Saturday, April 23, 2005

Gas Guzzling

And how much will it cost a resident of Los Angeles to drive to the new Zankou Chicken? Find out here.

• Posted at 8:09 PM · LINK

Important Stuff

My friends who live around the west side of Los Angeles will be thrilled to know that as of this morning, Zankou Chicken has opened their latest outlet. It's on Sepulveda, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, in an area that had no decent restaurants when I worked over there in the early eighties. Zankou serves exquisite rotisserie chicken which most diners slather with the garlicky Zankou sauce.

Right around the corner is a shopping center with a Koo Koo Roo Chicken...so in one block, you have my two favorite places in the world to devour poultry. I may just camp out on the block from now on.

• Posted at 2:45 PM · LINK

Funny Discs

This article over on Slate says that Jeff Foxworthy is the best-selling comedian of all time, at least in terms of selling record albums and CDs. A couple of folks have written to ask me if this is so.

Well, maybe. Foxworthy has sold a lot more records than you'd imagine. The problem is that no one can say for sure how many were sold by the only other real contender. Redd Foxx made and sold a ridiculous number of comedy albums, many of them for obscure companies whose sales were never charted via mainstream measures. In many cases, Mr. Foxx didn't know how many he sold. He did them either for flat fees or for dishonest companies that never paid him his royalties. Some of those records were revived, repackaged and reissued over and over with different jackets, especially after he became popular on Sanford and Son. There's no way to ever prove it but it wouldn't surprise me if all those Foxx "party records" collectively sold well over the fifteen million total that Slate reports for Foxworthy.

And actually, there's another contender, depending on your definition of a comedy record. Some of the albums by Ray Stevens would probably qualify. Some, obviously, would not. Still, if you counted singles and compilation albums, there have probably been fifteen million records sold that contained Stevens' recording of "The Streak"...and that's just one of many. The guy's been making records for 48 years and he still sells millions of his "comedy classics" videos.

I can't think of anyone else who might be near the 15 million mark...so I'll just mention that if you want to read an article I wrote about Redd Foxx, click here.

• Posted at 12:22 AM · LINK