The First Non-Musician to Win a Grammy
Mort Sahl at Beverly Hills Public Library
“The streets are safer, thanks to
Chief Bratton.” (Laughter.) “He looks like
he has authorization from Homeland Security, or Fatherland Security.”
Mort Sahl started in libraries as a poor kid
living near Sunset & Figueroa. Six books on his father’s card, and six books on his own, “living in
dreams.” Now he lives (since 1960) just a few miles away in Beverly
Hills: “remote back then—Indian country—Jeff Chandler next
door—two movie theaters, two bookstores, two pharmacies—if you got
drunk playing pool at The Candy Store, the cops would drive you home,”
etc.
“Today, it’s a nice place to
live if you’re shopping—that’s the Rodeo-Christian
ethic.”
“There’s no arguing with
Johnson,” says Goldsmith ruefully or exultantly, “for if his pistol
misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.”
“If you have the opportunity to be
born again,” Sahl quotes George Bush, Sr. as saying, “why would you
come back as Jimmy Carter?”
“Rock and roll” (quoting Woody
Herman) “isn’t as bad as it sounds.”
George Bush, Jr. was “a real
anklebiter” while working on his father’s “loyalty
squad” in the 1992 election. Sahl is at dinner with the President (Jr.)
and Billy Graham. The President says we are at “perpetual war—I
don’t like it any more than you do,” Sahl pauses here, “but
that’s what you elected me for,” and here Sahl essays his humorous
rejoinder, “WE DIDN’T ELECT YOU THAT MUCH!”
Governor Moonbeam? “Gray Davis is
Governor Lowbeam! The Light That Failed!"
“I bought the Enron sign on eBay this
morning, no kidding.”
“Not a state of
men—certainly not.”
“So many are pious without being
religious, Sen. Lieberman,” etc.
The Beverly Hills Public Library has
entirely remodeled to look like someone’s tile bathroom, but the books
are still the same.
Sahl and George Shearing are on the colorcast with Tom
Snyder. “How do you find middle C?” “It’s right under
the B in Baldwin.”