Monthly Archives: October 2021

This is my almost-annual post about why I don't like Halloween. Each year when I do run it, I make a few updates and changes but if you've read it in the past, you already know…

At the risk of coming off like the Ebenezer Scrooge of a different holiday, I have to say: I've never liked Halloween. For one thing, I'm not a big fan of horror movies or of people making themselves up to look disfigured or like rotting corpses. One time when I was in the company of Ray Bradbury at a convention, someone shambled past us looking like they just rose up from a grave and Ray said something about how people parade about like that to celebrate life by mocking death. Maybe to some folks it's a celebration of life but to me, it's just ugly.

I've also never been comfy with the idea of kids going door-to-door to take candy from strangers. Hey, what could possibly go wrong with that? I did it a few years when I was but a child, not so much because I wanted to but because it seemed to be expected of me. I felt silly in the costume and when we went to neighbors' homes and they remarked how cute we were…well, I never liked to be cute in that way. People talk to you like you're a puppy dog. The man two houses down…before he gave me my treat, I thought he was going to tell me to roll over and beg for it.

When I got home, I had a bag of "goodies" I didn't want to eat. In my neighborhood, you got a lot of licorice and Mounds bars and Jordan Almonds, none of which I liked even before I found out I was allergic to them. I would say that a good two-thirds of the candy I hauled home on a Halloween Eve went right into the trash can and I felt bad about that. Some nice neighbor had paid good money for it, after all.

And some of it, of course, was candy corn — the cole slaw of sugary treats. Absolutely no one likes candy corn. Don't write to me and tell me you do because I'll just have to write back and call you a liar. No one likes candy corn. No one, do you hear me?

I wonder if anyone's ever done any polling to find out what percentage of Halloween candy that is purchased and handed-out is ever eaten. And I wonder how many kids would rather not dress up or disfigure themselves for an evening if anyone told them they had a choice. Where I live, they seem to have decided against it. Each year, I stock up and no one comes. For a while there, I wound up eating a couple big sacks of leftover candy myself every year.

That didn't seem healthy so one year, I actually did this: When I was at the market picking out candy to have on hand for the little masked people, I picked a kind I didn't like. So that year when no one came, instead of eating a whole bag of candy, I found myself throwing out a whole bag of candy…and wondering why that had seemed like a good idea. What I now do is that I always have on hand, not for Halloween but for me, little bags of Planter's Peanuts and if any trick-or-treaters ever knock on my door, that's what they'll get.

So I didn't like the dress-up part and I didn't like the trick-or-treating part. There were guys in my class at school who invited me to go along on Halloween when they threw eggs at people and overturned folks' trash cans and redecorated homes with toilet paper…and I never much liked pranks. One year the day after Thanksgiving, two friends of mine were laughing and bragging how they'd trashed some old lady's yard and I thought, "That's not funny. It's just being an a-hole."

Over the years, as I've told friends how I feel, I've been amazed how many agree with me. In a world where people now feel more free to say that which does not seem "politically correct," I feel less afraid to own up to my dislike of Halloween. About the only thing I ever liked about it was the second-best Charlie Brown special.

So that's why I'll be home tonight and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Ted Cruz costume. I'm fine with every other holiday. Just not this one. I do not believe there is a War on Christmas in this country. That's just something the Fox News folks dreamed up because they believe their audience needs to be kept in a perpetual state of outrage about something. But if there's ever a War on Halloween, I'm enlisting. And bringing the eggs.

In the early days of YouTube, one of the most-watched videos was of two fellows who called themselves Men in Coats and did weird, funny stuff. A fuzzy video of their act — a bit different from the one below but made from the same longer video — got zillions of hits and even this one (with better video) has over 11 million views. I linked to it in 2005.

At the time, I asked who these guys were and where they came from and if they were still performing. I got no answers whatsoever then and I'll probably get the same number now. But who were they and what happened to them? Guys who get that many YouTube hits ought to have real and impressive careers, shouldn't they?

• One sign that COVID-19 is on the decline in my area: The supermarkets no longer have employees outside their stores sanitizing each shopping cart after each use.

