Personal – Page 4 – News From ME

Cold, Cold Callers

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 4:50 PM

So once again after a lull, I'm getting all these calls from contractors I've never heard of, offering me free estimates on any work I need done on my house. As it happens, I have a fine contractor and there's no work I need done…but obviously, some company is selling my number as part of a database of potential customers and I see no way to stop this. The "Do Not Call" registry, in which I am listed, only applies to the callers, not to the suppliers…and none of the callers calls me more than once.

Here is how the calls have been going lately. A total stranger calls and begins to tell me about their fine company. Often, they say they're "in my area" doing work for some of my neighbors at the moment. I interrupt them and here's how it goes…

ME: Excuse me. Could you tell me where you got this number?

THEM: Got your number? It comes up on a screen here.

ME: Okay, but where did your company get it in order to put it on your screen?

THEM: I really don't know.

ME: Well, if I'm going to hire a contractor, they're going to have to prove they're trustworthy. And if you won't answer that question for me, you're not trustworthy.

And they mutter something like, "Sorry to have taken up your time" and they hang up. So far, not one of them has offered to tell me where they got the number in order to prove their integrity. If one ever does, I'll let you know…after I inform them I don't need a contractor.

Food, Inglorious Food

Posted on Sunday, January 15, 2012 at 11:30 PM

I've occasionally mentioned my food allergies on this site and each mention brings e-mails from kindred spirits who've related their own social-type problems in this area. It's amazing how many people have trouble with the concept that some folks simply cannot eat certain things without harming themselves. I had a lady friend once who loved asparagus and wanted badly to cook it for me despite my repeated explanations that it could well put me in a hospital somewhere. She'd listen to that, nod as if she utterly understood then say, "Well, what if I put a sauce on the asparagus?

Sometimes, it helps to invoke rat poison analogies. Someone will say, "I can prepare the pecan pie so it doesn't taste anything like pecans." I often reply, "Supposing someone wanted to serve you rat poison but they said, 'Don't worry…I can prepare it so it doesn't taste anything like rat poison."

Or a well-meaning friend will try to serve you a dessert that's sprinkled with coconut. You explain as politely as possible that you're allergic to coconut. They say, "Well, just pick the coconut off…or I can do it for you." You have to say, "If someone came to you with a dessert covered with rat poison, would you just pick the rat poison off and eat the dessert?" There actually are times when I feel I can remove or eat around the offending ingredient but there are times when a little voice within me says not to take the risk. When I don't listen to that voice, I have almost always regretted it.

Actually, if you get medical about it, most of what I have are not food allergies but food intolerances. There is a difference but I learned that if I tried to make that distinction, it confused people even more. So I just say "food allergies" for both and that makes life simpler…but only a little.

Both can create vast social problems along with the health ones. I have occasionally found myself in a group at a restaurant where there was literally nothing on the menu I thought I could or should eat. You would be amazed how uncomfortable some friends can make you in that situation. Some treat you like you're making trouble in order to ruin their evening. Others feel that now they're not allowed to eat and enjoy themselves. The worst is probably when they make a huge fuss on your behalf and start scolding waiters and the restaurant management, and that makes everyone uncomfy. I accept the fact that there are just going to be times when the available food doesn't correspond to what I can eat. I would usually prefer to sit there and go hungry for the time being than to have people declare a national emergency around me or act like an alien dines among them.

It was worse when I was younger and in less control of where I ate. Today, if the whole gang's going out for lunch, I can usually speak up in time to genially steer the expedition away from the Indian or Mexican restaurant. I've had especially bad luck in the Mexican ones. I've probably gone through the menus of fifty of them without seeing an entree I could eat without serious modification…and it's sometimes difficult to get things altered to my specifications. One day years ago, I was among a bunch of TV people who lunched at Acapulco, a popular Mexican eatery then across the street from NBC in Burbank. The one item they had that seemed like it might be edible to me was the hamburger…but only if they omitted the guacamole.

