This is a long story but I think I can get it into two parts. If you are a regular reader of this site, you might want to wait until Part 2 is posted and read them both in one sitting. I won't be offended. You will also understand why I am illustrating it with photos like this one of Phil Silvers in his iconic role of Master Sergeant Ernie Bilko…

A recurring theme in stories I write is that the hero outsmarts the villain. One reason I haven't done more in the super-hero vein is that I don't relate to victory through sheer brute force and power. I understand that that is often the denouement of conflicts in real life but not so much in my life. We who follow comics all have our Batmans. Mine is the one who out-thinks The Joker instead of out-crazying him or beating the crap outta him.

Outsmarting an opponent isn't possible all the time. It may not even be possible most of the time. But there are cases where the best resolution comes where you figure out how to "win" via strategy rather than by threatening and/or screaming and/or pounding on the desk or someone's face. That did not work when I had a problem with the kind of places that are called "skilled nursing facilities," regardless of how skilled the nurses there may be. And let me make it clear: Sometimes in my experiences, they were very skilled and very good at what they were supposed to do. But not always.

I first had this problem with my mother, who kept having attacks that put her into the hospital. My mother lived to the age of 90 and, given the number of cigarettes she went through for about 73 of those years, even she was amazed she lasted that long. But the last ten or so of those years, she became almost blind, almost unable to walk, unable to eat anything she liked, unable to stray too far from a bathroom, etc. Worst of all were the numerous times either paramedics or firemen or I had to take her into emergency rooms.

On the door to her home, there was a little lock box. In the lock box was a key to her door so that if I wasn't present, emergency personnel could get in and help her. Sometimes, I had to give them the combination over the phone. Sometimes, the private monitoring service to which I'd subscribed would notify the emergency personnel that she needed aid and they'd give it to rescuers. But the last few times when firemen came, they didn't need to be told the combination. They'd been there so often, they remembered it.

She received very good care at whatever hospital they took her to…and if it wasn't Kaiser Permanente, she would soon be transferred to the local Kaiser Hospital because that's the kind of insurance she had and Kaiser likes to treat its patients at their hospitals instead of paying the bills at other hospitals. Also, all her records were at Kaiser and she knew most of the doctors there and they knew her. I probably mentioned this before somewhere but because of her, I spent so much time at that Kaiser Hospital that when I went down to the cafeteria, the cashiers would automatically give me the employee discount. They saw me so often, they assumed I worked there.

Eventually, she would be released from the hospital. Sometimes, the doctor would okay her going home. Sometimes though, she would need additional care of the kind provided by a Skilled Nursing Facility, and I will henceforth abbreviate that term because I'll be using it a lot here. I don't know if it works the same way everywhere but here is how it worked with Kaiser…

Kaiser had (and I assume, still has) contracts with local S.N.F.s. These places are independently owned and managed but they agree to provide beds and care for Kaiser patients who are sent there upon discharge. They also provide space for Kaiser doctors to drop by each day and check on the Kaiser patients there. I would assume that because of volume, Kaiser pays a rate for this far less than you or I would pay if we just wanted to check someone in there or if they were referred by a doctor who wasn't part of a plan like this.

So let us say you're in the hospital and your doctor can't justify keeping you in the full-facility hospital and thinks you need to be in an S.N.F. for a while. A coordinator at the hospital makes up a page to send to all the local S.N.F.s with which they have deals. The page tells the S.N.F. who you are, what's wrong with you, what kind of treatment you will require there, how long you might be there, etc. When I dealt with these matters, these pages were faxed to all the S.N.F.s but I'll bet they're all e-mailed these days.

Someone in charge at each S.N.F. looks at the page and determines, first of all, if they have a bed for you and if they have whatever might be needed to do what the doctor says must be done for you. You might require certain equipment or physical training or you might have to be there a long time. In essence, they decide if they can take you or not and they so notify the hospital.

