parent, you'd whip up one very much like Dr. Bruce Wasserman. If he lived across the street from her and didn't have any other patients, he'd be perfect. He's been her doctor (and when my father was with us, my father's doctor) for more than thirty years. When my mother turned 80, he surprised her on her birthday by sending flowers. He did that when she hit 85, too. She thought that was the most wonderful thing and I suspect they did more good for her than any prescription he ever wrote.

For a long time after that whenever she had health problems, I'd tell her she had to get better so she wouldn't miss out on the 90 arrangement. No other reason. At dire moments, she'd actually say, "Well, it looks like I won't be around to get the 90th birthday flowers from Dr. Wasserman." She was wrong. Two dozen roses arrived on Friday.

The floral displays get better and better. This one was especially stunning and I've told her she has to stick around just so I can see what Dr. Wasserman sends when she hits 100. She thought about it a moment, shrugged and said, "All right. I'll do it…but only for you!"

This is what happens when you write posts at three in the ayem…

I said in the previous item that the only conventions I was doing the rest of the year were the Big Wow! Comic Fest in San Jose and the Comic-Con International in San Diego. I was wrong. In fact, I forgot about one I'm really looking forward to. I'll tell you about it before the day is out. First, I have an e-mail or two to get through…

I awoke this morning and got myself fully awake in time to read an e-mail that the conference call has to be postponed because one of the other participants overslept.

I don't know why I am. Well, I know I'm writing a script but amazingly, it's not one due tomorrow or even this week. But I'm awake at darn near 6 AM despite the fact that I need to be up and able to form a coherent sentence or two during an important conference call four hours hence.

So why am I writing a script? More to the point, why am I writing this? This is fun, of course. Blogging is like sketching on one hand. On quite another, it's a chance to write something that's all my own, not subject to the tastes of some editor or producer or the interpretation of an artist or actor. Between the consumer and me, there's nothing but air and bytes. People ask why I blog and there's a lot of the reason right there. It's a resource for me…a way of reaching out and saying Hello Dere to a lot of friends, strangers and strangers who are slowly becoming friends. But it's also sketching and it's also, for good or ill, mine.

I've been a professional writer for 43 years, a number I mention not to impress you but to impress myself. Because to me, it sometimes feels like about 43 months. Every project, every assignment still comes down to what it has always come down to: Me sitting at a desk — or sometimes taking a long walk — asking myself the key question, "Okay, what are you going to do with this one?" I get there via a slightly different route with every single one but the point is I get there, "there" being the answer to that same key question. When people used to ask me what the difference was between writing comic books and writing TV shows, I used to say, "Tab stops."

I sometime think I write just because it feels so good to answer that question and to think, at least for a time, that I've answered it correctly. It feels good the same way it feels to solve a Sudoku puzzle or to fix a broken appliance, both of which I did today. It's so great when you reach that moment of thinking, "I know what I should do." And I just did, just this second. I should go to bed. Good night.

About 36 readers of this blog converged on the town of Rancho Cucamonga, California on Saturday evening to see Frank Ferrante perform as Guess Who in his much-touted show, An Evening with Groucho. You can probably figure out which one Frank is in this photo. The gent in the tux is his pianist-foil, Jim Furmston and now here's the hard part: Identifying everyone else after I lost the little scrap of paper on which I jotted down all the names.  From memory and friendship, I can identify (along with Frank and Jim) Carolyn Kelly, Stu Shostak, Mickey Paraskevas, Gordon and Donna Kent, Douglass Abramson, Jerry and Mary-Robinson Modene, Dave Gnerre, Steven Brattman and Kevin A. Shaw, plus I'm in there too. If the other two couples will send me their names, I'll identify them and I apologize for losing that piece o' paper. [UPDATE: The two additional couples are Alex and Vicki Jaramillo, and Richard Dean Starr and Erin Bower, who writes under the name of E.R. Bower.]

