Yearly Archives: 2015

Fred Kaplan on what Congress will or won't do with regard to the N.S.A. and its power to snoop on our phone conversations. My first hope is not that Congress extends The Patriot Act but that they read it. Only then might they decide the right thing to do with it.

I've officially been an orphan since October of 2012 when my mother passed away. As I've detailed here, her death was not a tragedy. The tragedy — if you can call it that with a woman who lived far longer than any doctor would have expected — was how her health deteriorated the last ten years or so. Inability to walk much or see much or eat anything she liked or go three months without being carted off to an emergency room had left her wishing it would end. She just wanted it to end. If there had been a legal, painless way to make that happen, she would have eaten three chili dogs, then pushed the button.

(Actually, in her condition, if she'd eaten the three chili dogs, she might not have lived long enough to push the button.)

On March 3 of that year, one day after I turned 60, I held a big birthday party for my little ol' self and invited 120 of my friends. If you felt you should have been among them, I apologize…but I have way more than 120 friends and that's about all the restaurant could hold. I chose that particular one because of her — because she liked it and it was close to her home. As if all the other problems I mentioned in the first paragraph didn't restrict her ability to enjoy life, there was this: She sometimes and without much warning got incredibly tired and had an urgent need to go to bed and stay there for 8-10 hours. One day, I took her on a day trip to a place she'd always wanted to go that was about a two-hour drive from her bedroom. The fatigue hit her there and it was quite an ordeal to get her home and safely under the covers.

After that, she was unwilling to ever be in a situation where she was more than about twenty minutes from that bed. She wouldn't let me take her to the theater or to a show because, as she put it, "What if we get there and the show is just starting and I suddenly need to be home?" She agreed to come to the party because I assured her that (a) if she suddenly needed to go to sleep, someone would immediately take her home and (b) it would not be me. I convinced her to let me take her to the party since we would be getting there before it started but she made me swear I wouldn't leave my own birthday party in progress to chauffeur her back to her abode.

With all that agreed-upon, she agreed she'd attend my 60th birthday party. She said, "I guess I should since I was there for your last one, fifty years ago." Actually, she was there for all of them but the previous one was, indeed, fifty years before.

I don't recall my first few. My earliest memory would be of one that was around age five or six. I remember a lot of neighborhood children and their mothers, we kids dressed up nicer than we wanted to be. I remember sandwiches and cake and presents and paper hats. That's really all that stayed with me about the next few and about all I recall about going to the birthday parties of friends of mine unless they were cruel enough, as some were, to hire a clown.

Clowns do not belong at kids' birthday parties. They belong at circuses and in cartoons and Red Skelton paintings and nowhere else.

Mostly, I had tiny, family-only parties at ages seven, eight and nine…and then when I turned ten, my mother insisted on throwing a big gala birthday celebration for me. I had not asked for one. She just felt it was something a parent was supposed to do for a child and she seemed way more excited about it than I was. It was only in ostensible adulthood that I began to not hate being the center of attention of anything. Still, I somehow felt obligated to go along with this party thing so at her request, I specified twelve friends I would like to have attend.  She contacted their parents and arranged the kids' presence and the assistance of a few moms.

It was all planned as an afternoon of events. The first was that with the aid of some other parents and their autos, we all caravaned to a miniature golf course on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica and played a round of miniature golf. Then we drove to our house and there was food — hamburgers, hot dogs, lemonade and (of course) cake — and then a Badminton tournament in the backyard. Somewhere in there, I unwrapped a lot of presents.

Fun? Not one bit. I hated the entire day. Could not wait for it to be over.

The miniature golf course part of it just seemed so awkward — getting thirteen kids there and dividing that prime number into smaller groups since thirteen kids cannot all play golf at the same time. The golf course was a ramshackle slum that was torn down a few years later. It might have imploded on its own on my tenth birthday if I'd had a better backswing on my niblick.

