Good to Brilliant: Sitcoms: TRYING TIMES (a sitcom anthology series, PBS, 1987-89)

Trying Times (co-produced with CBC, which ran these as episodes of a previously-extant anthology series called Lies from Lotus Land)

103: "Get a Job" (1987) starring Steven Wright, Catherine O'Hara and Tim Matheson; written by Earl Pomerantz; directed by Allen Goldstein

"The Visit" (1987) starring Julie Hagerty, Jeff Daniels, Swoosie Kurtz; written by Christopher Durang; directed by Alan Arkin. Apparently ?later staged elsewhere as "Wanda's Visit"

"The Boss" (1989) starring Jean Stapleton, Alan Arkin & Corey Feldman; written by Marilyn Suzanne Miller; directed by Arkin 

"The Hit List" (1989) starring Peter Riegert and Geena Davis; written by A. R. Gurney; directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg

"Hunger Chic" (1989); starring Carrie Fisher, Danitra Vance, Griffin Dunne; written by George C. Wolfe; directed by Buck Henry.

A period of distortion, leading to less than a minute's drop-out, about five minutes in, but otherwise intact.

"A Family Tree" (1987; the PBS pilot episode); starring Rosanna Arquette, Hope Lange, John Stockwell, David Byrne; written by Beth Henley and Budge Threlkeld; directed by Jonathan Demme. Uploaded, 15 years ago, in 3 parts: part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Laurie Kilmartin: Stand Up At THE TALK (CBS 11 October 2024)

A good short set!

Philadelphians and visitors can see Laurie Kilmartin at Helium 2 November...and Maria Bamford on several days in late October in the same club. And, with luck, you won't be seated next to the door near the dishwasher as I was at one afternoon show (Jimmy Pardo and Matt Belknap of Never Not Funny) a few years back.

Kilmartin's website 

Jackie Kashian's website (as podcast partner of LK and great friend of both her and Maria Bamford)

Bamford's website

Emma Arnold's standup comedy special: YES, PLEASE

some language and subject matter probably NSFW...



Emma Arnold's website; her Twitter; her blog



Emma Arnold's podcasts



Emma Arnold (with Arden Myrin and Matt Braunger) on The Dana Gould Hour podcast and other Gould Hours



Emma Arnold on the Doug Loves Movies podcast

Michelle Biloon and Maria Bamford at the Helium Comedy Club, Philadelphia, 13 May 2018

Impressions of the show: Helium didn't say anywhere who would be opening for Bamford...the will-call clerk didn't know, as I picked up my ticket (the not really Comedy Nerd nature of the ownership/management of Helium apparently extends to the staff). So, as I'm in the line get led to tables/seats, I ask one of bouncers if he knows. "Maria Biloon?" I thank him, don't correct him, having been both informed and amused by the fusion.

Helium has the low ceilings that comedians apparently appreciate, as opposed to the Punchline, the Other major we're-professional-showbiz comedy club in Philadelphia, which has the warehouse-space/high ceiling approach of a music venue (it's kind of the smaller annex of a multi-purpose theater where Jackie Kashian and Maria played on Bamford's previous appearance in Philly). Low ceilings good for spoken word, but unfortunately that means they're also good for audience spoken word. (And other extraneous sound...last time I was at Helium, it was for a in-concert Sunday afternoon NEVER NOT FUNNY/PLAYERS CLUB podcast recording, and Jimmy Pardo and Matt Belknap could barely be heard at my table because of the sound of the dishwasher, I suspect it was, roaring in the kitchen just off that wing of the room...the party that was at the table with me all had the same problem.)(Also, the PA system was turned way down on that side of the club, not a problem last night or at my other Helum shows.) But the table of latter-day yuppies at my left (much chatter about who was working for Berkshire Hathaway as real estate agents while in the seating line) were pretty well-behaved...the latter-day hippies at my left a bit less so, quite aside from being a bit more sweatily aromatic. The one closest to me, as I sat off the tables in back corner of the audience space, kept disapprovingly noting during Bamford's set, "Well, That's a trigger." Ah, for the audience that needs their trigger warnings.

