Here's an interesting article about how technological advances are trying to make grocery shopping easier or more appealing.
I've made use of a number of services where you order online and they deliver the goods to your home. For me, at least, they can't fully replace driving to a Ralphs and pushing the cart around. For one thing, they never have wide-enough selection. I just got a free test-drive of Amazon Fresh and when I went to their site to try a test order, I gave up. There were about fifteen items I wanted and they only had three. Why bother if I'm going to have to go to the market anyway? Years ago when I tried the home delivery service offered locally by the Albertson's Market chain, they'd deliver my order and then I'd go get in my car and drive to another market to procure the stuff they'd been out of.
There were briefly two different services in my area — HomeGrocer and WebVan — that worked well until they went outta business. But even then, I missed something. I missed being able to browse the aisles, notice new products, inspect their packaging and maybe decide to take the gamble of tossing one into my cart. As I look at the list of things I routinely buy, I see a number of products I discovered that way.
Someone will get this kind of service working well and successfully but I think I'll still be Ralphsing it two or three times a month.
I mentioned here once about some unpleasant encounters in my life with folks who owned dogs. Here is the story of the unpleasantest. I tell it not to demean all dog owners or even any but just this one guy who I assume is either very old or very deceased by now. He was about 35 when this story took place in 1960. I was eight.
The house I grew up in had a rather large back yard. In the center of this yard was a set-up for tether ball, a popular sport of the day. You don't need to know how tether ball is played to understand what I'm about to describe. All you have to know is that we had a small hole in the yard into which concrete had been poured around a metal ring. The tether ball pole was inserted into the ring so the pole stood erect in the yard like a flagpole. Sometimes, as in the incident I'm about to describe, the pole wasn't set up so you just had this little circle of concrete and metal in the middle of the yard.
The back fence of the yard was metal links covered with a thick blanket of ivy. It was about six feet tall and on the other side of the fence was the back yard of a neighbor who lived on the street to the south of ours. I do not remember this neighbor's name so for reasons that will soon become apparent, we'll call him Jerko. Jerko was married but from all indications, he didn't love his wife half as much as he loved his Irish Setter. The Setter — he was called Duke — was pampered and hugged and combed and generally treated like royalty. Jerko was so proud of that dog. Another neighbor remarked that Jerko chose not to have children because if he did, he might have to spend as much as five minutes a day on them — time better spent brushing and petting Duke.
Duke caused us some problems. There was a terrible, foul smell that came from over the fence. It was so bad that I couldn't go too near that side of our yard. There were also awful noises. Whenever Jerko went somewhere and left Duke alone in the back, the pooch would spend the entire time howling as if in pain. It was so agonized that at least once, another neighbor called the police to report that an animal was being mistreated. Cops came to investigate and they reported that the dog was not being harmed. He was just lonely.
This is not Duke but he looked a lot like this Irish Setter. Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez.
Duke continued to howl much of the day and he began trying to scale the fence and get into our yard. Sometimes, he did that when Jerko was home, too. But it was a high enough fence that the Setter couldn't climb over it and so what you heard was the repeated sound of Duke hurling himself against the fence — over and over, sometimes for hours at a time. My parents and I were all concerned about it but when we told Jerko, he said it was nothing to worry about. And when we called the City Animal Shelter, they told us basically that since the police had been out and had reported that the dog was well cared-for, there wasn't sufficient cause to send someone else.
So day after day, Duke would howl and hurl himself against the fence. One day, he made it over.
I was playing alone in the yard when it happened. I looked up, saw the dog get his front paws over the top of the ivy and haul the rest of himself over. Then he tumbled into our yard. I was scared and I started to run towards our house. Duke galloped towards me. I turned towards him to try and shoo him away but he jumped on me, knocking me backwards. The back of my head hit not the dirt but the metal-and-concrete setting for the tether ball pole.
I didn't know what the pain was but I'd sustained a small crack on the back of my skull. What I did know was that something back there hurt like hell and I couldn't get up because Duke, who was not a small animal, had his front paws and most of his weight on my chest.
