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This post ran on this blog on October 18, 2007. Nothing has changed about it except that it's now been 63 years since the article I'm writing about was written…

Here is an old article about Hanna-Barbera…

Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera old M.G.M. cartoonists have made five T.V. cartoon shows. Which have all hit the ratings. It started with HUCKLEBERRY HOUND show with HUCK, JINKS AND "THE MEECES" AND YOGI BEAR AND BOO BOO. Later QUICK DRAW McGRAW with Baba Looey, Snooper and Blabber, and Augie and Daddy Doggie. Yogi Bear got his own show then with 2 old characters, SNAGGLEPUSS and IDDY BIDDY BUDDY (NOW CALLED YAKKY DOODLE DUCK) Hokey Wolf and Ding-a-Ling COPIED AND REPLACED YOGI. Jinks and Pixie & Dixie copied M.G.M.'S Tom and Jerry (they look alike). Then the world's first adult cartoon show, FLINTSTONES (NOW IN THE MAKING, TOP CAT, ANOTHER ADULT CARTOON SHOW) El Kabong (QUICK DRAW McGRAW AS ZORRO BUT HE USES A GUITAR INSTEAD OF A SWORD.) Snooper and Blabber was the first detective cartoons. Augie Doggie was a copy of "Wendy and Breezy" (WALTER LANTZ) It is said that WALT DISNEY is jealous.

Hey, that's not a bad little article. The phrasing is awkward in places but the author knows his cartoons.

So…who wrote this article? I did. Why are some of the sentences so odd? Maybe because I was nine years old at the time.

It's amazing. Here it is, 47 years later and I still write articles about Hanna-Barbera and my writing hasn't improved that much. (I still use too many parenthetical phrases.) (Yes, I do.) (I really do.)

Robert Forman, a longtime reader of this site, suggested I rerun this piece that I posted here on January 14, 2009 when Ricardo Montalban passed…

In the early eighties, I was a writer on a short-lived comedy show exec-produced by Dick Clark called The Half-Hour Comedy Hour…not to be confused with at least two other shows that have appeared under that name. This was an ABC replacement series which, in format, was very much like Laugh-In. We even had as our producer Chris Beard, who'd been one of the main creative forces behind the original Laugh-In, and we taped on the same stage where that show had been produced. The cast included Arsenio Hall, Thom Sharp, Rod Hull, Peter Isacksen and, in their pre-Saturday Night Live days, Jan Hooks and Victoria Jackson.

Naturally, we had cameo guests. Mr. Montalban was then starring in Fantasy Island and they were about to replace Herve Villachieze in the role of Mr. Roarke's valet with Christopher Hewett. One day, the writing staff was informed about 11 AM that Mssrs. Montalban and Hewett would be there at 3 PM to tape something we would write in the next hour or so. One of the other writers came up with that something and Chris Beard approved it.

The way it worked with cameos was that the celeb would show up and the producers (in this case, a clever lady named Bonny Dore) would grab whatever writers were around to explain the script to them, perhaps acting it out and adjusting it, if need be. I was loitering on the set when Montalban and Hewett arrived and so was conscripted by Bonny for the occasion. Ricardo — he asked everyone to call him that — couldn't have been more charming. (Christopher Hewett was wonderful, too. I told the story of that encounter in this piece I posted when he left us.)

A couple of the other writers and I acted out the routine for our cameo guests. In it, a very attractive blonde lady with much cleavage thought he really was Mr. Roarke, granter of fantasies, and begged him to arrange her fondest longing, which was to have sexual relations with Ricardo Montalban. The punch line was something like, "I think we can work something out." You might think most actors, even the gay ones, would like that image — beautiful women lusting after him and all that — but to our surprise, Ricardo wasn't delighted.

He said, "Ah, that is a very funny routine you have written, gentlemen. Very funny, indeed. I am embarrassed to say I have a slight problem with it. You see, I have been married for close to forty years. My wife was a very famous actress and we have four children, and this is well known. For much of my life, I have attempted to counteract some of the more egregious stereotypes about Hispanics, including the image of the Latin Lover who sleeps with every woman who comes along…"

Now, ordinarily when an actor declines to perform a piece of material, you want to pull out a derringer and tell him, "Read the lines as written or I'll blow away your kneecaps." But Mr. Montalban was so gracious and he said what he said with so much charm…

And then he added this. He said, "I understand that to get a joke, you need to make fun of something about me and that is fine. Make fun of my age or my hair or my clothes or whatever you want. I trust you will make it funny."

Well, that sent us scurrying to make the man happy. "Give us ten minutes," we told him and then the other writers and I ran out into the hallway and huddled to come up with something else. We were constrained because we couldn't add props or actors or change wardrobe. We had to use the same set and the same blonde with the same set. Still, we came up with a joke we thought would work…a joke built on the premise (obviously not valid) that Ricardo Montalban was a man of extraordinary ego who thought he was the biggest star in the world.

Ricardo liked what we came up with and twenty minutes later, it was all taped and done. Before he left the stage, he made a special effort to seek out the writers and to thank us. I thanked him for being so cooperative and I said something like, "I guess we made you look a little vain in the sketch…"

"Oh no," he said. "That is not a problem. I just did not want people to think I would ever cheat on my wife. I don't mind if they think I am a conceited asshole but I would not want them to think I would ever cheat on my wife."

Later, I told the story to a friend who wrote for Fantasy Island. He said, "That's Ricardo. This would be such a wonderful business if all actors had even a third as much class." That's true. Ricardo Montalban was talented and handsome and gifted and a true gentleman. And he was definitely not a conceited asshole.

I received an e-mail the other day and started writing a response to it. A strong sense of déjà vu swept over me and I thought, "I've written this reply before!" It only took a little digging to find what I was remembering. I received a message about pretty much the same thing from a different person. Here is that message and here's what I wrote in response here on October 20, 2010…

Here's an excerpt from another one of those messages from someone who's not making much money as a professional writer and wants some advice. I don't claim my advice is worth more than anyone else's but if you want to heed it, I won't stop you. In the following, I've redacted a long list of projects that the author sees as inarguable dreck. I cut it because the discussion really isn't about those works and because a couple were written by friends of mine…

…the thing that gets to me is that I watch TV and I read comics and I see work being bought that is so obviously inferior to what I do. It wouldn't bother me so much if I thought I was being beaten out by better people but some of the shows today like [LONG LIST DELETED] just stun me. My wife is sick of hearing me screaming at the TV set or throwing down some comic I brought home from the shop. I could cope with the rejection if I felt the contest was fair and that the judges didn't have their heads up their butts. How do you think I should deal with this?

