Dick Cavett Recounts the Time a Guest Died on His Show

I was happily surprised to see Dick Cavett, whom an alarming number of people seem to think is dead, on Seth Meyers. He must be in his 80s by now, and looks wonderful, with those movie star cheekbones and the canny, knowing eyes. Refreshingly, he does not seem to have messed with his face to look younger, which never works anyway. His deep flat resonant Nebraska voice, so full of irony and skepticism, is just the same.

I always loved his show as a teenager, and some stick out in my mind: one with Crosby, Stills and Nash, along with Joni Mitchell, and Mitchell did a song called "For Free" (about a man on the corner with a clarinet, who was "playing real good for free"). I remember David Crosby looked like a dimpled angel, and somebody (Grace Slick? It couldn't be,  that was another show) said, "You look like a Leo."

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And here it is, for the love of God, the episode I was just talking about - it WAS on YouTube after all, and it looks like I was right about everything, even Grace Slick. What an incredible guest lineup for one show. I watched it after school while I was still living in Chatham. I was fifteen.

I didn't see the show where the guy died, because NOBODY did - it was on tape and never aired. But I did see an alarming show he did on PBS  in the early '80s, in which several people came on and talked about the pure pleasure and utter lack of danger of snorting cocaine. There was  a user with pinwheel eyes who insisted her life was better in every way (and how would  SHE know, after all?), and a doctor who swore it was all to the good and did no bodily or psychological harm whatsoever. Coke was king back then, but Cavett sat there barely hiding his consternation, trying not to tell them all they were full of crap, as he famously did sometimes in the old days. I also remember - there used to be a video of this, but I can't find it now - the cast of Husbands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes, all down on the floor wrestling with each other, while Cavett literally walked off his own show

Or was it Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal?

Anyway, these Late Night snippets seem to be recent, and I hope so, because I think it's good he's in the world. I love his moonwalk, too - he's  still full of surprises and the unlikely. 

And how I love the unlikely! Such as actually finding the clip (below). The good part starts around 7:30.

And here are a couple of gifs I made, at great expense and time!

The self-made monster

My Declaration of Self-Esteem

by: Virginia Satir, Source Unknown


I am me.

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me.  There are people who have some parts like me but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone choose it.

I own everything about me- my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all my thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they might be -- anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth and all the words that come out of it -- polite, sweet and rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud and soft; all my actions, whether they be to others or myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately aquainted with me in all my parts. I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.
 

I know that there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me and therefore I can engineer me. I am me and I am okay.

http://www.amazon.com/Mallory-Margaret-Gunning/dp/0888013116/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319992815&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1896300693/qid%3D1064537730/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr_11_1/103-6792065-9634225