Monthly Archives: October 2021

This ran here on January 9, 2013. It is not a funny story but a lot of people sent me notes expressing their gratitude for me sharing it and I hope it's of value to someone reading this. At the end, I have appended an update…

The last decade of my mother's life, she could barely walk and barely see. Increasingly, she became reliant on a succession of paid caregivers. I could and did drive her to doctor appointments but she felt mounting guilt every time she took me away from my life to do her marketing or drive her to get her hair cut or toenails clipped. There were also tasks a son just plain couldn't help her with…like showering.

So we started hiring women from a caregiver agency. For a time, the biggest problem was that the women didn't stick around long. They all loved my mother. They just didn't seem to like caregiving. It's hard, often less-than-pleasant work. It pays a low hourly rate. And in the sampling we had, it seemed to attract folks who couldn't get the job they really wanted in life, were only caregiving until they could…and resented that they were bathing old people instead of pursuing that yearned-for occupation. There were exceptions — a few who seemed to find the work fulfilling and did it well — but they were, make no mistake about it, exceptions.

Sadly, even the exceptions were transitory and we always seemed to be "breaking in" a new one…or waiting for the agency to find us a new one. Many of their caregivers wouldn't work in a "smoking home" and my mother had yet to break her addiction to Marlboros.

Two things I did not do: Even during the periods when we were desperate for the agency to find us a new caregiver, I did not call another agency. This one had been highly recommended and the people there seemed very nice and responsible. And I did not hire one of several former caregivers — women who'd tended to my mother, then left that agency — who contacted me directly offering their services. They all said something like, "I wasn't making enough working through that agency. But if you paid me the same amount directly and they weren't taking their cut…"

I said no to these offers for two reasons. One was that it seemed unethical. These women had all signed a contract with the agency that they wouldn't do this…and I believe I may have signed one myself that I wouldn't hire them on such a basis. Also, the agency was "licensed and bonded" (remember the second part of that phrase) and a freelance caregiver would not be. So we waited. I had one friend who could fill in now and then helping my mother…and sooner or later, the agency would come up with someone.

"Someone" last year was a woman I'll call Lucy. She was a large woman who claimed (I'm not sure I believe this) that her son was a starting player for the New York Jets. She was caregiving, she said, because her kids had all grown and moved away. She missed taking care of a person in need and she herself was a person in need…of money. For a time, she was more than adequate in the job.

As I mentioned here before, I was supervising my mother's finances. I would eventually take over everything but at this point, she still had her credit card and her checkbook. Every now and then, I'd log into "her" account on her bank's website and check balances and transfer funds between her several accounts. One night around 2 AM, I logged in and chanced to notice something I should have spotted a few weeks earlier.

Most of the charges on my mother's credit card were to markets, primarily the Ralphs near her home. I noticed that for some time, they'd fallen into an unusual pattern. There would be a charge of $20-$40 and then the same date, there'd be a larger one, always for more than $200. My mother did not need $200+ worth of groceries per week. The lesser expenditure was about right.

I immediately called the bank and froze the credit card. My name was on all her accounts so I could do things like this. The next morning, I asked my mother how her marketing had been handled lately. It was pretty much what I expected…

"I give Lucy a list of what I need and I give her my credit card and send her to Ralphs. Or sometimes, she takes me there."

I asked, "When she takes you there, who handles your credit card? And does she also buy things for herself?"

"Yes, she sometimes does her marketing at the same time. I'm in the wheelchair so I give her my credit card and she runs it through the machine there, then she hands it back to me."

"Are you certain she's not charging her purchases to yours at the same time?"

My mother thought for a moment then said, sadly, "No, I guess I'm not." By now, she'd figured out what this was all about.

I called the agency and had them suspend Lucy's visits. Then I drove over to the Ralphs where most of the mysterious transactions had occurred. I explained the situation to the manager there and showed her that I had a duplicate of my mother's card with my name on it. Based on that, she arranged for the market's accountant to give me a printout of all the charges to that card that had been posted since Lucy began working for us.

I picked it up later the same day and sat in my car in the parking lot, studying it. Lucy had refrained from skullduggery for the first few months of her employment, then started small. I already knew that from the data on the bank's website. Now, I saw that all the large, questionable charges were time-stamped one minute or so after the smaller, probably-legitimate ones.

The charges were all itemized. The purchases charged in the smaller transactions were all things I knew my mother used — her favorite brand of cookies, her favorite fruits, her brand of cigarettes, etc. The larger charges were for items she didn't use…a lot of coffee and non-dairy creamer, and each of the larger transactions included a $100 or $200 gift card.

And I noticed something else interesting: Listed alongside each charge was the number of the Ralphs Reward Card that had been used. There was one number on all the small transactions and a different number on all the large transactions.

I went back into the market and bought a bottle of water. At the counter, I lied to the checker. I told her, "I don't have my Ralphs Reward Card with me. Can I just give you my phone number?" She said sure…so I gave her Lucy's phone number. She keyed it in, I paid for the water and she handed me a receipt. The receipt had on it the number of the Ralphs Rewards Card that had been used and it was the same number attached to all the larger transactions.

Then I went over to my mother's and found out the number of her Ralphs Rewards Card. It was the number attached to all the smaller transactions.

Many years ago, I was briefly a writer on a TV series about an investigator named MacGyver. This was the first time I ever felt like him.

The agency fired Lucy, who tearfully swore she'd never done what I'd concluded she'd done. "I would never steal from your mother, Mark," she sobbed to me on the phone. "I love your mother." It was a pretty convincing performance and for about three seconds, I had to wonder if there wasn't some other explanation. Then I looked again at the evidence I'd compiled and went to the police.

This involved several phone calls and several visits there and waiting around for a long time on each of the visits. I had printed out packets of the bank records and the Ralphs data and had it all neatly charted and graphed and annotated. Every officer and detective who paged through it was impressed with how complete it was…and how airtight. "We rarely have someone come in and hand us an open-and-shut case like this," one said. He noted that the Ralphs Reward Card numbers alone were pretty solid proof that the larger transactions had been for Lucy's purchases, not my mother's. It would also be a pretty simple matter to trace the gift cards and see who redeemed them.

Alas, he also told me how overwhelmed and understaffed they were: "We have hundreds of these cases already open. And to be quite honest with you, yours is going to the bottom of the pile. Your mother is not out on the street. She's not going to miss a meal. She has you. Yes, a few thousand dollars is a lot of money but we have cases where someone who is alone in the world was screwed out of their life's savings and is now homeless."

I told him I understood all that but I had two concerns. One was that Lucy had to figure I was going to the cops. The agency, to justify the firing, had shown her how much evidence I'd collected and forwarded to them. How likely was it that she wasn't currently packing to move and disappear? Also, I noted, "My mother is 90 years old and in poor health. She's quite upset about this and would like to see some justice before she dies."

The detective promised he would do what he could. So did a lady at the city's Elder Abuse Department which was one of many other agencies I contacted. She reiterated for me how shorthanded the police were to deal with matters like this. "They could use another ten men over there," she said. "Unfortunately, the same people who complain that the police don't solve enough crimes are also dead set against paying a fraction of a penny more in taxes, which is all it would take to hire those ten men." Her division was being cut back, too.

So we waited. And waited. And in the meantime, the agency tried to find us a new caregiver. "This has never happened to us before," they told me over and over. "We've never had a caregiver caught stealing from a client." I didn't necessarily believe that but I supposed the significant word in that claim was "caught." If my mother hadn't had me monitoring her accounts, she'd never have known.

