God I wish he worked more. He could still be doing this stuff off the top off his head twice a week if he felt like it and we’d be all better off for it. David Letterman was smart to never start a show without him.
I plan on having a conversation with a music publication someday where they will say – how do you find your new music and I’ll say that I find that teen soaps are an excellent source and mean it – I may not be working very soon.
Chelsea Handler’s whole career is basically channeling Joan Rivers. Her version is a little hipper – she basically just rebooted Joan’s sensibility and rhythm in a younger prettier possibly sluttier body.
History should be kinder to Joan Rivers than it has been. She was brilliant for a long time before she made the decision that warped her career. It wasn’t like she wasn’t good enough to host her own Late Night talk show, she’d been doing it during Johnny Carson’s night’s off for years.
America had this religious obsession with Johnny Carson in the late ’70s early ’80s. It was for some reason seen as disloyal to our patriotic history to compete against Johnny Carson. The one guy who had tried it was from Canada – Alan Thicke – and people treated him worse for his efforts than they did the Ayatollah Khomeini.
When Joan did it, it was seen as almost stabbing her beloved father in the back. There’s no way she could have been successful, no matter how good she was, she was treated like a traitor.
You have to give Carson credit – he had things working for him. He only works like 3 or 4 days a week and never on Mondays. He’s making all the money because he owned the show. His sloth should be inviting every comic in the country to try and challenge him, but instead he’s so worshipped that to do so would make the entire country wish the Black Plague upon you.
Carson drank, smoked, made it with the ladies and he still was as popular as Tiger Woods at his apex. For some reason, America said, “Johnny’s our kind of guy. He grew up in Nebraska. He’s a good boy.”
So Joan’s move was just an epically bad decision and it also sadly gave us Jay Leno. Imagine how angry America was at her for competing against Johnny – her husband committed suicide and they still didn’t forgive her.
Til Death Us Do Part – By Ray Davies
What can I do?
How can I show you,
And let you see,
That I am someone,
That you want me to be.
I’m only me,
Not someone better,
Not someone good.
I’d be a soldier,
That’s if I only could.
If I were king,
I’d tell my army,
To change the world.
Then I’d be someone,
Like you want me to be.
In my little life,
I know that the world must keep on turning,
Even though it leaves me far behind.
Life is like a school,
But I’m not prepared to keep on learning,
Even though it treats me like a fool.
This is our lot,
To live together,
Not live apart.
Let’s stay together,
Until death us do part.
Not just a day,
But till forever,
Just as the stars,
Just as the ending,
Until death us do part.
Ray Davies hasn’t written a ton of out and out love songs and one or two are about transvestites, but I just love this song. It’s arrangement is a little English music hall goofy, but when he soars into the “in my little life” part it guts me every time.
This is hardly the marriage proposal that Donald Trump would make, but it convinces you that Ray believes that even the smallest, most fearfully insignificant man on the planet is capable and worthy of a great love.
I can still remember the phone number of just about everyone who was significant in my life at the age of 16.
I couldn’t tell you one phone number stored in my cell if my life depended on it.
I thought I had lost my cell today – I recoiled with horror at what a hassle it would be to lose all of those numbers. I found the phone – did I write down the numbers? Hell, no.
