This is the second and final tale I have of a business in downtown Las Vegas called The Golden Goose…only it wasn't The Golden Goose when this one took place. The first tale, which you can read here, occurred in the eighties (I think) when The Golden Goose was what they call a "slot joint." It was a place where you could put coins into slot machines…

…and that was about it. You just put them in and you put them in and you put them in. Oh, once in a while those slot machines might give you back a few of those coins but only to fool you into thinking that your luck was changing. The premise of the occasional mini-payoffs — and I doubt it failed much — was to convince you to put those coins and others into the machine in search of that big, life-changing jackpot that would never come.

To lure you in, The Golden Goose offered an outstanding selection of freebees, none of which were worth more than the first dollar you lost on their premises. I only stopped into the place a few times and I might have left a few bucks there…but only a few. In my dozens and dozens of trips to Vegas, I played a lot of Blackjack and once in a rare while after it came along, Video Poker. Those were my only games of choice. I never played Craps, Roulette, Keno, non-video Poker, Baccarat, Pai Gow or anything else. I don't even know the rules of some of those games…a disadvantage which stops some but not all players.

In my whole life, I probably put less than thirty bucks into slot machines so The Golden Goose was of little interest to me for gaming. I just found it and the business next door fascinating. The buildings practically screamed, like an uncommonly honest hustler, "Step right up and lose your money, folks!"

And I was especially fascinated when, as I related in our previous Tale of the Golden Goose, I met that lady out front…Audrey. Her job was to lie to passers-by and get them to come in and lose money. I have no idea how often this happened but in an uncommon burst of honesty, she warned me off from the scam she was representing. Several years later in the same spot, it happened again.

The Golden Goose was located at 20 Fremont Street. Right next door at 22 Fremont Street was a sister establishment which kept changing names and what transpired within. It apparently was called Mr. Reed's around the time of our previous tale but I never set foot inside any of the ever-changing establishments at 22 Fremont. Mr. Reed's was, at various times, a bar with slot machines, a retail outlet for cheap merchandise, some kind of diner and, at one point, a strip club. At some later point, Mr. Reed's became a slot joint called Glitter Gulch and at some even later point, The Golden Goose became a strip club and then the two businesses merged into one big strip club called The Girls of Glitter Gulch.

I don't guarantee the above chronology. I'm fairly sure though that in 2016, the combined Girls of Glitter Gulch business closed down and the following year, it and several neighboring businesses were demolished. That whole section of Fremont Street has changed tremendously starting in 1994 when a five-block stretch of Fremont was closed to traffic and turned into a pedestrian mall. Soon, a giant canopy/light show was erected overhead called The Fremont Street Experience.

On one visit in the mid-eighties, I stayed at the Golden Nugget, which was then the classiest hotel on Fremont Street. This was before the area's makeover and it was not hard then to be the classiest hotel downtown. About all you needed to achieve that stature was maids.

While downtown, I couldn't help but walk past The Golden Goose — or rather, 20 Fremont Street where The Golden Goose had been. It was now The Girls of Glitter Gulch and no less sleazy for the conversion. Where once it had been a slot joint that lured unsuspecting tourists in by making them think they'd get rich, it was now a strip club that was no less subtle in luring in men for bilking purposes.

Out front, there was a giant video screen which ran, over and over, a video of beautiful women. I mean, really gorgeous ladies. A gent in a bright purple sport coat stood outside, trying to convince passers-by of all genders to come in and enjoy the show. He kept yelling over and over, as the signs proclaimed, "Free Admission!" It struck me that he might have been standing in the exact same place where, in our previous Tale of The Golden Goose, that lady named Audrey tried to tempt me to go in and get a free keychain with my initials on it.

I had to stop and question the guy. The conversation went roughly like this — and if I sound more naïve that usual, it's because I was trying to act like someone with the I.Q. of Gomer Pyle. Usually, that does not require a lot of acting on my part…

HIM: Just pass through those doors, sir, and see some of the most beautiful woman on this planet. Free admission!

ME: The ladies on the video up there…will I see them?

HIM: You will see women even more beautiful than the women on that sign.

ME: Then I won't see the ladies on the screen?

HIM: You might. I'm not sure which ladies are working at the moment.

ME: That blonde lady dressed in red…is she inside?

HIM: She might be. She might be. I can't keep track of them all. Just step on in and look around for yourself. Admission is free. If she isn't working, I'm sure you'll find several girls who are even more attractive. It won't cost you anything to go in and see.

ME: But it is free, right? Because I don't have my wallet with me. They won't try to charge me anything?