That was how I ordered it…and I've learned over the years to be explicit about it. I'll say, "I'd like a hamburger with nothing on it. Just meat and bun and nothing else." I asked for it that way but when it came, there was guacamole aplenty. In fact, I think the chef had interpreted "no guacamole" to mean "extra guacamole." You'd be amazed how often that happens.

I sent the burger back and it was returned to me a few minutes later with most (not all) of the guacamole scraped off. The patty was still a lovely shade of green and when I explained that wouldn't do, the server gave me a sigh that implied I was just doing this to make his life harder. He went off to have them cook me another and I sat there, not eating while all my friends did. Every so often, one of them would offer me part of their tostada which I couldn't eat or part of their burrito which I couldn't eat. Finally, about the time everyone was ready to leave, my new burger arrived…lovingly slathered with guacamole. They told me the chef applied it out of "force of habit."

Some of this is my fault. There are times when everyone else wants to go for Thai food. Since I want to be with my friends and since I occasionally have gotten something edible in a Thai place, I decide not to play Bad Guy and try to hijack the party to where I'll feel safer. I have to learn to decline. Forced to appear at a luncheon where the cuisine seems dubious, I'll sometimes opt to dine before I get there and to tell everyone I had a late breakfast and can't eat a thing. I need to think that way more often. The Internet has helped a lot, enabling me to check out the menu of most restaurants before I commit to dine within.

Saturday Evening

Posted on Saturday, January 14, 2012 at 9:47 PM

I haven't been posting much lately (or when I have, it's been messages I wrote a few days ago) owing to a mother in the hospital. She's home now and doing better but I still have "son" stuff to do, plus I'm behind on a few things…so it may be a day or three before new things are appearing here at the usual pace.

Nothing ever happens in my life without a funny anecdote or two materializing. The best one this time probably was the one that occurred when a nurse at the hospital told me I needed to go down to the Admitting Office and sign some papers and she started to tell me how to find it. "I know where it is," I told her. My mother has been in this hospital a lot and I know where everything is, including a couple of secret doors I'm not supposed to know about. I told the nurse — and this has actually happened a couple of times — "I'm here so much, the cashier in the cafeteria gives me the employee discount."

The nurse looked surprised. "There's an employee discount in the cafeteria?"

Another nurse told her, yes there is: "If you go in there in uniform, they probably just give it to you automatically."

The first nurse thought a second then said, "I sometimes go in there in my street clothes…like when I come to work and stop in there for breakfast on the way in."

The second nurse: "Well, if you don't show them your employee I.D. or they don't recognize you, you're probably paying more than you have to."

The first turned to me and said, "Life isn't fair. I've worked here five years and you get the employee discount and I don't."

Today's Video Link

Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:41 AM

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Speaking of things coming out on video: I had a little something to do with Bob, the short-lived (1992-1993) sitcom in which Bob Newhart played a comic book artist. Some sites will tell you I created it but that's not at all so. As you can see in the opening titles below, that credit belongs to my friends Bill & Cheri Steinkeller and Phoef Sutton, and I suspect that if they'd been able to do the show they wanted to do, it would have lasted as long as your average Bob Newhart series. I just wrote one episode and answered a lot of questions about the comic book business.

The comic book graphics, by the way, were done by artist Paul Power. My buddy Paul was often seen as an extra in the show, playing an employee of the comic book company for which Bob "McKay" worked and in the titles below, he stunt-doubled Mr. Newhart's drawing hand. At one point on the set, I heard Bob telling someone, "I can't draw anything" and I turned and told him, "I suspect you draw a very handsome salary."

This is all my way of mentioning that the complete series is coming out on DVD on April 3. Many of you may want this if only for the episode in which Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, Sergio Aragonés, Jim Lee and other real draw-ers of comic books made cameo appearances. Cute story: The filming schedule required these folks to be there a few days for rehearsals, which meant they had to sit around for hours while other scenes were staged. Sergio had a Groo deadline…and there were drawing tables on the set. So he brought along pages and sat on the Bob set and drew Groo, much to the fascination of everyone in the cast and crew. He also brought along a high-wattage light bulb to swap out in the lamps they had on those tables because for filming reasons, they had very weak lights in them.

