Monthly Archives: September 2006

Not long ago, my friendly neighborhood 24 Hour Sav-on Pharmacy became a CVS Pharmacy. My first inkling that the conversion might not be an improvement — or even a zero-sum game — came when I saw all the signs posted around the place promising that as a CVS Pharmacy, the place would have "more convenient hours." More convenient than Always Open? Buckminster Fuller could probably explain how that's possible but I sure can't…and anyway, he's dead.

Actually, the old Sav-on (which I patronized for 20+ years) was about as perfect a pharmacy as one could expect, especially when that one (i.e., me) had the good sense to go in after 1 AM. During the more popular dayparts, the place was blatantly understaffed, which in this case is another way of saying that they did a tremendous business and that the management had not expanded the crew or the facility to service that demand. But in the wee small hours, it was a breeze. If I needed a refill, I could order it on the Sav-on website and go over and pick it up an hour later. If I had a new prescription from my doctor-person, I could take it in and whichever pharmacist was on duty would drop everything and fill it about as fast as humanly possible. The pharmacists were also truly friendly and willing to take the time to answer all questions.

Since the place went all CVS on me, things ain't working. First of all, they made a big show of announcing that all the prescriptions they had from their Sav-on days were still on file and could be refilled just as easily by the new management. This turns out to be untrue for those of us who renew online or even over the phone. We have to physically come in and order refills, even though that's just a matter of showing up and saying, "Gimme another round of my Glucophage." I am assured that once an old Sav-on prescription is renewed, it becomes a full-fledged CVS prescription and will thereafter be renewable online or via telephone. Perhaps…but you'd think someone could have worked that one out a little better.

But mostly, it's been a matter of prescriptions not being ready…when they're supposed to or at all. Two weeks ago, I took in two new ones. For some odd reason — I will never understand women, trigonometry or how my health insurance works — these required "prior authorization" from my insurer. As near as I can fathom, this means that my doctor — who has already filled out a prescription for the pharmacy saying that I need this medicine — has to fill out an extra form for my insurance company saying that I need this medicine. At the same time I took these in to be filled, I also ordered renewals on three other prescriptions, two of which needed okays from my doctor. My doctor authorized everything and filled out all his paperwork immediately but at the moment, the scorecard reads as follows…

• Two prescriptions filled more or less promptly. (Both renewals, one of which needed my doctor's okay.)
• One more prescription filled a few days later. (The other renewal that needed my doctor's okay. It was ready soon after, even though he okayed both at the same time.)
• One prescription totally lost. I don't know where it is. They don't know where it is. My doctor filled out the "prior authorization" form and the insurance company says they authorized the pharmacy to fill it…but the pharmacy has no record of it. In the meantime though, it became moot. When my doctor found out I hadn't started on it a week after he'd prescribed it, he decided to fill it himself. He had me drop by his office where he loaded me down with free samples. I have to tear open a lot of little packets but I have my pills. By the way, this prescription would have cost me several hundred dollars even after the insurance company paid its part of it.
• One prescription found, lost, then allegedly found again. The other "prior authorization" prescription was reportedly filled a week ago Monday. On Wednesday when I inquired at the pharmacy, they told me it still had not gone through. Apparently, it was sitting there, waiting to be picked up at that moment. On Saturday, since it had gone unclaimed for more than five days, they returned the pills to stock. I am told it has now finally been filled again and after I post this, I'm going to go see if that's true.

To get the found/lost/found one figured out and filled again, I had to spend well over an hour on the phone last night, most of which spent listening to tinny "hold" music, unsure if anyone would ever come on the line. Twice during that hour, I thought a human being was answering but I was instead disconnected, which is such a lovely feeling. The irony is that I was calling to perhaps save myself a trip over to the drugstore. As it turned out, I could have walked there, repainted the exterior of the building, then walked home in less time.

Thrice this month, I have phoned the CVS Customer Service line. During each call, I have spoken with an extremely nice, compassionate person (a different one each time) who has expressed shock at my experience, agreed with me that it's intolerable and apologized profusely. When I told this morning's Customer Service Person that I'd gone a week without my Omeprazole, she said, "Oh, I take that, too" and I thought she was going to offer to share her supply with me.

I'm not big on apologies from anonymous strangers. I'm never sure why I'm supposed to feel better because someone I don't know who had nothing directly to do with the affront says, "I'm sorry." I am impressed when they move to do something that might make things better, and the CVS Customer Service folks to whom I've spoken have sure sounded like they intended to try. The second had a high-ranking executive of the company phone me to hear my complaint first-hand and that person promised me that if I kept my business where it is, I would see a rapid improvement.

So I'm torn between waiting to see if they make good on this or just taking my business to another pharmacy…which will be farther away and probably not open 24 hours. I haven't decided what I'll do except for this: I am now about to walk (that's right — walk) over to the CVS Pharmacy and see if the prescription they told me was ready for pick up is actually read for pick up. If it is, I'll report back here later that it was. If it isn't, I probably won't post. That's because I will have done something that will put me in jail.

