BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
07 June 2025
13 February 2018
VIDEO Men On Football - Original, Unedited Version from IN LIVING COLOR SUPER BOWL XXVI (26) HALF TIME SHOW 26JAN1992
27 August 2015
15 August 2014
ROBIN WILLIAMS 11AUG14
A tribute to Robin Williams, a man who made us laugh so hard and then often think when the laughter faded away. It is so very sad he reached the point in his life that he decided the only way to deal with all his issues was to end it.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-robin-williams-dies-20140811-story.html
Actor, comedian Robin Williams dies at 63 in apparent suicide
Robin Williams, a comic and sitcom star in the 1970s who became an Oscar-winning dramatic actor, died Monday at 63 in Marin County. The Marin County Sheriff's Office said he appears to have committed suicide.
The news of the beloved actor’s death rocked the nation. Channels broke into their usual programming to make the announcement, and within minutes, he dominated online trending topics.
Williams was hailed as a comic genius was a star of both movies and television for more than three decades. But he also suffered from substance abuse problems.
The actor "has been battling severe depression of late," his publicist Mara Buxbaum said. "This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time."
Williams was found unresponsive at his home in Tiburon at around noon Monday, sheriff’s officials said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dubbed “the funniest man alive” by Entertainment Weekly in 1997, Williams brought audiences hours of laughter, putting his imaginative spin on characters in film and television. He was lauded for his serious roles as well, winning a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as Sean Maguire, the therapist who counsels Matt Damon’s math genius in “Good Will Hunting” (1997), and receiving nominations for “The Fisher King” (1991), “Dead Poets Society” (1989) and “Good Morning, Vietnam” (1987).
Williams was known for being open about his problems with cocaine and alcohol over the years.
The actor spent time on a Hazelden campus in Oregon in 2006. He later explained that drinking had gradually become a problem again after 20 years of sobriety.
"You're standing at a precipice and you look down, there's a voice and it's a little quiet voice that goes, 'Jump,'" the "Mrs. Doubtfire" star told ABC News in October of that year. "The same voice that goes, 'Just one.' … And the idea of just one for someone who has no tolerance for it, that's not the possibility."
This summer, he returned to rehab to "fine-tune" his sobriety.
Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams became one of only two students accepted into John Houseman’s prestigious acting program at Juilliard, the other being Christopher Reeve, who became a lifelong friend.
Williams gained fame as Mork, the bizarre, suspenders-sporting alien on the sitcom “Mork & Mindy,” a spinoff from “Happy Days.” Williams departed from the script so often that producers intentionally left blank moments on page for him to have space to indulge his ad-libbing genius.
That talent for ad-libbing functioned as a gift and a shield.
"He was always in character -- you never saw the real Robin," said Jamie Masada, founder and chief executive of the Laugh Factory. "I knew him 35 years, and I never knew him."
"He was a wonderful guy," Masada added. "I remember John [Belushi] and
Robin, both of them always complained to me -- no matter where they were
people would recognize them. They sold their privacy to the public.
They could be in the middle of talking in the street and someone would
come up for an autograph.... he [Robin] didn't realize how much he sold
his privacy to people."
“We have lost one of our most inspired and gifted comic minds, as well as one of this generation’s greatest actors,” said Chris Columbus, who directed Williams in the 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” and was scheduled to work with him again on “Mrs. Doubtfire 2,” a sequel recently set in motion.
“To watch Robin work was a magical and special privilege,” Columbus said. “His performances were unlike anything any of us had ever seen, they came from some spiritual and otherworldly place.... We were friends for 21 years. Our children grew up together, he inspired us to spend our lives in San Francisco and I loved him like a brother.”
Williams' last post on Twitter was about his daughter.
Robin Williams
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-robin-williams-dies-20140811-story.html
Actor, comedian Robin Williams dies at 63 in apparent suicide
Robin Williams, a comic and sitcom star in the 1970s who became an Oscar-winning dramatic actor, died Monday at 63 in Marin County. The Marin County Sheriff's Office said he appears to have committed suicide.
The news of the beloved actor’s death rocked the nation. Channels broke into their usual programming to make the announcement, and within minutes, he dominated online trending topics.
Williams was hailed as a comic genius was a star of both movies and television for more than three decades. But he also suffered from substance abuse problems.
The actor "has been battling severe depression of late," his publicist Mara Buxbaum said. "This is a tragic and sudden loss. The family respectfully asks for their privacy as they grieve during this very difficult time."
Williams was found unresponsive at his home in Tiburon at around noon Monday, sheriff’s officials said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Dubbed “the funniest man alive” by Entertainment Weekly in 1997, Williams brought audiences hours of laughter, putting his imaginative spin on characters in film and television. He was lauded for his serious roles as well, winning a best supporting actor Oscar for his performance as Sean Maguire, the therapist who counsels Matt Damon’s math genius in “Good Will Hunting” (1997), and receiving nominations for “The Fisher King” (1991), “Dead Poets Society” (1989) and “Good Morning, Vietnam” (1987).
