A Google Maps user has created an interactive online map of older restaurants in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. Jake Hook's map lists over 1,000 places to eat that have been in business for at least twenty years and he singles out what he considers the true classics. I've only been to a small percentage of these places but he sure brings up a lot of memories of places I've been and places I've always been meaning to try. Here's the map.

We're all familiar with the 1959 movie Some Like It Hot starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. But how many of you know that in 1961, there was an attempt to turn it into a weekly situation comedy for NBC? I sure didn't but recently, my assistant Jane Plunkett called it to my attention. Even weirder is the fact that as a favor to its producer Walter Mirisch, Lemmon and Curtis made a cameo appearance in the pilot and…

Well, here's where it gets real weird. As you may recall, the movie directed by Billy Wilder was about two musicians — Jerry (played by Mr. Lemmon) and Joe (played by Mr. Curtis) on the lam from The Mob. In the pilot, they're still on the lam so what do they do? They get plastic surgery and it not only changes their appearances, it turns them into two completely different actors! After the surgery, Jerry is played by actor-comedian Dick Patterson and Joe is played by the singer Vic Damone.

Thereafter, Patterson and Damone played Jerry and Joe for the rest of the pilot and for all episodes thereafter. Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately — there were no other episodes. No sponsor picked it up nor did NBC. The character of Sugar Kane Kowalczyk — played so memorably in the film by Marilyn Monroe did not appear in the pilot but Tina Louise, later of Gilligan's Island fame, played a similar type of lady named Candy Collins.

And Sweet Sue, played in the movie by Joan Shawlee, did reappear in the sitcom version. She was played by — wait for it — Joan Shawlee.

Dick Patterson was another one of those actors who appeared in bit parts in almost TV show of the sixties…and the seventies and the eighties. He was part of the troupe of performers who appeared in Billy Barnes revues in the early sixties so he turned up once on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He played talk show host Stevie Parsons there before Richard Schaal took over the role. Patterson was later a frequent sketch player on The Carol Burnett Show when they needed an extra man. He had performed on Broadway with Burnett in Fade Out, Fade In. Dick Patterson passed away in 1999.

Vic Damone was, of course, a popular singer of popular music. He also turned up on The Dick Van Dyke Show and I remember a fun little "summer replacement" show he did in 1961 and again in 1962 on NBC. It was called The Lively Ones — the same name as a hit song he recorded — and I've never seen a trace of it since it originally aired.  Mr. Damone left us in 2018.

So now you're probably wondering: How was the Some Like It Hot sitcom pilot? I'm wondering that too. I've never seen it and didn't even know of its existence until just the other day. Maybe someone reading this knows where there's a copy. I wouldn't get my hopes up for a masterpiece, considering the icy response it seems to have gotten from the network and potential sponsor. But it might be interesting to see…especially the sequence in which Lemmon and Curtis turn into two other actors.

Television has adapted (or tried to adapt) a lot of movies and I wonder if anyone ever thought of that. Somehow, I don't think when they were prepping the TV version of M*A*S*H, anyone said, "Hey, what if we got Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould to appear and in one scene, Hawkeye and Trapper John were severely injured in a shelling and after extensive plastic surgery, they turned into Alan Alda and Wayne Rogers?"

This is my almost-annual post about why I don't like Halloween. I run it each year and sometimes I change the name of the anti-gay person in the last paragraph — but if you've read it before, there's no need to read it again…

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 trick-or-treating. In earlier versions of this essay, I used to say, "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." But I haven't had anyone at my door for three or four years now so I don't bother.

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 for Halloween and not up in West Hollywood wearing my Marjorie Taylor Greene 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.

Here's a Woody Allen rarity. In 1965, reportedly when he was in the U.K. filming his role in another Woody Allen rarity — Casino Royale — he hosted a special for Granada Television. It consisted of him doing stand-up interrupted by one musical act. Wikipedia says the show runs 38 minutes but this video (which seems to be complete) runs 27 minutes.

