This will only interest folks in Los Angeles. Remember the sadness when it was announced that Nate 'n Al's Delicatessen in Beverly Hills was closing forever? Well, "forever" turns out to be a little less than two months.

It's back, at least for a while. The menu has been pared back and like all L.A. eateries, you can't go in and eat a meal there but you can do take-out. And if you want deliveries, they're on Postmates. I intend to try that soon.

Just a reminder: Tonight at 7 PM my time (which is Pacific time), I will be interviewing my longtime pal Paul Levitz about DC Comics, the company of which he was a vital part for thirty-something years as an assistant editor, an editor, a writer, a publisher and the president of the whole danged operation. I know a lot about DC but Paul knows a lot more. If you're interested in the firm or its comics, this is not a conversation you want to miss.

It'll be live on www.newsfromme.tv and I'm going to try and embed it here but the embeds don't always work for every browser. You can certainly watch the replay later but it may be more fun live and if you're watching on a YouTube page (like this one), you can send comments and questions our way. I can't guarantee we'll get around to answering all your questions but I can guarantee a long dialogue about the company I worked for from afar and Paul worked for from anear…

Every so often, the last chapter of a story ruins the whole thing. As you know, I was a big supporter of the Souplantation chain, promoting them here often. Their tomato soup even got nice mentions on the TV shows, The Big Bang Theory and Two and a Half Men because of this blog's relentless plugging.

They've sent an e-mail out to all the folks on their mailing list and also posted a statement on their website. The first paragraph is very nice but the last one makes me sorry I patronized and recommended them so much…

As you may have heard, we are unable to re-open out 97 Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes restaurants due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The outpouring of love on social media has been overwhelming and we are so grateful to all of the sweet memories you have shared with us. We would like to thank our 4,400 team members for their dedication and love they have shown to our local communities. We will miss you tremendously and wish you all the best.

For our gift card inquiries, refund options are limited at this time. You may be able to dispute the purchase with your bank or credit card company. Otherwise, there may be an alternative option available through the court in the future.

In other words: "Yes, we know a lot of you paid us in advance for future meals but since we're shutting down, we're not giving you that money back. If you don't like it, you can go to a lot of trouble to call your bank or your credit card company and see if they'll give you a refund — yeah, like they're really going to do that — but we got your money so we don't really care unless someone takes us to court over this."

I wish I had those sweet memories of the place but this kind of kills any I might have had. And I don't even have an unused gift card.

Stars of the musical comedy stage recall their worst auditions. How could that not be fun to watch?

As you may have noticed, I have combined my expertise at hosting panels at comic conventions (which pays nothing) with my expertise at blogging (which pays nothing) and moved into the new field of webcasting (which pays nothing). I still quite haven't mastered this last skill. So far, the beginning of every webcast I've done has had some screw-up due to operator error, a software glitch or both.

The first minute or so of last night's Conversation with Dick DeBartolo looked like a bloopers special but once we got going, things were okay from my end and Dick was very interesting and funny. People are watching it online in surprising numbers and you may want to follow the trend.

Tomorrow night, I'll be chatting with my longtime friend, Paul Levitz. When I first knew Paul, he was publishing fanzines and saying he didn't want to spend his career in the comic book industry. Next thing I knew, he was either President or Publisher of DC Comics. (He was both at various times but I'm not sure of the order.) What changed? Well, we'll be discussing that and many other things about that company but one thing I know changed was that Paul, once he got into a position of power, he did a lot of things that turned DC into a much better company to work for…which meant he also indirectly turned Marvel into one, as well.

Between us, we know almost everything about DC Comics. If you're interested in almost anything about that company, especially in the last three decades of the previous century, join us live at 7 PM Pacific Time.

And of course on Saturday, we have the second online Cartoon Voices Panel. I have done the job a good voice director does, which is to assemble a great company of voice actors. This one is Rob Paulsen, Kaitlyn Robrock, Gregg Berger, Debra Wilson and Jim Meskimen. In theory, there's no way I can mess this up but, of course, I will…somehow.