Williams was known for being open about his problems with cocaine and alcohol over the years.
The actor spent time on a Hazelden campus in Oregon in 2006. He later explained that drinking had gradually become a problem again after 20 years of sobriety.
"You're standing at a precipice and you look down, there's a voice and it's a little quiet voice that goes, 'Jump,'" the "Mrs. Doubtfire" star told ABC News in October of that year. "The same voice that goes, 'Just one.' … And the idea of just one for someone who has no tolerance for it, that's not the possibility."
This summer, he returned to rehab to "fine-tune" his sobriety.
Born in Chicago in 1951, Williams became one of only two students accepted into John Houseman’s prestigious acting program at Juilliard, the other being Christopher Reeve, who became a lifelong friend.
Williams gained fame as Mork, the bizarre, suspenders-sporting alien on the sitcom “Mork & Mindy,” a spinoff from “Happy Days.” Williams departed from the script so often that producers intentionally left blank moments on page for him to have space to indulge his ad-libbing genius.
That talent for ad-libbing functioned as a gift and a shield.
"He was always in character -- you never saw the real Robin," said Jamie Masada, founder and chief executive of the Laugh Factory. "I knew him 35 years, and I never knew him."
“We have lost one of our most inspired and gifted comic minds, as well as one of this generation’s greatest actors,” said Chris Columbus, who directed Williams in the 1993 comedy “Mrs. Doubtfire” and was scheduled to work with him again on “Mrs. Doubtfire 2,” a sequel recently set in motion.
“To watch Robin work was a magical and special privilege,” Columbus said. “His performances were unlike anything any of us had ever seen, they came from some spiritual and otherworldly place.... We were friends for 21 years. Our children grew up together, he inspired us to spend our lives in San Francisco and I loved him like a brother.”
Williams' last post on Twitter was about his daughter.
15 April 2013
Comic Legend Jonathan Winters Dies at 87 (VIDEOS) 12APR13 & Jim Lehrer Interviews Comedian Jonathan Winters 21OKT1999
I loved Jonathan Winters, he is the kind of comedian that could make all of us laugh, and he would laugh with us. On a day like today, with the Boston Marathon bombing all over the radio and TV and net, I thought, with no disrespect to those killed and injured and the suffering of so many, that some might just enjoy the chance to laugh, and remember what seems to have been simpler times. This from PBS, and I have to say, the opening of this first video always makes me laugh out loud. Thank you Mr Winters, may you rest in happy peace...
http://youtu.be/gugEmSCpLRE
http://youtu.be/wjpyztgCq8w
Published on Apr 12, 2013
Pioneering comic Jonathan Winters brought his own brand of wild, improvisational stand-up to television in the 1950s, and continued to perform for nearly five decades. Winters died Thursday at the age of 87. Jeffrey Brown remembers the comedian with a look back at his career and an interview excerpt with JIm Lehrer from 1999.
Published on Apr 12, 2013
Jim Lehrer talks to comedian Jonathan Winters, the 1999 winner of the Mark Twain Prize from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This interview originally aired Oct. 21, 1999. Winters died April 11, 2013, at age 87.
Published on Apr 12, 2013
A selection of comedic moments from the career of Jonathan Winters, who died on April 11, 2013.
Related obituary: http://nyti.ms/1596otd
Related obituary: http://nyti.ms/1596otd
Jonathan Winters, Unpredictable Comic and Master of Improvisation, Dies at 87
By WILLIAM GRIMES
Jonathan Winters, the rubber-faced comedian whose unscripted flights of fancy inspired a generation of improvisational comics, and who kept television audiences in stitches with Main Street characters like Maude Frickert, a sweet-seeming grandmother with a barbed tongue and a roving eye, died on Thursday at his home in Montecito, Calif. He was 87.
His death was announced on his Web site, JonathanWinters.com.
Mr. Winters, a rotund man whose face had a melancholy basset-hound expression in repose, burst onto the comedy scene in the late 1950s and instantly made his mark as one of the funniest, least definable comics in a rising generation that included Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart.
Mr. Winters was at his best when winging it, confounding television hosts and luckless straight men with his rapid-fire delivery of bizarre observations uttered by characters like Elwood P. Suggins, a Midwestern Everyman, or one-off creations like the woodland sprite who bounded onto Jack Paar’s late-night show and simperingly proclaimed: “I’m the voice of spring. I bring you little goodies from the forest.”
A one-man sketch factory, Mr. Winters could re-enact Hollywood movies, complete with sound effects, or create sublime comic nonsense with simple props like a pen-and-pencil set.
