TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 33: Andy Kindler
wait you have a TV no i don't like to read the tv guide read the tv guide don't need a TV hello and welcome to tv guidance counselor i am can read your tv guidance counselor as always and i'm very excited for a couple of reasons this week this is obviously tv guidance counselor as i mentioned before and before i get to my guest this week who is comedian andy kimler i have a big announcement for everybody well i think it's a big announcement we will be doing a live the first ever official live tv guidance counselor podcast during new york super week which is part of comic con down in new york on sunday october 5th at seven p.m we'll be having a live tv guidance counselor at the brickland brewery so definitely like us on facebook if you don't already or continue to go to the website i'll have all the details up on there not quite ready to announce the guest yet but you guys will be very pleased with who it is i'm very very excited so definitely keeping on the social media because i will be announcing it there now on to this week's episode my guest is comedian andy kimler who you've seen in a ton of things and you've definitely heard on stuff he does a great voice on bob's burgers one of my favorite current shows i do watch current tv occasionally he also does the state of comedy at the montreal comedy festival every year he's very funny i really enjoyed our conversation so please enjoy this week's episode of tv guidance counselor with my guest andy kimler so what's on tv mr andy kimler hello thank you very much i am uh i realize i needed uh needed a mint so that's fine um it's part of that it's part of the showing behind the scenes of the scenes yeah because it did you feel that your breath was so egregious it would come through on the audio it's lobster i just had lobster roll we're here in boston i recommend the locals try the lobster roll yeah a lot of local bostonians are unfamiliar with lobsters that's why i find yeah i don't think they know that there's uh you know what it's less expensive and uh is this sarcasm i'm doing now i don't know is it lobster based sarcasm yes it's just a bit so weak this sarcasm that i just maybe it's more like an observation the sarcasm i just realized what the uh name of the show was what meant oh did you really guidance counselor yeah finally i don't get puns no i'm not a big pun person myself either so it's odd that i i went with that for the title i like show i'm all forward thank you uh andy kimler all for the name of the show that is what i am changing the name to the show of yes well for the name of the show yeah no andy kimler's all for the name of the show oh okay yeah that's what i'm going now it's an official endorsement and you can't take it back we know i can't just it's on uh not camera so much is on um digital yes digital recorder i use a zoom in and there's a few people who didn't know what a zoom was and they thought this was a taser oh well it looks a little like a taser but also just that speaks to the level of paranoia of something that goes are you going to taste maybe is this all yeah some sort of trap to tase me uh so you picked i give you a selection of tv guides and you picked this one from 1975 it's uh the week of december 27th so christmas has already happened it's sort of new year's eve week yes and what drew you to this particular issue yeah well i don't want to mislead people uh to first of all i was running late so at the first half hour of our meeting i was eating a lobster roll so right i would say that had i had more time i would have maybe gone deeper into each issue but i didn't so but i did get i got to track it to robert blakes on the cover yes very happy robert robert yeah these are these before all the negative things he's feeding his is it a cockatoo it's a cockatoo yeah he's feeding it on his head and he has a look on his face like uh smug satisfaction well it's smoked satisfaction but i also think he's like laughing a little bit that the crazy bird what's that crazy bird doing up there yeah it looks like a really weird bond villain like instead of a cat on his lap he has a bird on his head he's like ah my bird friend and it says robert blake and fred barretta's cookie cockatoo page six yeah so that's that and i also like the fact that it's uh it's like not a holiday issue but it's in that time of the year yes so you're going to get a lot of reruns and you're going to get a lot of special programming right yeah that siren is nothing to do with the product where he's what it's the bonus round yeah so let's jump right in on Saturday night eight o'clock what'd you go with i went with emergency and i actually remember that i'm very much older than this issue is okay uh and we know i would have gone with you know you said my childhood so i would have gone from uh tv guides in the thirties good night and i did thirties pre-tv yeah that you're exploiting the joke for people and he means the nineteen thirties so uh i was out predictive television listings it was like sci-fi television yeah yeah exactly space travel hour space travel hour the first game show so you want a little later than your than your youth at this yeah this is not my youth but i do remember the show emergency and of course you would very confused like all of yours uh dv guides on from denver not all of them just this match is from denver so they're on central time right and that looks uh yes it's central's very works you grew up in new york right i grew up in new york and i heard it as a kid you know such and such this time they used to they used to talk about mountain times central and mountain they don't they don't walk down no whatever happened in mountain time i think mountain time is in a warehouse with acid rain the two of those things was acid rain real i thought it was really talked about it a lot it came off the ozone was definitely the ozone acid rain mountain time they're all in some sort of mothballed yes they're all in the smith sonya they're in the time capsule if they always say so seven o'clock i know this show what this would be and it's probably a uh emergency room yes hospital show it was a drama that followed uh uh what are the atms not etms emt's right etms sound like some sort of weird you know are you like having cyclopaedic knowledge of tv i do a bit so this is a little bit before my uh sweet spot but i i have a pretty encyclopedia knowledge of television that i never tried to learn it was just sort of absorbed into my skull by by an unhappy childhood and watching hours and hours and not sleeping i slept about two hours a night for about 20 years wow i just want to be all night have you stopped did you figure right away to yeah i started i got a lot less anxious all the time and i started sleeping in my sort of mid-20s so i mostly sleep the whole night now there'll be like one or two nights a month that i'll that'll have horrible insomnia but it was a great excuse to get a good television education and you parents didn't start you from watching tv oh god no they did not pay a single attention to anything oh okay at a tv in my room i stole cable from my neighbor yeah you did all that yeah i built my own black boxes wow now what's your wheelhouse in terms of like you really can't be beat uh pretty much horror movies horror television and then just 80 from like 84 about 92 every solid yeah that's solid a lot before and then after the year 2000 i stopped paying attention as everyone did yeah who watches tv yeah i had planned for y2k and then when it didn't happen i was like well i don't care anymore yeah no i i already uh i've ensured that i'm going to survive so this show i think was probably bad it wasn't great it was an hour long drama about paramedics so in this particular episode paramedics ate a parachutist snagged on a radio tower something we've seen yes i an auto accident victim who is in deep shock and a man whose adjustment to a heart transplant is made more difficult by his wife's nagging even better wolfman jack has a cameo role now did you add even better uh i added even better editorialized i like that i don't know where feminism was in the 70s but to be able to say the guys condition was worsened by his wife's constant nagging yeah and i imagine heart transplants in 1975 were a pretty new technology right right so they're like heart transplants are going to go great if we can just keep these women from nagging when will science solve that problem they don't have a cure for that yet you know a wolfman jack sort of fascinates me that he was such a phenomenon well he was a phenomenon and uh did you see american graffiti yes absolutely so that was like my first uh not my first no i don't know why i didn't grow up with him i don't know if he was more on the west coast i think he was because he would be on like midnight special which always seemed more west coasty to me yeah but he would show up in new york based shows a lot weirdly oh as a character actor yeah because he was such a uh my character and then he got the little there's a little controversy because he later on was like hey kid you got to sign up for the draft yeah pretty much yeah he was the establishment at that point right yeah wolfman jack and not a handsome guy not a very pleasant voice either for a radio person well i think many many of the fans would who are no longer alive would really take issue with that yes yeah um you don't want to say that back in 1963 no you would be beaten in the street for even questioning wolfman jack's credentials i don't even know much about his actual show i don't either i don't think i've ever heard his actual radio premise but america graffiti he's great he's great in that and he's uh i think he's an american hot wax too he really tried to make being an american graffiti into a career on it wasn't j lennell also an american hot one yes he was one of his best acting role yes so was larry newman was in that you know what his best acting role it was uh that movie with pat marita no no pretending as if he hadn't uh screwed a lot of people over yes he's very good at that he's very good yeah i didn't know what's going on there and uh yeah you know that's what i'm going to get numbers there and uh business business i'm just as much a victim here as everyone else that's right but i don't hear yes and then well he did have to eat a lot of doritos yes to be fair in his defense well i think he claimed that that was for um charity eating doritos for charity well no they sell of it he would do whatever they say salary i i donated it to charity and that's i killed those people but the money i made went to charity well that is legitimate yeah i think so especially if it's the families of the people you murdered so i probably would have went with the jefferson's at this time there's not a lot of options here because it's sort of pre-cable or in 75 you have four channels and i am very pleased to see that you passed up he-haw well that's the thing i mean he-haw is you know i think in a way would be hacky to make fun of it's too easy it's too easy and also he-haw did have like good musicians on it