Monthly Archives: October 2021

If you didn't see the 60 Minutes story on Tony Bennett, you need to see it. You will not be unmoved by it…

Still very busy so here's another rerun. This one's from November 19, 2013…

I tell people I'm Jewish but the truth is this: My mother was Catholic. My father was Jewish. That makes me, technically, Nothing. When they wed, my mother dropped most of her identity as a Catholic and never regretted it. My father was kind of a minimalist Jew. He went to shul on the High Holy Days but few other times. He did not formally belong to any synagogue. He did not hesitate to eat ham or bacon. He spoke about thirty words of Yiddish…but then so did my mother, having picked it up around him and other Evaniers. My mother's brisket and latkes could hold their own against any cooked by a pure, certified-as-Kosher Jewish Mother.

Another truth is this: Religion was not very important in our house. We had one prying neighbor lady who was always asking me questions about my family. Did we dutifully pray before every meal? No prayers were ever uttered in the our home. Did we routinely read The Bible? Nope. My mother had her childhood Bible, more as a keepsake than a reference, but it was almost never opened. Which holidays did we celebrate? Any holiday where you got gifts and/or ate a lot of food.

It all worked fine for us but it bugged the heck out of that lady and certain other onlookers. As I've mentioned here, my parents' mixed marriage was at first frowned-on by friends and relatives on all sides. The rise in acceptance in interracial marriages and now gay marriages shows the world moving in one direction: It doesn't matter who consenting adults marry as long as they're happy. Today, a Jew marrying a Catholic would scarcely elevate any eyebrows. When my parents wed though, it was like — as my father once put it — a penguin was marrying a gopher. (In the penguin-gopher analogy, I never figured out which was the Jew and which was the Catholic. If I had to guess, I'd guess the penguin was the Catholic because it looked more like a nun.)

After a short while, both sides of the family came to accept that Bernie and Dorothy were married and they had this great kid…and that, by God, was that. But there were some lingering resentments and feelings. My immediate family was more Jewish than not and my father's side occasionally asked, ahem, why I wasn't in Hebrew school? Or why I wasn't working towards Bar Mitzvah? The truth was that given the emotions that had surrounded their marriage, my parents didn't want to open old wounds — a wise move but not one that my Aunt Dot and Uncle Aaron could fully endorse.

Aunt Dot (for those of you not taking notes on these articles) was my father's sister. Uncle Aaron was her husband. They were slightly more devout Jews than my father and they feared for my soul or the family lineage or I don't know what they feared for. I think maybe my alienation from a world that expects everyone to have a neat, understandable religious label. "The boy should be something," I heard Aunt Dot say to my father once when they didn't know I could hear. "At least, expose him to it."

They campaigned intermittently and not without results. My father finally agreed and then my mother agreed with my father: Mark would be enrolled in a Sunday-only Hebrew school. I was not there to work towards a Bar Mitzvah; not unless I suddenly was seized by the passion to be a full-fledged Jew and insisted. But I should at least learn what it was all about and make up my own mind. There would also be some move made to expose me to Catholicism so I'd understand that side. Uncle Aaron consulted his rabbi and got a recommendation for a Hebrew school not far from my home.

Immediate Problem: The school had two classes, each of which was held from 10 AM to 2 PM on Sunday morning. One class was for kids aged 7-9. The other was for 10-12. Into which class should 10-year-old Mark go? I was a newcomer to these teachings so obviously, I should go in the Beginner class, right? But that might be embarrassing because I'd be in with the "little kids."

A lot of my classmates at weekday school were in the Advanced class so obviously, I should be in the Advanced class, right? But that might be awkward since in the Advanced class, it was presumed you already knew all the stuff you learned in the Beginner class and I hadn't taken the Beginner class.

There was so much discussion about this topic that they even asked me what I thought. I thought I should not be in Hebrew School at all but if I had to be, I should start in the Advanced class. I figured it would get me out of this ordeal sooner. It was decided that I'd go into the Advanced class and that I'd make a special effort to read certain books that might bring me up to speed.

