Well … that was an unexpected delight! Last year producer and director Mary O’Leary asked me to write her upcoming documentary, Dark and Shadows and Beyond: The Jonathan Frid Story. Mary was just the person for the job; she is a multiple Daytime Emmy winner for her career producing soap operas. But … she also […]
The Party with Peter Sellers
I had so much fun reading American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller, that I decided to briefly write about some of my favorite comedies. So it was a double bit of serendipity to learn that the 1968 cult hit The Party recently made its way to Blu-Ray and DVD. […]
American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller
American Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny, by Christopher Miller came as a delightful surprise. Arranged alphabetically, Miller enumerates the countless tropes so frequent in American comedy circa 1900-1966, and why they were funny and what they tell us about Americans of old. Miller creates an artificial cutoff of 1966, citing anecdotally that […]
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson
William McGuire “Bill” Bryson (born 1951) has written several amusing books on language, science and travel. He has also been a fixture on television and radio, and is one of the smartest and funniest men on the contemporary scene. However, the Bill Bryson that I enjoyed the most was the gentle memoirist who […]