I think John Oliver's show was supposed to return from its hiatus on Valentine's Day but now it appears February 20 is the date. Here's a trailer…

I left out one thought that I meant to include in my piece last night about why I've lost most of my interest in going to Las Vegas. I planned to make this observation: The Powers That Are in Vegas seem to have decided that they aren't that interested, the way they used to be, at the kind of tourist who is attracted by discounts or coupons or ridiculously-cheap shrimp cocktails.

They appear to have decided that there are plenty of folks out there who aren't alienated by price increases. There's a sense of "Gee, we raised the price of that by $10.00 and didn't lose enough business to regret it. Let's raise it another ten and see what happens."

And someone I know who isn't very rich told me this morning that they don't care how much Vegas costs. They just want to play Video Poker. They seemed a bit startled at the concept when I told them that you can play Video Poker day and night and night and day and not lose a cent if you play it at home, not for money. There are only about 17,398,772,044 Video Poker games available for any computer.

In fact, you don't need to even buy or download anything. The big rage in casinos these days is Ultimate X Poker, a brand of Video Poker where you wager on ten hands at the same time but you play one and…well, it's a little tricky to explain but you can learn it as you play it for free on this page. You won't win anything there but then again, you won't lose anything…except many hours of your life because it's so addictive.

• Every day is a good day to not be Rudy Giuliani but some days are better than others.

Adam Ragusea discusses the origins of words we use to denote food.  I found this a lot more interesting than I expected…

I used to go to Las Vegas a lot. I liked exploring the city and all its attractions. I liked going to shows — occasionally two the same night — and I liked hanging out with friends who were in those shows. I liked the 24 hour nature of the city. When I went alone, as I did much of the time, I could eat when I wanted to, work when I wanted to, sleep when I wanted to, be alone in my room when I wanted to, etc.

I liked some of the unique fast food options…like Lobster Me, which can be found in the food courts of a couple of hotels. They run it like a McDonald's but what they serve is very yummy lobster rolls. I liked the cheaper buffets for two reasons, both having to do with my many food allergies. Cheap buffets usually offer very simple food — carved roast beef, mashed potatoes, baked chicken, etc. So I get to see my food before I commit to it and at a buffet, I rarely have to ask, "What's in that?" And if I do, there's usually an attendant standing right nearby who can tell me.

Also, I really like freshly-roasted turkey sliced right off the freshly-roasted bird. Most Vegas buffets offer that and most other places I eat don't.

And the rooms were cheap and I used to play a mean game of Blackjack and…well, I had a lot of reasons to like Vegas. Almost none of them apply any more. The shows are beastly expensive and very few of them these days interest me. And I'm not talking about shows like Adele's upcoming 24-show residency where the cheapest tickets are now close to $1000 and ones up front are going for $30,000 each. And no, I did not mistype the number of zeroes in those amounts.

I'm talking about shows like Carrot Top (tickets start at $53.10 and go up to $91.25) or Rich Little ($62.18 to $83.98) or no one you've ever heard of (the same range). The cheapest Cirque du Soleil show in town wants almost $100 for its cheapest seats and then the prices go higher than the trapeze artists. And I don't know anyone in the current shows so no hanging-out backstage.

I gave up gambling and I ain't going back. I don't want to relearn Blackjack, especially in light of certain rule changes that increase the house advantage. There are a lot fewer buffets now and none of them are cheap.

And the room prices may seem reasonable at first glance but then they add on "Resort Fees" that can double or triple the price that lures you in. Here's a list of these fees.

Because of COVID — which is soaring in that town — I haven't been thinking of going there. But I'm now thinking that even when COVID is no longer a threat, I don't think I want to go to that city. Even if they will have a Peter Luger Steak House by then.

If you never read Ian Frazier's 1990 article in The New Yorker about Wile E. Coyote suing the Acme Company, it's back online.

Mike B. follows up with this article that appeared in advance of the special we're discussing here.  It gives us more info including the name of the producer, Bill Stierwalt, who IMDB tells me was involved with The Lohman and Barkley, a locally-produced (and wonderful) TV comedy show I've written about here before — here, for instance..  It also tells us that The Golden Age of Comic Books originally aired on Wednesday, March 9 at 8:30 PM.

Again, we welcome any further information on this program…or for that matter, on Misty the Prettiest Go-Go Gal…

This took twelve minutes and it's from 5/18/66 and is, as you'll note, a rerun. Thank you, Mike B. Anyone else find anything?

All this talk here about the Catman & Reuben pilot here got my pal Scott Shaw! to thinking about another local-in-Los-Angeles TV special we both remember from the same period. In 1966 (we think), KCOP Channel 13 (we're pretty sure) ran a special about the then-new fad of collecting and treasuring old comic books.

The show was hosted by Gary Owens who — since Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was not yet in existence — was best known as a local radio personality on KMPC 719. The show included tours of the Hollywood book shops like Cherokee Books and Collectors Book Shop. In those stores, amazingly, kids of all ages paid as much as twenty whole dollars for a copy of Superman #1 that originally sold for — get this! — ten cents.

