Monthly Archives: November 2022

The world premiere of the movie Grand Hotel was at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood on May 2, 1932. Here from that evening is newsreel-type film that has recently been restored and colorized. Amazing…

So far today, I've come across this three times on different social media sites. I don't know where it's from but it feels like it's true. I hope it's true…

Singer Billy Joel was disappointed that the best seats at his concerts were always full of unimpressed rich people.

"The guy's there with the girlfriend…'Okay, Piano Man, entertain me,' and they don't do anything. It was a drag and you'd hear all the kids yelling in the back and you know they didn't get a shot at those tickets," Joel explains.

That is why he decided to create a new policy for those front seats. He now holds the tickets and sends his road crew to the back of the room to bring people from the worst seats to the front rows.

"This way you've got people in the front row that are really happy to be there, real fans," he added.

Assuming it's true, good for Billy Joel. It's especially impressive when you consider what those seats in the front could sell for.

I've lately been using my otherwise-dormant Instagram account to just post images of the covers of comic books I remember owning 'n' loving as a kid. I'm not sure what the cut-off date is for when I stopped being a kid…or even if I've reached it yet. But I won't be posting anything published after the vast majority of 32-page comics went from costing twelve cents to fifteen. It's as good a dividing line as any.

Some companies had flirted with fifteen earlier, then looked at the sales figures and scurried back to twelve. The industry-wide move to fifteen started around March of 1969 at DC and was followed a few months later by Marvel and other publishers. The only exception was Gilberton with their Classics Illustrated line which had always kind of been published in a different reality with different means of distribution. As it happens, the first comic I've posted today in the gallery on Instagram is a Classics Illustrated.

Also, I've started to receive requests from folks that I post certain issues they remember. No. This is not about the comics you remember. It's about the comics I remember. There's nothing stopping you from using your Instagram account — or even opening one — and posting the ones you remember.

I am though trying to make some point about how there was a time when comics were not as much about heroic adventure and had more talking animals. That point could be made clearer if I also posted some romance comics or hot rod comics (Charlton had a number of hot rod comics) but I wasn't a follower of them back then and I didn't buy many war titles or westerns. Just imagine more of these in the mix.

I post two a day and the images above are the ones from yesterday. It's not always the case but I do remember where I acquired many comics from my childhood and there's a bit of a story about each of these two.

I've written before here about the Don't Give Up the Ship comic book. The other comic book came into my possession in a swap with a friend of mine named Rick. This would have been around when I was eight. Somehow, I had gotten two copies of an issue of Action Comics that Rick didn't have and he had two copies of this issue of Jimmy Olsen that I didn't have.

Would that all trade agreements were that simple. A year or so later, Rick decided he was too old to be reading comic books — My God, he was almost eleven — and I bought his entire collection — about two hundred comics — for a nickel each. Rupert Murdoch has probably never felt as proud of an acquisition as I did. And on a percentage basis, mine may have been more profitable.

Yeah, I know: Not much of a story. Sorry. I may have some better ones about some of the other comics I post on Instagram. You can view the gallery at this link. Do check in often.

This is another song for which I had to rewrite/launder lyrics when it was performed in a talent show at my school. It's "Young Girl" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, a group that for no visible reason often wore outfits that were a cross between "flower power" hippies and Union soldiers in the Civil War. I don't understand it and I don't think I need to.

Wikipedia says this about this very, very successful song…

The song is sung from the point of view of a man who has become distressed upon finding out that the girl he is with, contrary to the first impression she had made upon him, is actually younger than the legal age of consent. He is asking her to leave before things go any further: "Get out of here / before I have the time / to change my mind / 'cause I'm afraid we'll go too far."

So that's why I had to rewrite lyrics for it to be performed onstage at University High, even though at lunch hour every day, you could hear the original version blasting out from transistor radios all over campus.