Artie Forrest — he's the guy on the right in the above photo — was one of the busiest and nicest television directors in the business. Among the shows he directed (and sometimes produced) were Wonderama, The Mike Douglas Show, The Dick Cavett Show, Whose Line Is It Anyway?, That's Incredible! and many annual Rose Bowl Parades and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parades. He was especially facile at live shows — or programs where you had to get it in one take like game shows and telethons. He produced and directed many of Labor Day Jerry Lewis telethons.

I asked him once how he picked up his skills for live or one-take shows and he told me a half-hour of great stories about being Jackie Gleason's personal cameraman. He often had to "cover" Gleason (control the main camera on the guy) with no rehearsal on live shows. You had to be good to do that job…and yes, when you watch many of the classic Honeymooners episodes, you're looking at a shot taken by Artie Forrest.

He was a lovely man, beloved by everyone who ever worked with him. Sinatra loved him. Remember when Frank brought Dean Martin out to surprise Jerry Lewis on the telethon? Frank worked that out with Artie. And Jerry loved him and Jackie loved him and his crews loved him. I remember sitting with him in the control room of a TV show he was about to direct and Artie was telling me a great dirty joke.

Suddenly, he noticed that the crew wasn't doing the set-up as fast as they should have been doing it. He interrupted the dirty joke to get on the P.A. system to yell at them in very foul, furious language and they instantly sped up and finished as Artie finished telling me the dirty joke. And the crew loved him for what he'd said and felt very bad that he had to say it.

He was a very wonderful man who did his job very, very well. Artie died a few days ago at the age of 95. You can read more about him here.

Another Charlie Frye video. Being friends with this guy helps me understand how Jimmy Olsen probably felt. It's kinda neat to have a friend with amazing powers…

I'm quite pleased to be a part of this handsome volume that Abrams Books is releasing in the next few days. I got my contributor copy the other day and I'm still going over and over it, especially the parts I had nothing to do with. It's Fantastic Four #1 — the issue that started the Marvel Super-Heroes dynasty — with its panels enlarged and analyzed and discussed.

This was done once before and I was a part of it and not too thrilled with the way it came out. This is much better, thanks to Charles Kochman at Abrams Books and to Chip Kidd, designer extraordinaire. It's called Fantastic Four #1 Panel by Panel.

So you understand: The book is 8-1/2" by 11" in hardcover. In the back of it is a full reprint of F.F. #1 as it originally appeared. It has not been retouched or recolored or altered. They borrowed a copy in great condition from a collector who was willing to share his precious copy with the world and it was carefully and perfectly photographed by Geoff Spear.

The same material is printed in the front of the book but there, the panels have been enlarged — one panel to a page or sometimes one panel covers two pages. This gives us a chance to get up close and personal with the artwork…to see it as you've never seen it before. I keep doing this and it's fascinating. I see what Jack Kirby did better than I ever did before.

Between these two presentations of F.F. #1, there are essays. Chip Kidd wrote one about the making of the book. Tom Brevoort wrote one about Kirby's page composition and apparent changes made in the art. I revised and expanded mine from the previous attempt at this kind of thing. It's kind of a deep dive into who did what on the comic.

So this is me recommending this book and offering you this link to "advance order" one from Amazon. I put that in quotes since it is all printed — like I said, I have my copies — and it should be out this coming week. Hope you like it as much as I liked being a part of it.

Let's cover some loose ends. Folks are writing me with different answers to the question of whether Not Tonight, Henry! is public domain. Don't send me any more notes about this. I've decided it doesn't matter to me. The film is downloadable over at Internet Archive in case you can't live without a copy on your hard drive and you're one of the few folks who doesn't know how to download from YouTube.

I have a number of messages from folks asking what panels I'm hosting at the Comic-Con Special Edition in San Diego on Thanksgiving Weekend…and a few asking me if they can be on one of them. I hope this event will be a grand success but I won't be there to see it. I've decided I won't be comfy enough being around large quantities of human beings by November 26-28 so I'll be Comic-Conning here at Casa Evanier and not hosting panels there.

In the last month or so, three different people have written to me to ask why MAD is no longer being published. But it is. It's bi-monthly and almost all reprints but it's still available at comic book shops, though probably not all the newsstands where it was once available. Some of the reruns are very well chosen — the latest issue reprints a Kurtzman/Davis story from MAD #1! — and reproduced well, which is especially impressive when you consider who's editing MAD these days: No one! No one is listed as editor. I'm told the selections are being made by Suzy Hutchinson but her title is Art Director and she's doing a fine job. Maybe more magazines should have no editors.