I'm compressing the whole Q-and-A way down here. I asked that guy in the purple sport coat questions like that until he realized I was putting on an act and he began laughing. Finally, he dropped his voice and spoke to me, man-to-man in a confidential tone…

HIM: Listen, admission is free but there's a two-drink minimum. The second you walk in, they spring it on you. Someone will ask you what you want to drink and they'll immediately bring you two glasses of whatever it is and a bill for it…

ME: I don't drink alcohol.

HIM: Doesn't matter. They don't serve alcohol in there. But let's say you want a Coke. They'll instantly bring you two Cokes and a bill for nine bucks each, plus the waitress will expect at least a two-dollar tip. So admission is free but once you're admitted, it's twenty bucks. And then the girls will go to work on you and, believe me, you'll pay. You won't get any action but you'll pay. You were putting me on when you said you didn't have any money, right?

ME: Right.

HIM: Well, you won't if you go in there. And you're right. None of the ladies in the video have ever set foot in this shithole. Now, I've enjoyed this but I have to get back to work.

ME: Sure. Thanks for being the most occasionally-honest person in Las Vegas.

Which is one of the things I said to Audrey outside The Golden Goose even if I didn't mention it in Tale #1. Same location. Same kind of scam. And someone who had a moment of conscience and warned me not to buy what they were selling.

It's been a while since I was last in Vegas and even longer since I ventured downtown. At least under the Fremont Street Canopy, they've largely obliterated the kind of rip-off, drain-your-wallet dry little businesses that used to be at 20 Fremont and 22 Fremont. This is not to suggest that their replacements are any less mercenary; merely that they do it with more class.

Where a lot of those crummy little places were, there's now a state-o'-the-art luxury hotel called Circa which opened in October of 2020 in the midst of The Pandemic. It was the first hotel-casino to be built from scratch in downtown Las Vegas since 1980.

It offers 8,000 square-feet of casino space, a 35-story tower, a nine-story 1,000-space parking garage, five full-service restaurants, six bars and lounges, a three-story stadium-style sportsbook, six swimming pools some of which allow you to swim while watching a 143-foot screen made of 14 million megapixels.

It sounds and looks like a great place to stay and play…but you know what it probably doesn't have that used to be in that space? An occasionally-honest person outside like Audrey or the guy in the purple sport coat who'll warn you that if you go inside, they'll take all your money.

Hey! Are you in the mood to watch a whole episode of The Phil Silvers Show, also known as Sgt. Bilko? Of course you are. Here's one of my favorite episodes. It will make you laugh and it will also answer the question of why Nat Hiken thought Joe E. Ross was so funny that he cast the man on this show and later on Car 54, Where Are You? Mr. Ross was always funny as long as he was on a show produced by Nat Hiken…

William Berman wrote to ask…

Someone told me a story that involved you. It took place at a San Diego Con and a bunch of top comic book artists were standing around in the main hall and you walked up to them. Impishly, just to see their reaction, you said to them, "Well, I just had lunch with the best artist in the room."

Several of the artists seemed offended and they all looked at you and said, menacingly, "And just who do you think that is?" You then told them and they all thought for a second, then agreed. Some of them supposedly said, "I'd give anything if I could draw like him."

The person who told me this story did not remember who you told them it was. I guessed Jack Kirby but my friend was fairly sure this was after Jack passed away. Is this story true and if so, can you tell me who the artist was who you said was the best in the room and everyone agreed?

Yes, it's true. As for who I named, maybe some of you would like to think for a moment and formulate a guess. Then, you can click the following link and find out that it was this guy. And by the way, "impishly" is the exact way I said it.

Sergio and I talk about the current Groo mini-series and about the wonderful colorist who has joined the Groo Crew…

Yesterday, I posted this video link to Jackie Gleason's one-and-only appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Jim Held wants to know…

Any take on why this was the only time Gleason appeared on The Tonight Show?

Did he have something he really wanted to plug and his handlers/producers just thought that Tonight was the place to do it? Did Gleason feel he wasn't treated with the massive deference he thought he deserved? Or did Carson and his handlers just think Jackie was a pain in the butt and not worth dealing with any more?

No, I think this is all easily explainable as a matter of geography. Mr. Gleason moved his TV show and residence to Florida in 1964, less than two years after Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show. He was probably not on before that move because he was a CBS star and Carson was on NBC and back then, the networks really frowned on having on guests who top-lined shows on a competing channel.