What makes this record work, I think, is that Mr. Puckett had — and reportedly, still has as he's still performing in his seventies — one of the best voices singing this kind of music then. And lest you watch the video below and think he's lousy at lip-sync, I believe this is one of those cases where someone took the film of a live performance and laid the record over it. That's why they don't match very well…

Back in this message, we discussed the announcement that The Phantom of the Opera — the longest-running musical on Broadway now and probably forever — would close February 18, 2023. And in that post, I said…

It would not surprise me if this announcement sparks a surge of folks who want to see it again or even for the first time. And it would not surprise me if that surge caused the closing date to be delayed.

And today we have this in The New York Times…

The Phantom of the Opera is going to continue haunting Broadway a while longer. The musical — the longest-running show in Broadway history — announced in September that it would close in February, ending a storied run shortly after celebrating its 35th anniversary. But immediately after the closing was announced, ticket sales spiked. And last week, when Broadway was bolstered by Thanksgiving travelers, Phantom enjoyed its highest-grossing week ever: $2.2 million.

Thanks to Rob Rose for alerting me to the news. I am, of course, unsurprised.

Did you see this?

Frontier Airlines will no longer let customers call a phone number in order to speak with a live agent. And while the budget airline is known for its cost-cutting measures, most major airlines still operate customer service lines. Customers will instead have to rely on other ways to contact the airline: a chatbot on its website, a live chat available 24/7, its social media channels and even WhatsApp, according to Frontier spokesperson, Jennifer De La Cruz, who confirmed the news to NPR on Saturday.

There are several possible reactions to this news. One is that anyone who flies Frontier oughta know that getting the absolute lowest price gets you the absolute lowest level of service. Another is that this development isn't that surprising. Almost every company I've dealt with for years seems to be figuring out ways that the Internet, cell phones and other technological marvels can enable them to hire (and therefore, pay) fewer human beings.

Back in February of 2008, my dear friend Carolyn and I spent an agonizing day at LAX because we missed a flight and The System — this was United Airlines — didn't work for rolling us over to another flight. There was a Customer Service Desk at the airport. There was a Customer Service phone number I could call.  But overall, the experience probably wasn't that much different from what I'll experience if I fly Frontier Airlines without Customer Service. Which I probably won't do.

The problem is that no matter how well the programmers consider every contigency and build it into their system, something will happen that their planning doesn't anticipate…and it will probably happen to me. When I call some companies to complain about something that's gone awry with an order, there's usually an online, don't-talk-to-anyone way of reporting one bad employee but not a problem with the company itself. I don't like this trend. And I'd complain about it but the way they're set up, the system won't allow you to complain about the system. I assume that's deliberate.

So I clicked on the details to tell me how to get 4 bottles for $5.00 and there were no details there. There was no explanation of any kind. So I don't know how to get 4 bottles for $5.00 and I'll have to pay $1.25 each for them.  Damn the luck.

I still see a lot of online discussion, especially in forums favored by comedians, about Leo Gallagher, the member of their profession who died November 11. Everyone seems to agree he was thorny and sometimes abrasive, and that he had an awful lot of negative things to say about most other comedians. Where there seems to be a fair amount of disagreement is over how good a comedian he was and whether his act was, at times, racist and sexist and a few other "ist"s.

I didn't see him in the last few decades so I don't feel qualified to have an opinion on some of this. As I wrote here though, I was real impressed with a performance of his I saw a long, long time ago.

I am amused though that some are saying that, for good or ill, there was no one else like him. There actually was someone almost exactly like Leo Gallagher. There was, for a time, a second Gallagher. His brother Ron cloned the look, feel and some of the material and toured as "Gallagher Too." At first, it was authorized, then it wasn't, then it was the subject of a long, bitter court battle and the two brothers not speaking for years.

Marc Maron has put online the podcast he did with the first and genuine Gallagher in 2011 — the interview that got so heated, Gallagher walked off it. I listened again to some of it and I thought Maron was being a bit too harsh with his guest but the guest was pretty harsh before it got to a two-way harshness. Maron may not keep this available for free listening forever so if you wanna hear it, hear it here and now.