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Lastly for now: In my obit for Mort Sahl, I wrote, "I hope someone now will put together a big American Masters kind of thing with clips of him at his best." Several of you, including Jeff Abraham and Steve Stoliar, wrote to remind me that one of my favorite producers of this kind of thing, Robert Weide, did indeed do just that and Mr. Weide has put a copy of it up on Vimeo. Here it is if you want to watch it.

I've watched about half and there's some great stuff in there. But I have to say that I lost a lot of respect for Mr. Sahl when he became a salesperson for Jim Garrison's "investigation" of the J.F.K. assassination, which I thought proved its theory about as well as The My Pillow Guy has proven Trump got more votes than Biden.  Sahl was about equally willing to admit to being wrong about anything.

And I lost another chunk when Sahl was making the rounds of the talk shows to argue that women were intellectually inferior to men and should all kind of accept their second-class lot in life. I'll be interested to see if that's included in the remainder of the documentary. I still admire so much of what Mort Sahl did there were times when you had to specify you were talking about an earlier time in his career.

We hear a lot these days about "Critical Race Theory." I have a theory about "Critical Race Theory." It's that very few people using that term know what "Critical Race Theory" really is, nor do they care. It's just a handy boogeyman to scare others…a way of saying, "Your children are being indoctrinated by being taught something about race that you don't want them to believe." The truth or falsity of the "theory" doesn't matter.

"Indoctrinated" is also a scary term. "In schools these days, your children are being indoctrinated about how words should be spelled or how to add one number to another and arrive at a third number."

And as Eric Boehlert points out, the press is writing a lot about "Critical Race Theory" without pointing out that (a) no one using the term seems to define it and (b) "Critical Race Theory" is really not being taught anywhere.

Hey! If you were thinking of ordering a DVD of Not Tonight, Henry!, hold off. I didn't think to look on YouTube and see if it was there but as about eight of you all just e-mailed me within a few minutes of each other, it is. It's here. This looks like a slightly different version of the movie than the one on the DVD and it's a better print with better color. Ignore the naked women. Go watch Hank Henry's reactions and takes, and listen to some of the Paul Frees narration. That is, if you're over eighteen years of age.

And does anyone know how to look up and see if this film in public domain? Given that it's on a DVD that sells for seven bucks, it may well be.

Hank Henry (1906–1981) was one of the last working comedians who started in and largely stayed in the realm of burlesque. At one point, he was reportedly teamed, Abbott & Costello style, with the handsome, popular straightman, Robert Alda. Robert's son Alan later became quite well known as an actor. Henry also shared stages with the real Abbott and Costello as well as Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Red Buttons and many more.

As burlesque died its inevitable death, those who didn't graduate to the Gleason-Silvers level settled in one of the few places where their art form continued to thrive: Las Vegas. For years, Hank Henry was a superstar there — and only there — in revues, mostly at the old Silver Slipper casino. Some press clippings from the sixties call him the longest-running headliner in town…a position now shared by Penn & Teller.

When Hank Henry held the title, it was an honest but tough way to make a buck. Six nights a week (occasionally, seven) they'd do shows…sometimes four a night. And the four might well be spaced at 9 PM, 11 PM, 1 AM and at 2:30 AM. That's right: I said 2:30 AM. These days, very little entertainment is offered in Vegas or anywhere after Midnight but Hank Henry would be onstage at the Silver Slipper with a batch of stooges and semi-naked women until like four in the morning…with often, no cover charge, no minimum and free admission.

This has been floating around for a while on the Internet: An ad for The Bela Lugosi Revue, a show at the Silver Slipper starring Mr. Lugosi and Hank Henry plus the usual array of indecently-clad ladies along with Terre Sheehan, "The Girl in the Champagne Glass."  If I'd been her manager, I'd have changed her name to Olive. Sad to say, this was probably not the most embarrassing thing Bela did in his later years when he needed money.

But this post is about Hank Henry, who was one of those comedians people raved about. One of his many fans was Johnny Carson. In the days when Johnny would take two weeks off from The Tonight Show and play Vegas, he could often be found at one of Henry's 1 AM or 2:30 AM shows. Johnny once described him as "Rodney Dangerfield before there was Rodney Dangerfield."

