I'm Back for More Cash

by Tony Kornheiser

  Go Ahead, Make My Career

  Adam Clymer, you lucky dog.

  Clymer is the New York Times reporter whom George W. Bush called a “major league [rhymes with glass bowl]” into a live microphone on a campaign stop.

  How great is that?

  Not only does the possible next president of the United States know your name—but the guy says you’re major league. Major league! Wow.

  “I didn’t know there was a league,” my friend Cindy said.

  It was all most people wanted to talk about last week. Day after day there was another story about Adam Clymer. What Clymer said in rebuttal. What Clymer’s friends say about him. How the journalistic community is reacting to this attack on Clymer. It’s a career maker. One day he’s just another stooge with a notebook, and the next he’s major league. From now on, Clymer will be everywhere. First Elián. Then Darva. Then Rich. Now Adam Clymer.

  Enough already about Clymer.

  How do I turn this into something about me?

  I’ve got the credentials.

  I’m a gaping glass bowl.

  Ask my friends. Ask my kids. They’ll tell you. They’ll sign affidavits.

  I don’t know if I’m major league, but I’m damn sure Triple-A.

  I’d give anything to be insulted by the next president—Bush or Gore. I don’t care. Though it’s beginning to look like Gore, isn’t it? (I mean, as long as Clinton keeps making long trips to Gabookistan, or some other chicken-poop-intensive Fourth World paradise.) Suddenly, Gore looks presidential. It’s time to give Naomi Wolf props for this alpha male jive. It’s not easy for a fifty-two-year-old man to put on blue jeans and a polo shirt and not look like a fat yuppie poseur. It’s scary when Joe Lieberman does it. His shoulders sag. He wears his belt so high you might think it was a heart monitor. Lieberman looks like he’s going to Seniors Singles Night at a condo in Boca Raton. Gore is genuinely studly. Who knew? In the end it may turn out the most important choice he made wasn’t his vice president, but his personal trainer.

  On the other hand, Bush is shrinking before our eyes. He’s looking small and pinched. And Dick Cheney—what a toady. It’s one thing for George W. Bush to call Clymer a major league glass bowl. Bush is the big banana. But for Cheney to pipe up like Rootie Kazootie, “Oh, yeah … big time” is snarky. All Cheney did was pile on. Come on, Dickie, find your own journalist to smear.

  Like me!

  I’ll tell you this: If one of these guys ever sprayed the magic word in my direction, I wouldn’t respond with restraint like Adam Clymer. He was so far up the high road, the oxygen masks deployed. All Clymer said was, “I am disappointed in the governor’s language.” And this was after Bush refused to apologize for calling Clymer a glass bowl—only that anybody heard it!

  I don’t know jack about Clymer. (Or should I say, I don’t know him from Adam?) I’ve never met him. Maybe his hands are tied by working for the Times, and he can’t milk this fat cow. But I would.

  I’d sell T-shirts with my face on the front, and on the back a picture of my backside, and the words MAJOR LEAGUE. I’d write a book titled From One … to Another.

  I always envied the journalists who made the Nixon “enemies list.” As a veteran sportswriter I’ve had run-ins with athletes. In a rage, a player for the New York Yankees once threatened to cut off a sensitive part of my anatomy—which he identified as my “tentacles.” (This same genius once confided to me that he feared contracting “vizerial disease.” I assured him that only happened to viziers.)

  But let’s face it, being abused by athletes is only one slimy step above being abused by reporters. Just the other day in The New York Times Magazine I was referred to as “a kvetching columnist for The Washington Post who had gained a surprisingly strong following for his show on ESPN Radio.”

  Kvetching? Me? How can anybody say that? Do I strike you as a chronic complainer? Show me a single column I’ve ever written that expressed the slightest dissatisfaction with anything. I’m Mary Freakin’ Sunshine. Calling me “kvetching” is ludicrous.

  (“Maybe it was a typo,” my editor said. “Maybe he meant to write ‘fetching.’ ”)

  And how about the phrase “surprisingly strong following”? Like I’m a complete no-talent, and anybody who listens to my show must be the first person in his family to walk upright.