Finally, they found us a new caregiver who came with impeccable credentials. We'll call her Ethel. She was a short, portly nursing student who'd worked for many satisfied customers through this agency. She seemed nice enough and I figured she was honest. Even if she wasn't, she'd been told about how I watched my mother's financial affairs and how the police would soon be hauling her predecessor off to the pokey. So you figure that she'd at least know she wouldn't be able to get away with anything.

Yeah, you'd figure that, wouldn't you?

She didn't do anything for a few months. Then one night, again around 2 AM, I went online to check my mother's account and found three very wrong checks totaling $1,280. This bank lets you view a scan of a cashed check online and I could see that they were made out to Ethel and not by my mother. In the last few days, someone making no attempt whatsoever to imitate my mother's handwriting had filled them out, signing her name. I then checked the data on my mother's (new) Visa card and found about a thousand dollars in recent charges to two cell phone companies — SimpleMobile and Sprint. My mother did have a cell phone but not from either of those firms.

By 2:15 AM, I had the checking account closed and the credit card frozen. The next morning, Ethel was fired by the agency. She admitted to cashing the checks but swore that my mother had made them out. "She had me buy some things she needed and she was just paying me back for what I spent." That was her story but she somehow couldn't remember even one of the items she'd purchased for my mother a week before for a total of $1,280. My mother, of course, said there had been no such purchases. Ethel also insisted she didn't know a thing about any credit card charges.

At this point, I took my mother's checkbook away from her. I noted that Ethel (or her accomplice) had filled out checks #542, #543 and #547. #544 was a real one — my mother paying her gardener — and #545 and #546 were missing and have not been seen since. #549 and those that followed were still there except that one entire pad of blanks — checks #641-670 — were missing from her desk drawer. They were also now useless since I'd closed that account.

I made up another report and took it to the same detective at the L.A.P.D. He thought the sequel was even better than the original. There was no progress yet on the Lucy matter — we were still situated near the bottom of that pile — and now the Ethel matter would be keeping it company down there.

"Forgive me for questioning procedure here," I said to the detective. "But it would seem like with all the paperwork I've supplied you, it's just a matter of having an officer or two go to these womens' homes — you have their addresses from the agency — and bringing them in or at least letting them know they're under investigation. The evidence is so airtight that one or both might just confess or plea bargain or something."

"There's about a 90% probability it would go just like that," he replied. "But there are still a lot of cases ahead of you."

I thought I'd caught everything Ethel had done but she had one more surprise for me. My mother's prescription renewals were done online. I ordered, they were mailed to her and then I would go over each week and put the proper pills into one of these things…

Sometimes, I had to use two of them. My mother took a lot of medication. There were times when the Walgreens over on Pico had fewer pills in it than were in my mother.

The week after the Ethel caper had come to light, my mother told me she had not received my most recent order and I knew we were close to running out of some capsules. I called the pharmacy and they assured me the order had been sent. When the pills didn't arrive a few days later, I drove over and picked up another supply. Then a day or two later, my mother casually mentioned to me that not only had she never received those pills, she hadn't had any mail at all in the last two weeks or so. That was when the light went on!

I checked with her post office. It turned out that the same day Ethel had written those bogus checks, someone (gee, I wonder who) had gone online and filled out the form to halt my mother's mail delivery indefinitely.

One can only guess what was on Ethel's mind. She'd been told I watched over my mother's finances. She might have noticed my mother never had bank statements around. (Since I did my supervision online, it was all paperless.) Still, I can only suppose she didn't ponder any of this; just thought that the checks would not have been noticed if my mother wasn't receiving her mail. Or maybe it was all being masterminded by a friend of hers who didn't know all that Ethel should have known.

I contacted the U.S. Postal Inspectors who told me stopping someone else's mail is a crime. I don't know why they then make it so easy to do but it's a crime. They have, they said, a record of the IP address of every computer from which a request of that nature was received and that might be handy when the mail-stopper does his or her mail-stopping on his or her own computer. In any case, they would certainly look into this allegation, they said…and then I believe it went to the bottom of another very large pile.

It's important that I emphasize something: Everyone I dealt with in law enforcement or related agencies (I spoke to many not mentioned here) was professional and dedicated and eager to help…and doing a job that should have been spread out among at least a half-dozen other employees. One lawyer for the city told me something and I'm going to try to replicate it here from memory. This is the essence of what he said if not the precise words…

Every single division of law enforcement in L.A. is shamefully and seriously understaffed. Every one. If there's a job that needs twenty people to do it efficiently, we have to do it with three. We should spend a lot more money in this city on law enforcement but we don't. The voters would have to get behind that and they all assume that if they call and say "A man with a gun is breaking into my house," we'll find a black-and-white unit to be there within minutes…and usually though not always, that's true. So all people think of when you say we need more money for police is "Uh-oh. Higher taxes and more meter maids to give me a ticket when I'm two minutes late getting back to my car." And they vote no and later, when they need us to handle something like your matters, they get mad at us that we can't jump right on it like the cops on TV do.

You see the problem for yourself here. You walked in with overwhelming evidence of guilt on the part of these two caregivers. If I were the prosecuting attorney, I could get a conviction in two seconds with my eyes closed. But we can't spare the manpower to even go out and arrest those people. They may be working for someone else right now, doing the same things. They probably figure they got away with it the last time so why not try it again with someone else?

As it turned out, the police still have not gotten around to acting on our two complaints and as you know, my mother passed away last October. I am now told this makes one of the two cases more difficult to prosecute…so it's probably moving even farther down in the pile. The other one, they say, will not suffer from the fact that my mother now cannot testify, but it may still be a long time before there's any action.

In the meantime, I turned my attention to recoupment and got partial redress from the bank. Then I went to the caregiver agency — the one which, you may recall, is "licensed and bonded." I kinda figured that "bonded" part meant that they had insurance that would make good on any losses incurred as a result of their employees' actions.

Yeah, you'd figure that, wouldn't you?

It turns out, as the owner of the agency explained to me, that his insurance company will only pay if there's proof of the loss. And what would constitute proof? "If the police get a conviction."

I asked him, "Is there any doubt in your mind that two of your caregivers robbed a 90-year-old blind woman?" He said no. But the insurance company will only pay if there's a conviction. If the caregiver disappears and is never caught, the bonding is worthless.

He again assured me this had never happened before in the history of his agency. Later, his partner called and gave me the same assurance. I don't believe either of them. First off, they've had hundreds, probably thousands of caregiver placements. What are the odds that there have only been two crooked ones and my mother would get them both, one right after the other?

Secondly: Remember how I said that her former caregivers would sometimes contact me to see if they could work directly for her? Well, when one did not long after the first crimes were discovered, I asked her if she'd ever heard of any caregivers at that agency robbing their clients. She said, "Sure…it happens all the time. At least once, maybe twice, when they placed me with a new client, I was told it was because the one before me had been caught stealing." Another former caregiver who called me for the same reason told me the same thing.

The second one told me she'd twice replaced caregivers who had been found to have been stealing…in both instances, pieces from the client's jewelry cases. She said, and again I'm re-creating here from memory, "They always think, 'she'll never miss it' but they don't realize that's the first thing elderly women miss — their best jewelry. They can't see well enough to read their bank statements or don't understand them…but they all understand when they can't find their favorite earrings."

She'd recently been interviewed by a reporter for the L.A. Times who was — and as far as I know, still is — working on a story about this kind of burglary. With my permission, she gave him my number and he called me. I wasn't ready yet to go public with our cases — at this stage, I still thought the police and/or the agency's insurance company would be doing something soon — but we did have a conversation. He said he had found many such incidents and that they were not as uncommon as you might think. But the main thrust of his story is that most of the elderly never realize when it's being done to them. Our story is interesting but we're in the minority. We caught it.

