From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V12 #187 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Thursday, May 22 2003 Volume 12 : Number 187 Today's Subjects: ----------------- a crack in the walls of Bizarro world ["Natalie Jane" ] Re: Mighty Superpowers (some boob content) [Eb ] oh, PS...meant to add this [Eb ] Re: Mighty Superpowers (some boob content) [John Barrington Jones ] Re: all comedy, no boobs aside from Leno [Jeff Dwarf Subject: a crack in the walls of Bizarro world >Ah, things are back to normal. We're disagreeing about a movie and you're >hyped about seeing a band for which I have little use. The portal to the >Bizarro Feglist must have gone shut! Maybe it was Robert Stack who was The >Gatekeeper... Well, would I be opening the portal slightly if I bragged that I have 10th row seats to see REM and Wilco in September? :P (I can't remember if you like REM.) >p.s.: aside from both being from Oklahoma, I do not get the constant >comparisons of the Starlight Mints to the Flaming Lips at all. I TOTALLY don't get that. They don't sound remotely similar. But they're from the same town (Norman), so they must sound alike... That's just more proof to me that many music journalists have had prefrontal lobotomies. I don't think the Starlight Mints are nearly as rockin' as the Pixies, but I can definitely hear many similarities, especially in the vocals. My friend Wendy is friends with them - being from Norman, she also has many scurrilous things to say about the Flaming Lips, but I just plug my ears and say "LA LA LA" really loud. n. _________________________________________________________________ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 17:09:12 -0400 (EDT) From: Christopher Gross Subject: Re: all BUFFY 'n' Chris G., all funny is inadvertent Wow! I'm excited and a little nervous to be a Feg list subject line. This puts me in Quail territory, or almost.... Anyway, Miles, no problem - -- you really don't have anything to explain. I just got so excited at what looked like a chance to discuss Buffy on a Feg-list level that I blabbed on to excessive lengths. I wouldn't expect anyone else to go equally overboard (or even read everything I write). I'm sorry if I gave you that trap-door feeling. And I'm sure the rest of the list, far from thinking that you conceded defeat, is actually thanking you for letting the discussion drop. So, no worries. Heck, I'll even overlook being compared to the Nazis! ;) - --Chris ______________________________________________________________________ Christopher Gross On the Internet, nobody knows I'm a dog. chrisg@gwu.edu ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 14:27:52 -0700 From: "Rex.Broome" Subject: RE: fegmaniax-digest V12 #186 Gene: >>Schizopolis is funny. Hey, yeah, you're right! >>Adult Swim (Home Movies is hilarious. So is Sealab 2020, I keep forgetting this exists. Never seen Sealab, although I hear great things, but I was obsessed with Home Movies during its brief run on UPN (I think)... did Paula Poundstone make it back on the show after her... ummm... difficulties? _____ Miles: >>I thought Catherine was very purposely being very Canadian. Tell me if I'm >>wrong here. And Levy, too. They're supposed to be Ian & Sylvia (sort of) who were indeed Canadian. I filled in the blanks that way, anyhow. >>(This is analogous to how I made it through the "this cartoon series' >>outrageousness goes too far and will destroy civilization as we know >>it!" ..sequence of THE SIMPSONS -> BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD - >> SOUTH PARK and thoroughly enjoyed each series, but thought FAMILY >>GUY crossed the line.) Agreed 1 million percent, although Family Guy wasn't just crasser, it was sloppier and more poorly made on every level. I could enumerate every level on which it sucked, but since nobody's sticking up for it I'll just say that the fact that the characters had testicles for chins was the LEAST of its problems. Miles, let me know if you can't find that post of mine, since half of it addressed to you, and I can't tell which quotes you referred to but I think they might read incorrectly out of context... Boobs a lot, Rex ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 16:25:26 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Bringing the funny... to its knees! At 10:09 AM 5/22/2003 -0700, Rex.Broome wrote: >Mel Brooks... The Producers is really unassailable. I finally watched it a couple of years before the Broadway version got started, after several people saying "OK, you don't like Mel Brooks, but have you seen THE PRODUCERS?" Plus the concept sounded good. I liked the song "Springtime for Hitler." That's pretty much it. Brooks' sense of humor is just not my sense of humor. I did like some sections of HISTORY OF THE WORLD PT. 1, but maybe that's a subject matter thing -- just as Rex seems put off by some premises, regardless of the alleged quality, this was the one Brooks movie that was pretty much right up my alley. Purported classics YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN and BLAZING SADDLES are better than the other Brooks films I've seen, but they're still not for me. On SCTV/parody: >Well, not quite the same thing, but for most of my life I thought of "The >Dick Van Dyke Show" as a bland, spouses-sleep-in-separate-beds type of thing >until my wife got me to watch it, I think the implied "hadn't ever watched it" there tells the real story. :-) >and it's the showbiz parody bits that I >enjoy the most. But again, I have little aversion to vintage material, so >I'm different from most people. But I will still contend that: 1) Lingering vintage stuff and actual sightings of those performers (Hope, Berle, Sid Caesar, Dean Martin roasts, etc.) were probably part of your childhood like they were part of mine, so the parodies were easily grasped. 2) "Parodic" elements make up a much smaller proportion of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, and make enough internal sense that they're easily followed even if you've never seen a variety/sketch show from the '50s. Most of SCTV's content is not only parodic, but relies on knowing a lot of prerequisites to properly appreciate. Again, I think our theoretical current-day smart kid isn't likely to stick around through Merv Griffin in Space, PERRY COMO: STILL ALIVE!, . Heck, even some of the brilliant "continuing characters" like Lola Heatherton and Bobby Bittman really need some context to be fully appreciated. So I don't think this is the best analogy. :-) Again, what's more likely -- that an intelligent 16-22 year-old in 1987 would get the "insider" parody in THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (especially if they were weaned on LARRY SANDERS, CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, SEINFELD, etc.), or that an intelligent 16-22 year-old in 2003 would get the parodies in SCTV? I'm not saying that SCTV is the calculus of comedy, or that the broad outlines are difficult to grasp, but actual laughs are likely to ensue from knowing what SCTV is skewering and how precisely and wonderfully it's doing it. They might think it was mildly amusing to blow up Meryl Streep, but if they didn't see La Streep do one of her "voice barely audible, wincing at the camera, no personality whatsoever" pre-1989 interviews (Streep has since invented a "Meryl Streep" interview persona, so she comes across much better), they're really not going to appreciate how Catherine O'Hara just *nails* an almost impossible imitation before Big Jim McBob and Billy Saul Hurock blow her up. Let me try another analogy: Do you really, really enjoy the poems of Alexander Pope? I mean, you can "get" them to a certain extent without reading the annotation, and you can "get" them even more if you do read it, but there are going to be things about Pope's work that are lost on even the most dedicated student of early 18th Century England, things that any Londoner of the time would have guffawed at. Now to ALIAS: >Them there Alias club scenes: I dunno, there was a visceral kick to them >the first, I dunno, twelve or thirteen times I saw them, but it has faded >(and I just picked up the show in Season 2)... I'm just waiting for the >fight scenes, which I do enjoy. Most of the other "over-the-top" things are >fine and Bondy for me; won't catch me bitching about technical details or >loopy plot leaps. The club entrances are just... pandering. Not just the >flesh and the derailment of momentum, but the "what's the label pushing this >week" music being packaged as "hip"; same thing probably applies with the >fashion. Bleh. I don't feel pandered to -- and I'm not complaining when looking at the package they're selling me. :-) YMMV, of course, and obviously does. Plus they move on in short order pretty quickly; it's not like they do seventeen minutes of slo-mo Sydney-in-lingerie (though that would be a nice DVD bonus) before getting on to the fighting. :-) >I bet I would've disliked the first season when it was heavier on the >"Felicity" part of the "Felicity-meets-La-Femme-Nikita" equation. I just >don't know why it's so common to think an idea/genre/concept can be improved >by placing it in High School/Early College and casting Young Hotties. This was never a major part of the show -- the rapid-fire plot 'n' action combo was always the most prominent thing, even from the first episode. It became clear very quickly that the few times they played this aspect up, it stuck out like a sore thumb and derailed momentum for the 3-5 minutes they'd be dealing with "Sydney gets chastised by her grad school advisor" stuff. So what little remained got subsumed into the general "Sydney wishes for a normal life / normal relationships" angst, and by midseason, they were hardly touching on this at all. I think a Season 1 DVD set is in the works, and I also think you have little to fear