The Munsters was only on television for two seasons (1964-1966). Doesn't this seem impossible? It was a favorite of NIPPIES, and of many younger folks who learned to love Hermam, Lilly, Grandpa, Eddie and Marilyn in the wonderful world of suppertime reruns.

Ms. Decarlo was wonderful in her role as Lilly, somehow managing, thru her great acting skills, to make Lilly both funny and loving even with her ridiculous get-up and spider-web hair. Amazingly, her natural beauty shone through even the garish make-up. Many of you may remember her in Band of Angels, where she played a white-looking slave who is in love with her master, Clark Gable, and he with her. The 1957 classic was widely shown on late-night television during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Even tho Ms. DeCarlo was already 35 when the film was shot, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.

Yvonne DeCarlo was, unlike most in Hollywood during her era, married only once. She and Bob Morgan were married 13 years and had two sons together. Michael died in 1997. Bob Morgan died, a stunt man, died in 1999.

He produced a number of film classics, including Federico Fellini's La Strada, David Lean's Dr Zhivago and Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup.

Italian news agency Ansa reported that he was being treated for a pulmonary complication in the Swiss city.

Many things on Canadian television are similar to what we watch in the U.S. But there were some differences. For one thing, there is a lot of nudity on the stations we flipped through in the hotels. Another thing we at NIPPIES noticed is there are a lot of French-speaking programs. For yet another, there were NO pharmaceutical advertisements that we noticed.

If you never heard of Miss USA before, you certainly have now!

Not for ONE minute did I ever believe that the recent Tara Connor - Donald Trump fiasco was anything but shameless self-promotion...for both of them. A popular gossip show on television even pointed out the fact that they received a copy of Donald Trump's new "The Apprentice", Season 6, on the same day as the forgiveness press conference.

These two social geniuses certainly got, in NIPPIES opinion, what each of them apparently wanted: million$ in FREE publicity. You can't buy PR like The Donald and Tara Connor got, my friends.

Do you know anyone Tara's age who has been as naughty as her? Underage drinking? Oh my! What's next...losing her virginity??

By the way, did you know that, according to some reports, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe all share an apartment in the same Trump Tower? And all three are involved in some sort of scandal at the present moment?

Rosie O'Donnell was hilarious on The View when she swooped her hair to the side a al Donald Trump, puckered her lips, and went into a comical diatribe about all of this. Rosie doesn't usually make NIPPIES laugh - she's too angry about her causes sometimes - but she certainly did this time. And, according to news reports on CNN and Fox, Donald wasn't pleased with Rosie when she called him a "snake oil salesman". He's threatening to sue, and, for once, lost his famous cool, referring to Rosie O'Donnell as "my fat little Rosie" and commenting on her voice "like a truck driver's". He also hinted that she'd like to get some time with Tara.

The fued between these two does feel very genuine.

A few months ago Mr. Nippies was in Germany on business. So, we at NIPPIES decided to shop around and try to find an international calling plan, other than MCI's, which would save us a few dollars. Verizon seemed to have the answer!

The Verizon recruiter told us that for $39.99 we would get unlimited long distance calling in the United States. Of course, applicable taxes and surcharges would apply. Of course!

The calls to Germany would also be a few cents cheaper per minute than what we were currently paying, we were cheerfully assured. These calls would cost about fifteen cents per minute compared to the approximately .17 cents per minute we were paying to MCI. (Unfortunately, Verizon owns MCI. We find this terribly ironic and sad, considering that Verizon is the former Ma Bell, the telephone monopoly which MCI founder William MacGowan fought so valiently for fifteen years to break up. How sad is that??).

Anyway, all seemed hunky-dory in the first few days with Verizon. It was like a honeymoon! We made our calls to Germany, secure in the knowledge that we were saving a few pennies here and there! Pennies, after all, do add up. And, when a few weeks later, Mr. Nippies returned to Phoenix, Arizona, where he was then working 2 out of every 4 weeks, we would call there all we wanted for only $39.99 per month, instead of the former price of $59.99 that we had been paying to MCI. Life was good.

Unfortunately, things went wrong very quickly. During the first week of our attempts to call Phoenix, we were unable to get thru. After a bit of a tadoo, we reached a Verizon operator. We were told by the Verizon operator that "our long distance service in Pennyslvania is down". We at NIPPIES had NEVER heard of such a thing, but who are WE to question Verizon?

"Would you like me to dial that number (in Phoenix) for you, ma'am?" we were asked? "Sure, as long as there is NO charge," we at NIPPIES replied sweetly. Oh, no charge, we were assured.

Well, guess what? We at NIPPIES had to do the same thing later that night. The conversation was repeated. Service down....offer to dial....charge?...no charge, etc.

Flash forward to the first Verizon bill. Ohmygod. $249.00 plus change. And this was NOT including the last MCI bill, which came to nearly $50.00. Both bills came in JUNE. Go figure.

How on earth did Verizon get from a $39.99 per month promise to a $249.00 bill? We aren't sure, because the bill was, to say the least, very MURKY. What WAS clear was that we were NOT charged the promised pennies per minute to Germany, but rather about $1.50 per minute. The long distance calls came to nearly $100, or about 10x more than they should have cost.

The operator assisted calls to Phoenix were another story. We at NIPPIES were charged $7.50 PER CALL, or $15.00 total.

To make a long story short, by August we at NIPPIES had paid Verizon a total of nearly $200.00, and MCI nearly $50.00 FOR THE SAME PHONE. And Verizon still demanded another $62.10. We at NIPPIES refused to pay this amount until we explained a clear explanation of how, considering how much we'd already paid, we could owe this much more. We begged, screamed, and called and wrote to Verizon. No clear response, only THREATS to cut service, were given to NIPPIES. We at NIPPIES demanded a clear debit/credit type sheet explaining every charge Verizon was making with every payment we had made, because, we explained, the Verizon bills were very unclear and not easily understood. The slick Verizon rep not only denied us that request, but she hinted that we were liars by stating that she'd "never heard of our long distance service going down". Hmmmm....then WHY were we charged for 2 operator assisted calls?

The explanation for the nearly $1.50 per minute to Germany charges? Oh, when we made those calls, we were told, we weren't on Verizon's service yet. Really? THEN HOW DID VERIZON KNOW ENOUGH TO CHARGE US FOR THESE OVERSEAS CALLS?????

For many reasons, we at NIPPIES cannot afford to be without long-distance service. So we paid Verizon the ransom they were demanding for our long distance telephone service.

We have now been without the long-distance service for about 15 days, even though Verizon no doubt has been in possession of our $62.10 check for at least a few days. This story will be continued...

In the meantime, if you are thinking of switching to Verizon from another service, PLEASE think again.

November 20th: Well, Verizon got what they wanted - overpayment, in our opinion, of nearly one hundred dollars.
Us? We had three days without service in the past six weeks or so....due to the rain. Is it Verizon's fault? We didn't even bother calling, just waited out the story. After all, how would we call?