It was horrible. The Advanced class was taught by a young, angry Israeli man named Avik who took an instant dislike to me and my lack of Jewish purity. I kind of thought of him as an anti-semi-semite. He was fierce and militant about his faith, and quite intolerant of those who did not share his ferocity and militancy. After my first day there, he went to the lady who ran the school and told her I should not be in his class. She responded, "You think he should be in the Beginner class?" and Avik replied, "I think he should not be in this school at all." Well, we agreed on that but not much else.

The principal lady told him he was stuck with me so for the next month or three, he did what he could to make my learning unpleasant. However fast I tried to bone up on what I'd missed, it wasn't fast enough for Avik. The man was filled with rage on a wide variety of subjects and as for his sanity…well, let's just say he was a few Jews short of a minyan. In class, in front of my friends, he'd pepper me with questions he knew damn well I couldn't answer.

At first, I tried responding with a joke but that only made him madder. At times when he began yelling at me, I would just get up and walk out of the classroom. The facility we were in was a nursery school during the week so I'd go out and sit on the edge of the sandbox. I'd just sit there and wait 'til class was over and my father came to take me home. I tried to tell him about The Problem With Avik but he just kept telling me to work a little harder.

"In this world, you've got to learn to get along with people."  That was my father's oft-given advice…and good advice it was.  But what do you do about people who angrily refuse to be gotten along with?

It got really bad in the portion of class where Avik taught us Yiddish and Hebrew. I happen to have an utter inability to learn any foreign language.  You could teach a giraffe to speak Russian before you could teach me.  Go ahead.  Try it.  See how you fare.

In regular school at different times, I studied Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and I think one or two others. The reason I kept changing is that via intense, short-term memorization I was able to get through the tests in each class, after which my mind immediately jettisoned all I'd memorized. So I'd get through Beginning Spanish and then when I passed that and moved on to the next level of Spanish, I wouldn't remember two words of Beginning Spanish…so I'd switch to Beginning French and start all over. I was rotten at all of them and that included Yiddish and Hebrew.  Especially Yiddish and Hebrew.

Avik would ask me a question in Yiddish (or Hebrew; I could never tell the difference) and when I couldn't answer him, he'd ask it again, only louder. And then louder and louder. One time as he hit around the fifth level, I said to him, "You seem to be misunderstanding the problem. I can hear you just fine. I just don't know what any of those words mean." He screamed at me and ten seconds later, I was outside sitting on the edge of the sandbox.

There were actually a few decent weeks there because Avik was away — in Israel, of course — and his substitute was a decent guy who didn't loathe me because I did not fit his definition of a good, young Jewish boy. Whatever I did learn well enough to remember, I learned during those weeks. But then Avik returned and it was back to the sandbox for me.

Finally one day, things reached the meltdown level. We were supposed to bring in money to donate to a fund to plant trees in Israel and my parents had given me two dollars for that. I had it in my wallet along with three dollars of my own — three dollars I'd earmarked for the purchase of comic books and my other (brief) passion of the time, Topps baseball cards. Avik came around with an envelope and when I pulled the cash out of my wallet, I pulled out all five dollars, put two in the envelope and started to put the other three back in my wallet. Avik suddenly grabbed my hand with the three bucks. "You are holding out," he said. "Your parents gave you five dollars to donate and you are trying to keep three for yourself." He then snatched the three dollars away from me and jammed it into the envelope.

I told him he was wrong, that my parents had only given me two for the donation, and pointed out how almost everyone else was only giving two. He called me a liar. I told him to go call my parents and they'd verify they'd only given me two dollars for the cause. He said something like, "I don't have to call your parents. I know your kind, passing yourself off as a Jew. You are not a Jew! You will never be a Jew!" Then he said something about how my father could not possibly be a Jew either. If he was, I would have been in the synagogue with him every week and I would have entered Hebrew School when I was younger and would now be two years from being Bar Mitzvahed.

There was more, including nasty words about my mother who had gone no further as a convert to Judaism than learning how to cook a great brisket, but I'd had enough. I charged from the classroom…and this time, I didn't stop at the sandbox. I barged into the office of the principal lady, told her what had happened and that Avik was insane and also that he'd stolen three dollars from me. The woman phoned my parents, verified that I had indeed been given two dollars to donate, and she suggested they come over immediately so this incident could be properly discussed. Then she led me back to the classroom and in front of all the other students, told Avik to give me back my three dollars and apologize.