Next week, I'll be doing two more one-on-one conversations. On Tuesday, May 19, Scott Shaw! and I will be discussing the early days of what they now call Comic-Con International and at some point, we'll switch over and talk about working for Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera. On Thursday, May 21, the wonderful comedy writer-producer Cheri Steinkellner and I will discuss her work on The Jeffersons, Cheers, Bob, the cartoon show Teacher's Pet, the Broadway show of Sister Act and a whole lotta other things. I have a lot of interesting friends…

So…two months of near-isolation. Thanks to the phone, the Internet, Zoom and other forms of communication, I don't feel as isolated as I might but still…

People keep asking, "When do you think this will end?" and the answer, it seems to me, is increasingly, "Whenever you decide it's safe for you to end it for yourself." The folks out there rallying for legislation to "reopen" do not convince me that (a) they're listening to medical authorities or (b) my best interests matter to them.

Some of them sure want us all out there, bolstering the economy with normal activity even if it kills us. Look at this news item, especially the incredible sentence I've highlighted in my excerpt…

Leading U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Tuesday warned Congress that a premature lifting of lockdowns could lead to additional outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus, which has killed 80,000 Americans and brought the economy to its knees. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a U.S. Senate panel that the virus epidemic is not yet under control in areas of the nation.

"I think we're going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak," Fauci said during hours of testimony. He urged states to follow health experts' recommendations to wait for signs including a declining number of new infections before reopening.

Someone is sitting before a Congressional committee trying to convince them to listen to medical experts about a medical matter instead of just substituting their own hunches and guesses and hopes.

This is not new. We've been through this with Climate Change…elected officials who have to preface their speeches with "I'm not a scientist but…" ignoring scientists on matters of science. This is not much different from "You know, I've never studied surgery but I'm pretty confident I can perform a liver transplant on you."

So I'm staying in. They're going to "open up" whatever they want to "open up" because they think a lot more sick and/or dead people is a reasonable price to pay for immediate economic and/or political gains. I can't do anything about that except to not participate and hope that enough Americans don't participate that it doesn't spike the death toll, which is still going up, like the tote board in the closing hour of a Jerry Lewis Telethon. (If you want to know a good measure of how to tell when it's going down, read Kevin Drum's piece about the R₀ metric.)

Also, read Kevin about this simple fact that's being shoved aside: Even among Republicans, the consensus of Americans is that there's a big danger in trying to reopen the economy too soon.

The government can reopen public gathering places but they can't force us to go gather in them. I'm still fine here in the Fortress. I hope you're fine in yours. You probably are if you're in yours.

Many moons ago, I wrote a now-outta-print book called MAD Art, all about the artists who've drawn for MAD magazine. It was one of those dream projects because I got to interview just about everyone who was alive at the time and had drawn for MAD, a publication that has been an important part of my life since I purchased my first copy at the age of ten. I've also had the opportunity to know and talk with a lot of the MAD writers…but not enough. Like, I've known its most prolific writer, Dick DeBartolo, for many years but we never sat down and talked for any great length of time.

That changes tonight. I'm going to talk to Dick about MAD and you can listen in. We'll also talk about his career as a writer for game shows and as the "Giz Wiz" who appears on ABC News and elsewhere…but most of it's going to be about MAD. Dick had his first byline in MAD #69 — one issue before I began reading it — and continued writing for them for more than half a century! At one point, he went 459 consecutive issues without not having a new piece appear!

So we'll be talking, starting at 7 PM tonight Pacific Time…and I don't know how late we'll go but it oughta be fascinating. Like I said, you can listen in by joining us at www.newsfromme.tv then. The show will repeat for all eternity at that address but I promise you a better time if you watch it live…plus, you can send us comments and questions if you watch on the YouTube site as we're doing it. I will also try to stream it on this page but that doesn't work with all browsers and you can't post messages to us here. Don't you want to watch me ruthlessly interrogate MAD's Maddest Writer?

