Day: December 15, 2007

Another Morty Gunty Writer Speaks

I was very fortunate a few months ago to have comedy writer Arnie Kogen, of TV and MAD Magazine fame, visit this blog and relieve my concern that I may have played a role in the demise of comedian Morty Gunty’s NY TV show for kids back in 1965. Gunty was the first comic who Kogen wrote for, and later the same was true for writer Alan Zweibel, best known for his stint on the original writing team of Saturday Night Live. He helped develop the characters Roseanne Roseannadanna and Emily Litella for the late Gilda Radner.

It all started when Alan Zweibel’s mother chatted up a comedian she saw open for Engelbert Humperdinck. Zweibel laughs at the thought of it. “She just went up and approached him, and said, ‘My son can write jokes.’ And pretty soon I was writing for $7 a gag for a comic named Morty Gunty.”

Alan Zweibel: The History of Me is a one-man show Zweibel has been performing at various venues throughout this year. Friday night he was in South Orange New Jersey, as featured in this newspaper article.

I’d like to embed a video excerpt of Zweibel doing The History of Me, but YouTube says it can’t be embedded. So instead here’s a picture of Zweibel you can click to take you to YouTube.

Alan Zweibel

Boston Common For Non-Commoners

I don’t subscribe to Boston Common magazine, but it comes in the mail anyway. I think I’m on the mailing list because of my American Express Gold Card.

The magazine is named after a park in Boston, and it’s intended for the young, beautiful, fashionable and rich of greater Boston, although the old, fashionable and rich are also featured prominently. I’m flipping through it now, and I see an ad for Stella Artois lager beer, recently featured here on DogRat.com. There’s also a must-see ad for clothier Blue Fly. My son is almost sixteen, so I see no harm in letting this one through. Click to enlarge. I can’t find this picture at Blue Fly online, but it’s in Boston Common magazine.

Oh, the expansive and expensive suburban homes! The in-town luxury condos! The cars and the fashions and the restaurants, and Harvard, and everything else that goes with being so fabulously well off. I refer you to the video in a previous post about Hyannis Homeys. How many people truly can afford to live this way? The Natick Mall, west of Boston, is now called The Natick Collection, and I’m curious to know how well Neiman-Marcus and Nordstrums, and Tiffany’s, and the new condos catering to the customers of those stores, will do.