So I began screaming — partly in pain and partly in the hope that someone would hear and come help me. My father was at work and my mother had gone to the market but there were neighbors all around us. So I just screamed and screamed, and all the time the Irish Setter was licking me and drooling on me as he sat on me.
Finally, someone else came over the fence: Jerko. I don't think he emerged from his house in response to my screaming. I think he went to check on his beloved, found the hound to be missing and only then heard the sound of an eight-year-old boy shrieking in agony. He climbed over the fence, walked over to where the dog was still sitting on me and I was yelling, and he said, "Don't yell. That's his way of showing affection!"
I yelled, "Get him off me! He hurt me!"
Jerko made no move whatsoever to get his mutt off my chest. He stood there and said, "No, Duke would never hurt you! He's a good dog!"
This went on for several minutes. I was yelling for him to get the dog off me because I was injured and he was refusing to do this because his wonderful Duke would never, ever hurt anyone. Pinning me down to the ground was his way of showing he loved me. (Years later, I had a girl friend who…)
Finally, my mother got home, heard the commotion and ran outside. She ordered Jerko to get his dog off her son and he finally did, all the time muttering, "He's just showing affection." When she got me up and found blood on the back of my skull, she called Jerko a very nasty name, then scurried off to get me to a hospital. I have this vivid memory of her leading me into the house and of Jerko standing in our backyard with his Irish Setter. Jerko was still saying, "Oh, Duke would never hurt anyone."
She drove me to a hospital emergency room where they did a little bandaging and, I think, a bit of stitching. My mother asked the doctor if he thought there had been any permanent damage. With a solemn stare, the doctor said, "I'm afraid so. Your son has suffered sufficient brain damage that all he'll be able to do with the rest of his life is write silly cartoons and comic books…and some day if and when they invent the Internet, he may even start 'blogging,' whatever that is." And yes, I'm lying. He said nothing of the sort. What he did say was that the injuries were minor and would heal quickly.
That evening, Jerko called and asked if he could come over. My father told him yes, assuming the man wanted to see how I was and to apologize for his dog and, more importantly, for himself. Instead, Jerko came in, sat down, and without even asking how I was, he began explaining that Duke was shaken up but seemed fine. "He would never harm anyone, especially a child, so I have to assume your son did something to provoke it all." My father turned the color of Libby's Tomato Juice and told Jerko off but good, including a few threats involving lawyers and/or law enforcement. Jerko left, still convinced that somehow his fine pet was the victim in the whole matter.
That is not the end of the story but I have to warn you: From here on, it gets rather sad and ugly. The dog dies a pretty awful death and if you can't handle that, stop here.
A few weeks later, there were a couple of very rainy days in Los Angeles. Throughout them, as usual, we heard Duke howling as he always did. Then one afternoon, the howling took on a different tone — sadder and more desperate. It almost sounded like a human crying. My mother came into my room and asked, "Do you hear that?" I did.
It had stopped raining so I put on my little slicker and ran around to the other side of the block. Outside Jerko's house, there was a car stopped awkwardly in the street. An elderly man and woman who'd been in the car were out of it, standing next to it and looking very upset, trying to decide on some course of action. The first thing the man said to me was, "I didn't see it. It came running right out in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes but it's so wet and I skidded and…" And then I saw in front of his car, a pool of blood. There was a trail of it that led up Jerko's driveway and towards his back yard. "It was a big, red dog," the woman said. She was trembling and crying.
They had no idea what to do. They'd knocked on the door to Jerko's house and there was no answer. They'd knocked on a few neighbors' doors and there was no answer. They were standing there in the street by the car, hoping either a policeman would drive by or maybe the owner or some neighbor would come home. I asked if they'd followed the trail of blood into the backyard. They said no, that was private property and they didn't want to trespass. I think now as I did then that that was just an excuse because they didn't want to see the dog. It seemed cowardly but at least they had enough integrity to not hit-and-run.