Under the terms of your insurance, once an S.N.F. has agreed to take you, you must leave the hospital. In some cases, you could elect to go home or to the home of a loved one who can care for you but often, that is not practical. It was not practical whenever my mother was discharged and it would not be practical a few years later when my friend Carolyn was discharged from the different hospital where she was being treated.

But in that situation, you have to leave. You cannot say, "I don't want to go to that S.N.F. I want to stay here in this hospital."

Well, you can say it but it generally doesn't do much good. Even if you have good insurance — and my mother and Carolyn both did — it's not going to pay to keep you in the hospital if your doctor says you should be in an S.N.F. and one is willing to take you. If no S.N.F. can take you, you remain in the hospital but only until some S.N.F. can and will accept you.

The first time my mother was to be released to an S.N.F., I insisted on going there first and checking the place out. It seemed acceptable…barely. But I didn't know what to look for, plus it was much better in the afternoon when I made my inspection than it was in the evening when I drove my mother there and checked her in. At night, other patients were screaming…about what, we never learned. And the nurse assigned to my mother was rude and negligent. At 7 AM the next morning, my mother phoned me and said, "Please…get me out of here!"

I hurriedly dressed and I did not go immediately to that S.N.F. Instead, I drove to Kaiser Hospital, parked my car and made my way to the employee parking lot where I located the empty parking space of one of my mother's doctors there. Fortunately, I knew his day off and it wasn't that day.

Fifteen minutes later, he pulled into his parking space to find…me. I explained to him what had happened and he said, "You go get her. I'll get the paperwork started." I sped to the S.N.F. and felt like The Prince rescuing someone from The Dragon as I packed my mother up and took her out of there. This was done over the objections of an S.N.F. staff member who insisted she could not be officially released until they'd received the proper orders from Kaiser. I was daring them to stop me as I loaded my mother into her wheelchair but then the paperwork arrived.

Thirty minutes later, she was back in a bed at Kaiser Hospital. She stayed there instead of going to another S.N.F. until it was decided she could go home.

A month or two later, she was back in Kaiser and about to be released…but not to go home. She was to be moved to a Skilled Nursing Facility (to unabbreviate for a moment). I told the lady in charge of such matters that the one she'd been in previously was unacceptable. She told me Kaiser no longer put patients in that S.N.F. They'd canceled the contract with them…the result of an investigation requested by my mother's doctor there, based on what she'd told him and what I'd told him. (That S.N.F. remained in business, by the way. I have no idea if it underwent improvement but someone was putting patients in there even if Kaiser wasn't.)

But now I had to deal with the question of what to do to prevent my mother winding up in a place equally as bad…or worse. And that, dear readers, is where we shall leave things until Part 2 of this story which will be here in a day or three.

Click here to jump directly to Part Two

The Rainbow Connection…

From 10/23/1973: Johnny Carson welcomes The Ace Trucking Company to The Tonight Show. The A.T.C. consisted of Fred Willard, George Memmoli, Michael Mislove and Bill Saluga. Not long before this, Patti Deutsch had left the group. For this sketch, Fred plays the judge, George plays the widow, Michael plays her son and Bill plays Mr. Raymond Jay Johnson Junior…but you dasn't have to call him that.

I remember seeing the A.T.C. when they were playing at the Ice House in Pasadena…and just about every club in Los Angeles that was even remotely suitable for their kind of comedy. They were always very funny and Fred was a special standout. He sure holds this sketch together…

Here's a profession you might have considered pursuing: Taste Tester for Pringles…

Well, let's see. I had a dead possum in my swimming pool over the weekend. I'm taking it as a Godfather-style warning from someone who's afraid The Complete Pogo series will beat them out for an Eisner Award this year. I also have no hot water in my house but a plumber's coming later today to see how much he can charge me to correct that situation.

Try as I may, it's impossible to shut out all news of Trump from my life. From what I gather, he's absolutely perfect in everything he does and anyone who suggests otherwise is a lying idiot who's totally corrupt and their business is failing and they have lousy ratings and they're probably ugly, too. I find it kinda fascinating that the worst insults that Donald Trump can find to hurl at anyone is that their business is failing, they have low ratings and/or that they're physically unattractive. And of course, usually their businesses aren't failing, their ratings aren't low and they look better than he does…or no worse.