It happened but it didn't happen often. When you watch old talk shows, you'll often see someone mention that they have a show on "another network" as if it's a curse word to say that network's name. By the time that went out of fashion, Gleason was happily a resident in Florida and he rarely left. He didn't like to fly and usually when he did, it was because he was being paid a lot of money to appear in some big movie. You'll notice in the video, he mentions he was in town shooting a film with Tom Hanks.

He popped up occasionally on TV shows shot in New York or Hollywood but very rarely. One of the rare times was on this 1968 episode of Here's Lucy which also featured Jack Benny. Earlier in '68, Gleason was in L.A. to shoot his scenes in Skidoo and then How to Commit Marriage, back-to-back. I don't know where How to Commit Marriage was filmed but a lot of Skidoo was shot at Paramount and so was Here's Lucy. Maybe Lucy's producers just heard he was on the lot and wrote him into the script…

(By the way: The gent playing the tour guide in that clip is the legendary Sid Gould, who worked with everyone but especially Lucy.)

I doubt Gleason didn't want to appear on Mr. Carson's show and I doubt Johnny didn't want him. It was probably an inability to coordinate Jackie's schedule with whatever he was in town to do.

Steven Deal wrote to ask…

Hi, Just curious if you have given any thought to the recent announcement from AMC theaters regarding tiered pricing?

No. Not really. My moviegoing is very rare these days and I almost never go to AMC theaters. What I have thought about is how the current trend in American business seems to be to see how much they can raise prices before it becomes cost-ineffective. Las Vegas is currently a good example of this. I'm sure the price increases there on hotel rooms, restaurants, shows, tourist attractions (etc.) are driving some tourists away but apparently not in sufficient number to cause them to stop. The shows still sell out. The buffets still have long lines. And so on.

Every large business these days seems to have a division that is in charge of determining how much more money they can charge for what they offer…and who can blame them? If you could make more money by charging more for whatever you sell or do, why wouldn't you charge more? Someone at AMC obviously decided this was worth a try.

They probably said, "Hey, people will pay more for good seats at concerts, plays and other live shows. Maybe they'll pay it for movies." If it doesn't work, it should be a small matter to roll back prices or, more likely, keep those prices higher but make discount coupons more available. That's what Vegas does. They don't lower prices. They just offer discounts judiciously. Some people would be happier getting a 50% off ticket to a show than to have that show cost half as much in the first place.

I see two potential problems to the AMC plan. One is that people don't all agree on the ideal place to sit in a movie theater. At a live show, as close to the stage as possible is usually best unless it's an act that smashes watermelons or something. At a movie, some people like to be farther back. Some like dead center. I used to go out with a lady who didn't care where we sat as long as there was no one in front of us and no stranger next to her. I like an aisle seat where my right leg can extend out when it doesn't inconvenience anyone else.

The other possible problem: At a showing where the theater is half-empty, what's to stop people in the cheapest seats from just moving down to the expensive ones once the movie starts? Is the theater really going to have an employee watching for this and send someone out to make someone move? Sounds disruptive to the other patrons. My guess is that many of the theater's staffers would just look the other way.

But hey, who knows? Maybe AMC can make this work. I doubt though they'll be getting much of my money either way.

If you've been to any Disney theme park, you've probably had Dole Whip…usually the pineapple kind, though they make it in many flavors. I know people for whom no trip to a Magic Kingdom is complete without a Dole Whip. I gave up dessert-type foods many years ago but before I did, I loved Dole Whip and I especially loved the orange variety.

Wanna make it at home? There are dozens of YouTube videos by people who tell you how to make it using various combinations of frozen pineapple, ice cream, milk, sweetened condensed milk or other ingredients. And the Dole company once released this recipe which uses frozen pineapple, a banana, powdered sugar, coconut milk and lime juice. Which one will taste just like the Dole Whip you got at Disneyland?

Answer: None of them. The pineapple Dole Whip at Disneyland is made from a mix and here's the ingredients list: Sugar, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Coconut Oil, Citric Acid, Contains 2% Or Less Of Each Of The Following: Color (Carrot Concentrate, Blackcurrant Concentrate), Ascorbic Acid, Stabilizers (Guar Gum, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum), Natural Flavor, Modified Food Starch, Mono & Diglycerides, Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking).

So if you want your homemade Dole Whip to taste like the one at the theme park, you need to get all that stuff…or maybe it would be easier to buy the mix and a home ice cream maker. Apparently, back when I used to eat it, it wasn't dairy-free as it is now.

