Features
Mel Brooks gets serious in HBO special – but there’s plenty of shtick, too
By CURT SCHLEIER
(JTA) – Mel Brooks’ new HBO special is a departure from the comedian’s typical belly-laugh fare. In place of the slapstick gallows humor – though there’s plenty of that, too, in “Mel Brooks Unwrapped” – is a more introspective, documentary-style reminiscence of his nearly 60-year career.
“You got it right on the nose,” Brooks says in a phone interview from Hollywood. “It is kind of a walk through my life, a memoir. Some of it is funny, and some of it is moving and touching. It’s a very different kind of behind-the-camera look at me.”
Now 93, could it be that his advancing age accounts for the change of tone?
“It probably does,” he says, adding quickly, “But I’m not as old as Carl Reiner.”
Originally a BBC production, “Mel Brooks Unwrapped” is the work of Alan Yentob, the British network’s former creative director. The pair have developed a warm rapport through several previous interviews over the decades, clips of which are interwoven into the new production.
Brooks is more wizened than in the earlier clips, but still physically active and mentally as sharp as ever. He even drives. Yentob’s camera shows him driving to the supermarket, picking up some fixings and heading to Reiner’s house to cook dinner.
Reiner, 97, is Brooks’ longtime collaborator and comedic partner, and Brooks says they visit once or twice a week. But cooking dinner isn’t a regular thing. Normally it’s Reiner’s housekeeper who makes the food. Brooks claims to be there only for the free meal.
Brooks himself needs no introduction. He is one of only 15 people to earn an EGOT – an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. Over the course of his decades in showbiz, his work – including the 1974 classic “Blazing Saddles,” the various incarnations of “The Producers,” and dozens of other films, television shows and comedy albums – has won him countless honors. In 2016, he won a National Medal of the Arts from President Barack Obama.
But Brooks isn’t just a veteran of show business, he’s also an old hand at the interviews that go along with the trade. He insists he never gets bored answering the same questions again and again.
“I couldn’t be who I am if I didn’t love the questions and making up answers and lying about my life,” Brooks says. “When you’re a comic in the Mountains, you have to be prepared for anything.”
The mountains, of course, are the Catskills, where thousands of New York City Jews used to escape the summer heat. Brooks, a Brooklyn native, got a job as a dishwasher at a Catskills resort as a teenager.
Later he was allowed to perform some routines he had written.
“When I was there, there were so many wonderful hotels, and what training you got,” Brooks recalls. “You realized to make your act work, you needed good stories. You couldn’t steal material like Milton Berle. You had to have original material because that audience knew its stuff. Once I told a really funny joke and someone in the audience got up and said you stole that from Myron Cohen. And it was true.”
Brooks and Reiner achieved early acclaim in the 1950s writing and performing on Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” and its follow-up, “Caesar’s Hour.” Success after success followed, including the spy spoof “Get Smart” that Brooks co-created with Buck Henry. Along the way, Brooks and Reiner turned a routine they performed for friends at parties, “The 2,000 Year Old Man,” into a recording that sold over 1 million copies.
In 1964, Brooks married Anne Bancroft, whose newly released DVD collection is “selling like hotcakes,” Brooks said. “I wish it would sell like a boxed set.”
You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, you can’t take Brooklyn out of the boy. When the subject of his early years in the borough comes up, you can almost hear Brooks break out in a smile as he recounts his childhood memories.
“I remember my mother washed the floors,” he says. “Then she’d spread the newspaper down, the [Yiddish daily papers] Freiheit or the Forverts, to help the floor dry. Once my brother Irving came in and walked on the papers. I was about 5 and I yelled at Irving, ‘You’re cursed. God is going to kill you.’ I thought because the papers were written in Hebrew Yiddish, I thought the words were sacred.”
Brooks’ trademark Borscht Belt style owes everything to his childhood growing up in the heavily Jewish tenements of Brooklyn. He still remembers the pride his family felt when they were able to raise the $2 a month that allowed them to upgrade from an apartment at the back of their building, where the only view was of other buildings and garbage cans.
“I didn’t know any other life,” Brooks says. “When you grew up in Williamsburg and somebody goes by you who’s not Jewish, you feel sorry for them. You want to give them some food. I thought the whole world was Jewish – until I got into the Army.”
But Hollywood wasn’t the Army. As Brooks says in the documentary, after “The Producers” became a hit, “an army of Jews wanted to invest in my next musical comedy.” His success was assured – something he wishes he could have told his younger self.
