'Here isn’t Johnny!' Trying to Channel Carson’s Carnac The Magnificent
It was a night of prophecies and punchlines with The Simpsons writers in Silver Lake. But why did my jokes end up on a chair?
I never truly appreciated the contribution that Ed McMahon made to The Tonight Show until I stood in front of an LA audience in a cheap prophet costume doing a Carnac bit.
Ed knew how to handle staging and awkward silences with perfect timing.
But Brent Forrester, my co-host for the evening, had a different technique.
A comedy legend on the page and the stage — his credits range from Mr Show to The Simpsons and The Office — Brent had kicked the Feb. 28 show off at the Lyric Hyperion with vibrant theatricality and charisma, getting the audience laughing and whipping up excitement for all that was to come.
But when I launched into my version of Carnac, Brent switched from host mode to unconvinced audience member, standing beside me silently with the detached, evaluating air of someone trying to decide whether a piece of toast was too burnt to eat.
Carson’s famous Carnac the Magnificent routine, as many of my small-but-mighty-old readership may recall, involved Johnny wearing a turban and demonstrating his powers of mystic divination. He would press a series of sealed envelopes to his head and answer the questions before they were revealed.
An example: Johnny would hold an envelope to his head, ponder, then intone “sis-boom-bah.” Then open it to reveal the question: “What is the sound a sheep makes when it explodes?”
When he was introducing Carnac and setting up the bit, Ed McMahon always made a great deal of noise about how the envelopes had been “hermetically sealed” and stored “in a jelly jar” in “the offices of Funk and Wagnalls” since “noon that day” and so on.
What I didn’t realize when I watched this routine on TV (but which I noticed instantly while performing in front of an audience) was how much time there is between Ed handing Johnny the envelope the question reveal:
There’s taking the envelope.
The pressing against the forehead.
The silent concentration.
The quizzical answer.
The tearing of the envelope.
The squeezing and blowing into it.
The taking out the card.
And finally, the question.
And then it’s on to the next envelope…
On screen, this time passes imperceptibly, even amusingly, as Ed piles on the hype, theatrically repeating his catch phrases — “hermetically sealed!” ”Funk and Wagnalls!” — while Johnny, consummate pro that he was, made the process of opening an envelope look easy.
It’s not easy…
Occasionally Carson would shoot Ed an annoyed look, as if his bombast was breaking the state of concentration required for his psychic powers to work. In reality the sidekick was keeping the show moving and the audience entertained while Johnny was doing the blocking and tackling with the envelopes.
When I watched The Tonight Show as a kid, I thought Ed McMahon was an embarrassing, useless yes-man. “You are correct, Sir!
If you like this post please share it to help me manifest a better future.
Last Saturday, as Brent Forrester (a fellow “Prophet” from The Simpsons) stood beside me watching silently as I fumbled through the endless pressing-guessing-tearing-blowing rigmarole again and again, I realized Ed McMahon was a great man — and that I missed him terribly.
But I pressed on. I was committed and the only way out was through the stack of envelopes in Brent Forrester’s hand.
Then he set the stack of envelopes down on an empty chair…
To be fair, Brent grew up in a house without a television and still lives a largely TV-free life. He probably never saw Carnac, or has any idea about Ed McMahon’s role in the bit.
On reflection, I probably should have asked him before we sold out the show.
But still. putting the envelope down on the chair?
Where does that come from?
Eventually, mercifully, I reached the last envelope, and we moved onto the next segment of the show, which had been billed as an evening with the writers behind The Simpsons predictions.
The show was an evolution of my decision last summer to leverage my claim-to-not-quite-fame as the writer of the episode of The Simpsons that predicted the Trump presidency. I did this by putting on a makeshift prophet costume and foreseeing his downfall.
To be fair, that prediction was based on a genuine premonition I’d had of Trump’s impending fall and also a genuine desire to reject the climate of fear and self-censorship Trump and his enablers were seeking to impose upon us. I decided to try and manifest a new reality.
My collaborator in “The Prophet” project, Mieke Marple, and I had decided that a live event could help grow the following for my videos and, more importantly, begin my transition from guy milking his connection to The Simpsons by playing a character to guy with no hook at all commenting on and participating in civic life.
Apart from my sweaty Carnac routine, the evening was a great success, in large part due to Brent’s masterful performance as host.
Indeed, Brent’s starring role as host may have added to the difficulty of switching to a supporting role in the Carnac routine. But why put the envelopes down on a chair? Why?
After the opening act we moved on to a panel discussion about The Simpsons predictions and the future in general with former long-time Simpsons writer Ian Maxtone-Graham and current Simpsons writer and Futurama alumnus Dan Vebber.
Ian, whose 1997 episode “The City of New York vs Homer Simpson” became the focus of internet conspiracy theorizing due to an image in it which juxtaposed the number 9 and the Twin Towers — hence looking like number 911 — told a touching story of donating an animation cell from that episode to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum so it wouldn’t be lost to history. He did that in the unlikely event that his house was destroyed by a fire...which it was… in the 2025 Palisades fire.
Ian’s takeaway was to advise the audience to give away everything they love, so they would have both the joy of giving and the happiness of knowing the cherished object was safe.
Unless the recipient’s home was also destroyed by fire, I thought, but didn’t say. Why ruin a nice moment?
When it was Dan’s turn, he shared his theory of why The Simpsons seems to be able to predict the future.
He said that the job of a comedy writer is to think of hilarious and horrible things, and that the world is a place where hilarious horrible things are constantly happening. So the overlap was inevitable.
The world works the way comedy writers work.
He also shared a list of funny predictions from Futurama. He was funny and charming and, I daresay, chatty. It was the most I had heard him say in years — decades? — of working with him.
Simpsons OG and Hoagy Carmichael-esque nightclub entertainer manqué Jeff Martin rounded out the evening on the keys with songs and stories about the many classic 20-second songs he wrote for the show.
It culminated in a rousing singalong of the classic “Monorail” song.
“I swear it’s Springfield’s only choice… Throw up your hands and raise your voice… Monorail!”
The audience went home buzzing. Whether we had accelerated the fall of Trump or advanced my standing as a statesman was unclear.
The next day Brent wrote to me and offered to take over the show.
I agreed.
As Ian advised, “If you love something, give it away.”
Thanks, Brian! It is a growth experience to stand in front of an audience in a silly costume!
I had to explain Carnac to a British audience who'd never heard of Johnny Carson. I pored through vast archives of Carnacs, including the many hundreds I wrote and -- guess what -- they're not funny. Most of the best of Carnac is just 'wacky words' (Dippity Dew) or smirky double entendres. Few of them are genuinely clever. I even showed the original clip of "Sis boom bah", a brilliant joke by Kevin Mulholland. It got nothing.