Category Archives: Uncategorized

Do you own a piece of original artwork from MAD Magazine? No? Well, here's your chance. Their star caricaturist, Tom Richmond, is letting a number of pieces go at prices that, well…I like Tom a lot but I think he's really turned into one of The Usual Gang of Idiots. These are way underpriced…which is good for you. Hurry over to his sale and buy something before he wises up or, more likely, smarter people clean him out. This guy's real talented…and it's always fun to take advantage of someone else's mistake.

I have no information on when online ticket sales will resume for the Comic-Con International. I don't know. I don't know that they know at the moment. But these are real good folks running this operation and I'm sure they'll get this problem solved.

I mentioned in this post about the wonderful programming at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, California. I should have also mentioned that the same folks program the Egyptian Theater up in Hollywood and they also have screenings of rare old films, often accompanied by interesting guests or panels. And I really should have linked you to the current scheduled for the Aero Theater and the Egyptian Theater. Note that next Sunday at the Aero, they're running Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and there will be a panel discussion with folks who worked on that landmark holiday special and Darrell Van Citters, who authored this fine book about the making of said special.

From a reader of this site who goes by the handle, Dubba-hugh…

On every other blog run by a professional writer, I've seen the answer to the meme, "When did you first know you were a writer?" So, Mr. Evanier, why are you holding out on us? When did you first know you were a writer?

Disbelieve it if you will but it was in Kindergarten. I began reading Dr. Seuss books at a very early age. I largely taught myself how to read (I have no idea how) from the output of the Good Doctor as well as piles and piles of comic books, mainly of the Dell funny animal variety. About the same time I was first enrolled in Kindergarten, I was taken to the first play I'd ever seen. There was an investment firm up on Wilshire near Highland that had a small theater. I think it seated around 35 people and on weekends, they had local actors come in and put on plays for kids…some kind of invitational perk for the families of employees or clients. My Aunt Dot and Uncle Aaron were investors there and they got us tickets. So one Saturday afternoon, my mother took me to see a presentation there — a stage adaptation of The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins that I don't think Dr. Seuss or his agents knew about. (Can you imagine? A real estate investment company doing something unethical? Good thing that doesn't happen these days.)

It was a perfect intro to theater for kids. Our visit started with some sort of director or instructor welcoming us individually and then because I was new to this, explaining what a play was and how I should sit still for it and not make a lot of noise…a lesson I wish they'd teach adults who go to the theater these days. Our welcomer also explained that Bartholomew Cubbins would be played by a girl and that this was a long-standing theatrical tradition, as in Peter Pan. Part of my job as a member of the audience was to pretend along with the actors on stage…in this case, to pretend that the girl was a boy. I didn't quite get why they didn't just get a boy to play a boy but it was no hardship to pretend. We then saw the play, which was the perfect length for a kid my age — about twenty minutes. I remember the lady playing a boy playing Bartholomew doing a deft little sleight-of-hand trick as she kept placing hat after hat (actually, the same ones over and over) on her head to simulate hat after hat appearing there.

I was quite smitten with that whole world and when I got home, I re-read and re-re-read the Seuss book. We always had a couple of his checked-out from the public library and my mother, wisely thinking I might want to contrast and compare, had made certain we had that one in the house that weekend.

The following Monday at school, we were given construction paper and crayons to draw on. I decided to write a book. In fact, the book that I decided to write was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. I began to write and illustrate my version of it from memory. When the allotted time for drawing ran out, the teacher saw what I was doing and encouraged me to continue while the other kids did other things. So I sat there another hour or so until I finished…and she was so amazed at what I had done that she sent my "book" up to the principal, who was equally impressed. The next day, I created my own version of another Seuss classic, Bartholomew and the Oobleck, which I had not seen on stage but had read about ninety times.

I would later learn that this was a great way to launch a career as a professional writer. Many successful authors got their start stealing from Dr. Seuss.

So much fuss and encouragement was made over my little construction-paper books and about some subsequent, wholly original ones, that I just kind of assumed, "Okay, this is what I'll do with my life." In later years as I proved to be utterly inept at anything involving physical skills or math, that decision was constantly reinforced. Being a writer seemed like a great idea if only by default. If I stood a chance of doing anything well enough to earn a living at it, it was that. Years later, I met a rather stunning fashion model and heard someone ask her why she got into that line of work. She said, "I looked in the mirror and decided the only thing I had going for myself was my looks…and besides, I really enjoyed it."