There were all these parents around taking pictures of us and…well, there were a lot of things I didn't like about being a kid and one of them was being thought of as "cute" in the same tone of voice you'd use to describe a "cute" trained dog act. It also didn't help my disposition that I finished dead last in the tournament. None of my friends were classy enough to throw a few putts and let the Birthday Boy win.

Then it was back to the house for chow with all these adults taking photos and also now 8mm movies of how cute we all looked wearing our party hats and eating cake. I made a wish and blew out all the candles with one breath but I didn't get my wish: The party continued. Some of my friends embarrassed me with spillage and mess-making and there was my poor mother running around, trying to wait on all these kids and making a special lunch for one girl who didn't want to eat a hot dog or a hamburger.

Not one of the presents was something I wanted or could use. I've rarely enjoyed getting gifts because I'm terribly hard to shop for. I'm larger than people think, I have all those food allergies and I don't drink…so probably a good 70% of all the presents I've received in my lifetime, unless I told the person what to give me, have been items of clothing that didn't fit me, food I couldn't eat or wine I wouldn't drink. I also buy or receive review copies of every DVD or book I want so there's not much chance of giving me one of those I don't have. It's always made me feel bad when someone goes to the trouble and expense to buy (or worse, make) something I can't wear, eat, drink or use. Friends have succeeded in giving me wanted gifts but not often.

That day at my tenth birthday party, I did my best to smile and thank the givers but I was as bad an actor then as I am now and I'm pretty lousy now. Then the Badminton game was chaotic with the net falling down and no one knowing how to keep score or even play…and again, I lost. The whole afternoon just felt so wrong to me in every way.

When all my friends had finally left, my mother came up to me and asked if I had another wish for my birthday. I yelled, "Yes! I would like to never have another birthday party as long as I live!" Then I ran to my room, slammed the door and stayed in there for about five minutes, crying and sulking.

It took the full five minutes for my ten-year-old brain to realize that my parents — my mother, mainly — had gone to a lot of trouble to give me a wonderful day and it wasn't their fault that it hadn't turned out that way. I went out into the living room. My father had gone out somewhere but my mother was sitting in her chair, crying.

It was the worst moment of the day, maybe the worst moment of my admittedly-brief life until then. I had taken a bad situation and made it worse and I had hurt my mother.

"I'm sorry," I said to her. "I'm very, very sorry."

She said she was sorry I hadn't liked my day. I told her I was sorry that she was sorry and that I really liked what she tried to do. She looked at me hard and said, "I should have known. You don't like Halloween either!"

I nodded yes. To me, Halloween was and still is a day when you disfigure yourself, go around and extort candy you probably won't eat and — again — do things adults think are "cute." Never liked it. I've just never been big on holidays. I figure if you can live life so you're reasonably happy on non-holidays, you don't need the holidays. They become less important. A friend of mine later would tell me, "I lived all year for Christmas because it was the only time there was no screaming in our house." There was almost never screaming in the house where I grew up.

That afternoon, my mother and I continued to apologize to each other for about the next ten minutes. I was sorry I hadn't enjoyed my party. She was sorry she hadn't realized I wouldn't enjoy a party…and indeed, I didn't have another one for an entire half a century.

In those fifty years, I don't think I ever had another harsh word or moment of unpleasantness with my mother. She was smart and understanding and she just accepted that her kid was not like other kids. Actually, I'm not sure there are any kids who are like other kids but if there are, I'm not one of them. So after the debacle of my tenth birthday, we had an unspoken pact…

She never did anything just because it was something other parents did. And I, because I knew just how exceptional she was and how everything she did was at least intended to be for my own good, never faulted her for anything. There was really nothing to fault but I had a good imagination. I could have made up something if I'd wanted to. Years later, I stood by as my then-girlfriend — one who was not out of my life rapidly enough — screamed at her mother. What the mother had done was immaterial. It was wrong but not destructive and certainly not malicious. Still, my lady friend yelled, over and over, "Mom, you ruin everything!"

And I just stood there, cringing at the scene and thinking, "Gee…my mother never ruined anything!"

