Monday, December 14, 2015

TR SNIPPET RICH LITTLE AND OTHER COMICS


For $60 total I saw Rich Little's show and then the usual Laugh Factory comics. Booking them back to back was just perfect. I did not get at all weary until perhaps the last seven minutes. I got the tickets at the Half Priced store.

It also was grand that when I was weary, I could just walk across the street to Excalibur and head to my room.



RICH LITTLE



Rich Little and Gordie Brown have a good bit in common, but for me Rich is more talented and relevant. Younger people might night know the celebrities he imitated, but they are very well known to me.

He framed his show with a brief story of his life and illustrated a bit with his original charcoal sketches of the celebrities. I did not think his art was very good. It interpreted the people too much. But there were also clips from old shows: Jack Benny, Ed Sullivan, Lucy, Judy Garland, Johnny Carson, and these intersected with the impressions. During the course of the show he did Jack Benny, Carol Channing, Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn. John Wayne, Bill Clinton, Nixon, Reagan, Jim Stewart, Andy Rooney, Paul Lynn, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Ed Sullivan, Jack Lemmon, Walter Mathau, Willie Nelson and others. Woven in were actual stories from his life working with these people, good video clips, some great one line jokes and some interesting perspectives.

It was a grand show.

His conservative politics and love of Ronald Reagan is very different from mine. Otherwise, I had no emotional reservations. I felt very relieved to be presented with Turner Classic Movie greats who I have experienced and could recognize.

He sang a bit at times. Once he sang “The Man That Got Away” and did an updated version of when Judy Garland asked him to move from one person to another.



Jokes I can remember included:

Andy Rooney asking why Asteroids are in space, but hemroids are in the Ass.

George Burns talking to Gracie about her visit to a parage and wearing a fox hat because she claimed George told her to.

The converstation was about a strange place she was going for the tupee.

George asks, “Where the fucks that?”

She hears, “Wear the fox hat.”

John Wayne bathes in ice water.

His wife bathes in milk.

Is it pasturized,” he asks.

She answers, “No just over my tits.”

Rich said that after four marriages he hated lawyers. One day he walked into a bar after a particularly hard and costly meeting.

He shouted, “All lawyers are assholes.”

I resent that,” said a man sitting near him at the bar.

Are you a lawyer?”

No I'm an asshole.”



Jack Lemmon berates Mathau for making love to his wife the night before and leaving the windows open so Lemmon could see everything.

The jokes on you, “ Mathau retorts. “ I was not even home last night.”



He told a story of meeting Andy Rooney in a bookstore where Rooney sarcastically asked why, if casinos had a lot of money, they just didn't hire the real people.



He showed a clip of Paul Lynn being disgusted with an impression.He mentioned this movie that did not do well   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_on_a_Rooftop

Most of the impressions were just as good as they were decades ago. A few I thought were off a bit.

He looked strange in a very dark tupee. And of course at his age of 77 he did not do as many physical antics. He used props like glasses or a hat or in Willie Nelson's case a set of braids.



I liked this Laugh Factory theater. It was small and intimate. The bar was Dean and Jerry themed with clips playing of the two of them and posters of their movies. There was even one album cover of a record Jerry made called I think “Just Sings”




People came up for their own drinks, so there were not waitresses getting in the way of the view.



THREE COMICS

The second show featured Jamie Leesa, Rick Delea, and Danny Villepondo. I liked all of them, but Jamie was clearly the best of the bunch.

He engaged the audience in an easy way and could improv off their responses. He did a lot with his marriage and children. I liked his reason for going to Vegas. “Tired of sitting home with my morals”

And somehow aspiring not to win the gold, but to be happy with foil was very funny.

He said that his wife assured him that she would not want to change him and that she was sure he could adapt to the new rules.

It wasn't Steven Wright brilliant, but it was good just the same.




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