I kinda always felt that way about writing and never considered any alternatives. When friends of mine were fantasizing about being movie stars or Los Angeles Dodgers or the President of the United States, I would stick with my goal because it seemed quite satisfying and, perhaps as important, quite reachable. I've been at this for 41 years and so far, it seems to be working.

For some reason, I got to thinking recently about a kid named Travis who was in my third (I think) grade class at Westwood Elementary. Travis was one of those "me, me, me" guys who wanted what he wanted and he wanted it right away…and that was it. Nothing mattered in the world except what Travis wanted. He stole things from other kids. He lied left and right, often for no visible reason. He misbehaved constantly and blamed everyone else. But his finest hour came one morning when our teacher, Mrs. Reed, decided to show us how bread was baked.

There was a small stove in the Teachers Lounge and the whole class crammed in there to watch her break the eggs and sift the flour and such. Before long, the air was filled with the most wonderful smell of hot cinammon-infused bread and we were all salivating something awful. Mrs. Reed did a headcount. Including her and the student teachers, there were 40 of us…so she carefully cut the bread into forty pieces of equal size. One by one, we were to walk up to the table and each take our one piece. So Jeanette Bingle went up and took her one piece. And Ricky Kamen went up and took his one piece. And Cindy Segal walked up and took her one piece.

And then Travis walked up and grabbed about eight pieces.

Before anyone could stop him, he licked five of the pieces and crammed the other three in his mouth, thereby laying claim to them all. Mrs. Reed shrieked at him and all the students booed and yelled at him. His response? With his mouth full of cinnamon bread, he kept saying over and over, "I want it! I want it!" One of the student teachers scurried up and grabbed the rest of the bread away before he could get his hands on any more of it.

Travis was sent off to the principal's office while Mrs. Reed dealt with the reassignment of the remaining slices. I think she and her aides decided to forego their shares and a few other pieces were cut in half. I do remember getting half a slice.

Travis did not return to class that day. The following morning, Mrs. Reed asked me to go to the principal's office, not because I was in any trouble — my entire time in school, I was never in any trouble — but because I was needed there. I soon found myself in a meeting with Mrs. Kermoyan (the principal), Travis and the father of Travis, who'd come in at Mrs. Kermoyan's request. My initial impression was that I could have picked Travis's father out of a crowd with great ease. He looked exactly like his son but older and pudgier…and I would soon learn that selfishness is apparently hereditary, as well. The father was annoyed he'd had to take time off from work and come in.

I'd been brought in as a kind of witness. Since Mrs. Kermoyan hadn't been present for the incident, Mrs. Reed had sent her most trustworthy student to describe what happened. I felt a brief twinge that maybe I shouldn't "rat" on a fellow pupil…but it wasn't exactly a secret what had transpired. I was just saving Mrs. Reed from having to leave the class alone and come down to this meeting. And also of course, this was Travis, who'd been nothing but rotten to all of us and who certainly wouldn't have hesitated to speak ill of anyone else, even to the point of lying.

So I politely told what had occurred and underscored the fact that I'd been cheated out of half a slice of bread. When I finished, Mrs. Kermoyan asked Travis if my account was accurate. He agreed it was. Then she looked over at the father to await his comment…and when it came, I couldn't have been more surprised.

He didn't see what the problem was. In fact, he was rather proud of his boy.

"In this world," he said, "you have to grab for everything you can get. You have to knife the other guy before he can knife you…because he will." Then he turned to his son and said, "Good work."

I vividly recall the expression on Mrs. Kermoyan's face. I would not see that expression again for seven more years…not until the release of the movie, The Producers and the "Springtime for Hitler" number. She stammered as she told me I could go back to class and I left her there, pondering I suppose what she could do in this situation. She couldn't exactly punish Travis for being the lad his folks had raised him to be.

An hour or so later, Mrs. Kermoyan's assistant came in and cleared out Travis's desk. We never saw him again, which did not disturb anyone. I'm guessing he was transferred to some other school which was better equipped for dealing with "problem" students. Unfortunately, I don't think the L.A. Unified School District has ever had any schools equipped to dealing with problem parents.