She certainly didn't ruin my 60th birthday party. Quite the opposite. She was the star attraction, getting way more attention than I did — which was fine because I intended it to be less about me and more about her getting to meet a whole lot of my friends she had not met and vice-versa. I knew she wouldn't be in any condition to do that by #61 so I had the party and I planted her at the first table by the door. It didn't matter if guests congratulated me on entering my seventh decade but they all had to talk with my mother. As it turned out, I had a good time because she had a great time.

Biggest thrill of that evening for her? Talking with so many of my friends and especially Stan Freberg. Stan was not only there but though I'd admonished all there were to be no gifts and no performing, he wrote and insisted on reciting a poem about me. And then since he'd broken the rules, someone else insisted they all sing guess-which-song.

She didn't get exhausted. She wound up staying for the entire evening and then Carolyn and I drove her home. After she passed, I realized it was the last time she'd left her house for non-medical reasons.

The morning after the party, she called me up to thank me for, as she put it, "wheeling me there." I made like I was annoyed she'd upstaged me at my own party and she laughed, then said, "Well, I'm more important than you are!"

She said, "People kept saying to me, 'Oh, I can see where Mark got his sense of humor.' I told them, 'No, I got my sense of humor from him.'" That's something we both believed. She explained to them, "Mark started picking up all these funny things from comic books and books he read and TV shows he watched. I had to start talking like him so we could communicate. It was like if your child suddenly began speaking Swedish, you'd have to learn Swedish." At one point, Freberg asked her where I got my sense of humor and she said, "I think he stole some of it from you."

Today, as you're probably well aware, is Mother's Day. My mother never wanted to do anything on Mother's Day. The restaurants were always too crowded, she said, and she preferred to get flowers and gifts from me when she didn't expect them and they didn't seem like an obligation. It was pretty much the same attitude I have about all holidays. If you always treat your mother like it's Mother's Day, there's really nothing out of the ordinary you can do for her on the second Sunday in May except wish her a happy Mother's Day. So I'd do that and then I'd take her out to dinner the next time she felt like leaving the house.

The last Mother's Day she was around, she didn't want to go out. She didn't want to go out the next day or the next day or any day for weeks after…and then she was in the hospital for a week. Finally in late June, I gave her an ultimatum: Redeem your Mother's Day "coupon" now or forfeit it. She said, "Okay, if you insist, you can bring over some El Pollo Loco this evening and we'll eat together here."

I said, "That's not a Mother's Day dinner. I brought you El Pollo Loco last week…and I think, the week before."

She said, "Yeah, but it wasn't Mother's Day then."

I said, "It's not Mother's Day today."

She said, "Hey, I'm your mother and if I say it's Mother's Day today, it's Mother's Day today. I want four drumsticks and a couple of thighs — enough to have some for tomorrow. I have a feeling it's going to be Mother's Day tomorrow, too."

How could you ever find a reason to get mad at someone like that?  How?

Seven years ago, the Los Angeles City Council made a law that restricted the opening of new fast food restaurants in a 32-square-mile area inhabited by half a million low-income people. The idea was that this would somehow lessen obesity. As I said here and here at the time, it sounded like a misguided idea to me.

So how's it working out? According to this, not so well.

Here's an odd bit of TV history — the pilot for a talk show starring Orson Welles. It was filmed in the late seventies…and it was filmed (not taped) apparently with one camera like a movie, with Welles directing in addition to starring. (A pseudonym is credited at the end.)

The guests are Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson and the Muppets, with special interviews of Jim Henson and Frank Oz. The show has an odd, staged feel to it and the person who posted it to YouTube says the audience questions were scripted and that the audience members were directed (presumably by Welles) on how to ask them. They probably did multiple takes of many of the things people said during the show and there seems to have been a lot of editing and sweetening. My guess is that one of the reasons the show didn't get picked up is that someone was afraid it couldn't be done once a week or on a reasonable budget. The slow, ponderous pacing probably scared them off, too.

