Sunday, January 23, 2005

Johnny Carson

He died today, as most of you most likely know already. When I think of JC, I think of my dad, so I want to write my thoughts about him.

My dad always stayed up to watch JC, no matter what we were doing, or where we were, you could count on JC being on late that night. I remember we took a trip across country when I was probably 14, and we were staying in a Holiday Inn, 4 or 5 of us crammed into the hotel room, myself and 2 brothers, and my parents. 2 queen beds, everyone asleep except my dad and me. It was my turn to sleep on the roll away cot and it was near the TV, so I stayed up watching JC with my dad. I think it was one of the first times I paid attention to the show, and he was introducing a new line of toys coming out for the year and of course he was just showing the whacky ones. As the show progressed he had skits and chats with the guest stars, and what I remember the most was his innuendos. He was very classy about that. You had to be on your toes to catch them - at least if you were only 14 and just learning about sex and drugs and alcohol, so of course I just absorbed it all to sort out later what I wasn't quite understanding right then. But I was hooked, I couldn't stay up to watch him every night, but I got to catch him on Fridays and all summer long, and holidays. And because of him I started watching SNL during its BEST years. Late night was fun. Course when I was old enough to go out on dates things slowed down for the television aspects for me, but dating was just a few years before graduating high school and getting married and then I was back to sitting home on weekends and watching late night again.

People wonder why JC was able to be the only lion in the jungle when he was the host of the show - it's because he had so much class. He had that gift of innuendo, without making it dirty. He was able to make things funny. He was the erotic letters written in Playboy vs. the erotica written in Hustler. He had class.

My dad died 10 years ago and now another piece of his life goes with him.
Goodbye Johnny
Goodbye again dad.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home