Avik protested that I was lying. She said, "I spoke to his father. Mark is telling the truth." Avik started screaming what I think were actually curse words in Yiddish or Hebrew. Whatever they were, they were directed at me and my father and even at the school for allowing me in. Then he threw the envelope with the money down, stormed out of the classroom, got into his car and went elsewhere. My classmates cheered me because I'd won. I even got my three dollars back.

The administrators of the school called a hasty meeting to discuss what to do. They weren't certain if Avik had quit but just in case he hadn't, he was fired and I received an official apology from the school, not just for the $3.00 brouhaha but also for the way he'd treated me in general. They urged me to please, please stay in the class and learn with Avik's replacement but by this point, my parents had arrived — at the school and also at the realization that putting me into it was a serious parenting error. My folks left it up to me to stay or leave…and I gave it careful consideration. I thought it over for almost a sixteenth of a second.

That was the end of me and Hebrew School…an experience I never missed. But it was not the end of the story of me and Avik.

Three months later, I was with my mother at a very large Kaiser Health Clinic where she was going for some medical matter. We had an hour to wait so I told her I was going to take a walk around the building. A few corridors later, I happened to notice a man glaring at me and realized it was Avik. He started walking briskly towards me and yelling something, not necessarily in English.

I turned and ran a bit, looked back, saw him still striding purposefully towards me and I ran some more. I finally found a Security Officer and told him a strange man was coming after me. Avik saw me pointing him out to the Security Officer and he turned and fled. And that was the end of the story of me and Avik.

It was also the end of my Jewish indoctrination. Soon after, I received my glimpses into Catholicism. That didn't turn out much better except that I convinced everyone in even less time it was not for me. I'll tell you about that in the next installment in this series.  Or maybe the one after.

Very busy at the moment. Here's a rerun from November 10, 2013…

As a kid, I attended what was then Westwood Elementary School in West Los Angeles. It's now Westwood Charter School and still in the same location. When I drive by these days, the only structure that seems to still be there from my era is a freestanding handball wall in the northwest corner of the playground; that and a few of the cheese sandwiches they used to serve in the cafeteria there. The cafeteria is gone but those cheese sandwiches will be found and studied by Paleontologists of some future century. And based on the many fingerprints of the cafeteria workers, they will reconstruct Cro-Magnon Man.

Westwood was a good little school and one of the main reasons was the principal, Mrs. Kermoyan. I'm trying to think how old she was then, keeping in mind that when you're between six and 11 as I was, everyone over about 16 looks either forty or near-death. I'll say late thirties, early forties. She was a bright, conscientious administrator who cared about all her students but who took a particular interest in me. I saw a lot of her and not because I was ever in any trouble. I was never in any trouble. Not long before I graduated Westwood and moved on, I accidentally got a peek at my cumulative record.

This was a file students weren't supposed to ever see as it contained everything the school system knew about you and your parents, and included candid remarks from each of your teachers. Mine was filled with glowing statements about how oh, if only all students could be like Mark! The worst thing in there was that Mrs. Preuss wrote, "Has annoying tendencey to correct adults and be right." I laughed at that and decided to try not to do that so often. I started by not telling Mrs. Preuss that she'd misspelled "tendency."

Mrs. Kermoyan took a special interest in me and because of it, she and her associates unknowingly ruined my life for a while…then knowingly and happily made it just about all right. That's the story I'm about to tell you but first let me tell you a little more about the school. It was a nice, happy place located just barely within walking distance of where I then lived. The faculty was all female but for two teachers.

One was Mr. Manitzas, who proved to be one of those unforgettable educators who leaves a lasting and positive impact on those he tutors. He was fascinated with art and he'd often speed through Arithmetic and History so he could spend more time showing us slides of great paintings, especially every single canvas to which Vincent Van Gogh ever put brush. Years ago out of curiosity, I Googled "George Manitzas Westwood" and found a bevy of blogposts and message board chatter from former students who remembered him fondly and credited him with great inspiration. There are still a few of them up and I intend this posting to add to the search results about him.

