This post first appeared here on September 28, 2018. There will be newly-written things here in a day or so…
So I'm in my friendly neighborhood you-know-where and I'm waiting in line to pick up a prescription. Ahead of me is a Very Confused Lady (who shall henceforth be known as the V.C.L.) and she is being served by a Very Patient Pharmacy Associate (henceforth, the V.P.P.A.). The V.C.L. picked up a prescription the day before, took it home and found herself unable to get the friggin' cap off the friggin' container of the friggin' pills. In desperation, she has brought it back to the C.V.S.
The V.P.P.A. takes the container and with darn near no effort, pops the lid off. A small child could have done it and so could a small gerbil or marmoset. "These are our new caps," the V.P.P.A. explains. "They're Easy Open." In an instructional way, she takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, and hands it to the V.C.L.
The V.C.L. holds the vial and attempts to do what the V.P.P.A. just did. This time, the cap not only comes off easily, it comes off so easily that the V.C.L. is startled and she accidentally dumps all the pills on the floor.
The V.C.L. attempts to scoop the pills up off the dirty floor and into the container but the V.P.P.A. (acting very responsibly) will not allow that. She insists the V.C.L. wait and she gives the vial to the Head Pharmacist so she can dole out a fresh serving of the pills at — apparently — no cost. Then the V.P.P.A. cleans up the soiled pills and discards them. Then she presents a new container of the pills to the V.C.L. but not before demonstrating three more times how to open it.
The V.C.L. takes the new supply, flips the top off easily and once again accidentally spills them out onto the ground. Wonderful.
By now, the Very Patient Pharmacy Associate has become just the P.A. but she goes to the Head Pharmacist, they have a brief discussion and the following is decided: The Very Clumsy Lady (as she shall henceforth be called) may have one more free refill but that's it. The pharmacy cannot spare any more of whatever medication this is or they may not have enough to fill others' orders before they can get more. If these hit the linoleum, she'll need to take the matter up with her doctor or her insurance company or a Walgreens or anyone else.
It is at this point that a Clever, Handsome Bystander (who henceforth will be known as M.E.) steps up. He asks and receives permission to make some suggestions and then makes three…
The first is that when the V.C.L. takes the new vial home, she should put a clean towel on her bed and then attempt to open the vial over the towel. Thus, if the pills fall again, they will remain takeable.
The second is that the C.V.S. should also provide her with an empty container with the new style cap so she can practice opening it until she masters the art.
And the third is that if she has one of the old caps around, she puts it on the new container until such time as she does master that art.
Everyone — including the nineteen other customers who have been waiting in line behind M.E. — praises his suggestions and the V.C.L. leaves with a new supply of the pills and an empty practice vial.
M.E. then steps up to the counter to claim his own prescription and as the P.A. rings it up, the Head Pharmacist saunters over and thanks him for his wise input. M.E. says to her, "I guess the new easy open caps aren't as easy as they're supposed to be."
The Head Pharmacist sighs and says, "They would be if only someone could invent some way that people with her problem could take one of those pills before attempting to open the container."
There's a great Yiddish word that, like many Yiddish words, is spelled all different ways in English: Ganef, Gonif, Goniff, Gonnif, etc. It denotes a person who is thief and a crook and you can spell it however you like. Me, I usually opt for gonif. This is the story of Harry the Gonif.
There is much that I can't tell you about Harry the Gonif. I can't tell you what his last name was because though I heard it many times, we always referred to him as Harry the Gonif. I can't tell you who first hung that term on him. I can't even tell you how my father knew him…but my father was friends with Harry the Gonif. Harry would come over for an evening now and then. Sometimes, my father would go to lunch with him or take us all out for dinner with Harry the Gonif.
Most often, we'd drop by his place of business where Harry sold TV picture tubes. Discount TV picture tubes. This, obviously, was back when TV sets had picture tubes…around the mid-sixties. If your TV set needed a new one, it could easily run you $80 or $100…and that was just for the part itself. Installation could drive the price far beyond that.
But there was an alternative. Buried in the sports section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, there was a little ad that advertised brand-new TV picture tubes for $19.95…and then in the kind of microscopic typeface I like to call Flyspeck Bodoni, it said, "…and up."
