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The Haven:
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By LM Maggio
Originally published by The Haven
Ebenezer Scrooge bursts through the door of The Crown Tavern with an energy and swagger that belies his 177 years.
Charles Dickens brought the literary legend to life in 1843, but it was Scrooge’s dead business partner, Jacob Marley, who accidentally granted him eternal life, as Scrooge explains below.
The holiday hunk, though, doesn’t mind immortality — even after a century, Ebenezer Scrooge is decidedly winning. His roguish countenance is the official face of Yuletide, while his spectral entourage of Past, Present and Yet To Come has proved to be the world’s most iconic squad to date.
Recently, I had the pleasure of discovering what this humbug turned hottie humanitarian has been getting into since he first burst on the London scene.
***
Scrooge enters the pub having traded in his iconic Victorian dressing gown and nightcap for a Balenciaga three-piece and McQueen graffiti logo-print baseball cap. Restrained mutton chops line his rugged face, subtly meeting salt-and-pepper locks styled into a polite ponytail.
After graciously chatting up his fans at the bar, Scrooge seats himself across from me.
The spirit of Yuletide sparkles in his eyes as we begin our conversation:
Photo by Matthias Kinsella on Unsplash
GUARDIAN: Ebenezer, many thanks for meeting The Guardian here at the historic Crown.
Cheers. Are the bevvies free?
GUARDIAN: Complimentary drinks, of course. Now, since that fateful Christmas Eve, you’ve become philanthropist, Insta-influencer, and were awarded the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. How has Jacob Marley’s lesson effected such tremendous change? And do you still live in the past, the present, and the future?
Right-oh. I’m totally a jolly good bloke now. And I can’t get enough of my fellow man.
I’d like a hot toddy, please.
GUARDIAN: (After ordering a round, we continue.) Please elaborate?
Erm, Jacob and those ghosts scared me right shitless. And not just in a bloody “existential crisis” sort of way, but in a “Bollocks, spirits are real?” and “Blast, I’ve been buried alive!” gruesome sort.
But with intensive therapy for PTSD I eventually overcame the trauma of the haunting and then tackled the blimey existential crisis.
Oh, hot scoop though — Jacob’s pissed! Apparently, he wasn’t counting on granting me immortality with his whole “time-traveling ghosts” scheme!
But, aye, I became a right better bloke after the hauntings.
GUARDIAN: Define “better bloke?”
Mainly money stuff.
On account of Jacob’s histrionics, I had some socialist vision of me just giving all my quid away — “mankind being my business” and all that rubbish. But, bugger, my credit score went botched and I fell pretty skint. Plus, being charitable didn’t make me feel any better about bloody humanity.
So now I now lend with a fair market interest rate, and I stopped evicting orphanages and tenants and such. I realized that’s a fair dodgy thing to do, but more importantly, it’s bad for business. Lost a right lot of customers that way, so I switched my business model. Likely more what Jacob ‘ad in mind.
GUARDIAN: (At Scrooge’s insistence, we order another round.) Now, what about love? Did you ever reconnect with Belle? What about family?
No dice with Belle. Or the love thing. Them slappers’ just after my quid!
But family — Nephew Fred and Clara! Blimey, they’re cracking. Well, they were cracking… before they ‘ad the nippers. Things went to shite after that. They used to throw right posh Christmas parties every year, but now with all the aggression in that flat, even the Ghost of Christmas Present keeps ghosting on those blasted parties last minute.
And, Tiny Tim is brilliant! He popped off to the States to play American football at uni. He’s a punter.
Another hot toddy, eh? Let’s get Fezziwigged!
GUARDIAN: None for me, thanks. How do you “get in the spirit” during Yuletide these days?
Welp, I’m right chuffed because The Ghost of Christmas Present materializes in my front room every year. Man, that bloke is off his trolley! We pretty much go on the piss all night together every Christmas Eve. Though I wonder if he should be off saving another lost soul. But, bugger, if he’s paying, then I’m game.
GUARDIAN: Now tell me, Ben — (Scrooge shouts over my shoulder to a female patron whom he thinks is a waitress).
A toddy for this hottie over here, love!
Mate, I could Bob her Cratchit, if you catch my drift.
Photo by Todd Trapani on Pexels
GUARDIAN: Ben, erm, for the record, that mad night of hauntings did transform you? Perhaps you can share a proper example?