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Features
Ontario Online Casinos Let Players Set Daily, Weekly and Monthly Deposit Limits
A deposit limit sets a ceiling on how much money someone can add to an online gambling account. In Ontario’s regulated market, players can choose limits covering 24 hours, seven days and one month, with the website’s system enforcing the amounts they select.
The settings are straightforward, but the timing deserves attention. A daily allowance may sit within weekly and monthly caps, while an increase can involve a waiting period. For adults using Chrome on a Chromebook, understanding these account rules starts with knowing where to find them.
Finding the Settings and Choosing a Period
Deposit controls sit within the gambling website’s account menus. The Tooniebet Ontario responsible gaming page is an operator-specific resource readers can consult alongside their account settings. ToonieBet is operated by Canadix Limited and regulated by the AGCO under an agreement with iGaming Ontario.
Ontario’s standards require an easy and obvious way to set financial and time limits during registration and afterward. Players must be offered deposit and loss limits when signing up, and the controls must remain easy to reach and change once an account is open.
Menu names differ between sites. Published examples place deposit limits under account settings or responsible-gaming tools, where players can select an amount and a period.
Each type of limit measures something different. Deposit limits cap money added to the account. Loss limits restrict net losses after winnings are taken into account, while time limits govern playing time. iGaming Ontario’s player guidance explains all three.
For Chromebook users, these settings are managed through the website’s account interface. Chrome’s own permissions handle separate browser functions, such as access to location information.
How Several Limits Apply to One Deposit
Players can have daily, weekly and monthly limits running together. A deposit must fit within every active cap.
Take a hypothetical account with limits of CAD $40 daily, CAD $100 weekly and CAD $250 monthly. These figures illustrate the process.
If someone has already deposited CAD $90 during the weekly period, the remaining weekly allowance is CAD $10. That becomes the most they can add, even when the daily limit has more room. Reaching the monthly cap would likewise block another deposit until some monthly allowance becomes available.
This is why checking all active limits matters. A new day may bring fresh daily capacity while the weekly or monthly total remains close to its ceiling. The longer periods continue to apply as the shorter one refreshes.
When Money Drops Out of a Rolling Window
The next question is when previous deposits stop counting toward a cap. Some sites use rolling periods, which track elapsed time from individual deposits.
Published Ontario policies include daily windows of 24 hours, weekly windows of 168 hours and monthly windows of 720 hours, equivalent to 30 days. Under that approach, each deposit frees up its corresponding allowance once it falls outside the window.
Suppose someone has a CAD $100 rolling weekly limit and deposits CAD $25 on Friday, followed by CAD $75 on Saturday. Seven days after Friday’s deposit, CAD $25 becomes available again. The other CAD $75 returns seven days after Saturday’s deposit.
Leaving the restored Friday allowance unused means it combines with Saturday’s restored amount. At that point, the full CAD $100 is available. Reviewing deposit dates and times helps explain how much room remains within a rolling period.
Changing a Cap Takes a Separate Step
A limit refreshing follows the schedule already attached to the account. Raising that limit requires a request and a wait.
Ontario’s standards require at least 24 hours before a player’s request to relax or remove an established limit can take effect. The existing limit remains enforceable during the cooling-off period.
Operators publish their own timings. Documented examples include a seven-day wait for deposit-limit increases or removals. Another published schedule allows increases after one day for a daily cap, seven days for a weekly cap and 30 days for a monthly cap.
Lower limits take effect immediately under these published policies. Some policies also restart the waiting period when a player requests another increase while an earlier change is pending. The effective date shows which amount currently applies.
Other Controls and Support
Deposit limits work alongside loss limits, time limits, short breaks and self-exclusion. Together, these give players ways to restrict account funding, gambling activity or access.
Ontario-regulated online casino play is restricted to adults aged 19 and older who are physically in Ontario. Gambling involves financial risk.
For concerns about your gambling or someone else’s, ConnexOntario offers free, confidential information and referral support around the clock. Call 1-866-531-2600 or text CONNEX to 247247. Standard message and data rates may apply.
Features
What “Best Odds” Really Means When Comparing Gambling Review Websites
The phrase best odds appears frequently in gambling discussions, but it is surprisingly easy to use imprecisely. MonsterBetList is primarily a casino review and rankings website, not a dedicated live sportsbook odds comparison terminal. That difference is central to evaluating what its reviews can and cannot establish. A casino rating may explain payout conditions, licence information and bonus restrictions, while a claim about the best available price on a sporting outcome requires a different kind of evidence altogether.
Odds and ratings answer different questions
Sports betting odds represent a price offered on a specified outcome. A review rating is an editorial judgement built from multiple criteria. These two numerical systems cannot be substituted for one another. A bookmaker rated highly for service may offer a less competitive price on a particular match, while a service with a more attractive price may impose different limits or verification rules.
Similarly, a casino review can discuss return-to-player statistics, but RTP is not the same as sportsbook odds. RTP describes a theoretical long-run percentage built into a game model. It does not tell a reader what will happen in one session and it is not an individually negotiable market quotation.
What makes sports odds comparable?
A fair odds comparison starts with identical selections: the same event, outcome, market rules and settlement conditions. Comparing a three-way football result with a draw-no-bet price is invalid because the products pay under different circumstances. The observation time also matters; displayed prices can change quickly as market information or trading decisions evolve.
The numerical format should be standardised. Decimal odds provide one convenient representation, but American and fractional formats express the same underlying idea differently. Converting these formats is straightforward. What matters is the net price, the operator’s rules and whether the quoted offer remains available when reviewed.
Overround explains the hidden cost of many markets
In a simplified two-outcome market, dividing one by each decimal price produces an implied probability. If the implied probabilities add to more than 100%, the excess is commonly described as the bookmaker’s overround. It is one way of understanding the margin embedded in prices, although individual market structure and adjustments can complicate the interpretation.
This concept explains why the word best should not be attached to a price without context. A strong headline may look appealing yet represent an ordinary margin after calculation. More importantly, any single quote is time-dependent. Genuine comparison requires a dated observation and equivalent market rules; broad editorial praise is not enough.
What casino rankings can establish instead
MonsterBetList publishes casino reviews and guides addressing licences, bonuses, payout experiences and responsible gambling. Those topics are relevant to evaluating consumer risk and service quality. A report about the length of a withdrawal process, for example, can be useful if its methodology is transparent. A bonus review can help identify restrictive wagering requirements that marketing headlines omit.
However, a casino ranking should not be presented as evidence that its highest-rated operator consistently offers the best sports prices. Unless a site publishes repeated market-by-market comparisons, that conclusion is not supported. Readers benefit when publishers clearly distinguish what was measured from what readers might assume was measured.
Bonuses can complicate comparisons
A sportsbook may offer free-bet tokens, cashback or other promotions. Their effective value depends on conditions rather than the largest number printed in a banner. Some credits are not withdrawable as cash; others require qualifying selections, minimum odds or a deadline. Casino welcome bonuses often introduce wagering requirements, game-contribution rules and limits on withdrawals. Combining these products under one generic promotional score can hide important differences.
For instance, a large matched deposit might require extensive play before bonus-related funds become eligible for withdrawal. The required betting volume is not a promise of profit. The presence of a promotion may therefore make comparisons more complex instead of simpler. Clear disclosures should precede any judgement about value.
Editorial independence and methods
Review sites sometimes state that rankings are editorially independent. Such a statement is relevant but does not replace evidence of consistent testing. Readers should look for the criteria used, the date of each review, whether real transactions were examined and how negative findings are treated. If one platform receives detailed testing while another is scored on marketing copy, the ranking loses comparability.
Commercial incentives should also be visible. Referral relationships or sponsorships do not automatically make every observation inaccurate, but they create reasons to ask how rankings are insulated from revenue. A publication that explains its methodology and corrections process gives readers a stronger basis for trust than one that simply declares its winners.
Licensing and dispute rights before price claims
A marginally attractive price is of limited value when the operator is not legally available to the reader or does not provide meaningful avenues for redress. Regulations vary by jurisdiction, and a licence in one country may not authorise service in another. It is prudent to verify the legal entity behind a brand and the current status of any licence through official records.
Consumers should also review identity verification, account restrictions and dispute resolution procedures. These operational conditions influence the actual experience of using a gambling service. A sensible evaluation includes them before discussing promotions or theoretical market advantages.
Why guaranteed-profit language is a warning sign
No ordinary review or odds list can guarantee that an individual will win money from gambling. Claims of certain returns often omit the fact that results are uncertain, prices move and transactions are subject to restrictions. Casino games generally incorporate a house advantage, and sports outcomes remain uncertain regardless of a persuasive analysis. The safest response to absolute promises is scepticism.
Readers should also avoid treating gambling as a means of addressing financial problems. Chasing previous losses and increasing stakes to recover money can deepen harm. Consumer-oriented coverage is more valuable when it explains risk and offers realistic options for stepping away.
Conclusion: define the claim before ranking the service
“Best odds” is a specific comparative proposition, not a synonym for a high casino rating. MonsterBetList can be examined for its published casino research, review structure and risk disclosures, but those materials should not be stretched into claims they have not tested. Clear definitions, dated evidence and honest limitations are the foundations of trustworthy comparison journalism.
