Learning things that explain jokes
Jun. 12th, 2010 01:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaThis evening I was chez Hartwell for the first part of the NYRSF Work Weekend, and David mentioned that a local antiques shop had a poster for the 1935 film Air Hawks. This was a proto-sf story of airline rivals, one of whom hires a mad scientist to create a ray that causes airplane engines to fail. The poster, which I simply cannot find online, shows a plane with an unearthly green ray, so David was instantly smitten. He mentioned that the film starred Ralph Bellamy and Wiley Post, and suddenly a joke fell into place.
For many years,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
supergee, who is a coyote, ran a Discordian apa called Golden Apa, and his main 'zine for it was The Wile E. Post. Somehow I had spent my entire life to this point never having heard of the original Wiley Post, a superstar aviator, discoverer of the jet stream (!), who is probably now best remembered as Will Rogers's best friend, and the pilot of the small plane that crashed, killing them both.
Then, as I was driving home, I listened to my off-the-Internet-stream recording of last week's Divaville Lounge. In the second half-hour, DJ Sarah O played "The Late Late Show" by the Count Basie Orch with Joe Williams. And, to my amazement, I recognized it as an inspiration for a Frank Zappa song, "Catholic Girls", a standout piece from my favorite of his albums, Joe's Garage, Act I. (Youtube links. Warning: Frank Zappa is emphatically NSFW.) Ah, connections.
Speaking of "The Late Late Show", I've been meaning to link back to this piece for a while. It's from the Craig Ferguson show from April 5 of this year. I found it through Roy Edroso, who described it as follows:
Amen to that.
Video after the cut. I think the video is funnier if you don't have *any* explanation beyond "This was the opening of the Craig Ferguson show on April 5", so the explanation is after the video after the cut.
Craig Ferguson's The Late, Late Show has prided itself on being the "no-frills" talk show--no band, no sidekick, just conversation and comedy. However, the show got a Twitter feed, with the followers yclept "Craig's Robot Skeleton Army", and soon Craig made a deal with Mythbuster's Grant Imahara: that Ferguson could get 100,000 people to follow Grant's Twitter feed. When he succeeded, as payment Grant built Craig a robot skeleton monster sidekick. The video above was the sidekick's debut. The song is "Look Out, There's a Monster Coming" by the immortal but too-little-remembered Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, from their 1967 album Gorilla.
For many years,
supergee, who is a coyote, ran a Discordian apa called Golden Apa, and his main 'zine for it was The Wile E. Post. Somehow I had spent my entire life to this point never having heard of the original Wiley Post, a superstar aviator, discoverer of the jet stream (!), who is probably now best remembered as Will Rogers's best friend, and the pilot of the small plane that crashed, killing them both. Then, as I was driving home, I listened to my off-the-Internet-stream recording of last week's Divaville Lounge. In the second half-hour, DJ Sarah O played "The Late Late Show" by the Count Basie Orch with Joe Williams. And, to my amazement, I recognized it as an inspiration for a Frank Zappa song, "Catholic Girls", a standout piece from my favorite of his albums, Joe's Garage, Act I. (Youtube links. Warning: Frank Zappa is emphatically NSFW.) Ah, connections.
Speaking of "The Late Late Show", I've been meaning to link back to this piece for a while. It's from the Craig Ferguson show from April 5 of this year. I found it through Roy Edroso, who described it as follows:
CRAIG FERGUSON DOES THE BONZO DOG BAND. I only kind of miss network TV, but if it were as full of Ernie Kovacs as this, I'd go back to watching it and never ever stop.
Amen to that.
Video after the cut. I think the video is funnier if you don't have *any* explanation beyond "This was the opening of the Craig Ferguson show on April 5", so the explanation is after the video after the cut.
Craig Ferguson's The Late, Late Show has prided itself on being the "no-frills" talk show--no band, no sidekick, just conversation and comedy. However, the show got a Twitter feed, with the followers yclept "Craig's Robot Skeleton Army", and soon Craig made a deal with Mythbuster's Grant Imahara: that Ferguson could get 100,000 people to follow Grant's Twitter feed. When he succeeded, as payment Grant built Craig a robot skeleton monster sidekick. The video above was the sidekick's debut. The song is "Look Out, There's a Monster Coming" by the immortal but too-little-remembered Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, from their 1967 album Gorilla.
