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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 13:30:14 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Jun 21, 2022 13:30:14 GMT
The weather yesterday making any outdoor activities unpleasant, I ended up going down rabbit-holes of old SNL clips and eventually a few comics' late-night appearances.
As for the SNL, I was watching some of Molly Shannon's stuff (after having listened to her on the Dana Carvey/David Spade podcast). While she had more or less faded from my memory, she was really tremendously funny. And because she paired so well with Will Ferrell, I watched some of him, too. That was less a surprise, in that I've already fallen back in love with him. But I watched a few of his Letterman appearances, too, and he was really good on those shows. There is such a performance art element to his appearances and comedy, it's really funny. There is one of him appearing in character as Ron Burgundy on an Australian news show in which he goes into detail about a (fictional, obviously) trip he and an apparently legendary Australian newscaster took after an international news convention in the 70s... "We drank a gallon of Kahlua, shot roman candles into the sea, and woke up three days later in Singapore" or something. So funny.
Then, the YouTube algorithms controlling mindless old me, I was suggested some Dave Chappelle appearances on Conan, and watched maybe a dozen of those. I didn't realize how often he was on back in the late 90s and early 00s, before the Chappelle show began its run. I also noticed how Conan would set him up almost identically every single time. Based on what I've heard Norm Macdonald say in the past about late-night appearances, I'd bet anything it's because Chappelle didn't do pre-interviews to give any really set conversation pieces, so basically Conan was lobbing him softballs to spin off for jokes. Because it was always "You really keep up with the news, don't you?" (so he'd find an angle for current events), or "You work a lot, I know you've been traveling a lot lately" (so he could go into anything regional), etc. I mean literally, every single appearance.
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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 14:12:55 GMT
Post by kds on Jun 21, 2022 14:12:55 GMT
We could really use another top notch Will Ferrell screwball comedy. He had such a good run in the 2000s, and into the 2010s.
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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 14:54:53 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Jun 21, 2022 14:54:53 GMT
I was thinking I might go back and start watching old SNLs. I believe they're all on one of the streaming services. Maybe I'll start back in the era that I actually began watching in real time, the latter part of the 80s. I started watching in the Carvey-Lovitz-Hartman-Nealon-Miller years (with Mike Myers joining soon after). I remember in about 5th and 6th grade coming to school and doing the Church Lady and Hans & Franz bits with the one other kid I knew who watched it.
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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 15:16:43 GMT
Post by kds on Jun 21, 2022 15:16:43 GMT
I was thinking I might go back and start watching old SNLs. I believe they're all on one of the streaming services. Maybe I'll start back in the era that I actually began watching in real time, the latter part of the 80s. I started watching in the Carvey-Lovitz-Hartman-Nealon-Miller years (with Mike Myers joining soon after). I remember in about 5th and 6th grade coming to school and doing the Church Lady and Hans & Franz bits with the one other kid I knew who watched it. I believe they're on Peacock, the NBC streaming service. I probably started watching SNL in the early 1990s when the cast featured Farley, Hartman, Myers, Carvey, Nealon, Sandler, Meadows, Hooks, etc. That's still my favorite era. I watched pretty regular until 1995, after my freshman year of HS, when they cleaned house. Only Norm McDonald, David Spade, and Tim Meadows survived that purge. I still watched, but just not as regularly, and by the end of the 90s, I was pretty much done with the show. I still peak in now and then, but it's just not the same. One show I've been thinking about going back and binging is King of the Hill. The Mike Judge show lived most of it's life in the shadow of The Simpsons, South Park, and Family Guy, but I think you can make an argument that King of the Hill was superior to those shows (well, maybe The Simpsons once we got into the 2000s) as KOTH remained grounded in reality, other than the animation trope of kids not really aging. I'd caught a few episodes here and there when I was working from home due to COVID, and it's such a funny show.
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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 15:29:42 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Jun 21, 2022 15:29:42 GMT
That purge is mostly when I checked out, as well. And while Norm was kept, he was fired from Weekend Update, which was all he actually wanted to do. (His Letterman appearance on the day he was fired from Update, and then the next one shortly thereafter, is really amazing, btw.) Unfortunately, because of that, I didn't really appreciate the better aspects of that Ferrell group at the time.
Too bad if it's on Peacock, because I don't have that and goddamnit, I'm not getting it!
I'd like to rewatch KotH, too. I wasn't ever a religious watcher of it, but I saw it quite a bit. And it was very funny, indeed. I love having 30-minute (meaning 20-minute, really) shows to revisit now. It's just so easy to wind down with no real time commitment: if you've got a whole evening or day free you can watch a few hours' worth of shows; otherwise you can just spend 20 minutes on one episode.
