Yearly Archives: 2015

I wrote about this a few years ago but I think it's about time for an update…

Ever since I had my weight loss surgery in 2006, my diet has changed. My consumption of protein has gone way up and my taste for sweet things has gone way down. I can't recall the last time I had a cookie or a piece of candy or cake but it's been at least five years. I've also given up all beverages except water and a very small amount of milk, plus two drinks made with water. One is True Lemon Lemonade and the other is my daily Jay Robb protein drink. Both these drinks are sweetened with Stevia because I've never been able to stand artificial sweeteners. And anything with more than a small amount of sugar is too danged sweet for me.

Jay Robb does not make the cheapest protein powder you can buy but I was drawn to it because it uses Stevia instead of those other sweeteners I don't want. Back in '06, I could only find three brands that weren't loaded with Aspartame or Sucralose. I tried all three and settled on Jay Robb's as the best. The other two seem to have gone out of business since and I haven't found any others. Then again, since I've been perfectly happy with Jay Robb, I haven't looked very hard.

Jay Robb Protein used to come in three kinds — Whey Protein, Egg White Protein and Rice Protein. I thought the rice was awful and I must not have been alone in this opinion because they no longer make it. Of the other two, I have a mild preference for the Whey.

It comes in these flavors: Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Piña Colada and Tropical Dreamsicle, the last intended to emulate orange/vanilla ice cream. Since Piña Colada is a flavor I never liked in any form, I've never tried it. I haven't tried their Unflavored, either.

Of the rest, the Chocolate is my favorite by a wide margin. The Vanilla is okay and I drink it occasionally just as a change of pace. The Strawberry would probably be great if you blended in fresh strawberries and the Tropical Dreamsicle would do well with some orange juice…but without added fruit, those two flavors are pretty bland and uninteresting. With added fruit, they'd be too sweet for me.

Before you take my taste recommendations to heart, remember that I'm a guy who doesn't like ice cream, pie, cake, cookies, candy or fresh fruit. So I might not listen to me if I were you.

You can make your protein drink with water or milk. I found the best combination for me is ice water and a splash of milk. And the colder the water, the better.

When I started on Jay Robb protein, it came in neat plastic canisters and there were also individual servings in envelopes. You can still buy the envelopes and that's a good (though expensive) way to sample the different varieties. The best way to purchase these is to go to a Whole Foods Market or a health food shop that carries them.

For bulk purchases, the neat plastic canisters have been replaced by more disposable, environment-friendly bags which I find awkward to use. They're also wasteful because it's hard not to spill powder when you mix drinks out of them. Fortunately, I saved some of those neat plastic canisters so now I buy the bags online — Amazon's prices are as low as anyone's — and transfer the powder into them.

When traveling, I take along the overpriced envelopes and a good shaker bottle for mixing. At home, I use the Magic Bullet® which is the only thing I ever bought off a TV infomercial that worked as advertised and has proven valuable in my life.

And I think that's all I have to say on the topic. After the last time I covered this, several people wrote to thank me and one or two wrote to say they didn't like what I liked. That's kind of how it works in this world.

John Oliver's back and he spent most of the first show of his second season discussing prescription drugs. More specifically, he noted that a lot of doctors are taking a lot of money (and free lunches!) from drug companies, then turning around and prescribing the wares of their benefactors. That's both good and troubling to know.

In the piece, which I've embedded below, he directs people to this website where you can look up your doctor and see how much loot he or she has taken and from whom. Naturally, I looked up mine: My general practitioner, my new urologist, my old urologist, my dermatologist, my gastroenterologist, my podiatrist, my dermatologist and the guy who's making a full-time practice out of fixing my knees. That's everyone who's written me a prescription in the last seven or so years.

My podiatrist took $2200 from a drug company to deliver a lecture but the company involved has nothing to do with what he's treating me for. The others either took nothing or some amount under $30 for "food and beverage" from Lilly USA LLC, which makes Prozac, Cialias, Cymbalta, Methadone and other drugs I've never taken or had prescribed. My new urologist got $24.24 from them, which I'm guessing is like a roast beef sandwich with fries, a side salad and a large drink. I sure hope there was no cole slaw involved because then I'd have to find a new new urologist.

Just in case you don't have HBO or didn't catch it, here's Mr. Oliver's report…

So the Supreme Court refuses to block Gay Marriage in Alabama and we have a lot of officials down there vowing civil (or maybe even uncivil) disobedience. You're going to see a lot of analogies to the time then-governor George Wallace stood in a doorway at the University of Alabama and vowed to disobey federal orders for desegregation.

