As a couple of you actually figured out from my patterns of posting here, I spent much of last week taking care of my mother. I had to transport her to a hospital emergency room last Sunday night. The hospital released her late Tuesday. Then Wednesday afternoon, I had to take her back to the emergency room and she was in the hospital 'til late Friday.

She's home now and doing well so I need to fume about how awful things can get in a crowded emergency room. I've been in a number of them the last few years and it's maddening, utterly maddening. Because people are suffering, people are in pain…some are even on the verge of dying. There's a possible — in some cases, near-certain — cure there but then there are all these things, mostly relating to overcrowding, that keep it agonizingly out of arm's reach for far too long. Almost without exception, the doctors and nurses are wonderful and efficient and caring and everything you'd want them to be. Almost without exception, the admitting process and the red tape and the paperwork and most of all the overpopulation and the "waiting for a bed to open up" are disgraceful and — I'm sure, in many cases — killing people. That includes people who wait for long hours in emergency rooms to be seen and those who don't go there at all because they know what an ordeal it will be.

The Wednesday afternoon visit was one of the worst experiences I've ever encountered. Around 3 PM, I was leaving my house for the Joe Barbera Memorial when my mother's caregiver called and described symptoms that sounded bad. I course-corrected, went over there instead and stuffed Mom in the car. (Naïve optimist that I can be, I actually thought, "Well, Mr. B's memorial doesn't actually start until 6:00. Maybe I can get my mother treated and still get there in time for some of it." I was at the hospital until 2:20 AM…and would have been there longer if I'd just been quiet and done everything according to the rules. By the way, if you want a report on the memorial, my colleague Earl Kress has one up on his site.)

In every emergency room, you first encounter someone who does "triage," meaning they kind of log you in, check whether you're there for a heart attack or a hangnail, then prioritize who gets treated in what order. This particular emergency room was so busy and so disorganized that the triage people were running a good half-hour behind. I don't mean a half-hour to get the sick people inside so treatment can begin on them. I mean a half-hour to decide if someone is about to drop dead without immediate attention.

This, obviously, was not acceptable and I got into a very loud argument with one Triage Lady…which I guess was foolish on both our parts. Because while she was standing there yelling back at me, she wasn't processing patients and that was kind of the desired goal. So I broke it off, ran upstairs, snuck into a department that I shouldn't have been in and pressured my mother's doctor's chief nurse into phoning downstairs to demand a speedy admission. By the time I got back to the emergency room, my mother was undergoing the triage examination and shortly after that, she was wheeled inside. It also helped that I dropped the names of high-ranking hospital officials and the fact that one of my best friends from high school is a doctor in this particular emergency room. These are the times when you have to go into Full Bilko Mode, saying whatever it takes.

But you know, it shouldn't come to that. I kind of cheated and fast-talked and relied on connections to get her in there ahead of others…and I could only get that nurse upstairs to intervene because it was 4:00 in the afternoon and the rest of the hospital was still open. If we'd gotten there after hours when the upstairs departments were closed, that wouldn't have worked. The decision that my mother's condition warranted prompt action wouldn't have been made until a half-hour later, if then.

The call from upstairs got me got into another argument with the Triage Lady. She was furious that I'd gone "over her head" and she apparently felt that expressing that anger to me was more important than processing the dozens of people who were waiting for medical care…in some cases, critical medical care. Once again, I broke it off so she'd go back to doing her job…which I'm afraid was taking down their particulars, telling them to have a seat and then making them wait forever. Either that, or she told them it might be eight hours and they were free — hint, hint — to go to some other facility. Trouble was, she couldn't tell them where it might be any less of a wait. All throughout the evening, every time I passed through that waiting room, I saw sick people who'd arrived before we had, sitting there…praying to see someone who could treat what ailed them. It was very sad.

When I left at 2:20 in the morning, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. When I returned the next morning at 10 AM, my mother was in the emergency room, waiting for a bed in the main hospital to become available. They had yet to find her one so I spent four hours trying to hurry that up. Again, I had to bend/break rules, sneak into offices where I technically should not have been, go to superiors and ask them to intervene, etc.

