A LA MO'D #1: MEMENTO MONDO (a teaser of sorts):

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of one of my all-time comic heroes and chiefest influences, Michael O'Donoghue.  Which I was very much hoping to be able to commemorate on this very blog before the day ended.  But alas, all manner of obstacles and technical difficulties have blocked my way, and the rather ambitious post in his honor is, as yet, incomplete, and, as I'm headed off to work now (where internet access is extremely problematic), will have to remain so until tomorrow.   The only thing I can think to do at this moment in tribute is to find a cane and smash this fucking laptop to fucking fucking atoms.  But I did not want the day to pass completely without some sort of tribute.  So here - a taste of O'D heaven, one of the very few from that show he used to work for that somehow has escaped the YouTube copyright-enforcement wood chipper (maybe because it was shot camcorder-kinescope-style, I dunno), with the promise that some far more intriguing (and way less obvious) material is soon to come.  So stay tuned.

And, because I just can't leave sick enough alone, please head over the jump for a portrait of the great man that is surely and undoubtedly the way he'd have wanted us to remember him.  Bless you, MO'D.  More tomorrow...

SPELUNKING IN THE SPROCKET HOLES:

While you're waiting for me to finish one of the dozens of posts on this blog that lie in various states of composition, why not hop on over to Biocarbon Amalgamate, the film blog recently founded by widely-respected pop culture journalist and tireless freelancer Robert Ham (hmm?  Well, yes, now that you mention it, he does have the same last name as me.  What are the odds...?) and take a shufti at a few posts I've managed to complete under his tough-love tutelage and editorship.  So far, I've written about:

• The 78 Project Movie, a film following a pair of filmmakers as they criss-cross the country, recording musicians from John Doe to John C. Reilly on authentic vintage equipment;
• Razing the Bar, a documentary about the short but happy life of Seattle's most beloved punk club; and
• a short piece about the unpleasant intimations regarding the future of one of L.A.'s most beloved rep houses.

That all three of them have something to do with the struggle to keep a small part of the charmingly ramshackle side of America's not-so-distant cultural heritage alive in the face of technical obsolescence and/or gentrification and/or unmitigated avarice, we'll just chalk up to sheer coincidence.  Feel free to look over the entire blog - there's some fine writing throughout - and check back frequently, as I'm at work on several more pieces; now, if you'll excuse me, I need to consult with someone who knows a little bit about these magic computer boxes - apparently, one's not supposed to write on them using a quill.

IAMBIC, I SAIDIC:

Well, what the hell - while I'm reconstituting long-wilted word salad in lieu of producing fresh, um, prose produce, I may as well serve up some more recent cuts of lean (oh, Christ) Tweet meat.  Fuck, if Steve Martin can slap his Twitter feed between covers and charge people the same price they'd pay for an actual book for it (yes, yes, I know it was for charity - buzz off, I'm in the middle of a delicate rationalization here), then there's no reason I can't transport a few damp squibs of near-cleverness from one barely-noticed area of the Internet to another.  So here are some items I posted the other day on Twitter (@williamham) under the hashtag #NationalFirstDraftPoetryDay, plus a few bonus ones whose brilliance could not be contained in a mere 140 characters.  I just bet some of them may even push the 147-character envelope. I know. I can't be stopped.

how do you like your blueeyed boy
   Mister Death
regular
       or
           extracrispy 

*   *   *   * 

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
But, whatevs.  Costco's hiring. 

*   *   *   * 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
No?
Well, how about a Summer's Eve, douchebag? 

*   *   *   *

Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
And beat my brains in with a rock –
Because he's fucking DEATH. 

*   *   *   * 

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright,
won't you guyde my sleigh tonight? 

*   *   *   * 

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
Three, tops.  Four if it's your birthday. 

*   *   *   *

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said, "What the fuck kind of middle name is Bysshe, anyway?" 

*   *   *   *  

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox 

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast 

If you send
one more note
of mine
to Harper's

I will eat all
your peaches
and leave pits in
your slippers


*   *   *   *

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem for its microdermabrasion appointment?

MY FIRST PUBLISHED WRIT(H)ING, ANNOTATED (REVISITED):

In keeping with the newly-minted Twittition that is ThrowBackThursday and out of a desperate need to put something up here that doesn't apparently expire whilst still in "Draft" mode, I offer this - a five-year-old posting from the Forced Exposure Magazine Appreciation Society Facebook group about a twenty-one (!!) -year-old letter section of said magazine, in which, because of the increasingly gaping gap between issues culminating in what we can assume was the final issue of said uber-zine (I don't recall any official word that publication had ceased - maybe issue #19 is still being painstakingly grunted out), they published a letter I had written almost three years previous to that.  Which makes this a Triple Throwback.  Which sounds like an arcane dodgeball move.  Anyway, enjoy the following, whose resemblance to the dense, compressed scribe stylings of one Mr. Byron Coley (a writer every bit as seminal and inspirational to me as Saint Lester ever was) is purely and cravenly intentional.

(Pictured above: the cover of FE #18, the issue in question.  If the picture is a bit hazy, well, so are my memories.)

THANK YOU, DON PARDO:

Exciting stuff - exciting to me, anyway - is soon to come to this here blog there, but first, a quick appetizer: a funny, clever tribute to the inimitable Don Pardo, who split on an all-expenses paid trip to the great vocal booth in the sky last week at age 96.  (If you've read my typically-overlong Facebook post on the subject, feel free to skip it: the whole thing after this paranthetical aside has been cut-and-pasted from there, with a few minor changes throughout.)

Thoughts, relevant and otherwise: 

1) I am at least 65% convinced that Kristofferson didn't realize he was on TV.

2) One of the reasons I still revere the first few years of this program - not just that it made room for smart sketches like this, but it respected the individual voices of its writers to the point that the attentive viewer could tell who wrote what. If this wasn't Tom Schiller's doing, I'll eat Werner Herzog's other shoe. 

3) How long do you think my clever video subterfuge will stave off the inevitable cease and desist order?  (edit - not very long at all, apparently.  Fine, NBC/Universal, I'll rake in unconscionable amounts of money through alternate means.  But I don't have a rake!  And rakes cost money!  It's like that O. Henry story, Title of Story Blocked Due To Copyright Claim By Nestle.)

4) Don Pardo, unless there's a crew member or two I missed, was the person who pulled an SNL paycheck longer than anyone - 39 seasons, and his baritone Ur-Game-Show bellow graced the 8H loudspeakers for all of them but one (the seventh, 1981-82, supposedly at the insistence of Michael O'Donoghue, who reportedly wanted to fire him on-air during the season premiere. I plan on talking A LOT about that season, or at least the first seven shows, on my blog in the near future. So, y'know, that). Such a seemingly small part of the show's overall feel, yet crucial; there was always comfort knowing he'd be there, a reliable consistency that played well against the ever-shifting theme music (and if his hire was originally for ironic kitsch value, that morphed into true affection by the last sketch of the first season [which this is] - they honored him almost every week for many years with the very last joke of the night.) It's sure gonna be a different beast when it comes back, I'm sure. I feel a little like I felt when the Stones' semi-secret weapon Ian Stewart passed on some years back - some small bit of savor is gone now, never to return. And it just might not be worth the strain of its continuing. Not that NBC will take this show off the air, ever, but SNL sans Pardo feels wrong, somehow. We shall see. Or hear, whatever. One of the great voices - quite literally - in broadcast history is no longer with us, and I present this as tribute.

(All rights belong to NBC/Universal and Broadway Video)