Michelle Biloon did an unsurprisingly great twenty minutes, Bamford an unsurprisingly great hour, the latter seeming in better spirits than even in the previous Philly show, despite a few tremors. Biloon unfortunately had the even worse health news, a fairly recent MS diagnosis. Notable that both comedians are/were in Philadelphia, Biloon to live these years, to some degree because of their husbands' roots/family.

FFB: PULLING OUR OWN STRINGS: FEMINIST HUMOR & SATIRE edited by Gloria Kaufman and Mary Kay Blakely (Indiana University Press 1980)

This 1980 volume somewhat unsurprisingly gathers materials from the 1970s and earlier...one might be surprised by the eclecticism of those materials, including short stories, essays, novel excerpts and others from longer works, one-panel cartoons, comic strips, poetry, quip quotations, letters to editors of various publications, transcripts of a couple of standup duo Pat Harrison and Robin Tyler's comedy routines, and songs, some with the actual sheet music included along with the lyrics. C0-editor Gloria Kaufman in her introduction draws a distinction between what she sees as "female humor" and feminist humor: the former is usually full of bitterness, as it is mostly about the impossibility of the improvement of women's plight in society, and if anything celebrates working around while accepting rather than working against traditional limitations, while feminist humor is predicated on the possibility of change for the better, for liberation and equality, and highlights the absurdity of misogyny as well as its not at all necessary evil; Mary Kay Blakely in her introduction notes that feminist humor is often tasked with being the only humor of an oppressed group that really shouldn't ever hurt anyone's feelings in any way, and the impossibility of that task. While some of what is collected here, being satire and other comedy from a disadvantaged group and the wits within that group and their sympathizers, is at times bitter or angry, that's justified, and not all of it is by any means...a fair amount of whimsey and gentle observation appear alongside, or even within the same works.

In large format, and with pages laid out in a manner more reminiscent of a magazine than more traditional books (but less busily than most slick magazines are today), the editors gather their selections under several chapter-headings, as transcribed from their table of contents in WorldCat thus:

192 pages : illustrations, music ; 29 cm

Contents: "Dear Gloria" / by Mary Kay Blakely -- Introduction / by Gloria Kaufman -- PERIODIC HYSTERIA -- Becoming a Tampax junkie / by Ivy Bottini -- Ragtime -- Periodical Bea / by E.M. Broner -- Splat / by Marilyn French -- A person who menstruates is unfit to be a mother / by Hadley V. Baxendale -- A crowd of commuters / by Mary Ellmann -- If men could menstruate / by Gloria Steinem -- Walking the knife's edge / by Lisa Alther -- Mosquitoes and menses -- New discoveries hailed as birth control breakthroughs / by Jane Field -- Superpower sought on the contraceptive front / by Carol Troy -- Jumbo, colossal and supercolossal -- To the editor / by Shirley L. Radl -- The natural masochism of women / by Hadley V. Baxendale -- Revolutionary contraceptive / by Roberta Gregory -- The perfect job for a pregnant woman -- A few words about breasts / by Nora Ephron -- Mammary glands / by Kristin Lems -- What do you say when a man tells you, You have the softest skin / by Mary Mackey -- Keeping abreast of what men want / by Mary Kay Blakely-- UNTYING THE MOTHER KNOT -- On sleeping with your kids / by Alta -- The day's work / by Barbara Holland -- The pee-in / by Sheila Ballantyne -- Fairyland Nursery School / by Sheila Ballantyne -- Molly's beginnings / by Rita Mae Brown -- The Christmas pageant / by Rita Mae Brown -- Needle-and-thread envy / by Sheila Ballantyne -- Raising sons / by Elizabeth Cady Stanton -- The pros and cons of motherhood / by Mary Kay Blakely -- CLICKING, CLUNKING, AND CLOWNING -- Clicking -- A bargain with the judge / by Florynce Kennedy -- Don't you wish you were liberated too / by Shirley Katz -- The man was right / by Ellen Goodman -- Clunks / by Jane O'Reilly -- Pandephobium / by Sue Held -- Clothes make the man / by Sally Sertin -- Untitled / by Alta -- On stage with Harrison and Tyler -- Clowning with Ivy Bottini -- Monumental prophylactic -- Men: beware the ATR -- WE MEASURED 56-480-47-277-30-19, AND NOW WE MEASURE MORE! -- Carrie Chapman Catt -- When taxes are taxing -- A consistent anti to her son / by Alice Duer Miller -- The woman question in 1872 / by Fanny Fern -- Predictions for 1979 / by Yenta -- A Flo Kennedy sampler -- The lifting power of woman / by Joan Honican -- Why we oppose votes for men / by Alice Duer Miller -- How the women sang their way out of jail / by Mary Harris Jones -- The human-not-quite-human / by Dorothy Sayers -- I laughed when I wrote it / by Nikki Giovanni -- Liberation of the Yale Divinity School library men's room / by Carol P. Christ -- We need a name for Bernadette Arnold / by Joan D. Uebelhoer -- On a different track / by Sharon McDonald -- RAPE AND OTHER BIG JOKES -- The Saturday night special / by Naomi Weinstein -- How to avoid rape -- LABORING UNDER FALSE ASSUMPTIONS -- A great satisfaction / by Dorothy Sayers -- The aroma of "Miss" / by Virginia Woolf -- Marginal workers / by Hadley V. Baxendale (David Frank Phillips II?) -- Letter to the editor / by Joan D. Uebelhoer -- A writer's interview with herself / by Mary Ellmann -- Crooked and straight in academia / by Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope -- The conference / by E.M. Broner -- MLA / by Mary Mackey -- HERE COMES THE BRIDLE -- Lady in red / by Ntozake Shange -- Sterner stuff / by Sue Held -- Marriage quickies -- Dishwashing & suicide / by Maxine Hong Kingston -- The politics of housework / by Pat Mainardi -- We don't need the men / by Malvina Reynolds -- Of bikers, brides & butches / by Sharon McDonald -- What Mother never told me / by Sharon McDonald -- FOR ALL THE "CRAZY LADIES" -- No one has a corner on depression but housewives are working on it / by Gabrielle Burton -- Multiple penis envy / by Hadley V. Baxendale  -- What God hath wroth / by Charlotte Painter -- Mother's Day poem / by Pauline B. Bart -- I'm sorry, you're sorry / by Mary Kay Blakely -- Don't wear your guitar, darling Mother / by Shirley Katz-- Football / by Crazy Hazel Houlihingle -- Aaaaaaaaaargh! / by Sheila Ballantyne -- ONCE UPON A MYTH -- Application for employment / by Rhoda Lerman -- The creation of man / by Rhoda Lerman -- To whom it may concern / by Rhoda Lerman -- Quips of a high priestess / by Zsuzsanna Budapest -- You are what is female / by Judy Grahn -- The House of Mirrors / by Mary Daly -- Norma Jean's theory / by Sheila Ballantyne -- Honk if you think she's Jesus / by Mugsy Peabody -- Why little girls are sugar & spice and when they grow up become cheesecake / by Una Stannard -- S/HE-IT -- A feminist alphabet / by Eve Merriam -- "Him" to the weather / by Judith K. Meuli -- Overcoming a man-nerism / by Naomi R. Goldenberg -- Talkin' gender neutral blues / by Kristin Lems -- An eight-letter word / by Mary Ellmann -- Letter to the editor / by Patricia Miller -- Dear Colleague: I am not an honorary male / by Joanna Russ -- Another name for "down there" / by Sue Held -- Pickups, puns, & putdowns -- Josie takes the stand / by Ruth Herschberger. As one can see, there's quite a mix of mostly fairly contemporary writing and other art, along with some classic examples, many from 19th Century feminists and some few from earlier yet (you can't leave out Mary Wollstonecraft), and the TOC doesn't cite the comics contributions, including multiple items by Jules Feiffer, Gary Trudeau and Johnny Hart as well as Nicole Hollander and Bulbul. And, given that Kaufman taught in South Bend and Blakely lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at time of assembly, certain bits of locally-published material appear at various points in the book that editors elsewhere would likely not've seen, giving this somewhat unusual university press item a regional flavor that probably didn't hurt in getting through the approval process. Certainly the Nora Ephron essay has since become a bit of a classic itself, and others here should've; excerpts from now largely overlooked former bestsellers as Kinflicks and The Women's Room are useful to have at hand, as are the multiple excerpts from Sheila Ballantyne. Those who remember Joanna Russ's "Useful Phrases for the Tourist" fondly will find "Dear Colleague" cuts a similar path rather closer to home. Inexpensive copies of the 1980 and 1994 reprint editions (I hope the later printing had better binding than mine does) are to be had from the usual sources, and one can definitely do worse. This very late entry in Friday's Books hopes to join Patti Abbott's selection of same as detailed and linked here; next week, I will be gathering the list again.

