The first time that Michael Jordan unretired and came back to play basketball, he said that the reaction of the crowd during his initial game back was unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was the sound of people cheering for someone that they never thought they would see again. It was as if they were clapping and screaming for a dead man come back to life.
About ten years ago, Johnny Carson did a brief appearance on David Letterman's Late Show, and the effect was about the same. I know because I found a tape of that show when I was back home a little while ago, taped ten years ago when Dave did a week of shows in Los Angeles. I can't remember who the guests were, but every night for a week Dave would say 'Presenting tonight's Top Ten List, Mr.Magic Johnson!', and out would walk that pudgy wunderkind Larry 'Bud' Melman. The gag was still funny the third or fourth time; Dave would announce a famous name, and instead the audience would get Melman. The final night, Dave announced that Johnny Carson would be reading the list, and this time, lo and behold, Carson walked out. (This was two or three years after his run on The Tonight Show had ended.)
The applause was miraculous. It went on and on and on. At one point Carson sat behind the desk, looked as if he was about to say something, then smiled and shook his head and shook Letterman's hand and exited stage left as the audience screamed.
For me, Carson represented grown-up land. If you were old enough to actually be able to watch The Tonight Show on a regular basis, then you were an adult. You had all the rights that that implied. (Which, to a seven year old, basically meant, um, unlimited supplies of cookies and ginger ale and Johnny Carson before bed.) On those rare occasions and Friday nights when I did catch Carson, the jokes always went over my head, but I remember that he was always polite, and the audience always laughed. (It's hard to believe, but back then you never actually saw the audience. Remember that? Carson stood in front of the curtain, and he told his jokes, and you heard laughter, yes, but it seemed to emanate from some other, nearby realm. It kind of freaked me out a bit, actually, but I knew that they were there, those adults, and that was what mattered; I knew that somebody I'd be there, too. I knew that someday, maybe not soon, no, but someday, I'd be able to catch those jokes, and be part of that unseen fan club.)
And I did. By the time I was a teenager, Carson was still on the air, withstanding the assault of Arsenio. There was an old-fashionedness about Johnny that was slowly disappearing in the culture at that point in time. There was a class and a dignity to his humor, somehow. It invited you in on the joke, allowed you to become a co-conspirator in his priceless reaction-shots, enabled you to experience a sense of timing and style and class that hasn't been seen since, and will never be seen again.