The other male teacher was a Japanese gentleman named, I'm afraid, Mr. Fukushitma. Is that the worst last name you ever heard in your life? Should someone with that name even be allowed to reproduce? And he even pronounced the first syllable as if it had a "c" in it. I was never in his class but I do recall that no one on campus, be they pupil or faculty, could refer to the man without snickering.

In L.A. city schools at the time, and I suppose it's still this way, the first elementary school grade was B-1. When you were promoted, assuming you were promoted, you went into A-1. Then came B-2, then A-2 and so on. After you completed A-6, they shipped you off to a junior high school and to the seventh grade, therein.  At some point, at Mrs. Kermoyan's suggestion, an expert was brought in to test me and determine if I was sharp enough to skip a grade here or there.  I skipped a few and then at one point, I missed a semester due to a messy bout of Scarlet Fever.   The result? Well, my parents were quite proud and I briefly felt like I'd won a prize or something. I soon found out otherwise as I kept finding myself in a different class from the other kids I was getting to know.

School, after all, is as much about learning how to get along with others as it is about mastering long division or basic grammar. Arguably, the social aspect is more important. With my advancement, I lost all the friends I'd had and found myself in with a new group, all a year older. A year isn't much of an age difference when you're in your thirties or older but when you're in the single digits, it matters a lot. As I was younger and heralded as some sort of smarter-than-they-were prodigy, none of them were particularly interested in being around me.

I could get along fine in the classroom, especially in Reading and Writing, which were the areas that had most prompted my advancement. And I could at least sound like I understood Arithmetic and History and everything else. What I was lousy at were the three most important activities of the schoolday — Recess, Lunch and After Lunch Play.

I ate my lunch largely alone every day for a year or two. And then after lunch or at Recess when the games commenced, I couldn't seem to get on a team. They had this system where each week, two boys were designated as captains and when it came time to play Sockball, they'd take turns picking other kids to be on their squads. Egos were forever decimated or magnified based on how soon you were picked. It was embarrassing to be picked last…so you can imagine how I felt. I never got picked at all.

I'm not sure if it was because none of them knew me or because I was younger and therefore punier or because I lurked in the back and never spoke up. It might have just been that I'd never demonstrated that I could play the team sports, which was in part because I wasn't certain how any of those games were played. I kinda figured them out from watching but I never felt secure enough to dive in and participate. Or to point out to anyone that I'd been left off the roster so I never got to be captain.

Sockball was the big game on the Westwood playground. It was a lot like baseball except that you socked a big, inflated rubber ball with your fist as hard as you could and then ran the bases. You were out if someone caught your ball or threw it to a baseman before you reached his base. Everyone on one team got an "at bat" each inning and you'd see how many runs that side could score. Everyone on the other team was either one of the four basemen (home plate had a baseman, not a catcher because nothing was pitched) or was in the outfield, so there might be ten or twenty guys in the outfield.

I would plant myself deep in center and just stand there for the entire game. If the ball came near me, I let someone else handle it. When it came time to switch sides, I'd stay out in deep center because I wasn't on either team. It became a great metaphor for my early years and there are still days when I feel like that.

There were other games. One was Dodgeball and while the basic concept seemed pretty simple — i.e., dodge the ball, you jerk — I didn't know what else to do. So the first time anyone (me or any other kid) got hit, I'd go "out" and stay out. There was also a game I never understood called Four Square that involved another big rubber ball and four squares that were painted on the asphalt. Don't write and tell me how Four Square is played because there's little chance of me taking it up at this age.

The point was that throughout my early school years, no one really talked to me outside class and I felt increasingly like an alien presence. I was younger, weaker, smaller and worst of all, allegedly smarter. Being "Class Brain" because you skipped grades may make your folks beam but it's a great way to not relate in any way to your peers. Away from school, I was a happy kid but at Westwood Elementary, I felt like I was functioning in a parallel universe all my own.

It wasn't like being the New Kid in Class. We had new kids in class all the time…and since they were new kids, they were introduced and put on teams and placed into the rotation of team captains, and they were even taught how to play Four Square. Nobody ever did any of that for me. I'd see a foreign exchange student who barely spoke English start to fit in within days but I just felt more and more remote from those around me. I became withdrawn and dour…but only at school. At home, where I felt like I belonged, all was fine.