That was Harry's ad. He had a deal with a manufacturer in Hong Kong or Korea or some country where workers could be paid cents per hour. They made picture tubes and shipped them over and he sold them in the Los Angeles area. There were, I gather, other gonifs in other cities selling them to folks in their jurisdictions.
They made picture tubes in all shapes and sizes, and they made them in two levels of quality. If you came in to get your $19.95 picture tube, Harry would usually sell you one…but acting like he was your sudden buddy, he'd let you in on a secret. The models he had for $34.95 were much, much better and because of their longer, warranty-covered lifespan, much more cost-effective.
Or sometimes, if you looked desperate to get your TV working again before the Dodgers game that evening, he'd just tell you he was out of the $19.95 tubes that would fit your set and it would be two weeks before he could get more in. Then when you were in sufficient panic, he'd tell you, "Gee…I think I might just have one tube in the right size but it would be our $34.95 model." About two-thirds of those who went to Harry for the $19.95 tube went home with the $34.95 one.
A newer-model picture tube, not one of Harry's
He wasn't lying about one thing, by the way. The $34.95 models were indeed better than the $19.95 models. The $19.95 ones were, I gather, picture tubes in the same sense that a Snickers bar is dinner. But all you need to know about either is this: When our living room TV died, my father called Harry and told him. Harry immediately sent over one of his men to install a brand-new picture tube — and it was not one of his. He had his guy stop off at some warehouse and pickup an RCA model, for which we paid his cost plus an installation fee.
Harry may have been a gonif but he wasn't the kind of gonif who'd stick a friend with his crummy product.
Of course, $34.95 only got you the picture tube. If you wanted one of Harry's men to come to your house and install it…well, that's where they made back some of the profit they weren't making by selling picture tubes so cheaply.
Or you could take it home yourself with a little printed sheet Harry provided — instructions on how to do-it-yourself. And then when you'd done-it-yourself and it didn't work, you could pay to have Harry's guy come over and make it work…and that could really run into money. (Also, if one of his crew came to your house, they'd gladly haul away your old picture tube and "dispose of it safely." Usually, that meant they'd recycle it and make even more bucks off you.)
Up above, I said there were many things I couldn't tell you about Harry the Gonif. The big one was why my father was friends with this person. I think it was just that my father was such a nice man, he couldn't bring himself to cut an acquaintance loose…and with his tendency to see the best in everyone, he did have some nuggets of respect for Harry, AKA "The Gonif."
Harry had built a successful business. He seemed to treat his employees well. And some people couldn't afford a $90 picture tube so a $19.95 one, inferior though it might have been — or even if they were baited-and-switched up to 35 bucks — was still a good thing. If your TV was busted and you called a repairman out of the Yellow Pages, you could get swindled a lot worse than anything Harry would do to you.
One day, Harry took my father to lunch and let him in on a secret. Harry was preparing to triple the size of his operation. The more picture tubes he ordered from Sweatshop City, wherever it was, the less each one cost him. If he could get his sales up 300%, he'd up his profit more than 500%. I am not remembering the numbers precisely but I'm in, as they say, the ball park.
All it would take was a bigger building, more employees and more advertising…which of course meant more working capital. He was going to buy billboards all over L.A. and get a full page amidst all the other gonifs in the phone book. He'd even paid good money to secure a new phone number that spelled out something like NEW-TUBE. I thought it was a shame that none of the many common spellings of "gonif" had seven letters.
To do all this, he was taking in investors. He had one share left of his new, expanded business and my father could buy in for $3000.
My father had $3000 in the bank but he didn't have much more than that. He heard Harry out, examined some papers Harry gave him about the investment and what he'd get for his money…and asked for a few days to think it over. Then he went home and involved my mother and me in his thought process.
He had little doubt that Harry would make his expanded company profitable. Whatever else you could say about the guy, he knew how to run that kind of business. He also believed Harry was offering him this opportunity out of naught but friendship. Given the firm's past track record, it wouldn't have been that difficult to find a stranger willing and perhaps eager to put in the three grand. Harry really liked my father and liked the idea of making him a bit wealthier.