I liked the series, at least during its first season before panic set in about the ratings and folks began mucking with its premise and adding Betty White to the show. If like most of America you never saw it, you might enjoy it, too. We don't have an Amazon link yet for this but I'll put one up when it's possible to pre-order it. In the meantime, here are those opening titles…

This Just In…

Posted on Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 12:02 AM

All the James Bond films are coming to Blu-ray.

Why? Because someone said to someone else, "Isn't it about time we made Evanier buy Goldfinger again?"

No other reason.

Lamb Chop's Mommy

Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 5:42 PM

sharilewis01

Thanks to Greg Novak, I just read (and you can read) this great piece by Matt Weinstock about the late Shari Lewis. She may well have been my first "crush" though as an amateur ventriloquist aged in single digits, I probably didn't realize it at the time. I remember feeling somehow it was wrong for a "girl" to be doing that kind of thing…especially doing it a lot better than I would ever be able to do it. I also recall an odd reaction when I saw her on an episode of Car 54, Where Are You? The premise was that she'd been fixed up with Francis Muldoon (Fred Gwynne's character) and he was around 6'6" whereas she was under five feet so romance seemed out of the question. I realized I had the same problem as Muldoon. At age nine I was already taller than she was or close to that, and a doctor had told my parents I'd easily top six feet. I hadn't particularly had any thoughts of marrying Shari Lewis but it was still jarring to have them dashed like that.

Apart from her first network Saturday morning show which was clever and funny, I never cared much for the material she performed but I liked her. We had one brief encounter on a show I worked on in the early eighties. She was kind of frantic owing to the demands of the performance she was there to do so it wasn't possible to talk much. That didn't happen until around ten years later when I was hired to write a pilot for a new Saturday morn series she'd pitched successfully to CBS. It was a cute idea. She would be the only human being in it — a strict, humorless school teacher. All of her students would be puppet characters, none of them (probably) voiced or operated by her. She wanted to find and train a band of younger puppeteers because it was to be a real generation-gap series in which, as per her concept, the teacher learns as much or more from the kids as they do from her.

We met a few times at her home in Beverly Hills where you were greeted in the front hall by a stuffed Lamb Chop doll that was taller than I was…and when she stood next to it, it seemed even taller. She did have a kind of "school teacher" air about her and she knew it. One of the amazingly self-aware things she said to me was that she had a tendency to talk to everyone, including folks older than she was, as if they were children. For the proposed series, she wanted me to write her that way — to make that a flaw of the character but to also capture the idea that she didn't "talk down" to people because she was arrogant but because she'd simply spent her whole life talking to children from that vantage point. That plus the passion she had for doing a show we could be proud of made me fall in love with her all over again.

Sadly, the project never went the distance. I hadn't even written the pilot script I was hired to write when the brass at CBS decided they could only have one live-action show on their Saturday AM schedule and it would be or would continue to be Pee-wee's Playhouse. Our series development came to a screaming halt and I felt sorrier for her than for myself. She told me she wasn't giving up; that her agents would shop it elsewhere…and I never heard another word about it. Months later when I ran into her at a video convention in Las Vegas, that show was a distant memory and she had several others in various stages, one of which she asked me to write. I said yes but it never happened.

A number of articles about Phyllis Diller's retirement have rightly argued for her importance as a woman who broke down barriers for others of her gender, succeeding in comedy when it was so overwhelmingly a man's world. Not taking anything away from Ms. Diller but I would also argue for Ms. Lewis. In 1960 when she did it, how many other women had starred in a network TV show with their name in the title? Okay, we can name a few. But how many of them didn't play a ditzy character who kept getting into trouble and needed a man to help bail them out? How many of them succeeded without ridiculing their own looks? How many of them even had an identity not as somebody's wife? And Shari wasn't just the star of her 1960 show. Playing Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, Hush Puppy and the occasional other role, she was most of the cast.

