The Carnegie Deli in New York is a great and wonderful place…and probably more prosperous than ever since its neighbor, the Stage Deli, recently closed. The Carnegie Deli in Beverly Hills was not a great and wonderful place, which explains why it isn't there any more.

In the early eighties, the Stage opened an outlet in Century City — also a pale imitation of its Manhattan ancestor but not quite as pale as the west coast Carnegie would be. In 1988 when the Schwab's Drug Store at the corner of Crescent Heights and Sunset was razed, it was announced that the forthcoming shopping complex there would include an L.A. version of the Carnegie. Later, the plan was shifted to 300 N. Beverly Drive at the corner of Beverly and Dayton Way.

The buzz was that billionaire Marvin Davis had had a standing order every day at the Century City Stage Deli for a half-pound of lox, a half-dozen bagels, a pint of cream cheese and four bags of potato chips to be delivered to his office each morning. This did not satisfy him and he decided to open his own deli. (Another rumor was that he opened the Carnegie in Beverly Hills after he was made to wait too long for a table at Nate 'n' Al's down the street.)

The opening on August 9, 1989 was a huge media event with celebrities including Don Rickles, Carol Channing, Billy Wilder and George Burns. Burns was so impressed with the place that he booked it for his 100th birthday party, which was to be held on January 20, 1996. George made it to that date but the deli didn't. The opening was also attended by pickets as Davis and his partners had elected not to sign with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 11. And there were also restaurant critics present, that evening and in subsequent weeks. Few of them liked what they ate.

The place shut its doors on August 26, 1994 and someone had to call George Burns and tell him to find someplace else for his party. There were many reasons for the deli's closure but the big three probably went something like this…

1. Nate 'n' Al's, a long-established local tradition, was right down the street.
2. The food at the Carnegie cost more than the food at Nate 'n' Al's.
3. The food at the Carnegie wasn't as good as the food at Nate 'n' Al's.

Why couldn't they at least replicate the quality of the original in New York? Probably some combination of management and suppliers not being as good. All I know is I ate there twice — once by choice and once because an agent I was lunching with insisted we meet there. I didn't care for the meal either time and I didn't care for that agent.

UPDATE, YEARS LATER: And now, there is no Carnegie Deli in New York anymore.  It was a great place to eat.

It's 84 days until Preview Night of Comic-Con International in San Diego. That's right: Eighty-four — and I'm as surprised as you are. It felt to me like it was getting close to 100 and I went to look it up so I'd know when to write a post that began, "One hundred days from today…" Turns out I missed that opportunity. It's 84 days.

A number of folks have written to ask me if Sergio Aragonés will be there and if he'll be Quickdrawing at the Quick Draw! event. Yes, Sergio has mended nicely from his recent hip-replacement surgery. He practically danced into my house last week and I'm sure he'll be in San Diego. Our competitors this year for Quick Draw! will be Sergio, the ever-hilarious Scott Shaw!…and our "guest" player, a gent whose participation will surely excite many. Wait'll you see who it's gonna be.

Also, I want to thank everyone who submitted names for the annual Bill Finger Award. Our blue-ribbon panel, all of whom wear blue ribbons in their hair, has selected two excellent choices and they'll be announced shortly. So will the usual mess of panels I'll be hosting. I'd rush to start packing but I haven't gotten around yet to unpacking from WonderCon.

25 Photos You Need To Really Look At To Understand.

If you're in the Los Angeles area and are free this Saturday night, I have a recommendation for you. This is for the cheapest, best thing you can possibly do in this city on a Saturday evening short of staying home and reading this blog…

Back in the eighties, I got involved (kinda) with a project that some friends were doing. It was called Instaplay and every Saturday evening for a few years, I tried to attend and help out. Instaplay was improv in its purest form. A batch of skilled improv comedy performers would convene and invent on the spot an entire musical comedy (songs, included) based on a title suggested by someone in the audience. There are other troupes that do that now, some of them very well…but at the time it was unique and revolutionary.

So every week it was different…and I won't say they batted a thousand but every one was worth attending and an amazing percentage were sensational. I dragged friends there and they, in turn, dragged other friends…and so on and so on. What they saw was Real Improv…and let me explain what I mean.

There's improv comedy and there's improv comedy. A lot of it works like this: You're on stage. You find yourself in a scene about ocelots. Your mind races back to that sketch you did once about grasshoppers and your improvising thereafter consists of doing as much of that bit as you can, switching the grasshoppers to ocelots. If you do a lot of alleged improv, you develop a whole repertoire of routines that can be easily adapted. Sometimes, it's like an on-your-feet version of Mad-Libs, inserting the new name into the old scenario. You also learn a lot of stalling tactics to give yourself time to think ahead.

That's still technically improv but there's a better, purer kind. For that kind, you work "in the moment" and really do say it as you think of it and vice-versa. Instaplay is that kind.

Helming all Instaplays was a friend o' mine named Bill Steinkellner, who's widely hailed as one of the best teachers of improv comedy in the business. He's been responsible for a lot of careers and had a dandy one of his own. Before long, Bill and his brilliant wife Cheri (a key Instaplayer) were busy writing TV shows including The Jeffersons and Cheers, plus unimprovised musicals like Sister Act. Most of the other Instaplayers began working extensively in TV, some in front of and some behind the camera. Eventually, everyone was too busy/successful to take Saturday nights out to Instaplay and the shows ceased.

