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."

This post first appeared here on September 28, 2018. There will be newly-written things here in a day or so…

So I'm in my friendly neighborhood you-know-where and I'm waiting in line to pick up a prescription. Ahead of me is a Very Confused Lady (who shall henceforth be known as the V.C.L.) and she is being served by a Very Patient Pharmacy Associate (henceforth, the V.P.P.A.). The V.C.L. picked up a prescription the day before, took it home and found herself unable to get the friggin' cap off the friggin' container of the friggin' pills. In desperation, she has brought it back to the C.V.S.

The V.P.P.A. takes the container and with darn near no effort, pops the lid off. A small child could have done it and so could a small gerbil or marmoset. "These are our new caps," the V.P.P.A. explains. "They're Easy Open." In an instructional way, she takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, takes the lid off again, puts it back on again, and hands it to the V.C.L.

The V.C.L. holds the vial and attempts to do what the V.P.P.A. just did.  This time, the cap not only comes off easily, it comes off so easily that the V.C.L. is startled and she accidentally dumps all the pills on the floor.

The V.C.L. attempts to scoop the pills up off the dirty floor and into the container but the V.P.P.A. (acting very responsibly) will not allow that.  She insists the V.C.L. wait and she gives the vial to the Head Pharmacist so she can dole out a fresh serving of the pills at — apparently — no cost. Then the V.P.P.A. cleans up the soiled pills and discards them. Then she presents a new container of the pills to the V.C.L. but not before demonstrating three more times how to open it.

The V.C.L. takes the new supply, flips the top off easily and once again accidentally spills them out onto the ground. Wonderful.

By now, the Very Patient Pharmacy Associate has become just the P.A. but she goes to the Head Pharmacist, they have a brief discussion and the following is decided: The Very Clumsy Lady (as she shall henceforth be called) may have one more free refill but that's it. The pharmacy cannot spare any more of whatever medication this is or they may not have enough to fill others' orders before they can get more. If these hit the linoleum, she'll need to take the matter up with her doctor or her insurance company or a Walgreens or anyone else.

It is at this point that a Clever, Handsome Bystander (who henceforth will be known as M.E.) steps up.  He asks and receives permission to make some suggestions and then makes three…

The first is that when the V.C.L. takes the new vial home, she should put a clean towel on her bed and then attempt to open the vial over the towel. Thus, if the pills fall again, they will remain takeable.

The second is that the C.V.S. should also provide her with an empty container with the new style cap so she can practice opening it until she masters the art.

And the third is that if she has one of the old caps around, she puts it on the new container until such time as she does master that art.

Everyone — including the nineteen other customers who have been waiting in line behind M.E. — praises his suggestions and the V.C.L. leaves with a new supply of the pills and an empty practice vial.

M.E. then steps up to the counter to claim his own prescription and as the P.A. rings it up, the Head Pharmacist saunters over and thanks him for his wise input. M.E. says to her, "I guess the new easy open caps aren't as easy as they're supposed to be."

The Head Pharmacist sighs and says, "They would be if only someone could invent some way that people with her problem could take one of those pills before attempting to open the container."

This originally ran here on September 1, 2013…

There's a great Yiddish word that, like many Yiddish words, is spelled all different ways in English: Ganef, Gonif, Goniff, Gonnif, etc. It denotes a person who is thief and a crook and you can spell it however you like. Me, I usually opt for gonif. This is the story of Harry the Gonif.

There is much that I can't tell you about Harry the Gonif. I can't tell you what his last name was because though I heard it many times, we always referred to him as Harry the Gonif. I can't tell you who first hung that term on him. I can't even tell you how my father knew him…but my father was friends with Harry the Gonif. Harry would come over for an evening now and then. Sometimes, my father would go to lunch with him or take us all out for dinner with Harry the Gonif.

Most often, we'd drop by his place of business where Harry sold TV picture tubes. Discount TV picture tubes. This, obviously, was back when TV sets had picture tubes…around the mid-sixties. If your TV set needed a new one, it could easily run you $80 or $100…and that was just for the part itself. Installation could drive the price far beyond that.

