"Is this supposed to be fun? Am I supposed to be serious? Am I supposed to be a comedian?"

Trump finally gets his White House Correspondents' Dinner speech:

Was he just supposed to take up where he left off before he was so rudely interrupted?

"I could never [do] the speech that I had ready just a short while [ago]. Oh, that was going to be a doozy. I was so psyched. I was going to rip people and I don't know, just something changed and it's really for the better. But I just wouldn't want to do that. But we'll do a little ripping if you don't mind...."

ADDED: I just listened to the whole "little ripping." He told a lot of bad jokes, often stopping to ask "who wrote this?" Sample bad joke: "I thought Kaitlan [Collins] had really made it big with a major new sponsorship, but then I [was informed] that it wasn't her on the Bud Light can. It was Dylan Mulvaney."

Then there's the joke he said he thought was the best one: "The other day, a senator I knew got a text, a great guy, from his wife, and she said, 'When you get home, I want to have you immediately come up the stairs and make love to me.' And he said, 'I can't do both.'" He had to say, "Does anybody get that?" And then: "That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole freaking stupid speech that they wrote." They wrote. Don't blame him. He's trying to use the old Johnny Carson method of improvising jokes about how the monologue is failing. 

I see he took the same position I took on Graham Platner: "I think Platner might have done surprisingly well because we're in the age of Trump.... People can do well today. Platner, I don't know. But, you know, people don't have the guts to stick it out.... He certainly didn't defend himself very well...."

And here's the joke I thought was the best: "Under my administration, a once-feared and powerful regime that relentlessly attacked America has finally been toppled. Their former leaders have been removed and they're now being run by a gay dictator facing internal divisions. But I for one wish Bari Weiss all the best at CBS News. She's a wonderful woman."

AND: Near the end, he offers "somewhat of a scoop": "My intention to run for a fourth term as President of the United States." He puts on a red "Trump 2028" cap. It's a double joke — that he's running beyond the constitutional term limit and that he's already won more than twice — and he leans into it, to make sure they get it: "I won three times. Now I'm going to do it again.... I'm going to do it again. It should be easy. I'm getting very good at running for President. No, I won three times. Did very well the second time, by the way. It's a rigged election...."

"[T]he foundation of Mr. Colbert’s success was something new to late night: hard-core, point-of-view political comedy."

"He had developed it while contributing to 'The Daily Show' on Comedy Central. A broadcast network, steeped in the traditional 'both sides' style of Johnny Carson, was going to expect him to drop that as well as the character. CBS did; Mr. Colbert tried. It didn’t work.... The network says it decided to end 'The Late Show' because it was losing at least $40 million a year. Sounds credible, doesn’t it? Maybe not.... In forcing Mr. Colbert out and shutting down a 33-year late-night franchise — while selling that post-local-news hour of airtime to a syndicated show instead of replacing him with an original program of its own creation — CBS is assenting to its own diminishment. The biggest loss is to core America values, such as the right to speak freely, even in brutally mocking terms, about those in power. Then there is the opportunity, shared by everyone, to find and be entertained by voices like that on a free national platform, or to turn them off and watch something else."

Writes Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift” and “The War for Late Night,” in "CBS Cancels Itself, Not Just Colbert" (NYT).

The biggest criticism I'm seeing there is the failure to put something new — "an original program of its own creation" — in that slot. But maybe they know that slot is doomed. People don't watch TV the way we used to. Staying up/getting into bed early to spend that last waking hour with Johnny lest you miss the whole thing forever — there's no going back to that. 

Dr. Paul Erlich, author of "The Population Bomb," has died, so let's go back to 1970 and watch him on "The Tonight Show."

Johnny Carson has had Erlich as a guest before, and this time he has him on in a debate with Ben Wattenburg, author of "The Nonsense Explosion." I've cued the video to start at that point, but if you like Buddy Hackett, there's an hour of Buddy before the Erlich/Wattenberg debate begins.

Here's the NYT obituary: "Paul R. Ehrlich, Who Alarmed the World With ‘The Population Bomb,’ Dies at 93/His best-selling 1968 book, which forecast global famines, made him a leader of the environmental movement. But he faced criticism when his predictions proved premature."

Premature? You mean wrong? How wrong was he? He was so wrong that [insert Johnny Carson joke]...

And you can read Wattenberg's original 1970 essay here, at the American Enterprise Institute website: "The Nonsense Explosion." Excerpt:

The strong position on population control ultimately comes around to some form of government permission, or licensing, for babies....

"Two smart, insecure, witty singles meet at a Manhattan tennis club, consciously couple, measure their lives in psychotherapy sessions, find lobster humor in the Hamptons and disagree about whether Los Angeles is beyond redemption."

A summary of "Annie Hall." 

From the obituary for Marshall Brickman, "Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen’s Co-Writer on Hit Films, Dies at 85/The duo won an Oscar for 'Annie Hall.' Mr. Brickman went on to write Broadway shows, including 'Jersey Boys,' and make movies of his own" (NYT).

Also, he was a UW alum: "Marshall...  attended the University of Wisconsin, a school he chose casually because a friend was going there and seemed to like it."

And: "In 1964, Mr. Brickman played banjo as a member of the New Journeymen, a trio with John Phillips and Michelle Phillips. When Mr. Brickman left the group, the couple took on two new partners and created the Mamas & the Papas. That may have seemed like bad timing, but a few years later he and a friend were invited to Sharon Tate’s house in Beverly Hills and decided at the last minute to go to Malibu instead. It was the night of the Manson family murders."

In the late 1960s, Brickman was a writer on "The Tonight Show," and he created Carnac the Magnificent!

"Unlike a lot of self-help gurus, yogis and crackpot messiahs who rose to prominence in the early-1970s age of weird, Mr. Geller endured..."

"... and his cultural impact proved both singular and lasting. Ikea produced a Geller stool, which had bent, wavy legs. Nintendo made a spoon-wielding Pokémon character, Kadabra, who could cause clocks to run backward. References to Mr. Geller, or mangled silverware, have appeared in songs by R.E.M., Toad the Wet Sprocket and Incubus, and made a memorable cameo in 'The Matrix.' 'It’s not the spoon that bends,' a bald tyke in a robe tells Neo, Keanu Reeves’s character. 'It is only yourself.'..."

From "The End of the Magic World’s 50-Year Grudge/In 1973, Uri Geller claimed to bend metal with his mind on live television. Skeptics couldn’t beat him. Now they’ve joined him" (NYT).

"If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this 'if' — he is the author of a benign charade, which is a pretty good definition of a magic trick. Small wonder that the anti-Geller brigade has laid down its arms and led a rapprochement with the working professionals of magic. He is a reminder that people thrill at the sense that they are either watching a miracle or getting bamboozled."

Behold the entertainment (from 1973):

"[W]atching the Geller haters now is like watching people run into nursery schools shouting that there is no Santa Claus."

Perfection.

RIP Charles Grodin, an absolute genius pic.twitter.com/11YBdTYrdD

— Steve Agee (@steveagee) May 18, 2021

And I like my son John's Facebook post:

Sad to see that Charles Grodin has died at 86. Back in the ‘90s I loved watching him on his TV show and as a guest on other shows, and I also like him in The Heartbreak Kid (1972), with Cybill Shepherd.

I’m not surprised to see Rainn Wilson’s effusive tribute to Grodin, whose grimly deadpan approach to humor seems like a precursor to the cringe-inducing awkwardness of The Office.

Wilson wrote: "R.I.P. Charles Grodin, one of the all-time comedy greats. His legendary wit and dark wryness inspired me beyond all measure. Just watch this… SO FAR ahead of his time...." And links to this:

"Before discovering the world of ethical non-monogamy, known to some as 'the Lifestyle,' I was in a long-term, loving, monogamous relationship that my body begged me to end..."

"... before it progressed to an engagement. At the time, I didn’t fully understand what was missing from that relationship, but I did know that my partner loved me despite my weird wildness, while I yearned to be with someone who loved me because of it. To further confuse matters, I didn’t even know exactly what my 'weird wildness' entailed, partly because I had spent so much time in relationships that were not conducive to personal and sexual growth."

From "A Unicorn’s Tale: Three-Way Sex With Couples Has Made Me a Better Person/Intimacy between two people is like ping-pong, but with three people, it’s like volleying a ball with no net, and no blueprint. That openness has changed my life" by Caroline Rose Giuliani (Vanity Fair). 

I wonder if she's getting published despite her being Rudolph Giuliani's daughter or because she is Rudolph Giuliani's daughter. 

AND: Lateral thought that hit me just after I published this post: The people who love Trump love him because of his weird wildness, not despite it. 

ALSO: She might not use the term "weird wildness" if she remembered this:

Suddenly, everyone's interested in Leta Powell Drake — when people in Lincoln, Nebraska have watched her interview celebrities for 40 years.

She's gone big because of this tweet, collecting some of her sublime moments:

Currently obsessed with Leta Powell Drake, the greatest interviewer of all time. pic.twitter.com/3oCYAd9vZD

— John Frankensteiner (@JFrankensteiner) November 12, 2020

Now, Vulture has a interview with her. Excerpts: 

I suspect Scott Adams asked this question because he believed he was actually the first, but...

2012: https://t.co/dRe28WJR6r

— Christina Martin (@CMM123) September 12, 2020

Robin Williams didn't tweet it. But he said it very well.https://t.co/PtdK8C4HV7

— L (@SomeBitchIKnow) September 12, 2020

https://t.co/SHLCTWKNDj

— L Hamlin (@walkingfree) September 12, 2020

Jim Bouton — author of the classic baseball memoir "Ball Four" — reveals that he has a kind of brain damage that has undermined his ability to communicate.

In this terrific NYT article by Tyler Kepner, we also learn about Jim Bouton's wife of 35 years, Paula Kurman, "who has a doctorate in interpersonal communications from Columbia." Bouton had 2 strokes, one of which, 5 years ago, was "catastrophic," leading to a hemorrhage that "wiped out" his language skills. "He had to relearn how to read, write, speak and understand."

Kurman had worked with brain-damaged children many years before, and recognized troubling signs in her husband: repeating questions, difficulty organizing and categorizing information....

In her work with brain-damaged children, Kurman said, her boss would tell her to think about what remains, not what is lost. It is a lesson she applies now. Her husband can still make her laugh, still make her think. He has taken up painting again; he once studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. And he can still pitch.

“You need to learn that the person is still that person, and you have to focus more on what he can do, rather than what he can’t do,” she said. “And then you adjust.”

Most of the article is about "Ball Four" and the celebrity status it brought Jim Bouton in the 1970s. Here he is jousting with Johnny Carson in 1977



And here's "Ball Four," which could be the best book about baseball, since — as the NYT points out — it's the only sports book on The New York Public Library's Books of the Century. But if these librarians only came up with one sports book for their list, it might mean they weren't interested enough in sports to get it right.

"Ball Four" is listed in the "Popular Culture & Mass Entertainment" category — along with some novels ("Dracula," "The Turn of the Screw," "The Hound of the Baskervilles," "Tarzan of the Apes,"" Riders of the Purple Sage," etc. etc.) and 2 other non-novels: "How to Win Friends and Influence People" and "In Cold Blood." Great company to be in, no matter how much these librarians cared about sports.

What did the librarians care about? Novels. There are 12 categories, all (except "Nature's Realm") dominated by novels. And "Nature's Realm" was their way of saying science. That's the way people immersed in novels refer to science.

Jon Stewart does an anti-Trump turn on Stephen Colbert's "Late Show" that is so bad...

... that when I said that might push people toward Trump, Meade said — quite seriously — that he believed they were secretly pro-Trump.

I really don't know how "The Late Show" can have become this bad. Stewart's reliance on yelling, laughing faux-helplessly at his own jokes, and saying the words "bullshit" and "fucking" seemed really pathetic, and I think both men knew the material was awful.

And I don't know why a network show that needs ratings would offer comedy that automatically writes off half of its potential audience. What's worse is that even for the people they are trying to reach — the Trump haters — it is bad comedy. Yelling, dirty words, desperation... that's what you resort to when there are no real jokes to deliver.

And the late-night tradition used to take into account that the viewers were getting ready to go to sleep. There was a certain sweetness, a niceness. At one point Stewart does a little bit that references Johnny Carson — he holds a paper up to his forehead Carnac-style — and it just made me sad at the loss of Johnny. I longed for a make-late-night-great-again champion. I'd thought that's what Stephen Colbert was going to be.

And what was Jon Stewart doing with a dead animal on his head? I know it was a comic impression of Trump's hair, but Stewart's post-Daily-Show way of life has been a big animal-rescue facility, a sanctuary premised on an utterly unironic love for animals.

"The Indiana he knew as a kid was completely homophobic. Take my word for it."

Said Meade, upon hearing Letterman's "David Letterman's Top Ten Guys Indiana Governor Mike Pence Looks Like" routine, which begins: "This is not the Indiana I remember as a kid. I lived there for 27 years, and folks were folks, and that’s all there was to it. We all breathed the same air, we were all carbon-based life forms. We didn’t care."



Meade was born in Indiana in 1954 and lived there until 1971. "I don't remember anyone, ever, saying it's okay to be gay or that you should treat gay people the same as anyone else. The only thing I ever heard was disparaging or it was joked about and behind the joking was pretty thinly veiled fear. There were no 'out' gays." Meade called Letterman "delusional" and repeats something I said the other day: "Stop otherizing Indiana."

I'm going to defend Letterman a bit, even though I'm sure Meade is right about  Hoosiers and homosexuality in the 1950s. One thing is, Letterman makes no effort to understand what RFRA actually says and how it is likely to work in practice: "Honestly, I don't know what [Mike Pence] is talking about." He's operating at a higher level of abstraction, where Hoosiers are stereotypically friendly and nice to everybody. That's what he remembers, and that is the Hoosier brand. Ironically, Mike Pence — in his disastrous turn on ABC's "This Week" — relied on the same branding:

Hoosier -- come on. Hoosiers don't believe in discrimination. I mean the way I was raised, in a small town in Southern Indiana, is you're -- you're kind and caring and respectful to everyone. Anybody that's been in Indiana for five minutes knows that Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan, it's a reality. People tell me when I travel around the country, gosh, I went -- I went to your state and people are so nice....

Yeah, you're the nice people... unlike those people in other states. Well, I just have 2 things to say about that: 1. You're otherizing the people of the other states who have to be less nice for it to be noticeable that your people are so nice, 2. Niceness is a superficial quality, and it's a quality that makes it hard to tell whether the seemingly nice person thinks ill of you or not. Those stereotypical Hoosiers might hate your kind. How would you know?

By the way, has David Letterman ever said disparaging things about gay people on his show? All the jokes in there over the years, going back to the "Tonight" show appearances? I think it would be extraordinary if he didn't. Mocking gay people was, of course, absolutely the norm for Johnny Carson, who expected and got endless laughs over men who are — his words — "light in [their] loafers."

AND: The "Guys Indiana Governor Mike Pence Looks Like" routine isn't consistent with an ethic of friendly kindness and equality. You put up a picture of a man and then throw 10 shots at him for the way he looks. Letterman made a point of not even attempting to understand what Pence was talking about. Let's just make fun of how he looks. Letterman was teaching us that it's just fine to have a gut reaction to a person, to reject the stage in human relations where you see things from the other person's point of view, and to mock him for superficial reasons that have no substance at all.

IN THE COMMENTS: Laslo Spatula came up with 2 answers to my question "By the way, has David Letterman ever said disparaging things about gay people on his show?"

1. In 2011, Letterman joked about Rosie O'Donnell: "The woman she is marrying, her fiancée, was driving... and her car broke down. And guess what happened? Rosie pulls up right behind her in her tow truck." Rosie wondered what motivated him and added: "I don't remember making fun of you when you had sex with all your interns, Dave. I didn't do that. I didn't make fun of your rampant, throbbing heterosexuality, did I Dave?"

2. In 2008, Letterman had a Top 10 list of "things Jim Carrey will always say 'yes' to" including "A Fan Asking for a Hug, Unless He's a Dude" and then a shot Carrey taking a bath with Larry King and Letterman saying "Those guys are so gay!"

"There has been much discussion about a media double standard where Republicans are covered differently than Democrats, asked to weigh in on issues the Democrats don't face."

"As a result, when we refuse to take the media's bait, we suffer. I felt it this week when I was asked to weigh in on what other people said and did and what others' beliefs are. If you are looking for answers to those questions, ask those people. I will always choose to focus on what matters to the American people, not what matters to the media."

Writes Scott Walker (in USA Today).

ELSEWHERE: In Politico, Jack Shafer purports to give advice on how to answer the "gotcha" question. He holds up LBJ as a model: "Here you are, alone with the president of the United States and the leader of the free world, and you ask a chicken-shit question like that." Oh, yeah, wouldn't you just love for the Midwestern son of a preacher man to suddenly emit an LBJ-style outburst full of Texas swagger and farm excrement?

And Ron Fournier has a "Defense of Gotcha Questions." He begins:

Years ago, an Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton walked into the state Capitol media room at the end of a hectic legislative session and asked the journalists if we needed anything else from him.  We had asked Clinton questions all day. We were tired. We wanted him to shut up and go home.

So I said, "Yes, governor. I know you don't know much about baseball, but when there's a pop-up behind the third baseman, whose ball is it?" The other reporters snickered. Finally, they figured: a gotcha question Clinton wouldn't answer.

Bill came up with an answer that seemed amiable and made him look good. But I don't think that's a gotcha question. It's just a casual, irrelevant question that might bring out some personality. It's the sort of question Barbara Walters used to be associated with.... What kind of tree are you?

50 years ago today: "It is the excitement of becoming – always becoming, trying, probing, failing, resting and trying again – but always trying and always gaining."

The most memorable line of LBJ's inaugural address on January 20, 1965.

Later, at the gala, the performers were:

Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev, who danced a pas de deux from “La Corsaire,” the Ballet Folklorico, Alfred Hitchcock, Bobby Darin, Carol Channing, Woody Allen, Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews performing a duet, Harry Belafonte, Ann Margret, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Johnny Carson, and Barbra Streisand.

Other celebrities present:

Peter, Paul and Mary, The Brothers Four, Mike Nichols, Elliot Gould, Bobby Darrin, Jerry Herman, David Merrick, Sophie Loren and Carlo Ponti, John Reardon, Gregory Peck, and Allen Sherman.

Dances danced: the Jerk, the Frug, the Watusi, and the Monkey.

LBJ and Lady Bird aren't dancing the Jerk, Frug, Watusi, or Monkey in that picture, but they are dancing, and "LBJ was the first president since George Washington to dance at his own Inaugural Ball."

A firstier first involving Lady Bird on that inauguration day is: "Mrs. Johnson was the first President’s wife to hold the Bible at the swearing-in ceremony."

Johnny Carson learns the word "bustier" from Madonna, who presents herself "as a virgin" to him.

And here's Boy George's first time:

Robin Williams has died.

And they are saying "suspected suicide"!

ADDED: This is very sad. He's exactly my age, and I remember how much we loved him in the 1970s. The first comedy album I ever bought was "Reality... What a Concept."