I remember a lot about those days…but I probably recall the incident with Travis most vividly. It was my first real understanding that real people (i.e., those not on television) could be bad people…though in later years, I would substitute other, more nuanced adjectives for "bad." I'd like to think he outgrew that all-encompassing selfishness — a lot of kids I knew did an absolute one-eighty from what they were in school — but who knows? I do know I encounter people from time to time who remind me of Travis and I see an awful lot of them on news talk programs.

As alleged adults, they're usually a lot better at couching their general hoggishness in terms that suggest they're motivated by principles and concern for others. But it's still "me, me, me" all the time. As the economy in this country continues to suck and the job market recovers at about the speed of soil erosion, I see Travis everywhere and I hear echoes of his father, from whom I got a valuable lesson. I don't recall learning anything from Mrs. Reed in fourth grade but I sure learned I didn't want to be like, or even around people like Travis or his dad.

The other day, I somehow got to thinking about one of my favorite possessions when I was a kid: A reel-to-reel tape recorder. Somewhere around age eleven, my parents bought me a bulky Webcor model that would record and play 7" reels of audio tape. A few years later, it was stolen and my Uncle Nathan bought me a new one — a Sony model similar but not identical to the one in the photo above. You have no idea how much joy I got out of those machines. I made little homemade radio plays. I interviewed friends. I bought some reels of old radio shows via mail order and listened to them on the tape recorder. I taped shows off the air so I could enjoy them again later.

I used to tape long stretches of music off a local "top 40" radio station and then I'd select the songs I liked and use my little tape splicer to build them into a reel of favorite tunes. I must have listened to that reel of faves five hundred times as I worked in my little bedroom. It became so ingrained in me that to this day, whenever I hear the song "No Milk Today" by Herman's Hermits, I instinctively expect it to be followed by a playing of "Jimmy Mack" by Martha and the Vandellas. Because that's what came after it on that tape I played night and day.

But perhaps my greatest use of the tape recorder came when I invented the VCR…

I loved watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and also The Dick Cavett Show, which were both on late and opposite each other. It annoyed the heck out of me that on a school night, I couldn't stay up late enough to watch either…and when there wasn't school the next day, I could only watch one. I used to sit up near the TV in my bedroom (which had no remote control) and switch back and forth between the two shows, which still meant I missed a lot. Finally one day, I had a brainstorm.

I went to a nearby Radio Shack. They have since removed the space and they now call them RadioShacks but otherwise they were the same then as they are now: Lots of neat stuff sold by people who have no idea what any of it is or what to do with it. I knew what to do with some things they sold. I bought a radio that could pull in TV sound, a timer and couple of audio cables. At home, I combined them with my beloved reel-to-reel tape recorder. Thereafter before I went to bed, I would study TV Guide and decide which late night show to record — Carson or Cavett. Then I'd set my invention accordingly. The timer was deliberately adjusted so that when it read "11:30," it was actually 11:29 to allow for pad. At the prescribed moment, with a series of clicks that sometimes woke me up briefly, it would turn the radio and the tape recorder on, record the audio to the selected channel for 95 minutes, then turn both off. The next day when I came home from school, I could enjoy the sounds of Johnny's program or sometimes Dick's of the night before.

On nights when I could stay up late, I would watch one show and record the other. I usually watched Johnny and recorded Dick because I found that Mr. Carson's show was usually more visual. Listening (only) to Johnny, you missed those great reaction shots and facial takes, and this was also back when he'd do a lot of physical stunts and demonstrations.

It was a great system…and yes, I regret that I didn't save every one of those tapes. After I listened to one, I'd record another show over it.