But there was an alternative. Buried in the sports section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, there was a little ad that advertised brand-new TV picture tubes for $19.95…and then in the kind of microscopic typeface I like to call Flyspeck Bodoni, it said, "…and up."

That was Harry's ad. He had a deal with a manufacturer in Hong Kong or Korea or some country where workers could be paid cents per hour. They made picture tubes and shipped them over and he sold them in the Los Angeles area. There were, I gather, other gonifs in other cities selling them to folks in their jurisdictions.

They made picture tubes in all shapes and sizes, and they made them in two levels of quality. If you came in to get your $19.95 picture tube, Harry would usually sell you one…but acting like he was your sudden buddy, he'd let you in on a secret. The models he had for $34.95 were much, much better and because of their longer, warranty-covered lifespan, much more cost-effective.

Or sometimes, if you looked desperate to get your TV working again before the Dodgers game that evening, he'd just tell you he was out of the $19.95 tubes that would fit your set and it would be two weeks before he could get more in. Then when you were in sufficient panic, he'd tell you, "Gee…I think I might just have one tube in the right size but it would be our $34.95 model." About two-thirds of those who went to Harry for the $19.95 tube went home with the $34.95 one.

He wasn't lying about one thing, by the way. The $34.95 models were indeed better than the $19.95 models. The $19.95 ones were, I gather, picture tubes in the same sense that a Snickers bar is dinner. But all you need to know about either is this: When our living room TV died, my father called Harry and told him. Harry immediately sent over one of his men to install a brand-new picture tube — and it was not one of his. He had his guy stop off at some warehouse and pickup an RCA model, for which we paid his cost plus an installation fee.

Harry may have been a gonif but he wasn't the kind of gonif who'd stick a friend with his crummy product.

Of course, $34.95 only got you the picture tube. If you wanted one of Harry's men to come to your house and install it…well, that's where they made back some of the profit they weren't making by selling picture tubes so cheaply.

Or you could take it home yourself with a little printed sheet Harry provided — instructions on how to do-it-yourself. And then when you'd done-it-yourself and it didn't work, you could pay to have Harry's guy come over and make it work…and that could really run into money. (Also, if one of his crew came to your house, they'd gladly haul away your old picture tube and "dispose of it safely." Usually, that meant they'd recycle it and make even more bucks off you.)

Up above, I said there were many things I couldn't tell you about Harry the Gonif. The big one was why my father was friends with this person. I think it was just that my father was such a nice man, he couldn't bring himself to cut an acquaintance loose…and with his tendency to see the best in everyone, he did have some nuggets of respect for Harry, AKA "The Gonif."

Harry had built a successful business. He seemed to treat his employees well. And some people couldn't afford a $90 picture tube so a $19.95 one, inferior though it might have been — or even if they were baited-and-switched up to 35 bucks — was still a good thing. If your TV was busted and you called a repairman out of the Yellow Pages, you could get swindled a lot worse than anything Harry would do to you.

One day, Harry took my father to lunch and let him in on a secret. Harry was preparing to triple the size of his operation. The more picture tubes he ordered from Sweatshop City, wherever it was, the less each one cost him. If he could get his sales up 300%, he'd up his profit more than 500%. I am not remembering the numbers precisely but I'm in, as they say, the ball park.

All it would take was a bigger building, more employees and more advertising…which of course meant more working capital. He was going to buy billboards all over L.A. and get a full page amidst all the other gonifs in the phone book. He'd even paid good money to secure a new phone number that spelled out something like NEW-TUBE. I thought it was a shame that none of the many common spellings of "gonif" had seven letters.

To do all this, he was taking in investors. He had one share left of his new, expanded business and my father could buy in for $3000.

My father had $3000 in the bank but he didn't have much more than that. He heard Harry out, examined some papers Harry gave him about the investment and what he'd get for his money…and asked for a few days to think it over. Then he went home and involved my mother and me in his thought process.

He had little doubt that Harry would make his expanded company profitable. Whatever else you could say about the guy, he knew how to run that kind of business. He also believed Harry was offering him this opportunity out of naught but friendship. Given the firm's past track record, it wouldn't have been that difficult to find a stranger willing and perhaps eager to put in the three grand. Harry really liked my father and liked the idea of making him a bit wealthier.