But even if an investment looks like a "sure thing" — and this wasn't quite that — it's not easy to part with most of the money you have in your bank account. My father, as I've mentioned here, was a great worrier. The second the money was invested, he'd be worried: What if Harry's expansion plan did crash and burn? And what if we, the Evaniers, had some sudden, impossible-to-predict emergency that needed those bucks?
There was also a wee bit of conscience involved. Harry broke no laws. His $19.95 picture tubes weren't first-rate but what do you expect for $19.95? You could certainly make the case that he was doing his poorer customers a favor. You could also make the case that there's something a bit sleazy about making money the way he did.
Against all that, my father (and we) had to weigh the fact that this seemed like a pretty good investment. My father, you may recall, worked for the Internal Revenue Service. There are some lines of work where you can get rich if, say, you work for a company that thrives and prospers and they promote you. It doesn't work that way at the I.R.S. My father's income was pretty much locked down for the rest of his life, pension and all. Even if they'd bumped him up to a better job in the department, he would only have made about 5% more. If he was ever going to make a lot more money, he was going to have to take a gamble in something like this. He asked us if we thought he should do it.
My mother voted, basically, "No but if you really want to gamble on this, I'll support you but I'd rather you didn't." She had no idea if it was a good investment or not. She just didn't want to put up with my father worrying night and day about his money…as she knew he would. When my father asked me how I voted, I voted, "I vote that I should not have a vote." I kinda liked the idea of the gamble but something felt wrong about it…something upon which I could not quite put my little finger. Also, I didn't want to feel responsible if he did it and it failed or didn't do it and regretted it…so I said, "It's your money and your decision."
I was sure he'd decide against it but the next day, he surprised us both by saying he was going to do it. He called Harry and said yes. "Great," Harry the G said. "Bring me a check for $3,000 as soon as you can." My father said he'd be right over with it and then he sat down with his checkbook. I thought I noticed a slight tremble in his hand as he made it out. Then he stuffed it into an envelope and asked me, "Want to take a ride?" I said sure.
On the way to Harry's, my father told me, "I'll feel a lot better about this if I know you approve of it. I know you said it's my money but it's really not. My money is our money. It's the money we all live on."
I was impressed that he'd put it that way and that he really wanted my opinion. A lot of fathers wouldn't care what their 14-year-old son said. I'm guessing that's what I was at the time. We were still some distance from Harry's so I said, "Give me two minutes to think about it."
He gave me the two minutes and I tried to figure out what it was about this whole matter that bothered me. Finally I said, "I don't know much about business…but isn't there a rule somewhere that says you never trust your money to anyone whose nickname is The Gonif?"
My father thought for a second. Then he pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. Then he brought out the envelope with the check in it and tore it up. Then he started the car up again and turned a corner so he could head home instead of to Harry's. When he got home, he called Harry and told him he'd thought it over and had changed his mind.
"You're making a big mistake, Bernie," Harry told him.
"Maybe so," he said. "And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity but I don't want to risk my family's security this way."
Harry said the same thing again a few more times — "You're making a big mistake, Bernie" — and then they said goodbye.
Now, this story could end one of two ways. I could tell you that Harry's expansion plans were a disaster; that the whole enterprise collapsed and all the investors lost everything and my father was always grateful that I'd brought him to his senses. Or I could tell you that Harry's new, super-sized TV tube business venture thrived and grew such that even a $3000 investment would have yielded a significant return. That version would end with my father wishing 'til his dying day that he'd gone through with it.
But the truth is that I don't know how Harry made out and my father never knew, either…because my father never spoke to Harry again. He never called Harry and Harry never called him. The only clue I have to the progress of Harry's business is that his ads in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner got larger, then they got smaller, then they stopped appearing. Some years later, so did the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. I don't think Harry not advertising in it was the reason but with gonifs, you never know.
Once when I was visiting my father during one of his occasional hospitalizations, I was groping for something to talk about, just to make conversation. Outta the blue, I asked him, "Hey, whatever happened to Harry the Gonif?" He thought for a second and said, "I don't know…and I don't care."