It got worse when my one teacher decided that in reading from her class textbook, I was working too far below my level of comprehension. That was bad, they said…so meetings were held and the faculty debated what to do about the Evanier boy. They finally decided to adjust the times of the Reading lessons in the another class that was a year past mine to coincide with those in mine. Then when it came time for Reading, Mark would be sent down the hall to take Reading with students a year older. This meant that I would come in like some mutant freak and the pupils there would glare at me and resent the snotty young kid who was showing them all up with his unnatural command of the language.

You can imagine how much I looked forward to that each day: Oh, boy! Another whole group of kids to not fit in with.

The plan was that as I progressed through school, I would always take Reading with the class ahead. I, of course, asked what would happen when I got to sixth grade since the next class up was at another school across town. "We'll deal with that when the time comes," I was told — and of course, when the time came no one had the slightest idea what to do so they just sent me to the school library every day during that hour. I'd mostly sit there and draw Fred Flintstone.

So I hated school throughout those years…and Mrs. Kermoyan knew that I wasn't happy but she had no idea why. When I tried to tell her, my vaunted command of the language failed me. I started to explain to her about eating lunch alone and spending Recess standing in center field, not being on either of the teams that were playing. Somehow, she didn't understand, muttering something about how advanced students need challenges to stimulate their minds…or something. In hindsight, I could later understand that when I said, "I'm always alone," she took that to mean I was more advanced than the other kids around me so maybe I needed to be around older ones still.

Finally though, I was beginning to feel like I was almost on the same planet as the other students. Almost, not quite. I think it started one day in class when I did something unprecedented in my then-brief life or, as far as I could tell, any classroom I'd been in. I made a funny.

By then, I'd read hundreds, maybe thousands of comic books and I remembered every word of every one of them. I remembered every joke I heard on TV, too. One day in class, one of my fellow pupils, Fred Stern, was reading a book report — some book about the Dark Ages. It was one of those vague speeches that made you wonder if he'd even read the book. I guess the teacher was thinking that maybe Fred hadn't. When Fred finished, the teacher asked him, "Fred…why were the Dark Ages called the Dark Ages?"

We all watched the color drain from Fred's face like a plunging thermometer. He didn't have a clue.

It was during that awkward silence that I realized our instructor had unknowingly given the set-up line to a joke I recalled from an issue of Archie's Joke Book. For the first time ever in my life, I spoke up in class without being called on. I said aloud so everyone could hear me, "Because they had so many knights!"

For a fraction of a second, there was utter silence in the room and I thought, "Oh, I did something stupid." But it was only a small fraction because then, they all got the nights/knights pun and the entire class exploded in laughter. I mean, exploded. I can still hear that explosion and several aftershocks.

Even the teacher laughed and boy, that sure felt good. Nothing connects you with others quite like making them laugh. It was a moment of Instant Acceptance for me and later that day at lunch, other students asked me to sit with them as they repeated the joke for kids in other classes. "How did you think of that?" everyone was asking.

Another student who I suspect also felt like an outcast invited me to go over to his house after school and play games, whereupon I instantly clobbered him in Stadium Checkers. I was great at Stadium Checkers because, unlike Sockball, it came with printed instructions. The next day, a couple of other students spotted me drawing cartoon characters in my notebook and asked me to draw cartoon characters in their notebooks. That was nice. No one was really talking to me but they were talking at me so we were getting closer.

Little things like that made me feel like I was starting to belong…but then I suddenly began to get called out of class to take special tests. I recognized those tests. They were the same kind I'd taken that had prompted the school to skip me ahead an entire year. They were even administered by the same lady from downtown. Fearful, I gave a few wrong answers — just enough, I thought, that they wouldn't think I was throwing the game but would think, "Hmm…maybe Mark's reached the upper limits of his ability."

I guess I didn't throw enough. A week before my current class concluded, the teacher kept me after school and gave me a sealed letter to take home to my parents. She told me, "They're going to be awfully proud of their son" and I shuddered because I knew what it was.

I gasped, "They're going to skip me ahead again?" She answered with a smile, "Yes and your parents will be so happy." Well, maybe but I sure wasn't.  I still remember the shocked look on her face when I began yelling, "No, no, no!"

