My Point...And I Do Have One

they fly or something? People like flying.”
    I’m just surprised there were no copycat shows, like
The Swimming Rabbi
or
The Leaping Episcopalian
. Because, no matter how bizarre a show is, if it’s popular, someone is going to try to imitate it.
Bewitched
came on and one year later it was
I Dream of Jeannie
. “No, they’re different. On one she twitches her nose, on the other she blinks. But the most important thing is, one’s a witch and the other’s a genie. It’s so different it’s not even funny.”
    Other similar shows were
The Addams Family
and
The Munsters; Gilligan’s Island
and
Lost in Space; Mr. Ed
and
My Mother the Car
(one is a talking horse, the other a talking car—they’re both transportation);
Gunsmoke
and 60
Minutes
(well, they both have a bunch of guys and one girl).
    My Mother the Car
has to be the weirdest show ever. It even tops
The Flying Nun. A
man’s mother dies and is reincarnated as a car. It
could
happen. I mean, a talking toaster or talking can opener, an ironing board or a Ping-Pong table—
those
would be ridiculous. But a talking car? That’s much more likely.
    Somewhere along the way to putting this show on the air, drugs had to be involved. It was the sixties. To me it sounds like the last idea you have, and you mention it, kind of embarrassed, after all your other ideas have been rejected. “I came up with this one at 3:00 in the morning. Idon’t know … Well, it’s a talking car—you know, like they have—and it’s this guy’s mother … I guess.”
    Now he might not have been zoned out on boo or goofballs, but the network guy who bought it, man,
he
had to be on something. “Right, it talks. Just like a person talks. I dig it. Write it up. I’ll give you more notes after I tie-dye my shirt and drive up to San Francisco to see the Grateful Dead. Wow. Look at my fingers. They’re funny.”
    I saw Jerry Van Dyke, the star of
My Mother the Car
, in person around the time that show was on the air, but it’s kind of embarrassing how I saw him. The only major trip that my family ever took was to Los Angeles, Disneyland, and Anaheim. We took a train and that was kind of fun. My parents told my brother and me that it was an airplane, but we figured out after the first thousand miles that they were lying. We went to Hollywood and saw the set where
Gillian’s Island
was shot. That was every bit as exciting as you could imagine.
    While we were in Hollywood, my mom spotted Jerry Van Dyke walking down some street. It was a big deal for us to see a celebrity, so, when my mother saw him she screamed, “There’s Dick Van Dyke’s brother!” He looked around kind of uncomfortably. Even as a child, I was humiliated. I just knew that that wasn’t a good thing.
    I don’t remember how old I was at the time. Maybe my parents would remember or perhaps even Jerry Van Dyke.
    I guess they had another talking-car show in the eighties:
Knight Rider
. That was much different, though. It was a drama and not a comedy.
    Actually, of all those odd shows,
Mr. Ed
doesn’t sound so weird. I guess that’s because my Uncle Cookie had a talking horse. Well, it was really a dog with a saddle on it, but my Uncle Cookie thought it was a horse. He was blind and a little loopy.
    We didn’t want to break his heart. It was all he had,that horse. Or dog. It was a small dog. But he never saw a horse, so he didn’t know how big it was supposed to be.
    Nobody heard him talk but my Uncle Cookie. The dog would be lying on the floor (actually it was dead) and my Uncle would say, “That’s a good one, Spot. He’s telling a joke now.”
    That’s right, Uncle Cookie.

I went to a
psychic
or

baloney is just salami with an
inferiority complex

    A lot of people who know I’m writing a book ask me, “So, do you think it’s going to be any good? Well, do you?”
    It’s hard to tell how successful or good anything is going to be. And, to be honest, it makes me a little nervous. That’s why I decided to do the only rational thing: go to a psychic. I mean, what’s the use of putting in a lot of hard work if this book is going to be a flop? I could better use my time doing other stuff, like becoming a professional ballerina or flossing.
    The first psychic I went to wasn’t that good. Do you know how some people go to student beauticians to save a little money? I went to a student psychic. There was a little psychic academy in a mini-mall between a video store and a frozen-yogurt place. It was