This was more than just a matter of my mother's comfort. The doctors in the E.R. had signed off on moving her to the main hospital and to the care of specialists up there. That was right and fine. Trouble was, she hadn't actually been moved upstairs. The doctors who were now in charge of treating her didn't have her…so she was in kind of a Medical Limbo. The E.R. crew had stopped the immediate pains and problems but they were unequipped to deal with figuring out what had caused it and how we might prevent it from happening again. To get that part of the process underway, I had to get her upstairs.

It finally came down to the point where a room was assigned but the previous patient was still in it. A friend was with her and they hadn't left because the friend's son, who was going to drive them home, hadn't been able to get off work yet. They were eager to leave, I was eager to have them leave…so I gave them cab money, took them out and put them in a taxi. If I'd waited for the system to work, it would have been at least another three hours before my mother got into that room. And of course, getting her out of the E.R. freed up the space for them to treat someone else in there.

So I want to give you some advice. If you have an elderly relative and you care about them, do not ever let them go by themselves to an emergency room. Drop whatever you have to but get over there and fight for them to get prompt service. They cannot do this alone. They need you there to be an advocate, to stand up for their rights, to make the system work as well as it can for them. To the extent possible, accomplish all this by ingratiating yourself with the staff and following the rules…but don't stop there. If you have to, get loud and get in the way. And whenever the system doesn't work, circumvent it. This may be difficult because it will probably mean figuring out the system in order to figure out ways around obstacles…but you're a smart guy. Or at least, you'll be smarter than your unwell Loved One will be at that awful moment.

We're now hearing a lot in this country — and it's about time — about National Health Care. I understand all the arguments against government getting involved in this area and I would certainly not discount the possibility that the wrong action could make a bad situation even worse. But I also think we have to acknowledge the bad situation and do something to try and correct it, especially in the area of emergency care. One of the reasons that emergency rooms everywhere are so crammed and unable to deal with emergencies is that so many people today can't afford basic medical coverage. So they aren't receiving treatment for ailments when they're minor…and when those ailments get to be major, the only thing the infirm can do is go to some emergency room and overwhelm the triage people. This doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't even work for people who have decent health insurance — I do and my mother does — because we have to get in line behind them and either wait forever or do as I did and cheat a little.

I'll probably write a bit more about the past week in the next few days here. I have a few other relevant anecdotes. But I also have deadlines I'm now behind on. So stay tuned to this station for more grousing about Emergency Rooms and those who bar entry to them.

Here's one minute from the end of an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. Just watch it for a nice surprise.

A while ago on this site, I put up a section called "Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More" and I've occasionally added to it since then. (If you haven't read it for a while, there are probably a few entries — not necessarily at the end — that you haven't seen.) I thought the premise of this section was pretty clear. It's personal recollections of restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area that I went to, one or more times, and which are no longer in business. And I guess I thought it was also implied that these were restaurants about which I thought I had something interesting to say. I know I did mention that the section would be expanded in the future…and I continue to add to it.

I also continue to marvel at the people who don't get this basic concept. In the last two months, two major websites that focus on Los Angeles have linked to that feature, prompting thousands more hits than usual and lots of very nice e-mails from folks who fondly remember this or that place to dine. I also, however, received a number of messages that really baffled me because, like I just said, I thought the premise was pretty simple.

I received one rather insulting message from a fellow who was upset because I didn't include his favorite old restaurant, which was a place called Brewster's in Michigan. Why didn't I include Brewster's?, he demanded to know. Well, maybe because it was in Michigan and this is a section about restaurants in Los Angeles. Also, of course, I never went to or even heard of Brewster's.

I've received any number of messages — well over two dozen — from folks who write to me about great defunct L.A. restaurants that I seem to have omitted from my list. Most are friendly and polite but a few write as if I have committed a horrendous factual error and shame on me. Why didn't I include their favorite old restaurant?, they demand to know. Well, in a few cases, it's because I haven't gotten around to it yet…but in most, it's because I never went to their favorite old restaurant, have nothing to say about it and perhaps never even heard of it.

