Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:36 PM

Don Rickles is on Letterman this Friday (because talk shows never book elder guests). His appearances are always a delight.

Whenever Rickles is on Letterman, Letterman will invariably say "Oh, Dooooon." This is an allusion to Don Wilson, announcer and butt of fat jokes on the Jack Benny Show.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:49 AM

Speaking as we were of Butch Patrick, Johnny Hardwick (the voice of TV's Dale Gribble and a talented gent in his own right) sends us this article about a Texas couple who've set up their house to look like 1313 Mockingbird Lane (a.k.a the Munsters' house) and the special housewarming/Halloween charity fair they held there. Of course, Butch Patrick drops in for the fun.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:19 AM

Bruce Campbell gives a list of the best ten and worst ten horror flicks.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:40 PM

Talking of Butch Patrick (TV's Eddie Munster), according to his FAQ, he hangs out with Jerry Mathers and Danny Bonaduce.

I once performed comedy with Butch Patrick in the audience. He knew the headliner or something and was living near Austin, TX so he dropped in and became part of an audience of about 7. This was part of a particularly surreal evening which included the city of Austin attempting to start an annual Mardi Gras parade as 6th Street is, of course, Austin's answer to Bourbon Street (No, I don't know what the question was). We literally stopped the show in the middle so everyone could look at the parade. The parade itself consisted of two pickup trucks and a Toyota Corolla that made a wrong turn and just thought everyone was being really friendly by cheering and such. The parade was over and we continued the show.

Later that evening, between shows, someone popped his/her head into the club and said "Hey, Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner are at Maggie Mae's." And, no, neither Costner nor Eastwood dropped in. As MC of show 2, I opened with the announcement that Anson Williams was at the pizza place across the street.

But the point is I played for Butch Patrick. And if that don't get me laid, nothing on this blog will.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:18 PM

Speaking of impersonators, this is the website of Dakota Horvarth, the kid Frank Sinatra impersonator who played the Jennifer Aniston-Brad Pitt wedding at age 13 and did a jillion talk shows a year or two back. He also looks to have had one of the better childhoods ever outside of Butch Patrick. I hope he saved some money for a college fund since I suspect the act gets less cute as he grows older, at least judging from his two month booking in Akron.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:05 PM

We established earlier that everyone wants to liven up their parties and the best way to do so is to hire John Cleese impersonator John Parkin. But if you can't afford John Parkin's services, you may want to try Ed Wells. Or at least I'm presuming that a John Clesse lookalike who doesn't actually look like John Cleese is fairly inexpensive.

Nor does Mr. Wells particularly sound like John Cleese.
(via Mark Evanier).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:56 AM

The LA Times has an article on the Valley Girl dialect. Next week, look for an article on breakdancing being all the rage.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:33 PM

Here, Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers meet a Harpo Marx knockoff named Kool Katz.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:32 PM

Get your own limited issue maquette of Jackie Jokers, the so-called "clown prince of show-biz". Yet if one examines these 7 covers of Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers, in three of them, he's doing magic and on one of them, he's spinning plates.

Clown prince, feh! And people wonder why I have no doubt that Uncle Scrooge is richer than Richie Rich.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:20 PM

Here is Little Sad Sack, the adventuires of Sad Sack as a boy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:57 AM

Paul Krassner writes a review in the LA Times of a new book about Lenny Bruce's obscenity trials (login:cptspaulding/cptspaulding). While Krassner likes the book, it disturbs me that the authors got the joke Lenny made after Kennedy's assasination wrong. The joke they quote is not only totally wrong but is, of course, less funny.

Lenny Bruce is the most influential comic of the last forty years. My proof of that is very simple: Nobody gets arrested for telling jokes anymore and we have Lenny Bruce to thank for that. This CD is a recording of what is supposed to be Lenny's best performance ever.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:54 PM

Doonesbury closes his week on blogging with this strip. If I knew he was going to close with the "hot chick on the Internet is really a guy" joke, I would have saved my gag from Monday about how dated his punchline was for today. I started messing around with the Internet in 1991 and the joke was old then. In fact, I believe that joke was first told in a reply to the first ever email written by a woman.

