My favorite place to see stand-up comics in the Los Angeles area is not in the Los Angeles area. It's the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach. That is not as far as it sounds. The room is friendly, the prices are reasonable and the food is decent. Only the parking is sometimes a drawback, especially on the kind of days when folks flock to the beach.

Jay Leno, who can obviously play any comedy club he wants, chooses to bypass at least a half-dozen that are closer to his home and play the Comedy and Magic Club most Sunday evenings. When he does essentially the same act in Vegas, it's sixty bucks a seat with no opening act. In Hermosa Beach, it's around $25 and he has two comics on before him, one of whom is usually the wonderful Jim Brogan. If you're looking for a good place to take outta-town visitors (even older folks), you can't do much better. Here's a link to the club's website.

And here's a real tip which isn't up on the site yet. February 4th, 5th and 7th, Lewis Black is performing at the Comedy and Magic Club. I think he's the sharpest of the "newer" comedians and even though I saw him just last August, I have reservations to see him again. If you want to go, don't wait until they post the information. They'll probably be sold out before they announce his appearance, but they are selling tickets if you phone the club. Black is doing one show on Wednesday, one on Thursday, none on Friday, then two on Saturday. (I'm guessing he's doing Bill Maher's show on Friday night. Or something like that.)

If you're not familiar with Mr. Black, here's a link to a recent commentary he did on gadgets for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. And while you're over there: Here's a link to a very funny Jon Stewart spot about Strom Thurmond's illegitimate daughter, or click this one to see him discuss the news coverage of Saddam Hussein's "spiderhole." I don't know about your TV set but it's the cleverest show on mine.

If this article is to believed, an honest lady police chief is being fired for the outrageous offense of giving honest answers to a reporter's questions. I assume there's another side to this story and if anyone sees one online, I'd love to read it. But in the meantime, it sure looks like the kind of thing we all ought to protest.

Lex Passaris suggests I link to an obituary for Dick St. John, who was one half of the musical act, Dick and Dee Dee. The obit lists their main hits but somehow omits the fact that they performed the infamous song, "Bupkis," written by Rob Petrie and "Sticks" Mandalay. It was originally credited to Buzzy Potter but this was corrected on later pressings.

Jimmy Breslin on the way images of our war dead are being hidden from the American public. I hear conflicting reports as to whether this is standard procedure or unprecedented but either way, I think it's putting politics above respect.

As noted, Comedy Central recently aired a marathon of what they claimed were the "50 best" episodes of Saturday Night Live as selected by visitors to their website. They never posted the actual list anywhere but someone sent me a rundown of which episodes were run.

And as expected, there were none from the first five seasons since Comedy Central didn't have the rights to those. There were none from the last three for the same reason. There was one from 1980, one from '82, one from '86, one from '87 and one from '88. The vast majority were from the years 1996-2000, with eleven episodes from 1997 alone.

Now, this may be because the viewing (and voting) audience on the Internet is younger than we think and inclined to favor the years when they first discovered SNL. It may be that Darrell Hammond voted a few thousand times. Or it may be that the voting was kind of a sham and the folks at Comedy Central just put on whatever they felt like showing. My natural suspicion of polls conducted on the Internet leads me away from the belief that there's a substantial number of people who really assessed all the choices and came to the conclusion that SNL has never been better than it was a few years ago.

Then again, look at who we elect in this country.

For some time now, a major frustration in the comic strip community has been the failure of Mort Walker's International Museum of Cartoon Art. Walker started it in 1974 and it moved about before settling into a beautiful and permanent (Mort thought) home in Boca Raton, Florida in 1992. But tourists didn't flock to the place in sufficient number and it closed in 2002. Since then, the collection has been in storage while Mort and the other operators tried to unload the Florida building and find a new location.

