Michael's Emmy speech

"The award for my category came at the very end of the evening" at the Creative Arts Emmys, he said, "and I was sitting there getting glassy-eyed and beside myself with nerves.

"Then they made an announcement during the commercial break that they were going to be cutting off acceptance speeches twice as quickly as they had done earlier in the show because they were running behind," he said. "I had a little something prepared to say running in my head, and it was now twice as long as the time limit was going to be. So I was sitting there barely paying attention, trying to edit my remarks, God forbid I should actually have to climb the stairs and make them. Of course, I was busy processing that when my name was actually read, and I wasn't sure I'd properly heard it. I looked around and my wife was staring at me and said, 'You better go up there.'

"Climbing those six steps or whatever they were was one of the hardest things I ever did, because I was just so conscious of the chances of embarrassment if I stumbled or fell down or passing out. But I got up there ... and I said something, but I was relieved there was a statuesque blond lady there to steer me off the stage or I might have wandered around up there for hours," he said.

Ironically, winning that Emmy isn't all happy thoughts for him. "My memories are forever tied up with 9/11, because we flew home to New York and I had the Emmy in my lap -- which will never happen again in the history of aviation. It was the night of Sept. 10, 2001," said Mr. Emerson. "We just left the bags in the living room and fell asleep, only to be woken by the phone the next morning with friends calling to say, 'Turn on the television.' That colored everything. That whole fall season of 2001, it's like I sort of forgot that I had won this thing. You just stop thinking about the concerns of your career. Your little victory just didn't seem worth discussing. It was a unique season, one that I'll never forget."