If any of this seems familiar, I linked to some excerpts from this show many years ago. If you don't have time to watch the entire thing, he does his Moose routine at 21:25, then plugs the record album on which it appeared. Thanks to a reader of this site who calls himself or herself "Orange Apple" for pointing me in the direction to find this…

Back in this post, I said the following about the comedian Hasan Minhaj…

The Daily Show will return on October 16 with more of its on-air auditioning guest hosts. I would guess that Hasan Minhaj is no longer as high as he once was on the list of those who might get the job permanently. Mr. Minhaj, who I liked the few times I saw him perform stand-up, has been accused and has more or less confessed to telling stories from his life that were exaggerated to the point of being…well, if not lies then the next-closest thing.

True, most comedians do exaggerate or simplify true tales to make them shorter or clearer or more pointed or, most often, funnier. I think most audiences understand that but there's a line one can cross and Minhaj seems to have crossed it too far too many times. To his credit, he's confessed to his "crime" but that doesn't give him back all or even enough of his credibility.

I would like to formally retract that part of the post and replace it with a big "I'm not sure." The charges against Mr. Minhaj were first made in this article in The New Yorker. Minhaj has now released a lengthy video response which basically says, "Yeah, I exaggerated and changed some facts but it's nowhere near as bad as the piece in The New Yorker made it out to be. If you wanna watch his whole reply, here it is. Parts of it seem pretty convincing to me but you can and will decide for you…

The New Yorker has responded with a statement that essentially says, "We stand by our story." Like I said, you can decide whatever you want about this. That's if you even care at all and I can see where you might not. Heck, I might join you.

I said it looked to me like Minhaj had crossed the line far too many times but it now looks like to me that while he crossed it, he didn't cross it as far or as often as the article suggested. Maybe. I think I'll hide behind that big "I'm not sure" or maybe even a bigger "I don't care."

A number of you have written in to ask me about last week's termite tenting of my home. Some, like Prentice Hammond, wrote to ask "Does this termite gas do anything to the contents of your home? Collectibles in particular (one of a kind items)? Comics, say, or books?"

Answer: Nope. It can harm pets and plants and you have to remove (or bag in special bags) all food items that are not still factory-sealed in glass, metal or plastic. But I've had my house tented and filled for a couple days with Vikane® gas every fifteen years or so and it doesn't harm artwork, books, old comic books…anything. In fact, it probably helps some collectibles since I own a few books that show signs of termite gnawing and this stops that…for a while.

There are quite a few videos on YouTube that tell you how to prep your home for a fumigation.  Check one out if you're thinking of having it done.

I've also had questions from folks who live in Southern California asking me who my exterminator is and if I was happy with their work. I was…very.  So I am pleased to recommend Morales Exterminating Company.  Ask for Robert and tell him I sent you.

In the past here, I've featured some videos from the folks at Hellthy Junk Food, a video enterprise run by a couple — J.P. Lambiase and Julia Goolia. Recently, they separated and J.P. is now devoting his time to trying to establish a career as a stand-up comedian.  He's posting videos of how that's going.

Julia, whose real last name is of course not Goolia, is now holding down the Hellthy Junk Food fort by herself and she's still posting food-oriented videos like this one. In it, she went to several local supermarkets in Florida and did some comparison shopping.

Comparison shopping is something I sometimes like to do though I do it by looking up the prices of my local markets online which is more easily done on Instacart. Go there, put in your address and look up, say, the price of a gallon of milk. Or the price of any item else which is identical or pretty much identical no matter where you buy it…like a can of Campbell's Cream of Anything Soup or a box of Cheerios. Often, the range of prices is more than a few cents — as the charming Ms. Goolia found…

My pal Tom Galloway, who knows almost everything about almost everything, fills me in on a few things relevant to our mention of Formula 1 racing in Las Vegas next month…

1) Chicago's race wasn't Formula 1 like Vegas' will be. Believe it or not, it was a NASCAR (which had this Western North Carolina where NASCAR originated from drivers carrying moonshine outrunning the revenooers [sic] born person raising an eyebrow. Should've been in Charlotte) race, and they have a contract for two more years. Unfortunately, it was marred by heavy rains, cancelling the last 25 laps/quarter of the race and associated concerts. Much more affordable than Formula 1; tickets were only $269.

