Author: edbaruch

In the last post I talked about David Letterman and I presupposed that he was a university professor and a psychologist. My inner voices told me I was close and I went to psychiatrist…Yahtzee! Mildly annoyed that I minimally entertained the possibility I’ve decided to see if I can’t figure out who he is.

Let’s look at what we know. Dave is very smart, he’s a little older than me 71, I’m 60. He would have come through into the field of psychiatry when psychoanalysis was waning but still in vogue for a lot of shrinks so my assessment of him doing psychotherapy is probably on target but pretty much all psychiatrists do psychopharmacology and Dave is really smart so he’s probably a university professor or was. According to the other Ed, Ben Stein’s father, Herbert Stein was Henry Kissinger which I’m in agreement with having seen Herbert Stein at a psychiatric meeting in Brooklyn NY over 20 years ago.  Nixon once while talking about Kissinger to someone and his being Jewish commented that Jews make great psychiatrists which is pretty funny if you consider that Herbert Stein, a psychiatrist, was Kissinger and Jewish.

Back to Letterman; without reviewing I know that Letterman’s show was in NYC. NYC has several prestigious psychoanalytic institutes associated with departments of psychiatry. Off the top of my head: Colombia, NYU, Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn associated with SUNY Downstate. Maybe others. I think Letterman was in LA for a while but moved back to NYC and I believe he lived in Connecticut.

Okay we have enough to go on, without doing any research yet. I’ll start by looking at photos of Dave, then move on to some medical schools and maybe review Herbert Stein aka Kissinger.

Into the rabbit hole we go!!

It appears that Letterman won a Mark Twain award and his shrink showed up: David Letterman’s friends — and shrink — make his Twain ceremony as funny as his late-night legacy

And in an unbilled appearance, Letterman’s psychiatrist, Clarice Kestenbaum, delivered one of the night’s punchiest paragraphs.

“If you ever need a solid 45-minute nap, drop in,” Kestenbaum said. “ ’I’m dumb. People hate me. I have E.D.’ Oh, Jesus, what a f—ing pity party. Don’t get me wrong: He’s crazy. Not Trump crazy. But who knows?”

Worth looking up Clarice Kestenbaum and see where she’s working.

OK here’s Clarice, let’s dig a little deeper.

Wow look at this! Clarice apparently wrote a book or several books, “Handbook of Clinical Assessment of Children and Adolescents.” What can we learn from this?

1. Clarice may not be David Letterman’s psychiatrist. It would be extremely rare for a psychiatrist to appear in public as the personal psychiatrist for one of their patients. It might be considered unprofessional. Patients are entitled to confidentiality. More than likely she’s a confidant, colleague, supervisor or supervisee of Daves.
2. She wrote a book on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. It would be rare but not impossible for a child and adolescent psychiatrist to see an adult patient and Clarice looks like the real deal having written a handbook of Clinical Assessment of Children and Adolescents. She would be less likely to spend time working with adults like Dave, but still possible.

Now I may hit a dead end, or not but let’s keep on this path, so this book, Ending Therapy, shows up with Clarice Kestenbaum’s name. There are two other men’s names on this “find” , Terry Allen Kupers, M.D. and Daniel T. Williams. Let’s see if either of them are Letterman. If either of the men look like David then it’s him because I’ve followed the trail of bread crumbs.

That’s a no on Terry Kupers, let’s try the other.

Daniel T. Williams, MD

On Terry Kupers google page I found this crazy looking old man photo…have a look…

Hmmm…needs careful review, this is the crazyoldmannetwork.

There is a possibility that the “Crazy Old Man” above is David Letterman. When I went to the website I found it was about old time actors and radio which would have been right up Letterman’s alley. Lot’s of similarities in the photos. Will double check on Daniel Williams.

Now the crazy old man and Letterman may both have forehead injuries with skin scarring.

Letterman may be going out of his way to cover up some forehead scarring.