Love is a battlefield? Saturday Music Club

In memory of 
Margaret A. Roche 
















Annie Ross: "Love for Sale"


Lahna Turner: "Recycle" (mildly NSFW)


Kasey Lansdale: "Sorry Ain't Enough"


Smart Went Crazy: "Sugar in Your Gas Tank" (mildly NSFW)


Maggie and Terre Roche: "Jill of All Trades"


The Scarlet Furies: "Heart Shaped Box"


Michigan Mafia String Band: "Spooky"


Doc Watson: "Sitting on Top of the World"


Muddy Waters Band: "Don't Go No Farther"


Helen Shapiro: "Walk on By"


The Glenn Miller Orchestra: "At Last"

9 Songs, Give or Take: Saturday Music Club on Sunday

Annie Ross: "Love for Sale"


Jane Monheit Quartet: "How About You"


Nellie McKay: "I Want to Get Married"


Evie Ladin & Keith Terry: "Sugar Baby"


Terre Roche: "Warriors"


Terre Roche and Robert Fripp: "Mary"


Kasey Lansdale and CJaye Lerose: "Heart Like Mine"


Ana Tijoux (con Juanito Ayala et al.): "Creo en ti"


Mary Mack: polkas and comedy

SCTV (1976-1984): not quite as overlooked a fictional television network

The Second City, the improvisational comedy troupe which has helped groom an impressive lot (to put it mildly) of comic actors and standups over the years (the list can begin with Anne Meara, Elaine May and Mike Nichols, Alan Arkin, Ed Asner, improv gurus Del Close and Severn Darden, Jane Alexander. Shelley Berman, Valerie Harper...and not too long after gathering the likes of Zohra Lampert, Fred Willard and Joan Rivers), began in Chicago (hence the name) and set up satellite workshops/theaters in Toronto and eventually Los Angeles. National Lampoon's Lemmings (a stage revue spun out of the The National Lampoon Radio Hour) and NBC's Saturday Night (as it was first known) were among the productions picking up on the early/mid-'70s talent in both Chicago and Toronto, and so it seemed like not the worst idea to create a Second City television series, beginning in 1976...which, in fact was the title of the first several seasons, Second City Television, produced in Canada for the then very small Global network and syndicated to commercial stations in the U.S. (at the same time, the second series known as The David Steinberg Show was being shot for a single season for CTV in Canada and syndicated in  the U.S. as well, featuring most of the SCTV cast in supporting or guest roles).

Second City Television, SCTV (on CBC and syndicated in the US), SCTV Network 90/SCTV Network (CBC and NBC) and SCTV Channel (cable channels Superchannel [Canada] and Cinemax [US]) all had a relatively similar format: a parody of the programming on a poorly-funded, small-time station (or. later, network) based in the possibly U.S., possibly Canadian town of Melonville. 

First-season episodes slightly repackaged to go with with chopped-up longer later episodes for latter 1980s syndication in the U.S., and rerun on Canada's Comedy Channel and US's cable station Ha!/Comedy Central:




3rd Season CBC/US syndication episodes:




CBC/NBC episodes:






SCTV Channel nearly complete excerpts:

Part 2

SCTV Remembers: Part 1

Part 2

A sort of grandchild of SCTV: latter-day Second City video:

Saturday Music Club on Monday: some rather funny songs

Maggie and Terre Roche (featuring the Oak Ridge Boys): "If You Emptied Out All Your Pockets You Could Not Make the Change"


Karen Kilgariff: "Couldn't Love You More"


Tom Smothers: "Mediocre Fred"


Fairport Convention: "Million Dollar Bash"


The Kinks: "Wicked Annabella"


Utopia: "Everybody Else is Wrong"


The Damned: "Grimly Fiendish"


Trusty: "Goodbye, Dr. Fate"


The Virgin-Whore Complex: "The Coldest Night of the Year"


Annie Ross: "Twisted"; Lambert, Hendricks & Ross with Williams: "Every Day I Have the Blues"

A night at the movies...