But you want to know what Gallagher was really like? Really, really like? Well, my buddy Bill Kirchenbauer knew him as well as any non-relative could. A few days after his pal died, Bill spent a half-hour talking about the guy. This is about as accurate a picture as you could ever get of the late Leo…

I have a couple of folks who send me e-mails and sign them "Smiler Grogan," which was the name of Jimmy Durante's character in my fave film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  There are at least two, maybe three, and one of them wrote to ask me…

I've heard you in interviews say that when you got into the TV business, you tried to work with or at least meet everyone you could who was in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.  Could you furnish us with a list of who you met? And how many of them told you that they were very proud to have been in the movie?

In the immortal words of Curly Howard, "Soitenly!"  Here's a list of everyone in the film who wasn't a stunt person or extra.  I have boldfaced the names of those who I worked with and/or got to spend a decent amount of time with and I have italicized the names of those I met in what I would consider brief encounters…

Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Jonathan Winters, Edie Adams, Dorothy Provine, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Jim Backus, Ben Blue, Joe E. Brown, Alan Carney, Chick Chandler, Barrie Chase, Lloyd Corrigan, William Demarest, Andy Devine, Selma Diamond, Peter Falk, Norman Fell, Paul Ford, Stan Freberg, Louise Glenn, Leo Gorcey, Sterling Holloway, Marvin Kaplan, Edward Everett Horton, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Charles Lane, Mike Mazurki, Charles McGraw, Zasu Pitts, Carl Reiner, Madlyn Rhue, Roy Roberts, Arnold Stang, Nick Stewart, Sammee Tong, Jesse White, Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Stanley Clements, Joe DeRita, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Nicholas Georgiade, Stacy Harris, Tom Kennedy, Ben Lessy, Bobo Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Eddie Rosson, Eddie Ryder, Jean Sewell, Doodles Weaver and Lennie Weinrib.

Of those I met, the only two who ever expressed negative feelings about the film were Mickey Rooney and Carl Reiner, both of whom seemed to feel that the film was loud and crowded and not as funny as it could or should have been. Mr. Rooney made some great films in his career but he was not, shall we say, the most stable human being, always announcing wacky business ventures and show business productions that never materialized. His appearances at Mad World revival screenings were punctuated with all sorts of strange anecdotes that never happened including the ridiculous assertion that he and his co-stars had ad-libbed the entire script. A copy of the entire script — yes, of course, I have one — shows that this was not so.

I never found much logic in anything Rooney said about the movie and the one time I got to speak with him about it, he was somewhat incoherent and he wound up screaming and running out of the room about another matter. Mr. Reiner, I think, was imagining what he, as a writer-director, might have done with the cast and budget that Stanley Kramer had. It would have been a very different film and I'm not saying it would have been a bad one.

Both of those gentlemen somewhat recanted late in their lives, saying only good things about the picture. I suspect this was because they kept being invited to screenings full of fans who pledged undying allegiance to the movie. This is just a theory on my part but I think they came to realize they'd been a part — in Rooney's case, a rather large part — of something that meant so much to so many and they decided to stop being negative about the experience.

They may also have noticed that some of their co-stars — folks they truly respected like Jonathan Winters and Don Knotts, to name but two — were bursting with delight to have been part of the film. So to demean the film was to demean Jonathan's or Don's gratification and pride. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion but they're also entitled to change their minds.

As a kid, I used to watch Popeye cartoons almost every day on Channel 5. They were presented by an ultra-genial gent named Tom Hatten who dressed as a sailor and hosted from a cheapo set that was supposed to look like a ship's cabin. Tom could draw and he often gave lessons on how to draw Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy and others from the Popeye property…and I suppose one of the reasons I could draw at all when I was a kid was because Tom Hatten taught me.

For a long time, the cartoons he ran were the ones made by the Fleischer Studio from 1933 to 1942 and by the Paramount/Famous Studio from 1942 to 1957. Channel 5 did not seem to have all of those cartoons in their library — or if they did, they'd elected to not show certain ones. Between the two studios, there were 231 cartoons made and I'm going to guess Hatten ran and reran about half that number. Even at that age, I knew that some were way better than others. The ones that looked cleaner and shinier were the ones made by Paramount/Famous. They weren't as good as the Fleischer ones…but they weren't bad, at least when I was seven.

One day in 1960, Tom announced on his show that if we were tired of seeing the same old Popeye cartoons over and over — which we were —, we should not despair. We would soon have some brand-new Popeye cartoons. That was an exciting announcement. That is, until we saw them. Even at the age of eight, I was disappointed.