Dirk Deppey over on the ¡Journalista! site is reporting (here's the link) that arrangements are being made to house a human rights museum in the Boca Raton structure…so that presumably means Walker is out from that financial encumbrance. And I hear from another source that they're close to announcing a new venue where the collection of rare and exemplary comic strips can be made available to the public…a very tall structure in New York that all by itself attracts tourists and that once housed a couple of comic book companies, including Timely (Marvel) Comics…

Years ago, I was a serious player of Blackjack, usually in Las Vegas. The way I played it, I usually won but it required a helluva lot of time, study and concentration, and it eventually came to feel not just like work, but work that I did not enjoy. At the time, I was way ahead but well aware that if I continued to play, at some point my luck would turn bad and I'd give back all my winnings and maybe more. I knew that if that happened, I'd feel compelled to keep playing until I got ahead again, which would be even less pleasant work.

So just like that, I stopped playing. Gave it up. I continued to go to Vegas because I like Vegas but my last dozen trips, the only gambling I've done has been a few bucks in slots, just to see how some of the new model machines worked. And I never went for Craps or Roulette or any of the others in the first place.

If I hadn't retired from Blackjack back then, I might do so now. Several of the casinos have quietly changed their rules, generally on single deck games, so that a "natural" (Ace plus a 10-value card) no longer pays 3:2. Now, it pays 6:5, which may seem like a teensy change but really isn't. This article will explain why it's harder to come out ahead now than it used to be. Since they seem to be getting away with this, you can expect more rules and payoffs to change in the house's favor.

Creeping exploitation is occurring in many areas of the town. There are still cheap places to stay and eat, but buffet prices are rising and a lot of the newer hotels and fine restaurants are amazingly expensive, given that it's Vegas. Meanwhile, most of the major showrooms are continuing with an unofficial policy of sneaking ticket prices upward. The best Lance Burton tix are now $66 each, the Cirque du Soleil show at the Bellagio is $99-$150, and Danny Gans, whose show consists of one guy on a stage backed by a small band, charges a hundred bucks a seat. A hundred is what you'll pay for the worst seat to Elton John's show, which has a top of $250. So far, the price increases do not seem to be hurting attendance at most ongoing shows so the hikes will probably be ongoing, as well.

A few years ago, the conventional wisdom was that with so many casinos opening all across the country, Vegas might be on the cusp of extinction. Now, even without Bill Bennett's money, the town is doing better than ever and a dozen new "megaresorts" are planned. What may be extinct is good, cheap shows and buffets. That, and winners at Blackjack.

Here's an interesting site. Some analysts claim that they've identified certain indicators that tip off the gender of the author of a given piece of writing. The Gender Genie attempts to apply those rules to a hunk of text (preferably 500 words or more) that you upload. I tried ten pieces from my online articles and postings and each time it said they were written by a guy. See if it works for you.

Vince Waldron (a fine author, whose website is a haven for us sitcom fanciers) writes in reference to our earlier item on the series, Hank…

Just saw the Hank piece question, on which I have no more to add. (I think that one may have been before my time.) However, I did have a "wait a minute!" moment when I saw the publicity graphic you included in your listing, which showed Hank pondering one of life's ponderables next to a statue of Rodin's Thinker. Surely I'm not the only fan of old tv who found the juxtaposition of Hank and thinker more than a tad reminiscent of a motif frequently employed in the opening bumper of another series that featured a campus cut-up named Dobie.

Yeah, that's interesting. I don't recall "The Thinker" ever being a part of the TV series. It may have turned up only in that one publicity photo, which Hank star Dick Kallman also used on the cover of a record album he had out at the time. Hard to believe though that no one involved with Hank realized they were replicating a key visual from The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which had gone off the air not long before and was still quite visible in reruns.

…although I'll tell you an odd thing. One of the producers of Hank (and I think he directed some of them) was my old boss, Jimmie Komack. And in 1977, when CBS hired Komack to produce a revival of Dobie Gillis, Jimmie enraged Max Shulman, Dwayne Hickman and everyone else involved in the old show by bragging that he'd never seen the original series. Hickman, Bob Denver, Frank Faylen and Sheila James all signed on to the pilot/special because Max Shulman had co-written (with Eric Cohen) a very funny script that was true to the spirit of the original but, I thought, quite accessible to anyone who didn't know the old show. It also struck me as quite contemporary, but Komack decided that everyone involved was too fixated on replicating a series no one remembered and he was worried it wouldn't be modern…so he tossed the Shulman-Cohen script and had a new one written by two other writers who didn't particularly recall the old series.

