I'm surprised they are still selling purple lupines. I thought you were far enough East that they'd be considered invasive.And I said:
These are not lupines. I am certain they are salvia because I have another picture of the same set of plants where the label, a sticker on the pot, is clearly readable. These are May Night Salvia. The 2 plants are completely different, not even the same order. Salvia are Lamiales, which include 23,810 species, including (Wikipedia says) "lavender, lilac, olive, jasmine, the ash tree, teak, snapdragon, sesame, psyllium, garden sage, and a number of table herbs such as mint, basil, and rosemary." Lupines are Fabales, which include "the families Fabaceae or legumes (including the subfamilies Caesalpinioideae, Mimosoideae, and Faboideae), Quillajaceae, Polygalaceae or milkworts (including the families Diclidantheraceae, Moutabeaceae, and Xanthophyllaceae), and Surianaceae."Blah blah blah... I had to reverse that line of Wikipedia-powered blather:
Lupines are in the family Fabaceae or Leguminosae — "commonly known as the legume, pea, or bean family..."
I'm just cutting and pasting from Wikipedia and not showing off my own knowledge. I had to look it all up. If you'd have told me, 10 minutes ago, that salvia and lupine were 2 words for the same plant, you could have fooled me.rhhardin reacted aptly:
Furze and gorse are the only two exact synonyms in English.And I said:
I'd like a comedy team named Furze and Gorse.And then I started thinking of all the comedy teams that were around in the 1960s. There was a sweetness to them. Who was I thinking of? Allen & Rossi?
That's a random men-in-shorts occurrence. Anyway, back then, the audience laughed easily at Marty simply saying "Hello dere."
The second sweet comedy team I think of is Shields & Yarnell:
That was back when we loved mime. Mimes were so sweet. And Sonny and Cher were a pretty sweet comedy team too. But where is the sweetness now?
The internet returned this 2017 NYT article, "Sick of Angry Comics? Try Some Sweet-Tempered Stand-Up":
Comedy clubs have long been packed with head-shakers airing grievances and heatedly picking apart nonsense. But [Josie] Long is part of a new breed of young performers more likely to begin a joke with affection than annoyance and to end with ridiculousness, not ridicule. This sunnier stand-up is in part a function of the times, when social media keeps count of likes and favorites, and late-night television is a chummy safe space for celebrities. But the hopefulness is also a refreshing artistic change of pace, a backlash against generations of smug finger-pointing and knowing raised eyebrows. When irritation becomes so common, good cheer can be novel, if not downright irreverent....Is there a nascent sweetness trend in comedy? If so, can we also get a sweetness trend in politics? I'm sick of all the anger there too.
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127 comments:
"If so, can we also get a sweetness trend in politics?"
Assuming it's not an old-fashioned faux question, that's funny.
And don't forget about Myron Cohen.
There was a rather twee Brit series called Rosemary and Thyme in which a couple of lady gardeners, played by Pam Ferris and Felicity Kendal, solve mysteries.
Those clips remind us how dreary, (and imbecilic) the prevailing entertainment of the 60' (Allen & Rossi) and 70s (Sonny & Cher) could be.
If sweetness can't also be intelligent and funny, then fuck it.
Don't let me forget to condemn Shields & Yarnell, too!
Look at the career arc of George Carlin. Early on funny, even a bit silly to funny, edgy (i.e.7 words you can’t say) to finally not so funny and misanthropic.
Frankly a lot of “sweet comedy” wasn’t funny but can we at least get to a place where Jim Gaffigan is the rule, not the exception
sometimes I wonder if this blog is for Boomers who want to process generational change.
“If sweetness can't also be intelligent and funny, then fuck it.”
Cookie, that statement says so much more than what you intended.
And it makes me wonder if comedy at its core is supposed to be cynical or not?