did this episode as uh ernie ford right so and then that but you know and then of course i'm not defending the level of comedy it's terrible yeah it's really bad and uh because i'm mini-purled yeah and she had like she had the the the price of her clothing on the clothes yes there would be the the tags on her hat and that sort of thing i just it it uh someone on a previous episode called it southern face what is that making so it was like just cartoonishly offensive depictions of southern people that's somehow not offensive to southern people but somehow encouraging well yeah because i think the thing you're saying is uh well i don't think they thought it was negative no it also was just variety shows in general um i have played it played out lowest common denominator i don't know so much less common denominator there just so many of them when i when i was growing up there were all these sunny and share show and yeah and uh it's done over then yeah done well done and then done mary uh oh they have a right show then oh absolutely yeah so did the brady kids in the early sevenies uh my favorite terrible variety show was produced by sinden marty kroft and it was called pink lady and jeff with uh jeff altman jeff altman now i'm gonna walk over here so yeah no i'm gonna get a drink that's what i drank uh i'm good at the moment thank you i probably should have got fiji water that's swanky i think i'll have a coke nice because i've heard my doctors because i need to get more coke the coke or my diet not pepsi definitely no and less water yes less water more coke coke coke coke coke coke coke is mostly water now wait a second i'm not one of these people though uh i think it was eddy brole on facebook it was i say what happens when you drink once coke yes it's poison i don't believe that for one day you know when i think about it i think it's delicious delicious sugar water i'm a huge soda fan i'm obsessed i've never had alcohol in my life so i'm kind of obsessed with um cane sugar sodas i love them love them i use thinners or when you're thin i don't know i think that's just because i worry the weight off that's my you worry the weight off it's much harder than easy it's just that easy uh i used to order mexican coca cola every year before you could readily get it in the u.s because it was still made with cane sugar because life is cheap down there and so i used to order a case of it every year i uh i ordered one time and they used an old invoice address and they shipped it to my parents old address that they didn't live at anymore and i panicked because i'm like that's like a fifty dollar case of glass bottles i gotta get it so i did a reverse look up i called the people that live there and i was like this can read you probably got a package for me don't worry about it and i literally said it's just mexican coke and what they hung up on me and i was like oh my god my era here uh did you ever get back i did i did i called them back and i'm like it's coke coke you can open it's fine and i showed up and they were just like put it on the porch and we're like get out of here like they just i thought they would have had the consumed it i would have thought so as well because that's good stuff yeah it's good stuff i also used to order the double and dr pepper which you can no longer get what is that it was original formula dr pepper from double in texas with cane sugar much much better now do you think uh do you buy into the fruit uh the fruit house corn syrup stuff is that as good for you no it definitely isn't there's some weirdness on that if you ever read how that stuff's made it's very not right yeah yeah it's very weird i mean i think a lot of people say the medical physiology does the same thing but sometimes things don't do the same thing no no there's definitely some studies that basically say it it tricks your body into just going like i don't know what to do anymore well that's they say true about diet stuff too yeah yeah it has the same reaction is regular that's what i'm like if you're gonna have soda just have a soda like don't have some weird thing that's not i do drink some stevia based like uh that do like like so be zero because at least natural i think that the weird aftertaste gets to me though yes is true have you ever gotten actual stevia plant no i bought a stevia plant which you can get really it's wrong it's not stevia it might be stevia i don't know if you're wrong i would say penny i said penny a pasta for 10 years penny i until they put penny sounds like a fine painter yeah i love pennies where oh penny is good the stevia is in spring is one of my favorite things but uh i got an actual stevia plant and i steeped the leaves and made like a syrup this is how insane that i am because it doesn't have the uh that chemically taste when you do it that way and it was awesome i made like i made like a simple syrup out of it oh so when it when they extracted is when you make it look like sugar they have to bind it to something sugar-like so what does all you know so you can do because it's actually sweeter than sugar and so you can replace it one to one and cooking and stuff whatever so you but you can make like a tea out of it and then basically make like a something like that but you see them i don't know if i do that because i want it in the various items yeah you could put it in various i don't have enough time that yeah very busy it's a it's a crazy person's endeavor to make a stevia simple syrup but but well worth it yeah well worth psychosunty yeah exactly we just don't love sunti uh what happens they don't they don't teach kids sunti anymore because kids would get botulism from it why because you're leaving tea like stagnant water in the sun for three days i didn't realize it was that long yeah yeah i think that's i remember there was an episode of pewey's playhouse where the where the activity for the day was sunti and a bunch of kids did it and got botulism so they cut that out of uh rebroadcasts of the show oh you mean they actually got botulism wow making sunti which makes me concerned about this cold brew coffee phenomenon why is that because how do they manage to not have the same issue because it's it's done in a refrigerator i will there you go yeah i don't understand i'm a coffee fanatic i love cold brew but i'm a light oh you like it i really like roast fan too oh it's too it's too strong for you i like that it's low acidity the cold brew oh no i like cold i like cold brew uh but you drink it mostly as nice coffee yes yeah yeah but i like regular brew coffee that but and i'm anti the whole starbucks thing yeah i'm not roasting we gotta go to starbucks well the thing i'll say about starbucks when i used to well i'm still on the road but you like if you want a latte or i think it's it's very consistent yeah and also he's very good to his employees yeah yeah i'm sure it's fine now you feel bad now you feel bad no but he started that whole over yeah absolutely yeah i think i i would rather go to like a mom and pop if there is one around but i imagine in some places in america that's the best coffee you're gonna get in that area although you don't know because now that i'm finding with all these roasts you just thought to have find someone who roasts yes yeah yeah just go by your nose follow your nose as two can sam said um from where oh that's a great uh that's a great product it always knows a great product i endorse fruit lips we'll watch it and the other night on the tv on the tv me and my wife and it was like one of these things it was like so hi uh it's like how are you getting things like hi but like it was only it's like you know i do you know hi and on the local news oh no even on the evening news they talked to like you're seven years old you know they always have a tag line at the end and that's that's you know whatever the line some kind of a pun so the whole thing was uh how you can save money at the supermarket and she's in the supermarket this is an mb station in the supermarket and she says uh uh i use one of these like cards yes yeah yeah you know you say fit she's like shot oh she the only person in the world doesn't know has never heard about that well you know you may or may not have i worked in the television news for a while and the majority of those stories are produced by the companies their pr pieces that they make look like news pieces and they send them to the news stations for free so that was probably produced by the supermarket council whatever and so those really dumb stories like doesn't everybody know about this it's basically ad time well it's actually worse than that because this was Rahi Rahema Ellis okay from the national news yes and just uh i always love to where they'll be like uh there is a war in Gaza right now and our final story some baby ducks and i'm like this is very strange and the cliche for years was you know like uh at 11 learn how your faucet can kill you yeah something can kill you i collect one of my other uh mental issues is i collect old television broadcasts so i get tape beta tapes and dhs tapes from flea markets and ebay and then i convert them to dvd and i like the old commercials and the whole broadcast right my favorite thing are those news stingers like at 11 and so for years what i wanted to do is just do a super reddit of like hundreds of them because just when you watch them in succession they're insane like it'll be like skier killed by a lion at 11 and then the next thing is like stabia is poison at 11 and just when you watch them that's gotta be great it's very fun i just i haven't had the time to do that because i've been making uh stabia liquid yeah wall to your podcast podcast and your other obligation stand up comedy that's true that's true we're very busy very busy people we're actually running while we're doing this podcast which is just uh we're just in very good shape so yeah he are terrible i wouldn't go with the jefferson's at this time although not my favorite show i do enjoy the jefferson's i don't i mean for some reason i never well i was big on the family fan yeah so i think i loved i love sherman hell yeah i didn't pick that one because i figured i would pick something i wouldn't want to watch was emergency but i would watch the jefferson's too but i thought sherman helmsy was it was hilarious he's always funny i used to watch amen in the 80s which was not a good show but i always enjoyed his seething rage and he was great on all in the family yes yes he was he was much better on all in the family than i think in the jefferson's yeah the jefferson's just except for the theme song which is incredible classic classic uh so at 7 30 you don't need to pick anything because you're watching now a long show and there's literally only one show on at 7 30 which is what which is called doc which is a show i'm unfamiliar with but the description is doc a frustrated cellist is there any other kind uh has mixed feelings when he's asked to play in a string quartet he'd love to try but he's afraid he's lost touch uh Barnard Hughes plays doc who's an actor that i love you actually hear him at the beginning of the podcast uh never heard