  But being insulted by some freelance writer won’t get me anywhere.

  I need some kahuna to go after me like Bush went after Adam Clymer.

  The closest I’ve come so far is that some years back at a formal dinner George W. Bush’s mom, Barbara, called me “Mister Porthauser.” I didn’t think she meant anything bad by it. But in retrospect perhaps she did. Like mother, like son? Maybe she called me a “major league Porthauser.”

  It’s all coming back to me now. I recall President Bush speaking to me next, and this was right after Barbara made the “Porthauser” comment. All these years I thought he’d said, “Care for some wine?” But he probably said, “Oh yeah … big time.”

  Food for Thought

  After careful consideration, I have decided to pursue other employment.

  (What will you miss most? My charm? My wit? The crotch jokes?)

  It’s not that I dislike being a professional sportswriter and (alleged) humor columnist. I am happy in my work. But my dream job has recently come open.

  Phyllis Richman, The Washington Post’s distinguished restaurant critic, is retiring.

  And all I can say is: Let the big dog eat.

  Being a restaurant critic is a physically demanding job. Virtually every night you need to stay awake through long dinners at fine restaurants. You need to have good teeth to chew USDA choice steak. You need to be ambidextrous to use either hand to signal your waiter to bring another expensive bottle of imported wine. Occasionally you are even called upon to speak and say things like “More gravy, hoss.”

  Herewith is my application for the job of restaurant critic. My sample restaurant review, in twenty-five words or fewer:

  “The waiter brought the bread, which was impudently crusty without being overbearingly crispy. The warm butter was irresistibly insouciant, reminding me of a French girl’s …”

  Oh, well, that’s twenty-five.

  I can’t say that I have been encouraged in my pursuit of the restaurant critic’s job. One objection seems to be the notion that I don’t know jack about food.

  Look at me. I weigh 215 pounds, 165 of which are gathered around my middle like a goiter. Of course I know about food. I eat five meals a day. Not including the bags of Cheez Doodles.

  Another objection stems from the fear that I will be too easily recognized. Restaurant critics are supposed to blend in and not be known, so they’ll pay the same prices and get the same service as any schmo walking in off the street.

  How stupid is that?

  I want to be recognized in the restaurant. I want to be FEARED by the staff when I walk in the door. I want people to bend over backward to cater to my every whim. I am ANTHONY IRWIN KORNHEISER, dammit, and you had better valet my car and treat me like I hold your genitals in my hands. Got that, food boy?

  The essence of my reviews wouldn’t be to tell you whether a restaurant was good enough for a schmo like you. Why would I care if you liked the place? I don’t know you. You can eat at Sac o’ Burgers, for all I care.

  The essence of my reviews would be: Was this place good enough for ME?

  I want my friends to drink and eat with me, and get rowdy and smash wineglasses against the walls. What is the point of being a restaurant critic of a major metropolitan newspaper if you can’t trash the joint and get your friends free food? There are two words a big-shot restaurant critic should never utter: “Check, please.”

  (This reminds me of the time I went to the Palm, and some uptight gastroenterologist told me that my friends and I were making too much noise for him to hear the medical lecture in the next room. What a putz. And what a scam—trying to get a tax write-off for a pricey dinn
er by claiming, “I attended a medical lecture!” If I had been the restaurant critic, I’d have gone straight to the maître d’ and insisted that the doctor and all the members of his party be immediately stripped to their shorts and tossed into the street or I’d tell tout Washington that the Palm’s baby asparagus lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. That’s power, baby.)

  The one thing that worries me about being a restaurant critic is that I like to go to bed early. I don’t really want to be eating dinner past eight o’clock, and unfortunately that’s when they serve it. I’m sure the better restaurants will have no objection to just dropping their food off on my porch so I can eat it at my convenience.

  So you don’t think I know nothing about food, I asked my friend Nancy to give me a pop quiz. Here it is:

  1. What is demi-glace?

  Demi Moore’s sister.

  2. What is a galangal?

  Another easy one. Those scenes in certain movies that men really like to watch despite the fact that no male actors are involved.

  3. What is pho, pronounced “fuh”?

  I didn’t know that. I told Nancy to phogettaboutit.

