As my comrade Jerry Beck notes, the Dudley Do-Right Emporium is going away. It closed some time last year or maybe the year before, and will soon be razed…though parts of it may be preserved for historical purposes. Jay Ward built the place in '71, around the time his last real series, George of the Jungle, ended production. Jay had an oddly-shaped parcel of land up on Sunset Boulevard and part of it was occupied by his studio. He put the gift shop up on a corner of it and stocked the place with Rocky and Bullwinkle merchandise, some of it made especially for the store.

It was always fun to drop into the Emporium. For one thing, you might be waited on by some employee of Jay's studio, some member of his family…or even Jay, himself. A lot of tourists bought Bullwinkle cels and Rocky dolls there, unaware the guy with the handlebar mustache who was taking their money was Jay Ward. Depending on his mood, he might or might not tell them. Once, the story goes, someone asked him if it would be possible to get Mr. Ward's autograph in their book. Jay said, "Well, I'll check but he's usually passed out drunk by this time in the afternoon." Jay took the autograph book into the studio building on the other side, signed the page…then took it back to its owner, explaining, "You're lucky. I caught him before he got to the heavy stuff." On request, he might also procure the signature of his shows' mythical executive producer, Ponsonby Britt.

Most of the time when I went up there, the person behind the counter was Jay's wife, Ramona. Well, actually, most of the time there was no one there and the place was closed. I forget what they claimed their hours were but the truth was that it was open whenever someone there felt like opening it. For the last decade or so of his life, Jay pretty much ran the animation part of his business with the same "if I feel like it" attitude. I worked with him on an unrealized project that, had it gone forward, would have been one of the biggest, most lucrative things to happen to him in years. His partner, Bill Scott, was excited about it. Jay's attitude was kind of like, "Well, if you want to…okay…"

Actually, I'm surprised the Emporium stayed around as long as it did. When it opened, there was a lot of tourist foot traffic in the area, owing to a bank across the street that was always staging events and exhibits. (Does anyone here remember the Guggenhead Traveling Exhibition of Awfully Modern Art? It was a touring show of art parodies and it was at that bank, whatever it was called then, for months at a time. People used to visit it and then hike over to the Dudley Do-Right shoppe to buy Boris Badenov t-shirts.) Nowadays though, no one walks on that part of Sunset, it's darn near impossible to park, and that piece of land has to be worth a fort-yoon. Or at least, it's worth too much to hold a store that's almost never open and which probably didn't make much money when it was. I think Jay did it the same way he did his cartoons: As much for fun as for the income. Sorry that Jay, his store and that attitude are no longer with us.

Above, we see George W. Bush awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former C.I.A. Director George John Tenet. According to a press release that accompanied the presentation, "The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation's highest civil award. It was established by President Truman and later re-established by President Kennedy. It is awarded by the President of the United States to persons who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."

Last week, a presidential commission reported, "We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction." Bush says he accepts the conclusions of this report.

So, uh, what's the spin here? Tenet was in no way responsible for the fact that his agency got everything wrong so he shouldn't be denied the nation's highest honor? Getting everything wrong when the U.S. goes to war isn't that big a screw-up? Bush gave the medal when he thought Tenet had done a great job and now doesn't want to embarrass the guy now by saying it was a mistake? Help me out here, someone.

Just to remind you: The weekend late night rerun of Saturday Night Live is the Show #4 (11/8/75), which was the one hosted by Candice Bergen. It includes a great film bit by Albert Brooks, the first "Land Shark" sketch, and Andy Kaufman doing his bit where Foreign Man does inept impressions. Next week in that slot, they have Show #13 (2/14/76) which is the one where John Belushi and guest host Peter Boyle did "Dueling Brandos."