Sam Levenson, a former NYC schoolteacher, was definitely a purveyor of comedic sweetness in his many appearances on the Ed Sullivan show and elsewhere. And I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention George Burns & Gracie Allen--both their routines together and Burns' memories of childhood on the Lower East Side.
wwww said...
"sometimes I wonder if this blog is for Boomers who want to process generational change."
Kind of like how All in the Family helped the greatest generation process the changes of the sixties and seventies?
Boomers invented edgy comedy.
Gen X’ers and Millenials invented comedy that’s not funny
Or better put “THATS NOT FUNNY!!”
I never thought Lenny Bruce was all that funny.
I liked sonny & cher. Chet by herself not so much.
Luis prima and keely smith who sonny modeled the act on are even better at it.
See that old nlack magic on YouTube for a great example
Happy fathers day to all
John Henry
Whatever happened to the sweet audience?
"As God is my witness; I thought turkeys could fly!"
And I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention George Burns & Gracie Allen--both their routines together and Burns' memories of childhood on the Lower East Side.
Going back farther than most here probably remember, comedy was happy and tolerant way back. Fibber McGee and Molly and Fred Allen were both hugely popular radio shows.
Amos and Andy was a black themed radio show that was hugely popular with both white and black listeners. It was only later that people realized the characters were being spoken by white men. For TV, black actors took over.
Angry comedy probably began with Mort Sahl in the 50s.
Even his angry comedy was mostly ironic or sarcastic.
Not the stuff we see now.
I'll be in the Twin Cities in August. How is Dudley Riggs Brave New Workshop these days? Funny? Tolerable? Or TDS?
"sometimes I wonder if this blog is for Boomers who want to process generational change."
There is no need to wonder. It sometimes serves that purpose for me, and I presume, for others here.
Are you implying there is something wrong with that?
I prefer my comedy to be more philosophical.
She was dressed to kill in her furze and gorse. The furze was fake, of course, she wasn't heartless, but the gorse was the real deal and must have been worth a small fortune.
Burns and Allen were great, but they were on TV in the 1950s... ending in 1958. She died 6 years later, and he lived for 32 more years.
The comedy there was mostly just her being dumb -- a classic "Dumb Dora" character that was a stereotype when they started in vaudeville in the 1920s.
Just being dumb and being amused by the other person's dumbness... that was enough.
Btw, on the subject of sweet, on Friday I went to the funeral of maybe the sweetest person I've ever known. We were acquainted for more than thirty years, and I don't think I once saw him do anything but smile when he greeted me. Others commented on this at the funeral as well. He was just so nice. Sweet is the right word.
One of his grandsons said that he visited him in the hospital, close to his death. My friend had no strength, but he was cheerful and the grandson was miserable. He cheered his grandson up. Afterwards, the grandson asked him if some more family should come visit, and he said, Whoa - let me get some rest. I'm so weak, and it's hard work cheering everyone else up!
May he rest in peace.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-joke-life-idukl129052420080731
"Ulex europaeus (gorse, common gorse, furze or whin) is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to portions of Europe from the northern United Kingdom south to Portugal, and from the western Republic of Ireland east to Galicja in Poland and Ukraine."
Furze and Gorse, PC
Specializing in gardening law.
I don't know his other work, but I always enjoyed Mo Rocca's show My Grandmother's Ravioli. Never a snarky moment despite unlimited opportunities, and funny.
Rocky and Bullwinkle reruns still run in syndication. That’s a sweet duo for you.
May is still around I think but Nichols is dead. Both Bob and Ray are gone.
Another law professor, Amy Wax, thinks that a return to the values of the 1950s (which themselves are anchored on even more enduring Christian-based values) are in order. So does Jordon Peterson.
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/commentary/paying-the-price-for-breakdown-of-the-countrys-bourgeois-culture-20170809.html
If you hit your ball in the furze you can usually wedge it back into the fairway. Hit it in the gorse and you’ll have to take an unplayable..
Michael K. wrote:
"Angry comedy probably began with Mort Sahl in the 50s.
