Episode #301: Back In Ye Olden Days When Comedy Was Memorable

A blast from the very distant past: sidewalk art via the road, circa 2010's, as performed during the annual Waterfall Festival. It's funny how images can conjour up a tenuous connection to a random song, in this case, The Spirit of Radio.

As most of you know, I am quite ambivalent to most forms of audio that originated during my teenage years which are currently being fossilized on an hourly basis on commercial radio.* There are however, a few exceptions, of which one is comedy. I grew up/came of age in what I consider to be the 2nd golden age of comedy (late 70's through the 80's) and is where I often retreat to when I want to listen to good comedy.

*the stuff being fossilized today I remember listening to when it was actually fresh.

I actually have quite a bit of comedy in my record collection that ranges from old time (Lily Tomlin), to really old time (Victor Borge), from crass druggie (Cheech & Chong) to the strangely topical (Vaughan Meader and Rich Little), to name just a few. But I rarely venture beyond that 2nd golden age of comedy, simply because the majority of today's doesn't really do anything for me (I will admit to watching some Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in their collective prime though).

However, amongst the baker's dozen or so of comedy records that I own, there are three that I do cherish from my favorite comedian-turned-to-very-competent-actor, Steve Martin.

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Pictured to your immediate left is one of those albums, which in today's world the front cover featured would probably get you into trouble for being the "T" phobic word.

Like most adults who grew up in the seventies, my initial exposure to Steve Martin was through his novelty song "King Tut" (also had my first exposure to censorship on vinyl with the B side called "Excuse Me"). This novelty song of his piqued my curiosity enough to search out his comedy albums, of which three: the one pictured to your left, "A Wild And Crazy Guy" and "Let's Get Small", are part of my collection.

I felt his humor really connected with me on a personal level and some of his bits, like the aforementioned "King Tut" and "The Cruel Shoes" became absolute comedy classics. The man was an absolute legend as a comedian and I personally believe he was way ahead of his time with his comedy.

I for one, was truly sad when he stepped away from being a comedian and moved in other forms of entertainment, like acting (the majority of his movies were commercial/critical successes) and music (he dipped into bluegrass with his banjo playing, and became quite the solid entertainer in that endeavor). In general though, his comedy is still, some 40+ years later, my go-to humor of choice whenever I want to have a chuckle or two.

He was my introduction to the type of comedy that you really don't see much of these days: clean with the occasional swear word thrown in. In my later adult years, I came to appreciate his comedy as well-written sketches that actually relied on talent with the English language as opposed to 50 ways to use the "F" bomb in grammar. I think subconsciously, I wanted to emulate that with my writing: playing around with the English language just enough to make my stories interesting without an over reliance on select adjectives (trust me, creating a kneecap insult that replaces a swear word/multiple swear words is not the easiest thing to do).

He will always be a comedic legend in my book. A legend that people often strive to emulate but haven't yet completely succeeded in doing so.

So I leave you with this question: who is your favorite comedian, past or present, that has influenced you in a particular way?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #300: My Bookcase {3}-Curiously Odd Non-Fiction

Flashback Monday of sorts: just to give everyone an idea on how long I've been blogging, this is a pic of my daughter that I had used in my photo blog back in the late 2000's. She is now 24 1/2 and a university freshman pursuing a dual PhD/Masters (already has a BA) in neuroscience; the two stores in the background filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and were (mostly) liquidated.

As I've mentioned previously, non-fiction is my preferred genre to read. It started with the Guinness Book of World Records, but quickly spidered off into other sub-genres under that umbrella, including one of my perennial faves: true crime.

Now I know that sounds weird, but true crime really became my go-to non-fiction genre for most of my adult life. Whenever I had a problem in finding something to read, I could always depend on true crime coming through for me.

Fast forward a few decades. Having exhausted most of what I have chosen to read about in true crime, I moved on to other topics under the queasy literary umbrella that is death that happened to strike my fancy. One of the odder topics that had struck my fancy was how people passed away performing/pursuing certain outdoor activities (aka The Darwin Awards), of which one, visiting a national park, is the subject of this post.

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I had first heard about this particular book while I was watching a documentary about North America a few years ago, so I decided to check it out. As the subtitle suggests, it contains all kinds of Darwin Awards activity (along with some that were decidedly not Darwin Awards eligible) that has happened since Yellowstone was first opened back in 1872.

The one thing that stood out to me was not the fact they had records of untimely deaths dating back to 1872, nor the fact that the book was written by (at the time of publication) a member of the NPS, but the fact that this book is an updated second edition, circa 2014, with the first edition being published in 1995.

