And here's one of my favorite episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It stars Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Larry Matthews, Richard Deacon, A Surprise Guest Star and the off-camera voices of Carl Reiner and Jerry Paris on the TV…
And you can see the cover page from the script for this episode by clicking here. The signature that's hard to make out is Rose Marie's.
Tim Hall wrote to ask…
I've never been to Las Vegas and it seems you've been there a lot. Can you give me some tips on where to stay, where to rent a car, what to avoid?
I'll try but let me point out that (a) I haven't been to the city in a number of years and (b) there are only about seventy quadrillion YouTube videos about what to do and not to do in Las Vegas. Most of them though are produced by folks who live there so maybe some don't provide the best advice for outta-towners.
First thing: In all the times I've been there, I've never driven there and I've never rented a car there. Driving and parking seem like a major hassle in that town and a huge waste of time. It can take forever to get to and from where you have to park and longer than forever to have a valet retrieve your vehicle. You'll almost think the casino plans it that way to discourage you from leaving the premises.
Add to that the traffic problem and I've never found it to be either time-efficient or cost-efficient to have an auto there, rental or otherwise. I suppose if you wanted to make a lot of day trips outside the city, it might but I don't go there to go somewhere else. A friend of mine there once said that tourists only need a car if they want to go hiking in the desert or visit one of the legal brothels outside town.
Generally, I pick my hotel based on price and location. The rooms in my price range are all pretty much the same at the major hotels so that isn't worth a lot of consideration. I stay often at Harrah's because from there, I can easily walk to The Linq, The Venetian, The Flamingo, The Cromwell, The Palazzo, The Horseshoe (formerly Bally's), Paris, Treasure Island, The Mirage, Caesars Palace, The Bellagio and a few others.
There's very little I might want to do in that town that I can't walk to if I'm staying in that cluster. There are probably 250+ places to eat in a wide array of cuisines and costs, there are several drug stores, there are several shopping malls, etc. I might want to go see a certain show somewhere but it would probably be a cheap Lyft/Uber/taxi ride, plus there's a monorail stop at Harrah's and a few free shuttles to other locations.
Downtown Las Vegas is also a nice cluster of places to stay and eat and play. I don't necessarily want to stay downtown because people are dancing and drinking and partying at all hours in the streets but if I wanted that environment, I'd stay down there. If I stayed downtown, I probably wouldn't go to The Strip and if I stayed on The Strip, I probably wouldn't go downtown.
If you stay near one end of The Strip (The Stratosphere) or the other (Mandalay Bay), you'll have a more limited list of things you can walk to but it might be enough. Mandalay Bay is a bit expensive, The Luxor is a bit less and Excalibur is even cheaper but those three hotels have the same owners. They're next to each other and linked by walkways and a short monorail. You could probably fill three days very nicely staying in one of those hotels and visiting the other two.
The Excalibur is one of the cheapest hotels on The Strip and much of its decor is laugh-out-loud kitsch. But from it, you can cross a street or two and be at New York, New York or the MGM Grand or the Tropicana.
Do some advance planning. If you go on a weekend and you want to partake of a buffet or a famous eatery, the lines can take over an hour. Vegas restaurants are increasingly moving away from "just walk in" to "make a reservation." You can make those reservations online months in advance if you know when you'll be there.
If you want to go to a show and it's one of the expensive, "hot" ones, buy tickets online well in advance. If you just want to go to a show, discount tickets are available to about two-thirds of them (not on a weekend) or a third of them (on a weekend) at several booths around the city. When I stay at Harrah's or what's now the Horseshoe, there are outlets of Tix4Vegas right outside.
And unless you have no choice, it's a good idea to not go to Vegas on the weekends. Everything's more expensive and crowded then.
Pace yourself. You can't and shouldn't try to do everything. Also pace your money, especially if you intend to gamble. Never gamble money you can't afford to lose and don't gamble on any game you don't fully understand. You can learn and play most of them online for free but recognize that not every casino has the same rules and payoffs for its table games. Also remember that two slot machines can look identical but have two very different payout schedules.
