it was 1981. i had holed myself up in this new york hotel. parker hotel. terrified of everything. ashamed of my life.
when you're young, your potential is infinite. you might do anything, really. you might be great. you might be einstein. you might be goethe. then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. you weren't einstein. you weren't anything. that's a bad moment. but i remembered something carlyle wrote: ".  there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed." i realized my salvation might be in recording my wasted life, unflinchingly. maybe it would serve as a cautionary tale. maybe it would help me understand why.
i figured i was in. all i had to do was get the pilot made and i'd be a millionaire. everyone would love me.
was anyone ever so young?
sometimes as a younger man i stretched the truth to get what i wanted. "through all the lying days of my youth. i swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;. now i may whither into the truth." yeats. you heard of him?
sure you have. anyway, my little lie worked. we aired and become a big hit. a phenomenon, really.
i felt bad about ronnie. but really i did that ugly, fat, stupid kid a favor. he was ugly and fat and stupid. more life wouldn't have changed that for him. no woman would ever have loved him. that's just the brutal truth, y'know?
the newlywed game was based on my theory that almost any american would sell out their spouse for a washer-drier or a lawnmower you can ride on. such was my respect for that most holy of unions. i must've been on to something, because the show aired for thirteen years.
yeah, i remember that religious girl, sure. monica something. fleming. oh god, she had the softest, fleeciest clam i ever experienced. it took a little more work than usual, but i got in there, baby. it was some clam. oh lordy. you get old, y'know, but the taste for soft clam, it just doesn't go away. this is the great tragedy of getting old.
i don't really want to talk about this.
i almost asked penny to marry me right then. but i didn't.
the next day i heard keeler offed himself.
you never really know in the world of espionage if something labeled a suicide actually is a suicide. but he was dead. that i knew.
but as i stood there, i realized, i couldn't kill jim brooks, the man who was responsible for such good stuff: mary tyler moore, rhoda, cindy, phyllis, episodes of my friend tony. i loved those shows as much as anybody in america.
i couldn't kill either of us, so i let us both live. jim brooks and me. the rest is history.
that was it. i just disappeared. the network had to put the gong show into reruns. it was 1981. i holed myself up in this hotel in new york. parker hotel.
y'know, i came up with a new game show idea recently. it's called the old game. you got three old guys with loaded guns on stage they look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. the winner is the one who doesn't blow his brains out. he gets a refrigerator.