Paul Harris has posted the audio of a long interview he did with Ed McMahon back in 2000. Paul's a great interviewer and Ed, perhaps by virtue of putting in all those years on Johnny's couch, was a great interviewee.
There's a joke about a sky diver whose chute doesn't open and a horrified crowd watches him plunging towards certain death...and then at the last second, a fluke gust of wind blows him into a haystack and he lands without a scratch on him. The onlookers all run up to the guy and one says, "My God...you're the luckiest man in the world!"
And the man replies, "No, [name of very wealthy celebrity who doesn't seem to have ever done much of anything] is the luckiest man in the world!"
These days when that joke's told, the inserted name is probably Simon Cowell or Keanu Reeves (is he still famous?) or someone like that. For a long time, whenever I heard the joke, it was Alan Thicke. But when I first heard it, the name in there was Ed McMahon.
It's unfair, of course. All those people do or did very popular things...but they had that sense of having gotten it all by chance, by being in the right place at the right time. Ed McMahon wasn't much different from dozens of professional announcers when he got the job working with Johnny Carson on a game show. He didn't do anything that others couldn't. Still, he fit right in and provided Carson with an anchor and someone to play off. At times, Ed's main function was as a kind of lifeguard. No matter how silly or bizarre things got, Johnny could go to him in moments of crisis and there was someone rock-steady to help him pull himself out of a hole. When Carson got The Tonight Show, he took Ed along as kind of security blanket.
A week or two ago here, I quoted former Tonight Show head writer Hank Bradford about the value of McMahon. Hank is aghast that while all of Johnny's successors — guys who now host that kind of show — cite Carson as the role model and the guy who did everything right, they all think they don't need an Ed. Carson never thought that. There was a period in Tonight Show history when McMahon's extracurricular activities, like selling Budweiser or hosting Star Search, caused him to not be there some nights for sidekick duty. Johnny finally sat him down and said that was not acceptable.
Ed was no dummy. He knew that everything he had, he had by the grace of Carson. His schedule was quickly adjusted, even though it probably cost him some serious money, so that he was always there when Johnny was there.
Before each show, he gave great warm-up. It was the same each night, almost word for word, but it worked. He delivered his employer a hot audience and then stood by, ready to be called upon if Johnny got into trouble or if Don Rickles needed someone to call a fat drunk. He learned Carson's timing and certain looks Johnny might give him that would cue his participation. One night when Mr. Carson said, "I'll never forget when I learned there was no Santa Claus...I was just devastated," Ed knew enough to jump in and ask, "How old were you?" so Johnny could immediately say, "Thirty-seven."
In person, Ed was a little bossy, a little phony, a little eager to prove he was more than Johnny's stooge. He occasionally tried acting or nightclub performing...never to any lasting success. He did a lot better as a pitchman or a host, but those were just ancillary perks of the Carson gig. Without it, he was just another announcer. In a way, it was perfect casting to have him doing those commercials where he'd go around, presenting contest entrants with checks that made them wealthy. It was one lottery winner passing the luck on to another.
Every so often on some cable channel or another, I catch Ray Lampe, a cooking tutor who calls himself Dr. BBQ. What he prepares looks so good, I'm tempted to see if my health plan will cover his services.
Here's a short documentary on what this man does for a living. Basically, he travels the country and tells people in parking lots how to cook ribs...a noble profession. This runs a little less than five and a half minutes and you may have to watch a short commercial to get to it.
This evening, Carolyn and I went to dinner at what previously was one of our favorite restaurants. We like the menu. We like the furnishings and the mood and the comfort...and we used to like the food.
About eighteen months ago there, I got a pretty sorry plate of fish 'n' chips. I'd had it there before and enjoyed it but that night, I got bad fish and bad chips. Okay, that happens even in the best of places from time to time. I didn't hold it against the restaurant.
A few months later, we gave 'em another try. This time, I wound up with bad prime rib and bad mashed potatoes...quite a surprise since mashed potatoes are pretty difficult to ruin, and prime rib is one of the signature dishes of this establishment. On the way out, I told Carolyn, "Get a good look at the decor...it'll be a long time before I bring you back here."
This evening, I guess I was in a forgiving mood...plus, I had a certificate for $25 off. So we gave it what turned out to be its last chance and I tried the fish 'n' chips again. The chips were bland and the fish had that taste that makes something in your tummy say, "Stop sending crap like that down here!" I ate one of four pieces and not only didn't like them but started feeling queasy. My stomach has always been pretty sensitive to faulty cuisine and since I had its size reduced, it's become even more apt to go rogue on me.
The waiter took a largely-uneaten plate away and I had him instead bring me a plain baked potato...which turned out to also not be very good. How do you ruin a baked potato? In this case, I suspect, by cooking it hours ago and leaving it in some kind of warmer for way too long. Carolyn found her entree (sea bass) edible but not wonderful, and when she bravely sampled what I had in front of me, she concurred that all was not right.
The manager came over — a well-dressed man who, Carolyn said, reeked of cigarettes. I didn't smell that but things were a little blurry for me at that moment and she was closer to him than I was. He was polite and asked that we give his business another try in the future...but he seemed pretty certain that the food could not possibly be at fault. He had tasted an untouched piece from my plate, he said, and it was fine. As further proof, he noted that they get a delivery of fish every morning. Not being at my best just then, I didn't think to ask, "Is it within the realm of possibility that your supplier brought you a piece of bad fish? Or that it hasn't been properly refrigerated since this morning?" But given his manner, I'm sure he would have said, "No, that is not humanly possible." And of course, no one else has complained about anything this evening or lately.
Bottom line: I was apparently wrong that the fish tasted awful and was making me ill.
Well, that was it for one of my favorite restaurants. Had the man said, "Well, of course it's possible something went wrong in the kitchen...we'll make sure it never happens again," he might have given me a reason to think things would be different on a future visit. As it is, if I give 'em yet another try and dislike my meal, I'll feel like the biggest ninny in this hemisphere...so we'll go elsewhere. There are plenty of elsewheres out there.
I had three thoughts after we left. One was to wonder why he thought I was complaining if the meal was fine. Did he think, "This clown just doesn't know what good food tastes like"? Did he think I was trying some sort of scam to get a free dinner? I was there with that coupon, after all. It meant I was a longtime customer — so obviously, I've properly appreciated their cooking there at some point. I was also not paying much for the meal anyway.
The second thought was this: The place wasn't very crowded. When Carolyn phoned for a reservation, she was told, "You don't need one...we're practically empty." They were, and maybe that explains why the food didn't taste fresh. When the joint is full, there are probably freshly-baked potatoes coming out of the oven every few minutes. When they're only serving one or two taters an hour, I'm guessing they bake a whole batch at once and then the spuds sit around for a while and get a microwave blast just before serving.
Which brings us with Thought #3: As we all know, retailers everywhere are hurting these days. In April, the National Restaurant Association reported falling sales for the eleventh consecutive month. I'm thinking that maybe if your dining establishment is losing patrons because it's declining in quality, you might not realize that...because you'd think it was just the bad economy.
June 22, 2009