At the Jeffty Five Cineplex in Painesville, Ohio starting Friday...and simultaneously on Painseville's Channel 81 on your obsolete UHF dial (WAQZ, formerly an affiliate of no fewer than seven dead networks!):

Cartoon: "Jackie Kashian: Los Angeles Pet Owners" 


Cartoon: "April Richardson and Jimmy Pardo: Go Bayside!: The California Bandsaw Massacre"


Newsreel: The Onion Review for 12 May (despite preview image, still linked)


Serial:  The Maria Bamford Show


Short Western Film: The Tonto Woman (based on an Elmore Leonard short story)

Daniel Barber - Short Film - The Tonto Woman from Knucklehead on Vimeo.

Feature: Night of the Eagle (aka Burn, Witch, Burn!)--based on Fritz Leiber's first novel.

Second Feature: The City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel) 

Anthology film: Three Cases of Murder (1st segment the most impressive, and no bones about it horror)

Very alternate feature: Siesta (now a dead link, an interesting though not completely successful variation on Carnival of Souls; a UCLA forum on it featuring director Mary Lambert, editor Glenn Morgan, and cast-members Ellen Barkin and Jodie Foster)...or Castaway (looking a bit soft in image, but difficult to pick up on the market otherwise of late...also not a perfect film, but an interesting one). Original choice here, Testament of Orpheus, didn't have any English subtitles option when I first posted this, but the current link does...for now!

Cartoon: "The Tell-Tale Heart" 

(A more recent, more loosely-adapted variant)

And my first film seen by myself in a cinema...a 1970 re-release of Kiss of the Vampire (1963)--rediscovered with indirect help from Jeff Segal, who guessed closely:

Organ Music: Rhoda Scott and Barbara Dennerlein: "Yes or No"

the first records I purchased for myself: Saturday Music Club on Monday

The first recordings I purchased for myself...all the albums were cut-outs when not discount items initially (Pickwick). I had only so many $2/3 allotments in the early/mid 1970s.

The flipside of this sole 45 was a cover of "Barefootin'"...

1958. Emus was apparently more a d/b/a pseudonym than division of the
shady Roulette Records (see any account of payola).

 

I'm not sure where I first saw Steinberg, but I was happy to find this
for only a few bucks in a Grant's or Woolco or perhaps K-Mart...

Oddly enough, w/o credit anywhere, the LP appended several short
orchestral works by Mussorgsky and Ravel.

I though of Pickwick at the time as the "paperback" record company.
Certainly their discs were thinner and more easily bent than anyone
else's...

...So, what were your first purchased records? 45s, LPs, 78s perhaps (they did last through the 1950s into the '60s), cassettes, CDs? I can only guess that more readers now first purchased a download (the rare one that couldn't be had easily for free) than have ever bought an open-reel tape or 16rpm vinyl disc...

The David Feldman Show: Teri Garr and many more

 

Teri Garr

with Paul Dooley, Paul F. Tompkins, Fred Stoller, Eddie Pepitone, Janie Haddad Tompkins, Mark Thompson, Frank Conniff, Jeremy S. Kramer, Ben Zelevansky and Chris Pina. Our show is written by Steve Rosenfield, Guy Nicolucci, Ben Zelevansky, Paul Dooley, Frank Conniff, Dylan Brody, Eddie Pepitone and Karen Simmons. We are mixed and engineered by Alex Steen. Edited by Darren Ayres, and our production assistant is Alicia Cordova. Our Executive Producer is Troy Conrad.

The recurring "ads" teasing the gritty CBS cop show (parody) Muntz might just be the highlight of this episode of the Pacifica Radio series, up at the link on Garr's name...
 

Jonathan Winters: 1925-2013