How Ya Living? What?

On April 15th 1990 a show premiered that would alter my future in a lot of ways. It introduced me to sketch comedy and gave me my first celebrity role model. That show was "In Living Color".

As anyone who has been to this site before knows I tend to do a fair amount of research before I post anything and more often than not I start my search at www.imdb.com. However when I went looking for some basic information that I could share with you about "In Living Color" this is the tagline I was met with: "An afro-american focused comedy sketch show." 

There are obvious problems with this not the least of which is it comes across as a bit a racist. "In Living Color" was the brainchild of Keenan Ivory Wayans, who wanted to put together a multi-cultural sketch show that could be viewed as funny no matter what race, creed or sexual orientation you were. In the 90's the show was a phenomenon and looking back it's easy to see why. The cast Keenan was able to assemble was nothing short of remarkable. The cast included: David Alan Grier, Tommy Davidson, Damon Wayans, Jamie Foxx, Chris Rock, Marlon Wayans,  Steve Park, Jennifer Lopez(fly girl - dancer) and of course a young man who went by the name of James Carrey. 

Jim Carrey was my first comedic idol. I wanted to be him.(There are family video's that hopefully remain buried of me doing my best "Fire Marshall Bill") I learned a lot from watching him. The art of slapstick and exaggeration of ones body parts for comedic effect. I learned that being able to do voices or impersonations instantly got you laughs and I practiced my voices as often as I could(and still do). In fact, it must have been around grade six when I volunteered for the school talent show to do impersonations and even now I can remember hearing those laughs. 

Jim has since grown up quite a bit and has taken his attempt at serious roles with some success(Man on the Moon is a stand-out performance and will be reviewed here in the future). But to me he will always be "Fire Marshall Bill".

In short, Thank You Keenan, Thank You "In Living Color" and Thank You Jim Carrey.

Now...LET ME SHOW YOU SOMETHING!