in this regard. Personally, I think being a globe-hopping double agent whose Dad is also a globe-hopping double agent, lying to her real-life friends about what she does for a living, being worried about her SD-6 colleagues who think they work for the CIA but are really aiding international terrorist groups, and constantly having to juggle lies within lies to keep her cover from being blown... all of that sounds like a piece of cake compared to the stress of grad school. Where do I sign up again? And oh, now I see this. Since it's about BUFFY, how did I overlook it? :-) >Pet >peeve of mine which blocked my entrance to the Buffy cult as well. >"Popular, attractive young people have problems, too!" Doubtless true. But >at least, unlike the rest of us who have problems, they are popular, >attractive and young, so I figure they'll pull through without my watching >their show. You already explained this better, so now I think you'll just get over this someday and start watching and liking BUFFY. Could be in 2017 or something, but it'll happen. Chris and I will make sure you have our current brain implant addresses so we can e-think "I told you so." :-) later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 16:33:37 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: all BUFFY 'n' Chris G., all funny is inadvertent At 05:09 PM 5/22/2003 -0400, Christopher Gross wrote: >Wow! I'm excited and a little nervous to be a Feg list subject line. >This puts me in Quail territory, or almost.... Anyway, Miles, no problem >-- you really don't have anything to explain. I just got so excited at >what looked like a chance to discuss Buffy on a Feg-list level that I >blabbed on to excessive lengths. Oh, I love the enthusiasm! And understand it, completely. >Heck, I'll even overlook being compared to the Nazis! ;) Don't worry, it was purely a technological analogy. :-) Plus the Germans had the cool looks of the war, from planes to uniforms. And I didn't mention H*tl*r, so everyone is still free to talk about BUFFY! ;-) later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 16:43:12 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: fill(ed) in the blank I said: >content is not only parodic, but relies on knowing a lot of prerequisites to >properly appreciate. Again, I think our theoretical current-day smart kid >isn't likely to stick around through Merv Griffin in Space, PERRY COMO: >STILL ALIVE!, And didn't finish the sentence. Let's pick it up: "PERRY COMO: STILL ALIVE!, or WALTER CRONKITE'S BRAIN long enough to glean that there are signifiant joys to following the exploits of Edith Prickley, Mayor Tommy Shanks, Earl Camembert, Johnny LaRue and the rest of the 'continuing story' crowd." Ah, that feels better. Of course, now I have a serious SCTV jones... got *some* tapes of the show, but am still missing a lot that I'd like to have (including one of their more astounding pieces, the documentary about how bankrupt F.F. Coppola is forced to take on Dr. Tongue and Bruno, and together they make 3-D STAKE FROM THE HEART). And my tapes are of the 30-minute ones as aired in syndication and on Comedy Central, and thus are missing a lot of the wonderful wrap pieces from the 90-minute NBC episodes. Can I say this louder? DVDs! DVDs! later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 14:46:02 -0700 From: Eb Subject: Re: Mighty Superpowers (some boob content) >Jonathan: >I have a fond spot for the musical Inquisition scene in "History of the >World." I actually went to see that bomb in the theater, after previously being a big Mel Brooks fan. I remember how deadly quiet the audience was, throughout most of the film. And when that musical scene ended, I did one of those laborious "slow claps" to emphasize the sequence's leaden lameness, and the audience laughed at *me* as hard as they laughed at anything in the film. ;) > >Chris: > > The BUFFY finale was, to me, something of a dud, > >Well, I quite liked the Buffy finale. Of course that's practically a >given. Yes. ;P >I liked the way Buffy killed Caleb. The biggest killer in that scene was UPN, who presumably nixed the satisfying gore which should have been shown onscreen. I was also aware of "the UPN factor" when the gang descended into the hellmouth - -- it was shot all wrong, probably due to budget-skimping on the set design. There should have been a great "unfolding wonder/terror" tracking shot as the gang entered the seal and saw the unknown interior slowly revealed for the first time, but instead, there was just a sloppy quick cut to the gang, already standing on the edge of the hellmouth's "main room." Gypped! >(and did anyone notice the way Angel's face went into shadow >as he was saying goodbye? All kinds of things can be read into that) Especially if you're a major Buffy dork. ;) > >>What sorts of "gossip" did SCTV yield? > >My "tone unclear" light is blinking... I think you're trying to be >sarcastic, yeah? I was talking primarily about creative conflicts, which >were legion, and often quite emotional/potentially embarassing. "Dishing" >doesn't always mean "who's schtupping who", does it? If so I'll adjust my >useage... No, I wasn't being "sarcastic." I was asking about the show's gossip and, no, I don't assume gossip means "who's schtupping who." I figured the gossip would be more along the lines of unreliable performers, personnel changes and creative conflicts. > >>I didn't interpret it that way, at all. I think Flaherty was >>>just a versatile actor portraying two different on-air personalities >>>at a crappy TV station. I don't think there was any implication that >>>"Floyd Robertson" was hosting Monster Chiller Horror Theater in >>>disguise. > >Floyd Robertson *was* Count Floyd OK...yes, I guess that I forgot about this. Haven't seen this show in YEARS, y'know! Now did I hallucinate, or did someone say Cheri Oteri's "Simmahdonnow" bit was FUNNY? I might participate in this thread a bit more avidly, but I'm coincidentally just getting out of an *identical* thread in another off-topic forum, where I was sneered at ad nauseam for daring to say that I think Fawlty Towers is totally pedestrian and run-of-the-mill. Que sera. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 14:48:25 -0700 From: Eb Subject: oh, PS...meant to add this The *worst* part of the Buffy finale for me was that horribly written scene between Faith and Principal Wood, where Faith started bragging about her "mad skills" and tossed out every wigger cliche in the book. Ugh. OK, OK...she's, like, "streetwise." We get it, we get it. Eb ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 15:07:00 -0700 (PDT) From: John Barrington Jones Subject: Re: Mighty Superpowers (some boob content) > I might participate in this thread a bit more avidly, but I'm > coincidentally just getting out of an *identical* thread in another > off-topic forum, where I was sneered at ad nauseam for daring to say > that I think Fawlty Towers is totally pedestrian and run-of-the-mill. > Que sera. Regarding Fawlty Towers: that show in any given minute could range from brilliance to utter crap, depending on that particular minute combined with my mood. It is my wife's least favorite Britcom, mostly due to all the jokes and abuse with regards to Manuel, the servant from Barcelona. God bless the idiot boy. Alot of the physical comedy in the series is so over-the-top as to be very lame. But there are some clever jabs between Cleese's character and the wife, and I really like the Major, and Polly, and the two elderly sisters. =jbj= p.s. Three's Company? Not funny. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 17:37:06 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: a crack in the walls of Bizarro world At 01:54 PM 5/22/2003 -0700, Natalie Jane wrote: >>Ah, things are back to normal. We're disagreeing about a movie and you're >>hyped about seeing a band for which I have little use. The portal to the >>Bizarro Feglist must have gone shut! Maybe it was Robert Stack who was The >>Gatekeeper... > >Well, would I be opening the portal slightly if I bragged that I have 10th >row seats to see REM and Wilco in September? :P (I can't remember if you >like REM.) It's a pretty big aperture -- R.E.M. was my favorite band from '83 until '92 (GREEN and AFTP made their first "two of three albums don't click wih me" run), then I sort of drifted, came back aboard after liking MONSTER and especially NEW ADVENTURES IN HI-FI, but UP and REVEAL have all but killed what was left of my love for the band. I mean, if they want to be a slightly more hip version of an adult contemporary act, I guess they've earned it, but they'll have to do it without me. I still love and appreciate the catalog, of course, but they are *very* far from being "favorite band right now." Of course the band that's filled the void for me is... Wilco. :-) And I saw exactly the same double bill in Cleveland in '99, on Jeff Tweedy's 32nd birthday. Great show by both bands, and great setting -- Blossom has great sound by amphitheater standards, reasonable policies about bringing in food and drink, and a shockingly efficient parking layout. I'd go there again for a good show in a heartbeat, whereas it's gonna take the resurrection of Hendrix to get me to go to our local Clear Channel shed. But Wilco's not on the bill past the Left Coast, and I don't feel like traveling to see a band coming off two albums for which I have little use. If R.E.M. was coming here, I'd go see them. They're not, so I'm not. >>p.s.: aside from both being from Oklahoma, I do not get the constant >>comparisons of the Starlight Mints to the Flaming Lips at all. > >I TOTALLY don't get that. They don't sound remotely similar. But they're >from the same town (Norman), so they must sound alike... That's just more >proof to me that many music journalists have had prefrontal lobotomies. Exactly. It's an easy angle. One