| Wednesday, January 21, 2009 |
| Celebrity Autobiography = awesome! |
Every year San Francisco has about a gazillion amazing festivals, from NoisePop to Noir City to the International Film Festival, and you have to pick and choose what to attend because no one has unlimited time and money. One fest we've attended throughout the years has been San Francisco Sketchfest, which is now in its eighth (!) year and offers an astonishing array of comedy shows, panels and films with some pretty big-name comedians.
Joe and I went to Monday night's "Celebrity Autobiography," which features comedy celebs reading excerpts from cheesy books like Vanna White's Vanna Speaks and Joan Lunden's Good Morning, I'm Joan Lunden. It was the perfect evening for the pop culture obsessive. Here are some of the highlights:
Michael McKean reading from Burt Reynolds' My Life, with "rebuttals" from Annette O'Toole (My Life in High Heels by Loni Anderson) and Rachel Dratch (Burt And Me: My Days and Nights With Burt Reynolds by Burt's former assistant Elaine Hall)
Will Forte reading from the Tommy Lee chapter in Motley Crue's The Dirt
Jason Sudeikis reading from Kenny & Julia Loggins' The Unimaginable Life: Lessons Learned on the Path of Love
Scott Thompson reading the part of Lance Bass from an N'Sync autobiography
Laraine Newman reading selections from Suzanne Somers' poetry
The founder of "Celebrity Autobiography," Eugene Pack, read a passage from Neil Sedaka's Laughter in the Rain: My Own Story, and disturbingly enough, the women sitting right behind us started whispering, "Who's Neil Sedaka?" "I don't know." Who's Neil Sedaka? For shame!! Anyway, out of all the autobiographies, I have to say that Sedaka's was by far the most banal, consisting mainly of a laundry list of all the food he eats when he goes to various restaurants, due to his dietary preferences and restrictions: "At a Japanese restaurant, I always start with sashimi -- that's raw fish (hey, the book was written in the early 1980s) -- and then have chicken teriyaki. At a Chinese restaurant..." etc. The fact that Sedaka would think anyone might possibly care about this minutiae is definitely worthy of mockery.
The grand finale featured excerpts from the dueling autobios of Debbie Reynolds (Dayle Reyfel), Elizabeth Taylor (Newman) and Eddie Fisher (Pack). I had never heard of Reyfel before, but she was just spot-on as Reynolds, and it was great to see "Saturday Night Live" veteran Newman back in action.
The whole evening was just hilarious. The show is playing at New York's Triad Theater, and must be worth catching there just for the no-doubt-priceless experience of seeing Bruce Vilanch read from Star Jones' memoir.
As we were leaving, one of Joe's co-workers who happened to be in attendance was chatting with Will Forte, who is a current cast member on "SNL," and I got to say hi to him, which was cool. He seemed very gracious and nice, and I always enjoy his work on "SNL" -- plus, he's an East Bay native (he grew up in Lafayette). |
posted by 125records @ 2:07 PM  |
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| 1 Comments: |
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you are way too cool for me Sue--damn! truly--I confess that I shall shamelessly use this knowledge for artificially enhanced hipness at school this week! most entertaining and delightful!
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Name: Sue
Home: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
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you are way too cool for me Sue--damn! truly--I confess that I shall shamelessly use this knowledge for artificially enhanced hipness at school this week! most entertaining and delightful!