of this show well what was you do with the thing in the podcast i have a quote from the film The Lost Boys where he says uh you have a team don't need a tv if you have a tv guide oh okay yes Barnard Hughes so eight o'clock what are you going with well this is a classic this is uh Mary Tyler Moore which i would can still when i moved to LA in 1978 and uh it was after college and uh what am i reading i'm the one i'm reading since like i'm reading from a thing uh i i had watched well Mary Tyler when it came out yeah and i watched and my fan it was like what's happening to my family we watch all together because Germany siblings or my brother my brother sister so i actually really actively remember watching that as a family and then uh but when i came out in the late 80s i mean the late 70s and that i would see Mary Tyler Moore on reruns i was very depressed at that time of my life because uh i went to college and i had to find college i did theater and then after i was like oh i couldn't have a you know because i didn't want to make money i didn't want to go to law school like when do i think that i knew i wanted to be some kind of performer so i had terrible day jobs so that was always i watched Mary Tyler Moore in the afternoon to make you feel better it was like maybe feel better it just i just like it well i grew up with shows that uh i still would defend like i like i leave it to people i thought it was for what it was it's not a bad show it's not a bad show so yeah but then they were shows i i could watch as i was a kid that i couldn't sound like Donna Reed is very boring it's a bit saccharin or even you've fought in those best is very boring yeah yeah the stakes are so low and leave it to beaver was a pretty well written show yes there's some good uh sort of um the misunderstanding sitcom which is yes you know three companies probably the worst example and you know maybe curvy enthusiasm or car 54 are you are the best examples i would argue this nice curvy is the worst example i would the the contribus that's actually what bothers me in that show where the contribus how convenient the the little tie up is at the end right oh the homeless guy from the first scene and his car ends up on mars yeah i mean i think it's hard to do that sort of comedy but leave it to beaver would get complicated sometimes in some of those episodes yeah surprisingly and you would feel like nervous for the beaver yeah absolutely the one thing i have a problem with a lot of those 50 shows is that speaking of the sort of um subtle conspiratorial news stories those shows did that but like leave it to beaver specifically was paid by the department stores in america to introduce the concept of layaway to america oh it's introduced things like credit so there's an episode where like beaver really wants this bike let's teach you about layaway this new concept i did not pick that up a young story yeah there's a lot of those kind of things in those shows which was uh is a little bit disturbing to me when i rewatched them well of course early on uh so much of tv is sponsored too right yeah absolutely uh but you'd have less of that yeah you would say this whole half hour is brought to you by oh it's fantastic uh which is better and worse i think but uh a little less subtle which is kind of good yeah no no question still holds up as a brilliant show in america was great it was a really smart show and i think people now don't realize how innovative it was to have a strong female character who's single in approaching middle aged yeah in the in the 70s and she i don't think she tried a few sitcoms after that and had a really weird show in the late 70s that was uh almost like the larry sander show where it was about she was a fictional version of herself that had her own variety show and the first half of the show was the behind the scenes and the second half of the show was the actual variety show oh man what was it called you know it's called the mary tylor more hour oh okay it only lasted about eight episodes and some of it's very funny and some of it's just weird uh michael keaton was on it was his first role and he was still doing stand-up oh man yeah 78 he plays a uh like a page at the television station or a dorm and or something like that's a very weird show but i love mary tylor more all the mcm production stuff was was great well that's also goes there they were classic for believing in what they were making right and that taking off the air right i think mary tylor but i think it's a book just written by mary tylor but i think there is yeah and about how uh throughout the week at first uh like no one was buying like i think Lou Grant or or no no one was buying road at first yes and then they had the daughter of phyllis kind of comes in and says something and it's like it all of a sudden it was in that first few days they they thought they were had a bomb on their hands and they just turned around yeah and shows now don't get the chance to do that no sometimes shows get canceled before they even air because the internet buzz is bad yeah yeah the cheers floundered in the bottom 100 for the first season and a half and they kept it going and it became one of the best that comes of all time yeah you never have it you should never take off a show that's good i think it's hard for people to tell what's good now right i think that people don't want to stick their neck out anymore i think people you also seem to and and you know i'm i'm so low on the ladder of the business so i am i'm sort of just guessing here but i feel like at the up until the 80s you had executives that also had an interest and true love of television yeah movies or actually sit and watch them and had an opinion on something and they would say i like this show so we're going to stick with it and not just we lost money buy well that's also because you know i think grand tinker was one and they are trying to tardogoff you see these names of people but that's also because the original people were in tv were actually tv people who had a lot like you're saying i love and now it's like i'm you know i'm i'm tweeting today about cars that Comcast please pull the plug you pull the hdmi cable on this msmbc because yeah i wake up it's like a right-wing joe joe Scarborough and i think the nature of that is there's such huge companies running these networks that by the time it gets from the top down to the person it's like who knows who's yeah it's like i used to be the CEO of seagrams and now i run sitcoms and you see it's like it doesn't it just doesn't make sense it's it's money people it's very strange to me but it was a different time then yes so i'm guessing you went at 8 30 with bob newhart yeah bob newhart uh and that is another show that i remember in the 80s again when i was depressed just we watched every single day every single episode i love that show i couldn't say i lived in more than mary time where i live in both equally but he was hilarious to me and i never even listened to his albums when did you check out his albums i would say i still have not too much i'm getting very i'm getting a lot more honest as i get older about what i haven't haven't seen you know i haven't seen french movies yeah i haven't seen it's gonna be like many many years to see catty shack here's the thing i don't really like catty shack i don't think it's that great it's not really that great it really is it people get mad at me because i say i like catty shack too better oh that might be bad it's bad but i think i'm like if catty shack too was called the golf movie i think people would like it if it wasn't the sequel it wasn't the sequel yeah meatballs too better than meatballs it has an alien in it oh yeah called meathead is bill mary in that one too no no john mary kett is well yeah i mean here now we're talking but uh yeah i i catty shack i feel like does not hold up but that's sort of a holy cow movie well it was built up to too much yeah i agree i agree if i ever buy something you haven't seen it what's wrong with you and belmore is funny it he is he is definitely funny he's finding everything i'm i have an aversion to any movie that can be turned into a theme restaurant of which catty shack has a restaurant in mertle beach there is a catty shack restaurant run by the mari brother who is a chef because all families with more than five people need to have one member who's the chef maris wallbergs what's what's his name uh i can't think of his name it's not joel mari it's not brine dole mari it's like mike mari or something he's the one mari brother who's not in the industry and well the one who's on madman is great joel mari yeah he's yeah he's lary's i mean he's in one crazy summer which is a great movie oh and see that movie it's uh savage steve holland bobcat gulp awaits in it uh boston comedian tony v as a great cameo in it uh it's a fun movie do you ever see better off dead oh is that the yes i did it's uh it's the it's sort of the unofficial sequel to better off dead it's a similar cast kurtis armstrongs in it joe flarity who's one of my favorite sc tv alumni yeah uh it's really it's a fun manemia uh one crazy summer shot mass two sets it's uh it's a silly fun funny oh i see tony v too tony's very funny in the in the opening of that so yeah bob new her and mari to learn more shows i still frequently watch their funny and also have a lot of heart to them yeah but aren't uh they're character shows which is sadly unusual well that's a thing too you know uh they also had so many great side characters or yeah on the show which don't you know when you get down to like chloris leechman's amazing and uh yeah i mean even just like lorenzo music who started as a writer on that show and then became the doorman and then the voice of garfield and he wrote the theme song to the bob new heart show you have these people who are so involved he was like is he kylo the kylo that knows yeah um uh what's the doorman's name he wrote him yeah yeah oh i didn't know that was him and that's lorenzo music who started literally started as a writer writing scripts wrote the theme music of the bob new heart show did that voice went on to voice acting work and carlton carlton you don't yeah exactly yes it's carlton you doorman it's carlton you doorman just having these people behind the scenes too that are so versatile and so involved and a lot more than just the writer term well the other thing is that i never really just realized about because when i watch tv i watch it very organically i don't think about camera angles right but now recently you know or maybe from going out for sitcoms just the idea that you establish this shot right of the building it just totally works yeah all of a sudden you feel like you're aware married hollamore lived yeah you're not you're not um and you believe that it's minnesota or are and not you know on a soundstage in l.a. so i just want to say establishing shots very good very important in fact we should have a show just of establishing shots which i'm surprised hasn't happened yet what was the first three cameras sitcom you're on was it uh ramen um i actually did uh a show called muddling