Speaking of Mr. Kaufman: A major turning point in his career, some said, was a phone survey on the 11/20/82 edition of Saturday Night Live. Viewers during the live broadcast were invited to call in and vote on whether or not to ban Andy Kaufman forever from the show. Depending on which account one believes, Kaufman either suggested the stunt or just went along with it because he expected to either win or to come back on the show thereafter in the guise of Tony Clifton. Neither of these happened. Kaufman lost the vote 195,544 to 169,186 and was never invited back again in any identity, thereby losing an important showcase for his comedy. An hour-long version of this episode, including all the Kaufman-related material, airs this Tuesday on the E! Channel. In the East, it runs at 4 PM and again at 1 AM the following morning. It's the one with host Drew Barrymore and musical guest Squeeze.

The always-wise Peter Sanderson reports on the New York premiere of Sin City and certain other related topics.

It's still April Fool's Day, at least where I am. So I can still post that today is the 5th anniversary of the Oddball Comics page written and curated by my longtime buddy, Scott Shaw! Every week, Scott plucks from his bizarre collection, some comic book that makes you go, "What the hell were they thinking?" It's always worth a click, a chuckle and a glassy-eyed stare.

Went up to the Magic Castle (of which I am a member) for lunch with a fabulous actress friend named Judy Strangis. Most folks remember Judy for her role on a great, oughta-be-rerun sitcom called Room 222, and also for playing Dynagirl on Sid and Marty Krofft's ElectraWoman and DynaGirl series. There was also a time when the F.C.C. seemed to have a rule that she had to be in every fourth or fifth commercial aired, and she's still adorable. [ATTENTION, JUDY: To read that earlier item I posted about you, click here. Actually, anyone who wants to read that story can click there. You don't have to be Judy Strangis to click there.]

Then I went to what I once called here The Best Car Wash in the Universe, and you'll have to click that link to see why. Alas, I must now rescind that designation because today, they refused to fill my tank.

Premium unleaded petrol, the kind I put in my auto, is $2.71 — a number I feel I should emphasize to a certain longtime (but Republican) friend of mine who seriously thought Jimmy Carter should be impeached over rising gas prices. With a fill-up and wash, which is what I was getting, it's $2.61. My tank was darn close to empty when I rolled in, so a fill-up should have been close to 18 gallons. The pump's nozzle clicked off around eight and I told the attendant, "It can take more." The sensors on the nozzle clicked off again and he said, "That's it," and turned off the pump, wrote up my ticket and gave the signal to move my car on to the place where they vacuum it out and pry all the little parking lot stubs out from the ledge under the windshield wipers.

"It's not full," I said. It wasn't just that I wanted to save a buck or so by filling it to the brim at the gas+wash price. I wanted a full tank so I wouldn't have to stop for gas again in a few days. But the attendant informed me that station policy was that the second time the sensor clicks off, the tank is considered full, end of discussion. We argued over this and the Manager came over to explain the policy to me in terms you'd use with a very stupid person who'd just overdosed on Valium. I made salient, irrefutable points but by this time, my car was on the conveyor belt being slathered with suds so it all seemed pointless. I went on in to browse the greeting cards, check out the display of cellphone accessories, buy a Pepsi and pay for my wash and half a tank of gas.

Ten minutes later, my car was done. When I got in and fired 'er up, the needle went to about half-empty…or half-full for you optimists out there. The Manager was walking by so I called him over and pointed it out. I suggested that maybe there was something wrong with the sensors on their pump nozzles and he said, "Yeah, you may be right. I'll have the guy come out and check 'em." I asked if, in the meantime, I could drive over to the pump and they could put in another eight-or-so gallons. He said, "Sure, but I'll have to charge you the $2.71 price. You only get one fill-up at the discount price with each wash." It was another of their policies, he said.

I said, "That doesn't make any sense. I only want one fill-up. We're only having this discussion because I didn't get a fill-up. 'Fill-up' means you can't put any more in, so you can't get more than one flll-up per visit, no matter how hard you try."

He gave me a snarl and said, "You'd be surprised what some people try," and walked off. Guess which car wash I'm not going back to for a while. And by the way, the Manager's name was Phillip.

He'll probably be performing it tonight on his HBO show, Real Time, but Bill Maher has a funny "New Rules" piece up on Salon about the failure of sexual abstinence campaigns. Here's the link, and I have no idea what non-subscribers now have to do to read a Salon article. But it's probably worth it, whatever it is.

