Richard Pryor and Steve Martin talk on The Tonight Show in June of 1978. It’s rare to see people actually conversing on talk shows today. It’s usually over-rehearsed bits, which are especially obvious when the guest is a stand-up comic. You can trace the shift in format to David Letterman, who never seemed comfortable in interviews and often looked like he wished he was anywhere else.
Guest hosts are also rarer now. Jay Leno takes few vacations, and Letterman and the rest just throw on a repeat. I believe the last instance of high-profile guest hosts on a talk show was when Letterman had heart surgery.
The new material that Pryor says he’s “woodshedding” would become his double album Wanted and film Live in Concert.
Joan Rivers celebrated her 80th birthday on Saturday (I’ll avoid the obvious jokes about the age of the majority of her body). When I was a kid and there was no school the next day, my parents would let me stay up to watch The Tonight Show or, as we all called it, Carson. If Joan Rivers happened to be hosting, my parents would race to change the channel. I loved her back then, though. She was hardly the prim and proper companion to the charming, Midwestern Johnny Carson (Betty White, for example). She was outrageous and overtly New York (the standard euphemism for “Jewish”).
This clip is from one of her Tonight Show monologues in 1984. It’s a time capsule of early 1980s Hollywood, which she skewers along with herself.
I haven’t followed her E! network career, but I did enjoy her appearances on Nip/Tuck. Now, that was inspired casting.
A 13-year-old girl is killed on her birthday, and it’s apparently not a crime.
A teenage girl was accidentally shot and killed Tuesday night in Johnson County while her teenage brother cleaned a gun.
Emilee Bates, who celebrated her 13th birthday Tuesday, was airlifted to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, where she died, authorities said.
Deputies responded at about 8 p.m. to the home off FM917 near Joshua. Emilee’s 19-year-old brother was cleaning his guns when one went off, striking her in the stomach, authorities said.
The incident is being treated as an accident, and no charges are expected to be filed, said Lt. Tim Jones, a spokesman for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.
A Florida state senator says he wants changes made to laws in the wake of the felony charges against Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old high school senior who was arrested for her relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
Hunt faces two felony charges and could serve 15 years in prison if convicted. She is scheduled to appear in court June 20 after refusing a plea deal last Friday. The deal offered by the state of Florida would have placed Hunt under house arrest and required her to register as a sex offender.
How things change, I guess, as I recall when such laws were used to selectively ensure your white daughter didn’t date a black classmate.
1953 was undoubtably Marilyn Monroe’s year, one in which she catapulted to stardom in three great films.
Marilyn played a delicious femme fatale in Niagara with Joseph Cotton.
She claimed the role of Lorelei Lee in the film of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
However, my favorite of Marilyn’s films that year is How to Marry a Millionaire, which also stars Betty Grable and Lauren Bacall. Shot in CinemaScope, it opens with a live orchestra’s performance of Alfred Newman’s “Street Scene.” I watched the overture about five times before starting the rest of the film.
I can’t even talk about whatever Henry Cavill is wearing in the upcoming Man of Steel movie that he’s trying to pass off as a Superman costume. It’s actually worse than Brandon Routh’s from Superman Returns. Is it really so hard to get it right? The lady dancing with Michael Jackson in this clip from a 1979 episode of Midnight Special comes closer to the real deal than Cavill and Routh on their best day. This is back when movies had legs — rather than playing for a few weeks and then showing up on Amazon as a Blu-ray special edition, so it’s likely that the first Christopher Reeve film was still in theaters.
James Baldwin just RSVPed to my Writers Group meeting, and although he’s a nice fellow, he is regrettably not the gentleman who wrote Giovanni’s Room or debated William F. Buckley at his smarmiest in 1965 at Cambridge University.
It’s amazing to see the reception Baldwin receives at Cambridge, which in 1965 would have been hard to imagine at an American university.
