Country Music Broke My Brain by Gerry House Page B

But when it’s all said and done, it’s really just another sinkhole. Or massive dent in the earth, made by a river. They have trails where you can walk to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and see its grandness from the bottom up. I opted out of that little jaunt.
    The most exciting part of my visit to the Grand Canyon? In the restaurant, where you can have wine in case you’re not dizzy enough, I saw Davis Love III come in, look around, and dash out. I was more impressed at spotting a pro golfer than I was looking at the magnificence of Momma Nature. Some things I just get bored with.
    However, Reba McEntire is not the Grand Canyon. Oh, she’s grand all right. She’s a wonder of nature, and she’s from out west. I never get bored staring at Reba McEntire. I believe she’s also the same age. I may be off by a few years.
    Let’s just call her Reba for now and forever. I think she left her last name somewhere on a bus outside Tulsa. Reba is one of the grandest things in the world, right up there with the Pyramids and, pardon the redundancy, Dolly Parton.
    I met “Red” (or, as we often use between each other, “Ruby Two Shoes”) about thirty years ago at some event. She was with her Mercury record execs, and I actually met her three separate times, introduced by various guys. The third time she laughed and said, “I got it. His name is Jurry and he’s on the rayjoe.” That’s how it sounds to me when she talks. Jurry on the rayjoe.
    She has not changed one iota from the first time I saw her—same sense of humor, same voice, same kind way of listening, same direct replies. She’s tough as nails but gets misty-eyed at things people say or do. She writes personal, handwritten notes to people to thank them. We’re friends. We’ve traveled together, had dinners together, and worked on TV shows together. I have written a lot of jokes for her over the years when she hosted the Academy of Country Music Awards or some other showbiz deal. Make a note: there is nobody tougher on a “line” than Reba, but when she loves it, you can rest assured it’s going to be knocked out of the park. She commits to everything. If you’ve never seen her onstage, she just takes over. It’s wonderful to watch. Such poise is rare. We all know how amazing her voice is. And that hasn’t changed a bit, either. To me, she still sounds exactly like she did on her first record. Before this gets too icky, let me just say Red is one of my favorite people and leave it at that.
    When you write jokes, at least in my case, you stare out the window a lot. Or you keep a little recorder by the bed and sort of drift off and think of things. I’ve done that my whole life. I’m terrible onstage myself ’cause I get nervous. I can, however, write funny things for other people to say. I write better for Reba than anyone else. I wrote some stuff for Roseanne Barr early in her career when I lived in L.A. Roseanne’s husband, Bill (at the time), would call and say, “Rose is going on Letterman. Write some jokes about her trying to quit smoking.” So I did. Then I’d turn on Letterman and Roseanne would spout the lines I wrote, like she had just thought of them. She was good. This is all I want to say about Roseanne because she’s not one of my favorite people, and it’s taking up Reba talk.
    Getting jokes past managers, wives, producers, and publicists is tough. Everybody has an agenda. Everybody is paranoid the public will hear something about their act or singing or whatever. It’s always easier to just say, “No,” than it is to say, “That’s funny.” All I know is Reba’s husband, Narvel, sent me a script with a note that read, “Wanna take a whack at this?” I did and have done it many, many times since.
    If there’s anybody who should take up some Reba time, it’s Narvel. Supposedly, he’s