Keep an eye out for discount coupons. There may be a lot of them around and some may be available at your hotel's bell desk, concierge desk or the place where you sign up for the casino's rewards club. Sometimes, it's worth the time to sign up for those rewards clubs because they're free and they get you discounts. I haven't done it lately but I found a lot of very cheap rooms via the Caesars Rewards Club and I think you can sign up online.
But remember: Wherever you book, there may be a mandatory "resort fee" which will considerably raise the cost of that room. I once booked a stay at Harrah's via the Caesars Rewards Club for $0 a night plus a $35 Resort Fee. It was still a good price but you had to read the fine print to know exactly what you were paying. (I am not shilling for Harrah's, by the way. I just have a good history with the hotel by that name and the others that are owned by the Caesars/Harrah's company.)
Be very skeptical of "free" offers and especially avoid invites to seminars where they offer you something to sit through a sales pitch for timeshares. If you want your picture with a street performer, check the price in advance. Bring the most comfortable shoes you own. Do not drink too much or sleep too little. Keep your cell phone charged. (One of those battery-powered chargers can be a great investment.) Remember that the price of water and other necessities will be higher at the CVS or Walgreens there and even higher in the hotel gift shop. And never split tens at Blackjack…or even play it for money if you haven't played a lot on your computer without getting wiped out in ten minutes.
Most of all, remember to do what you want to do and to enjoy yourself. You'd be surprised how many people forget that's the whole point of going.
Yesterday, we had a great episode of The Phil Silvers Show here. Here's my favorite episode of The Honeymooners. Sorry it doesn't have opening or closing credits but it was written by Leonard Stern and Sydney Zelinka…
Three different folks wrote to ask me if I could recommend a good book or other way to learn how to count cards in Blackjack. No, I can't. The books I learned from are somewhere in storage and some of what was in them is probably obsolete due to rule changes. Remember: I learned this about forty years ago and I'm sure since then, there have been hundreds of new books and computer programs and tutorials. I know I did read Beat the Dealer by Edward O. Thorp, the man many credit for inventing card-counting, and Professional Blackjack by Stanford Wong, the other historic authority. But I read a lot of books.
I absolutely do not recommend card-counting if you're only in it for the money. It's harder work than you think and there will be long stretches where you can do everything absolutely right and still lose. If the dealer is dealing themselves a lot of blackjacks and pat hands, knowing the running count won't help you.
I did it for the same reason I like to work puzzles…to see if I could do it. Once I got ahead, I quit for good. I'm sure if I'd kept on playing, at some point I would have given it all back — and more. If you do try counting cards, also try the part about giving it up. It's the only way to win.
This is the second and final tale I have of a business in downtown Las Vegas called The Golden Goose…only it wasn't The Golden Goose when this one took place. The first tale, which you can read here, occurred in the eighties (I think) when The Golden Goose was what they call a "slot joint." It was a place where you could put coins into slot machines…
…and that was about it. You just put them in and you put them in and you put them in. Oh, once in a while those slot machines might give you back a few of those coins but only to fool you into thinking that your luck was changing. The premise of the occasional mini-payoffs — and I doubt it failed much — was to convince you to put those coins and others into the machine in search of that big, life-changing jackpot that would never come.
To lure you in, The Golden Goose offered an outstanding selection of freebees, none of which were worth more than the first dollar you lost on their premises. I only stopped into the place a few times and I might have left a few bucks there…but only a few. In my dozens and dozens of trips to Vegas, I played a lot of Blackjack and once in a rare while after it came along, Video Poker. Those were my only games of choice. I never played Craps, Roulette, Keno, non-video Poker, Baccarat, Pai Gow or anything else. I don't even know the rules of some of those games…a disadvantage which stops some but not all players.
In my whole life, I probably put less than thirty bucks into slot machines so The Golden Goose was of little interest to me for gaming. I just found it and the business next door fascinating. The buildings practically screamed, like an uncommonly honest hustler, "Step right up and lose your money, folks!"
And I was especially fascinated when, as I related in our previous Tale of the Golden Goose, I met that lady out front…Audrey. Her job was to lie to passers-by and get them to come in and lose money. I have no idea how often this happened but in an uncommon burst of honesty, she warned me off from the scam she was representing. Several years later in the same spot, it happened again.
