Recently Heard: Revenge by Bill Cosby

[ellyssian]

Bill Cosby: Revenge

This recording is not entirely new to me, it's replacing -wait for it- vinyl. Yes. Vinyl.

I don't recall how old I was when I found a stack of Cos stuff at a yard sale for maybe five or ten cents each, but I do know how deeply the material embedded itself and helped shape and form the world as I saw it. I really enjoyed watching Justin's reactions to this, as he's heard much of it from me. The spiel on slushballs resurfaced during more than one snowball fight. When the kids would jump on me, I'd often say things like "What was that, a mosquito?" and "Someone threw a piece of paper on me." And, of course, there was talk of monsters, closets, and covers.

Listening to all of this again brought home exactly how much of his material still has an impact on me, some thirty years after I first heard it, and some forty (maybe even fifty) or more years since it was first recorded.

The Cos and his characters - including Old Weird Harold and Fat Albert - were also a part of our Saturday morning childhood. It doesn't take more than a "What you want to hit me upside the face with a snowball for?" to evoke all the images of Harold, and for Albert, all you need is that first "Hey!" of "Hey! Hey! Hey!" and you can't help but have him fill all your thoughts.

He's that big.

But mostly it's due to the brilliance of Bill Cosby.

Comments

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard that one. My favorite bits all come from Bill Cosby: Himself. Or, at least, I think they all do. Noah, the dentist bit, hoof 'n' mouth, etc.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

That was one I didn't have.

200 MPH was great, especially as I was into cars at a very young age.

I know I had To Russell, My Brother Whom I Slept With except I don't recall any of the routines.

I think I had a few others, but when I look at the list of what they had on them, they don't seem familiar.

Revenge has the largest volume of quotable bits for me, though.

[dangerdean.livejournal.com]

I think I still have Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby floating around on vinyl somewhere, and I took a few others out of the library constantly.


Just don't name your dog "Froofie", okay?

[tewok.livejournal.com]

"froofy" (imo the *one* *true* spelling) is one of the standard coding identifiers I use, along with foo, bar, bat, and baz.

[dangerdean.livejournal.com]

My bad. :)

[tewok.livejournal.com]

As a reasonable person, I'm not saying my spelling is correct -- just that it's my spelling.

As a solipsist, I'm saying that my spelling is right.

[tewok.livejournal.com]

I grew up with this stuff. I credit Bill Cosby and Warner Brothers cartoons as two of the major, non-familial influences on my life. I grew up in the 'burbs of Washington, DC. Thanks to Cos, I fully expected my childhood to be the same as that of an inner-city Philly kid. Buck-buck, winos, slushballs in July, giant monster movie cut-outs, and massive amounts of post-tonsillectomy ice cream. None of it happened, of course, but I owe Cos a great debt for helping twist my child's brain into the warped shape it is today.

I haven't heard any of those old Cosby records in years. I need to see if I can find any, or see if Dad still has his.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Yeah, thought it was great when you were quoting from it while we were talking at CGotH... I had picked this up two days before that and been listening to it... not that I couldn't recite half of it by memory.

I was just across the river and a tiny bit upstream from Boston, and, although I did get to see winos when we went downtown, we didn't actually have any of our own. I think I might have tried the slushball in July, but without a definitive Junior Barnes, I think I forgot about it long before my mom tossed it out.

If you follow through on the link in the post, you'll be able to find a bunch of them! =)

[tewok.livejournal.com]

Did we talk about Cosby at CGotH? I remember talking about a number of things that day, but not about Cosby.

Sheesh, I'm pathetic. My memory is all melty and squishy. I'd be dangerous if I could, um, y'know, um, thingy.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

We weren't talking about Cos directly, but you referenced him in regards to something else.

I can't remember what that, in particular, was...

[dandelion-diva.livejournal.com]

My grandparents had a bunch of Bill Cosby records...I borrowed them when I was ten or eleven...around the same time I liberated my mom's George Carlin album (Class Clown). I think this explains so much about me. *Grin*

Gessi