I'd be curious to know where they intended to sell this. With commercials, it would have been a ninety-minute show, presumably for syndication. If you were a local station, where would you have put it? During the day? At night? Local stations usually put once-a-week shows on the weekend…but where on the weekend?

In some ways, it's a pretty good show. Burt Reynolds answers some probing questions. The interview with Henson and Oz is interesting. But the whole thing just has the feeling of being shot on another planet or something. Take a look…

There were plans to expand the San Diego Convention Center, the place where Comic-Con International is held. Then the plans were off.

Is there a chance they could be on again? Well, it's not impossible but according to this, it's not looking likely.

I said here a week or three ago that I couldn't see why Jay Leno wouldn't accept the invite to appear on one of David Letterman's last shows. My thinking roughly paralleled this article from some time ago by Luke Epplin. I have also heard from many that Dave regrets how nasty their little "feud" got and that the two of them have had many friendly phone calls lately. I figured Jay would like the world to see that Dave no longer holds any grudges for real or imagined offenses.

Then yesterday afternoon, I had a phone conversation with a friend who knows Jay pretty well and he suggested a few reasons why Jay won't go on one of Dave's last shows and he convinced me to not expect it. He said, "If it were three or four years ago, even if Jay were still on opposite Dave, you'd be right. He would have shut his program down for a night and jumped on a plane to New York as he did when Dave wanted him in that Super Bowl commercial. But Jay has now moved past all that."

My friend went on to suggest a few reasons Jay wouldn't want to do it now and I'm not sure how many of them were his thinking and how many of them were what Jay's thinking but they convinced me not to expect that reunion.

So Dave's last three shows will probably be sans Leno. Everyone's assuming that he'll have Tom Hanks and Bill Murray plus Regis Philbin either as an announced guest or a surprise cameo. Sounds to me like there's room for one or two more big guests in there and I have no idea who they might be.

I know what I'd like to see but Dave will never in a thousand years okay this. I'd like to see him bring on a good interviewer like Bob Costas with the express mission of interviewing the host about how he feels about the show ending, what he's proudest of about it, what he can imagine for himself in the future, etc. But Dave won't give up that control of his own farewell.

A couple of folks have written me to ask, "Why are you asking about what Dave will do next? People do retire. Couldn't he just be retiring?" I don't think so. You can retire from selling plumbing fixtures and you don't get frequent offers to come back and sell one more toilet float or one more flush valve. Entertainers don't usually retire voluntarily, especially beloved entertainers. They just scale back and make occasional reappearances.

Yeah, Johnny Carson went away forever but he didn't really intend to. On his last telecast, he said he expected to come back with something. As it turned out, he never found that something. Everything presented to him either looked like an embarrassing comedown from his former heights or something that could flop and leave him looking like a failure as opposed to that guy who went out on top as a capital-L Legend.

I've been trying to figure out why I don't feel Dave will do what Johnny did. Johnny was 67 when he did his last Tonight Show and Dave is 68 so you could certainly make the argument that he's not too young to do what his idol did. I guess the reason it feels different to me is that Johnny always seemed like a part of the show business era that preceded him — Benny, Berle, Hope, Skelton, etc. He had seen plenty of those performers outlive the demand for their talents and appear, in some cases, somewhat pathetic as a result.

I don't think Letterman identifies with comedians who are older than him. Admires, yes; identifies, no. Just the way he talks, I think he feels like part of the generation that includes Jerry Seinfeld (age 61) and Steve Martin (69) and Martin Short (65) and Bill Murray (64) and yes, Jay Leno (65).  These are all guys who are still working, none of whom has trouble finding an audience or worthwhile projects.

If Dave gives up performing now, he takes himself out of their category and makes himself older than he has to be. A lot of folks around Carson — and if I've heard this, I'm sure Dave has — felt that once Johnny had no audiences in his future, he started gaining weight and getting out of shape and aged a lot. Dave has an eleven year old son. That's a pretty good reason to not want to descend into Old Man mode and to instead stay active and healthy. Also, Johnny grew up at a time when being almost seventy was a lot older than it is today.