Hey, remember how I told you all to tape or TiVo the Laurel and Hardy film, Our Relations, from Turner Classic Movies? It was a bit of a disappointment. What they ran was (apparently) an old Nostalgia Merchant home video print with a mediocre picture quality, a flat soundtrack and a few seconds missing here or there. Nostalgia Merchant transfers were okay in their day but what you got was a copy made from one 16mm print with no video restoration. So if that print was faded or spliced, that's how the tape came out.

In the past, when Turner Classic Movies ran a bad or incomplete print of something, it has usually been a matter of the rights holder, whoever it is, supplying a bad copy. It used to remind me of the NuArt Theater over in West Los Angeles. Back before home video, it was the main place many of us saw classic films of the past. They ran a different double-bill every evening so they went through a lot of movies and good copies were not always available. Each month, when the following month's schedule came out, it was a moment of excitement ("Hey, look what they're running!") but also of reservation ("Are they going to have that lousy, incomplete copy that's making the rounds?").

The NuArt had a problem that I suppose plagues every "repertory cinema" house. They have to advertise their schedule well in advance but they don't actually get the print of the film until a day or two before the screening date. If it arrives and is chopped-up, scratched and a mass of splices, what can they do? Often with older films, that's the only print the distributor has. I can recall times when people stormed out of a program at the NuArt and demanded their money back. I also recall one time when we arrived there for an advertised evening of (I think) obscure Billy Wilder films and a hand-lettered sign on the box office announced something like, "We received lousy prints of these films at the last minute. If you want to put up with splices and missing scenes, fine. If you don't like it and want to walk out, we'll refund your ticket price. Just don't get mad at us. It's not our fault."

(The NuArt is still open, by the way, still showing old movies, usually for a week at a time. They're even running The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight every Saturday and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls at midnight on October 13. Here's a current schedule. Sad to say, I haven't been in the place since vintage motion pictures began coming out on Beta.)

Anyway, when I hear of Turner Classic Movies getting stuck with a bad print, it used to remind me of the NuArt. But then I realized: This is the era of digital video. The company that owns the film can send them a copy well in advance. TCM can demand to see that print before they schedule the film and decline to schedule it at all until they have a good, complete copy. In the case of Our Relations, there are complete, excellent quality DVDs available overseas and plenty in this country. So there's no excuse for this. There really isn't.

It won't get much attention outside Los Angeles — and maybe even not much here — but Ralph Story died yesterday at the age of 86. Mr. Story had a brief career as a game show host (The $64,000 Challenge) but most of his broadcasting days were spent on local radio and television in Los Angeles. He did interview shows and the local news but was best known for a program he did for six years, starting in 1964.

It was called Ralph Story's Los Angeles and it pretty much consisted of Ralph bringing us interesting tales about our town — its heritage, its history, its very identity. Story was a fine storyteller with a friendly, folksy quality about him. Each week, he'd pick out some odd corner of the city and we'd learn what it was and how it came to be. I was born in this burg but an awful lot of what I know about it was learned from Ralph Story's Los Angeles.

The U.C.L.A. Film and Television Archive lists among its collection, and I quote: "104 two-inch videotapes of Ralph Story's Los Angeles (1964-1970), the highest-rated and most fondly remembered local series in Los Angeles television history." Wish someone would put those out on DVD. I suspect they'd stand up very well today…and the history in them would be more important than ever.

A short story from Woody Allen.

We have a magic trick for your today…and not just any magic trick. This is Metamorphosis as performed by The Pendragons.

Metamorphosis is an old trick done by so many magicians that it long ago became a cliché. It's the one where one person is tied up a couple different ways and locked in a trunk…then another person stands on that trunk and, before you know it, the two of them have changed places. You've seen it as many times as you've seen the Linking Rings or the Cups and Balls routine and you're sick of those.

Every so often though, a magician comes along who takes an old trick and makes it (a) new and (b) their own. You oughta see Johnny "Ace" Palmer do the Cups and Balls. Amazing. And now, you're about to see Jonathan and Charlotte Pendragon do their version of Metamorphosis. It's so special that when they do it at the Magic Castle, seasoned professionals in the world of magic stop by just to see this trick. They do it faster than anyone ever has…and actually, I think this is an old video and they now do it even faster than the demonstration you're about to see. In person, of course, it's even more stunning.

One other thing before we get to the clip: After you're suitably impressed by the trick (which only takes a minute and a half), notice what Charlotte Pendragon is wearing at the end, then run it back and notice what she's wearing at the beginning. It's another little twist they put on an old trick and many people miss it. Like it isn't already amazing enough.

Michael Kinsley on the future of newspapers. After you read this, you may not think there is one.