Jonathan Chait has an op-ed piece this morning in The Los Angeles Times [they may make you register] that uses the Schiavo case to illustrate a larger political point. It's essentially the same point that Thomas Frank seems to be making in What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, a book that I started reading and must go back and finish. The thesis is that there's a voting bloc in America that cares primarily about what they see as issues of morality — banning abortions, rolling back gay rights, etc. — and that it keeps getting fooled. They think, when they vote for someone like George W. Bush, that they're voting for those things. What they get are token gestures in these directions and a lot of genuine action to lower taxes for the wealthy and to aid corporate interests, which may not be what they want.

Anyway, in case you don't want to read the whole Chait piece or register over at the Times, I'm going to quote his last paragraph…

Three years ago, a casino-owning Louisiana Indian tribe called the Coushatta hired [GOP activist and lobbyist Jack] Abramoff to help stop another tribe from opening a casino, which the Coushatta feared would dilute their business. Abramoff hired former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, who enlisted Focus on the Family's James Dobson, who spurred his followers to send thousands of letters opposing the new casino. The poor souls riled up to stop legalized gambling had no idea that they were pawns of another casino. It's a perfect metaphor for the relationship between the Republican elite and the voters who put them into office.

Democrats are hoping, obviously, that there's a fracture coming in the G.O.P. constituency. The anti-abortion voters will probably never go in any significant numbers to the Dems but they might be persuaded to either move the Republicans farther to the right, thereby losing more of the center, or to split off and back a third party ticket. If nothing else, they might just stay home. It's a nice theory but I don't think the Democrats should count on it. They ought to look into finding a candidate someone will vote for.

Turner Classic Movies seems to be playing an unintentional April Fool's Day joke on those of us who've set TiVos or VCRs to record today's Laurel and Hardy treasures. It's the old Phony Start Time trick.

This morning, they scheduled Beau Hunks to run 7:15 to 7:45 (all times Pacific), which would have been great except Beau Hunks is longer than that, a fact that someone there even knew. Their own schedule, shown above, says it's 37 minutes and while I haven't run a watch on it, I think the print they ran may have even been a minute or two longer than that. The film before ran a minute or so over so, allowing for the TCM openings and billboards, Beau Hunks actually aired from 7:17 to about 7:55. This means that a 7:15-7:45 recording, such as all our TiVos made, cut off the last 9 or 10 minutes.

The following film, The Bohemian Girl, was scheduled to start at 7:45 and run until 9:00. It actually started at 7:57. (At 7:56, an on-camera graphic still gave its start time as 7:45 and so does the TCM website.) The schedule says it's 68 minutes, and maybe the print they're showing as I write this is indeed that length…but a complete one would be 70 or 71, depending on which source one believes. Even if it's only 68, it will end at around 9:05. Your 7:45-9:00 recording will therefore consist of the last 10 or so minutes of Beau Hunks — followed by all of The Bohemian Girl except for the last 5-7 minutes.

Up after that is Them Thar Hills, which is supposed to start at 9 AM but will actually commence around 9:07 or 9:08. It's to be followed by Tit for Tat at 9:30. Both of these are in half-hour time slots but both are around 20 minutes each so this may fix the problem and allow Pick a Star, which is scheduled for 10 AM, to actually start at 10 AM. But it could actually start before.

This is frustrating because it's so simple. I mean, how difficult is it to not schedule a movie you know is 37 minutes in a half-hour time slot? TCM is usually so good about restoring and showing complete prints of great movies. Can't they at least let us know when they start and end? As Mr. Hardy would say when Mr. Laurel drops a brick on his head, "Oooow!"

It hasn't hit the press yet but I'm hearing that longtime TV director-producer Greg Garrison died on the 25th due to complications of pneumonia. I barely knew Mr. Garrison but there was a time around 1969-1971 when I used to prowl NBC Burbank, sneaking in to watch Bob Hope tape a sketch or Johnny Carson do his monologue. And whenever I could, I'd slip down to the studio where Dean Martin was doing his series. I was always hoping for a Golddiggers rehearsal but I'd settle for watching Dom DeLuise, Kay Medford, Nipsey Russell and/or Lou Jacobi rehearse a sketch. Once in a rare while, I might even see Dean but he wasn't there very often.

