QUOTE
Johnny Carson: the Sinatra of comedy
By John Jennings - MANAGING EDITOR - Friday, January 28, 2005
Wish I had said that department: Pittsburgh talk-show host Doug Hoerth, upon the death of Johnny Carson, said "We have lost the Frank Sinatra of comedy."
I felt much worse about Carson's passing Sunday than about the Steeler debacle, which was not unexpected. (More on that in a moment.) Carson was an entertainment icon, someone who took the light-night TV franchise established by Steve Allen and Jack Paar and turned it in a new direction: broadband comedy that was funny if not terribly sophisticated.
Carson's genius was to make what he did look as effortless as a Fred Astaire dance. Most standup comedians today seem to be trying to wrench laughs out of their audience with pliers, but not Carson. If a joke fell flat, he would toss off a remark like "May a yak leave a deposit on your welcome mat" and move on. Of course, when you have Ed McMahon at his sycophantic best guffawing at Carson's laundry list, who needs an audience?
Undeniably, however, everyone had their favorite Carson memory. (Everyone of a certain age, that is. A Dispatch staffer said she told her kids, "Johnny Carson died," and they replied, "Johnny who?")
Carson was the last true giant of television, with the possible exception of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With the increasing fragmentation of the mass audience, there will never be a universal icon like him again.
Now about that Steeler game: repeatedly since Sunday night I have heard and read that the blame for the loss (a rout, an embarrasment) should not be placed on the shoulders of Head Coach Bill Cowher. Horse hockey. How much proof needs to accumulate before one concludes that Cowher can't win big games? They sent Al Capone to Alcatraz on less evidence.
Cowher has proven to be adept at building teams that dominate on the division level, teams built on defense and strong running games. Normally he also shows a deft touch at inspiring his players to emotionally supercharged levels, although emotion seemed painfully absent from the Steelers' performance Sunday--except perhaps self-directed disgust and anger.
Cowher's teams win one division title after another, but when they reach the playoffs, with the pressure on and an equally talented team competing, he is hopeless at devising game plans that will make the difference in strategy. It's hard to defend a 1-4 record in conference championship games--played on your home turf, no less--and the infamous loss to Dallas in the 1996 Super Bowl. Get on with your life's work, Bill.
Meanwhile, I am back in touch with one of my favorite January correspondents, Stan Gordon. He's just as faithful as the IRS and his compilation of the UFO sightings and unexplained happenings of the past year are a lot more fun.
Stan, a Greensburg resident, has been investigating reports of UFOs, Bigfoot, mysterious sounds and other unexplained phenomena for 45 years now, and I first encountered him as a young reporter almost as far back.
He has credibility that others in his field lack, mainly because Gordon is quick to point out natural explanations for strange lights in the sky, such as the brilliant orange-red object with a burning trail reported at about 10:50 p.m. last June 26 by observers from Pittsburgh to Greensburg, as well as by people in eastern Pennsylvania.
Later it was confirmed that the object was Russian space debris reentering the earth's atmosphere, Gordon said.
UFO sightings this year past have not been that exciting, but he did note that a woman in the Punxsutawney area saw a square object about 30 feet off the ground and 50 feet from her window. "The object looked as though it was made up of multitudes of light bubbles," Gordon reported. Suddenly it began to rise slowly higher until it looked like a light in the distance.
On April 4 in Washington County, near California, a witness reported observing a large triangular shape over a nearby house. The object had a blue light on each corner and seemed to glow.
At about the same time, another large object appeared in the sky, this one shaped like a glass rod. Then a strange fall of sparkling material dropped from the sky just as the triangular object traveled quickly north.
In March, in Westmoreland County, passengers on a rural road said their headlights picked up an object in the road. It turned out to be a small metallic cigar-shaped object that rose off the ground, turned right and flew away.
As for Bigfoot, Gordon has turned most of that hairy fellow's research over to the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, which received 2004 sightings in Carbon, Beaver and Fayette counties. August through October were busy with sightings in Beaver County, including one woman who claimed to have seen three creatures moving across a road.
Gordon said he received several Bigfoot reports around Westmoreland County, but a more interesting observation was reported in Tioga County on July 20.
There a man on a construction crew said he saw a dark hair-covered creature, seven to eight feet tall, standing near a road.
The creature crossed the road in three long strides and continued into a swamp. The ground cover in the area was smashed down where the creature had been seen.
As always, reports of unusual happenings can be reported to Gordon at 724-838-7768,
John Jennings can be reached at jjennings@tribweb.com or (724) 459-6100, ext. 10.
By John Jennings - MANAGING EDITOR - Friday, January 28, 2005
Wish I had said that department: Pittsburgh talk-show host Doug Hoerth, upon the death of Johnny Carson, said "We have lost the Frank Sinatra of comedy."
I felt much worse about Carson's passing Sunday than about the Steeler debacle, which was not unexpected. (More on that in a moment.) Carson was an entertainment icon, someone who took the light-night TV franchise established by Steve Allen and Jack Paar and turned it in a new direction: broadband comedy that was funny if not terribly sophisticated.
Carson's genius was to make what he did look as effortless as a Fred Astaire dance. Most standup comedians today seem to be trying to wrench laughs out of their audience with pliers, but not Carson. If a joke fell flat, he would toss off a remark like "May a yak leave a deposit on your welcome mat" and move on. Of course, when you have Ed McMahon at his sycophantic best guffawing at Carson's laundry list, who needs an audience?
Undeniably, however, everyone had their favorite Carson memory. (Everyone of a certain age, that is. A Dispatch staffer said she told her kids, "Johnny Carson died," and they replied, "Johnny who?")
Carson was the last true giant of television, with the possible exception of CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With the increasing fragmentation of the mass audience, there will never be a universal icon like him again.
Now about that Steeler game: repeatedly since Sunday night I have heard and read that the blame for the loss (a rout, an embarrasment) should not be placed on the shoulders of Head Coach Bill Cowher. Horse hockey. How much proof needs to accumulate before one concludes that Cowher can't win big games? They sent Al Capone to Alcatraz on less evidence.
Cowher has proven to be adept at building teams that dominate on the division level, teams built on defense and strong running games. Normally he also shows a deft touch at inspiring his players to emotionally supercharged levels, although emotion seemed painfully absent from the Steelers' performance Sunday--except perhaps self-directed disgust and anger.
Cowher's teams win one division title after another, but when they reach the playoffs, with the pressure on and an equally talented team competing, he is hopeless at devising game plans that will make the difference in strategy. It's hard to defend a 1-4 record in conference championship games--played on your home turf, no less--and the infamous loss to Dallas in the 1996 Super Bowl. Get on with your life's work, Bill.
Meanwhile, I am back in touch with one of my favorite January correspondents, Stan Gordon. He's just as faithful as the IRS and his compilation of the UFO sightings and unexplained happenings of the past year are a lot more fun.
Stan, a Greensburg resident, has been investigating reports of UFOs, Bigfoot, mysterious sounds and other unexplained phenomena for 45 years now, and I first encountered him as a young reporter almost as far back.
He has credibility that others in his field lack, mainly because Gordon is quick to point out natural explanations for strange lights in the sky, such as the brilliant orange-red object with a burning trail reported at about 10:50 p.m. last June 26 by observers from Pittsburgh to Greensburg, as well as by people in eastern Pennsylvania.
Later it was confirmed that the object was Russian space debris reentering the earth's atmosphere, Gordon said.
UFO sightings this year past have not been that exciting, but he did note that a woman in the Punxsutawney area saw a square object about 30 feet off the ground and 50 feet from her window. "The object looked as though it was made up of multitudes of light bubbles," Gordon reported. Suddenly it began to rise slowly higher until it looked like a light in the distance.
On April 4 in Washington County, near California, a witness reported observing a large triangular shape over a nearby house. The object had a blue light on each corner and seemed to glow.
At about the same time, another large object appeared in the sky, this one shaped like a glass rod. Then a strange fall of sparkling material dropped from the sky just as the triangular object traveled quickly north.
In March, in Westmoreland County, passengers on a rural road said their headlights picked up an object in the road. It turned out to be a small metallic cigar-shaped object that rose off the ground, turned right and flew away.
As for Bigfoot, Gordon has turned most of that hairy fellow's research over to the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society, which received 2004 sightings in Carbon, Beaver and Fayette counties. August through October were busy with sightings in Beaver County, including one woman who claimed to have seen three creatures moving across a road.
Gordon said he received several Bigfoot reports around Westmoreland County, but a more interesting observation was reported in Tioga County on July 20.
There a man on a construction crew said he saw a dark hair-covered creature, seven to eight feet tall, standing near a road.
The creature crossed the road in three long strides and continued into a swamp. The ground cover in the area was smashed down where the creature had been seen.
As always, reports of unusual happenings can be reported to Gordon at 724-838-7768,
John Jennings can be reached at jjennings@tribweb.com or (724) 459-6100, ext. 10.