The above is a pretty good clue. I don’t believe you get on as big a show as Mork and Mindy unless you’re a first grade relative.

Interestingly or not, Jimmy Carter has some facial similarities i.e. “Genetic Markers” to Letterman including a flattening of the top of the left ear. Pay attention to this as Jimmy Carter is also JFK and Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol loved NYC as does Letterman. I noticed this as Carter showed up on Letterman’s show and could not hide a broad smile and affection for the man. Kind of like Walt Disney with Shirley Temple, his brother’s daughter.

 

Part 3

I decided to review Terry Allen Kupers MD…Here’s a photo of him:

Notthing new, wish I had another ear.

The guy below, Daniel W. Cramer MD,  is worth a look, found on Daniel T Williams Google search page.

Not feeling the love yet, I think this guy is OB/GYN

 

 

 

I just binge watched Norm MacDonald Has a Show on Netflix. My whole life is Netflix. If I don’t watch the recommended feature at the top of my screen when I get to the opening page Ron Howard turns off my computer which then takes five minutes to reboot, so I inevitably watch it. Usually whatever’s up is pretty good and I get to meet some of the people from the show. Made the mistake of watching some show about abortions during dinner and yakked all over the place.

I watched Norm’s show which was pretty good, perhaps a little rough around the edges but entertaining. David Spade was the first guest and the guy is pretty funny, so is Norm. The sidekick grew on me but he looks like he’s sitting at the kids table off to the right. There’s a sketch with andy kaufman I think from SNL, maybe the Andy Kaufman Show where he’s the host of a talk show but is sitting way way higher than the guest. this reminded me of it.

Drew Barrymore was real good then Judge Judy. After watching half of Drew I had to sample the rest so I could get a taste of each show. When Jane Fonda came on if I were Norm I would have asked her why she looks so much like Judge Judy, and maybe Laura Bush. I loved the singer Billy Joe Shaver and skipped ahead to the songs, super stuff. Looked like he had a touch of emphysema and could have dropped dead any second.

Chevy had me laughing out loud, very funny. M. Night Shyamalan very interesting. Michael Keaton and Lorne Michaels only spent a bit with them. Overall Norm’s show holds up. I’ll come to Dave in a minute. I could do with less of all the nervous twitches of the comics where they do their little shticks in between the jokes and stories. I’d rather hear the stories and the jokes some of which they never got to with everyone just doing whatever their non-verbal, partially verbal shticks are. Chevy did it too but some of what he does is so funny and unexpected like drinking his water through his nose it’s forgivable. (Still love memoirs of an invisible man!)

David Letterman: Of all of Norm’s shows I found David Letterman to be the most interesting. I watched the entire thing, didn’t get bored or distracted, still a bit too much shtick from Norm on this one and it’s not necessary. It’s a talk show, let ’em talk. David is really smart, seasoned and kind of slick. I know pretty much everyone in Hollywood has another life and I found myself thinking that David is probably a college professor somewhere, likely in psychology and does counseling or psychotherapy. Just a guess but the guy was fascinating, has a great manner and a silky voice. I thought the show moved along well and some of that might be David’s comfort with the talk show venue and he basically ignored some of the nervous shtick. (Follow up on Letterman in the next post)

Great guests, good show and a very funny story by Judge Judy about three hoodlums going to a store at midnight looking for Matzohs. A1 rating for the show, mostly because I’m sucking up, people used to hate when I said lousy things about them but now it’s usually regarded as good but I still don’t want to insult anyone, so it’s really a B.

In my mind the talk show to beat similar to Norms was The Dennis Miller Show. The show was so funny and it was on late when I was pretty tired and I used to pray it wasn’t too funny because I was so tired and my ribs would hurt from laughing. He made a gay spelling bee joke that was so funny he had to come on the next week and apologize saying, “Sometimes I’m an A-S-S-H-O-L-E.” I think he toned the show down after that a bit which he should have avoided because for thirty minutes it was pure hysteria and I believe Norm MacDonald was on the show and he and Dennis talked about when they fly together they use a female name for the airplane. Dennis was saying they call the plane “The Lady” but Norm confided they were calling the plane, “The Bitch”. He also told Dennis that Joe the Camel looked like “a giant cock”. He over the topped Dennis that night, even Dennis feigned leaving the set after that.

