Category Archives: Video Links

Hmm…what to post today? I could put up this great video I found of Buckminster Fuller explaining the future of human energy consumption and the survival of our species…or I have a video of a number from the movie Grease as performed by Lego toys. I'll have to decide which one my readers would enjoy more…

Hey, let's get a tour of John Cleese's house…

A musical tribute to Star Wars…or maybe to John Williams. The vocals are by a group called Moosebutter and the kid doing the lip sync below is named Corey Vidal…

From The Frost Report (hosted by now-Sir David Frost) in 1966: Tom Lehrer sings a song that sounds like one of his but is actually by Noel Coward…

I have a perverse appreciation for songs with inappropriate arrangements…where someone has taken a tune and performed it completely and totally the way it shouldn't be. It's especially wonderful when the performers obviously thought they were doing a fine and valid interpretation.

During the early disco craze, I was overwhelmed with examples, but you still encounter them, here and there. This clip from The Lawrence Welk Show is about as "wrong" as wrong can be. It's so wrong, Mr. Welk apparently couldn't bring himself to introduce it and he left that task to his star accordion player, Myron Floren…

I saw this on the blog of my pal Paul Harris and decided it belonged here, too. It's a video from the mid-seventies (around early '77, I'd say) — excerpts from a local talk show in the midwest. The guests were all new, up-and-coming stand-up comedians discussing what their lives were like and this video has been edited to focus on one of them, a new kid named Dave Letterman. The other two are Dottie Archibald and Gary Muledeer. I dunno what's happened with Ms. Archibald but Muledeer is still out on the road touring and performing, usually as the opening act for Johnny Mathis.

At the end, Letterman is asked about how he feels about performing sans pay, which was then the norm at most comedy clubs. It would not be the norm for long.

As a follow-up to yesterday's video link: Here's Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five performing "Caldonia" in a 1945 "soundie." (For those of you unfamiliar with the noun, "soundies" were the music videos of the forties, made to be shown primarily in jukebox-like devices.)

Mr. Jordan, who had a number of big hits, probably wrote the tune. I say "probably" because when it was first published, it was credited to his then-wife, who was not a songwriter…and anyway, he divorced her soon after when she stabbed him with a knife. That's never good in a marriage. Apparently, there are musicologists who think Jordan only wrote the lyrics and that someone else penned the music…but the point is that he made the song famous and sold an awful lot of records with it. Here he is…and I still don't get the part about "mop."

Okay, I said earlier here that I was a big fan of a musical comedy performer named Doug Eskew. Here's why. This is a number from the 1992 Tony Awards…a selection from Five Guys Named Moe. Mr. Eskew is the tall one, and while his show didn't win any trophies that night, I remember thinking that they walked away with the telecast and sold a lot of tickets…

By the way: I've never quite been able to understand one word in this song. What is it we're supposed to yell when he asks, "What makes your big head so hard?" "Mud?" "Mop?"

Carolyn and I had a great time down at the Ahmanson Theater in downtown L.A. this evening. They have a new production there of Ain't Misbehavin', the musical revue based on the work of Fats Waller that played Broadway in the seventies. This one is said to be a faithful replica of that one and whether it is or not, it's enormously entertaining. Waller co-wrote (or just made famous) a lot of wonderful songs and the show consists of five great singers and a seven-piece band just performing the hell out of those tunes.

The five performers are Armelia McQueen, Debra Walton, Eugene Barry-Hill, Roz Ryan and Doug Eskew. They're all sensational but I was especially delighted to find Mr. Eskew in the cast. He's long been one of my favorite stage performers. Maybe later when I post today's video link, I'll show you why.

Anyway, I didn't care much for the last two shows I saw down at the Ahmanson. They made up for it tonight. If you're in or around L.A., it's there 'til the end of the month and it's real good.

The first time I saw Jesse Ventura lecturing people about truth and integrity, I did a double-take that would have seemed excessive on The Benny Hill Show. The man's first claim to fame was in professional wrestling, an occupation where you can't utter five sentences without lying in at least two of them. But he parlayed the skills from that profession into a brief career in politics, where I suppose they came in handy…and he was such a fine governor in Minnesota that he united people of all beliefs. Democrats, Republicans and Independents all couldn't wait to get rid of him.

But now he's in a position that I kinda like. He's in politics just enough that he's invited onto shows to talk about what's going on…but he's beholden to no one. He's not a Republican. He's not a Democrat. He's probably never going to run for anything ever again. No one gives him talking points. He has nothing to lose by being blunt and saying exactly what he thinks. That isn't always what I think but in today's clip, it is. Here he is on this morn's installment of The View, mopping the floor with their blonde, Conservative version of Alan Colmes…

C is for Cookie. Hey, that's good enough for me…

Zero Mostel on some variety show performing a song that maybe should not be performed in a tuxedo…

A local investigative reporter in Los Angeles goes after the most dangerous and outrageous criminals of them all…valet car parkers.

I know most of you watch The Daily Show…but every so often, they do something so spot-on funny that I just have to have it on my site. This is from last night's show…and please note. This is hardly an example of kissing Obama butt…

And while you're at it, watch the follow-up…

This runs almost an hour and it may be interrupted by the occasional commercial announcement. It's a wonderful documentary on Paul Conrad…to my mind, the best political cartoonist this country has ever seen. Though nominally a Liberal, he's pretty much savaged every president since L.B.J. took office and every prominent politician…and not unfairly, I think. He certainly was never afraid to piss off anyone, including the editorial board of the L.A. Times. His cartoons often appeared as devastating rebuttals to the paper's own editorials on the facing page.

By the way: Throughout this film, you'll see excerpts from an interview that Conrad did at a radio station in Iowa. The guy sitting next to him in those shots is Max Allan Collins, a fine writer of novels and comics, mainly in the mystery genre. Here's the documentary…