It's worth remembering that, first of all, Wallace lost that battle and later practically begged people for forgiveness for his stance. It's also worth noting that several of his biographers have stated that Wallace never believed in segregation; that he only believed in doing whatever would make him popular in his state and at that moment, standing in that doorway made him very popular…even if he didn't stop what he pledged to stop.

Alabama. They can't stop it in Alabama. I continue to be amazed…pleased but amazed. I really thought it would take decades for this to happen.

This was posted June 20, 2002 as an obit for Gene Moss, one half of a very funny comedy-writing (and occasionally, performing) team with a man named Jim Thurman. Sadly, Mr. Thurman only survived his former partner by five years. Not much remains of their brief foray into doing a live kid's show…one or two bad-quality tapes and a lot of great memories…

In the above photo, the big guy on the right is Gene Moss, who for most of his career was a top comedy writer, often in tandem with a gent named Jim Thurman. The little guy on the left is Shrimpenstein, the title character of a short-lived but well-remembered kids' show on Channel 9 in Los Angeles. Shrimpenstein ran every Monday through Friday at 5:00 in the afternoon. It was done live and a casual viewer might sometimes have gotten the notion that the managers of KHJ had gone out in the alley, found two drunks, bought them a few extra pints and sent them out to do a TV program, ostensibly for toddlers.

The station was going through a period where it was acting like its parents weren't home. During this time, it also tried an afternoon dance party show called Groovy, which was broadcast live from Santa Monica Beach. Fathers all across Los Angeles were racing to get home in time to watch the 15-year-old girls in bikinis flash the camera. Some left work early so they could also catch Moss and Thurman's televised Happy Hour.

Shrimpenstein went on the air in January of '67. At the time, almost every local TV station was trying to work a Soupy Sales knock-off, some of them amazingly close. Channel 9 also offered up — briefly — a morning man named Bill Holly whose show was a precise clone of Soupy's: Pies in the face, guys at the door, dog puppet-gloves reaching into camera range, etc. Same show but not as funny. Shrimpenstein incorporated most of the same elements: One guy on camera, another working puppets just off-stage. The difference was that this show was set in a kind of Transylvania castle with Moss playing Dr. Von Schtick, who was supposed to sound like Boris Karloff but who sounded more like Bobby "Boris" Pickett on the record, "Monster Mash." Actually, late in the run (sometimes, late in any given episode), Moss would tire of the accent and announce, "I'm sick of this stupid voice" and just drop it.

His partner Jim Thurman was the unseen guy, playing various roles. They had two "White Fang"-type hairy gloves. One was Klaus, who was some kind of rude creature who, like Soupy's canines, reached into the scene from next to the camera. The other came out of a box like "The Thing" on The Addams Family. He was called Wilfred the Weiner Wolf because he was originally the spokeswolf for a brand of frankfurters that bought much of the commercial time on the program. Then one day, Wilfred — who muttered everything under his breath so he sounded like an obscene phone caller — started explaining that their sponsor used only the finest ingredients, including live kitty cats. Dr. Von Schtick gasped (this was apparently not in any script) and asked Wilfred, "You don't mean this fine product actually grinds up cats?" Wilfred answered, "Yeah…they take people's kitty cats and throw them in the vats." Following that broadcast, the hot dog company was no longer involved with Shrimpenstein and Wilfred was occasionally grumbling about having lost his weiner.

That was how it often went on Shrimpenstein. It became one of those shows you were afraid to not watch for fear you'd miss Dr. Von Schtick exposing himself on the air or Wilfred saying the "f" word. None of that occurred but there was forever a sense of danger.

One time, they were off the air because there had been a fire at the Channel 9 transmitter that had blacked out the entire station for much of one day. The following afternoon, Dr. Von Schtick explained that he had been the cause of the blackout because one of his experiments had gone wrong. There was a huge toggle-switch on the set — they called it "The Bull Switch" — which he would often throw to start a cartoon or something. He walked over and, to demonstrate what he'd supposedly done the day before, threw the switch…and the station went to black again, this time intentionally but only for about thirty seconds. That thirty seconds, however, was enough to panic the station managers who thought the transmitter had blown up once more. One of them reportedly was on the phone screaming and firing technicians when he finally realized that it wasn't another disaster; just Moss and Thurman screwing around again. (Around this time, the station also gave up on a micro-budgeted late night talk show hosted by Moss and Thurman, with Stan Worth as their bandleader. For no visible reason, Gene and Jim were dressed as basketball referees and, going in and out of commercials, they would toss free throws through a hoop on the set or make their guests try.)

