Just as I had done on previous occasions, when similarly honored, I opened with a question: "What the hell were you people thinking? You are aware," I continued, "that I'm a high school dropout?"
On that early summer afternoon in Vancouver, Canada, resplendent in my royal blue and crimson ceremonial muumuu and deftly balancing the mortarboard yarmulke atop my bobbling head, I was given the opportunity to address assembled graduates and faculty, families and friends. Sinai School of Medicine? They're honorary, of course, which puts me on equal academic footing with the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Would it be crass to mention that I also have a doctorate of Fine Arts from NYU, as well as a doctorate of Humane Letters from Manhattan's Mt. Fox." As neither I nor my brother, Steve, had ever given our mother any reason to expect that she'd someday utter the words "my son the doctor," she was immensely proud that the University of British Columbia had pronounced her baby boy a "Doctor of Laws." My photo appeared on the May 23, 2008, front page of my hometown paper, the Vancouver Sun, but the headline identified me as "Dr. "Now," I announced to the wunderkinds, assembled for one of our first meetings of season one, "if you see me wearing a shirt from your alma mater, say Yale, for example" (with this I'd sneak a glance at an eager young Eli whose specialty was fart jokes), "then that means it's your day to get me coffee." Okay, so I am capable of a modicum of swaggering jerkitude."I've never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain An old Dartmouth baseball shirt was a personal favorite. Among others, I had a burgundy Harvard tee and a Stanford Cardinal jersey. I amassed a collection of T-shirts from some of the finest schools in the country. Inspired by the irony that I was the boss of such a lettered group of individuals, and, honestly, perhaps a little intimidated, I thought I'd have some fun with it. As executive producer of Spin City, I was responsible for hiring and managing an astoundingly bright collection of young comedy writers, many of them graduates from prestigious universities: Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, and Harvard, to name an ivy-covered few.
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