I used my invention from around 1967 through about 1972. My life began to get busier and I began to lack the time to listen to what I was recording…so I'd skip some nights and eventually, I began to skip all of them. Then the Sony broke and I thought, "I have to get this fixed or replaced soon" but never did. In the late eighties, my friend Marc Wielage loaned me a reel-to-reel tape recorder — by then, not the easiest thing to get one's hands on — for a few weeks and I examined what remained of my old collection of tape reels. About half turned out to be unplayable, the result of my having bought the cheapest-possible tape as a kid and not storing it properly. I was able to dub off a few nuggets of audio treasure and put them onto cassettes. One of these days, I'll have to dig out those cassettes and see if what's on them can be converted to MP3s. I'm not sure anything there would matter to anyone but me. Mostly, what's on them would be a nice reminder of the days when I recorded those shows and of how important certain things were to me back then.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have no greater fan than me. Maybe if I'd made the trek to Washington for their rally, the sheer fellowship of the party would have given me a different view of the event…but on my TiVo at home, it seemed like a 3-hour bore. The musical acts were nice but I wonder how many of those who did show up were there for The Roots and Sheryl Crow, and how many were expecting something on the order of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. The segments where Jon and Stephen held stage struck me as so eager to not offend anyone or seem political that they were without a lot of point…up until the end when Stewart made his little plea for sanity and cooperation in the nation. It was eloquent and funny and very, very sane…but even there, if he said anything that anyone who wasn't in the cable news business could disagree with or anything that would encourage any kind of change anywhere, I missed it.

In interviews preceding the rally, Stewart seemed oddly unable to articulate just what its purpose was. From that, I may have guessed wrongly that he knew but didn't want to say, lest he provide ammo for those eager to shoot back at him. Once I saw the rally, I started to think that maybe he didn't have much of a purpose other than to show you can fill the National Mall with people who aren't there because they think the end is nigh. Then again, maybe some of the people who did make the trek went because they're terrified of the kind of people who showed up to hear Glenn Beck.

Getting back to his end speech, which I've embedded below: I was kinda hoping/expecting he'd button it with something about how fear drives out sanity; how the folks in our nation who are most apt to be spreading anger are the ones who are most afraid. Either that or they just see the dollar signs and empowerment that come from exploiting and fanning the anger of those who are afraid. It seemed like that was where he was headed…and maybe he just thought it was too obvious a point to make. Instead, he showed us cars trying to navigate an awkward merger of lanes on a thoroughfare and he said…

Every one of the cars that you see is filled with individuals of strong belief, and principles they hold dear — often principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers'. And yet, these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze, one by one, into a mile-long, 30-foot-wide tunnel, carved underneath a mighty river. And they do it, concession by concession: you go, then I'll go. You go, then I'll go. You go, then I'll go. "Oh, my God — is that an NRA sticker on your car?" "Is that an Obama sticker on your car?" It's okay — you go, then I go.

And sure, at some point, there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder, and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned, and he is not hired as an analyst!

That's a good line but I'm not sure I buy it as a working analogy. I don't think that individual is scorned. I think on Tuesday, some of those individuals are going to get elected…and their main selling point is that they don't make concessions. John Boehner is playing to his kind of voter when in speaking of the Obama agenda, he promises, "We're going to do everything

Eager to scare the living bejeesus out of the kids in your neighborhood? Well, you could show them any commercial Glenn Beck has made lately but that would be too, too cruel. Far better is this: Carve yourself a Groo-o'-Lantern! Our friend Ryan Claytor figured out how to do it and he's more than willing to share his secrets and the pattern with you at this site.

And while you're there, take a look around. Ryan is a clever cartoonist whose work I've recommended in the past. This Halloween, why not give yourself a treat and order a volume of his "And Then One Day" autobiographical comics? Start at the beginning so when you get hooked and need more, you can go chronologically.

Regular readers of this blog are probably sick of items wherein I rave about my pal, Frank Ferrante. Frank spends about half his year touring in a one-man (plus piano player) show called An Evening with Groucho. In it, Mr. F. creates a jaw-dropping and very funny tour de farce as that Marx fella. I will soon be linking you to a calendar of his upcoming Hackenbushing but in this post, I will not gush about Frank's portrayal of Julius "Groucho" Marx. No, in this post I'm going to gush about his other job.

Frank, you see, has this other identity — a flamboyant, outrageous gent named Caesar who intermittently stars in productions of Teatro ZinZanni…and now, here's the hard part 'cause I have to explain what Teatro ZinZanni is. Imagine a grand tent inside of which you find a swanky restaurant that serves a gourmet meal as a bevy of wonderful food servers and performers put on a show all around you. There are singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats in the style of (the comparison is unavoidable) Cirque du Soleil and artists whose skills are awesome but utterly unidentifiable. This all transpires not on a faraway stage but up close and personal. The aerial acts are practically over your head in the intimate theater. The dancers are sometimes performing not just near your table but actually on it, skillfully not stepping in the fine soup you have just been served.

