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There are 27 comments.

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  1. kgrant67 Inactive
    kgrant67
    @kgrant67

    So, Rob told his story about Thelma Louse/Laverne Shirley.  John immediately jumps in with “Oh, I have a better one”.  Reminded me to never tell a two wisdome tooth story:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymaDgJ7KLg

    • #1
  2. Mark Belling Fan Inactive
    Mark Belling Fan
    @MBF

    I found JP’s comments regarding McCain bizarre. It is precisely because his outburst at Carney was so out of character that anyone noticed. McCain is regularly criticized because his typical stance towards the left winger interrogating him is to apologize for the whacko birds on his right flank. And FWIW, I’m 30, grew up loving Wayne’s World, and had never heard of Art Carney prior to this podcast.

    • #2
  3. user_30416 Inactive
    user_30416
    @LeslieWatkins

    I think the reason people don’t go to the theater to see movies is because it’s incredibly expensive. Going to the movies used to be something you did with dinner, but now, two people plus popcorn and drinks sets you back $50 (way too much for drek, even if you get to hold hands in the dark). The only reason to go see a movie in a theater is for special effects. If you want to see movies with characters, non-network TV is where it’s at.

    • #3
  4. SteveSc Member
    SteveSc
    @SteveSc

    My 10 year old just discovered (on her own) I love Lucy and loves it.

    • #4
  5. user_473455 Inactive
    user_473455
    @BenjaminGlaser

    Ditto to Watkins.

    If I wanted to take my kids to the movies I’d have to take out a personal loan.

    • #5
  6. Mister D Inactive
    Mister D
    @MisterD

    SteveSc:My 10 year old just discovered (on her own) I love Lucy and loves it.

    Couple years ago I had to sit in the waiting room for a few hours while my car was being serviced. Had reading material (as always) but TVLand was on – Leave It to Beaver, Green Acres… I’m not young, but I couldn’t fathom how anyone watched these insipid shows. Then Lucy came on. Every bit as funny as I remembered – made even funnier by the extreme political incorrectness of a plot about Lucy fearing Ricky was going to beat her. Pretty much that and Sanford and Son were the only palatable programs that day.

    • #6
  7. BuckeyeSam Inactive
    BuckeyeSam
    @BuckeyeSam

    Thank God, you three are back. I subjected myself to half an hour of the new podcast Ricochet is featuring, “Tracked and Targeted.” I’ll be kicking myself for weeks for wasting that half hour. It’s the New Coke of Ricochet podcasting. What was anyone thinking?

    • #7
  8. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    “Green Acres” oughtn’t be lumped in with the rote sit-com fare. It was not only surreal and absurd – the  female carpenter named Ralph, the hired man who liked to think he was the boss’ son, the salt-of-the-earth farmer whose attitude about his pig indicated he was quietly insane, and so on. It was also the last gasp of old radio tropes: the guy who put it all together, Dick Chevillat, was a pre-TV radio vet,a dn brought the conventions of the old genre to the new medium: the weekly parade of Beloved Stock Characters who come in and hit all their marks.

    Imagine  “Green Acres” as “The Eddie Albert Show” on radio, doing a bit with Mr. Haney, then Eb, then  Elsa, then Sam Drucker – that’s what many old radio comedy shows were like. Self-contained routines based on the character’s notable attribute. What made GA work was the continuity between all the rural characters: everyone was broadcasting on a different frequency than Eddie.

    He thought they were all crazy. They thought he was just a bit misinformed. Week after week. He really was in hell.

    • #8
  9. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    As for “I Love Lucy,” I find it unwatchable – as great as Lucille Ball was, the show made her a mewling infant half the time. Watch her  pre-TV movie roles; she could be smart, arch, and dead sexy. The entire run of the show could be summed up as “married couples hide things from each other; complications ensue.” Yeah.

    • #9
  10. Mr Tall Inactive
    Mr Tall
    @MrTall

    James Lileks:As for “I Love Lucy,” I find it unwatchable – as great as Lucille Ball was, the show made her a mewling infant half the time. Watch her pre-TV movie roles; she could be smart, arch, and dead sexy. The entire run of the show could be summed up as “married couples hide things from each other; complications ensue.” Yeah.

    I know what you mean. My daughter went through a phase in which she could not watch enough old Carol Burnett clips on YouTube. So I though, hey, why not go back to the previous iteration, and try out some I Love Lucy? But the results were not good: Lucy has aged indeed . . . .

    • #10
  11. Laconicus Member
    Laconicus
    @

    I actually watch more movies now than I ever have in my life, thanks to Netflix DVD by mail. Movies I previously never would have watched in my life are now easily available at a low cost so I watch them.

    I’m missing this whole golden age of television thing, but it’s easier to justify a movie per week than binge-watching much longer TV shows. And the best movies often turn out to be ones you wouldn’t spend a trip to the theater on anyway..

    • #11
  12. Matede Inactive
    Matede
    @MateDe

    FYI, I’m under 40 and got the Wayne’s World reference. It was my favorite movie when I was 12

    • #12
  13. Kim K. Inactive
    Kim K.
    @KimK

    I really like this podcast, but why don’t you just go ahead and rename it PODl? Because it’s a whole lotta POD, a little bit of l and – is there supposed to be a G in there somewhere? For crying out loud, give Jonah a chance to get more than a few sentences in at a time! I’m surprised he’s willing to devote time to a production in which he says so little.

    P.S. Over 50, got the Wayne’s World reference but I’ve never seen the movie and don’t have a clue what it’s about.

