Tubular Memories

JoAnne Worley
(Special guest, Pete ‘n’ Keely)

“Well, duh! I loved Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. Surprise! I was only on the show for two years, but Alan Sues proceeded to ‘do’ me for another three: He got my hair, my eyelashes, my boas, and he would shriek, ‘B-O-O-R-ing!!!’ Everybody thought it was me! One of the most famous bits came from a scripted tirade where I stood up for chickens. ‘Don’t put chickens down! How dare you make jokes about chickens?’ Consequently, everyone started to send me chicken jokes, so I wrote a chicken joke book. In Pete ‘n’ Keely, I do my famous chicken puppet act that I did on the Laugh-In special, before it was a weekly series. Honestly, that show changed my whole life. Before Laugh-In, my name was below the title when I did theater. Since the show, it’s above the title, no matter what the role. I get the last bow–even in Annie!”

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Amanda Green
(Singer/writer, There Is Nothing Like A Dame and an article in the current Playboy Magazine)

“Growing up, nothing was more magical than H.R. Puffnstuff. It absolutely made Saturday mornings for me. I was about five years old and we would watch it on a color TV that you had to keep hitting to keep the color on. I wanted to marry Jack Wild; it’s odd that I ended up marrying someone who looks strangely like him, with the floppy hair and all. Now, my step-kids love the show and rent the videos all the time. The songs are totally fabulous, especially ‘I’m A Mechanical Boy.’

“Antiques Road Show is my all-time fave right now. Each episode is a complete drama. Will it be worth more than we thought? Will it be worth less? Just the other day, a couple had a statue they called ‘Grizelda’ that they kept umbrellas in. It was worth $50,000! God, this sounds so pathetic. I’m boring myself.”

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Sammy Goldstein
(Appearing at Gentry on Halsted in Chicago in April)

“The show I watch in reruns and am absolutely in love with is The Golden Girls. It had some of the funniest writing ever, and yet the characters were so human. How great to be mothered by all of them! I’ve been working at night for the past 20 years, and the thing that was so appealing was when they would sit around the kitchen table eating dessert and talking at the end of the day. I want that camaraderie at the end of my day!

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Charo
(Special guest, Pete ‘n’ Keely)

“I’m going to be very honest with you: Most sit-coms suck. I’ve had offers to do one lately, but I just don’t know whether to do it. They are so far away from reality. I watched Bette the other night, and I wanted to pick up the phone and say, ‘Bette, what the hell were you thinking? Let’s just go to Tijuana and have fun!’ She is too good for that crap. The laugh tracks make me loco…that phony ‘HA-HA-HA’ kills me. If it’s really funny, why do you need that? I just can’t take it. I do watch the news, though–Fox and CNN. Sometimes I like Friends or Frasier. But when the program sucks, I get frustrated. So I turn on old movies or go for a walk, or pick up the guitar and practice. I consider bad T.V. a humongo waste of time. I have a message for T.V. producers: America has changed! With the satellites and all the traveling people do, the audience is sophisticated and international now. They don’t buy crap anymore! I get scripts in the mail, but they’re not so good. If people aren’t talking about your show the next day at the office, you better be happy making chicken tortillas in your kitchen, because you gonna have a lot of free time, baby!”

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Click here to visit Jim Caruso’s website.