Jones, Jonze, Spike & Co.
7 Comments
Leave a comment
The Webby Awards
Person of the Year
Best Blog: Natl. Soc. of Newspaper Columnists
One of the year's best blogs -- Time
Last 12 months, 109 million views at RogerEbert.com.
Year's best blog: Am. Assn. of Sunday and Feature Editors
Roger Ebert
Ebert's latest books are "The Great Movies III," "Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2011" and "The Pot and How to Use It." Volumes I and II of "The Great Movies" and "Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert" can also be ordered via the links in the right column of rogerebert.com.
Search
About this Archive
Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
___________________
Buy from Amazon.com
Buy from Barnes & Noble
Buy from Borders
___________________
Tweet / Facebook
Pages
- "Anna Nicole The Opera" ~ Covent Garden's cups runneth over
- A Monty Python Christmas
- Guys: Danger signals on a date
- Photo of alternate ending for "Star Wars" for 6/13
- recent Two Thumbs Up® reviews
- The birthday of the cinema
- the Your Movie Sucks™ files
- Who goes there? A map of science-fiction
- 3D
- Animation
- Archives
- Art in many forms
- "I don't know anything about architecture, but I know Brutalism when I see it"
- I'll draw you if you'll draw me
- Is The Phantom the only sexually-active superhero?
- Pogo's lament on Earth Day
- San Francisco in 100,000 toothpicks
- The end of "film"
- The man without eyes and his paintings
- The world's largest indoor photo in 360 degrees
- Being here
- "Best Society," by Philip Larkin
- A photo of a little girl, and memories of two beloved aunts
- Hitchens is eloquent in the face of death
- How to be alone
- Let's get together and feel all right
- My master thinks this is art
- Oprah remembers our big date
- Talking to people on the subway
- The bonono apes can listen and learn
- To be young and mixed in America
- West Virginia 8th grade test in 1931
- C'est moi
- Best films 1967-2009: Siskel & Ebert & Scorsese
- Helicopter crashes in our house!
- I didn't notice that was Ron Galella. Is he everywhere?
- I have no arms and I must play
- I read these in my bedazzed youth. Now it's the covers I love.
- I will never, ever, ever, do this
- I'll be honest and fight sqare
- If you were a kid in the 1950s, you remember...
- It's hard to believe it's been 12 years, Gene. I miss you.
- It's like so uncool to like sound like you know what you're like talking about
- Matinees and horse manure
- My drinking days, recalled in a noirish oil
- My other neighborhood on Red Arrow Highway
- My talk at TED 2011
- Oprah remembers our first date
- Portrait of the critic at home
- Reflections after 25 years in the dark
- Shel Silverstein wrote my own damn song
- The long-lost 1990 reunion video of the "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" director, cast and writer
- Cooking
- CyberWorld
- Directors
- A conversation with Atom Egoyan
- At home with Bernardo Bertolucci
- Claude Chabrol, RIP. The master at midpoint
- Herzog looks ahead to the Cave
- Jason Reitman in conversation
- Louis Malle: A do-it-yourself interview
- Manuel de Oliveira is 102: A tribute
- Scorsese on Elia Kazan: Watch the documentary
- The heart of the world and other organs: The singular cinema of Guy Maddin
- The secret of Jacques Tati
- Ebert Club
- Ebert Presents
- Ebert presents at the movies
- Ephemera
- Film Festivals
- Film classics
- Funny
- A personal letter from Steve Martin
- Aid rushed to movie overdose victims
- Are waitresses hitting on you? Onion undercover
- At this point, we all need a good laugh
- Attack of the Second-Rate Monsters
- Avengers Assemble! Superheroes need health care
- Barbara Walters reviews Weinergate
- Buddy Hackett: Up at drama, down at comedy.
- Dan and Dan: The Daily Mail Song
- David Mamet's "Lost Masterpieces of Porn," with your host, Ricky Jay
- Do the Creep!
- Down memory lane: Nic Cage goes batshit
- Dr. Tongue's Evil House of Wax in 3D
- George W. Bush and Mike Tyson in "The President's Speech"
- Harpo Marx, the most articulate brother
- Haven't I seen him somewhere before?