By ignoring it. Really. The field in which you and I are working is a flawed meritocracy. It's all about the best work rising to the top…and sometimes, it does. But we've all seen studio heads greenlight the wrong movie, network programmers buy the wrong series, publishers publish the wrong manuscript, etc. That is never going to change and to get mad at it is like getting mad that your favorite baseball player sometimes strikes out.

Actually, I should back up here and note that when you see, for example, a TV show where the writing seems to suck, you are not seeing the writing the writer did. You're seeing his or her work after it has been through a process…perhaps rewritten by others, certainly interpreted by actors and a director, changed or skewed by many hands. It is entirely possible (in some situations, almost probable) that your wonderful script could endure that process and by the time it hit the air, it would be no better than what you're decrying…and some frustrated writer would see it and his wife would hear him yell about how being rejected when that kind of debris was selected. A writer-friend of mine who left us too soon, Bill Rotsler, used to have a saying that came to mind as I typed the above. It was, "Those who think they are the exceptions are wrong."

But even if rotten work is getting bought, don't let that anger you. In fact, don't let anything in this area anger you. Being mad can be one of the best ways to not get hired. There was a writer I used to run into at Guild functions and committee meetings who couldn't utter two contiguous sentences without one of them being about the crappy show he saw last night and how in the name of all that's holy does that garbage get bought when his brilliance goes unbought and unproduced? Having never read one word he's written, I honestly have no idea if he truly was as good as he seemed to think…but I do know that if I were in a position to hire writers, he's about the last guy I'd consider. Who wants to work with a screaming maniac?

There was a time in my past when I used to think of other writers as competition, as if the successes they enjoyed somehow subtracted from what was possible for me. When I stopped thinking that way — stopped caring about how well someone else was doing at all — I got a lot happier as a writer…and, I think, a little better. I have tons of flaws and shortcomings and weaknesses but that was one I was able (I think) to get rid of. It involved a realization that the system isn't "fair" in the way we'd like it to be. The buyers are not going to always select the best writers any more than the voters are always going to select the best candidates. Stop expecting otherwise and just do your best work…because the system doesn't always fail.

This is a partial rerun of a post that ran here on February 21, 2002 but down below, there will be a little line and everything below the little line will be new content. It's about a Broadway show that I have never seen called Subways Are For Sleeping…

A friend sent me this picture of a famous (in Broadway lore) full-page ad that ran only once and only in one edition of The New York Herald-Tribune.  Wanna hear the story behind it?  Good.  In 1961, the notorious Broadway producer David Merrick had a musical called Subways Are For Sleeping that was limping along at the box office, losing business and about to warrant closure.  One reason was that the seven major Broadway critics had been indifferent — some, outright negative — about it.  So, if only to cause trouble, Mr. Merrick had his staff dig up seven men with the same names as the seven critics. He brought the men in to see the show, wined and dined them, and secured permission to use their names and photos along with quotes about how much they enjoyed what they'd seen.

An ad was prepared and submitted to all seven newspapers…and it would have gotten into all seven, some say, had not a copy editor at one of the papers spotted the hoax just moments before press time.  (The tip-off?  The photo of Richard Watts.  The theatre critic with that name was not black.)  The alert copy editor phoned all the newspapers in town and they all pulled it…except that the early edition of the Herald-Tribune was already on the streets.  No matter.  Merrick secured what he wanted, which was an enormous amount of publicity.  The grosses on Subways took an enormous leap upwards and, while the show was never a huge hit, it managed to last out the season and turn a modest profit.

It was a brilliant publicity stunt…and one that Merrick had wanted to do since the idea occurred to him years earlier.  What stopped him was that, back then, the critic for The New York Times was Brooks Atkinson…and Merrick couldn't find anyone else with that name.  When Atkinson retired, he was replaced by Howard Taubman…and there was an insurance agent named Howard Taubman.

Some called Merrick "The Abominable Showman" and there are those who worked with him who still get migraines at the mention of his name.  I don't doubt that all or most of their tales are true…but I do think this ad was a stroke of genius.  They don't make them like David Merrick any longer…which is both good and bad.

---

Okay, that was the little line and this is Mark now writing on 3/3/24. Like I said, most people have never seen the show Subways Are For Sleeping. It opened on Broadway on December 27, 1961 at the St. James Theater in New York and, as I explained back in 2002, received pretty not-good reviews. It closed there on June 23 the following year after 205 performances — not an out-and-out flop but a pretty disappointing number for a show with book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and a score by Jule Styne.

The show the three of them had done just before it was Do-Re-Mi, which was a hit and before that, they'd done Bells Are Ringing, which was an even bigger hit and later Comden and Green did On the Twentieth Century with Cy Coleman. Those were three successful shows that I really liked.  The director of Subways, Michael Kidd, had plenty of hits to his credit and there were some stars in the cast — Sydney Chaplin, Carol Lawrence, Orson Bean and Phyllis Newman. Ms. Newman's wardrobe for the entire show consisted of a bath towel and you'd think that alone would have sold some tickets.

So what went wrong such that Subways closed so soon and is almost never revived? It was suggested that its basic storyline — about homeless people who used subway cars as sleeper compartments — turned off a lot of New Yorkers. Well, maybe. I'm among those many who've never seen the show and I can't seem to find a copy of the script anywhere. But I do have the cast album and I also have the record below, which was made by Percy Faith and his Orchestra featuring instrumental-only, jazzed-up recordings of the songs from the show. Mr. Faith and that orchestra of his did a lot of records like this and he always made the material sound really good…

While I was ensconced recently in that Rehab Center for my busted ankle, I listened to a lot of music via Spotify and some of it was show tunes from shows I didn't know. I happened upon Mr. Faith's recording of the tunes from Subways and I thought, "Hey, these are great!" — certainly worthy of the good name of Jule Styne. So then I listened to the actual cast album of the show and I thought, "Hey, these aren't great!" I'm not sure what to think.

I expect to get a message from my pal Jim Brochu who knows everything about Broadway shows but I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone else reading this saw it or even performed in a production somewhere of it and can provide some insight. Or a copy of the script.

If you want to listen to the Percy Faith record, it's here on YouTube with a second Percy Faith album attached. It's also here on Spotify. If you want to listen to the original cast album, it's here on YouTube. And here's a tune from the show performed by Judy Garland. Maybe that's what the Broadway production needed: A Judy Garland…

Busy day here. This first ran on this site on March 31, 2005. The last time I drove by, the restaurant described below was still there and I still haven't been back for a meal…

Guess I'm on a kick of recalling near-defunct restaurant chains. I was thinking today about Piece O' Pizza, a string of eateries that once decorated the Southern California landscape…an amazing reach considering the awfulness of their signature product. Do you like pizza where the crust tastes like matzo, the toppings have the thickness of carbon paper and you can't decide whether to eat the pizza or the box it came in?