An even better fan was Frank Sinatra who loved Hank, brought the whole Rat Pack to see him and even gave Hank roles in many of his films. You can see Hank Henry, usually playing a not-too-bright mobster in The Joker Is Wild, Pal Joey, Ocean's 11, Sergeants 3, Robin and the 7 Hoods and a few films that didn't star Ol' Blue Eyes.

But the greatest record of Hank Henry's work may be the 1960 movie he starred in, Not Tonite, Henry!, also sometimes spelled as Not Tonight, Henry! Earlier that year, Russ Meyer had released The Immoral Mr. Teas — the first in a wave of "nudie" films and featuring at least one of the same pairs of breasts. N.T.H. was the same kind of film with a slightly higher budget and a slightly wittier script. Note the use of the word "slightly."

It's a stupid film in a stupid genre with a stupid storyline full of stupid reasons for women (probably all strippers or burlesque stars) to be naked and it's about as arousing as watching your electric Ronco Food Dehydrator turn chunks of fresh pineapple into styrofoam. But the sheer "period" inanity of it is amusing and two performers — neither of them naked women — bring some value.

One, of course, is Hank Henry. The guy was funny. If someone had given him a network sitcom with a decent script, he could have been William Bendix or Ozzie Nelson. Throughout the film, he does these long-suffering looks into camera which almost made me think he was asking the audience to take pity on him for being in this movie.

And the other standout is the narrator. The credits say "Narrated by Larry Burrell" and Mr. Burrell was an occasional newsman who often played newsmen or reporters on TV shows. But it's not his voice in the movie, which kind of has two narrators. There's a serious gent who is not Larry Burrell. He in turn introduces the eminent authority on male/female relations, "Dr. Finster," who also is not Larry Burrell.

Both announcers are Paul Frees. And as Dr. Finster, he babbles on for over an hour in the same voice he would begin using months later as Professor Ludwig Von Drake, occasional host of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color on NBC. If you love Paul Frees and that voice, he's a far greater reason to watch this movie than any stripper with her shirt off. And if you respect the vast voiceover skills of Mr. Frees from cartoons and real movies, you'll be more impressed with how he handles the most fatuous copy he was ever forced — at gunpoint, perhaps — to read into a microphone.

I had always heard about this film and I remember it being plugged in Playboy when I was officially too young to be looking at Playboy. The nekkid women in stills from this movie didn't intrigue me even then — too impersonal, too much like mannequins — but I was curious about Hank Henry. And I certainly didn't know that the narrator sounded like every great historical figure who had been visited by Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

I am not recommending the quality of this movie for there is little. I am also not endorsing the way it depicts women, which is mostly as statues to be admired from afar…and that's about all they're good for in Henry's world. I am not even praising the film transfer of the DVD of it I bought off Amazon. A few minutes in, I was wondering why they hadn't made this movie in color and then I realized they had. The print I was watching was just too faded.

But I bought it because I had a $5 gift certificate for Amazon and I stumbled across this movie which I've been curious about since about age thirteen…and it was $6.98. I figured it was worth two bucks to retire that curiosity forever. I think I more than got my money's worth but if you don't have a $5 gift certificate for Amazon, you might feel otherwise. Here's a link in case you're over eighteen but your sense of humor is still thirteen. At the very least, it's interesting to see a movie that couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't be made today.

Okay, here are The Turtles on a 1967 Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour performing one of their hits…the title song to the 1967 comedy film, The Guide for the Married Man. Let's watch it and talk about it…

They're lip-syncing to the record but I believe they removed the vocals by the lead singer, Howard Kaylan, and had him redo his track. Variety shows often did that. They'd use the recorded track but alter something so it didn't sound exactly like the record. But let's talk about the movie. Here's some of what I wrote before here about it…

Guide is an odd film. Everyone in it's great, especially Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. There are cameos (briefer than the advertising would have you believe) from Jack Benny, Phil Silvers, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar and others in that category of performer that is becoming sadly extinct. There are great looking women. The film even has a scene where Joey Bishop is very funny, and how often does that happen?

