You have a TV? No, I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide. You don't need a TV. Happy Wednesday everybody. It is Wednesday as I just said when I said happy Wednesday. That's the Wednesday that I meant. And it is time for an all new episode of TV guidance counselor. As always, I am Ken Reed. I am your TV guidance counselor. And my guest this week is very exciting. My guest this week is Paula Poundstone. And if you are just tuning into the show for the first time to listen to my guest, it's a fun episode and you will enjoy it quite a bit. Normally the format of the show is I own pretty much every issue of TV guide. Somebody picks a random issue from my collection. They go through that week in television and then we talk about what they would watch. But also occasionally we just kind of freestyle it and flip through some old TV guides and talk about TV people watched generally and television they were on. And this is what we did this week with Paula. It's a really fun conversation. I have always admired her work and really enjoyed watching her on things. So it was great to speak with her and it's a really fun conversation. So I think you will enjoy it. So please sit back, relax and listen to this week's episode of TV guidance counselor with my guest, Paula Poundstone. So what's on TV. So what's on TV. So what's on TV. So what's on TV. So what's on TV. Paula Poundstone, Paula, thank you so much for doing this. Well thanks for having me. Oh you're welcome. We were just chatting a little bit about the '60s Batman show. Oh it's great stuff. That's great stuff. I love that show and for years that show was like an Elvis Ross for Batman because they were like no it's this dark night that we have to have and it has to be realistic and it's like you can have both. You can simultaneously have multiple interpretations of a character. Yeah I like the one with oh I can't think of the name of the guy who played the Joker in the movie. Oh Susa Romero. No no. Oh Jack Nicholson? No in the movie after that. Oh he's Ledger. Thank you. Yes yes. That was a great movie. I don't consider it remotely the same thing. No it's completely different. It's like multiple interpretations of a legend. You know it's you get the basic gist of it. First interpretation may have been more accurate. Yes yeah. I love the radio arms going towards this crotch. The elaborate desk traps. Was he in one of those? Yes. Yeah there should just come a point where you just learn one move for that because you know. I don't think so. You're going to be on that table again. Or pre-plan. You know I may have something in the utility belt for it. That show was also sort of a turning point in you know it's it's very campy and it's considered just laughable now but I think people didn't realize that it was intentional. It wasn't people making a bad show and not realizing it. It was a very winking very sort of hip knowing show and it was sort of the first show that I can think of that was like that. Maybe get smart but not nearly as campy but as far as a show that was very self-aware. Yeah yeah well you think it's laughable unless you're strapped to a table and you're wearing your arms. That's true. That's true. And then you're laughing at the other side of your face. Or you know Vincent Price is menacing you as egghead. I think we would all be very tight. Got it. Oh yeah. Liberace was a villain on it. Oh I totally got it. Yeah they cast Liberace as a person. You know I saw that I saw that I'd heard such good things about Michael Douglas playing Liberace on the HBO show right. So on the HBO movie. So one night I'm in a hotel and I you know finished work and packing and I flick on the TV and by golly you know there. It's the very beginning of the Liberace movie and so I say to myself well I should watch this. I watch the whole thing the whole way through and Michael Douglas's performance was really really great. But I watched the entire thing and then I said to myself I just watched a movie about Liberace. Why? I know interest. Yeah just to see if we could pull it off. Right I mean you know I don't know I think about the guy's life other than I vaguely suspect he was gay. But I unconfirmed. There was always suspicion. But I watched the entire thing and I was just I cannot believe I devoted. Yeah. Whatever it was two hours of my life to watching about Liberace's life which I don't care about at all. Yeah you'd be better served to actually just watch like a Liberace variety show. Well honestly right. Yeah just gonna be more entertaining. Which I'm sure would have been very entertaining. But yeah no I just don't I don't I really don't care at all. Do you watch any of those sort of expose behind the scenes of a famous person stuff though? Is that like the author? I don't like I think especially now with snarky social media and like I really you know that horrible entertainment show with people and they pretend that it's news. Oh 10 TMZ's. Yeah exactly and that just mean to everybody. Yeah I probably have the kind of rubber neck thing as much as the next guy sort of wondering wow that guy down that guy bottom out. Right. But in principle I try really hard to keep my eyes on the road and turn away from that stuff. I just think I confess when I'm at the grocery store when those horrible things are that close. You're waiting at the checkout. I never picked them up but I do glades at the covers. Yeah I think you have to. Yeah. Just to be aware of what's going on. I remember 1000 years ago I was in a grocery store and there was the star in the national court or something. And one of them was back when Roseanne Barr was you know on TV a lot and on TV a lot. And one of them one of the covered stories said you know Roseanne Barr you know struggles to lose weight or whatever. And then the other cover also has Roseanne Barr on the cover but it says Roseanne Barr I'm fat and I'm proud. Right. Wasting a wave can't stop it like it's just like three. Yeah. What's the aim of that other paper is taken. We'll take it. We'll take the opposite one. And who's the woman? I never see this show. The friends woman. That is. Is it Jen? Jennifer Aniston? Yeah. Does she have a million photographs of herself possibly pregnant? I think so. Yeah. I've never been. Has she lost 10 babies now? I've seen so many reports and they go and they show and then they'll have that circle. Yes. And that point of the ball is there. I really don't know. She might have had a big lunch. Like she's a very thin person. Exactly. Like she could have had an extra slice of cake. It's got to look like a baby. Or she did what I do which is occasionally take a Kleenex and shove it in the top of the pants and then it worked it way down. Yeah. And you forget that it's there. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No. I really do my best to turn from those and the ones where they show, you know, stars without makeup or stars who look horrible. It's a weird humanizing thing. And I think we've always had that in pop culture but it's become the mainstream culture in the last 10 years. It's got worse and accepted more which makes it get more mean. If you look at in the 40s and 50s and 60s, there were always trash mags that had rumor mill but they were like almost under the counters. People... Yeah. They did say things as nasty. They definitely did. Yeah. They definitely did. I, you know, I'm beyond the point of expecting well beyond the point of it. But just because somebody's good in a role doesn't mean that they're a great human being. Right. Just because somebody's a great human being doesn't mean they're good in a role. They're not able to learn interchangeable. That's true of all jobs, too, though, I think. Well, absolutely. And this sort of feigned like, you know, how everyone is, you know, so upset. Our idols are dry. Well, you know, we're idolizing the wrong people. That's part of the problem. Oh, yeah. And you never see like a magazine cover where it's Apple. CEO is fat. See the Apple CEO. That was makeup. Yeah. It's like, who, why, why just these people? It's, it's very, very strange. Yeah. Well, it's, I mean, to some degree, to some degree live by the sword, die by the sword, but at the same time, it really has gotten worse. It really has gotten, yeah, costly. There's a weird thing where people kind of almost want to see the people who do things. They like fail. Oh, I think that's true. I think it's very strange. I suppose it's kind of like writing a bad review is probably more fun, really, than writing a good review and writing a review that said, well, it was okay. Is, is, is not, is interesting to read. So I think some of it is that. I think the adjectives are, are more exciting and failure than they are and success. And it's, you know, they, you can come up with more. What's the word? Like metaphors and things like that. But, you know, I guess when Sonia Sotomayor spoke recently in Los Angeles, they had Barbara Hale in the audience. And, and Sonia Sotomayor was very excited when she found this out because she had been inspired to go into the law. Although Barbara Hale didn't play a lawyer. Right. And, and she wasn't even, although she was a loyal secretary, and there was that one episode where she gave advice to the brother of the murder suspect. That's like being a lawyer. Very much like being. And every now and then, Perry would say, I don't know, Della, it's like you're after my job. Yeah. But he was, then he would, he would chuckle afterwards. That was usually the final joke on Perry Mason. Oh yeah, absolutely. The freeze frame joke. Yes. It always ended a joke that was barely recognizable as a joke. And then everyone would. Like not even dad joke caliber. Like even your dad would be like, I don't know about that. He was just, yeah. The freeze frame needs to make a non-ironic comeback. Yeah. Yeah. That was sad. And you wonder if the actors, did they, did they ever go look at, even I cannot do this. Yeah. Did they ever completely ever say, you know, what? So it's been interesting to me, you know, I come from stand up and obviously you do as well. And you have done some acting not as you, but I think the majority of your stuff is very much you being you for the most part. And so coming at it like we would, I think the same thing. I'm like, come on. You must go to a table and do it. There's no way. But when I talk to people who are actors, they're like, hey man, I just want my job. I read whatever they put down there. So it's very interesting where I'm like, you know, that's obvious now that you say that, but for some reason coming from the other angle, like if someone handed me jokes to tell on stage before I walked out and they were terrible, I'd be like, I'm not doing these, but it's a different, it's a totally different thing. I was doing a thing one time years ago with another comic. I can't remember her name right now. But there were two of us. We were co-hosting an awards show of some sort, for some sort of industry. I don't forget what it was now, but it wasn't like a televised thing or anything. It was just for the crowd in front of us. And I cannot stand awards show humor. I just can't stand it. It's the worst. So I had said right from the beginning when they hired me to do it, I said, look, thank you. Appreciate the work. And I will, you know, you put up the names. I riff on it. And what, right. And what the job is, and I will do that. I will gladly read that off the screen. Yeah. But I cannot do awards show humor, nor will I. And so we get to the show and they understood that right. And here's this prompter with this script. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. But the funny part was, see, the other woman hadn't had the good sense to do that. And so that poor thing was stuck reading this, like, painful stuff. And you're on stage at the same time? Yes. Or even if we alternate, I can't remember any more. But I was able to just be myself and do my thing. Which makes it totally more obvious. Exactly. So, yeah, it was really, it was, and I would gladly, you know, stood up for her, but I think she just, it never, I didn't occur to her to do that. Right. Yeah. So instead I just watched her fry. Oh yeah. No, nothing's worse than that. I really hate roasts. I can't get, that's almost like the award show humor combined with the awful mean snarkiness of TMZ. And I'm like, ah, I can't. And I realize it has a history and whatever, but it's not the same thing. Well, there are people who are really good at it, and then there's not. I, I did for an organization in LA called Actors and Others for Animals. Um, when I first got involved with them, and Earl Holman used to be the head of the organization, we bumped into each other at a play. I snuck over to talk to him for a second to ask him if he was the actor. In Charlotte McLean. Terms of endearment. Terms of endearment. I had to ask him if he was the actor who does, honey, it's sleep. Right, right, right. And, uh, he was not. Right. So I sort of crawl back to my seat and then- Check, cross that off your list. Honestly, I've been dying to ask him for years, and he sort of crawls over to my seat and he says, "Well, you do a benefit," and I was like, "Oh, damn. Damn what I asked you." I owe him now that he answered this. So he, it was a benefit for this terrific group, Actors and Others for Animals, and what they used to do a long time ago, were they would do fashion shows. Okay. Which, impossible to picture myself in a fashion show, but there I was. And what was really cool about it was, first of all, Earl knew everyone. Right. So, he is, and I'm sure you know, he's the lone actor on the pilot episode of the "Twilight" song. Yes. And brilliant. He was great. Um, so he has this, this, you know, like every studio backlot for, uh, and when you do the fashion show, um, it requires tons of people because it moves real fast when you walk out and walk back. Oh, yeah. And, um, it was a point to this. I forget what the hell it was. Oh yeah, yeah, so they did that, for years they did the fashion show and it was so much fun. And then, I don't know, they decided, like, too much fun. Right. So they switched, and they started having roasts. The first year they did the roasts, I only did one with them, but they were roasting Betty White. Okay. And, uh, I had to say it was, okay, here's the shocker. Yeah. Alex Trebek was one of the panelists. Okay. He was hysterical. Oh yeah, he's very funny. He was great and everyone was blown away by it. Yeah. But so I got this event and, uh, my idea was that, you know, Betty White's known as being, it's a very, very nice person and, you know, very kind to animals, and that's, hence, she was the person for this thing. And, um, so I had this idea that I would pretend that there was a back story that nobody knew. Right. And in order to back up what I was saying, I would hold up these photographs and say, see here she is, but the photographs actually didn't have Betty White. Right. Right. Right. And, uh, so the joke was sort of just that I was saying that- What is the Hindenburg? Right. Exactly. The photographs are the main ones. So I happen to have a black and white, uh, eight by ten of the cast of Lost in Space. Okay. I love Lost in Space. Yeah. I raised my kids watching Lost in Space on DVD. Who's your favorite character? What we bought. Well, I love Will Ross. Yes. And I love the, the, the, um, the robot. Yes. I have a little robot in my kitchen. But, um, when we've got our first, like, big screen, a lot of only big screen television, uh, we've tried to decide what would be the best thing to watch on first. Right. And we don't watch TV. We only watch DVDs or something. But, um, we all came to the conclusion that because of that vast space that lost in Space- It's the whole of Space to get Lost in. Exactly. And so, large screen television would be the best thing to- So, that's what we watched the first. Sorry. So, I met, so I have this eight by ten that I had for a thousand years. And, uh, I took that as one of the things that I was going to hold up and say, you know, "Here's been a white hurting a goat." Right. And, um, it's the cast of Lost in Space. So, I arrived at the event and it was a big round table. It's a dinner thing first. And, um, uh, I, I kindly, Earl had me at his table. And I arrived and he introduced me to the other people at the table. And one of the people at the table was Guy Williams' wife. Really? And, and Earl says, you know, "Here, her husband played zero." Yeah. And I went, "Okay, that's great." Yeah. "People's a gessorah." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He played Mr. Robinson. Yes. At which point, I take out this eight by ten. Now, come on. That is the craziest coincidence in the world. But you just think you carried that around you all the time. They did that on I. They acted like it was perfectly, like, like, "Come on!" Yeah. There are, I think people in those sci-fi shows tend to be, like, nothing shocks them for fandom at this point. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. No, I loved, uh, I loved-- So, Twilight Zone Lost in Space, were you drawn to all the sort of genre shows or just-- I like Twilight Zone. I'm not as familiar with it as I am. Uh, uh, no, I think I was just the right age group for, um, for Lost in Space when it came out. Yeah. But the other thing is, all right, Penny could be bothersome sometimes. Yeah. You know. They were right here out a lot. The whole "Mr. Nobody" episode, which, in my opinion, that was the one where you couldn't see the alien. Right. She would just go into a cave and talk. Very economical. Well, that's what I figured. Yeah. I figured they shot their wad on, on props and costumes the week before, and so, you know, some writing genius. So they'll be no alien. It's in your mind. It'll just be a voice. Um, yeah, Penny could get on my nerves after a while, and the bloop, bloop, bloop. Did you see the movie? The Lost in Space movie? No, was there one? There was. And, uh, Matla Blank is in it, and, uh-- No. And, uh, oh my god, I'm blank. Gary Oldman is the doctor. Oh, wow. I love Gary Oldman. It's-- it misses the fun. It didn't-- yeah, yeah. It's very '90s. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I see very few film adaptations of television shows that have been good. They're just, like, at best it's almost-- it's almost like the laboratory there where you're, like, that seems like they did a good job. Yeah. But you're not my guy. Yeah. And what I do in my town. Yeah. Yeah. The Lost in Space was definitely much more whimsical. I loved filling movie. He was great. He was-- he's in one of my favorite Twilight Zones as well, where he-- Oh, yeah, some of it. Yes. It's a good life, where he's wishing them into the cornfield. Oh, yeah. And he also had a really weird band in the '80s. Was he in the one where the kid had the gun? Was that him or-- No, he was in two. So he was in the one where the kid wished people into the cornfield where they're like, "It's real good you did that." Oh, yeah. And he's in the one that's one of the shot-on-video tape episodes from season two that people always instantly go, "Oh," when they see them. But it's the one with the grandmother calling from beyond the grave on the child's toy telephone. Oh, I vaguely agree. Yeah, he was in those two. The one with the kid with the gun was so damn scary. Oh, yeah. There's some terrible-- And by the way, it's come to pass a hundred times since-- Oh, absolutely. Yes. As have many, many, many episodes of that show that have totally been-- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, that was a prescient-- Absolutely. Yeah. But Lost in Space was kind of pure escapism, for the most part. Yeah, it didn't seem real to you. Well, the family unit kind of did. We had to have an ambiguous doctor who lived in our house and constantly tried to get our robot to distill alcohol. Don't you hate this? And that happened frequently. You know, I've always thought that Jonathan-- what's the name of the guy? Oh, yeah. Jonathan-- I can see it. --such with an F, I think? No. No. Don't think of Jonathan Frid from "Dark Shadows." Jonathan, I can't think of it. Okay. Think of it when I don't need it. Yes. Wake up in the night screaming. It's this guy. I've always thought that he could have been Robin Williams' father. Yeah, I could see that. He looked a lot alike. I'm surprised he'd never did that on, like, more. It's a lot. That would have been perfect. Oh, yeah. That would have been perfect. It was his name. It was something. It's very simple. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he wanted me. I don't really remember seeing him in it. We were talking about typecasting a lot before we started recording. No, surely that. Surely. He, everywhere, was still pissed at him, so he could probably never have done anything else. I was vaguely suspected, Don was a crack addict. He had that sort of terrifying at any moment. He was angry a lot. Yeah, absolutely. Which seemed to transcend acting. You can't blame him, because that time, when Dr. Smith gave away the thing that fueled... Oh, that's something crystal cells. Yes, they died. Die, die lithium, Martin. Yes. Deuteronomy or something. And it was in these containers. And Dr. Smith fed it to these plants. And then the plants ate Judy. Yeah, I mean... That's just going too far. Some things are unforgivable. It's irredeemable. Yeah, you're not gonna forgive. Yeah, so now, and I really can understand Don going off. Did you watch any of those other less well done at the time shows in that genre that were on the same time like Land of the Giants or Time Tunnel? I loved Land of the Giants. Yeah, I did watch. I'm deeply ashamed of how much time I spent watching television. The irony is, I mean, there are any number of shows that I really swear by in terms of their value. But I did not allow my children to watch television growing up. I wanted to call the joy for myself. No, what I did, I didn't want them seeing commercials, although I got to say that probably backfired. Which is that my son is just a mark. Right. He, you know, by the time you and I were in the, say, second grade, we'd see a commercial and go, "Yeah, right." And we, we developed a healthy cynicism towards advertising. Right. Whereas my son didn't develop that at all. So he'll tell me that something is the best car or the best this or the best that. That's what he wasn't inoculated for. Honestly. Right, and I'll go, "Well, what makes you say that, honey?" And I'll go, "Well, the poster or the, you know, the bill, the billboard or..." And I'm just like, "Whoa, boy, yeah, that's great up there." Right. And I also, I think part of my hope was that they would somehow become voracious readers and I can't tell you. Right. I think we filled in the time arguing mostly. We watched that. We'll be writers later. Yeah. Hopefully. We watched stuff on non-school nights, never during the day, but on non-school nights. And a lot of what they watched was videos of television shows that I liked. Right. When I was growing up. So you were trying to sort of program them to the similar... I wanted them to be just like me. But would you present it as like, "This is a show I loved when I was growing up?" I did. And sometimes, you know, like, for example, okay, for example, they started watching three stooges in there, pretty little, and, you know, I made the little speech about how we don't really saw one another's heads and it's only funny when they do it and... Don't get a haircut like Larry. Right. And it's not, and it's not real. And we used to, we went a few times to the three stooges, film festivals at the Historic Alex Theatre in Glendale, which is such a joyous thing to do. Because, you know, in all the years, I've watched the three stooges and I started watching them when I was little there, kind of my babysitters when I was little. And then I got, you know, when they would be on in that sort of afternoon, CHM56, Dale Dormand thing. Oh, yeah, yeah, Dale Dormand showed me. Yes, yeah. I watched them then, and then later when they came on on videotape, you know, I got them and I watched them, you know, a variety of times. And all the times that I've watched, I don't think I've ever laughed out loud. Yeah. I think I always knew that I was amused and enjoyed them, but I don't think I ever laughed out loud until I sat in a theatre full of people watching them. And that is that context it was made for. Right, right, exactly. It's so weird. I think very few people have experienced a lot of that stuff that we saw growing up that was on endlessly, that was theatrical shorts, looney tunes, and even to a charity and the March brothers and all that stuff. Probably the, I would think the little rascals made up too. The rascals, yeah. We never really got to see them in the context that they were originally supposed to be seen, and so getting to do that must have been amazing. Oh, it's great. I mean, first of all, I saw stuff, even though I've seen them each easily a hundred times. Right. But I saw stuff that I literally had never noticed before because you hear everybody else laughing and you go, "Oh my gosh, yeah." But the other thing is just to join in that collective wave of laughter was, it's so much fun. You know, real different than watching at home. Although, probably a couple times with my kids, I've laughed out loud, but the same thing, and with them, I know there's one thing where, and it's one of the later ones. But Joe Besser? No, not quite that. You know, they just look a little older. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's one where Larry, they're firemen, and Larry comes down the pole and his head sinks into his uniform, and it was done-- Very cartoonish. Yeah, yeah, but that one did get us. And also, there's one where they accidentally inflate Mo once. Yes. And it's very similar sort of wonky-- Too like the big technique. Yeah, yeah. Too laughing out at two levels. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, it was just so silly. If it had been done seamlessly, it wouldn't have been as fun. If it was realistic, it would have been tough. Yes, it would have been more. Do you remember the Three Stooges cartoon from the late '60s? Yeah, yeah. Where there were robots. Oh, I don't remember that. There was one that Hannah Barbera did. And could I say that was more of a Boston accent? Really? She did a bad barra. Hannah Barbera did that was the robotic Three Stooges. Oh, no, I'd see them. Because Hannah Barbera could never do like a straight adaptation of anything. Yeah. So like when they did a Gilligan's Island cartoon, they were in space. And when they did a Happy Days cartoon, they traveled through time. Did they do a Happy Days cartoon? Wow, geez. And Fonzie had like a talking dog. It was very, they did a Laverne and Shirley cartoon. No, I, boy, I'm glad I missed that. They did a lot of children's cartoon adaptions of live action sitcoms. It was a weird time. Yeah, I never heard of that. I just, you know, I'm a, you know, we have on DVD. Wacking races. Yes. And I refer to that many times while, you know, trying to instruct my son in the lessons of life. Yes, I think it's a good example. It really is. Because Dick Dastardly, even from a young age, viewers would notice that if he had just driven the car, he could have won the race. He'd follow the rules and he'd do fine. Yeah, yeah. But he would always get spoiled by, yeah. So you were watching a ton of cartoons and stuff. Would you like a run home from school, put the TV right on? Sadly, I was for a number of years. I look back on that. I remember at one point, Channel 38 in Boston had this phenomenal afternoon lineup. Yeah. And when it came out in like the September TV guide, one of the September TV guides, they had these, what do you call those? They had this opportunity, like caricature versions of the stars of each of these shows. And they were all reruns. They were all syndicated shows by then. And I remember the page that they were all on that told the times they starred and then had the picture. I tore it off and put it in my underwear drawer. And as a young girl, there's no more sacred place. Oh, yeah. That top drawer that had the underwear and had the love letters. Yeah. And money, usually. Yeah. That was a, yeah. That's the highest compliment. It really is. There's no higher compliment. And what I recall mostly was that Dick Van Dyke was on. And I think there was a little interim period. And this I regret, there was like the really good stuff didn't start until probably like maybe even five, six o'clock. But I would wade through the not good stuff. And so like a Gilligan's Island came out earlier. I don't feel the Gilligan's Island was ever a good show. No, it certainly isn't. But it was very Americana. And so when my kids were little, as I said, I didn't allow them to watch television. For a couple of reasons, one is I didn't want the missing commercials. And the other is, even if there's a good station, as you flip to it. Who knows? The red stuff that you see on your way. I just, I didn't want to argue. I just didn't want to do that. And I was hoping that they didn't waste their lives the way that I did. You've already put the work in for them. Exactly. I've done more than enough wasting for an entire, another generation of poundstones. But my son, who never quote unquote transitioned well, when we would be walking to school, and it was sometimes difficult to get him out the door and on a good path there. Right, right. When you walk to school, I'd often try to distract him with stories. And eventually, I would sort of turn to bad television. Yeah. And just relay plots like you had created them? Yeah, exactly. So when I told him the story of the tourist group that had gone for a three hour tour, and then I would say a three hour tour. Yeah. And then, and I told him that tiny ship was tossed. He, to this day, doesn't understand why. I didn't get a Pulitzer prize. I mean, he thought that was so brilliant. He's going to be at college, and he's going to be flipping through on me TV. He's going to come on and be like, "Do you rip my mom's ideas off? We got a case. Who we can sue?" Oh, I do want to sue. He's a litigious child. What's the other one? I used to tell him a story about these two people that one was eating peanut butter. And he was on his way to work. And he's really busy. He's not paying attention. The other is eating chocolate. And, you know, he's just really having a hard time getting the kids off to school. So he's not paying attention. The stories are really cornering. And they, you know, they bump together. And, and then, you know, they're very angry until one takes a bite and discovers that the, he says, "You've got your peanut butter on my chocolate." It's just a story. Yeah. He thinks, I am a genius. He's going to go to a candy store one day. They've stolen, as long as they don't take that idea about the guy in the advertising agency married to the witch. I'll be okay. That was mine. That was mine. We were actually for a talent show at school. We didn't do it. We didn't do it, but we seriously considered doing a stage play production of the guy with the chocolate and the guy with the chocolate. Really? Really? What have been genius? Did you try to talk him out of it? No. No, I tried to talk him into it actually. I really thought it was. Yeah. I thought it was. Let's a story that needs to be told. I think the time is right. It's a rich thing and you can develop that. You can develop that in a feature like film. Fortunately though, you do have the peanut allergy people. That might have been what stopped them. They have a big, big lobby group. They do now. Yeah. Yeah. They've taken, they've taken over. So you, when did they do, do the kids watch TV at all now? Are it still DVDs or is it like trickled? No, no. We don't watch TV. Okay. No, we still don't. You know, when, you know, when off the, when off the ranch a little bit, she, when she started to go to friends houses, she would cheat. And then so she found, she was still like friends and she bought the DVD of friends. I, I don't watch it, but I have OCD. So when I sort of glommed on to mash years ago, I don't know if I ever saw it first run, but certainly in syndication I did. Yeah. And it's like TV 38 used to share it all this time. Well, I took a Greyhound bus around the country when I was young to see what clubs were like in different cities. Right. And it was very, it was a very lonely existence writing around the country on a Greyhound bus. And I was so, you know, committed to, so obsessed with mash that when I would get into a city and I would, you'd see as you got near the, as you got near the Greyhound station, you know, there'd be more and more billboards. And it'd be the billboard. So it didn't matter what town you were on. Does it feel like a chess station? Exactly. At five and five thirty. They're back to back to mash episodes. And I would get to the Greyhound station. This was a thousand years ago. They used to have these little... The quarter TVs? Yes. The desks with the quarter TVs. I had no money. I did not have money for food. Yeah. And I would put my quarters in that machine. And when I hear that, my shoulders would descend and I always write with the world. But that makes sense too. I mean, if you're traveling around a place you've never been, you're looking for a consistent thing. And it's almost like an introduction to the town you go, "Oh, I'm leveled now." Yeah, yeah. You're in with my people. Yeah. Well, years later, I became friends with Mike Farrell and who's a great and wonderful man. And I know so much more about mash than Mike could ever hope to know. Right, right. And on the rare occasion when I bring something up, I'll go, "Well, that's like that mashup." So I can feel him take a couple steps away from me. Yeah. Where did this come from? Yeah. It's a little nutty. Yeah. It's like, "Is this a long con?" What? When... I used to watch it, you know, just every time I was on TV. I was... When did you see the movie? How fun. I think I saw... I don't think I saw it at first release. I think I saw it at the Harvard Square Movie Theater, which used to have a double feature every day. The Orson Welles? No, it's just called the Harvard Square. Oh, the Harvard Square movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it had a double feature every day, and it had a flyer for that double feature, which I used to tape up over the trash can in the back. At the restaurant where I busted tables, and it Boston. And I couldn't always get in to see them, but I saw a lot of stuff that I saw came from that theater. A lot of the old black and white stuff I saw, and they liked a lot of kind of cultish things. Right, right, right. They would have shown mash. How did it... By then you were probably very ingrained in the TV show. Was it sort of jarring? No, I liked it a lot. Although now, you know, just recently, they popped a bunch of Navy guys for, you know, filming some women in the shower or something, the Navy and that submarine. And I go, "Wait, wasn't that the movie mash?" Yeah. It's, you know, they change the rules on them. And by the way, rightly so. Yeah. But still having said that I can't help feeling a little bit bad for these guys. That's it. They all saw mash. They all saw mash. This is why we joined the Navy. You mean we can't do that. Yes. And you watch those. I realize I couldn't show that film to my... I don't think my daughter would like it. Right. Because she's a little too advanced for that. And I couldn't show it to my son because he would think, "Oh, so that's okay after all." Yeah. And the same thing with Animal House. Oh, yeah. Or can't show those things. Because yeah, that's what guys are getting popular. It's interesting seeing stuff that was like a lighthearted romp for teenagers. And even 20 years ago, I think that it's shocking that if you showed it to a teenager now, a lot of