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“Are you sure that little asshole is through?”
If you’re not in your 40’s yet, the verbal elements of today’s dispatch may be lost on blind eyes since you may not have either a conscious memory or a frame of reference to understand what I’m talking about.
Fortunately, I’m pretty good about providing visual aids in these ongoing posts which endeavor to make your internet experience so much better than what it could have been if you didn’t visit my strand of the worldwide web.
Now that I’ve put the self aggrandizement out there, let’s get down to business.
Ladies and gentlemen, I have watched a lot of TV in my day. Thanks to the internet, I don’t really consider myself as tied to it as I used to be. Big picture, I guess TV was my gateway drug to the internet.
There are two specific scenes in television history (as it applies to the years I’ve been around) which continue to make me laugh each and every time I watch them.
Number two on my list is a scene from Taxi when Reverend Jim took his driving test and couldn’t grasp the concept of a yellow light.
It’s a shame that Tony Danza is no longer with us to view this post and reminisce on that brilliant exchange between Christopher Lloyd and Jeff Conway.
Let’s pause a moment.
Pause for effect.
Okay, now that you’re back and have verified that Tony Danza is still alive an well (at the time of this writing), let’s move on to my favorite TV moment which still makes me laugh.
Correction.
It doesn’t make me laugh, it makes me giggle. Believe me there’s a difference. In my world, a giggle is a nitro infused laugh.
Some of my earliest memories of watching TV involve watching Carol Burnett on Saturday nights. If memory serves, the lineup on those nights usually included Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. I want to say Space 1999 was on at the time as well.
Anyway, Carol Burnett had a variety show where she had a special guest and her stockade of players between Vicki Lawrence, Harvey Korman, and Tim Conway. Every week, they would put on a show featuring various sketches followed up by a musical production at the end.
Did I mention Tim Conway?
If there was anyone who could ever steal a show, it was Conway. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail of what the man did on that show because I couldn’t do it justice.
He did a movie with Don Knotts around the same time of the show’s run called The Apple Dumpling Gang. The only scene I remember from that movie is a point where Conway lit a cigarette from the butt of Don Knotts, which just happened to have been on fire.
Even still, as funny as that particular moment was, it fails in comparison to an improvisational tangent Conway went on during an episode of “Family”, which was a standing favorite on The Carol Burnett Show.
There were two different stories Conway told in the ad-lib. Both of them completely destroyed Conway’s co-stars as they tried to maintain their composure. At the same time, Conway kept a straight face through the ordeal. That is, of course, until Vicki Lawrence cracked her own ad-lib while staying in character.
Enjoy. Laugh. Giggle.
Thanks and/or props go to Eric Barclay for the featured image on this post.
