Comments

1

LAME!

2

"I'm dreaming
Of the old
Kingdome
Just like the one I used to know
With its narrow aisles, and
Falling tiles
And beer that tastes like yellow snow..."

4

Almost Live! still airs on KING 5 on Saturday night at around midnight. It's easy to DVR all the old shows.

5

Good grief, Katie. Did you honestly not know about Almost Live? It had its moments, but of course it is dated. You'd probably enjoy this skit: https://youtu.be/udxh5mPsZw4

Almost Live launched the careers of Joel McHale and Bill Nye. They weren't even the best cast members.

6

You want a trigger warning? They got a trigger warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGlDVmBLibg

7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taMDsIoeZKo

cops in ballard.

8

Just wait until Katie discovered In Living Color https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16rGLmupdlI

9

Uhhhh. God, these barrel-scraping columns are just fucking god damned PAINFUL. The Stranger is begining to make Buzzfeed look professional.

10

The Lame List had members of local grunge bands in it. The cast of Alomost Live used to sponsor live movies at Gas Works Park. The 40th anniversery celebration book made by Dick's Drive Inn had the cast in uniforms pretending to serve food. It was on the last page, I think. Bill Nye, The Science Guy was not famous yet. Ballard Vice was ok, but the neighborhood it made fun of is gone.

Ever heard of J.C. Patches, The Kingdome, Chubby and Tubby, peacocks that used to escape from the Zoo and run around on Phinney? Remember when the Lakeside Rummage Sale was put on in the 70's by rich parents to buy a computer for an already rich kid? Guess who. Costco had piles of tires you could climb on their grocery floor. Ernst was the biggest hardware store. Frederick and Nelson's sold Frango's.

11

Much of Almost Live focused on neighborhood distinctions that have since been lost, so I doubt the show would make much sense to folks that didn't live in Seattle during the show's heyday.

I imagine that if you just moved here, the Ballard Driving Academy bit is super confusing. The days of Ballard being a sleepy outpost of old Norwegian ladies are long, long gone.

12

I never thought I'd see a "Hey you guys, there used to be a show called Almost Live!" article from The Stranger. Glad to see it mentioned, but geez.

Portlandia owes at least something to Almost Live. Compare the Almost Live restaurant skit shot at Ponti with the Portlandia "Farm" skit.

13

hbb @ 11 is right, the show wouldn’t work today for the stated reasons and the fact that nobody can seem to take a joke today. However, to be fair, the show got in trouble for the “Space Needle collapse” bit on April Fools Day.

14

Wait until Katie finds out about Bombshelter Videos.

The headline will read: "Did you know that Seattle used to have a music scene?"

https://youtu.be/1xDEk-v7234

17

I loved Almost Live! probably because I was in middle school during its heyday, but those clips aren't bad considering the shelf life of sketch comedy. Does vintage SNL even hold up well? Mmmmmm... kinda. Plus they'd book touring comedians, something I didn't have access to otherwise.

@14 1,000,000 points for mentioning Bombshelter videos.

See you at the Toast Bar.

19

Mind your manners!

Hey Katie, write about Spud Goodman next!

takes swig of pepto bismol

https://youtu.be/tJomJVKbFLI

20

I like Cops in Redmond (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pxGDSucCEI). Dated for sure, yet somehow ahead of its time as well.

21

@19: Spud Goodman !!!!! (sat in that studio audience quite a few times, back in the day)

22

A great example of how far we are from the Almost Live era is Katie Herzog writing that the show "aired each weekend on, of all stations, KING5 (née KING-TV)."

Now why would you say "of all stations," as if KING was the unlikeliest of stations to do a local comedy show? That seems to reveal a lack of familiarity with Seattle history.

Those of us who grew up here in Seattle in the 20th century remember KING as a local station that produced a relatively high number of local programs in its Dexter Avenue studios. We would never say "of all stations" because it was fully within the nature of KING TV to do another local show.

Sadly, after the original owners the Bullitt family sold the station in the 1990s, KING 5 joined the national trend of axing budgets for local programming in favor of cheaper, easier to acquire syndicated programming, and better yet (for them), informercials, because they actually paid you to air the show instead of the other way around!

Now KING5 has vacated the old Dexter studio building which has since been demolished, along with the old tradition of making locally based shows like Almost Live, Seattle Today, and How Come?.

As for "trigger warnings," that is part of what makes it so much less fun to live today. You can't air a Billy Quan skit any more without the obnoxious far-right complaining that "the white man is set up as the buffoon again, like Homer Simpson, forced to receive abuse and humiliation that women and minorities protest when it's them," and the irritating far-left complaining about "Asian stereotypes and cultural appropriation..." To me it was neither of those...it was simply FUNNY.

23

@16 That was: "The Mystery of Broadmoor"

https://youtu.be/018tE9m28-o

24

x3 on the Spud Goodman love (and for Spud’s dad’s dominatrix)

25

Almost Live was a big promoter of local music. It was great to hear snippets of Goodness or Green Apple Quickstep in the bumpers between commercial breaks.

26

21

Awesome! Watched it religiously as a teenager. My buddies and I loved that wierd ass show intensely.

27

It was very Seattle and a pretty innocent way of laughing at ourselves without being mean or sarcastic - and that is rare in a comedy show today: the Ineffectual Middle Management Suck-Ups, the High-Fivin' White Guys, skinny Bill Nye's bulge doing Speed Walker; Tapings were catered by Pagliacci. and promotional consideration given by American Music. Maybe not always Hall of Fame stuff, but frequently pretty darn cute. It was a time.

28

@25 I still have a soft spot for Superwise.

Are people not interested in Local Comedy in 2018? Has something on YouTube replaced it? Or is the massive content firehose of Netflix/YouTube/DVRs/TV on Demand that really killed shows like Almost LIve?

29

I guess I'm officially old.

30

Next week: Katie discovers an up & coming burger joint, Dick's Drive-In.


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