If you do, you'd have loved Piece O' Pizza pizza. Just awful. What kept them in business, it seemed to me, was their great, racy slogan ("Had a piece lately?") and the fact that there then weren't a lot of other places where one could grab a fast pizza to take home.

Also, they served a decent meatball sandwich and a more-than-decent (and very cheap) spaghetti plate. Many of the Piece O' Pizza stands were in "Skid Row" style areas, and I bet that spaghetti plate kept a lot of homeless people alive.

Like I said, they were all over L.A. There was one on Pico just east of Sepulveda. The building's still there but now it's a Numero Uno. All the other ones I know of were torn down completely. There was one at Beverly and Fairfax, another on La Brea just south of Hollywood, another on La Cienega near Airdrome…and (I'm guessing) at least 200 more.

As far as I know, there's only one remaining. It's down on Venice Boulevard about a half-mile west of Sepulveda. A year or two ago, I was in the neighborhood and in need of rapid lunch, so I decided to go in and have the spaghetti plate, just to see if it was still the same. I also shot the photos you see here. Since there is no parent company now to supply the preparations, I was expecting totally different cuisine…but the meat sauce was more or less what I recalled, or at least it seemed to have evolved from the same recipe.

I probably won't go back since I now have better places to eat. I suspect that's what killed off the Piece O' Pizza chain in or around the late eighties. As Numero Uno and Pizza Hut and even Domino's spread, everyone had a better place to get a quick pizza or to have one brought to their door.

Speculating further, I'd guess that too many of their stands were located in depressed areas, which made it difficult for them to upgrade their product. It would have been awkward to simultaneously improve their menu (making most items more expensive), advertise that they'd done this…but still service the crowd that just wanted the cheapest-possible plate of pasta.

I don't exactly miss the places since they weren't that good. On the other hand, I've been to fancy Italian restaurants where I enjoyed a $20 entree a lot less than I liked the Piece O' Pizza spaghetti plate. Even in the early eighties, it didn't cost much over two dollars…and that included garlic bread.

All this talk about Albert Brooks movies and my mention of Writers Guild strikes caused several of you (well, two) to suggest that I encore this story I posted here back in 2006…

When Lost in America opened, I took a date to see it at the first matinee on opening day in Westwood. We both enjoyed it up until the scene where Julie Hagerty goes on a gambling binge in Las Vegas and loses most of the money they have in the world. It's a funny scene but when I looked over at my lady friend, she was trembling and crying.

As she later explained to me, someone in her family had destroyed many lives by doing pretty much the same thing and it was just too painful a memory for her. "I'll wait out in the lobby," she said as she got up from her seat. Since I didn't know what the problem was at the moment, I got up to go with her, much to the annoyance of all the people we had to climb over to get out of our row.

As we headed out into the lobby, I caught a glimpse of a man sitting in the aisle seat in the last row. It was Albert Brooks and he looked like we'd struck him over the skull with a Louisville Slugger. Here it was: The first day his new movie was open and two people were walking out on it. I felt bad about his pained expression for days.

This was in 1985. Three years later, the Writers Guild was on strike and I was working the tables at a mass picketing of one of the studios. Everyone whose last name started with A-G had to check in with me. I remember I logged in Michael Blodgett, star of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and then the next two people in line were Albert Brooks and James L. Brooks, who had apparently arrived together.

I thanked them for showing up in alphabetical order, which made it easier to find their names in my paperwork. Then I said to Albert, "Listen, I have to apologize to you for something…" I told him the story of our walkout and why it had occurred and I assured him that I went back on my own a few days later and thoroughly enjoyed the whole movie. I said, "Now, I know you don't remember this but —"

And he interrupted and said, "Remember that? I had nightmares about you two. I thought you were the leaders and your walkout would give everyone else the idea and they'd all go, 'Hey, those people are right. This sucks! Let's get out of here!'" Then he grinned and said, "No, I don't remember that at all."

I hope he really didn't and that he just wasn't being nice about that last part. I've always really enjoyed his work and I wouldn't want to cause the man one sleepless moment. So just in case, when I go see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, I'm telling Carolyn we're staying to the end, no matter what.

Ridiculously busy today so you get a rerun…in this case, of part of a post from May 4, 2005. Every so often, someone writes me that they remember some post from the past on this site but cannot locate it. In the last year or three, several folks have asked about this story so I'm re-presenting it here.

I posted it the first time after spending a whole night at the Emergency Room at UCLA Medical Center, which is where the paramedics took my mother at 2 AM one morning. My mother went home from the hospital a few days after this and lived for another seven years and five months but the story's not about her…

Very early Thursday morning, I was in the Emergency Room at U.C.L.A. Medical Center with my mother…and I must say, she received superb treatment. Everyone was nice and efficient and, well, if you absolutely have to be in such a place, that's the place.

My mother was on a gurney surrounded by one of those flimsy curtains they have in hospitals. Next to us, there was another gurney with another woman on it, and I could not help but overhear what was transpiring over there. The lady, who was maybe sixty, had been brought in with some sort of balance problem — an inner ear disorder, I believe I heard the doctor say. Whatever it was, she could not stand without falling. She had fallen twenty-four times in as many hours, and was clinging to that gurney for precious life.

The doctor — same one who treated my mother — was a charming, authoritative man. He looked like Pernell Roberts, sans toup and spoke like Ricardo Montalban, sans accent. Having treated her and decreed that the problem was gone, he asked her to stand. She was too scared to do this. "I'll fall over," she said.

He assured her she would not. A male intern came over and the doctor promised that they'd stand on either side of her and prevent her from falling. She refused. He promised her there was no way she could fall. She said no, she couldn't. The doctor told her she couldn't stay there on that gurney forever. She didn't answer. She just clutched the side of the gurney and held on, tight and trembling.

Calmly, and with a disarming friendly manner, he engaged her in conversation. Where was she from? What did she do? Did she have any hobbies? Two minutes into this chat, she happened to mention that she'd once been a champion ballroom dancer.

The doctor brightened. "Oh, it's been so long since I've danced with someone who really knows how. Would you dance with me?"

The woman looked at him (I assume — I was just listening) like he was nuts. "D-dance with you? Here?"

He said, "Why not? Just a few steps. Do it for me…please."

I don't know if it was because he was so charming or because he was a doctor but, sure enough, the woman slowly turned loose of the gurney and allowed him to help her to her feet. Within moments, I could see them dancing around the small amount of open space in the Emergency Room. There was no music, of course, but the doctor hummed and they waltzed about for maybe a minute.

Just as I was about to ask if I could cut in, the doctor stepped lightly away from her, leaving her standing there…on her feet, in full possession of her balance. If you'd seen the expression on this woman's face — tears of joy as she realized she was not falling — you'd have witnessed one big reason why people become doctors.