The Golden Goose was located at 20 Fremont Street. Right next door at 22 Fremont Street was a sister establishment which kept changing names and what transpired within. It apparently was called Mr. Reed's around the time of our previous tale but I never set foot inside any of the ever-changing establishments at 22 Fremont. Mr. Reed's was, at various times, a bar with slot machines, a retail outlet for cheap merchandise, some kind of diner and, at one point, a strip club. At some later point, Mr. Reed's became a slot joint called Glitter Gulch and at some even later point, The Golden Goose became a strip club and then the two businesses merged into one big strip club called The Girls of Glitter Gulch.
I don't guarantee the above chronology. I'm fairly sure though that in 2016, the combined Girls of Glitter Gulch business closed down and the following year, it and several neighboring businesses were demolished. That whole section of Fremont Street has changed tremendously starting in 1994 when a five-block stretch of Fremont was closed to traffic and turned into a pedestrian mall. Soon, a giant canopy/light show was erected overhead called The Fremont Street Experience.
On one visit in the mid-eighties, I stayed at the Golden Nugget, which was then the classiest hotel on Fremont Street. This was before the area's makeover and it was not hard then to be the classiest hotel downtown. About all you needed to achieve that stature was maids.
While downtown, I couldn't help but walk past The Golden Goose — or rather, 20 Fremont Street where The Golden Goose had been. It was now The Girls of Glitter Gulch and no less sleazy for the conversion. Where once it had been a slot joint that lured unsuspecting tourists in by making them think they'd get rich, it was now a strip club that was no less subtle in luring in men for bilking purposes.
Out front, there was a giant video screen which ran, over and over, a video of beautiful women. I mean, really gorgeous ladies. A gent in a bright purple sport coat stood outside, trying to convince passers-by of all genders to come in and enjoy the show. He kept yelling over and over, as the signs proclaimed, "Free Admission!" It struck me that he might have been standing in the exact same place where, in our previous Tale of The Golden Goose, that lady named Audrey tried to tempt me to go in and get a free keychain with my initials on it.
I had to stop and question the guy. The conversation went roughly like this — and if I sound more naïve that usual, it's because I was trying to act like someone with the I.Q. of Gomer Pyle. Usually, that does not require a lot of acting on my part…
HIM: Just pass through those doors, sir, and see some of the most beautiful woman on this planet. Free admission!
ME: The ladies on the video up there…will I see them?
HIM: You will see women even more beautiful than the women on that sign.
ME: Then I won't see the ladies on the screen?
HIM: You might. I'm not sure which ladies are working at the moment.
ME: That blonde lady dressed in red…is she inside?
HIM: She might be. She might be. I can't keep track of them all. Just step on in and look around for yourself. Admission is free. If she isn't working, I'm sure you'll find several girls who are even more attractive. It won't cost you anything to go in and see.
ME: But it is free, right? Because I don't have my wallet with me. They won't try to charge me anything?
I'm compressing the whole Q-and-A way down here. I asked that guy in the purple sport coat questions like that until he realized I was putting on an act and he began laughing. Finally, he dropped his voice and spoke to me, man-to-man in a confidential tone…
HIM: Listen, admission is free but there's a two-drink minimum. The second you walk in, they spring it on you. Someone will ask you what you want to drink and they'll immediately bring you two glasses of whatever it is and a bill for it…
ME: I don't drink alcohol.
HIM: Doesn't matter. They don't serve alcohol in there. But let's say you want a Coke. They'll instantly bring you two Cokes and a bill for nine bucks each, plus the waitress will expect at least a two-dollar tip. So admission is free but once you're admitted, it's twenty bucks. And then the girls will go to work on you and, believe me, you'll pay. You won't get any action but you'll pay. You were putting me on when you said you didn't have any money, right?
ME: Right.
HIM: Well, you won't if you go in there. And you're right. None of the ladies in the video have ever set foot in this shithole. Now, I've enjoyed this but I have to get back to work.
ME: Sure. Thanks for being the most occasionally-honest person in Las Vegas.
Which is one of the things I said to Audrey outside The Golden Goose even if I didn't mention it in Tale #1. Same location. Same kind of scam. And someone who had a moment of conscience and warned me not to buy what they were selling.
It's been a while since I was last in Vegas and even longer since I ventured downtown. At least under the Fremont Street Canopy, they've largely obliterated the kind of rip-off, drain-your-wallet dry little businesses that used to be at 20 Fremont and 22 Fremont. This is not to suggest that their replacements are any less mercenary; merely that they do it with more class.
Where a lot of those crummy little places were, there's now a state-o'-the-art luxury hotel called Circa which opened in October of 2020 in the midst of The Pandemic. It was the first hotel-casino to be built from scratch in downtown Las Vegas since 1980.
It offers 8,000 square-feet of casino space, a 35-story tower, a nine-story 1,000-space parking garage, five full-service restaurants, six bars and lounges, a three-story stadium-style sportsbook, six swimming pools some of which allow you to swim while watching a 143-foot screen made of 14 million megapixels.
It sounds and looks like a great place to stay and play…but you know what it probably doesn't have that used to be in that space? An occasionally-honest person outside like Audrey or the guy in the purple sport coat who'll warn you that if you go inside, they'll take all your money.
Hey! Are you in the mood to watch a whole episode of The Phil Silvers Show, also known as Sgt. Bilko? Of course you are. Here's one of my favorite episodes. It will make you laugh and it will also answer the question of why Nat Hiken thought Joe E. Ross was so funny that he cast the man on this show and later on Car 54, Where Are You? Mr. Ross was always funny as long as he was on a show produced by Nat Hiken…
William Berman wrote to ask…
Someone told me a story that involved you. It took place at a San Diego Con and a bunch of top comic book artists were standing around in the main hall and you walked up to them. Impishly, just to see their reaction, you said to them, "Well, I just had lunch with the best artist in the room."
Several of the artists seemed offended and they all looked at you and said, menacingly, "And just who do you think that is?" You then told them and they all thought for a second, then agreed. Some of them supposedly said, "I'd give anything if I could draw like him."
The person who told me this story did not remember who you told them it was. I guessed Jack Kirby but my friend was fairly sure this was after Jack passed away. Is this story true and if so, can you tell me who the artist was who you said was the best in the room and everyone agreed?
Yes, it's true. As for who I named, maybe some of you would like to think for a moment and formulate a guess. Then, you can click the following link and find out that it was this guy. And by the way, "impishly" is the exact way I said it.
Sergio and I talk about the current Groo mini-series and about the wonderful colorist who has joined the Groo Crew…
Yesterday, I posted this video link to Jackie Gleason's one-and-only appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Jim Held wants to know…
Any take on why this was the only time Gleason appeared on The Tonight Show?
Did he have something he really wanted to plug and his handlers/producers just thought that Tonight was the place to do it? Did Gleason feel he wasn't treated with the massive deference he thought he deserved? Or did Carson and his handlers just think Jackie was a pain in the butt and not worth dealing with any more?
No, I think this is all easily explainable as a matter of geography. Mr. Gleason moved his TV show and residence to Florida in 1964, less than two years after Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show. He was probably not on before that move because he was a CBS star and Carson was on NBC and back then, the networks really frowned on having on guests who top-lined shows on a competing channel.
It happened but it didn't happen often. When you watch old talk shows, you'll often see someone mention that they have a show on "another network" as if it's a curse word to say that network's name. By the time that went out of fashion, Gleason was happily a resident in Florida and he rarely left. He didn't like to fly and usually when he did, it was because he was being paid a lot of money to appear in some big movie. You'll notice in the video, he mentions he was in town shooting a film with Tom Hanks.
He popped up occasionally on TV shows shot in New York or Hollywood but very rarely. One of the rare times was on this 1968 episode of Here's Lucy which also featured Jack Benny. Earlier in '68, Gleason was in L.A. to shoot his scenes in Skidoo and then How to Commit Marriage, back-to-back. I don't know where How to Commit Marriage was filmed but a lot of Skidoo was shot at Paramount and so was Here's Lucy. Maybe Lucy's producers just heard he was on the lot and wrote him into the script…
(By the way: The gent playing the tour guide in that clip is the legendary Sid Gould, who worked with everyone but especially Lucy.)
