The only time we did this skit in front of a live audience was during the BYD & Friends show in Syracuse – it was on Dr. Demento, and an audio tape, but for some reason never made it on any of the compilations or BENT! episodes. Pat still does a killer Elvis.

I think we did actually almost run out of ‘nanas for this segment. The King really likes his finger-shaped fruits. The fact he used a minor chord for ‘one ripe nana’ in his song showed how deep love for the food truly was.

Enjoy

You gotta love those old Sci-Fi movies. they used to have a great Saturday Afternoon series on Channel 3 in Syracuse when I was a kid. The kind where the sports guy plays Dracula, but you only see his hand, and ‘Igor’ is the weather guy with a basketball under his smock. Have someone hit a sheet of metal while turning the lighting on and off, and you have a scary host intro to your movie!

I liked Mark and Bill’s version of this parody – lots of intentional continuity errors, cheap effects, and hammy acting. It was used as one of the segments for the BYD and Friends show, with Stephanie, Tom and I believe Jeremy Bill’s brother John helping out in the acting. I know I couldn’t have kept a straight face when Steph went ‘Gasp!’. Enjoy.

Boffo Yux Dudes & Friends Pt. 2 – ‘Tommy G Used Cars’ and ‘Morris Weiderman Day’

I remember picking Mark Haskins up late one night and driving him somewhere -

I think it was NH to write a skit or go to the studio – and having a ball doing my impression of Pat doing a Tennessee and Chumley skit. Not because I knew the bit was funny, but because I had him in conniptions in the passenger seat, and I had to pause every few sentences so he could catch his breath.

Mark knows funny, and has a great laugh – and it felt good knowing if my lame impression of  Pat had this reaction, the finished version would probably send him into intensive care.

Mark wrote the 2nd skit in this video ‘ Morris Weiderman Day’.  I loved the way this one built up – you have no clue where it’s going, but you knew is was going to be a classic. I’d say it’s SNL material, but it didn’t have their ‘voice’ – SNL couldn’t pull this off. It’s more a Jackie Gleason style that’s been lost for a long time. And it totally came out of left field. It’s still one of my favorite bits, and I try and celebrate every April 11th. It’ll always be Morris Weiderman Day to me.

The first skit was detailed here in an earlier post with the my freakish Australian doppleganger Tommy G. Love his stuff too. Some day we’ll meet, and I hope that some geeky matter/antimatter thing doesn’t happen when we shake hands.

Enjoy.

Boffo Yux Dudes & Friends Pt. 1 – ‘Elvis Says’

The first part of the BYD and Friends show, live from Syracuse University in 1989. Pat does ‘Elvis Says’ with the help of house band ‘Yosemite Quick’.

I grew up in Syracuse, NY and ended up going to Syracuse University for a TV Management and Psychology degree. In ‘85 I headed out to New England for Radio and TV work, and ended up creating BYD with Pat and Scott. 4 years later, 2 of Scott’s friends at SU, Renee and Joyce, fresh from working on Null and Void at UUTV, asked us back to do a collaborative show at the Newhouse school – sort of a fun homecoming in between gigs and projects. We jumped at the chance to work with these folks. Bill and Mark made us laugh on a bunch of skits, and it also gave us a chance to do some of our radio bits for TV on a larger scale than the one camera bits for BENT!

One of the most searing memories of that week was the Ernie and Bert puppets. Pat put them on in the car on the way out, and I swear, they never left us the entire time we were there. Some of the more air-able parts of them made it on the behind the scenes doc, but the rest was just too rude for mass consumption. There’s something extremely funny and just plain wrong having the words we said come out of a puppet’s mouth. I guess when it’s not really ‘you’ saying the lines, then you’re free to be a wacked as you want to be. Freud would be having a field day with us, that’s for sure.

This section has Pat doing a version of his ‘Elvis Says’ routine, which came of much cleaner than the Rock 107 gig. Also playing with a house band was a novel thing for us. an all around great time had by all, and I ended up snagging all the footage and pasting together this show out of it with bumpers from behind the scenes shots and a day of filming around Newburyport, MA and Plum Island.

I’ll be adding the rest of the parts over the next few weeks. Enjoy.
It ended up being a road trip that kept on going even on the way back, thanks to a visit to Brad Lowry  working in the Berkshires on the ‘Back to the Future’ prototype ride - but I digress.

Doing a skit with Daniels & Webster at ROCK 107, Wilkes-Barre, PA.- late 1980's

I remember the Reverend Billy C. Wirtz talking to us while we were at Rock 107 at some early hour in the morning and he gave us a great compliment – we had just finished a live version of ‘The Scotsman’s Bag’, and he had heard it on the way over to the studio in the hotel van.

He said he literally choked on his breakfast he was laughing so hard.

That juiced up our egos a bit. This was one of our first gigs outside of New England, and he was the headliner that morning, thanks to Jim Rising, who was running the joint back in the late 80’s.  Rock 107 was in a huge building that also had a newspaper, and housed a studio with seating for an audience, just like one of those old time radio theaters. Very impressive.