There were many others there who read here about Frank and showed up but we had to wait 'til Frank and Jim finished signing autographs to take the photo and a lot of folks didn't want to wait around that long, especially since it was raining. Still, they all told me what a great time they had. I know some of you are probably sick of hearing me rave about Frank's portrayal of The Great Groucho but it really is one of those things that you have to see — a more-than-reasonable facsimile of Groucho, around the age he was in Duck Soup, performing in the present day. Much of the show is Frank/Groucho just chatting with the audience, improvising and bantering his way through the house.

Speaking of the house: Boy, is the Lewis Family Playhouse out there a nice theater. It's in an area of Rancho Cucamonga called the Victoria Gardens — a fairly new development built by the Lewis family. Mr. Lewis and some of his family members were in the front row last night, which is a dangerous place to be when Groucho's doppelgänger is roaming the premises in search of targets. Lewis was a grand sport and he, like everyone present, laughed his head off at the show. He should be proud of that whole complex there. It's like a little city with great restaurants, stores and performance venues and everyone in my party seemed very impressed with it.

Here once again is Frank Ferrante's schedule. He's in Tryon, North Carolina on Tuesday…in Sacramento, California on Thursday…and in Kansas on April 13 and 14. If you live in Southern California and wish you'd seen him last night, you'll have one other chance this year. It's Long Beach in October and I'll give you the details when they become available. Wherever you see him, you'll understand my constant pluggery and you'll have a very good time. We sure did last night.

I may have confused some folks when I said I was hoping for an orange version of the lemonade mix put out by the True Lemon folks. Many wrote to ask, "Don't they already make one called True Orange?"

No, that's not the same thing. True Lemon's main product line — and it's something you should know about — are these little packets called True Lemon, True Lime, True Orange and now True Grapefruit. They're little fruit flavor crystals that you can add (like a packet of sugar) to water or tea or recipes. I know about them and have used them on occasion.

The new things are these drink mixes which take that kind of flavoring and configure it so that it's a powder that flavors water instead of just enhancing it. You can't make lemonade with True Lemon. You can make it with their new True Lemonade with Stevia. I'd like to see them come out with True Orangeade. Sorry I wasn't clearer.

As I mentioned recently here, my options for liquids to drink have narrowed in the last few years . Don't like coffee, tea, fruit juices, milk, etc. Can't handle anything with carbonation or artificial sweeteners. For the last 4-5 years, it's been only water and about once a day, a Jay Robb protein shake made with water.

My water of choice has been Crystal Geyser, which I buy in cases and have throughout my house. I had home delivery of Sparklett's for a time but I wasn't thrilled with the water and I had all sorts of problems with them delivering bottles I didn't want, no matter how I told them not to. I also like having liter bottles all over my house and there's always one on my desk. Crystal Geyser comes in liter bottles.

It's obtainable, by the way, under a number of names. At my local Whole Foods Markets, they sell gallon bottles of Crystal Geyser for $1.25 apiece. Next to it on the shelves, there are gallon bottles of the Whole Foods house brand for $1.00 each. Little do some unsuspecting Whole Fooders suspect but they're the exact same thing: Same H2O from the same source, same bottle, same piece of tape for a handle, everything. Only the label is different. At Walgreens here, they sell a brand called Roxane, which is also Crystal Geyser…and I'm not sure if it still is but for a while, the Trader Joe's house brand in my area was a matter of the Crystal Geyser folks slapping yet another label on their output. The tip-off is if you look at the label and find some reference to "CG Roxane."