The Bush administration today released four pages of the now-declassified National Intelligence Estimate. Here's a link to a PDF file of what has been released. It's pretty sad stuff, essentially asserting that the Iraq War is emboldening insurgents and fueling a new generation of jihadists.

If this is the part the White House felt might help them, one wonders what's in the rest of it.

Some weeks ago here, we griped about companies that bring out DVDs of great old TV shows on a season-by-season basis…and then, after fans of the show have bought each volume, out comes the "complete collection." And of course, the new set is cheaper and contains bonuses that weren't in any of the individual releases, thereby forcing the die-hard buff to buy the whole thing again. We do not like when they do this.

So we're pleased as punch, however pleased that may be, to report that the folks releasing Get Smart on DVD seem to be reversing the process. In November, they will release all five seasons of that show in one set. Later on, they'll be putting out DVDs of individual seasons for those who wish to get their Maxwell Smart that way but you can order the whole thing right now. I'm hearing that the video quality on this set is quite good and that the special features are especially good. Paul Brownstein's company is doing them and when I ran into Paul recently, he told me they'd just obtained permission to include some video from the memorial service for Don Adams, which I hear was quite wonderful.

Now, here are the catches. All five seasons (138 episodes on 25 discs) will run you two hundred bucks. They're saying the season-by-season releases, whenever they get around to putting them out, will be $40 each. If that's true, then $200 for the lot is no great bargain and you may think it's a lot of money to shell out at one time. You also can't go bargain-hunting for this if you crave it now because the set is available only from Time-Life Video until late next year, they say. (There's an option to pay in installments if that makes a difference to you.) Also, we can't guarantee that the individual releases won't contain some bonus material that isn't on the complete set, though that seems unlikely.

So you wanna buy a complete set of Get Smart: The Complete Collection? Then click on that name and start filling in your particulars. That's a commissioned link so this website gets a tiny payment which I think I deserve for posting an entire item about that show without employing one of its 8,022 catch phrases.

By the way: Get Smart was produced (and brilliantly so) by Leonard Stern, who had previously given us the one-season wonder, I'm Dickens, He's Fenster. I don't know if that show — which starred John Astin and Marty Ingels as two hapless constriction workers — was ever syndicated. Until recently, I don't think I'd seen an episode since they originally aired on ABC for the 1962-1963 season but I've always remembered it as a very clever, funny show. But a week or two ago, I saw one and I was delighted to see my memories validated…an experience you may soon be able to experience for yourself. Two different sources are telling me that a complete set of all 31 episodes is currently being prepped for DVD release early next year.

Fred Kaplan on how the Army doesn't have enough money to fight the war in Iraq, let alone one in Iran.

Here's one of those "goose pimple" moments from the stage, and this may take a bit of explanation. But bear with me. It's worth it.

As we all know, My Fair Lady opened on Broadway in 1956 with Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It was only the biggest hit in the history of musical comedy, chock full of delights. One that was often singled out as the most thrilling was the number, "The Rain in Spain" — in particular, the instant when Liza (Andrews) finally masters the language exercise and speaks that phrase properly. Librettist-lyricist Alan Jay Lerner cited it as the greatest "tingle" he ever wrote, meaning a moment when the audience just went crazy with emotion and excitement. And he was right: It is a wonderful moment. In every production.

Now, flash forward to Carnegie Hall in the year 2000. A special is being taped for PBS. It's called My Favorite Broadway: The Love Songs and it consists of star after star singing great show tunes with a romantic bent. Julie Andrews is the host, and it breaks the heart of the audience that she cannot be among the singers. Ms. Andrews, they all know, suffered a severe injury to her vocal cords in 1995 as a result of some botched routine surgery. It was said she would never be able to sing again…so she can only function as emcee for the proceedings.

It's the final number. Michael Crawford comes out and sings "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face"…and he's almost too good a singer for that song, the one that Henry Higgins warbles at the end of My Fair Lady. In the musical, Liza enters near the end and performs a few bars of "The Rain in Spain" to remind Higgins of how he taught her and who she was when she first came to him. On the stage that night at Carnegie Hall, Julie Andrews stepped back into the role of Liza and re-created that moment and…

Well, watch the video. You'll see an audience that's about as thrilled at what happens as any audience has ever been over anything. (You'll also see PBS harm the mood somewhat by inserting an announcement and rolling credits at an inopportune point. But what comes just before it is so good, nothing can ruin it.)

Here it is…

Molly Ivins on the debate about torture. I think one question that ought to be asked to everyone who speaks or writes about this issue is, "Does it matter to you if innocent people who have no valuable information are tortured?" If they say no, it might help get to the core of the debate a little faster.

This one will be better if I don't tell you anything about it in advance other than that it runs a minute and 38 seconds and that like all of the really weird video links, it has William Shatner in it. Go click.

I'm not much into following sports but I've finally found one that interests me. Matter of fact, now that I've lost all that weight, I may start training for it. Here's a link to a video of my new favorite athletic endeavor.

And after you watch the video, you can read more about it.