For a long time, Lydia had my back yard all to herself. I've been feeding feral cats out there for an awfully long time and I usually had a few lurking about…but when it came down to just Lydia, I started thinking that maybe she'd be the last. I thought that once she died or disappeared, as feral cats eventually do, I'd stop putting food out there. Raccoons and possums and sometimes even crows wind up eating as much of it as the cats do.

Then around February, a new cat began stopping in. Unsure at first whether it was a male or female, I named it Murphy. Murphy howls a lot but she — I finally decided it was a she — seemed to be well-behaved. It wouldn't let me get within ten feet of her but it also wouldn't get in the way of me feeding Lydia. I'd set out a bowl of chow and Murphy would wait until Lydia had had enough and then when Lydia left the feeding area, Murphy would sneak up and wolf down whatever remained in the dish. Like I said, well-behaved.

But not lately. Lately, I put out the food for Lydia and Murphy sits there, a few feet away, growling and meowing and putting out vibes that yell, "Hey! Hurry it up! Some of us are hungry!" And as the growls get louder, Lydia finally flees and Murphy scampers up and devours every single scrap of what's edible in that dish. The dish itself is metal or else she might take a bite out of it.

Then when Murphy finishes, she howls for more…but it's a self-defeating demand. When I do step out onto the porch to get the dish for refilling purposes, Murphy flees from me, sprinting clear out of the yard. I fill it, put it back out on the porch and Lydia wanders back up to finish dining.  I suppose it all works out okay.

By the way: As I mentioned, when the new cat began showing up in my yard,  I named it Murphy.  That same cat has also been seen in my neighbors' yard and they also gave it a name.  Want to guess what they named her?  Murphy.  They also named her Murphy.  I guess there's just something very Murphy about her.

If I were running the Joe Biden campaign, I would make more of the fact that when Joe Biden says something stupid, he apologizes. Especially since he'll certainly be doing more of that before the election and his opponent, of course, will be doing none of that.

Martin Short discusses various characters he's played over the years…

I don't like it when John Oliver takes a week off. The least he could do is get Mr. Nutterbutter to guest-host for him while he's away.

Busy weekend.  The last chapter of the article on Nursing Homes should be here tomorrow.  Or maybe the day after.  Or the day after.  Time moves at a variable pace when you're in isolation.  Every so often, I have a day that must be forty-five hours, given how much I manage to get accomplished in it.  But then that's almost immediately balanced by a couple of those nine-hour days in quick succession…the kind where you get up, get out of your pajamas and into actual clothes, eat something…and then it's time to get ready for bed.  You've all had them.

This week, my one-on-one podcasts have a theme in common and that theme is Groucho Marx.  On Tuesday, I will be talking with my friend Steve Stoliar, who worked as Groucho's secretary for the great comedian's final years and witnessed the antics of the controversial Ms. Erin Fleming.  Steve is also a fine writer, a student of non-Marxian comedy and a talented voice actor and impressionist.

On Thursday, I talk with another friend…Frank Ferrante, who as readers of this blog are sick of hearing, tours the continent with his magical show, An Evening with Groucho.  Frank is so good, he can even sometimes do An Evening with Groucho in the afternoon…and like Steve, he also does a lot of other things.  We'll talk about them, too.

Next Saturday is the third Cartoon Voices Panel and…well, I hope you folks are enjoying these because I am.

Holland Casinos are all over the Netherlands — a state-owned network of establishments that take money from Dutch citizens in a much more fun, sporting way than collecting it all through taxes. This is a commercial for the chain. Pay careful attention to the gaming chip in constant motion…

That's not CGI. Someone, obviously in a series of separate shots, made that chip do that. That "someone" was my oft-mentioned-here pal, Charlie Frye. The man juggles balls and clubs and tennis rackets…and he even manipulates chips like that, as you can see in this "making of" video…

Tonight, NBC is running a fourth season episode of Saturday Night Live from 10/14/1978. Why this one? Because it was hosted by Fred Willard, which is a fine reason.

I'm not sure I've seen this episode since 10/14/1978 and the only thing I recall from it is that Fred did a bit as an Elvis impersonator in the monologue and later, there was a very nice, well-executed sketch about a one-night-stand with him opposite Laraine Newman. I hope it makes the cut because this episode is being hacked down from its original ninety minutes to fit into an hour slot tonight.

BTW: The lovely Ms. Newman will be on our third online Cartoon Voices Panel a week from today. She will be joined by four other voice performers also of extraordinary talent.

Leonard and Jessie Maltin talk with Hayley Mills…

My one-time writing partner Dennis Palumbo has some thoughts about how the pandemic is affecting folks who write for a living. But a lot of this is applicable to folks who don't.

If you are into solving Sudoku puzzles (as am I), you need to see this one…

A week from tomorrow, I'll be doing the third Cartoon Voices Panel. I just "signed up" the last of the five panelists and I'm quite pleased with who I've got. I'll announce the names here over the weekend and you'll see why I'm quite pleased.