  At this point, I probably should state my philosophy of restaurant reviewing. I plan to have a rating system that incorporates up to twenty-five smiley faces—because I can’t imagine anything more embarrassing to a really expensive restaurant than having to display a favorable review that awards large smiley faces.

  Pay attention: I’m not crazy about restaurants that are obsessed with “presentation.” I’ve come here to eat, not decorate my house. So when I order a chicken dish, don’t bring me a plate with a piece of chicken the size of a guppy surrounded by a “drizzle” of drops of some fruit sauce. Look, I don’t care if the plate looks like it’s spent the last six weeks hanging in the Louvre—just bring me some damn food! And another drink too, okay, honey?

  And another thing: I will review only steak houses. All I eat is steak. Maybe an occasional prime rib for variety. But mainly steak. Oh, and bread with real butter. Not a foo-foo flavored whipped butter. Who do I look like, Niles Crane? Real butter. Lots of it. Chop-chop. You can keep the vegetables. Give them to homeless people. They need the vitamins. It’s tough sleeping on a grate.

  So I will review steak houses. Downtown steak houses. I don’t go to the suburbs. You think Mister Tony is going to eat in a mall? Phogettaboutit!

  I won’t review foreign restaurants either. I feel inadequate in foreign restaurants that insist on printing the menu in their native language. I once went into a Greek restaurant and said to the waiter, “Oh, this looks good.” And it turned out I’d ordered the “coat check.”

  Honestly, I can’t see eating blood sausage or soup made out of bird saliva. And who am I to judge that one cat tastes better than another? Let their own people do that is my feeling.

  That’s it.

  Let’s eat.

  Double Jeopardy

  I can’t talk to you now.

  I’m busy talking to Herb Stempel, who you might remember was a celebrated quiz show contestant of the 1950s.

  I mentioned Mr. Stempel in a recent column about the megahit quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. And it seems I was not, technically, totally accurate in referring to him. So I called him in New York City to apologize.

  “I wrote ‘Stemple,’ with le at the end,” I said.

  “It’s S-t-e-m-p-e-l,” he said.

  “I also wrote that you appeared on The $64,000 Question,” I said.

  “No, it was Twenty-One,” Mr. Stempel said.

  “There’s one other tiny item.”

  “Oh?”

  “I, um, I said you were dead. Hahaha. Isn’t that a riot? Um, Mr. Stempel, you’re not laughing.”

  Let us review:

  I spelled the man’s name wrong. I got his claim to fame wrong. And I said he was currently dead when he was alive. I hit the trifecta!

  Oh, baby. Do you want to hand me my Pulitzer now, or will you mail it? That’s K-o-r-n-h-e-i-s-e-r.

  Anybody can spell a name wrong. As a matter of fact, the reason I misspelled Stempel’s name is because my friend Gino peeked at the column as I was composing it and tried to save me embarrassment by telling me, “You’ve got the guy’s name wrong.” At the time, I was calling him “Herb Stuckler.”

  Gino said, “It’s Stemple, you idiot.”

  My friend Nancy warned me I had the wrong quiz show, and though I generally value Nancy’s counsel enormously, I figured she’s just a chick. What does she know?

  The thing about Herb being dead? That was all moi.

  A lot of you are probably wondering how a prizewinning columnist could make such a stunning series of mistakes. You’re probably saying: “Jeez, Tony, don’t you check anything?”

  What do I look like, a freakin’ database?

  I should explain the sophisticated journalistic process I go through while producing this column: I write something I think might be true, such as, “Herb Stemple made a bundle of dough on The $64,000 Question, and now he’s dead as a doornail.” Then I walk outside my office and I yell at whomever is around, “Hey! Anybody? Herb Stemple, the guy on the quiz shows forty-five years ago—alive or dead?”

  I literally mean “anybody.” It could be somebody fixing the copy machine, or a Japanese tour group. I don’t care. If nobody says, “Alive! He’s in my bowling league,” then I go with my gut, and my gut said: Dead.

  I mean, come on, the guy was on TV in the 1950s. The sets looked like aquariums. Nobody got out of those alive.