The unpredictable, often surreal quality of his humor had a powerful influence on later comedians like Robin Williams but made him hard to package as an entertainer. His brilliant turns as a guest on programs like “The Steve Allen Show” and “The Tonight Show” — in both the Jack Paar and Johnny Carson eras — kept him in constant demand. But a successful television series eluded him, as did a Hollywood career, despite memorable performances in films like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” “The Loved One” and “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.”
Jonathan Harshman Winters was born on Nov. 11, 1925, in Dayton, Ohio, where his alcoholic father (“a hip Willy Loman,” according to Mr. Winters) worked as an investment broker and his grandfather, a frustrated comedian, owned the Winters National Bank.
“Mother and Dad didn’t understand me; I didn’t understand them,” he told Jim Lehrer on “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” in 1999. “So consequently it was a strange kind of arrangement.” Alone in his room, he would create characters and interview himself.
The family’s fortunes collapsed with the Depression. The Winters National Bank failed, and Jonathan’s parents divorced. His mother took him to Springfield, where she did factory work but eventually became the host of a women’s program on a local radio station. Her son continued talking to himself and developed a repertory of sound effects. He often entertained his high school friends by imitating a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
A poor student, Mr. Winters enlisted in the Marines before finishing high school and during World War II served as a gunner on the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard in the Pacific.
After the war he completed high school and, hoping to become a political cartoonist, studied art at Kenyon College and the Dayton Art Institute. In 1948 he married Eileen Schauder, a Dayton native who was studying art at Ohio State. She died in 2009. His survivors include their two children, Jonathan Winters IV, of Camarillo, Calif., known as Jay, and Lucinda, of Santa Barbara, Calif.; and several grandchildren.
At the urging of his wife, Mr. Winters, whose art career seemed to be going nowhere, entered a talent contest in Dayton with his eye on the grand prize, a wristwatch, which he needed. He won, and he was hired as a morning disc jockey at WING, where he made up for his inability to attract guests by inventing them. “I’d make up people like Dr. Hardbody of the Atomic Energy Commission, or an Englishman whose blimp had crash-landed in Dayton,” he told U.S. News and World Report in 1988.
After two years at a Columbus television station, he left for New York in 1953 to break into network radio. Instead he landed bit parts on television and, with surprising ease, found work as a nightclub comic.
A guest spot on Arthur Godfrey’s “Talent Scouts” led to frequent appearances with Jack Paar and Steve Allen, both of them staunch supporters willing to give Mr. Winters free rein. Alistair Cooke, after seeing Mr. Winters at the New York nightclub Le Ruban Bleu, booked him as the first comedian to appear on his arts program “Omnibus.”
In his stand-up act, Mr. Winters initially relied heavily on sound effects — a cracking whip, a creaking door, a hovering U.F.O. — which he used to spice up his re-enactments of horror films, war films and westerns. Gradually he developed a gallery of characters, which expanded when he had his own television shows, beginning with the 15-minute “Jonathan Winters Show,” which ran from 1956 to 1957. He was later seen in a series of specials for NBC in the early 1960s; on an hourlong CBS variety series, “The Jonathan Winters Show,” from 1967 to 1969; and on “The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters,” in syndication, from 1972 to 1974.
Many of Mr. Winters’s characters — among them B. B. Bindlestiff, a small-town tycoon, and Piggy Bladder, football coach for the State Teachers’ Animal Husbandry Institute for the Blind — were based on people he grew up with. Maude Frickert, for example, whom he played wearing a white wig and a Victorian granny dress, was inspired by an elderly aunt who let him drink wine and taught him to play poker when he was 9 years old.
Other characters, like the couturier Lance Loveguard and Princess Leilani-nani, the world’s oldest hula dancer, sprang from a secret compartment deep within Mr. Winters’s inventive brain.
As channeled by Mr. Winters, Maude Frickert was a wild card. Reminiscing about her late husband, Pop Frickert, she told a stupefied interviewer: “He was a Spanish dancer in a massage parlor. If somebody came in with a crick in their neck he’d do an orthopedic flamenco all over them. He was tall, dark and out of it.”
One of Mr. Winters’s most popular characters, she appeared in a series of commercials for Hefty garbage bags, which also featured Mr. Winters as a garbage man dressed in a spotless white uniform and referring, in an upper-class British accent, to gar-BAZH. Carson kidnapped Maude Frickert and simply changed the name to Aunt Blabby, one of his stock characters. Mr. Winters said that the blatant theft did not bother him.
Mr. Winters often called himself a satirist, but the term does not really apply. In “Seriously Funny,” his history of 1950s and 1960s comedians, Gerald Nachman described him, a bit floridly, as “part circus clown and part social observer, Red Skelton possessed by the spirit of Daumier.”