The result was a deservedly-unsold pilot called, appropriately enough, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? and if you ever run into Dwayne Hickman and want to see him turn a lovely shade of scarlet, ask him about it. (Actually, don't, 'cause he's a very nice guy. Here's a link to his website, by the way. His autobiography, which you can purchase there, is a pretty good book.)

I guess this really has nothing to do with the Hank photo but in the world of weblogging, if something pops into your head, you post it. By the way, the above story has one of those EC Comics endings. A few years later, when Jimmie might have been trying to sell a new sitcom to CBS, he had a teensy problem: The guy you pitched to then at CBS was Dwayne Hickman.

While I'm posting: Tom Wittick wrote to ask if I knew anything about Dick Kallman. Well, I know he was a musical performer before and after his time in Hollywood. He spent a lot of time after Hank playing the Robert Morse role in productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, then he replaced Tommy Steele in the lead of Half a Sixpence on Broadway, then took it on the road for a while. He worked a lot actually, bouncing around between movie and TV parts and stage, plus he also played Vegas a lot. Somewhere in the mid-seventies, performing dried up and he became a dealer in rare paintings and antiques until 1980 when he was killed in a robbery of some of his wares. Sad ending for a pretty talented guy.

Happy 81st birthday to "Smilin'" Stan Lee, guru of the Marvel universe. I hope I have half his energy when I'm his age. Hell, I wish I had half his energy these days. Maybe if I did, I would have gotten around to posting this yesterday, which is when his actual birthday was. I'll try to atone with this quick anecdote: Years ago at a comic convention, there was a very lovely lady who was dressed as a then-popular Marvel character named The Valkyrie. She was stunning, and Stan couldn't resist going up to her and saying, "Hi, I think I created you." The lady was nice but she said, "I think Roy Thomas created me when he was writing The Avengers." Stan was crushed (who wouldn't be?) but then, as he started to walk away in shame, a nearby fan piped up and said, "But Valkyrie used to be The Enchantress, and the Enchantress first appeared in an issue of Thor that you did with Jack Kirby!" Stan brightened up and told the lady, "Ha! I knew I'd created you!"

I mentioned meeting Carlotta Monti the other day and a reader made me promise I'd tell how that happened and all that I recalled. It was around 1974, a period when I often found myself in Westwood Village, right outside the U.C.L.A. campus. My Aunt Dot was donating two days a week as a saleslady at the United Nations Gift Shop, which was a charity enterprise that sold globes and flags and little sculptures that you'd never want in your house. When I was in the area, I'd drop in and say howdy to Aunt Dot and one day, she introduced me to another of the women who volunteered their time in the store. When she said, "This is Carlotta Monti," little bells went off in my head and I thought, "Hey, I think this is the lady who was W.C. Fields' mistress." She seemed about the right age (just shy of 70) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything other than, "Oh, I certainly know of you." Matter of fact, I think I changed the subject swiftly and awkwardly and hurried off. Once home, I consulted her autobiography, W.C. Fields and Me and, sure enough, it was the same lady.

I checked with Aunt Dot to find out when Ms. Monti would be there again and took the book up to get it signed. We wound up going to a shop down the street for cola and coffee, and I could see that Ms. Monti was thrilled to have a new audience for her tales of "Woody," as she called him. The way she pronounced it, it rhymed with "moody" and no, I have no idea where the nickname came from. She was proud of the book and upset that "certain people" who knew Fields or defended his memory felt she'd exploited her relationship with him. These "certain people" (unnamed) were also upset that she had sold or was about to sell the film rights…and I recall thinking to myself, "That's one movie that will never get made." Two years later, it was. Filmdom would have been much better off if I'd been right.