So here is where things stand. I am Waiting for Godot — i.e., for my mother's cases to move from the bottom of the pile at the police station to the top. I am told at least one is easily prosecutable if and when that happens…if it happens. One detective there told me that the most likely scenario that would result in either woman winding up in a courtroom would be if she were to be caught doing it again, and then our case would be folded into that case. Ethel might be getting her nursing license right about now.

Of course, for them to be caught again would mean that the person(s) they're stealing from now would have to notice. That, as we've learned, doesn't happen most of the time. Complicating it all, of course, is that my mother is not here to testify in the case where it might matter…and oh! Did I mention that I checked and neither Lucy nor Ethel seems to have the same phone number any more? The agency believes each has moved and left no forwarding address.

My lawyer is researching the matter, deciding the best direction in which to sue. I suspect I'll spend more than I'll collect but I'm not concerned about that. First off, it will be very satisfying. Secondly, it might in some microscopic way make this kind of thing happen less often. And thirdly, I can afford it as I've just found a great new source of income. I'm going to begin caregiving for really old people who can't see very well and I'll write checks without their knowledge and charge things to their credit cards. Until we start spending more money on police in Los Angeles — which will never happen — it's a gold mine. A gold mine, I tell ya.

---

UPDATE – 10/25/21: Well, as it turns out, I was wrong about a bunch of things in the last few paragraphs above. First off, the L.A. Times never ran the article. Secondly, my lawyer told the caregiver agency I was going to sue and they basically said, "Okay, how much do we have to pay him?" and I got a check for the full loss and since it was only the one letter, my lawyer didn't charge me anything.

Lastly: After a long time, the police called and said, "Neither of those two caregivers are at their old addresses (I could have told them that) and since your mother has passed and you got your money back, we're not going to spend a lot of manpower looking for them. But we have all their info on the database and if either one ever gets involved in dishonest caregiving again…well, they probably won't get prosecuted for what they did to your mother but the information will go to whoever's prosecuting theme on the new charges."

It's been nine years since the crime and I assume the Statute of Limitations has run out so I guess that's the end of this story. We all have things we don't like about law enforcement in this country. That crimes often don't get investigated for budgetary reasons is a big one of mine.

One of the many, many things I got from my dear love, the late Carolyn Kelly, was a love of her favorite musical performers, The Chieftains. This great Irish band — winner of many Grammy Awards and other honors — would play Los Angeles or thereabouts every year or three and we'd always go. Their music was and will forever be infectious and irresistible. The group was formed in Dublin in 1962, by Paddy Moloney, Sean Potts and Michael Tubridy. Paddy, who was the leader and (most would say) heart of the band is the gent in all black in the above photo, second from the left.

Or I guess I should say "was" because Paddy died on Monday the 11th at the age of 83 — in Dublin, of course. Lovers of his kind of music are still reeling from the loss. Here's the New York Times obit.

Here's a clip of The Chieftains on Conan O'Brien's show back in 2003, performing one of their signature tunes. You don't see much of Paddy in this video. He's there leading things and playing but the camera is mostly focused on Earl Scruggs, the great country musician who was sitting in with the band. Still, he was a key reason the group has been making this quality of music for sixty years. (The video goes on for a while after the Chieftains perform. You can turn it off once the show goes to commercial.)

The article you're about to read ran here originally on January 3, 2013. I later answered some requests by rerunning a truncated version of it but here's the whole thing for the first time since its first upload. It will be followed tomorrow by a repeat of the ghastly tale of the caregivers that preyed on my mother…and after that, I hope to be back to regular posting with few reappearances. Thank you for bearing with me…

During the last decade of my mother's life, her eyes and legs increasingly failed her. In-between those parts of her anatomy, there were occasional problems like Congestive Heart Failure but the eyes and the legs were the ongoing problems.  There were long stretches when her heart was fine but her eyes and legs were awry every waking minute.

Her doctors told her that if she would just stop smoking, both would get better…or at least, wouldn't continue to worsen at the pace by which they were worsening. She cut back on the Marlboros but didn't stop until a few months before her passing, by which point it almost didn't matter. One wrenching day about a year before she passed, I took her to an optician appointment where she was asked, rather matter-of-factly, if she had or needed a document certifying that she was legally blind.

I can still hear her soft, stunned voice as she repeated, as if the term had never occurred to her, "legally blind." She could see but not much more than about two feet in front of her…and not well enough to read a book or make out my face unless our noses were practically touching.

Her eyes had been deteriorating for some time. Macular degeneration, they told her. And then one day while out with our mutual cleaning lady, my mother fell and sustained a big scratch on the retina of what had up until that moment been her "good eye." From that point on, she had to rely on her "bad eye" and worry that it would fail and leave her totally without sight.

Still, hearing those words — "legally blind" — came as a shock. Well, why wouldn't they?

She had what seemed like a most competent ophthalmologist at Kaiser Hospital and he struck me as properly balancing compassion with honest assessment of her situation. Some of the other eye doctors she saw there were a bit clumsy with their wordage but they told her the same thing; that her vision would continue to deteriorate. Certain treatments (like shots in the eye, which she hated) might slow things down but if she lived long enough, she would one day be totally, not just legally, blind. One of the things that tempered my sorrow at her death was the knowledge that she was approaching that day and she dearly wanted to go before it arrived.

The only thing I didn't like about her main ophthalmologist wasn't his fault. It was how little attention he could spare us as he handled some ridiculous number of patients per hour. We always had to spend long stretches in the waiting room, well past her appointment time. Then we'd finally be shown into Examining Room A while he was examining a patient in Examining Room B. Then he'd come into our room and attend to my mother while nurses loaded his next patient into B. Back and forth he'd go between the rooms, unable to spend enough quality time with anyone. At the end of each examination, he'd ask my mother, "Any questions?" And if she didn't come up with one in two seconds, he'd be out the door and on his way to the next patient.

How I dealt with this: By blocking the exit.

I'm 6'3" and something of a wide load. When the doctor came into the room, I'd subtly move to a spot between him and the exit, the better to prevent his escape before my mother had a chance to ask all her questions. The doctor knew exactly what I was doing and didn't really mind it.  Once when I finally let him go, I heard him tell the patient in the adjoining room, "Sorry to keep you waiting but the patient I was just with…her son was blocking the door and wouldn't let me out."

But once he got past me. I wasn't in position and he gave my mother a half-second to ask him anything before he said, "Exit, stage left!" and headed for the room next door.

"Oh, a Snagglepuss fan," I remarked.

He stopped and said, "You know Snagglepuss?"

My mother said — in a dry delivery that Walter Matthau would have envied — "My son knows every cartoon ever made."

The doctor eyed me with skepticism. "Oh, yeah? What was the name of Jonny Quest's dog?"

I said, "Bandit. Hey, do you think my mother should be taking Lutein?"

He said, "Can't hurt to try" and he recommended a dosage. Then he asked me, "What was the name of the Jetsons' dog?"

I said, "Astro and his real name was Tralfaz. Hey, how about Vitamin D? You think that would do anything for her?"

That was how it went, not only on that visit but every one after that. Instead of giving us the minimum time, he'd keep others waiting and we'd talk about two topics: Cartoons and my mother's eyes. I'd trade him info for info.  Sometimes, he had actual questions about the industry.  Other times, he just wanted to see if he could stump me.  Once, he tried the latter by asking, "On the Dungeons 'n' Dragons cartoon show, what was the name of the blonde kid who was their leader?"

I told him it was Hank. He told me I was wrong and that it was Frank. I told him it was Hank and added, "By the way, if you watch that show, you'll see my name in the end credits. I wrote the pilot for it."  Whack!