Here's a rerun from June 4, 2011…

Recently at his site, Michael Barrier has been discussing Walter Lantz, the prolific animation producer who gave us Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy and others. A reader of this site, Alan Willson, wrote to ask me, "Did you ever cross paths with Lantz? Any personal anecdotes?" Not many, I'm afraid. I met Mr. Lantz but once and I'll tell you about it in a second. But first let me tell you the way in which he was important to me.

As a kid, I was a fan of his cartoons. Of course, as a kid, I was a fan of most cartoons. As one gets older, one's interests and tastes evolve. At the same time I was avidly watching The Woody Woodpecker Show on Channel 11, I was also watching (and loving even more) the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons on Channel 11 and the early Jay Ward cartoons on Channel 7 and later 4. I still like and enjoy Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and other H-B programs of that era. I still love and admire Rocky and His Friends and other Wardian concoctions. Whatever positive feelings I have for Woody and Company are not unlike my emotions re: Bosco chocolate syrup and Circus Animal cookies. I can't and don't eat them today but I do remember how much joy they gave me at age 10. Somewhere downstairs here, I have a VHS tape of Woody Woodpecker cartoons that I picked up for a couple of bucks once in a KMart. It literally contains every Walter Lantz cartoon that I can recall ever really liking as an adult.

Some of the cartoons he produced have expertly-done musical numbers and I suppose most were as well-animated as the budgets of the time allowed…but I feel scant connection to the characters or the jokes or the storylines. And to the extent that I even like the characters, that's mainly because of their appearances in the Dell comic books that were created and printed by Western Publishing Company. I liked a lot of those comics…which Mr. Lantz and his immediate staff didn't write or draw. In fact — and this is a visceral feeling, not a logical one — as a kid, I felt the cartoons were wrong and the comics were right. The Road Runner in the Dell comic books didn't match the Road Runner of the cartoons and there, it was clear to me that the comic book version was the aberration. With Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda and other Lantz properties, it felt like the cartoons were wrong…and also wildly inconsistent, whereas the comics had one generally clear vision.

But what I really did like about Walter Lantz was that he taught me the basics of cartooning. He taught them in little film segments on the Woody Woodpecker TV show like this one…

I would sit there with my pad and pencil and follow along. Even though I never carried it to the point of real professional cartooning, doing that had a lot to do with the fact that I now work at all in the creative arts. I can interface with the best cartoonists in the business and understand what they do when we collaborate…but I also think that whatever flair I have for writing is connected to having filled many a pad with cartoons at an early age.

Where I really learned something ostensibly from Walter Lantz was when I acquired a book called Easy Way to Draw. I wrote about it back here and I still consider that volume to be as important to my life as any book I ever owned. An idea I've toyed with for some time is to grab friends like Sergio Aragonés and Scott Shaw! and to try and do a new book that will work the same magic on kids in that age bracket. I would start by resolving that the book was for ages 6-12 and that I really didn't care if one person older than that would buy or could even understand it.

So when I finally met Walter Lantz, it was a very special moment for me — one of those encounters when you feel the need to say to someone, "You have no idea what you did for me…but thank you for what you did for me." And that's pretty much what I said to him.

It was at the opening of an animation art gallery in West Hollywood around 1984 or '85. (Mr. Lantz passed in '94 at the age of 95.) I saw him there and got June Foray to introduce us, and the first two things I noticed were that he was very short — not a whole lot taller than I was when I was watching his drawing lessons — and that he talked exactly the same way in person that he'd talked in them. He really did sound like he was reading off-camera cue cards and that was somehow comforting.

He'd been standing for some time shaking hands at the gallery and was looking for a place to sit down for a spell. Recalling a bench a bit away from the mingling area, I suggested that and led him to it. So I got to sit with Walter Lantz for maybe a half-hour of Q-and-A. Unfortunately, it was mostly Q's from him and A's from me. June had introduced me glowingly as a great friend and important person in the cartoon business (half-right — the first half) and once I told Mr. Lantz that I'd gotten into cartoons because of him, he really just wanted to hear more about that. It was clearly a big deal to him that he'd been responsible for the "next generation" — or maybe I was a generation or two past his — but it felt odd to sit there and be peppered with questions about where I went to college and how he'd inspired me.

Most of what I did get him to talk about was the relationship between his operation and Western Publishing. He dearly loved Chase Craig, who'd been my editor when I wrote Woody Woodpecker comics and others, and he'd been delighted with Western's comics and activity books of his characters. He admitted to me that at some point, they were the creative force behind much of what he was doing in his own studio. The evolution of Woody's official design, for instance, was influenced as much by what the Western artists were doing as by anything done by folks on the Lantz payroll…and many talents went back and forth between the two employers. (In this article, I explain how a character created by folks at Western for the comic books became a semi-valuable Lantz property, much as Disney got Uncle Scrooge out of their relationship with Western.)

Mike Barrier says that when he interviewed Lantz in a more formal context, he also got little out of him. People in animation often develop what I call "talk show versions" of their history…little abbreviated anecdotes that are simplified down to be quick and comprehensible to folks outside the business and which come with built-in punchlines. They tell them so often to reporters that they often can't shift back to the real stories. This was often a problem if you spoke with Mel Blanc, as well. Asked about Porky Pig's stuttering, he'd launch into the same tale he told in Johnny Carson's guest chair and so many other places about going out and studying pigs until he decided a grunt was a stammer. Unless you reminded him that he was the second voice of Porky, replacing a guy who really did stutter, that was all you got out of Mel. At one point in our half hour and with zero inquiry from me, Mr. Lantz launched into the oft-heard-but-apocryphal saga of creating Woody Woodpecker when a real woodpecker kept interrupting his honeymoon.

But you know what? I loved it. It was like hearing Tony Bennett sing about leaving his heart in San Francisco…which probably also didn't happen.

So I didn't extract a lot of historical data or wisdom about animation from Walter Lantz but so what? I got to tell him that he was a good teacher and that he'd inspired one more kid to move towards his life's work. I'm sure there were a lot of us and that he only got to hear it from a very small percentage.

I first posted this on November 5, 2007 when the Writers Guild was in the midst of a very long and nasty strike. I reposted it the last time a strike by my guild was possible and now that another seems imminent, there seems to be a need for it again. It's about residuals, a concept which often seems alien to folks who work in professions where there are none, nor would they be appropriate. Based on how often this piece has been read and copied, I wish I'd gotten residuals on it…

Dave Bittner sends a question which others have asked in various forms and which piggybacks on my previous posting…

There's a fundamental aspect of this whole writers strike that puzzles me, and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. How did the whole residuals system start, and become the standard of what's considered "fair" in Hollywood? In most other industries, even creative ones, a person gets paid for doing a job, and that's it. There's no expectation of ongoing payments. If I sell my house, for example, I don't send a check to the original architect, even though his design work contributes to the ongoing value of the property.

