Sunday, January 23, 2005

A Merv, a Swerve, and Larry King's Nerve

As part of our unending service to humanity, BlondeChampagne is ever on the lookout for movement regarding The Lord of All Entertainment, that name of the lips of all mankind: Merv Griffin.

You remember Merv, whom we revere here as the Worst. Interview. Ever. and one-man inspiration of the Chris McCarron Look of Death.

Johnny Carson passed to that great green room in the sky yesterday, and, as is directed by law when this sort of thing happens, every person in the entertainment industry over the age of 157 appeared with the drop-dead sexy Larry King to look old and listen to Don Rickles shout things.

You know, I made a realization last night: I don’t want to be famous anymore. Because if I do become famous, and I die, there stands a chance that Larry King will be allotted an hour to mark the event, and he will trot everybody ever remotely connected to me out to his set, the backdrop of which is apparently a gigantic Lite Brite screen, and he will say things like, “Regis Philbin, you were once in the same room with Mary Beth for seven seconds. Best friends. How was her nightclub act?” And Regis would go, “Well, Larry—“ and Larry would say, “This reminds me of when I last interviewed Angela Lansbury. Have you seen her smash movie, Bedknobs and Broomsticks? Caller from Minneapolis, go ahead.”

CALLER FROM MINNEAPOLIS: Th-

LARRY: Okay, it's time for a break.

It's been at least two days since Merv last appeared on Larry King, and so he of course was asked to appear. Merv was in excellent form last night, once again having dressed for the occasion in a shirt and a sweater, and I was vastly disappointed when CNN—whose ratings have apparently fallen to a point where its remote broadcast budget now consists of a horse on a treadmill and one (1) extension cord—was having trouble transmitting Merv’s talking head to Larry’s studio. So we had to make do for a while with Joan Rivers, whose face is now officially so tight she is renting it out as a trampoline. We were also treated to Mike Douglas, who technically died in 1987, but nobody told Larry, so he still has to get pancaked up every time anybody who was on a first-name basis with Bing Crosby kicks the bucket.

But when—o glorious day!—Merv at last appeared unto us, we were privy to the following conversation:

LARRY: Did you know he was sick?

MERV: Yes.

(pause pause pause pause)

MERV: I did.

(pause pause pause pause pause)

MERV: You know what, he spoke Russian.

DON RICKLES: (shouts something)

MERV: And Johnny was a real astronomer. He could subtract time with his telescope.

Yeah, that’s exactly how I want to go out.

subtracting time at: blondechampagne@hotmail.com

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