I Haven't Watched Charlie Rose In Over 30 Years

One of the best jobs I've ever had was also one of the worst in that the wages were exploitatively low: $80 a week in 1995-96. I was an usher in a theatre showing Steve Martin's play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (Movie stars' salaries make headlines, but there are a lot of low-paying and even non-paying jobs in show business, and the producers and studio execs who make more than movie stars and manage to keep their finances out of the news make money off of the movie stars, and the people being paid very little in non-union jobs, and the people not being paid at all. Unionize.)



I could've gone home when the play started, but night after night I stayed and watch the play. It was incredible. It's set in 1904, in the Lapine Agile, a bar in Paris where Picasso hung out at the time. Albert Einstein was never there, but this play is not strictly realistic, and in this play he pops in. 1904 was shortly before he published the papers on relativity and photoelectronics which made him famous. In the play the proprietors of the bar have a ridiculously, hopelessly, unnecessarily complicated system of bookkeeping, which it seems they will never untangle, but young Albert quickly does some amazingly complicated math in his head to help them out. Then people ask him to tell them about himself. Instead of saying he's working on academic papers, the way he puts it is that he's writing a 70-page book about "everything." Someone asks him how many people would have to read his book for him to consider it a success, and he gets the same abstracted expression of his face that he had just a little while ago when he was doing the complicated math in his head to his the bar's owners with their messed-up accounting; and after a while he answers, "One. But it has to be Max Planck."

That doesn't make Einstein as different from other writers as some might think. Sure, all other things being equal, the more people who read my blog, the better. But one person reading my blog, or something else I've written, and then commenting favorably on it, could make me a successful writer all at once -- if that person is Oprah Winfrey.

Or possibly if it were Charlie Rose. I'm not entirely sure about that. Like I say, I stopped watching his shows 30 years ago, because the way that he constantly interrupted his guests, not only verbally, which was bad enough, but also by waving his great big stupid hand in their faces for them to shut up, was driving me mad. So why did I watch his show to begin with? Because he had very interesting guests. And I gather he still does. I gather this partly by channel-surfing past his show and seeing the face of some extremely-interesting person -- as interesting as Cate Blanchett and Salman Rushdie and 4 different Presidents and Harold Bloom -- and partly by hearing extremely-interesting people talk about having been on his show in venues other than his show. Does the amazing list of guests make me want to repent and give Rose another try after 30+ years, see if he's become somewhat less unbearable? No. On the contrary, it make me angry that all of those amazing people continue to prop this jerk up by appearing on his show.

I hope I've made the intensity and unreasonableness of my dislike for Charlie Rose vividly clear.

Still, I suppose that Rose could make me famous. Not Oprah's Book Club-famous, probably, but he could give me a huge boost. I think sometimes about whether I would refuse to appear on his show. I know, I just finished denouncing a teeming host of wonderful people for appearing on his show. I also suspect that I've made it impossible that Rose will ever want to interview me, with this post, if it wasn't already impossible because of other things I've said and written. But maybe Rose is a very magnanimous guy. Maybe he doesn't interrupt nearly as much. Maybe he's stopped with the waving of that big hand in his guests' faces.

(The fact that the guests were so great, even 30 years ago, was what made the interruptions so unbearable. You can understand that, right? I tuned in to watch -- say, Steve Martin, or Ted Kennedy, not to watch Rose talk about Martin or Kennedy while they struggled to get a word in edgewise. Hot tip, Charlie: if you're fortunate enough to have a great speaker appear on your show, LET HIM OR HER SPEAK YOU BIG GOON!!!)

Whether or not to grit my teeth and betray my principles -- and maybe take a strong prescription pill or 3 -- and go on "Charlie Rose" -- that's the sort of dilemma I want to have. And just like the Tom Petty Ab-So-Lute-Ly Bassackwards Law of Microeconomics, the more likely it is that I will ever have a chance to appear on the show, the less likely it will be that I will have any incentive to do so, because, although Charlie Rose could single-massive-handedly make me rich and famous, it's unlikely that he would want me as a guest unless I were already rich and famous, or at the very least, already speeding toward rich and famous.

