Amazing, Phenomenal, Awesome.

iPad Keynote in less than 180 Seconds. Adjectives Galore!

H/T Mashable.
Video Mashup by the amazing artists at www.neilcurtis.com.

There's more...

Happy Mother's Day

Wondering what Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg been up to after Dick in a Box? Wonder no more. (Susan Sarandon and Patricia Clarkson as "the mothers.") The Saturday Night Live crew presents Mother Lover. For Mother's Day.

Don't forget to call, write, or take care of YOUR Mother.

Love -- from all of us at GNB.

h/t Raw Story.

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Ricky Gervais and Elmo

Ricky Gervais and Elmo crack each other up.

This is a preliminary peek at an interview scheduled to air in November 2009 for Sesame Street's 40th Anniversary episode.

The producer has lost control of the interview. Instead of talking about charity, they turn to "what NOT to ever" talk about on Sesame Street. Heh.

Enjoy.

H/T Huffington Post.

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Richard Pryor: First Black President, Press Conference

Can't. Stop. Laughing...

h/t Huffington Post.

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A Tough Weekend...

“He Wasn't Scared A' You!”

Bernard “Bernie Mac” McCullough—1957-2008


“Soul Man...Personified”

Isaac Hayes—1942-2008

I awoke Saturday morning to the news of the untimely death of comedian Bernie Mac, and to be frank, it hit me a lot harder than you might think.

I didn't know Bernie personally, but I came of age in the entertainment industry working alongside him during the “Black Comedy Boom” of the early nineties. I was working heavily in television at the time and had as peers people who would eventually write for his later television series and work as producers for it. I saw many of Bernie's Black comic contemporaries work the biggest stages—hundreds of them actually, and worked directly with many of the folks who opened for and toured with him on the eastern seaboard circuit back then. It was a wild time. I saw SNL's and “30 Rock's” Tracy Morgan make his first TV appearances, as well as Steve Harvey, and J. Anthony Brown while Bernie himself would break through downtown on the “cousin” TV project “Def Comedy Jam”.

Bernie was the natural heir to the late, great Robin Harris, who was the first Def Comedy Jam shooting star and also passed away tragically young (at the age of thirty-six). Harris' style was if you can imagine, the life experience of a blue collar slaughterhouse worker from a Howlin' Wolf song, poured through Rodney Dangerfield's self-deprecating “No Respect” filter, and then shaken vigorously with a double shot of Richard Pryor's rough verbal patois. Harris was on his way to mega-stardom, as the nascent hit show's host and thanks to a couple of scene-stealing turns in Reginald Hudlin's “House Party” (as “Pop”) and Spike Lee's “Do The Right Thing” (as corner-man “Sweet Dick Willie”) when he died of a heart attack during a bout of sleep apnea while on tour. Martin Lawrence would step into the Def Comedy Jam host breech and take the world by storm with his kinetic style, but it was Bernie who would continue mining the besieged everyman vein initially prospected by Harris.

From the moment he first took the stage, prowling nervously and then grabbing the mic and roaring at the crowd with paranoid eyes darting every-which-way,“I ain't scared a' you!”—and the audience knowing knowing full well there was more than a little fear there behind the bluster—he was a hit, playing the aggrieved, “why me” to the hilt, dragging the Dangerfield schtick through the South Side's back streets as Harris did with that extra dollop of paranoia.

He ragged on his advancing age and time's not being kind to him—particularly a waning sexual prowess, moaning ruefully “M' body tired...m' body weary..”. He wasn't going to be seen in the red leather suits Eddie Murphy sported, or work the slick “Player” angle of his S-Curled, MTV comedy star contemporary Bill Bellamy. He was the guy with problems, and he was gonna share 'em—warts and all. Ornery kids bugged the hell out of him, as did moochy, ne'er-do-well relatives. And he was hilarious re-counting it all in that blustery, “Foghorn Leghorn”-ish griot/storyteller style of his. He pretty much counted on playing the club circuit permanently, ironically joking about how the TV executives would never give him a show like his buddies Steve Harvey, Cedric The Entertainer and D.L. Hughley had gotten during the hilarious basketball court segment of the Spike Lee directed “Kings Of Comedy” film.

“BERNIE: (Wild-eyed and straight to camera) I vote. I still get hassled. You know, I been with my wife for 25 years—I ain't got NO outside kids. But do I get a—naw! Fuck that, I'm gonna tell ya'll...But do I have a television show? Naaaaawww! I ain't got no televison show. Why?! (Right up on camera now) Cause' you scared a' me! Scared I'm a' say somethin'! Henh! (BEAT) You mother-fuckin' right! Think I won't say somethin'? Lemme tell you somethin'!...Ya'll been fuckin' with me for a loooong time... you know? But I'm back! Shit, me an' Jim Brown'd tear this mother-fucker up!

CEDRIC: (Laughing, and then in a tepid announcer's voice) The comments made by Bernie Mac belong to him and him himself...

BERNIE: Now you (To Cedric) told—you told me to sat what I wanted to say! (Then suddenly contrite and despairing) White folks, I don't mean that...I'm just playin'. Ya'll can do...if you give me a chance, I'll take WB, I'll take UPN, I'll take USA (Networks). Gimme a chance to show ya.

STEVE HARVEY: You'll take The Food Channel.

BERNIE: Sure will! TNT!

STEVE: The Bernie Mac Cooking Show!

But of course, Bernie did land a show...and it was perhaps the best of the bunch among his contemporaries, expanding on his standup bit about parenting his cracked-out sister's kids—but with a sense of heart and the real flusteredness of raising kids in a modern world. “The Bernie Mac Show” was an award-winning hit in its first season. But alas, similar tensions between the star, the network and the show runner / Executive Producer to those that killed Chappelle's Show cropped up and the honeymoon was over by the middle of season two. The show would go on, thanks to the talents of the star himself (but no thanks to a bit of shortsightedness that made Fox's “Divide and Conquer” plan work to “T”, separating the series' brain—Larry Wilmore, from its soul, Bernie). Bigger movie roles would come—unlike his oily, profane preacher and and mouthy barber cameos in earlier, smaller films—for example his parts in Charlie's Angels and George Clooney's “Ocean's” franchise, as well as starring roles in “Guess Who” and “Mr. 3000”.

But Bernie's health was an increasing problem. He suffered from the auto-immune disease Sarcoidosis, which causes irritating and sometimes painful cellular lumps or granules (granulomas) to grow in organs and tissues, while also bringing on chronic fatigue and body pain. But it's those damned “granules” that do the damage—attacking the lymph nodes and lungs primarily. And diseases that compromise the pulmonary system (yes, sarcoidosis can adversely affect your breathing) make other pulmonary ailments like the pneumonia that killed him that much more intense and difficult to fight. You add in that rigorous TV shooting schedule he had, and the continual touring, probable lack of rest, bad eating and so on that is endemic to the working comic's life, and you have a recipe for disaster. His appearance changed drastically when a nasty flare-up (of Sarcoidosis) hit him in '04 and the drugs used to spell the disease (steroids) visibly blew him up and then dried him out, and Fox had to shut the show down for a month so he could get a handle on the illness. (He did and it went into “remission”) And then in '06, the show itself was cancelled, but his rigorous touring resumed. Taxing on anyone, that sort of running about really strains a person with sarcoidosis. Bernie's death hit home hard for me as one of my best friends for nearly thirty years and a fellow television writer also suffers from the illness, and has to take special care to stay healthy as the disease has a “cascade” effect when dealing with things like colds and lung-compromising viruses. Bernie was only fifty years old. My buddy, another veteran of that “Black Comedy Boom” is just a few years younger than that, so you can imagine the lump in our collective throats in the circle of friends upon hearing about Bernie's death and considering ourselves. Hearts go out to Bernie's family and surviving loved ones. This was a stunner.

And even more stunning was the second blow to America's pop-culture gut yesterday, as I was walking through Times Square in Manhattan, only to look up at the “Zipper” news crawl around a building to see that the legendary Isaac Hayes had also passed away. I stood there for a moment wondering...“Did I just see that?”, and waited for the news items to repeat. I saw it again, and my eyes filled with tears.

For those who don't know...Isaac Hayes was an awful lot more than a sultry baritone voice and “Chef” on South Park.

Hayes...was in fact, one of the architects of Soul music as we know it. He was a songwriter par excellence, contributing in no small way to fashioning the “Stax/Memphis” Soul sound itself, with his work (alongside his writing partner David Porter) on such classics as “Soul Man”, “Hold On, I'm Comin'”, “B-A-B-Y” (for Carla Thomas) and “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby”, just to name a few. Hayes was of a generation of great musicians that came through the Memphis public school system's music program (a veritable “Who's Who” of Jazz and R&B legends too numerous to cite here), who stayed in the city and re-vitalized it with his groundbreaking work at Stax. He fused the hard Blues with the roaring fire of Southern Gospel, while adding into the mix more than a little bit of the punchy Jazz style (particularly the horn charts—Basie-esque “smears” and “stabs” on the brass) endemic to the region.

And God, could he write melodies! Melodies that mated perfectly with the scary rhythmic sense he seemed to simply sweat. He had a “golden ear” for arrangements and balance, while having a special knack for building a jam “in-song” from a whisper to a roar, until the song was a big ol', almost living, amoebic thing—pulsing, flying here and there...whispering and shouting...all at once.

