Go Carts

Okay, not it’s really so raunchy–it’s tame, in fact–but here’s “For Adults Only” by Bill Cosby.

Today, is a good day to laugh. So we’ve got some routines to make you smile…

First up: Cos.

Go Carts

The great routine.

[Photo Credit: Paul Walde]

Here’s an extra beat of the day for you. A friend posted this on his Facebook page and said it made him feel like he was a Huxtable.

Cos gets deep…

[Photo Via: Worship the Feminine]

I run up on her. She was about seven feet tall. Built like an Amazon. Had Mens climbing the Walls.

I said ‘Hello, Baby.”

She said, “Hello, little fella.”

I said, “I likes that.”

[Photo Credit: oio]

I’ll fake it to ya.

I thought about kid logic today on my way to work. A mother pushed an empty stroller up a hilly block. Her son, maybe five-years-old said, “Mom, can I get in the stroller?”

“No, you cannot. I want you to walk.”

The kid was too big for a stroller but that hill must have made him ask.  Can’t say I blamed him but I felt a strange satisfaction when his mother made him walk. Guess I’m not so young anymore, either.

Hickey & Boggs was one of a spate of revisionist private-eye movies that proliferated in the late 60s and early 70s, along with better known examples like The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973), Night Moves (Arthur Penn, 1975) and Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974). For years I only knew of it because it was always referenced in books about 1970s cinema, genre revisionism or neo noir – I’d never seen it on TV or in a video store. To me, Hickey & Boggs only existed as still photographs of director-star Culp and his co-star, Bill Cosby, holding .44 Magnums, so I was more than happy to find it available for instant streaming.

Despite the presence of Culp and his I Spy co-star Cosby, the film, written by then-rising star Walter Hill, is a downbeat affair. Al Hickey (the Cos) and Frank Boggs (Culp) are partners in a two man Los Angeles private eye firm, ex-cops and divorced losers. Boggs is an alcoholic whose stripper ex-wife likes to taunt him from the stage (“Eat your heart out.”) and Hickey is desperate to repair his family and be a father and husband again, but his ex (Rosalind Cash) is having none of it.  Hickey and Boggs are broke, financially and spiritually.

The two are hired by a creepy, possibly pedophile lawyer named Rice to find a missing girl, which brings them deep into a web of gangsters, thugs, black militants and stolen mob money.  The closer they get to cracking the case, the deeper the hole they dig themselves. The bad guys want them dead and the cops want them out of the way or in jail. What’s worse is that they can’t even figure out why they’re putting themselves through all of this. “It’s not about anything,” Hickey repeatedly complains. And while they carry the same enormous, deadly pistol as Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan, they don’t share his deadly accuracy. “I gotta get a bigger gun,” Boggs complains, “I can’t hit anything anymore.”

Hickey & Boggs was the only film Culp directed, and it’s a pity he didn’t go behind the camera again. The film is well-paced, well-acted and Culp has a good sense of the city and the contrast between the dark places the characters go and the bright, sun-bleached, wide open expanses the action often plays itself out in (the L.A. Coliseum, the beach, a collapsing hillside mansion). Hill’s script was supposedly written for Jason Robards and Strother Martin, which makes one wonder if the original intent was to get Culp’s good friend Sam Peckinpah to direct. No matter, Culp makes the most of the material and gives a very generous performance, allowing for really nice work from the rest of the cast (including a very young James Woods and Michael Moriarty) to shine.

The biggest impression is made by Cosby. Cosby gets a couple sardonic one-liners in, but this is a straight dramatic role, with his character going to some pretty dark places emotionally, and he’s excellent. He’s always believable and always seems to be giving each scene the proper energy.  Sadly, the film didn’t do well, and Cosby spent the bulk of the remainder of the 1970s in silly (albeit fun) comedies with Sidney Poitier. What a shame that he wasn’t given more of a chance to shine as a dramatic actor during those peak years. Hickey & Boggs provides a tantalizing “What if?”

For fans of Cosby, Culp or neo-noir, Hickey & Boggs is a must-see.

My brother loved this one…

For more than ten years I’ve talked about records, record labels, record producers, rare 45 b-sides and comedians with my dear friend Alan who knows more about records and record history than anyone I know, and it’s not even close.  When we see each other, we usually go right into an old Carlin routine, or a Lenny Bruce sketch, or Bugs Bunny riff.  Alan was the first guy I thought of this morning. When he got into work and saw the red light on his phone, he knew who the message was from

I got the following e-mail from Alan this afternoon:

George Carlin records were the comedy soundtrack of my childhood. I heard “AM/FM” and “Class Clown” when I about 9 years old. First to laugh hysterically at them, then to memorize them, then to imitate every single vocal inflection contained on them (“Hey, who’s wearing chicken vegetable”, “Not me, I have bean with bacon”). I learned about language, culture, and humor from absorbing these records (and soon many more). Thank you, George.

I love comedy records.

Pretty much any records that have made me laugh or still make me laugh, are things I listen to more than anything else these days. This feeling is not limited to stand-up comedy records, but I’ll be brief.

These are the records that have cracked me tup more than any others.

Lenny Bruce – “Let The Buyer Beware” (audiobook), “The Carnegie Hall Concert” and “Thank You, Masked Man”.
George Carlin – “AM/FM”, “Class Clown”,and “Occupation: Foole”
Richard Pryor – “That Nigger’s Crazy”, “Is It Something I Said”
Franklyn Ajaye – “Don’t Smoke Dope, Fry Your Hair”
Bill Cosby – “Wonderfulness”
Steve Martin – “Let’s Get Small”
Lewis Black – “The Carnegie Hall Concert”
Patton Oswalt – “Werewolves and Lollipops”

A top-ten stand-up list?
hmmm….

Let’s break it down this way

1. Lenny Bruce
2/3. George Carlin / Richard Pryor (you decide, I can’t)

4-10 then-ish

4. Jonathan Winters (didn’t make great records, but no one is funnier to watch)
5. Bill Cosby
6. Rodney Dangerfield
7. Alan King
8. Jackie Mason (more for the one man shows in the 80′s & 90′s than for his eary stuff)
9. Moms Mabely
10. Charlie Callas (along with Winters, very few could get a laugh just by showing up)

4-10 now-ish

4. Lewis Black
5. Patton Oswalt
6. Chris Rock
7. Bernie Mac
8. David Cross
9. Ron White
10. Eddie Izzard

I’d throw in “A Star is Bought,” by Albert Brooks as one of my favorite comedy albums, along with “Wild and Crazy Guy,” (Steve Martin), “The 2013 Year Old Man” (Brooks and Reiner) and the double lp of Woody Allen’s stand up years. Oh, and maybe Eddie Murphy’s debut too. But not before I added “Live in Concert,” the double Richard Pryor lp. Oh, there are lots more. Nichols and May, Robin Williams, the National Lampoon stuff, the old Peter Sellers records…The Bob and Doug record used to crack me up.

Here’s a question. Who are the funniest comics to have never made a great album? Mort Sahl and Jonathan Winters, who some people claim is the funniest man on the face of the earth, spring to mind. I never cared for Lily Tomlin’s records either. Whatta ya got?