She was a remarkable lady…and one deserving of wider recognition for what she did. Nice to see her getting a little.

Where I Am

Posted on Wednesday, January 11, 2012 at 1:21 PM

At my favorite Chinese restaurant having lunch with Wolf J. Flywheel (aka Frank Ferrante) who will be doing his Marxist act next on February 1st in Grove City, Pennsylvania at Ketler Auditorium and on February 3rd in Paramus, New Jersey at Bergen Community College. If you are near either, get tickets while there are still tickets to be gotten.

Monday Morning

Posted on Monday, January 2, 2012 at 11:58 AM

As you've probably heard, Los Angeles has been plagued recently by someone (or someones) starting fires every night, usually igniting cars in car ports. Police have apprehended what we used to call a "suspect" and what we now call a "person of interest." The latter term, of course, makes the guy sound like he should be on the cover of People magazine, right next to the Kardashian of the Week.

Some reports say the "person of interest" is an immigrant. If that's so and if it turns out he set some or all of these fires, I suppose this will become a story not about an arsonist but about all immigrants.

Folks have been writing to ask if any of this is happening near me. Last night, there was a fire about ten blocks from here but that's as close as it's gotten. I do not, by the way, have a car port. Very early this morn from about 1 AM to my bedtime of 4:30 AM, I could hear sirens quite often in the distance and at one point, a helicopter was hovering over a location perhaps a mile from me. It reminded me of the Rodney King riots of '92. The destruction didn't make it into my area but I could hear sirens, see plumes of smoke in the distance and in the news, see that the riot was affecting places I was known to travel.

There were a number of moments from that week that I vividly recall but I thought of this one last night. Most of the meaningful TV news coverage of the looting and the burning was done by men in copters. They were showing us what was happening right then, as opposed to the reporters on the ground who were usually showing us aftermaths.

One night — I think it was a Friday — there came a moment when the chopper guy on one local channel was able to report that as far as he could tell, there were zero fires burning at that moment. That was the first time he'd been able to say that in days and to emphasize the concept, he did a 360° pan of the city from his aerial vantage point. Not a plume of smoke to be seen.

He mentioned a hillside and swooped down to give us a look. It was a grassy slope and on it were about thirty firemen, mostly in full gear, lying down and napping…and for some, it may have been the first time in days.

On my TV, I heard the news anchor, back at the studio, tell the copter pilot to bank closer so we could get a better look at those brave, hard-working public servants. And I heard the copter pilot say, "No, this is as close as I dare get. Any closer and they'll hear the helicopter, and if anyone ever deserved a chance to sleep, it's those guys." The in-studio anchor hastily agreed and retracted his suggestion.

Like I said, last night I thought about that. I never wanted to be a fireman. I wouldn't even have wanted to be Dean Martin if it required sliding down one of those poles. But I'm very glad there are people in this world who want to fight fires and help the public. Very glad indeed.

Lookin’ Back

Posted on Monday, January 2, 2012 at 1:10 AM

foraykress

2011 was a not a bad year around here. Matter of fact, if I could overlook friends getting sick, friends getting financially desperate and friends achieving both, I could say it was a pretty good year. Trouble is, I can't overlook that stuff. About all I can do is hope we've seen the worst of it.

A pretty bad bit of news for many of us came with the sad, sad loss of Earl Kress, my friend of 27+ years and one of the nicest, brightest people I've ever met. That's Earl in the picture (like you couldn't have figured that out) with the magnificent June Foray at a Comic-Con panel a few years back. Earl was an animation writer, voice actor, historian and devout fan, and the two of us helped June assemble her autobiography.