usually smart (I don't *agree* with him a lot of the time, but he's smart) local writer, when reviewing their first album, not only hit the Flaming Lips thing hard, but identified "Blinded By You" as sounding like "early Bowie" -- when of course it steals the "Ashes to Ashes" riff outright. I think both he and his editor were on crack that week. >I don't think the Starlight Mints are nearly as rockin' as the Pixies, Oh, I agree, but that still means that the Starlight Mints rock a lot! :-) later, Miles ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 17:47:00 -0500 From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: "a dimension torn free from the future" Quoting Miles Goosens : > p.s.: aside from both being from Oklahoma, I do not get the constant > comparisons of the Starlight Mints to the Flaming Lips at all. I mean, > could the Starlight Mints sound more Pixies-like? Same sort of dynamics, > similar lead vocal style and female counterpoint, even similar lyrical > concerns. Yet every goddamn review or story about the Mints can't get > past the second sentence without dropping the F-Lips-bomb. That's one of those Established Critical Conventions that make me scream: someone, somewhere was lazy enough to make it the first time...and it became the "hook" for reviews of the band by critics too lazy to think up their own comparisons. I completely agree - there's about zero similarity there. Okay - I'll stop before I rant about how Interpol sounds like Joy Division only in a few stray moments, and about how the Strokes sound like the Velvet Underground even less often, and like the garagey acts they're associated with not at all, and how the exaggerated backlash against them seems almost entirely motivated by the exaggerated frenzy *for* them (and, probably, because they're Rich Kids With Connections - as if that says anything about their music). Oh, and about the boxing women thing: it's the hitting-people part I don't get. Someone want to explain that, and how it can possibly be a good thing? As for pro boxing featuring women: sorry, just creeps me out...because I know damned well a significant portion of the audience is just plain fucked up and watching for entirely the wrong reasons. There was a pictorial in _Sports Illustrated_ some years back that made that crystal clear to me - made me queasy. ..Jeff J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html :: This album is dedicated to anyone who started out as an animal and :: winds up as a processing unit. :: --Soft Boys, note, _Can of Bees_ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 12:07:01 +1200 From: grutness@surf4nix.com (James Dignan) Subject: RE: funny or not >Have you watched "Black Books"? It's from the writer/creator of "Father >Ted", Graham Linehan (who also did "Big Train" and had a hand in "The Alexei >Sayle Show"). If not, you should add it to your list of Britcoms to watch. >"Believe Nothing" is also quite good, and stars Rick Mayall (from "The Young >Ones") in a much more interesting role. you speak-a my language! I'll have to keep an eye out for "Believe nothing", if there's a Big Train/ Father Ted/ Black Books/ Alexei Sayle comparison implied, though Mayall has been in some incredibly un-funny stuff (Bottom, for instance). Oh, and thanks for whoever mentioned 'Coupling" - one of my guilty pleasures. Perhaps the most American-like of Britain's sitcoms - it staggers me that they'd need to make a US version. Then again, that's the way US TV works. James (nursing a knotted shoulder. Not funny) James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand. =-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= .-=-.-=-.-=-.- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-. -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= You talk to me as if from a distance =-.-=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time -=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 21:13:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Aaron Mandel Subject: Re: Mighty Superpowers (some boob content) On Thu, 22 May 2003, Eb wrote: > I was sneered at ad nauseam for daring to say that I think Fawlty Towers > is totally pedestrian and run-of-the-mill. I recently watched some episodes of both Fawlty Towers and Monty Python and was amazed to find the latter had aged better on me... after 15 years of hearing people quote the same sketches at each other constantly, I was thoroughly sick of the idea of Python, but watching the six of them actually perform (with most of it, of course, not being from the Parrot - Lumberjack - Etc. hit parade) made me think I hadn't been totally wrong about the show when I was 13. Meanwhile, Fawlty Towers had somehow gotten identified as 'more mature' in my head, and instead, enh, parts of it were really funny, but I found myself fidgeting a lot between the good bits. So, is Luxor out yet or something? a ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 