Aye, aye. On account of the hauntings, I now focus my brand on “Giving During Yuletide” — blasted charity and goodwill and all that rubbish. But — bah — recently I’ve been donating more to Patreon projects that I suspect will fail and animal charities.
Sweet Fanny Adams, it still counts as charity. I’m giving quid away!
Perhaps one more toddy.
GUARDIAN: But maybe — (Scrooge shouts toward the entire pub.)
Scroogey needs a hottie up in here! Any takers?
GUARDIAN: (Patrons give us indignant looks.) Erm - I imagine that such donations still count as opening your heart to others. Perhaps you just —
Dunno — even though I give pounds sterling to them, humans are right cheesing me off again.
I still generally dislike people.
Is that proper to say?
They’re loud and petty and…
Wankers.
Humans are wankers, savvy?
GUARDIAN: Mate!! I think Jacob was trying to get you to —
Oi! Speaking of Jacob — he pops in on Christmas Eve last year, and he’s like, “Scrrrrrrrrroooooge!”
And I’m like, “Marley?”
And he’s like “Blimey, Ben, I’m totally vibing your curmudgeon shtick now! I’ve realized that humans are…”
But then he starts fading out and moaning and rattling his chains and being right dramatic.
I asked him, “Jacob, how now? What do you mean?” but he disappears before he could answer.
Bah hum-fuck!
That git’s a confusing arsehole.
But I’d wager he was going to say “Humans are…wankers.”
GUARDIAN: YOU DON’T KNOW THAT!! I AM CERTAIN JACOB WAS —
Crikey! I’ve got to pop off — got a photo shoot in Knightsbridge with David Beckham for the Daily Mirror. Marketing our new collab called “Feed the Bloody Children…” … “Needy Nippers?” Dunno — something about poor street urchins who are hungry or some such, but who should, honestly, just sod off.
***
Abruptly, Scrooge stands up unsteadily, ending our formal interview. Pointing at me, he says. “God bless you, knobhead!”
He spins toward the rest of the pub, opening his arms wide. After ensuring that he has the crowd’s attention, he shouts:
“God bless us, everyone!”
“Except Belle. Screw her.”
Ebenezer Scrooge falls arse over tit, bladdered.
I'm certain I've wandered from my proper timeline – forcibly evicted, perhaps?
Today I learned that Carl Reiner, patriarch of the golden age of comedy, passed away at his L.A. home in on June 29, 2020 at the age of 98.
And here I am, deep into the fourth crying jag of the day, wondering why the world hasn’t stopped, hasn’t sunk into a deep and consuming mourning over the loss of this pillar of classic comedy.
Apparently many people my age and younger don’t know Carl Reiner?
Shockingly, most women my age don’t idolize and aspire to embody the likes of Reiner, Mel Brooks, Jean Shepherd, Steve Martin, Mary Tyler Moore, Leslie Neilsen, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke or Martin Short?
But hearing news of Reiner’s passing hit me hard, leaving me to sob to Michael that “all the good ones” – anyone I respect in comedy who can actually make me laugh – “are gone.” (Excepting Mel Brooks.)
Perhaps, I shouldn’t blame my out-of-place comedic proclivities on being lost in time and space. I suspect I should blame Nick at Nite?
Nickelodeon, and its more grown-up Nick at Nite programming, was the first cable television I ever watched when my family finally acquired cable sometime in the mid-90s. Compared to my preferred pre-cable lineup of The Price is Right, Action News and Fall Guy, my new cable-fed diet of classic sitcoms was pure, side-splitting, teary-eyed, formative comedic fodder.
Apparently, the television one consumes at that tender age of 11 really shapes a gal.
And so, according to Laura, you can’t get funnier, more classic, more iconic, more “Help me with the bags. You take the blonde, I'll take the one in the turban” than those comedic titans who haunted the Nick at Night airwaves. (I recently acquired a vanity license plate reading “Agent86” as homage to these golden years of my life.)
So, am I the only one to have spent today day teary-eyed and moping over a 98-year-old man she didn’t actually know?
But, in a way, I did know Carl Reiner - as well as any fan could. He created and produced my all-time favorite show, The Dick Van Dyke Show. Dick Van Dyke starred as Rob Petrie, a writer at a comedy/variety show called The Alan Brady Show, with Reiner portraying the fictitious Alan Brady.