Even his angry comedy was mostly ironic or sarcastic."
Don't forget Tom Lehrer.He was as edgy as you could be in the 1950's. He was also highly literate and clever in a way today's comedians are not.
"In author Isaac Asimov's second autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt, he recounted seeing Lehrer perform in a Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954. Lehrer sang cleverly about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "...and after a while you gathered the 'it' was venereal disease [the song was likely I Got It From Sally (in later versions 'Agnes')]. Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every known perversion without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable (in those days) outside a nightclub."
Tom Lehrer is all over the interwebs. There’s a resurgence in his popularity every few years as he’s discovered by clever youngsters
I'd like to see Cartman from South Park's idea of "sweet" entering politics more.
Topo Gigio vs Lambchop - who'd come out alive?
The comedy there was mostly just her being dumb -- a classic "Dumb Dora" character that was a stereotype when they started in vaudeville in the 1920s.
Yes, but the same dynamic was seen in all male comedy routines, e.g. Abbott and Costello, so it was not a sexist thing.
And here's a bit of trivia -- when Burns and Allen really first started, Gracie was supposed to be the straight man and George the fool, but Gracie had such natural comedic talent that they flipped the roles.
I'd say try Brian Regan. He's hilarious and not mean about it. Very family friendly and laugh out loud funny.
Burns and Schreiber were great - and you could watch them with your parents (and now your grandchildren).
https://youtu.be/OXW0xy2UAdg
While I haven't seen much of Jim Gaffigan lately, I sem to remember him doing some really sweet stuff about kids and hot pockets.
The Carol Burnett show especially the bits where they tried to make each other bust up laughing. The Gone With the Wind sketch is a classic. Jim Gaffigan is funny and sweet.
"Look at the career arc of George Carlin. Early on funny, even a bit silly to funny, edgy (i.e.7 words you can’t say) to finally not so funny and misanthropic."
Carlin never stopped getting better. He was at his best at the very end. I don't think he ever got misanthropic. He did speak honestly about the world as it is.
I liked sonny & cher. Cher by herself not so much.
Cher has been doing everything in her power to make me dislike her but she hasn’t yet succeeded. And just look at how she has made the most of her opportunities in life. With a good but not great voice, she became a hugely successful singer. With perhaps above average but hardly stunning natural beauty, she became a fashion icon. She also became a top comedienne in terms of timing and other matters of execution, whatever one may have thought of her material (personally, I liked it). She turned in at least one very effective performance as an actress. She cross-leveraged each of those fields to boost her success in the others. Cher may talk the talk of a typical Hollywood leftie, but she has walked the walk of a hero of capitalism.
"...it makes me wonder if comedy at its core is supposed to be cynical or not?"
"It's funny because it's true" is not just a cliche; the best humor is about reality, and is not merely silly.
(My own comment was meant somewhat ironically.)
Mort Sahl didn't strike me as angry as much as detached and ironic and cynical . . . although that is a persona that I think often hides an angry person. Jean Shepherd once accused Sahl of "getting religion" when he became involved with Jim Garrison and Kennedy Conspiracy Theory. I knew a lot of once-coolly cynical "liberals" who "got religion" in the late Sixties and early Seventies when Sirhan Sirhan saw to it that Bobby Kennedy would never be president and then Nixon defeated McGovern and they began to despair that they would never see their dopey socialist Utopia dreams come to fruition. I don't know, but that could be when the Angry Comic was born.
It would be a shame if one's tastes were coarsened so as to miss the humor in Austin, Dickens, Thackeray, or Trollope. None of it was particularly sweet.
Whatever happened to Louis C.K. ?
"It's funny because it's true" is not just a cliche; the best humor is about reality, and is not merely silly."
Not a Monty Python fan then,are you? They had some pointed political satire, but there were plenty of skits that were merely silly - like the Spam skit and the cheese shop skit.