End of Trump comments for this message and, if I can manage it, this week.

Getting back to something that gives me joy: Below is the final cover for Volume 7 of Pogo: The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips: Pockets Full of Pie. It is off to the presses well ahead of schedule for a release date of October 13. Reports indicate that Friday the Thirteenth will be falling on a Tuesday this year.

Honesty compels me to say the following. In normal times, there would be no question of the book coming out on schedule; not when the printers have it this far ahead of its publication date. But these are not normal times and the books are printed overseas. It would not surprise me if that person I'm not mentioning suddenly decided to close U.S. borders to any import from a country with a "K" in its name. All publishers around the world are dealing with at least a small amount of uncertainty these days. Matter of fact, probably any business that relies on foreign manufacturing or labor is less than 100% confident of anything more than about eight hours into the future.

I remain insufferably proud of this series. I'm also proud to be fulfilling my promise to my late love, Carolyn Kelly, who wanted the series she launched to keep on reprinting her father's magnum opus all the way to its conclusion. Volume 7 puts us more than halfway there.

Carolyn spent the last ten months of her too-short life at a facility that was part "skilled nursing facility" and part "assisted living residence." I'm sure most of you can tell me horror stories about what happened to a loved one in one of these but — I beg of you — don't. I have heard way too many of those tales and I do not need convincing that some of them are nightmarish places that no one who is loved by anyone should ever be in.

Carolyn was in the best one we could find and I still think no better choice was possible. Still, that facility is today awash with COVID-19. As of a month ago, they were reporting 20 deaths and over 17 then-current cases of the disease. Those numbers are surely way higher today and every now and then, having spent nearly a year of my life visiting that building almost daily, it depresses me to imagine what a ghastly, depressing place it must be now. It wasn't exactly Disneyland during the Main Street Electrical Parade back then.

I'm not mentioning its name but this is the situation at many such businesses around the country. Anyone who believes this pandemic thing is a hoax to unseat certain elected officials should visit one, maskless.

Nursing facilities are as much a necessity of life as hospitals these days — especially when some hospitals are still jammed at times. I dealt with such places when my mother was dying and again with Carolyn and I did learn one trick that helped a little. I'm going to write a post in the next day or so to tell you about that trick in case you ever need it (you might) though it may only work in certain select situations. If it does work for you, please pass it on and give credit for it, not to me but to the person who inspired it…Master Sergeant Ernest Bilko.

On Thursday, I'll be interviewing my friend Cheri Steinkellner, who with her husband Bill worked on The Jeffersons, Cheers, Bob and many other shows including the animated series, Teacher's Pet and the Broadway musical of Sister Act. Among other vital questions, I'll ask her what it's like to accept an Emmy Award presented by Milton Berle when he doesn't want to get off the stage.

The next Cartoon Voices Panel will be Saturday, May 30. And wait'll you see the lineup I'm lining up.

Several folks have sent me links to this article in the New York Times. In it, media columnist Ben Smith dares to question whether Ronan Farrow is as good a journalist as his fame suggests. Says Smith, "At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove."

Curiously, Smith does not delve at all into the scandal that seems to be of primary importance to Farrow: The relentless attacks on his alleged father, Woody Allen. Might that not tell us volumes about what Farrow thinks constitutes solid proof or relevant evidence? So I don't know what to think of any of this.

A very funny man, onstage and off…and very nice. And a good dresser. Fred was the kind of guy who showed up in a tie and jacket when jeans and a t-shirt would have been just fine.

And polite and friendly and approachable. And humble. People surrounded him once at an event I attended, all telling him how great he was on Fernwood Tonight or in This is Spinal Tap or a bit with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show or somewhere. Fred thanked them but quickly changed the subject to anything but himself.