Not a lot to report. I'm not watching much news but I gather the spread of COVID-19 is being matched by the spread of a certain mindset — the "I don't believe anything that tells me what I don't want to hear" mindset. That's a good way to be wrong a lot…and unprepared for all sorts of things.

Earlier, I watched some of a very long police pursuit that dominated Los Angeles TV this morning. I find these interesting for a number of reasons, one being that they're among the few times a TV station is broadcasting something with absolutely no idea what's going to happen or when. Someone at the station makes the decision to cover a chase which could last two minutes and end in a bloody shoot-out or it could last two hours and end up in a quiet, anti-climactic peaceful surrender. Other outcomes are possible.

Many outcomes are possible with a baseball game but 90+% of the time, it ends in nine innings with one team scoring 1-3 more runs than the other. But that person decides to pre-empt regular programming (which pisses off devout followers of the absent shows) and skip all the commercials (which costs the station money). I wish I knew more about how those decisions are made. I've seen some cases where I'm sure they later thought they'd made the wrong call.

Also, the news coverage of chases is interesting with reporters who have about five minutes of actual information and have to fill 90 minutes in which nothing new happens for long stretches. For this morning's chase, I channel-surfed and on every station, the newsguy or newslady was saying, over and over, "He's driving with no regard for others." True but obvious. When you're running red lights at busy intersections, you aren't showing a lot of concern and caution.

As you may have noticed, these chases offer a lot of analogy to the virus situation we're now in. No one is sure what's going to happen, no one knows when it will end…and a lot of people are running around doing potentially destructive things with no regard for others. If only we could solve the coronavirus emergency with a couple of spike strips…

This is Part 2 of what I've now realized will have to be a three-part piece about S.N.F.s (Skilled Nursing Facilities) and how I dealt with them when my mother — and soon after, my girl friend — were being assigned to them. Part 1 is here and should be read before proceeding with this chapter.

Let me remind you: Some S.N.F.s are quite satisfactory and perhaps even very good at supplying the services they are supposed to supply. But some are not and my mission was to get the two most important women in my life, one at a time, into the best S.N.F.s available at the moments of decision. My mother had spent one night in a bad one and it was one of the ghastlier nights she ever endured. I was determined she would never experience another one like that…

But how to prevent it? The rules of her Kaiser health insurance mandated that after her doctor ruled she was well enough to leave the hospital, she either had to go to a private home (hers or someone else's, which would have meant mine) or move to the first S.N.F. in that area that (a) Kaiser had a contract with and (b) was ready and willing to accept her. In neither her home nor mine could she receive the care and treatment she needed.

To solve this problem, it was important to remember that there were no human villains involved; at least none that I could talk to…so getting testy with individuals wouldn't help. The problem was with the rules…and while rules can sometimes be artfully bent, they cannot (usually) be broken. In this world, I think we often spend too much time arguing about rules with people who don't have the power to change or waive them. What you can do occasionally is to find ways to get around them.

If I was going to circumvent them to her advantage, the first thing I had to do was to fully understand those rules. Several of the folks with whom I dealt at Kaiser were very friendly and helpful. They were willing to explain the system to me, especially since they could see that I only had one concern here, which was to do what was best for my mother.

When the moment came for her to be moved to an S.N.F. this time, I asked again for a list of the possible locations. As I recall, there were seven of them. A symathetic staff member there tipped me off that two of them would probably not please me. They'd had complaints about them — not enough (yet) to sever their association with those businesses but enough to warn me about them. I visited the other five, politely asking for a tour of each…and by now, I'd learned enough to ask better questions.

The person taking me on the tour was always some sort of administrator at the facility and they were all very proud of the businesses they ran. I listened to their sales pitches but I also tried to get away from them and explore a little on my own. This wasn't hard to do since all those administrators were very busy people and they kept being called away from our tour to handle some matter. But if they weren't, I'd just ask to use a men's room and I'd visit not just one but every one I could find. That told me a lot about the cleanliness of that S.N.F.

And I'd strike up conversations with other employees there. Most people who get into any kind of nursing or medical care have a solid streak of empathy in them and as long as I kept it friendly and casual, they figured I was not going to get them into trouble for anything they told me. One question I asked that told me a lot went something like this…

"This seems like a nice place but I just have to make sure. I had my mother in another Skilled Nursing Facility recently and it seemed like a nice place when I toured it. But late at night, she said, people were screaming and yelling a lot. That doesn't happen here, does it?"

You would be amazed at some of the candid, "don't-tell-anyone-I-told-you-this-but…" responses that evoked. The administrators taking me on my tour all denied that ever happened but the nurses, orderlies, interns (etc.) were honest and I often heard something that caused me to immediately scratch the place off my list. I wound up crossing off all five available S.N.F.s and went back to the lady at Kaiser who was in charge of arranging to move my mother into one of them.