Speaking of Lambchop -- or Lambchops, I should say -- here is the famous Burns and Allen vaudeville skit Lambchops from 1929 on Vitaphone in the early days of talking motion pictures.
Out loud funny.
Don't forget Tom Lehrer.He was as edgy as you could be in the 1950's. He was also highly literate and clever in a way today's comedians are not.
I saw Tom Lehrer at the Interlude nightclub in LA during his prime. "Be Prepared" and "They're Rioting in Africa" are two of his most popular routines.
He was a math instructor at Harvard and MIT although he never got his PhD.
The Interlude was upstairs above the Crescendo. It was smaller and did not serve meals.
"And I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention George Burns & Gracie Allen--both their routines together and Burns' memories of childhood on the Lower East Side."
Burns and Allen were very funny, as was Jack Benny. They were not profane, and didn't have to be. Gleason's THE HONEYMOONERS was funny; also not profane, but definitely rooted in reality.
Moms Mabley! Flip Wilson! Red Skelton!
"Not a Monty Python fan then,are you?"
Not much, no.
There was also Abbott and Costello, remembered now chiefly for their "Who's on First" routine.
"Whatever happened to Louis C.K. ?"
He was just in the news...ah, here we go:
50 year old Comedian Chokes Chicken In Front Yard
"He was careful not to yell because he didn't want his 5 year old niece to come outside."
Part of Gracie Allen's shtick was taking words literally, thus upsetting meaning.
Example: George enters to find Gracie arranging a bouquet of flowers. He asks where she got them, "I went to visit my aunt in the hospital. You said I should take her flowers, so when nobody was looking, I did".
50 year old Comedian Chokes Chicken In Front Yard
What a jerk.
RE: Bob Boyd @ 10:30 AM:
Now that's funny!
RE: tcrosse @ 10:33 AM: Burns and Allen were meta before the term was ever used thus.
Gracie also said that the purpose of the Eiffel Tower was to hold up a blinking red light so planes wouldn't run into it.
"Whatever happened to the sweet comedians?"
If these clips are typical, I don't think there's much of a mystery here. Although I suppose that "pussy cat" line was pretty edgy for its time.
Apparently Shields was in The Conversation, playing himself. Not in the Louis CK way, though, which I suppose is the main point of this post.
"Carlin never stopped getting better. He was at his best at the very end. I don't think he ever got misanthropic. He did speak honestly about the world as it is."
It's funny how words like 'honest' and 'brilliant', etc... basically mean "agrees with me."
those were the days my friend
we'd thought they'd never end
we'd sing and laugh forever and a day
There was also Abbott and Costello, remembered now chiefly for their "Who's on First" routine.
In one of their movies they had a whole routine about limburger cheese. Yea, they were very funny and nothing like the "comedians" today.
Lou Costello died at 53 after a long history of heart trouble related to rheumatic fever.
I met Gracie Allen in 1963, a year before she died. (I had a summer job cleaning carpets in the Beverly Hills/Bel Air areas of LA.) She was home, he was on tour. She was EXACTLY like her stage persona. Scatterbrained, gabby, but obviously smart. Very genuine. And nice. She was far and away the nicest person I encountered that summer.
Sweet comedians are all woke now.
Jerry Seinfeld’s humor is sweet. So is Jay Leno’s. Tina Fey’s Is sometimes.
I'm with Robert Cook. So much of that stuff was dreck. I remember being a kid and watching the Ed Sullivan Show every Sunday and hating so much of it. Kids used to be subjected to the worst "entertainment".
Carol Burnett was the best and perhaps only "sweet" comedian that holds up.
You should check out Mike Birbiglia. He has a couple of stand-up specials on Netflix
I am switching back and forth between the internet and reading one of David Mamet's books. I just read this:
Why accept the second-rate in yourself or in others? Why laugh at the unfunny? Why sigh at the hackneyed? Why gasp at the predictable? Why do we do that? We do it because we need to laugh, to sigh, to gasp.