The great open secret of The Dean Martin Show was that Dean barely showed up for work. He did for its first season, but the program wasn't working, and Dean was unhappy with how hard he was working. That was when Greg Garrison, who'd been hired as director only, came up with an idea. To make the show more spontaneous — and to keep Dino interested in doing it at all — he would arrange the schedule so Martin only had to come in one day a week, and not even for the entire day. Rehearsals were done with a stand-in, and everything that didn't involve Dean was taped when he was nowhere on the premises. There were people who appeared on The Dean Martin Show without ever meeting Dean.

On tape day, Dean would come in, watch a run-through with the stand-in, then go out and replicate the stand-in's actions. Everything was configured for maximum speed. Dean almost always wore a tuxedo, thereby minimizing costume changes and making it possible for any segment to be edited into any other show. The lines were all on cue cards and the songs, which were performed live, were all tunes that Dean already knew. If something went wrong, Garrison would usually not start over. He'd work some kind of paste-up edit, often inserting a freeze-frame in a manner that made other TV directors wince. Once in a while during a musical number, Dean wouldn't be able to hear the orchestra and if you watch, you can see him rubbing his ear to signal Garrison to have the audio cranked up a notch. Anyone else would have restarted or edited…but Garrison promised his star he'd be done by 10 PM, and did whatever was necessary to make that happen.

I used to watch Garrison at work and there was something amazing about how fast he could tape a prime-time network variety show. His relationship with Dean was also fascinating. To get his one-day-a-week schedule, Dean had traded off a star's right to reject material or have input into the script. He just showed up and did whatever he was told to do. One time, Garrison needed some reaction shots of Dean that would be edited into a musical number by someone else. He told Dean, "Stand there, look to the left and stick out your tongue," and Dean stood there, looked to the left and stuck out his tongue. He did everything Garrison commanded with no idea of the context or what the routine was about. That was the kind of trust he placed in his producer-director and business partner. At the same time, Garrison knew that his career was dependent on that relationship, and did everything possible to make Dean happy and to earn that trust. Nick Arnold, a friend of mine who wrote on the show, never once met its star…but once a week, he'd ask Garrison, "How's Dean?" Every week, Garrison would give the same answer: "Dean's beautiful!"

The Garrison Technique was much debated in the TV business. On one hand, you had a very successful show, and it could certainly be argued that he'd figured out the perfect way to package his star for weekly television. On the other hand, NBC would never have tolerated some of the odd, patchwork edits on another show, and a lot of guest stars were upset that they never got to rehearse with Dean before tape rolled. I once saw Juliet Prowse tape a duet with Dean, then explode in anger when informed that there would not be a second take. She was sure it could have been done better, especially once she had some idea where Dean was going to stand or when he was going to put his arms around her…but the schedule was more important than doing it again. Other performers, including most of the regulars, just accepted it but none of them liked it.

I have some other stories and observations about Greg Garrison which I'll try and post over the next few days — like how he managed to tape "roasts" featuring people who were taped at different times, sometimes in different states, but looked like they were all in one room. I'll also tell why Marty Feldman wanted to strangle him, which is kind of an interesting tale. For now, I'm just sorry to hear that we've lost another true pioneer of the television industry.

I awoke this morning to the news that — and I quote from the AP story — "…America's spy agencies were 'dead wrong' in most of their judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United States knows 'disturbingly little' about the threats posed by many of the nation's most dangerous adversaries." Also, Terri Schiavo died. Guess which one the news channels are giving almost non-stop coverage. (Hint: It's the one that will be the subject of a live 3-hour CNN special tonight hosted by Larry King.)