"You should be happy about it," she exclaimed. I cried, "I'm not happy about it" and asked her who could undo this rotten decision. She said someone would have to talk to Mrs. Kermoyan. I announced that I was going to talk to Mrs. Kermoyan and I sprinted from that classroom and down the stairs, taking them three at a time because it sure felt like every second counted. I barged into Mrs. Kermoyan's office and began shouting.

I don't recall the first part of what I shouted and it was probably incoherent and hysterical. I do though recall the second part vividly. I told her how I always ate lunch alone and how no one would let me into a game and how the older kids in Reading class glared at me and how I was just starting to not completely hate coming to school each day. Then I saw her go pale as I asked her, "Don't you want me to have any friends at all?"

I was crying throughout all of this…but when I said that last thing, suddenly I stopped and she started.

Mrs. Kermoyan broke into tears, came out from behind her desk and squatted down in front of me. She threw her arms around me and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I did something terrible to you. I thought you were always so unhappy because you needed to be in with smarter kids. I'm so very, very sorry." Over and over, she kept saying, "I didn't mean to hurt you…can you forgive me?" And over and over, I forgave her. I still forgive her. Mrs. Kermoyan! If you're still alive and you're on the Internet and you Google your name some day and find this, I forgive you! Honest!

I must have forgiven her twenty times. She assured me I would never be skipped again in any grade unless my parents and I approved, which made me very happy at that moment. Later, in high school, I wished I could have skipped all of them and proceeded directly to my life.

But I remember sitting there in her office that day, listening in as Mrs. Kermoyan called my mother and told her that the school system wanted to skip Mark ahead again but, "he and I have talked it out and we agree it's not in his best interests. We both hope you agree." My mother replied that she'd discuss it with my father but that they'd found that "Mark usually knows what's best for Mark." Boy, that made me feel good. I felt like for the first time ever, I was in control of my own life. Better still, someone recognized that I had the capability along with the right to be. That was really what the problem was, after all.

And that "not belonging" problem? Gone for good, as of that moment…or at least, I began to feel like I belonged. It took a little longer for all my classmates to decide that but decide they did. As things turned out, I actually found myself enjoying the next class into which we all went.  The next class, by the way, was Mr. Manitzas.

My existence at school more or less normalized in fourth grade. I still had that problem with taking Reading in an upper class but everything else fell into place once I realized the problem was not with me. By then, other kids were picking me to be on their teams at Recess…and not because I was a good player. It turned out, I was really lousy at Sockball and all those other games. It also turned out that it didn't matter. What mattered was that I got my turn at bat and my name on the roster.

One disadvantage of staying home and getting home delivery of almost everything is that when things go wrong, you have to call the company — and at least in my experience, you either get right through or you're put on hold for the balance of this century and maybe part of the next. Kroger — known in this area as Ralphs Market with no apostrophe — sure doesn't want to talk to me.

They do have a "Virtual Assistant" who asks questions to try and route my call to the proper human being who won't take my call. I'm supposed to answer them "yes" or "no" but neither of those options quite fits what I'm calling about…so I keep saying "agent" or "representative" and every so often, the V.A. offers to credit my account with $5.00 to make up for whatever the hell I'm calling to complain about. That's nice but I'd rather talk to a person.

Finally, the Virtual Assistant — who did not by any definition assist me, virtually or otherwise — put me in a queue to talk to a human being and told me my call would be answered in the order in which it was received. Another recorded voice then told me that because of higher-than-expected call volume, my wait time could be as long as forty (40) minutes. I'm thinking that the "virtual" part of the term "Virtual Assistant" is using the definition of "virtual" that means "almost or nearly as described, but not completely," meaning he, she or it almost supplies some assistance.

I gave up after sixteen minutes.

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By the way: The following has nothing to do with why I called Ralphs/Kroger though if I'd ever reached anyone there, I might have mentioned it. I like a brand of quasi-potato chips or crisps or whatever you'd call them called Popchips. I like the kind in the bag below on the left, which holds your basic Popchips.