So what's wrong with it? Well, it's one of those sixties' comedies built on the premise that cheating on one's mate is a fun, acceptable and even (in this case) noble thing for one to do. Even if you buy that philosophy, that aspect of the film seems so shallow and sitcom-silly that it's hard to enjoy. If you can get past that, you might. (Two other interesting things about the film: It was directed by Gene Kelly, and you can hear his voice pop up occasionally on a TV set or otherwise off-camera. And he originally wanted to have Matthau and Morse play each other's parts. Matthau kept declining the project until one day when he was telling Billy Wilder about this film he'd been turning down, and Wilder said, "Hey, that would work if you guys switched parts." Matthau decided he was right and said he'd do the picture if they swapped, and the studio agreed.)

Those who live in Los Angeles may get an extra jolly in that the movie was shot all over 1967 Los Angeles, but especially around Century City. Art Carney plays a construction worker…and the structure his crew is putting up soon became that big office building on the southwest corner of Avenue of the Stars and Santa Monica Boulevards. The scenes in the supermarket were filmed in what is now the Gelson's in what is now the Westfield Century City Mall, and there are scenes around the mall itself as it then looked.

There are even moments in a tiny amusement park called Ponyland which was then located at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and La Cienega. It was a little rat-trap with cotton candy and it seemed to exist only for divorced fathers to have a place to take their kids on the weekend when they had custody. Around 1980, it and some surrounding oil wells were torn down, and the Beverly Center was built on that land. Anyway, if you buy this film and you're bored by what the actors are saying and doing, keep an eye on the backgrounds.

I just love this song. It was composed by John Williams, long before Star Wars and long before he succeeded Arthur Fiedler as the Boston Pops Orchestra's Principal Conductor. And did you know that Williams has more Academy Award nominations than anyone except Walt Disney?

Anyway, the lyrics were by Leslie Bricusse, soon after he wrote the words for the title tune of Goldfinger and at about the same time as he was writing lyrics for Dr. Dolittle. Mr. Bricusse passed away last week. Here's a piece over on Playbill about his quite substantial contributions to the musical theater.

So Bricusse and Williams wrote the song. The Turtles just sang it and it's just so bouncy and silly and sixties.

When I edited my mixtape, I accidentally put this song on twice. When I realized my mistake, I didn't fix it. I wanted to hear this song twice as often as I heard any of the others.

The matchless Charlie Frye lives in a world where things happen that do not happen in your world or mine…

I'm having trouble figuring out what to write about Mort Sahl, who died today at the age of 94. He kinda/sorta invented the concept of the mostly-topical stand-up comedian…an occupation that for a long period was limited to him and some pretty unimpressive Mort Sahl imitators. At times, it seemed like a lot of comics wanted to be him but didn't want to spend the necessary time reading newspapers and understanding current events well enough to joke about them. His albums — even though the material was often dated by the time the record was released — are still essential to any library of spoken word humor.

I met Mort briefly a couple of times. He gave my comedy-writing some encouraging words when I was in high school and I'd write about that here but then this would wind up being a piece about me and it oughta be about him. So I'll just mention that I snuck some of how he influenced me into this article that I wrote in 1996 about the Doonesbury comic strip.

Hey, I guess I can mention that I saw him perform live about seven times. Three or four of those times, he was brilliant and witty and everything you'd want Mort Sahl to be…though on one of those appearances, he said nada about politics or what was going on in the news and spent the whole hour talking about writing a TV pilot for Jack Webb's company. The other times I saw him were massively disappointing; like he was appearing on the stage before us only because someone was holding his loved ones at knifepoint and the ransom was that he just ramble on for a while without making much sense.

One of them was him scolding us for not being more demanding that the real plot to assassinate President Kennedy be revealed and accepted as truth. Back then, I believed there was a conspiracy — I later decided otherwise — but the problem was there were many theories deserving of consideration and with Sahl that night, you either totally bought into his or you were one of those uncaring, unfeeling sheep disinterested in The Truth. I don't think his version, as presented that evening in lieu of the advertised comedy, was later believed by very many people including Sahl himself.

