“'Minute to Win It' is a variation on a game show from the 1950s called...” — Tom Shales Quote

'Minute to Win It' is a variation on a game show from the 1950s called 'Beat the Clock,' in which contestants won washing machines and fox stoles by doing such pointless stunts as catching a tennis ball in a paper cup or knocking a hat off one's wife's head with a whipped-cream spritzer.

For those who don't like Dave Letterman, there's Jay Leno; and for those who like neither, there's Craig Ferguson; and if you're still feeling undertained, there's George Lopez and Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel and - let's see, did we leave out a Jimmy?

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess.

By a twist of fate rather than anything approaching journalistic enterprise, I did the last major interview with Johnny Carson.

I like to create chances, to shoot when I play farther forward, but I also like playing deeper, as you have more time on the ball.

I'm too professional, too much of a perfectionist to take my eye off the ball.

It's hard to run the ball with 8-9 guys in the box.

You have to try to win the ball at all costs and if someone doesn't get it quite right people get injured.

They throw the ball, I hit it. They hit the ball, I catch it.