A few years back, Bill began teaching a Master Class in improv comedy — the kind of thing where skilled performers go to work out and practice. That led to someone saying, "Hey, for old time's sake, let's do another Instaplay." They did one and it went so well, they did another…and another and another. But they're running out of "anothers" so this coming Saturday evening, they're doing the last one for a while. The troupe will include Cheri Steinkellner, Jonathan Stark, Deanna Oliver, George McGrath and Navaris Darson, with Bill onstage directing things to the extent they can be directed.

As I write this, there are tickets available but not many of them. That's because the theater is tiny. It's also really crummy but we don't care as long as the performances are, as I'm sure they will be, brilliant. Also, the tickets are, like I said, ridiculously cheap. I'll be there and I thought you might wanna be.

BTW: The little hunk of ad above was adapted from an ad I designed back around, I'm guessing, 1983. I had laid it all out and put in the lettering and I was just about to start drawing silly people when my doorbell rang. It was Sergio Aragonés and I thought to myself, "Aha! Better artist!" Sergio wanted to go to lunch. I said, "Sure. But I have to change my clothes and while I do, finish this drawing for me!" Sure enough, by the time I'd changed, the whole thing — it was much larger than the piece you see here — was done and we went to lunch. It was more appropriate that he draw it since Instaplay requires an Instacartoonist.

As I've said, I don't believe any meaningful Gun Control laws will pass in the foreseeable future. In fact, I'd hate to think how many Newtowns we'd have to have before a majority of politicans would be more afraid of not passing Gun Control than they are now of even showing it the slightest consideration. Nevertheless, I admire the artistry and good intentions of this video created by a bevy of the country's leading newspaper cartoonists…

A contract signed by the Marx Brothers for something they did at MGM Studios. I don't see the part that's in every contract, the part that says, "If any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified." You know what they call that part…

History, sounding a bit like my pal Bob Elisberg, judges George W. Bush. I love, by the way, how some conservatives are trying now to sell the idea that Obamacare is "Obama's Iraq." And these are all people who still won't admit invading Irag was a foolish, destructive thing.

Politifact is usually pretty good at catching politicians when they lie or distort the truth about unimportant matters like war and death and health care. But how are they at the serious, vital stuff like whether Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is shamelessly lying about his favorite cartoon character?

My friend Jeff is urging me to take the money I just got from selling my mother's house and buy this, this being Milton Berle's old joke file. Note that my friend Jeff is not intending to use his own money to purchase this sucker. That's because he knows, as I know, that most of what's in there has got to be dreadful. Berle published two volumes of jokes from this repository plus there was an awkwardly-designed CD-Rom…and all the jokes on the three of them collectively were not as funny as the photo above. Which, as you can see, isn't all that funny.

You know what is funny? Back in the seventies, there was a syndicated version of I've Got a Secret hosted by Steve Allen. On one episode, Berle was the Celebrity Guest and they brought out these huge boxes on stage. His secret was what was in them and the panel, which included Alan Alda, had to guess what was in them. At the end when they hadn't figured it out, Steve asked Milton to tell them and Berle said, "Those boxes contain every joke I ever told on television."

In less than a second, Alda exclaimed, "You mean you've got both jokes in there?"

Here's an episode of Topper, a 1953-1955 situation comedy based on the 1937 Cary Grant movie of the same name. Cosmo Topper, played in the TV series by Leo G. Carroll, lived in a home inhabited by three ghosts (one of them, a dog) that only he could see. I remember watching this show over and over in syndicated reruns in the late fifties and early sixties but this is the first time I ever saw a print of it with the original opening and closing. It's also full of commercials for Camel cigarettes, which I guess explains why everyone in the show was always smoking. Even the dead people.

This is one of the eleven episodes written by George Oppenheimer (a screenwriter and playwright who among other credits wrote on the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races) and his then-partner, Stephen Sondheim. This is not the episode in which Topper's wife entered a jingle-writing contest and penned a terrible entry that didn't rhyme very well. That may well have been the first Sondheim lyric to be performed on television…and the worst.

Singer Richie Havens has died. It's probably my loss that I was not too familiar with his work but he sure had a lot of fans.

Actor Albert Brooks, back when he was comedian Albert Brooks, told a wonderful story on one of his records about the loyalty of Richie Havens fans. You can listen to it via the player below and I suggest you do. Ignore the little aside where someone yodels. You have to hear the entire album — Comedy Minus One — to understand what that's about…

Contrary to reports around this wacky Internet of ours, there is pre-paid parking available for this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego. None of it is at the convention center but at right this moment, there are spots that can be purchased in several lots. Here's the link.

This may not be true later today. It may not be true in twenty minutes. But it's true as I post this message.

You may remember I used to do this joke every year around this time about how if you need a parking spot for the con in July, leave now. Since they introduced pre-paid parking, the joke doesn't work.

A discussion of the difference between "ketchup" and "catsup."