Here's Johnny

 

1974

This is another week where a lot of people have time off. It's not really a holiday week, but more of a holy day week. Easter and Passover. You notice it on television. All my favorite late night shows run repeats and I'm left surfing the channels looking for something to loll me to sleep. Nothing other than a baseball game is as good for putting me to sleep than a Trevor Noah interview. I like the guy, but his interviews are dull. Anyway, on one of those extra digital channels that the FCC gave us when they made our old televisions obsolete, they play Johnny Carson reruns. So I record it and watch it instead of the other reruns. It's a slice of history watching a Johnny Carson monologue. I don't always get the references, but his jokes stretch from the Nixon years to Clinton. And when the opening music hits the first few notes I am transported right back. A couple of things about the Tonight Show from the Johnny Carson years. First, it originally ran for one hundred and five minutes every night. One hour and forty five minutes. By the time Johnny retired, he had it cut down to one hour. I also think he only did four shows a week by then. The weirdest thing about that show was that they never changed the curtains for at least twenty years. A rainbow of colors behind Johnny Carson as he stumbled through monologues. I imagine those curtains might have had an odor after all those years. By today's standards the old Tonight Show sucked. Not as bad as the current Tonight Show, but it sucked. So in a pinch, during rerun weeks, it makes for the perfect late night sleep aid.

1992