Monthly Archives: September 2014

Cleese on the Coast!…

And for our friends on the West Coast of the U.S., you won’t be able to avoid John Cleese or his autobiography, So Anyway…

John will be in Seattle on November 16; details to come.

Nov. 17 is San Jose, and the details are here.

Nov. 18: John will be in L.A., with special guest interviewer Eric Idle!!! Get your tickets now!

Nov. 19: John returns home to Santa Barbara! Here’s more info…

Nov. 20: John is heading towards San Diego for this one. I’ve been working the phones to get another interviewer for this one, and I think I found one! I should be able to make the announcement any day now. Here’s the rest of the info…

Nov. 21: John will be at the Barnes and Noble at The Grove at Farmers Market in L.A. and it’s looking like I may have another terrific interviewer. Stay tuned for the announcement, but in the meantime: Have a look…

And finally, he’ll wrap things up Nov. 23 at the Miami Book Fair.

I’m hoping to have the Canadian tour info soon!

Cleese in the Middle…

…of the U.S. I started posting John’s U.S. events for his promotional tour for So Anyway… (his upcoming autobiography). Yesterday I revealed the events for New York, Washington DC and Boston, today, it’s Chicago and Kansas City.

November 11: John will be appearing that evening at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove, IL, just outside of Chicago, through the courtesy of Anderson’s Books.

November 12: John will be in Kansas City at 6 pm (more info here.)

And more info in the west coast events coming soon!

Cleese Invasion: East Coast Edition…

As I mentioned earlier, John Cleese is indeed touring North America and Europe soon to promote the release of his upcoming biography So Anyway… As a part of that, he’ll be doing a lot of bookstore events where you can see him with your own eyes…

Nov. 4 he’ll be at the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue in New York City at 12:30 pm.

That same evening, Nov. 4, he’ll be doing a TimesTalk in NYC, for which you can buy tickets here.

At 8 pm the next evening, Nov. 5, he’ll be interviewed at the BAM Harvey Theatre by John Hodgman, tickets available here.

Nov. 6 at 7 pm in Washington DC, he’ll be interviewed by NPR’s Scott Simon; tickets are sold out but you can apparently get on a wait list here.

Nov. 7 at 6:30 pm, he’ll be at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum for another talk, with tickets available here.

I’ll post more with his Midwest schedule, hopefully tomorrow.

A word to the wise: many of these are likely to sell out; the Washington DC event already has. If you’re hoping to get to any of them, best get your tickets now! If they look a little pricey, it may be because most include a complimentary copy of So Anyway… with ’em.

Stay Cleesey, San Diego! …

As I mentioned earlier, the first volume of John Cleese’s autobiography will be out in November, and he’ll be doing some pretty extensive traveling across Britain and much of Europe, as well as the U.S. and Canada, to promote it. He’s planning loads of TV, radio, and bookstore appearances, so there’s no point in hiding–he’s coming for you. I’ll give you more details as they become available, but I’ll start out by noting that San Diego fans can see John live on November 20. More details here.

Sports Sunday!

Thought I’d take the sting out of the Bears loss watching the White Sox, or maybe the WNBA Finals. Bad day for Chicago…

Roy Leonard

There aren’t too many Chicago radio legends left, and we can’t afford to lose the ones we have. Unfortunately, we’ve lost Roy Leonard, one of the nicest, most decent gentlemen to ever pick up a microphone.

There are plenty of tributes to him all over the web, so I won’t try to summarize his career or write anything lengthy. In addition to reviewing movies for many years, he even took over for Frazier Thomas on Family Classics. He was even nice enough to interview me on occasion and help me promote my Monty Python books, and I’m happy to say that the difference between the on-air Roy Leonard and the off-air Roy Leonard was non-existent.

Need more? Well, he was one of John Cleese’s favorite interviewers. John once said “Any actor who says he enjoys publicity is a Goddam liar. Nevertheless, I have enjoyed a small number of interviews in the last 15 years and most of them were with Roy Leonard.”

Thank you Roy, and condolences to his family.

Joan the Improviser

The national tributes that have gone out with Joan Rivers’ passing have not made much of the fact that she was once a Second City performer. Of course, neither did she.

Del Close, without much prodding, often told tales about performing with her in the same Second City cast. He talked about improvising a scene with her as a married couple in which he asked “But what about the children?” She responded “But we don’t have any children!” So much for “Yes, and…”

Del often described performing with her when she would essentially turn her back on her scene partners, step to the edge of the stage, and begin a monologue about her marriage, husband, etc. Although the others didn’t know it, she was building a stand-up act, albeit at the expense of her fellow improvisers.

In an interview many years later, when asked about Second City, she said something to the effect of “I don’t think they care much about me there.”

All told, she was not much of an improviser. Fortunately for her, she was able to find something else to fall back on…

Book it! …

I’ve been busy for a little while now helping my old boss research the first volume of his upcoming autobiography. I haven’t written about it yet because, well, frankly, it was still being written. But now, to the best of my knowledge, the manuscript has been turned in, and the countdown to publication has started. Don’t worry, I’ll be giving you a few reminders before it comes out, but in the mean time–what do you think of the cover?

iO again! …

Although I wasn’t at the grand opening of the brand new iO theatre (at 1501 N. Kingsbury in Chicago), it was not through lack of desire, and more because we have a new house of our own that we’re gradually getting ready to move into. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check it out. I got an eyeful last weekend at the grand opening of the Mission Theatre, and it’s an amazing place, with more improvisation going on in one building than there was in the entire country when I first started doing this. Don’t believe me? Take a look here…