This is a fine description but I need to explain more. It is sometimes difficult to tell where the attractive wait staff leaves off and the equally attractive cast takes over. Some of each serve you. Some of each entertain you. The performers roam about in character, chatting you up and entertaining you while you dine. That's when they aren't dancing…or hustling you up out of your seat to dance with them. The show is quite interactive…and did I mention the sensational live five-piece band? The compleat ZinZanni experience runs about three hours. They serve you the first course. They perform for a while. Then they serve you the second course and perform while you eat it…and so on. You leave quite well-fed and, of course, utterly entertained.

Two Teatro ZinZanni venues exist in this country — one in Seattle and one in San Francisco. I was at the latter last evening, catching Frank Ferrante and friends in the latest, soon-to-close production. (It will be replaced by an all-new one next week and it'll probably be wonderful though Frank and the other follks I saw won't be in it. Frank is tentatively slated to appear at the Seattle location the middle of next year for a while.) Boy, was he funny. Caesar is allegedly the evening's chef and he keeps popping up throughout the show to describe the bill of fare, woo the leading lady — Cleopatra, of course — and bring audience members up to participate in good-natured scenes and sketches. There's a lot of a certain mustached Marx Brother in Caesar but also plenty of Frank, a very quick-witted improviser indeed. I really enjoyed watching him work.

Which is not to say he's the whole show. Everyone in it is great but I'll only mention the two others we spoke with after the festivities. Dreya Weber plays the breathtaking Cleopatra, looks the part and sings as well as she looks. You'd think that would be enough but she also does a dazzling aerial act and is very funny in her role as Caesar's love interest. Then there's Tim Tyler, an Australian comedian and juggler with a face of pure, unvulcanized rubber and a happy spirit that pervades the room. He does a bit with ping pong balls, blowing them into the air and catching them in his mouth, that is one of the most unforgettable (in a good way) acts I've ever seen. Some of the physical feats, like the couple that runs up and down a big metal pole like Spider-Man and Spider-Woman making out, leave you thinking, "I did not just see that." But you did.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I had a very good time. Everything was grand, except maybe the most impossible feat of the evening, which turned out to be getting a cab in the rain after the show. For a while there, I thought maybe we'd have to stay until tomorrow night's performance. And you know something? It would have been worth the wait. Thanks, Frank.

Back around '03, some of us in the animation community were saddened to hear that our friend Jim Korkis was going to stop writing his wonderful and informative pieces about the history of the Walt Disney Studio. Though many have covered that territory, Jim had a unique way of finding out about stuff that no one had previously documented. No more Korkis articles? What a shame.

Fortunately, around the same time as Jim's announcement, a new Disney scholar suddenly began appearing in most of the same venues — someone named Wade Sampson who had the same knack as Korkis for ferreting out hitherto-uncharted Disney lore. Sampson even wrote a lot like Korkis…and before long, it was the worst-kept secret that the new guy was the same guy, writing under a nom de mouse. I knew because Jim told me but others figured it out…and it's no longer classified information. Jim even cops to it in this fine new book I'm recommending to you…The Vault of Walt. It's an engrossing "must have" for anyone interested in Disneyana. Jim covers things like Walt's ventures into radio shows, movies that were never made, things you never knew about movies that were made, etc. It's 478 pages of that kind of thing, unauthorized and uncensored but also reverent and respectful. (Walt's eldest daughter supplied the foreword so if you're expecting scandal, you're looking in the wrong place.)

Here is an Amazon link to order your copy. If you're even remotely fascinated by Mr. Disney and his amazing company in its creative heyday, click and get yourself one. Of all the folks who've written major works about Walt this year, Jim Korkis is my favorite. And Wade Sampson is a close second.

So…does anyone know what that song is that they play on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson when Secretariat dances through or runs through or whatever it is he does?

By the way: Funny bit.

Here's a rerun of an item I posted here a few years ago…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I really don't like Halloween and never have. Even as a kid, the idea of dressing up and going from house to house to collect candy struck me as enormously unpleasant. I did it a few times when I was young because it seemed to be expected of me…but I never enjoyed it. I felt stupid in the costume and when I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked.