But even if an investment looks like a "sure thing" — and this wasn't quite that — it's not easy to part with most of the money you have in your bank account. My father, as I've mentioned here, was a great worrier. The second the money was invested, he'd be worried: What if Harry's expansion plan did crash and burn? And what if we, the Evaniers, had some sudden, impossible-to-predict emergency that needed those bucks?

There was also a wee bit of conscience involved. Harry broke no laws. His $19.95 picture tubes weren't first-rate but what do you expect for $19.95? You could certainly make the case that he was doing his poorer customers a favor. You could also make the case that there's something a bit sleazy about making money the way he did.

Against all that, my father (and we) had to weigh the fact that this seemed like a pretty good investment. My father, you may recall, worked for the Internal Revenue Service. There are some lines of work where you can get rich if, say, you work for a company that thrives and prospers and they promote you. It doesn't work that way at the I.R.S. My father's income was pretty much locked down for the rest of his life, pension and all. Even if they'd bumped him up to a better job in the department, he would only have made about 5% more. If he was ever going to make a lot more money, he was going to have to take a gamble in something like this. He asked us if we thought he should do it.

My mother voted, basically, "No but if you really want to gamble on this, I'll support you but I'd rather you didn't." She had no idea if it was a good investment or not. She just didn't want to put up with my father worrying night and day about his money…as she knew he would. When my father asked me how I voted, I voted, "I vote that I should not have a vote." I kinda liked the idea of the gamble but something felt wrong about it…something upon which I could not quite put my little finger. Also, I didn't want to feel responsible if he did it and it failed or didn't do it and regretted it…so I said, "It's your money and your decision."

I was sure he'd decide against it but the next day, he surprised us both by saying he was going to do it. He called Harry and said yes. "Great," Harry the G said. "Bring me a check for $3,000 as soon as you can." My father said he'd be right over with it and then he sat down with his checkbook. I thought I noticed a slight tremble in his hand as he made it out. Then he stuffed it into an envelope and asked me, "Want to take a ride?" I said sure.

On the way to Harry's, my father told me, "I'll feel a lot better about this if I know you approve of it. I know you said it's my money but it's really not. My money is our money. It's the money we all live on."

I was impressed that he'd put it that way and that he really wanted my opinion. A lot of fathers wouldn't care what their 14-year-old son said. I'm guessing that's what I was at the time. We were still some distance from Harry's so I said, "Give me two minutes to think about it."

He gave me the two minutes and I tried to figure out what it was about this whole matter that bothered me. Finally I said, "I don't know much about business…but isn't there a rule somewhere that says you never trust your money to anyone whose nickname is The Gonif?"

My father thought for a second. Then he pulled over to the curb and stopped the car. Then he brought out the envelope with the check in it and tore it up. Then he started the car up again and turned a corner so he could head home instead of to Harry's. When he got home, he called Harry and told him he'd thought it over and had changed his mind.

"You're making a big mistake, Bernie," Harry told him.

"Maybe so," he said. "And I appreciate you giving me the opportunity but I don't want to risk my family's security this way."

Harry said the same thing again a few more times — "You're making a big mistake, Bernie" — and then they said goodbye.

Now, this story could end one of two ways. I could tell you that Harry's expansion plans were a disaster; that the whole enterprise collapsed and all the investors lost everything and my father was always grateful that I'd brought him to his senses. Or I could tell you that Harry's new, super-sized TV tube business venture thrived and grew such that even a $3000 investment would have yielded a significant return. That version would end with my father wishing 'til his dying day that he'd gone through with it.

But the truth is that I don't know how Harry made out and my father never knew, either…because my father never spoke to Harry again. He never called Harry and Harry never called him. The only clue I have to the progress of Harry's business is that his ads in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner got larger, then they got smaller, then they stopped appearing. Some years later, so did the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. I don't think Harry not advertising in it was the reason but with gonifs, you never know.

Once when I was visiting my father during one of his occasional hospitalizations, I was groping for something to talk about, just to make conversation. Outta the blue, I asked him, "Hey, whatever happened to Harry the Gonif?" He thought for a second and said, "I don't know…and I don't care."