He was hard to define. “I don’t do jokes,” he once said. “The characters are my jokes.” At the same time, unlike many comedians reacting to the Eisenhower era, he found his source material in human behavior rather than politics or current events, but in him the spectacle of human folly provoked glee rather than righteous anger.
In 1961 Variety wrote, “His humor is more universally acceptable than any of the current New Comics, with the possible exception of Bob Newhart, because he covers the mass experiences of the U.S. common man — the Army, the gas station, the airport.”
Mr. Winters did much of his best work in nightclubs, but he hated life on the road. In 1959 he suffered a nervous breakdown onstage at the hungry i in San Francisco and briefly spent time in a mental hospital. Two years later he suffered another collapse, and soon after that he quit nightclubs for good. From 1960 to 1964 he recorded his most-requested monologues for Verve on a series of albums, notably “The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters,” “Here’s Jonathan” and “Jonathan Winters: Down to Earth.”
The conventional television variety show did not suit Mr. Winters, but film did not seem the right medium for him either. Scripts stifled him. “Jonny works best out of instant panic,” one of his television writers in the 1960s said. He thrived when he could ad-lib, fielding unexpected questions or pursuing spontaneous flights of fancy. In other words, he made a brilliant guest, firing comedy in short bursts, but a problematic host or actor.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Winters was a frequent guest on “The Andy Williams Show,” “The Tonight Show” and “Hollywood Squares.” He played Robin Williams’s extraterrestrial baby son, Mearth, on the final season of “Mork & Mindy,” and he kept busy with voice-over work in animated television series and films. He also published a book of his cartoons, “Mouse Breath, Conformity and Other Social Ills,” and a collection of whimsical stories, “Winters’ Tales.”
More influential than successful, Mr. Winters circled the comic heavens tracing his own strange orbit, an object of wonder and admiration to his peers. “Jonathan taught me,” Mr. Williams told the correspondent Ed Bradley on “60 Minutes,” “that the world is open for play, that everything and everybody is mockable, in a wonderful way.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: April 12, 2013
An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of Jonathan Winters’s wife, who died in 2009. In 1948 he married Eileen Schauder, not Elaine. Additionally, a caption in an earlier version of a slide show featuring Mr. Winters incorrectly stated the recipient of an Oscar. Mr. Winters received an Oscar for Peter Ustinov.
Multimedia
Related
ArtsBeat: Remembering Jonathan Winters (April 12, 2013)
28 August 2010
19 August 2010
Ben Quayle Campaign Ad Parodied By Andy Cobb (VIDEO)
Ben Quayle, son of former Vice President Dan Quayle, is running in the GOP Primary to be the next Representative of Arizona's Third District in the U.S. House of Representatives. And this week, he had a message, for America, that Barack Obama was the "worst president in history." Unfortunately, this message didn't fit the editorial mission of Quayle's preferred outlet, The Dirty, a gossip site on which he "documented his quest to find the 'hottest chick in Scottsdale.'" And so, he cut a campaign ad in which he promised to "knock the hell out of Washington," presumably after the effects of the Qaaludes he seemed to be on during the filming of said video wore off.
I thought that Quayle's ad was ripe for parody, and I knew the man for the job: comedian Andy Cobb, of Second City fame. So I made my case, over Twitter, and soon got a reply that such a parody was on the way. Now, I have no idea if I just correctly anticipated Cobb's comedic instincts or if I literally control Andy Cobb from deep within the Comedy Panopticon I built inside the Eat The Press Terrordome, but the man delivered the very thing this brave nation needed most. Please enjoy! And if this doesn't do it for you, click here.
WATCH:
I thought that Quayle's ad was ripe for parody, and I knew the man for the job: comedian Andy Cobb, of Second City fame. So I made my case, over Twitter, and soon got a reply that such a parody was on the way. Now, I have no idea if I just correctly anticipated Cobb's comedic instincts or if I literally control Andy Cobb from deep within the Comedy Panopticon I built inside the Eat The Press Terrordome, but the man delivered the very thing this brave nation needed most. Please enjoy! And if this doesn't do it for you, click here.
WATCH:
12 August 2010
06 August 2010
23 June 2010
Lesbian Kagan Speculation Mocked By 'Auto Tune The News' (VIDEO) 21JUN10
Oh, hey! Have we not highlighted the recent YouTube creation from the Streamy Award winning Internet superheroes known as Auto-Tune The News? Here you go, then! This merry summertime jam features the media discussing the merits of legalizing pot, as well as coverage of that time everyone wondered if Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's love of softball was some sort of secret indication that she was a lesbian. You can get a contact high from all the blissed-out, idiotic speculation! Enjoy!
11 February 2010
ABFAB FALLING DOWN
Just a short bit from series one, click the header to see it....some humor to brighten your day......
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