through okay which jennifer aniston was uh attached to it was about eighty nine ninety no this is like nine mid-nineties okay something it was just the same year she took friends okay but what that one wasn't if that one had been picked up she wouldn't have got friends she wouldn't be our friends well she'd been in on just failed pilots forever and she was on the first bueller tv show and she was on that sketch show the edge with july brown oh okay tom kenny and uh which was not fantastic but she had just been around a long time so it was nice that something finally hit forever yeah um when did you do tv will ninety that seems around the yeah nine yeah that was and uh that was really exciting i loved tv will i that's one of my favorite sketch shows and it made me sad that that concept just one pilot just one pilot yeah but that was such a uh an interesting sort of uh play on that on this on the formatting of the studio yes and just the fact that the the whole stage would uh would rotate and then it would open it would open up into the next area where you'd have your scene very very interesting it was really and also i don't know if you remember or it kind of included he did a tour of it yes at the beginning yes yes yeah and so that was such an interesting way to play with the sort of conventions of television that people were used to whereas you're saying you know establishing shots and stuff you doesn't even register but you you realize when they're not there they stand out yes they work certain things work i mean i hate to be a rules guy but certain things work yeah absolutely your mind makes it fills in the blanks when you were on the in through some camera sitcom that first time did it strike you as odd or were you because you never really thought about the things you watched growing up when you were there were you like oh did you just have to rethink things like maritime a more about new heart i was actually had a misleading introduction because i had to bring a cardboard cutout of something and i had to walk across the room and place it down just in the spot where then i would lose i wouldn't lose me and the heel behind me got it was so hard because you didn't hit the exact mark i thought oh my god i'll never be able to do this but most of the time that's you don't have to do that and a lot of times i will uh have no i have no idea where the cameras are right they're just more should have more should have more of idea of because uh but so part of me is i think i'm glad about it because i my mind the my mind doesn't work that way and then sometimes i just do like i had some episodes of which is a wavily place yes which is on disney show disney john so what i had to do was appear in smoke which we've all had to do it so i i went like like that but it was it's supposed to be more complicated and move and they just thought it was they always a funny thing you went stage magician yeah so sunday night uh seven o'clock what are you going with at uh the beginning of print well i only didn't point to the world of disney because it was such a depressing show i couldn't stand it and it meant school uh was the next day the next day this particular addition of world of disney is really depressing this is a this is a 60 minute uh 1958 disney produced show called the pigeon that worked a miracle and the plot is a crippled boy's hopes of regaining the use of his paralyzed legs right on the wings of a racing pigeon oh no that is it is supposed to be uplifting at the end i imagine no pun intended i imagine it is and they've clearly run it around christmas time due to the people love the cripple that christmas it's a big thing they don't get on tv till christmas time that everyone cares about oh man and even when there was no theme maybe when it wasn't something anti-pressing i didn't even know what the show was it just was like it was a much color and uh yeah i'd be like tonight on the wonderful world of disney we're just gonna have a nature program about lemurs or here's the show about a crippled boy but it didn't walled hosted to he would yes yeah and then later michael eisner did in the 80s when they brought it back uh yeah very very sad show uh but i probably would have watched that as well given what our other choices are because even more depressing is share a family-oriented show with captain kangaroo the hudson brothers illusionist mark wilson and his son greg and chastity bono the captain brings along something called stupid dillio a three-headed animal played by the hudson's and reenacts his attempts to sell his idea for a tv show in another sketch sharing the three brothers appear as toy soldiers why they go through that very detailed back in those days you would have less choice so you're gonna watch one of these three things why do they need to tell us so much like so just so excited about it really is let me tell you about share doing a medley of old standards the variety show probably would have gone a little for world of disney as well especially given that six million dollar man i would have made the thing was depressing about of that because it must have started earlier world of disney on the east coast oh no would like time wise it was in the 60s maybe yeah it started in the late 50s i think and i just hated the idea of this school is next day and this is the heart someday not anxiety i still get and i've been out of school for decades it's just that uh i'm gonna go to bed and wake up and have to do it all over very depressing so i probably would have gone with that as well uh eight o'clock would you go with nine o'clock east coast time i should mention yeah you will have to keep saying every time i went with kojak which i don't think i've ever really seen i've only heard people called kojak that seems to be the extent of like all right kojak okay kojak nice word kojak sounds like there was a milli reference before everything went sour well Dennis Miller calls me all the time it just calls me kojak right kojak and he's somebody kojak he's a legal aliens kojak yeah i tell us of all this scares me uh well i didn't mind him as a on the player's club commercials play as club i'm not just talking about Wednesdays and Thursdays baby did you know anyone who had a player's club card no i don't think so uh no i don't think uh i wonder if it was popular at some point i mean there were enough ads you would think so yeah but it could be because they were constantly pushing it that's true he to me when i picture the devil he looks like telecephalus and just like that's the devil yeah but he did some good movies right or something like that he was in some good movies he was in a really good Italian harm movie called Lisa in the devil where he doesn't play the devil but that reminds me of it but yeah he was in some good stuff he just he's he's a weird-looking guy yes he just looks like a genie i think that might be at his little genie-ish like genie oh like a dream of genie yes he looks exactly like yeah but he didn't sound ladies like him i think ladies liked him was he a pin up in the 70s i wonder if there were people like ooh telecephalus you mean like in playgirl well just like ladies being like i'd hang up poster up at him he was the he was the pinnacle of male well he was one of the few guys who did the bald head like the old brother can do but he had to be in like his mid-fifties when he was doing kojak i would imagine yeah i remember was he a private detective i think he was a private detective i didn't watch a lot of kojak in this particular episode kojak learns that his teenage nephew is not only a junkie but is also implicated in the murder of a dope peddler and we've all had that day happen yeah yeah yeah wait he's not only a junkie but he murdered his dealer i feel like that problem just solved itself why is that an episode yeah it's uh that's uh that's uh that could be the upside of that whole candle itself out uh so monday night seven o'clock would you go with i would rota i loved rota but there's a thing that on that tv guy that looks like it's called pilots yes and what what exactly is that so pilots so since we're in uh sort of a downtime between seasons television stations used to always run pilots that they didn't pick up because they had invested all this money and they needed to recoup it a little bit which sounds crazy to people now yeah i don't even make full pilots it's like a 10-minute demonstration no one ever sees it yeah but every single pilot they would burn off either between uh christmas break or in the summer and people knew they were pilots sometimes they'd call them like the comedy theater right just run these things but this is a pilot that was not picked up and this is a pilot called the moose and the pussy cat uh which is a trilogy it actually says in tv guide a trilogy of unsold comedy pilots the first one is called moose which features scott jacobie William James Madden and georgio holler and jr as teenage boys growing up in chicago in the 1950s coping with girlfriends parents and sudden crushes on attractive homeroom teachers i don't know why they didn't get picked up i still love the extensive elaborate descriptions they are definitely much more elaborate than they later were these are like full paragraphs and then we have buck henry and bernardette peters co-star in the owl in the pussy cat the tail of a stuffy writer and a brash actress who find the opposites attract as they always do sicam is sicam format sicam format book and wow and bernardette peters and the third unsold pilot is someone to watch over oh these are still the same yes they're within a half hour within the hour wearing three half-hour unsold pilots as a as sort of a made-for-tv movie yes uh and so the third one is someone to watch over me stars jane alexander and lauren's lucken bill as a parole officer and a lawyer who are married to each other crazy and this preempts the invisible man so someone was probably pissed that yeah well he can't have all i mean something has to go pre-emptions used to really really drive me insane uh because you wouldn't get a warning oh all of a sudden we have pre what were they preempted by a sports events or sports events or or these unsold pilots like i would watch a rerun if i tuned in from visible man and i'm like the eye on the pussy cat yeah the hell is this they're alienating their core audience exactly from away so rhoda is a show that i loved although it got a little not great in the last couple seasons i feel like no but this started out pretty strong and had yeah it had uh what's in that nazi carber oh nazi cartwright yes he was out there really great show i like rhoda better than philis as a spin-off of philis and everyone's that much do i put philis down for my next uh choice probably but now it wasn't uh mine i had the most spin-offs i can think of for many show either marietta with more happy days i think had the most spin-offs so philis is on at 730 did you go with that i did but i never liked i mean i like her as a character on uh on uh marietta with more right but you know once i was uh i had a show in the 90s called the pet shop it was two years old two years