I decided I would trespass. I followed the blood droppings through an open gate that I guessed Duke had somehow opened, and I crept into Jerko's yard where I'd never been before. I realized the agonized howling had stopped just as I came across the source of the dreadful odor we'd been noticing for months. The yard was full of dog excrement. Full. It was everywhere and since it had been raining, its aroma was enhanced by moisture. It was also squishy and to follow the blood trail, I had to delicately walk through a lot of it. I remember thinking we might have to throw away the shoes I was wearing.
I found Duke curled up in a corner of the yard, covered in blood and whimpering. It was the saddest thing I'd ever seen in my life. It may still be the saddest thing I've ever seen in my life. He was alive but it didn't look like he'd be alive for long.
I ran out of the yard, nearly slipping in muddy dog excrement, and I told the older couple that I was going to go call someone. I still don't quite understand why they could do nothing but wait for an eight-year-old kid to come by and take action. I ran back around the block to our house, doing my best as I ran to scrape the soles of my shoes as I ran. When I got home, they were still clumped with unpleasantness so I took them off and left them in the patio. We actually did wind up throwing them away.
In the house, my mother called some city department that seemed to cover such matters. She put me on the phone so I could describe what I'd seen. A lady at the other end of the line told me that they would send police because there was no one else they could send at just that moment, and because the animal control people couldn't on their own enter private property without the owner present. I put on other shoes and ran back around the block while my mother got dressed so she could join me there.
When I got back to the street outside Jerko's house, the elderly couple was gone. I waited a few minutes and about the time my mother arrived, a police car showed up and I flagged them down and explained the situation. The officer I spoke to said, "We'll go take a look but there's probably nothing we can do and there's no way we can get anyone out here from Animal Control for an hour or two." I warned them about the lake of liquid dog poop in the back yard and they donned some sort of plastic covers for their shoes and went back. Soon, they returned and said the dog had apparently died.
They asked us if we were aware of the dog being mistreated. That was not a simple question to answer but we did our best. We told the officers that Jerko seemed to love his pet and pamper him…but the dog did, after all, spend most of his life howling and trying to get out of that yard.
We went home after that. I have no idea what happened next between the police and Jerko but later that evening, we had a visitor. It was Jerko and he was very upset. My father, who sensed trouble was looming, sent me to my room while he and my mother met with Jerko in our living room. When I heard yelling, I came out anyway.
Jerko was basically accusing me of having let his wonderful dog die as revenge for that silly incident wherein I "wrongly" believed Duke had injured me. I still do not know what he expected me to do, aside from what I did, that might have saved the dog's life but he was furious that I hadn't done it. He was also mad that I hadn't gotten the license number of the car so he could track down the murderers…so much so that I half-expected him to accuse me of having been behind the wheel.
Oh — and though he was furious I hadn't done more to save Duke, he was also upset that I'd caused the police to enter his private property. The officers had cited him for a health hazard in his back yard and he had something like ten days to clean it up or face jail time. I remember thinking, "Oh, I hope he doesn't clean it up."
My parents yelled a bit at Jerko, then I yelled a little at Jerko, then my father told him to get the hell out of our house and never come back. Jerko announced we'd hear from his lawyer and then he stormed out of our home and we never heard from his lawyer or from him again. Within days though, the smell from his yard went away and within a month or two, so did Jerko. He moved out. Another family soon moved in…and they didn't have a dog but they did have a son, a bit older than me, who became a good friend.
The whole thing left an emotional scar, along with the one on the back of my skull. In the years that followed, I would flinch and cringe when we were out and someone came by with a big dog on a leash…anything larger than, say, a Scottish Terrier. Everyone but my parents thought I was afraid of dogs but really, I was afraid of dog owners. Eventually, my feelings about them went away. I met some nice, responsible ones…folks who seemed to place human beings on a level at least equal to their canines. I still feel an occasional twinge of anger at Jerko — you should see what I called him in this piece before I decided to soften it down to "Jerko" — but I accept he's atypical of those who own dogs.