Anyhow. Whether Oprah or Charlie are ever involved at all in my career rise, or even if they both actively oppose my rise because I've criticized them, if they're petty that way -- the more people who read my blog, the better. I'm doing everything I can think of to get the attention of the publishers and agents and other people who could help my career, including asking my readers, repeatedly, begging them, to mention my blog whenever and wherever they can. My ambition is naked. Yr darn tootin it is. I'm not trying in the least to hide that fact that I want to be a huge, huge, huge success. I know that some people advise those who are ambitious to hide their ambition, to pretend to be humble, and even pretend not to want honours and promotions. (But take the honours and promotions anyway of course, just pretend to do it unwillingly and with protestations of unworthiness.)

Whatever. I'm going a different way. It's one less thing people can accuse me of being insincere about.

You Are Feeling Very Sleepy...

...very pleasantly relaxed. When I've counted down to 1 you'll be completely hypnotized, 5, 4, 3... 2... 1. You want me to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. I'm your favorite writer, you find my work to be deep and important and witty and charming all at the same time. "Sparkling prose" is a very overused phrase, but my prose truly sparkles. I am wise, I am always full of sound advice for the world. The thought of me winning the Nobel makes you very happy. You think that it is strange and wrong that my work has not been published in books and in magazines like the New Yorker and the Atlantic and Vanity Fair and Redbook and Harper's for many years already and that it is not on the bestseller lists. What would be proper and just would be if I were often referred to as being like Dan Brown or Stephen King (in terms of the sales of my books), except that I'm a good writer. If you're a publisher of books or periodicals you want to publish my work, if you're a literary agent you want to represent me, if you're Oprah you want me to be in your Book Club, if you're Conan or Jimmy Kimmel you want me to be a frequent guest on your show. Whoever you are, you want to talk about how good my writing is and how everyone should read as much of it as they can. You want to talk and write about it as much as you can, wherever and whenever you can, to whomever you can. Reading this blog makes you happy. Thinking about my writing makes you happy. Talking and writing about it, spreading the word about it, makes you even more happy. The thought of me winning that Nobel Prize in Literature, this year if possible but if not this year then just as soon as possible, makes you blissfully happy. When I've counted back up to 5 you'll be wide awake again, you'll feel great, rested and cheerful, and you'll start spreading the word about me with a verve and conviction you've seldom felt in relation to any cause before this. 1, 2... 3... 4... 5.

Oprah vs Nyad, or: One Example Of How To Tick Atheists Off

ATHEIST: Ambiguous or possibly poorly-word statement.

BELIEVER: Aha! POUNCE!! So you DO believe in God!

ATHEIST: No, I'm an atheist! Let me explain --

BELIEVER: LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING. Clearly, you feel awe and certain other human emotions. This would seem to indicate that you are not dead inside, which in turn indicates a belief in God. Well, which is it: do you believe in our all-merciful, perfectly-loving Supreme Being? Or are you dead inside? LA LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING. Why are you getting so upset? I guess you are an atheist, then: no sensitivity or humanity.

On October 13 of this year Diana Nyad, one of the great athletes of our time, played the role of ATHEIST, and Oprah Winfrey played the role of BELIEVER. Nothing new here. Nothing any atheist who's gone public with it doesn't already know all about. Same shit, different day.

Some atheists have demanded an apology from Oprah for her interview with Nyad. Not me. I'm not demanding anything from anybody. On the other hand, good luck trying to get me to apologize for describing the interview the way I did above. I'm not going to apologize for being angry about this kind of crap. I'm really not angry at Oprah personally, I'm angry because it's frustrating to encounter this sort of response over and over. But this is a situation involving billions of people which has been going on for thousands of years. Oprah didn't invent the situation we're in regarding religion, any more than she invented the weather. Like the weather, this situation is just there. And it used to be much, much worse. Unlike people in Europe in the Middle Ages, I can talk openly about religion. Unlike anyone until well past the Middle Ages, I can angrily satirize religious points of view. Things are changing, even if we're surrounded on all sides by attitudes like Oprah's.