No, but if a Harry Potter book goes into another printing, J.K. Rowling gets another check. I disagree with you that ongoing payments are not the norm in creative industries. I get payments if an issue of some comic book I wrote in the seventies is reprinted. I get payments if a song I wrote in the eighties gets played again. It is a generally-established principle that if you create something that has an ongoing value — particularly if its reuse competes with new product — additional compensation is appropriate. This is not to say it's always paid. Comic books, for a long time, didn't pay for reprints. A lot of animation work still doesn't pay for reruns. But that's because of the way the financial structure of those fields developed, with creative folks placed at an economic disadvantage and not having the clout to get reuse fees. I don't think it's because they don't deserve them.

Residuals exist for a couple of reasons. One is that they are deferred compensation. Let's say you want to hire me to write your TV special and there's no WGA and no residuals and we're negotiating out in the wild. I suggest $10,000 would be a rational price. You were thinking more like $5,000. I point out to you that this is likely to be a great show that will rerun for many years to come and that you'll be able to sell it again and again and again. If we could be certain it would be, ten grand to me wouldn't seem unfair but as you point out, we can't be sure that it will have all those resales. So how do we resolve this?

Simple. We invent residuals. We agree that I'll write the show for $5000 or maybe even a little less, and that I'll receive another $5000 if you can sell it for a second run and then maybe $2000 if there's a third run and $1000 for a fourth and so on. The reuse fees are not a gift to me. They're part of the deal…and by the way, this is not all that hypothetical a scenario. I've made deals with this kind of structure for animation projects where the WGA did not have jurisdiction. Even some pretty stingy cartoon producers were glad to make them because it lessened their initial investments to have me, in effect, share a little of the risk.

(A quick aside: The other day, I was talking to Lee Mendelson, who produced all the Peanuts specials. He's making a new deal for the early ones, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, which is probably the most often-rerun TV show ever produced. Every time he sells it again, he gets paid again, often at rates comparable to what a newly-produced cartoon special would cost. The thing has made millions and millions of dollars each decade since it was produced and it continues to earn. Would someone like to look me in the eye and tell me Charles Schulz never deserved a nickel after the first run? Lee sure wouldn't make that argument.)

That's a very mature, honest way of doing business. What wouldn't be honest is if we made our deal as per the above and then you did the following. You say, "Wait a minute! I don't pay my plumber every time I flush my toilet," (a famous quote from a studio exec fighting the concept of residuals) and you try to lop off the back-end payments and just pay me the initial $5000 or so. No. The $5000 wasn't my fee for writing the show. It was more like a down payment. I wouldn't have done it for $5000 without the other part of the contract. But every so often in Hollywood, some exec gets the idea that they can maximize profits by reneging on the back end of their deals, and we have these silly, periodic battles over residuals.

Anyway, all of the above is one rationale for reuse payments. Another is a tradition — not in every circle but some — that creative folks share when their work has ongoing value. The reason we have a Patent Office in this country is that we wanted to encourage people to invent new ideas and that means giving them a structure through which they can cash in on their brainstorms and not be excluded from the ongoing exploitation of them. Residuals are one way that writers and artists avoid being excluded.

Yet another is that they are compensated when the lasting value of their work preempts new production. A situation which has occurred quite often in the cartoon business is this: You're hired to do a show and you really do a fine job on it. Everyone does. You get 40 or 65 episodes done and they're so good that when they rerun, kids are eager to see them again and again and so the ratings don't go down much. At some point, the studio says, "Hey! These shows are so strong, we don't have to spring for the cost of any more. We can just run these over and over forever!"

And they lay everyone off.

You're out of a job because you did it so well. This has happened many times and it continues to happen. Reruns narrow our opportunities to work on new product.

So if I'm writing a new show…well, I don't want to sit there and think, "Hmm, I don't want to put myself out of work. I'd better not do too good a job on this." That's not healthy for my soul and it sure isn't the ideal situation for my employer. It's far better for all of us if I have that incentive to make the show as big a hit as possible. That means I have to have an ongoing financial interest if the show turns out to have an ongoing financial value. I won't mind getting laid off if I'm sharing. I will mind if all I've done by contributing to a success is put myself out of business.

There's a lot more I could write about this but I have to get a comic book written this morning and then go picket this afternoon so this will have to do for now. The last thing I'll add is that I've been a professional writer since 1969. I've written comics and cartoons and live-action shows and screenplays and songs and stand-up comedy and commercials and books and magazine articles and…well, you name it. Sometimes, I've been excluded from the ongoing value, if any, of my work. Sometimes, I haven't. The healthiest business relationships I've had have been those where I had residuals or royalties or some other financial participation beyond my up-front paycheck — and I mean healthy for me and for the entity that was issuing those checks. Inclusion is a very wise thing for All Concerned. It puts you all on the same team, working for the same goal.

In all those creative fields, I've never encountered any employer or producer or publisher who thought I, or others doing my job, didn't deserve that continuing share. I've met a number who thought they could get by without paying it and sometimes, they can. But since they get paid for the rerun of the TV show or the resale of the movie or whatever, they certainly understand and embrace the concept of getting paid when a piece of work has enduring value. It's just that some of them want to keep it all for themselves.

I'm too swamped with Stuff I Gotta Do to write something new this morning here so here's a short rerun.  It's part of a post that ran here on June 20, 2006 when my go-to drug store was transitioning…

Last night, I went back to my friendly neighborhood Sav-on Drug Store which, to the confusion of elderly patrons everywhere, is becoming a CVS Pharmacy. A sign out front promises that the new establishment will have "More convenient hours." Since the place is now open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, I can't wait to see how they manage that.

I was there to pick up a renewal on a prescription and the man behind the counter fetched it and announced, "That'll be $91.88." I said…well, here. I'll let you listen in on what I said…

ME: What? I've been getting that prescription for two years and it's always been ten bucks.

PHARMACIST: (after consulting his computer) You're renewing it ahead of schedule. Your insurance doesn't pay unless you're within seven days of running out.

ME: And when will I be within seven days of running out?

PHARMACIST: (after consulting his computer again) June 20.

ME: It's 11:54 PM. In six minutes, it'll be June 20.

PHARMACIST: And in six minutes, it'll be ten dollars.

ME: I suppose there's no point in mentioning that I'm not going to be taking that pill tonight. I am just as "out of it" as I will be in six minutes.

PHARMACIST: Right. There's no point in mentioning that. At this moment, it's $91.88.