Later gators

FYI: Running around LA in my underwear was just a metaphor. I was fully clothed the whole time. Also, thanks to the Hispanic actors and actress who took me back to my hotel when I got blindsided at the Hollywood Bowl Overlook, wish I could have hung with you guys but the object of the mission was to stay on track. Thanks to the BB Queen for the brew.

Keeping this brief but I loved the film despite it being a bit of a downer at the end. Rick sure reminded me of Camren Bicondova aka Selina Kyle aka Catwoman who I’m pretty sure I saw in 42nd street and my gym!

I was miserating that I knew a lot of the players in film and had insulted some of them in the past but I wasn’t in the film (something about banning me from Los Angeles in someone’s contract but they can’t enforce it) plus I may be difficult to take direction (too PTSD from being run around LA in my underwear) just as I hit the heights of despair White Boy Rick went in to see the goldfish named of all things Ed! My heart lightened that is until Rick got shot in the stomach 2 seconds later and has to crap into a bag for the rest of the film while he’s banging some very hot black chicks. Other than that how was the play Mrs. Lincoln? Thanks for the shout out guys!

Robin Williams AKA Art Garfunkel. This is as close to 100% correct as possible (unbelievably). I went looking for Art Garfunkel and figured him for someone else. When I saw this picture of Art Garfunkel sans shirt he resembled Joe Pantoliano who played Guido the Killer Pimp in “Risky Business”. Joe, I identified as Robin a while back and I knew Robin had a massive diagonal neck scar which was left open to heal. Here the scar, going up to the ear is virtually identical and would be a lot closer but the scar on Robin is smeared (photoshopped) and hence they are not completely identical. What about the voice? Art has one of the great voices of our time…so does Robin (yes the man who was Robin Williams still breathes) Robin Williams was incredibly talented and I heard him sing and he is literally breathtaking!!! For anyone paying attention

I’ve suspected this for a while and took some time to set about and prove it. Identical scarring on the right knee of both men (also the left) also arm and abdo scarring that is similar but the right knee is most convincing. Eastwood and Lennon are both tall as well and let’s not forget The Donald! Very talented man. My suspicion derived from similar friends of both men and the height. George, Ringo and John all have terrible scarring and the person playing Paul McCartney did change at one point. It’s possible Paul was badly injured, I’ll work on this. The first Paul McCartney went on to become another famous singer…Sir Elton John! IMHO

“Absolutely!!!”

Said by Ed immediately preceding the most exciting event of his life…bar none!

(Sidebar-The director was the only one there who seemed the least apprehensive about what the answer would be!)

I got this off BabbittBlog on FaceBook. Disney must have put out some new ice cream product that everyone was trying. Find Ron’s dad in this photo.

The last person to be filled in was George Peppard who I saw today in the film, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”

I had the pleasure of watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” early this morning. I had tried to watch it in the past with limited success as it is a very mature film and requires careful study and it appears my head was not in that place when I first sat with it. I enjoyed it thoroughly except they really abused the cat and I felt bad for Buddy Ebsen as Doctor Golightly who gets dumped by Holly and he recovers about as quickly as he did from the pulmonary disease he acquired from the Tin Man make up in the Wizard of Oz.

The film is a sophisticated tome reminiscent of “The Own and The Pussycat” and “The Graduate”. I don’t think anyone could have done a better job playing Holly than Audrey Hepburn except for maybe Shirley Jones, IMHO.

George Peppard and the rest of the cast were terrific and I loved seeing Patricia Neal in the film who played a pretty hot cougar. I think the only actress who might have filled her shoes in film is Myrna Loy.

Anyway the film continues to be timely despite being made about 60 years ago.