This morning, I received a message from a man who I hope was kidding with how outraged he was. I mean, I don't know the guy but you hope there aren't total strangers who could get this incensed over something so wrongheaded. He's upset because he operates a very popular, successful restaurant in Los Angeles and I didn't include it on my list. Why didn't I include his restaurant?, he demands to know. Well, maybe it's because it's still there. It's not out of business! I've also never been there and have barely heard of it so I have no reason to declare it "Great"…but the main point is that it's still open and operating. It doesn't belong in a collection of essays called "Great Los Angeles Restaurants That Ain't There No More." Maybe he'd have a point if I'd called the department "Every Single Restaurant That Ever Existed in Los Angeles That Anyone Liked."

I guess I shouldn't be stunned by these messages. Whenever I post anything even vaguely political, I get at least one e-mail to which the appropriate response, were I of a mind to respond, would be, "Please read what I wrote with your eyes open." The Internet is wonderful because it makes it so simple for us to all communicate with each other but of course, there's a downside to this. It's that it makes it too simple for us to communicate without enough thought and consideration.

Someone ought to invent a piece of e-mail software that would work as follows: You compose a message and hit "send" but it doesn't send it. It holds the message in a little storage area for twelve hours and then it shows it to you again and asks, "Do you really want to send this?" The software could even scan the message for certain key angry words and if you include enough of them, it would ask you two or three times, the last of which would say, "Are you sure we can't talk you out of sending this?" Or if you tend to drink at night while surfing the web, you could set the program to stop you from sending anything after 9 PM. It wouldn't actually dispatch the message until the next morning after you'd passed a little online sobriety test.

I'll be updating the L.A. Restaurants section in a few weeks with three or four more old extinct Southern California eating establishments. If your favorite isn't there, relax. Maybe I never went there. Or maybe it's still in business or it was in Michigan.

If you enjoyed yesterday's clip with Mel Blanc and Johnny Carson, you'll probably like this one of Mel Blanc with his longtime employer, Jack Benny. You'll even get to hear the English Horse impression again.

This runs ten minutes and it's from Benny's last TV show of 1956. The first half is Mel playing an impersonator of animal sounds. Note that he and Mr. Benny have a bit of trouble getting through it without breaking up.

If you want to stay tuned for the second half, you'll see some (not all) of a bit Benny did with "The Landrews Sisters." There's an interesting bit of history to this piece. It was originally written for Benny by a writer named Harry Conn, who authored all the early Jack Benny radio programs. Jack did some version of it throughout most of the live performances he did from about the mid-thirties until the last times he played Las Vegas in the seventies. The name of the act kept changing to keep up with the times. Near the end, they were called The Smothers Sisters.

The three ladies in the video are, left to right, June Earle, Iris Adrian and Muriel Landers. I don't know anything about Ms. Earle but Iris Adrian had a long career playing wisecracking waitresses and chorus girls. (She was the waitress that Walter Matthau flirts with in the delicatessen in The Odd Couple.) Muriel Landers had a long career playing fat girls and was even a regular briefly on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. She was so often cast when they needed a fat girl that casting agents used to refer to those as "Muriel Landers roles," which was a nicer way of saying, "Get me a fat girl."

Tim Dickinson on why he thinks Al Gore should run for president in 2008 and why he thinks Gore can win. I still think it's too early to predict almost anything about the election but when I think of all the reasons some people gave in 2000 for thinking Gore would be a bad president, they sure seem trivial to me today.

That's Charles Lane in his (brief) scene in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World with Mickey Rooney and Buddy Hackett. It was only one of a couple hundred movies in which he appeared, usually playing a banker or a lawyer or some other officious presence. Every time I've seen Mad World with an audience, there's a laugh of recognition when Mr. Lane appears on the screen and you can hear people muttering, "That guy." They may not know his name but they know the face and voice from films as diverse as You Can't Take It With You (he played an I.R.S. agent), Arsenic and Old Lace (he played a snoopy reporter), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (he played another snoopy reporter), It's a Wonderful Life (he played a rent collector), The Big Store (he foreclosed on Groucho's car) and so many more.

Mr. Lane turned 102 today. I doubt he's spending it Googling himself so he probably won't see this. But maybe somebody he knows him will let him know that he has a lot of fans out here on the 'net and that we're thinking of him.

This video is badly edited but there's enough good stuff in it to make it linkworthy. It's an appearance Mel Blanc made with Johnny Carson, demonstrating pretty much the same voices he did on every talk show appearance he ever made. Even the bit at the end where they pretend Johnny's throwing a curve at him is an old bit but, hey, it's Mel Blanc. There's a reason he was the top voice guy in the business.

