Jackie Mason

On our last day in New York, I freed my wife to go shopping alone while I stayed in the hotel and read the Times. I consider reading the local papers the best part of any vacation. We agreed to meet at 1 o'clock at Lindy's, a deli in the RCA building, for lunch. Though they specialize in everything I shouldn't eat, I would no more think of going to New York without eating in a deli than I would think of going to London without having a beer in a pub. She was exactly on time.

When Jackie Mason says, "I can't believe this success is happening to me," you can believe it. Most comedians trying out a "work-in-progress" would take their act to a comedy club or an out-of-the-way venue to see how it flies. But Mason took time off from his Broadway show, "The World According to Me," to try out some new stuff at the Pantages on Sunday--at $30 a pop for the good seats. With Mason, new material doesn't mean a new act.

Incivility is the new secondhand smoke. Everyone feels impelled to disdain it, but nobody is willing to do away with it entirely. Besides, it's profitable. Look at South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson. Two weeks ago, he was just a loudmouth with the bad taste to shout an insult at the president of the United States from the House floor. Since then, he's become a right-wing darling, and $2 million in new campaign contributions have flowed his way. Incivility apparently cuts both ways, though; his Democratic challenger has taken in more than $1.5 million.

Comedian Jackie Mason, after arriving in Atlantic City, N.J., for tonight's fight, told Joe Gergen of Newsday, "I came here to find out if Mike Tyson is giving away another car. Maybe I'll bump into him and wind up with a Plymouth." Mason said he once fought as an amateur. "I loved it," he said, "until someone hit me back. I found out it's not a sport for short Jewish people." His career ended with him on his back. "The referee started to count over me," he said. "I told him, 'Don't count.

Rocky Bridges, a perennial minor league manager, always has a story to tell, and this one's about Johnnie LeMaster, the former San Francisco Giants shortstop, who had part of a finger missing. Bridges, manager of the Buffalo Bisons, told Steven Krasner of the Providence Journal, "I had LeMaster at Phoenix. One day we're playing at Tucson, and LeMaster's up, and a pitch comes in close to him. He spins out of the way, and it's one of those 'Did the ball hit his bat or his hand?' kind of things.

In the distant days when "The Ed Sullivan Show" was a Sunday-night institution, it was broadcast live. The comedian Jackie Mason was a frequent guest, until one evening when, as a friend of Mason's recalled a few days ago, Mason in mid-monologue got the cut-throat signal from the show's floor manager that meant, "Hurry up and get off; we're running late."

Jackie Mason has vaulted from a struggling career as a borscht-belt comic to a trendy prime-time player, all in the past 18 months. The in crowd from the unshockable Manhattan night scene to the moneyed Rodeo Drive set just love Jackie. He's hip. He's hot. He's Jackie . He's also very funny . . . and a little dangerous. The freewheeling style that helped him survive the club circuit for three decades, in front of crowds that take their ethnic jokes with a chaser of Scotch or bourbon, has misfired a few times.

TV watchers who change channels during a program or zap to another station during the commercials are in the minority, ABC said Tuesday. The results of a 1989 Roper poll were presented during the first day of ABC's annual press tour at the Century Plaza, where television journalists from around the country have gathered for two weeks of back-to-back news conferences on the fall television season.