Being Father's Day, we're going to have a bunch of songs on the subject.  And it starts with our traditional one -- Groucho Marx singing "Father's Day" by Harry Ruby.  (Ruby wrote a lot of the more-wonderful goofy songs in the Marx Bros. movies, often with lyricist Bert Kalmar, like Groucho's theme song, "Hooray for Captain Spaulding," "Hail Fredonia" from Duck Soup, "I'm Against It" and "Everyone Says I Love You" (which actually was a successful popular song) from Horsefeathers, as well as big hits like "Who's Sorry Now"," "I Wanna Be Loved By You," and "Three Little Words," which was also the title of a movie biography of his career with Kalmar.

This was also a song my dad dearly loved.  When I'd call him on Father's Day, I'd often wait to see how long our conversation would go before he'd cut in to whatever I was saying, and interrupt with "The song!!!"  I usually didn't get very far.
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​And now, on to the parody.

On The Late Show last night, Stephen Colbert went off on a bit of a tangent, decidedly more blunt and serious than usual.  In fact, at one point he tosses off an aside as a quip, and it's clear that the audience didn't take it as a joke but were still caught up in his outrage.  As he goes on, even more blunt, though, they eventually do get the idea that it's okay to laugh when he throws in a joke, but for the most part they sit back and let him have the floor.

Plus, he has a bit of great wordplay at the very end which is blatantly a shout-out of support to Samantha Bee.  Something I foolishly missed but Greg VanBuskirk gratefully pointed out to me.

I've always like "Mr. Bean," the mumblingly-silent character from Rowan Atkinson, somewhat in the vein of Jacques Tati's genial character M. Hulot, generally as oblivious though far more irascible.

Here's a sketch, "At the Hospital."  It's doesn't have much of an ending, but it's fun getting there.

What with the Roseanne show in the news and all, I was reminded of an especially funny and clever thing they did in the original series.  As I've noted, I didn't watch the show -- I may have seen parts of a few episodes, but that's it.  But when one of the actress, Lecy Goranson, who played the daughter Becky, decided to go to college, they replaced her with Sarah Chalke -- and when Goranson decided to return, they brought her back.  And I wanted to see how they handled that.

It actually was quite funny.  They set it up that it was meal time, and Becky was long-since due home and late.  And when she finally arrived (and Goranson made her re-entrance to the show), the character of Roseanne snapped at her, "Where have you been??!  We've been waiting for you."  And yes, it got a huge laugh from the audience.

But that wasn't the "especially funny and clever thing they did."  That came during the closing credits.  If you never saw it, it's really smart and a total hoot.  The did a parody -- even duplicating the black-and-white -- of the opening credits of the old Patty Duke Show, where Duke played look-alike cousins.  ("They're cousins, identical cousins all the way.  They laugh alike, they walk alike / At times they even talk alike...")  Only here, they wrote news words -- that are pretty funny -- about "Nearly identical Beckys."  There's also a very funny homage near the end that I don't want to give away.  But you have to know the Patty Duke Show to get it.  I don't want to give anything away of what to look for, but I'll explain it at the bottom, after the video.  (Also, since some of the words fly by and are hard to understand, I'll post the lyrics below, as well.)

And indeed, here's the video of that parody.  Also, for those who don't know The Patty Duke Show, the person who made the video edited in first the original opening of that show, so you can see and hear what's being parodied.

Okay, here's what the homage joke is.

I'll skip a few lines, so your eyes don't accidentally drift to it.

Here it is -- at 1:55, you see John Goodman, who played the father on Roseanne, along with another older man.  That is longtime character actor William Schallert -- who played Patty Duke's father on the The Patty Duke Show​!

Interestingly, Schallert himself was involved in a character replacement.  When the actor Ross Martin was playing the sidekick Artemus Gordon on the series The Wild, Wild West, but he sadly passed away.  William Schallert was hired to replace him, albeit with a different character.

And here are the lyrics --

Meet Lecy the one you used to see, from '88 to '93
Then Sarah came and took her place
Because she had a similar face --
Just like on TV.

They're Beckys, nearly identical Beckys all the way
One pair of matching actors but only one part to play

Sarah loved that dopey Mark and wound up in a trailer park
Our Lecy showed some Lecy skills
She wants a house that's not on wheels
What a crazy pair.

They're Beckys, nearly identical Beckys and you'll find
They walk alike, they talk alike,
Abruptly leave the show alike
You could lose your mind
When Beckys ain't two of a kind.

The other day, we had some video of Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon playing the characters Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan who served as hosts for the 2-hour Rose Parade broadcast that streamed on Amazon Prime.  It turns out they were back at it a few weeks ago.  That's when they hosted the live coverage of the Royal Wedding, which aired (as far as I can tell) on HBO.

Here's some footage of that where, the horses traipsing by cause some consternation for Cord.
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And this is a fun appearance by the pair, as they show up on The Tonight Show to promote their upcoming telecast and discuss, among other things, their experiences in the past having traveled through Europe.

A month ago, I posted a hilarious acceptance speech here by Julia Louis-Dreyfus when she was given the Charlie Chaplin Award by BAFTA.  If you didn't see it before, by all means check it out.  It's a master class in comic performance.

In describing this to a friend, she asked if I'd seen Julia Louis-Dreyfus's acceptance speech in 2013 when she won the Emmy for Veep.  I hadn't, and checked it out.

I hope the dear lady (and Northwestern grad...) keeps winning awards just on general principle because her acceptance speech make it all the more worth it.

Speaking of Audra McDonald -- as we were yesterday -- it turns out that the six-time Tony-winner stopped in to visit The Late, Late Show with James Corden while in Los Angeles on her concert tour to participate in an amusing sketch, "Inappropriate Musicals.  Along with Corden and Dan Stevens (from the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Downton Abbey), the trio performed scenes from three fictitious musicals which never should have been musicals.

I have a feeling that this was recorded separately from the show.  It appeared Monday night after her Sunday concert, but during her concert she explained (during shouts for more encores) that they were leaving after the show to fly up to San Francisco.  Also, there are several costume changes in the sketch that would seem to take longer than the time allotted if done live, which makes me suspect all the more that this was taped in advance.