Out on the ledge

Thanks to the internets millions of us have seen the William Shatner "Rocketman" performance from the last seventies (aka "The Greatest Video EVER made!"). Except Pansypoo of course.

Mark Evanier found the one video I've been waiting to appear on You Tube fore some time. In the late 80s Chris Elliot had left Letterman to work on his incredibly bizarre and ahead of its time show, "Get A Life". But he returned as a guest to "Late Night" with a special performance.

Now, this was a few years before the internet made doing the Shatner/Rocket man thing so pervasive in hip-internet culture that Family Guy could do it on broadcast television and even I could use Bush to parody it through a discount Al Yankovich approach (and think about how cheesy that is).

But in the late 80s virtually no one, but the most hip of the hipster doofuses (hipster doofi?) would know about it. So Elliot comes out and does this:



Now when viewing this it may not seem so terribly funny because it's been done so often -- and really what can top the original? But back then, when so few people knew about it strikes me as an incredibly clever and brave thing to do. Elliott never was everyone's cup of tea and a little of him went a long way for many people, but I really loved his audacity in doing this skit.

And speaking of comedians not afraid to be bizarre & how Letterman's old show was the place for them (more than any current show including Conan [Sasha Baron-Cohen is the current standard bearer]), here is the modern TV age standard bearer:



Oh, and just for overload, a bit from "Get a Life"