I went to the end of the line and saved eighty bucks. Makes you wonder what the mark-up is on these pills. And the funny/sad part of it is that this particular drug is also sold over-the-counter without a prescription for $23. I'd hate to think there are uninsured people out there who don't know that and are paying the $91.88, but I'll bet there are.

By the way, I'm told by several folks that not every Sav-on is becoming a CVS. Good for them. This conversion is already becoming way too traumatic for me.

The fine comic actor Louis Nye died on October 9, 2005 and I posted this obit here. Then the next day, I posted the story you're about to read (I hope) about him and my father. Mr. Nye, by the way, was buried the following day…at Hillside Memorial Park, the cemetery where my father was buried.

Part of this piece is about Yarmy's Army, a social club to which I still belong and I should mention this: Since this article was first posted, every single member of the group who is named in this piece has passed away. And almost everyone on the current roster turned out last week for the funeral of our member Budd Friedman…at Hillside.

Louis Nye was that rare kind of comedian — a guy who was always funny even when the material wasn't. Lots of comedians can be funny with sharp lines and clever dialogue. But on various old Steve Allen Shows, they used to stick Mr. Nye in sketches and situations with none of that and he still managed to amuse. One time, in fact, they deliberately put him in a bad sketch with zero to do. Allen tipped the audience beforehand that, as a prank and an experiment, they'd rehearsed one version of the skit that afternoon, then done last minute cuts and rewrites (which were not rehearsed) to remove everything Nye had that was even vaguely amusing. Incredibly, Louis Nye managed to wring a fair amount of laughs out of his part anyway…and then at the end, when Steverino revealed to him what was up, he threw a mock hissy-fit that was hilarious.

There's a quote sometimes attributed to Ed Wynn that differentiates between a comic and a comedian: "A comic says funny things. A comedian says things funny. A comic will open a funny door. A comedian will open a door funny." I'm not sure that Mr. Wynn had the right nouns there — comic and comedian seem pretty interchangeable in my experience — but he had a point. There are some performers who are just funny brushing their teeth or carving a turkey. Whatever that kind of funnyman is, that's what Louis Nye was.

I speak as a lifetime watcher of Mr. Nye. Even as a small boy, he was required viewing in our household. My father went to school with Louis Nye back in Hartford, Connecticut, and I need to make the point that they were not close friends. They were just in the same classes, occasionally playing baseball or handball at lunchtime. After about age eleven or twelve, they went their separate ways but he was still my father's closest connection then to Show Business so he became an unabashed Louis Nye fan.

No matter what Nye was on, Dad had to watch it…which, since we only had the one TV, eventually meant I had to watch it. This was no hardship as Nye was usually on the hippest, funniest shows on television, including all those Steve Allen programs and, sometimes, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows. (A few months back when our pal Howie Morris died, I directed you to a video link for the funniest sketch that ever appeared on Mr. Caesar's weekly extravaganza. Many people think it's the funniest sketch ever done on television. Louis Nye was also in that sketch.)

I'll tell you how much my father enjoyed watching Louis Nye. When Nye became a semi-regular on The Beverly Hillbillies, my father even watched a few of them. That's devotion.

My father passed away in 1991. Shortly after that, I was attending a play and at intermission, I spotted Louis Nye in the lobby, signing autographs for others who'd recognized him. I decided I should introduce myself and tell him some of what I just told you. I hovered around, waiting as he signed and bantered with admirers but there wasn't time. The lights began to blink to signal the start of Act Two and I didn't get to talk to him then, nor could I find him after the play. Three or four years later, almost the exact same thing happened again at a restaurant. He and his party were waiting for a table, me and my party were waiting for a table…and just as I positioned myself to interrupt and introduce myself, his table was ready and I again failed to meet Louis Nye.

Five years ago, I was at a meeting of Yarmy's Army. This is a club comprised of comedians — mostly older comedians — founded in memory of the late Dick Yarmy, a much-loved character actor. Much of the original group has drifted apart, in part due to internal squabbling and in part due to so many of its members passing away. One recently said to me, "We don't need to have monthly meetings. We see each other now at monthly funerals" and that's true. Most charter members were present for the recent Pat McCormick memorial. Most were present one month to the day later in the same theater for the memorial for Don Adams (who was Dick Yarmy's brother, by the way). They'll all see one another at the Louis Nye memorial.

But when it was at its peak, Yarmy's Army was a great place to hang out and you were very honored if you were invited to do so. The last meeting I attended, the "round table" included Shelley Berman, Howie Morris, Tom Poston, Don Knotts, Pat Harrington, Gary Owens, Chuck McCann, Harvey Korman, Jerry Van Dyke and about a dozen others of that breed…and Louis Nye. When there was an opportune moment, I practically ordered Gary Owens to introduce me to Mr. Nye.

I told him that he wouldn't remember my father — like I keep reminding you, they weren't close buddies — but that they'd gone to school together in Hartford and as a result, Louis Nye Watching had been an important part of my childhood. I gushed a bit and told him about one sketch in particular that had me howling for days. It was a parody of the movie, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? with him and Steve Allen in drag as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. This was around '62 when the film was current, and they'd done a spoof that had careened wildly off-script with Nye devouring scenery and alternately readjusting his wig and fake breasts while Allen literally rolled on the floor, laughing too hard to get his lines out. For sheer laughter, it was a close runner-up to that Your Show of Shows sketch I just sent you scurrying to watch again.

Mr. Nye said he was very flattered and amazed that I recalled it after so many years…but then he did me one better when he asked my father's name. I said, "I'd bet a year's pay you won't remember him."

He said, "I won't bet you but try me."

I told him my father's name was Bernard Evanier. He thought for about ten seconds and then said, "I went to school with a Beryl Evanier."

I don't gasp often but I gasped then. My father's birth name was Beryl. He changed it to Bernard when he was eighteen.

When I got home, I did the math. My father was born in 1910 but entered school late. Louis Nye was born in 1913. A reasonable guess would be that they were in class together somewhere between 1922 and 1927. The Yarmy's Army meeting of which I write occurred in 2000.

Louis Nye had remembered my father's name for more than seventy years.

I think that says something about him more than just that he had a great memory. It says something about caring about people and the world around him, and he also took the time to ask me about my father — what he'd grown up to be, when he'd died, how he'd died, etc. Before that meeting, I knew what a tremendous performer Mr. Nye was. Standing there, seeing how touched he was that his work had meant so much to someone else…well, I just couldn't help but think what a genuinely nice man he must have been. What a genuinely nice, funny man.

