Creature of night
“When I got the ’Late Night’ job, I wasn’t interested in being humiliated in front of the whole country. It’s not cool to say this, but I’ve worked [very hard] since I was a kid. I wanted to get somewhere. During those early days, I kept thinking, if I can get enough time, I will thrive. I felt like I was battling Lex Luthor, and I knew I was going to have superpowers — I just didn’t have them yet. …
“I am very impatient when things aren’t funny enough. I can be bitingly nasty and neurotic. I’ve got a wicked temper. And when I’m on the air, I just look like I’m having the time of my life. … After the show, I revert to being a sweet person. …
“I remember telling my dad when the show started doing well, ’The tricky thing will be the dismount.’ I’ve done this long enough where I’ve made myself unsuitable for anything else. … I’ve become one of those weird fish that live at the bottom of the sea for so many generations that my eyes have atrophied.”
—Conan O’Brien, host of NBC’s “Late Night,” interviewed by Michael Hainey in the October issue of GQ
WUSA woes
“At the end of the popular film ’Bend It Like Beckham,’ the two heroines leave their native England for soccer scholarships in the U.S. and the possibility of a future as professionals in the Women’s United Soccer Association. In real life, those girls would be put in the odd position of having to root for the U.S. and against their own national teams in this year’s Women’s World Cup, since anything less than a victory by the American women will practically ensure that there won’t be a revived WUSA. …
“For the second time in four years, the Women’s World Cup is being billed as the showcase that might save women’s pro soccer in this country. But if the 1999 victory, the most publicized women’s sporting event in U.S. history, couldn’t establish the WUSA as a money-making venture, how will a victory this year be different? …
“Right now, minor league baseball, with virtually no TV exposure, is flourishing in more than 100 American cities and towns, even though many teams lose their biggest stars to major league teams as the season progresses. It seems hard to believe that American women’s professional soccer couldn’t sustain itself with the same level of grass-roots support as minor league baseball and cultivate its fan base from there.”
—Allen Barra, writing on “What Doomed the WUSA,” Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal
Universal hero
“Everyone wanted to claim [Johnny Cash] as their own: leftists, right-wingers … those who wear black because it’s cool, and those who wear it because that’s all that was left at the thrift shop.
“Cash was a hero to country-music traditionalists in particular, even though he completely eschewed the fiddle and steel guitar most associated with that brand of roots music. Thanks to a mid-’50s contract with Sun Records and friendship with Elvis Presley, Cash was more or less present at the birth of rock and roll; his … sound fused folk and rockabilly in a hybrid. …
“He enjoyed one of mainstream country’s most successful careers, but also busted down lots of figurative doors, in addition to some literal ones in his wildest days. With his 1969-71 variety show, which featured guests like Dylan and Joni Mitchell, ’he was crossing over to the college kids and reaching a new audience, where we in country music were kind of preaching to the choir,’ says friend Merle Kilgore. ’I think the “Folsom Prison” album really did it for him. They said, ’Who is this guy that sings to prisoners and killed a man in Reno?’ They swore he did time!’”
—Chris Willman, writing on “Johnny Cash, 1932-2003,” in Friday’s issue of Entertainment Weekly
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