"Living well and ripping your enemy's still-beating heart out with your bare hands is the best revenge": the forgotten work of Michael O'Donoghue

Since the post below begs the question, what exactly do you find funny, Ed, if you can’t laugh at the hee-larious antics of that tall, gawky, spontaneous, and oh-so-glib Will Ferrell whom millions’a happy souls think is really a panic? Well, I have already offered a few dozen answers on this blog, but I will supply one more: Michael O’Donoghue, aka “Mr. Mike,” the rapier-sharp nasty black humorist whose wit was exhibited in The National Lampoon (both the magazine and the radio show).

He was no doubt the best writer ever to toil in the Lorne Michaels “we’re gonna run this fuckin’ character into the ground” factory that seems to amuse so many folks who want to watch TV in real time on Saturday evenings (hey, in NYC, just flip over after you’re done laughing yourself into unconsciousness, and give the Funhouse a try — I may be tackling a topic that doesn’t suit your fancy, but I can guarantee it won’t insult yer intelligence).

O’Donoghue’s life was well-chronicled in the essentially biography Mr. Mike by Dennis Perrin, but the true guts of the man’s material is to be found in a bunch of old Seventies (and, surprisingly, Nineties) magazines, plus on the discs of vintage SNL that are now slowly being shuffled out. He was the natural extension of the “sick humor” gods of the Fifties/Sixties (Bruce, Berman, Sahl, Nichols & May), but he added a very nasty rock ’n’ roll/punk sensibility (without ever playing the “rocker” roll himself, unlike the great Bill Hicks or the wafer-thin “Dice” Clay).

Mr. Mike was the late 20th-century’s equivalent of the brilliant magazine humor writers of earlier days (the Perelmans and Thurbers). His humor was extremely brutal, extremely fast, and extremely precise. He counted among his heroes William S. Burroughs and the inestimably perfect Terry Southern (check out a portrait of Tip-Top Ter by yrs truly), but he also no doubt drew inspiration by the sick souls who wrote with him at the Lampoon (the few anthologized examples we have of Doug Kenny prove he was one wonderfully twisted fuck).

There isn’t a lot of free Mr. Mike on the Web — a search on the official SNL site produced none of his “Least-Loved Bedtime Stories” or his odder creations like the Ricky Rat program. Instead we must turn (natch) to YouTube, where some helpful soul has uploaded the first five minutes of his Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video, which I was so taken with as a teen that I sat through it twice in a theater (it was short, and christ, when you alternate between sacrilegious and sexy material, and Root Boy Slim and his Sex-Change Band and El Sid himself, you couldn’t lose).

I also must direct you to two sites that have posted some of his brilliant writing (no, no one has hazarded “Children’s Letters to the Nazis” yet). The first is this one featuring the wonderful ”How to Write Good”, a guide to creating fine literature. And then there is this completely indispensible link to some of his “Not My Fault” columns for Spin magazine. O’Donoghue only did a handful of these, which have been Xeroxed and passed from hand to hand among sick humor enthusiasts for several years.

The site doesn’t have the one wherein [paraphrase, I'm doing this from memory] he notes that Whoopi Goldberg has done charity work for every humanitarian organization except the “Give Whoopi Goldberg a facelift because she’s an ugly bitch fund.” O’Donoghue took no prisoners when writing humor, which is the way it should be. He also hit on some universal truths in his seemingly scattered and angry rants. Check out the fourth column included here, which is his final word on the Rat Pack (this years before the heavy-duty sentiment set-in for Sinatra’s “clan” of compares. In discussing Liza Minelli, he gives us this bit of pop-cult wisdom:

Because [Judy Garland]… knew an incredible secret -- a secret so dark and twisted that it has never been spoken aloud -- a secret any Rosicrucian would give his left nut to possess -- forbidden knowledge older than the pyramids unveiled here for the first time -- a secret guarded by the rich and powerful for centuries yet I reveal it to you for the price of a rock'n'roll magazine -- a dreadful secret that Judy, lying on her death bed, with seconds to live, leaned over and whispered into her daughter's ear:
"The person in the most pain wins."
This simple truth is the basis of all daytime chat shows--
"Notice me, Phil. I'm a woman and my husband beats me." 
"Notice me, Sally. I'm a woman and I'm black and my husband beats me and my father sexually abused me." 
"Notice me, Ricki. I'm blind -- so blind that I don't even know if I'm black or a woman -- and somebody -- it's so dark it's hard to tell -- beats and rapes me and I weigh 850 pounds." 
"Notice me, Montel. I'm a woman, I'm handicapped, I'm fat, everybody from the mailman to the parish priest beats and rapes me, my son has Gay Bowel Disease, my daughter was born with pot holders for hands and I'm on fire right now."
 "Notice me, world. I'm Liza."

I think he hit that target with a bullseye (and years before the even more pathetic ceremonial-ritual of the reality show “confession booth” came into being). I also think he was an incomparably funny individual.