At times, Shrimpenstein was almost an average kids' show, as per the Soupy formula. Soupy had his puppets, Pookie and Hippie, who would mime to records. Shrimpenstein had The Tijuana Bats, who would dance to records that were played at double-speed, a la The Chipmunks.

Early on, they tried running the Marvel Super-Hero cartoons that had just been produced by the Grantray-Lawrence studio on the lowest of budgets. Dr. Von Schtick would introduce each as, "Another Marvel mediocrity" or "Another one of those cartoons where nothing ever moves." One time, he even suggested that kids switch over to Channel 11 and watch Roger Ramjet…a good cartoon. Moss and Thurman had been the head writers, and had provided occasional voices for Roger Ramjet. KHJ must have loved that.

And, of course, two or three times a week, Moss would get hit with a pie. On the very last show, he dragged Thurman on-camera and pelted him with about ten of them.

Their last telecast came abruptly. As I recall, they didn't say it was their last show, though they seem to have known. The following Monday, Dr. Von Schtick and Wilfred and the Tijuana Bats were gone, and one of the station's newsmen was awkwardly working Shrimpenstein. (Moss and Thurman hadn't had much more success with the dummy, which was built by famed puppet-maker Wah Chang. First, Moss had tried supplying its voice but he was no ventriloquist. Then, Thurman did the voice from off-camera while Moss clumsily moved the mouth, never remotely in sync. Then, for a time, they just ignored their title character whenever possible. I seem to remember one show where Dr. Von Schtick announced that Shrimpenstein would not be appearing that afternoon because "no one remembers where we left the stupid puppet.") The show only lasted another week or two after their departure.

Soon after, there was a much-publicized rally in Griffith Park. Billed as a campaign to get Shrimpenstein (the Moss-Thurman version) back on the air, it reportedly turned into Gene and Jim just doing all the material Channel 9 wouldn't let them do, angering some parents who'd brought their kids. It was the last time I know of either performing anywhere. For a time, they wrote for different TV shows, including a stint with Bob Hope, and operated a small company that produced humorous commercials. At some point, they split and Moss worked for various shows and advertising agencies, while Thurman became a key writer for The Electric Company and, later, Sesame Street.

Thurman continues to work at such projects but Moss passed away last week, following a short bout with pancreatic cancer. I never had the pleasure of meeting either gent in person (I spoke to Thurman a few times on the phone) but as a devout Shrimpenstein watcher, I feel like I've lost one of my childhood buddies.

(P.S. Thanks to Scott Shaw!, who shares my fond memories of the show, for pointing out an egregious error I made when I first posted this. It has, of course, been fixed.)

Brian Williams has canceled a scheduled appearance with David Letterman for this Thursday. I don't care a whole lot whether the man retains his exalted status as the voice of NBC News or not. I mean, if he stays and tells us one evening that the Dow Jones average dropped, I won't assume that's not true because he was once caught exaggerating some war stories. Only two things really interest me about this whole matter…

One is the way he's getting pilloried for falsehoods by people who overlook them in those they like. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — to pick one from Column A and one from Column B — were forgiven for worse by those who were happy with what those gents were doing for (or maybe to) the country. I don't think it's much of an excuse for Williams' defenders — I assume he has some even if they aren't very loud — to point this out. It's just interesting how being outraged about lying can be so selective. Frankly, I think Williams should just go out and assure America he didn't trade arms for hostages.

The other thing is to wonder just what NBC can do with him if anchoring is not, at least for a while, an option. He just signed a new five-year contract @ ten million bananas a year. Do you bench a guy like that? I think he'd do great with a talk show in the old Larry King Live! timeslot but on MSNBC. He might even get someone to watch MSNBC…but both he and NBC Corporate probably fear that a Basic Cable gig of that sort would demote him from future anchoring status. I dunno what anyone has in mind for him but the problem his network has is that even as damaged goods, he's still too, too valuable to throw away.

In other news: Bill Cosby has another accuser and he canceled two concerts this weekend in Boston, officially because of bad weather. There's been quite a cold snap around Mr. Cosby lately and I'm wondering if very many people still believe he didn't do what all those women said he did. I do still see occasional comments from folks who think what he was accused of was lechery and infidelity. There's that…but slipping something in someone's beverage (a crime all by itself) and then raping them is not quite the same thing as being horny and cheating on your spouse. I am amazed that human beings who ought to know better don't know better.