Recently, they brought out a new variation which is kind of like a potato chip with no potato in it. They call them "Popchips Grain Free" and the ingredients list is cassava flour, tapioca starch, sunflower oil, cane sugar, sea salt and, for color, annatto. Cassava flour, in case you didn't know — as I didn't until I Googled it — is made by grating and drying the fibrous cassava root. Cassava is also known as manihot esculenta and is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Cassave flour is used a lot these days because it's free of gluten.

I tried this kind and didn't like it anywhere near as much as the basic Popchips made from potato flour. But what I especially don't like is that lately, every time I order the potato kind from any company that carries them and delivers, they deliver the cassava flour kind. As you can see, the packaging could be confusing, especially when you don't know there are potato-free Popchips. They also make varieties with corn and peanuts and some promise sizzling hot spices. I put on my orders "make sure the bag says POTATO on the front" and still, they bring me the other kind with blue on the bag.

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Finally: I announced here recently that I would be attending the Comic-Con Special Edition in San Diego on Thanksgiving Weekend. I am now announcing that I will not be attending the Comic-Con Special Edition in San Diego on Thanksgiving Weekend. Changed my mind.

You might care to know why. Part of it was because when I told my doctor I was going, he gave me a look that said, "What do you need that for?" Also, since I made the decision, I've been asking myself that and I don't want to spend the next seven weeks asking myself that. Thirdly, when I floated the idea of not going to the lady friend who was going to accompany me, she seemed pleased.

Fourth…well, three is enough. I do not think the convention will be unsafe. The folks who run it are very smart and very non-merecenary. They will not hesitate to spend or lose whatever money must be spent or lost. But I can't say the same of other places where I might sleep or dine and I don't know what I would do at the con during the many hours I wouldn't be hosting panels.

In the unlikely event (highly unlikely) that anyone was thinking of going because I was going to be there, I apologize. But I doubt there's anyone in that category. I just thought it best to make that decision now, rather than closer to the convention dates. Do not let me stop you from attending…and if you need information on attending, here's where you'll find some.

I had a link to this song here a long time ago but it got deleted. Here's a different instance of my favorite vocalist, Audra McDonald, singing "Baltimore"…

One of the most amazing people I've met in show business is my friend and occasional employer Sid Krofft. Marty's pretty amazing too but this article in the L.A. Times is mostly about Sid, who at age 92 looks a decade or three younger and still has the unrestrained imagination of a nine-year-old. Sid's Sunday podcasts are delightful, mostly because he is. And yes, I've been to that home of his and it's the single-most impressive residence I've ever seen in my life. Check him out some Sunday.

Remember when we were all worrying about The Ozone Layer? Remember when some folks were really worried our planet was doomed because it was disappearing?

Well, you don't hear much about that these days and there's a reason why.

This may interest some of you. It's close to half an hour of casino gambling expert Sal Paciente showing clips from movies about cheaters and discussing how authentic the scenes were. I once spent a lot of time learning about this kind of thing for a movie script that I wrote for a studio that closed down two years later. If they'd made my script, they could have been outta business in one.

In connection with it though, I spent a lot of time at Blackjack tables and read a lot of books and talked to a lot of experts and even got some amazing tours. One was of the counting room in one casino and it looked like Uncle Scrooge's money bin in there. There was literally money all over the floor and when I exited, I was just about strip-searched to make sure none of the loot was on my person.

Another was of the surveillance room in another casino — the room from which experts spy on the players and also on the dealers. In this particular gaming establishment, they seemed more "on the lookout" for dealers being in cahoots with players than with players cheating on their own. They also showed me how if a known cheater walked into hotel in town, they were all instantly alerted to his whereabouts.

It was all fascinating…and I also learned enough that while I could card-count and win a few hundred dollars at one casino or another, it was a foolish risk to go much above the "few hundred dollars" level. They didn't mind a guy winning $600 or $700 because they figured (a) he'd resume playing later and give it back or (b) seeing him win that money would inspire other players to play…and they'd lose more than that winner won. But I still gave up Blackjack and, really, all gambling.

Here's the video. You may note the number of ways in which what this man is explaining intersects with my interest in magic…

I continue to be aghast at how a man who was so honored and respected twenty years ago has done everything short of molesting farm animals in public to lose all that respect. The latest is Rudy Giuliani's admission that much of the "evidence" that he claimed in public to have of voting fraud came from that most reliable of sources — some guy on the Internet. And that it was evidence that Mr. Giuliani deliberately did not fact-check. I would assume the reason he didn't fact-check was that he really didn't care if it was true or not…and if he found out for sure it was false, he might feel a little worse about spreading it.