Then he looked at me and said, "Right after I turned down investing in his company, I got to thinking, 'Why is this man my friend?' I didn't enjoy his company. I didn't learn anything from him. I didn't find him particularly interesting. When he called up and said, 'Let's have lunch,' I always thought, 'Oh, Christ! Him again.' It was like a chore. I had to have lunch with Harry." He paused and added, "You know, it's important to have friends in this world but you don't have to make room in your life for every person you meet."

That was one of the wisest, sharpest things I learned from my father. Right after he said that, I took a good, hard look through my address book and realized I had a couple of Harry the Gonifs in there. They were people upon whom I wished no ill will…but I just couldn't explain why I wasted any large chunks of my life on them. Not when there were so many people I liked in this world.

Being polite is fine. You can and should be polite to everyone. I just had to learn not to let these people drag me out to dinner or wrangle invitations to drop by when I literally had nothing in common with them and no interest in anything they had to say. The time I spent with them was time I didn't spend with real friends.

So that was one big thing I learned from him. I was going to add that another was "Never trust your money to anyone whose nickname is The Gonif" but I think he learned that one from me. Either way, it's good advice, too.

The other Evanier who writes for a living — my cousin David — has a fine essay online…an overview of Woody Allen's astonishing output as a filmmaker. If Mr. Allen had quit after, say, Hannah and Her Sisters, he would still be on a lot of those lists he's on of great American directors. Here's David Evanier with an appreciation.

A lovely gentleman named Robert Clary died Wednesday morning, November 16 at his home. He was 96 and you probably knew him best as Corporal LeBeau on Hogan's Heroes, the sitcom set in the unlikeliest of settings…a World War II German prison camp. As it happened, Clary had in spent 31 months of his real life in such confinement, and was the only member of his family to get out alive. Though I was with him on several occasions, I learned about his wartime horrors from articles, not from him.

I knew other survivors of such horrors who talked incessantly about them but at least around me, Mr. Clary talked more about positive things.  Mostly, it was his very long career as an entertainer, here and in France. He was an actor but his main area was cabaret-type performing and you couldn't help but love every song he sang and every story he told on the stage.

I got to know him because of my friendship with Howard Morris. Howie directed many episodes of Hogan's Heroes and at one point (before they found Werner Klemperer) was slated to play what would have been a very different Colonel Klink. I believe Howie's close friendship with Robert pre-dated the show, however.

Once or twice, Howie took me to lunch with Robert and sometimes others from Hogan's Heroes.  At one point, they had a little Wednesday lunch group at an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. I recall very little talk about the show itself, some chatter about Bob Crane's bizarre personal life and great stories about their experiences in show business. Robert Clary was unquestionably the star of the table. He had performed all over the world. He talked about everywhere he had been…except Auschwitz. Not unless he was forced to.

No, I take that back. Howie and I went one night to a performing space in Culver City called The Jazz Bakery to see Robert perform. It was an enchanting evening. Everyone in the small room loved spending time with Clary as he sang and told stories…one or two of which were even about surviving the camps. But the point of everything he said about those days was survival and getting over the nightmares to live what he said was a long, happy, productive life. Which he proved was possible by living as long and as well as he did.

I am slowly returning from my undisclosed location and this blog will be back at full strength soon.  I have a few posts I wrote before the shutdown that I should have put up here at the time, including one obit for a dear man.  I also have a few reruns prepped to go.  There will be nothing about whatever's in the news because I'm paying as little attention to the news as I can.  What little I see all seems to be about people shooting and/or beating up one another.  But yes, I'm okay (thanks to all who asked) and yes, I'm getting a lot written.  Those two things have a lot to do with each other.  Thanks again to the friends who've given me some space these last few days…

I appreciate the messages from folks who are concerned about my absence. I also appreciate the many friends who understand that I'm busy and that there are periods when I just need to take care of things and who leave me (mostly) alone. My lovely friend Carolyn used to say, "You need some Mark Time." I appreciate both groups and will be back soon for you. But like the subject line says, I'm Not Quite Back Yet…