Today is a double holiday -- Saturday is not only the first day of Rosh Hashanah and the start of the High Holy Days, but also Talk Like a Pirate Day.  And as always, Talk Like a Pirate Day gets me to think about the quite-wonderful video I've posted here before, Ahaarrrr. 

This is one of my favorite videos that I've ever tracked down.  As I've written here in the past, it's a little British film, 13-minutes long, which I came across back in 2010 and have been passing it around since -- mostly to friends of my who do voice-over work, on either side of the microphone.  Oh, boy howdy, do they ever empathize with it...  And now I post it on this site every year.

I don't know very much about its history or the wonderful creative mind behind it, Jonathan Kydd, who wrote and stars in the short film (impressively, as both the voiceover artist and the director!  I didn't even realize that the first half-dozen times I watched it).  But it did win the (Mid Ulster) Critics choice at the DIY Festival LA.  As it happens, I also know very little about that festival -- other than that sentence I just typed. 

I do see on the iMDB that Mr. Kydd deservedly has had a long career with a great many acting credits -- not shockingly, most over the past 20 years in voiceover work, notably eight Harry Potter video games, as well as the Toy Story That Time Forgot video.  And for the animated series, The Adventures of Paddington Bear, he provided the voice of Paddington.  But yes, mixed in among that and especially before getting involved with voiceover acting, he has also done a good deal of live-action, on-camera TV work.

As the description below says, this is indeed the voice over session from hell. 

​​On this past Sunday, the Doonesbury strip didn't have a story like usual, but was just a collection of drawings of supposed "tweets" from the cartoon's longtime reporter, Roland B. Hedley Jr.  They were very funny, like the one which read, "Can confirm that POTUS 'barely knew' John Bolton.  Official list of people he knows well is down to three of his five children."

Each tweet said it was sent from "@realRBHJr."  And a thought eventually occurred to me -- I wondered if Garry Trudeau had registered that name as a Twitter handle and was using the Sunday strip as a way to promote it.  So, I decided to check it out and --

Sure enough, there is a very real Twitter page for the very fictitious "Roland B. Hedley, Jr."!!

As you can see above, the account has been active for a while.  But this is a prominent way to bring attention to it.  At first glance, it's certainly a bit but.  But then, since Trudeau only does a new Doonesbury cartoon once a week on Sunday, this clearly is a way that lets him comment on the news of the day immediately, and also in as easy a way as possible.  You can Follow it here.

I've read through a bunch of "Roland B. Hedley Jr.'s" tweets,, and they're very funny, such as one that dealt with professional football players taking a knee during the National Anthem.  In his tweet, Hedley reported that an emergency meeting of NFL officials to address the crisis from Trump's "Idiot Second Son" saying that football was dead to him -- "won't be happening anytime soon."   

And this is Roland's pinned tweet at the top of the page.

Last night, I put Stephen Colbert’s show on, and they were in the midst of a long piece they'd apparently set up with Robert Smigel and his Triumph the Insult Comic Dog character.  (Unlike most of Smigel's work with Triumph, the dog had very little to do with the actual piece, and mostly had funny side-commentary.)
 
RawStory did an article on the sketch, and talked about how hilarious it was.  And from one perspective, it was hilarious – but I personally found it ghastly and unwatchable, at least with the sound on.  I watched only for Triumph's humorous reactions and only periodically would turn the sound on to check in and get "updates" of a sort on what was happening.  To be very clear, it wasn't that I thought the jokes in the piece were bad or that the people weren't acting in a way highly-deserving of ridicule or that I didn't understand people laughing -- I could absolutely see why many likely found it funny.  And I'm posting it here for that reason.  Everyone here might find it just as funny.  But I'm posting it for my reaction, as well.
 
The premise was that they got the most deeply-devoted Trump supporters into a real focus group at a real research company.  Then, they played audio of a supposedly real Trump recording that was a) clearly to me a Trump impersonator, and b) utterly horrible what he was saying -- and c) knowing it was an impersonator was pretty funny, in a cringing way.  And the researchers also showed some fake campaign ads for Trump that were SO over-the-top and SO gallingly despicable that (knowing they were fake) were, in fact, sort of amusing.  And then the real focus group moderator questioned them afterwards.  And what was the joke of the piece, but what I found the very-opposite of funny was how all the supporters accepted everything and bent themselves in knots to defend even the most appalling things.  (Okay, here's just one example.  Like on the "secret" audio tape, hearing Trump suggest that immigrants be microwaved.  Really.)
 
Was it funny as a bit?  Yes, very.  But was it troubling for the reality of how cult followers would accept the absolute worst from Trump?  It was ghoulish.  I could absolutely see those people literally being okay with Trump shooting someone in cold blood on Fifth Avenue.  And creepy too was that they couldn’t tell it wasn’t actually Trump on the tape or that the “ads” were foolishly over the top.
 
(By the way, to be clear, I’m not judging how fake the Trump impersonation sounded because I knew I was watching Colbert’s show.  I tuned into the sketch halfway through, so I didn’t know exactly what it was at first.  For all I knew they were playing a Woodward tape I hadn’t heard yet, or I also wondered if it was a CBS special after the news, and Colbert’s show was delayed.  So, even under those conditions it was clear to me it was a fake Trump.)
 
As I said, I can see why some found it so funny.  You may, too.  And some of it was funny.  So, I don't begrudge anyone laughing.  (And it may be slightly funnier to me after the General Election, on the presumption that Trump loses.)  Me, I had to have the sound off and was horrified by it.  But loved Triumph’s reactions, especially a couple near the very end.
 
Here’s the whole thing.  It’s about 12 minutes –

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore famously got their start with the 1960 revue Beyond the Fringe, teaming with Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller.  Later, they teamed up and became even more popular in England with their TV series in the mid-'60s, Not Only, But Also.  And later still touring with their hit stage show, Good Evening.  

​The television shows were most-noted for their "Pete and Dud" sketches, where the two played lower-class cockneys who sit and pontificate on the world.  (Pete tended to do most of the pontificating, while Dude did his best to play catch-up.) 

Unfortunately, most of those tapes are lost -- especially full shows -- though the audio of some of the best sketches have been released on record albums.  And at least some videos still exist.

This is one of those.  It's "Pete and Dud at the Zoo."  It begins with a bit of wandering around, but eventually they do get down to sitting -- and pontificating on the world.

Bear with me, this is worth it.

​​Back around 1995, I attended one of the funniest evenings I've ever had in the theater.  If it wasn't the funniest, the others competing with it were pretty special.  This wasn't a stage play or musical, to be fair, but basically a group discussion.  But it was in a theater, and it was about the world of entertainment, so it counts.

The evening was called Caesar's Writers, held at the Writers Guild Theatre in Beverly Hills.  It was a reunion of the writers who had worked on the two variety TV shows lead by Sid Caesar -- Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hours.  The series were pretty close to the same:  the casts of Caesar, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris were the same, with Imogene Coca in the former having moved on with her own show and replaced by Nanette Fabray in the latter.  And the writing staffs were very similar, with a few changes here and there.

And oh, what a writing staff it was.  If you put together a list of the staff and showed it to someone without any other information, they'd probably think you had written down your Hall of Fame of comedy writers.  And no, I'm not exaggerating.  Among those who participated that evening were (and bear with me, because the list is long and the credentials longer...) --

Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart (hey, I told you i wasn't exaggerating -- and I'm even leaving out Woody Allen, because he wasn't there that night).

​Anyway, the good news in all this is not just that there's a DVD of Neil Simon's play or that I've described a fun evening -- but that evening was recorded and edited down for a two-hour DVD...and then re-edited down further into a one-hour TV special that PBS ran during Pledge Week.  And I have a copy of that PBS broadcast here which I've embedded below.

​I told you it was worth it to bear with me.

A few final notes:

The video quality is not the greatest, but it's the material that shines through.  Also, it's interrupted a few time with pledge breaks, so you can fast-forward through those.  And it's divided into two videos.  Also, a reminder that the actual evening was almost an hour-and-a-half longer than this.  And it's not that this is The Best Material -- it was all wonderful.  This is just the great material that fit best together for a one-hour special.

A word too about why you won't see as much of Neil Simon as you might like.  First, he is famously quiet..  If you ever saw the movie, My Favorite Year, which is also based on this group and Your Show of Shows, there is character who is always whispering his joke suggestions at the writers table to the person who is sitting next to him.  That character is based on Neil Simon.  (Usually he would be seated next to Carl Reiner and telling his jokes to him.)  The other reason is more specific.  About halfway through the evening, his older brother Danny started feeling unwell and left the stage.  A minute or so later, Neil was clearly concerned, so he left to be with him.  Happily, he ended up being fine, though the two were gone for the rest of the evening.
​

For meaningless perspective's sake, just so that you can have an idea where I was so-thoroughly enjoying myself, as you are looking at the stage, I was about halfway back and off to the left against the wall.  My recollection is that I perhaps briefly can be seen, but as a sort of heads-up -- I'll be the one laughing.
​

   

There was a brilliant line about it on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night with Josh Gad sitting in as guest host. In his opening monologue, they showed the photo of the Trump Boat Parade -- and then referred to the boat as the "HMS Metaphor."
​

It's been much, much too long with we've gone Out and About with Jiminy Glick, so let's rectify that.  Today, he sits down to talk with Jon Stewart, who does a wonderful job figuring out how to disagree with Jiminy yet play along.  What stands out here is that it's one of a rare times a subject can't keep a straight face, and Stewart quickly breaks at one point -- but impressively composes himself almost instantly, and so the interview is able to go on calmly, if lunatically as before.  But clearly the laughter is building up inside him, because eventually Mother Nature takes over.

​Here's the latest movie marquee from the Laemmle Royal Fine Arts house a few blocks from me.  They change it every week with a new, sardonic movie title "Now Playing" and the next "Coming Soon."  This week's is a bit bleaker than most.

Sorry that I can't seem to get them in sharp focus as I crop the images and work with the resolution.  If you can't read this clearly (since there's also a shadow), I'll note it below.

For those this is too blurred for, it reads --

Now Playing
This is the End

Coming Soon
Good Night, and Good Luck

If you missed Sunday's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, here's their Main Story, whose topic was...Last week tonight.  No, really.  As Oliver himself noted, that's incredibly rare for the show, for their Main Story to be about the title of the program.  But last week -- with the Republican National Virtual Convention and the shootings and violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin -- was important enough to be the Main Story.  It's detailed, fascinating (especially with a revelation about the Kenosha sheriff), and often very funny