The applicability to the clips is rather obvious.
Michael K said...
Don't forget Tom Lehrer.He was as edgy as you could be in the 1950's. He was also highly literate and clever in a way today's comedians are not.
I saw Tom Lehrer at the Interlude nightclub in LA during his prime. "Be Prepared" and "They're Rioting in Africa" are two of his most popular routines.
"They're Rioting in Africa" is actually titled "The Merry Minuet" and it was the Kingston Trio.
Here is some really old comedy. Has anyone ever read the story in the Arabian Nights (yeah I know the official title is longer - sue me) called "The Historical Fart"? I've only seen it in the Penguin paperback edition.
A king, Abu Hasan, weds a beautiful young bride. The wedding party pigs out on all sorts of food for hours*. The seven veils dance happens. Then, Abu Hasan rises to go to the wedding bed, cutting a massive fart as he gets up. Massive. Like, all the guests must have been sickened. Abu Hasan is so embarassed - he just keeps going. Out of the wedding hall, down the street, right to the docks where he gets on a ship and sails away.
Decades pass. Abu Hasan becomes homesick, and he's nearing the end of his life. "Surely", he thinks, "everyone has forgotten about my fart at the wedding, so much time as passed?" So he gets on a boat and sails back home, slinking into town at 10pm or so when everyone is preparing for bed. Tired, he sits under a window of a nearby house, where he hears this conversation:
"Mother, when was I born? My friend wishes to do my horoscope."
"Oh sweetie, you were born the year of Abu Hasan's Fart"
Wikipedia says Burton translated the stories in the late 1880's but the scope of these folk stories goes back to the 8th century. That is one old fart joke. Possibly the oldest.
The Penguin edition also has a story of 3 men hiding out in a vertical cabinet of some sort, one on top of the other. Eventually, guy on top can't hold his piss any longer, and just lets go. This causes the second guy down to start pissing, and the poor guy on the bottom is getting pissed on by the two guys on top of him. Darned if I can remember the context of that scenario.
hours*
*meant to say the description of the food served is also a great feaure of the story and it makes you want to cook once you are done reading it. But not cutting huge farts, that is cleary life-changing.
Steve Martin made the conscious decision to be silly, rather than Serious and Relevant as everyone else was in those days. He figured it would age better, and it did. Nixon jokes no longer have their power to amuse.
Russell Peters is, I think, one of the most popular comedians on earth owing to his following in coutries such as India. Hilarious and not particularly mean.
I miss Flip Wilson.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_Wilson
We tend to forget that a good portion of what we see today is dreck and only remember the good bits. Same back then.
Stiller and Meara. Caught some of their early stuff on the Ed Sullivan Show the other night.
Simple and funny. A lost art.
Carlin never stopped getting better. He was at his best at the very end. - Cook
Oh, please. By the end he was shrill, bitter and full of hate.
Unlistenable compared to his earlier work.
The only joke or moment of humor in the Bible (as far I am aware) takes place when the angel of the Lord tells Sarah, then age 90, that she will conceive and bear a child (Issac) who will be the founder of a great nation. To which Sarah, laughing to herself, replies: "At my age, will there be pleasure in the conceiving?"
Bill Cosby was a very sweet comedian. They even called him America's Dad. Other comedians found him sanctimonious because he would criticize them for working blue. He would say it's so much easier to get laughs being crude, but it takes real chops to get people to laugh working clean. The other comedians, finding him sanctimonious--I think he may be correct, btw, but it can come off as sanctimonious--basically accused him of "civility bullshit."
Carlin was awful in the middle and later years of his life/career, after he got politically conscious -- which happened fairly early on. Initially, in his Hippy-Dippy Weatherman phase, he was sweet and funny and silly. Then he became a leftist know-it-all bore.
I like paradoxes. Bill Cosby, the great sweet comedian of my lifetime, turns out to be a real scumbag in his personal life. Great talent finds strange homes.