King Features Syndicate had bankrolled what eventually turned out to be 220 new short cartoons, all 5-7 minutes, all meant for TV only, all seemingly done for about as much money as I spent each week on Snickers bars. Even at that age, I could recognize (mostly) poor animation.

Every so often, there was one with okay visuals. A little more every-so-often, the stories were clever. One good aspect of them was that Popeye, Olive Oyl, Wimpy and the big nasty guy with the beard sounded right. That was always important to me about my cartoon characters; that they sound like they were supposed to. Jack Mercer, Mae Questel and Jackson Beck did all the voices.

The big nasty guy with the beard was named Brutus. He was very much like the character Bluto in the earlier Popeye cartoons but not exactly. In this piece, I explained the conundrum that troubled me so back then.

These cartoons have generally been shunned and derided by animation historians but Fred Grandinetti — who may know more about Popeye than anyone has ever known — has authored a book about them, complete with a list and detailed plot summaries of all 220 cartoons. The films were made by five different studios and Fred goes into depth about each studio and notes their better efforts.

If you have any interest in these cartoons, Fred has all the information you need. I am mightily impressed by his devotion and research. You can get yourself a copy here.

Two friends of mine — J. Keith van Straaten and Jim Newman — always seem to be producing something of a game show nature. Their current endeavor is the audio (only) podcast, Go Fact Yourself — a quiz program hosted by J. Keith (pictured above) and the very funny comedy person, Helen Hong. You can hear it almost anywhere good podcasts are available but especially on the Go Fact Yourself website.

Here's how the game is played: They bring on two celebrities who profess to have expertise in some area. The celebs have included folks like Drew Carey, Richard Kind, Mo Rocca, Nancy Cartwright, Lewis Black and almost anyone who's won a lot of money on Jeopardy! lately. There is much fun conversation but at some point, the two celebs are quizzed on their chosen topic and the one who does the best wins. They win just about nothing but the important thing is that one of them wins.

The last rounds of questioning are accented by the surprise appearance of one or more experts of the topics of the day.  Those experts verify answers and add to the conversation…and J. Keith and Helen are very good at making all these interesting people more interesting than usual.  That's how it all works and no one goes home with a case of Turtle Wax or lovely parting gifts.

Every episode is fun but I would call your attention to Episode 115, which was recorded November 4 of this month and which featured as its contestants, the fine comic actor Rob Corddry and the fine cartoonist-author Mimi Pond. Rob's claimed area of knowledge was the TV series, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the two surprise experts on that topic was that show's show runners, Jed Whedon and Jeffrey Bell. Mimi's area was MAD magazine and the two surprise experts on MAD were myself and (via Zoom) Sergio Aragonés.

(In the photo above, the back row is — left to right —Mr. Whedon, Mr. van Straaten, Ms. Hong and Mr. Bell.  The front row is me, Mr. Corddry and Ms. Pond.  Sergio was at home in a row by himself.)

Like I said, you can hear Go Fact Yourself at the above-linked website or just about anywhere on the web where quality podcasts are available.  You will enjoy any of them but you will especially enjoy the recent Episode #115.  Because Sergio and I are on it.

Lewis Black on a recent Daily Show…

Charles Schulz, creator of the most successful newspaper strip of all time, would have been 100 years old today. In tribute, an awful lot of syndicated comic strip folks have made reference to the birthday and work of Mr. Schulz in their strips today. You can see them all over on this page.

A week ago last Friday, I went to the funeral of Budd Friedman, the man behind the Improv Comedy Club — an event as crowded as the Improv on a Saturday night when Robin Williams was performing. Budd had a lot of friends who showed up for the funeral, some of them comedians who feel they owe a lot of their success to him. There will apparently be some sort of public memorial for him in January and I would expect it to be flooded with even more folks whose careers were made or at least bolstered on the Improv stage.

