Your Pre-HOLIDAY SOR-BAY PSA: Lewis Black on Black Friday

Here is a 

"Pre-HOLIDAY SOR-BAY PSA"

from Lewis Black.

  

Lewis Black reports on the increasingly outlandish practices associated with Black Friday and discusses its impact on laborers and retailers.

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This Week in Television History: November 2014 PART IV

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As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.

November 26, 1989

The television series MTV Unplugged, featuring stripped-down acoustical performances by a wide range of artists not usually known for such performances, makes its broadcast premiere on this day in 1989.

The premiere episode of MTV Unplugged was only lightly promoted by the network, in part because it featured a lineup whose biggest name was the English pop group Squeeze—a band whose greatest popular success was already several years behind it. The episode also featured performances by the relatively unknown singer-songwriter Syd Straw, Cars guitarist Elliot Easton and singer-songwriter Jules Shear, who went on to act as host in the first season of MTV Unplugged. Following this less-than-star-studded debut, subsequent episodes featured a smattering of moderately popular acts like 10,000 Maniacs and Michael Penn along with performers with little or no name recognition among the MTV generation, like Graham Parker and Dr. John.

November 30, 1929

Richard Wagstaff "Dick" Clark is born. 

He was an American radio and television personality, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American television's longest-running variety show, American Bandstand, from 1957 to 1987. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which transmitted Times Square's New Year's Eve celebrations worldwide. Clark was also well known for his trademark sign-off, "For now, Dick Clark. So long!", accompanied with a military salute.

To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".

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Tony Figueroa

Your Mental Sorbet: Tenspeed and Brownshoe Full Pilot

Here is another "Mental Sorbet" a little spark of madness that we could use to momentarily forget about those things that leave a bad taste in our mouths.

Tenspeed and Brown Shoe was an American detective/comedy series originally broadcast by the ABC network between January and June 1980. The series was created and executive produced by Stephen J. Cannell.

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Tony Figueroa

Mike Nichols

You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted

- Mike Nichols 

Mike Nichols 

November 6, 1931 – November 19, 2014

We lost Mike Nichols yesterday. He was born Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, Germany and was an television, stage and film director, writer, producer and comedian. He began his career in the 1950s with the improv troupe, the Compass Players, predecessor of the Second City in Chicago and as one half of the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with Elaine May. May was also in the Compass. In 1968 he won the Academy Award for Best Director for the film The Graduate. His other films include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Catch-22, Carnal Knowledge, Silkwood, Working Girl, The Birdcage, Closer,Charlie Wilson's War (his final picture), and the TV mini-series Angels in America. He also staged the original theatrical productions of Barefoot in the Park,Luv, The Odd Couple and Spamalot.

In 1955 Nichols was invited to join the Compass Players, which was predecessor to Chicago's Second City and whose members included Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Del Close, and Nancy Ponder, directed by Paul Sills.

Nichols moved back to Chicago to perform comedy with Compass and started doing improvisational routines withElaine May, which led to the formation of the comedy duo Nichols and May in 1958. Three records of their routines, best-sellers at the time, were released and the duo made appearances in nightclubs, on radio and on several television programs.

In 1960 Nichols and May opened the Broadway show An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May, directed by Arthur Penn. In the show they were accompanied by Chicago pianist Marty Rubenstein, host of the television show Marty's Place and the musical director at Mister Kelly's. The LP album of the show won the 1962 Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Personal idiosyncrasies and tensions eventually drove the duo apart to pursue other projects in 1961. They later reconciled and worked together many times, such as on the unsuccessful A Matter of Position, a play written by May and starring Nichols. May scripted Nichols' films The Birdcage and Primary Colors. 

I will always remember Mike Nichols this way

Good Night Mr. Nichols

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Tony Figueroa