From nowhere, there was a sudden flash of seasickness. Johnny Carson had leaned over to a young, pretty actress and intimated, "you'll be forty-seven someday."
Carson was, himself, forty seven in this clip. As was his main guest -- Don Rickles, the man who'd brought me here -- something like forty-four years later and only a day after his death. In this clip, and the others I watched that night, Rickles was bemoaning his station in life -- being a club comic at this point in his career. Carson, as Rickles was wont to remind us all, was a millionaire a couple of times over. Their mutual friend, Bob Newhart, was a year into his first sitcom deal. Playful as it seemed on the surface, it was hard not to notice, maybe only because his course was now known to be set and fixed, Rickles's insecurity.
These aren't new clips to me. I've rabbit-holed on Don Rickles a few times. I've seen the roasts, which are edited so badly you can barely watch, and I've watched the Tonight Show interviews at all stages of his spikey career. The best of these were from the "CPO Sharky" era when Rickles was close, so close, to the sitcom legecy, the prestige and the security that came with it, with Carson needling him about the show's precarious spot in the NBC fall lineup. The ribbing was stark and cruel, but Rickles was one of the only people Carson would talk to this way. Rickles could take it. The studio audience marvled at the unfamiliar acid-laced approach of their Late-Night buddy and watched Mr. Warmth squirm on the end of his fork. We all got to be insiders. We all got to be thankful that Rickles, for all his venom and discontent, was just as dissatisfied with his lot as we-- or, more to the point, our parents -- congregates of the Silent Generation, lit only by their console TV's in their ranch style suburban homes and constantly wondering if this was as good as things were likely to get and not wanting to go to sleep because tomorrow was going to be just another mundane interval in their typical and unimprovable American lives -- and dear God can't I just stay here with these people in Burbank for just another hour?
We're not supposed to be watching this.
It was supposed to be ephemeral. It's just a trick of technology that we're here in 2017 and able to call up the collected appearances of a performer as the warmth of his lifeless core slowly drops to room temperature. Twenty years ago, we crossed this quiet milestone where we, the human race, had more space to store digital information than we had digital information to store. Then, Game On. Digitize everything. Build a box to show the frozen ghosts to anyone curious enough to call them up. Without intending to, we turned seventy years of entertainment into a haunted house where no one knows they're dead.
"You'll be forty seven some day."
No, she won't.
There's a sweaty clip from some Network Stars show where Gabe Kaplan is playing, for reasons no one will endorse, pinball. Pinball -- on primetime network television. It's long and it's terrible, and everyone knows it. The contempt of both Carson and Rickles is palpable.
Carson was, himself, forty seven in this clip. As was his main guest -- Don Rickles, the man who'd brought me here -- something like forty-four years later and only a day after his death. In this clip, and the others I watched that night, Rickles was bemoaning his station in life -- being a club comic at this point in his career. Carson, as Rickles was wont to remind us all, was a millionaire a couple of times over. Their mutual friend, Bob Newhart, was a year into his first sitcom deal. Playful as it seemed on the surface, it was hard not to notice, maybe only because his course was now known to be set and fixed, Rickles's insecurity.
These aren't new clips to me. I've rabbit-holed on Don Rickles a few times. I've seen the roasts, which are edited so badly you can barely watch, and I've watched the Tonight Show interviews at all stages of his spikey career. The best of these were from the "CPO Sharky" era when Rickles was close, so close, to the sitcom legecy, the prestige and the security that came with it, with Carson needling him about the show's precarious spot in the NBC fall lineup. The ribbing was stark and cruel, but Rickles was one of the only people Carson would talk to this way. Rickles could take it. The studio audience marvled at the unfamiliar acid-laced approach of their Late-Night buddy and watched Mr. Warmth squirm on the end of his fork. We all got to be insiders. We all got to be thankful that Rickles, for all his venom and discontent, was just as dissatisfied with his lot as we-- or, more to the point, our parents -- congregates of the Silent Generation, lit only by their console TV's in their ranch style suburban homes and constantly wondering if this was as good as things were likely to get and not wanting to go to sleep because tomorrow was going to be just another mundane interval in their typical and unimprovable American lives -- and dear God can't I just stay here with these people in Burbank for just another hour?
We're not supposed to be watching this.
It was supposed to be ephemeral. It's just a trick of technology that we're here in 2017 and able to call up the collected appearances of a performer as the warmth of his lifeless core slowly drops to room temperature. Twenty years ago, we crossed this quiet milestone where we, the human race, had more space to store digital information than we had digital information to store. Then, Game On. Digitize everything. Build a box to show the frozen ghosts to anyone curious enough to call them up. Without intending to, we turned seventy years of entertainment into a haunted house where no one knows they're dead.
"You'll be forty seven some day."
No, she won't.
There's a sweaty clip from some Network Stars show where Gabe Kaplan is playing, for reasons no one will endorse, pinball. Pinball -- on primetime network television. It's long and it's terrible, and everyone knows it. The contempt of both Carson and Rickles is palpable.
The show is a summer replacement. The windows in the long, low, blue-glowing, cathode-lit brick ranch homes are open and the chilled breezes of autumn will never get here. America will wake in the warm steam of their own sweat-soaked nightshirt. Next year, a president will leave the White House in disgrace and for him there will be bourbon-drunk nights when the south lawn spins beyond the night-mirrored windows of the Oval Office, the world ruined with the pointless ambition of the California lawyer, of a Vegas comic, of the prettiest girl in a class from some Illinois high school.
Carson is forty-seven, precisely as old as I am, on the night of the eleventh anniversary of his taking over the Tonight Show. He and Rickles reminisce about where they were eleven years ago. When they are joined by a young, perky Carol Wayne, the resident sketch girl, and they ask her where she was in 1962. She jabs that she was in high school, and teases that they are terribly old, and they remind her that she'll be forty seven some day, not knowing that she'll be found dead on a Mexican beach at forty-two.
I don't know why I instinctively know Carol Wayne didn't see forty-seven. My memory isn't that good, but the living room spins and my mouth becomes dry. A smartphone search later, my inkling crescendos into a dread that sickens me like a whiff of bad meat and I clutch the arm of my unremarkable American couch amid the ghosts of stagnant comics, marginalized actresses and sweat-soaked suburbanites all raging against the mundanity of life as it has been dealt, rather than languishing in the larger truth that the most bitter losers and the most opulent winners are all just as gone as gone can be.
Carson is forty-seven, precisely as old as I am, on the night of the eleventh anniversary of his taking over the Tonight Show. He and Rickles reminisce about where they were eleven years ago. When they are joined by a young, perky Carol Wayne, the resident sketch girl, and they ask her where she was in 1962. She jabs that she was in high school, and teases that they are terribly old, and they remind her that she'll be forty seven some day, not knowing that she'll be found dead on a Mexican beach at forty-two.
I don't know why I instinctively know Carol Wayne didn't see forty-seven. My memory isn't that good, but the living room spins and my mouth becomes dry. A smartphone search later, my inkling crescendos into a dread that sickens me like a whiff of bad meat and I clutch the arm of my unremarkable American couch amid the ghosts of stagnant comics, marginalized actresses and sweat-soaked suburbanites all raging against the mundanity of life as it has been dealt, rather than languishing in the larger truth that the most bitter losers and the most opulent winners are all just as gone as gone can be.
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