old it was two years over two years i think despite all of your listeners i am severely jet lagged he just flew in from out loud i flew in last today and it hit me hard and it's no reflection on the on the podcast it's a reflection of uh i think i have a brain tumor like on the tv show emergency yes if emergency was real they could have solved that for you they could have uh do you have a nagging wife she may be making that progress hey hey ken you're gonna get me in trouble that's not the 90s he's getting it's not the 1970s but i hope this talk show and chloris leechman came out in the middle of a monologue and so it's as well this is where you bring your pet in with her okay yeah so just interrupted my monologue my pet so uh it's when it's just gonna end so it wasn't it wasn't a setup she legitimately did that yeah so i was very angry with she seems a bit loony she was a bit loony especially at that time that uh was who yeah she's an older lady a little crazy and she's so alive right she is yeah she's still alive right that's always a nice thing to say she's still alive right she's not dead yet she ain't ground yet what kind of pet did she have uh i think i don't think it was a dog i don't remember it was and that was not memorable she's what was the weirdest pet anyone had on that show well the slash had a had a snake so that was weird or but you know you really get it was a ridiculous format in the sense that certain animals like you're not gonna have a cat it's not gonna so i gotta sit there with it it's not gonna play ball yeah yeah unless it's playing ball right exactly it's a ball playing cat there was a guy that was a burger king restaurant in central square in cambridge and the guy who used to ring you up you had a snake around his neck yeah well that was a ball constructor yeah slash had a snake and he said at one point he was be careful man it's gonna bite you but it really was not just kidding man he's he's known for being very funny yeah he's funny but it's really hard to do uh so eight o'clock would you oh slash i just i did slash and then i started to do the impression and it sounded like tommy chunk to me he actually did have a good sense you know he's a mother of slash his mother was uh she's a groupie or famous she was like a casting thing or something davis bowie used to babysit him or something like that when he was a kid oh man this story like why can't i have had that life we all want slash his life and had so eight o'clock what are you all in the family which is probably up there with the two or three greatest shows of all time everything in social commentary but it was always based on the comedy of it yes and the fact that he was a prejudice guy who wasn't a bad guy right it was it was sort of a realistic portrayal it wasn't black and white yeah and i thought it was good i also enjoyed all in the family the thing that i found weird about all in the family and i don't know if you ever encountered this is sometimes when you talk to people about it they sort of liked it wrong like they would be like and that aren't she's so funny when he calls people this name and it's like no it's laugh at not laugh with right they well the thing about it is no question about and in fact Bill Cosby had a problem with the show because he felt like it was celebrating prejudice yeah i mean because you're making a character who's like a one a real person right right yeah but i mean i think that it'd be it's almost just as bad to make someone be a caricature racist yeah i think that they would what you're saying what he would i don't know what his point was but he he would get mad a lot so Bill Cosby's easily enriched yeah all those people who he beat the shit out of for years who did he didn't help no just Bill Cosby beaten someone up no he's always like criticizing like uh he hated criticized his own people yeah he's like carol o'conner why don't you get uh why don't you get a man's name that was his famous bill Cosby that he installed the famous bill Cosby quote uh but i enjoyed the show as well and my dad loves the show because i think he likes Archie Bunker and thought he was like he's telling it like it is oh that's not good it was a total it pulled the right out from under me because i'm like wait a minute people are watching this in the wrong way yeah i think that there were also some shows within which the with in the show the context of the show you know he did step up to the plate yeah and what are they telling you what they're telling you what it is part do you remember the one where Gene Stapleton got raped yes i do that's amazing crazy that it really was it was amazing and they did such an amazing job with it it's like you would never come out of there saying it was gratuitous or anything no can you imagine a sitcom now having that as a plotline and she was amazing and she was really quite about it i do remember crying quite a bit in the episode when she died and he finds her slipper oh devastated i don't think i saw that i maybe i've blocked it out oh it's like the whole episode about how how upset he is and she died and then he but he hasn't broken down because he's starchy bunker and then he finds her slipper under his chair and they just cry yeah that's like the end of the episode it's devastating he is amazing actor he is very very good in the heat in the night i enjoyed him and uh oh i think i've seen some of that i've never seen it all the way very good uh eight thirty what are you going on i'm going with mod mod uh my favorite story about mod is the janine garafelow the hilarious janine garafelow could not get that song i ever had for like and then there's mod yeah she would sing i think she actually went to therapy to learn to get the mods out of her head and stuff saying it is pretty infectious i uh bill macy who plays mod's husband is from revere massachusetts and has one of my favorite old men boston accents he's he's uh i met him out in la he's pretty nutty and still alive he's in his 90s or something oh i know he's out but he's and that's why there's a William h macy yes because of bill macy people uh if you didn't know that that's good trivia and that's like the yankee's red socks of acting people are like hey you're in the William h macy or in the bill macy can't you can't like both oh can't we can't be becoming a come together over something no no we have to pick one of the other so i definitely would have gone with mod as well i love that show comrade bane underrated on mod no definitely underrated on mod uh tuesday night eight o'clock well you know if you have a tv job though i'm gonna get another water here please yeah please america please america don't uh don't hold it against and the philippines where the show is very big what's that the the show oh it goes to the philippines we do get downloads in the philippines that's kind of cool it's very weird yeah i i look at all the numbers and i know i know who downloads when and where but it's interesting to see the foreign countries that download the show because i'm like either an expat or like why is someone in uh oh wait shall i find an even old american tv well is it in the is it in the description of the show that's what you uh yes yeah it is yeah so that might have it they go i also write all the descriptions in Croatian just because it's funny yeah just a sideline tuesday night eight o'clock what are you going with oh by the way mod was a mod wasn't as good as all in the family no no it was like it had some good moments in it did and and b-arthur i i always like b-arthur i mean she's always funny and everything except they tried to remake faulty towers oh i didn't see that with b-arthur in the basically the basil faulty role and it uh doesn't work just doesn't work oh and she was also another character from oh on the family yes yeah that was an on the family spinoff which between all the family happy days and maritime war they all had like four or five spinos i hope you know my my leg is if you're at home and you're wondering what sounds like a uh a creaking door that's my leg and also there's a ghost there's a ghost there's a ghost that you're slamming the door oh pretty shut so tuesday night seven o'clock what are you going with well i go with happy days only because i have no idea what it was i couldn't understand it when i washed it it seems so phony to me but you loved american graffiti yeah i loved it so no uh is that what it's called yeah right graffiti yeah so did you watch happy days being like this is like a bullshit american graffiti was it based on that uh not officially but it was more or less i probably didn't connect the two that much although maybe i did but i never bought happy days for one second it just seemed so boring it is and there was a show that started off semi-serious shot on film and morphed into a three-camera video tape sitcom that kind of stopped pretending it took place in the 50s really weird i know that at all about that it's really strange when you watch it and reruns and they show them out of order you'll see an early episode that's like a movie and then at a later like early 80s episode and it looks like a really bad play yeah the same show the set stars look bad so this particular episode i just have to read the description because it uses a term that i very rarely hear these days and much less so in television descriptions uh fonzi is as crushed as his beloved motorcycle which was demolished during the night by some dastardly vandal now what's the word you don't hear dastard doesn't come up i thought you didn't hear crushed i very rarely hear crushed or beloved yeah uh i probably wouldn't have had my happy days i think i would have gone with good times despite the fact that the dad from good times was absolutely terrifying to me who was a jet yeah it's uh why am i blanking on his name uh john oh i know who he is yeah yeah he just seemed so pissed off all the time like he was gonna murder JJ like just just strangle him to death that was that was another show uh just didn't get the show i mean i kind of he was interesting i heard him on uh somewhere talking about the behind the scenes because it was not a normal leadership yeah and he was he was fired from the show who was uh the dad oh because john aim is john aimis that's the correct he uh the show basically became the jj show oh like most shows were a wacky side character takes over the herkel syndrome oh he wasn't the lead at the bed wasn't the lead it was a pretty serious family sitcom and john aimis was told like this is your show oh he hated that so he left he left uh yeah good times good show uh now you grew up in new york city or in queens yeah so when you saw these shows set in new york like good times did they just ring false yes it probably did it probably did but i probably wasn't thinking about that much because i think when those sequels aren't like i watched a lot so i mean when you were a middle-class black person right in the 70s uh in new york you know yeah it's a lot of television in the 60s and 70s was filmed in new york before everything started moving to the west coast did you ever go to a taping or anything like that may have grown up not in new york interest or anything i have interest but i've got a lot of issues at the time even worse keeping you from going to see those things i don't know i mean i look back on my lap and i think okay i could have done this i couldn't have done that but i didn't have an obsession with uh um now the shooting well that's where the sopranos i wonder if they shoot any they must shoot some i think my whole j-fox shot is a comedy yeah it's been city was shot in new york at the time too yeah um so were you what's calm was the maritime more comedies the biggest comedies you were into growing up well i started early with things like the honey moaters and dick man dyke show and i love that i even loved i don't say even love but i love i love usi for a while right it's very hard to watch it now so uh in the mid 80s uh 70s i think windy hill street blukes ground 1981 i was very obsessed with that show yeah known for its humor yeah very funny show that and say nowhere say yes because they had that final episode where the guy is all a dream the autism the autism all takes place in autistic child's mind what doesn't these days uh so seven thirty what are you going with seven third year on tuesday yes well i went with dragon that because i think it's just an awful awful show that you can't believe was on for so long yeah and this isn't a rerun either the show was still making new episodes in 1975 this show had been on for like 14 or 15 years wow and it's hilarious to see the 70s episodes because they got big sideburns yeah yeah hippies but jack web is still sort of this he's it really is like someone who's been plucked from the past and thrown into the swing in 70s and then the more you know about him personally he sounds like creep not a good guy and then uh just the fact it just seemed like him image of what what he would be like is a great cop such the establishment yeah it was such a he was like wolfman jack's soul well they didn't think that other shows would like more like procedural shows or right that were actually interesting shows but this one i never it's very dry it seemed like i always watching drag night i kind of enjoy now but when i was watching as a kid it felt like when a dare officer would come to your school and tell you about drugs like for it right yeah it was entertaining and he kind of left a little scared and felt like he did something wrong after uh so eight o'clock i went with mash now mash my favorite comment about mash is from scott tomsen from the canadian yeah kids in the hall and he said that he never watched mash because it was too green too green yeah it was very green i love that show when it was out i don't think i watch one second of it now it seemed very very soft it that's sort of it like you would want a more hard-hitting war drama yeah i think i think one of the people who wasn't the producers decided on that the hair had to be short yeah that was one of the conditions of coming back yeah it was weird too though i think at the time if you if you look at mash and macales not macales navy um hogan's heroes yeah it'll hold them up against each other which were almost contemporaries right yeah yeah then you really appreciate mash a little more but watching it now it's a show that seemed too old for me as a kid i couldn't really get into it but now it's jokey it's too jokey and you know they didn't want a lap track no i regret or i did not want one and he was right not to want one because it just sounds crazy it doesn't make sense it's very early it sounds crazy i would have gone with either the saint uh with roger more who i find hilarious and can watch an absolutely anything was that an actual bond movie uh no it was what got him the bond role it was a show where he played a spy basically it was a very funny show it was an hour long u.s. uk co-production called the saint which they made a terrible adcom remember and you thought it was a good show itself i enjoyed it yeah it was a fun show or was he a saint on it or no he was not an actual saint he was a spy known as the saint co-lamed saint well now with the secrets out everyone exactly everyone knows or police woman just for angi dickets yeah i would watch a lot of shows this show called honey west was great honey west is great say you know more with an earlier than new and she was so sexy she really is uh she's great on that show with her weird servo cat ner kung fu uh that was the first depiction of martial arts on television was uh it was honey west yeah wow yeah and also feminism because yes absolutely that was a great show uh the the dvd box that is very cheap i highly recommend picking it up was i i was on second very well it was la based right it was all it was driving around yeah i love all shows are la based i do too i i growing up here in the east coast i realized that i'm obsessed with los angeles and it was in so many things i grew up watching i didn't go there till i was 30 and i felt so much more comfortable there than i do in here because i'm like everything's familiar yeah yeah i know where everything is i won't watch anything set no especially like sixties la yeah well i loved when they would show the well was that any even a dragnet where they would show the courthouse right right yeah absolutely so i'm i'm probably going with police women because ronnie mcdowell guest arts in this episode as well yeah angie dickenson not a great actress no no uh so let's move on to wednesday night well well i'm sorry i wasn't that at a time because i always i couldn't stand that show would you watch it anyway no i couldn't stand i couldn't stand blend and stand but well i maybe i did watch it a little bit but it's like that i didn't understand the whole body franklin energy and uh very weird show and that's with uh uh with the valor bird malle yes yes it's a really bad show it's a really bad show did your family watch it were there shows that they watched that you would just sit through my parents are elitists like me i mean they're tv elitists not like uh and like they're very much on the same page and not by dad our family is not like bathroom humor okay all right so it's like this is bonita yeah sixty minutes on that kind of thing yeah but not even like that much uh uh formal the other way they just reject a lot of tv that's a good thing that's a good parent it's nothing wrong with them it's a good parent so wednesday night seven o'clock what are you going away well i wouldn't really watch tony orland but what else don't i picked tony orlando and don but i would never watch it there's something called king orange jamboree perry no that's i was passed on that that sounds like the worst jam band that your college roommates jamboree i'm in king orange jamboree perry do you want to come see us uh tony orlando what an insufferable human being i don't know him as a person but just looking at him i can't stand him well uh he really had to dig his whole that whole tony orlando thing i'm trying to defend him well you have to see that no there's no defense this episode is the new year's eve show so we're actually wednesday night i should mention is new year's eve yeah okay and so tony orlando had to shoot a hole through your other suit to hold another thing tony orlando and mini pearl feature sketches about three sanitation workers celebrating the holiday at the dump can you get more literal than that sketch but also is that what you think of sanitation workers if that's their idea of a fun night out let's hang out at the dump yeah that's you won't believe it because we're here all the time get it we're at the dump and uh tony randal and tony randal and don perform the tongue twisting sister susie sewing shirts for soldiers well that one i would watch i would watch anything with uh with phillips on the right would you go into time square on new year's eve yeah i say that's the thing my family we don't like lines no i don't either if you if i ever commit a capital offense or when i do yeah i think instead of putting me in jail if you just went you have to sit in time square for new year's eve i would be like please just kill me don't i i can't do it i'm gonna see if i can arrange that because i think you're lying i think i i think you'll come right down off of it send me to time square or spring spring break in like middle beach orlando florida and i would rather go to jail all right go to those and tv beach has i could get the whole thing going on i go to the mtv beach house pock would be there if pock is there my pain in life i think he is a lot yeah he is daisy fwentes or idolis maybe they could be there only 90s bj's so yeah i what would you watch on new year's eve where you were you were uh dick cards rocking new year per day i hated them all i hated them all maybe when i was like 12 or 13 now i get a look side because they would count down the ball but now it's just yeah no would you ever do anything when you're like a team what would you do for like a new year's eve? well we drank and we drank in the home or something like that uh i was drinking the home when i was 18 and uh there was still you could drink that was drinking new york race yeah yeah so uh i don't know that you're going to get hammered yeah well not wheel and there have been i've never been a war i mean hypothetically you know this isn't specific but hypothetically i probably would enjoy pot there you go well i think if you're living in a world where your best option at seven o'clock on a wednesday is Tony Orlando and Don you should partake in pot no i that's got this is they gotta be doing the stretch sign the whole time with them how could that last a whole hour how did it last at last a year yeah it was on for more than a year Tony Orlando shows photos of his grid iron days during a salute to the new year's day bowl games uh oh awful so that's the type of thing we don't want to explain too much no absolutely not uh so eight o'clock we're going with i'm gonna go for you get two choices it's limited uh i would oh well canons one of those shows where i had no idea another one it's like cojak cannon uh there's another one called uh jail with james francisco oh yeah uh manics no that was uh with michael that was with uh he's an Armenian guy but he changed my conners oh yeah that was his real name you got ban a check i hate to rip the cover off of these things hold on he's Armenian and cannon i didn't know what it was and i'm sure it wasn't good this is William Conrad who was later in jake and the fat man as the fat man uh and that was that better show uh jake and the fat man has some interesting segments but it's uh i always thought it was weird that he took that role there are certain shows where the title of the show is insulting to the actors in the show yeah i always wonder did they cast this with a different name and then you go to washing you're like it's my new show the William Conrad show and then it's called jake and the fat man like fox had a show called babes that was about three overweight sisters and i'm like this show is a sarcastic dig at the stars of the show and uh and also people love still to make a final obesity oh yeah absolutely go to