"Waiting room horror" Topic

While I was waiting my turn at the clinic the other night, the entertainment was an endless loop tape of Red Skelton.
That man had to be the most BORING entertainer in television history.
When I was a kid in the 50s or 60s, I could not stand him, but my parents had his show on every time. Strange I never heard them laughing at him.

Could Red Skelton be the main reason everybody hates clowns?

Bit harsh.
70 years in showbiz---30+ films
Not always a clown.

I like Red Skelton but I can't stand Jerry Lewis.

I liked him and had it been a loop of Junior the Mean Widdle Kid, I'd have been in heaven.

One of the officers in my Guard unit here in CA is a relative of his.

I never thought he was that terrible…most of the comedy was aimed at another generation.

It couldn't have been as awful as the Lawrence Welk Show.

I never appreciated ad breaks until I was stuck in a waiting room while they played free-to-air TV with Ellen on.

Red Skelton is great. If you like slapstick and bad jokes well delivered. I do. But I can see that a waiting room might not be the time and place for any standup comedian routines. An endless tape of Mormon Tabernacle Choir renditions might be preferred by the OFM. Why don't you suggest the change?…

I'm afraid of clowns.

most of the comedy was aimed at another generation

Younger than the OFM?

He spoke at my College in the 80's. I think he had a long and successful career. And his paintings were down right creepy

I once worried for a dear friend in a waiting room while Howard Stern played endlessly on the tube. I didn't throw anything at it.

In a waiting room right now. No TV. Just an awful lot of good looking females passing through.

^^^ My grandmother died this year at 97 years of age. She watched LW all of the time(which meant I watched it every time I visited)!

Enjoy Red very much.

Also a big fan of Danny Kay.

Red Skelton was a comic genius! To each his own.

Terrement,

Shouldn't that be "makes me wunnerful wunnerful!"

I was dated when it we new.

I have to agree with Vstaogames – while my best buddy is a huge Howard Stern fan, I find listening to Howard Stern is absolute torture

I'm sticking with the Jimmy Dean show and Ralph the dog.

You are lucky, my parents had Lawrence Welk on.

Shouldn't that be "makes me wunnerful wunnerful!"

YouTube link

"Which is STILL ON today! Who the hell is STILL WATCHING it?!?"

"I see Dead people" Watching it.

8)

My Dad loved Red Skelton as a kid and one year he asked for the DVDs of the TV show for Christmas. My Bad Aunt obliged him.

He discovered it was yet another thing that the years had not improved. "Don't tell your Aunt," he said to me one day, "but I've learned that Red Skelton is almost unwatchable."

Not sure if it is a true story, but laugh tracks in sit-coms use the laughter from his pantomimes suposedly.

RS' comedy is dated.

A lot of comedy has a "use by" date. This isn't a criticism of Red Skelton but an observation that what people find funny changes over time.

Have you seen any British comedian Norman Wisdom movies recently? They were hilarious when they were made, not so much today. The jokes haven't changed.

YouTube link

I should add I don't like a lot of modern comedy. eg 'Little Britain' I find it tedious. Comedies changed but I haven't?

It couldn't have been as awful as the Lawrence Welk Show.

Bite me, people. My wife and I put on the Welk and ballroom dance in the livingroom around the shokutaku.

And I like Red Skelton. Still. My daughter, as a history major, appreciates his routines from a different perspective (heck, he was really before my time, too).

Some classic comedy never dates: I can still go into fits of hysteria watching 'Fawlty Towers', and a friend almost twenty years my junior discovered it not so long ago and declared it 'very funny'. The writing was pure genius (leavened with a lot of hard work).

The reason the audience laughed so hard during the Red Skelton show, they'd do a burlesque version between takes, commercials or rehearsal-look how he leers at the audience reminding them of the REAL joke. Read that in somebody's memoirs.

Strange they don't show Mitch Miller.

fits of hysteria watching 'Fawlty Towers'

I'd argue it isn't old enough yet to have "dated".

Charlie Chaplin. Buster Keaton. Absolute masters but I don't think many would laugh aloud at them now.

YouTube link

Ditto Skelton. I can appreciate his slapstick skill & rubber face but it doesn't make me laugh.

The first series of FT was made almost forty years ago! Yes, time flies…

Sorry John, I still like Skelton.

My brother's family has a DVD of some of his work and they all like it as well.

I was easy to get a laugh out of as a kid. I had a teacher in high school who told jokes or came up with puns that no one laughed at but me. The class thought I was sucking up but I genuinely thought he was funny. A boss I had once cracked me up all the time yet he was hated by all. He knew the dialogue from "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" by heart. Out of nowhere he would be doing lines from the movie and I would lose it. Red Skelton had my parents in stitches. I could never see it. For some bizarre reason I liked Jerry Lewis.

I hated M*A*S*H growing up. Grandmother had a thing for Alan Alda…now I'll miss church if I'm waiting for my wife to get ready and it comes on in a marathon. Couldn't stand Hee-Haw either but I like it now when I can find it…

Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello are still funny. I remember Skelton in my youth, some of his stuff was good, some a bit off, but people liked him. My parents thought he was hilarious. I thought he was fairly funny. I didn't like the Marx Brothers as kid, now love them. It's not just that tastes change, but sometimes you "grow into the jokes" as well as "growing out of them."

By the way Red Skelton and believe it or not, Buddy Ebsen (Beverly Hillbillies) were both song and dance men before they went into comedy.

One of my favorites was Jerry Collona.

My waiting room story is a bit different.

My wife's aunt was dying and had been taken from the nursing home to the emergency room. She was having trouble breathing and it was her last hours. I had the flue and rather than hang around the emergency room I decided to go into the waiting room. This may seem odd but it was 3:30 in the morning and there was literally NO ONE there. My aim was to sit there, put my head down and sleep.

Well I go in and the television is off and it's nice and quiet. GOOD! I thought.

Well I no sooner sit down than the security guard comes in and turns on the television, LOUD and he turns it up to the History Channell, and he then leaves for his station which is like three rooms away.

And what is coming on to the Nazi Channell? (My wife and I call it that ALL NAZIS, ALL DAY, EVERY DAY ALL THE TIME!
Anyway the program comes on and it's called (of course!) "Hitler's Women!"

My hand is just reaching for the dial when some guy comes in, sees it, and says "Oh iz dat about hitler!??? I can't get enough of dat guy!"

I lost it, I told him how he wouldn't feel that way if he had a German sounding name, and how veryone thinks you're a Nazi and Hitler Lover about that, and that it didn't matter what positive accomplishments Germans did, that man took Mozart, Bach, Fichte, and all the achievements of Germans and ground blood and Shyyte over them!

Well finally I was exhausted and I left the guy happily watching the movie and I went outside and sat on the bench in the subzero cold and snow till they brought Dot's aunt up to the room where she died.