The Match Game Live
Upright Citizens Brigade
Hollywood, California
First Friday and Saturday of Each Month
10 PM (Reservations A Must)
Rating: 5 teaspoons of Bosco (out of 5)
By Allen Bacon
Editor
Bosco
Gene Rayburn would be very proud. Comedian extraordinaire Jimmy Pardo and his buddies are doing a live sendup of the old television game show the Match Game and the results are hilarious; the funniest stuff I've seen in a long time.
The Match Game Live, is an actual game. Two contestants, one man and one woman, are picked from the audience to participate and have the chance to win up to $100 or, as was the case the night I was there, Jimmy Pardo's old leather jacket. The interaction between the Chicago-born fast talking Pardo (a regular on Comedy Central shows) and the audience, the two contestants and the all-star panel is hysterical. The show even comes equipped with the funky old Match Game music, which is worth the price of admission itself.
And the six member panel is nothing to sneeze at either. On the night I was there, Comedy Central star Paul F. Thompkins, Late Night with Conan O'Brien's ex-sidekick Andy Richter, Madmen star John Hamm were among the six on the panel. I understand the night before that Janine Garafalo was on the panel. And that's part of the attraction of the show...you never know who is going to be on the panel...and it is usually the top comedy talent.
Make it an evening by going to one of the great restaurants along Franklin Ave. in walking distance from the UCB Theatre (Partly owned by Saturday Night Live's Amy Poehler) and be sure to make on line reservations before going down to see the Match Game Live. Show starts at 10 PM on the first Friday and Saturday of each month. Next shows are on Fri. May 2and Sat. May 3.
Photo Credit: Allen Bacon
4 comments:
That sounds like a great idea and funny. I wish I were down there to attend.
Onanite
Upright Citizens Brigade? Dromo1? Now you're moving into my circles. I've been thinking of taking a crack at joinng UCB. I used to be with Improv Olympic, which I understand spawned UCB.
And Dromo1, I grew up around racing. Trying to get a car and go back. Meanwhile, I wish Dromo1 worked their racing league (Champion is chosen at the end of the season) a little differently.
Have you considered these activities beyond simply sitting back and being entertained?
Yes I have actually. My daughter, the comedienne, actually works out of UCB Theatre and her boyfriend BJ Porter produces and writes Comedy Death Ray which is every Wednesday night at UCB.
I love old cars...and I would love racing go carts but it's one of those things that i'm conflicted about. I want to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels period. I think burning large amounts of gasoline for our amusement is not right. In fact I think it's kind of obscene when it's entirely possible that over 4000 people have lost their lives in a war that may be over oil rights.
So, keep the beautiful vintage cars in the garage and admire their craftsmanship and marvel at the engineering..and maybe develop go-carts and other race cars that run on alternative fuel sources.
I'm still thinking that one through. And as I say that...my dad and I are planning a trip on Old Route 66 in a 65 Mustang and a Model T...so I could be a bit of a hypocrite.
Thanks for your comments, Doug.
Allen
You think stopping the use of gasoline will actually save it? Do you think if there wasn't racing, they'd have figured out how to make a 430hp Corvette that gets nearly 30mpg on the freeway? My old 4 cylinder Cherokee only got 20/27mpg brand new, but it's replacement, the 6.6 liter turbo diesel Silverado, gets 21/30mpg, at 3 times the horsepower. The numbers given vary, but let's go with 350hp. I'm so glad they started racing the turbo diesel at the 24 Hours of LeMans some time back, so this engine could be developed. Someday, the little 1.5 liter Aveo engine for sale on the same lot as the Corvette will be getting 50+mpg as it puts out 175hp, but that's going to add a few thouand dollars to the manufacturing cost so people might not buy it. Oh, and people are going to have to accept the engine won't last quite as long, though it will last more than half as long. The most clean and efficient burning engines are the dragsters, would you believe? But those things would melt if you tried to drive them on the street.
It was racing, which consumes wellwellwell under 1% of the world's energy, that brought the advances that are currently saving more fuel in a day than racing uses in a year. Racing is also proving that such alternatives as switchback grass, etc., aren't an efficient replacement for petrofuels. Nice to take some strain off the resource, but ethanol and the like are made from resources that have had only a short period to absorb the energy of the Sun, while petro recources had been absorbing it for centuries before the 4004 B.C. that some goofballs try to insist was the beginning. You cannot create energy, you can only convert it. There must be energy contained within the raw material for you to create fuel, and you can only get out what is in there. There isn't enough energy contained in the various biofuels to make them a serious replacement at the pump, although there's ways to use them to take the strain off the primary source, the petrofuels.
The original diesel engine WAS biofuel, but the switch to oil based was what made it an effective, useful engine.
Ah, the dream. Imagine this guy who wants to buy his own live theatre venue, say maybe the LA Connection, and use it to resusitate his near dormant TV/Film career by setting up an inhouse organization like you find at group101films.com. Then he takes over a mall to move the stages to so there's foot traffic to take an interest in the shows, to say nothing of parking and nearby restaurants to give it a hybrid LA commuter/NY downtown feel. And all the deep fry grease is rounded up from the restaurants, and from others nearby, and biodiesel is created and creates the ONLY real advantage that type of fuel has, that in cutting the amount of transportation of fuel to the end user. The recycled fuel is purchased at the point of manufacture, right at the mall where the original grease is obtained from and never transported in tanker trucks. THIS makes an effective replacement fuel, and people can buy it while they're at the mall so there's no out of the way trip to get it.
The only real advantage of an electric car is not having local gas stations, as electricity doesn't have to be PHYSICALLY transported. Except there's not many electrics with a range over 50 miles. My scooter was good for 10-12 miles new, and less than half that when I replaced the worn out 10 amp batteries with some lawn mower batteries than didn't have near the 280 amps they claimed, but I guess were about 50 amps and were cheaper than the replacement 10 amps. Alas, the 60 mile range didn't last, these two have fallen under 10 miles after 2 1/2 years of use. Lithium Ion will would give the full range for some 2,000 charges, and I think I can get 100 amps (120 miles) stuffed under the footboard where the lawnmower batteries don't fit, but this at a cost of close to $1,000. The mower batteries were about $50 for the pair. So electric isn't going to do it.
So which would you chose, electric or hydrogen? Before you start enthusiastically chanting "Hydrogen, hydrogen," remeber hydrogen IS electric, you just have a generator in the car running on a fuel that you currently would have to drive out to one of very few stations to fill up, and fill up CAREFULLY. So the development of electric drive is also the development of hydrogen drive, and if a city used the government fleet with their own refueling station, again we have a replacement that's only effective in a small way.
What do I think of going to war over oil? In 2003 I was pointing out to people Mark Twain's 'The War Prayer,' where a church full of people chanting wildly about seeking a victory in an upcoming war so they can praise God for it are interrupted by a man who asks them if they want their lord to bring suffering and devastation to the enemy, for THEIR mothers to cry over the bodies of THEIR sons, for THEM to suffer the famine and disease that comes from such a defeat, as they begin to kill each other. And I got the same reaction from people that Twains' old man did in the story.
Now, 4,000 Americans dead seems to mean something to people around here, while half a million dead Iragis, and growing, they could care less. Just as it was meaningless to people when I warned them that allowing the accidental president to take office would send the price of oil and gas skyrocketing, as well as allow his old partners at Enron to run amok. Gee, why did they spend so much money on their buddy if they didn't believe that themselves. So was I being an opportunist tying up so much in CHEAP oil that became EXPENSIVE oil? Or was I merely backing up what I was saying when I warned them?
You know, my Mom has basically the same solar system that Dubya has on his ranch a few miles away. Solar power, with propane backup that creates maybe 20-30% of the power. Ground water, which of course needs an electric pump to bring it up and filter it. And of course celphones, and the septic tank that recycles the water into, well, at my Mom's nobody likes it when I remind them where the water is going. 100% disconnected from utilities. But for once, Dubya is telling the truth when he says it's not a viable opportunity for everyone. Since there's no hookups in the middle of nowhere, you spend many thousands setting this up, and never save enough on it to recover that cost. And the people doing the loudest shouting about the things I'm talking about don't have even a minimal understanding of how any of this works. And a truck has to drive up and deliver the propane that creates the electricity that makes up for what the solar can't do.
Unless Mom wants to creat her own landfill. You see, just about half the contents of a landfill is paper products, and yard wastes takes it to about half. While all the plastics and such that people scream are pollutiing the landfills are in fact doing no harm whatsoever and are cleanly disposed of, the paper and plant decomposition is giving off a lot of gas that's polluting the air. Except in places where they over it with clay after running pipes much like the trickle watering devices on farms, and where the fumes are collected that way and used as natural gas to create electricity. There's a landfill like that near the Rose Hills cemetary. Mom could have her own little landfill and never need propane delivered agsin.
Oh well, once again I'm talking about how things REALLY work, and that upsets people who want to get emotional and push ignorance. What's the line from '9 Chickweed Lane?' "Only in the utmost ignorance can a truly emotional response be made." Or something like that. Hard as I try to educate people on this, ultimately it's more important to them that I'm stealing their thunder than it is that I'm trying to get them to think in ways that can REALLY HELP. They don't want to HELP, they want to point the finger.
Ah well, enough finger pointing of my own. So there is supposed to be a Chevrolet 4.5 turbo diesel coming out soon for the smaller trucks. Probably should get 27mpg around town, 40 on the freeway, and should be around 250hp, or more. I'm thinking I could go to americanmusclecar.com and have a brand new '69 Camaro built for me, that's a genuine GM built unibody, etc., and I'd go with that diesel engine. It'd get better mileage than my Neon, but I'd have other Neon drivers ignorantly getting snooty about the waste. And I'd let them, afterall it's the money that they're spending on gas that paid for it. This is gonna be SO FUN.
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