  True, I have access to up-to-the-minute online resources. I could get most of the information I need from my own computer. But I’m so pathetically technophobic I don’t even know how to score porn! So I have perfected an open-the-door-and-holler approach to research. I am well known for this. In fact, my friend Tracee keeps a list of some of the questions I have asked recently, which include, and I quote verbatim:

  “What was an event before the 1600s that was famous and that involved only one person, like Martin Luther nailing the proclamation to the church door—but not that?”

  “Who’s blind that you can make fun of?”

  “You know the thing that goes, ‘Mine eyes have seen the glory yada-yada-yada’? What’s that called?”

  My mistakes about Herb Stempel could have been far worse. It would be inexcusable, for example, if I ever identified Joan of Arc as “that minx who drowned in a motorboat accident in the Yucatán.”

  But what I did was bad enough to warrant this embarrassing correction. (Of course, I’d prefer to be writing a correction like: “Lord Alfred Beckwith DeBootay, the English nobleman whose descendants invented cream cheese, was mistakenly referred to as the eighth Earl of Shropshire. He was the seventh.”)

  I’ve thought about trying to wiggle out of this. I could say, “What’s the big deal? So I had some guy dead, and he’s alive. So sue me! Hahaha. Hey, I’m a humor writer. Nobody believes the crap I write. Here, I’ll demonstrate: Woodrow Wilson was gay.”

  Or I could say, “So what if Herb Stempel is alive? I was talking about Herb Stemple! Have we heard from him yet?”

  And, of course, I thought about claiming David Broder wrote it.

  I have to admit this whole episode has humbled me, made me more tolerant of imperfection in others. I used to go ballistic when anybody made a mistake at my expense. I won’t be so quick to judge people again. Oh, excuse me for a second—that’s my doorbell.

  “Hey, hold on, pal. This is pepperoni. I ordered green pepper. What, you were smoking so much dope you grabbed the wrong box? Green pepper. Got it? Maybe remembering both a color and a food group was too tough for you. Now go back and get me the pizza I ordered before I call your parole officer!”

  Hi, I’m back. Where were we?

  Anyway, I called Herb Stempel, and he was great. We chatted for a while. I asked him about the quiz shows nowadays.

  He told me about watching Jeopardy! a year ago and being appalled at how easy the questions
were: “For a thousand dollars they asked, ‘What is the capital of Paraguay?’ That was a romp!”

  There was silence on my end.

  “Asunción,” Herb said.

  Oh, yeah, sure.

  “TV Guide called me recently,” Herb continued. “They gave me sample questions from this Millionaire show. For a million dollars they asked: Who was Sissy Spacek’s cousin? And the choices were: Cliff Robertson, Wilford Brimley, Rip Torn, and Jack Lemmon.”

  Herb paused. He might have been waiting for me to answer. But I was still trying to spell “Asunción.” I thought the capital of Paraguay was Paraguay City.

  “It’s Rip Torn,” Herb said. “They’re both from Texas.”

  Who didn’t know that?

  I thanked Herb for his time, and apologized again for my mistakes.

  “I guess I got you confused with Charles Van Doren, who is dead,” I said.

  “No he’s not,” Stempel said.

  Hey! Anybody? Charlie Van Doren, dead or alive?

  Optical Delusions

  For some years now my eyesight has been declining to the point where I am unable to read anything in close range—and by “close range” I mean anything in the same room with me. I suffer from a condition known as presbyopia, an ophthalmological term for “Willard’s going to be announcing your birthday soon.”

  I am still excellent at reading large green overhead road signs, so you can take me on trips. Sadly, they don’t print the dosage instructions for Zantac on large green overhead road signs. So last year my friend Nancy gave me a pair of nonprescription reading glasses (referred to technically as “old-people glasses”) that she had bought for herself off a rack in a drugstore. They made me look like a member of a bowling league in Akron, but at least I could read typefaces smaller than TURNPIKE NEXT EXIT 1 MI.

  When those glasses broke I went for an eye exam to get real glasses. And I was introduced to an “eyewear fashion consultant,” who said she would design glasses that would be “customized to my face shape, coloring, and lifestyle needs.”