It’s
one of those things that can’t be helped: I’m addicted to late-night
talk shows. Part of it is my guilty-pleasure affinity for schtick;
there’s something about a guy in a suit slinging one-liners that gets my
motor hummin’, especially when a live band gives brassy flouish to the
cheesy punchlines. Part of me feels that, TV-wise, I should be aspiring
to better – PBS documentaries about the history of typewriter ribbons,
perhaps, or a History Channel series about the prevalence of burlap
underwear in the Roman army. But late-night is cheap, it streams for
free over the Internet, and it lets me know what’s going on in the world
of entertainment, a sphere of pop culture that consistently flies under
my rader. If it wasn’t for tie-straightening yukster comedians, I’d
have no idea that Lady Gaga is partial to evening wear fashioned from
slabs of dead buffalo. I’d also have no idea who the hell Lady Gaga is.
After
a while, you start to learn certain things about public personages,
especially the ones who make the rounds; there are roughly 137
late-night shows currently airing, and a handful of celebrities will hit
them all, usually so they can pitch their latest project. One of them
is Howie Mandel, a comedian and “America’s Got Talent” judge who’s
shaved his head in a transparent attempt to look more like yours truly.
Pathetic, really.
But there’s something I’ve noticed about the guy.
Mandel
never shakes anyone’s hand. Ever. Instead, he does the “fist-bump,” a
relatively new hand greeting whereby two people briefly, and informally,
graze knuckles. He does this because he’s a self-proclaimed germophobe,
apparently petrified that prolonged contact with another human hand
will expose him to lethal viruses and pathogens. David Letterman and
Conan O’Brien get the fist-bump whenever Mandel is a guest, as if both
hosts pre-game their respective shows by taking naked Dumpster baths
with stray dogs.
This is taking the germ thing a bit too far. You can take precautions, but if germs are gonna spread, they’re gonna spread.
And
in fairness, Mandel might know that. Fifty years ago, before certain
conditions and ailments were identified by the medical community, people
with exagerrated fears of germs were given the highly clinical label of
“nuts” and told to suck it up. Nowadays, we know that such fears are
indicative of some kind of mental imbalance – related to obsessive
compulsive disorder, perhaps, but with less likelihood that the
afflicted will blow an afternoon counting and cataloging the hairs on
his dachshund’s muzzle. From his talk show appearances, it seems likely
that Mandel is fully aware of this abnormality; it’s always the subject
of gentle prodding, not that “prod” is a word you’d want to use around
this squeamish fellow. But it still defies logic.
I’ve
got an empty bottle of Germ-X that’s been on my work desk for so long,
even 800-year-old Galapagos turtles are like, “Jeez, dude, you’re
pushin’ it.” It’s not that I’m a hoarder by nature, although I
admittedly have a tough time throwing away box office receipts from
movies featuring masked crusaders. There’s just something about the
bottle itself that’s comforting; it’s like having a sticker on your
front door that reads “Protected by Security System,” when in fact no
security system exists, and burglars’ Christmas belongs to those with
the strongest crowbars. It’s all about having a sense of security, even
though you’re running scared from your own powerful denial. Despite
knowing it’s totally batty, there’s a small but vocal section of my
brain telling me that airborn viruses will simply see the Germ-X bottle
and say, “Crap. Let’s try the next desk.”
So
in a way, I understand Mandel’s totally nonsensical fixation. Human
beings in general are constantly doing things that are illogical, and in
some cases borderline insane. We turn creepy-looking clowns into the
mascots of burger chains. We punch holes in our flesh so we can decorate
them with metal culled from caves filled with precious minerals and
ticked-off bears. We burn fossil fuels when we don’t strictly have to.
We briefly allowed Pauly Shore to appear in movies.
Running
from germs falls somewhere along that spectrum. Not that we should
actively be pursuing them – washing hands after using the bathroom is
one of our species’ better ideas, right up there with nudie calendars
and bubble gum – but over-washing, over-cleansing, and over-insulating
ourselves from viruses can have deleterious effects. For an immune
system to be strong, it needs viruses for practice; that’s the whole
idea behind vaccines, which introduce us to low-grade forms of disease
so our bodies can kick the real thing’s butt. By constantly shielding
ourselves from communal surfaces and talk-show handshakes, we’re taking
the goalie out of the net and yelling, “Fire at will, flu!” Then it
does, and we spend a week in bed with an egg-frying fever, watching Dr.
Phil scold cheating spouses. Something tells me Howie Mandel’s seen a
lot of daytime television.
When
I was younger, I used to fantasize about being a guest on one of the
late-night programs. It would’ve meant I’d done something cool. The band
would play me onstage with a sax-adapted rendition of Rush’s “I Think
I’m Going Bald” (I swear that’s an actual song), and then I’d take my
seat and start talking about the pants I invented that neutralize the
smell of Heineken farts. None of this is likely to happen, but if it
does, I’ve got a plan. When they announce my name, I’ll step out from
behind the curtain, raise a hand to the audience to thank them for their
undoubtedly rapturous applause – and then I’ll reach out with my right
hand and give the host a firm, germ-smooshing grip. We’re crawling with
bacteria and microorganisms at all times; adding a little more to the
stew is just one more part of the dance, and if I can fortify myself
heading into cold season, all the better.
So
long as it’s not Craig Ferguson. The Scottish-born host is probably
rife with exotic European germs that smoke long cigarettes and have
hairy armpits. Sorry, Craig. As a precaution, you get the fist-bump.
No comments:
Post a Comment