If you’d just as soon skip tonight’s Democratic beauty pageant for something, anything else, well — have I got a podcast for you.
No, it’s not another edition of Radio Free Dogpatch. This is the real deal, two pros, Marc Maron talking with Stephen Colbert.
I loved “The Colbert Report,” and Herself is nuts for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Maybe you’re crazy for both of these aspects of the guy’s personality.
Well, lemme tell ya, there’s a lot more where those came from. The chorale of voices in Colbert’s head make mine look like a barbershop quartet. And yet somehow, he has them all singing instead of screaming.
I wish they’d had more time, but somebody had a show to do. Maybe there will be a rematch.
In the meantime, if you need a little sumpin’-sumpin’ for dessert, check out Maron’s chat with David Letterman.
Yesterday’s air-quality report from the City of Albuquerque.
I lay low for April Fool’s Day. It’s gotten to be kind of like the St. Patrick’s Day or New Year’s Eve of comedy — not for serious funnymen. Funnypersons? Persons of funny?
My favorite April Fool’s gag may be the time the Gazette caught the Greeley Tribune napping. It was in the late Seventies, and some wisenheimers on staff faked up a photo of an El Paso County pickle farmer inspecting a bumper crop (reporter Don Branning in a planter’s hat, examining a plump dill tied to a tree across the street from the newspaper).
We ran it on the Metro front, then put it on The Associated Press wire just for giggles. To our astonishment, the Tribune picked it up and ran the shot on its Farm page despite the photo credit, which read something like, “GT photo by Aprylle Foole.”
The desk jockey who made that call clearly was not a local boy with shitcaked bootheels. The Tribune is in Weld County, one of the richest agricultural counties east of the Rockies, the state’s top producer of grain, sugar beets and cattle.
Not pickles, though. El Paso County had all the pickle farms in Colorado.
Here in New Mexico the ash and juniper are providing all the comedy, if your idea of a good laugh involves watching some poor sod’s nose run like an irrigation ditch with a busted headgate.
I pretended to be a runner yesterday afternoon and came home with an enraged snotlocker, a condition that persists this morning. Snot funny, man.
When I went to check the forecast this morning Weather Underground served me up an ad for bipolar-depression medication. Judging by the list of side effects, which ran longer than the CGI credits in a Marvel superhero flick, anyone prescribed it will soon be longing for the good old days of bipolar depression.
Clearly, with another Monday hanging over our heads like a 16-ton weight, what we need here is a solid dose of the best medicine: laughter.
Thus, for your amusement and/or bemusement, we have a twofer from Marc Maron, who last week chatted with John Cleese and Eric Idle, and a New York Times Q&A with Jerry Seinfeld, who basically channels a Cleese line from “Life of Brian” when he says of their shared line of work in troubled times: “We’re figuring it out as we go along.”
• A Cellar’s Market: Speaking of troubled times, the Comedy Cellar, where Louis C.K. has been inching back into the spotlight, is getting into late-night TV on Comedy Central. The piece is worth reading for the gags about Megyn Kelly and Il Douche.
• Wot’s All This Then? And finally, Netflix is airing a ton of Monty Python, from the original TV show to the movies to the various Pythons’ side projects.
The streaming service is acquiring ABQ Studios from Pacifica Ventures, with a $14 million economic-development assist from the state and city, and says it anticipates bringing a billion smackers and up to 1,000 production jobs per annum over 10 years to our little corner of the cinematic universe.
Terms of the deal have yet to be disclosed.
Netflix has produced in New Mexico before, of course — there’s “Longmire,” “Godless” and some Adam Sandler vehicle that I will watch just as soon as there’s nothing else on TV and I’m chained to a chair with my eyelids wired open.
And ABQ Studios, which opened for business in April 2007, has hosted everybody’s favorite Duke City drug drama, “Breaking Bad,” along with bits of Marvel’s “Avengers” franchise, according to Variety.
“Our experience producing shows and films in New Mexico inspired us to jump at the chance to establish a new production hub here,” said Ty Warren, Netflix veep for physical production.
“The people, the landscape and the facilities are all stellar and we can’t wait to get to work — and employ lots of New Mexicans — creating entertainment for the world to enjoy.”
This has to be considered good news, which we so rarely discuss here, and I’ll look forward to learning more of the deets once the cheerleaders drop their pompoms and the joyful noise abates somewhat.
In the meantime, if you don’t have a Netflix subscription please acquire same with all possible speed. We need to make that $14 mil’ back before all these Netflix execs get their cars stolen.
In my last post I mentioned that we live in a desert, by which I meant an actual desert, the Chihuahuan.
Soon we will be living in a consumer desert as well, if Herself has anything to say about it.
Her elder sister and niece have been earning some pocket money hawking items on eBay, and their enthusiasm for the activity has proven contagious. Herself has begun working our overgrown unused-goods orchard like an undocumented immigrant, plucking low-hanging fruit like her unworn Oakleys, my still-functional Flip UltraHD camcorder, and our fifth-generation iPods for sale to the slavering hordes of bargain hunters at large on the Innertubes.
She also required me to drag her old Cannondale R800 down to this weekend’s BikeABQ bike swap at Sport Systems, where the 23-year-old machine is certain to fetch dozens of dollars. If anyone in the vicinity needs a low-mileage, made-in-USA, 48cm road bike, this sucker is the last nickel bargain in America.
There’s all manner of crap cluttering up El Rancho Pendejo, and none of it is safe. Soon, if we’re not careful, we’ll be forced to go out and get … more stuff!
Mad Blog Media 