Last night, we linked you to this video featuring three funny men, two of whom were Jeff Hoover and Tim Kazurinsky. I'll tell you about the third guy in a second.
First, though: My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson writes this to me about Mr. Kazurinsky...
Tim has been living in the Chicago suburbs for close to twenty years now, and the older he gets, the funnier he gets. Nowadays, he seems to do more writing than acting (which is a great loss to us all). He can write anything — his 2001 drama, My Beautiful Son/aka Strange Relations, which he wrote for British TV, won a BAFTA award for Julie Walters, and Tim was nominated for his script. If a TV series (particularly a comedy) is shooting in Chicago, or one of his friends is producing a show (According to Jim, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Still Standing, etc.), Tim nearly always ends up appearing in it. There's a long list of his credits on imdb, of course, but I should mention that Tim is also the go-to guy for Second City here in Chicago for so many things, and volunteers his time for any number of charity events, student projects, moral support, and countless other things for which he never gets any credit. He appeared on a panel I hosted at Second City a few months ago for The Funniest One in the Room, my Del Close biography, and was characteristically brilliant, insightful, and hilarious, usually at the same time.
Years ago, when Tim and his wife Marcia had kids, they decided to leave NY and LA so they could raise them in a Chicago suburb. Had he stayed on a coast, he would undoubtedly be rich and famous today. But he's still got plenty of funny left in him, and if he can be coaxed out of Chicago long enough to do a few more films, don't be surprised to see a resurgence...
Wouldn't surprise me one bit. As I said, Tim was an oasis of comedy during a period of arid desert on Saturday Night Live. People were so busy saying "The show's not as good as it used to be" that they didn't notice that his segments generally were. Tim also has a fan in Dan Castellaneta, who wrote me to say...
Tim started in Chicago where I use to see him at the Second City. I met him when I started performing myself. He would come back to Chicago occasionally to improvise with us. As you know, Tim was also an incredibly funny guy, some of the sketches he wrote Second City are still classics and done by the Second City Touring company. He’s also one of the nicest guys I’ve met there.
Not surprising. Meanwhile, Jeff Hoover — the second guy in the clip, the guy who also does the great Jerry Lewis impression, sent his thanks and a link to this article about Jerry. It's a recent interview with Mr. Lewis, who is about to get a big honorary Oscar at this year's ceremony. Jerry continues to be Jerry, making odd and candid admissions about things like why he shouldn't have made the deal to let Eddie Murphy remake The Nutty Professor and why the character in King of Comedy was the most like him of all the characters he's played. Well worth a read.
Which brings us to the third man in the video. That is, it turns out, comedian Mike Toomey, who is known for many wonderful things. One of them is a great impression of Adam West. In the clip below, we see Mr. Toomey perform his Adam West impression on the news in Chicago...and then return later to do it for Adam West. (And by the way, this is not an official announcement but I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Adam West at the Wondercon in San Francisco this year...)
Last night on his show, David Letterman aired the "lost" stand-up spot by comedian Bill Hicks...the one that was censored from the program on October 1, 1993. And by the way, that's the correct date. I had it wrong in this posting. Letterman took full responsibility/blame for the decision to edit Hicks from the tape that night and apologized excessively to the late comedian's mother, who was a guest on last night's broadcast. They ran the deleted routine and I have to say: Though I'm glad they did, and I think it was a mistake to cut it in the first place, it wasn't much of a spot. Many folks I respect think Hicks was one of the most brilliant comics to ever grace a stage...and while I've seen a lot of him and liked some of it, I've never really seen whatever it is they see in him.
I should also add that Dave probably gladdened the hearts of a lot of people in network jobs, particularly Broadcast Standards departments, with his admission that he, not the show's censor people, was responsible for the decision. It is very (emphasize: very) common for the network to take the heat when a show's star or producers make possibly-unpopular choices. I worked once with a star-producer who was always doing that kind of thing, blaming "the idiots at the network" for his decrees and demands, and it's not fair. The folks who work at TV networks make enough stupid, pernicious decisions without taking the heat for those made by others.
The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, a local group that honors veterans in the field of TV and radio, yesterday threw a nice luncheon in honor of a nice man named Robert Wagner. The word "classy" was uttered a lot and so was the word "mensch," and none of the speakers — who included Loretta Swit, Norm Crosby, Mike Connors, Bud Yorkin and James Bacon — had anything but praise for Mr. Wagner as an actor or a human being. (Those two categories are not always mutually exclusive but sometimes they are.) I think the worst thing that was said about "R.J." all afternoon was that he'd slept with an awful lot of beautiful women. One would assume he's deeply ashamed of that.
I don't have a lot to report about the event. For me, the most interesting thing was that it was not held at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, scene of all recent P.P.B. luncheons. For those of you outside L.A., the Sportsmen's Lodge is this huge complex of a hotel, a restaurant or two and a sprawling banquet facility located on prime real estate on Ventura Boulevard. Until recently, it was the venue for an infinite number of meetings, weddings, receptions, luncheons, parties, etc., not so much because it was good but because it was there. If you had to book an event for a large gathering of people, you'd be hard-pressed to not wind up at the Sportsmen's Lodge. I know people who loathed the place but wound up using it because the alternatives were inconveniently located and even more expensive. The management often functioned as if they knew they had you by the [fill in euphemism of your choice for "testicles"] and you couldn't go elsewhere.
Well, now you have to. The Sportsmen's Lodge has been closed by its new owners for some sort of renovation of indeterminate length or breadth. I'm kinda surprised...not that it didn't need a makeover but that they're doing it. If I were in their position — and this may explain why I'll never be a real estate mogul — I wouldn't close the place down for a second; not when the main thing it has always had going for it is that customers don't know where else to have their Bar Mitzvah receptions. The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters were forced to find a new place and they did — a very nice restaurant high on a hill overlooking Burbank.
Okay, so it wasn't quite as perfectly situated. But the food was better, the ambiance was better, the parking was better, the service was better, the room was better, etc. Even the air up on the top of that mountain was better than what you breathe around the corner of Coldwater and Ventura. Everyone seemed so happy with the new location, I doubt they'll ever return to the Sportsmen's Lodge, no matter what is done to it. Which is fine with me.
February 1, 2009