"Those are the only ones in our working area," she told me. "She has to go to whichever one will accept her." I asked if I could get a list of — and go inspect — the S.N.F.s in the adjacent working area.

Kaiser is a big organization. They were trying to move my mother to an S.N.F. within a ten mile radius. "Well," I asked, "what about outside that ten mile radius?" She didn't know why that couldn't be done but said that a certain Mr. So-and-So (I forget his name) would have to okay it. I went to see Mr. So-and-So and our conversation went roughly like this…

MR. SO-AND-SO: I've been here nine years and no one has ever suggested this.

ME: I've been bringing my mother to Kaiser for a lot longer than that and I'm suggesting it. Look, if my mother suddenly moved her residence to twenty-five miles away, you'd make the nursing homes in that area available to her. And you'd assign a Kaiser doctor in that area to check in on her in the nursing home in that area. Why can't we do that without her moving her home?

MR. SO-AND-SO, after thinking a bit: Well, the only problem I can see would involve transporting her farther. We have ambulances and drivers who are supposed to stay within the area.

ME: I have a car with a full tank of gas. I will get her there and take her home and whatever else has to be done. Besides, my mother would much rather have me drive her somewhere than one of your drivers and it won't use up their time or the gasoline Kaiser pays for.

He thought for another few seconds and then said those wonderful words, "I can't think of a reason to say no." An hour later, I was driving around that adjacent area, checking out S.N.F.s that were more than ten miles away. I found a real good one in Torrance. It was 22.3 miles from my home but I decided it was worth the drive. If I could time my visits to not involve driving at rush hour, I could get there in about 40 minutes.

The place was so far superior to options closer to me, I decided it was worth the commute. I had a nice chat there with the fellow who ran the place and we bonded. Turned out he had once been an avid reader of Marvel Comics and was delighted to meet a guy who'd worked for both Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I'm reasonably sure though that wasn't the main reason he agreed to make a private room available for my mother and to tell Kaiser that they would welcome her.

As I left there, confident my mother would like the place, I had a sudden thought. Some of you may recall a long, maddening tale I told here back in this message. I was hiring caregivers from an agency that supplies such folks and while we had some good ones, most of them didn't stick around long and I caught two of them — one after the other — stealing money from my mother.

Those ladies were immediately fired but even after I supplied solid proof of their crimes, the police never got around to arresting or charging or even looking into the matter. I did sue the caregiver agency and they reimbursed me for the losses.

Most of the caregivers we had for her were fine and honest and a few were pretty good. The best one was a lady who I wished had stayed with it but she had to give up caregiving for personal matters. As I was driving home from my inspection of the S.N.F. in Torrance, I suddenly realized something: That great caregiver lived in Torrance! I pulled over to the curb, found her number on my phone, called her and asked if she was interested in part-time work helping out my mother there. When I told her which S.N.F. it was, she said, "That's about six blocks from where I live. Absolutely!"

So that's how my mother not only got into a good Skilled Nursing Facility but also had her own private caregiver there who'd come by whenever I couldn't. The caregiver did her laundry and brought her better food than they served at the S.N.F. and kept her company and ran errands for her. If you had to be in a place like that, it was about as good an experience as it was possible to have.

My mother returned to that S.N.F. a couple of times. She passed away there and all the right things were done. And it was only possible because we found a way around the rules.

This has been the second of three parts here on this topic. In our third and final installment, I'll tell you what happened when I had to find the right S.N.F. for my dear friend Carolyn. This one was more difficult but I found a new way around the rules…one that was inspired by the legendary Sgt. Bilko. It did not involve lying as he sometimes did. Anyway, you'll understand why I'm illustrating this story with photos of him.

Click here to jump directly to Part Three

This evening, I will be talking with my longtime friend Cheri Steinkellner, who was Cheri Eichen when we met. She was a regular performer on Pink Lady and Jeff and I was the Head Writer and if the show had been as wonderful as she was on it, somebody might've watched it. Since then, Cheri — working mainly with her husband Bill Steinkellner — had become mainly a writer and producer of hit situation comedies, a couple of great animation projects and they were nominated for a Tony Award for the book of the musical of Sister Act.

Bill is one of the most high-praised directors and teachers of improv comedy and Cheri is a powerhouse in that world, as well. They're two of my dearest friends and she's quite brilliant and quite lovely and quite worth interviewing…which I'll be doing tonight at 7 PM Pacific Time. You may be able to watch it live on this page but you'll certainly be able to watch it live over on this YouTube page — and there, you can comment or ask questions.

If you miss some or all of it, the show will be available for viewing almost immediately after on my You Tube page…and while you're over there, would enough of you please subscribe to get me over the 1000 Subscribers mark? It doesn't cost anything. And while you're there, you can also watch some of the other webcasts I've done. If you haven't seen either of the Cartoon Voices Panels, they're especially fun. Thanks!