The funeral took place at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, which is where my father and one aunt and one uncle were interred. I don't recall why I didn't mention it by name in this article that ran here on October 30, 2013 but that was where most of the following events took place…

My father died on a late Tuesday afternoon. I had to spend Wednesday directing a cartoon voice session. On Thursday, I picked up my mother and we went to the mortuary to make arrangements for a Friday funeral. We had an 11 AM appointment and my mother, who understandably was shaky and still somewhat numb, hoped we could be out of there by Noon. She wanted me to take her to a favorite restaurant for lunch, then to get her home, A.S.A.P. Her goal at the time was to go to bed and stay there as much as possible for the rest of her life.

We had selected a popular Jewish Memorial Park (nice euphemism there) on the west side. If it's possible to apply adjectives like "pleasant" and "beautiful" to a place where you go to bury family members, and I suppose it is, this one qualified. When my Aunt Dot had died a few years earlier, my father chose this one for her. It was famous for being full of famous Jewish entertainers. Al Jolson was buried on the premises so there was always the possibility that late at night, you might spot a ghost in blackface down on one knee and singing "Mammy."

"I'll try to get us in and out in an hour," I told my mother but it was a goal I could not achieve. We were there a very long time.

Our appointment was with a very nice woman who, like all who labor in this industry, was quite good at expressing sympathy and condolences and phrasing everything oh so tastefully. We weren't there to pick out a grave for someone who'd died. We were there to select a final resting place for the physical being of one who's left us. That kind of talk. She acted as if our loss was her loss, almost as if we were family members and not customers. She was almost apologetic as she gave me the first form to fill out and sign. It was followed closely by the second form and the third form and many, many others. I have a vague memory that at one point, I even had to sign a form that acknowledged I was signing all the other forms.

Then shortly after that, there was one form I refused to sign for some reason and I had to sign a form to indicate that I had declined to sign the previous form. I asked her, "What if I refuse to sign the form that says I refused to sign the other form?" and she said, "We have a form for that."

If a form had more than a few sentences on it, she'd say, "I'll give you a little privacy while you go over this one" and then she'd leave the room for around fifteen minutes. I am a rapid filler-outter of forms so I'd be done in one and my mother and I would just stare at each other for the next fourteen.

After I'd filled out every form that had ever existed anywhere on the planet, our Grief Consultant (her title was something like that) began to lead us from room to room…and I couldn't help notice that every room had at least one large box of Kleenex. When it came time to select a coffin, she led us into a showroom, announced she'd give us a moment alone to make our decision, and then left us there for an hour. I am also a fast decision maker and it was even easier when my mother said, "We both know what Bernie would want. He'd want the cheapest one. So let's find it and get out of here."

It took me about 90 seconds to find the cheapest one and another minute to ponder if there was any way we could ever possibly regret that choice. I couldn't think of one and neither could my mother…so we just sat in a creepy room full of coffins and stared at each other until our saleslady returned. Then we went to the room where we selected the grave marker and its typeface and I wrote out the wording.

Then we had to pick a place to put my father. There were many burial sites available and I'm sure she would have driven us all over that vast complex like a good realtor but I cut that short. I said, "Please…just show us a couple near where his sister is buried." I think the woman asked, "Did they get along well?" — like that would have mattered — and then we drove up to the hill, located the gravesite of Aunt Dot, then I selected the nearest vacancy. "Don't you want to see some of the other options?" she asked.

My mother interrupted. "Unless you have one with a view of drive-in movie, this will do fine." It wasn't that we were being callous. We just couldn't imagine why one farther away from Aunt Dot could be in any way preferable.

The last decision I recall was the chapel for the service, and I think our personal Grief Counselor was going to show us all the different ones they had but I made matters simpler. We were only expecting a turnout of about five people so I said, "Give us the smallest one you have." We took a look at it, I said fine, and then we went back to her office and I signed another dozen or so forms and wrote a large check. When we finally got out of there it was after 4 PM and my mother said, "Let's skip lunch. I just want to go home and go back to bed." I took her there, then went out and got us both some food. It was a pretty exhausting day.

