It’s ‘Hello, Dummy, Well, Hello, Dummy’
Listen up, you hockey pucks: Don Rickles has landed a gig as a spokesman for cable’s Comedy Central network.
The acerbic comedian will portray “Don Rickles Paid Spokesperson,” an exasperated, sarcastic, slightly reluctant pitchman, in a series of promotional spots that begin airing on the network next month.
“I was delighted when they asked me,” said the 70-year-old Rickles, a fixture on the Vegas club circuit. “It’s a different look for me … It’ll make me well known to the young people.”
In one spot, a pompous director’s use of the word “gestalt” prompts Rickles to snarl: “Was that a word? I thought you were blessing me.” In another, he walks in on a typical family, wordlessly changes their channel to Comedy Central and walks out.
Loose talk
Formerly serious actor Leslie Nielsen, on his “Police Squad” days: “Frank Drebin set me free … I realized that I was as dumb and stupid as that guy I was playing, and it was a great feeling.”
And he’s probably still raising Caine
Herman Wouk turns 81 today.
If you rent ‘Showgirls,’ that’s one too many
Books are one thing, but videos are quite another, author John Updike told The New York Times: “There’s something squalid about a video store. The people look furtive, like drug addicts, as they take them out in stacks of four or five … It’s one thing to drink at a party, another thing to drink alone. One thing to go to an assembly hall and watch big illusions, another thing to take them home in a little can.”
He’s obviously trying to turn over a new leaf
David Foster Wallace, author of the 1,079-page satirical novel “Infinite Jest,” admits to a terrible weakness with nicotine: “I made a deal with myself that if I ever fired up a cigarette with chewing tobacco in my mouth, I was going to check into a hospital.”
At least the little tyke didn’t damage his suit
Lawyer-cum-author John Grisham got gummed on the arm by an 8-month-old baby while signing copies of his latest book, “The Runaway Jury,” for fans in Jackson, Miss. There were no teeth marks, as there were no teeth, but his shirt was soaked.
Didn’t he write ‘Gravity’s Rainbow-ho-ho-ho’?
Reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon penned a piece on the rock band Lotion for Esquire. Band member Bill Ferguson describes the 59-year-old novelist as a cross between his 1959 Cornell University yearbook picture (one of only two known Pynchon photos) “and Santa Claus.”
Guess you could call it his big bang theory
Science fiction master Ray Bradbury, now 75, explaining his gender in a Playboy interview: “The male is motivated by toys and science because men are born with no purpose in the universe except to procreate. There is lots of time to kill beyond that.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino