The controversy from hell
During an especially memorable episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry’s friend Richard Lewis, the famed comedian portraying himself in the series, makes the claim that he invented the phrase “the ____ from hell” as part of his nightclub act-- as in, “this is the date from hell,” or “it was the vacation from hell.”
Though this show plays to the funny, this is serious business—or at least mock-serious business—to Lewis in real-life, and details about his claim are prominent on his Wikipedia page. (The Yale Book of Quotations backs Lewis, but Bartlett's has refused.)
To somebody my age, the highly-adaptable phrase seems somehow timeless. If asked to date its origin, I would have probably guessed the turn of the last century, about the time that the concept of eternal torment in the afterlife became less serious in the West. No clue exactly though.
Anyway, by no means is my research conclusive, but if you watch Richard Lewis during one of his early appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s—and there are many good reasons to do such a thing—you can hear a shocking (to me) response from the audience both times Lewis uses the phrase. It’s truly as if these people have never heard it before. Or maybe the man just says things funny.
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Another nasty legacy of Ronald Reagan: This is an excerpt from Carl Reiner's book I Remember Me.
It was in 1927, when Mr. Hoover was the secretary of commerce, that he proposed and helped pass a bill insuring that the airways belonged to the people and not the broadcasters. The regulation limited airtime for commercials to three minutes of every hour or ninety seconds for every half-hour. For decades, the writers and producers of radio dramas and comedies had ample time to tell their stories, with minimal interruptions.
After President Reagan was sworn in, one of his first priorities was to thank the heads of the major corporations and the top film studio executives for their energetic support in helping him get elected. To show his gratitude, President Reagan supported a bill that deregulated the amount of minutes per hour that advertisers could use to sell their products. In a very short time, the network's half-hour comedy shows, which had used twenty-six and a half minutes to tell their stories, were now trying to tell a story in twenty-two minutes. Recently it was chopped to twenty minutes.
On most networks, we are now able to watch strings of commercials that peddle high-fiber cereals, incontinence pads, health insurance, full-figure brassieres, Odor Eater foot pads, an eyelash separator, Hamburger Helper, an erection-enhancing cream, toe fungus lotion, Cheez Whiz in a spray can, a lawyer who handles cases for victims of mesothelioma-- all this without having to be interrupted by any kind of entertainment.
If you enjoy watching these commercials more than you do a good comedy or drama, then you are one lucky guy or gal! And you lucky guys and gals can thank President Ronald Reagan for that. He has gifted our country with a healthy chunk of entertainment-free television!
posted by CM @ 7:32 PM
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