Monday, July 30, 2007

Another One Gone

Watching the Tomorrow show with my dad was one of my favorite activities as a young adult. Tom Snyder had the most interesting personalities on his show and he let them be themselves which sometimes was more interesting than he planned. His show featured such diverse guests as Patti Smith, Elizabeth Ashley (personal favorite of my dad's), Johnny Rotten and a host of others. My favorite episode was when he got involved telling off Anita Bryant's crazy Save Our Children representative, he didn't normally tell people that they had their head up their ass, that was good television.

It was worth staying up late (1 am) because the mental stimulation was some of the best (since Dick Cavett) and has not been the same since. The free flowing exchange of ideas as well as the off the cuff humor has never been repeated though several have tried. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert provide some of the intellectual conversation that is missing from the airwaves, but no one can replace Tom Snyder.

Rest in peace Tom, I will definitely miss you.

4 comments:

  1. I had Snyder's interview of Johnny Rotten (with Keith Levine of PIL) on tape, and it was excruciating to watch. For once, Tom was completely out of his element, and Rotten wasn't about to help him make any sense of the situation. A riot. RIP.

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  2. RIP indeed. He would be nice to have around again.

    BTW, your Indecision 2008 box is overlapping the text in Firefox.

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  3. I think I fixed it, I asked them for a different version since, a flexible one so it would fit completely in the sidebar. It looks okay in Safari, which is a total surprise. Also, Safari loads faster than FF.

    One of my favorite episodes was with David Brenner. Absolutely fascinating man, he told stories about being a producer for NBC documentaries in the mid sixties and redoing them in the late sixties because nothing had changed. You never knew what the subject was going to be, but it was intersting more often than not.

    Plus, I thought he was sexy.

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  4. That would be Tom, not David. David wasn't bad but Tom looked a little less self involved.

    Whatever, I feel saddened by his passing.

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