“Dogfish Head? What on earth is Dogfish Head?” I eyed the bottles of beer in ice when I finally found Booth 35. I’d wandered through the maze of white tents in the sprawling parking lot for nearly 10 minutes before I spotted it. When I got the e-mail asking if I wanted to work the UNLVino wine tasting, I was thrilled. It’s one of my favorite things to do — pour wine and talk to people. And this wasn’t just any old wine tasting, this was the one honoring the founders of UNLVino on its 40th anniversary. “Big doin’s” as my grandmother used to say. I first went to UNLVino some 30 years ago when the tickets were $25 and it was a 3 hour event at the Thomas & Mack arena. The tickets now start at $125 for each event and there are 4 nights of events. Because the tasting was at the Lou… Read More »
Phyllis Diller and Groucho Marx
A couple of weeks ago I received an invitation to speak at today’s television class at UNLV. Since Phyllis Diller didn’t do a lot of television I wasn’t sure how well this would go, and racked my brain for her television-related appearances. Turned out I needn’t have worried. The instructor, Kevin, started the class by showing the clip of Phyllis’s appearance on “You Bet Your Life,” which was hosted by Groucho Marx. I remembered Phyllis saying she had not been happy with that show; it was only a couple of years after her debut at the Purple Onion in San Francisco and she was still very much a house-wife, still struggling to make it in show business. www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnzT46uTQ0s As I watched it this afternoon, it was clear that Phyllis was very nervous. In a PBS interview many years later said she hadn’t been nervous — she had been petrified! But still, there was something sweet… Read More »