I doubt Gleason didn't want to appear on Mr. Carson's show and I doubt Johnny didn't want him. It was probably an inability to coordinate Jackie's schedule with whatever he was in town to do.
Steven Deal wrote to ask…
Hi, Just curious if you have given any thought to the recent announcement from AMC theaters regarding tiered pricing?
No. Not really. My moviegoing is very rare these days and I almost never go to AMC theaters. What I have thought about is how the current trend in American business seems to be to see how much they can raise prices before it becomes cost-ineffective. Las Vegas is currently a good example of this. I'm sure the price increases there on hotel rooms, restaurants, shows, tourist attractions (etc.) are driving some tourists away but apparently not in sufficient number to cause them to stop. The shows still sell out. The buffets still have long lines. And so on.
Every large business these days seems to have a division that is in charge of determining how much more money they can charge for what they offer…and who can blame them? If you could make more money by charging more for whatever you sell or do, why wouldn't you charge more? Someone at AMC obviously decided this was worth a try.
They probably said, "Hey, people will pay more for good seats at concerts, plays and other live shows. Maybe they'll pay it for movies." If it doesn't work, it should be a small matter to roll back prices or, more likely, keep those prices higher but make discount coupons more available. That's what Vegas does. They don't lower prices. They just offer discounts judiciously. Some people would be happier getting a 50% off ticket to a show than to have that show cost half as much in the first place.
I see two potential problems to the AMC plan. One is that people don't all agree on the ideal place to sit in a movie theater. At a live show, as close to the stage as possible is usually best unless it's an act that smashes watermelons or something. At a movie, some people like to be farther back. Some like dead center. I used to go out with a lady who didn't care where we sat as long as there was no one in front of us and no stranger next to her. I like an aisle seat where my right leg can extend out when it doesn't inconvenience anyone else.
The other possible problem: At a showing where the theater is half-empty, what's to stop people in the cheapest seats from just moving down to the expensive ones once the movie starts? Is the theater really going to have an employee watching for this and send someone out to make someone move? Sounds disruptive to the other patrons. My guess is that many of the theater's staffers would just look the other way.
But hey, who knows? Maybe AMC can make this work. I doubt though they'll be getting much of my money either way.
If you've been to any Disney theme park, you've probably had Dole Whip…usually the pineapple kind, though they make it in many flavors. I know people for whom no trip to a Magic Kingdom is complete without a Dole Whip. I gave up dessert-type foods many years ago but before I did, I loved Dole Whip and I especially loved the orange variety.
Wanna make it at home? There are dozens of YouTube videos by people who tell you how to make it using various combinations of frozen pineapple, ice cream, milk, sweetened condensed milk or other ingredients. And the Dole company once released this recipe which uses frozen pineapple, a banana, powdered sugar, coconut milk and lime juice. Which one will taste just like the Dole Whip you got at Disneyland?
Answer: None of them. The pineapple Dole Whip at Disneyland is made from a mix and here's the ingredients list: Sugar, Dextrose, Maltodextrin, Coconut Oil, Citric Acid, Contains 2% Or Less Of Each Of The Following: Color (Carrot Concentrate, Blackcurrant Concentrate), Ascorbic Acid, Stabilizers (Guar Gum, Cellulose Gum, Xanthan Gum), Natural Flavor, Modified Food Starch, Mono & Diglycerides, Silicon Dioxide (Anticaking).
So if you want your homemade Dole Whip to taste like the one at the theme park, you need to get all that stuff…or maybe it would be easier to buy the mix and a home ice cream maker. Apparently, back when I used to eat it, it wasn't dairy-free as it is now.
From 10/18/1985: Jackie Gleason makes his first and only appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It's a great conversation but Mr. Gleason gets a little confused about The Honeymooners. He started being Ralph Kramden on Cavalcade of Stars, a live series he starred in on the DuMont Television Network in 1950 and 1951. In 1952, he jumped to CBS for higher pay and a program called The Jackie Gleason Show on which more "Honeymooners" sketches appeared.
