A popular sitcom of the sixties, “Get Smart,” featured Don Adams as Control Agent 86, whose responsibility was to undo evil forces of KAOS.
     Bumbler that he was, Maxwell Smart made life miserable for his long-suffering boss, played by the late Edward Platt. On the many occasions in which Smart committed a faux pas, he’d simply utter, “Sorry about that, Chief.” So popular did that expression become that even the public used those exact words to rub out an error.

Continue reading →

     Is there any way to live decades and decades without getting old? I went to bed just before midnight Tuesday, at age 64. I tossed and turned for a few minutes and arose to take another look in the mirror, now at age 65. Instead of the Brad Pitt-type appearance I imagined, the new, more mature look resembled Mr. Moldy Face, Puffy Eyes and Turkey Neck.

Continue reading →

    A guest at a local hotel was irate the morning after checking in. “What kind of place are you running here?” he asked the hotelier. “I almost got scalded last night in the shower because both of the handles have Oc’ on them.”
     The manager, nonplussed, pointed out that his hotel tries to epitomize the truly bilingual nature of the community. So he replied, “One Oc’ stands for Ocold,'” and the other stands for Ocaliente.'” He left it to the guests to sort it out.

Continue reading →

    A regular reader of Work of Art, who turns out to have been an across-the-street neighbor in my childhood, asked me yesterday whether all I have written about yesteryear in Las Vegas really happened.
     Rather than wait for a reply, he added that it’s extremely convee-eenient that, for example, a friend of mine would have saved us from a beating with a roll of quarters. He also mentioned a column in which we peace-loving teens were about to be attacked by two gangs and were saved by the sirens of the local constabulary.

Continue reading →

     In preparation for a military inspection during my years in the National Guard (in New Mexico, unlike Alabama, they actually took roll, and I attended most of the drills), the officer in charge of my platoon asked me to claim some quite simple military occupational specialty when the inspector general came to me.

Continue reading →