I was already hanging out at such places…though I was wise enough not to spend that kind of money for old comic books. Scott first learned of those stores and about this thing called "comic book fandom" from the special. It did a lot to legitimize our hobby, promote the notion that comics weren't just for kids…and I think it even drove the price of a Superman #1 all the way up to twenty-five or thirty bucks.

For years, Gary searched for a copy of that special and I helped him search. We both became satisfied that KCOP no longer had one. They kept almost nothing. And this was well before the days when one could record a TV show off the air so it's doubtful any video still exists. But some of you folks did wonders to search archives and find info on Catman & Reuben so Scott was wondering — and he got me to wondering — what could be found about this special.

We think it was 1966. We're sure it was Gary Owens and Channel 13 and I think it aired more than once…but not much more than that. We don't remember what it was called (neither did Gary) but I wouldn't be surprised if there were Batman-style sound effects in the name. A genuine-but-intangible newsfromme no-prize will go to anyone who can come up with any info on the program.

Here's the latest Sergio/Mark video. I play Mark…

• I just saw this headline — "Microsoft buys Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion" — and I thought, "Damn! I should have bid 68.8." Too late.

When I wrote about the comedy team of Davis & Reese in this post, I had no idea I'd be spending so much blog space on them…but it's my fault. I had to go and mention a TV special/pilot I remembered that they did…perhaps the first-ever spoof of the 1966 Batman TV series. And yes, I know that program was kind of a spoof itself.

Thanks to industrious readers of this site, we have since found out more about the Catman and Reuben show, which as far as I now know consisted of one one-hour pilot that was so poorly-received, it led to no more.  But as you'll see in our new section, its makers apparently thought it was going to turn into a weekly series seen in many of the major markets.

Yes, to remove the topic from this section of newsfromme.com, I've opened a new section as kind of a repository/scrapbook for research and clippings devoted to this silly endeavor…and I even designed a Catman and Reuben title logo for the page.  That logo is not from the original show.  If you're interested in this little nugget of TV/comic book history, go visit our new Catman and Reuben page.

We are aware that in today's installment of the fine newspaper strip Luann, there's a character named "Mr. A" who looks an awful lot like my partner Sergio Aragonés. Thanks to the seventy-three million of you who wrote to tell me.

Back in this post and this post, we were talking about the comedy team of Davis and Reese and I recalled from memory a pilot-type show they did back a long, long time ago. I wrote in the first of the above links…

The most interesting thing I recall about them is that around the time the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) was all the rage, Davis and Reese made a pilot-of-sorts parodying it. This is all from memory and I may be a bit off but I remember it being a five-episode, shot-on-video, low-low budget serial that ran once, Monday-thru-Friday in Los Angeles on Channel 9. I think Davis played the Robin-like character and Reese played the Batman-type guy and that's all I remember about it other than that it wasn't very funny. Does anyone else recall this thing? I don't know if it was local or national or what.

I didn't think there was any way to further research this but David A. Grudt, a reader of this site, prowled around in the L.A. Times archives and found out stuff. It was called Catman and Reuben and indeed, Davis played the Robin-like character and Reese played the Batman-type guy.

I recalled it as five-episodes aired in one week. It was, in fact, one hour which KHJ Channel 9 aired twice — at 10 PM on two successive Monday nights — February 21, 1966 and again on February 28. As a point of reference, the Batman TV show debuted on January 12, 1966.  So someone had to get awfully busy to get the parody written and produced and telecast a mere six weeks later.

David wrote, "It would seem to have been only on Ch. 9, not national" and I think that's probably true.  At this point, a lot of the local channels in Los Angeles were producing shows and pilots with what usually turned to be the following pipe dream: That a network would see what they were doing and grab up the show…or there would be interest such that national syndication would become feasible.  The following year, Channel 9 tried some other short-lived programming including the infamous kids' show that adults watched, Shrimpenstein.

David also found an article which said, "Channel 9 answers the Batman craze with this hour-long spoof, Catman.  In the first thrilling episode, Catman and Reuben are called on to stop the evil Dr. No-Good from smuggling any more whee! into the country.  Stars the comedy team of Tony Reese and Pepper Davis."

I am fairly confident of my almost-56-years-ago recollections that the show was very dull and cheap-looking.  It mostly consisted of Catman and Reuben standing around the Cat-Cave (the main and perhaps only set) talking about a lot of off-stage action.  Catman was very serious and wise.  Reuben — and yes, I noticed his name spelled wrong above — was pretty dumb and always saying, "Gosh, that sure makes sense to me, Catman!"

It struck me that they were trying to turn that line into a catchphrase so he said it about eighty-seven times.  Did we ever see the much-talked-about master villain, Dr. No-Good?  I'm not sure we did but I may not have made it to the end, especially since I had school the next morning.

And that is all we know about this show…and all we may ever know.  We'll probably never even find out what "whee!" is and why it's a bad thing.  Great thanks to David Grudt for finding what he found.

Here's a segment from The Dean Martin Show from (I think) 1970. Dean's there with his regular piano player, Ken Lane. Then in comes "Vladimir," who is actually our friend Leo DeLyon. This should give you an idea of the kind of thing Leo did…obviously, very well.

As you watch Dean's reactions, keep in mind that this was probably done with very little — probably no — rehearsal…