Brick

Copy­right 2005 Ben S. Pollock

Wednes­day, Feb. 2, 2005. It seems fruit­less and self-serving to merely write stuff that’s a reac­tion to stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff.

Last month, I threw a Brick that Johnny Car­son in death deserves all the credit for tal­ent, longevity and know­ing when to leave the stage that he is get­ting in eulo­gies, yet it shouldn’t be for­got­ten both that his show was leer­ingly sex­ist as well as numb­ingly repetitive.

I have one more point: The talk shows in those days did do one thing right: Its guests were not always, always, pro­mot­ing or hawk­ing movies or books or TV shows. Some were on because they were inter­est­ing, fun or off-beat. Comics — the biggest eulo­giz­ers in recent weeks — back then rarely were intro­duced as hav­ing just begun the sec­ond sea­son of their sit­coms but that they were play­ing a week at the Improv or some Vegas show­room. Tens of mil­lions of “Tonight Show” view­ers being sold to fly out to grab one of a few dozen seats, on a two-drink min­i­mum? No, the comics were on to enter­tain TV viewers.

That was nice.

It seems that 9/11 changed the guest list, for­tu­nately. Now, the main net­work shows also have thinkers and pub­lic ser­vants, even jour­nal­ists with­out books to hawk, on occasion.

But count on Johnny to have invited Tiny Tim and Calvin Trillin numer­ous times, no mat­ter their box office appeal.

I’m still merely react­ing. Maybe it’s OK. The sun came out this morn­ing, and I reacted by get­ting out of bed and writ­ing this. Orig­i­nal? Yes, despite almost every­thing. — 30–