Watched a re-run of Almost Live after watching a re-run of Saturday Night Live last night (Party!). John Keister’s opening monologue mentioned Seattle Art Museum, Dale Chihuly, the Lusty Lady, and a skit poked at Republicans for demanding Green Cards from legal residents. It all seemed oddly poignant until they did a bit about Legends of the Fall, which would seem to indicate it was from 1994. At the end they pitched Almost Live’s Guide to Living in Seattle (want it).
Despite the the Keister, et al.’s duds throughout the years, watching last night made me miss having a locally based comedy show. Is there something in the works? Is there already something out there? It could be fun. That’s all.

Grant Brissey covered everything from hard news and technology, to music, film, and visual arts during his time working for The Stranger. Grant's work has also appeared at Geekwire, and in Billboard,...

26 replies on “Missing Almost Live”

  4. Around the turn of the century, there was the short lived John Report with Bob, but really that was the unfunny Keister just doing a mediocre monologue and then using material from actually funny local comedy groups like Bald Faced Lie, Up In Your Grill, and The Habit.

    Those were the salad days of local comedy, and those groups were the reason.

  6. I was just discussing with a friend yesterday how Seattle needs another Almost Live. We were coming up with skit ideas like crazy:

    -A Seattle-based Gossip Girl promo casted entirely with aging hippies from Wallingford.

    -A video showing the Denny party founding Seattle and establishing a town, but one of the members ends up being first NIMBY. Hilarity ensues.

    -National Geographic television does Belltown nightlife.

    -“Ask a 3rd Avenue Schizophrenic”

    Anyone want to film a pilot??

  8. We need something like “Almost Live” because we need to laugh at ourselves now and then. The closest these days might have been the “Uptight Seattlite” at the Weekly but that still left a bit to be desired.

  9. There were a few bits I didn’t care for on Almost Live, like the High-Fivin’ White Guys and the Lame List, and I didn’t find a couple of the cast members to be very funny but, overall, I loved it. Bob Nelson was probably my favorite cast member; his droll delivery always cracked me up.

    I loved the local humor. One of my favorite lines was by Keister as a driving instructor for the Ballard Driving School. He looks at the speedometer and says to his student, “Whoa…you’re going 5 mph…where’s the fire?”

    The cheesy Billy Quan skits were always hilarious.

    You mentioned Chihuly in Keister’s opening monologue. Here’s Keister in Chihuly and Jones.

  11. Well John Keister pointed out a few years ago why it wouldn’t work; every neighborhood has become like every other neighborhood. Ballard = Queen Anne = Capitol Hill=Madison Park.

  13. @11, John Kiester’s old. He doesn’t know what’s going on. There’s like twice as many people in the metro area as there were then, and that population is ten times as diverse. Just because Kiester never goes anyplace that’s different doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

    And Ballard is hella ripe for ripping to shreds in a new way.

    What they need to avoid is too heavy a reliance on the same old same old, the same few cast members doing the same sketches over and over again. That’s what made Almost Funny fail (ditto SNL). They should have a large set cast but mucho guest appearances. And if you don’t repeat everything sixteen times you can tolerate the bits that turn out to not be so funny.

  14. I’m all for it. Seattle definitely needs to reclaim its sense of humor.

    One not-funny thing to note: KING 5 airs reruns of AL without paying a single residual cent to the cast or writers. DICKMOVE!

  15. Oh man. When I was stationed at Whidbey back in 88-90 I watched that show all the time and loved it. The two things that still stick out were “Washington, we’re left of Idaho” as the state’s tourist slogan and “Don’t stir your Tang too fast or you may create run-away cold fusion”.

  16. Great. Someone create a new Seattle comedy show. BUT, it has to be funny more times than not. Neither the last two years of SNL nor most of Almost Live are funny in any noticeable way. There is so much to make fun of and for some reason both these shows use a running gag for an entire skit. Boring.

    I know there are those out there who can do it (I laugh every night at John Stewart and Stephen Colbert so it can be done).

  17. They have a YouTube channel that goes deep into the archives. A pretty decent amount of it holds up. The East Side Story is kind of awful yet wonderful.

  19. I highly prefer Almost Live to pretty much any season of SNL. My family still cracks jokes whenever we visit Kent- “I’m sorry, ma’am, but your hair is not big enough to be in the city limits.” I would support something like this wholeheartedly, and also agree that Pat Cashman needs to be on it.

  23. If there was only a successful local alternative news source with a large Internet presence and ties to the local comedy scene and a couple of staffers who do stand-up that could sponsor and help create such a thing…

  24. I agree with Fnarf – Ballard needs to get a ripping and grow a fucking sense of humor. Tons of comedy hilarity there.
    It’s hard to believe that there is no local sketch comedy television show for Seattle. Hardly a day goes by without something that would make good fodder for it.

  25. I’ts incredibly apparent that Seattle needs to learn how to make fun of itself again. I am all for this idea, but with some of the caveats expressed by other commenters, i.e. needs to be more than just a small group of sketches repeated ad nauseum, and would be great if AL alums like Pat Cashman could be somehow involved.

  26. Though not televised there are a few sketch groups in Seattle who perform fairly regularly: Charles, Killer Donut, and Ubiquitous They. These three groups each have their own brand of comedy that is rooted in the culture of Seattle. Charles is duo whose writing is always sharp and well-thought out, Killer Donut is a trio who really understand “the game”, and Ubiquitous They is a huge group that finds its funny in the multitude of voices that it is comprised of. If you want to support sketch comedy keep an eye out for these guys, come out to the shows, and talk about them. If you want televised NW comedy support what is there because that is what will likely make it on the tube if the time comes.

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