As I've said before here – prompting some thankful mail and some angry – I'm not a big believer in grief. I don't think you have to be in pain for weeks or months or years because you lost a loved one. My feeling is on the order of: "You're going to get past this sooner or later. Why not sooner?" When I go, I don't want anyone who knows me to be depressed for more than fifteen minutes unless there's some reason to think that being miserable will bring me back.

That said, I'm also big on remembering the departed. To that end, the evening of his passing, I seized control of a web address Earl wasn't using anyway – www.earlkress.com – and put up a quick tribute site. I have since had the time to redesign it into something more appropriate…and easier on the upkeep. If you haven't visited, drop by and read up on my pal Earl. You might get some idea why so many of us miss him.

Jewel

Posted on Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 10:57 PM

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So I have this friend named Jewel Shepard. Known her a long time…longer than you'd imagine, given how young she looks. (I took that photo, by the way. I'm not that great a photographer but even I can't take a photo of Jewel that doesn't make her look stunning.)

Sad to say, she is suffering from a particularly nasty kind of breast cancer, not that there are any good kinds. She has, in fact, already had both breasts removed and she still has all sorts of medical problems. You can't help her with those but you can help with the closely-related problems she has of the financial variety. Simply put, she cannot afford to pay for the treatments she's receiving or the ones she still needs to get. Even with limited insurance, the bills are astronomical — as fine an example as any of why the current Health Care System in this country is intolerable. People die every day in this country because they cannot afford treatment and a lot of us are determined that Jewel will not be one of them.

So is she. She's fighting harder than you can imagine, working every possible job and doing what she can to not let the devastating side effects of chemotherapy prevent her from earning bucks she needs. Still, the costs are too great for anyone to handle so friends are helping out and a benefit is being held. The horror/gothic bookstore out in Burbank, Dark Delicacies, is selling books and prints and signed photos of Jewel (Caution: She is naked in the photos) and this Saturday, October 22 at 7 PM, there's an art show and a signing at the store.

If you ever wanted an autographed nekkid photo of Jewel, now's the time. Or if you just want to help out a lovely lady, that's okay, too. Her book, Invasion of the B-Girls, is an entertaining volume that will tell you all about women who make the kind of movies she's made. I recommend ordering a copy for yourself if just ordering for a good cause isn't reason enough…though it really oughta be. She will also be a guest at the Frank 'n Con, a horror-oriented convention in El Paso, Texas on October 29 and 30 if you're in that area and want to buy stuff from her in person.

As I said, I've known Jewel a long time. I would like to know her a lot longer time. Please lend a hand to someone who needs and deserves many.

How I Spent Last Night

Posted on Saturday, October 8, 2011 at 10:47 AM

I spent a lovely evening up at the Magic Castle last night, along with my friends Paul Dini and Misty Lee. For those of you who don't know, the Magic Castle is a private club located in Hollywood. To become an Associate Member, you have to pay the initiation fee. To become a Full Member, you have to pay the initiation fee and have the membership committee certify you as a magician of some accomplishment. I am a Full Member, though my magic is a lot like my drawing: I can do it but I usually don't, deferring to others around me who are more skilled.

I used to draw a lot but then I started hanging around with people like Jack Kirby and Sergio Aragonés and Dan Spiegle and Alex Toth and…well, would you try to sing with Pavarotti in the room? Maybe you would but I wouldn't.

When I was a young lad, I would sometimes bore/amuse my relatives with lame magic tricks. This was when I wasn't boring/amusing them with my lame ventriloquist act. I had a card trick that called for me to force a card on a spectator…the King of Diamonds. Via a means I hoped wouldn't be obvious, I would get someone to select the King of Diamonds, all the time thinking they'd picked at random. Then I would vanish it.

Then I had an envelope that was sitting in plain sight during all of this. It had a King of Diamonds sealed inside — not the same one, of course, but all King of Diamondses look alike. So having vanished the selected King of Diamonds, I would then open the sealed envelope and there would be the chosen card, having miraculously disappeared from my grasp and reappeared inside the sealed envelope. Amazing. Anyway, that was how the trick was supposed to work. As it turned out, it worked even better than that.

