Denis Leary - No Cure for Cancer

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

I first saw this in March of 2000, and I watched this again tonight, probably for the first time in like five or six years. Man, I outgrew this one. Fuckin' spaz.

[Nighthawk 0]

It's also completely ripped off from Bill Hicks, at times nearly word for word. Hicks was funny, though.

[Guest step up, ghetto blaster.]

huh. I hadn't come across Hicks when I first saw this, but going back and watching it again, you are correct. I dislike lifted bits.

 

what else has Leary done (if anything) that's worth hearing?

[Youth N Asia 0]

I like him as an actor, but hate his stand up

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

His "Asshole" song was like the funniest thing ever when I was a Freshman in high school.

[Slayer 0]

Why is Bill Hicks dead?

 

Because there's no cure for cancer

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Bill Hicks was such a blowhard piece of shit.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

His "Asshole" song was like the funniest thing ever when I was a Freshman in high school.

Yeah, I know, right? Now I just ask myself why this guy extolling the virtues of beer and cigarettes is bouncing around on a meth binge. I mean, Christ, it's actually uncomfortable to watch at times.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Anyone remember Afterdrive? It was already out of production when Comedy Central came to my town in 1991, but they showed it often enough, anyway. (This being when Comedy Central had little else to run other than mediocre movies and numerously repackaged stand-up clips.)

 

EDIT: I specifically remember Comedy Central debuting on our cable network on a Thursday, in the summer of '91. The next day, at 10am, I saw MST3k for the first time. Thus began an adolescent love affair that didn't wane until the Sci-Fi years.

[Guest Gym Class Fallout]

Did your cable system ever split its channels? For a while on our cable system (up to about 1995), we'd get VH1 in the daytime and Comedy Central in the evenings, when Comedy Central had such fare as Kids in the Hall, Dr. Katz, Short Attention Span Theater, and that one stupid puppet show with the movies that everyone on the Internet seems to like. As long as we got the last one there, we were a happy family, though. It wasn't until years later (when Comedy Central had that animation block on Sunday nights) that I figured out the premise of Dr. Katz.

 

Comedy Central, for me, peaked around 1999-2000ish, with the aforementioned Katz/Critic/South Park block, Upright Citizens Brigade, Soap reruns, British Whose Line?, No Cure For Cancer and the Dana Carvey special in heavy rotation, and the Daily Show when you had Steve Carell, Nancy Walls, Beth Littleford, Stephen Colbert, and a tenor that was nowhere near as heavy-handed as what we have now. I don't want to blame 9/11, but...

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

There was channel splitting yeah, but I don't recall much of it happening beyond the early 90s, outside of the ultimately failed integration of Much Music onto US airwaves. In my town, it had to share airtime with whatever was that shopping network that featured Don West.

 

And man, youtube is proving useless in finding clips of old Comedy Central shows. Locating MST is easy enough, but there's nothing pre-'94. Afterdrive? Clash? Sports Monster? Short Attention Span Theater, when Jon Stewart was a co-host?

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I was a big fan of Night After Night with Allan Harvey.

 

And youtube comes through:

 

[Slayer 0]

I only know of the old Comedy Central (and even Comedy Channel) shows from commercials on MST trader tapes that I got in '96

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Watching clips of Night After Night shows it wasn't any better or worse than any current talk show.

[King Kamala 0]

Good to see me and my brother aren't the only Dr. Katz fans I know. I still love that show, own the first two seasons on DVD and will probably buy the later sets since I don't remember a real dropoff. I do remember people who weren't really comedians showing up later on though like Jeff Goldblum.

 

 

Ah, they're coming out with The Complete Series in November. Eh, don't know how I feel about this. I hope they release Seasons 3-6 individually. It'd probably be cheaper too since The Complete Series is $120 and the individual seasons are $15 tops.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

That pricing structure makes no sense at all.

[fazzle 0]

whatever was that shopping network that featured Don West.

 

 

LEBRON JAMES ROOKIE CARD! WITH STRETCH PAY! AND WE'RE NOT DONE YET! ANOTHER LEBRON JAMES ROOKIE CARD!

 

 

 

It's a scary thought, but he's actually calmed down some in TNA.

 

 

[King Kamala 0]

That pricing structure makes no sense at all.

