Monthly Archives: June 2010

Gene Lyons on things people believe long after they've been disproven. Nothing will ever convince my friend Roger there weren't Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and that cutting taxes for the rich doesn't increase revenues for all.

I usually go to Ken Levine's blog to read something very funny. The other day, I found something sad there: This piece about how one of his favorite restaurants has closed. Anna's over on Pico in West Los Angeles was one of my favorites, as well — for the general friendliness, the comfortable atmosphere and the fine cuisine. I especially liked a dish called Cannelloni Napoletana that was altogether delightful…a mixture of cheese and meat with some barely-detectable spinach, all rolled in a large homemade, crepe-like egg noodle and doused with their fine meat sauce. I'm going to miss it and I'm also going to miss their waiters. Anna's was staffed by seasoned professionals who worked there for decades — not teens or outta-work actors temping while awaiting a permanent career.

Actually, this is the second time I've lost a favorite Italian restaurant at that location. Anna's opened in 1969 in the same building that had previously housed the best place I ever found to eat pasta…an establishment called Zito's. To this day, when I go to a new Italian eatery, it's with the silent hope that it will have a meat sauce like the dark, rich one that Mama Zito used to whip up in her kitchen there. It was quite unlike any I've found since.

A dinner at Zito's was a special treat when I was a kid but it was even better when we did take out. That was because I'd get at least two meals, if not three, for the price of one. Mrs. Zito ran the kitchen. Mr. Zito ran everything else. They both knew our family as regulars and extended a fine, generous offer to us. When we went in for a "to go" order, we'd take in one of my mother's big pots with a lid on it. Allegedly, Mrs. Zito would put in one portion of her spaghetti and meat sauce…but it was usually more like two-and-a-half orders. There'd be enough pasta for two good-sized meals plus enough extra sauce that if my mother cooked a package of Buitoni spaghetti at home, Mrs. Zito's overage could cover that, too. So for about five bucks, I got three full dinners of the best food I ever had in my life.

There was something magical about the food there. The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Zito was in my high school class and I briefly considered trying to woo her. I didn't have any romantic interest in Joanne Zito and she had none whatsoever in me. Still, I briefly considered trying to marry her so I could learn the family recipes and then file for divorce. It would have been worth it.

In June of '69, Joanne and I both graduated from University High in West Los Angeles. Following the ceremony, we — my parents, my Aunt Dot and my Uncle Nathan and I — were all going to go out and celebrate. I suggested Zito's, which was close by and which we all loved. Aunt Dot, for one of those odd Aunt Dot reasons, insisted we all go way, way downtown to Little Joe's, a celebrated downtown Italian restaurant where none of us had ever eaten. I argued that since it was my graduation day, we ought to go where I wanted. My father suggested that we work out some sort of compromise between what I wanted and what Aunt Dot wanted…and then we did what she wanted. My father, like you can't tell, was a Democrat.

"You can go to Zito's anytime," Aunt Dot said, which didn't strike me as a good reason. As it turned out, she was wrong about that. I couldn't go to Zito's anytime. It closed a month or so later. A couple named Anna and Mario took the building over and opened Anna's. It was difficult to forget Zito's and judge its successor on its own merits but eventually, I decided that if I measured every Italian restaurant against Zito's, I'd never enjoy pasta again. Anna's wasn't Zito's but it was a darn good place to eat…and successful. Just a few years later, they leased or maybe bought the store next to them, knocked out a wall and doubled their seating capacity.

It was shortly after that that two employees — Tony and Andy — bought out Anna and Mario, kept the name and improved the food even further. Before long, a third room was added and there were nights there, back when the restaurant business was thriving, when they could have used a fourth or fifth. There was also an Anna's out in the Valley for a few years — at the corner of Sepulveda and Ventura, as I recall.

Recently, Tony and Andy got one of those offers one can't refuse…a huge sum of cash to vacate the premises. Anna's closed forever last week and a new, apparently non-Italian restaurant will soon be inhabiting that space on Pico. I didn't hear about it until I read Ken's blog…too late to rush there and have a final Cannelloni Napoletana, though that's not what I'm going to miss most. I'm going to miss the chummy ambiance, the dependability of the place and that great feeling of familiarity. Oh, yeah — and the ghosts of Zito's.

