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‘Almost Live!’: the sketches

The sketches, memorable and overlooked

By Clay Eals

On YouTube, you can find literally thousands of “Almost Live!” sketches to cover almost any topic and taste.

After painful culling, here are two highly subjective lists: 10 that surely top many fans’ lists and 10 that are unjustly overlooked.

This is merely the tip of a formidable iceberg. Prepare to search for your own faves!

MEMORABLE

• “Roscoe’s Oriental Rug Emporium,” a Pat Cashman master stroke, skewering endless “going out of business” ads, arguably the most laugh-inducing bit in the show’s history. Several sequels.
• “Ballard Driving Academy,” the show’s signature routine, featuring John Keister and Bob Nelson and poking gentle fun at what was seen as a neighborhood of slow and oblivious motorists.
• The “Worst Girlfriend in the World,” series flaunting a malevolent Tracey Conway tormenting a string of male dates, even from the grave.
• “Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan,” with charming, cut-rate special-effects galore, and with Darrell Suto dubbed in voiceover fury over smoking and other faux pas at a yard sale, pool parlor, bowling alley and the library.
• “High-Five’n White Guys,” jumping, bellowing, hand-slapping and clueless, in many locales: Ballard, downtown, the Eastside, even Vancouver, B.C.
• “Ballard Vice,” starring John Keister and Ross Shafer, a visual and verbal take-off on TV’s “Miami Vice.”

• “East Side Story,” the most operatic five minutes in the show’s history, pitting Factoria Trash against Bellevue Squares in reverent Jets/Sharks style.
• “Speed Walker,” a Joe Guppy-invented series in which loose-limbed Bill Nye improbably apprehends runaway evil-doers through dogged, Olympic-level heel-to-toe striding. For a companion superhero, check out five episodes of “Jet Guy.”

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  “COPS,” a TV spoof, with “bad boys” thwarted in Wallingford, the University District, Mercer Island, Ballard, Kent, Redmond, even Leavenworth.

• “The Lame List,” famous or infamous, depending on your view, a series featuring repeated “la-a-ame” reactions from Seattle’s longest-, stringiest-haired grunge rockers.

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OVERLOOKED

• “Burger Gun,” fast food at its logical extension, with a charged-up Nancy Guppy firing burgers at drive-by customers.
• “Seattle Is a Changing,” Bob Nelson strumming and singing a 1997 Dylan rewrite aiming a lyrical razor at the rapid disappearance of the city’s icons.

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  “Black History Month,” a pair of edgy, singular polemics by black performers Rhonda Watson in 1998 and David Scully in 1999.

• “Terminator,” middle-aged office-workers and others facing mortality from their “just shoot me” wishes expressed two decades earlier. John Keister’s all-time favorite sketch.
• “Jeopardy,” commentary by would-be contestant Victor Morris on tailoring the game show for Blacks, such as adding “The Funk of Dionne Warwick” as a category. “Hey, it’s a start!”

• “Gorillas on the Space Needle,” an early visual treat, as Ross Shafer and others mount the monument in ape suits, ostensibly representing an indignant union.
• “The Thing,” a wordless Bob Nelson masterpiece that in just 90 seconds enlists an escalating mix of nine players, including a rifled Joel McHale, in trying to eradicate an unseen threat. Existential!
• “Totally Realistic Barbi,” in which 8-year-old Aurora Bennett gets her wish for a Barbie doll that doesn’t “make me feel so inadequate.”
• “Sluggy,” a twisted, over-the-top Lassie tribute from Pat Cashman wherein a lonely boy bonds with, yes, a slug.

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  “80’s Rock Star Temp Agency,” full-cast showcase revealing what became of Boy George (Hans-Eric Gosch), Nena (Tracey Conway), Toni Basil (Nancy Guppy), Devo (John Keister, Steve Wilson, Joel McHale and Bob Nelson), Hootie (David Scully) and a crazed David Lee Roth (a shamelessly mugging Pat Cashman).

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BONUS!

• Two “making of” videos, courtesy of Ralph Bevins, (1) for “Rock Star Fantasy Camp,” with prominent grunge-rock cameos, along with the finished sketch, and (2) for the “Yard Sale of Fury” episode of “Mind Your Manners with Billy Quan,” along with the finished sketch.

• “Guide for F—–g Morons,” a Bevins production starring Bob Nelson and others. Bevins says it’s the only completed sketch never shown on “Almost Live!”

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