I first came to really know of Isaac when I heard his (in my mind) magnum opus—the eleven-minute cover /re-contextualization of Burt Bacharach's “Walk On By”. This was a pimp-tastic, psychedelic, sanctified, cinematic / operatic sonic workout, from the crackling opening snare hits, to the soaring strings in the chorus, to the flanged, crazy Hendrix-ish guitar trail-out. It was on the album “Hot Buttered Soul”, its cover placed prominently as if to say “Now Playing” atop the big Sylvania stereo console in our family living room. That big, gleaming bald head of his, looking like a NASA shot of a massive, brown planet on the cover always intrigued me. In the age of “The Fro'”, Isaac said “No.”, and went with his own wild “Star Child” look—the big goggle-y aviators, and his inversion of the chains of slavery into golden links of proud prosperity draping his hulking, onyx form.

Brother was bad-ass long before Shaft was “a bad mutha-shut yo' mouf!”

There were the pre-“Shaft” albums—“To Be Continued”, and “The Isaac Hayes Movement” (said sporting what was at that time the BEST art direction along with “Hot Buttered Soul” in the Soul and R&B record racks) that featured those amazing, long, long breakdowns / songs. These albums boasted maybe five tunes maximum, but there were usually two or three seven-minute-plus monsters on them—sprawling vanity / concept pieces that pre-dated Marvin's and Stevie's “What's Goin' On” and “Talking Book” masterpieces by a couple of years. “Walk On By” was one such beast, as were his covers of George Harrison's “Something”, and Jimmy Webb's “By The Time I Get To Phoenix”. (His original funk-opera “Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic” is another such wonder)

And then, there was “Shaft”, or rather “SHAFT—Music from the Soundtrack Composed and Performed by ISAAC HAYES”, as it is described on the three vinyl copies I—and probably you also own.

The Shaft soundtrack or score is more than just the ubiquitous tile track that has entered the pop-culture lexicon through it's driving rhythm and “Stagger Lee”-ish lyrics. It was—and in many ways still is the gold standard of film scores of the second half of the 20th century. The music, from “Shaft's Cab Ride”, “Ellie's Love Theme”, “Bumpy's Lament” and the sparkling, summer-y “Café Regio's” are near-perfect music beds for the scenes they support, working beautifully, but then when separated from the visuals, they are also brilliant individual pieces of Soul/Jazz/Blues that unlike the songs from the Bee Gees “Saturday Night Fever” didn't sound like pre-existing hits inserted into the movie. These were just great pieces of music that seemed to jump out of the score they were written for. I didn't even mention “Soulsville”, or “Do Your Thing”, and those strong tracks just add to the album's majesty. The other thing “Shaft” did was expand the palette of avenues for Black music and its pre-eminent composers to exploit, opening film music up to the more trenchant stylings of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, bringing those artists ever more into the “mainstream” and letting them explore their artistic souls more fully.

It all started with “Shaft”, and for that alone, Isaac Hayes would be a legend. But his Stax work as a producer and writer, as well as his pre-“Shaft” solo work just enhances his legend that much more, and makes his loss that much deeper.

Every artist peaks, and “Shaft” may well have been his—considering the rote-ish and occasionally ill-advised artistic choices that followed, along with a bit of fun self-parody late in his career—but what a climb to that peak it was!

It was a tough weekend loss-wise, losing these two. And them being gone makes life and art just a little bit sadder to think about. But that's the miracle of what they did. Thanks to technology, it lives on. And it's there to be enjoyed...even if they've gone from us.

So, dig into that Netflix queue, or that iTunes playlist and let what they did so well wash over you.

And bid them both Godspeed. Godspeed. Godspeed.

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“Mudbone, The Gastronome”

To commemorate the one year anniversary of The Group News Blog, celebrating me and Steve's birthplace—Harlem—and a great Uptown get together last month with Sara, Evan and Jen, (and a paean to the loss of a great national resource—our great stand-up comedians) I give you this track from the “lost” Richard Pryor album “I Got Yo' Damn Iced Tea Right Here, Mother-f*cker!”

SIDE ONE—BAND ONE:

MUDBONE, THE GASTRONOME—8:11

(AUDIENCE STARTS TO CHEER AND LAUGH AS PRYOR RECOGNIZABLY STOOPS A BIT AND SLOWLY MOVES TOWARDS THE MIC. ONE PATRON CALLS OUT:)
“Aw yeah! That's what I came here for!...”

MUDBONE (TO PATRON): Well sit the fuck down an' let a man introduce himself! Sheeeeeeee-t! This ain't no reality show featurin' you! Fuck Big Brother, you the star of “Big, Stupid-Ass Mother Fucker”! I'm the God-damn star a' this show! (CLEARS THROAT) And m' name...is Mud-bone, of the Tupelo Mississippi Mudbones, thankyaverymuch!

(THE AUDIENCE CHEERS WILDLY)

MUDBONE: Now, now...I lknow I been away fo' awhile. You see, I been busy the las' year or so, workin' on sumpin' you prob'ly heard about—that big “Hope an' Change” thang! Basically, I been hopin'...that with all that money Mr. O-Alabama been rakin' in...that he might fuck up and drop some change so I could pick it up. (BEAT) Fuckin' people give him millions of dollars a month. Make Jerry Lewis Telethon look like Goddamn Food Stamps! “Hope n' Change.” Hope I get me some a' that change. Mmmm-hmm.

So, like I says... I been away, but I come back to...resume...my lucrative career in the Cable News industry. See, I woik behind the scenes and shit. I'm a mover and a shaker. I move that push-broom like a Goddamn champion, and I..shake the dus' off the dust-pan like no-boty's bidness. Now I must confess, it's a hard-ass job...'cause...I woik over there at Fox News.

(AUDIENCE BOOS A LITTLE BIT)

MUDBONE: You can boo me if you wanna, but I seen many a n*gger in a neck brace from fallin' offa high horses. Like all that laundry yo' mamas took in ain't never had no robes an' pointy-ass hoods up in it! Ain't but so many Magic Johnson Starbucks to work in, you know. Bills gotta git paid. (Under his breath) Criticize me, know got-damn well your cell phone been turned off two months. Now, before I was so rudely interrupted—I was sayin, the work at Fox is hard. I use a special mop, just to handle Sean Hannity's spit. It's a extra-absorbent mop, 'cause his ass spit like a clam whose mama been insulted. Motherfucker spits everywhere. On the flo', on his desk...on the camera lens—and that shit is fifteen-fucking-feet away. He spit on Alan Colmes so bad one night, I thought it were Pat Riley sittin' in with Sean 'cause his hair was all slicked back.

I said to im', “Mr. Riley. I appreciate your work...and...fuck Phil Jackson with a rusty chainsaw.”

Colmes said, “Goddamn Mudbone, it's me! Alan B. Colmes! You've bein' bamboozled by all this here spit!”

So of course, I apologized to the man. Toweled his hair off. Give him a spine massage—which were hard, 'cause I couldn't locate one on 'im...

But like I said, the job is hard.

However, it's honest-ass woik. Now, I got the position there, through my friend Juan Williams who owed me a favor, 'cause I saved his life in Florida 25 years ago. See, he were messin' roun' with this gal...Latin gal she were. Fine as the day is long! Sweat taste like flán! An' he got caught in a compromisin' position with her—I think it was the reverse cowboy or sumpin'—by her brothers, who was a bunch a' Cuban gangsters. An' Cuban gangsters don' play. I saw bunch of 'em beat a motherfucker so bad in Miami, his ass swam back to Cuba to escape. No raft. Jus' arms an' legs paddlin' like a Goddamn riverboat. So...so, I knew Juan was in trouble. 'Specially since his name wasn't even Juan. N*gger's real name was Stanley. Stanley Williams from 47th Street. But when them Cuban gangsters caught his ass, I was there outside the window, not peekin' in—I ain't no freak or nothin'. However, I was attracted by the Marvin Gaye records playin'. And I could see they was gonna chop his ass up like a fried pla-ta-no, an' Lord knows I don' like to see a brother get chopped up over no punanny or nothing, so I caught his eye an' called out—“Juan! It's time-o, for you to go-o, you'll be late for yo gig-o at the Buena Vista Social Club-o!”

An' I winked t' give him the high sign—an' for kicks, at that fine-ass Cuban gal, you know? (LAUGHS) But the brothers, bein' Cuban an whatnot, automatically respected him, 'cause they thought he were one a' them artistes from the island...stead 'a what he was, which was a Miami cock-hound runnin' a pimp game. So, he managed to get up outta there—after two shitty sets at the Pie-ano an' a encore, and he was eternally grateful for my savin' his Black ass...an' for givin' him fitty dollars to get his ass outta town when the gal come to give birth an' fucked up namin' the chil' after him with his real name—Stanley.

So, when he got his job at Fox, I dropped him a line, remindin' him a' my good deed on his behalf—an' that I knew where he were, and where them Cuban Gangsters were...an' pity should the twain ever meet. That's how I got my job at Fox!

Now, workin' up there, I sees all kinda famous peoples ever' day. Like that crazy-ass Ferrarro woman. I saw her ass in the green room last week. Said “Hi” to her, I shook her hand...spit in her latte when she wasn't lookin'...

But the most famous person I seen up there was Mr. Bill O'Reilly, from that “O'Reilly Factor” and whatnot. Sellin' all them mugs an' shit. Now, he's hard as hell to work for, 'cause he got what you call...anger management issues. Like to yell at every-bo-ty all the damn time. In fact, I heard, that when he were born, the doctors didn't have to slap his ass or nothin', to get him yellin—an' that he came out cussin' his Mama's ass out for for not pushin' hard enough! Said 'Bitch I got places to be! Shit to make! Titty to suck! You holdin' up the Goddamn process!'

Oh yeah, he love to cuss. Motherfucker say fuck almost as fuckin' often as I say fuck. An' my ass say 'fuck' all the damn time.

So, one day...I'm there cleanin' up the place, sweepin' an' whatnot, when I'm outside O'Reilly's office...an' I hears all this cussin, an' heavy breathin' an' shit...an' I'm thinkin' 'Maybe this motherfucker's bein' born a second time' or somethin'. But then...I hear this loud-ass buzzin' sound—swear to God it sound like somebody, gettin' the Goddamn electric chair in there! So, I bust down th' door, an' Holy Jesus, HOLY JESUS—there is Mr. O'Reilly sittin'...well kind squattin' actually, over his office chair, with a woman's “personal massages” stickin' outta someplace it clearly don' be-long! An' it's buzzin' like a bee stuck in a knot-hole or somethin', while his ass is on the phone talkin' nasty to somebody.

Now, now...I don't know what I stumbled onto right then an' there...although my Black ass knows now!, so I were shocked as shit! So, I said “Mr. O'Reilly...is there a problem I can he'p you with, that don't involve me touchin' that women's personal massager?” An' he were surprised by me bustin' in there—I know he were, 'cause he took care a' the massager issue lickety-split, when he musta' flexed or somethin' an' fired that son-of-a-bitch cross the room like a motherfuckin' Atlas rocket! PYOW! Shit ricocheted off his Peabody...Polk...some kinda award...fuck if I can remember what it was—mighta been a Goddamn softball trophy—but it bounced off that thang and stuck in the wall like a motherfuckin' spear from a Tarzan movie!

An' then he dropped the phone all of a sudden—his hands was all greased up, so I guess it musta' slipped, an' he said “Thank God you've come...you've just saved me from a nefarious plot by Media Matters. They snuck that woman's personal massager onto my chair like a thumbtack, and were preparing to embarrass me when word got out that I sat down on it unwittingly”

So...(MUDBONE LAUGHS) So...I ask him—'cause you know I'm like Joe Louis, I don't pull no punches—I ask him, “Did they also set up that bucket of K-Y Jelly on your desk, and how...did they get your pants down around your motherfuckin' ankles, sir?”

Well, he get next to blubberin' an stutterin' an whatnot, talkin' 'bout “Don't be a pin-head!”, which was kind of funny seein' how I was the one fully dressed and decent, an' he were the one I caught playin' with the do-it-yourself, home proctology kit, an then...he tried to take my mind offa what was goin' on by offering me some food he had on his desk—which was kinda nasty sittin next t' that bucket of K-Y, but he wanted to be all hospitable an' shit, so he say “You look hungry, would you like some of this here falafel?”

I said, “Fa-what?”

He say “Falafel! Here, tuck in.” An' he push th' plate at me, and I said it again...“Fa-what?”

'Cause , that stuff didn't look too appetizin'. Looked like some undercooked “mountain chestnuts” wrapped in a Pamper™, with some questionable-ass “sauce” all over it, and considerin' what I had just walked in on, I wasn't about to go near that shit! Sauce looked a little too fresh for th' kid—know what I mean? So, I shook my head and said, “No, no Mr. O'Reilly, you can keep your Fa-whatever.” And he lost his motherfuckin' mind! Started yellin' at my ass all kuh-rayzy, “It's falafel, motherfucker! Falafel! Falafel! Falafel! Soun' like he was coughin' an' shit.

To which I naturally said, “God bless you, motherfucker.”

So...so he simmer down after a minute. Seem like he wanna be a nice fella now. Got his pants pulled up, pried that massager out the wall, and he said, “To show you my undyin' gratitude for saving my life from Media Matters, here is five-hunded dollars for your trouble—“trouble” meanin' you don't say a got-damn thing to nobody about what happened here—and...would you allow me to treat you to a fine dinner somewhere in town?”

Well I took that money before he could finish sayin' the “-ble” in “trouble”, an' I knew I had me a fish on the line, plus...I done seen the shit this motherfucker like to eat, so I wasn't even gonna let him make the choice a' where we was gonna grub. So I proposed we go “Uptown” for some soul food. Said it sound alright to him, and “Where do want to go exactly?” So, I hatched my plan and of course said “Sylvia's on Lenox Avenue”.

(AUDIENCE STARTS LAUGHING HARD)

MUDBONE: Well, I knew he wouldn't be too keen on that, cause I could hear his body make that nasty sound it made just before he fired that personal massager 'cross the room, an' this were while his pants were pulled up while we was ridin' in the cab, so I knew he was up-set. An' then, his skin went white. Or, whi-ter dependin' on your perspective of shit, but then he said somethin funny, He said, “I'm afraid I can't go up there to Sylvia's, as rumor has it there's a buncha' militant Black Panthers waitin' there to kill my ass should I ever show my face there a-gain.” (WAITS A LONG BEAT FOR LAUGHTER)

Now you know, I don't want no God-damn murder on my hands, least of all one of somebody payin' for my dinner, so I got crafty and suggested a different spot—Viola's, up on 135th Street where my man Tood'lum woik in th' kitchen. So O'Reilly said “That's fine”, and we drove on up. Which were gonna work out sweet for me, 'cause Tood'lum an me, we had an agreement. I never paid for nothin' when I ate there, and I never tol' nobody 'bout that n*gger he cut up down by the Chattahoochie over that Geechie gal what had his nose all opened up. An' seein' as how O'Reilly was payin', I was gonna have Tood'lum kick back the difference on my meal, while I was gonna make damn sure Mr. O'Reilly made up the difference on th' drinks an' the tip. See, don't think my ass bein' from Tupelo mean I don't know how the business world works.

That's what entrepreneur motherfuckers call a “re-allocation of funds”. An' I was gonna re-allocate as much a that bitch-ass's money as possible so I could have me lots of “funs” with it, too.

So, we get up there to Viola's, O'Reilly paid for th' ride, an' the cabbie like t' dig clear down to the “2” Train tracks peelin' out t' get back downtown. Swear t' God! But, we was there, and' as we was walkin' in O'Reilly stopped an' said, “Good grief—I just realized! Do you have a reservation?” An' I said “Well, now that you mention it, yes. I wish today were Saturday, 'cause then the Peach Cobbler'd be on the menu. But besides that, no suh! No reservations.”

Then, we stroll on in, an' I can see Tood'lum wavin' at me from the kitchen and I'm like “Awwww shit, don't advertise that I got an 'in' at this place! Hang back an' let this motherfucker spen' his money—some of which will soon be my money.” So, I wave his ass off and th' greeter seats us...up under a big-ass picture of the owner Viola, shakin' hands with Louis Farrakhan. Well, O'Reilly like t' pitch a bitch right then and there an' started back to his yellin' all crazy an' shit, “This is an outrage! I'm offended you would seat me under such a vile human being!” (MUDBONE SIGHS) You know how it go...“Cracker-ass angry shit, cracker-ass angry shit, cracker-ass angry shit!” So, Viola re-seated his ass elsewhere in the joint, but this time under a picture of her...and Al Sharpton. Here we go again...with “Cracker-ass angry shit, Part Deux.” (BEAT) That's french for “the sequel”. (LAUGHS) So, they moved us again an' again, an' O'Reilly's clumsy ass is bumpin' into people's tables an' shit, knockin' over their hot sauce an' grape soda...got their cornbread fallin' all on the floor...it's a Goddamn, soul food calamity up in there! An' now, the peoples is mad, 'cause he done fucked up their dinin' experience, so they start shootin' him evil eyes, an' then his ass got all paranoid. An' I can see his wheels turnin', 'cause he thinkin' (MUTTERED UNDER BREATH IN [WHITE GUY” VOICE) “Aw shit. Who up in here done called the Panthers. I know they comin'. I done fucked up a-gain.”

But, they finally seat us under a picture his ass can tolerate—it were the kid from “Family Matters” in the suspenders...”

(AUDIENCE MEMBER CALLS OUT) “Steve Urkel!”

MUDBONE: Thass his name. (BEAT) And you need to get your ass out more. Know that n*gger's name like he was your kin. Shit. So, we seated under this four-eyed fool, waitin' for our cornbread, when O'Reilly starts goin' off about the picture on the wall, one table down. it's a picture of Bill Clinton smilin' through a mouthful of greens, at a table with Viola. An' O'Reilly starts his yellin' an shit all over again about how “this man sullied the presidency and trashed the office”...and it's all I can do not to laugh in his motherfuckin' face. 'Cause I'm picturin' his ass...and I do mean his ass shootin' rockets 'cross the office while squattin' like a Goddamn baboon. But, seein' as how we'd already come to a settlement and whatnot, a brother had to bite his tongue.

But, the peoples in the restaurant hear him, an' now they really hot with his ass, 'cause all he got is bad shit to say about everybody they seem to like. So, he checkin' over his shoulder every five seconds like...(MIMES A NERVOUS MAN LOOKING FROM SIDE TO SIDE REPEATEDLY AND THEN SUDDENLY BEHIND HIM SEVERAL TIMES) “You ain't gonna catch me nappin'!”

I were hopin' somebody'd get up an' say “Get your hands outta my pocket” just to see that motherfucker shit on himself, but...nobody did.

So, the waitress come by with our cornbread, an' she hot now, 'cause all the tables is complainin' to her about his ass, an' she throw down the plate a' cornbread down and say, “Your entrees'll be here in a few minutes, Bon Apetit!”, an' walked away. Now, I know me some french from my time in WW2 in Pah-ree, so I know “Bon Apetit” means “Enjoy this good-ass food”. But I also know “Pissed-Off N*gger From Uptown French”, and that Bon Apetit meant, “You need to tell yo' friend to watch his self up here across 110th Street, 'cause it might take him a while to make it back downtown...if we float his ass down the Hudson in little pieces”.

Wasn't the most subtle warnin' in the world, but I got it. Bill's ass however, missed that shit entirely, 'cause now the motherfucker started goin' off about the cornbread, which were just fine, really—'cept he ain't never had no cornbread, cept for that bullshit they sell at Boston Market. “Why ain't it in little loaves?” “This is corn slices, not corn bread!” Triflin' shit like that.

Well, that were the las' straw, 'cause the people got t' buzzin' and talkin' bout' his actin' the fool, and word made it's way back to the kitchen. And you know, you don't be insultin' Black folks cookin' when you up in their restaurant an' shit. So now, I hear pans an' whatnot smashin' around, like they tryin' to restrain some-boty what done lost they mind, and all of a sudden...I remember who back there, and I'm like, “Oh shit...this motherfucker gonna end up in nex' weeks pot pies for sure”...'cause now, here come Tood'lum from the back, with his meat cleaver, and I know his ass was on cornbread detail tonight. So now, Bill O'Reilly done fucked up and insulted a crazy motherfucker who I know for a fact carved “Tood'lum were here, and YOU BETTER BELIEVE THAT SHIT!” in a n*gger's face in MIssissippi for kicks. What's more, seein' as how when Tood'lum git mad, he forget everything you tol' him, I also know I ain't gettin' nothin' else on top o' my $500 settlement, which made me mad...but right about then, all I see is six-foot-nine, 322 pounds of man, in a bloody apron an' a hatchet comin' my way...so I brace m'self, an' put my napkin up like a bib, so the blood don't spatter all over the front of m' new overalls.

An. Tood'lum said come up and say, just as calm as fuck, “Mr. O'Reilly, it's a pleasure to have you in the restaurant tonight, would you like to come to the kitchen for a private tour and maybe sample some of our off-the-menu specials?”

So now...I know his ass is in trouble, 'cause I ain't seen Tood'lum that calm since he passed out drinkin' a gallon a' corn liquor on a dare on Juneteenth Day in nineteen-fifty-five. That's a high-strung mother-fucker there, so I know this little kitchen visit ain't gonna turn out well for O'Reilly, and fuck next week—his ass just might make it to the gumbo on Saturday. But, Bill accepts the offer, and while we walkin', I'm beggin Tood'lum to please don't kill this motherfucker, 'cause I'll be the last n*gger seen with his ass, an' jail and me is like motherfuckin' Paula Abdul an' a bottle a' pills—a bad-ass mix. I'm pleadin' with his ass, “Tood'lum, if you could just let me be seen leavin' with him, let him get his ass home, and then you can do your “Marcellus Wallace” shit on his ass anytime after that, I would very much appreciate it.” But Tood'lum just said, “I'd like the man to see how we handle things back here, if you don't mind.”, an' I knew it wasn't gonna be no episode a' Rachael Ray up in there. So, I hung back an' let the chips fall where they may.

Then, Tood'lum walk us over to this here pan a' raw meat that stink like all that be damned and said, Mister O'Reilly, I understand our regular cuisine isn't your cup a' tea, so we keep certain items on standby in case a dignitary like you arrives.” Now, I was shocked for two reasons. One, I ain't never heard Tood'lum use a word like “dignitary” in the sixty years I done knowed his ass. Upwards a' two syllables an' his ass is as lost as Amelia Earhart, so I'm as shocked as shit. And the second reason I'm shocked is 'cause I know God-damn well what's in that pan and and I'm lookin' for Joe Rogan, 'cause it's 'bout to be a very special, live, motherfuckin' episode of “Fear Factor” in this place.

These is raw, just of the hoof chit-lins, which for you uninformed motherfuckers is the part of the pig opposite the snout, which is the “rooter”. This part in the pan is what you call...“the tooter”—about twenty-five motherfuckin' miles of it...an' it ain't been cleaned yet. So, Tood'lum point at the pan and says, “Mr. O'Reilly, would you like to try our special down-home cannolis?”

And God as my witness, this dumb motherfucker—who obviously ain't got no sense a' smell left to speak of, what with his freaky-ass shenanigans—said “okay” to that shit—literally to that shit! So, Tood'lum cut a piece loose—almost threw up on m'self man—and put it on a plate for O'Reilly's monkey-ass to eat...

An' just then, our waitress walked by with a platter a' food an' whispered “Bon Apetit!” again and she laughed. But this time she literally meant “Enjoy that shit”, motherfucker.”

So, he lift the plate up to his mouth, an' he said “Bottoms up!”, which made me start laughin' my ass off, an' he—(MAKES A LOUD SLURPING NOISE) sucks out “the cheese” just like that.

Well, it were about one second later, and that motherfucker's smile...turnt upside-the-fuck-on down an' he come to realize...that that wasn't no got-damn cheese he were eatin', and what he sucked on for damn sure wasn't no cannoli!

And then, he los' his fuckin' mind, runnin' all around the kitchen, flippin' over big-ass pans a' fried chicken an' cornbread, goin' “Mmmmmmf-mmmmmmmmmf-mmmmmmmmmf” an' dry heavin' an shit, and now, that extra seventy-five dollars I was gonna get is the farthest thing from my Black-ass mind, 'cause this here floor show is worth every God-damn penny! Smothered chicken flyin' ever' which 'a way...He fucked up and kicked over the pan a' chit'lins, so they was spread all over the floor like comatose, stinkin-ass snakes, an' that's when that crazy-ass Tood'lum said, “Mr. O'Reilly, would you like something to drink to get the taste outta your mouth?”, and Bill's eyes got all big, an he started noddin' “Yes!” all kuh-ray-zy, like a low-rider chihuahua on crack—head bouncin' up an' down an' shit!

But Tood'lum had made up his mind he was gonna really torture this motherfucker...so he started lookin' for the beverage all slow and whatnot. He walkin' roun' the kitchen like that ol' motherfucker Tim Conway used to do on Carol Burnett. Goin' “Naw...this ain't it...and naw...this ain't it either...”. Meanwhile, O'Reilly's turnin' baby-shit yellow, 'cause he done mainilned e.coli concentrate, an' his eyes are rollin' all up in his head an' shit...

An' then, our waitress come through again with a tray a' empty glasses, an' O'Reilly snapped and grabbed her ass up in the collar and an' screamed—sount' like the got-damn Exorcist—growling, “Where's my iced tea, motherfucker?”.

Well...that were all she wrote for his ass, then. 'Cause it got realllllll quiet back there all of a sudden, an' Tood'lum figured “Oh well, I guess this here motherfucker can't find a tall buildin' to jump off or nothin'”—guess I'll fulfill his death wish for him.” So he reached over by the stove for a metal pitcher, and handed it to O'Reilly 'an said, “Here it is right here, sir.” He snatched that shit away, and started guzzlin' it down like it were ice-cold lemonade in August—'cept it wasn't. And it wasn't no God-damn ice tea neither!

It were a pitcher...of recycled,hot, fried chicken grease!

An' after two or three swallows, O'Reilly realized it too, 'cause he dropped down to his knees, and this time he turn't beet red! He broke out in motherfuckin' spots—swear t' God I thought he were gonna melt like that crazy bitch from “The Wizard Of Oz”! I heard them funny-ass noises he made again before he launched that massager rocket—(STARTS MAKING LOUD AND LONG, FART NOISES WITH HIS MOUTH)—but these sounded all wet and shit, and then...he got down on all fours an growled real loud, and run out the back door—BAM!—like a motherfuckin' dog!

An' that the last I seen 'a his ass since. Now, now...I know you see him on “The Factor” every night, and you sayin', “Oh, there he is!” Well, that ain't him. That's a' one them leftover Disneyland president robots they re-furbished an' propped up behind the desk. I should know, 'cause it's my job to dust that motherfucker off every night after the show.

The real Bill O'Reilly's still up in Harlem. 'Cause see, them Black Panthers caught his ass over on West 127th Street, eatin' grass out the ground at the park, but—they decided not t' kill 'im. Instead, they use im' t' make money for new leather jackets, by rentin' his ass out as a garbage disposal to the restaurants up there. And you can find him...at Sylvia's on Friday and Saturday nights in the back alley...chompin' on chicken bones and empty soda cans.

An' when he get thirsty, he don't ask for no iced tea no more. Uh-uhhhhh! That motherfucker goes (IN THAT EXORCIST GROWL AGAIN) “Where the hell is my fried chicken grease, motherfucker?”.

There's more...

“The Mick”

Rest In Peace, Harlem's George Carlin—1937-2008


We knew we weren't going to have him for long very early in the game.

George Carlin. comedian, monologuist , and member of the “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” troika of dazzling comedy talent of the sea-changing 1970's has passed away—although, as Hubris says downpage a touch—“What (are we) thinking? George hasn't passed way, we didn't 'lose him'. He didn't go to the other side. He's dead.”

Which is a perfectly apt, Carlin-esque way of summing it up.

George Carlin IS dead. And we should thank our lucky, brick wall-backdropped stars that we had his talent for as long as we did. By my count, he'd suffered at least three heart attacks (that we knew of) and kept bouncing back from those should-have-been-life-stealing-episodes to bring us the funny, make us think—and yeah, give everyone who listened a little lesson on writing with wit in the english language. And mind you, those debilitating health issues didn't just crop up as he wizened into a raging old lion trodding the comedy circuit boards. No. He was just shy of forty and at the peak of his popularity when he first dodged death's swinging scythe pointed at his fragile heart, and basically called the black-clad ender of things, word number six—“Motherfucker”—to his face, and then proceeded to keep on steppin'. He would duck and slide away from that bastard's blade at least two more times we knew of, and still he returned to entertain and challenge us again and again.

I referred to him up-page here as “a member of the “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” troika of dazzling comedy talent of the sea-changing 1970's”, and he absolutely was—with Richard Pryor as Willie Mays, Carlin as Mickey Mantle, and the great Robert Klein as Duke Snider. If you don't get that reference, it's to the great trio of Hall of Fame major-league center-fielders who all played here in New York during the halcyon 1950s and were immortalized in the song, “Willie Mickey and the Duke”. If that's too “in” for ya, think of heavyweight boxing in the seventies when it was ruled by colossi like Ali, Frazier and Foreman. Pryor, Carlin and Klein were like those three in the comedy world—dominant, mega-talented forces who changed the game for everyone who followed in their wake. Now, only Klein remains. But if you're a comedy newcomer, or managed to be unlucky enough to miss 'em when they—and particularly George Carlin were hurling thunderbolts of laughter from the heavens, you need to understand just how good these three were and how their work changed the game.

Pryor, who I have discussed at length before, was the most protean talent of the three in my mind. For all of his unfortunate bacchanalian excesses, there may have never been a more all-around gifted comedian and yes, no-holds-barred social commentator. A rubber-face and body, a keen intellect and sense of unsparing anyone for their transgressions—especially including himself, and finally, a sense of verbal rhythm that made him the “Charlie Parker” of the comedy game—were the formidable weapons Pryor brought to the stage, and no one as far as I can see, ever outgunned him. You throw in as an extra his having perhaps the most tuned-in observational powers of regular folks ever bestowed by the creator on a funny person and you get the magic that was him—so much more than dirty words and a bushy 'fro as some liked to discount him as—he was damn near a Will Rogers 2.0, tearing away the veil of false propriety on America's issues of race, sex, class,and justice. He did this not by impersonating the famous, but rather—by channeling the voices of WASPS, winos, and women. Dogs, doctors and Dracula. An old, Black man, a young spotted giraffe, and even a horny spider monkey on the loose in the palm tree fronds canopying Hollywood. And tapping into ALL of those people, animals and more, (yes, he even personified a heart attack trying to kill him), he soared to prominence in the early seventies. But he wasn't alone...

The Bronx's own Robert Klein also came down the pike, and he too was a student of the observational school. But Klein was effectively the first, great, post Borscht-Belt, post-Goodman/Cheney/Schwerner Jewish comic. Relying on the old archetypes of irony and self-deprecation, he flipped the script in dealing with subjects as Joe McCarthy, the stupidity of cold-war excesses and of course, his beloved whipping post of Watergate, in which he took on a president in ways the late Vaughn Meader could only hint at. He took the old cadences of the Catskills and ran the new subversive material through them, while also subtly mocking the style to boot. It was unabashedly “Noo Yawk”-ey, yet it had a deciely college-educated vibe running through it as well, and his exasperation with the world he grew up in, only to see it replaced with the crazier world he was now an adult in only heightened the laughs. His work was finely-crafted and yet...had that corduroy-ed college professor prowling the stage at the lecture hall vibe, riffing on history and seeming to discover some wild, new shit right there in front of you as he spoke and fairly explodied with new energy to “hip” you to his breakthrough. What a time that was.

And we come to the great Carlin, (who was from what he joked was “White Harlem”, aka West 121st Street—the “Morningside Heights” section of the nabe)...who may have been the best pure wordsmith of the three. I am hard-pressed to think of another comedian who worked harder at perfecting his craft than George Carlin did. In his peak years, he Pryor and Klein ALL busted their asses coming up with new material, but it was Carlin who chiseled at the marble more, with finer tools and then buffed it to a glowing finish better than any of 'em. He workshopped his material so hard as he toured the country, and with such a discerning eye for pacing, and just the right phrasing and even intonation, that by the time you saw him at a big venue of on one of his annual HBO specials, you were watching something pretty damned close to stand-up perfection.

You see, every comedian's goal/wish/dream/necessity is to come up with “a fresh fifteen” every three months or so. A “fresh fifteen” being a new, and solid fifteen minutes of new material—staggered in such a way that at the end of every year, you'd end up with a different hour's worth of stand-up than you had the previous year. (Ostensibly so that when you hit spots on “the circuit” for the second time within a year's cycle, you're not booed off the stage for bending ears with the same old stuff) That's a damned hard thing to come up with, that whole new hour—but it starts with that supremely difficult “fresh fifteen” every three months, and Carlin was fucking superhuman at this. He would work from a handful of index cards when starting a new quarter's worth of material, stuff he painstakingly wrote himself, testing it, floating it and then honing it or ditching it based on the audience's reaction. He crafted his sets with an architect's eye almost, with special attention to pacing—when to run for twenty seconds breathlessly, and then, when to pause for a long beat, and hit with that one-liner with the vocal curl up at the end.

Which would of course, push the verbal boulder down the mountainside to start the next run of funny anew.

Where Pryor was an improvisational wizard, springing new additions from his basic outline of things, Carlin wrote these perfect pocket symphonies of comedy. Arranged just so, and when performed by the master—himself, they were quite simply brilliant. Especially when mated with that well-honed stream-of-consciousness, slightly buzzed delivery of his. (He would abandon much of that “stoner” timing as his work got sharper in tone over the years.)

And that goes without even dipping into the nature of the material itself—another observational genius, he—Carlin was also an unabashed observer of language itself. Playing with it, noting it's foibles and inherent silliness in how we fuck it up every damned day. Not to mention his constant highlighting of words' power, and how we as a society constantly mis-ascribe power to certain words to make points beyond the words' meaning.

Thus, we get Carlin's most infamous and subversive bit—“The Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television”. You know 'em...

“Shit, piss, fuck, c*nt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.

The routine itself is damn near a doctoral dissertation on the words and the hypocrisy of the so-called “affronted” so outraged by their use. It's a masterful piece of wordplay, timing and knife-edged in way that simultaneously draws the guffaws while ridiculing the posers who would stand in judgment. It also drew the ire of those posers who held power in media here in America, placing Carlin right where he wanted to be—diametrically opposite them, but also NOT exactly where he wanted to be—which was in a fucking courtroom with these stodgy bastards fighting this shit out like some property-line case in Levittown. Carlin, something of a Lenny Bruce acolyte (who yes, was there in the club the night Bruce was arrested on obscenity charges, and in defending Bruce wound up going downtown with him in the same cop car!) believed whole-heartedly in using language to challenge, and did so with that bit. However, in the most classic case of “You can't fight City Hall”, not only did the powers-that-be use all of their “oomph” to keep their verbal ban in place, but they then ascribed huge fines for broadcast outlets that dared flout said ban—fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for usage “on-air”. I know from that ban close-up. The radio station I worked at for years here in NY had on the wall of the Master Control room (and still does to this day) an ‘Olde English” scroll featuring the calligraphed words you must not ever fucking say displayed in plain view, lest you bankrupt the joint with fines. The ironic thing was that their fighting Carlin on this only gave him that much more fame, and in the end—respect—and it only helped him far more than it ever hurt him. Folks don't give a shit about the “rightness” of the government in it's crusade for morals per se—they remember Carlin's routine, and that cadence of how he rolled those words off the tongue—“Shit, piss, fuck, c*nt, cocksucker, motherfucker and...tits.”, and how he stuck it to the man.

And of course, he'd have the ultimate last laugh in doing his routines unexpurgated on TV whenever he wanted thanks to the birth of Cable which didn't have to hew to the FCC's whips and thus gave Carlin (and other envelope-pushing funnymen) bigger audiences than ever with his perennial one-man shows, centered around his anti-bullshit mantra. He tackled with rough hands society's hang-ups over sex, religion and violence, while brutally making light of our superficial ways of dealing with the supposedly bad outgrowths of those things. He railed—far longer than I ever thought he would, considering his repeatedly failing heart—against those hypocrisies and was damn near as sharp now at it as he was at his youthful peak.

Maybe even sharper.

Having worked professionally in comedy for twenty years, I can say with no doubt that this is a loss of huge proportions for the biz. He was a professional's professional, and cared enough about the craft to keep honing his shit, and never gave in to the temptation to be a lazy-ass, and fall back on lame-ass material because he didn't respect his audience—the ultimate stand-up no-no that some so-called “pros” shittily engage in, as noted by one of my favorite bloggers, Mark Evanier:

It's just the nature of comedy to deflate the privileged and the powerful. It was the Marx Brothers tormenting Margaret Dumont, not the other way around. Lately, Dennis Miller seems to be trying to reverse this principle. I used to really like Miller, though not all the time. One of the "not" times came after I saw him perform years ago at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Rita Rudner was the opening act and she was funny and fresh and giving it her all. Miller came out next and did horribly dated “topical” material — nothing I hadn't heard him do a dozen times — with an attitude of, “Gimme my check and let me get out of here.”

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What struck me when I saw Miller on with Leno the other night was that given the state of the world right now, a comic who decides to not joke about the President really hasn't got a lot to say. He started his Tonight Show spot by hauling out his joke about Michael Jackson and George Hamilton officially crossing on the pigmentation chart. It's a joke that has now been rerun more often than the I Love Lucy about John Wayne's footprints and one that really shows its age. I suspect that were it not for Miller and that joke, George Hamilton would not have been mentioned on network television in the last decade.

That's a disease that afflicts many of today's comics—be they big names or guys booked at “The Yuk-Yuk Hut” on Route 11. There's an ugly laziness there, and sadly now—minus the borderline-crazed professionalism of a George Carlin, there's one less person working to point to as a sterling example of “how it should be done”. It's no mere coincidence that in the first year of NBC's Saturday Night (the show's REAL name at first before the change to a bunch of things ending with “Saturday Night Live”), he, Klein and Pryor would be guest hosts, and that Carlin himself would host the very first episode . “Willie, Mickey and the Duke” indeed. And damned if he didn't hit some serious tape-meausre shots like “The Mick” did when he prowled the stage with a mic.

He was a giant. A pro's pro, and as someone who also values the weight and worth of “the word”, I shall especially miss him, as we all should. Because I think we're all a little bit dumber, and a little less brave without his needling, cranky and “How could we not notice this?” presence.