Maybe this is wishful thinking on my part and I should stop trying to predict. One thing I do know about Dave Letterman with reasonable certainty is what I once heard one of his writers say about him. He said, "Dave's going to do what Dave's going to do." I just hope what he does is not what Johnny did.

As someone who never watches or cares about professional football, I have no real interest in this scandal involving Tom Brady and the New England Patriots and underinflated footballs. But even I thought Keith Olbermann's rant about it was pretty funny. I miss this guy covering politics…

Believe it or not, Preview Night at this year's Comic-Con International in San Diego starts in two months and two hours. I haven't even unpacked from WonderCon and they already have me working out my panel schedule…and this weekend, I'm writing a couple of tributes to departed folks to appear in the souvenir book. We're also close to announcing this year's recipients of the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Writing.

I have heard all the complaints. Okay, I'm exaggerating. There must be at least ten people who either go there, decide not to go there or want to go there and can't who do not e-mail me with their gripes…but I hear a lot of them, none of which I can do anything about and some of which I don't think anyone can do anything about. When you drive down the 5 Freeway to go there on a Saturday morning, you're not going to have the Car Pool Lane all to yourself and the price of gas is not going to be what you want it to be. Deal with it. Just deal with it.

Many of the complaints are things I wouldn't want anyone to do anything about and an awful lot of the grumblers are not unlike the acquaintance of mine who moaned about this: He went to the con one year with a list of 50 or so old comics he wanted to buy to complete his collection. He couldn't find 20 of them at all and of the remainder, well over half were priced too high for him to afford. Some old comics are scarce and expensive and somehow, that's the convention's fault.

This person should not be confused with the guy who used to come up to me every year and tell me the con sucks because some old-time comic artist he wanted to meet wasn't there. Often, the artist in question had been invited but had declined. In one case, the artist was deceased. This was probably the convention's fault, too.

To oft-dead ears, I told these belly-achers what I've told you here before. I love Comic-Con. I loved what it was back in the seventies and eighties, and I don't fault the current version of it for not being what it was back then. The comic book industry, for reasons good and bad, isn't what it was back then, either.

It is obviously possible to have a great time at Comic-Con. The thing wouldn't sell out each year in nine nano-seconds if it wasn't.

I sympathize with those who tried to get tickets but couldn't. That's an absolutely valid grievance and one which will always exist as long as 400,000 people (that's probably a low guess) want to attend a function that can at most accommodate 135,000 or so. The operators of the convention can't help that and even if they moved to larger quarters, more folks would probably want to attend and your odds of scoring a badge might not be much better.

(Important Note: I cannot help you get in. Don't ask. Don't even offer bribes…and, yes, I've had offers.)

But if you can get in, you can have a great time. You have to accept the fact that it's crowded and there'll be a lot of walking and you might not be able to get into every panel or event you want to attend…and the food, like the food in every convention center, will be overpriced and underedible. That's a useful new word I made up last time I tried one of their alleged pizzas.

You have to plan ahead. By now if you're attending, you should know how you're getting there, where you're going to stay if you're going to stay, some good places to eat, etc. If you're leaving these things for last-minute decisions, you're setting yourself up to have a bad time.

About two weeks before the convention, the Programming Schedule will be posted. Naturally, you're going to want to attend all the panels I moderate but there may be others. Check the schedule when it's available and mark down what you want to see and what you'll go see instead if you can't get into your first choice. Study the map of the hall and get a sense of where the exhibitors you want to check out will be located. (Hint: If you're not into video games, note where those exhibitors are and avoid that area at all costs. They like to make certain you can't hear and you can't move.)

Make sure you have shoes you can walk in for a long time and for long distances. And follow other tips I'll be posting here in the coming two months.

It really can be a wonderful experience if you work at it a little. If you stumble into it or give yourself unrealistic expectations, you'll wind up with a lot of complaints. For God's sake if you do, don't dump them on me. There's no point in both of us being miserable.

