The Man Show Cometh

By Joel Stein

When I first graduated from college, I couldn't decide whether to become a magazine writer or a TV writer. I quickly settled upon unemployed writer, until Martha Stewart hired me to type up gardening tips. The things a man will do just to get close to that siren.

Thus, until recently, my only experience with TV writing was a meeting at UPN several years ago to pitch my one brilliant sitcom idea: "It's about a Nielsen family and will therefore be the highest-rated show ever, because every Nielsen family will watch it." That meeting went poorly, only partly because I was distracted by the UPN office, which is bright, cheerful and contains a life-size bronze statue of Sherman Hemsley in a bell-bottom suit holding a piece of pie. Let me repeat that: bright, cheerful and contains a life-size bronze statue of Sherman Hemsley in a bell-bottom suit holding a piece of pie. You try to pitch a sitcom after seeing that. This might explain the UPN lineup.

But last February a producer, apparently taken by the testosterone in my articles, asked if I'd like to try to write for a new series premiering this week on Comedy Central called The Man Show. Three weeks later I was on a plane to L.A. for a week-long writing gig and the chance to create that extra-sleazy me I had long fantasized about. I called him Shane.

The first thing I learned about being a television writer is that even though I dress badly, it is not nearly bad enough. My button-down shirts and dress shoes were just asking to be made fun of by the all-male writing staff. So unfamiliar were these people with leather soles, they kept referring to my "wood shoes."

I'm not sure if all TV offices are like this, or if it was just because this program was called The Man Show, but there was pornography everywhere. And everyone played mean jokes on each other. For a week co-host Adam Carolla, who had gone to the Grammys with one of the Dixie Chicks, believed she was sending him gifts. These gifts included flowers and a 6-ft. sub with a note that said, "I will not be ignored!" TV hosts, I learned, aren't the smartest people on staff.

They are, however, the most powerful. The writers shared one office where we ate lunch at our desks and had to come up with three pages of funny ideas by 5:30. This was so difficult that one of my ideas was "C. Everett Koop Teaches You How to Dance."

So instead of spending lunch hour yelling at my agent at Morton's or scoring the phone numbers of women Scott Baio rejected, Shane shared a Subway sandwich with another Jewish writer from New York. In fact, the one attractive woman who spoke to me that week wasn't interested in me when she found out I wrote for a TV show. She gave me a whole lot more attention when she found out I wrote for TIME. Until she said she'd never seen my byline. That's when the whole Shane thing backfired. After that week I decided TV writing wasn't me. Actually they did.

But I miss Shane. Now that I know he's not that talented, powerful or smooth with the ladies, my Hollywood dream is just a fun, overpaid desk job. Because even Comedy Central pays better than TIME. I think it has something to do with the fact that on TV the ads move. People seem to like that.