“Sigh!” I guess I'll have to find “a place for my stuff” all by myself now. Damn.

There's more...

Now For Something Completely Different

An Anti-Grizzly Suit Test.

This fella was attacked by Grizzlies and then built a suit to protect himself from nature's deadliest fur friends. This video is just one of the "tests" that he performed, on himself. After watching this, you have to find the video where one of his friends hits him with a pickup truck and he flies 20-30 feet into the air.

There's more...

Reid Makes A Funny

Senator Majority leader Harry Reid was asked just now about whether
the ongoing nomination fight is hurting the party.

"It makes me bitter," he said.

Of course I would have rather he made a comment on "Team Torture".

There's more...

Feelin' Kinda Sketchy

We Loves The Sketches! We Loves The Sketches!


Jesse's post downpage a piece on IFC's listing and ranking of the “50 Funniest Sketches Ever” hit close to home for me. I've spent the better part of twenty years writing (and performing) sketch comedy for television, the stage and radio. I've been fortunate enough to get to work with some genuinely talented people who ply the trade— like Richard Pryor consigliere Paul Mooney (although he may not have appreciated working with me...but that's a story for another time), Robert Townsend, and an estimable television comedy mentor from NBC's classic “Laugh-In”.

It's a craft I've come to love and respect. I first fell in love with the idea of sketch comedy writing when I was a child and saw the syndicated reruns of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, and lusted for a job (and a wife) like Rob Petrie's. The second act of the love affair was watching on TV one late night as a pre-teen an old PBS compilation called “Ten From Your Show Of Shows”. It was a revelation. Seeing that run of vintage Sid Caesar / Imogene Coca / Carl Reiner / Howard Morris classics left me speechless in awe—and gut-busting laughter. The timing, the physicality, the perfectly-placed ad-libs (which I managed to catch at that tender age) just left me reeling.

I wanted to do that.

And in short order, “NBC's Saturday Night” and Canada's comedic monster “SCTV” would come down the pike, stoking my inner gag-meister further, along with a newfound appreciation for the high-production value camp and craziness of “The Carol Burnett Show's” set pieces. I was hooked. My brothers and I made up madcap stuff and performed it at home. I fell in with a like-minded clutch of comedy-crazed lunatics in high school and we came up with (I still think, hilarious) sketches every damned day in the lunchroom. (My high-school friend Frank L.'s “The Dr. Zaius Show”, a Johnny Carson-esque talk show hosted by the bombastic simian who would intellectually berate his guests and then have them strung up in nets still makes me laugh when I think about it thirty years later. Plus Frank's dead-on impersonation of Maurice Evans' pompous ape forced to deal with ignorant humans four nights a week with an equally ape-hating sidekicky Paul Lynde—yours truly—just had a surreal quality to it. His Zaius' hilarious viciousness towards “guest” Barry Manilow is something you just had to see...)

We carried that comedic penchant to college and wrote sketches there too. Did a revue in senior year and a couple of years later we were on radio. Nabbed the TV gigs shortly thereafter and the rest is my little gang's own mini-history. But the one thing that never died for us, and me in particular is an absolute LOVE for quality sketch comedy.

In the years hence, I still run with much of that original pack. And the intervening years have refined our eyes and ears to what IS great sketch comedy. The IFC list is decent, boasting about a dozen of the true classics, but it misses the mark with some glaring exclusions (How in God's name do you leave off things like SCTV's “Polynesiantown” and The Godfather”, Your Show of Shows “This Is Your Story” as noted by a commenter downpage in comments, and Saturday Night's creepy “Mr. Death” as portrayed by Christopher Lee, as well as its first generation of short films from Albert Brooks to Tom Schiller's “Java Junkie” and the darkly ironic “Don't Look Back In Anger”) and some if you'll pardon the word, “sketchy” inclusions of pieces that while funny, are not classics.

Thus, this post. It's based on a discussion I've been having for months with myself and a circle of talented writer friends. It's a list of a baker's dozen of what I think are some of the absolute “best” of the genre. What constitutes a “great” sketch? An inspired idea that the entire acting ensemble “buys” totally. Generosity in performance—where everyone gives and takes in the piece giving room to their fellow performer to “breathe” comedically while catching their individual moment to shine. Strong, meaty characters—not gimmicks that the talent can “live in” and have a history built into their inception. Room for absurdity. And I define absurdity as the twisted, natural offshoot of reality. You ramp up the progression of events, instead of going from 1 to 10, go from 1 to 400, with just enough stops in between to maintain a hint of familiarity with reality. Crazy skipping back and forth is just “wackiness” which is cheap and easy. (Of course, if the sketch's premise begins in “high-concept” form—say a “50“ on the scale, humor can be mined from going backwards to normalacy, and then back up past the “50” and beyond.)

A willingness to go for the surreal, a firm grasp on pop culture, a strong, friendly acting ensemble (the original “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” bonded for many weeks before an actual rehearsal ever took place, soaking up each other's timing and personalities), a blending of disparate elements into a gut-busting comedic whole (i.e. SCTV's “Godfather”). Brevity? Not necessarily. If it's good enough to just run, you let it (“Godfather” again and Chappelle's “Rick James”), but shorter bits require a deft hand at the paintbrush knowing when to lift it from the canvas. I'm reminded of an old Simpsons bit where Krusty the Clown is on an episode of SNL and is bombing terribly in a sketch with audible groans from the audience. Krusty looks at the camera and wearily sighs, “It goes on like this for sixteen more minutes”.

But what does it for me is—does it make me laugh? Not just now, but years down the road? Is it timeless? Does it go beyond mere gross-out and “shock” (which too much of modern sketch work does) and hit me high and low, smart and silly? Do the performers go for it and not focus on vanity? Lose themselves in the funny and this sweep me up in the wave? The following list of my personal favorites do all of that and then some. Here then, is my “Holy Grail” of sketch comedy.

1.) Your Show Of Shows “This Is Your Story”—April 1953

This piece is in my mind, the gold standard of TV sketch comedy. Click on the link above to see it in two parts on YouTube and you will catch the amazing Sid Caesar at the height of his considerable comedic powers, along with a pitch-perfect Carl Reiner and a comedically infectious Howard Morris, who is a laugh catalyst in this spoof on “This Is Your Life”—and a catalyst for the initially, riotously uncooperative Caesar's Al Duncey to take this partly written, but mostly improvised rip on game shows, privacy and familial wackiness to the laugh stratosphere. This landmark piece (lensed in New York) broke the comedic “fourth wall”, as it begins amidst the audience with Caesar seated there as an unwitting member who is chosen by the host (Reiner). The privacy-craving “citizen” Caesar portrays battles Reiner and a bevy of ushers and theatre securityand I mean really battles them, across rows of audience seats, down an aisle, onto and off the stage and then is basically dragged kicking and screaming into the limelight. I saw this when I was 10 years old and it floored me then. 34 years later, it still kills me, and maybe even moreso. You have to see it to believe it—particularly Howie Morris' bawling turn as an overcome “Uncle Goopy”. Add in the impeccable timing, perfect camera takes and the stellar written bits (the show featured a young Neil Simon, Mel Brooks and Larry Gelbart in the writer's room) and you have the “Babe Ruth” of TV sketch comedy—the early giant whose legend still stands up.

2.) NBC Saturday Night's “Racist Word Association”—December 1975

Jesse features this one in his post below and in it you have a divine confluence of humor perfection. It's edgy, brief (clocking in at a mere 2;27), minimalist and graced with the presence of one of the century's comic geniuses—Richard Pryor, bringing his beyond-the-box-of-wires-and-tubes gifts to television and nearly exploding it with his chameleonic performance. He goes from a dull-witted hump of a guy to a hilarious, thermonuclear ball of rage in no time flat, and he does this opposite an uncharacteristically generous Chevy Chase, who plays straight man to Bud Abbott perfection. His needling, wheedling HR guy is emblematic of a head-gaming corporate bureaucracy and lights Pryor's fuse with deft precision. Pryor's extra bit of business—like his about-to-snap facial twitch after Chase has gone too far—is priceless. I doubt if an impending murder on television has ever been funnier. This one was written by Pryor's fellow comedian and nuts-and-bolts comedy technical wizard Paul Mooney—and not one of the NBC Saturday Night regular scribes—specially brought in by Richard to spike the night's bits with a more “Pryor-ian” authenticity. It was comedy perfection—three minutes, no props, no effects, no tricks, just a great script and great performers working it to a “T”. Pryor's appearance on the show itself was a cause celebré. He was undoubtedly the comic king of the day, having won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album two consecutive years (he would run it to three) but his stylistic volatility and “blue” work unprecedently led NBC to run the show that night on a five second delay—lest the “uncontrollable”, curse spouting Negro let fly with a naughty. He didn't. Al he did was give the first season its first breakout episode with three classic skits—this one, “The Exorcist” and his face off with Belushi in “Samurai Hotel.” I don't think you could do the “Word Association” piece on TV today. Never mind the charged content—the way Chase and Pryor give themselves over to the locomotive-like drive of the material is just unseen today. Un-seen.

3.) SCTV Network 90's “The Godfather”—December 1981

Here you have a magnum opus of TV sketch-dom. As much as I loved the original cast of SNL, the gang at SCTV (which followed it here in NY at 1 a.m.) might have actually been the more talented ensemble, and this extended “through-line” piece (it ran as a multi-segment interspersed with other bits during the episode) is simultaneously indulgent, smart, ruthless, dead-on impersonation and performance-wise, surreal and freakishly absurd all at once. It's rooted in the fictional SCTV network's “boss” Guy Caballero's acting as a television version of Coppola's “Godfather” on his daughter Connie's wedding day and being absent from SCTV headquarters that day. From the opening scene of the brilliant Eugene Levy (so wasted today on what he performs in) as an eerily dead-on Floyd the Barber from “The Andy Griffith Show's” requesting a favor from “Don Caballero” (to “break Opie's arm” for breaking his barber pole), expertly mimicking the original Godfather's opening, this one is an all-time great. Levy switches roles as Floyd leaves Caballero and becomes James Caan's constantly, fidgeting and punching “Sonny”, and from there—it. Is. On. They spoof the coming craze of “Pay TV” (Cable), The Today Show, CBS Sports, ABC's then penchant for “Jiggle TV”, the gangster-like aspects of network television, and do so while running out a dazzling array of characterizations—the aforementioned Levy two, John Candy's “Johnny Pavarotti” and Jimmy The Greek, the gifted Catherine O'Hara's scary Jane Pauley, Levy as Gene Shalit, Rick Moranis as Brent Musburger and Michael Corleone (Guy's son “Michael Caballero” ), and Dave Thomas' uproarious turns as Turk Ugazzo and Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen. This link takes you to what may be the sketch's wildest moments, spoofing the Duvall/Hollywood Producer segment in “The Godfather”. It's been chopped up a bit, but from this and the clip at the top, you get an idea of how this one hit at all levels. They got the look right, the feel right and the whole Godfather vibe right, and then they pumped it so full of laughs that it's a comedy explosion of rare quality. SNL could NEVER do a bit as long as this one and somehow keep it this funny. And the SCTV gang would do a lot of these. “Polynesiantown”, The Towering Inferno” just to name a couple of examples. Genius. Sheer genius.

4.) Monty Python's Flying Circus “Argument Clinic”—November 1972

This is one of the most perfectly-crafted pieces of sketch comedy ever done. It is in the upper pantheon of word-play humor alongside Abbott & Costello's “Who's On First”. It's sly, manipulative, wickedly smart and like the Pryor/Chase bit, under three minutes in length, involves but two characters, a desk and a verbal confrontation. Like the Pryor one, it also made IFC's list thank goodness. But John Cleese and Michael Palin play this bad boy to comic-timing perfection. It begins with an absurd premise (starting at a “50” instead of a “1”) and manages to take off from there, sucking you into the characters' mind-gaming of one another. Who will crack? Who cares? It's too much fun seeing these two verbally fence with one another as they mix intellectualism with silliness and walk you out the other side with stitches in your gut from laughter. Again, you have to be generous, quick and have a sensibility of knowing where to allow a breath for laughs for one like this to work. And bluntly, these two are two of the living legends at doing this. There aren't many.

5.) Monty Python's Flying Circus “International Philosophy”—December 1972

Here's another Python bit and...well, Steve and I used to laugh our asses off at this one in e-mail exchanges. Above and beyond our love for this piece, it is probably the smartest, and funniest sports spoof ever lensed. You don't have to be a soccer fan to dig this one, as it again does what the Python crew does best, seamlessly mix high and low, smart and silly into an uproarious concoction. The wedding of all these classic thinkers and philosophers—German vs. Greek—with a high-stakes soccer match where instead of kicking the ball about the pitch—they haughtily ruminate in full costume as a breathless announcer sells it in typical all-the-marbles fashion is a classic bit of comic contradiction. And in that high-stakes commentary comes these exchanges:

ANNOUNCER: Nietzsche receives a yellow card after claiming that "Confucius has no free will."; Confucius says "Name go in book".

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Socrates scored the only goal of the match in the 89th minute, a diving header from a cross from Archimedes (who gets the idea of using the football first after shouting out "Eureka!"). The Germans dispute the call;

ANNOUNCER: "Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx [with apt materialism] is claiming it was offside."

If you “get” philosophy and know whose views are whose in terms of the “players on the pitch”, the piece is hilarious. And even if you don't get the philosophy, the spoofing of these dueling belief systems as competitive sport is still amazingly funny. The silliness of the on-field behavior contrasted with the announcer's never for a second giving up the ghost as far as this thing being a “real” soccer match is just a gem of juxtaposition comedy and surrealism gone to a brilliant, absurdist peak. From the moment the announcer says, “And they're off!”—and the players are decidedly not “off” as you'd expect them, you will not. Stop. Laughing.

6.) Chappelle's Show's “Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories: Rick James”—February 2004

This one made IFC's list too. You've probably seen and heard bits from it a hundred times...but it's a stone winner, and it belongs because it is jaw-achingly funny. Now, this one I have some behind-the-scenes info on, as I had an in-law working on set as well as a good friend. What makes this “sketch” a classic is that it really is a perfect storm of things coming together and simply “killing” humor-wise. From the start, it's a wonderful bit of story-telling from the piece's anchor, Charlie Murphy (Eddie's brother). Some people just know how to spin a tale and Charlie's a Goddamned griot on this one. But the little secret is that Charlie routinely spun these classic tales off-set as a way to kill time and entertain his co-horts. He cracked up so many folks with his tales (including Chappelle) that the star rightly figured that they were being wasted on the cast and crew and said, “Let's shoot a couple of these.” They shot Charlie telling his story in documentary style to get the details down, then shot Rick for his side of the story, and then shot Dave and the cast doing the “enactments” if you will. There was very little written. It was mainly improv-ed off a rough outline of what would go on in a scene. A LOT of improv to be precise. A massive amount of footage was shot of Chappelle—who was in effect living as James during the spaced-over-several-days shoot. He was in total Rick “mode” during this time and a couple of those shoot days went well into the wee hours—three to four a.m. easily as he riffed off Charlie's story details. The piece was intended to be a regular-length sketch—a component within a 22-minute show, but they shot so much great stuff, along with the Charlie Murphy and Rick James interviews, the decision was made to just devote damn near the whole episode to the bit. It was a masterwork of post-production—the editing of the disparate elements was brilliant. But it's Chappelle's getting inside of and reflecting Rick's inner “crazy” and raging egomania and Charlie's hilarious narrative that is the backbone of this sketch's success, Chappelle plays Rick as what he was—a coke-addicted, inferiority-complexed, enfant terriblé with NO boundaries whatsoever. Pair that with Charlie's insane stories, which when you watch the sketch are not really refuted by Rick at all, so you're on the edge of your seat wondering and laughing at how much of this is hyperbole and how much is simple reportage and you get a great sketch. The absurd becomes real, and the real becomes absurd. Belief is totally suspended and once you've got that, anything goes—as it did when one was around Rick. You're along for the whole lunatic ride. One of the best ever.

7.) SCTV Network 90's “Maudlin's Eleven”—April 1982

Unfortunately, there's no web video of this one, so to see it you'll have to buy the DVD compilation SCTV Volume Three. In fact, if you're a TV sketch comedy fan, you should really own a couple of these disc sets because these sets are the video record of the masterpiece that was SCTV. You just won't see a better combo of writing, performance, production values and a willingness to just “go for it” than their stuff. Much as I love the original NBC Saturday Night sketches with that first cast, time has not been as kind to that material as I would have thought. You can see the drugginess in some of the performers, as well as the ego issues showing through. Some of the nihilism I found so coolly subversive back then reads a lot more needlessly mean now. SCTV didn't have those issues as the players weren't forced into the grinding “star machine” that the “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” were, and as they sort of worked in the cocoon of Toronto as opposed to NY or L.A. the creators were able to just create in workshop without the worry of media center distractions. SCTV is Comedy 101 for true “heads”.

This particular sketch is one of the best examples of what SCTV did better than just about everybody else. They skewered Hollywood, television itself and pop culture with this, the single best spoof of “The Rat Pack” and caper movies ever done. SCTV's underlying premise was always that you were looking in on the inner workings of a cheesy TV network and how media cultivates, panders to and packages their “stars”. “Maudlin's Eleven” was merely the ultimate example of that ethos. It featured a “Murderer's Row” of SCTV's pre-packaged, wannabe-cool talent in an awful network produced movie of the week. (within the show itself) Starting with the obsequious, toadying talk show host Sammy Maudlin (The hilarious Joe Flaherty character based on the mid-70's Sammy Davis Jr and his fawning talk show of the time) in the Sinatra role, the nails-on-a-chalkboard annoying “legendary comedian” Bobby Bittman (played to teeth-grinding perfection by Eugene Levy) indulgently and perfectly over-acting the cool Dean Martin part, with Rick Moranis, John Candy and Dave Thomas filling out the rest of the loser-ific second-line talent the “network” crammed into this D-level caper flick, they ape and rip that sort of tinsel-town packaging of popular movies. The fact that their characters are already third-tier “stars”, their low-grade heist (a wad of money from Danny Thomas' dressing room!) and its invariably going bad in the most pathetic ways possible makes it that much funnier. These are losers who don't think or even know that they're losers running a dumb scam they think will send 'em to the big time, which even if it worked, wouldn't. So when it fails, you laugh at their delusional idiocy twice as hard. Mix in a bit of witty ripping on the oiliness of some aspects of early 60's television and you've got a multi-leveled sketch classic. For this one though, it helps to have watched a bit of SCTV to familiarize yourself with the players playing “the players”. You won't be sorry. Trust me.

8.) NBC Saturday Night's “Miles Cowperthwaite—January 1979

Alas, another one not yet on video or on YouTube or anywhere on the internets (Get Season 4 of Saturday Night out on DVD already,“Dr. Evil”), but this particular piece is one of the rare matings of comedy giants that doesn't cancel one another out—The “Not Ready For Prime Time Players” meets Monty Python (in their ace laugh-getter and guest host Michael Palin)—and actually kills beyond belief. A super-spoof of a “lost” Charles Dickens series of tales, “Miles Cowperthwaite” is set in a dreary, sickly Dickensian England, and we follow Palin's Miles through his travails as a young butler/valet to a horridly enfeebled, aged master of the house as played by a laugh-out-loud nasty Dan Ackroyd. His character has all manner of weird old world ailments. Prone to spastic fits where he convulses and grabs anyone within a few feet of him “invading their personal space”, he also has a disgusting problem with saliva. He grossly over-produces it, forcing him to wear an odd metal frame about his head on which a “drool cup” is attached to catch his excess saliva. Palin's job? To help Ackroyd's character around the house and empty his full drool cups left about the manor into a “drool bucket” he must carry around. The mix of the dour, Dickensian style with the unnerving physical comedy (seeing a seizure-struck, fur-swaddled Ackroyd spazzing about and grabbing the naive Palin character while sloshing his own drool, and the huge pail of drool that Palin's collected while feebly wailing “Drool Bucket!” has to be seen to be believed.) amps that Python-esque technique of melding the smart and ridiculous to the Nth degree thanks to the extra SNL twist from their troupe's own madcap performances. Never has Dickens been better spoofed. Ugly Victorian maladies like consumption are made hilarious in this one as well as good old British pluck in the face of way-overweening awfulness. It's smart, and gross, and so true to the source material that you'll wish it actually existed. It was an SNL “Godfather” kind of sketch in that when Palin came back four months later he did a follow-up second part that like “The Godfather Part II” may have even surpassed this one in its inspired lunacy. It revels in that British awfulness that's supposed to make you feel bad for the characters, but instead leaves you anxious to see what new, deathly distress will befall them. PLEASE GET THIS ONE ON VIDEO SOON!

9. The Carol Burnett Show's Gone With The Wind—November 1976

And sometimes, you get lucky and have four big-name comedy wizards on one show, and in one sketch. The Carol Burnett Show boasted its namesake star, the number two TV comedienne behind Lucille Ball and just in front of SCTV's Catherine O'Hara. Plus the infectiously funny Tim Conway, a “reactive” master and king of slapstick smarm in Harvey Korman, and the chameleonic, swiss watch-timed Vicki Lawrence. This ensemble is the only big-name variety show bunch to ever rival Caesar's formidable posse of Coca, Louis Nye, Reiner, Morris and Nanette Fabray. Week in and out Burnett's band of merry-makers hit the mark with brilliant one-act play-lets (“Eunice, Mama & Ed”), crazy slapstick (“Mr. Tudball & Mrs. Wiggins”), and of course their campy, wild movie parodies. This one of “Gone With The Wind” is a Cliff's Notes run-through-an-insane-asylum rip on the cinema classic. Burnett's vain, childish “Starlett” is a hammy, self-indulgent wonder, dominating every frame with her outsize goofiness and bluster. Korman's slick jerk “Rat” Butler is played with equal parts Clark Gable and Pepe LéPew silliness. Conway's “Bashley” is a classic sublime Conway dolt (His explanation about the “Camptown Racetrack” is totally deadpan, and yet you hang on every word laughing). But Vicki Lawrence's “Cissy” (Prissy) takes the madcap cake. It's all crazed vocal and wild gesture. No blackface. Just a genuinely nutty turn on what could have been an offensive characteriztion. You put all of this together (with a guest starring Dinah Shore playing a dim “Melody”.) with one of the highest-grade sketch scripts EVER written in Hollywood and you end up with a camp sketch legend.

Some of the great lines?

(Starlett descending the grand staircase at “Terra” addresses two adoring suitors, and then stops at the last one for the payoff)

BILLY JOE: Remember me, Miss Starlett?

STARLETT: Oooooh, Billy Joe my goodness! I thought you jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge!

------------------------------------------------

(Starlett coming down the steps again to greet a post-war “Rat Butler”, wearing a hastily thrown together “dress” made from the curtains—with the rod still running through it across her shoulders like a milk-maid's pail-holders)

RAT: That-that gown is gorgeous!

(Waits a long beat as the audience takes in the hideous dress)

STARLETT: Thank you. I saw it in the window and...I just couldn't resist it.

It's like that through and through, line after line. A sumptuous, candy-colored, camp spectacle. I don't think Hollywood ever had four funnier people doing sketch work on one show, and those four for as good as they were and all the good stuff they did, never surpassed this.

10.) The Kids In The Hall's “Chicken Lady's Blind Date”—October 1990 or “Chicken Lady At The Strip Show”—January 1991

These sketches are what I like to think of as proto-cringe humor. The craze we see nowadays (and badly done, mind you) of discomfiting, creepy laughs traces back to this disturbing character of Mark McKinney's from Kids In The Hall. The Chicken Lady, a repellent, over-sexed result of a farmer's breeding with a hen is a human/poultry hybrid train wreck you cannot not look at. In the original “Blind Date” sketch (the character is a carryover of a punch-line from a sketch dealing with freaks) we are introduced to the lonely, sex-obsessed character who has managed to get a date to come to her apartment, sight unseen, and what a sight she is! The six-foot-plus McKinney plays her as an amazonian, white haired, beak-nosed and partially feathered walking sideshow—with an edge of innocence and sensitivity that manages to come through her freakish repellence. She's a bundle of spastic chicken tics, squawks and dim bird intellect who only wants to be loved, loved, loved! And hard. Ick. She's the dark, twisted fraternal twin of Sesame Street's child-like Big Bird, except she's not in the nurturing environment of that loving street— Chicken Lady's in the real world, and it freaks her out just as much as she's freaked out by it. McKinney plays the character with a sense of a back story you can clearly see but is so awful you don't want to. And she is so damned eager to please that...well, she'll do just about anything to show her love for a potential suitor, as Dave Foley, her chance-giving would-be paramour in the “Blind Date” horribly finds out.

CHICKEN LADY: God, you must be thirsty. Can I get you a beer or would you like to just drink out of the toilet?

MAX: A beer.

CHICKEN LADY: Okay. Suit yourself. Hey, would you like to sign my yearbook?

MAX: Oh, no thank you.

CHICKEN LADY: High school was hell for me.

MAX: Oh, really?

CHICKEN LADY: All the other kids teased me.

MAX: Wow, imagine that.

CHICKEN LADY: If you want to stay in my good books, don't call me a birdbrain. If you want to stay in my good books, which you do. Gravel and grubs, gravel and grubs, I love to eat my gravel and grubs.

(Chicken Lady drops down a tray with two plates. She sits and eats a worm off of hers.)

CHICKEN LADY: Oh, I made you an omelet on account of I figured you might not like bugs.

MAX: Oh, thank you.

CHICKEN LADY: Go ahead. Tuck in.

MAX: Oh, good. (Starts to eat)

CHICKEN LADY: Course it's good, cause they're fresh. Straight out of my body and onto your plate.

MAX: (Screams and runs out of the apartment) Ahhhh!! Oh my god!

I gag and laugh every time I see that bit. It's simultaneously mortifying and hilarious, sad, macabre, and jaw-droppingly funny. McKinney IS A CHICKEN LADY in these bits and you have to see how he sells this thing character-wise. it's an amazing sketch character, as creepy and nearly as vulgar as Monty Python's disgusting “Mr. Creosote” except that you actually kind of feel for her. Until she violates again, as she does in the bizarre follow-up “Strip Club” sketch where her carnal desires are too much for the other patrons, the emcee and the unfortunate object of her desire, the red-maned “Rooster Boy”, whose gyrations cause Chicken Lady to have a literally explosive orgasm that sends feathers into the air, sets off alarms and concusses everyone in sight. McKinney's stuttering, seismic build to “climax” is funny in its own right, but the payoff proves that “the bang is definitely worth the buck”. It's one of sketch history's best “WTF?” moments ever. Click above and watch it and see. (And Kevin Thompson's combative “Bearded Lady” who pals with “Chicken Lady” just piles the laughable grotesquery that much higher.) What is it about these frighteningly funny Canadians?

Those are the LowerManhattanite “Ten”. I could give you a classic twenty, but these are the ten main ones that come to mind. There's a few great ones from “In Living Color”, as well as Ben Stiller's unforgettable “Skank” the puppet, not to mention maybe seven or eight other classic “SNL” bits and I think even more from my all-time favorite SCTV (“Polynesiantown” “Oh That Rusty!”, “The Days Of The Week”). But I can't list 'em all.

With that, the honorable mentions go to SCTV's Martin Short in “Jerry Lewis, Live On the Sunset Strip—Directed by Martin Scorcese”(!) capturing the bitter, post-Dino solo years like no one else ever has or will.

And leave us not forget Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin's killer“PMS” short which they wrote and debuted on a David Letterman Anniversary Special. It's a rarity, but I remember it from when it ran and it left me crying with laughter. Something tells me you'll sully an LCD screen or two watching it also. Just try not to.

Then there are these four sublimely brilliant “Eunice, Mama and Ed” Sketches, plus one magnificent batch of cast-rupturing Tim Conway outtakes.

And finally, another divine comedic confluence of giants—SNL meets SCTV—Bill Murray guest hosts an episode of SCTV and literally wrecks shop as an aging Joe DiMaggio running a San Francisco seafood restaurant in this swing-from-the-heels bit. Bill plays the “I'm-still-a-star, dammit” DiMaggio to a “T” and is aided mightily by Eugene Levy and Martin Short. Put your batting helmet on...this one's a home run—as are all the ones listed above. Kick back and laugh a little, and feel free to toss your faves into comments.



“Scampi! SCAMPI!”

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Laugh, Laugh, Laugh

Note: Not precisely work safe everywhere; use caution.

The 50 Funniest Comedy Clips Ever

Nerve and IFC dare to rank great comedy with their:

The 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches of All Time

I don't know if I agree with them. I do know, I've wasted the last three hours.

You have been warned.

h/t Boing Boing.

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