I set up to perform my trick for a small group of relatives and their friends. I think I was about nine or ten. I placed the sealed envelope in view and then with the snottiness of every magician I had ever seen on TV, I announced I was going to ask someone to pick a card. Thinking he was being funny, my Uncle Aaron blurted out, "King of Diamonds!"

I couldn't believe the dumb luck but I kept my composure. I said, "Fine" and I skipped the card force and the vanish and instead handed the envelope to Uncle Aaron and asked him to open it. When he found the King of Diamonds inside, jaws fell open. Mark was the greatest magician of all time.

It was a powerful, prideful moment…a roomful of grown-ups utterly stumped as to how a child had done that thing he did. For months after it, some of them asked me to tell them how it was done because they couldn't imagine any way it was possible. I didn't tell them it wasn't possible. My parents kept asking me to perform the trick for other friends and relatives. I declined, explaining that a good magician never repeats a trick in front of the same people. At one point, my father wanted some friends of his who were visiting to see how brilliant his son was. He said, "If I leave the room, will you do it for them?" I don't recall the reason I came up with for declining but I didn't tell him I couldn't do it again.

I suppose in some lives, that would have been the key moment that encouraged the kid to grow up and become David Copperfield. With me, it had the opposite effect. I couldn't do another magic trick for my relatives and their friends because I didn't have anything else comparable. I pretty much decided to quit while I was ahead.

A few years later, my friend Randy Jacobs and I had a little "company" that ran birthday parties for younger kids. We'd organize games and activities, making some decent money for taking that burden off the birthday boy's parents. I did most of the entertaining. I had a puppet show. I drew cartoon characters. And I did a little magic act I worked up that include the card in the envelope trick as it was supposed to be performed. It worked well but some kid would usually yell out, "That's not the same King of Diamonds" and I'd want to say to them, "You're right…but you should see this trick when my Uncle Aaron is around." I now confine my magic performances to small groups when there are no kids present…and no magicians better than me. Which is most of them.

Anyway, great magicians last night…especially Jonathan Pendragon, who is now doing a solo act. We also enjoyed a fine juggler named Lindsay Benner, the brilliant marionettes of Scott Land and the incredible ventriloquism of my old pal, Ronn Lucas. [Warning: Ronn's webpage talks to you the minute you go there. Everything about Ronn talks to you.] I've been a member of the Magic Castle for more than half my life…since back when the food wasn't very good but you overlooked it because the rest of the evening was so sensational. Now they've upgraded the food to the point where you'd go there just for it…and the rest of the evening is better than ever. It sure was last night.

Libraries

Posted on Monday, November 22, 2010 at 6:28 AM

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Not long ago, I spoke at an event about comic books that was held in a public library. Upon entering the building, two thoughts collided in my brain at the same moment.

One was one of those "look how far we've come" observations. Comic books being heralded in a public library? When I was a kid, a library was where parents sent their children because they didn't want them reading comic books. Or at least, didn't want them reading only comic books.

The second observation was along the lines of, "Hey, I'm walking into a public library. How long has it been since I did that?" It had been quite a while…and the last two times were also to appear at events connected with comic books.

There was a day when public libraries were my home away from home…when I'd be in one at least twice a week to take something out or bring something back. My parents were big on the library and I almost always accompanied them. Then when I was old enough to go on my own, I went on my own. I was in one so often that if I overheard someone ask a librarian for the Dewey Decimal code for biographies, I'd call out "920" before the staffer could get the nine out. Naturally in high school, I worked in the school library…and I could have done that for a living if I'd wanted a real boring, thankless occupation that didn't pay and which would soon be obsolete. (I am not knocking librarians one bit. I admire them greatly, especially those who champion Free Press and public access to information. I'm just lamenting what has befallen the profession.)