So now I'm fine with dogs and dog owners…though I really do prefer cats and by a significant margin. I don't feed stray dogs but I feed every stray cat that comes within a couple blocks of me. The cats may have Jerko to thank for that.
People used to always say, as an example of why Saddam Hussein was a horrible, must-be-removed creature, "He used chemical weapons on his own people." Now, the bad rap on Bashar al-Assad of Syria is the same thing: "He used chemical weapons on his own people."
I get why the chemical weapons are a bad thing. I always wonder about the "his own people" part mattering. Would either of these actions be okay if the dictator in question had used chemical weapons on, say, someone other than his own people? Aren't we concerned about the mass murder, not with who is getting mass murdered?
I asked a question not unlike this during the Iraq mess and someone wrote me to say, "What you don't get is that if a man was willing to use chemical weapons on his own people, he wouldn't hesitate to use them on his enemies." Uh, how about this? A man who was willing to murder any hundred thousand people wouldn't hesitate a whole lot to murder any other hundred thousand people. It's not like these guys work on the quota system. For that matter, murdering a hundred thousand people by any means makes you a pretty miserable excuse for a human being even if you don't do it with chemical weapons.
I understand chemical weapons are in many ways more dangerous than some (not all) conventional weapons because you don't really aim them at enemy soldiers. You just take out a whole section of the population, including women and children. I don't mean to trivialize that threat. But you could watch a lot of politicians on the news the last few days and get the feeling we wouldn't be talking about "punishing him" — by killing some of his people who escaped the chemical weapons — if all he'd done was shoot 100,000+ non-Syrians. That, we could overlook.
Here's a 35 minute interview with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges. It was conducted in 1971 and Moe's memory is pretty sharp…though he says that Moe Howard was always his real name. He was actually born Moses Harry Horwitz…
Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd was on live TV recently taking questions and he was asked to defend his position on marriage equality. Even if you have no interest in his answer — which I thought was pretty darned good — you might ask yourself why we see so little calm, mature discourse of this kind on American TV…
Some atheists are challenging the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. I think they're 100% right and even a lot of my religious friends would agree…but the challenge has about a 0% chance of succeeding. A whole swath of people who think America is the greatest, strongest force in the Universe would get hysterical, screaming that to omit those two words that weren't there in the first place would destroy the nation and doom us all to Hades and points lower.
Mary Elizabeth Williams argues that we oughta just chuck the Pledge altogether and I agree with that, too. My feeling is that if we'd never instituted The Pledge, we would point at other countries where they do have something similar and say, "Isn't it wonderful that we live in America where school children aren't forced each morning to rise and swear their loyalty to the government?"
See that man there? That's my best friend (male division), a fellow named Sergio Aragonés and today is his birthday. I have known Sergio since 1969 and we've been collaborators on a wide array of projects — most of them, Groo the Wanderer — since around 1977…and boy, the dirt I know about this man. People think he is handsome and charming and oh so talented and that he's high among the world's most honored and respected cartoonists. They wouldn't think any of that if they knew what I know.
That's how we've been friends so long: I have too much on him. He knows that if he ever stops being my best friend (male division), I will spill the refried beans, tell all I know and he won't be one of the most beloved, admired cartoonists. He'll just be Anthony Weiner with a fountain pen. I have been unable, in all the years we've worked together, to successfully blackmail him into actually paying me. Some people only fear shame so much. But I have been able to extort him into being my best friend (male division). And since he's that, I might as well wish him a Happy Birthday…
Happy Birthday, Sergio! And no, you are not old. Al Jaffee is old. You are a (relatively) young man and don't worry. No one will ever know about you-know-what and you-know-who and that time you did you-know-that with you-know-them. Your secrets are safe with me. At least they are, so long as you remain my best friend (male division)…or if you ever get that sex change you keep talking about, the female category. Especially if you lose the mustache.
I've given up, probably forever, on my two favorite telethons to watch. Both were pretty unwatchable this year.