A problem with my laptop is making it beastly difficult to type so I can't yet write up any closing thoughts on this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. So here's a rerun of a post that ran here way back on July 23, 2003…

That's me interviewing Ray Bradbury at the Comic-Con International in San Diego. Much of what he said at the event fell into the general category of "Encouragement For Aspiring Writers" and it sent me into spasms of Flashback. In 1968 when I was a lad of 16, I went with several friends to Mr. Bradbury's office in Beverly Hills for what we thought would be maybe a half-hour of his time. It wound up being all afternoon, as he seemed to enjoy the chat as much as we did. He liked talking about comic books and strips and science fiction, and about the way the mainstream world treated those of us interested in such things.

That day in '68, Bradbury had powerful memories of growing up in Los Angeles (like we were doing) and participating in fan-type clubs (as we were then doing) and feeling a bit out of sync with the world (ditto). So we were in awe of him and he identified like crazy with us, especially after being informed that I was aiming to be a professional writer. The advice he then gave me was all pretty generic and obvious but the fact that The Great Ray Bradbury was telling me to keep at it had enormous impact. It made my intended occupation sound eminently possible and when I went home and told my parents that Ray Bradbury had told me to keep at it, they took it as airtight proof that I was on the right path — this, despite the fact that Mr. Bradbury had not read one syllable I'd written. I have the feeling he had the same effect on at least a few folks who were in the audience last Saturday afternoon. He's one of those writers that makes you feel like a writer.

I subsequently met Mr. Bradbury maybe a dozen times. One encounter that I prize occurred around 1978 when I came across a copy of a movie magazine that contained an article he'd written. It was all about his experiences as screenwriter of the 1956 film of Moby Dick and, of course, quite interesting. The following weekend, he was making an appearance at a local mini-con that I knew always had rotten turn-outs, so I went and took the magazine along. Sure enough, upon my arrival I found Ray Bradbury sitting there, ready to sign anything fans brought to him…but no one was paying him the slightest attention. Since he didn't drive, he was stranded there for the next few hours, until the con ended and its organizer could take him home — bad for him, good for me: I had him all to myself. We sat and talked, mostly about Los Angeles and what was to become of it. When I hauled out the magazine, he practically jumped out of his chair. "I don't have a copy of this," he gasped. "I've been looking for one for years."

For the next five minutes, we argued: He insisted on paying me for the magazine. I insisted he just take it. We finally compromised: He would take it and send me an autographed book. He asked me which of his I wanted and I said, "It doesn't matter. I'm probably not going to read it since I already own well-worn copies of every one of your books. I just want to put an autographed Ray Bradbury book on my shelf. Send me whichever one you have the most copies of." He seemed to like that answer. Even better, he liked that I offered to rescue him from the dreary convention by driving him home. A few days later, he sent me an autographed copy of The Martian Chronicles in Swedish and another of a short story collection in German — a terrific, clever gesture, I thought.

I interviewed Mr. Bradbury last year at the Comic-Con. He is in poor health, primarily from a couple of strokes that have robbed him of most of his ability to walk. At one point, I felt it was appropriate to tell him that though I was sure he didn't recall it, I had visited his office in 1968 and he had been most encouraging, sending me well on the way towards this thing my agent and I laughingly call my career. He smiled and said he had a vague memory of it…but of course, I assumed he didn't and was just being polite. This year, we had a few more minutes to chat before the panel as he sat there in his wheelchair, looking for all the world like someone who couldn't recall his name, let alone past events. When I reminded him I'd moderated the same event last year, he said he remembered…and then surprised the hell out of me by saying, "You gave me a magazine once…about Moby Dick." That would have been an impressive feat of recollection even for a man who hadn't had a stroke.

I guess we're too quick to assume that if the motor skills don't function properly, the brain doesn't, either. Just like last year, when the program started, he suddenly turned pretty much into Ray Bradbury from the waist-up. Owing to a set-up problem, we couldn't get him onto the elevated stage so we had to situate him on the floor in front of it, where more than half of the 1000 people present were unable to see him. It almost didn't matter. His mind was sharp and his words were passionate. He touched every person in that hall and infused them with a large dose of inspiration and creative energy. A fellow who sat way in the back, unable to see Bradbury even during the standing ovations later said to me, "This may sound weird but it really felt like he loved us all." He did…and the feeling was more than mutual.

Still battling that deadline. Here's a rerun from November 26, 2011…

I didn't post for the last 25+ hours because I went shopping on Black Friday. Many have tried it. Few have returned. And the ones that did return were returning stuff they bought that didn't fit or work.

Actually, it wasn't so bad at the Costco in Tustin today — don't ask what I was doing in Tustin — though they were out of almost everything I wanted. On the way in, a nice lady handed me a coupon book of this-weekend-only specials and I went off to one side to page through it. Amidst the many bargains were low, low prices on three items I wanted. (I was not, by the way, shopping for gifts for anyone. I was buying stuff for me.)

There was a new Seagate external 2 TB hard drive for something like 19 cents. I forget the real price but I didn't pay it anyway since they were all out of them. There was sign that said that because of the shortage caused by flooding in Thailand, there was a limit of two to a customer. And then underneath that sign, there were no hard drives.

I stopped a friendly Costco employee, pointed to the little coupon in the book I'd been handed not five minutes earlier and asked, "Are there any more of these around?" I received a slight snicker and the information that they'd sold out at 10 AM that morning. It was now around 12:45 and I asked him, "What time did you open?"

He said, "Ten."

I asked, "How many did you get in?"

He said, "Ten."

Then he laughed and said, "No, we had a few hundred of them here but people just swarmed in the door and I blinked and they were all gone." It was that way with the two other items I found in the coupon book: Fresh out. I could only find about eighty dollars worth of non-advertised items to buy, which is kind of pathetic considering it's Costco where I've been known to spend that much on canned tuna.

The checkout line actually went rather swiftly. The checker asked me, "Did you find everything all right?"

I pulled out my coupon book and pointed to three separate coupons. "Yes. I found where you were out of this and out of this and out of this."

He apologized and said, "It was kind of a crush here this morning. We opened the doors and all these people just poured in and grabbed up all the specials. The thing is, a couple of those items have been available here at the same price for weeks and some of them are the same price online. I guess it just seems like a better bargain if you buy them on Black Friday."

Sorry I didn't get to post more new stuff today. Here's a rerun from March 3, 2008…

Friday afternoon, I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles office to get my drivers license renewed. It's customary to make cracks about long, long lines at the D.M.V. and employees who act like Lee Majors running in slow-motion…but I was in and out in twenty minutes and it would have been ten, had it not been for an incident I'll describe in a moment.

