Hello and Happy New Year. I've been looking forward to this.
Yes, looking forward to coming back to work in January and writing this column. The holidays are over and a very good thing too. Don't get me started. Don't. Just stick with me here.
Never got away anywhere. Heathrow closed. Cancelled flights. On the phone to Air Canada. Time passed. Heathrow still closed. Time passed. Flights resumed. Dublin Airport closed. Surrendered to the weather over there. Postponed all plans. Hunkered down: a quiet holiday. Nothing to do, nowhere to go.
Felt a bit queasy, mind you. Disappointment? No. A great, uneasy flu-like feeling came over me. Next thing, it was extensive carnal knowledge of the toilet bowl. Upchuck central. Teeth-chattering, hands-quivering, feeble-body feeling. Then a day of sitting upright, sipping flat Coca-Cola. Followed by the arrival of a hacking cough, chest congestion and a runny nose. Charming. That was Christmas Eve.
The Brother was on the blower. Well ensconced in Doyle Mansions in Dublin, gone ahead of the weather, he crowed. Supping on turkey and trimmings and sipping Jameson, he feigned concern. Inquired about the well-being of "the Brother and the bag." An inside joke. Me being elevated to the "Brother" status, for a change, and "the bag" being the Brother's well-established term for the tummy. Hilarity ensued at his end. That is, an unbearable cackling sound on the phone. He claimed my severe illness and familiarity with the toilet bowl reminded him of his early adventures in Canada when his favourite tipple was a concoction made of Gatorade and Advocaat. Those were the days, he claimed. "Cheers," he said, insufferably.
On the broad of my back, stretched out like a mackerel, I gazed at the television. The news mainly. What was the news? The weather, people shopping and getting stuck in traffic. Tips for bargain-hunting on Boxing Day. Gripping stuff. Footage of people stuck at airports. Heathrow, Frankfurt and Paris. A close-up of a woman in Paris, gazing up at the list of delayed and cancelled fights, her face dissolving into tears. I felt her pain. Though at least she was upright and mobile.
Of course, the TV news was delivered by people unknown to me. Youngsters stepping in for the likes of Pastor Mansbridge, Lloyd "Boy" Robertson and that nice woman on Global. Where were they? Feet up with a book and a drink in the Caribbean, I imagined. Or at the spa. A hex on them.
Read a book. Mr. Bill Carter's The War For Late Night: When Leno Went Early and Television Went Crazy. A book of admirable depth, girth and detail. Perfect for the person so sick they'd be gripped by traffic reports from places they'd never visited nor intended to visit. More than four hundred pages of detail about how brave, spunky Conan O'Brien went to Harvard, wrote some TV shows, was picked to host a late-night chat show, became way popular and was given the job of hosting The Tonight Show. Then he became a victim of scoundrels at NBC who treated him with wicked disregard for propriety. Wicked, I tell you. They favoured this Jay Leno character, a big-jawed jokester who would sell his sorry soul to be on TV, apparently.
The upshot is that brave spunky O'Brien took umbrage when it was suggested that The Tonight Show be moved back on the schedule by half an hour. He asserted that "the institution" that is The Tonight Show might be irreparably undermined. Reacting with savage indignation, he took a buyout, walked away and found a job hosting a chat on another outlet. Perhaps you've heard the story? Well you don't know the half of it. The grim details - meetings, insults, an occasional swear word - are laid out with copious detail in Mr. Carter's book.
At the end of the tale, the author seeks the sage opinion of Jerry Seinfeld on the strange events he has recounted. This is the best bit. Seinfeld goes to the heart of the matter: "How do you not get that this whole thing is phony? It's all fake. There's no institution to offend! All of this 'I won't sit by and watch the institution damaged.' What institution? Ripping off the public? That's the only institution. We tell jokes and they give us millions."
Needless to say, I found this bracing and I embraced it. Sick, tired of being sick and fed up, I agreed: It's all a crock. Seinfeld speaks the truth. The new year starts thus - with resolve to recognize the phony, the idiotic and the sadly misguided. There's a lot of it around.
Take the People's Choice Awards (CBS, Global, 8 p.m.), which involves a lot of eejits voting for their "Favourite TV Doctor" or "Favourite On Screen Team," whatever that is. Then, awards are handed out. It's "an institution" or something. Then there's tonight's Primetime (ABC, 10 p.m.), which covers the vital issue "Celebrity Weight Loss - What Really Happens." I'm starting to feel nauseated again.
But I'll feel better. Eventually. Stick with me in 2011.
Check local listings.