To "KeepIt100" about The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, I have to say that I like but do not love The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. I think he's terrific and I'm optimistic the show will get better…but there are some aspects of it that haven't started working for me.

One is the whole idea of doing one topic per show. First off, if you're not interested in the topic, the episode's kind of a waste. You might not give a hoot about what Jon Stewart discusses in his first segment but there's something different coming along after the commercial. Also, there's the same problem I had with Penn & Teller's Bullshit! series tackling one topic per episode…

The show was a half-hour. If they had a topic and they only had about ten minutes of interesting things to say about it, it got thirty. And if the topic was an important one worthy of hours of discussion, it also got thirty. So you either got a show with very little to say and a lot of padding…or you got a very cursory, insufficient look at an important topic. Mr. Wilmore's show also suffers from the problem that no one on the panel may have anything of interest to say about that day's topic…or, conversely, the time to say what they do have to say. Both have occasionally seemed to be the case.

But my larger problem with the group discussion is that I usually don't know who most of those panel people are…and by the time each of them has spoken twice and I'm starting to get to know them, the conversation is over.

Which brings us to the "KeepIt100" segment in which tough questions are put to those panelists who (again) I've often never heard of before. Absolute honesty is a good thing but the way to "win" that game is just to give the answer that's most uncomfortable for you to say. Let me give you an example.

Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite journalists (i.e., someone I've heard of) and he was on as part of a discussion of the movie American Sniper, which Taibbi trashed. Here's the question that was put to him by Mr. Wilmore, followed by the answer he gave…

Q: Which is more irresponsible? Clint Eastwood's approach to American Sniper or Rolling Stone's approach to the U.V.A. rape story?

A: It's us. I mean, we got that story wrong.

The audience cheered because Taibbi, who's a pretty bright guy, played the game correctly…and that may have been the extent of his feelings on the question. But this game is about giving honest responses…so what if his honest answer was more like this?

Yeah, we got that story wrong. However, when our irresponsibility was brought to light, we responded to the charges and the publisher has asked the Columbia School of Journalism to do an independent review of the story and we're going to publish whatever they say about us. We screwed up but we're determined to correct the record and to properly retract and apologize. What people in our profession will learn from our irresponsibility is that you have to be more scrupulous in fact-checking stories. What's being learned from Clint Eastwood's irresponsibility is that there's zillions of dollars to be made from fairy tales about the Iraq War that depict it the way the right-wing wishes it had been.

Now, I don't know for a fact that that's Mr. Taibbi's honest view…but if it was, he was smart enough not to say it on the show. Saying anything but what he did say would have gotten him booed for not swallowing sufficient fecal matter. Which is what bugs me about "KeepIt100." The short, uncomfortable answer may not really be the honest one.

I am not going to un-Season Pass The Nightly Show on my TiVo. I'm just going to keep watching and enjoying what's there and waiting for the show to find its way because I have a feeling it will. And yeah, maybe I'm just grousing because it isn't as wonderful as what it replaced.

Speaking of magicians who do things other magicians can't: One of the greats, René Lavand, has passed away at the age of 86. We shared his wizardry with you here.

If you watch that video a few times, you may be able to figure out how he's doing what he's doing. But you'd have to practice for months if not years to be able to do that yourself and not have people instantly see what you were doing.

Someone wrote to ask that I post more videos of unique magic acts. Okay. We live to serve. Here from an old Craig Ferguson show is Jason Latimer with a great variation on the oldest trick in the book…

James Troutman just sent me this link to a piece by PZ Myers, a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota. Myers did see Bill Maher last night (the episode that reruns on HBO 'til next Friday evening) and thinks the man is a dangerous idiot. I don't disagree with Myers except that I think the name-calling is unnecessary.

Still, I'm not giving up on Bill Maher. I find him funny (usually) and gutsy in that he says things on other subjects that oughta be said and that few others are saying. And while I don't buy his views on diet and medicine, there's zero chance I'm going to modify my eating because of them. He'll have no credibility with me on this issue until he begins warning people that our planet is slowly being destroyed by the repeated consumption of cole slaw.

Mr. Maher keeps complaining that doctors don't ask their patients, "What do you eat?" Well, mine do…and my life was probably saved by one years ago who diagnosed me with food allergies.

Though I neither have nor ever wanted children, I am interested in all the anti-vaccination arguments. If nothing else, it's interesting how so many people, as with the Climate Change debate, will place emotional feelings — what they want to have be true — ahead of or on an equal footing with overwhelming scientific consensus.

