Q: Good luck trying to pitch ON ASSIGNMENT as a latter-day Moby-Dick.
A: Thank you. Or are you being ironic?
Q: You can't be ironic in a post-literate culture. Irony is lost on people who watch Jerry Springer and Oprah.
A: You shouldn't lump Jerry Springer and Oprah together.
Q: I watched Oprah last week and it was about incest.
A whole parade
of women who had fucked their father, their older brother, their uncle.
A: Was Dr. Phil on?
Q: I didn't watch long enough to see. Aren't Dr. Phil and Oprah feuding? Aren't they on the outs?
A: I don't know.
But you're right. It's like a soap opera.
Q: Michael Jackson! Walter Cronkite! David Carradine! Teddy Kennedy!
A: In Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy writes about Barbara Walters talking about sexual intercourse on the Today show.
Q: Tom Brocaw thought The Cloning of a Man was true.
A: As Stan Freberg said about The Search for Bridey Murphy, "Who's blowing harp there, man?"
Q: Lenny Bruce used to hang with a musician who said, "Lick your leg for a quarter, lady?"
A: You have to see the humor of it.
Dress Walter up in fishnet
stockings and a wig.
Q: I see him as Laura Linney in The Truman Show, holding up a box of macaroni and cheese, and saying, "I think I'll fix macaroni and cheese tonight."
A: Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman in Man On the Moon.
I'm
having celebrity overload.
They're all running together.
Is 60
Minutes news?
Is The Nightly News 60 Minutes?
Is news
entertainment? Is entertainment news? Is a commercial news? Is the news a commercial?
Plus there are references to TV shows I never saw, so the reference is lost on me.
I watched a lot of old movies. But not as many as Quentin Tarantino. That guy's
an encyclopedia of crappy movies.
I watched Wild Guitar. But Quentin
Tarantino knows who did the special effects on a spaghetti western no one has ever
seen.
Q: You can look it up on the Internet.
A: Yes. If you want to.
If you have a computer.
Q: Everybody has a computer.
A: But they use them for social networking sites.
They use them
to twitter each other.
Q: Tweet each other.
A: Whatever.