"John Morressy - Last Jerry Fagin Show" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morressy John)

presented like the Second Coming.
The familiar Jerry Fagin theme was gone, and so was the studio
orchestra. In their place was a selection from the The Planets, performed by
the Hollywood Symphony and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Billy Bragg. Jerry's
applecheeked, white-haired butterball of an announcer, did no clowning on this
sacred night. He marched on camera with the step of a man in a college
commencement procession. He was in white-tie and tails. I took another big
drink.

***
As I should have anticipated, Jerry was playing with his audience. After
the solemn buildup, the show opened with a young comic. Billy appealed for a
big hand for the kid in his first TV appearance, and the poor jerk-his name
was Frankie Mars, for God's sake-came on an did a monologue about aliens
landing in Brooklyn. It was the thirty-first one I'd heard since Twelve's
arrival. There were alien-andPuerto Rican jokes, alien-and-cop jokes, Jewish
mother-and-alien jokes. I found it all very cozy and familiar. I had stolen a
lot of those very same gags for my early sketches.
The comic died, and he was followed by a singer who did a new number
written in honor of Twelve. The only lines I can remember are "The whole room
rocks, and I shake in my socks, when you jiggle your eyes and wink your
weiox." The rest was a lot worse.
The singer gave it all she had, but she went down like the Titanic, same
as Frankie Mars. Scattered applause from three relatives in the studio
audience, silence from everybody else. The entire home audience was either in
the bathroom or at the refrigerator. Comics and singers they could get
anytime. What they wanted was Jerry and his guest.
That was a distinct Jerry Fagin touch. Subtle and deadly. I could
picture him setting it up: the Uncle Jerry smile and "This will be the biggest
audience in history, and I'm going to give some new talent a chance." And it's
not until they're on camera that the new talent realize that they couldn't
hold this audience if

they stripped naked and sacrifice themselves to a trash compactor. I wondered
why Jerry had picked this particular comic and this particular singer to
destroy. Probably an interesting story there if I could dig it out. I drank to
their memory.
Jerry sauntered on camera, white-tie and all, and was greeted with five
solid minutes of uproar. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking
humble and saintly, and when the noise died down, he made a little speech in
which he used the words honor nine times and privilege eight. Grateful came up
eleven times in just over a minute.
Then Twelve appeared at last. I turned the welcoming ovation low and
took a good look. He moved smoothly for something as lopsided as he appeared
to be. The lumpy, grayishbrown plastic sack that covered his pale body didn't
help his looks much. He looked like something that stepped off the cover of a
cereal box, and those wacky, wandering, off-center features were halfway
between a nightmare monster and an idiot mask.
I turned up the sound. The people in the audience were still applauding
wildly, and Jerry let them go on. But when someone whistled. Jerry held up his