BEST BET

There were flakes, and then there was our older brother Thomas, the hipster, who walked around the house spouting Ginsberg, Kerouac and Whitman morning, noon and night. Wanted everyone to call him Tomas. It was embarrassing. He had one foot out the door, anyway, so when the Mort Sahl Incident happened, we weren’t surprised in the slightest. We were upstairs in our room, playing “Love Potion No. 9” over and over again, minding our own business, and pretty much hoping Dad wouldn’t call us downstairs to watch Bob Hope’s latest Christmas show from Vietnam with the rest of the family. We went downstairs for a snack, and Tom walked into the living room, dressed all in black. Boy, there was something in the air that night. I heard my Dad say something like “Bob Hope is the greatest.” Tom snickered and said, “He ain’t no Mort Sahl, that’s for sure.” Then Dad said as long as he was putting the food on the table he wasn’t going to have a Communist living under his roof. And that was it. Tom hit the road that night, driving out to the West Coast. So when we hear the name Mort Sahl, we think of Tom, and Dad, who laugh about that night now. Mort Sahl will perform at Pepperdine University’s Smothers Theatre, 24255 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $22. For information call (213) 456-4522.