Rickles' Book: A Memoir

I tell you this. Back in 2016, for some reason, I started watching Johnny Carson's Tonight Show on YouTube. Maybe it was because I was already familiar with Letterman and other late-night shows, and curiosity got me wondering about what came before them. If I'm remembering right, Don Rickles was in the first video I watched—or at least one of the first.

It was something unusual for me—totally different from anything I'd seen before—and, as I later found out, for just about everyone else too. I was instantly hooked. From there, it was binge time, baby. I tracked down every appearance Rickles ever did. His movies and TV shows? Not so much—except for behind the scenes, where he was naturally dynamite.

I was just glad I managed to catch him while he was still making appearances—I wished I could've seen him perform for at least a year, but I got a few months on top of that.