On the topic of J.F.K., he became not only a bore but a condescending bore. Listening to him there or elsewhere, you never got any final answers about who killed Kennedy but at least you could then answer the question, "Why don't we see more of Mort Sahl these days?" Still, when he was good, he was very, very good and very quotable and I hope someone now will put together a big American Masters kind of thing with clips of him at his best. They'd certainly have enough material to fill many hours…and the top "current events" comics of today would queue up to acknowledge the debt they owe to this man. Or at least, they should.

Here and there, if you look real hard, you can find some good things that have resulted from COVID-19. A lady I dated back in the previous century called the other day to say that her husband died from it. I would ordinarily consider that a tragedy even though I never met the guy…but she seems pretty happy about it. I've also come to enjoy my home in ways I never enjoyed it before. And it looks like smoking is effectively being banned in Las Vegas casinos and presumably casinos elsewhere.

I have no foreseeable plans to set foot in Vegas, let alone elsewhere, but when I finally do, I will appreciate that. For both physical and spiritual reasons, I hate being around smoking…and not just smoking tobacco. I've gotten very sick at times because of it and that's never pleasant…though I did enjoy to some extent one instance. I politely asked a stranger near me to smoke in the other direction. Instead, just to be a dick about it, he turned and blew smoke in my face and I responded by throwing up on his pants.

Perhaps that drilled home the concept that others weren't just being finicky to tell him they didn't enjoy it. And if that didn't, I can't imagine what would.

Casinos in Vegas have experimented in the past with banning smoking. Every so often in the previous century, one would try it and revenues would plunge so severely that they'd either hurriedly rescind the rule or, in a couple of cases, go out of business. This century, some have successfully cordoned off "no smoking" areas so it's less likely you have to breathe in Winston fumes while playing slots, rolling craps or losing shirts.

But the casinos have had two problems segregating the smokers. One is that the ventilation/circulation in those places is complicated and odd and you can sometimes find yourself inhaling the cologne on that pit boss twenty yards away, over near the Sports Book. Last time I stayed at Harrah's, I couldn't walk past the exterior of the buffet without smelling honey-glazed ham and perhaps the guy carving it.

And secondly, you have people who believe their personal freedom includes the right to do whatever they want wherever and whenever they want…or as they often phrase it, whatever/whenever/wherever the f*ck they want, although they sometimes don't pronounce the asterisk. It's amusing and manageable when — and we've all seen the news clips and videos — someone insists there's an amendment in the Bill of Rights that says they can shop at Target without a mask…

But what if it's someone a little harder to say "no" to? In Vegas, they have such people. They call them "Whales." Some time ago on this blog, I told the following story…

One year a long time ago, I had to spend a week in Las Vegas and I worked day and night in my room but especially night. I was writing a script, often until 7 AM or 8 AM. Then I'd sleep most of the day, just to annoy the housekeepers.

Around 3 AM, I would take a break and walk from my room at the Luxor to the Krispy Kreme stand over in the Excalibur. The two hotels are owned by the same company and there's a walkway that connects them. It was a long walk so I felt better about eating a Krispy Kreme donut than if I hadn't burned so many calories to get to it.

There was a very cute lady who worked there and as she didn't have much to do at 3 AM, we always got to talking. I think I went over for the conversation as much as for the donut. This was not a romantic thing — she was married and in an early stage of pregnancy — but I liked talking with her and making her laugh. One night as I walked up, I said, "What's the latest donut?" She said they'd just made Cinnamon Buns so I said, "I'll have a Cinnamon Bun." As she was fetching it, a well-dressed man rushed up, shoved his way past me and demanded a dozen assorted donuts, IMMEDIATELY!

She said, "I'll help you as soon as I finish helping this gentleman." That didn't satisfy the well-dressed man and he screamed like it was an emergency, "YOU WILL GIVE ME THE DONUTS NOW!!!" I nodded to her to help him first and she began putting donuts in a box for the man. As she did, I turned to him and said, "You sound like someone's holding your loved ones at gunpoint for a donut ransom."

He said, "It's worse than that! We have a whale who's demanding them or he's going to go to another casino!" ("Whale" is the Vegas term for a gambler who bets — and preferably loses — in the $100,000 and up category.) I realized the fellow was a casino host, probably not from the Excalibur.

A casino host jumps at the whims of such gamblers. The bigger the whale, the higher the jump. From the way he acted, he had a Blackjack player back at this hotel who'd just swallowed Gepetto.

