
Going into (what would be my final Christmas season with the show) reminds me of an incident that happed a few years earlier. I had a small publisher once interested in my manuscript Lost Claus. Spoke to him on the phone. He liked the book. But he liked the idea that I worked on PHC. Would GK have me on the show to talk about the book. And silly mean gave him an honest answer, "No." I mention how little interaction I had with the staff at PHC. I mean, I once asked him about hosting or presenting at the Writers Guild Award show and got no response. I was blunt with the publisher about my experience with PHC. And I never heard from that publisher again. Granted the only reason he contacted me was to try and use me to get on PHC, so when that wasn't an option, I was useless to him.
Anyway, the holidays were here. The show was here, so I went with a silly joke about the Christmas tree and the Ronco Clapper. It's a fine little black-out bit, even if it was trying to do a sight gag on the radio. They passed.
Rockefeller Center

TR: --im Russell, live at Rockefeller Center where they are about to light the Christmas tree. It's a beauty, too, a Norway spruce, which is 71 feet tall and 40 feet wide. The nine-ton tree is from Suffern, NY. The tree is decorated with the 30,000 lights and has been a New York city tradition since 1933. I see the mayor, he's approaching the podium.
MY: I declare this tree lit. Clap on!
(two claps)
TR: Yes, the tree is lit! It's spectacular!
(crowds cheers, applauds)
TR: The people are cheering and...oh-oh, they're applauding now...the tree is off. It's back on again. No, it's off, now on. Off. There it goes again.
GK: All right, then. We'll just come back to the studio, then. Thank you, Tim.
end