"You Punks And Your Damn Tig Notaro! - 1950s Comedians Explained To All Youse Alt-Comedy Wise Asses"
By John Saleeby
June 1st, 2013
You Crazy Comedy Kids with your Adult Swim, The Onion, Patton Oswalt, and all those other Cute Lil' Pixies raking in the bucks while I'm Writing for Acid Logic and digging around in the dumpster behind Pizza Hut to stay alive! Yeah, you guys are Cool but when it comes to the Comedy of the Past you are really full of it - Especially about Comedians from the Fifties! Nothing sucks the snot out of the Conan O'Brien Pity Party more than Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle, and Jackie Gleason. Why, those bums were so backward they never even took Work Shops at The Upright Citizens Brigade! So let's have a quick review of these Much Maligned Muckamucks before we get to The Sixties and I have to write about Nichols And May (They forced us to listen to those Nincompoop's records in SCHOOL!!!) JERRY LEWIS
Stick with Gay Marriage, Legal Weed, and Gun Control, kids, cause there is NO WAY you are gonna beat Jerry Lewis! Jerry Lewis was America's #1 Comedian for TWENTY YEARS and all the Marc Maron Pod Casts and Louis CK Cable Specials in the World will never take that away. But we're all supposed to hate Jerry Lewis because he says Women aren't funny. Who cares what he says? He's EIGHTY SEVEN YEARS OLD! When Jon Stewart is that old he'll be raving that no Radioactive Mutant Crab can do Political Satire as good as a Human Being. Or even a regular Crab! Oh, yeah, even a creep like John Saleeby likes Suzanne Somers on "Three's Comedy" but enjoying Political Satire Written by Radioactive Mutant Crabs will take even more of an open mind than watching Tina Fey doing "Weekend Update" on "Saturday Night Live". What? She's not on "Saturday Night Live" any more? Good! Maybe now I'll watch the damn thing. Nah! But getting back to Jerry Lewis, the guy hasn't had a Hit Movie in more than thirty years and people ARE still paying attention to what he has to say! I am sure that none of you enlightened, evolved Maria Bamford fans will ever have anything in the least sexist or racist to say when you are as old as Jerry Lewis. But if you do - Just go right ahead and say it. Nobody will be paying attention to you, anyway. It's not like you were America's #1 Comedian for TWENTY YEARS or anything. Fred Armison could paint his face black and sing "Mammy! I'm Yo' Sammy! Home Fo' Some Eggs An' Hammy!" and nobody will give a shit. JACKIE GLEASON
You are so full of it about Jackie Gleason you make him look skinny. Ha ha ha! But, seriously, quit bitching about the Ralph Kramden "One of these days, Alice! One of these days - BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!!!" thing already! He never hit her! But forget about Alice, how about all the people that Ralph REALLY DID punch? "One of these days, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg! One of these days - BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!!!" "One of these days, Lee Harvey Oswald! One of these days - BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!" "One of these days, Khrushnev! One of these days - BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!!!" Where would America be today if it wasn't for Jackie Gleason, Two Fisted Champion Of American Comedy? "One of these days, Richard Speck, the Ku Klux Klan, and Fidel Castro! One of these days - BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!!!" What about the Apollo Moon Program? Jackie Gleason volunteered to give Neil Armstrong the "BANG! RIGHT TO THE MOON!!!" treatment and save the American Tax Payers millions of dollars, but that would have deprived all those German Rocket Scientists at NASA of a chance to redeem themselves after all the innocent people they murdered with their V1 and V2 Rockets while they were Nazis. So Jackie Gleason just went off and made some Movies. THE GREAT ONE!!!! MILTON BERLE
Milton Berle's legendary Joke File - Millions of silly gags typed onto index cards - was recently put up for sale and the Alternative Comedy Crowd stopped flapping their gums over the possible "Hot Wet American Summer" sequel to get all bitchy about how not a single one of those jokes had been actually Written by Berle himself, thus proving that Uncle Miltie was no way as talented as . . . Oh, Ricky Gervais. Oh, is that all it takes to be a Comic? You just read a bunch of jokes off of a piece of paper and - AL A KAZAAM!!! - You're a Vegas Headliner!!! It's too bad Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy didn't get hold of those jokes before Milton Berle did, then he would have become "Mister Television" instead of going on with that House Un American Activities Committee Witch Hunt. My God! What if they sold the joke file to Jay Leno? He'll open it up and it's Awesome Comic Force will melt his face away like that Nazi when he opened up the Ark Of The Covenant in that stupid Indiana Joe Movie. Only Leno's face is so big it will just melt down to normal size and he'll be George Clooney. It will give Bill Maher a nose job! Joan Rivers . . . Never mind. I just hope TBS bought it for Conan O'Brien. Poor bastard needs all the help he can get. LENNY BRUCE
Lenny Bruce is the only Fifties Comedian anybody has anything positive to say about - Probably because he never had anything positive to say about anybody. He was ahead of his Time! Lenny Bruce was funny but the best thing he ever did wasn't any of the Big Deal Satire you dopes carry on about, the funniest thing Lenny Bruce ever did was squirt Pearl Bailey in the face with a Fire Extinguisher onstage in Vegas. It was HILARIOUS!!! You never hear anything about that now, but after Lenny Bruce squirted Pearl Bailey in the face with a Fire Extinguisher every time he did a show everybody would go because they thought he was going to squirt Pearl Bailey in the face with a Fire Extinguisher again. But all he'd do is come out all wasted and do all that Big Deal Satire shit. Bo-Ring! I guess Pearl Bailey didn't want to get squirted in the face again. He should have found a broad that wasn't as big a Star as Pearl Bailey to squirt in the face with a Fire Extinguisher. She wouldn't be as big a Draw as Pearl Bailey but Lenny could squirt her in the face with a Fire Extinguisher WHILE SHE WAS ON FIRE!!! Yeah!!! STEVE ALLEN
Steve Allen was an asshole. Oh, you've never heard of Steve Allen? Well, take my word for it, Steve Allen was an asshole.MORE ACID LOGIC MATERIAL ON 50s COMEDY!
What do you think? Leave your comments on the Guestbook!John Saleeby wrote for The National Lampoon while he was in high school, was a stand up comic in New York, and has contributed to the net humor zines Schmuck.com, Campaign Central, and the legendary American Jerk. He's on medication now so he's probably a little nicer now than he was when you met him earlier. Email - jacksaleeby1@hotmail.com