I'm Hosting as Fast as I Can!: Zen and the Art of Staying Sane in Hollywood
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I'm Hosting as Fast as I Can!: Zen and the Art of Staying Sane in Hollywood
260eBook
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Overview
Tom Bergeron, Emmy Award–winning former host of Dancing with the Stars and America’s Funniest Home Videos, has always been ambitious, driven, and charming. However, as a young man, he had an enemy that posed a serious threat to what otherwise would have been guaranteed success—a bad temper. His family and friends didn’t keep their concerns to themselves, but Tom’s petulance remained a problem until his first date with a woman who threatened to end their relationship when, in a fit of anger, he put a dent in his car door. “If you want us to go any further, you’d better do something about that,” Lois said, unabashed and unafraid. Tom, embarrassed, then and there committed himself to controlling that temper. (That woman later became his wife, by the way.)
This humorous memoir will be filled with anecdotes of how Tom, who never breaks character, stutters or so much as breaks a sweat (even when an Osmond faints at his feet on live TV), uses meditation and other regimented, relaxation techniques to stay focused, energetic, and happy on and off the camera.
Praise for I’m Hosting as Fast as I Can!
“The charm and wit that have made Tom Bergeron one of television’s most popular hosts is reflected beautifully in I’m Hosting as Fast as I Can! Readers will love Tom’s book.” —Bob Barker
“You are a good man, Charlie Brown! Also an honest man, an entertaining man, a life-instructing man, and one hell of an autobiographer. Congratulations, Tom!” —Carl Reiner
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061867590 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 12/15/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 260 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
Tom Bergeron is the current host of Dancing with the Stars, for which he's received two Primetime Emmy nominations. He is also the host of America's Funniest Home Videos and the former host of Hollywood Squares, for which he won a Daytime Emmy in 2000.
Read an Excerpt
I'm Hosting as Fast as I Can!
Zen and the Art of Staying Sane in Hollywood
Chapter One
Can You Hear Me Now?
It was a Saturday night in 1972. I was a seventeen-year-old high school senior, sitting alone in a dimly lit radio studio in my hometown of Haverhill, Massachusetts. I was barely aware of the music I'd put on the turntable. Other things competed for my attention, most prominently my nerves.
My heart hammered against my ribs. My throat tightened. I stared at the toggle switch, which controlled the microphone and the dial directly under it, which controlled its volume. I reached out to touch the switch . . . and then pulled back. Oh, shit, what am I doing here? Why did I think I could do this? I knew that the moment I flicked that switch and turned that dial, there'd be no turning back. My voice would be out there, "on the air," for the very first time.
Who would be listening? My family? Certainly. My friends? Sure. But who else? This was a 1,000-watt radio station. It was 6:10 on a Saturday night. Who knew how many others could be out there? Hell, there could be dozens! I tried to swallow but couldn't. My peripheral vision collapsed, and all I could see were the toggle switch and the dial, the toggle switch and the dial, the toggle switch and the dial . . .
The song was ending; the music was fading. Only seconds left. Oh, shit, I have to pee. Or faint. Or both. First I'll faint and then I'll piss myself. Gotta prioritize.
No, I had to do it. I could do it. I adjusted my headphones, flicked the switch to the right, and cupped my hand over the dial. The last notes of America's "A Horse with No Name" gave wayto the crackle of the needle bouncing against the album's center. It was now or never. I turned the dial clockwise, took a deep breath, and, for the first time on the radio, said my name. I had officially begun my career as a broadcaster.
And I sucked.
Truly, I did. I'm not exaggerating. My proud grandfather recorded the entire six-hour show, and I eventually listened to about twenty minutes, just enough to consider entering the witness-protection program. I don't remember where those tapes disappeared to or what exactly I said in those first moments as a broadcaster. I do remember that my tone was akin to a dental patient trying to chat casually while watching the approaching Novocain shot; or like Barney Fife pretending to be James Bond. I wasn't fooling anyone—with the possible exception of my grandfather. He thought I did great. At least that's what he told me. Maybe he was just being supportive. A white lie or two for his only grandson. Of course, he'd lived through the Great Depression and World War II. He'd witnessed real disasters. Grading on that scale, I could've strangled kittens all night and still not been all that bad.