- Helen Mirren's breasts are the answer to everything
- Henny Youngman: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this!"
- How Michael Caine Speaks
- How to fill a glass with water
- How to get a guy to notice you during sex (nsfw)
- I don't know WTF it's saying, but thumbs up!
- I know every single word. So do you.
- I love it when I'm quoted correctly
- Laurel & Hardy & The Gap Band
- Push the dragon's head, and the marble runs down here, and...
- The 1982 Tron Holiday Special
- The 5-year-old who wrote "Fast Five"
- The helpful Robert Benchley
- Walken the Walk, by Walkin' Walken
- When Harry met Sally 2, with Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren
- Who cut the cheese?
- Yes! I won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest!
- Literature
- "Fight Club," by Jane Austen
- "In Love with Raymond Chandler," by Margaret Atwood
- "The Premature Burial," by Edgar Allan Poe
- Gatsby in Scott Fitzgerald's handwriting
- In memory of the memories of W. G. Sebald
- Jack Kerouac: 3/12/22 - 10/21/69
- Kurt Vonnegut's chalk talk on the shape of a story
- On 4/13/1906, Samuel Beckett started waiting
- Studs and Algren and Patterson, N.J.
- The Black Mask Boys
- The books everyone should read
- The enigmatic case of the oddly persistent mystery writer
- Vladimir Nabokov meets Gregor Samsa
- Walt Kelly, an immortal
- Why is film criticism important?
- ♫ Deck us all with Boston Charlie ♫
- London
- Meaning of it All
- A cry from alone
- Conan O'Brien's Dartmouth commencement address
- Grandpa Joe and Secretariat: A Christmas story
- Hitchens feels a tap on the shoulder
- Oops! Let's start over with a new prayer
- The Nutcracker Cheat
- The Rapture Preacher has a stroke
- The Wheel of the Sky
- This is a dog
- What to do when meeting an alien
- Movies
- "As Penny Chenery's youngest son..."
- "I texted! You threw me out! You're assholes!"
- "Man in a Blizzard," by Jamie Stuart
- "Rosebud" was a rather tawdry device
- "Sharks on a Plane: The Movie"
- "The most beautiful film ever made"
- "Whose birthday, Lou?" "Yours, Bud!" "Mine?!? Waitaminit! You were born before me." "That's why your birthday is first." "Who's second?" "You. I was born first."
- "You just don't get it, do you?"
- 100 Great Moments in the Movies
- 36 Hitchcock death scenes all at once
- A blind film critic reviews "Scre4m"
- A double feature every day!
- By popular demand, my review of "3D Prison Girls" (1973)
- Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
- I could watch a Fellini film on the radio
- If Hitchcock had made the trailer for "Inception"
- Jeff Bridges: The Starman within
- John Waters Unplugged: The Transcript
- Marni Nixon: The secret voice of Hollywood
- NYFF48: Film's evolution and man's progress.
- Nick & Nora's hangover cure
- Revenge on "Revenge of the Sith"
- Richard Harris: Don't let it be forgot
- Robert Duvall: "Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that"
- Rock Hudson's secret
- S&E review River Phoenix's last film
- Sam Fuller auditions with Pacino for Hyman Roth in "The Godfather"
- Street scene: Movie theater, snow, rain, promise
- The 100 greatest movie threats of all time
- The Akira Kurosawa Song
- The Bechtel Test
- The Blanche DuBois Death Match: Vivien Leigh v. Woody Allen
- The Duke on Rooster: "My first good part in 20 years"
- The Kowalski Smackdown: Marlon Brando v. Diane Keaton
- The shower scene
- When Lynch met Lucas & Werner saved Joaquin
- Why Pauline Kael never saw a movie twice
- Movies free online
- "Alma," award-winning short by Rodrigo Blaas
- "Breathless:" Modern movies begin here
- "Inspired by Bret Easton Ellis," by Matthew Ross
- "Magritte Moment," by Ian Fischer
- "Out of Sight." A magical anime
- "The Kid," by Charlie Chaplin
- "The Whales of August"
- Buster
- Chaplin: "The Circus," "The Kid" and "The Gold Rush"
- Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast"
- Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story
- Godard's "Film Socialisme" in four minutes flat
- Harold Lloyd in "An Eastern Westerner"
- Harold Lloyd: A rare early short and an interview
- Pauline Kael's favorite film: "Menilmontant"
- Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Richard Lester's "The Bed-Sitting Room"
- Some documentaries of Werner Herzog
- Ten great films about horror
- The Haunted World of Ed Wood, Jr.
- The Naked Civil Servant: John Hurt as Quentin Crisp
- Music
- "Chanda Mama" around the world
- "Gimme Shelter" by Playing for Change
- "Making Giant Hands," by Dog and Panther
- "Redemption Song" around the world
- "Swan Lake" by the Great Chinese Circus
- "What'll I do?" by Julie London
- A Farm Aid concert from 1985
- A Labor Day concert
- A spy at the Bank of America protest
- A xylophone in a forest
- Bob Marley: One Love around the world
- Concert for an uncertain world
- Did Leonard Cohen save my life?
- Do you know the wonderful Lucy Foley?
- Ella: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing
- Esperanza Spalding. Yes.
- Four-year-old Jonathan conducts conducts the Chandler Symphony Orchestra
- Freddie Mercury vs. the Platters & Wayne's World
- Gene Siskel covers Paul McCartney in 1976
- George Shearing, 1919-2011
- Happiness is being on the road again
- Hazel Dickens, the Rebel Girl
- Hey you! What song you listenin' to?
- I could listen to Ronnie play guitar all day long
- I went to school with Andy Cohen
- I'll never smoke weed with Willie again
- I've never loved Paul Simon more than after seeing her tears of joy
- Jammin' cellos: Stjepan Hauser and Luka Sulic
- Joan Baez: There is a clearing where one is almost happy
- John Prine: A concert in Ireland
- John Prine: American Legend
- Jonathan is three and loves great music
- Joni MItchell: "Big Yellow Taxi"
- Julie London: The torch is burning
- Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" as a classical composition
- New Year's with Steve: In tribute to a great heart
- Nikki Janofsky: The future is hers
- Phoebe Snow, R.I.P.
- Que sera, sera
- Roy Orbison: Say you'll stay with me!
- Sing a song of newspapers
- Smile : )
- Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee
- Still Bill: The life and songs of Bill Withers
- Sweet Dreams, Baby: For Patsy Cline
- The Platters perform "The Twist"
- The artist known as Prince
- The greatest music video ever made
- The night Bo Diddley double-crossed Ed Sullivan
- The night Hank Williams came to town
- The triumph of the day-fly
- The ukulele orchestra of Great Britain
- Tom Waits serenades New York harbor
- We need Punk Vaudeville. Jarmean?
- Won't you ride in my little red wagon?
- Your Christmas morning concert
- ♫ Don't know much about history... ♫
- ♫ My funny valentine, sweet comic valentine, you make me smile with my ♥
- ♫ Nestor Torres and the spirit in the music
- New Yorker captions
- Newspapers
- O'Rourke's magazine
- Oscars
- Pages for Twitter
- People
- "By the age of 50, every man has the face he deserves."
- "It's not like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Cher said.
- Bill Mauldin, American
- Bob Hope: Thanks for the memories
- Bronson: Coming of age in Scoop Town
- Dorothy Dandridge: In Memory
- Dustin Hoffman can't stop laughing
- Falling in Love Again: Marlene Dietrich
- Keanu thought his two years were running out
- Kirk Douglas: I've killed so many Romans, so many Vikings, so many Indians...
- Lars von Trier, meet Klausi Kinski
- Leslie Nielsen, RIP. "And don't call me Shirley"
- Liza, when all was still ahead
- Mae West and Rock Hudson: "Baby, It's Cold Outside!"
- Maria Schneider comes to America
- On the 69th birthday of the greatest
- Orson Welles sells peas
- Pete Postlethwaite: 1946-2011
- Robert Mitchum remembers Marilyn Monroe
- Some Robert De Niro gossip I hadn't heard
- Susannah York, 1939-2011
- The last days of Tiny Tim
- Waitaminit! The radioactive albino crocodiles weren't real?