This runs a little over an hour and you may want to play it in the background — over and over and over — as you go about your cleaning or chores or whatever it is you do in your house. It's a history of Disney music that I gather plays or played in a loop at the Disneyland Hotel in Paris. The on-screen notes are rather informative too…

I do not believe there's an afterlife.  But if there is, I think my friend Marty Pasko would be very pleased to see that he got an obit in the Hollywood Reporter. And that a lot of people have had very nice things to say about him on social media.

This is one of the tough ones. Longtime comic book and TV writer Marty Pasko has died at the age of 65 and the coroner is saying "natural causes." Marty had not been in the greatest of health the last few years.

Marty broke into comic book writing in 1973 with a few sales to Warren Publishing and then he began a long, mutually-beneficial relationship writing for editor Julius Schwartz at DC Comics, primarily on Superman. But his association with Julie preceded that by any years as Marty — nicknamed "Pesky" Pasko by Schwartz — had been a letter column regular long before that. So was I and he and I shared a number of those letter pages. Thus, when we met at the New York Comic Con in 1970, it was like we were old friends. At the same time, I also met his oldest friend, Alan Brennert, with whom he was then publishing a fanzine called Fantazine. Both would go on to great, successful writing careers and would remain good friends.

Marty wrote many comics for DC (not all for Julie Schwartz) including Doctor Fate, Justice League of America, Wonder Woman, Metal Men and so many more, especially any title that featured Superman. I was especially impressed with a run he authored of The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Preceded by co-creator Len Wein's stint with the character and followed by Alan Moore's, it did not receive the attention I thought it deserved. He also wrote Star Trek, both for DC and Marvel, and occasional jobs (like E-Man for First Comics) for other publishers.

In television, Marty wrote live-actions shows like Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Fantasy Island, Simon & Simon, and Roseanne, and would gladly tell you horror stories about the last of these. His animation credits included Thundarr the Barbarian, G.I. Joe, Batman: The Animated Series, The Tick and quite a few others. He won an Emmy for his work on the Batman show.

If this obit sounds like it was written by someone who's a little stunned, there's a reason. Like I said, I knew Marty since 1970 and though I hadn't seen him much in recent years, we had spent a lot of time together once upon a time and spilled blood jointly on a few projects. I thought he was a very good writer, though I'm not sure he always believed it when I told him that…or when anyone else complimented him. I may write something more about the man when I'm a bit less stunned but I definitely consider him one of the good guys and I'm really, really sorry to not have him around anymore.

Okay, I've decided that for the next few weeks, I'm going to do two one-on-one interviews of folks I know, one on Tuesday evening, one on Thursday evening.

Tomorrow evening at 7 PM (my time), I'll be talking with Dick DeBartolo, the fine writer whose work appeared in MAD magazine for 445 consecutive issues, dating back to 1966. We'll talk about many aspects of that magazine and one will be its publisher, William M. Gaines, who I think was one of the most fascinating, misunderstood people in his field. I also want to talk about Dick's career working on game shows for the Goodson-Todman empire, especially Match Game, which he seems to have saved from a quick demise. He also has yet another career as the "Giz Wiz" seen on ABC News…and he's just a funny, clever guy.

Thursday evening at 7 PM (M.T.), I'll be talking with my longtime friend Paul Levitz, who told me when we were putting out fanzines in his basement that he didn't want to make his career in the comic book industry…and then went on to work his way up to President and Publisher of DC Comics. But that's okay because along the way, he improved the comic book industry a whole lot, which is something I can only say about…oh, maybe six people or so.

These interviews will be done live and we will take some (not all) questions you submit in real time…so please watch live if you can. But they will almost immediately join the eighty jillion things to watch on YouTube so you can catch them there. The link that will take you to where you'll find all this is www.newsfromme.tv.

This coming Saturday, I'll be hosting another Cartoon Voices Panel at 1 PM (M.T.) with five folks who often speak for animated characters. Four of the five have confirmed and when I get the fifth locked in, I will be announcing what I think is a pretty-impressive lineup. Our first online Cartoon Voices Panel went well and again, while this one will also be available for later viewing, I think you'll enjoy it more (and be able to ask questions) if you tune in when we do it. Here's the display ad for tomorrow night. Mentions on other social media will be appreciated…