As any sane person realizes, all this talk about a military takeover of Texas is just well-fanned paranoia. It comes from the same place as those stories that George W. Bush and later Bill Clinton had plans to declare Martial Law on some pretext and remain in office past the completion of their second terms. The maddening part of it is that when it doesn't happen, none of the folks fearing it will say, "Gee, I guess we were dead wrong and were fed a lot of phony rumors and horse manure." They'll instead insist that because the plan was leaked and good, alert Americans like themselves raised a stink, it was called off.

CBS has announced David Letterman's guest list for next week…

Mo 5/11: Howard Stern, Don Rickles
Tu 5/12: Bill Clinton, Adam Sandler
We 5/13: Julia Roberts, Ryan Adams
Th 5/14: George Clooney, Tom Waits
Fr 5/15: Oprah Winfrey, Norm MacDonald

Pretty impressive lineup there. I lost my taste some time ago for Howard Stern's hysterical self-importance but everything there should keep Dave interested.

After this, there are three more shows. Presumably, we'll see Tom Hanks and Bill Murray on them — the two remaining names from the announced list of Dave's final guests. We do not yet see an announcement of Regis Philbin, Brian Williams or Jay Leno. Wednesday's show is also supposed to include "a special interview" with Paul Shaffer.

Jan's Restaurant was located on Beverly Boulevard just east of La Cienega. It billed itself as "L.A.'s Best Coffee Shop." One wonders how the folks at Astro's over on Fletcher Drive — owned by the same family and featuring almost the exact same cuisine — felt about that. But Jan's was pretty good. In the seventies, I lived a block from the place and was in there at least twice a week. Breakfasts were as good as any other option I had. For lunch and dinner, it wasn't the greatest but it was several notches above Denny's or Norms or any other big chain you could name.

I especially liked the Spaghetti Burger, which was not as many assumed a hamburger with spaghetti on it. It was a hamburger with a dish of spaghetti on the side.

Jan's was reasonably priced and had good service. It closed in mid-March after more than fifty years in business. We've lost too many of that kind of eatery.

You probably saw this but just in case, here's the song Nathan Lane sang the other night on David Letterman's show…

Julia Sweeney recalls her days on Saturday Night Live. I thought Ms. Sweeney was an underused talent on that show who was capable of doing a lot more than playing Pat in a series of sketches that would be fondly remembered if they'd stopped after about three of 'em. I saw her one-woman show a few years later and it was quite wonderful.

She's right about Victoria Jackson, by the way. I know Victoria — or did before she decided that people of my political positions were Unwitting Tools of Satan. The Victoria I knew was very sweet and very charming but, as Ms. Sweeney noted, lacking in any filter. She said exactly what was on her mind even if it was inappropriate or thoughtless. I'm sure she believes exactly what she says she believes and doubt that any force on this planet could ever persuade her it was wrong.

The Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas has closed and the company that purchased all its slot machines should have removed them from the premises by now. Other tangibles in the building are being sold off and soon, the aging structure itself will be razed and in its stead will rise an extension of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

I don't believe that in all my many trips to that city, I ever actually stayed at the Riv…but I gambled there and I saw shows there and I ate there and a lot of comedians that I knew played its comedy club so I was often hanging out there. I recall one time Bill Kirchenbauer was headlining in that room and we had to go through a little ritual. There was a gentleman who worked for the Riviera who was in charge of the comedy club, a large guy named Steve. Each evening between shows, Steve could and would arrange to "comp" dinner for the comedians. The comp was usually good for two — in this case, Bill and his wife — and Bill wanted to introduce me to Steve so the comp would be for three. "Just be friendly with the guy," Bill told me, "and joke with him a little."

