Late Night Comics

Conan, Leno, or Letterman? Who cares? Well Conan’s out, so now we just have to wait and see who captures the highest ratings – Leno or Letterman. And, oh dear, what will Conan do? Join Fox? None of this uproar rocks my world, but it does make me think of Johnny Carson.

Now Johnny Carson was MY kind of host from MY era. He hosted The Tonight Show for 30 years. Thirty years (1962-1992) of my television-watching prime! Thirty years is a long time. (FYI: If he had been a teacher, he would have been eligible for a full retirement pension, receiving 2% per year, or in other words 60% of his highest salary. I wonder how much that would have been!) I was a dedicated Carson fan, never missing the first 10 or 15 minutes of his show, or 5 minutes, or 7 minutes, or until my eyelids fluttered shut.

Anyhoo, a few days ago I heard someone say that Johnny Carson would not be funny if he were to host The Tonight Show in today’s world. This statement pushed me toward a little research. Some of Carson’s “laugh promoting” quotes follow. You decide if they’re funny.

• "Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas."
• "If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam."
  
• "Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill."
  
• "The worst gift is a fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other."
  
• "I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing."
  
• "If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."
  

Of course Carson would have to update his material! I'm confident that he would! Does any teenager know what all this old stuff is about? In the last 20 years we've experienced computer spam, the total demise of fruitcake, property that does not contain any out-buildings (let alone a barn), and we now can watch TV on our computer or iPhone (thus we should be eating frozen computer dinners?). Today, Apple unveiled the iPad -- frozen iPad dinners?

The post office is still around...but for how long?