Une caricature du grand voleur d'ordure sur le boulevard grand au milieu du matin

I Must Meet Leslie Kritzer When I Return to NYC

And to think SNL didn't hire her after seeing this tape. Another reason I lost interest in that show around 1979.

The Only Show More Fun Than JTTV

Those in Manhattan are strongly encouraged to go see Julie Klausner in Wasp Cove opening next week.

This is not a Manhattan blog. We're just waiting for something to happen in Topeka on the Pacific, er, San Francisco.

Reason to Move Back East, #2

My loan officer at Wells Fargo called this morning over brunch with his mom at Boulevard. (Banker's hours? Ha!) Things are looking good for my approval to buy the Brooke Astor place, so I may soon become bicoastal for real. As if that were not reason enough, I am really wanting to see the Julie Klausner show "Wasp Cove" opening in another week. With a character named Devon St. Palestine, I know I would love it.

Just STOP

Hearing her on Fresh Air yesterday, Tracey Ullman almost lured me into getting cable again, but I prefer to make my own shows more than watching others in general. But Tracey is on exception that makes me want to just sit down and watch.

Comedy Most Terrible

In a number of conversations tonight, the works of various Russian authors came up and all of their wonderful bleak sensibilities. Chekov, whose works spoke to me more as a youth than they do in late middle age, called many of his works comedies. This got me thinking about possibly one of the most obscure summer replacement sitcoms of all times, Ivan the Terrible that ran in the summer of 1976 for less than a dozen episodes with Lou Jacobi in the title role and Despo Diamantidou as an in-law with a bawdy laugh. It was a big, extended working class family living in a dingy high rise public housing project similar to the one on Good Times except it was in...Moscow.

As I recall the theme song had the in a horse drawn sleigh in Red Square as the theme music went something like "Vee are livink in Moscow, livink in in Moscow tooo-Day!"

I am amazed to see that Amazon even has videos of the series available since it was so bad and so obscure. Somehow a Soviet Archie Bunker just never caught fire in the era of Brezhnev and détente. Perhaps jokes about the KGB and moldy cabbage went above most viewers heads. Though it makes me glad to know that obscure oddity is out there, I can now forget it for another 32 years. Now I am curious to recall what else I so clearly remember Despo Diamantidou appearing in other than Never on a Sunday and Love and Death, though simply as Despo.

Let's Get a Luna Bar & Split it!

It will be a cold day in Hell or Alabama before I will subscribe to the Logo channel or cable in general, for that matter. Hey, I’m a Junk Thief and think TV channels oughta be free. Plus I don’t need one more diversion. However, I could easily get pulled in by Julie and Jackie whose sense of humor is eerily close to mine. I’m no fan of Carol Channing, but I have a couple of friends with whom I also play mommy in a similar way. Just the other day one of them came over with his Elaine Stritch doll, er, I mean came over with Elaine Stritch, and we just sat on my famed purple couch and shot the breeze over jasmine tea while Elaine pretended to be Camille Paglia while playing with Bunter.

If that doesn’t make sense, just watch the clip. Julie’s website/blog is pretty cool too, and she’s got a cat that looks a lot like Bob next door.

These girls are hilarious. I want to be their best friend!

UPDATE: The more of these videos I look at, the more I am conflicted of trying to decide if Julie is the new comic genius of this century or has the same stark raving mad sense of humor that appeals to me. Beside having cat news, her fake tourism video on Manhattan has to be the most side splitting four and a half minutes that I've ever seen. "32nd Street and the West Side Highway, the center of the universe!" On top of that she cute as a button and has a damned fine singing voice. Her main site is here.

Forgetting Amnesia

Tonight I went to hear fellow blogger/writer Bryce Digdug perform his stand-up comedy at Amnesia. He was one of only two comedy acts in an interesting mix of a banjo player, new millennium Beat poets and a blues singers born during the second Reagan administration. It reminded me that I really need to have great-great aunt Carrie's zither harp tuned so I can start rehearsing my own performance art soon.

Even JunkThief was born after the Beats hit, but it was good to know that 20-somethings were doing something other than numbing white guy rap. Most memorable line of the night was "skinny people can't fly in Reno."

Afterwards, Bryce, "friendatella" and I went for a meal at the ever trusty Herbivore. Somehow the conversation weaved around to the sometimes tense relationship between fags and hippie chicks. I have had a number of hippie chick fag hags in my day and finally just gave up on trying to win their approval. Once I even tried Tom's of Maine deodorant which I dubbed "why bother," since it has no right to be called a deodorant. You'd do better putting sand under your arms. We seemed to agree that some hippie chicks blamed fags for their lifestyle bringing on AIDS. "Yes, it was all that red meat and soap," I offered.

I remember that about a decade ago a boyfriend and I stayed at the Riverside Drive rambling flat of a trust fund hippie chick. She was very judgmental of him because he drank Coca-cola. I tend to agree that it tastes like motor oil with sugar poured in (she compared it to carbonated fecal matter). But I actually came to his defence, probably buying me another year in a relationship that was headed south from the get go. Trust fund hippie chicks are the worst, I think. All that money to buy skin care products and six figure automobiles, but they tool around big cities with slogan covered bikes wearing Teva sandals.

Guilt leads to women who want to be gilt free. Maybe I'll add that to the JunkThief act when I get up the nerve for open mike.