There's a certain kind of skepticism towards What The Experts Say that is healthy and which should be encouraged. Where I have a problem with Skeptics sometimes is when they start with — and refuse to budge off the presumption — that the Popular Opinion or the government's position are lies just because they're the Popular Opinion or the government's position. Many lifetimes ago, I spent some time amongst Kennedy Assassination Buffs who were willing to consider absolutely any theory of J.F.K.'s killing — a few even involving Martians — as long as it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald as lone assassin.

That one was off the table. It was automatically wrong because "they" believed it. If you asked some of these folks what day it was, they would have checked the newspaper, seen it said Monday and then told you, "It's any day but Monday. You're a fool if you think it's Monday!" I thought some of them just felt hipper and smarter than the masses if they didn't believe what the masses believed. Personally, I think that it's fine to believe Popular Opinion is wrong but you need a better reason than just that it's Popular Opinion.

I can imagine a rational anti-vaccination argument. Some doctors (probably a lot more than a few) could come to the conclusion that a given vaccination is ineffective or has bad side effects that outweigh its benefits. At least on the cable news shows, I'm not hearing any of those. They seem to be trotting out parents who think that if their kids never get a shot, they'll never get a sickness. Or you get the old "If the government says so, it's wrong" argument. We should remind those people that it's the government that tells us what day to vote. Maybe that'll make them go to the polls a week too late to cast ballots.

My friend Paul Harris has announced he will never watch Bill Maher again due to Maher's anti-vaccine statements. I don't know if Paul saw the show last night when Maher seemed to be walking back certain of his assertions on this topic but I share some of Paul's view. I haven't reached the stage yet of not watching but I do think people should be getting their medical advice from doctors they trust — preferably, in one-on-one relationships — rather than from talking heads on cable channels. Hell, I'd even concede that Bill Maher's advice could be absolutely right for Bill Maher's body. That doesn't mean it's right for everyone who tunes in his show because they think he's funny.

No one who's been in one in the last ten years will be shocked that the RadioShack chain is going bye-bye. A few days ago, the New York Stock Exchange began delisting the company. A fewer day ago, the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced that General Wireless Inc. has agreed to buy 1,500 to 2,400 of the approximately 4,000 stores RadioShack has in this country. They will close the others.

You'd think that an era in which we all have computers and smartphones and other electronics goodies would send sales soaring at a chain of technology shops…and it might if that chain had employees who knew anything about how the stuff worked.

Maybe someone will try that sometime…but usually, we get what killed Radioshack, which is the same thing that sank the Egghead Software chain that I used to patronize. It's the same thing that closed the CompUSA store where I used to buy computer equipment. It's the same thing that shuttered the Good Guys store where I used to buy software and computer equipment after Egghead Software and CompUSA closed. You'd go into these places, ask a question and you'd get either the wrong answer or none.

I'm not that tech-savvy but way too often at a Radioshack, I found myself explaining the products to the salespeople…or sometimes to other customers. I don't know what the pay scale was in these shops but it sure wasn't enough to keep anyone who knew their stuff around for long. The Ray Krocs of the world figured out how to set up their businesses so any minimum-wage teen could be hired and quickly trained to produce the exact same french fries. That interchangeability of service people doesn't work for every business in the mall.

If you ranked technical expertise via a four-star system with four stars indicating great knowledge and one denoting, say, my Aunt Dot's level, Radioshack made this mistake: Half of each store catered to the four-star folks without there being anyone on the premises with a four-star level of expertise. Then they ignored the three-star people, which was a mistake because that was the bulk of their potential customers. The rest of the store (cell phones, boom boxes, etc.) sought to sell to the two-star people. And most of the employees were somewhere between two-star people and Aunt Dot.

Still, it was at times a handy business to have around. I occasionally needed a certain cable or adapter in a hurry and I could usually find it at a Radioshack — and of course by that I mean, I would go in and locate it for myself on their racks. One time, I made the mistake of asking a salesperson and wound up explaining to them what it meant when we said a cable had a "male" or a "female" connector. And all the time, this person giggled because they thought it was dirty.

It's A Night in Casablanca — complete, though with commercial interruptions. Hey, even the Marx Brothers' weakest movies are not without their moments…

My old buddy Joe Brancatelli invents the perfect airline. I wish we had one like that.

