Garry

For the past several weeks, I've been running a stupid series on Saturdays that I was calling "The Gary Files," in which I featured a different famous Gary, since the name is going extinct.  In fact, I did one for Garry Shandling, which you can read here.

In many ways, I had very little to say about these other Garys, & a lot of the time, I tried to be funny rather than attempt something substantive, since I mostly copied info from their Wikipedia page.  Funny was attempted with the Garry Shandling entry, in which I pretended to have an argument about whether the names Gary & Garry were the same or different.

But in that entry, I did say he was a genius.  & I believe it.  He was an amazing stand-up, & when I was a kid, I liked it when he hosted The Tonight Show.  I confess I wasn't able to appreciate It's Garry Shandling's Show when it was on - I was too young, there were too many levels of comedy going on.  But when I saw The Larry Sanders Show, oh shit.

The first episode I saw was the one in which Elvis Costello is on & trashes the green room because Larry Sanders talks during his musical performance.  I watched it because I am a big Elvis Costello nerd - but I ended up liking the show in its entirety - I even think I thought Costello's performance was the least interesting thing on the show!

Somehow - I didn't have HBO at the time - I managed to acquire several episodes of the show.  I consumed them.  I talked the show up to friends, made them watch them.  & I evangelized up till this very day.

Also I followed Shandling on Twitter, & Bill Maher this week showed clips from his many appearances on Real Time, which I saw.  I watched all the extra interviews he did for the first DVD reissue of Larry Sanders.  I loved it when he hosted the Emmys.  I was a fan.  I was an admirer.  I kind of worshipped the guy.

As you know, he died this past week, at the age of 66.  It is so sad, so tragic on many levels.  66 is too young, & I like to believe he had some other greatness he was preparing to unleash on the world.

This is my way of saying, you know what?  With one less Gary in the world (this one spelled Garry), I think I'm going to retire my Gary files.  It might not have been much fun to read, but it'll certainly be less fun for me to do it.

Goodbye, Garry Shandling.  Thank you for being so smart & funny.  I'm going to pretend for the rest of my life that I was named after you.