Dancing with the Devil... for Christmas...

... in simpler times:



"I'm not completely convinced that your intentions are honorable."

The origins of Ed Grimley.

From a Vanity Fair article about Martin Short:

Grimley grew out of an existing Second City sketch called “Sexist,” in which a male employer interviewed two candidates for a job, one an accomplished, over-achieving young woman played by the future SCTV star Catherine O’Hara, the other a flagrantly stupid man—“the joke being,” Short said, “that the guy who’s hiring says, ‘You’re both so good, I can’t make up my mind!’ ”

Click "read more" for the part that made me laugh out loud.

Short’s version of the stupid man grew increasingly broad and outré with each performance, until he morphed into Ed, with his checked shirt (an artifact from Short’s actual teenage wardrobe), hiked-up trousers, hunched posture, and forelock greased straight up into a point. But as much of a hit as Ed was onstage, Short, by the time he joined the cast of SCTV, in 1982, had not played him in public for four years and was initially reluctant to do so again because, he said, “Ed had become a part of my life with my wife, Nancy.”....

“A part of your life with Nancy?”

“Yeah! So I’d come out of the shower nude … like this.” [Makes grimacing Grimley face.]

“With the hair sticking up?”

“Not even the hair—just nude.”

“Just doing the face and posture?”

“Just the face. And she’d say, ‘Ed, get outta here!’ Or sometimes we’d get into a fight, and she’d say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you. I want to talk to Ed! Ed, what is wrong with him?’ [Grimley voice] ‘Oh, he’s jealous of you, Miss Nancy. It’s very sad, I must say.’ This was a private thing. So when I joined SCTV, I thought it was now way too personal to do Ed.”

“Marty—are you saying that Ed Grimley had therapeutic value in your marriage?”

“Yes.”

"Sit Down Comedy."

That's a new talk show, on TV Land, with David Steinberg:

Mr. Steinberg was a director of the early-80's sitcom "Newhart." And, he recalled, one of the highlights of working on that set was the chance to eat lunch with Mr. Newhart and other funny people - including Mr. Newhart's friend and fellow comedian Don Rickles, who would often drop by - and to sit back and listen to them talk, joke and reminisce about life in the comedy business.

"That was almost my childhood ideal of what show business would be, those lunches," Mr. Steinberg said in a telephone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. "That kind of experience is so memorable, and so rare."

Nice idea. I'll set the TiVo.

"Casual" is the watchword for the series itself. In contrast to "Inside the Actors Studio" and its scholarly, well-prepared host, "Sit Down Comedy With David Steinberg" is concerned less with serious analysis than with giving Mr. Steinberg and fellow comedians - some, like Mr. Newhart and Martin Short, old friends; others, like George Lopez and Jon Lovitz, performers he admired but did not know personally - the chance to riff off of each other.

"I'm not interested in the craft of comedy," Mr. Steinberg said. "I don't think that's interesting to an audience. I just wanted to show the audience how funny these people can be."

Mike Myers is the first guest, tonight. Larry David is the second guest, next week. What more do you need to know? This is perfect!

The trouble with making fun of punditry.

A negative view of "The Colbert Report" in The New Republic (free link!):

"The Colbert Report" dragged through long laughless parts. Why? For two reasons: First, the people Colbert is ridiculing are already widely viewed as cartoonish; and second, he has chosen parody, rather than mockery, as the vehicle for making his point....

During his interview with [Stone] Phillips, Colbert complimented his guest's neck, boasted about his own Emmy and Peabody awards, and debated the merits of different tie knots. Basically he teased him. This kind of light banter is key to [Jon] Stewart's interviewing technique, but it's usually inlaid with more sincere questions. The balance of funny and anodyne keeps the report buoyant. But in his parodic mode, Colbert couldn't retreat into normal conversation. And his frantic humor seemed to discomfit Phillips, the audience, and the cameraman (the interview was a series of awkward angles and cuts).

Phillips's uncomfortable turn as a guest raises a question about "The Colbert Report": Is it lampooning newscasters, or is it promoting their senses of humor? Up until the interview segment, the show seemed like a straight-up O'Reilly spoof. But O'Reilly doesn't interview fellow cable newsmen; he talks to officials, congressmen, scandal-ridden citizens. He does so with an inane ferocity, while Colbert interrogated Phillips with a prankish, but gentle, buffoonery. So "The Colbert Report" has a split personality--on the one hand, making fun of punditry; on the other, winking along with it. The scheduling of future guests such as Lesley Stahl indicates that this schism will persist.

It is hard to do the comic character while interacting with real guests. Martin Short was able to do it as Jiminy Glick, but most of his guests were comedians, who had some ability to play along with the game. (Jerry Seinfeld was truly sublime as a guest on that show!) So far, Colbert has had only newsfolk on, and they are so preening about their images and not much good in the acting department.

Okay, enough blogging about body parts and related spiritual topics for the day. It's time to watch TV. I've chosen the extra Monday edition of "American Idol" and "The Dennis Miller Show." I think Dennis Miller has been figuring out how to do his show. It was nice to see the chimpanzee return to the show on Friday. But you can't predict how good Miller's show will be based on the Friday example, because Friday had Martin Short who was just absolutely perfect as a guest. Oh, maybe the two of them could become co-hosts, as sort of "Hannity and Colmes," but funny. That would be wonderful.