- Werner & Erroll & the mystery of Ed Gein's grave
- What Oscar Wilde taught Stephen Fry
- Zuppke of Illinois: A football coach
- Photos in need of a caption
- Photos in need of comment
- Photo inevitably by Helmut Newton for 6/11
- Photo of Grace Slick being choked for 6/9
- Photo of Spider-Man underfoot for 4/12
- Photo of a belly-flop for 6/15
- Photo of a brave tattoo for 6/6
- Photo of a family outing for 6/14
- Photo of a man doing what any man would do for 6/7
- Photo of a woman smoker for 6/5
- Photo of world's most pierced woman for 6/10
- Posting these images could get me arrested in Tennessee
- Upskirt wrestling photo for 6/8
- Poetry
- "Hell is a Lonely Place," by Charles Bukowski
- "Hollywood Jabberwocky," by Frank Jacobs
- "Love 20¢ the first quarter-mile," by Kenneth Fearing
- "The Charge of the Light Brigade," by Tennyson
- "The Day the Saucers Landed," by Neil Gaiman
- "The Machines Mourn the Passing of People"
by Alicia E Stallings - "You being in love," by e. e. cummings
- 'Twas the Night Before Pogo
- All the world's a stage
- Dylan Thomas goes not gently
- Emily Dickinson: My life closed twice before its close
- Evening Prayer
- Good-bye to All That
- Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
- Here today, here tomorrow. Ten poems read by great actors
- I love this sweet grandmother
- In Just-Spring, when the world is mud-luscious...
- Marilyn Monroe and Carl Sandburg
- On the worthlessness of internet snipers
- Remembering Bukowski
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
- So anyway, Charles Bukowski, Errol Morris and Roger Ebert walk into this bar...
- So much depends upon a red wheel barrow
- W. B. Yeats: "Horseman, pass by!"
- Walt Whitman: I sing the body electric
- When icicles hang by the wall
- William Blake: Of innocence and experience
- e. e. cummings lives in a pretty how heaven
- e. e. cummings talks dirty (nsfw)
- Politics
- "If you think it's a socialist plot, give up your federal health care"
- A disgusting new low in political videos
- Christopher Hitchens at length on BBC's Newsnight
- John Lithgow: The Gingrichburg Address
- Pogo says it for the very first time
- Saul Alinsky pours for the Tea Party
- The Battle Hymn of the Tea Party
- The Weiner Files: A dramatic reading (nsfw)
- The financial crisis explained (nsfw)
- The rich are waging war on America
- Update on the TSA breast milk incident
- Will Rogers on unemployment
- Willam F. Buckley was not an Ayn Rand fan
- Satire
- "I'm American, and I speak American!"
- Bird species faces extinction for some reason
- Feds relax national dating standards
- Final Harry Potter film to be released in seven segments
- George Lucas strikes back
- Marion Cotillard for Forehead Tittaes
- Paul Revere's midnight ride, revised by Sarah Palin
- The nation's smallest Gay Pride parade
- Science and not
- A reality far beyond my imagination
- Ants have built-in pedometers
- Do Creationists make good science students?
- Drive a car with the power of your mind
- Jeez, Dr. Feynman, I'm sorry I asked
- Our beautiful, awesome, terrifying universe
- Snakes on mathematical planes
- Starting with one cell, we arrive at Prof. Hawking
- The God Gene. A breakthrough
- The python's dinner
- The real reasons why our health care costs are so high
- We are part of all worlds
- Why HAL 9000 sang "Daisy"
- Sex and stuff
- Siskel and Ebert
- Letterman, Siskel & Ebert go door-to-door in New Jersey
- Letterman: "The lovely & talented Siskel & Ebert"
- Siskel & Ebert & Stern
- Siskel & Ebert on home video in 1988
- Siskel & Ebert on how to be a film critic
- Siskel & Ebert recommend great summer movies
- Siskel & Ebert's 1980s Holiday Gift Guides
- Siskel & Ebert's animated appearance on "The Critic"
- When Siskel & Ebert were on "Sneak Previews"
- Strange
- "Jean-Luc," a cartoon not about Godard (I think)
- "The Tell-Tale Heart," by Edgar Allan Poe
- At last, a trailer that doesn't give away the whole story
- Do I dare to eat a peach?