But that wasn't my favorite exchange. My favorite was when he asked me where Bullwinkle Moose went to college. I told him it was "Wottsamotta U." He told me I was wrong. "Aha! I finally got you! It was Moosylvania University!"

I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I told him he was wrong. He told me he was right. I offered to bet him.

The offer was this: If he was right, I'd give him a DVD of any cartoon show he named. Any one. If I was right, he'd give my mother a half-hour of his time. We'd come back at the end of the day after all his other appointments and he'd spend thirty solid minutes discussing things we might try to help her vision. He said, "It's a deal…but how are you going to prove it?"

Easy. I whipped out my cell phone and dialed a number. A woman answered and I asked her, "May I speak to Rocky the Flying Squirrel, please?" The ophthalmologist stared at me like I was…well, trying to phone an imaginary cartoon character about ten fries short of a Happy Meal. When a very familiar voice came on the line, I said, "Hi, Rocky. It's Mark Evanier. How's the weather in Frostbite Falls, today? Great. Hey, listen. I have a friend here. Would you please tell him where your friend Bullwinkle went to college? Here he is —!"

And I handed the phone to the eye doctor. You should have seen his face when Rocky said, "Hokey Smokes! Everyone knows Bullwinkle was a proud graduate of Wottsamotta U!" There are many advantages to knowing June Foray and that was one of them.

My mother, who understood exactly what was going on, got hysterical. I used to make her laugh a lot but I think that was the all-time best. And the doctor was not displeased about losing our little wager. He stumbled around his office for some time after in a happy daze, telling everyone, "You won't believe who I just talked to!"

He made good on the half-hour but unfortunately, there wasn't much that could be done…by him. I took her to an outside specialist — a man my own ophthalmologist said was the best retina man in the field. The best retina man in the field said there wasn't anything that could be done. After that, my mother asked me to stop. All she was going to hear from additional doctors was that there was nothing that could be done and she didn't need to hear that over and over. So I stopped.

She became increasingly reliant on paid caregivers. She could, of course, no longer drive and her walking capabilities were such that she couldn't even leave her home without considerable aid. The house had a large, beautiful back yard and she loved to stare out at the birds splashing about in the two birdbaths or feasting at a feeder I'd installed. She couldn't see them very well but she could hear them and her imagination could fill out whatever imagery she could see.

Still, even with help, she could not physically get down the back steps and so couldn't actually venture out into her own back yard. There were fewer steps in the front and I had a banister installed to help her there. In the house, she got around with a walker. When out, she was pushed around in a wheelchair. I had a good, heavy-duty one in the trunk of my car and I also bought a lightweight one that was employed when caregivers took her to the market or the beauty salon…or to the kind of doctor appointments that didn't require my presence.

The caregivers came from an agency that had been highly-recommended. It was licensed and bonded and the people there were awful nice. So were the caregivers…until one day, I went online to check my mother's bank accounts and I found some mysterious charges. The next time I write one of these, I'll tell you what happened.

Unless you grew up in Los Angeles, you probably won't love this video as much as I do. Someone has restored and colorized footage of driving up and down a stretch of Wilshire Boulevard in the fifties. A friend of mine in the comments section pegs it as the the week of August 1, 1951, which is seven months before I was born — but I do remember this street looking very much like this.

In the opening shot, you'll see a building with a windmill on it. That's the Van DeKamp's restaurant that was on the corner of Wilshire and Masselin. In 1969, I took one of my first dates — a nice lady named Lynne — there for dinner. Then we proceeded to the Ivar Theatre in Hollywood where we saw what I think was the last performance of the L.A. company of the musical, You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. Gary Burghoff was playing Charlie Brown. There's now an Office Depot where that Van DeKamp's used to be and I have been known to buy office supplies there.

Moments after that, we pass a Ralphs Market which then occupied part of a block. Then a few doors down was an outlet of Du-Par's restaurant which was there into the eighties when they tore it down. In fact, they tore down everything on that block that wasn't a Ralphs so Ralphs could expand and have the whole block to itself. I ate at that Du-Par's many times and have shopped at that Ralphs.

A block or so down from there, you'll see an Ontra Cafeteria and then the El Rey Theatre. The El Rey is still there. I wish the Ontra was but there's now a Smart & Final in its place…and I could go through the whole video like this. Watch and you'll see a lot of great old buildings including the May Company department store which was vacant for years and is now opening as the new Academy of Motion Pictures museum.

You'll also pass a medical building where around 1965, Dr. Nathan M. Seltzer — called by some "The Orthodontist to the Stars' Kids" — fitted me with braces. I should write about Dr. Seltzer here some time but not now…

Big deadline on Monday so Mark's gotta focus this weekend on a script. Here's a piece that I posted here on November 17, 2014 about my days working for Hanna-Barbera…

Here's a story I don't think I've told here. For many years, I worked for Hanna-Barbera Studios in two capacities. I was the editor of their comic book department and I was the story editor of the Saturday morning Richie Rich cartoon show. Three capacities, actually, because I also wrote freelance scripts for shows other than Richie Rich.

Those may sound like a few full-time jobs but actually during this time, I was also usually writing a prime-time show or special for (a) Sid and Marty Krofft, (b) Dick Clark or (c) Alan Landsburg and also writing a comic book for DC or a couple for Eclipse or I was working on Groo the Wanderer for whichever company was then publishing it and hadn't yet gone out of business. There were also animation scripts for other studios.

So I was only in the Hanna-Barbera building for maybe ten hours a week, if that much. I actually did most of the comic book work and Richie Rich out of my home (or offices elsewhere) so I told H-B not to give me a big, fancy office. They, of course, gave me a big, fancy office.

That office moved from time to time. At Hanna-Barbera, the floor plan moved more than the cartoons and was often funnier. Where they put me for the longest time was a good office, well situated between the Xerox room and the office of a wonderful producer-artist named Doug Wildey. Mine sat empty and locked much of the time. In fact, most of the time.

I kept suggesting I be relocated to some small, crummy spot upstairs and that the big, conveniently-located room go to someone else. This was not just selflessness on my part. I actually thought it would be better for me to be where everyone wouldn't notice how often Mark Evanier's door was locked and he wasn't on the premises. Certain folks would not think, "Oh, he must be doing most of his work at home." They'd think, "Oh, he sure isn't working very hard on our show."

The certain folks who'd think that way would be the people in Business Affairs who were in charge of saying no when a writer's agent asked for more money. Why give them that as a reason to do what they did so well and so often?

The Office Manager Lady did not move me. I mean, physically but also emotionally. Every so often, she'd assign someone to share the place, which was fine with me. It meant my door wouldn't be locked as much when Business Affairs people passed by. It was also usually fine with my roommate since I was so rarely there. Then they'd move that person out and I'd have the place to myself for a while so the door would again be locked a lot.

It was actually a great place during one season when Jonathan Winters was a regular on The Smurfs. When recording sessions let out, everyone exiting the sound studio had to pass by my office. If I was there — and I tried to be when Smurfs was taping — I usually had a gang of other writers in there with me, plotting against management. Mr. Winters loved an audience so he'd appear in my doorway and I'd say something like, "Hello. You were Atilla the Hun's pool boy, right?" Without missing a beat, Jonathan would slide into the appropriate accent and describe the problems of keeping Atilla the Hun's pool clean. One was that it was always full of dead Visigoths.

But that's not the story I wanted to tell. One day, the Office Manager spotted me in the parking lot on the way in and told me, "We just moved someone into your office to share it with you." I said that was fine with me. She didn't tell me who it was so I headed inside to see which lowly, unimportant figure in the animation business was bunking with me now. And there, occupying the west half of what was now our office was Frederick Bean Avery.

