coffee table books about coffee tables
I wrote the above headline in 1990 while working as an editor for the Los Angeles Reader, which was a free "alternative weekly" distributed throughout LA. The headline was for a pair of book reviews—one about fabrics, one about home furnishings—by another writer.
I thought the "cloth-bound books about cloth" and "coffee table books about coffee tables" thing was a cute turn of phrase. That's why I wrote it—I can be nauseatingly cute.
Apparently, one of the writers for Seinfeld thought it was a darling idea, too, because a couple of years later, Kramer proposes to write "a coffee table book about coffee tables," and the joke was stretched out for more than one show. Seinfeld began production in Los Angeles a few months before my super-cute headline appeared.
Now I read that THIS guy is claiming that the Seinfeld writers stole the idea from HIM, but I'm thinking he was merely an agent in the Chain of Infection—he saw the headline while buying a latte, filed it in a cranny somewhere in his brain, and it popped out a year or two later as a "new" idea.
Ironically, Kramer's character was always having HIS ideas stolen, such as the one for a cologne that smells like the beach. And in an episode years later, Elaine's former boss rips off her scheme for a store that sells only muffin tops. Here's the dialogue from when she confronts him:
Elaine: This was my idea—you stole my idea.
Mr. Lippman: Elaine, these ideas are all in the air. They're in the air.
Elaine: Well, if that air is coming out of this face, then it is my air and my idea.
I know how you feel, bubeleh.
Seinfeld remains TV's greatest sitcom. But I wonder how the writers of America's Best-Loved Jewish Comedy would feel to learn that Mr. Supergoy provided them with one of their gags?
