Under the Radar: Joe Flaherty

 

Circa 1971: Here's several members of Chicago's improvisational comedy troupe Second City (the group took its name from a 1950s New Yorker article by A.J. Liebling in which he mocked the Midwestern metropolis for always coming in second to the East Coast metropolis.) You probably recognized John Belushi right off the bat, but maybe not the others, so let me tell you who they are going from left to right. First off is Judy Morgan, followed by Eugenie Ross-Leming, Jim Fisher, and, towering over Belushi, the subject of this post, Joe Flaherty. Flaherty and Belushi acted alongside each other in three Second City revues and were also castmates on the National Lampoon's Radio Hour: Odd to say this about a radio program, but I actually found a 1974 video clip from the latter. Very much of its time (but nevertheless fairly amusing in ours), part of it satirizes Watergate criminals sent off to college dorm-like minimum security prisons, and the other part the era's courtship etiquette:

Along with Flaherty and Belushi, you may have recognized Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, and two guys who looked like either one could be a young Bill Murray. Well, the one with the beard is a young Bill Murray, the other is Bill's older brother Brian Doyle-Murray.

Belushi's subsequent life and career is pretty well-known by now. He and Gilda ended up on Saturday Night Live, and were joined by Bill in that show's second season. Belushi at first was overshadowed by Chevy Chase on SNL, but then saw his celebrity rise after Chase's departure. Actually, it was a movie he did when the show was on hiatus, Animal House, playing a college student who parties more than he studies, that really secured his stardom, a stardom cut short by a fatal heroin overdose. As for Flaherty, even if he never achieved the same level of success as Belushi, his career was no less interesting (to me), with the added bonus that he got to live a whole lot longer.

After 13 successful years in Chicago, its owners decided it was time for a second Second City, and somehow Toronto was chosen. Sent to that Canadian metropolis as a kind of advance man, Flaherty found it was a very good choice indeed, as the city had as much a performing arts scene as Chicago, and a plethora of comedy talent. Dan Ackroyd, John Candy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas Catherine O'Hara, Eugine Levy, as well as aforementioned Americans Ramis and Radner and Flaherty himself, and probably a few others I'm unaware of, were earning laughs onstage with a mixture of improvised and (this sometimes gets overlooked) scripted material, as had the folks back in Chicago. What didn't happen in Chicago that did happen in Toronto was a television spin-off. Why in one city and not the other? Apparently, the person who owned the Canadian Second City rights wanted to explore new ways make money off the brand, and the Chicago folks didn't. Who says it always has to be the Americans who are the entrepreneurs?

What became known as SCTV ran from 1976 to 1984, first on Canadian TV, then in United States syndication, then as an expanded show on NBC on Friday nights, and finally on premium cable. SCTV had a TV show-within-a-TV show premise: a bunch of people who wanted their own program were turned down by CBS, NBC, and ABC and so, undaunted, put on their own show on their own station. Truth be told, I usually paid no attention to the framing device, and just enjoyed it as a series of unrelated sketches, except when Joe Flaherty showed up as the TV station's sleazy intermittently wheelchair-bound owner Guy Caballero:

Reminds me of a certain orange-haired politician.

1941-2024

 

Vital Viewing (Tick Tock, Tick Tock Edition)

Time. There just doesn't seem to be enough of it. Not time enough to do the things we want to do, like waste it, because we're spending so much time on things we don't want to do, like making productive use of it. Interestingly, I've been told that for some people, while they agree that they never seem to have enough time, it's somehow for the opposite reason of what I just stated.  If you happen to be one of those unusual individuals, perhaps the following video can offer some helpful hints:

Didja hear that? TV, computers, and mobile devices can be distractions when not used for productive purposes. Let me think. This blog can be found on two of those three devices. Well...FUCK THAT SHIT!

Besides...

...you really want to put a major corporation out of business? Remember, one person's distraction is another person's bread-and-butter.

Furthermore, there's one distraction that the video didn't mention. I hesitate to bring it up myself as I have no first hand experience, but it's my understanding that...

...the perpetuation of the...

...species can be a tad time-consuming.

Perhaps Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde can explain it better than I can:
 

They're a Hollywood power couple. You'd think they could afford nannies.

Nevertheless, for the Hollywood-less, powerless rest of us, their point is well-taken. So much demands on our time, both at work and at home, when will it ever...

...end?

A man by the name of Burgess Meredith once saw a bright side to all of this:

That Rod Serling, always with the I-told-you-sos. As for Mr. Meredith, he'll find enough time to be both a Gotham City criminal and a grizzled fight trainer in Philadelphia.

Now, I'm sure you've heard the saying, "Time is money". Well, maybe that's the answer. Time a commodity that can be bought and sold:

Can you buy stock in that company? It would give a whole new meaning to the word timeshares.

As you probably guessed by the both the accents and the £ instead of $, the above video was filmed, or rather drawn, in Britain. For our final clip, let us go to the American Midwest...

...and see if anybody in the Windy City can tell us how best to manage time:

If only time came with its own horn section.