Michael Kinsley comes out in favor of partisan squabbles.

The 1933 movie 42nd Street may have been the first great movie musical…and it still holds up rather well. Let's take a look at the trailer for it which hypes all the wrong selling points and avoids showing you any interesting scenes from the film. In spite of that, it's still a fun trailer. If the embedded link below doesn't do it for you, click here instead.

And by the way, consider this: This is a pretty old movie. Your great grandmother could have seen it when your great grandfather took her out on this first date. It truly belongs to another era.

The movie is all about the staging of a Broadway musical called Pretty Lady. And you know who played the guy who authored Pretty Lady? He only has a small, unbilled part but he's there in the movie…

Charles Lane, who reaches the glorious age of 102 tomorrow. We'll post something more about the Birthday Boy then.

Take a moment and read this weblog post by Glenn Greenwald. It's about the latest crusade by people who were all wrong about Iraq to suggest that the problem isn't that they were all wrong about Iraq. The problem is American citizens pointing out that they were all wrong about Iraq. You know, everything would be just fine if we'd just refrain from pointing out that they don't know what they're doing.

This is a quickie but it's something you may remember from your childhood…an animated commercial spot with Reddy Killowatt, the mascot of your local electric company. I believe his voice is done by Walter Tetley, who's probably best remembered for his role as Sherman on the Mr. Peabody cartoons produced by Jay Ward. Here he is…

So what's the deal with Bush's alleged "health care" proposal? Doesn't it sound like he gathered together his aides and asked them to come up with some new proposal that was guaranteed to not go anywhere and to piss off everyone in the process? If you hate the idea of increased government involvement in our medical lives, you're probably annoyed that he's legitimizing that goal and suggesting it would be a good idea for something to be done in that area. If you love the idea, you're probably annoyed that he's come up with such a terrible one.

Isn't Bush down to the point where his remaining constituency is mainly people who love him for his tax cuts? For the last decade or three, any time a Democrat has suggested anything that might cause someone to pay a dime more to any government than they did before, those people have screamed "TAX INCREASE!!!" What Bush is proposing here would certainly qualify as one by even a more realistic definition. So, given what a tax hike did to his father's popularity with that same crowd, why is this Bush opening himself to that charge? Especially for a proposal that won't even have much Republican support, let alone the Democratic backing it would need to become a reality?

That's what I wanna know.

I didn't watch the State of the Union address earlier, though it's waiting on my TiVo at home. (I am currently blogging from an undisclosed location.) According to Fred Kaplan though, Bush is still double-talking us through this war. Which is a shame. It would be nice to believe in Bush's plan…and even nicer to believe he actually has one.

Ed Golick explains something that hadn't occurred to me about that "soundie" I linked to…

The "Who's Yehudi film" was printed backwards on purpose. Panorams, the machines that showed the 16mm musical numbers, rear projected the films. If the films were printed normally the titles and the image would have been backwards. I own a number of original 16mm Panoram films and they all have reverse titles.

A little trivia. Years ago, a Yehudi radio contest was held on Bob Hope's radio program. Listeners were invited to send in who they thought the
mysterious Yehudi was. The winning entry — "Yehudi is the little man who turns out the light in the refrigerator when the door is closed."

Maybe someone who reads this site can help me with this. I'm looking for a place, preferably online, to buy two-sided blank DVD-r discs. I don't mean dual-layer. I mean the kind where you can burn Part One of a movie to one side of the disc, then flip it over and burn Part Two on the other side. Most companies have stopped making or carrying these because they're quite unreliable. I know this but I have a need for them in spite of it. I'd like 16X but will settle for whatever I can get.

Also: I'm looking into maybe/possibly/I'm not sure getting a wireless Internet card for my laptop. Several cellular companies offer them and I'm wondering if anyone reading this has a strong recommendation or warning about any particular provider or plan. Natch, I'm most interested in hearing from anyone in Southern California, which is where I can usually be found. So far, the deals I've seen all require that you to sign up for a couple of decades. Having once gotten stuck in a long-term analog cell phone plan when the rest of mankind went digital, I'm a bit leery of committing to anything that may not be what I want after the next Consumer Electronics Show. Anyone have a suggestion?