So that's what I've been drinking. Recently though, I've discovered a bunch of new products with which to flavor one's water. They're new drink mixes made with Stevia…which is not, as some folks think, an artificial sweetener. It's a real sweetener that lacks calories and which can be quite effective in certain applications. Years ago, I tried a couple brands of flavored Stevia and they were awful. Somehow though, someone has mastered it, particularly in a new product called Truvia. These new drink mixes come in little packets that you add to a 16 oz. bottle of water, then you shake it up and drink. Recently, I taste-tested three…

Hansen's Natural Fruit Stix – Natural Strawberry Lemonade
This was my least favorite of the three I tried, probably because it didn't taste like Strawberry Lemonade to me. It tasted like Hawaiian Punch…or at least what I remember Hawaiian Punch tasting like the last time I had one, which was in the seventies. If you like that, it's probably great but I thought it was too sweet and that its taste didn't relate to anything that occurs in nature. Hansen's sweetens with Truvia and one serving has 5 calories. For something advertised as "natural," the ingredients list sure had a lot of names I recall having in my old Gilbert Chemistry Set. Anyway, they also have an Iced Tea flavor, a Blackberry Tea flavor, a Natural Berry flavor and a Fruit Punch flavor. Since their Strawberry Lemonade tastes like Fruit Punch, I'm wondering if their Fruit Punch tastes like Strawberry Lemonade.

Crystal Light Pure Lemonade
I liked this one (also containing Truvia) but not as much as the next one. One of these has 15 calories and again, it has a rather chemically-oriented list of ingredients. The Crystal Light Pure line also includes a Grape version, a Tropical Blend, a Strawberry Kiwi and a Mixed Berry. The lemonade was fairly good and I might have stocked up on it had I not found…

True Lemon Original Lemonade
This one says on the box "made with lemons," which is always a nice sign. The ingredients list read more like a real beverage and one serving has 5 calories. Best of all, this one actually tastes about as close to lemonade as any mix I've ever had. So I'm stocking up on True Lemon. They also have a Raspberry Lemonade flavor which I haven't tried.

Are there side effects to Stevia and Truvia? There are anecdotal reports on the Internet…but on the Internet, you can find people who will tell you that they had a bad reaction to oxygen. I've had what I believe were bad reactions to Splenda, NutraSweet and saccharin but so far, no problem with Stevia. (There's Stevia in those Jay Robb protein shakes I make.) Like any food product of even slighty-questionable safety, you need to decide for yourself about yourself…and I would think that limiting one's intake of it would not be a bad idea. I limit mine to one every few days and it's a nice change o' pace from water, water everywhere.

This concludes my report. Updates will be posted as soon as they become available…like if anyone makes me happy and puts out an orange version.

I'm going to delay the second part of my Drinking Problem post 'til tomorrow when I'm not as swamped with deadlines and also because I received a few questions like this one from Jess Camen…

You said you have Sleep Apnea. I've read all sorts of explanations of what it is but I've never heard anyone who had it actually describe how it feels. Could you tell me?

Well, now that I sleep with a CPAP unit, it feels fine. The main thing I tell people is that before I started spending the night with this breathing device strapped to my kisser, I slept so restlessly that in eight hours, I got about three hours of genuine, useful sleep. I also snored so loudly that one time at a hotel, a girl friend literally got up, took a couple of the blankets and went out and slept on the balcony with the sliding glass door closed. Now, I rarely snore, I sleep about five hours a night and I awake refreshed.

Before I was diagnosed, I was sluggish and drowsy much of the day and I fell asleep in the darnedest places. The freeway, as I mentioned, was one. Almost as dangerous was during a meeting at CBS. One minute, I was telling network execs how exciting the show I was writing for them would be. The next, I was sound asleep in my chair. (I was with a producer who had the presence of mind to say something like, "Mark's been working so hard on this script that he's been staying up nights." Amazingly, they bought that, being unaware I had yet to start on the script. I'd actually slept eight hours the night before but woke up feeling like it was around two.)

Sleep Apnea is a lot more common than most folks think and it is said that there are countless undiagnosed cases out there. If you doze off when you shouldn't or you get up from sleeping feeling more tired than when you laid down, you oughta go get checked for it. It could be many things but it could be Sleep Apnea. And should you want to know more about my experiences, here's a link to an article I wrote back in 1996.