Then he looked at me and said, "Right after I turned down investing in his company, I got to thinking, 'Why is this man my friend?' I didn't enjoy his company. I didn't learn anything from him. I didn't find him particularly interesting. When he called up and said, 'Let's have lunch,' I always thought, 'Oh, Christ! Him again.' It was like a chore. I had to have lunch with Harry." He paused and added, "You know, it's important to have friends in this world but you don't have to make room in your life for every person you meet."
That was one of the wisest, sharpest things I learned from my father. Right after he said that, I took a good, hard look through my address book and realized I had a couple of Harry the Gonifs in there. They were people upon whom I wished no ill will…but I just couldn't explain why I wasted any large chunks of my life on them. Not when there were so many people I liked in this world.
Being polite is fine. You can and should be polite to everyone. I just had to learn not to let these people drag me out to dinner or wrangle invitations to drop by when I literally had nothing in common with them and no interest in anything they had to say. The time I spent with them was time I didn't spend with real friends.
So that was one big thing I learned from him. I was going to add that another was "Never trust your money to anyone whose nickname is The Gonif" but I think he learned that one from me. Either way, it's good advice, too.
The other Evanier who writes for a living — my cousin David — has a fine essay online…an overview of Woody Allen's astonishing output as a filmmaker. If Mr. Allen had quit after, say, Hannah and Her Sisters, he would still be on a lot of those lists he's on of great American directors. Here's David Evanier with an appreciation.
A lovely gentleman named Robert Clary died Wednesday morning, November 16 at his home. He was 96 and you probably knew him best as Corporal LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes, the sitcom set in the unlikeliest of settings…a World War II German prison camp. As it happened, Clary had in spent 31 months of his real life in such confinement, and was the only member of his family to get out alive. Though I was with him on several occasions, I learned about his wartime horrors from articles, not from him.
I knew other survivors of such horrors who talked incessantly about them but at least around me, Mr. Clary talked more about positive things. Mostly, it was his very long career as an entertainer, here and in France. He was an actor but his main area was cabaret-type performing and you couldn't help but love every song he sang and every story he told on the stage.
I got to know him because of my friendship with Howard Morris. Howie directed many episodes of Hogan's Heroes and at one point (before they found Werner Klemperer) was slated to play what would have been a very different Colonel Klink. I believe Howie's close friendship with Robert pre-dated the show, however.
Once or twice, Howie took me to lunch with Robert and sometimes others from Hogan's Heroes. At one point, they had a little Wednesday lunch group at an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. I recall very little talk about the show itself, some chatter about Bob Crane's bizarre personal life and great stories about their experiences in show business. Robert Clary was unquestionably the star of the table. He had performed all over the world. He talked about everywhere he had been…except Auschwitz. Not unless he was forced to.
No, I take that back. Howie and I went one night to a performing space in Culver City called The Jazz Bakery to see Robert perform. It was an enchanting evening. Everyone in the small room loved spending time with Clary as he sang and told stories…one or two of which were even about surviving the camps. But the point of everything he said about those days was survival and getting over the nightmares to live what he said was a long, happy, productive life. Which he proved was possible by living as long and as well as he did.
I am slowly returning from my undisclosed location and this blog will be back at full strength soon. I have a few posts I wrote before the shutdown that I should have put up here at the time, including one obit for a dear man. I also have a few reruns prepped to go. There will be nothing about whatever's in the news because I'm paying as little attention to the news as I can. What little I see all seems to be about people shooting and/or beating up one another. But yes, I'm okay (thanks to all who asked) and yes, I'm getting a lot written. Those two things have a lot to do with each other. Thanks again to the friends who've given me some space these last few days…
I appreciate the messages from folks who are concerned about my absence. I also appreciate the many friends who understand that I'm busy and that there are periods when I just need to take care of things and who leave me (mostly) alone. My lovely friend Carolyn used to say, "You need some Mark Time." I appreciate both groups and will be back soon for you. But like the subject line says, I'm Not Quite Back Yet…
A few hours ago, I was wondering why so many Uber drivers these days were driving Teslas. Then I took Ubers to and from my physical therapy session and I got one Tesla on the way there and a different Tesla on the way back. I've redacted their license plate numbers but here's what these two gents were driving…
And I asked both of them about the mystery and I got roughly the same answer twice: Do the math. It seems there's some sort of alliance between Uber, Tesla and Hertz Rent-a-Car. Hertz bought a whole mess of Teslas — that's probably how Elon Musk got the dough which he blew to buy Twitter — and they rent them to Uber drivers on surprisingly favorable terms.