She kept coming back to the fact that she was being criticized for writing about her life. Her side of it, which did not surprise me and which I am not suggesting was at all wrong, was that she'd given "the best years" of her life to Fields and received precious little. So selling her life story was her inheritance, and "Woody" would have wanted her to be comfortable in her old age. She said she had plenty more stories…enough to fill several more books, but would have to wait a few years before embarking on one.

I asked her to tell me one of these stories and she mulled several possibilities before telling of an aging prostitute Fields knew. She wasn't sure if "Woody" had ever been a patron but they were friends, and Fields was always trying to find a way to throw her a few bucks since she was too old to get much work in her main occupation. There's a tale that makes the rounds about some guy who's in the hospital, attended by nurses and/or nuns and one day, one comes in, locks the door and begins ripping off her clothes and performing sex acts on his person. This of course shocks the patient who is unaware the nun (or nurse) is a hooker that his friends have hired for this treat/trick. Well, according to Ms. Monti, Fields's friend specialized in such missions and owned all the necessary costuming. Now that she was older, he occasionally hired her for non-carnal nun impersonation. He'd arrange for her to be in some restaurant or other public place when he was with some pals and he'd start verbally abusing this nun and saying foul, vulgar things to her. This would horrify Fields' friends who would try to shut him up but he would persist…until finally, the "nun" would start firing back with even better obscenities, and Fields' cronies would realize they'd been had. According to Ms. Monti, "Woody" loved the reactions.

The other main thing I recall beyond the talk about him wanting to play Scrooge was that she felt Fields's last few years had been squandered by Hollywood. He'd had a bad check-up and from that point on, no studio wanted to start a movie with him in the lead. He was in constant demand for short cameos but many offers fell through and some of what he did film was never released. She made the comment that he might have lived longer if the business hadn't decided prematurely that he was dying.

She didn't have a lot of time that day so we agreed to get together again for a longer chat but never did. And though she lived almost two decades after our chat, she never wrote that second book. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with her because…well, how often do you get to talk to someone who slept with W.C. Fields? These days, hardly ever.

That eBay auction of my pilot script and bible for Dungeons and Dragons ended at a price of $255.00, and I have no idea how I feel about that. I guess I'm afraid that some animation studio is going to see that and decide that's what they should pay writers for writing these things in the first place.

Speaking of eBay, I have nothing to do with it but a one-of-a-kind, hand-carved Porky Pig walking stick is currently up for bids. It was made for my pal Bob Bergen, who usually does Mr. Pig's voice these days, but it's the wrong length for him. So you can buy it (or at least see it) by clicking here.

Did you know Kay Kuter died last month? Yeah, me neither. I just found out that the venerable character actor (and fixture at autograph shows) died November 12 from pulmonary complications. I didn't see anything in the papers about it, even though a lot of folks probably remember him as Newt Kiley on Petticoat Junction and Green Acres…six years, playing the same character on two popular series. At those autograph shows, that's all they seemed to ask him about. He wearily but good-naturedly answered questions about Arnold Ziffel. We chatted occasionally about an amazing career that went back to bit parts opposite Bogart in Sabrina, Sinatra and Brando in Guys and Dolls and Jack Benny in the recurring hillbilly act that graced the Benny program.

His listing in the Internet Movie Database will give you a brief sampling of what he did. As you'll see, he never played big roles but he sure played a lot of them.

Went to a party last evening at the home of Leonard and Alice Maltin. Got to talk to lots of fun folks including Stan Freberg, Chuck McCann, Richard Sherman, Ian Whitcomb, Phil Proctor and John Landis. It was a lot more fun than the last time I was with John Landis. It was 1963 and we were in the same classroom at Emerson Junior High School in West Los Angeles, hearing over the P.A. system that the President had been shot.

Lots of fun talk. Richard Sherman was telling everyone that things are finally set to bring the stage musical version of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which is a hit over in London) to Broadway in Fall of 2004. (There are video clips and fun facts over at the show's website.)