She gave him the box of donuts, he threw twenty dollars at her and, not waiting for change, sprinted out with the box.

What do you think the chances are that if that "Whale" lit up a Kool, that casino host would have told him he couldn't smoke there?

Better/uglier anecdote: One uncrowded night at the old Dunes Hotel, back when I was hustling Blackjack, an older lady dealer was telling the few players at her table stories about Old Vegas. I was one of those players so I heard her tell about a whale at her table who was losing money faster than the U.S. Postal Service. Casino hosts were hovering about, tending to this guy's every notion since he was exactly the kind of customer casinos love: A really rich guy who thought he was a master of the game he was playing and wasn't. He was splitting tens against a dealer ace, she said.

Finally, he decided to knock off for the night and retire to his fully-comped luxury suite upstairs. One of the obsequious hosts asked this guy — who'd probably dropped a half-million dollars in three hours, back in the day when that was a lot of money — "Is there anything you need for your room, sir?"

The whale pointed to the dealer and said, "Her! I'm going to stop off for a drink or two but when I get to my room in thirty minutes, I want to find her naked in my bed."

Remember: This is that dealer telling us this story. She was a nice-looking lady and I'm sure that back when these events took place, she was a younger, even nicer-looking lady. Once Mr. Ace-Splitter had left the table, the casino hosts negotiated what she'd get for being where he wanted her to be. She wouldn't divulge the amount but said with obvious pride, it was "Several times what I made in a year dealing 21."

Regardless of what you think of this story — the truth of it or the morality of it — this kind of thing did happen…and may still happen for all I know in casinos. Does anyone think they would have told that guy he couldn't, you'll excuse the double entendre, enjoy a butt?

The other day, I spoke with a friend who works for a big, big casino corporation. He says that in light of COVID, the answer today may be yes. He thinks smoking is going away in Vegas and that the whales (he calls them "high rollers," even when their game of choice involves no rolling) will just have to live with it. Then this morning, I read on the Las Vegas Advisor website…

Park MGM seems to be doing just fine since it banned smoking; plenty of other casinos around the country, particularly tribal operations, are as well. We rarely take sides on issues, but to us, it's notable that even a sizable percentage of smokers have indicated in polls that they'd prefer casino air not be exempt from indoor smoking bans and that they'd be happy to step outside to get their fix. That was certainly seen in Atlantic City for the full year, from June 2020 to June 2021, that smoking was banned in the casinos. And given that COVID is, first and foremost, a respiratory illness, this seems like as good a time as any to complete the process by including casinos.

Even if you don't go to Vegas — as I will again, eventually — isn't it nice to think that something good could come of The Pandemic? I suppose if I owned stock in a company that makes surgical-type masks, I'd already think that but here's one, however measly, for the rest of us.

With a grand total of one exception, the men and women who forged Marvel Comics from 1961 to 1964 have left us. That one exception — the last man standing from those historic four years — is Larry Lieber, who turns 90 today. Jack is gone. Stan is gone. Don, Steve, Dick, Sol, Joe, Stan G., Flo, George, Paul, Bill, Chic, Al, Wally, Artie, Sam, Vince and just a couple others…all gone.

Writer-Artist Larry is still here…one of the few who lived to see characters he worked on become zillion-dollar movies. And perhaps more amazingly, they were movies which had his name in the credits like Thor and Iron Man. I probably won't bother him today but we speak every year or so and a nicer man, we never had in the field.

I first met Larry in the Marvel offices in New York in 1970. He seemed a little surprised that anyone wanted to meet him and he was genuinely pleased when I conveyed to him best wishes from my then-employer Jack Kirby. Jack loved Larry and as far as I could tell, everyone did. A lot of them later felt that he had not received proper recognition for his contribution to comics. I hope we rectified that a little bit in 2003 and again in 2008 when he was brought out to Comic-Con International in San Diego, the latter visit to receive the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.

The award goes to someone whose body of work has not been properly rewarded in terms of credit and/or compensation. That certainly describes Larry. I really liked seeing him signing that first Iron Man story…the early tales of Thor…all those issues of Rawhide Kid…even the pre-superhero Marvel monster comics. And I really like wishing him a happy 90th birthday and hoping he has many more of 'em.