Friday, April 16, 2004

Mushroom Soup Time

I'm still hacking away at that deadline so I've decided to post the Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup can. For those of you who are woefully unhip to the ways of the Internet, this ancient tradition (adhered to by almost no one but me) means that the proprietor of the weblog is swamped and won't be posting much for a while. We'll be back as soon as we finish our current assignment or when a flood of donations (hint, hint) convinces us that this is almost as important as paying work. Hasta la vista, baby.

• Posted at 8:56 PM · LINK

Funny Folks (Finale)

Well, this brings us to the end of Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Standups of All Time. Their Top Twenty consisted of Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, Roseanne Barr, Eddie Murphy, Johnny Carson, Jerry Seinfeld, Robin Williams, Bob Newhart, David Letterman, Ellen DeGeneres, Don Rickles, Jonathan Winters, Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison, in that order.

I was right that their Top Two would be Pryor and Carlin...though I would have reversed the order. Matter of fact, I might have put a couple of folks ahead of Pryor, but it isn't an unreasonable choice at all. My pal Daniel Frank theorized they'd put Carlin first since Comedy Central just acquired all of Carlin's HBO Specials. I thought of that but then noted that immediately following the broadcast on which they revealed their #1 pick, the network scheduled a Richard Pryor Special. In any case, I hadn't noticed either of these facts when I predicted Carlin and Pryor. They're just obvious choices.

Also as predicted, they had Bill Hicks in the Top Twenty. I thought there were two names unknown but as it turns out, they teased 19 of their picks instead of 18. I accidentally dropped Steve Martin from the list of those previewed, and Lord Buckley didn't make their list at all.

The tricky thing with a ranking like this has to do with what's being considered. A lot of the folks there are beloved for what they did apart from standup. Most of the clips they showed of Jonathan Winters, for example, were of him guesting on shows where he was being interviewed. He's always been brilliant at that but I don't think I'd consider that "standup." I don't think most people who love Jonathan Winters have even seen him do standup...but I also think that if Comedy Central had used a stricter definition, they'd have left out a lot of Big Stars. If I'd been assembling a show like that, I think I'd want to get clips in of Johnny Carson and Billy Crystal.

Yeah, one can quibble. I can't imagine any criteria by which Roseanne Barr places higher than Bob Newhart...or Ellen DeGeneres is above Robert Klein. And while I think Chris Rock is terrific, I also think I'd want to see him be terrific for a few more years before I put him above Cosby and next to Woody Allen. But we can all come up with arguments like this, and I still think it's not a bad list. Someone put a good amount of thought into it and there's some nice recognition there for some folks, plus a good overview of how diverse the standup talent pool has been — and how non-diverse in some areas.

The next thing I'd like to see them do is to take this list, send it to everyone who's alive and on it, plus everyone who might qualify in the second hundred, and ask them to vote their twenty favorites. I have a hunch it would yield a very different Top Twenty...but Carlin and Pryor would still probably be in the top two slots.

• Posted at 7:22 PM · LINK

Pompeo Posar (1921-2004)

It apparently hasn't made the wire services but the great glamour photographer, Pompeo Posar, passed away on April 6. He was quite an artist with the camera...and guys in my age bracket owe him big for all the fine, adolescent fantasies. There's an obit posted over at the Playboy site. [Caution: Mild naked women photos.]

I have a funny story about the one time I met Mr. Posar but I'm still on that deadline and it'll take a while to type it out. Maybe next week some time.

• Posted at 5:54 PM · LINK

Set the TiVo

The overnight edition of Saturday Night Live that airs early Sunday AM on NBC (3 AM in most timezones) seems to switch back and forth between recent shows and very old ones. This coming Sunday, they're running an episode hosted by Jay Leno — with musical guests, The Neville Brothers — that originally aired February 22, 1986. This was the season when the cast consisted of Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr, Nora Dunn, Anthony Michael Hall, Jon Lovitz, Dennis Miller, Randy Quaid, Terry Sweeney and Danitra Vance, with "featured players" Al Franken, A. Whitney Brown and Damon Wayans. It was one of the periods in the show's history that is generally forgotten...but when you see them now, there's occasionally some real good stuff in there. At the very least, a lot of it is interesting in a historical sense.

What I recall of this episode is that Leno did a very strong monologue at the outset and then they stuck him in a lot of sketches that seemed calculated to show what he couldn't do: Accents, singing, playing characters, etc. I have a hunch Jay will not be plugging this on The Tonight Show but the opening spot is a good example of how good a standup he was at the time.

This was also the period during which A. Whitney Brown was doing very sharp commentaries during the Weekend Update segment — material that often sailed way over the heads of the studio audience. If this is the episode I think it is, his commentary was about Iran and Iraq, and is still sadly relevant.

Friday, April 16, 2004

Mushroom Soup Time

• Posted at 8:56 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

• Posted at 8:53 PM · LINK