You might know him better as Tex Avery, director of some of the funniest, greatest cartoons ever made.

He had been retired but some combination of restlessness, family problems and money woes had prompted him to get back into the game. He had long had a standing offer from Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera to work for them and he'd taken them up on it.

Tex was a great guy and we got along fine. It didn't bother me that absolutely no one was coming into that office to see me anymore. They flocked there from every corner of the building to meet Tex, to praise Tex, to get a sketch from Tex, to learn from Tex and to be able to say, "I was talking with Tex Avery yesterday…" Bill and Joe had him developing some new shows and adding gags to ones that were currently in production and in need of First Aid. I was almost disappointed he was never assigned to mine.

He worked a lot with another clever old-timer who was on staff, a veteran Disney expatriate named Chuck Couch. One day when I came in, Tex said to me, "Hey, I hope you don't mind but I've asked if they can move me into an office I can share with Chuck. We're doing a bunch of projects together and it makes sense." I said, "Hey, you two can have this place." And off I went to the Office Manager to suggest I take one of the small, cramped offices upstairs and that Tex and Chuck share the big one. She said she'd do just that.

The next time I came in, which was a few days later, I asked the receptionist where my office was now. She said it was in the same place. I went to it and, sure enough, there was all my stuff…and none of Tex's. I found him and Chuck crammed into one of those small, cramped rooms upstairs with no idea what had happened. I went to the Office Manager and she had no idea, either. She gave the order to swap us around.

Chuck, Tex and I went to lunch. By the time we got back, they had the big office downstairs and I had the tiny one upstairs…for real. Done and done.

A few weeks passed. I was almost finished with Richie Rich for the season and the Office Manager came to me and said, "We're going to need your room for someone else. The minute you finish the last script, we'll need you to vacate." She'd forgotten I was still editing the comic books but I did so much of that work at home, I decided I didn't need an office there at all. We settled on a date when I would be out of my little cubicle.

She warned me. "Now, if you leave anything in there after that date, we're going to throw it in the dumpster." I said, "Anything I leave behind, you can throw away."

A week or two later on a Thursday, I handed in the last Richie Rich script for that season and took home everything I needed to take home. On Friday, I got on a plane and flew east to spend a few days in New York.

Some time on Friday, the Office Manager turned to one of the young men who ran errands and moved furniture and supplies about and said, "Check to make sure Mark Evanier is out of his office."

The Young Man was in a rush that day to get everything done so he'd be able to leave on time. He was about to go on vacation, too. He looked at the staff list to determine which office was mine. Unfortunately, the list hadn't been updated for a while so he wound up going to the large office, the one that now housed Tex and Chuck. He peeked in and reported back to the Office Manager. "Evanier's office is full of stuff." She told him to throw it all out.

He went back to the office to do so but noticed that the boxes and drawers were full of a lot of original artwork and sketches and scripts. He went back to the Office Manager and told her that the stuff in Evanier's office looked like it was important and maybe valuable. Exasperated, she told him, "Okay, then. Get his home address from the files. Box it all up and take it over to his house."

And that's what he did. He packed the contents of the office — this is the Tex Avery-Chuck Couch office we're talking about here — in about six large crates and drove it over to my house. No one was home so he left it all in my enclosed patio. Then he went back to Hanna-Barbera, finished his other labors for the day and began driving to Yosemite National Park (not Jellystone) to spend a week.

Monday morning, Tex Avery arrived at work, walked into his office and found…

Nothing. No files. No art. No sketches on the walls. No sign of what he and Chuck had been working on all the previous week.

A few minutes later, Chuck walked in and found his partner standing in a bare office. There were two desks, one waste basket, a battered sofa and nothing else. "Tex," he gasped. "What happened?"

Tex said, "I'm not sure but I think we've been fired."

They hadn't, of course, but throughout the day, no one could figure out what happened to their stuff. They searched everywhere.

Well, everywhere except my front porch. No one knew that's where it all was and, of course, neither did I. My housesitter came on Saturday and Sunday but she'd gone in the back way to put out food for the stray cats and had forgotten to check out front for mail.

Finally, late Monday, someone figured out where Tex's and Chuck's papers and files might be. A different Young Man drove over to my house, found it all on my porch and since no one was home, just took it all back to the studio. He must have left with it all not long before the housesitter came by and did check outside for mail.

I got back late Wednesday night. Thursday morning, I got a call from Tex Avery. He said, "I have a crate of comic books here that belongs to you. It's from Marvel Comics." At the time, I did get a monthly crate of all the new Marvels but I couldn't figure out why they'd sent it to Hanna-Barbera instead of, as usual, my home address. I drove to the studio to get it and was baffled to see that it had my home address on it. It took us a while to figure out why Tex had it.

You see, when the second Young Man went to my porch on Monday afternoon to fetch the boxes from Tex's and Chuck's office, he took all the boxes he found there…

These days, a lot of people seem to think they have to have an opinion about everything…and they have to tell you that opinion. And in some cases, they're often outraged if you don't agree with their opinion. I'm trying to have less and in this new department, I'm giving my non-opinions about some things about which I have no opinion…

Like: I have no opinion about Dave Chappelle's latest special. Lately, it seems everyone has an opinion about Dave Chappelle's latest special…even people like me who don't have Netflix and haven't seen it. A lot of people seem to love it and that, to me, is reason enough for it to exist.  I've even seen people say he's the best stand-up comedian working today…and he may be.  But I haven't seen enough of him to have an opinion on whether he is or he isn't.

The fact that there are people who don't like some of the things he said in it is not a reason why the show should not be available to those who want to see it.  I'm pretty sure I'll feel that way even if I see it and I don't like some of the things he says in it.  I've seen an awful lot of TV shows and movies and comic books that I didn't like but if you did, fine.  Enjoy them.  I wish I had. But stop asking me to comment on Dave Chappelle's new special.

What many of the people who don't like Chappelle's special don't like are reportedly some remarks he made about trans people.  I have no opinion about what he said because I haven't seen it. In case you're wondering how I feel about trans people, I have no opinion other than that they should have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies and they don't need my approval or anyone's. A very close friend of mine is transitioning and the only problem I have with that is then when I refer to him/her, I sometimes have what Daffy Duck once referred to as "Pronoun Trouble." Other than that, I have no opinion.

Here's the latest one of these…

Everyone's talking about the tragedy that occurred yesterday. As the L.A. Times reported…

Actor and producer Alec Baldwin fired the prop gun on a New Mexico movie set that killed the director of photography and injured the director, an accident that is renewing questions about safety hazards on film sets.

There's a lot of armchair — make that computer chair — detective work going on from people who are not at the scene, taking testimony from everyone who could have loaded or handled what was supposed to be a "cold" (unloaded) gun. Some folks are asking my opinion and my opinion is that, apart from saying it's a horrible tragedy, I don't have an opinion. I might once those who are actually investigating the matter conclude their investigation.

It might have something to do with the production losing most of its union crew and replacing them with crew members who are less experienced…and it might not. Why don't we wait and see?

Busy today so here's another rerun, this time from January 18, 2014. The only thing that's changed since then is that I no longer occasionally catch a Dodgers game just to marvel at the broadcasting skill of Vin Scully. Since he stepped down, the chances of me watching a Dodgers game — any baseball game, really — are about the same as the chances of me starring as Aspicia, the lead ballerina in a production of The Pharoah's Daughter for the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. Maybe even a little worse…

As I've written here before, my father hated his job. He hated what it involved doing and he hated the way he was treated in his office — the arguing, the yelling, the jockeying for position, the whole bureaucracy.  He did not respect his superiors; didn't believe that they had gotten to higher positions by being good at what they did so much as by being skilled politicians. They knew, he said, which butts to kiss and when. More importantly, they knew how to make certain that when things went wrong, it was always someone else's fault. Often, it was his, even though he'd followed their orders to the proverbial "T."