On the other hand, this was at least in part where people actually live, so it seriously inconvenienced the population. Also to my disappointment, since there was no mention of it, I have to assume the pace car was not a replica of the Bluesmobile from the last major street car race on the streets of Chicago in the closing act of The Blues Brothers movie. Writeup of the race and aftermath here.

2) From what I've read, Formula 1 has a ten-year race contract with whatever the appropriate authority is in the Vegas area. I phrase it that way since, as I'm sure you know but most folks outside of the Vegas area don't, despite that iconic "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign just past the Mandalay Bay on the south end of the Strip, the Strip itself is not in Las Vegas, but rather the unincorporated town of Paradise.

Paradise was created in 1950 to counter the actual city of Las Vegas (i.e.. for most tourists, downtown Las Vegas/Fremont Street. If I'm recalling correctly, the Vegas city limits on Las Vegas Blvd aka "The Strip" is Sahara Ave, such that Sahara the casino is in Paradise and the Strat casino a short bit down on the other side of the street is in Las Vegas) from annexing and taxing the Strip casinos. It's governed by the Clark County Commission and a town Advisory Board and also contains the airport and UNLV. F1 is confident enough about its Vegas adjacent events to have built a significant operations and paddock/pit building across from Ellis Island Casino.

All very interesting. By the way: In racing, the "paddock" is where the racers store their transporters…kind of like temporary headquarters and garages. But in the Formula 1 event in Vegas, every effort is being made to refer to that as "The Pit." Why? Because the name of the guy who committed that mass shooting in Vegas in 2017 was Stephen Paddock. We don't do much in this country to stop mass shooters besides trying to avoid saying their names.

Speaking of Las Vegas, as I was: Peter Luger's Steakhouse has finally opened at Caesars Palace. I'm a longtime fan of Peter Luger's in Brooklyn but my last few trips east, I haven't had the enthusiasm to make the long cab ride out to it. That long drive is part of the reason but another is that I've become less of a fan of very, very expensive steakhouses. There's a limit to how wonderful a steak can be and more and more steakhouses are exceeding that limit in this country.

Spending money, when one spends it the right way, can be fun. Feeling fleeced of it is not.

In Beverly Hills, steak seekers used to have their choice of Ruth's Chris, Fleming's, Wolfgang's, Morton's, The Palm, Mastro's and one or two others. I've had great meals at all the named places but in just the last few years, all the named ones except Mastro's have closed and I don't believe it's just that people are eating less red meat. All of these places offered fish and chicken. I just think that for many folks, "steakhouse" has become a synonym for "clip joint."

In Vegas, your basic Peter Luger's steak runs $72 for one, $149 for two, $216 for three, and $286 for four. That's just for the plate o' meat. Early reviews say it's a great steak but like I said, there's a limit…and it also bugs me that the price for two is more than double the price for one. i wonder what they'd charge if you said, "Bring us two orders of the steak for one."

Add an appetizer, a side dish and a dessert and you're looking at $117 per person and that's without tax, tip or beverages. Those tariffs are a little above the current prices at the two Peter Luger'ses in New York, by the way.

You may remember some excitement from me when it was announced that Peter Luger's was coming to Vegas. Imagine! There would be one only 273 miles from me instead of 2,787 miles away! Now, I'm feeling like it's not my kind of place. I don't feel like I'm part of the target audience for it or a lot of places in Vegas lately. The prices of hotel rooms, shows and other forms of entertainment are just alienating me as are the offers I'm getting for package deals. I have a problem with "package deals," as I'll explain in another post shortly.

