Candygram

Courtesy Jonah Goldberg at the Corner (scroll down), The Fifty Funniest TV Sketches of All Time.

I could quibble with a few omissions (such as SCTV's extended "Godfather" Sketch, with John Flaherty, Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Dave Thomas and John Candy at the top of their games), but one holds a place in my heart: #11, "Land Shark," from the first season of Saturday Night Live.

I've seen the sketch twice--the last time, maybe twenty-eight years ago. And I'm laughing right now thinking about it.

Not that Astro-Girl would understand.

"It's based on Jaws," I explained. "Except the Land Shark swims up on shore, goes to women's apartments and rings the bell. And then when the woman answers the door, he eats her."

"O-kay," she said.

"Sometimes he says he has a telegram," I said. "Another time, he says he's a plumber. But when Larained Newman says, 'We didn't order a plumber,' he then says, 'Candygram.' And then she opens the door and he eats her." (Spasm of uncontrollable laughter.)

"That's good, sweetie."

"Well," I said. "The writers back then were notorious for all the pot they smoked."

"Um, you think?"

One mistake the writers of the list make is identifying Belushi as Police Chief Matt Hooper. The chief was named Brody of course, played by Roy Scheider in the movie and I forget who in the skit, and their best moment in the skit is when they undrape what appears to be the remains of the girl in a plastic bucket. One of them looks down.

"Oh God," he says. "Tunafish again!"

Royals 5, Yankees 2

Well, the Yanks are hurt, the hitting is crummy, and only Wang--of the top three starters--has put together two good starts in a row, so instead I'll share with you the one thing that made me laugh out loud today. In "The Sports Guy," on ESPN's page two Bill Simmons shares this nugget:

STRANGEST HOLLYWOOD STORY OF THE WEEK

Jack Klugman wants his millions in "Quincy" residuals, and he wants them right now! I love the concept of "Quincy" losing money since it has been off the air -- how is that even possible? Not even James Dolan could pull that off. And since the subject is "Quincy," here's my imitation of the last line right before they headed to the first commercial of every "Quincy" episode: "It wasn't suicide, Sam, it was murder!!!!!!!" Thank you, thank you. I'll be here all week.

On that, more in a second. But consider this:

Follow-up note: I defy you to find a weirder opening credit sequence for a TV show than the one "Quincy" had -- it's a detective show about a coroner, only the music makes it sound like he's a bartender in the Caribbean, and then there are some slapstick sequences (like all the cops fainting) and everything ends with Quincy making time with some babe on a boat. He's a coroner! That might have been the goofiest show from that era that actually made it. Also, I love that there were no other stars from the show. It was like Jack Klugman knew back then, "They're gonna screw me on residuals 25 years from now. I can't have any other stars on this show!"

Yeah, pretty much.

Oh: I followed the link Simmons provided; it's the age-old story. Twenty-five years ago, James Garner was on Donahue saying precisely the same thing about "The Rockford Files."

In Hollywood there live accountants who will tell you, with a straight face, that Forrest Gump and Jurassic Park lost money.

"The Bronx Is Burning" premieres tonight

Oh, please, please, please, Dear God, don't let this thing suck.

In the pantheon of my sports-viewing life, four teams have stood out for me as the epitome of success, class, effort and teamwork: Larry Bird's Celtics, the Brady/Belichek Patriots, Pete Carroll and Matt Leinart's Trojans, and Joe Torre's Yankees, circa 1996-2001.

(Jake Plummer's ASU Sun Devils, by missing out on the prize by 19 seconds, are barely nosed off my personal Mount Rushmore. And the 1972 Boston Bruins, my first encounter with a champion always seemed a minor disappointment; this team, not Montreal, should have been to the seventies what the Islanders, and later the Oilers, were to the 1980s.)

The 1976-78 were, by any definition, a successful team: three pennants in a row, two World Series in a row--by all accounts, quite an impressive run against a field top-heavy with 90-plus-win teams: Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and--most fatefully--the Boston Red Sox, the only team in Divisional Play history to win 198 games in consecutive seasons ('77 and '78) and have nothing to show for it.

However: what made the Yankees so compelling was not just their superb play on the field, but the ongoing off-the-field drama that existed, so openly and so luridly, day after day. What was clear, just by reading the Phoenix Gazette and Sports Illustrated, was a four-part melodrama featuring Thurman Munson, Billy Martin, Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner. What became clear, as the years passed, was that, in Roger Angell's account in the New Yorker, never a more joyless clubhouse existed. Whole factions of the teams despised other factions; Munson, Graig Nettles, Sparky Lyle and Lou Piniella barely bothered to hide their hostility toward Jackson; Jackson talked to third-string catcher Fran Healy and almost no one else; young Willie Randolph withdrew so much he earned the nickname "Corporal Moody" from Nettles; Mickey Rivers was forever piling up gambling debts and begging for advances on his salary; and Catfish Hunter, Chris Chambliss, Roy White, Ron Guidry did their best to stand clear of the whole mess.

Heading the team was bombastic George Steinbrenner--ranting to reporters during games, phoning the dugout to demands pitching changes--and manager Billy Martin, whose brilliance as a game tactician and judgment of talent was done in by his vast insecurity and his drinking.

The only really joyful part of the Yankees was between the lines--when, as has been repeated a thousand times, "they took their fight out of the clubhouse and onto the field."

In a proper world, the mini-series that starts tonight would capture at least some of that.

Maybe. But maybe not.