I still remember the first time I saw the “Coast to Coast Big Mouth” episode – when Rob’s wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) accidentally reveals on a nationally aired game show that the famous, demanding, and vain “Alan Brady” is bald.
I crumpled in a ball, convulsing with laughter on the pool-blue carpet of our gray-wood-paneled rec-room basement during the scene where Alan knocks his collection of now useless toupees off the desk one by one with a cane. Immediately, Brady demands that his mousy assistant, Mel, “Pick it up, pick it up, pick it up!”
“Pick it up, pick it up!” became my new teenage catchphrase for the foreseeable future after that one. My family was thrilled.
Many people only know Reiner’s The Dick Van Dyke Show claim to fame, but his influenced can be felt in countless classic entertainment, beginning with his stint as a performer in the U.S.O. He then starred on Broadway, moving on to become actor (and sometimes writer) for Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, and then Caesar's Hour.
He and Mel Brooks created "The 2000 Year Old Man" in the Your Show of Shows writer's room one day off the cuff – a sort of ad-libbed private joke. Their banter in character went on for nearly 70 years, eventually winning a Grammy when they finally agreed to start recording and publishing their joke. (That's some amazing best-friend cred right there.)
Carl Reiner has appeared in the Ocean's Eleven (and beyond) movies and Parks and Rec; directed and acted in The Jerk (Steve Martin); and voiced characters for King of the Hill, The Adventures of Rocky Bullwinkle, The Cleveland Show, Bob's Burgers, Family Guy, American Dad – phew!
Perhaps my favorite of Reiner’s roles is when he voiced God (uncredited) speaking to Moses in Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I.
And then there is the jaw-dropping series of events regarding a novel contract that fell in his lap after he shared the first short story he ever wrote with a friend. A piece he only wrote for typing practice! That novel, Enter Laughing, was then turned into a movie (directed by Reiner), AND a Broadway show. Talk about the Midas touch.
And now he’s gone. And the state of modern American comedy is irrevocably altered – and arguably shittier.
I find modern written comedy too absurdist and terse, while movies tend to embrace uncreative gross-out or uninventive drug humor. Modern “comedy gems” like Superbad, American Pie, and This is The End don’t make me laugh, and their creators including Seth Rogan and his unimaginative ilk don’t hold a candle to those comedy legends who came before them. I predict that The Hangover will never be included in the monolith of immutable, classic comedy cannon that we humans will leave as an artifact for whatever comes after us.
So, yes, today I felt the very foundations of comedy - of my idealized golden past and the heroes who played a part in it - shake and crumble.
I'm sad.
But I’m also grateful.
I was lucky enough to have been able to experience Reiner’s art. To laugh and delight and snort, and double over in pain, watching Nick at Night or reading my copy of “The 2000 Year Old Man” through bleary, tear-stained eyes.
And Carl Reiner was pretty lucky too.
He was lucky enough to have thoroughly enjoyed his life: content with his home life; enjoying the strong tribe of friends and collaborators he cultivated; and fulfilled in his work and creative pursuits. Plus, he had fucking Mel Brooks as a best friend AND dining/movie-watching buddy until the very end.
And that’s what this ride is all about – to work, to create, to enjoy.
Only two days before he passed, he tweeted (being one of the oldest celebrities to have a Twitter account): “Nothing pleases me more than knowing that I have lived the best life possible...”
Reiner’s also pretty lucky because he was also able to cheat death.
He won’t just be a random relative known to only a generation or two of immediate family, or an unknown name that's uncovered on a sprawling family tree after sending a spit sample to a DNA identification company. His scripts, his jokes, his performances will live on in perpetuity in reruns and media archives. His books will continue to cram book shelves and his movie roles will continue to inspire chuckles.
No, Reiner’s work and gentle leadership in classic comedy won't soon be forgotten. One could imagine his influence, art and artifacts will continue on for at least the next 2000 years. Perhaps, after all these years, we have discovered that it was both Carl and Mel who are truly 2000-year-old Men!
God speed, Carl. I will remember you fondly with tears in my eyes - both from laughter and from sorrow of your departure.
Enter laughing, leave ‘em laughing.
What a way to go!
***
PS:
His My Anecdotal Life: A Memoir (2003) is a very informally written, but informatively entertaining read.