If only Trudeau's skepticism about things written on the Internet was developed before he drew this strip.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:50 AM

Jim Treacher mocks how yesterday's Doonesbury seems to have Zonker Jr (or whatever the hell his name is) type in articles he could simply cut and paste.

Today's was kind of funny. Although I notice that the other kid has switched from "Dude" to "Man". Look for "Bro" tomorrow and "Homey" on Friday and Saturday.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 7:29 PM

I saw Comedian Saturday. While it doesn't quite show, as the tagline promises, "where comedy comes from", it does show the aggravation of performing and working on new jokes. Jerry Seinfeld takes a particularly hard route by publicly retiring his old material. Almost all comedians, even when working on new stuff, will open with an old joke or two to get a rhythm going. While, yes, Seinfeld's fame helps a little for the difficult transition, that buys you maybe a five minutes grace period (as Colin Quinn correctly notes). This is why Ray Romano gazes at Seinfeld in awe when he realizes that there are no loopholes for what Seinfeld is doing. (An interesting contrast is the awe Seinfeld held for Cosby in a discussion he has with Chris Rock about a Bill Cosby concert--- two-and-a-half hours, almost all new material, no intermission, no opener.)

Almost every comedian I know has commented on how heartening it is to see that even Seinfeld has to endure some of the same crap we do and gets the same jitters we do. (At one point, he asks "How big do I have to be for the audience not to talk?") Seemingly less unsure of himself is Orny Adams whose high confidence level doesn't seem to match his talent level (Granted we don't see much of his act but his using the bar stool as a wacky prop was enough proof for me; when you watch a lot of stand-up comedy, you pick up on these signs.) Granted, Orny, who's about my age, has George Shapiro (who manages Seinfeld and who managed Andy Kaufman) as a manager and did Letterman and Montreal. So what do I know? I don't think he looks good in this movie and even if the general public doesn't care, those who do the hiring will probably see it.

All in all, an excellent moving picture show.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 6:51 PM

Gary Trudeau does bloggers today (and presumably this week) with the original punchline that bloggers have nothing to say (Check out next week's strip about two guys standing next to each other talking on their cell phones).

I don't have much to say, I will grant. Other than, at least I wasn't dopey enough to fall for the Presidential IQ hoax.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:48 PM

Today would have been Margaret Dumont's birthday. Here's a blogcritics article about her with a debunking in the comments column by me about the "Dumont never got the jokes" myth.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:32 PM

About a month ago, Forbes ranked the fifteen wealthiest fictional characters. Among the injustices of this list was ranking Richie Rich above Scrooge McDuck.

Uncle Scrooge writer Don Rosa attacks this injustice as well as the gross underestimate of Scrooge's wealth at $8.2 billion. (Although in Forbes's defense, perhaps the day they did the official count Scrooge had been robbed by the Beagle Boys and had not yet rescued his dough.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:20 PM

Speaking of Mark Evanier, he has a picture of Harpo Marx and Jerry Lewis in a mug-off. Harpo wins.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:17 PM

Holy Moley! Great Caesar's Ghost! By the Beard of Odin! Mark Evanier now has a page of weblog links and for some dopey reason I'm on it. The head writer for Pink Lady and Jeff digs my stuff! (I am, of course, joking; Mark Evanier is the standard bearer of pop culture themed weblogs.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:54 PM

My performance as Sheldon Leonard was terrific, thanks for asking. (And if you're still unsure of who Sheldon Leonard is, you might recollect him from It's a Wonderful Life as Nick the bartender ("Hey, get me, I'm giving out wings!").) A friend's review was "Now if you could only be equally skilled in something that's marketable."

I dunno if I agree that it's unmarketable. There's gotta be a market for a comedic, Jewish-looking gangster. Hell, Michael Lerner and Alex Rocco can't play everything.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:42 PM

Punch Drunk Love was terrific. I hope Paul Thomas Anderson is collecting a million frequent flier miles because he'll need them for the extra plane seat for his Oscar!

The friend I saw it with had the perfect summary "You don't know what will happen next. And how many films can you say that about?"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:25 PM

I auditioned for the Aspen Comedy Festival yesterday. I've played around last year with the idea of doing what's done during the Sundance Film Festival where you have alternate film festivals in neighboring towns at the same time like Slamdance which are as successful as the original.

So I'd find a town near Aspen and hold the Gaspin' Comedy Festival or the Graspin' Comedy Festival or whatever. However there is a fatal flaw to this plan: The reason alternate film festivals are so successful is that people like going to the movies. "Come see eight more hours of stand-up" is a harder sell.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:28 PM

On the subject, here's the story of a guy Michael Moore sued for using Roger-and-Me-esque techniques on him. Also this book has a funny essay where the author does the same thing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:07 PM

Reviews like this one of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine question the relevance of Moore's emphasis that Columbine happened on the same day as US bombers dropped a huge payload. Here's an essay that Moore wrote at the time of Columbine making the same point (It was on his website at the time).

This essay was the start of my dislike of Moore because he denies that the Serbs were committing genocide on the Albanians. I wonder if he ever retracted that claim. Maybe I should follow him with a video camera, this photograph, a bullhorn and a guy in a gorilla suit to find out.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:02 PM

Punch Drunk Love, the Adam Sandler/Paul Thomas Anderson collaboration opens this weekend in New York and LA. A friend and I have been playing phone tag to set up seeing this together. Invariably, we leave messages where we impersonate Adam Sandler. Mine are complete with high-pitched screeching songs.

Here's the story of the real-life guy who spent $3000 on pudding to get a million frequent flier miles.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:22 PM

Want to liven up your party? Sure, we all do! Why not book professional John Cleese impersonator John Parkin? Read some testimonials by satisfied customers. (Four of the eleven testimonials are weddings; not a bad idea now that Emil Sitka isn't available to shout "Hold hands, you lovebirds!") (via Mark Evanier).
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:31 PM

Sunday, October 13th, I will be performing in a radio play production of an old Saint episode. I will be playing a role Sheldon Leonard played. The location is the Fake Gallery at 4319 Melrose Ave. Show starts at 8 pm.

If the imdb entry for Sheldon Leonard is insufficient to jog your memory cells, here's an episode of The Lucy Show guest-starring Sheldon Leonard. The episode is called, appropriately enough, "Lucy Meets Sheldon Leonard". As was the style of the time, a brief biography of the special guest star is worked into the dialogue ("After appearing so many times as a gangster in the movies, you then started producing television shows such as The Danny Thomas Show!").

UPDATE: The reviews are in!
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 8:50 AM

OUT OF CONTEXT DEPT: From this WSJ article about the gay community's embrace of Spongebob Squarepants

Early in September on NBC's "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," Mr. O'Brien asked Tom Kenny, the comic who is the voice of SpongeBob, to address the "controversy" about one of SpongeBob's pals, a grumpy squid named Squidward who speaks in a voice some find reminiscent of Paul Lynde, the late comic actor who specialized in gay double-entendre on "Hollywood Squares."
"Whether he's intended to be a gay character or not, that's the question people are asking," responded Mr. Kenny. Describing Squidward as a fussbudget who likes bubble bath and classical music, Mr. Kenny ultimately dodged the question. "It's never been addressed by us on the show," he said, adding with a wink that besides, "all the main characters are hiding horrible secrets of their own."

When Tom Kenny was saying "all the main characters are hiding horrible secrets of their own", he was not alluding to the Spongebob Squarepants show. He was doing a bit about how sitcoms in the past would have clearly gay characters but no one talked about it because the characters were hiding their own secrets (my wife is a witch; I live with a genie; I own a talking horse, etc.). In fact, the question itself was obviously a lead-in to do the bit.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:50 PM

Barbershop is now running ads that exploit the controversy. The ad cuts to a clip of Eddie saying people are supposed to talk about whatever they want in a barbershop to his saying the OJ did it to Calvin saying "Do not get him started". I believe that the announcer invites to see the film that has everyone talking.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:34 AM

By the way, Red Buttons does have a website. But he still never got a dinner.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:25 AM

In 1993, Ted Danson appeared in blackface at Whoopi Goldberg's roast. Conan O'Brien had an interview with "Danson" a few days later (actually, a Clutch Cargo-esque picture of Danson). In the interview, "Danson" listed Friars Club comics who loved the bit

Marty Ingalls was peeing in his pants, Freddie Roman was worshiping me, Red Buttons said it was brilliant, Jack Carter was in tears

Comedian Red Buttons sued Conan and NBC for slander. Here are the details and results of that case.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:22 AM

Something else not mentioned in the New York Observer article(WARNING:contains swears) that I discussed earlier. A disadvantage of having Comedy Central in the room for a roast is that part of the charm of a roast is people acting different than their public image. So a roast would have Jack Benny go blue or what have you.

The most famous/infamous example is Ed Sullivan at Don Rickles's roast in the late sixties (You will, of course, need to imagine this in Ed Sullivan's voice):

I have a few words to say. F&% you, you bald-headed bastard.

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:13 AM

I was thinking about what I said about being surprised about how funny Paul Shaffer was at Chevy Chase's roast. Perhaps I shouldn't be that surprised. I've always felt that Paul's contributions to Letterman were underrated. Hell, you sit through Warren Zevon trying to be funny when subbing for Paul and you see it ain't easy.

The best example I remember was during the NBC show. Dave was ranting about Howdy Doody and Buffalo Bob's appearance in a commercial for a hotel chain. Dave complains that it makes Buffalo Bob and his puppet look sleazy, like they spend their days travelling and staying in cheap hotels. He then says "I don't know if that's the image they're trying to project." Paul says "Who, Howdy Doody or the hotel?" BAM! Dave chuckles and says "Yeah, I guess it's hard to choose a winner out of that bunch" and then proceeds to do a few more minutes of comedy around how silly the hotel looks for having a puppet as a guest ("More towels for Mr. Doody?") This is exactly what a straight man is supposed to do, provide fodder for additional comedy.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:59 AM

I just saw the live version of Mr Show. Woooh! Greatest show ever. A majority of the material was new stuff. Of course, I got a Los Angeles-only version with performances by cast members who were unable to tour.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:02 PM

A NY Observer article about the Friars Club roast given for Chevy Chase (WARNING: Has dirty words). The article states that the roast wasn't terribly good and blames the younger comics performing in it including Comedy Central's desire for younger comics.

I'm not convinced. Roasts aren't that hard and I say that as someone who's done a few (including this past Monday when I roasted Lew Wasserman's granddaughter in honor of her pending nuptials to Milton Berle's grandnephew. I love Hollywood!). Of course, hidden under the veneer of the insults and gay sex jokes is genuine affection for the roasted. I think the problem with the Chevy Chase roast is that the only SNL veterans he could attract to his roast were Lorraine Newman, Al Franken, and Paul Shaffer. According to a review of Tom Shales's book about SNL, the main constant amongst the casts throughout SNL's history is a hatred for Chevy Chase.

What sort of surprised me was how good Paul Shaffer is at roasting.

Combustible Boy aka the Blazing Blogger (of the Sound and the Fury) asked me to explain this joke:

When the laughter subsided, Mr. Shaffer dropped a beauty of a show-business insider’s joke: "How about that new Saturday Night Live book," he said. "They were pretty rough on Chevy. I haven’t seen anybody eat that much [$&%!] since the biography of Danny Thomas."

An apocryphal rumor about Danny Thomas is that he was into what the kids call "plating". Mr. Thomas would supposedly lie under a glass coffee table while the hookers he had hired would defecate on said table.

Hey, blame Combustible Boy. He asked!

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:27 PM

Barbara Streisand can't find the word gullible in the dictionary. Details here. The snopes debunking.

UPDATE: Streisand admits to being duped but resorts to the usual last refuge of the duped: saying that the statement is true even if not written by Shakespeare.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:39 AM

Sunday October 13th, I will be playing a role Sheldon Leonard played in a radio play production of an old Saint episode he appeared on. More details as to location and time when I have them.

UPDATE: I stupidly forgot to include a link of who the hell Sheldon Leonard is. I have one now.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 12:37 AM

I'd been getting the 503 error when I published entries for my blog. Equally important was that the archives list wasn't updating. Solution: Copy your template and paste in Notepad. Select a new template. Copy and paste your old template on top of the new template. Save and republish all.
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