That was an hour-long variety show. In 1955, Gleason insisted on suspending that series and instead made the 39 classic half-hour episodes of The Honeymooners and then the following year, he went back to the hour format. It went on and off CBS a couple times before it ended for good in 1970. Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton appeared now and then on all those shows.
Here he is with Johnny in 1985…
Just before the Super Bowl, I wrote here about my near-total disinterest in sports. That prompted Robert Rose to write in and ask…
As a follow-up to your note about not being a fan of sports, I don't question that part of it; I'm not much of a sports fan myself, though I think a bit more than you. I do like to attend the occasional baseball game, and I may actually watch the Super Bowl, or part of it, but that's more of a social activity — watching it with friends — than because I care much about the outcome.
But I am curious about your statement that "I still haven't paid enough attention to football to know how it's played." I can understand not following it as an adult, but how did you avoid it as a kid? I'm ten years younger than you, but growing up and going to public schools, I had to participate in P.E. classes, which means I had to learn enough about the rules of sports like baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, and soccer to at least participate, however poorly. I may not know enough to give a coherent explanation of the infield fly rule or to always distinguish between offsides and illegal procedure, but surely enough to follow the basics of what's going on.
I'm just wondering how you avoided this; or did you learn just enough to minimally get by, and promptly forgot it all after graduating from high school?
Well, I don't recall ever playing soccer in high school. What we played of the other sports you mention were simplified, modified versions of the games that were clearly not what professional teams played. Even then, I'm not sure I completely understood the rules but I guess I understood enough to get by. It helps that when you're as lousy at sports as I was, your teammates rarely pass you the ball. I was never a real active player in any of these activities so I could fake it.
In baseball, I remember we had a rule that when you hit the ball, there was a prescribed way to lay down the bat before you ran for first. Neatness in doing that counted in a way it never does in the Major or probably even the Minor Leagues. The one time at bat that I somehow managed to wallop the ball far enough for it to maybe be a home run, Coach Hawkesworth — yes, I remember his name — called me "out" because he didn't like the way I laid down the bat.
And the version of football we played resembled what the teams in the Super Bowl are playing about as much as an Egg McMuffin resembles Eggs Benedict. So you're right: Once I graduated high school, I forgot every bit of my athletic experience except for Coach Hawkesworth robbing me of the only home run of my life.
I was just plain lousy in sports, even back when I was underweight instead of over. I've always been one of the clumsiest people on this planet — the kind who can't cross the street without almost tripping on the white line. One time when I was working on That's Incredible!, Fran Tarkenton tossed me a football from about eight feet away and the ball bounced off my hands, hit me in the nose and then I stumbled picking it up. Fran told me I was the worst catcher-of-footballs he'd ever seen in his life.
Since a lot of people thought he was the best thrower of them ever, I figured he must know what he was talking about. It almost felt like an honor.
At last! I've been urging someone to make a YouTube video performing the great parody of the song "Downtown" that the late Frank Jacobs wrote for MAD. My longtime e-mail friend Corey Klemow has picked up the dare/challenge/urging/whatever you want to call it.
I don't think Frank meant for it to refer to the specific restaurant by that name…if said restaurant even existed in 1967 but that's beside the point. You're a good (and brave) man, Corey Klemow…
It should come as a surprise to no one that some of the right-wing folks on Fox News do not believe a lot of what they put on the air. If you're not up on the recent revelations, you might want to read this article by Jeremy Stahl. He focuses on text messages from Tucker Carlson that show Carlson thought a lot of it was rubbish but there are similar e-mails from Hannity, Ingraham and other Fox personalities. It's all coming out because of the lawsuit that the makers of Dominion Voting Machines have brought against Fox News. And it can't help Fox's defense that there's all this evidence that the channel broadcasts news they don't really believe.
That's one of the few things I'm following in the news these days. Another is the way the New York Times and other supposedly-progressive entities are sounding pretty non-progressive (and not all that well-informed) on the topic of Gender Reassignment. Read this article by Christina Cautericci. That is all.
