Mandela Was Late by Peter Mehlman – I picked this book up while in the middle of the quite long although certainly not tedious Bully Pulpit – soon to be reviewed here. The goal was to read something humorous and light during breaks from the other book. Well, it is certainly light and the chapters are conveniently succinct, sometimes just a few pages. Maybe his chapters are short because that is the way you have to write when you make a pitch for a TV program, which is what this guy does for a living. In fact, I chose the book because the author is proclaimed as a writer and Executive Producer of Seinfeld for nearly all of its nine-year run and is noted as the person coining such terns as “spongeworthy” and “yada yada.” Early in the book I learn that not only was he a key writer for one of my favorite TV shows but he is a New Yorker transplanted to Los Angeles but always appreciating New York as a native when he visits there. I thought I might be able to identify with that state of mind or even the names of all the Los Angeles streets and restaurants which he mentions, most of which I know as a New Yorker transplanted to LA myself.  However, I didn’t find the book particularly humorous or enlightening. The author seems to be writing about his life but as far as I can see all he does is pick up checks for residuals from the Seinfeld Show, write scripts for new sitcoms that sometimes get bought but hardly ever get made or if they get made they barely last. Not that there is anything wrong with that. He is single and we really don’t see any meaningful relationships in his life. Not that there is anything wrong with that either. Nevertheless I tried to relate to his youth in Queens in NYC (I am from Brooklyn but that should be close enough) when he tried to figure out the meaning of the number “69”). Maybe I have aged out of the demographic for this book. It may be a fortyish thing.