Nichols and May
Stiller and Meara
Pretty smart and sweet
Eddie Murphy, in particular, used to bristle at Cosby's criticism. In fact, the person who got the whole Cosby train rolling, the guy who got people talking about Cosby's bad deeds, is a dirty comedian. Hannibal Buress used to do a "Bill Cosby" routine all about Cosby's sanctimony. He would get laughs talking about how Cosby would talk down to black people about the way they dress and talk. Buress would joke, but yeah Bill, we dress and talk funny, but you raped women! One of his performances went viral online, and that was the beginning of the end for Bill Cosby's "teflon" public image. Paradox: a blue comedian, pissed off about Cosby's "civility bullshit," took down "America's Dad," arguably the great sweet comedian of my lifetime.
Cher was always running Sonny down.
Poor people really like lupines, so give them as many as you can find.
Or should I have said: Pretty, smart and sweet.
A Panda walks into a bar . . . . .
The Abbott and Costello Show was my favorite. At the beginning they'd come out in front of a curtain and do brief stand-up bit. Remember "Stinky" (played by Joe Besser) and "Mr. Bacciagalupe?" Hilarious. "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankstein" was one of the funniest and (when I first saw it) scariest movies I'd ever seen.
Loved the Amos 'n Andy TV show too. The duo of Kingfish and Andy Brown was a classic.
The paradox is that Cosby's advice to young black men was good, and sweet comedy is harder than blue.
The message was good, but the messenger very, very flawed. Same as it ever was.
"They're Rioting in Africa" is actually titled "The Merry Minuet" and it was the Kingston Trio.
You're right. It is described as "Tom Lehrer-like" and some think he wrote it. I was just remembering wrong.
Cher was always running Sonny down.
After Sonny died, Cher said that the joke was always on Sonny, but it was his joke.
Paradox: a blue comedian, pissed off about Cosby's "civility bullshit," took down "America's Dad," arguably the great sweet comedian of my lifetime.
I still think the Cosby thing is a lot of voluntary, consensual stuff that went on in Hollywood until yesterday.
Imagine Errol Flynn if he were alive today.
In one of David Niven's books he recounts a story about getting drunk with Prince Rainer who asked him who gave him the best blowjob.
He started to answer "Grace..." Realized who he was with, and finished "Gracie Fields."
Three basic types of standup:
1. I'm so stupid that...
2. We're (the comic and the audience) are so stupid that...
3. They're (targets who are presumed not present) are so stupid that...
Type 3 has been in the ascendant for quite a while.
"Mime": in one episode of Cheers, Diane who has started many careers, announces that she is taking up mime. This would be annoying to the gang in the bar in any case, but then she pronounces it "meem." You're taking up what? "Meem." Like the two word joke, "Pretentious? Moi?"
Sweetness and dumbness. "Dude, Where's My Car?" The Teri Garr character (Inga) in Young Frankenstein. I think there's a laugh of relief: wouldn't it be great if life could be that innocent? I think there needs to be somebody quite a bit smarter to make the whole scene funny.
Am I the first to bring up Month Python's skit on lupines?
https://youtu.be/qLkhx0eqK5w
If so, can we also get a sweetness trend in politics? I'm sick of all the anger there too.
Frank Turner's latest album, entitled Be More Kind, has a recurring theme of more kindness in politics and social interactions. Here is the title track
Burns and Allen wasn't just Dumb Does. There were convoluted mistaken-identity, Gracie's misapprehension plots that you just had to follow through to resolution..Hillbillies did that all the time too.
Hell that stuff never gets old.
Dumb Dora!!!
"Steve Martin made the conscious decision to be silly, rather than Serious and Relevant as everyone else was in those days. He figured it would age better, and it did. Nixon jokes no longer have their power to amuse."