The MDA Telethon — transformed into a two-hour network music special interspersed with MDA pitches — was probably fine for what it was, and it appears to have succeeded as a fund-raiser, raising more dough than anything else the organization could possibly have done these days. Okay, that's great. But sans Jerry or a comparable figure, it's just a show with infomercial segments throughout…and I think it was all pre-taped. There's no sense that you're staying up, watching in real time as all those volunteers sweat to raise the money and you want to reward their efforts with donations. Another of the almost-extinct live, anything-can-happen TV programs has gone away on us.
The week before — but more recently semi-watched on my TiVo — was the annual Chabad Telethon. I say "semi-watched" because I had to speed through it and eventually give up altogether, in large part because of its unctuous host, Dennis Prager. There are conservative commentators I can respect even when I don't agree with them — you've seen me link to a number of them here — but Mr. Prager is not among them. I think he spreads bogus information and constantly demonizes those who don't share his precise views and, more importantly, his religion as interpreted by Dennis Prager. He's a very dull, uncharming man who has no business hosting a telethon to begin with and when he started by touting his various outside enterprises, I started fast-forwarding. Oh, for the days before Jan Murray passed away. Murray, who hosted the Chabad Telethon for years, understood that the telethon wasn't about him and where he was appearing next week.
What I did pause to watch — especially the moments featuring the charismatic Rabbi Cunin — was honest enough…and at least the show was live. But I'll tell you what I really miss on there. I miss Stanley Ralph Ross.
It's no one's fault that he wasn't on the show. Stanley, an actor and TV writer who was a good pal of mine, died in 2000. I told some of this story before here but it's been ten years. Time for a refresher.
Stanley was the pushiest writer I ever knew and he was absolutely shameless about promoting himself. There are a lot of people in Hollywood who are like this but Stanley was the Beethoven of harassing people into giving you work. You said "yes" to Stanley because he made it too much work to say "no."
That most didn't shun him for this was largely due to the fact that he could be very funny and charming, and that he'd often do very nice, selfless things for people. He did me a number of favors early in my career when it didn't look like I could ever possibly be of any use to him. Most pushy people won't do something nice for you unless they're setting up a very specific quid pro quo.
But Stanley could be very generous with his time and effort even as he was relentless in selling himself as a writer. Relentless. And he usually managed to snare an acting job in everything he wrote. A few years after his passing, I was watching an old Banacek rerun on TV. I'd seen this episode before — it was the one about the million dollars vanishing from a display case in a Vegas casino — but I hadn't noticed Stanley's writer credit in the opening before. Immediately, I thought, "Ah, he'll be in this episode somewhere" and I began watching for him.
And watching and watching. Two-thirds of the way through the episode, it felt like all the suspects and key players had been introduced…and there was no sign of Stanley. I thought to myself, "Where is he? Why isn't he in here?"
Just then, Banacek asked someone where he could find the hotel publicist. The someone said, "Oh, he's down by the pool, photographing bikini girls." Immediately, I thought: Ah, here comes Stanley! And sure enough, there he was in the next scene, probably having written the part with himself in mind.
Stanley had lots of credits, and many of those who read this will know him as one of the main writers of the Batman TV show (the one with Adam West) and the developer of the Wonder Woman TV show (the one with Lynda Carter). But to me, his greatest credit was his work on the annual Chabad Telethon.
Stanley volunteered every year to do anything and everything. I'm sure he pushed to be its host but Jan Murray did it in those days. And I'll say this for Stan: He would have been a lot better than Dennis Prager. By that, I mean Stanley in his present condition would have been a better host than Dennis Prager.
So he did some announcing and he did a few pitches and in the dancing sequences, where the rabbis come out and dance to celebrate a new high on the tote board, you could usually spot Stanley in the outer fringe, dancing and trying to make his way into the shot. He was hard to miss because he was around 6'6". He also had a deep, gravelly voice which you need to keep in mind during the following.
Stanley Ralph Ross and his wife, Neila.
