Review - Is Michael Riedel The New Bob Uecker?

The First Amendment, that noble invention of our founding fathers that grants all Americans the right of free speech, must frequently be defended under less than noble circumstances; the right of a neo-Nazi group to hold a march in the heavily Jewish community of Skokie, Illinois, the right of Lenny Bruce to use a certain euphemism for someone who performs oral sex on a man as part of his comedy act and now... perhaps... the right of Michael Riedel to get a good seat at Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark.

I say "perhaps" because, as described by Riedel in this morning's New York Post, nobody actually said to him that the reason he was being removed from his prime seat in D116 and sent to a cramped balcony location against the wall had anything to do with him being the infamous Broadway gossip-scribe who has been feasting on the production's rocky preview period. According to his column, he was told he was being removed for safety issues... first... but after identifying himself as a reporter was told that the seat was actually sold twice.

Might the safety issue had been that someone didn't want the cast to be rattled by seeing Michael Riedel taking notes during the performance? Might the ticket have been sold a second time only minutes earlier to someone on the cancellation line after it was confirmed that Riedel was attending? I have no idea.

All I know is that the situation brings to mind Bob Uecker in that classic Miller Lite television commercial from the 1980s. Uecker, a less than distinguished major league baseball player who cultivated a humorous self-mocking image into a successful career as a sports commentator and famous-for-being-famous celebrity, earned a place in American Pop Culture's Hall of Fame by starring in a spot where he was enjoying a ball game from a primo location, saying it was one of the many perks of his celebrity. When an usher tells him he's in the wrong seat and asks to see his ticket, Uecker lets loose the soon-to-be-famous catch-phrase, "I must be in the front row." After a quick plug endorsing the great taste of Miller Lite, we next see Uecker seated in a sparsely populated nosebleed section, trying in vain to start a wave.

With the Super Bowl only weeks away, I wouldn't be surprised if some sharp advertising exec got the bright idea to capitalize on the sudden surge of Broadway fans now interested in football - thanks to that terrific production of Lombardi - and quickly whipped up a beer commercial featuring Michael Riedel being removed from his orchestra seat and regulated to the theatre nosebleeds.

If only PBS had a pre-game show.

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