them would be appalled or shocked or really shaken up by. Well, I think a lot of the guys would feel like it was the answer to their prayers. True. Yeah. I would hope that women would be appalled by it. I mean, you know, animals. There's some questionable things in that movie. Not okay. We ran into Donald's other one last week. Oh, wow. And Gelsons, which was very, very weird. Oh, in a way. Yeah. It was very weird speaking of Animal House. Maybe not his finest role, but yeah. He was in the ROTC or something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He has a scene of lower nudity of the horse. The horse? Yeah. I think so. Maybe. Yeah. I haven't seen it in a while, but it's not a pleasant. It's not a finest work. I was in a pet store one time trying to take a picture of a hamster, not in a cage. And he helped to walk in while I was on the floor trying to wrangle the hamster. Perfect timing. I was not able, really. If I turned from the hamster, I would lose the thing entirely. Yeah. As it was. It was touch and go. Yeah. We've all been put in that situation where we have to make a decision, Donald Sutherland or a hamster. A hamster. Yeah. Yeah. It was tough call. Tough call, but I did the right thing. A lot of this stuff is a kid. Were you an only child or did you have siblings? No, I had siblings. But you know, when I was the youngest and so my mother would get the other kids off to school and she would go back to bed. And I would be babysat by the television. Yeah. And here's what I watched. I dabbled in romper room and Captain Kangaroo, but I did not like either show. I found them both sort of unpleasant. Yeah. You had to talk down to me romper room. And romper room, like I'm watching you, magic me. She never said my name. Yeah. Which I didn't, you know, I should have seen that I was in the clear like I could do anything because she wasn't watching me. But she never said my name and that always bothered me. The Boston romper room actually has an interesting infamy because the romper room was a franchise. Sure. Yeah. Like Bozo. Yeah. Like Bozo. Yeah. Like Bozo. So they did it. They did a version in every city. Because they were merchandising the show on the show and were advertising to kids all these romper room products that they were sort of gone rogue and were making. Oh, really? And were selling to kids through the Boston show. Oh, because I remember they used to sell, they used to advertise child world. Yes. And I always- Yes. Literally jealous that Sudbury didn't have a child. Yes. Every time. To this day when somebody tells me where they're actually away from, they go brain treatment. Oh, here at Shoppers World was right in their framing. Yeah. Yeah. I was a big fan of child world. So jealous. We used to go to the child world in Sogast was my little child world, which was- Oh, man. For people who don't know, child world was this sort of castle themed- Well, you were bended when I didn't know what it was like. It was a cat. They built them like castles and they were these huge sort of before Toys R Us really had been the store like that. Yeah. They were these giant toy stores. So my parents when TV wasn't babysitting me would often just don't me in there while they did their shopping or bought scratch tickets. So I would kind of wander the aisles for hours and they're used to sell like frog dissection kits that you could buy that was like a real frog in formaldehyde and it was in the aisle where they'd have like the visible man and all the educational things for sort of teenagers. And so I was maybe five or six and they used to also sell and you could probably see where this is going rubber frogs that you could squeeze and they would make like a dog toy sound and they would be in these bins. So I went up to the bin of rubber frogs and some teenager I presume had opened up one of the frog dissection kits taking the frog out and put it in the bin of rubber frogs. I picked one up and squeezed it and instead of squeaking, it just all of its intestines that's horrible and I just started screaming and gosh, but my point being trouble was so great. Still went back. Wow. It wasn't trauma. Yes. It was that good. That's a good job. Yeah. Yeah. There was that. All right. So I'd watch those and by the way years later I saw Bob Keisham who was Kevin Kingaroo on McNeil Lair. Yes. He was a brilliant man. Oh, yeah. And a brilliant child advocate. He was great. I sort of couldn't get over there. It was the same guy. Yeah. Because it was so it did seem talking downish on that show. Oh, no. I learned the word obsolete from that show. Yeah. So he had some good vocab. I didn't care for dancing bear. I didn't really need grandfather Clark. I liked Mr. Green jeans because they were at least talking about real animals. I enjoyed the ping pong balls. Oh, yeah. The ping pong balls. Sure, sure. They also did a really great run of shows in the 80s that were CBS had a thing called Storybreak from 1980 to what 91 and what they would do is take a children's or a young adult novel and animate 80% of it and then have it as a half hour special every Saturday and then say if you want to know it ends read the book. Oh, wow. It was a great way to get kids to read books and he spearheaded that with CBS after Captain Kingaroo. You know, it's funny because it is similar. I was really, by the time Mr. Rogers came on, I was sort of too old for Mr. Rogers, but you know what I mean? I mean, you know, mocked it when my neighbor, when the babysit from my neighbors came like that. I made fun of it. I thought it was horrible. And then you hear the guy talk in real life, although he talks the exact same way by the guy. But he was, do you ever see him testify for Congress? Yes. Yeah. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my entire life. It's like something like Oliver Stone could have written that, right? The crusty old, horrible white congressman. Yeah. You know, and what does he actually say? All right, Rogers, right? Yeah. He actually talks so rudely to him and then he just, and talking about Pression, everything he said about what was happening with television and how it would affect us, everything he said was right. And he's one of those guys that got it. I think he, because it was new, which I think for people, you know, younger than us, it's hard for them to understand. There was a time when there were people who were working in television who existed before television existed. Yeah, right. Yeah. And so a lot of those guys, like Bob Keishan and Fred Rogers, who were older guys, they weren't exactly spring chickens when they started doing those kids' shows. Yeah. And they were probably in their 40s or 50s in some of them. They kind of had been around the block a few times, and I think they were able to size it up and go, here's how it works, here's where it's going to go if we don't do this. I think you're right. Yeah, I think you're right. And it's stuff that you get just from, sort of, experience from living. Oh, sorry. So there was a couple of, then there was a show called the Virginia Graham Girl Talk Show. Okay. You may have been on it the same time as Ron Perlm. I think I would do a lot of, even though there were no remote controls back then, but I think I would do it. There were only three television shows. Yeah. I mean, television stations. But I think I did a lot of switching back and forth, and we didn't have the dial that had 56 and maybe my neighbors did, but we didn't. I can't remember which came first, but then I would, I would labor through, I couldn't stand the Virginia Graham Girl Talk Show, could not stand. Was that aimed at, like, teenage girls, or? No, it seemed at, you know, mothers at home. Oh, okay. Yeah. No, it didn't, and my girl talk, like, oh, we girls, we talked about that, you know, should this kind of funny hair that stood out, you know, it's a kind of funny, loopy image there. Right, right, right. White and Linda's hair, and, yeah, no, I couldn't stand that show. But there's a weird phenomenon too that I think people also wouldn't understand this. You would watch things. You hate it, just because what else you get to do, like, you wouldn't know the choice. Well, I couldn't go anywhere else, because it was just stuck in the house. Yeah, I mean, it's not like I couldn't have looked at a book or did puzzles or, you know, we had pets and stuff like that, but no, I'm, you have it on. Yeah. There it was. Yeah. And then I think would come on, I love Lucy, and maybe then the three students. And so I, I have always felt that I love Lucy and the three students raised me. Yeah. And now, one of the joys of my life is that my daughter, Allie, we own all the other blue seas on, we had them on video, and then those eventually started breaking. We got them on, on DVD, and to this day, if she's home, she's 20 now, but to this day, if she's home, we'll go, we'll go, maybe we want to watch an I love Lucy tonight. Yeah. Twenty-two minute I love, we've seen them all a million times, doesn't it? But they're a comfort. It's like a comfort food kind of a show. Yeah. Yeah, it's great stuff. One time I was at the, they have a Lucy Festival in Houston, New York, one year when I worked it, they had a little three piece band on stage that played me on to the I Love Lucy song. That's great. I thought I had died in content. Yeah. And I just was like, I wished my daughter could have been there because I knew she would have just loved that. What if you had full circle too, like, was there anyone that you watched growing up that you then got to work with later that you were completely starstruck by? Well, I mean, Mike Farrell, we became a friend and that was kind of cool. Well, I'm trying to remember. No, I'm also, I mean, I, I, I feel like you got to definitely interact with you. I became friends with Lucy Arnaz, you know, Lucille Well's daughter, but I'm trying to think probably the only thing that's like that would really be, oh, other than, wait, I take it all back. And as in our Maritale and more. What's the matter with me? Yeah. I met Maritale and more at some George Slaughter thing. Oh, shit. I'm lonely Tomlin. I met in the Maritale more at some George Slaughter, you know, comedy world. All the love they came for. Yeah, exactly. And we have a great picture of she and I, I had gone to the rehearsal that day. And even though there was really nothing I needed to rehearse, but I really went because I knew I'd get to meet these people. Right. And I took my baby with me. And so I have a picture of me and Maritale and more sort of leaning into the camera with these big cheesy smiles and my daughter, Ali, in her ear or onesie crying. And a few years ago, I came across the picture again in my stuff and I sent a copy of it to Mary with a note that said, which one of these is not in the show business. Does your daughter appreciate that now? Like, do you, I presume you wanted to show us your probably short of his Maritale or more. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, great to our family and friends. I don't think because they weren't television watchers growing up, I don't think they understand that I have the reverence. Right. They don't get how huge she is and what a, what a treat that is in addition to the fact that she's just a nice person. But you know, what a, what a treat it is to have known somebody with this huge cache of work, although Ali loves the Dick Van Dyke episode with the, no, which gets a toast stuck in the process, which is brilliant one. I found that all kids love that walnuts episode if there's the dream episode. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. There's a lot of ones that I, I, I, I like that one with the, that one with the drop in the, there's just funny joke after funny joke. Oh yeah. A funny joke in that one. And the one where she, the one where Rob gets annoyed with Laura because she opens his mail sometimes. Right. Right. Right. And then they write the sketch about it. And then the big, they get in the mail, they get the lifeboat and she pulls the coin and opens it. That's a great episode. She was interested to me too, is that a lot of the things that you brought up are, are very physical comedy and you know, you're, you're a very verbal comedian. Yeah. It's true. I never became, I, I never became who, you know, I idolized when I was growing up. Mayor Talamour, Lucille Ball, Cal Burnett, Gilda Radner, Lily Tomlin, and there's probably somebody in there that I'm forgetting, but that's a pretty solid joke right there. Oh, absolutely. Be them in the worst way. And I missed by a country mile. Same thing, my kids, Lily's been really great with our family and my children just love her and my girls got to see her. They did a tribute to her at some fundraising about one time and I, I got to go and I brought the girls with me. And she did the rubber addict. Right. And then, they had known her for a little while, but they really didn't know what she did. They never saw her perform. Right. Yeah. And so when they saw that, I mean, they just how old they thought that was like the greatest thing they ever saw. What? What do you got? Damn great. It's interesting. Yeah, that, that number one, these people are legends and television to anyone who grew up in that timeframe. But two, you know, for people like I also was a go home watch TV all day person. They have this sort of weird personal connection with you that they're not really aware of. Yeah. Right. I mean, they probably are now, but not on a personal level, but as a mental level, you know, the sort of influence and connection they have with people. But it's very, very strange to be so familiar with somebody that you see them every day, multiple times. Oh, right. And then to sort of meet the real person is very, very, very, yeah, it always feels a little awkward. I mean, I, you know, I have a picture from that night, actually, that Lily did the, the rubber addict, originally she, I come down because they were doing this tribute to her. And so, and so I came down to, to swatch. And then somehow it sort of became, that I would go on stage and then somehow it became a little bit bigger and a little bit more. And, and, and I ended up going out and talking, it was some animal thing again, you know. And by this time, you know, I had 16 cats and it's nothing but take care of animals. Well, you know, it's kind of sick animals, I went on stage and just told the cold harsh truth about taking care of all those animals. Yeah, exactly, and, and, and I, and I ended up, it was not what anybody expected me to say. And so Lily got laughing really hard about it. And there was a picture of the Ellie Times website of me on stage with Lily, Tom starts diagonally behind me roaring with laughter, and I'm like, boy, that's an amazing thing. Yeah, honestly, right, whoever thought, you know, when, when, when, when that's laughing came out, when I was in maybe the sixth grade, maybe seven, I think laughing, yeah, yeah, maybe something like that. And my neighbor and I, by the time I was in maybe middle school or sixth grade or something, my neighbor, Foster Stroup and I, we were always quoting things that Lily's characters said. And while we were doing stuff in the afternoons, we would, we'd go like, we would take ownership of the lines. So I'd say, for example, okay, I get to be honesty. And then, Foster would say, well, I'm going to be, I'm going to be Edith Ann and then I would go, no, I'm going to be Edith Ann. I had no generosity. Right. Not a generous bond. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Eventually was. You are the street person. Yeah. I don't know. No, no, I get to. In fact, do you just watch me? Yeah. I'll do this thing. Stand over there. Just, yeah, try not to get in my way. What's interesting with laughing, too, is that I, so laughing didn't re-air until the late '80s, when Nick at Knight started airing it, and they made a big deal out of it. And that was a huge sketch comedy fan at that point and loved SNL. I didn't know they ever re-aired it. It was the first time and then they really advertised it as, you know, it's laughing. So I was very excited. And I loved S.E.T.V. and still did, it's my favorite show of all time, and Nick at Knight was airing S.E.T.V. all the time. So we sat down and walked laughing and was just like, "What the hell is this?" And Lily Tom was the only thing that stood out as being interesting to me. Really? Because her sign. I think if you watch that show, her stuff is the only timeless stuff on there? Well, I think that's true. Which it's not about the times and the kids. It was a very, and that was part of what made it so powerful. I have, George sent me years ago, they were doing a thing where you could buy the series. And so they had like an infomercial or something where they advertised it, but George sent me the infomercial. And I showed it to my kids, actually, and they couldn't follow it. But it was so a part of its time. And you know, it was a part of ending the Vietnam War. It was a part of sort of, it really did, you know, speak truth to power in a way that honestly, I don't think you could get away with now. It was a brilliant show. Yeah. I mean, I think that one of, to that respect, one of the things that I always am shocked by is how blunt the Smothers Brothers were at the time with a lot of that stuff. And they were a mainstream, weekly, family-friendly on this sort of show. And then they were like, "Hey, here's the thing, and we're just going to go against this stuff." I remember when they were talking about censorship and that a guitar player on, I think it was, I always feel like it was, "Oh, I can't remember what it was." They had Pete Seeger on. That was a big one. He played the big muddy, and it was like a huge deal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have that on my silly iPod, I have the big money. No, I remember they had a musician on, he was a classical gas guy, and they were talking about censorship, and he cut his guitar strings, and I would never forget that as long as I lived. It was a really powerful audio visual image of that sort of thing. Yeah. And I think that anyone, but also seemed like a pure expression of people who truly were sort of angry about something, and I feel like when people do that sort of thing now, it doesn't seem as genuine, you know, like even that, what was it, kind of a West or something where he was like, "George Bush doesn't care about black people on the thing about Katrina." I was like the last time I remember someone sort of breaking the fourth wall of making a statement on a live thing, he was presenting with Ben Stiller, and he was like, "Powerify that this thing is happening." But even that didn't, it didn't have the impact of that. So I think it's hard to watch those shows in the back. It was so rare at the time, and so many things were so sort of Lawrence Welkish that maybe that's what made it stand out. I don't know, but I just know that that was, it really was a brilliant show that did good things. I mean, she was obviously the sort of biggest talent to come out of it. Well, Gary Owens. George tells a great story about meeting with the censors. They used to do this joke. There was a dictionary back then called the Funk and Waggles. Funk and Waggles dictionary, and so they used to do this joke where they'd go, "Well, put that in your Funk and Waggles." Yes, yes. And censors said, "You can't say that." And George said, "It's a dictionary." An actual thing. And they said, "You can say funk, and you can say waggles, but you can't say it the way you say it." It's like... That's great. Well, there's that famous story, too, of them getting away with the nipple on the air. Oh, I don't remember this. So they used to do the thing with the painted things and all that, and they actually had, it was just bare breasts with paint over the nipples, and they showed it, and it was so fast-cut, and they got away with it for no one noticed until it started rearing it in the late '80s, and people could tape it and look at it, and it was like, "No, not that there, probably ten times," right in the air, "No one mentioned the thing." So they did get away with some stuff, you know, but then changed. What happened to the guy who played Uncle Al, the kiddies' pal? Oh, geez. It was... He was... Alan... Yes, he didn't do a lot after that. No, he was very funny. I always wondered if he was a stage guy. Like, there were some people that... Oh, yeah. Maybe they'd be a former. But might have been... What the heck was his name? How was it? Yes. Yes. 'Cause a lot of the laughing people showed up and stuff for ever. I mean, Ruth Bosey was in so many... You just see her all the time on all kinds of weird things for years and years and years. I love American style. I love American style. They show up on a love boat. Americans, yeah. Which was another weird thing that we don't have now, which is a non-horror anthology. Well, American style was a comedy anthology. Yeah. I don't know when the last time anyone has done something like that. That's true. Any of those were great. They weren't. But they had that. They watched it because it seemed like it was supposed to be cool. Yeah. And it was just young enough that it fell for that idea. That was another very of its time show, too. And that show was developed as a place to burn off pilots. Oh, is that true? Yeah, it was. They would dump... So, like, happy days aired on "World of American Style" as a pilot. And then they put it on the show. So a lot of the things were sort of unproduced pilots. And they would do that a lot of two into the '80s. They had George Burns comedy hour or half hour was a thing in the mid '80s that it would just be, here's basically all the sitcoms we didn't buy. But we're going to air them as an anthology series in the summer. Oh, really? Oh. And they never do that. But it was interesting to see these sorts of things that, you know, they would never do now. There's a television network called Antenna TV. Yes. Now, forget where the hell I was. They're in Pennsylvania. And when I'm in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and they had Antenna TV on. I was flipping the stations in the middle of the night, and there it was. And they had a couple of Jack Benny episodes back to back, and one of them had Kybernet as a guest. And it was a very, very young Kybernet. Yeah. And she sang, like for real, that was sort of a whimsy about the song, too. But it was, for real singing, it's getting us, it was good. And then she was in this sketch that was, she was just so brilliant and so great at it. She played a, she was the daughter of a riverboat gambling shaster. And so she would help her father cheat. And the way she would do it, is she would stand behind the guy that he was playing cards with. And she would raise her arms up and on her, on her gown, and she had that kind of gown with the hoop thing, you know. And the banana curl hair and stuff, and you know, oh, daddy. And when she raised her arms up and in her armpits, where they were dangling little hand mirrors. Right, right. So that the dad could see the cards, it was so funny, and I'm not sure that anybody else could have pulled it off really, but oh my gosh, it was good. Well, then that, you mentioned Gilda Radner earlier, too, and the first thing I remember seeing you on was SNL. I was there, a thousand years ago, briefly. And '84 or so probably? I can't remember anymore, maybe. You did stand up. I did stand up. And then I brought me on. Which people forget, too, that SNL would have stand-ups on. Yeah. And Stephen Wright did it frequently, and not that often, but I remember seeing you and Stephen Wright and Kinneson and Pennanteller, not to stand up, and Harry Anderson. Those are the people that I remember seeing doing stand-up on SNL. Yeah, Robin was a guest host that week, and he brought me, you know, you know. And I actually, to this day, I mean, I saw that SNL. That was the most recent one