 

I think their justification is the Complete Series has a bunch of special features and three never before seen episodes while the individual season sets are barebones with the exception of commentary on 2 or 3 episodes per set. But I think only geeks are willing to pay $30 more to get more special features.

 

It's hard to believe now and I bet 90% of you will razz me for saying this but Ray Romano was actually funny on Dr.Katz, according to one of the commentaries they wanted to make him a regular but he decided to do NewsRadio instead (Which he was on for a couple days before getting canned and replaced by Joe Rogan).

 

The other 10% is wondering "Wait....when is Ray Romano not funny?"

 

Thing I miss the most about old school Comedy Central- hours upon hours of 1980 to late 90s SNL reruns. The E! Network never fucking shows reruns and when they do it's the same rotation of six or seven episodes from this decade. Bastards!

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

I recall enjoying Ray Romano on that show, but I haven't seen those episodes in years. Dom Irrera was the best of the reoccurring guests.

[Failed Bridge 0]

I use to love their animation block of The Tick (usually two episodes), The Critic, and Duckman.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

The Critic has aged pretty poorly I think. It just doesn't seem funny at all to me, and the Family Guy-esque flashback sequences are pretty boring as well.

[King Kamala 0]

The Critic has aged pretty poorly I think. It just doesn't seem funny at all to me, and the Family Guy-esque flashback sequences are pretty boring as well.

 

I couldn't disagree more. Though I will say some of the pop culture references are very dated but that sort of comes with the territory.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Family Guy invented flashbacks? If you insist on comparing the two shows, one of the worst (of many) things about Family Guy is its tendency to run jokes into the ground, something The Critic did not. A comparison:

 

The Critic: Jay is interviewing Willy Wonka. Jay chews gum, thus turning into a giant blueberry. Joke's over.

 

Now, if Family Guy did it, you'd get this:

 

Family Guy: Peter chews gum, turns into giant blueberry, rolls down the street and narrowly misses oncoming traffic while doing so (with some of the cars crashing into each other). He finally comes to a rest in a poor neighborhood, where he is attacked by starving children.

 

The gag in The Critic wasn't very funny, but at least it threw it out there and moved on. Family Guy would take the joke and add a bunch of ridiculous shit on top of it. It's as if the writers think more volume leads to greater hilarity.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

Course, Family Guy did do the blueberry thing, and pretty much left it at that, but I take your point. Overdoing it is more a symptom of the current episodes really.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Volume = Hilarity can also be applied to the Dane Cook method of comedy. Yelling your punchlines to result in bigger laughs.

[Giuseppe Zangara 0]

Course, Family Guy did do the blueberry thing, and pretty much left it at that, but I take your point. Overdoing it is more a symptom of the current episodes really.

Ha. I brought up the Wonka thing as it was the only flashback used in The Critic I clearly remembered. Still, my point stands.

[Kinetic 0]

The biggest and most obvious problem with "Family Guy" is the incredibly sloppy way that they segue into those flashbacks. And the random bits, while sometimes funny, are almost never in service of the actual storyline. I've seen somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty episodes of that show and I don't think I could give you a decent synopsis of any of them. The stories exist to justify the flashbacks and "Star Wars" references and puzzling celebrity digs. "American Dad" is actually a lot better. "The Critic" always seemed like a show that was written around the idea that the movie parodies would be the real attraction. And I think Jon Lovitz is hysterically funny, but that show was pretty lame 90% of the time.

[Guest Pizza Hut's Game Face]

Even when it's lame, it's funny, though, like all the Franklin stuff. He's just sitting in his study, reading the NYC Yellow Pages. That's good stuff. I'll defend The Critic to the ends of the earth.

[Guest Smues]

The Critic was an amazing show, and it's an absolute shame it only lasted 23 episodes. Especially when it was doing well on FOX and basically got cancelled because the new guy in charge didn't like it.

 

I watched that block of Comedy Central cartoons for years, despite them constantly fucking with the schedule and me never knowing just what I was going to get. The best was in 2003 when they'd have Clerks, The Critic, Duckman, and Dilbert. Before all of those but Duckman got DVD releases that comedy block was a godsend. Speaking of which, Duckman needs a god damned DVD release.

[MrRant 0]

Duckman never got the run it deserved.