We tried to think what would work for bits, since it had to work for a live audience as well as the radio listeners…

Elvis says, Eat an 'nother peanut butter an 'nanna sammwich'

We started with a round of ‘Elvis Says’ – Pat would go ‘Elvis says…. raise your right hand… Elvis says … pick up your shotgun and shoot the TV set. Pick up a groupie and a … you know — man — elvis didn’t say – you’re out!  Another skit was a live version of Luigi’s, with the SFX all done live using twigs, pots and pans, scraping metal spoons and hunks of cottage cheese. I’m sure the audio techs loved that one.

But the one people seemed to remember best was The Scotsman’s Bag. Pat owned a set of great bagpipes we used in a bunch of skits. He practiced in the winter on Plum Island on the beach behind my rental – mainly because no one would get pissed at the noise by the surf.

You thought I was kidding on the names of the parts, didn't you?

With parts named ‘Bag’, ‘Chanter’, and ‘Blowpipe’, you can tell where it’s headed, but I thought it built nicely to its inevitable conclusion. Enjoy.

Evil incarnate always carries a pitchfork and a rubber chicken...

Mr. B and the Kid

What if Evil came over to babysit? That was the entire premise of this bit. My nephew Kevin was a year or so old, so I used him in the starring role. I don’t know if his mom ever told him he faced evil incarnate with a laugh and a grin. He’s now in his 20s and recently started a Microbrewery. I’ve heard it’s quite good stuff.

As for the skit – I don’t think this was scripted at all, we just had the doorbell and the baby sounds and winged it from there. One take, a few SFX overdubs, and it’s as you hear it for posterity.

Enjoy

Walking the Plank isn't as easy as it looks...

Scott and I had a lot of fun at WJPZ in Syracuse, NY.  We each had DJ shifts, but when the station finally went to FM from a blank cable channel, we decided to join in with the gaggle of funny folks and co-produce the first ‘Cray-Z Morning Crew’ in 1985. Produce was the key word.

We had 30+ people working the weekday morning show with us. A half dozen DJ’s, a dozen news and a dozen sports reporters all on staggered shifts – it was chaos, yet somehow still organized. It also allowed us to spend most evenings thru the wee hours creating bits, promos, segments and style elements for the ‘All New’ Z-89.

One of the characters we created were ‘The Pirates’ – a crew from the ship who didn’t quite get how things worked, and didn’t really care as long as they got to say a few puns or sing a song.

I remember visiting Mark Humble at his house in New Jersey with a copy of this skit during spring break. Scott and I accosted him in his backyard, and made him put on headphones to listen to the first skit, the Pirates singing the ‘Slinky’ theme song.   His reaction was MFM.  First he listened. Then he shrugged. Then his mouth opened up and as the Pirates sang the chorus, he doubled over in laughter.

Our work there was done.

See if you start to chuckle in the same spot. Enjoy.

Some people just never call...

Dave-

You neglected to tell me you were in town last week with Steve Martin. Sad. I missed it.

Maybe you misplaced my e-mail. Even though you’ve never met me, I’m quite famous in my own mind.

Many people have it. In fact, I’ve heard some make a fortune sending it to Nigeria.

I guess I’ll have to remind you my blog is at www.boffoyuxdudes.com as well.

I know, you’re busy with your pseudo retirement, but it’s nice to drop me a line once in a while. Just because I randomly connected with you after Googling ‘Talk like a Pirate Day’, when I was actually was looking for a pirate picture for the blog is no excuse for you to not communicate.

Just sayin’.

Best of luck with the new book.

The book is 46% off at Amazon.com. In stores Tuesday!

Tom Giarrosso

boffoyux at gmail.com

No, not that Tiny Tim....

I always liked the ukulele. Something about that instrument, even though it’s sized like a toy, made me smile. I’m happy it was used for this skit that ended up on Dr. Demento in the late 80’s.

Pat had one we used for a number of skits – and early on, while he was doing a Tiny Tim impression, we tried to think what was one of the most un Tiny-like song he could sing, other than something heavy metal.  This is what we came up with. Tiny’s reaction to the skit comes after the break.

This skit was one of the bits American Comedy Network picked up, as well as Dr. Demento played. ACN would send out updates on their weekly tapes of bits – that’s how we found out that one of the DJ’s set Tiny up by saying he had a tape of him singing the Flintstones. After he played it for him, Tiny got annoyed, and kept repeating that it wasn’t him… he never sang that song… that got the DJ going, and it went down from there…

Pat ended up doing a quickie impression for this – took one or two takes, and he played at the same time. Enjoy.

Pat making himself at home on the TV-38 Movie Loft set.

Another BYD punfest of a bit.

I had taken a ‘Religions of the World’ class at Syracuse University – a filler course so I could complete the Liberal Arts quota of credit hours. One of the chapters that stuck was on the basic Hindu Caste system and reincarnation. Somewhere it must have been percolating in the back of the mind, when Ghandi and Candy came out… this was the result. Enjoy.

Boffo Yux Dudes

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