that I've ever seen. Really? And prior to that, I mean, I never watched another of the Eddie Murphy ones. Yeah. That was the Eddie Murphy cast. And then before that, I mean, when I think of SNL, I think of Gilda Radner and those guys. But you know what's funny about those shows? We had a different appetite back then, I think. We had different expectations. My sisters and I, we watched a lot of TV together, we waited for one or two good laughs on those shows. Right. And everybody sort of harkens back to the time now, and has this memory that everything was a laugh a minute ago, it really wasn't, there would be one or two brilliantly funny things. Yeah. And it was worth waiting for. And the other stuff was kind of exciting about it, though, too. I think now where people cut up sketch shows because they want to have everything online and they can go right to what they want to watch. It was fun to watch that show in a communal way, like you're watching Three Stooges. SNL is in a show that necessarily was great to watch alone. That was like, you're having to sleep over, your friends are over, you're with your family, and you're kind of watching it together. And you know, there's the weird blast sketch and one person in the group really likes it and then it's kind of, it's more of a communal thing. Yeah. And that's, in the other thing too, is the holdover of that show being in a 90 minute format. That was pretty standard for the time. The Tonight Show used to be a 90 minute format then. Oh, yeah. Nothing's that long now. There used to be a show called The Name of the Game. Can't think of the name of the guy that was the star. Was it a, was it a, um, a game show? No, it was a drama. Okay. And it was some guy that did a lot of like sort of undercover stuff. I do some government agency, uh, I don't know if he was FBI, what the hell was his name? Okay. He. Featuring like a drag netman from Uncle Hybrid. Yeah. Yeah. But it was like, it was a problem, I believe it was like a 90 minute show. Right. And this, you know, they really could unfold a story. Um, I mean, I remember this one where they, they, they, they, they sort of cracked these training, um, uh, techniques, they were, they, they trained military people in this very, very, very cruel way. And they, you know, it was, it was so many years ago, weaponizing them to be still have the image. And they just said like really mean physically grueling things to them that were unnecessary. Um, and I wish I could remember the name of the actor. Okay. What was in the first Colombo? Peter Falk. Um, no, but the, the, the criminal, uh, prescription murder. Yes. Um, I'm picturing the guy's face. And I can't think of his name because I believe that was that was, that was in a, I bumped into him at a, at a, at a, uh, what do you call a union thing? Yeah. A thousand years later. And I was talking to him and he was saying, you know, that when they started making this shows all much shorter, you know, just going to do what you can do, you know, you know, which is interesting how we sort of come full circle where now they're much more serialized. Some shows to a fault, uh, but for years and years and years, the shows get shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter. And you can't tell story in that. Yeah. I watch that. This is very sad. Mike. See, I have OCD and once I get hooked on some, on some, I have to finish it. I, well, I have a really hard, I, I, it's all I can think about. Yeah. I just like that with MASH, such that when they showed the last, when they showed the final MASH episode, a lot of clubs, I lived in San Francisco at the time and a lot of clubs closed that night because there was just no point. And I used to work at this great club called the other cafe in San Francisco and the manager of the other cafe, they were planning on being dark that night and he said to me, we don't think you should be alone that night. It was so sweet. And I thought I shouldn't because I knew I would never stop crying. Right. And so, in fact, I didn't watch it by my, by myself, but it was, you know, I used to, I would watch that show and so many of the episodes were real tear-jerkers, you know. So when I, I was getting ready to go to work and I'm watching and it was like, another one of those like, you know, two shows and a real things. And you know, it was the one where Henry dies and radar put a mask on. Geez, I'm just sobbing and sobbing and I mean, this house I lived at in San Francisco by myself. And then I figured, well, okay, well, what's the next episode of this? It'll fill me up. Yeah. It'll go to what's the next one. And my God, if they didn't like some flashback to radar put a mask on the Jesus and I'm just like, I don't think I can go to work. I was just torn apart by this. And all of a sudden, it don't have to be like an enlightening flash where I went, you know, it's a tremendous amount of emotional energy for something that's not real. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not watching primetime television. I did not watch that moment. To this day. I have not watched another primetime show except for a few years back. My daughter, Ally, liked that show, The Mentalist. Right. And she says, oh, you got to see this show. And she'd watch Dead Up Friends House and I'm like, I don't want to, Ally. And she got, she went out and bought some of them on DVD. Oh, no, no, you'll like it. I know you'll like, and she felt so insulted that I don't want to watch it with her and I kept going, you understand. You know, I have OCD, you just don't understand. Yeah, it's a whole can of worms. Yeah, exactly. I was able to go cold turkey, don't do this to me, Ally, you know. She finally hammers me and knew watching it. And now I watch The Mentalist on DVD over and over and over again. And the other one that I did the same stupid thing with was boardwalk empire. I saw it while I was flipping one night after work in a hotel and it's so damn well done. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautifully done. It's cinematic. Yeah, unfortunately, it's horribly gory and there's just not a redeeming character in the whole damn thing. But I told myself, I decided to go buy them on DVD. At least there's like 13 episode seasons. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's going to come to an end. But I told myself, okay, I will only watch it because that damn serialized thing really kicks your ass. I hope so, yeah. And so I go, okay, I will only watch it when I'm working out and I would dutifully take my stupid little DVD player down to the fitness room at the hotel and I put the stupid deer things in and I would do the steppy thingy and watch this. It's a reward. Well, that lasted all of about two nights before I said, okay, I will only watch it while I'm meeting Butterfingers. Right, right. And events only while I'm driving. That's not exactly a workout pace, shall we? No, no, really isn't. But so I ended up, of course, burning through. Yeah. And I heard this idea that I was going to wait, and I watched them over and over. Right now my DVD player, if there's one of those in there, and they've killed everyone there is to kill. Yeah. They're now, they're doing one more season, they're, you know, the last ones airing now. And I don't, you know, everyone's dead. They've had to introduce new characters just to kill them. Just to kill them. Everyone's dead, yeah. That's a show. I have not seen Boardwalk Empire yet. There's two shows that people go, can you have to watch these shows because of your haircut? Legitimately people have been like, "You'll love Mad Men in Boardwalk Empire." And I'm like, "Okay." But to the match thing, I think that I've had similar, especially at that age, I've had similar reactions where it's something that's not real, but at the same time I think you're almost mourning the loss of something that you look forward to every week. And so that's a reaction I've had when shows have ended where you go out and watch this for 10 years. Yeah, yeah. It's the thing that I watch. The thing you watch when you get to a town on the Grand Boston, you're like, "What am I going to do without this?" No, I had a huge relationship with Mass. Yeah. Poster up in my basement with my ping-pong table, I had a t-shirt, I went to the Smithsonian when they had the exhibit at the Smithsonian, which was great, by the way. I got, somehow I got hooked up with Gary Burgoff just by phone. He used to travel a lot, and he was sometimes at the same theaters I was at. And so I got somebody to give him my phone number and tell him, "Well, I mean, he did." Wow. And oh, he spent hours on the phone one night, and in the end I think it probably thought I was a lunatic. Because when you're on, "Wait, don't tell me," or something, it's very current pop culture stuff. Do you feel like it's hard to keep up sometimes when you're not watching these things? Because I, when I get asked-- Oh, I don't know a lot about pop culture anymore. I don't. Because I don't need it. For that reason, I won't watch those shows. Yeah. Because I know that I will get hooked, and so far I've been right. The two times I tried. Right. It's happened. I got drunk royally. Yeah. So yeah, I really don't. No, actually part of the joy for me is, I'm always the person who doesn't know stuff on that show. Right, right. And so them trying to school me is part of the joy. I mean, I, you know, a couple weeks ago it was selfie stick. I still don't change the health of selfie stick, but no, and I don't, I don't fish around in the internet. I don't know all this stuff. Yeah. And by the way, I consider myself a more mentally healthy person. I'm sure you are. I'm sure. I remember one time a thousand years ago, I was on Jeopardy, and I was a play for charity thing. And, you know, they-- Did Trebek roast you in his style that he was-- Oh, no. He was so annoyed by me, he couldn't stand me. Because I had never seen the show before. Gotcha. And this just pissed them off. Yeah. So they do when you go on. They do these practice shows first. But before I went down for the practice show, I confessed to the woman that was wrangling me. I said, yeah, I've never seen the show before. And she was beside you. She likes you. It's Jeopardy. And I said, well, I think I can catch on. Yeah. Quickly. It gave me that complicated. And I did, by the way. What I figured out. Well, okay. They do this thing, though, where they give you, like, um, the other players were Michael Feinstein said, they gave him this thing about songs, mostly. All his questions were about songs. And Kelsey Grammer was a genius. I forget what his stuff was. But for me, it was like women in television. So there's this dumb shit question after dumb shit question. And at one point they asked me about something and I didn't know the answer to it. And I said, you know, I take pride that I don't know the answer to that question, you know. They did. What I figured out early on was that it didn't matter what you knew if you didn't push that button. Right. And I would push the button and then I'd have no idea what the whole thing was. Yeah. And that drove them crazy. Right. So they do it if you don't. Yeah. So they go, all right. So I pushed the button and one of them was an island in the Pacific. That was, it was some island in the Pacific. And so I just said, uh, who is Tom Selleck? And Alex True back to this day, probably still nightmares making a mockery of this. It's like it's a game. Oh, that doesn't sound like it is zero sense of view. Well, that doesn't sound like an island to me or something. It's probably like this woman thinks that's an island in the, like I'm clearly joking. It's what we did the roast. And he was there. As I said, he blew everybody away. Yeah. Funny he wasn't how great he was. He really was. Um, I was sitting with Angie Dickinson and Suzanne Plashette. At least woman herself. Yeah. Yeah. And so we see that Alex True back is, you know, also on the panel or something and Angie Dickinson