Rodney Dangerfield RIP

Listening to No Respect (1980) right now.

"I only get girls cause of who I am...a rapist!"

Full set from Westbury Music Fair, N.Y. 1983

oooh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FPv2toi5og

Just bought a used vinyl copy of No Respect. Had no idea it came out on Casablanca!

An oral history of "Back to School". Includes this amazing tidbit (so to speak):

Basil: Rodney came to a showcase at the Comedy Store I was on along with Louie Anderson, Bob Saget, Yakov Smirnoff and others. He liked my act and casted me in his first HBO special, the 9th Annual Young Comedians Special in 1984. We first met in the Green Room at Dangerfield’s, Rodney’s comedy club in New York City. His testicles were hanging out of his robe. Anyone who spent any private time with Rodney saw them. He was only comfortable in a bathrobe, but he never tied it shut all the way and never wore underwear. So the boys kinda hung out to catch some air. They were exceptionally low-hanging, like a grandfather clock.

hall of tmi

a grandfather's cock

Joan keeps a bottle of Rodney’s sweat in her refrigerator

Maybe it's ball sweat.

I suspect a lot of younger ppl fail to investigate his stand up, thinking he's just the "no respect guy". Their loss

We all remember him for his rapping.

Did y'all know about Where's Rodney, the failed NBC pilot where Rodney advises a 14-year-old, Play It Again, Sam-style, on his growing pains?

I vaguely remember seeing it at the time. The TV at my house was almost always tuned to NBC back then, and at the time the network was found of burning off unsold pilots they had access to as filler programming.

Rabin not kidding about how terrible it is (there’s a link to it on Daily Motion in the article) but a few things amused me: the WTFness of the scene with the banana, how much the main actor resembles a pipsqueak version of Bill Maher, and the surrealism of the premise—which, yes, I know is ripped off from Woody Allen, but the idea of Rodney actually being pulled, forcibly (by what? magic?), out of his real life to just appear and help this kid out treats it far more like something that is *actually happening* rather than Woody being visited by Bogie’s ghost in what we can easily read as a fantasy of the Woody character.

His Centennial was two days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6QzY6KbCUQ

Attempted a rewatch of Easy Money the other day, but didn't get very far. Just a junky, lazy, and all around cynical piece of work. Mean, too: big shock that P.J. O'Rourke was one of four (!) credited writers. Say what you will about Back to School and, hell, Ladybugs--at least they obviously conceived and executed as proper star vehicles. Easy Money looks like no one involved gave a shit.