On September 20, 2003 when this post first appeared, California was in the midst of a recall election involving then-governor Gray Davis. Davis wound up being replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger…and I'd be very surprised if many of those who voted to dump Gray and install Arnold thought today it was much of an improvement. The fellow who might have been better was the first runner-up, Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante. I mention all this because I referenced that election in this piece on Sam Yorty, who was the mayor of Los Angeles for a long time, and way more deserving of recall than Gray Davis…

I mentioned Sam Yorty on my weblog and found myself engaged in e-mail discussions with others who recall the flamboyant (and largely inept) mayor of the City of Los Angeles. Yorty was mayor from 1961 to 1973 and darn near proved that L.A. could function just fine without anyone in that office. He spent most of his time in power either (a) travelling, ostensibly to promote trade with our fair city or (b) running for higher offices, among them the presidency.

The last of these was the more amazing since there was never any evidence that anyone anywhere wanted him to win any of these positions, except maybe for Angelenos who wished to be rid of the guy. Republican leaders didn't like him because even though the office of mayor is constitutionally non-partisan, Yorty had let it be known that he was a Democrat. Democratic leaders didn't like him because on every single issue that came along, you could count on him siding with the Republicans. His insistence that he was destined for bigger and better things almost seemed delusional. In fact, in '68 L.A. Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad began drawing Yorty in a Napoleon suit, being taken away to an insane asylum. This occurred when Yorty began claiming that he would soon be offered an important post in the cabinet of the newly-elected President Nixon. When he wasn't, Yorty hit Conrad and the Times with a lawsuit that, of course, went nowhere and made its plaintiff look even stupider.

How Sam Yorty got elected in the first place, I cannot say but I recall how he got re-elected in '69. In the primary that year, he came in second with 26 percent of the vote, trailing Councilman Tom Bradley who had 42. That looked like the end of Yorty but long before people talked about "playing the race card," he had one up his sleeve. Bradley was black, so the credo of the Yorty campaign became that if Tom Bradley got into office, he would take his marching orders directly from the Afro-American militants known as the Black Panthers. Yorty aides combed through photos of Bradley, found every one in which the Councilman's fist was clenched (including pictures of him jogging) and published them with captions that claimed Bradley was giving a covert "Black Power" signal to his true masters.

It was an enormously dirty, racist campaign. At one point, it was alleged that Yorty's backers had recruited and paid young black males to ride around key precincts in Cadillac convertibles with Bradley campaign signs on them. They were to play the radio at deafening levels and yell at old white ladies, "You'll be cleaning my house when Mayor Tom takes over!" I'm not sure they actually went that far, but they sure came close. It was an especially ludicrous line of attack if you recall how non-militant Tom Bradley turned out to be when he did finally did get into office and how groups like the Panthers all but disappeared. Yorty's racial fear campaign actually worked in '69 and he squeaked by. The next time around, the same line of attack got nowhere and Bradley easily won what turned out to be the first of five terms.

One of my favorite incidents in a lifetime of election-watching occurred during that election. Yorty, in a rare instance of doing something besides travelling and campaigning, had rammed through the City Council a number of proposals that enriched Occidental Petroleum. One was a controversial land swap deal where the city got some worthless acres and Occidental got some land which turned out to be quite rich in oil. During the campaign, Bradley charged that Yorty had a personal financial interest in Occidental and Yorty responded that Bradley was a lying fool and categorically denied any such interest. As it does more and more these days, the press stayed out of an election issue and didn't start looking into Bradley's charge until after Election Day when, of course, it meant so much less.

Turned out, Yorty himself might not have had a financial interest in Occidental but his wife did. The moment I loved came in one of Yorty's last press conferences when he was asked about this. He said something like, "I never denied that I had any financial interest in Occidental and anyone who says I did is a damn liar." One of the local news channels ran that footage, then ran a clip of Yorty saying, "Neither I nor anyone in my family has ever owned one share of Occidental Petroleum and anyone who says I have is a damn liar." I wish the media would do more of that kind of thing, and do it when it matters. (Later, I believe Yorty actually tried claiming that his wife had purchased more than a million dollars worth of petroleum stock without telling him…)

Sam Yorty died in 1998 without ever again holding public office. I have to say that I smell some of his tactics in the attempts to portray Cruz Bustamante as some sort of Chicano militant. Mr. Bustamante has not impressed me as anything more than the least offensive of a lot of bad choices I find on my ballot, but I think the attempts to tie him to extreme racial groups seem very strained. The same applies to any possible connection Mr. Schwarzenegger may have or have had to former Nazis. Come on. There are plenty of reasons not to vote for either of those men without resorting to that kind of nonsense.

Bill Carter on reporting about Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live for 40 years.