Over in West L.A. on Santa Monica Boulevard, there was and I think still is a library I frequented. That I'm not certain it's still there should give you some idea of how long it's been. It was divided into two sections. When you walked in, the Childrens section was to your left and the Adult books were to the right. In theory, you weren't supposed to be looking in, let alone checking books out from the Adult section if you were under thirteen years of age. This is not because there was any pornography or filth on that side. They were just afraid kids might encounter a book that had the words "hell" and/or "damn" in it. I think I was around eleven (maybe ten) when I outgrew the Childrens section. I'd literally read everything in it that wasn't of the "See Spot run" variety. I'd even read all the Freddy the Pig books by Walter R. Brooks, and I didn't even like Freddy the Pig. It's just that I'd run out of books there I hadn't read and perhaps memorized.

My parents sometimes checked out books they thought I'd like from the adult section but what was obviously needed was for me to have the ability to browse it myself. That's when my mother called Mrs. Kermoyan. You may remember Mrs. Kermoyan from this anecdote. She was my elementary school principal and a big supporter of my writing and reading endeavors. I have one other story about Mrs. Kermoyan I'll tell here one of these days but this one is about how she somehow arranged for me to get an adult library card. The next time my parents took me to that library, I was handed a special, magic card that allowed me to read or borrow any book in the place. A moment of great pride.

Card in hand, I marched over to the Drawing/Cartoons shelf (Dewey Decimal 740, I knew) to see what they had for me there. I picked out a book at random, opened to a random page and found myself looking at a photo of a nude woman. What, I ask you, are the odds?

I immediately slammed the book shut — not because I didn't want to see the nude woman. I did, very much. In fact, I later checked her out in a couple of senses of that term. But right at that moment, I didn't want anyone to see me looking at the nude woman. I was afraid they'd think that was the only reason I wanted the magic card and so they'd take it away from me. One of my two great disappointments came when I realized that almost none of the books in the Adult section contained photos of nude women. I'd just gotten lucky my first time out.

That day, I checked out several books on comics and cartoons…and I later worked my way through many shelves of many aisles. Every so often, a library worker who didn't know of me would say, "Hey, you shouldn't be in this section" and I'd proudly haul out my card and show him or her, which made me feel pretty darn special. My second great disappointment would come when I learned that I wasn't the only kid my age to have such a card.

I liked taking books out of the library. What I didn't like doing was taking them back, though I always did. (One near exception came when I finally got hold of a copy of Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy by John McCabe — at the time, the only book in print on my two favorite performers. The L.A. library system didn't have a copy. The nearby Beverly Hills Public Library did. Using my aunt's address, I got a Beverly Hills library card just so I could check that one book out…and I kept it out for months. I'd renew it whenever I could renew it and when I couldn't renew it, I'd take it back, wait around until they returned it to the shelves and then check it out again. I only briefly considered claiming it was lost and paying the fine, which would have been a lot less trouble for me and for the library.)

Anyway, as I began to make a little money, I began to buy books as opposed to borrowing them…and that's about when I stopped going to libraries. A library was no longer my home away from home. My home became a library away from libraries. In some ways, that's not as good because you don't have as many delightful surprises. Then again, I rarely have to pay myself an overdue fine.

T.M.I. (Too Many Ingredients)

Posted on Saturday, June 5, 2010 at 8:49 PM

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Mock me if you will but I like foods that are kinda plain. To me, a hamburger is meat, bun, ketchup and maybe some onions — no cheese, no lettuce, no tomato, no chili, no mustard, no dressing, no nothing extra. Baked potato? Butter and sometimes not even that. Hot dog? Mustard only. Pizza? Cheese is fine. Maybe some mushrooms and/or meatballs.

You would not believe the condescending sneers you sometimes get from people who think there's something wrong with you as a human being if you don't like all sorts of excess, experimental things on your dinner. Or the number of waiters and waitresses who think you can't possibly mean that you want the chicken without the chutney-mango guacamole smeared all over it.

