Finding nothing to my liking last night in the two hours before Nashville aired, I turned to a mixed bag of comedy I taped from TV long ago. A lot of it had my eyes glazing. Steve Martin reprised his What I Believe bit on The Tonight Show, starring Johnny Carson. The comic approaches the mic and, in faux sincerity, delivers his beliefs. Here are three lines that always get me: "I believe in going to church every Sunday, unless there's a game on. And I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, wholesome, and natural things that money can buy. And I believe you should place a woman on a pedestal, high enough so you can look up her dress."
In the Blabbermouth episode of The Honeymooners, Ralph is set to record an apology to his wife, whose mother he wildly excoriated. He tells Norton he'd like to be alone. Ed understands, saying: "In the words of the immortal bard, Shakespeare, 'There are three times in a man's life when he wants to be alone: one, when he's communing with his thoughts; two, when he's being tender with his wife; and three, when he's in the isolation booth on The $64,000 Question.'" Absolutely brilliant writing and delivered flawlessly by the great Art Carney.
The hard of hearing Emily Litella, played charmingly by Gilda Radner, appears in two clips from SNL's Weekend Update, making editorial replies about the "Deaf Penalty" and "Endangered Feces."
Also from SNL, Andy Kaufman does a ten-minute skit entirely in a gibberish foreign language, which he ends with a mad jam on congas. He certainly epitomized the tag "Mad Genius." Whenever I think of him I recall his segue into wrestling, especially his bouts with women, his billing himself as the Inter-Gender Champion.
Dan Akroyd plays Sigmund Freud in Great Moments in Herstory, announced by Don Pardo. His daughter Anna, played by Laraine Newman, enters, sits on his lap and recounts a dream wherein her male relatives all offer her a banana, and how she chooses only the one offered by a man who looks like her father, who is now squirming in his seat. She asks what the meaning might be, and daddy says: "Sometimes a banana is just a banana." It is at once smart, creepy and hilarious.
Another sketch has John Belushi playing director Sam Peckinpah, whose films have a masculine, macho ethic that matched his personal conduct. He yells "cut" several times, dissatisfied with Gilda Radner's interpretation of a simple scene. Each time he pummels her in a different way until he is pummeled himself by Robert Klein. The Monty Python troupe does a similar lampoon that involves a garden party that turns into the massive, accidental, slow motion bloodletting that characterized Peckinpah's films. A tennis ball takes out an eye and a racket winds up lodged in a gut.
Thanks heavens for people who make us laugh and momentarily forget the grim events that take place in the world each day.
The phrases of the afternoon were: "What a difference a day makes. Do you believe that rain yesterday?" The skies cleared after eleven and the temperature soared to the upper 70's. People were smiling. My thanks to the kind folks who bought books. All sales but one were in Russian. Special thanks to Steve, the poet laureate of Sheepshead Bay, who purchased the Kindle version of Exchanges.
Vic's 4th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/bszwlxh
Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3
Vic's Website: http://members.tripod.com/vic_fortezza/Literature/
Vic's Short Story Collection (Print or Kindle): http://www.tiny.cc/Oycgb
Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/6b86st6
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tiny.cc/94t5h
Vic's Horror Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/cyckn3
Vic's Rom-Com Screenplay on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kny5llp
Vic’s Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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