Another warm and beautiful day - not on this sad main street, obviously, where I guess the plague unleashed by the Germans in the waning days of the war wiped out most of the population. But that's in an alternate world! Here on Earth Prime everything worked as usual. Did a podcast, wrote a lot on many things, worked out OUCH OH AY YI YI
In the alternate universe "The Odd Couple" is a completely different movie, because Felix' back did not go out when he tried to open the window, and he threw himself to his death. The plot then concerns all of his friends arranging his funeral. It was Neal Simon's only dramatic work, and is a staple of high-school theatrical productions. Neil Hefti's score was also noted as a departure, with its somber, melancholic moods interspersed with moments of dark humor.
(Note: here on Earth Prime, the spellings of their first names are reversed.)
No matter where they go
They are known as the couple.
They're never seen alone
So they're known as the couple.
But they're laugh provoking;
Yet they really don't know they're joking.
Don't you find
When love is blind
It's kind of odd.
I don't know what Sammy Kahn was thinking. Maybe they just gave him a tune and a title. He could've made it specific.
There's Oscar, he's a drunk / and he's half of the couple / There's Felix in a funk / and he's half of the couple. / But they have to share space / So they really can't get in each other's face / This simple fact / Makes the third act / Not so much fun.
Why the pain? The other day I bounded down the stairs to lower level in my usual style. Didn't turn on the lights because I know this place like the back of my hand, which I just whapped against the door frame because I missed a step and assumed a posture like a Ditko Spiderman.
But nothing broke. In did, however, require an inordinate amount of elasticity from one back muscle, and it has griped ever since. It will heal, replaced by another ache in another muscle that got tasked beyond its ability to provide. After 40 you have one pain, and it just moves around, riding the rails from one location to the other.
Natalie alerted me to a show she thought I’d like, Documentary Now! And she was right. Don’t know how I missed it. All mock-docs, but mocking - gently, with wit and admiration - actual documentaries, or genres. Wikipedia:
Documentary Now! is an American mockumentary television series, created by Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, and Rhys Thomas, that premiered on August 20, 2015, on IFC.
Documentary Now! presents itself as a long-running news magazine for documentaries, initially celebrating its 50th season.
A particularly charming example concerned an Al Capone Festival in an Iceland town, and it made me nostalgic for Iceland. It had an exterior shot that caught my eye:
That’s an old commercial poster. Can we search for Icelandic Butter Vintage? We can, and we get . . .
This! Smjor butter. It's Myolkursamsalan!
But the search also an article about Iceland bodegas, with this vintage-heavy example being the prime example. So there’s something I didn’t know. Iceland bodegas.
There’s something nifty about the modern world, no? See a location in Iceland, type a few words, and you’ve found it on Street View and can walk around the block and read reviews and bookmark it for your next trip, should you ever return.
Another episode was a parody of “The Thin Blue Line,” the Erol Morris documentary, and from the beginning I’m snorting: listen to the music.
Yes, it’s a Philip Glass parody.
The problem is that a Philip Glass parody or satire will almost seem indistinguishable from the real thing, since there’s not much to parody besides the repeating ostinato. Who was the composer?
Snort #2:
I sent Natalie a message that said: that's exactly what all the network courtroom sketches looked like.
Later I see:
What are the odds of that.
Anyway:
It’s 1963.
These are from “Caper” magazine, which catered to men. It ran from 1956 to 1983. Never heard of it.
Not sure there’s a lot of call for these today.
Not sure there was a lot of call for those back then. It’s a “gag gift,” but what guy wants his best gal clad in this sack?
A floor show in your batch pad:
He’s alive, and turned 100 in 2024. Wikipedia:
In 1962, Woodbury replaced Johnny Carson as host of the game show Who Do You Trust? when Carson left to succeed Jack Paar in helming The Tonight Show, a job for which Woodbury had also been competing.
In the mid to late 1960s, Woodbury often performed at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, touring nationally and performing in charity golf tournaments with Hope, Gleason, and others. He hosted a beauty pageant in West Virginia with Gordon MacRae and Troy Donahue. In the 1970s, Woodbury performed standup comedy, mostly in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area, his home base for many years. He performed at the Bahama Hotel.
The Woody Woodbury Show was on television from 1967 to 1968 a 90-minute talk/variety show which aired weekday afternoons in most markets.
Woodbury's most substantial film role was that of "Uncle Woody" in 1964's For Those Who Think Young (with James Darren, Pamela Tiffin, Tina Louise and Paul Lynde.
Heeeere's Woody!
Three minutes of the stage act: drunks are funny! Embeds disabled, presumably by operators of his home site, which seeks to keep his memory alive and sell some albums. And good for them.
Sis-Boom-Bah, it’s the . . .
Einschliesslick postcebuehren, I'm glad to say.
I think the idea of getting a mail-order lawyer wasn’t high on guy’s lists of aspirations, but being one?
Sure. Why not. You’re not going anywhere in life. Looks like they let anyone in, too.
These ads were always fun. Lots of junk. Let’s take a look.
Rifle brim? Ah, that’s the name. In never knew that.
“Unclad.” Any other word would be naughty.
The realm of perversity to which these might lend themselves is immense.
Gal gets in the car, sees that, she knows this is the first and last date:
Slap on your Gurka hat, load up a drink with clinking nudes, and stick on your eyeball cufflinks: tonight’s the night
That'll do. Now it's time to return to the tales of Hollywood's Sweetheart, the Black Cat! When last we left her she had watched her action comic turn into a horror book. How's she doing now?
