I have a young friend who, like a lot of irritating young people, uses one of those ridiculous vape pens. We were talking recently and he pulled out the device and took a puff. I rolled my eyes. “Why don’t you just smoke a cigarette, like a person?” I asked. “This is the whole problem with your generation,” I continued. “You only know how to do the ‘lite’ version of things.”
“This is healthier,” he said.
“And that’s exactly why it’s lame,” I responded.
To prove my point, I told him this story: There used to be a restaurant on the lot of Paramount Studios called Nickodell’s — and I am aware that just by saying that sentence I sound like one of those elderly bores who begins every story with, “There used to be…” But that’s pretty much where I’m headed, so why fight it? The moment you’re old enough to notice what isn’t around anymore, you’re in Old Bore territory. Nickodell’s was on the studio lot, but it was a public restaurant, too. The public could come in from the Melrose Avenue door, but if you were already at the studio, you could come in the back way, through a nondescript metal door marked, “Studio Entrance.”
Theoretically, of course, you could enter Nickodell’s through the Melrose Avenue door and then slip out the back, completely circumventing the multiple guard gates and checkpoints. Back then, no one thought that was a security breach. There was even a lot phone hanging on the wall, one of those really old ones, with a rotary dial in black Bakelite. The food was terrible, but it served what functioning alcoholics call a “healthy pour,” and during the time I was at the studio, we’d all head over to Nickodell’s for a drink and a burger before we’d shoot an episode of whatever series we were working on in front of the studio audience.
It felt very showbiz, very old school, which is why we liked it. At a certain point between the first and third cocktail, the lot phone would ring, a waitress would answer it, and she’d turn to us and say, “Fellas, your office called. They’re ready to roll,” and we’d head out the back door into the bright Hollywood sunshine and do our jobs producing television the way people have been doing that job for decades: unsteadily and with alcohol on our breath.
Each time we went, though, there was always someone else at the bar. A very well-known, legendary local television news anchorman who delivered the 6 o’clock news broadcast for the television station that was also on the Paramount lot. He’d be at the bar, in his anchorman’s uniform and already in full makeup, working his way through a mysterious amount of Canadian whisky. He’d sit there smoking and watching the TV above the bar, which was tuned, of course, to his station. And at some point just before 6 p.m. — we never managed to see this happen, but it happened somehow — we would look up at the bar and he’d be gone.
And then we’d look up at the TV and he’d be there, suddenly: “Good evening everyone. Here’s the latest from the Southland.” There was still ice in his glass. Still a small dimple on the stool where he had been sitting moments ago. And still smoke, curling up in wisps from his cigarette.
So I asked my young friend to imagine that same story, only with a vape pen instead of a smoldering cigarette. And maybe a kombucha instead of a Canadian Club. He thought for a moment, then nodded his head. “I see your point,” he said. “On the other hand, I can only wonder what trauma or childhood abuse he had suffered to choose such an unhealthy and self-destructive lifestyle.” Which is when I gave up. His generation will always seem lame to me. They may have better lungs or be more emotionally healthy, but they’ll never understand how to be cool.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
