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| Son #1 and me at Radio City Music Hall, circa 2006 |
In August 2006—almost nine
years to the day of the final Daily Show—I took Son #1 to NYC for a reading at
Radio City Music Hall, titled “Harry, Carrie & Garp.” The authors appearing:
Stephen King, John Irving, and JK Rowling.
If the author lineup
wasn’t blow-you-away-worthy enough, the three writers were introduced onstage
by a few surprise guests: Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Bates, and Jon Stewart.
It was like a real-life
version come true of that great party question, “If you could invite any three people
to a dinner party…”
Here, thanks to a
transcript I found online, were my favorite lines that evening.
Jon Stewart (the story
about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant had broken that same day): “I was running
a little late and I was talking to my friend Mel Gibson on the phone. He hopes
that tonight's mishigas puts a smile on your panim.”
John Irving: Irving’s
short talk was terrific, but the highlight was when he read a passage from A
Prayer for Owen Meany, one of my very favorite books of all time. *swoon*
JK Rowling (on the perpetual
female attraction to bad boys): “Oh you girls and Draco Malfoy. (She shakes her
head.) You've got to get past this.”
Kathy Bates: “It’s no
wonder at all why I have been asked to introduce the first author (Stephen
King). After all, I am his #1 fan. I used to be the #2 fan up until about 15
years ago when a woman named Annie Wilkes came off the list and the top spot
opened up.”
Stephen King (on what
scares him): “How about standing in front of 6,000 people? And checking to make
sure that you've zipped your fly. Everything scares me so I just try to turn it
around. That's the best I can do, I mean. Elevators— they talk about power
blackouts in New York and I get in an elevator and I think, ‘Oh my god!’”
Whoopi Goldberg: “Harry,
Carrie, and Garp. Somebody maybe should have put them all together a long time
ago. Did you know, if one of those boys from the Hogwarts School had asked that
poor girl—you know, the one at the prom—if somebody had just asked that poor
child out for a date, a lot of people would have been saved a lot of grief.”
What an evening. And
so, the question begs to be asked: If you could invite three (or in this case,
six) people to a dinner party, who would they be?
