He had me at “Shut up!” I was sixteen, spending the night at a friends’ house, and we were watching the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival being broadcast on HBO. Several comedians cracked us up, but the one who really got my attention was Bing Hitler. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. He was aggressive and made loony jokes about worms, bees, wasps. I had no way to find out anything more about this guy but it didn’t matter. I was a fan for life.
Five years later a friend who’d been brought up in England played me a tape of a couple of stand-up routines by this guy named Craig Ferguson. He did a whole bit about two Scottish families on Family Fortunes (Britain’s version of Family Feud) that had me in tears. I didn’t know anything else about him but I was a fan for life.
It never occurred to me to wonder why they sounded similar until I heard Ferguson asked about his original stage name Bing Hitler in an interview.
When he took over The Late Late Show he gained a whole new group of fans, but I get a special feeling knowing I was there almost from the beginning.
Happy birthday Catherine Tate. There are hundreds of Doctor Who clips I could use to illustrate how brilliant she is, but instead here’s one of her just being herself.
Happy birthday Carol Burnett. Even though she’s done so much in a career that’s spanned more than six decades now she may be best remembered for The Carol Burnett Show. And that’s kind of fitting because she hasn’t just done comedy. She’s also done dramatic roles, she sings, she’s written a memoir. Carol Burnett has shown a variety of talents. When I was a kid I always loved her questions and answers with the audience best because she could be hilarious even when not working from a script. Oh yeah, and there was that yell.
Happy birthday to Phil Austin, AKA Nick Danger, Third Eye. As one quarter of Firesign Theater he’s always in two places when he’s not anywhere at all, and one of them is temporarily Humboldt County.
So it was 1995, and the place where I worked had just started using e-mail. We had a program called Pegasus, which I’m tickled to see, is still going. It was supposed to be a work tool, but its real purpose quickly became clear: to share jokes. A short time later I discovered I could create email groups and have the names hidden so the recipients wouldn’t see each other’s addresses. So I created a group.
Twenty years have gone by in a flash. I’ve read somewhere that the average blog only lasts three years. If you never come here again drop by on April 1, 2025. I intend to destroy the average.
In the meantime…there will be the book. I have no idea when, but it will be a collection of humorous pieces and short stories, because there’s nothing publishers love more as you can tell by the fact that such books always end up in the three-for-a-dollar remainder pile.
I do at least have a title, which is a good start.
Subtitles include:
Never pick apart a golf ball or it will explode and other lies our parents told us.
The true story of a boy and his aardvark.
Don’t pick up this book—you don’t know where it’s been.
Chuffed, Naff, Barmy, Wanker, Git, Bollocks, And Other Words I’d Use Constantly If I Were British.
Contains Material Not Included In Previous Editions.
A shoe, a canoe, and a didgeridoo.
Or It Will Be If I Ever Get Around To Writing It
A post-Freudian analysis of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as examined through a Barthesian dialectical lens.
A helpful guide to just read the damn book already.
I don’t know if it really started on April 1, 1995—I don’t remember the exact date, frankly—but it’s close enough. And I always wanted to have a birthday in the spring. My real birthday is December 20, . And I have to give full credit to my mother who always made sure my birthday was celebrated as its own event in spite of its proximity to Christmas. There were advantages to having a birthday at that time of year—including being a Sagittarius. I remember the first time I read the description of a Sagittarius. Three things stood out:
-Loves the outdoors
-Loves to dress up in costumes
-Scatterbrained
Check, check, and mate. I’ve spent the rest of my life avoiding reading anything about astrology because I suspect the description of a Leo is completely different but would fit me just as well.
April 1st is also the birthday of Lon Chaney. Apparently loving to dress up in costumes is an Aries thing as well.
Thanks to Scott MacLean who created the original website, and Jeff Goebel of Frogstar, both of whom put an incredible amount of work into rebuilding this site as a blog I could call home. They created a fantastic design which I immediately tore to pieces. This was not an editorial comment. It’s just that I’ve lived with dogs long enough to know that the only way to make the yard yours is to pee on every tree.And now…let loose the tarantulas of foolishness! Here are videos I’ve made on my real birthday for the past three years.
He had me at “Shut up!” I was sixteen, spending the night at a friends’ house, and we were watching the Montreal Just For Laughs Festival being broadcast on HBO. Several comedians cracked us up, but the one who really got my attention was Bing Hitler. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. He was aggressive and made loony jokes about worms, bees, wasps. I had no way to find out anything more about this guy but it didn’t matter. I was a fan for life.
. And I have to give full credit to my mother who always made sure my birthday was celebrated as its own event in spite of its proximity to Christmas. There were advantages to having a birthday at that time of year—including being a Sagittarius. I remember the first time I read the description of a Sagittarius. Three things stood out:
