KNBC Channel 4 here in Los Angeles has a reporter named Joel Grover who does something I like. Every so often, they send him out with hidden cameras to take a car to various mechanics and document the rip-offs. In his latest expedition, he went to ten outlets of the EZ Lube chain and six of them prescribed unnecessary repairs and/or charged him for repairs they didn't perform. What's interesting about this is that is the second time Glover has had this experience at EZ Lube outlets. In fact, at one, he encountered a manager who was one of the guys who swindled him the last time he did this kind of survey. Here's a link to a video report.

Again, let us review: Several of you alerted me to a drawing currently being sold on eBay and represented by its seller as an original sketch by Sergio Aragonés. It is not. It's a forgery and a pretty bad one. As explained here, I wrote to the seller and told him as much.

Now, here's the update. He wrote back to me and said…

You are entitled to your opinion. I stand behind each and every autograph and drawing from my collection. I acquired this and various other Mad drawings years ago while into my Mad phase. I have no doubt about the authenticity of this item or anything else I sell. I stand behind it with a 100% moneyback guarantee! I am not here to make enemies with you or anyone else but I am not going to pull any of my items because someone doesn't like them.

So now I've just sent the following to him…

It's me again, Mark Evanier, partner of Sergio Aragonés. Sergio says the drawing you're selling as one of his is a fake and I think he's going to notify eBay of this. He's also had me put up an announcement on his website at www.sergioaragones.com to beware of fake sketches on eBay. Do you still have no doubt about the authenticity of this item or anything else you sell?

I'll let you know what the guy says…but I suspect the auction will disappear and if I get a response at all, it'll be along the lines of, "My Goodness! For the first time in my many years as an autograph dealer, I've been hoodwinked by a fake!" This has been the result in the past when I've called sellers on forgeries…which I only do about half a percent of the time I see them.

This morning, the weblog for The Comics Journal took brief note of my little crusade here. I'd like to suggest that it would be a valuable service — for them or any news outlet that covers the comic and cartoon market — to at least follow up on this, if not to start some sort of Consumer Watchdog column or something. I'll gladly furnish any reporter with the contact info for the eBay vendor in this case. He's a major seller with a whole website of other allegedly authentic sketches and autographs. He claims in his e-mail to me to have "the world's largest autograph, cartoonist and fine art drawing collection in the world." (It must be big. It has a world on either end.)

But the point is that this is not a unique situation. This kind of thing goes on a lot with comic art and especially with animation cels. eBay polices their auctions to a limited extent but if someone offers a bogus "Charles Schulz" sketch — as happens quite often there — eBay doesn't notice that and couldn't verify it if they did. Generally, the worst that happens to the seller is that he cancels one auction. I don't think it would hurt for there to be a little more publicity and attention paid to this chicanery. Folks need to be reminded that the verified, authenticated Walt Disney sketch that comes with a money back guarantee from a reputable seller may have been drawn in the last few months.

Lots of e-mail this morning on the opening I linked to from The Odd Couple. Quite a few reminded me that when The Mary Tyler Moore Show was being first assembled, there was the worry at CBS not just that people would think Mary was a bad person for having been divorced but that they'd think she'd divorced Dick Van Dyke! Guess that's why a few years earlier, when Lucille Ball came back to CBS in her first sitcom since I Love Lucy, she played a widow. They didn't want people to think Lucy had divorced Desi Arnaz…which, of course, she had.

I don't think anyone has mentioned this in e-mail yet but someone will. It dawned on me that the reason they put that line in the Odd Couple intro about Felix wanting to return to his wife was that they were concerned America would think that Felix really, really liked the idea of living with another man. I seem to remember an article around the time that claimed that ABC was worried that viewers would think Oscar and Felix were light, as they say, in the loafers and that they were keeping an eye on scripts to make sure everyone knew that the roommates liked the ladies.

Also: Apparently, there were more episodes than I recalled in which Tony Randall expressed a yearning to return to his wife and in the last episode of the series, he did. That feels a bit contrived to me and I'll bet if they were doing that show today — and sooner or later, Paramount is bound to bring us The New, New Odd Couple — it would just be about two guys who were irrevocably divorced.

Off and on here, I'm going to link to videos of openings I liked for TV shows. In some cases, I didn't like the show but I liked the opening.

This is the original opening for The Odd Couple with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. The voiceover is done by Bill Woodson, a charming and witty man who has been doing commercials and announcing for decades. I always thought it was odd that the text makes a point of saying that though Felix's wife had thrown him out, he knew in his heart that one day he would return to her. Why did they say that?

First of all, is it even true? I don't recall any such sentiment on the part of Felix in the Neil Simon play, the movie based on it or the series. In the play and movie, the idea was that Felix had to accept the notion that his marriage was over and that he had to begin building a new life for himself. In the series, it seemed like the roommate situation was a permanent condition except for one episode here and there. So I'm wondering why they felt they had to say he'd return to the woman who'd thrown him out.

The same season that The Odd Couple debuted, The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered on another network. As has been oft-reported, its writers originally intended that Mary be starting a new life following a divorce. The CBS folks objected, saying that America wouldn't like her; that despite the high separation rate in America, the nation still preferred to think of marriage as the natural state of all decent people. So Mary Richards became a woman who'd never married. Was the same concern at work over on ABC with The Odd Couple? Obviously, given the source material and premise, they couldn't say that Oscar and Felix hadn't been divorced. But it's easy to imagine a meeting in which concern is voiced in this direction and someone says as a compromise/concession, "Don't worry…we'll put something in the opening titles that says that even though Felix left his wife, they'll eventually get back together."