Two days later, I put on my best suit, picked her up in the Mercury Sable I was then driving and drove her to the Memorial Park. The officiating rabbi was a man who'd never met my father and he took me aside, asked me questions and took notes. He then plugged my answers into the appropriate holes of one of his stock speeches and though I don't think he had it written down, it worked something like this…

[Name of Deceased] was so proud of his [son/daughter], [Name of Child] who had acheived so much as a(n) [Occupation of Child]…

Basically, it was Mad-Libs interspersed with occasional quotes from the Torah. There were five people in the chapel to hear it: Me, my mother, my Uncle Nathan and two neighbors. One was our next-door neighbor, Betty Lynn, who was more like an aunt to me than any actual relation. The rabbi's remarks were brief, totally appropriate and given that he never met my father, utterly unnecessary.

I was invited to follow him at the podium but I passed. The room was cold and foreboding and the four other mourners knew how I felt about my father. Besides, I was taking them all to lunch afterwards anyway — at that restaurant my mother hadn't gotten to on Wednesday. So anything I had to say, I could say more directly there. There was plenty to say, all of it good.

But back at the Memorial Park, we all just wanted the ritual to be over. I've been to funerals — including some there — that were in their own ways, joyous and fun. I've attended memorial services where people who knew the deceased got up and shared wonderful stories and there was laughter and sometimes music and singing, and new friendships were made or old ones rekindled. Pat McCormick's ended with jazz trumpeter Jack Sheldon playing "Taps" and then all the male comedians present — about half of those in the business and over the age of 60 — all dropping their pants.

I've spoken at quite a few great ceremonies and there can be something healthy about them, especially when they provide a sense of closure. I always feel like when they're over and you drive out of the parking lot, there should be a big sign that says, "You are now leaving the Mourning Zone. Please resume your life."

The last act of our Friday was the burial itself. We all got into our cars — my mother was with me in mine — and we caravaned up to the top of a hill. It was a clear but way-too-breezy day in Southern California. Trees were rattling and swaying and for a second there, I felt like I should gather up my little dog Toto and try to take shelter in the cellar. I parked as close to the site as possible, got out of the driver's side and began to walk around the car to open the passenger door to help my mother out. Suddenly, a violent burst of wind hit and my yarmulke blew off my head.

It was the cheap, disposable kind but it was still vital that I have it on for the duration of the ceremony. I watched it disappearing into the distance like a black frisbee and began to sprint after it. This was not easy because I was wearing not my usual New Balance athletic shoes but some leather dress footwear that I only wore to funerals and the Magic Castle. I ran and ran and every time I got near the errant skullcap, a new gust would blow it farther from me, making me run more. When I passed a grave marker I thought said "Jack Benny," I imagined the yarmulke was a five-dollar bill and Jack was yanking it away from me, again and again, on an invisible cord.

Finally, right in front of Vic Morrow's final resting place, I caught the yarmulke and then my breath. Then I looked back in the direction of my car and I was so far away, I couldn't see it. Wheezing, I hiked back as my mother sat in that car, wondering where the hell her son was. The rabbi and the three other mourners were all wondering that, too.

It felt to them like forever before I reappeared, breathing hard, with one hand holding my yarmulke firmly in place on my head. "What happened?" the rabbi asked me. I told him my yarmulke had blown off and I ran after it. He said, "You didn't have to do that." He reached into his coat pocket and showed me he had about eight of them in there. "I always carry spares." Then he added, "What you should do is what I do. Use a bobby pin." He pointed to his own yarmulke, which was a small disc, elegantly stitched with gold and silver threads. It was clipped onto his hair —

— and that didn't help. Because just then, the strongest breeze of the day so far hit us and his yarmulke (the expensive one) went spinning off in the general direction of Eddie Cantor — and since the rabbi was in his seventies, I had to go chase his down, too. By the time I got back to the burial site, I was so exhausted, I half-wanted to fall into the hole with the coffin and take the permanent dirt nap.

With one hand holding his yarmulke in place, the rabbi read the appropriate words. Then he explained, as we all already knew, that it was customary for the friends and family to demonstrate their acceptance of the burial by each putting a spadeful of dirt into the grave. The rabbi moved to demonstrate but since he was 70+ and he only had one hand free, I had to go up and help him while simultaneously preventing my own yarmulke from escaping again. I didn't find it so funny but I'll bet my father would have roared.

