They Should Make The Joker Funny

            On Wednesday I only went out for a few minutes to take some pictures of the Earth sculpture in front of the Parkdale library down the street. I leaned my bike against a pole and only noticed afterward that I’d just missed a big spiral of dog shit that had been given birth to nearby. While I was walking around snapping the structure a guy with long hair and a beard riding by on a bike called out, “Nice eh?” I like it, but they should probably take down their Christmas decorations in January.

            I cut a slice of bread in half, toasted it and made a corned beef and cheese sandwich with cucumber and mustard for lunch.

            I watched the recording of my song practice from July 26, 2014. Half of it is spent on “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” with me stopping to figure out which verse was next. I was also still looking at the neck of my guitar while playing. The other songs were in french and I flubbed the chords on one and the vocals on another.

            It rained in the afternoon and so I didn’t take a bike ride.

            In the evening I grilled a couple of burgers and had one of them for dinner while watching The Comedian, which is the only other Playhouse 90 made for TV movie that I’ve been able to download so far. This one was adapted for television by Rod Serling and it stars Mickey Rooney as an over the top asshole of a comedian named Sammy Hogarth. The story begins with rehearsals for Sammy’s television comedy show called “The Sammy Hogarth Comicular”. Included in the show is the monologue that Sammy is most famous for, which is one in which for several minutes he insults and makes fun of his younger brother Lester. Lester, played by famous jazz singer Mel Torme, does not like the monologue but his wife Julie hates it and has threatened to leave Lester if he doesn’t stand up to Sammy about getting him to drop it. But Lester works for Sammy as his personal assistant and has a very good life because of that and so he can’t bring himself to stand up to his big brother.

            Meanwhile the rehearsals for the show stink because there are no funny skits. The head writer, Al Preston has run out of ideas and so he desperately digs up some old sketches written by a comedian named Davy Farber who died fighting in WWII. Al removes Farber’s name and presents them to Sammy as scripts that he wrote himself. Sammy loves them but Lester finds out they are plagiarized and steals them. He threatens Al that he will tell the gossip columnist Otis Elwell about them if he doesn’t convince Sammy to drop the monologue. Elwell would like nothing better than to bring about Sammy’s final ruin. 

            Al does his soul searching in dialogue with his girlfriend Connie, who is also his secretary. He confesses to her about the plagiarism. She keeps telling him she doesn’t care if he’s a head writer or not.

            Lester’s wife leaves him and Sammy has gone for the night to his country house. Al is suspicious because Sammy never goes to that house until after the show airs. Al goes there and finds Lester’s wife drunk and waiting for Sammy. She’s willing to sleep with Sammy if he’ll promise to drop the monologue. Al convinces her to go back to Lester but as they leave Elwell sees them and writes a column about Sammy and Lester’s wife.

            The night before the show Al confesses to Sammy that the skits are plagiarized. Sammy immediately calls up his agent and gets him to spread the word that they are doing Davy Farber’s sketches as a tribute to a war hero and thereby saves his own ass. He fires Al.

            The show is a big success but during his monologue Lester comes out and hits him. Sammy ad libs and makes it look like part of the show, then he drags Lester off camera, beats the hell out of him and returns for his grand finale.

            Al and Connie walk away happy.

            Lester is reunited with Julie but when Sammy starts to give Lester orders again, he obeys. That’s the end. I

            It was kind of a disturbing story.

            Connie was played by Constance Ford.

            I don’t know if there are any comedians that are over the top assholes like the one Mickey Rooney portrayed.

            I guess one could think of the Joker as a comedian that’s an asshole but the Joker never really says anything funny. He should but he hasn’t because of the poverty of the writers. They should actually hire a real comedy writer to write the Joker’s lines.