this is my new show the fat ugly guy yeah i wouldn't have gone with cannon because i'm fascinated by the show called skating spectacular 75 an annual ice skating exhibition for charity once again you can get away with anything if it's for charity yeah would have been exciting ice skating not my not my favorite thing i'm a roller derby person but ice ice skating you know i'm i'm surprised they haven't tried to combine roller derby with ice skating uh that'd be exciting oh i know how you combine it though you basically just do roller derby on ice oh i see i think you're meant they half of them do some half of them are on ice and half of them are on roller skates put the roller skates on the ice i wasn't getting the concept that because then you're getting hockey fans yeah yeah to watch ice skating yeah i think i have a new color i think you got some great ideas some great ideas here uh so that is wednesday night new year's eve 1976 first day of the year thursday january first 1976 it's the bicentennial what are you kicking it off with on seven o'clock 1976 first day this has to be because it's all about coming home to the waltons right right why that you want to start the year right with a family unit that you can i watch the waltons a lot really yes i watched them a lot what did you what did you have you seen it recently or recently i don't think it would hold up so you love the waltons i did but i i mean oh there was what happened was there was a christmas movie that was made called the homecoming yes and that affected me i grew up jewish right i was very i loved christmas and had a sequel as well homecoming too oh and i remember maybe i saw it when i was really young and i just i loved i was like just the whole idea there searching for the family did you all have christmas because you didn't have it well it seemed really sort of exotic yes it was um yes and there was a couple of traumatic things in my whole family like my mom was very inconsistent so some years that she'd have a little thing and sometimes she wouldn't right actually made it more traumatic right and i when i was about nine years old for some reason i stumbled onto a christmas carol in our house yeah and i read it and because you could read like a very it's a short story yeah yeah and so i just for some reason and very much the uh english british christmas right we're the traditional victorian christmas oh and every version of a christmas cow but i used to love also archie comic books right when i was a kid because they always have christmas yeah and i and i watched every generation archie comics a lot of them overtly christian well you know because i'm kind of into comic books because my dad was uh friends with harvey kurtzman who was rich there you know and he got in trouble before going after he called starchy yes he had to actually get super duper man he got sued in the original man he got sued uh so they were but to me because i was just a kid i loved archie and i thought it was like i wanted it to be wholesome yeah i just did joke about how to make it more realistic now it's like uh no i didn't want to watch i didn't want to read archie just uh to find out that in river delo they're also having a sanitation strike yes yeah and syringes are are washing up on the page it's escapism it's it's sort of the america that never existed yeah i i don't need regi's take on uh global warming right regi hiv positive archie actually is riverdale is based on haverill massachusetts oh i didn't know that place in haverill massachusetts wow and the idyllic fifties haverill is a long gone thing it's a very crime-ridden place now it's actually where rob zombie comes from oh okay but haverill mass is riverdale the guy that archie had so funny so weird would you dad friends with kurtzman when you were a kid my dad was friend of harry christman because his friend um harry chester was like an advertising mass yeah and my dad wasn't in the business at all my but except he was very very funny yeah my dad he's still around but uh he's 88 but i remember very clearly going to the world's fair in 1964 i'm 57 world's 4964 and and we just harvey kurtzman happened to be there yeah with his daughter and uh it's like a memory that will stick with me did you read mad at that time when he was i did yes that what we did know was kids that he was um but then i didn't know about the whole story that it started as a because like what apparently harvey kurtzman he didn't like when they were doing those weird science the horror comics yeah because the ec comics was was super entertaining comics yeah so william gains inherited the company from his father and was doing funny animal books in the 1940s right and william gains uh reinvented it with al feldstein they were really the two big guys that recreated it as these horror comics yeah which became very popular with gis in the 40s and 50s who came back from reading them and so they started aiming them more at adults right but there was a time period where i knew obviously no more about night a bit there was a time where where even harvey felt like they were going too crazy with the eyeballs playing out they went very far that it because they knew what sold basically so they really started pushing it and so harvey started doing mad as an ec comic but then they created the comics code which was after the the frederick wortham trials which they went and testified before congress and all this stuff so mad was reinvented as a magazine yes magazines weren't subject to the scrutiny of the comics code because people didn't assume magazines were for children and the other thing was that what harvey was more into were these war things that he was doing yes and those were different so he was kind of he thought like they brought it on i mean obviously didn't agree with the censorship but they they brought it on themselves in a way and some small i mean that wasn't what the whole thing was about the whole thing was the political uh yeah it was a way to sort of control kids and yeah and you know was a scapegoat for juvenile delinquents and there's a pretty great movie called comic book confidential that's a very good documentary from 1990 that gets into that stuff uh quite a bit um and william gains was reinvented as sort of the head of mad magazine later which was funny that most kids knew him as the as the mad magazine guy yeah not the horrific eyeballs popping out women being decapitated guy yeah he really was i mean what happened was that harvey uh had dispute with him and lost mad magazine in the dispute and then he went in humbug which was backed by uh Hugh Hefner yes and uh saw that but everyone had a mad rip off i mean there was plop yes you remember it cracked cracked right famous and but i didn't know as a kid that it was the the first issues of mad were like so different yes they were varying and cutting edge and all that kind of thing yeah oh absolutely they were they were almost like proto underground comics and the sort of robert crumb and all the the sixties and seventies underground psychedelic sort of head comics were incredibly influenced by those first few issues of mad right they were they were sort of the biggest influence on those kinds of comics and it's sort of surprising to people when they look back at those yeah that influential uh yeah mad magazine is is a huge huge influence i think on a lot of comedy in the eighties people that grew up one mad and national ampoune and all that stuff where the the sort of interesting stuff for youth and and teenagers was in magazines but it's really funny to me like uh that the stuff that i liked when i was 9 or 10 ended up being terrible stuff like the lighter side of yeah that looked like because i was fast i had shut ups it was it shut ups remember those no they were like snappy answers oh oh yes nappy answers stupid questions yeah are you going are you going to swimming yeah i just have to go over this ski slope to get to the pool stupid yeah but mad at some great artists and some great uh art and uh really really cool stuff incredible artist and then i got into what i've been into what was it was more like american splendor harry pikar and then i love that yeah so the autobiographical economics yeah so all the eight ball and stuff like that yes he is the funniest he's hilarious and so wilson yep is incredible and mr wonderful is incredible yeah i it always bothers me i'm a huge comic book guy in case it's not even by the last 10 minutes of me babbling but uh i used to have a cable access show about comics when i was 12 and i was in the comic book legal defense fund uh member and all this stuff like that but it's crazy to me that people see comics as a genre and not a medium so back to the 50s thing they say it's a it's a genre for kids but it's a medium it's it's like saying movies are a genre for kids right now it's a thing yes you can tell any kind of story you want you say that because it gets associated with a third thing exactly yeah and it's actually it's it's a it's a specific skill so it's you can be a great artist you can be a great writer but doing something that combines the both is a different thing right it's a different thing it has different beats and it has a different vibe to it and to be really great at that and to do humor at that is difficult yeah and daniel hoe stuff and and those guys is is great oh daniel hoe's uh clouds oh daniel hoe stuff no and i do you know i do watercolors i draw and i like that but i mean i i don't have the discipline to do the kind of a detailed what was the the town it's so i'm so egomanial i could do our code i could do our code if i wanted but i i really admire those guys and uh but i love when it's the oil biographical stuff it's almost like what bothers me about curvy enthusiasm right it's just richard louis and larry david talking and that's why i love about harp i think his is the most brilliant because it doesn't necessarily go anywhere but it doesn't it doesn't like like lui i think what the downsides to me about lui is like he'll have episodes that don't go anywhere right but to me it's still contrived right i'm just gonna be in the rush of the orders it's not a real moment it's not a real moment whereas harvey's like telling you a real thing that happens to him he's stuck in line behind an old lady yes you know he's he's fixing his coat he's going on this hunt for jazz records it's small stories that are all filled out exactly real and and so yeah and i love the american splendor movie yes i loved that movie i did i i didn't love it as much as i wanted to because i loved i really almost wanted the whole thing to be a documentary did you ever meet arvey pikar i wanted to meet him and i have a mutual friend i have his phone number yeah but i was too kind of like in awe of him i met him once at a convention he was very nice yeah i got a autograph i always did use to watch him on letterman and yes and i knew of him before that um and and loved him on that show yeah and the interesting thing too about mad magazine coming out of ec comics is you know i won't get into the whole thing because i your time is valuable but uh how horror