From 10/18/1985: Jackie Gleason makes his first and only appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It's a great conversation but Mr. Gleason gets a little confused about The Honeymooners. He started being Ralph Kramden on Cavalcade of Stars, a live series he starred in on the DuMont Television Network in 1950 and 1951. In 1952, he jumped to CBS for higher pay and a program called The Jackie Gleason Show on which more "Honeymooners" sketches appeared.

That was an hour-long variety show. In 1955, Gleason insisted on suspending that series and instead made the 39 classic half-hour episodes of The Honeymooners and then the following year, he went back to the hour format. It went on and off CBS a couple times before it ended for good in 1970. Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton appeared now and then on all those shows.

Here he is with Johnny in 1985…

Just before the Super Bowl, I wrote here about my near-total disinterest in sports. That prompted Robert Rose to write in and ask…

As a follow-up to your note about not being a fan of sports, I don't question that part of it; I'm not much of a sports fan myself, though I think a bit more than you. I do like to attend the occasional baseball game, and I may actually watch the Super Bowl, or part of it, but that's more of a social activity — watching it with friends — than because I care much about the outcome.

But I am curious about your statement that "I still haven't paid enough attention to football to know how it's played." I can understand not following it as an adult, but how did you avoid it as a kid? I'm ten years younger than you, but growing up and going to public schools, I had to participate in P.E. classes, which means I had to learn enough about the rules of sports like baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, and soccer to at least participate, however poorly. I may not know enough to give a coherent explanation of the infield fly rule or to always distinguish between offsides and illegal procedure, but surely enough to follow the basics of what's going on.

I'm just wondering how you avoided this; or did you learn just enough to minimally get by, and promptly forgot it all after graduating from high school?

Well, I don't recall ever playing soccer in high school. What we played of the other sports you mention were simplified, modified versions of the games that were clearly not what professional teams played. Even then, I'm not sure I completely understood the rules but I guess I understood enough to get by. It helps that when you're as lousy at sports as I was, your teammates rarely pass you the ball. I was never a real active player in any of these activities so I could fake it.

In baseball, I remember we had a rule that when you hit the ball, there was a prescribed way to lay down the bat before you ran for first. Neatness in doing that counted in a way it never does in the Major or probably even the Minor Leagues. The one time at bat that I somehow managed to wallop the ball far enough for it to maybe be a home run, Coach Hawkesworth — yes, I remember his name — called me "out" because he didn't like the way I laid down the bat.

And the version of football we played resembled what the teams in the Super Bowl are playing about as much as an Egg McMuffin resembles Eggs Benedict. So you're right: Once I graduated high school, I forgot every bit of my athletic experience except for Coach Hawkesworth robbing me of the only home run of my life.

I was just plain lousy in sports, even back when I was underweight instead of over. I've always been one of the clumsiest people on this planet — the kind who can't cross the street without almost tripping on the white line. One time when I was working on That's Incredible!, Fran Tarkenton tossed me a football from about eight feet away and the ball bounced off my hands, hit me in the nose and then I stumbled picking it up. Fran told me I was the worst catcher-of-footballs he'd ever seen in his life.

Since a lot of people thought he was the best thrower of them ever, I figured he must know what he was talking about. It almost felt like an honor.

At last! I've been urging someone to make a YouTube video performing the great parody of the song "Downtown" that the late Frank Jacobs wrote for MAD. My longtime e-mail friend Corey Klemow has picked up the dare/challenge/urging/whatever you want to call it.

I don't think Frank meant for it to refer to the specific restaurant by that name…if said restaurant even existed in 1967 but that's beside the point. You're a good (and brave) man, Corey Klemow…

It should come as a surprise to no one that some of the right-wing folks on Fox News do not believe a lot of what they put on the air. If you're not up on the recent revelations, you might want to read this article by Jeremy Stahl. He focuses on text messages from Tucker Carlson that show Carlson thought a lot of it was rubbish but there are similar e-mails from Hannity, Ingraham and other Fox personalities. It's all coming out because of the lawsuit that the makers of Dominion Voting Machines have brought against Fox News. And it can't help Fox's defense that there's all this evidence that the channel broadcasts news they don't really believe.

That's one of the few things I'm following in the news these days. Another is the way the New York Times and other supposedly-progressive entities are sounding pretty non-progressive (and not all that well-informed) on the topic of Gender Reassignment. Read this article by Christina Cautericci. That is all.

It hasn't been a good week for glamorous actresses of the movies. I didn't write anything about Raquel Welch because I never met her, didn't see very many of her movies and didn't know any great anecdotes about her. I was going to write a little piece about how I admired how she'd gone from being someone who was hired mainly for her looks to someone who distinguished herself as a good actress on film and especially on stage…but then I saw that everyone else was saying that.