He came home each day, frustrated and depressed, gulping Maalox and other unpleasant substances to soothe a savage ulcer that hospitalized him more than once. He loved his home. He loved his wife and son. He loved his chair in the living room and his TV and our cat. The best thing about his job, I'm sure, was that it made all those things he loved possible.

He especially loved his TV when it had a Lakers game on it. I'm sure I disappointed him greatly by being unable to summon the slightest interest in basketball. For a year or two there when I was around eleven, I was sorta/kinda interested in following the Dodgers…but that soon went away. I will follow the Dodgers again when the starting roster once more includes Maury Wills, John Roseboro, Frank Howard, Willie Davis, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax…but not before. Actually, even before those men left the team, I did — and that was the end of any interest in team sports. Every now and then, I'll catch an inning or two of play-by-play described by Vin Scully, not because I care which team wins but because I admire great broadcasting.

My father would have liked sports to be something he could share with his son. He would make futile, doomed-to-fail attempts from time to time to see if an interest in basketball, and especially in the Lakers, could be kickstarted within me. It could not. And to my dying day, I will live with the knowledge that I let him down, at least in that one area. We only had one shared basketball experience. For a time, we bet on the Lakers games.

They were never large bets. My father wouldn't have bet more than five dollars that the Earth revolved around the Sun. But we did bet actual cash-money — a buck or two — on some games.

The Lakers games were broadcast intermittently on KTLA, Channel 5. I guess they were only allowed to show one or two a week and only "away" games. An "away" game played on the East Coast started at 5 PM Los Angeles time but someone at KTLA decided that was too damn early. Too many men weren't home from work by then so they began telecasting the games on a delay, starting them at 6 PM. My father got home from work about 5:45 each day so that was perfect.

Once home, he'd hurry out of his office duds and by six, he'd be in front of the TV and my mother would be setting out his dinner on a TV tray. I would hear him in the living room yelling, "Let's go, Lakers," because for my father, basketball was a participatory experience. He spent the whole game shouting at the TV. Often, he had the family cat on his lap while he did this and you could kinda hear her thinking, "What the heck is he yelling about?"

I'd occasionally wander into the living room and say things like, "Why are you hollering? They're in Boston and your voice only carries as far as St. Louis!" If the game was in commercial, he'd tell me how it was going, knowing full well I didn't know a jump shot from a huddle. (Oh, wait. I don't think they have huddles in basketball, do they? This shows you how much I know about the sport.)

Anyway, there was a simple rule, violations of which would warrant the Death Penalty, when I ventured into the living room during a game: "Don't tell me the current score." I had a TV in my room and if I was watching the news, I could know the score an hour before he did. He was watching a tape delay, remember.

So he'd tell me how the game was going and I'd say, "Would you care to put some money on the outcome?" And this is exactly how it went every time. He'd look at me and say, "I'm not going to bet you. You know what the current score is." I'd say, "Two bucks and you can pick either team."

If we were having this conversation between 6:00 and around 6:45, he might show a bit of interest because he'd figure as follows: The game's not over yet. Mark might know that one team is way ahead but he doesn't yet know for sure who'll win. This would probably not have worked with baseball because baseball games are sometimes so lopsided that by the fourth or fifth inning, you'd never bet on one team, no matter what odds you get. But basketball games are unlikely to be truly "over" by the mid-point…or so he told me.

Still, he'd feel like I was setting him up but would weaken when I would make him this amazing proposition: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes of the game on his TV. It was one of those offers you can't refuse — he couldn't, at least — and he'd finally say, "Okay, it's a bet. Two dollars and I'll take the Lakers." I'd say fine and extend my hand so we could shake on the wager.

Noting my smirk and instant agreement, he'd say, "No, I want the Celtics. You take the Lakers." I'd again say fine.

Studying my face, he'd say, "No, you want me to pick the Celtics. I'm staying with the Lakers." I'd say fine and we might go around another time or two…or I might repair to my room.

From time to time, I'd pop back out to ask him if he wanted to switch teams and/or raise the stakes. He never did before around 8:00 but after that, he might consider it. After 8:00, he'd figure the game back in Boston was probably over and I'd gotten the final score, either on TV or by tuning it in on the radio. So when I walked in then and said, "You want to change teams?" he'd instantly say no. That would make him think he had the winning team. In fact, he'd grin and say, "Outsmarted yourself this time, didn't you?" I'd say, "No…I just want to make sure you think the bet is fair."

And then I'd ask, "Would you be interested in raising the bet?" That would make him think he had the losing team. Sometimes, at that point, he'd switch. And sometimes when he switched, he'd raise the bet a buck or two…and we might go back and forth a few times before the final buzzer, at which point one of us would pay the other. We did this for most of one season and I'm guessing that by the play-offs — or the World Series or Super Bowl or whatever they have in basketball and yes, I really don't know anything about the sport — we came close to breaking even. At the end, I owed him two dollars which I never got around to paying him. This all probably happened in 1970 or 1971.

In 1991, he was hospitalized by what turned out to be his next-to-last heart attack. The last one, which came a week or so later, took him from me. Between the next-to-last and the last though, we had some very nice visits, all of which I recall verbatim.

I believe he knew, or at least thought likely, that he wasn't leaving that hospital alive. I also believe he was genuinely at peace with that idea. We had no differences between us — it had been at least fifteen years since our last argument of any sort — and he knew that his wife could get by without him. He had left her a solid if unspectacular government pension, full ownership of their home, about ten grand in the bank and very good health insurance. He had also left her me, and he knew I could and would take care of her. So when I went by to see him, we spoke of only good things….because apart from the fact that he was dying, that's all there were.

On one visit, I walked in and he was watching a Lakers game. I immediately asked him if he wanted to make a bet on its outcome: Three-to-one odds, the team of his choice…and he could switch teams until the last three minutes. He laughed and said, "This is not on a tape delay."

I said, "It doesn't matter. All those games where you thought I knew the outcome before you did…I never did."

He asked, with a note of amazement in his voice, "You didn't check the score before you made those bets? You let me go back and forth, trying to guess what you knew that I didn't…and you didn't know anything I didn't?"

"Nothing," I said.

He laughed a little. Then he thought about it and laughed some more. Then he thought about it some more and laughed a lot more. Then he said, "You're going to do just fine, son. By the way, you still owe me two bucks."

