I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before.
I guess the best advice I ever got or anyone could get for doing a talk show, though it has not been easy very often, was from Jack Paar, who said, ‘Kid, don’t make it an interview. Interviews have clipboards, and you’re like David Frost. Make it a conversation.’
Commercials are not the only exposure that obesity gets on TV. It is by no means a rarity on the wonderful Judge Judy’s show when both plaintiff and accused all but literally fill the screen.
Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, ‘It was a perfect script for she and I,’ inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, ‘Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?’
You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other.
I am always shocked that there are still a handful of defenders of the dubious practice of abstinence, surely the worst idea since chocolate-covered ants.
