Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. NBC programmed a lot of disasters on Friday nights in the fall of 1983, including a show about a talking orangutan and the notorious Manimal. And yet it was a show that arrived as a mid-season replacement on that night which proved to the biggest dud of them all. Amazingly, it was produced by Lorne Michaels, the creator and current producer of Saturday Night … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Steve Martin, “Billie Jean”

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. Now, more than ever, we need the Peace Through Dramatization Players. “Shakespeare?” “Dickens?” “No, good guesses, though.” Man alive, do I miss Late Night with David Letterman. Previous entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Laughing Matters” tag. Continue reading Laughing Matters: “Hungry Are the Damned”

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. When I was a kid, Saturday nights were a sketch comedy goldmine. At least one robust vein is obvious: the programming night is right there in the title. Saturday Night Live endured some complicated seasons during the nineteen-eighties, but it was also the decade that saw the likes of Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Martin Short, and Christopher Guest pass through Studio 8H, and all … Continue reading Laughing Matters: Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic”

Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too. This one is shared in tribute to the Rough Diamonds, the softball team that I’ve spent the summer watching, inspired to do so, as you might expect, by highly personal reasons. Among other things, watching the games helped me realize that sitting on bleachers and quoting The Simpsons episode “Homer at the Bat,” especially the parts involving Darryl Strawberry, is an evergreen entertainment. “Homer at … Continue reading Laughing Matters: The Simpsons, “Talkin’ Softball”