Renewal by mail was possible but I wanted to get a new photo taken. I've lost more than 100 pounds since the last one was snapped (99+ pounds of flesh, one pound of hair) and the pic doesn't look much like me these days. I've had two hassles with T.S.A. employees at airports and one with the only sales clerk who actually looks at the photo when you pay with a credit card and the store policy is to check the customer's i.d. It's amazing how many "look" and don't notice that the picture doesn't particularly resemble the patron.

I arrive at 12:15 for a 12:20 appointment and am given a form to fill out and return to the window. When I return it, there's a man ahead of me having an emotional breakdown. He's around 65 (I'm guessing) and he works for a company not unlike Super Shuttle that drives folks to the airport…and even with eye glasses as thick as the Berlin Wall, he has just failed the vision test and been told his license will not be renewed. Amidst angry tears and yelling, he is arguing with a D.M.V. employee who is just trying to enforce the rules and hasn't the authority to do anything else.

As near as I can tell, the argument goes roughly like this: "I cannot drive without a license. If I do not drive, I do not have a job. If I do not have a job, my family cannot pay rent or purchase groceries. Therefore, you must give me a license."

The D.M.V. staffer explains very politely that the eye exam is not something that can just be ignored. It's given for a reason. He's sorry but the applicant had several cracks at it — however many are permitted — and he failed. A supervisor of some sort comes over and the conversation is moved to one side (so I can go about my business) and it is repeated. As I'm waiting for my new photo to be snapped, I can hear the supervisor saying, "The fact that you need the job doesn't change the fact that you failed the test."

All the people who are sitting around and waiting have heard the exchange. They feel sorry for the man whose livelihood has gone away with his vision. They also feel sorry for the D.M.V. employee who was screamed at as if he'd decided to starve the man's family.

Behind me in line, waiting for her picture to be taken, is a lady who I'd guess is in her eighties. "It's so sad," she says. "That poor man." The man waiting behind her says, "Why don't they just give him a license?" To which the woman replies, "Would you want to ride with a driver who can't see well enough to pass the eye test here? That's scary."

I lean over and say, "The scary thing is that he was driving people to and from the airport yesterday, maybe even this morning."

"That's not even the scary thing," the man says. "The scary thing is that he's going to drive home from here. When I'm going through the parking lot, he'll probably be going through the parking lot." Then he thinks for a second and adds, "You know, my company has jobs where you don't have to drive and good vision isn't essential." He pulls out a business card, tells the lady to save his place in line, and goes over and gives one to the man who has just lost his license.

That's all there is to this story. My picture is then taken so I leave and I can't tell you what, if anything, happened as a result. But I'd like to think it will all lead to a happy ending.

This article ran here on May 19, 2011. The Kmart of which I write is long gone from my neighborhood. The building actually turned into a museum of Britney Spears memorabilia before it closed for COVID and it's still shut tight.

Why did it stop being a Kmart?  Because as we've discussed occasionally on this blog, Kmart and its sister company Sears have been mismanaged into near-oblivion.  Once upon a time, there were 2,486 Kmarts in the world.  Today, there are about a dozen.  This piece may also suggest a reason for their decline…

My cleaning lady told me we were all out of Lysol. I said I'd pick some up and I forgot when I was at the market the other day. So I stopped this morning at the closest place to get some, which was a nearby Kmart.

In the parking lot, which also serves a CVS Pharmacy, a Whole Foods and a few other businesses, I ran into a lady I knew who used to have a high position at the NBC Network. We made small talk which got smaller when I mentioned I was on my way into the Kmart. She looked at me like I'd just said I was about to go down to Skid Row and bunk with the homeless people. "Why would you ever go into a Kmart?" she asked…and "To buy Lysol" turned out to not be much of an answer.

"It's just…" and here she was having trouble finding the words to express why that was wrong. The point was so obvious to her that it went without saying. Finally, she said, "Kmart is for the kind of people who'd shop at Kmart."

Well, hard to argue with that. I said, "I need some Lysol. They sell Lysol. What's wrong with going there to buy it?"

She pointed to the other end of the mall and said, "They probably have Lysol at the CVS store."

I said, "Yes…and it's the exact same Lysol and it's probably not any cheaper down there, plus the Kmart is closer."

When I noted it was the same Lysol, I suddenly reminded myself of something. Ten or fifteen years ago, I had to buy a small household appliance. I checked out Consumer Reports and they recommended a certain brand and a certain model. Let's say it was the Acme 74W. The next day, I was passing that Kmart and I ducked in to see if they had it. They didn't but they had the Acme 74X. I thought, "Well, how different could that be?" and I bought it.

Which turned out to be a mistake. It was a terrible product. I phoned up the Customer Service folks at the Acme Company (not the same one that makes Road Runner traps) and asked if I'd gotten a defective item or I didn't understand how to use it or what. I got an uncommonly honest person on the phone who told me basically that I'd purchased their crappy version. The 74W was a fine product. The 74X was a piece of junk.

"You should have looked at the price," she said. "The 74W is $65. Places like Kmart can't or don't want to sell it to their clientele so we designed the 74X for them. You probably paid about thirty bucks for it."

I looked at my Kmart receipt which I'd pulled out for possible returning purposes. "I paid $29.98," I told her. She said, "Well, there you are. I mean, it's a good thirty dollar appliance but it's like paying less than half of what you have to spend to buy a decent meal. Some people can't afford anything better. That's why they have the Value Menu at McDonald's."

I took her point. The $30 appliance went back to Kmart for a refund and I found the 74W online for $50 and ordered it. It worked fine.

If I'd been the Acme Company — which actually has a famous name, one you'd probably know — I don't think I'd be putting my brand on cheapo merchandise. I might service that marketplace with products under another trademark but I don't think I'd devalue my reputation by applying it to intentionally low-grade products. But that's another matter. Standing there in the parking lot, talking with the lady who used to work at NBC, I thought, She's right in a way. She's just not right about this particular example. They don't make a cheaper grade of Lysol.

At least, I don't think they do. The bottle I ended up buying said on it, "Kills All Germs!" not "Kills Some Germs and Not Others!"

She didn't want to shop at Kmart because of some sort of snobbishness. I don't mind shopping there but I've learned to be cautious of the mindset that the cheapest alternative is always the one you should buy, which is sometimes the dynamic you get in a place like Kmart.

But not always. Not long ago in a men's store, I found a kind of pajama that I really like. A pair was $40 and I'd been meaning to go back there and buy a couple more next time I'm in that area. Now I don't have to. While carrying my other purchase out of Kmart, I passed through their men's clothing section and found the same pajamas — and I mean exactly the same — for $19.95.

I just told this story on the phone to a friend of mine who remarked, "Great…but what if it turns out the $19.95 pajamas are so cheap because the people who make them in some primitive country have a deadly disease and it's transmitted through the material?" I thought for a second and replied, "Well, I guess that's what the Lysol is for…"