Gilda, We Miss Ya, or when comedy was (gasp) funny

Occasioned by my finally listening to the audio book (on audio tape, yessir, it is) of Gilda Radner’s at times heartbreaking cancer-chronicle It’s Always Something, I offer a little bit of joy from her terrific retrospective show Gilda Live, which I did indeed see when it had its limited time on B’way.

Thinking about Gilda again, I was brought to mind of the fact that the recent Vanity Fair cover proclaiming a heyday for female comedy had it all wrong: comic actresses/sketch goddesses had their heyday back in the Seventies, and the wimmen plying the trade today, while fine and okay to watch, just simply ain’t funny (Tina Fey=snark, Sarah Silverman=deadpan, with “shocking” subject matter; Amy Poehler=perky and… well, who cares?). They are, simply put the female equivalents of today’s biggest movie comedy star, Will Ferrell, a big void on screen. A pleasant, friendly void, mind you (the guy, and those ladies, seem to be well-loved in the biz), but not bright, witty, brilliant, and funny in the way that the classic screen and TV comedians were (yes, call me middle-aged and cranky, but you stack any of these sorry-assed Lorne Michaels discoveries up to Groucho, W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, Sid Caesar, Kovacs, Lenny Bruce, Steve Allen, Richard Pryor, the late Carlin, and you’ll see how the national funnybone is now equivalent to the voting sentiments: “well, he/she seems like they’d be fun to have a beer with…”). It's the triumph of the funny guy at the company picnic, or the office clown, whose humor only has relevance in that same workplace.

Thus, I think back fondly to the Seventies, when Gilda, Catherine O’Hara, and Andrea Martin showed what it’s like to have a range in comedy (please don’t tell me Amy Poehler has played many characters on SNL— they all register as the exact same person in a different wig and costume). I salute them and miss their presence on the tube (Gilda's presence is missed in general). Women in comedy is a tricky subject: there are goddesses at certain times, and the rest are are the grinning wives on sitcoms and women who do wacky/crappy skits on shows like SNL and Mad TV.

There are also women stand-ups who break down barriers, but who don't seem to be eternal as the male comedians (for instance, in the world of comedy records, a world I have delved too deeply into, it's hard to think of an LP by a woman comic, save Elaine May's eternal contribution to the perfect three Nichols/May records, that you'd easily break out and replay countless times). The pioneers were the housewife ladies (Phyllis DIller, Joan RIvers); the stalwarts were the filthy ol' dames (Belle Barth, Pearl Williams, Rusty Warren); and at any given time there are about two-three "famous" (read, in today's favorite term, "branded") women stand-ups. Today, they are Sarah Silverman (again, deadpan, deadpan, deadpan, some funny lines, but it's all 'bout the deadpan), and Lisa Lampanelli (all-out filthy, taking the guys on on their own turf, with the addition of the "I fuck black guys" trope).

Whenever anyone writes about this subject, one steps delicately around the possible assertion that their comedy may not be "for the ages" as it is for the handful of male comic icons. You run the risk of being called a sexist (which I'm doing right now), but I think the best way to counter that assertion is to note the perfection of a small number of female sketch comedians, from Imogene Coca (and, okay okay, Lucy) to the ladies mentioned above, who brought versatility into the mix for good (and then Lorne Michaels' crew sucked it out, with decades of really, really shitty comedy).

To sum it all up (and get down to the clip below), what we’ve got now in the way of comedy “stars” in American sketch comedy and major motion picture crappy-vehicle pics is a sorry, sorry lot indeed. I am reminded of the wonderful Albert Brooks “comedy institute” short film that aired on the show-that-has-now-been-seriously-reeking-for-decades, Saturday Night Live. In that little flick, Albert is cornered by an angry man who has been dying to tell him that he’s not funny. The gent pushes Albert against a wall, and accosts him, telling him that he’s not funny at all, why the hell did he think he was funny, etc.

You know the sad, sorry thing about today’s lackluster “friendly” bunch of comic lights? They’re not even worth pushing up against a wall and screaming at (Chris Farley, now there was one monstrously unfunny performer, worthy of a “what the fuck?” confrontation; Carrot Top, good for an attack; Adam Sandler, doing that fucking high-voice shit for the thousandth goddamned time — but who could even get angry about how tediously deadpan and UNFUNNY Ferrell and his comic posse are, it ain’t even worth it).

I am glad that there are a few folks who are doing quality material (the "fake news" folks on Comedy Central, Larry David, and Brits like Gervais and Coogan, who can construct a comedic concept like it’s nobody’s business). American moviegoers, on the other hand will actually pay to see Ferrell, Ben Stiller (funny for the run of his terrific Ben Stiller Show, rough, truly rough since), and Jack Black (ah, the appeal of rotund "cool" guys — I'm not even getting into that).

Let me, finally, soothe my achin’ comedy-fan head with the words of the late god “Mr. Mike” as sung by our fair Gilda. Who else could add the proper amount of cuteness to “fuck you, Mr. Bunny/eat shit, Mr. Bear/if they don’t love it, they can shove it/frankly, I don’t care…”? Play this one for the kiddies.

The YouTube poster didn’t want embeds (huh?), so click here.