Among those who still insist Trump won the election, there seems to be no awareness that guys like Giuliani were fighting with two kinds of evidence: The kind that would stand up to scrutiny in a court of law and the kind they knew wouldn't. The latter kind was disseminated to rally the public, keep Trump's followers mad and behind him, and to get donations. This was the kind they rarely presented in court lest the lawyers be laughed-at or even disbarred. What little they did present in court was pretty feeble.

Here's Brett Bachman explaining about a smear that Rudy spread about an employee at Dominion Voting Systems…and don't take Mr. Bachman's word for all this. You can read the transcript of the deposition and it's pretty amazing, especially when you remember that Rudy Giuliani was supposed to be a very accomplished (and expensive) attorney.

I don't cook much but I occasionally do something simple with chicken parts. The following lesson from Adam Ragusea is of some use to me. Perhaps it will be of some use to you…

• I used to tell people that "Free Advice is worth exactly what you paid for it" but lately, it seems the bottom has fallen out of that market. Most of the Free Advice I see given these days is worth a lot less than what you paid for it.

A little over 570 days ago, my primary care physician told me about The Shutdown…how I should plan on staying home a lot and avoiding contact with others. This "pandemic" thing we were hearing about was more real than we thought, he said. A few days later, most of America would be told what he told me and I decided to follow his advice. I don't think my doctor is infallible but I think he knows a helluva lot more than I do…and more than any non-doctor I see offering advice about this thing.

None of us then thought we'd be where we are today. I thought the shelter-at-home plan might last a few months. I also thought it would be way more difficult and depressing than it has been. I'm fortunate that my occupation and lifestyle were already centered on staying home. It wasn't that big a change for me. Along with feeling bad for those who got the damned disease, I feel bad for those whose lives were ruptured by quarantining…people who lost jobs, friends, businesses, important social contacts, things they loved to do, etc.

I continue to take the position that no one knows when this will end or if it will get worse but I'm cautiously trying to get out of my house a little more. Today, my friend/assistant Jane and I went to the Magic Castle up in Hollywood for lunch. Masks were worn (except while eating, of course) and vaccination statuses were checked. It's the first time I've set foot in the club since late February of 2020.

The Castle has changed a bit. Each October, they apply some sort of Halloween overlay that changes the appearance of much of the place and they're just starting to apply it. But most of it is still the Castle of which I've been a member for forty years. It felt like being home but then I also felt like being home in a real sense. This Pandemic has really turned me into a guy who doesn't want to leave his house if he can possibly help it.

I know I have to get over that and that's one reason I have provisionally agreed to be a Special-Type Guest at the Comic-Con Special Edition which starts in 56 days. I need to start practicing for being somewhere else and not here.

The Kino Lorber company issues a lot of great movies on DVD and Blu-ray and does a fine job restoring these films and packaging them with the proper extras. I'm one of those folks who isn't satisfied that a movie he likes is easily available for streaming. I like to own a physical copy and I am glad that there are companies like Kino Lorber that put films out for purchase. But I also like streaming channels so I can watch films before I decide to own them and Kino Lorber has just gotten into that business, too.

Beginning today, you may be able to get Kino Cult, a new streaming channel with what they call "cult" films. I'm never sure what that adjective means in this context and think maybe "weird" or "not for everyone" would be a better descriptor. In a way, I think calling something a cult film is like calling it a "guilty pleasure." Both terms to me mean the same thing: "This is a strange movie with lots of gore and/or sex and/or a bizarre mindset and I don't want to be judged for liking this kind of thing."

Personally, I don't judge anyone for liking something (unless it's illegal) and I don't fault them for liking things that I don't like or even things I can't conceive of anyone liking. And with that in mind, I intend to explore Kino Cult because they have an awful lot of stuff I've never even heard of. You might want to give it a look. It's available on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV and other video-on-demand apps. Look over their offerings at this page and prepare to be really, really baffled at some of what's available.