Years ago, there was a great Chinese restaurant not far from my home. I wrote about it in Story #3 in this article which I wrote way back in the previous century. You don't have to go read it. In that tale, I told how I took a lady named Valerie there for dinner on many of our dates. We both loved the food there.

By way of Updates and Honesty, I should tell you that that not long after that restaurant got bad and lost my patronage, it went out of business. Also, I should set your mind at ease and tell you that I've found an even better-than-that-one-ever-was Chinese restaurant that my current lady friend also loves. And I should tell you that in the above-referenced story, I changed that lady friend's name to Valerie. It wasn't really Valerie.

One evening, I took the lady who was not named Valerie to a very fancy and expensive steakhouse in Beverly Hills for a wonderful meal. Later, she found a gentle, kind way to tell me that though she loved her dinner, she was uncomfy when she peeked at the bill and saw what it had cost me. I told her I didn't mind. She told me that she minded. It was a little under $100 which at the time was a lot of money to spend on dinner for two people, neither of whom ordered alcohol. It would probably be twice that today.

She asked me what it cost me when we went to the Chinese eatery we both loved. I told her it was around $25. She said, "How about this? Every time you get the urge to take me to a place where dinner runs $80 and up, we instead go to the Chinese restaurant and you give me $20 to spend on something I really need for my life? That way, you'll be ahead and I'll be ahead. Because frankly, while I enjoyed our dinner tonight, I didn't enjoy it any more than when we eat at the Chinese place."

I thought for a second, decided I couldn't see anything wrong with that and agreed. We did that for the rest of the time not-Valerie and I dated, which was another six months or so. It never occurred to me to continue that policy with subsequent companions but I may reinstitute it with regard to steakhouses.

Or if she doesn't want the money, maybe I'll send it to Operation USA or some cause that can put it to better use. I've probably been eating too much beef anyway. The policy may not apply any time I'm on an expense account and someone else is paying.

"Bud in Cincinnati" wrote to say…

I have to disagree about Trump's goal. I believe that Donald Trump's main goal after the 2020 election is to con(vince) as many people as possible to send him as much money as possible. Note how Trump demanded that Trumpists send the money to him and not the Republican Party, way back in idk when. I believe that every claim to have won is in service to this goal.

Okay, I don't really disagree with that. "Follow the money," as they say. My point was that I think all his odd behavior during the trial is consistent with the notion that he and his team are resigned to losing. You don't keep calling the judge names if you're holding out hopes he's going to rule in your favor. Trump is playing to his base. That's really all he does.

Here's a message I received from Joseph Finn about the upcoming Formula 1 race through the streets of Las Vegas…

They did this in Chicago as well this summer, blocking off a lot of the lakefront and museums for a month, and you better believe how much the locals hated it (not to mention the business owners who had access to their stores blocked). I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the big reasons that former mayor Lori Lightfoot is the former mayor as of a few months ago is that she pushed for this deal to have F1 in Chicago and the constituents were, "Hell no."

Unfortunately, in Vegas, the concerns of the "locals" don't hold much clout against the concerns of the hotel-casinos. The hotels are, after all, the major employers and at least that part of the city gives 'em what they want. Someone smells an awful lot of revenue if this race becomes an annual event. Nothing short of it turning out to be a huge flop is going to stop this from being part of every November on Las Vegas Boulevard.

And lastly, here's one from "A. Fan." That's how he wanted to be identified…

You're telling us who you're glad you're not certain people. Is there someone you would like to be?

Yeah: A better Mark Evanier. There's so much room there for improvement.

As longtime readers of this site know, I used to spend large chunks of my life in Las Vegas. I went there to write, to see shows, to count cards in Blackjack, to chase showgirls, to hang out with comedians and other performers, to get away from Los Angeles, to just walk around and see tourist attractions and tourists…and there were probably half-a-dozen other reasons.

Almost none of those apply anymore and the town — I'm talking about the casino part of it, obviously — just doesn't seem that appealing to me. Everything I see about Vegas these days makes me feel that I am no longer its target audience and it's especially true when I receive e-mail offers to go there next month and experience the first — and some Vegas residents seem to be hoping the last — Formula 1 race through that casino area.

