This Week In Joe’s Basement, episode 39a: It Seemed Like the Thing to Do at the Time or The Diapers and Daises Dance, Part II.
Viewer mail for episode 39.
“The 80s in Retrospect” is a mockumentary produced in 1979. The documentary “begins” in the middle of the footage (10:06), and features a series of mock commercials, scenes from a New Year party, a scene within a restaurant, and a soliloquy in a train station. The tone of the “documentary” shifts between comedic irreverence and earnest social criticism. The beginning of the footage (before 10:06) establishes the basic premise that polluted radio and television waves sent from Earth are being re-broadcast to Earth from a “space” Haight-Ashbury. The “documentary” footage, then, shows the “polluted” nature of television and radio media. Produced by The Anybody You Choose Video Group at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Tongue-in-cheek polemic against a 1979 Chicago Magazine article about the failures and debaucheries of Southern Illinois University–Carbondale (“Burned Out in Carbondale”). The video takes the form of a 60 Minutes-esque investigation. It has several humorous segments and parodies, including rounds in a dilapidated library, an academic adviser who is actually a magician/diviner, and a woman who passes through a neighborhood bar (PK’s) selling test answers.
This tape captures a Second City performance from 1972 featuring John Belushi, Harold Ramis, Joe Flaherty, Jim Staahl, Jim Fisher, Judy Morgan, and Eugenie Ross-Leming.
Raw footage of improvised comedic scenes shot for (but mostly not used in) TVTV Goes To The Super Bowl, a documentary about the events and personalities surrounding Super Bowl X in Miami between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Dallas Cowboys. This tape features Christopher Guest, Bill Murray, Brian Murray, and Harold Ramis.
Sitcom pilot starring Mary Gross, Tim Kazurinsky, and George Wendt. Gross and Wendt are a couple, and Kazurinsky is staying with them after a divorce. The plot revolves around it being Wendt’s 30th birthday and the other two attempting to arrange a special evening and facing a series of mishaps.
AIR DATES: January 25, February 1, 1992