Fred Kaplan writes about those recently-uncovered Russian spies in our midst and compares them to Boris & Natasha and Spy Vs. Spy. I once showed Fred around a comic book convention and it's good to see he learned something.

Maybe somebody here will have an idea about this…

I have an iPhone. I use it in my car via a Motorola HF850 Bluetooth "hands free" connection for two things…as a phone and to play music via its iPod functions. The phone part has always worked fine and still does. But a few days ago, the music/iPod part ceased to function the same way. I can make phone calls and hear the audio through my car's speaker system. But when I play music, the music no longer comes through the car's speakers. Both functions work fine on the iPhone when it is not connected to the car.

It feels like I'm trapped in one of those technology jurisdictional disputes. If I call the guy who installed all this for me in my car, he's going to tell me the Bluetooth is working fine with the phone so the problem must be in my iPhone. But I just know that if I take the iPhone into the Apple Store, they're going to tell me the problem must be with my car installation…and anyway, I can't replicate the problem in the Apple Store. It only occurs in my car.

An Internet source yields no info on why, though the phone plays its audio through my car speakers, the music part of the same device will not. Last week, my iPhone upgraded itself to the new 4.0 software but the problem did not pop up until a few days later. It all worked fine for a time after the upgrade so it doesn't seem to be related to that.

Anyone?

Busy like you wouldn't believe. Back soon.

A few more tickets to the Comic-Con are available. These are "returned" memberships, meaning (I guess) someone bought them and then cancelled. Go here and try to get one if you need one.

Hey, remember when a bunch of my friends and I went down to the Fox Performing Arts Center in Riverside to see our pal Frank Ferrante? I wrote or at least noted that the theater was beautiful and had a great sense of history…but I didn't know then that it was where Gone With the Wind had its sneak preview. Read this when you get a chance.

Here's a long profile of Mike Huckabee, who occasionally sounds like the kind of Republican I could maybe imagine myself voting for…or at least, I might not worry a lot if it looked like he had a real shot at being president. Even though some polls peg him as the G.O.P. frontrunner, I suspect he won't be by the time it comes to pick.

As I mentioned back here, I've been involved lately in an interesting project — a series of public service animations featuring Professor Garfield. Professor Garfield looks a lot like regular old lasagna-eating Garfield except he has glasses and his adventures teach valuable lessons. I will soon be voice-directing another batch of these but I wanted to mention that the first group, which school young kids in Internet Safety and in how to avoid Cyberbullying, can now be downloaded free to your iPad. This is assuming you have an iPad. I don't but you might.

If you (like me) have no iPad, you can view the spots the primitive, old-fashioned "online" way by going to this website. It'll feel ancient and low-tech but it'll work.

If you're desperate to get a hotel room and admission to Comic-Con, you have another chance tomorrow. That's when a bunch of package deals (hotel + 4-day-pass) open up. The hotels (there are four of them) are in Mission Valley, which is not as far as it sounds — five or six miles — and there's a shuttle bus from them to the convention center. Here are the details.

Roger Ebert on confession…in movies and in life.

Not long ago here, we had some chatter about comedian Woody Woodbury, who sure sold a lot of funny records in his day. The discussion seems to have prompted announcer (and comedy album historian) Christopher Bay to do something about the paucity of Woody Woodbury fan material on the Internet. He's set up this new Facebook group devoted to the mirth-inducing Mr. Woodbury and it's already full of clips and excerpts and things that might make you want to visit.

And here's one of those tales of how not only is it a small world but the Internet is making it smaller every day. I joined Christopher's new group and promptly got a message from my friend, Elaine Ballace. Let me tell you where I know Elaine Ballace from. Elaine was one of the other kids in the classroom on Welcome Back, Kotter when I was a story editor there in 197something. She was one of the students who sat behind John Travolta or Ron Palillo and occasionally got a few lines. I once wrote a nice little bit for her where she played a cheerleader and when I see her, she still reminds me of it.

Anyway, Elaine saw I'd joined this group and wrote to ask me if I was a friend of Woody Woodbury's. I wrote back no, I've never met him; just admired his work is all. She wrote back that she was a friend of his. In fact, they had lunch just a few days ago…and she promises to invite me along, next time they get together. Boy, I love the Internet, if only for things like this.

Go check out Christopher's group on Facebook.