There's some evidence that instead of being really, really, really, really lucrative for business there, they've lost a couple of reallies and it will only be really, really lucrative. It's not sold out and prices are dropping from really, really, really, really outrageous to just really, really outrageous.

Here's a preview of the event from Norma Geli, the dominant force among the countless folks now doing "What's happening in Vegas" YouTube videos. I'm not thinking anything in here will entice you to go. It certainly won't if you're like me and not the least bit interested in auto racing, excessive drinking, partying all night, sleeping in a room for a few nights that costs you more than your monthly rent or mortgage at home, and wading through massive crowds. But just watch it and see what kind of tourist Vegas is now looking to attract. That sure ain't me…

Except where it will be noted, my Person I'm Glad I'm Not for the forseeable future will be Donald Trump, who just endured a very, very bad week in court…or at least he did if you think the goal of him and his attorneys is to win the case or at least minimize fines. The following is the view of someone who is thousands of miles from the courtroom and isn't even following everything there is to follow online.

I'm thinking Donald and his legal team have decided he can't "win" (in any sense) in this proceeding. The prosecutors have him dead to rights. So…

His goal after the 2020 election was to convince his base that his loss was because Democrats rigged the system against him. I think that's all that's possible for him with this trial and probably some or all of those ahead of him. And in that sense, he may be doing okay…but I'm still glad I'm not in his position and so are you.

This is for folks around my age who grew up in Los Angeles. It's a group shot of Los Angeles kid show hosts from when I was ten, give or take a few years. If you click to make the photo bigger, you'll see I've added their names. Some additional info…

Walker Edmiston (B) was probably my favorite, though he rarely appeared on camera. Usually, you saw one or more of his puppets, especially R. Crag Ravenswood, who is to the right to Engineer Bill. You (or I) never saw the face of Vance Colvig (E) because it was hidden behind Bozo makeup that his father had once worn when he was the first Bozo the Clown. Jimmy Weldon (F) passed away recently. Jimmy, seen here with his little buddy, Webster Webfoot, was the last surviving member of this fraternity…and the job of Los Angeles kid show host.

This was taken on the set of an afternoon movie show which Tom Hatten (G) hosted on KTLA years after he stopped hosting his own kid's show running Popeye cartoons on that station. The major omission for me in this gathering is Charles Runyon, who played Chucko the Birthday Clown on KABC for many years. By the time this group was assembled, he'd moved to Oregon. If you feel like using the Search function on this blog, you can read more about most of these men. When I was a kid, they were TV stars just as much as anyone on the networks.

Since "gag orders" are now in the news a lot, Devin "Legal Eagle" Stone explains all about them and the laws around them. This YouTube video ends with an ad but the subscribers' version (I'm a subscriber) has no ads and ends with Mr. Stone explaining that this story is changing so rapidly that after they recorded it but before they posted it, they had to go back and shoot and edit in some update footage — which is why his haircut changes back and forth during the video. I hadn't noticed…

At 2:10 AM, I received an e-mail from Holly, a reader of this site who was worried that I was still standing outside my home waiting for the poison gas to dissipate. I appreciate your concern, Holly, but no. I got in about ten minutes after the previous post and immediately got busy closing windows and drawers, putting all my food items back in their proper places and, in general, making my house my home again. Thanks to my incredible housekeeper Dora and my amazing assistant Jane, everything was returned here to normal quicker than I could have imagined.

In fact, things are so normal here now that I'm up in the middle of the night writing so I saw Holly's worried message as soon as it arrived.

Right after I posted that message, a neighbor came by to ask me how things were going. I pointed to a worker who was up the roof of my house letting down the last of the tarps and I said…

An exterminator on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But in our little village of West Hollywood, you might say every one of us is an exterminator on the roof, trying to scratch out a simple, pleasant development deal without breaking his neck…

My neighbor didn't get it but you do, right? Sigh.