Here is why you never want to play poker with Daniel Roy. Or even Old Maid…

Here's another one of those "Have you ever done this?" questionnaires. I covered some of those in a previous one of these but there are some new ones here…

• Been married – Came close three or four times but no.
• Been divorced – Can't get unhitched if you never got hitched.
• Fallen in love – More times than you might imagine. (I assume this refers to falling in love with people as opposed to comic books or good restaurants…)
• Skipped school – Only when told to do so by school officials.
• Had a child – Pretty sure the answer to this is no, but a lady friend with a weird sense of humor once tried to make me think it was imminent.
• Rode in an ambulance – Yes but only to accompany someone in medical need. Some very sad memories there.
• Been to Hawaii – Never left the continent on which I was born.
• Been to Paris – See "Been to Hawaii."
• Been to Las Vegas – Many, many times. I even saw Wayne Newton once back when you really hadn't been to Vegas until you'd seen Wayne Newton. He kissed everyone in my row except me and the only other guy in it.
• Been to Canada – Three times. Really enjoyed two of 'em.
• Been to Italy – See "Been to Hawaii."
• Visited Mexico – Driven right up to the border but never gone beyond.
• Swam in the Pacific – Yes. If you can call what I did "swimming."
• Swam in the Caribbean – See "Been to Hawaii."
• Swam in the Atlantic – Nope. As a Californian, I believe in being Ocean Loyal.
• Been to New Zealand – See "Been to Hawaii." I really have no desire to see the world or to sit on an airplane for longer than the flight time to New York.
• Been to Australia – It's sixteen hours. Pass.
• Been to Tahiti – As you may have figured out by now, I am not well-traveled.
• Flown in a helicopter – No. I was supposed to once but it got canceled due to bad weather.
• Been on a cruise – Nope. And can't think of too many things I less want to do.
• Gone camping – Nope. And that's one of the things I less want to do.
• Served on a jury – Served jury duty several times but never got close to being a juror.
• Danced in the rain – Very little movement in my life could be accurately described as "dancing" and it was all indoors.
• Been to California – From the moment I was born here.
• Been to New York – Many, many times. One of the few things I would have liked to do since COVID entered our lives but couldn't do because COVID entered our lives was go to New York. Also, I can get there in the time it takes to fly to New York.
• Sang karaoke – No and I think those who might have been around me if I had should be more grateful.
• Been on TV – Yes. Sometimes reluctantly. I always feel like there are people who belong there more than I do.
• Had a grandchild – I am even surer I have not had a grandchild than I am that I've never had a child.
• Had a pet(s) – One cat, several parakeets, a whole mess of goldfish and frogs when I was quite young and also, if you count feral cats fed in my backyard, a lot of those. Also, I have a blog — which at times can feel like the same thing. You need to check on it all the time, you need to feed it, etc.
• Been downhill skiing – No. And you didn't ask about ice skating. I haven't done that either. Or roller skating. Or anything with a toboggan or a snowmobile or water skiing or hang gliding or anything like that.
• Been water skiing – You're not paying attention. I just answered this question.
• Rode on a motorcycle – Never even ridden a bicycle with less than three wheels. And even then, I sometimes fell over.
• Jumped out of a plane – Nope. I used to think that was one of those "Are you crazy?" activities but if I was younger and if a video like the one of James Corden doing it was around then, I might have considered it…emphasis on the "might."
• Been to a drive-in movie – Yes but not in the last fifty years. I'm not even sure where I'd find one these days. I haven't looked because I recall it as the absolute worst way possible to see a movie.
• Rode an elephant – No. I once had the associate producer of a TV show I was writing rent one just because I wanted to see if he'd actually do it. He did it so we had to write it into the show and they brought it to the set but it wasn't a riding elephant. It was mainly a defecating elephant.
• Rode a horse – No unless you count merry-go-rounds.
• Donated blood – Yes but they don't seem to want mine unless it's to put back into me when I've had surgery.
• Got a piercing – Can't even stand to look at them.
• Got a tattoo – Can't even stand to look at them.
• Driven a stick shift vehicle – Never. Someone tried to teach me once and it instantly struck me as high on the list of Things I Dont Need To Know, right behind changing a diaper, using an abacus and milking a goat.
• Been scuba diving – Sort of but not really. What I did was scuba diving the same way microwaving a Hot Pocket is cooking.
• Lived on your own – Yes, a lot. I like it as long as it isn't because no one wants to be around me, even occasionally.
• Been in a limousine – Yes. And I recall much disappointment among onlookers who gathered around when mine pulled up and then I got out. You could hear them muttering, "Aw, I thought it might be somebody."
• Got a speeding ticket – No. I did get a ticket once for driving too slowly on the freeway. It was given to me by an officer who thought I should have been more reckless weaving through heavy traffic.
• Broken a bone – A couple of toes in recent years and a chipped cartilage thing in my right elbow when I was in Junior High.
• Had stitches – A few times but nothing major. An appendix…my knee replacement…having wisdom teeth extracted…
• Traveled alone – Yep. If the trip's for business, that's what I like because that way, you just take care of the business and go home.
• Graduated from University – No. I quit U.C.L.A. before I got any kind of degree and I have only regretted that I didn't do it sooner.
• Owned a company – I had a personal loan-out corporation back when there were tax advantages to that but really no. I find being a person easier.
• Retired – No. And while I might someday do so in a "start collecting on your pension plan" sense, I will stop writing when I stop breathing. In fact, I sometimes get those activities confused.

The chatter about who should host Jeopardy! — and the amazing run by Matt Amodio — got me to watch the show again a few times and I had a few thoughts about it…

1. Mayim Bialik is fine as the host.  Lots of people would have been fine.  The guy they gave it to — Mike Richards — was on the low end of "fine." I dunno if they've decided to give Ms. Bialik the permanent job if/when her other gig ends but what we've learned from this is that it doesn't really matter very much who hosts it. The show is about the game itself and the contestants — in that order.
2. The show is kinda boring when one contestant's running away with it. If we go into Final Jeopardy! and I have $20,000 and my opponents each have $4000, the only way I won't win is if I'm stupid enough to wager more than $11,999.00. And if I'm smart enough to be that far ahead, I'm smart enough not to do that. The end of the show was usually anti-climactic with Amodio way out in front and it's the same way with the new ongoing champion, Jonathan Fisher.
3. Since everything in the world now has to be a "they're not telling you the truth" conspiracy theory, folks are saying Amodio threw the game in which he lost. My pal Paul Harris explains why that's ridiculous.
4. And Paul doesn't mention another possible explanation for why Amodio lost when he did. Maybe the two other players that day — Fisher and Jessica Stephens — were just plain better at the game than he was.

I can feel my interest in the show ebbing again and I probably won't watch it much in the coming weeks. But there's one nice thing about Jeopardy!: It ain't going anywhere. It will always be there when I do feel like tuning in.

That's Jack Angel the way he was usually seen: With a microphone in front of his face. Jack was a lovely man with a magical voice that was heard in hundreds of movies, TV shows, commercials, promos, cartoons, video games…you name it. He was a popular disc jockey in Los Angeles for eighteen years and one of the main promo announcers on NBC for ten. He worked for Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Warner Brothers, Sony…everyone.

When I had him on one of my Cartoon Voices panels at Comic-Con International, the crowd gasped to hear that he'd played several major roles on The Transformers, G.I. Joe and Super Friends…just three of perhaps two hundred cartoon shows where he was heard. He was even the voice of Smokey the Bear for many years.

I could just list all the things Jack was in or I could send you to his IMDB listing which probably covers about 20% of all the jobs he had. Just that 20% will stagger you. And like I said, he was a great guy. Condolences to his wife and agent, Arlene Thornton. He died yesterday at the age of 90.

It's Charlie Frye doing the kind of things Charlie Frye does…

The house I grew up in and the house Betty Lynn lived in next door were a few blocks from the Twentieth-Century Fox movie studio in West Los Angeles. The houses are still there. Other people just live in them now and the studio has dropped the "Fox" from its name.

I don't know what prompted my folks to select the home they purchased in 1953 — probably just that it was the right size and the right price — but I know why the Lynns lived where they did. Betty had moved to L.A. under contract to Fox and for a while, made most of her films there.

My earliest memories of our neighbors were of Betty, her mother and her grandfather George. Everyone called the grandfather "Mr. Lynn" and he was a sweet old guy who was always building or fixing something in a two-car garage in their backyard that was so full of stuff, there was no room for one car in it, let alone two. One time, a toy of mine broke and Mr. Lynn applied some glue to the pieces and locked the assemblage into a clamp on his work table for few hours…and, lo and behold, it was good as new.

