Big shout-out to Seattle native and longtime SLOG reader Manzell, who clued me in yesterday on a little known fact about Seattle: It used to be funny.
For those of us who've been here for less time than Jeff Bezos, that may seem impossible. Seattle? Funny? What the hell is funny about a $1,600 a month "apodment" with the toilet next to the stove? The funniest thing about this city is the Solowheel-riding leather daddy, and, come to think of it, I haven't seen him for months. He probably got a job at Amazon and replaced the harness with a lanyard. Seattle is many things (hilly, expensive, close to Canada), but funny? Not since the first dot-com bubble burst, which, for the record, was hilarious.
However, according to Manzell (Ingraham class of '98), this city formerly had a rich sense of humor, and there was even an SNL-like local TV show, Almost Live!, that aired each weekend on, of all stations, KING5 (née KING-TV).
The show was created by Bob Jones and Ross Shafer, and starred a bunch of now-successful Seattle losers like Bill Nye, Joel McHale, and Bob Nelson, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Nebraska. (While Nelson lost that Oscar, he did win a Stranger Genius Award in 2014, which is basically equivalent, so congratulations and you're welcome for that.)
Almost Live! ran for 15 years, from 1984 to 1999, before it was axed by KING's then-owners, Dallas-based Belo Corporation, for the high crime of not making any money. Reruns have aired periodically on KONG, KING's Tacoma-based sister station, but now, if you want to see a glimpse of Seattle's better self, YouTube is the place to do it.
Here's one that will appeal to even the newest Seattle resident: "Pike or Pine?" The businesses may be gone but it's still a question for the ages.
"The Almost Live! Guide to Seattle" is also timeless, proving once and that making fun of Seattle Weekly was never not in style. And coffee jokes were never funny.
There's also this Bruce Lee parody, starring Almost Live! cameraman Darrell Suto and host John Keister, which really could have used a trigger warning.
After watching a good 30 seconds of each of these clips, I'm not sure I'd agree with Manzell that Almost Live! was exactly funny, but I do believe that Seattle use to be. I mean, have you read The Stranger before David Schmader quit? That shit was hilarious.
