Learning things that explain jokes

[womzilla]

This 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, 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.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Wiley Post was also a pioneer in using a pressure suit to endure high-altitude flying. It was designed for him by Russell S. Colley of B. F. Goodrich, and known as "the tire shaped like a man." Later Colley developed more flexible, but ultimately unsuccessful, pressure suits for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Still later, after decades of licking one engineering problem after another, he was on the team that developed Goodrich's Mark IV pressure suit, adopted by the U.S. Navy. The Mark IV, given a silvery color, became NASA's suit for Project Mercury.

The Navy client was the Air Crew Equipment Laboratory in Philadelphia, where Edward V. Hays also worked for years on the development of these pressure suits. NASA hired him to do environmental controls and space suits for Gemini and Apollo.

ObSF: In November 1969 Robert Heinlein visited NASA in Houston. He saw a Moon rock. He watched the Apollo 12 crew practice lunar landings. His host, knowing Heinlein's interest in space suits, arranged a private briefing with the chief space suit engineer. Turned out to be Ted Hays. Whom Heinlein had hired in 1943 for the Navy lab, luring him with the promise that he could work on pressure suits.

ObPuppets: Russell Colley had a child-sized duplicate of the Mercury space suit made. When he spoke in public, he brought a ventriloquist dummy dressed as an astronaut. Its helmet, if there ever was one, is lost, but the dummy still exists (http://www.collectspace.com/images/news-040302c.jpg).

ObMusic: I don't own any Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band albums. Perhaps I should obtain some.

ObMusicAgain: Doctor Demento is shutting down. He'll broadcast his final show this week. Damn.

[washa-way.livejournal.com]

Everyone should own as many Bonzo Dog Band albums as possible.

"If you're normal, I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life." -- Viv Stanshall, "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe"

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Actually, my original Golden APAzine was "Fan-Shaped Destiny," a phrase from Illuminatus!. I changed the title to "The Wile E. Post" when I turned the apa over to others.