Then since everyone else present was of the rabbi's age, save for me, I had to do their burying by proxy for them. I think, by the way, this whole custom of the mourners helping to fill in the hole was something a cemetery owner came up with so he wouldn't have to hire as many men to do this.

We all paid our respects to Aunt Dot's grave — which pretty much consisted of locating it and saying, "There's Aunt Dot's grave!" — and then we were done. I took everyone out for that great lunch that involved all the warm remembrance of my father that didn't seem to fit into the formal funeral.

When I got my mother home, before she collapsed into bed, she told me, "When I go, I don't want you to have to go through any of that. I don't want you to have to deal with the paperwork of my estate, either. Can you get me a lawyer who specializes in estate and end-of-life planning?" I asked my Business Manager and he recommended just such a lawyer.

Three months later, my mother presented me with a manila envelope. She said, "Here…put this away and when I go, open this and you'll be able to handle everything in about fifteen minutes. Among other actions, she'd put everything she owned into a trust and named me as the sole inheritor of that trust. As for her burial, she'd prepaid for a cremation and burial-at-sea with the Neptune Society and specified that there was to be no service of any kind. When she finally did go in 2012, the non-funeral arrangements for her body didn't take fifteen minutes but they didn't take much more than that.

The trust worked well too, though that was a bit more complicated. Because she lived so much longer after the formation of the trust, many of her financial details had changed. You may recall how on two separate but consecutive instances, I caught caregivers stealing from her and had to close down her checking accounts and credit cards, and open new ones. Well, I didn't think to put those new ones under the trust so I had to sign a lot of forms and then I had to sign forms to verify that I'd signed the forms I'd signed…

But all in all, it was pretty efficient. In my mother's last years as I drove her around and ran over there at 4 AM to help her with this or that, she often said things like, "I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you." Well, she thanked me plenty by how she arranged her affairs, including that "reservation" with the Neptune Society. It really made my life so much easier. That was one of the major ways we expressed love in my family: By not creating problems for each other.

This has run long, I know, but there's one more story that belongs in this piece. Three years after my father died, his brother Nathan joined him. Uncle Nathan was a life-long bachelor and it fell to me to handle his burial and his estate. I could turn most of the estate stuff over to my Business Manager but I felt I had to make the funeral arrangements myself…and that I had to go back to the same Memorial Park. That, of course, would mean going through the same day-long ritual once again.

I phoned the same Grief Counselor/Sales Person and said, "I've got another Evanier for you." She expressed all the same condolences as the last time, then asked me, "When would you like to come in? I have an appointment open at 10 AM tomorrow."

I said, "I can be there at 10 but I have a question. I don't want to seem insensitive but I really feel all these forms and taking an hour to pick out a coffin and a half hour to select a marker are…well, wastes of time. I'll miss my uncle but…is there any way to speed up the process?"

She replied, "Sure. Do you have any idea what you'd like for Nathan?"

I said, "Give me the least expensive coffin you have, the same headstone you had for my father — and I'll give you the new wording — the same chapel and the same kind of burial site, the closest one available to my father and aunt. Oh — and get me the same rabbi since he's already learned how to pronounce 'Evanier.' Anything else?"

"The time," she said. "How about Tuesday at 11:30?" I said that would be fine. She came back with, "And if you want, you can give me the check and sign all the paperwork when you're here then. I have one form that can take the place of all those others we have some people sign."

I was astounded. I asked her, "We just did all this in about the time it takes to boil an egg. Now, granted, a lot of that was because we were just duplicating decisions I made last time. But last time, it took five hours. Was there any way to make it go quicker?"

She said, "Oh, certainly. You might have had to come in but we could have done it all in, oh, about a half-hour if you'd preferred."

I asked, "Why wouldn't I have preferred that?" and I swear on the lives of all the dead relatives I've mentioned in this article, she replied, "Most people want to be distracted from their loss or to feel like they're really doing something for their loved one. Since they're spending so much on the service and burial plot, they get upset when the arrangements don't take all day. Heck, if you had a fax machine, you could probably have done it all from home in fifteen minutes."