And of course, absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

My trick-or-treating years were before there were a lot of scares about people putting razor blades or poison into Halloween candy. Even then, I wound up throwing out just about everything except those little Hershey bars. So it was wasteful, and I also didn't like the dress-up part of it with everyone trying to look maimed or bloody. I've never understood why anyone thinks that's fun to do or fun to see.

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple bags of leftover candy myself. The last few Halloweens, I've switched to little boxes of Sun-Maid Raisins, which are a lot healthier if I get stuck with them. Maybe I ought to switch to candy corn. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about anyone eating it. And if no one comes, I could just keep it around and not give it out again next year.

The only thing that's changed since I first wrote that is that my sweet tooth has disappeared to the point where I don't even like Sun-Maid Raisins. I've stocked up on little bags of peanuts to give out if any kids show up…which is highly unlikely. And also I've received about six dozen e-mails from liars who are trying to get me to believe they like candy corn.

Slate is running a series of articles to note the 40th anniversary of Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury…

• There's this interview with the cartoonist himself…
• There's this listing of what they call the 200 most memorable moments in the strip…
• There's Gail Collins writing about her favorite character in the feature…
• There's Nicholas Von Hoffman writing about the intersection of Hunter S. Thompson and Uncle Duke…

…and I believe there are other pieces to come. But those will hold you for now. And I do have to make a note to read Doonesbury more often because I always enjoy it when I do.

A reader who signs his message Nikola sent me this link to a genuine piece of comic book history — a sketch that artist Harry G. Peter sent Dr. William Moulton Marston to try and settle on a costume for their new character, Wonder Woman. The handwritten notes are interesting as is the way Wonder Woman looks a little sexier here than, I think, she ever looked in the comic. But then the way Peter drew her in the comic all those years, she was about as sexy as Edgar Buchanan. I was always curious why, given all the artists then around who could have produced "good girl art," they went with Peter. Marston had effective creative control of the feature so it must have been a "look" he wanted…but why? Some of those early stories are pretty kinky so he probably had some sort of subtext in mind…and if I could have forced myself to read more than a dozen or so of those comics, I might be able to figure it out.

It's come to this: I have begun lying to pussycats. In particular, I have been lying to several of the feral cats I feed on my back porch. I do not feel good about this but I have found it necessary to lie to them, particularly to the one I've named Max. In the photo above, the cat on the left is called The Stranger Cat and the one on the right is Max.

Max is perpetually hungry. In the morning when I get up and go downstairs, Max is waiting. If I don't immediately open the sliding glass door, he pounds on it with a paw and he howls until I open a can of Friskies cat food (preferably, Mixed Grill) and the opened can and I are outside on the porch. Now, the way he would like his meal served is as follows: I would put one spoonful into the bowl. He would eat it in full, then give me a look and I would put another spoonful of food into the bowl and he would eat it. And then another spoonful and another and another until the can was empty, whereupon I would open another can. In this way, Max would not have to do a thing he hates, which is to eat food that has been in the bowl for more than two minutes and twenty seconds.

Well, I don't have time for that. I can't stand there all morning ladling fresh food into Max's bowl. I have things to do — calls to make, obits to write, Fred Kaplan articles to link to. So I dump the entire can into the dish and go back into the house to make a protein drink or something.

Max eats about a tenth of the can, then stops and yells for fresh food.

I am not about to open another can when he still has nine-tenths of one before him…and here's where the lying comes in. I walk out onto the porch with the empty can and the spoon and I mime like I'm putting more Mixed Grill into the dish…and most of the time, Max is fooled. He thinks he has newly-spooned chow in there and he resumes gobbling it down. Sometimes, I take the dish inside, do nothing to it, then bring it back out and place it before him. He thinks it's fresh food so breakfast continues. Of course, I accompany both fibs by telling him, "Here's more food for you, Max!" But there is no more food. I'm lying. I do this with the other cats, too. They've all learned from Max that if you take two bites and yowl, you get fresh grub.

I always feel guilty about this. I'm confessing to you here to get it off my conscience and also because I don't think Max has an Internet connection. If he does, I'm really screwed.