AND: First appearance on the "Tonight" show, 1981:



AND: Here he is, again with Johnny, 10 years later:

"It’s too bad this is such a big deal."

"It’s too bad our society isn’t further along."

The CBS News reporter Diane Sawyer asked [Sally Ride] to demonstrate a newly installed privacy curtain around the shuttle’s toilet. On “The Tonight Show,” Johnny Carson joked that the shuttle flight would be delayed because Dr. Ride had to find a purse to match her shoes.

ADDED: "The pioneering scientist was, a statement from Sally Ride Science announced, survived by 'Tam O'Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years.' With that simple statement — listed alongside her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin and nephew, Whitney — Ride came out." Link.

"The pancreatic cancer community is going to be absolutely thrilled that there's now this advocate that they didn't know about. And, I hope the GLBT community feels the same," Bear Ride, who identifies as gay, said....

Of Sally Ride's sexual orientation, Bear Ride said, "Sally didn't use labels. Sally had a very fundamental sense of privacy, it was just her nature, because we're Norwegians, through and through."

How cold is it? Death? It's very cold.

RIP, Ed McMahon.

Living in the sunlight.

I love Tiny Tim's total commitment to his character and style, Johnny's perfect mix of niceness and sarcasm, and Tim's sweetly stated superior knowledge of music history. Here's the original that Johnny didn't know:



"Things that bother you never bother me..."

IN THE COMMENTS: Mr. Forward says:

Happy Tune from the the 30's?

Sounds like Secretary of the Treasury "Tiny Tim" Geithner.

"What bothers you doesn't bother me."

Bissage says:

My father worked with Miss Vicki's uncle and I was very young when he brought me along for a visit.

That was the first time I heard the expression "hippie weirdo freak."

In such ways are the incentives to conform made known to small children.

Miss Vicki now.

Miss Vicki has a blog!

Dylan's "Chronicles": Chapter 4 (part 1).

Continuing with my reading of Dylan's autobiography. (I do Chapter 1 here and Chapter 2 here, and Chapter 3 here.)

How Dylan felt in 1987, coming off a tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers:

I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck. ... Wherever I am, I'm a 60's troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. [P. 147.]

How he felt about his old songs then:

It was like carrying a package of rotting meat. [P. 148.]

Line on p. 147 that foreshadows the role the Grateful Dead would play in his revival:

It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough.

Obviously, the Grateful Dead, who show up on p.149, knew how to do live shows that stoked a hunger to see multiple shows. The Dead challenge him to do much more with his old songs than Tom Petty ever had, and he runs off, has a drink in a bar, and feels transformed by the singer of a jazz combo in the bar. Then he's able to go back and sing again with the Dead. He seems to enjoy giving credit to the unnamed jazz combo in the bar and unwilling to credit the Dead. Somehow, I suspect it was the Dead that shocked him out of his complacency, that their ability to inspire people to come back to see them over and over made him jealous, and that the drink and the mellow music only allowed him to calm down and meet the challenge the Dead had laid in front of him.

Most grandiose statement in the book so far:

If I didn't exist, someone would have to have invented me. [P. 153.]

Dylan's attitude toward his fans from the 60s (like me):

[T]his audience was past its prime and its reflexes were shot. [P. 155.]

Secret to a system of playing the guitar taught by aging blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson:

[T]he number 3 is more metaphysically powerful than the number 2. [P. 159]

Second reference in the chapter to songs as meat:

I had been leaving a lot of my songs on the floor like shot rabbits for a long time. [P. 162.]

Thing on TV that bums Dylan out: Johnny Carson does not ask soul singer Joe Tex to come sit on the couch after his song. P. 163. He seems to view this as a specific rejection of Joe Tex--did Johnny invite the singers over generally?--and he identifies with Joe Tex. Outsider.

Great play that just seemed like a big drag: "A Long Day's Journey Into Night." P. 167.

What spending time with Bono is like: "eating dinner on a train." [P. 174.]