Men Like Me

"Carson wanted a dog to kick, and every time he looked at me he saw a Milk-Bone in my mouth." Ha ha, so terrible it's good. I am reading a book called JOHNNY CARSON, written by Johnny Carson's lawyer. It is filled with tough-guy sentences of a comfortingly cornball variety. The lawyer is helped out of the particular crisis alluded to in the above dog metaphor by a couple of men, one named Charles Wick: "men like me," he writes, "men who were highly accomplished at what they did." By the way, Wick has been introduced to us as "the man behind SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES" - ha ha, whew! What a gas. First I read THE RICHARD BURTON DIARIES and now this, or as I call them, PEOPLE GETTING DRUNK ON YACHTS, VOLS. I and II. That's not fair. I can't recall whether anyone gets drunk on the yachts in JOHNNY CARSON, though they get good and drunk elsewhere. The lawyer remarks of the year 1970, "One was accustomed in those days to seeing drunk patrons in bars and tipsy diners in restaurants, far more so than today." Wow! I want to invite him to Oxford, Mississippi. He'll be so surprised all the time!