The Monday after my virgin broadcast, walking the corridors of Haverhill High between classes, I was quickly made aware of some other members of my radio audience.
"Hey, Bergeron," the ringleader of a small group of assho— . . .
I mean, students—yelled, "heard you on the radio. You sucked."
See? It wasn't just me saying it.
But it wasn't all bad. It was mostly pretty damn good. Not my performance; you couldn't have saved that with an exorcism. I mean my situation. After all, I was a high school student actually being paid to host a radio show at a professional (well, more about that later) broadcast facility! Who cared if I sucked on my first attempt? Next Saturday night, I reasoned, when I flicked that switch and turned that dial, I'd suck a little less. And I'd be even less sucky the Saturday after that; assuming of course that the station manager was willing to keep paying a buck seventy-five an hour for only marginal leaps in quality.
Getting my foot and quavering voice in the door of the radio station, WHAV, was the culmination of a deliberate campaign hatched the moment I discovered that one of the high school's English teachers, Edwin Johnson, worked there part-time as a newscaster. I signed up for his public-speaking course and set out to impress the hell out of him. When, months later, he asked his brownnosing A student about his career goals, my answer exploded like a sneeze.
"Radio! I want to be on the radio!"
Upon hearing that, he generously offered to introduce me to WHAV's owner/station manager/sales manager/program director and hallway monitor, an eccentric and curmudgeonly chap named Ed Cetlin. I accepted the offer with similar sneezelike velocity. Within weeks, a meeting was scheduled. I was ecstatic. I was going to have a job interview at a radio station! My promising career as a supermarket-shelf stocker, begun in my freshman year, was about to be tossed aside like so much bad lettuce.
When I met Ed Cetlin, he asked me, "Why do you want to work in radio?" in a tone that suggested I'd aspired to developing carcinogens. He chewed on the ends of his glasses and squinted as he talked. I almost suggested he wear the glasses rather than gnaw on them, if only to help with the squinting, but thought better of it. Instead, I blathered on about my love for radio, how I'd always dreamed of being a broadcaster, and how hard I'd work if given the chance.
He shook his head in dismay. "You'll never make a living in radio. It's not a career. I'll prove it to you. I'll give you a job."
And, at a dollar seventy-five an hour, he set out to prove his point. But first, he said, I had to get my third-class operator's license. I'd need to learn how to take meter readings and monitor the transmitting equipment, a common requirement at low-power radio stations in the 1970s. To get that license, I'd take a test at the FCC office in the Customs House in Boston. No big deal. Until I took it, that is, and flunked.
I'm Hosting as Fast as I Can!Zen and the Art of Staying Sane in Hollywood. Copyright (c) by Tom Bergeron . Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
1 Can You Hear Me Now? 1
2 There's No Place like Om 7
3 Dulcet Tones and Hidden Gin 11
4 A Mime Is a Terrible Thing to Waste 19
5 I'll Always Have (South) Paris 25
6 Sometimes a Low Road Is a Highway 29
7 Frozen Dishes, Bottled Pigs, and Flexible Tubing 35
8 Thoreau Another Log on the Fire 41
9 Hopping Planes and Achieving Orbit 47
10 (Much) Better Red Than Dead 51
11 Physics and Bliss 55
12 Long Days and Short Spurts 59
13 Nuts, Sluts, and Heads of State 65
14 Lassie's Choice 71
15 Howdy Doddy, Bye-Bye Boston 77
16 Ready for Breakfast 83
17 And Now for Something Completely Different (with Apologies to Monty Python) 87
18 Why the Red Face? 93
19 Kill the Puppet 97
20 The Peter Principle Pox 103
21 Salmon Chanted Evening 107
22 Viva Liz Vargas 111
23 Live McCree or Die 117
24 Whoopi's Cushion 121
25 The Adventures of Captain Spasm 125
26 Tic-Tac-Toe-Hold 135
27 Game Changer 145
28 Coffee with the Captain 151
29 The Agony and the Annuity 155
30 Something's Amiss America 165
31 "Marco," "Polo," and Watts 169
32 Six Weeks of Sequins 175
33 A Step in Time Saves Mine 185
34 Dance Partners 193
35 Something to Plinko-ver 203
36 Yin, Yang, and Your Mama 209
37 But Enough About Me 223
Acknowledgments 227