    P. S. S. Have to disagree with BuckeyeSam – I really enjoyed Tracked and Targeted.

    • #13
  14. Peabody Here Inactive
    Peabody Here
    @PeabodyHere

    I believe James Lileks had previously told the story about the ‘it’s a goat’ on the laugh track but it was told slightly differently. In Lileks’s I don’t recall it being a woman’s voice and it was a shout, not a whisper.

    Also, great insight on the James L. Brooks laugh on the Taxi shows.

    • #14
  15. RPD Inactive
    RPD
    @RPD

    I never have been able to stand “I Love Lucy”, on the other hand I always liked “The Lucy Show” – the one with Gale Gordon as Mr Mooney.  On the old time TV I find that I rather liked the rural movement shows of the late 60’s (Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, and on another network Andy Griffith, Mayberry RFD, and of course Gomer Pyle) in that their reruns were the background noise of my youth.  When I run into them again, I tend to think they hold up well. I’m not sure if that’s my nostalgia or if they were actually pretty good.

    • #15
  16. RPD Inactive
    RPD
    @RPD

    It sounds like Obama’s idea of strategy is to sit among his greek columns and smite his enemies from the heavens.

    • #16
  17. user_477123 Inactive
    user_477123
    @Wolverine

    Personally I still rather watch a movie in a movie theatre than at home. To me it is a social activity that gets me out of the house. I still enjoy the big screen, popcorn etc. There is nothing more depressing than sitting in your house all day isolated. And for what it is work, I thought Green Acres was hysterical.

    • #17
  18. user_477123 Inactive
    user_477123
    @Wolverine

    Hardly an original point but liberals don’t hate smoking as much as they hate smokers.

    • #18
  19. user_1030767 Inactive
    user_1030767
    @TheQuestion

    Thank you for the observation about the the “War on Women” (e.g. nuns not paying for birth control) versus the “non-war” in Iraq.  I’ll keep that one handy.

    • #19
  20. Casey Inactive
    Casey
    @Casey

    James Lileks:As for “I Love Lucy,” I find it unwatchable – as great as Lucille Ball was, the show made her a mewling infant half the time. Watch her pre-TV movie roles; she could be smart, arch, and dead sexy. The entire run of the show could be summed up as “married couples hide things from each other; complications ensue.” Yeah.

    Redonkulous.

    I Love Lucy is brilliant.  It’s the Babe Ruth of TV shows.  Sure there are a lot of strike outs but the home runs are legendary.

    • #20
  21. Full Size Tabby Member
    Full Size Tabby
    @FullSizeTabby

    Mr. Podhoretz defines a “movie” as a “bespoke” entertainment item, but then uses 1949 (I think that was the year) as a benchmark for “movie attendance.” My understanding is that in that era, the studios were mass producing films to feed the weekly audience – such films were hardly “bespoke.”

    • #21
  22. user_989419 Inactive
    user_989419
    @ProbableCause

    To add to what the guys said about Dreamworks/ Shrek, one of the problems with that approach to family films (separate jokes for adults vs. jokes for kids), is that it’s not a good idea for us as parents to purchase the DVD.  Because then my kids are going to watch the movie every day for four weeks straight, and during that time they’ll absorb every detail, including the adult jokes.

    With us, the way that played out was as follows.  We saw and bought Shrek.  Then we saw Shrek II, but didn’t buy it, because there was a cross dressing subtext.  Again, ok for seeing once in the theater, but not something we wanted to reinforce.  We never saw Shrek III.

    • #22
  23. Sonny Blount Member
    Sonny Blount
    @

    This episode has descended into too much Podhoretz and not enough Goldberg again.

    John’s weakness seems to be that he is too slow a speaker for the format, he chews up time setting up his anecdote or point and then the payoff is far to modest for the momentum used.

    Make your points snappier John. The podcast seemed to be doing better for a few months but this was another bad one.

    • #23
  24. EJHill Podcaster
    EJHill
    @EJHill

    James Lileks: It was also the last gasp of old radio tropes: the guy who put it all together, Dick Chevillat…

    Chevillat was half of the greatest comedy writing team in the history of radio. He and his partner Ray Singer were responsible for The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. It was raucous and really stands the test of time.

    Green Acres was on radio to begin with. It was called Granby’s Green Acres and starred Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet (Petticoat Junction) as the city couple who move to the country. It lasted all of 13 weeks. But when Paul Henning, the creator of Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies, was given a third half hour by CBS, he turned to Granby creator Jay Sommers to fill it. Chevillat wrote 141 episodes of Acres and ended his career with 3 episodes of the forgettable Hello, Larry.

    • #24
  25. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    EJ is of course correct; I deleted the previous radio version for brevity, and also because it was dragged down by the conventions of the medium, at the time. TV was liberating, at least for that concept.

    And EJ is right about Harris / Faye, although it was a spin-off of Benny’s show and shared the same conceit: a show about famous people who had a show, although this wasn’t the show for which they were famous, except that it was. Benny’s show had been codified years before, and was an institution; don’t think it would have accommodated a gloriously alcoholic character like Remley.

    • #25
  26. user_653084 Inactive
    user_653084
    @SalvatorePadula

    I’ve tried e-cigarettes and they’re not bad, but I’m with Boyd Crowder: if I’m going to smoke I prefer to do it the old fashioned way.

    • #26
  27. user_358258 Inactive
    user_358258
    @RandyWebster

    A few days ago, I saw a post about the manners to use in NY.  One of the pieces of advice was that New Yorkers say that they’re “on line” when everyone else in the country would say that they’re “in line.”  When John used the phrase “on line” to refer to being in line waiting for some event, I assumed that he meant that he was using his iPod or something.  I suppose even New Yorkers can be parochial.

    • #27
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