21:35:05 -0400 From: broadway jack Subject: luxor availability from the auditorium : [RHLuxorCD.jpg] Luxor, Robyn's new CD will be available via the giftshop on this site, beginning June 16! o A track from Robyn's new Luxor album can be heard on Joe Silva's radio program Saturday May 24th at 1PM EST - online at www.wuga.org/listening/ of course, several stores in the uk are already carrying it, in addition to amazon.co.uk -- i've heard from one person who found a copy at tower (or maybe it was hmv) in bristol. woj ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 May 2003 19:24:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: all comedy, no boobs aside from Leno Miles Goosens wrote: > Jeff D.: > >Others that are funny: > >Greg Proops, though hosting that dating show loses him > >lots of points > > I liked Greg where I first saw him, on WHOSE LINE IS IT > ANYWAY? back when Comedy Central was first airing the UK > show, but I haven't liked him much outside of the WHOSE > LINE UK/US confines. What's odd to me is though I'm > generally a fan of dark, misanthropic humor, there's a > downright mean quality to Greg's comedy when he's doing > standup or hosting these other TV shows, and that > meanness rubs me the wrong way. (This is analogous to > how I made it through the "this cartoon series' > outrageousness goes too far and will destroy civilization > as we know it!" sequence of THE SIMPSONS -> BEAVIS AND > BUTT-HEAD -> SOUTH PARK and thoroughly enjoyed each > series, but thought FAMILY GUY crossed the line.) Of > course, by hosting shows that crappy, Proops has a > built-in excuse for being hateful, but still, it puts me > off. I can see what you are saying, though I obviously disagree. I also have the backstash of memories listening to Proops as a guest on the the old Alex Bennett show (Bill Hicks to Howard Stern's Denis Leary) so maybe he has more built in goodwill with me. But Proops is frequently particularly vicious. > >Bob Newhart, especially the second show > Oooh, glad to see someone not only mention Newhart, but > NEWHART. It started out being a very good conventional > sitcom, along the lines of THE BOB NEWHART SHOW (even if > he was stretching by playing a guy named "Dick" instead > of a guy named "Bob") transported from a Chicago high > rise to a Vermont inn, but it morphed into something > hilariously surreal. Nobody today could get away with introducing Larry, Darryl, and/or Darryl. > Believe it or not, THE KING OF > QUEENS sometimes has looney moments (like a couple of > seasons ago when Doug, Arthur, and Deacon formed a street > gang!) that remind me of NEWHART. Huh. That's sorta like hearing Christina Aguilera has a few buried _Hips and Makers_ type moments on her latest records. I don't know if I can twist my brain around that. > >Around the Horn, though it's not on purpose > > Don't know it. It's on ESPN. basically, it's a panel show set up as a game show, with 4 panelists/columnists: usually Woody Paige from the Denver Post, Jay Mariotti from the Chicago Sun-Times, and two from amongst the LA Times, Dallas Morning News, and the Boston Globe. It's absolute train-wreck. > >>Not Funny: > >Martin Short > >Jiminy Glick > >Martin Short > >Jimmy Kimmel > >Martin Short > >Sarah Silverman > >Martin Short > > Disagree. > Disagree. > Disagree. > Disagree. > Disagree. > Disagree. > Disagree. > > Clearly a YMMV moment, huh? :-) Evidently. > >And do we even need to say Jay Leno stopped being funny > >around the same time Bette Midler finished singing to > >Johnny? > > It's worth saying, and worth remembering that he was once > a very able standup -- not groundbreaking, but > consistently very funny. And he was a good guest host > for THE TONIGHT SHOW. But when it became his full-time > gig, he became ultraconservative, ultra-unfunny, and > borderline racist. I usually can't suffer through Leno > at all, even in the name of getting to a beloved musical > guest, so on those occasions I try to tape the show so I > can zip right past the host. His unfunniness is becoming > such a commonplace that Conan O'Brien (funny!), who has > him as *his lead-in* on *the same network,* regularly > zings him. Sad, really. I suppose taking over for Carson was an utterly thankless job in many ways, but Leno has really done it in the worst possible way. Little Jay Leno running around grinning like an idiot on Conan (definitely funny) has to be one of the nastiest in house gags ever. I wonder if Jay even gets it. If only we could get Patrick Duffy and Joey Lawrence booked together on Leno so Bill Hicks's fantasy could come true. "So Ed, how was your vacation?" ===== "Being accused of hating America by people like Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham is like being accused of hating children by Michael Jackson or (Cardinal) Bernard Law." -- anonymous . __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V12 #187 ********************************