It kind of boggles the mind that a second (and apparently final) edition had to be produced in order to bring this darker side of Yellowstone to completion (as of 2014).

Not to weird anyone out any further than they already are by reading this post, but I found this book to be quite the engaging read. While some of the events are distasteful to read, Lee managed to weave in the history of Yellowstone quite effectively throughout his narrative. Essentially, you're not just reading a book about smart people doing stupid things, or nature doing stupid things to smart people (with tragic results), but you're also reading a thoroughly researched history of Yellowstone too.

If your secret guilty pleasure is reading stories about people who nominate themselves for a Darwin Award, this book is for you. It's well written, highly enjoyable tome that treats the profoundly stupid, the simply careless and the those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with equal gravitas, thus letting the reader judge for themselves the merit of each and every story.

I sincerely hope that this latest installment of my personal bookcase has met or exceeded your expectations this week.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #299: The Music Of Our Youth Influences The Music Of Our Today

I was feeling just a tad zany today, thus the main protagonist from one of the very few (like you can count the amount on one hand) live action movies that I've chosen to pay money and watch as an adult. This was an actual gift I had bought for my wife while we were dating.

The music that I grew up with as a child has had a moderate influence on what I have decided to listen to today as a "mature" adult (I'm 60, so you can take that "mature" descriptor with a grain of Himalayan sea salt), although it took me quite few decades to realize that.

Back in the 70's, I grew up listening to what my parents listened to: my mother enjoyed 50's rock/doo-wop and I think some 60's & early 70's pop; while my father enjoyed 60's folk and 70's/early 80's country.

As the 70's morphed into the 80's my music tastes didn't really change much nor did they follow what my schoolmates liked (e.g. the classic rock/new wave bands that were originally fresh and popular in the late 70's/early 80's). For all intents and purposes, they basically stagnated, and stayed that way until the mid 90's when I was introduced to the wonders of college radio.

College radio allowed me the ability to not only reconcile the music of my youth with music of the present that was still under the same genre umbrella (e.g. folk and classic country), but also allowed me to explore other genres that I had given short shrift to previously.

I want to focus a little bit on the aforementioned genres that I grew up on and hopefully show how they've influenced what I listen to today.

1} The folk music that I'd grown up listening to boiled down to three groups: the heavily commercialized/influential Peter, Paul and Mary; the commercially successful trio that had four members The Kingston Trio (If you can find it on c.d. check out their live recording from Lake Tahoe (called "Once Upon A Time") when they were at their height of popularity; and the commercially successful/influential Australian quartet The Seekers (the original incarnation from the mid 60's).

These three groups gave me my first real exposure to acoustic music. Prior to them, the only other  real exposure I had to acoustic music was via Hee-Haw and The Waltons. It took me forever and a day to appreciate the power that acoustic music could bring to a given song. To be honest, early folk music allowed me to appreciate the lyrics of a given song, especially if it was a topical song. An appreciation that still sticks with me some 45 years later (never really liked the MTV show "Unplugged" because it sounded too artificial/too forced when artists tried to turn their well known hits into acoustic songs w/o putting in the necessary work to make them fit the format).

Over the decades, that early appreciation of acoustic music made me take a second look at other related genres like the singer-songwriter, classical guitar and even a deeper look into the folk music genre (but bypassing today's folk/pop trend that seems to be all the rage these days.

2} The country music that I had listened to growing up would be considered "classic country" by today's metrics: Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, The Statler Brothers and ye olden stars from The Grand Old Opry to name just few. I also grew up listening to just a smattering of Johnny Cash, as my father really wasn't in to him.

If you fast forward to the early 2000's, I started hearing more Johnny Cash on college radio, which really intrigued me. Turns out he had a renaissance of sorts where he was starting to cover popular rock and pop songs, (all courtesy of producer Rick Rubin), as well as performing duets with some as well. During that fertile time period, he released six c.d.'s on Lost Highway Records, of which the first five are really good, and I highly recommend checking those out.

Just like that early appreciation of acoustic music changed my outlook, so did listening to classic country. In addition to rediscovering Johnny Cash, listening to college radio allowed me to explore other genres under the country umbrella like Americana, bluegrass and alt country. What it did not do was modify my very dime outlook on country-pop, but I managed to dip my toes in a small wading pool wave by selectively exploring certain artists in the country-pop genre that I could actually listen to w/o being turned off.

In general, what I had listened to growing up has come full circle. While I now listen to the same kind of music that both of my children listen to (shock I know), I will also search out and listen to the music of my youth, because sometimes listening to the music of past often makes you appreciate the music of the present. Especially the stuff that doesn't quite make it to commercial radio in its currently decaying format.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved