GOING, GOING, GONG

         I was assaulted by Whoopi Goldberg while sitting in a waiting room at a hospital. One of those forces of history had left the television on. For a change it was not tuned to the Cartoon Network, but rather to the latest reincarnation of Hollywood Squares, the elephant's burial ground of America. There in the center square was Ms. Whoopi.

         I did not know the show was back on the air. Someone had pulled the wooden stake from its heart and now it stalked the landscape again, giving aid and comfort to stars and starlets beginning their trek to oblivion. Whoopi should be given a humanitarian award for keeping her supporting cast out of the Hollywood poorhouses. There they sit in their windows: players from failed sitcoms, former headliners and now has-beens, direct from the cocktail lounges of America, cracking smiles and laughing at Ms. Whoopi's jokes.

         After ten minutes of being subject to this torture, three conclusions came to mind:
(A) It was preferable to the afternoon I spent in another waiting room suffering through a David Niven-Doris Day festival;
(B) The producers would do better to send Whoopi packing and morph the late Paul Lynde; and,
(C) Gordon Moore needs to promulgate a new law.

         Actually I'm not sure it is 'Gordon' Moore. I know it isn't St. Thomas [Forever] More because he had only one 'o' in his name. I don't think it is Victor Moore or Garry Moore because they are both dead. Whoever? Whatever! Mr. Moore, like Mr. Murphy and Mr. Gresham, made a law. They are totally unlike Mr. Einstein who wrote a theory or Mr. Peter who produced a principle.

         Attentive readers will note that I have dropped the name 'Gresham'. Thomas Gresham is the subject of my unpublished monograph, "Really Crummy Money", which someday will be posted on Writing.com. I bet you can't wait. I THINK his first name was "Thomas". In my research I could not find anyone who actually knew him personally. It probably doesn't matter. He has had his fifteen minutes. His fame is gone. Get the hook, please.

         Getting back to the subject at hand, Moore needs to combine his theory on obsolescence of computer memory with Warhol's 'fifteen famous minutes' dictum and Fitzgerald's 'No Second Acts in American Life', so that minutes of fame will shrink every eighteen months and we can get these people off stage for good.

         It isn't just Hollywood Squares. Popping up on screen in the fall of 2000 were James Baker and Warren Christopher, both of whose faces bore a strange resemblance to my wallet. Could Ron Ziegler or Jody Powell be far behind?

         Worse yet, in five or ten years we will have the obligatory anniversary of the Florida vote controversy and the living and dead will be exhumed again. There will be a certain curiosity to see if William Daley still resembles Frederick March playing Matthew Brady masquerading as William Jennings Bryan in "Inherit the Wind".

         How will it fit into our crowded November-December calendar? We have JFK's assassination, Pearl Harbor, the killing of John Lennon, Thanksgiving, Black Friday and now the election that would not end. Forgive me if I have left out anything important. Is there any O.J. trivia lurking around from this period?

         It's almost as bad as late July-August when we just get over the observance of JFK Jr.'s and Elvis' demise only to be confronted with Princess Di and the anniversaries of Woodstock, Chicago 1968, and Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, or was it Chuck Berry's? Once again forgive me if I am omitting an O.J. moment.

         Poor Will Shakespeare, he had it all wrong. Life is not "a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more". The last time I saw Life, he occupied the lower right hand square on the Tic Tac Dough board, next to Charo

Valatie 12/9/00