Everything in a Blender
Thursday, March 18, 2004
George: One of the giants
I blog about comedy a whole lot. It's one of my passions.
Tonight I saw a comedy giant. There aren't many out there (giants of standup comedy, specifically). Richard Pryor (who is not performing anymore..he's dying of MS--not Microsoft), Bill Cosby, Jackie Mason, David Brenner and George Carlin. On a slightly lower plane there's Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart..There are a few who used to be funny. Then there's the next plane....Paula Poundstone, Elayne Boosler, Judy Gold....Pat Cooper.
Whatever! Those are just my opinions.
But..George Carlin is one of the undisputed giants. He is 66 years old, and has been in comedy for 42 years. That's longer than I've been doing anything.
He performed tonight at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center His opening act was not bad (Dennis Blayne? Dennis Blair? David Blair?)..but..certainly an opener for the likes of George. Mae West hired Don Adams (Yes, Maxwell Smart) as an opening act when Mae took her act on the road. He was not good. Even he admitted he wasn't good. After one "audition" show, Mae hired Adams for the balance of the tour. He was bad! She liked that about him.
Anyway...You know a comic is good when...he doesn't have to rely on anything external...He can just get up and talk for an hour and a half. And that's what George did. George loves to talk about language. His opening bit (which, he said will be the opener for his next HBO special, to air in 2005), was a fabulous bit of language play. He did a lot of great material on..a range of topics that really suits him (suicide, a suicide (cable) channel, mass destruction, stupid people...). He did about 15% to 20% older material. But...even that was executed brilliantly.
To top off the evening, Ariel and I took the PATH home. We took the train from Penn Station in Newark to the World Trade Center. Ground Zero is still quite visible. It's a massive hole in the ground. It's..full of water and...nasty looking dirt. It really is quite a mindblower.
All in all, it was great to see George, and moving to see the WTC.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
It's been a long, long time
Well, work's been busy.
Poor EKG. She works so hard, and is so dedicated to her work.
On March 29th we have a new employee starting. Showgirl's going to be quite something.
Showgirl has technical acumen, even if not a great deal of technical knowledge. She's highly intelligent, and I believe she's quite capable of learning all the techie things. She has a very comforting personality.
I do work reasonably hard. As such, I try not to feel guilty about going out once in a while. I'm going to see George Carlin live on the 18th. Ironic that..He's anti-religion, but he's a comedy god.
So far, the comedy Gods I've seen live are:
Bill Cosby (he was awesome..he totally still has it)
Robin Williams (when he was on Broadway, working out for the HBO special)
David Brenner (he did around 45 minutes at Gotham Comedy Club)
and now..George Carlin.
I can't wait to report back on how cool it will have been. (Is that last sentence gramatically correct?)
He was on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, and on Real Time with Bill Maher. His face, not just his hair, was gray. His voice was significantly lower than usual, he didn't talk as much as he has in other guest appearances.
Then again, when he was honored 2 years ago at the Aspen Comedy Arts Festival (for having worked in comedy for 40 years), he seemed to be slowing down. I hope it was just a short term illness that he'll get over soon. He was born in 1937--the same year Mary Tyler Moore was born. (Mary and I (as well as Jon Voight, Ted Danson, Paula Poundstone, and Billy Joel's daughter, Alexa Ray, share a birthday.).
Okay..how was THAT for a huge tangent?
Back "on message" now....
Monday, March 01, 2004
The opposite of Jump The Shark
I was having a chat with my friend Sarah ..Sarah's quite the wordsmith.
I'm inspired by her blog and her journal. In fact, apparently so are many people. When we discussed Maria Cruz who was murdered, I posted how I know the alleged murderer. The next day, I got a call from a New York Newsday reporter. She was researching the story, and following it up. She totally misrepresented trannies. But she seemed to do reasonably okay on everything else.
So what else is new? Trannies misrepresented in the press ain't nothin' new.
Anyway..back to Sarah.
I was watching "The Cosby Show"...Nickolodeon is currently re-running the first season...It's quite good. But...I believe that about 2 or 3 seasons into it, the show got even better. I had wondered that if a show is said to have "Jumped The Shark", when it gets worse, what would it be called if a show gets better after a certain period of time? There are many examples of shows that started out lukewarm and got better.
"Seinfeld"...Sarah suggests "Mad About You" as a possible example of this phenomenon. I always thought that Paul Reiser was Richard Lewis with a more conservative haircut, and lesser neuroses. Reiser's funny. Lewis is..crazy, though. One of my favorite Richard Lewis jokes is the name of his Jewish Sex Manual: "Ow, You're On My Hair".
In any event...What does one CALL the phenomenon by which a show improves after ..a certain number of seasons.
I had to think back and use all those braincells devoted to storing television info...The Happy Days reference of "Jump The Shark"....in which Fonzie on water skis jumped over a shark, was indicative of a show that was going downhill. What could possibly represent the opposite phenomenon?
And I thought about "The Late Shift"-a terrific movie about the Late Night Television Wars. Treat Williams is HOT...He plays the part of Super Agent Mike Ovitz.
At the end of the movie, there are blurbs that tell us what became of the Late Night hosts, Leno and Letterman. Letterman stayed on top for 90 weeks.
After 90 weeks, Hugh Grant was arrested for having received oral sex from prostitute Divine Brown. Grant went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and blew away Letterman's lead. From that point on, Leno consistently beat Letterman. On that basis, I wonder if the appropriate term for what happens to a show would be "Divine Brown". Usage: "I didn't have much hope for the first few episodes of 'Seinfeld', but it Divine Browned pretty early on, and never really Jumped The Shark."
What do you think?