I'm all for free meals so I went along with this. He introduced me to Steve, we chatted a little, I said something that made Steve laugh and he said to Bill, "Hey, Kirchenbauer. Your friend's funny so I'm making your comp for three tonight. Take him to dinner!" It was only a twenty dollar steak in the coffee shop but it was one of those times in Las Vegas when I really felt I'd won something. Then Steve told me, "Hey, next time you're coming to Vegas, give me a call and we'll set you up with a free room here."

I never took Steve up on the lodging portion of his generosity but I did see him again…when I watched The Sopranos. His full name was Steve Schirripa — casino employee turned actor.

That must have been twenty years ago and the Riviera was already getting shabby then. Other hotels of its era underwent zillion-dollar upgrades to remain competitive with new megaresorts. The Riviera occasionally put in new carpeting here and there. As its neighbors like the Stardust and the Sahara and the Frontier and the Desert Inn went away, it was only a matter of time.

In addition to seeing friends in its comedy club, I recall seeing Splash! there — a big, noisy show that at one point represented a modern, contemporary version of the classic Vegas revue. "Noisy" was its outstanding quality. The sexy showgirls and the promise of great acts would draw you in. The decibel level would cause you to leave before it was over…and it wouldn't surprise me if that was a deliberate effort to get you out of the showroom and back to the gaming tables and the slot machines sooner.

The buffet at the Riv was cheap, never crowded and pretty lousy except that the dessert table had an orange meringue cake that was among the best things I ever tasted back when I ate that kind of thing. And for a few years there, I found another, even better reason to go to it. Splash! did two shows a night. I don't recall how I figured this out but I realized that if I got to the buffet about fifteen minutes after the early show concluded, it would be full of showgirls grabbing a comped meal there between performances. They all had their stage makeup on with their eyes and lips painted to appear extra-large but they were otherwise in sweats and old clothes.

There was something very colorful and sexy about it and I almost always struck up a conversation with one of them and was invited to bring my tray and myself over to their table. When I was alone in town, I especially appreciated the conversation and the friendliness and once, one of the ladies took me backstage for the second show and we wound up going out afterwards. We are still friends, albeit now just of the Facebook variety.

Most reviewers thought the Riviera Buffet was the worst in town. That was probably true if you just went there to eat.

The casino was fine for gaming, though one time I got into a dispute with a Blackjack dealer. We "pushed," meaning we tied and I neither won nor lost my bet…but the guy wasn't paying attention and he collected my money anyway. I objected. "That was a push," I told him. He said, "No, you had seventeen and I had eighteen." I said, "No, I had eighteen. Look at the cards." Others at our table told him he was wrong but he insisted he was right and also said he wasn't allowed to look back into the pile of played cards. (I never heard of such a rule anywhere else and doubt there was one there.)  He then grabbed them all up and shuffled, destroying the evidence.

It was only five dollars at stake but if I'm going to lose five bucks, I want to really lose five bucks. I called over the Casino Host — the dealer's supervisor — and explained the situation. Others at the table backed me up. The Casino Host said the dealer was an experienced pro who wouldn't make such a mistake.  I said, "Yeah, well I'm highly experienced at adding ten and eight and getting eighteen."

Getting nowhere, the Host agreed to phone the "eye-in-the-sky" department and have someone check the tape. Play continued at the table while they rewound up there but I stepped away, refusing to go on at least until the matter was resolved.

About three minutes later, the folks upstairs called the Host back. He listened to what they had to say, then handed me a slip refunding my five dollars and said, "They say you were wrong but to be good sports, we're going to refund your money anyway." I said, "In other words, they said I was right but you're not supposed to admit your dealer made a mistake." He gave me a wink and muttered, "Something like that." I cashed in the slip and my remaining chips and I don't think I ever gambled at the Riviera again. It wasn't a matter of principle. It was just time to go to the buffet for a serving of orange meringue cake with a side of showgirls.

I'd say "I'm going to miss that hotel" but that cake and the show my friend was in were gone long ago…and the last few times I was there, it looked like a hotel that could have imploded if they'd just revived Splash! at the same volume. So I missed it a long time ago. If anything, I miss the era of Vegas that it represented.