I also remember when he died. I was around nine and it was the first time someone I knew — a real person, not a character on TV or in a comic book — died. Or maybe it was the first time it happened when I was old enough to understand. I remember crying and Betty — who done a lot of crying herself that day — held me and she started crying again and we cried together for a while. She told me it was okay to cry but you had to stop at some point. We talked about that moment in later years and she told me I'd said, "I'll stop if you will" and she thought that was so funny.

Betty and her mother were both named Elizabeth but everyone called Betty "Betty" and everyone called her mother "Boo." Boo was like Betty — pure niceness with love for everyone and everything. The character of Edith Bunker on All in the Family reminded me of Boo because both were always so cheery but both could be a bit absent-minded at times.

Betty and Boo were both devout members of St. Timothy's, a Roman Catholic parish about three blocks from where we lived. I wrote in a piece here some time ago about how my family knew people who disapproved of my father (Jewish) and my mother (Catholic but non-practicing) not rearing their only child to be particularly either. Betty and Boo were not among those who felt that way. Would that all people of diverse faiths got along as harmoniously as the Lynns and the Evaniers.

The Lynns had a Christmas Day ritual. They'd rise bright and early and walk down to St. Timothy's for services. Then they'd return home in time to welcome a guest into their house. Each year, they would invite some friend Betty had made in the movie business over for drinks and conversation in their living room. At some point during that afternoon, Betty or Boo would phone us and say, "Could you send Mark over? We have a gift for you and there's someone here we think he'd like to meet." I would take the present we had for the Lynns over and accept their gift for us and they'd introduce me to —

— well, I may have the order wrong and I can't recall the names of at least two of them but I remember three: Roddy McDowall, Fred MacMurray and Bette Davis. I think the others might have included Jeanne Crain and/or Maureen O'Hara but I was very young and my knowledge of old movies — though more thorough than most kids my age — was somewhat spotty. Whoever else I met there, I really didn't know what they'd done except be in movies I hadn't seen.

I knew Fred MacMurray because of My Three Sons and a Disney flick or two. I do not know now how I knew who Bette Davis and Roddy McDowall were but I did. I also don't know how Betty knew Roddy McDowall because I don't think they were ever in a film together. I have the vague notion that they'd made some personal appearances together for charity events.

Whatever, I remember him sitting in the Lynns' living room, talking about appearing in the original production of Camelot on Broadway. He left that show in September of 1961 so this was probably the following Christmas when I was nine. I'm going to guess Mr. MacMurray was 1962 and Ms. Davis was 1963. I definitely saw The Parent Trap when it came out in Summer of 1961 so I would have known who Maureen O'Hara was if I'd met her after that.

I did not have in-depth interviews with any of these stars. That wasn't why I was summoned. Betty and Boo knew I was interested in show business and movies, and they just wanted to give me the thrill of meeting them…and maybe it would please their guests to meet a kid who was so impressed to meet them. That was the only thing the Lynns were about: The happiness of others.

One of the few facts I knew about Bette Davis then was that impressionists would imitate her by saying "What a dump," which was a line she uttered in the film, Beyond the Forest. I never saw Beyond the Forest — and never even knew what film that line was from until I just looked it up on Google — but that Christmas afternoon in (maybe) 1963, I actually thought of asking Ms. Davis, "Would you come next door, look at my bedroom and say, 'What a dump"?"

I didn't say it and I still regret that because I now think Bette Davis would have told that story on every talk show she appeared on for the rest of her life. But I was afraid it would somehow upset or embarrass Betty and Boo, two people I never would have wanted to hurt in any way.

The main thing I took away from these encounters was the close camaraderie between Betty and these movie stars. Apart from her appearing now and then on My Three Sons as Fred MacMurray's secretary, she wasn't working with these stars but there was a strong bond. They spent part of Christmas Day together and that's not something people like that did with people they did not consider, in some sense, family. She was not a big star but that didn't matter to her and it didn't seem to matter to other actors. She was one of them.

Most of you, of course, know Betty best as Barney Fife's girl friend, Thelma Lou. That was only one of many things she did in her career but of course, that's the way it works in show business. You can play hundreds of roles but you're only remembered for a few…and that's if you're lucky. Betty was fortunate that the main thing she was known for became such an important part of so many lives. There are cities in this country that rerun that program eight or more times a day.

Just before he passed away, I worked with the actor Roger C. Carmel, who told us that the following weekend, he was going to be appearing at a Star Trek convention in, I believe, Seattle. He had done dozens and dozens of roles in movies and TV and had been on darn near every series of the sixties — Route 66, Naked City, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Munsters, et al — and those residuals had all either run out or the checks wouldn't cover the price of a Snickers bar. But he was remembered. He had people clamoring for his autograph and he was getting a guarantee of $25,000 (minimum) for one weekend because many years before, he'd worked three days on one episode of Star Trek and three more days on another…probably for scale.

Betty was on 26 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. Before she was cast as Thelma Lou, she was up for a regular role on The Danny Thomas Show, which was done by the same company and was, when they were both on CBS, about equally popular. It was on that network longer but its reruns aren't even close to being as beloved or remembered or rerun. If Betty had been on Danny's show, the last few decades of her life would have been very different — nowhere near as much attention, fame or money.

In her retirement years, she had the honor/thrill — it was probably a lot of both — of representing the much-loved Griffith series and giving so many of its fans the memorable moment of meeting Thelma Lou. I witnessed several such moments at autograph shows in L.A. and two years ago in Mt. Airy where she'd relocated, the following happened…

I was pushing Betty in her wheelchair into The Andy Griffith Museum. It was a Monday and she usually appeared there to meet her fans every second or third Friday…but I was visiting her on Monday and she wanted me to see the place so I drove us over. As we were heading in, a family was heading out: A father, a mother and two daughters around, I'm guessing, ages nine and eleven. We passed them and the father saw us, recognized Betty and ran over to me…

"That's Betty Lynn, right?" I nodded yes. He said, approximately, "My family and I…we come here every year on my vacation. We drive hundreds of miles but we never got to meet her because I can never get Friday off from my job. We've never been able to meet Ms. Lynn…"

I checked with Betty but I knew what she would say. Of course, she would be pleased to meet them. She was pleased to meet everyone. The man fetched the rest of his family and they talked with Betty for five or ten minutes that I'm sure none of them will ever forget.

It was not just a matter of meeting someone they'd seen on TV. The show was almost sacred to them and the parents were using certain of its episodes to teach basic morality and manners to their daughters. The show represented "good, old-fashioned American values" to them and while many of us could discuss how real and all-encompassing those values were, that's what it meant to that family.

And yes, it did dawn on me at that moment that one reason Betty was so good at speaking for the show was that she was devoid of meanness or selfishness or greed or any of the sins that never lasted very long in Mayberry. She urged those two young women to work hard in school and live exemplary lives…

…and I don't know if they will or they won't but at that moment, they sure took Betty seriously and promised her they'd try. I don't think anyone who was on The Danny Thomas Show had that impact on anyone. Betty had those encounters everywhere she went.

The family left, we toured the museum, I took her to dinner and eventually, we were back at the Assisted Living home where she lived…where she was treated very, very well by the staff. You couldn't not love this woman.

When it came time for me to go, she insisted on getting to her feet for hugging purposes and we kissed like you kiss a relative you treasure dearly. We were both aware this might be the last time we would ever see each other and we were both crying. That is, until Betty made me laugh by saying, "I'll stop if you will."

If this story warms you in any way, think back over your life. The answer may well be "no" but ask yourself if there's anyone you ever loved who's still around and you need to connect with them before they're not. Don't endanger their health or your health but if it's possible to let them know what they mean to you, do it. And not just for their sake but for yours.