especially the mad the the ec comic style of horror with the oh henry sort of twist endings structurally is exactly the same as comedy oh okay it's the same sort of sting it's a punchline the you know the the little tie up ironic tie up at the wall ec comics so it made sense that they were easily moved into a comedy that makes sense yeah that's a cool sense did you ever see uh the frank fisetta documentary playing with fire no is that good too it is one of the best comic book artists a documentary is playing with fire playing with fire or painting with fire i'm sorry painting with fire he's a fascinating guy grew up in brooklyn real tough guy amazing artist had a stroke retot himself how to paint with his other hand and was just as well what is his name frank fisetta oh okay i've heard his name a million times oh this sounds it he grew up with Jack for me yeah really really fascinating darn sorry around thursday night all right um speed around okay we got speed rats so walton's uh thursday the walton's you watching it at uh seven what are you watching today well straight to san francisco which i never is actually james francisco's junior yes yes uh i never actually watched that all the way through but i look i watch anything with san francisco i loved i loved anything really oh i think anything west coast yeah anything specific well la yep but la was more uh subtle level right by the way uh finally for those of you listening i finally woken up i was i i was thought i was having uh i thought i was having a uh head onset of narcolepsy yeah i was nervous i was nervous could you see my eyes go i saw the eyes go i didn't want to say anything i almost fell down a couple of times yeah it's happened to me before where i've been talking and people have fallen asleep which was my fault i haven't been in a speech class in college this kid in the front row passed out while i was given a speech so yeah don't think that we we sped up on purpose yeah is my energy can uh street san francisco uh like la would be more i didn't notice it was la right then later i would know services go at a very distinct vibe to it so i love that and i never saw the show i love it was good it's an okay show it was very 70s it was sort of like rin 66 carmaldin is in this episode i remember bruce lee was in an episode of street san francisco that was an episode i liked quite a bit it's pretty much the only thing on at eight o'clock you have barbie jones which says or so that i absolutely it's no i never exactly but he ebson bothers me i don't know what it is about but he ebson he was good in the wizard of ours right he got he had to quit the wizard of ours because he got poisoning from the silver flake maker he was the original team oh oh he wasn't the guy so who was the jack haly jack haly it's so funny that i remember that way jack haly from boston mass chucits one of my favorite things about the wizard of ours is the boston accent of the tin man oh my um oh biz and tigers i never was even thought of that he has the greatest old man boston accent my heart dawty dawty it's so cool as a kid i just saw him as like uh uh that that was his musical tin man with his accent yeah i always really had an uh an affinity for him as a kid because he had this very warm accent that i was used to growing right yeah my favorite thing is martin short did a special on showtime in the mid eighties which is really weird and really funny and he does sort of a uh a mashup of this character that never existed that was in a wizard of ours like movie called the man in the moon and he's playing an anthropomorphic fence and he goes oh my bawdzel whoop and he does the jack haly jack and it's so funny and i often quote that my wife and arrow is going my bawdzel whoop i just saw him in the airport the way up to uh matriole i love him and i was so and he was so nice to me and so complimentary but it was like at one point i was like you're the greatest i said you're just the greatest i said i said oh my god i'm doing you doing me yes doing you know saying something nice and he laughed at the back i mean he he's a guy that doesn't get credit for the just bizarre grotesque characters that he would do people are at him oftentimes as like a punchline well oh why don't do you think that that i never see it that way younger people i've definitely seen he's martin short it's a punchline they the edgy weird stuff the best the best the best the best yeah some it was really scary the d-d-d da-da-da whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah great uh so the final night friday night seven o'clock what are you going samford and son although i i love red box i don't think i watched all of them all the way through but i would watch him in anything kind of if you tried to listen to his standup uh well i know about his standup because i know that he has uh uh a famous bit about you don't have to wash your gotta wash your ass whole everybody gotta wash your hands you don't have to wash your whole ass you know wash your ass whole yeah i don't know they've called party records yeah and i i don't know if i would have liked them have you listened i have yeah i feel like those records were the best way you describe them is built for tittering if i was a a very dismissive upper crust person in the 50s they would be like oh these titter records yeah right well also the thing is like he was with i was not aware i was reading but he knew mac and mac yeah they were jailed together yeah together and they bonded because they were both black eyes with red hair so they were both uh nicknamed red or a variation of red so they were salamates so crazy what you what a weird mix of people i watch that buddy movie knock him x and red fox why isn't that a series the the eye couple yeah exactly i would have watched that absolutely uh seven thirty you have two choices i think i know what you went with because the other one is very vague i don't think i wrote it down so what do you predict it chico in the man freddie prince's show the only other thing on is called to be announced oh no yeah you really have to hate freddie prince to go with that well my friend my friend josh wine stein who is with mystery science yes he does the greatest impression of uh the theme song hey oh that's all i'm gonna sing because i want you to have to get the right i think that's pretty good yeah i'm freddie prince i never watched that show probably that much i never did either and scatman crawlers is in this particular episode uh when chico's auntie connie turns up for a visit ed finds her in the hundred and fifty thousand dollars she just won in a lottery highly attractive situation we've all been that writes itself exactly uh so the final hour and this is a good thing to close with the final hour final hour is my not my i want to say my i'm so guilty of hyperbole but there's nobody i love more than than uh garner and and that show is unbelievably great a great smartass in the rockford fight oh he's so great and that show is really well written and that's where you know david chase wrote for that show yes and i could and another show that in the eighties when i was going through depression i would watch that show and that was like i wanted to be on the beach and malibu that trailer yeah yeah i mean i have the same thing i didn't realize how much i love delay with that stuff till i first went there yeah no i'm like how do i why didn't i move here when i was 18 right because uh when you well i my first one there i thought it was gonna be like all beaches yeah and that that was really not it's not true that's more like south yeah uh and then because i think rocker files and columbo i mean columbo may be the best show on tv of that style yeah but they're both such winners the rockford files james coming just so charming like you can't get a more charming character than and really rough and tumble yeah that's the thing where you could kick your ass or charm you into not fighting him like he either like he just whatever he feels like doing yeah and he would oh so such a wise ass and there's a book called difficult men to a really great book about uh the sopranos and the the wire and he talks about uh the this character being an influence kind of a precursor to uh the sopranos type of anti-hero because he was a loser and he was a counterculture guy in the way and he you know he's always in was he's always in trouble with the cop still and money yeah yeah he always reminded me of the um in the long goodbye the depiction of philip marlow that's played by um oh the movie i gotta say it's a robber altman movie called the long goodbye it's uh it's philip marlow but he's played by eliot gold wow and he's this ludie and then miss that movie it is my favorite robber altman movie hands down it's in la it's very rockford files ish yeah it's from about 72 or 73 it's a great movie i like shortcuts shortcuts is good yeah it's just the full frontal nudity from um julie and more oh uh she's she's ironing with no pants on that's what i remember from shortcuts oh i think i remember well yeah just think of his stuff like nashville and um mash yeah mash back to match right but long goodbye is my favorite movie that i have to do i'll hand that out so that is the end of the week and i i forgot to tell you this before but uh tbi guide is not just informative and cheers and a jeers it has opinions and so this week's tv guide this predates their cheers and jeers but if you had a cheer and a jeer right for this week in television what would they be based on what these shows based on this this shows this week okay i would say jeers uh cheers goes to rockford files for just being great you're still doing it in year what you were in year seven i got to tell you i'm looking for what you were sitting in 1976 77 is going to be another battle year yeah jeers to uh dragnet because your white white white politics just are annoying what agreed two signs of the coin there you have the la of the rockford files standing next to the la of dragnet at the same time right you can't get to more different depictions better way to wrap up absolutely another episode of tv guides why do i have to say that i and again i apologize to ken i apologize to america it'll be interesting to see if anyone made it through my initial part you try you had to carry me you'd be rewarded though by the yes yes your diligence will be rewarded i'll thank you so much and there you go that was a gent-lagged Andy Kinler talking about some fascinating things i could talk about ec comics from the 50s and christmas specials all day and in fact i probably have at certain points in my life he is very funny you can find him at andykindler.com definitely check him out if he comes to your town i highly recommend seeing him and also just to remind you we will be doing a live tv guidance counselor podcast the first official live tv guidance counselor podcast as part of new york super week which is sort of an adjunct to the new york comic con so make sure you like us on facebook because you will be the first to know we'll see you again next week for an all new episode i just realized what the uh name of the show was