SIDE SALAD - Everything crunchy is good.

THAT LONG, LONG ROAD

I heard in the car Sunday afternoon that Johnny Carson had died. Remarkably, especially for a man diagnosed with emphysema, he was not named in our dead pool at work.
My earliest recollection of his show is when I was a kid. I remember that there used to be a gag shop called the Barefoot Mailman in the Tyrone Square Mall that had a toilet which, if you lifted the lid, would emit the phrase, "HEEERE'S JOHNNY!" I later found out that Carson's lawsuit against the manufacturers made case law for celebrities who had their catchphrases used without license.
My other strong memory of him was the time when we lived in Anchorage and an earthquake took place while we were watching his show. All of a sudden the vase above the TV started to swirl and the chandeliers began to swing. I ran outside, only to find my truck wobbling from the tremor. It was a little disconcerting to come back into the house and see the program, which went on, of course, as if nothing had happened.
Something that doesn't get mentioned much in his obits: He had three sons, one of which died in the early 1990s. His son Cory, is a musician and has a Web site with MP3 samples. I did not know that.
I also didn't remember that he had been a character on The Simpsons:
My favorite of his quotes:

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

New York Times writer Bill Carter has a nice story today in the New York Times about Johnny's post-show life. It includes an interview with his longtime producer Peter Lasally.

"He really missed doing the monologue," Mr. Lassally said. "So he started doing them for me."

Sometimes once a week, sometimes more often, Mr. Carson would call Mr. Lassally and, over the phone, perform his little monologues - for an audience of one. "They were always funny," Mr. Lassally said, and one day about a year ago the jokes struck him as so funny that he had a suggestion.

"I told Johnny he should call Dave and give them to him," said Mr. Lassally, who, after Mr. Carson retired, went to work as executive producer for David Letterman.

Thus began a quiet collaboration, which delighted Mr. Carson in his final months. "He was like a little kid when Dave would do one of his jokes," Mr. Lassally said. "He was not blasé about any of it."

Posted by Jeff at January 24, 2005 07:41 AM | TrackBack