Gasping for Airtime - Jay Mohr [53]
Norm would pitch about five fake ideas in great detail, and then at read-through he would have one winner that you never saw coming. When Bob Newhart hosted the show, Norm took about ten minutes to pitch “Literally vs. Figuratively.” “I’ve noticed that people misuse the phrase literally when they actually mean figuratively,” he began. “A guy will come out of a movie theater and someone will ask him, ‘How was the movie?’ and he’ll respond, ‘I literally laughed my head off!’”
Newhart stared at Norm thinking he was finished. We all chuckled, knowing that Norm had no intention of writing his “Figuratively vs. Literally” sketch. But the giggles didn’t sate Norm. He wanted to win Newhart over. What happened next was incredible.
Norm kept adding example after example of what he meant, trying to force Bob Newhart to crack a smile. Newhart was an idol to all of us in the room, especially to the comics. Norm fought like hell. He wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night if Bob Newhart didn’t laugh at his fake pitch. He plodded onward: “Sometimes, someone will say I literally cried my eyes out…but their eyes are still in their head, you know. Or someone will get some bad news and say, ‘I literally died!’ But there they are talking to you because they didn’t die at all. They meant figuratively, not literally, you see.”
Newhart began to smile, and Norm tasted blood. Norm kept going and going until I was convinced that if this started as a fake pitch, it was now personal. Norm was going to write it, if only to prove to Newhart how funny it was. And it was funny. The longer he went on and on, the funnier it became. Soon we were all in hysterics. Norm felt satisfied with himself.
That week at read-through, Norm had one sketch on the table that made it onto the show. It was Norm as Charles Kuralt. I was literally blown away.
I returned to the doctor a week after our first meeting. Since seeing her, I felt great. I walked through the emergency room of the hospital to the elevators. All around me were people in wheelchairs and on gurneys. Some of them groaned. They were dying; I wasn’t.
By this time, I had become a quick study in panic disorder. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines panic as “A sudden overpowering fright…a sudden unreasoning terror accompanied by mass flight. Synonym: Fear.” Most people who believe they’ve had a panic attack are suffering from anxiety. Alternatively, the dictionary definition of the word anxiety is “Painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind, usually over an impending or anticipated ill. Synonym: Care.” The key word in distinguishing panic from anxiety in these definitions is over. Anxiety is over something: Your boss is an asshole, you can’t pay your bills. These are things you have anxiety over. In the definition of panic, the word over is replaced by unreasoning. The synonyms for anxiety and panic are virtual opposites. Panic equals fear; anxiety equals care.
The doctor asked me how the Klonopin had been working for me. I told her it had worked like I prayed it would, only better. She told me that Klonopin was a drug developed to stop seizures in epileptics, and that it was a smart drug. This meant that if the patient didn’t suffer from seizures, it redirected itself to stop the flood of adrenaline and endorphins that cause panic. If you suffered from neither malady, it would put you to sleep for a while. When she asked me if, in addition to panic, I had been suffering from depression, I responded with an offhanded “I wish.” Sternly she told me, “No you don’t.”
She went on to say that if I wasn’t suffering from depression or having any more panic attacks, that we should continue with the