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Friday Funnies
Feb. 12th, 2010 04:04 pmI might have posted this one way back, but it's still funny... here's Bill Bailey with a Kraftwerk spoof on a tune that's very familiar... even if you don't speak German... =)
Recently Watched: The Pink Panther
Nov. 29th, 2006 01:53 pmThe Pink Panther, starring Peter Sellers
The classic original, which
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patrixa sent us so that Justin could counteract his experience with the Steve Martin version he had watched during the summer. He definitely prefers the original.I can no more detach the role of the clueless detective with Peter Sellers than I can think of him in any other role - and I've heard he's done at least one unrelated project. =)
This movie is one of those - like a variety of films from Arsenic & Old Lace to Monty Python and the Holy Grail that exemplify what, exactly, a comedy film should be. Even when they remake it, they seem to lose the idea at the heart of it - what, exactly, funny is. The earlier films didn't need a laugh track to cue the funny reflex - they handled it another way, by legitimately being entertaining and funny. Funny is not an exact science, but it certainly seems to be a lost art.
All that aside, how can you go wrong with a couple of gorillas involved in the car chase at the end?
Recently Heard: 200 MPH
Oct. 10th, 2006 04:37 pm200 MPH by Bill Cosby
This is it. Classic Cos. The best of the bunch that I've heard.
This, I realized last night, was why I like long songs. Epic prog tunes are cool because of this.
Four tracks on the first side, one twenty-some minute epic on the other. 200 MPH, spun, back in the day, at 33 1/3 RPM.
So much brilliance in the first four bits - the whole mother and father present thing; wives, grandfathers, dogs and cats - and then, 200 MPH.
I don't know what I'd do without the recurring character with his name on his jacket - BOB - without that, where would I be when I need to invent students/parents/teachers/counselors/doctors/and-more when I'm trying to create data to test a new program? What would I do without BOB ROBERTS, BOB ROBERTS JR, and the lot? Each time I write up one of those test cases, I can trace it's lineage right back to Cos, right back to 200 MPH.
And how can anyone talk about cars - something I did much more *before* I drove - without talking about pieeeeeepes. Or Volkswagens using rubber bands if the fan belt breaks. Or diving into trenches if a truck drives by.
Where would the world be if Cos hadn't explained how to find the gas tank on a Ferrari or unearthed the mystery of where cops are just before they seem to pop out of thin air and pull you over.
200 MPH. Pipes... pieeeeepes...
Recently Heard: Revenge by Bill Cosby
Jul. 20th, 2006 11:12 amBill 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.
