"stop me before it gets that far"

i have a deal with my kids. they are entrusted to know when to take away my car keys, and encouraged in advance to act when they know it's time. ("how will we know, dad?" "take a look at your grandfather--you'll know"). anyway, i'm figuring i'll need to have another talk with them about my computer. (this is a lay-up for the detractor, so free shot).

in today's sun there's an editorial contributed by a retired sun editorialist. (bob read, age 89, now of west newbury). i generally laugh out loud when i read the sun editorials, so i'm pleased to say the streak continues. this one is hysterical.

apparently, bob is not amused by the current slate of late night talk show host slash comedians. only he is adamant we not call them comedians, because he doesn't find them at all funny. (fair enough as far as that goes--i've long since stopped laughing at leno, and i never cared much for conan). so who does bob find funny, you ask? why, he'll tell you: abbott and costello, the marx brothers and victor borge for starters, and laurel and hardy for his big payoff.

yawn.

don't get me wrong--i've got abbott and costello's "who's on first" bit on my ipod and i listen to it more frequently than even i expected when i downloaded it. it's one of the most classic and funniest bits in the history of the comedy of this country, and it's still funny today. well, funny enough... my kids have heard it, and they know what it is, but i'll tell you that they don't have it on their ipods, nor laugh all that hard (bob describes his reaction to it as "sit through that without busting into raucous laughter and you need help"). so, bob, do my kids need help?

my kids think steven wright is funny, and always watch the tivo'd versions of the late late show with craig ferguson whenever steve's on, which is quite often. they can recite for you a good 15 minutes worth of his deadpan stuff ("i bought some used paint in the shape of a house", and, "i took a walk around my building the other day on the ledge--some people are afraid of heights, i'm afraid of widths", etc.) and never fail to crack each other up doing it. (my favorite is steven's response to the woman who told him she was a nymphomaniac though only turned on by jewish cowboys: "hi, i'm bucky goldstein"). i don't expect other people find it as funny, as steven is absolutely an acquired taste for many, but they laugh harder at that stuff than they do at abbott and costello every day of the week. but the guy they really laugh at is craig ferguson, which i suppose would be much to bob's confusion, observing as we can that craig ferguson is one of those current late night hosts that bob swears isn't as funny as victor borge.

want to know who is as funny as victor borge? weird al yankovic is as funny as victor borge. (weird al is coming to the lowell memorial auditorium this spring, so you can see for yourself). they're both musical comedic entertainers. victor, for kids or other readers not familiar with his schtick, is pretty funny. he was one of the more famous entertainers of his day. but it's not like he's irreplaceable, or even all that accessible now that the music he parodies fall further and further from public familiarity. but, bob, see, my kids do not have any deficiency in their sense of humor--they just have a different context than you.

and i'll have to presume there's some context missing, because the marx brothers are nigh on insufferable through long stretches of their movies, even while they are as funny as it gets in their moments, and laurel and hardy are just plain not funny at all if you ask me. a lot of abbott and costello's bits are pretty lame, too.

want to know what two generations (well, three if you count theirs) of comedy has been distilled down to in my household? they've got all their grandfather's stuff (bob's stuff) and they've got all of my stuff, and they've got all of their stuff too. abbott and costello they like well enough, though not enough to put it on repeat play for hours on end. monty python they find hysterical. steven wright, too. and more than anyone else, george carlin. they LOVE george carlin. which is a beautiful thing, because i love george carlin, too.

and among late night hosts, they've seen carson and love him, too. (carnac baby). they've seen leno, and yawn, just like bob and me. but, see, they're addicted to craig ferguson. ADDICTED. they watch him on tivo more that i watch him on tivo. (and i watch him a lot). they get conan, so there's that, but i swear i still don't. (though triumph the insult comic dog has to be one of the funniest things ever in the history of television, and coco gets big props for that with me). and if they were ever forced to sit through a laurel and hardy farce, they would be on bob with baseball bats to take away his car keys for even suggesting it.

see, laurel and hardy aren't funny. maybe to bob they are, but bob's era gave us talk show hosts like dinah shore and dick cavett, and there's very little funny about either of them. (ok, maybe dinah, a little). so why the hate on leno and letterman?

i know why, and it's got a lot to do with the fact that bob is 89. times change. car keys come, and car keys go.

time for bob to give up his typewriter.

and time for the sun to stop publishing their newspaper for a demographic that, if it isn't already dead, is soon to become so. it's no wonder to me whenever i read nonsense like this why readership and ad revenue continues to go down. it's funny like it's funny reading the loco-emotive writing about keven hagan white as if he has any basis whatsoever to write about him beyond the hysterically funny fact that kevin once and for all proved back, way back in 1983, just how enormous a horse's ass that the loco-emotive was and remains. (google "white will run" and "peter lucas" together to get a quick recap of one of the most famous boston newspaper headlines in history).

i guess we can sum this all up by observing that campy is all about campy.