Both drivers ticked off the math to me. I didn't take notes but they were roughly the same. Fuel for a Tesla costs almost nothing. Fuel for a Prius cost one of those drivers a fortune even though it was a hybrid. Hertz pays most maintenance charges. The guy who drove me home ended up buying his. The guy who took me there has another car (not a Tesla) for his everyday activities and only drives the Tesla for Uber missions. And they both said they really like driving a Tesla.
I shoulda known. I'm a big believer in the principle of "Follow the Money." It's the answer to more questions than we might imagine.
I've been having a problem with my right knee lately. That's the one I had replaced in September of 2015 and while I can walk okay much of the time, it's rough for a minute or so after I get up from a seated position. I also have a problem on stairs and I've temporarily stopped driving. I have trouble controlling the pressure with which I depress the gas pedal or the brake.
It's something my orthopedist is certain will be remedied via physical therapy so twice a week, I take an Uber over to a wonderful place to which I'd walk if my knee was in better shape. There, some nice people put me through exercises to improve flexibility and strength, and I can already feel some improvement.
An odd thing: In three of the last five Uber trips I've taken, I've been transported by a different guy driving a Tesla…and when I complimented one of those drivers on how nice his car looked, he said, "You should see the other Tesla I have at home." I don't think he was joking. And I don't know why a person who owns one Tesla, let alone two, is driving for Uber, nor can I think of a nice way to ask any of them about this. If I had one of them conveyances, I don't think I'd let a steady succession of strangers ride in it.
My right knee.
Not being able to drive is not a huge problem since there aren't that many places I want to go these days and almost none of them are far. Driving down to Comic-Con in San Diego last July was one of the few times in the last few years I've ventured into a non-adjacent zip code. The Pandemic got me hooked on having Instacart bring me my groceries and to have Grubhub and DoorDash bring me meals.
A lot of meetings to which I would previously have had to drive are now taking place on Zoom or sometimes Skype and I like that a lot. Last week, I had a meeting which once-upon-a-time would have meant a drive to Burbank. That's thirty minutes each way when there's light traffic and it could be more than an hour when it's heavy out there. The meeting lasted twenty minutes on Zoom and that's all the time of mine it took.
Driving to and fro might have been four times that. And if I'd had to take an Uber there…well, right this minute, Uber says "It's busy, fares are higher," and they want $36.93 one way. Maybe that's how Uber drivers can afford Teslas.
None of this should be taken as complaining, not even the part about my knee. It's still causing me less pain and trouble than if I hadn't had it swapped out for a metal one. People continue to ask me, "Are you glad you had it done?" as if the alternative was having my original one functioning like it did when I was a teenager.
That didn't seem to be an option just as it won't be if/when the left one needs replacing. I still don't know why it didn't reach its expiration date the same time my right one did. I got them both at the same time in the same place and since I don't do a lot of hopping, they've taken almost exactly the same number of steps.
Posted on Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at 10:25 AM
I see people out there already handicapping the 2024 Biden-Trump rematch as if nothing that could possibly happen between now and then — including the economy, the War in Ukraine, a dozen-or-so Trump trials, the health of either man, Biden deciding not to run, various scandals, more or fewer random shootings, debates, weather catastrophes, etc. — could possibly affect the outcome of that election. I'll bet something within thirty days makes a big difference.
A friend of mine who'd vote for a cockroach before he'd vote for a Republican is delighted Donald is running. He thinks it means utter chaos and bloody infighting for the G.O.P. and there seem to be folks in that party who feel the same way. I think we're in truly uncharted territory as to what will happen…and I don't want to hear predictions until at least there's some solid polling on who'll be the nominee. I wouldn't even assume either of those guys will be on the ticket.
Right now, I have more important things to think about…like I'm realizing that the most exercise I will ever get out of my old stationary bike — the one that no longer works — is getting it down the stairs and off to some sort of dump or recycling center, and then getting the new one upstairs and assembled.
I reminded you yesterday that badges for WonderCon are now on sale. I should have also reminded you that your badges will cost you less bucks if you buy them by January 8, 2023. And there's a big hint there that they're not going to sell out soon…but they will probably sell out. If you wanna go, don't wait too long.
One of my favorite people was the late Daws Butler, voice of Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound and so many more great animated characters. Just a lovely, lovely talented man. We have here seven commercials for Snowdrift shortening…and I believe Daws did more than voices for these. I think he was involved in the writing of these commercials. He isn't even heard in the last one. I think the voice of the wolf in that one is Herschel Bernardi. Daws did do the voice of the rich guy in the first six…
Here in Los Angeles, we still don't know who our new mayor will be. As of earlier today, Karen Bass has 52.15% of the vote and Rick Caruso has 47.85% — but whatever news media might make a projection and "call the race" hasn't done so yet, perhaps for good reason.
For what it's worth, I voted for Bass but this is not a race I care about as much as some others. The mayor of Los Angeles, whoever it is, doesn't have enough power to drastically change things…at least not as much as mayors of other big cities have. And we'll probably never know this but I am curious though to what extent people did or did not vote for Mr. Caruso, a very wealthy real estate developer, because his profession made them think he might be kinda like Donald Trump.
Anyway, the L.A. Times just ran this explainer about why the vote is taking so long to count. It might be of interest to folks who think there's cheating afoot whenever Candidate A takes an early lead in the counting and then suddenly, in the wee small hours of the morning, Candidate B overtakes Candidate A.
I was perusing old MAD magazine issues from the 1980s and I have been wondering about the time that Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder returned to illustrate numerous articles. What I'm curious about is why the art was credited to both together (and signed "WEHK"). I know that in the original comic book days, Kurtzman did the writing and I guess story layouts and Elder/Davis/Wood/Severin did the actual drawing, but in the 80s the writers are all from the Usual Gang of Idiots. So did WE and HK split duties? Did Harvey do the basic layouts and Will the rest? (A few articles have artwork credited to Kurtzman alone, in his distinctive style; the joint works are all in the Elder style.) Or did Elder do all the work but agree to share credit for whatever reason?
I put this very question to Nick Meglin, who was co-editor of MAD back then. His answer was kinda what I expected: "Harvey and Will figure out between them who'll do what and they do it and turn it in to us."
The assembly line method by which most comic books have been produced has convinced a lot of people that if two artists work on a story, one did all the art in pencil and then the other went over the pages and finished the art in ink. That's one way to do it but it's not the only way to do it. In newspaper strips especially, one sees many different divisions of labor…different ways in which the lead artist might employ assistants.
Al Capp sometimes laid-out Li'l Abner, sometimes he had assistants do it, sometimes they penciled, sometimes they inked. Often, Capp would ink the characters' heads (especially the ladies) and maybe the hands. Then again, I have an original Li'l Abner Sunday page which I think is pure Capp.
The later years of Steve Canyon, Milton Caniff sometimes penciled but often Dick Rockwell penciled and usually, Rockwell inked. Sometimes, Rockwell inked everything. Sometimes, he inked everything but the faces of recurring characters, including Steve. And sometimes, Caniff did some strips by himself.
Every Buick that comes down the conveyor belt on a given day may have had fifty people work on it and each one did the exact same thing on each Buick. Comics don't work like that, especially when artists work together, as opposed to collaborating through an editor. Harvey and Will were very close and their collaborations on Little Annie Fanny were done all different ways with many others participating, "who did what" often varying from panel to panel. In most of their jobs together, I would imagine that Kurtzman did most of the layouts and some of the penciling and Elder did the rest…but it wasn't necessarily the same split on every job.
And you can get yours here. The convention is Friday-thru-Sunday from March 24 to 26 at the Anaheim Convention Center. 412,000 square feet of comic book convention…and this one usually has a lot of comic books!