- Fifteen minutes of my life, gone forever
- Forms of sychronized swimming without water
- No animals were harmed in the making of this fur coat
- Sigmund Freud's friendly couch
- Take my hand, I'm a stranger in Paradise
- The Man Who Foretold the Future
- Top 10 reasons I want to be cremated
- Train a performing goldfish
- Television
- "I Love Lucy:" The long-lost pilot
- Jack Benny, 1894-1974: The man who was funny just by standing there
- Johnny Carson and the uncanny potato chips
- Jones, Jonze, Spike & Co.
- OK, already! I PLAYED a video game! Now are you happy?
- Piers Morgan is hitting his stride
- Playboy After Dark was pretty good. Yes.
- The Orson Welles Program
- Tom Shales lunches with Siskel & Ebert
- When television had a brain in its head
- Young Jon Stewart interviews George Carlin (1997)
- Trailers
- Videos
- What could go wrong?
Categories
- 3D (4)
- Best film lists--and worst (12)
- Books and reading (3)
- Books and such (3)
- Cannes 2009 (10)
- Cannes 2010 (10)
- Darwin, My Hero (9)
- Deeper into movies (28)
- Film festivals (2)
- Just for Twitter (1)
- My Life and Times (43)
- My Old Gang (13)
- People (23)
- Political (22)
- Popular entries (17)
- Specific films (26)
- Supposedly funny (12)
- The Immensity (24)
- The Seasons (3)
- The Webopolis (5)
- The show (3)
- Toronto 2009 (11)
Monthly Archives
- June 2011 (2)
- May 2011 (6)
- April 2011 (3)
- March 2011 (4)
- February 2011 (4)
- January 2011 (7)
- December 2010 (6)
- November 2010 (4)
- October 2010 (7)
- September 2010 (12)
- August 2010 (5)
- July 2010 (5)
- June 2010 (5)
- May 2010 (13)
- April 2010 (6)
- March 2010 (5)
- February 2010 (4)
- January 2010 (7)
- December 2009 (9)
- November 2009 (4)
- October 2009 (7)
- September 2009 (15)
- August 2009 (9)
- July 2009 (7)
- June 2009 (6)
- May 2009 (13)
- April 2009 (7)
- March 2009 (7)
- February 2009 (10)
- January 2009 (6)
- December 2008 (6)
- November 2008 (8)
- October 2008 (6)
- September 2008 (6)
- August 2008 (6)
- July 2008 (4)
- June 2008 (5)
- May 2008 (11)
- April 2008 (4)
Spike Jones was my dad's favorites and we had a lot of records. One of the first songs I sang was Pimples and Braces.
I can't stand it anymore--it's driving me sane. (Spike Jones)
Thank you so much for the memories of Spike.
Although I only saw Spike Jones and the City Slickers on tv when I was younger than 7, their comic zest plucks my primordial dna.
I learned to loved jazz from my father, who died when I was 14. Watching these clips feels like being with him. The spirit of jazz is uncompromised and the comedy is like transcendental meditation for the soul.
Fun Fact about Spike Jones and his City Slickers....
A member of the City Slickers came to have a somewhat prominent role in Chicago Broadcasting history...
Carl "Stormy" Greyson, who I believe was featured singing in "Cocktails for two",
(if not in the video posted above), was a staff announcer at WGN Radio and TV, and of course a foil for "Uncle" Bobby Collins.
Roger - Thanks for the kind words. Best, SJ2.
Ebert: Thank you for your great work in bringing your dad's classic work to DVD. I saw him in person once in Urbana. Unforgettable. LMAO. And they were all great musicians.
Hate to be Mr. Know-It-All, but ...
Carl Greyson of WGN was never with Spike Jones's band.
The singer of "Cocktails For Two" was Carl Grayson.
Different fellow, who had a sad, turbulent history with the band.
Details can be found in Jordan Young's book, Spike Jones - On The Record, published by BearManor Media, the definitive reference work on the City Slickers/ Band That Plays For Fun.
Young has taken this book through three revisions, each one bigger and more informative than the last.
Istill don't know how to link to things, so just go to BearManor Media, which has a list of offerings that will knock you out (to say nothing of putting a dent in your wallet).
"Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet." -- African proverb