I did however meet Stella Stevens…not for long but on several occasions. We seemed to get invited to a lot of the same parties and we talked enough cumulatively for me to see that she was a genuinely nice person who was proud of her work.

At one event, we were talking about Li'l Abner, the 1959 movie in which she played the lovely-but-sneaky Appassionata Von Climax. Ms. Stevens, unlike most of the cast, had not appeared in the musical when it originally played on Broadway but a fellow who overheard our conversation didn't know that. He politely interrupted to introduce himself and tell her that Abner was the first show he ever saw on Broadway and to gush about how much he'd loved her in it.

An easy mistake. But when I started to correct the guy, she gave me a look that said "Let me handle this" and she thanked the fellow and was so sweet in the way she told him "That was probably Tina Louise or Deedee Wood you saw in that role then" that he wasn't the least embarrassed. I don't think I could have done that.

If you look at her IMDB listing, you may be stunned by how many TV shows and movies Stella Stevens was in. And if you read the New York Times obit, you'll see that she had a lot of struggles, including a certain amount of sexism when she tried to move from in front of the camera to the director's chair. That she overcame as many as she did tells you what kind of lady she was. And she chuckled when I congratulated her on surviving working with Jerry Lewis.

Two weeks from now, I turn 71 — an age which, when I was much younger, sounded like the age when you look like Burt Mustin and walk like Tim Conway's old man character. Some days, my knees do cause me to walk like the latter. But except around the knees, I don't feel that old and people who sound reasonably sincere tell me that I look years younger. Well, maybe two.

Something you don't think of until you pass 60 is that the longer you live, the more someone you know dies. You also increasingly see obits for folks who, even if they weren't friends, cause you think, "Gee, he was my age." Or worse, "Gee, he was younger than I am." We don't like things that remind us that we might not have as many years left as we once did.

And I think I've mentioned it before but I have a couple of friends who are getting on in years who can't seem to shut up about how death seems imminent. They might live a few decades more but every sentence out of their mouths lately is about death and dying and how they won't be around much longer. One in particular who passed a couple years back almost seemed to have willed himself into the grave prematurely. My philosophy is that I'll go when I go…and obsessing on it now can only get in the way of living.

So what does this have to do with what I was talking about, which was The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show? Just this: I'm really getting tired of people who have trouble with the concept that the world changes and it can't be like it was when you were 24. Or 32. Or whatever age you were when you really liked the music, the movies, the way people dressed, etc. All that stuff's supposed to change and you can't be part of the Target Audience forever.

I ran that old newspaper column the other day here — the one by Paul Jones, who I've been informed by many of you wrote for the Atlanta Constitution. I'm going to assume Mr. Jones was sincere in what he wrote that day and was not doing what some columnists and commentators do: Say something controversial just to get attention. If he didn't really believe what he wrote, others certainly did.

It's an attitude that I find increasingly common in folks my age…and I suspect it's always there when you hit 70 or so. It's that frustration that the world is changing and it doesn't revolve around your generation any longer. There are movies that aren't aimed at you. There are jokes full of references that you don't get. There are hit songs that are huge…but you never heard of the people performing them and what they have to offer isn't the kind of music you loved forty years ago.

Paul Jones wrote, of Ed Sullivan presenting the Beatles on his show…

In catering to the screaming teen-agers who find this group exciting, Sullivan has shown his contempt for the vast millions who used to find his program diverting.

Okay. That's one way to look at it. Another might be that Ed was getting one of the largest audiences in the history of television and extending the life of a TV series that had already been on the air for sixteen years. And it stayed on for another eight by booking acts like that, including The Beatles a few more times.

To the columnist from the Atlanta Constitution, it was showing contempt for the viewers. To others, it was staying relevant to changing times and giving the public what much of it wanted. Does anyone think that Ed would have stayed on the air for eight more years if instead of The Beatles, he'd booked Jerry Vale?

TO BE CONTINUED SOME MORE

I don't watch The Masked Singer often. Too often when the mystery vocalist is unmasked, I have no idea who they are. But sometimes, it's someone I've heard of and it's fun to tune in and see the unmasking. That was the case with The Gnome, a character on the show's season opener this past week.

If by some chance you haven't heard who it was, watch a little of the musical performance and see if you can guess…

Then if you want to see the unmasking, go to this link. I'd embed it here but the thumbnail image would give it away. It's a very nice moment.

I was just placing an online order for groceries and I found these on the same page. Can no one in this world do math anymore?