Oh — and a great audience. I sat next to him at a show where great comedian after great comedian performed. There are comics and comic actors who either won't laugh at someone else or they give out with a kind of fake chuckle, trying to look like it doesn't bother them when someone else is scoring. Not Fred. He howled as loudly as anyone in the place and now and then the guy on stage would get a monstrous guffaw and Fred would turn to me and say, "Isn't this guy great?"

Getting back to funny: Fred was. He was fast. He was funny. From the day I first saw him in the Ace Trucking Company out at the Ice House in Pasadena, I watched as he would crawl into a character and play it for all it for every possible laugh. Every possible laugh and then some.

And loved and respected. Everyone liked him. Everyone wanted him on their show. That was Fred Willard. Wasn't that guy great?

I occasionally mention my pal Charlie Frye here and I usually say he's the best comedy juggler I've ever seen in my life. Want some proof? Every day during our isolations, Charlie has been posting a video as "The Great Quarantini," performing some silly feat in his bathrobe in his workroom. Here's an example. If you're watching on a computer monitor, take this full screen. This man does things like this all the time…

You see that cookie? When I was younger and eating things with high sugar content, those cookies were my favorite. They were sold in just about every delicatessen in the world and I bought them (or had my parents buy me them) all the time. But I never knew what to call them except "those cookies with the colored balls on them." A more detailed discussion of this mystery occurred on this blog back in 2006. Read this message and then this one.

I never got a satisfactory answer and since I wasn't eating the things anymore, the whole question slipped from my mind where there is ample opportunity for slippage. The other day though, I happened upon a recipe for them. The noted pastry/dessert chef Meghan McGarry makes them with a dash of bourbon and calls them "bourbon confetti cookies." Being an absolute non-drinker, I've never knowingly ingested bourbon but I don't think that was ever in the zillions of them I consumed. Or maybe I had an alcohol problem and didn't know it.

Anyway, I still don't think that's the name for them and have concluded that there isn't any name for them that's even vaguely close to official. Back around '06, my friend Misty Lee wanted to start a campaign to name them "Evaniers." We'd all start using that name for them on the Internet and it would spread, as things do on the Internet, and everyone would eventually call them that. Since I'd given up the cookies by then, I asked her not to.

Anyway, if you want to bake up a batch of them, here's the recipe. Don't make any for me, thank you.

Here's another one of these mass online collaborations…and maybe my favorite so far. A whole mess of performers who've been in productions of Hairspray — and there are only about nineteen folks alive who appear in musicals and haven't been in a production of Hairspray — perform the big hit number from that show. If you look closely, you may spot Randy Rainbow and Kristin Chenoweth and Harvey Fierstein and Bruce Vilanch and my friend Valerie Perri and many others.

This is all part of fund-raising efforts for The Actors Fund, which is helping save the lives and mortgages of many folks in the entertainment industry — not just actors and not just folks in live theater. It's a most worthy cause and if you enjoyed this video even a third as much as I did, do what I did and send a donation (whatever you can afford) to the Actors Fund, which I bet they rename soon so they don't have to keep explaining it doesn't only help actors…

I have about two dozen e-mails from folks who are either attorneys or think they know as much as one defending the Souplantation statement and their cavalier (to me) attitude towards anyone who's stuck with one of their gift cards now that the chain has gone bye-bye. Typical is this excerpt from a message from Don Kemp. "BK" is how lawyers refer to bankruptcies…

Once they start the wheels turning towards a BK, they really are limited as to what they can say and if (presumably) Karl or I were advising them on their BK I would not endorse the language you'd like to see. They really shouldn't give any hope or indication any bill or even gift card can be redeemed in any fashion before or after filing. The court will decide who gets what and how. Souplantation might make suggestions, but the court has to ensure the protocols are followed.

Okay. I concede the point. I just think it would have been better to say nothing about the gift cards. And yes, as just about everyone noted, a lawyer probably wrote the part that bothered me. Is it too much to think that there might be lawyers out there who could have said what they had to say in a classier manner?

Featuring Jim Meskimen, Gregg Berger, Kaitlyn Robrock, Rob Paulsen and Debra Wilson…