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Funny.
Jun 21, 2022 15:45:32 GMT
Post by kds on Jun 21, 2022 15:45:32 GMT
That purge is mostly when I checked out, as well. And while Norm was kept, he was fired from Weekend Update, which was all he actually wanted to do. (His Letterman appearance on the day he was fired from Update, and then the next one shortly thereafter, is really amazing, btw.) Unfortunately, because of that, I didn't really appreciate the better aspects of that Ferrell group at the time.
Too bad if it's on Peacock, because I don't have that and goddamnit, I'm not getting it!
I'd like to rewatch KotH, too. I wasn't ever a religious watcher of it, but I saw it quite a bit. And it was very funny, indeed. I love having 30-minute (meaning 20-minute, really) shows to revisit now. It's just so easy to wind down with no real time commitment: if you've got a whole evening or day free you can watch a few hours' worth of shows; otherwise you can just spend 20 minutes on one episode.
I was a faithful KoTH fan, and FOX really gave it a raw deal, as for some reason, they'd air new episodes on Sundays at 7:00p or 7:30p, during football season. So, there were times that the late game would run late, and they'd cut into a brand new episode of the show in progress. But, it's probably for the best that the show ended instead of stinking around past their expiration date like The Simpsons and Family Guy now. I believe KoTH lives on Hulu with several other shows I watch to go back and either watch or rewatch. One of these days, I really want to watch Taxi and Cheers. I was too young to experience Taxi in real time. By the time I started to like Cheers, it was close to going off the air. I'm fairly certain I'd seen most of Cheers through reruns, but I don't think I've seen all of Taxi. I didn't really appreciate Will Ferrell until seeing the movie Old School. Then, I went back and watched some of his SNL stuff later thanks to reruns on Comedy Central.
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Funny.
Jun 28, 2022 19:04:07 GMT
Post by kds on Jun 28, 2022 19:04:07 GMT
Happy 96th Birthday to comedy legend Mel Brooks.
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Funny.
Jul 21, 2022 11:52:03 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Jul 21, 2022 11:52:03 GMT
On Monday or Tuesday, a surprise show was announced locally for Dave Chappelle, who was to play at legendary First Ave last night. Tickets sold out quickly, but I say "was to play" because there was apparently staff backlash, as well as the predictable social media stuff, due to his controversial content about gender identity.
It is being reported that First Ave canceled his show, though actually they just moved it 10 miles east to another of their properties, the Varsity Theater, in downtown St. Paul. Their statement (in black with white text, which, if you've noticed, seems to be the ubiquitious style for corporate apologies) talks about wanting to ensure First Ave is a safe space; I'm not sure why it was unsafe for Chappelle to play there, but not at the Varsity. Did staff at the same company, but a different location just a few miles away, feel so differently about him?
Chappelle is going to be fine: I'm not worried about him. But I really hate the idea of pressuring artistic venues to cancel (or downsize) shows based on the content, assuming the content is legal and not literally inciting violence. (I do not accept that jokes like Chappelle's cause violence, or result in anti-trans violence, or cause suicide, etc. There is no actual evidence of that. It's true that some people don't like, and some are truly offended or emotionally hurt, by it. The obvious answer in my opinion to that is, don't attend the show. Or protest, if you really must [though I find protesting any cause tremendously annoying and mostly narcissistic--an admittedly unpopular opinion]. But life is quite literally full of things a person is not going to like, that will offend, etc. One cannot cleanse the world to make it comfortable for oneself.) The show sold out quickly. That means more than enough people wanted to attend.
Personally, as I think I said after his last special, for me it's more that the line of jokes has become tired and boring. Carrying on a feud with activists--which is really what those jokes are about more than anything else--is silly.
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Funny.
Jul 21, 2022 12:18:18 GMT
Post by kds on Jul 21, 2022 12:18:18 GMT
On Monday or Tuesday, a surprise show was announced locally for Dave Chappelle, who was to play at legendary First Ave last night. Tickets sold out quickly, but I say "was to play" because there was apparently staff backlash, as well as the predictable social media stuff, due to his controversial content about gender identity.
It is being reported that First Ave canceled his show, though actually they just moved it 10 miles east to another of their properties, the Varsity Theater, in downtown St. Paul. Their statement (in black with white text, which, if you've noticed, seems to be the ubiquitious style for corporate apologies) talks about wanting to ensure First Ave is a safe space; I'm not sure why it was unsafe for Chappelle to play there, but not at the Varsity. Did staff at the same company, but a different location just a few miles away, feel so differently about him?