I'm sorry about Ms. Schiavo, just as I'm sorry when anyone dies. I felt there was something wrong with allowing her to go the way she did, though I was at a loss to explain why she mattered any more than anyone else, nor could I disagree that the real tragedy in that life occurred fifteen years ago. I just heard someone on one of the news channels say that it "demeans the concept of life" to not have done everything humanly possible to save Terri's life. I wish the interviewer had asked — not to be argumentative but because I would have liked to hear the explanation — why folks who feel that way seem so unconcerned about all the other preventable deaths that occur every day in this country. I'd sure be on the side of the so-called "Culture of Life" if I saw more being done under its auspices to help more people. I also think it demeans the concept of life to define it down to merely having a pulse.

In the meantime, we're learning more and more that the entities that led us into war and which continue to lead the War on Terror were and continue to be largely inept and uninformed. I think, if we're going to care about the sanctity of human life, that ought to be the bigger story. I'll bet most people think that. But Larry's still doing the 3-hour special on the Schiavo matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I wasn't going to discuss the Terri Schiavo case any more, largely on the grounds that everyone's sick of it, and the amount of disinformation on the Internet has reached critical mass. But Andrew Sullivan has what seems to me an incisive article on what it all means to the future of the Republican Party. And if you can stand an overdose of sarcasm, you might like to read what Robert Friedman has to say.

Well, as you may remember, I mentioned the other day here that the chain of Love's Barbecue Restaurants seemed to be down to one in Chula Vista and one in Lakewood (both in California) and the one in Jakarta, Indonesia. I am now informed that the Lakewood one recently closed and I'm guessing that since half of Indonesia ain't there no more, that Love's is probably gone, as well.

The Chula Vista Love's is still open — or, at least it was as of an hour ago when I phoned to check. When I'm down in San Diego for this year's Comic-Con International, I may swing by for a meal. It's a little less than nine miles from the convention center, and this could be my last chance to taste Love's beans. That is, if the place is still there come July.

Meanwhile, another of my favorite restaurant chains is now completely extinct. The last outpost of Woody's Smorgasburger, which was down on Sepulveda just South of LAX, is currently being turned into an International House of Pancakes. In the sixties, there were a number of Woody's around Southern California, including a wonderful one in Westwood Village, a block or three from UCLA. I could often be found there between (and once in a while, even during) classes.

Woody's was the first chain I know of where you could get a hamburger and then carry it over to a little self-service counter stocked with ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles, salsa, barbecue sauce, etc., and do what you wanted to it. Today, there are chains aplenty like Fuddrucker's that offer this but at the time, it was something rather special.

Woody's burgers were pretty darn good, too…and they also had a "make your own sundae" bar: You could buy an empty dish at the counter, fill it full of soft-serve vanilla ice cream, then slather it in a diverse selection of syrups and sprinkles and crushed nuts and such. My old comic club buddies and I would practically have a contest to see how much sundae we could get in one dish, building structurally-unsafe vertical arrays, then having to walk them back to the table and eat them before they collapsed.

One of the guys once asked if he was allowed to put the toppings from the sundae bar on his burger and when they told him yes, he began speculating on what hot fudge or whipped cream would do to a hamburger, and whether the maraschino cherries would blend with the mustard or if he should leave the mustard off. Each visit to Woody's, he'd say, "Next time, I'm going to try it," but he never worked up the courage. Or wanted to spoil a good smorgasburger.

It no longer exists but Once Upon a Time, there was an institution of learning known as the Hollywood Professional School. It graduated hundreds of students who went on to become well-known performers including — this is a random, very-partial list — Barbara Parkins, Lance Kerwin, Melanie Griffith, Ryan O'Neal and Tatum O'Neal, Peggy Lipton, Connie Stevens, former SAG president Barry Gordon, Sue Lyon, Patty McCormack, Peggy Fleming, Annette O'Toole, Jill St. John, Donald O'Connor, Yvette Mimieux, Tuesday Weld and many, many more.

On June 25, an "all-years reunion" is being held at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City. No contact lists exist for the school's many former students so the organizers are having a bit of trouble locating and notifying them all. Click here for more info, especially if you went there.