mikl-em's combine

I… it… it’s just fun watch this over and over… via thepianoblog

(via arpeggia)

Amazing story from Bill Murray about the last time he saw Gilda Radner from the book Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live (via andrewtsks, cureforbedbugs, & huffpostcomedy):

“Gilda got married and went away. None of us saw her anymore. There was one good thing: Laraine had a party one night, a great party at her house. And I ended up being the disk jockey. She just had forty-fives, and not that many, so you really had to work the music end of it. There was a collection of like the funniest people in the world at this party. Somehow Sam Kinison sticks in my brain. The whole Monty Python group was there, most of us from the show, a lot of other funny people, and Gilda. Gilda showed up and she’d already had cancer and gone into remission and then had it again, I guess. Anyway she was slim. We hadn’t seen her in a long time. And she started doing, “I’ve got to go,” and she was just going to leave, and I was like, “Going to leave?” It felt like she was going to really leave forever.

So we started carrying her around, in a way that we could only do with her. We carried her up and down the stairs, around the house, repeatedly, for a long time, until I was exhausted. Then Danny did it for a while. Then I did it again. We just kept carrying her; we did it in teams. We kept carrying her around, but like upside down, every which way—over your shoulder and under your arm, carrying her like luggage. And that went on for more than an hour—maybe an hour and a half—just carrying her around and saying, “She’s leaving! This could be it! Now come on, this could be the last time we see her. Gilda’s leaving, and remember that she was very sick—hello?”

We worked all aspects of it, but it started with just, “She’s leaving, I don’t know if you’ve said good-bye to her.” And we said good-bye to the same people ten, twenty times, you know. 

And because these people were really funny, every person we’d drag her up to would just do like five minutes on her, with Gilda upside down in this sort of tortured position, which she absolutely loved. She was laughing so hard we could have lost her right then and there.

It was just one of the best parties I’ve ever been to in my life. I’ll always remember it. It was the last time I saw her.”

- from Live from New York: an Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live

I wrote another vintage comedy post, my favorite, on laughingsquid: a 1978 Rodney Dangerfield routine featuring a 16-piece band. Plus details of the secret origin of the “Rodney Dangerfield” name. (!!)

Wonderfully and hilariously done: Who’s on First?, revisited by Seinfeld, Fallon & Crystal. Via laughingsquid

(via laughingsquid)

Stan and Ollie (Laurel & Hardy) clowning with Jean Harlow. “Double Whoopee” 1929 via vintagemarlene & www.doctormacro.com

Laurel and Hardy in “Double Whoopee” poster, 1929, via vintagemarlene & Doctor Macro

Double Whoopee is a 1929 Hal Roach Studios silent short comedy starring Laurel and Hardy. It was shot during February 1929 and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on May 18 of that year. […]

Jean Harlow also makes a brief appearance in this film, as a blonde bombshell who gets partially stripped by Laurel & Hardy.

A Funny & Moving Interview with Comedian Tig Notaro on Conan via laughingsquid

Louis CK & Marc Maron in a different time. They were so much younger then and had trouble getting gigs. Via azizisbored & awesomepeoplehangingouttogether

What the hell, one more assemblage of Lucille Ball: from the 1966 TV special “Lucy in London” via lucynic83.  Film Threat has a great piece on the background and content of the special.

“Lucy in London” was broadcast on October 24, 1966, with Monsanto as the show’s single sponsor. Reaction to the production was, for the most part, unsatisfactory. Variety’s critic sneered: “What had promised to be one of the season’s major specials turned out to be a major disappointment.” Other critics were equally unfriendly, leading Ball to decline to pursue future specials and to concentrate on her weekly half-hour comedy show. The show was later broadcast on British television and that country’s critics actually liked it (who knew?).

(via mariedeflor)

Heeey sexy Luuuucy!  A young Lucille Ball poses on a not very likely beach. A post-birthday shout out.

wow. Bad news first. Comedian Tig Notaro has breast cancer. The rest that happens is the knife’s edge that makes the nervous monkeys do that sound—comedy, which makes everything better even though it changes nothing at all. Like you need oxygen and fuel, you need technique and extreme honesty to start this particular fire. Again nothing changes, but there is caring and empathy and touching of the human condition. It’s poetry, damnit. And it is never too soon for that.

Props to flamelikeme who documents it from the first person laughing/crying perspective…

flamelikeme:

“Tragedy + time = comedy. But I don’t have the benefit of time. So I’m just going to tell you the tragedy and know that everything is going to be okay.”

So began Tig Notaro’s set last night at her show “Tig and friends” at the Largo.

Actually, that wasn’t the beginning of her set. It began when Ed Helms welcomed her to the stage and she crossed over, took the microphone, and said “Thank you, thank you, I have cancer, thank you, I have cancer, really, thank you.”

Applause gave way to reticent laughter as she explained how she had planned a set about bees flying alongside her car on the 405, but that she couldn’t possibly do her “silly jokes” when all this was going on. And that’s when she told us that 3 days ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, in both breasts.

But she didn’t just have cancer. She went on to explain that in some manic twist of fate, while her career is at an all-time high — she is moving to New York to work on Amy Schumer’s new television show, she was on This American Life — concurrently, all these terrible circumstances have befallen her over the past 3 months: pneumonia made way for a debilitating bacterial infection in her digestive tract for which she was hospitalized and lost 30 pounds off of her already small frame, days after being released from the hospital, her young mother died suddenly and tragically (fell, hit her head, died), then she and her partner broke up, and then, now, cancer. In both breasts. (“You have a lump.” “No, doctor, that’s my breast.” — one of her most renowned bits is about someone remarking upon her small breasts)

For the first half of her set, even though she was telling the story in perfect grace and humor, I couldn’t laugh. For the second half, for the first time in my life, as far as I can recall, I genuinely laughed and cried at the exact same time, bewildered at the tragedy and the remarkably calm, clever prism through which she assessed her terrible set of circumstances.

While telling us anecdotes from these personal tragedies, all along the way, she assured the audience “it’s okay, I’m going to be okay.” At one part, when she reached a dark place wherein most of the audience could not find the will to laugh, she said “maybe I’ll just go back to telling jokes about bees. Should I do that?” there were several “NOs” and one insistent loud male voice who cried out

“NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. THIS IS FUCKING INCREDIBLE.”

She looked genuinely taken aback, and relieved. She’d managed to make the tragic not only palatable but overwhelmingly engaging. She’d done it.

Tig’s been one of my favorite comedians for a couple of years now. I told her how much I loved her work after a set at UCB one night, and she received my words so kindly that she came towards me and gave me a hug. I’ve gone downtown to bars by myself and sat for hours alone, just waiting to see her headlining set.

At the end of her routine last night, everyone in the audience gave her a standing ovation, for me her wowed, grateful, happy face blurry with my own salty eyes. She’d released her horrific story into the hearts of her fans. I’m sure we all felt like I did; we were made witness to a truly historical moment in comedy, by one of the industry of comedy’s absolute greatest.

Bill Burr followed her set, inexplicably able to make the whole audience uproarious with laughter by the end. Bill Burr then brought on Louis C.K., the surprise guest of the night, which was a shock - it was my first time ever seeing him live - but it was very difficult to give him my enrapt attention after Tig’s on-stage confessions.

My head is still swimming around what happened last night. We all saw the ultimate embodiment of what comedy is supposed to do: deeply personal tragedies somehow transformed, with the enormous, necessary power of an open-hearted audience, into brilliantly-written truths that we’ll all take home with us and keep with us as long as we’ll have a sound-enough mind to remember that show. If schadenfreude is pleasure derived from the misfortune of others, we all shuffled into another corner last night, schadenfreude’s cousin; we’re not laughing at you, we’re crying with you but trying very hard to accept this avalanche of misfortune through the more edible prism of humor.

I’m so grateful I could bear witness to what happened last night, and more than that I’m grateful to comedy and to Tig Notaro for being not only courageous enough and not only spirited enough but for being so endlessly, achingly HONEST with all of us, the stunned, mouth-breathing strangers in the dark.

—Kira Hesser

It’s her birthday, the queen of comedy, the late Lucille Ball. Via heckyeahlucilleballilovelucy:

The only way I can play a funny scene is to believe it. Then I can convincingly eat like a dog under a table, freeze to death beneath burning-hot klieg lights, or bake a loaf of bread ten-feet long. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Lucille Ball
August 6, 1911 - April 26, 1989 

(via mariedeflor)