goes, he is so smart. He knows so many things on that show. And I think Suzanne and I were on both sides of our heads like slowly turn towards her. And at the exact same time, we both go, he has the answers on the cards. And they didn't hire him because he knew all the answers. He acts like he does, you know, which I had always found a turn off. But I have to say, I had a newfound respect for him when I saw how funny he was with that Betty White thing. Slightly self-aware. So, yeah. One of the things I remember seeing you in where you were acting was you had a reoccurring role in Sible. I did. Which as a show I loved and was a very funny show and did you, did you watched her and anything? No. I can't even remember how we met anymore. But she got a kick out of me for whatever reason. In fact, I remember one time she was doing a commercial and she hired me to come to the set of the commercial. So she wouldn't have needed to hire me. I would have just gone and she asked me. But she hired me ostensibly as a writer, but I didn't write anything. Basically, she just wanted me to become some moral support. Right hand around and express my admiration, which I do very well. She was the most beautiful woman in the world. Yeah. And she was gorgeous at that point. I haven't seen her in years. I don't know what she looks like now. But anyway, so no, she, I don't know, we just made this nice connection. And so I got hired to do that show and it was really. Did you watch the episodes you did or? No. Never did. Very funny. Never did. Oh, that's good. Yeah. It was a whole new kettle of fish for me. Yeah. Because that was the only thing I can think of seeing you in as, aside from, you know, voiceover stuff like science court and home movies and stuff where you were doing. Yeah, no, I haven't done a lot of that sort of thing. Yeah. I hope to someday be able to, after I get my son raised, I have to sort of owe him a few more years. Right, right. So I put those in. It's a big commitment. It's a, you know, elderly woman roles, just waiting for me. For a while I was taking classes at the groundlings until I had to stop because, because I, the night that I was gone doing those classes while the mouse, when the cat was away, the mice were fine. I see. Yes. And so, yeah, until my, I had to, I had to, but it was so much fun. Yeah. And it's totally different. It's entirely different. People can, people would look at me in the hallway and go like, wait a minute, what, what are you doing? Why are you taking a class? And I'd say because this is nothing like anything that I do and it's really fun to do. And I'd like to do more of it, but yeah, and it was a night of, it takes so much brain power that you really couldn't think about anything else, which, you know, he's got to kind of let it go. Yeah. It's very, very fun. So I hope to, hope to return and that people would teach there so much fun, so. Oh, yeah. It's totally different understanding of stuff where they'll say something like, I, that hadn't occurred to me. And I am surprised that it didn't. Yeah. Yeah. It was something very simple. Oh, they're great. They're really fun. So the other thing that I, that I really enjoyed that you did and, and was short-lived was the variety show that you had on, was it ABC? Oh, thanks. ABC. ABC. And it wasn't, was it a summer series? I was very short-lived. No, it came on the fall. Okay. It was on the fall. It was very short. Okay. And I, either one, or, either one or two were, were, were blacked out in Los Angeles because of the Malibu fires, which by the way, at that time, they would fill in the fires and it was mostly just a thoroughly orange screen. Just a fire. And we've all seen fire. And no one knew where it was. They could, they would speculate where they were. No context. Just a fire. Just a fire. Pre-empted, my show, so that's not a good review. My show was very much out of its time. It was, it was a true variety show. And that was one of the things I wanted to bring up too, is that, were you a fan of the, sort of, the Haiti of the variety shows and the, and the 70s? Good Caravanette fan. Yeah. Our show was kind of a funny hybrid. I mean, you know, at the time, you know, we do all this promotion stuff and I had no idea how to do that. And people kept saying to me, yeah, you got to be able to describe it more quickly, you know? Because that's what's killing you. I really. That's what's killing me. But we never, you know, we never had a name for what, for what it was. I mean, I would have people come on and teach me stuff. That was one of the things and one of the elements. And then, and we would often illustrate what they were teaching in sort of a funny way. For example, we had someone come on and explain to me, ratings, what, I didn't understand. I didn't even do the ratings. And for that, I had this idea to measure ratings with Oreo cookies. And so we had these, somebody designed for me. In fact, Joel Hodgson did a lot of the prop kind of stuff, he designed this chart where you put actual cookies into these tubes. And then there was another thing, let's see, very similar notion actually, was I was trying to understand how they did the budget, United States budget, what I have, have these buckets and have audience members do their own budget. I forget how we illustrated that one in the end. But I think my favorite thing was, I know I'd still this day understand anything about the economy or finance. So my favorite thing was we had economists come, the idea was that they would come and explain economics. But I had them, and there was a, my show had a location, but then we had this remote stuff. So I had a big screen television on stage with me so that I could interact with the person in the remote location. And this is, you know, pre-computer. So a little stodgy maybe sometimes. But anyways, it was a very similar word like the Daily Show does now. Oh, do they? I've never seen it. Yeah, it's similar. Yeah. I have to write all of them. We had, we took the economists, we put them at the Santa Cruz boardwalk in the scrambler ride, which is like the tea cups. And we had a fixed position camera. I would ask them a question, and as their car came up to the camera, they would shout out their answer. And in order to liven things up, one of the cars had a barbershop quartet in it. Excellent. As it does. Naturally. Yeah. So it would be, and I can't even remember all the terms and everything that got discussed, but it was like, oh, you know, what kind of economics do you want to do, but believe me, I would be like, you know, supply side, then somebody, I would say, you know, hijens or whatever. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. So it was one of the, that little piece was one of the best things ever on television. And that sort of illustrates what I remember of that show. We had some clever stuff. Yeah. It seemed like you were just allowed to kind of do whatever you want. Well, that was the promise of ABC. Yeah. And I think that promise so bloody quickly. Yeah. I don't know. You know, what they originally said was, and it was a terrible time slot. It was nine o'clock on a Saturday night, which at that time was not a good time slot. People didn't watch TV at that time back then. Yeah. No, it was home. The audience you wanted was out. Right. That's exactly right. And, but I had been given this promise by ABC that if we took that time slot, that this, the reason they were giving me that time slot was that I would have the chance to be left alone because they weren't expecting huge ratings and give the show time to develop and breathe. And have they done that? I don't know if it would ultimately have had success or not, but if they had done that, it would have been more fun. But instead, what they did was, you know, the ratings were disastrous. And when they got the first couple of shows under their boat with not good ratings, they went, "Okay, no, we're going to show our movies." Right. Which is how it works now. Like that was the first show that I remember that happening to very quickly. Where they pulled the plug so fast. Yeah. Because before that, you would let show, like, Cheers would have been canceled the first season. It was, it was like a bottom 200 show. And there were a lot of... That's what they say about the Tic Van Dyke show. Tic Van Dyke. They say that it's given a year to grow. Man. I can't even imagine having a year to figure it out. All those shows. It was like we let you have a year or maybe two years ago, you know, we don't really have anything else to replace it. So just keep doing it for a year. And that's the history of television, all the shows that people cite as like the quality shows, the top five shows of all time on television. Most of them are in that bond given this breathing room and growing room. Do that now. No, no. I'm glad wealth. Yeah. You know, 10,000 hours. Yeah. Well, actually, wait, wait, don't tell me the radio show that I do. That started out so small. Only a handful of networks aired it. And they had that time to, you know, breathe and grow and make it grow. That model is so different, too. And I wonder if, you know, network television, which I think is going to have to change because it's not doing well right now. And if you look at the Golden Globes, it didn't win anything for the first time ever. What do you think? Network television show. I'm so happy to hear it. A single network television show did not win one. Wow. Interesting. And I think that's the kind of wake up call it they'll get. And if you look at that NPR model where it's sort of like a bunch of franchise stations and they can kind of pick and choose which ones they take, which is how the network affiliates works in the '60s and the '50s when some of that stuff came out. I think our show had a little bit of that, too. I don't think we were everywhere. I don't think so. So, you know, that might work to the advantage of some things if that model kind of goes. Because when you get the word from on high, we're cutting the show, but no, it's doing really well in this place in this place, so you're like, oh, but those aren't the places we care about. Yeah. Well, also when people have other places they can go to, whether it's, I don't know, Netflix or HBO or whatever, I don't know, you know, network television treats people so badly. Yeah. And they still go, TV is involved in such a niche thing now where you can find exactly what you want to see right down to whatever your political bet is. You don't even have to see anything that questions you what you think. You know, it's hard to do this sort of generalized, you know, I don't want to say the lowest come denominator, but very, very general entertainment is sort of a difficult model these days. I guess that's true, yeah. So, it'll be interesting to see where it goes. But yeah, I think that show was very, what year was it, '94, '95? I think it was mid-90s. Was Joel involved from the beginning? No. She was just a friend that was helping. No, I can't remember which point it came on board, but... Because he was involved in a bunch of weirdly ahead of its time shows that took a look. Did you ever see the pilot you did called TV Wheel? No, no. It was a sketch show where he had built a set that moved and it was a wheel and the camera was fixed and each sketch, the wheel just moved and it was very complicated, but very interesting. Yeah. And it was only a pilot. And even like his Mr. Science Theater show, really only has gotten some respect in the last five or six years and it's, you know, he had done it for 20 years. Yeah. So, it's interesting that that was, you know, a person would be involved in that. I put it on the TV when it came in from work the other night and the movie network was on and talk about Pression. It reminded me who said the wheel thing because they, you know, they did that thing with the different, you know, Suzy Soothsayer or, you know, that movie. It was just so, they, they, they, they just nailed