He'd work the phone banks, taking calls…and he performed a special function there. Every hour or so, they'd get a call from someone who was outraged to see so many Jews on his TV set, which apparently did not have any sort of control via which one could change the channel. So he'd call up and start cursing out Jewish people and saying how Hitler had the right idea and threatening to bomb the TV studio. I am generally against comparing people to Nazis but if it talks like a duck and it goosesteps like a duck…
And what the Chabad people would do when they got one of those calls was to switch it over to Stanley. He was the expert at handling them. He'd cue the Stage Manager who'd in turn cue the director to cut from whatever was transpiring on screen to a shot of the phone bank…and Stanley. In fact, I think the part of this that Stanley enjoyed most was that he got to be on TV when he did it. In his low, menacing voice — a voice Hanna-Barbera often booked to play a super-villain in a cartoon show — Stanley would say, "Look at your TV screen, you piece of worthless shit! You see that 6'6" Jew there? That's me. If you've got any balls, come on down to the station. I'll meet you in the parking lot, you coward, and you say that to my face!"
They always hung up immediately. And somehow never showed up in the parking lot.
Stanley told me how he did this once or twice every telethon and when the next one occurred, I made a point of watching for it. Sure enough, right in the middle of a song by some boys choir, they cut to the phone bank and a shot of Stanley. There was no audio of him but you could see he was glancing to camera and threatening the caller and I could lip-read "son of a bitch" and "Nazi bastard." And then you could tell the guy hung up because Stanley started laughing and laughing. I laughed too and when I finally stopped, I called up and pledged a hundred bucks in honor of Stanley Ralph Ross. After he passed, I sometimes called in and made the same pledge.
The photo of him I inserted a few paragraphs above was taken at the 1977 San Diego Comic-Con…the annual event now known as Comic-Con International. I had arranged for Stanley, because of his Batman connection, to be a guest of the convention. "Guest" just meant that he would get in free but Stanley, being Stanley, promptly alerted Variety and the Hollywood Reporter that he was the ***Guest of Honor*** and began calling the con to firm up how many talks he'd give and how many trophies he'd receive. I think they gave in and presented him with an Inkpot Award and he may even have gotten them to actually list him as a Guest of Honor. Like I said, a pushy man.
As it turned out, he gave one of the funniest, most interesting lectures I've ever heard at the con and later, he somehow convinced them to let him be the auctioneer for the charity art auction. He was terrific at it and raised more money than anyone else could have or ever had. In part, he did this by declaring hefty opening bids on certain items…and if no one would offer that much, he'd just buy it himself.
I can't look at that photo of him and his terrific wife Neila without noticing that in it, Stanley had one of his constant cigarettes going…and that we lost him to lung cancer. It was very sudden and very sad. He drove me nuts at times but I still miss the guy. One of these days, I'll tell a few more stories about him and you'll wonder how I could be friends with this person. I guess you had to know him to understand it. At his funeral, I sat next to Julie Newmar, who credited him with the best moments on the Batman show. She turned to me at one point and asked me of all the things Stanley had done, what was my favorite? I told her it was manning the phone banks at the Chabad Telethon. I'll forgive a lot of pushy job-seeking in a person who does something like that.
How well do you know your current events? Here's a test you might want to take. I missed two — the one about the country with the odd population pattern and the identification of the woman.
All the polls say that a majority of Americans oppose the bombing of Syria. Okay, so do I. But I'm curious as to why they think this. Here are four possible thought processes…
"I am opposed because I have examined the issues involved and I believe that in this particular case, it is not in the best interests of the United States to do this."
"I am opposed because I don't like us killing people, especially innocent civilians, unless we have a helluva good reason and I haven't heard a good enough one yet."
"I am opposed because I'm sick of us getting involved in any kind of war and I'm not even sure what's going on there but I don't have to because I think we should say no to anyone unless we're directly threatened."
"I am opposed because Barack Obama is in favor of it."
Me? I'm kind of a mixture of 1 and 2 with a soupçon of 3…but if I had to pick one of those, I'd pick 2. And yes, there are other reasons but I'll bet most opponents have a view that is close to one of the above. Let me know if you see a poll that breaks down their reasons.