Yes, I can remember an article in Time or Newsweek about how he is a new kind of comedian, just being silly, with no social/political commentary. Balloons on his head or that arrow-through-the-head gag. And "happy feet" and pills to get small. Banjo playing about being a "rambling" guy.
When Richard Pryor was on TV in the 1960 (I remember him on the Merv Griffin show), he was very sweet — childlike and used a baby-talk voice. I loved him! Later, he completely changed. He was great either way, but I'd love to watch someone today who is as sweet as he was then.
Blogger Oso Negro said...
Moms Mabley! Flip Wilson! Red Skelton!
I saw Flip Wilson in Las Vegas. He was the lead in for Bobby Darin. I saw a lot of shows in Vegas. Friday night and the booze was gone it was hop in the car and off to either Vegas or Tijuana.
There were two major reasons for the "sweet" comedians - The Hayes Code (movies) and the FCC (TV). I remember seeing some of the acts in Vegas and the guy you thought spent his Sundays in church was as raunchy as all get out.
Martin Short said that being with Steve Martin is like the movie Deliverance. It's all fun and games until the banjos come out.
Comedy does not need to be "sweet" again so much as funny and not hostile. As far as comedy this century, even though Key & Peele were often dealing in stereotypes, it was never hostile . . . and usually funny.
Kate Danaher said...
Am I the first to bring up Month Python's skit on lupines?
Beetcha with an allusion at 1:04.
Martin Short is always not quite funny.
Vaughn Meader and Naomi Brossart -- impersonations of JFK and Jackie -- so political humor but totally not cruel (in my opinion) and funny (in my opinion).
Martin Short is always not quite funny.
Martin Short is Canadian funny.
Surprised that no one's mentioned Red Skelton. A comedy star of stage, screen, radio and television. Nothing but clean and nice. An old Hollywood producer told me that Red was one of the meanest, nastiest hypocrites in Hollywood... I choose to not believe that.
Ralph and Kate,
I beat both of you on the overnight thread.
I didn't get to that thread, but I did recognize them as salvia, not lupines.
Watch the British comedian James Acaster in Netflix, a real one-off, and zero bitterness.
"Don't let me forget to condemn Shields & Yarnell, too!"
Now now Robert. They did eventually break up in a messy divorce. So that must have brought a smile to your lips, right?
"RE: tcrosse @ 10:33 AM: Burns and Allen were meta before the term was ever used thus."
Robert, now that's something with which I can agree. Just the premise of their TV show was enough. A pair of vaudvillians who have a TV show about a pair of vaudvillians who have a TV show, plus George often breaking through the fourth wall to go off and watch the action of the others on TV, plus the two of them doing vaudville in front of the curtain each week. It was and still is the most existential TV I've ever seen.
Kate Danaher, I was scrolling through to see if any one brought up Monty Python. I never see or hear about lupines without thinking of their skit. As to angry comedians, I think of Lenny Bruce more than Mort Saul.
Actually, Michael Fitzgerald, I remember Red Skelton doing what my mother (admittedly something of a prude) called "dirty jokes" on his tv show. Probably Skelton's "blue" material would be considered harmless today; but I remember MAD Magazine (at that stage of my life the Bible of humor) doing a joke about his "naughty" stuff. "And now, in the words of Red Skelton, after doing a half hour of dirty jokes, 'So goodbye for now, and may God bless!"
"An old Hollywood producer told me that Red was one of the meanest, nastiest hypocrites in Hollywood... I choose to not believe that."
That could be true, but are you sure he wasn't referring to Red Buttons? He turned into a horror, I understand, when his show became instantly popular in the 50s. Milton Berle was also supposedly a monster, and Jerry Lewis, and many others....
Of course, it's a truism that comedians (and novelists) are depressed, miserable bastards.
Ou sont les Buster Keatons d'antan?
Sweet mimes? She's beating him.
No one has mentioned Bob Newhart? I would classify his standup as sweet.
