It’s showtime again. This show was taped in Connecticut. No video boxes because (ta da), Tom and Garry are together on the set in Tom’s studio. It’s a very funny episode. It’s especially interesting how their being together changes the way they interact. It’s more conversational than other episodes.
MEDIA WAR STORIES – BEHIND THE SCENES TALES FROM MEDIA’S FRONT LINES – EPISODE 7
And they said it wouldn’t last.
Well, actually, no one said that but it’s a saying you hear all the time. I figured I had to include at least one annoying platitude especially since this episode includes some of the funniest traditional TV news platitudes.
Unlike all the other productions, I didn’t hear this while it was being created because Garry and Tom were downstairs in the studio and I was doing things with corned beef.
In this episode Tom and Garry are actually in the same room! Garry talks about doing a zoo story that ends with Colossus the gorilla showing Garry just how closely he had bonded with him.
Then there is the story about when Billy Crystal and Robin Williams tried to teach him how to say chutzpah. I saw this one on TV having just arrived in Boston a few weeks earlier. Not that we have all tried — and failed to teach Garry to properly say “Chutzpah,” but sadly failed. Garry just can’t find his gutteral note.
Tom talks about how the news is really never really new and how many times he’s been taped to a chair with gaffer’s tape while on the air.
This is by far the closest to real conversation they’ve had in a podcast. It’s the kind we have when we are hanging out. If we lived just one hour closer, we could do it more often. As it stands, though, it’s a three hour drive which isn’t a day trip anymore. There were many years when we could have easily done it and not even thought about it. Those days have fled.
I have spent all week worrying that we brought COVID to Connecticut but as of this writing, Ellin and Tom are fine. That’s a huge relief. I felt incredibly guilty about having unknowingly brought COVID to their household. They got their last booster some months later than we did. No good deed goes unpunished! We were always among the first to get vaccinated, but the boosters don’t last more than three or four months, so early isn’t necessarily the best option. Until they make longer-lasting vaccines and boosters, COVID will always be “going around.” At least the vaccinations help keep you from getting deathly ill.
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Categories: #Media-War-Stories, Humor, podcast, Video, You can't make this stuff up, You Tube
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Also. I make a response to every comment here. WordPress put them in a completely random order. So, guess which response goes with which comment. Winner gets a year’s supply of RIce A Roni, The San Francisco treat!
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I have never figured out what was going on in the Great Minds who designed the comment section. It’s some kind of bibliographic format which is meaningless for blogging, but hey, they own the market, y’know? I’ve tried it top down, bottom down — and it’s equally confusing in either direction. I like it “top up” so someone can add a comment and I can FIND it quickly because it’s at the top.
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Tom I’m wondering how we’ll top this with our next pod.
No worries, something bizarre will happen to one of us. We are, my faithful companion, the children of a greater God.
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War buddies. That’s a kinship you can’t buy.
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And these days, as so many old friends have gone, it’s even MORE important.
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Very true. At least we never got shot at.
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Yet.
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I never hurry a man who wants to die, Pilgrim.
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S/F — and that’s a wrap.
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This was a really funny one. I did enjoy the whole tornado segment. I often feel annoyed when some poor family who have just been flooded out or had their house burnt down are asked how they feel. Somehow they always manage to stay polite on TV, or maybe they get edited well.
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The “bosses” INSIST they ask those stupid questions. Reporters know they are stupid questions. I mean, seriously, what do they expect people to say?
I thought this was very funny. Garry and the gorilla always makes me laugh — and every time I see one of these stories about tornados, you just know some trailer park got completely flattened. There’s an area of this country lovingly known as “tornado alley” in which entire neighborhoods are regularly flattened. Although tornados can happen anywhere, they have a definitely preference for the south. With changing climate, that could change. We get them up here, too, though rarely the really huge ones they get down south. Still, even a small one can thoroughly dissassemble your house.
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Yeah, but it’s God’s Country!
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Did you ask God?
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Nearer My God To Thee.
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We rarely get them here but I know parts of the US are prone to them. You do wonder though about why people choose to rebuild in an area that is regularly subject to natural disasters. Especially now, when flooding and bushfires seem to occur more frequently and with greater severity.
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I think people — especially rich people, but they aren’t alone in this — are arrogant. Why would you build on a beach when building just a bit inland and up a few feet could save your home? Why build on a muddy cliff when you could build back 100 feet and know your home won’t collapse in a sea of mud? We seem to think whatever we want is JUST FINE, no matter how unnatural it is or how unrealistic. Perhaps the bill is coming due these days. We ran up quite a tab and I think the pub is closing down and asking us to pay up.
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Thanks. It was a stand up routine I did at the NY Comedy Club over 10 years ago. Was amazing it that’s it’s still relevant today.
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Hilarious! I could listen to those two for hours…
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They can run on for hours, too 😀 They are funny — even when you’ve heard the stories MANY times and in some cases, actually seen the event.
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It’s always lovely to watch people enjoying each others company…
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Thank God! We have so many more episodes coming!
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I expect they are doing well on YouTube too…
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And, we’ ll have designer, strait-jackets.
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they are really funny together in the same room, more relaxed and they very naturally play off each other.
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This one is much closer to their “natural patter.” They started talking when we arrived and kept talking for HOURS, even when they changed rooms. I kept think we should just set up a microphone. They could have cut half a dozen shows just from the ongoing memories.
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Glad to hear that. When I thought up the show I wanted it to be like a conversation at a bar, or at dinner between old friends and co-workers sharing and remembering the crazy things that happened to them. One of my fondest memories was the few months I was assigned to “The equipment crib” The place where we went to sign out microphones, cameras etc. It was also the place where all the “Old Timers” hung out. These we guys who started in the 1950’s. They literally invented modern TV broadcasting. They worked on the Ed Sullivan show, The Jackie Gleason show. One was the cameraman who filmed Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. The audio guy who recorded the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan so, etc. I would sit in the back of the room and drink in their tales. I always regretted not taping those conversations.
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Tom, I echo your regrets about not taping those “old timer” conversations. I never had the presence of mind or the audacity. It was just so “way cool” to be in the same room with those folks, absorbing their stories.
Hopefully, we are offering the “newbies” what we didn’t have. “Real” person, oral histories of what it was like. It gives us, I think, a little credence when we are shoveling our stories for the umteenth time.
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Beth, it’s really more comfortable in the same room. We can look at each other and go into silly giggles.
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