Garry Marshall, who was one of the producers, often tells the story of when they filmed this opening and other exterior shots around New York. They had a limousine to transport Klugman and Randall around and for them to wait in while shots were set up. Unfortunately, they only had the one limo and Klugman — as yet unaware of what it would do to his voice — was smoking constantly. Randall was a militant non-smoker and kept complaining that Klugman was rendering the interior of the car uninhabitable. This was early in the association and so Jack and Tony got their new partnership off to a fitting start by arguing incessantly. It was a good training ground for the series which opened like this…

Here's the question I think should be asked of all the Republican candidates in their next debate…

The questions in this round will be premised on a fictional, but we think plausible scenario involving terrorism and the response to it. Here is the premise: Three shopping centers near major U.S. cities have been hit by suicide bombers. Hundreds are dead, thousands injured. A fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured off the Florida coast and taken to Guantanamo Bay, where they are being questioned. U.S. intelligence believes that another larger attack is planned and could come at any time but that they can prevent it if you will only vote for wealthy Americans to shoulder at least the same tax burden as lower and middle-class citizens. What would you do?

My guess is that we could say bye-bye to that fourth shopping center.

Let us review…

In February of 2006, in this posting, we noted that the Old Spaghetti Factory — a classy/campy restaurant up on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood — was soon to close.

Then in July, we received the happy news that the business had received a reprieve of indeterminate length. And last November, an executive in the Old Spaghetti Factory company e-mailed me that the Sunset Boulevard location would be open for at least two more years.

It turns out to have been a pretty short two years…a little less than seven months, actually. There are signs up now at that location (and a notice on the chain's website) saying that its last day of operations will be June 19. And just to show that they mean it this time, an auction of the fixtures, furnishings and restaurant equipment will take place on June 23. Shortly after, the rear section of the building will be demolished and the front section will be incorporated into a new 23-story residential tower with 301 for-sale condominiums, 40,000-sq.ft. of "creative office space," 13,500-sq.ft. of ground floor retail space, 508 parking spaces and a new half-acre public park.

So it looks like that's it for that outlet of the Old Spaghetti Factory. The posted signs urge its patrons to visit other Old Spaghetti Factory locations in Southern California. The nearest would be the one in Duarte, which is twenty miles away and also requires that you visit Duarte.

Guess I'd better get up there to Sunset in the next couple of weeks for a farewell lunch. I'll take my camera and snap some pics to post here.

Fred Kaplan on the mediocrity of our generals…and on one who has a lot to say about that topic.

While we're at it: I've written before here about how an awful lot of original sketches that turn up on eBay are phony. Someone has just posted one that purports to be by Sergio Aragonés. Oddly enough, the seller has been in business for some time, has a 100% positive rating and is selling other sketches that are not only suspect but look as if they were forged/drawn by the same person.

I've just sent the seller the following message…

Hello. I'm Mark Evanier and you're selling what you claim is an original sketch by Sergio Aragonés, who happens to be my best friend and business partner. Sergio did not do the sketch you're selling. It's a tracing of one of his old drawings and not a particularly good one. What do you think we should do about this?

I'll keep you posted on what happens.

Speaking of MAD Magazine: One of the more interesting new artists drawing for that publication is Hermann Mejia. I like his artwork a lot but have been especially impressed by his statuary. He's done some amazing sculptures of famous people.

Hermann has just set up his own website and it has examples of his painting and drawing on it. But I call your special attention to his gallery of sculptures. Take a look at his renderings of George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein and DC publisher Paul Levitz. I don't think Paul will feel insulted by the likeness of himself but he might by the grouping.

Here's Part Three of Dick DeBartolo's tour of the offices of MAD Magazine. Have I mentioned that Dick is a very funny guy and that he's written some of my favorite pieces in MAD? Have I mentioned that he also was a writer for various Goodson-Todman game shows like To Tell the Truth and The Match Game? Surely I've at least mentioned that he's also a world class expert on gadgets and new technology and that you can hear him on Daily Giz Wiz, a podcast of some note and that you can listen to him there or go over to his website. Here he is showing us a display case in the MAD offices, carefully avoiding the one that holds the remains of Wally Wood..

There are hundreds of filmmakers out there who love the idea of making those "women in prison" movies. You know the type — with the dyke guards and the shower room scenes and the desperate escape plan at the end. How many do you suppose are currently being developed which have a character not unlike Paris Hilton as the new inmate?

Michael Kinsley discusses the history of the Avis Car Rental Company. The piece may seem trivial but it makes an important point, which is that the "business" of a lot of companies in America now lies in selling the company and very little attention is paid to what the company actually makes or does. This has been the problem at some comic book companies or entertainment firms or especially Internet businesses.

Roger Ebert received a bouquet of flowers and a handwritten "get well" wish from one star whose movies he'd reviewed. You'll never guess which star.

Just heard that the Reverend Jerry Falwell has died. In his honor, let's all think of some way to exploit this sad event to advance our causes and line our pockets.