I just watched the seventh season finale of the new DOCTOR WHO series, which featured a cliffhanger ending that (obligatory spoiler warning) introduced John Hurt (Alien, Nineteen Eighty-Four) as the Doctor. At that point, my wife turned to me and said, “If this old guy is the new Doctor, you’re watching this show on your own from now on.”
So, John Hurt is the Doctor, except he’s not really the Doctor. I suppose the main character does change faces and personalities every few years, so it shouldn’t surprise me if he also appears to suffer from dissociative disorder. He sort of reminds me of Prince in the 1990s after he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and referred to his former self in the third person. Perhaps the finale would have played out better if it had actually featured Prince.
(PRINCE holds CLARA tight but suddenly reacts with horror when he glimpses a figure in the distance.)
CLARA: Who’s that?
PRINCE: Never mind. Let’s go back.
CLARA: But who is he?
PRINCE: He’s me. There’s only me here, that’s the point. Now let’s get back.
CLARA: But I never saw that one. I saw all of you. The Dirty Mind you, the Purple Rain you, the Parade you, the Sign o’ the Times you…
PRINCE: I said he was me. I never said he was Prince.
CLARA: I don’t understand.
DOCTOR: Look, my name, my real name, that is not the point. The name I chose is Prince. The name you choose, it’s like, it’s like a promise you make. He’s the one who broke the promise. (CLARA faints.)
PRINCE Clara? Clara? Clara! (PRINCE has a bodyguard pick up Clara in his arms.)
PRINCE: He is my secret.
NOT PRINCE: What I did, I did without choice.
PRINCE: I know.
NOT PRINCE: In the name of peace and sanity.
PRINCE: But not in the name of Prince! (PRINCE’s bodyguard carries Clara and Prince away. The figure turns around to introduce Jamie Foxx as O+>).
I’m a fan of Pieta-inspired comic book covers, but this issue of Lois Lane is one I hadn’t seen until recently. Whatever twisted meaning you might wish to interpret is your own business, but Bob Oksner’s cover is one of my favorites of this theme.
This is a photo of Michelangelo’s Pieta. I had the chance to see it at St. Peter’s Basilica in 2011, and much like David in Florence or Venus De Milo in Paris, the sculpture is almost overwhelming in person.
The Pieta depicts Mary cradling the slain body of her son (“Someone Christ, King of the Jews”). However, it’s not surprising that the male-dominated comic book industry tends to focus on men holding limp female bodies (and occasionally a limp male body).
serhasacomplaint 
Crimes in America…
A 13-year-old girl is killed on her birthday, and it’s apparently not a crime.
A teenage girl was accidentally shot and killed Tuesday night in Johnson County while her teenage brother cleaned a gun.
Emilee Bates, who celebrated her 13th birthday Tuesday, was airlifted to Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, where she died, authorities said.
Deputies responded at about 8 p.m. to the home off FM917 near Joshua. Emilee’s 19-year-old brother was cleaning his guns when one went off, striking her in the stomach, authorities said.
The incident is being treated as an accident, and no charges are expected to be filed, said Lt. Tim Jones, a spokesman for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department.
But this I suppose is a crime.
A Florida state senator says he wants changes made to laws in the wake of the felony charges against Kaitlyn Hunt, an 18-year-old high school senior who was arrested for her relationship with a 15-year-old girl.
Under Florida’s consent laws, it is illegal for an 18-year-old to engage in sexual relations with anyone under the age of 16. According to TCPalm, other Indian River County lawmakers said that the laws protect children as they stand.
Hunt faces two felony charges and could serve 15 years in prison if convicted. She is scheduled to appear in court June 20 after refusing a plea deal last Friday. The deal offered by the state of Florida would have placed Hunt under house arrest and required her to register as a sex offender.
How things change, I guess, as I recall when such laws were used to selectively ensure your white daughter didn’t date a black classmate.
Take it away, Archie.
Posted by Stephen Robinson on June 5, 2013 in Pop Life, Social Commentary
Tags: guns, kaitlyn hunt