Chappelle is going to be fine: I'm not worried about him. But I really hate the idea of pressuring artistic venues to cancel (or downsize) shows based on the content, assuming the content is legal and not literally inciting violence. (I do not accept that jokes like Chappelle's cause violence, or result in anti-trans violence, or cause suicide, etc. There is no actual evidence of that. It's true that some people don't like, and some are truly offended or emotionally hurt, by it. The obvious answer in my opinion to that is, don't attend the show. Or protest, if you really must [though I find protesting any cause tremendously annoying and mostly narcissistic--an admittedly unpopular opinion]. But life is quite literally full of things a person is not going to like, that will offend, etc. One cannot cleanse the world to make it comfortable for oneself.) The show sold out quickly. That means more than enough people wanted to attend.
Personally, as I think I said after his last special, for me it's more that the line of jokes has become tired and boring. Carrying on a feud with activists--which is really what those jokes are about more than anything else--is silly.
Now, I do think the concept of "cancel culture" is definitely overblown to a degree, but this is proof that it does indeed exist. I hate this insane notion that everybody must conform to a certain belief. And, even more troubling to me if certain things are "off limits" when it comes to comedy.
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Funny.
Aug 3, 2022 18:27:00 GMT
kds likes this
Post by Kapitan on Aug 3, 2022 18:27:00 GMT
This could be in a few different threads, but it's going here because in any case, it's about funny people. Dana Carvey and David Spade had Beavis & Butt-head and Office Space (among others) creator Mike Judge on their podcast Fly On the Wall. It's a very funny podcast anyway, just because they often have SNL personalities and some other funny people on it and tell old war stories. (They also are obsessed with doing Dennis Miller imitations all the time for no real reason whatsoever.)
I hadn't realized that Judge did the Milton character who ended up in Office Space as a few shorts that were on SNL.
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Funny.
Aug 3, 2022 18:44:35 GMT
Post by kds on Aug 3, 2022 18:44:35 GMT
This could be in a few different threads, but it's going here because in any case, it's about funny people. Dana Carvey and David Spade had Beavis & Butt-head and Office Space (among others) creator Mike Judge on their podcast Fly On the Wall. It's a very funny podcast anyway, just because they often have SNL personalities and some other funny people on it and tell old war stories. (They also are obsessed with doing Dennis Miller imitations all the time for no real reason whatsoever.)
I hadn't realized that Judge did the Milton character who ended up in Office Space as a few shorts that were on SNL.
I remember that Office Space short on SNL back in the day. Initially, after seeing the previews for the movie, I didn't make the connection. That is, until I actually watched the movie and Bill & Milton made their appearances on screen. I recently saw a YT video where David Spade was originally in the running to star in a live action Beavis and Butthead movie in the 90s before Mike Judge got his way and the eventual movie (Beavis and Butthead Do America) wound up being animated. Spade wound up doing some voice work on the original run of the B&B TV show.
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Funny.
Aug 3, 2022 18:50:07 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Aug 3, 2022 18:50:07 GMT
They briefly discuss that on the podcast. Seems, at least as they tell it, it was more just a thing they were kicking around that maybe Spade and Sander could be Beavis and Butt-head, just because they loved the show and were friendly with Judge.
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Funny.
Aug 3, 2022 19:03:46 GMT
Post by kds on Aug 3, 2022 19:03:46 GMT
They briefly discuss that on the podcast. Seems, at least as they tell it, it was more just a thing they were kicking around that maybe Spade and Sander could be Beavis and Butt-head, just because they loved the show and were friendly with Judge. That's right Sandler was to play Butthead. According to a YT video I watched, the rights to Beavis and Butthead were originally under Warner Bros, and WB really wanted the movie to be a live action movie, even though Judge wanted to keep the movie in the animated world. But when the rights went to Paramount, they agreed to allow the movie be an animated movie. Which, when you think about it, was kind of a coup because at that time theatrically released animated movies not targeted specifically to kids were pretty rare.
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Funny.
Nov 20, 2022 13:29:38 GMT
Post by Sheriff John Stone on Nov 20, 2022 13:29:38 GMT
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Funny.
Dec 14, 2022 20:57:55 GMT
Post by Kapitan on Dec 14, 2022 20:57:55 GMT
This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the death of Chris Farley. Dana Carvey and David Spade's show released today a 2-part episode of stories and memories about Farley from former SNL cast members, guests, and others. I'm getting near the end of part one (which is itself 2.5 hours, as is part two) and they've spoken with Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Kevin Nealon, Rob Lowe, Chris's mom and one of his brothers, and Eric Newman (Randy Newman's kid, who was an assistant on SNL in that era and has since become a producer and writer).
There are some really funny stories told about him.
You can find it more or less anywhere that has podcasts, including YouTube:
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