Ain't no fussin' or feudin' about it - Ray Combs is tired.
He's giving it his best shot at the KXIV studios, where he's shooting his hosting segments for this week's "Viewers' Choice Movie Fest" on Ch. 14. But the effects of successive 20-hour days is starting to catch up to him. He gropes for words. He keeps calling "Rick Warner Truckworld" "Rick Warner's Truckworld." His facial expression is pleasant, but strained. And in between takes he sits quietly, speaking only when spoken to. And then only softly.And you wonder: Is this really the same bouncy, articulate, energetic guy we interviewed last year in Los Angeles when he was just starting his stint as the host of "Family Feud"?
Then he comes over, sits down and starts to talk. The warmth is still there. So's the quick wit and the charm. Yep, it's Ray Combs, all right. It's just that it's been a long day in a year that has seen more than it's share of long days.
"It's been pretty hectic and crazy," he sighs, shaking his head slowly. "I can't remember a day off in the past three, maybe four, months."
"Family Feud" is only part of that pressure. Combs is also working as a production consultant on two NBC sitcoms - "Amen" and "Dear John" - where he helps punch up the script with jokes and even occasionally drops in to do a little stand-up warm-up with the studio audience. He's working on a couple of comedy projects of his own (one, which was to star lewd-mouth comic Andrew "Dice" Clay," has already been trashed), and he spends two weekends a month in Cincinnati working at the comedy club he opened there nearly three months ago.
Then there are the personal appearances that take him all around the country. Some are planned months in advance. Others, like this KXIV gig, just sort of happen.
"Originally, we were going to have Frank Layden host the movie festival," said KXIV's Mike Hemingway. "But then the Jazz told him that he couldn't do it on our station because of the team's agreement with KSTU, so he had to back out."
A few phone calls later Combs' busy schedule got busier.
Not that Combs minds all that much - especially not when it means a trip to Salt Lake City for this life-long Mormon.
"I still like getting out and seeing people," said Combs. "But I have learned that there are a lot of people out there who are . . . well, not normal. I mean, I realize that there are thousands of people who watch the show and either love me or hate me, and I don't worry about them. That's OK. But I do worry about the people who hate me so much they want to kill me, or who love me so much they want to kidnap me and take me home. Those are the ones - the destructive ones - that I try to avoid."
But what do you do when one of those "destructive ones" turns out to be your own brother? Combs found out about that this past year, too, when his brother told the sleazy tabloid, the Globe, that Ray's marriage was crumbling and that he was dating other women. And while Combs acknowledges that he and his wife are indeed separated, they are working toward reconciliation - and he isn't seeing anyone else.
"The Globe had an $8,000 bounty out for a photo of me with some `other woman,' but they couldn't get one because she doesn't exist," Combs said. "The problems between my wife and I go back many years - my greatest dream was her greatest nightmare. But we're trying to work it out. We have five wonderful reasons - our five kids - for doing it."
Such intrusions on his personal life have been challenging, but he figures it goes with the territory. He even seems to relish an occasional adventure, like the time he went to a lounge to hear a band play.
"It was `Alternative Night,' which I thought meant alternative music," he recalls. "But then I looked around and said, `Hold it - what's wrong with this picture?' The place was filled with men - no women. I figured out what `alternative' meant, and started to leave.
"But one guy runs up to me and he says, `We're all just dying to know. You're Pat Sajak, aren't you?' So I look at him and I look at all the guys who are looking at me, and I can't help myself. `Yes I am,' I tell him. "And spread it around."'
He laughs at the recollection. It's a tired laugh, but a hearty one, and for a moment he seems just like the Ray Combs we met a year ago. And then it's time for him to go - just in time, he is reminded, to catch "Family Feud" at the hotel.
"Are you kidding?" he asks. "I was there - I know how it ends."
So what's on the schedule for his evening in Salt Lake City?
"Only one thing," Combs says, dreamily. "Sleep."
- ON TV TONIGHT: Is it true, as one nearby resident insists, that people are just loving Yosemite National Park - to death? That seems to be the theory advanced by tonight's American Experience (8 p.m., Ch. 7) offering, "Yosemite: The Fate of Heaven." Narrated by Robert Redford and produced, in part, by his Sundance Institute, the piece mingles photography of the park's pristine beauty with views of how man's encroachment is messing with Mother Nature. The camera work is stupendous, but be prepared for a decidedly one-sided perspective from the narrative.
In the sportlight, the Jazz get the first look at the Minnesota Timberwolves in tonight's NBA Basketball (6 p.m., PSN-Utah) action. And at the same time, the league's two best centers - Akeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing - square off in the Rockets-Knicks Game (6 p.m., TNT).
Elsewhere, a Matlock (7 p.m., Ch. 2) two-parter concludes; ditto Judith Krantz's 'Till We Meet Again (8 p.m., Ch. 5); Roseanne (8 p.m., Ch. 4) celebrates Thanksgiving; Tom Hanks and John Candy are Peace Corps Volunteers (8 p.m., Ch. 13) in Thailand; and ABC's alternative to "Chicken Soup," Coach (8:30 p.m., Ch. 4), returns for its second season.
- LOOKING TOWARD WEDNESDAY: AMC brings back the classic 1940s film, Brigham Young (6:30 and 10:30 p.m., AMC); CBS has Garfield's Thanksgiving Special (7 p.m., Ch. 5), The Bugs Bunny Thanksgiving Diet (7:30 p.m., Ch. 5) and the 14th annual Circus of the Stars (8 p.m., Ch. 5); "American Masters" profiles Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius (7 p.m., Ch. 7); Burt Reynolds and Sally Field whoop it up in Smokey and the Bandit (7 p.m., Ch. 30); Danny Kaye is The Kid From Brooklyn (8 p.m., Ch. 11); Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger try to survive the world's worst Blind Date (8 p.m., Ch. 13); Stewart Granger is superb in the 1952 version of The Prisoner of Zenda (8:30 p.m., TNT); Moyers: The Public Mind (9 p.m., Ch. 7) discusses "Illusions of News"; and "P.O.V.'s" Girltalk (10:35 p.m., Ch. 7) focuses on three troubled teens.