everything. Yeah. The really wacky stuff that was supposed to be so funny because it was so wacky and wild and stupid, we have all those things. Oh, we absolutely do. Yeah. And not even tongue and cheek. Well, it's completely serious. Yeah. If you've ever seen The Running Man, the Schwarzenegger movie from the late 80s, it's based on a Stephen King book, but it's basically about this future where there's a game show where they take convicts and have them like basically fight for their freedom like war zone. But there's all these like game show parodies on it like climbing for dollars and stuff. And I'm like, this is just a hair ahead of where, you know, it's not quite there yet, but it's terrifying sometimes. So I think you're, you're a philosophy of not watching things. Yeah, I think it's best. Even the program, I think that is best. I watch the news. I'm mostly, sometimes I watch CNN just because it's on, but I try to avoid it because it always makes me mad. Yeah. Yeah. Every, you know, I don't, I mean for a long, long time, certainly by the Malaysian airliner era. Yes. Yes. I think they just, you know, and that, how they make things worse, you know, how, you know, just to keep sure. You don't want to get ratings and you try to scare people and also I sometimes, I used to be really critical of, you know, talk show hosts on the radio or, or 24 hour news cycle people, which I still aim to a degree, but the more I perform, the more I realize how hard it is for them to have to just talk about with no information about a topic. Well, I agree. But for a long time, but it's irresponsible. It is irresponsible. It is irresponsible. Yes, it is. We say it's unstable, so Wolf Blitzer would gladly create a situation in order to have it in the situation room. Yes. There's a great book. It's about, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a media literacy book. I can't think of the name of it. Anyway, it's a, it's a, it's about the 24 hour news cycle and what it's done to the news. Yeah. And, and it's about, you know, blogging and, you know, all these places that we get our information from now that are often quite flawed and skewed. Yeah. And, um, it's a book that every, you know, high school kid should be required to read. Because there's no fact checking. There's, when things are, oh, we were wrong. It doesn't really matter because it's already the first thing people are, yeah. And somebody, right. Exactly. Somebody's already acted on that. Yeah. Yeah. My, my, my hatred of authority and corporations always goes, they're doing a really bad thing, but then like my human empathy goes, but I almost feel bad for this anchor who is kind of an idiot. Like a lot of them will be like, this guy look good. They're kind of dumb. And they have to talk about an airline are missing and they'll literally be like, do you think it's the Bermuda triangle? Oh, this poor dumb person has had to talk till they got to the Bermuda triangle question. I saw Don Lemon, who's the weekend guy. Yes. And when they were, it was an earlier story, and they were, they just announced that the guy that was ahead of the search team was going to do a press conference in five minutes. Yeah. And Don Lemon then, it says this, and then he turns to the CNN expert and he says, what do you think he'll say? It's just like Don, just hum. Just what? Just write it. Just tell us that you're going to turn and go over some paper. Work. Yeah. And we're still with you. We want to know. So we'll wait five minutes, but you can just, or dance, or, or, you know, eat your lunch. Show us a puppet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think the commentary about things that don't need commentary has really, and to me, and I kind of have a bias towards really disliking sports. And I have a theory that the, the political divisions in America are really bad when sports started being televised, which is a whole different thing, but because people got a very us first, them mentality, but, um, the commentary on things like sports has infected everything where it's like, here's the sport, here's how the game is played. We don't need analysis after where you're like, what they're going to need to do is get the ball and then score points and then score more points than the other team and figure out 700 ways to restate that same thing. Yeah. Yeah. I run out of adjectives, but yeah, I was listening to the radio one time on my way to a job and they were talking about a college football game and one of the, they hadn't begun the game yet. And one of the guys said, well, Marilyn's going to, Marilyn is going to need to come here and play. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, well, that really gets to the heart of that. Thank you for having that job. And that, I see that kind of approach more. You're right. With news. Absolutely. Definitely right. And that stuff probably should have gone away. Like it's a holdover from radio. Yeah. Like it's back to the fire. I mean, I watch McNeil Lair still and they do a brilliant job. But that takes research and smart people who have insights and not just, we're doing news about the news or we're covering our own coverage. And they're not doing, I mean, they have a website now and stuff like that, but they don't, when Jim Laira announced that they would be, you know, that you could get the news online, it was, it was like he was drinking castor oil air. He was so, you could tell he was just pissed about it, you know, it just, you know, and but any, he said, you know, he guaranteed people that the quality would still be there and. You can tell it was not his idea. It was clearly not his idea. And I think ultimately, of course, it was a good, a good idea. I think even he would say Sophie, I don't know how well they did it, but yeah, it was a bitter pill, I think, for him that, that, that, that show was just so well done. Judy Woodruff was on, she left McNeil Lair and went to CNN for 12 years, that was where the dark years. Yeah. It's doing good stuff is hard. Yeah. And I think people don't necessarily want to admit that and they'll go, well, that doesn't have to be. It's like, no, no, it kind of does. Yeah. You kind of have to have to do good stuff and it's hard and sometimes it takes a wall to find an audience. Also, I think that there is a, there is a corporate and 1% let's see, what's the word, motivation. Yeah. To dumb us down. Yeah. I would agree. All that stuff is, is, is, is a part of, a part of that and, and so is, by the way, the push to put computers in the classrooms really is, is there is money, you know, app all wants people to see that apple sign and, and get happy because they remember it. It was the kind that they know how to do it was the kind that they learned on, it was the kind they had in high school and they give that brand, brand name recognition. There is, I don't think there is any research to support that it's a good idea to, for, we need handwriting for developing brains that, that's already been clearly established. Yeah. Kids who take notes by hand are more successful than kids who take notes on, I mean, there's every reason not to do that. Oh yeah. I mean, there's that push. Well, you, you get people don't know anything anymore. Yeah. I have to. And the, the most chilling, this is my, my Twilight Zone kid with the gun, real life story is I was driving with a show with a comic, was a lot younger than me. He was driving and he goes to get his GPS out and I went, don't, I know how to get there tonight and he like, couldn't understand that. It was almost like I said, let's walk. And so I finally get him to put it away and he turned to me and he sincerely asked me this. He goes, how do you know how to get places? Wow. He legitimately asked me that and I said, I, I go there once and then I remember. Wow. And he was like, couldn't understand that because you have the, you know, you, you use the technology and then you never absorb it. Yeah. And they don't know the phone numbers and they don't know facts because they'll just look it up. They don't know how to get places. And I'm looking at that. Wow. And so with, you know, I've been volunteering in a nursing home and, and these are not people that used computers, but you know, if you don't keep your, keep challenging your brain, it's like any other muscle, you don't use it, you lose it. It's got an atrophy. Yeah. Right. And, and we don't want, I mean, we're all, many of us will end up with dementia one way or the other. But my guess would be that by not exercising our brains, we're going to get it a lot sooner. Oh, yeah. And you just don't want to have that. No. It's a bad thing. It's a terrible thing. Yeah. And, and I mean, I, I, I refuse to look stuff. I don't Google things as a general, especially things like what we're talking about, trying to think of. That's like the show. I played a role. Yeah. I'm like, no, let me work at it. Get it. I was apologized to people because I'm like, they're probably screaming at their headphones or what, but I'm like, I do no research. It's just the things we know. I'm not looking up on the computer because that's, that's part of it. Yeah. Yeah. I spent all night long one time trying to think the name of the actor who played the warden, the terrible warden in Cool Him Luke, I literally stayed up all night long trying to think of it. I would, I started from the beginning of the alphabet and I would do combinations only in my head didn't write any down of letters. And it starts with an S and so you can tell how late at night it was when I finally hit it. And I don't know why I hit it. I knew when I felt that right combination that I would get it. You know it's in there. Yeah. That's the thing. You're like, I just have to find it. Yeah. And the following night, I said to myself, who was that guy's name I couldn't remember? Yeah. And it started all over again. I got it quicker the second night, but. Because now you're practicing it. Well, you know, I, you know, I don't know why I would ever remember the name Struther given that that's not your average. Well, that's why you heard her name. I got to ST. Yeah. And I went. Struther. Yeah. Isn't that weird? Not Sally. Yeah. Sally Struther Myers. I still, however, cannot think of the name of the name of that game guy and then, and it was in the first, he was in the pilot episode of Globo, which was called prescription murder. It'll pop up because it's so much more satisfying when I think of it too. So much fun. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Yeah. Sally, I, I loved your, I loved the premise so when I saw your email, I said to myself, "We'll make this work." Thank you. I really appreciate it. Well, thanks for coming all this. Away from stone. Yeah. It was a whole, I had to go like four exits on the highway. It was difficult. It was huge. Very, we lost some people on the way this time. Yeah. Thank you. And that, of course, was the one and only Paula Poundstone. I want to thank her again for taking the time to speak with me. It was incredibly nice of her to do so and you should thank her as well because you got to listen to a very entertaining episode. As always, you can reach me at tvguidenscounselor@gmail.com or at can@icandread.com. We're also at tvguidenscounselor.com and on Facebook/tvguidenscounselor. And please let me know what you think of the show. Always love hearing from you guys. And we'll see you again next week on Wednesday for an all new episode of TV Guidenscounselor. Wow, you think it's laughable unless you're strapped to a table with your rear arms. That's true. So I was vaguely suspected that I was a crack addict to put it in my underwear drawer. As a young girl, there's no more sacred place. That top drawer that had the underwear and had the love letters and money. I was in a pet store one time trying to take a picture of a hamster not in a cage. You can say funk and you can say wagnalls, but you can't say it the way you say it. Dumb shit question after dumb shit question.