Actually, my servers have gotten better about this since I learned to make a funny issue out of these things when I order. Nowadays if you eat with me, you're likely to hear something like this…

ME: I would like the pulled pork sandwich but without the cole slaw.

SERVER PERSON: You don't want any cole slaw on the sandwich?

ME: I don't want any cole slaw on the plate. I don't want any cole slaw on the table. I don't want any cole slaw in the restaurant. You see those people at the next table eating cole slaw? Go take it away from them and tell the manager to remove it from the menu. If you can do something about banning it from this state, I'd be so appreciative, I might even tip.

Understand that I don't expect them to actually remove cole slaw from the menu or the state, though either would be nice. I just say stuff like that because I want them to remember that the large guy at table 8 really, really doesn't want cole slaw. About 90% of the time, this works whereas when I used to merely specify "no cole slaw," I'd almost always wind up with cole slaw…and a server who'd swear on some blood relative's life I said no such thing.

It's a problem I have with most restaurant meals, especially in new eateries. Between my food preferences and my food allergies, I'm always cross-examining the waitress and asking that they leave something out. Sometimes, they can't.

I long ago gave up ordering tuna fish sandwiches in restaurants because to me, a tuna fish sandwich is tuna, mayo or Miracle Whip, two slices of some non-exotic bread…and nothing else. Most places will leave off the tomato, lettuce, arugula, alfalfa sprouts, vinegarette dressing, cole slaw, etc. that their sandwich maker likes to heap onto the bread but they can't do much about what's already mixed into their tuna salad: Celery, chopped olives, Dijon mustard, onion, dill, cottage cheese, chopped avocado and so on.

The add-ins were not the problem. If they want to do that to perfectly good tuna fish, that's their right. My problem was the vast number of times I'd ask, "What do you put in your tuna salad?" and the person taking my order would say, "Just mayo." And then when the sandwich came, it would have chopped chili peppers or live caterpillars or something blended in. So I gave up on public tuna salad. I only eat what I make. In an upcoming post, I'll tell you how I do this…and believe it or not, I have something to complain about there, too.

For now, I just want to say: There are new moves across the country to force restaurants to divulge nutritional info on their menus. I'm not completely comfortable with this being mandated by law…though the info itself is welcome. Wouldn't you like to know before you order the Bistro Shrimp Pasta at Cheesecake Factory that a single serving contains 2,285 calories and contains 73 grams of fat and more sodium than they have in Utah?

But what I'd really like to see more restaurants do is tell you what's in what you're ordering and what can be omitted. I'd like to know before I decide that the turkey meatloaf comes in a sauce made out of the contents of old Lava Lamps and that the stuffed salmon is stuffed with teriyaki-flavored Soylent Green. It's pretty awful but it's better than cole slaw…

It's Not That Easy…

Posted on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 11:30 PM

Okay, so today I got my car back from the body shop. They took out dents all over and gave the thing a full paint job…and it looks great but I have this bizarre problem…

I don't know what color my car is.

When I bought it, the official color at the dealership was "jade." It was a very, very dark green…the kind in that in some lighting you'd take for black. But most of the time when you looked at it, you'd see green, which is what it says on the registration. The body shop said they could and would match that color but it's now a shade or two darker…so dark that it looks black in most lighting and green now seems to be the occasional exception.

I'm going to look at it for a few weeks and poll friends before I decide what I'm going to say when, for example, a parking attendant asks me what color my car is. There is green in there but if he goes looking for a green car, he might never find mine. Now, it kind of looks like a black car that ate a batch of bad clams.

Pussycat Placements

Posted on Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 9:29 PM

Hey, do you (a) live in Los Angeles and (b) want a cat? Lately, I've had a couple of friends — all of them actors, for some reason — ask me if I know anyone who'd like to give a good home to a good cat. In each case, someone in the household is allergic and they need to put a beautiful feline up for adoption. If you're interested in finding out more, drop me a line.