*Ring*
Kettle: Hello?
Pot: Yeah, look this Pot. I know we used to be tight and I hate to break it to you but you are no longer polished steel, in fact you are black.
*click*

Almost Live was awesome.

Almost live sucked ass.

Except for the Miami Vice parody in Ballard where instead of flamingos in the opening credits, they had Canadian geese at Golden Gardens.

Har. Nice one.

Yeah it sucked ass, except that part where I laughed.

Kind of like the Stranger sucks, except that part where I pick it up and read it every week.

It doesn't justify the whole that I was willing to trudge through hours of television for one laugh. I'm fucking dumb and fat to boot, and I'll watch anything in order not to move. I watch Leno instead of Letterman because I do not own a remote and KING5's news is better.

Seriously I must have watched, what? Forty hours of high fivin' white guys in my life? Not one laugh.

It wasn't always funny (especially toward the end of the show's run), but at least Almost Live employed local actors, writers, sound guys, costume designers, etc.

The sketch comedy on TV now (MAD TV, SNL) is far shittier, but foisted upon us from afar.

It's nice to have local television programs sometimes, if only to maintain the illusion that the U.S. isn't an awful cultural monolith.

What I resented about Almost Live was this: It was on after the news and before SNL. Basically you had to sit through Almost Live to get to SNL—and many people did, because... what else was there to watch? And so the thing had decent ratings. It was manipulative and passive-aggressive—in other words, pure Seattle.

And the show was... smug. That's Seattle too. The endless opening credits, which went on almost as long as SNLs, and were done in an eerily similar style, for a show that was 1/3 the length? Come on.

I did laugh once though: Green River Dance. That was funny.

I dunno, I've seen less than a dozen episodes, but I like that Kent or Bothell are the butt of all the jokes. That honestly nevers gets old.