Somebody commented:
"Of course, it's a truism that comedians (and novelists) are depressed, miserable bastards."
A "truism" is defined as "a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting."
When you use it, I think you mean it as a stale, hackneyed, stereotype which has little empirical evidence to back it up. At least that's what I hear.
Outside of some bullshit biographies and the occasional portrayal in a movie of the week or an episode of "One Day At A Time," there seems to be little evidence of comics being "depressed, miserable bastards" in any concentration higher than that of the general public. Of course, what would I know, I've only been a professional standup comic for 34 years!
I would no sooner generalize about standup that way than I would about women or thoracic surgeons or test pilots or janitors. Unless I had some of that evidence I alluded to earlier to back it up.
What if I told you that EVERYthing you think you know about comedians is based on a handful of incidents involving just a handful of iconic performers over the past 60 years?
Take the comedy red pill, Neo.
A long time ago Steve Allen (remember him?) wrote a book called “Funny People.” It was his take on many of the key postwar comedians — Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Lily Tomlin, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Jonathan Winters, etc.
Mostly it was self-aggrandizing — “I discovered this one, this one stole a character from me,” etc. But the most astute thing I learned from this was that, after WWII, comedy cultivated an aura of “hipness” and “cool” — it couldn’t be sweet, it had to be cool. The coolest comedians directed their material to the band, not the audience. Drug and sex references were mandatory, sometimes dressed up in coded language.
I remember watching London Lee — a legendarily awful comedian — try to recover from a bad set on a talk show by looking to the band every time he let off another klunker line. We, the audience, just wasn’t hip enough to dig what he was layin’ down, maannn. I wonder if sweet comedy fell victim to cool.
Robert Cook@8:27... Definitely Red Skelton because I cited Red's patriotic and biblical homages, and that's when he brought out the charge of hypocrisy.
William Chadwick@8:23... Maybe, maybe. He had a lot of shapely ladies in his skits, and there was that naughty widdle kid...
And Mary Beth with a welcome mention of the great Bob Newhart!
How about Neal Hamburger? Not sweet? Weirdly sweet? Merely unsalted?
For dozens of transcribed interviews with those involved in the comedy business in the 1940's to the 1980's, go to classicshowbiz.blogspot.com.
You may not recognize the names of some of the interviewees, but they were there and dish on the famous.
And Red Skelton was infamous to and despised by those working for him. One face to the public ("And may God bless") and another to his writers. Just search his name on that website.
"'A "truism" is defined as "a statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting.'
"When you use it, I think you mean it as a stale, hackneyed, stereotype which has little empirical evidence to back it up. At least that's what I hear."
No, that's not what I mean. I mean simply that "it is often said." There's a truth to it, but I don't know how far it goes.
I'm going to classic showbiz website Wilbur- To have my childlike innocence destroyed!
@Robert Cook:
I cut and pasted the dictionary definition. Are we so post-truth now that we're turfing the dictionary?
I give the fuck up.
@tragic christian:
I own a signed copy of that book (worked with Steve Allen in 1993).
Funny thing about Steve Allen: He actually _did_ discover this person or that. They actually probably _did_ steal a bit or a character from him. Yes, he was at ground zero (or close) in a fairly new medium and he did have an eye for talent and a brilliant mind.
"The show's regulars were Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Don Knotts, Pat Harrington Jr., Dayton Allen, and Gabriel Dell. All except film veteran Dell, who had appeared in the Bowery Boys movie series (also known as the Dead End Kids and the East Side Kids), were relatively obscure performers prior to their stints with Allen, and all went on to stardom."
Pretty impressive.
He also insisted on having Lenny Bruce on as a guest. Lenny Bruce. On television.
He booked Miles Davis on his show. Miles Davis!
His show and its quirky features influenced dozens of comics and shaped shows like Letterman.
Say what you will about Steve Allen, he was the real deal. And sweet. (And a nice guy off-camera and offstage, in my experience.)
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