for those about to rock

arsillio

anyone remember the uptown comedy club? it was a pretty lackluster sketch comedy show that ran on BET in the early 90's and featured jim breuer, tracy morgan and this man, whose arsenio hall ranks among my top 5 favorite impersonations of all time. he gets some brownie points right off the bat for being one of the only guys i know to even attempt it (chris rock being the only other person i can think of), but what really clinches it for me is that magnotti seized upon a personality's definitive idiosyncracies -- idiosyncracies in which no other performer recognized fertile comic material -- and amplified them just a tad, suggesting how shamelessly ridiculous his subject acted as a television host in the first place. sure, rock got the brown-nosing part right in a broad sense, but magnotti was the one who really homed in on all the little things that together marked ars a sycophant: the hyperbole delivered in grave tones when introducing a guest, the suggestive, bugged-out roll of the eyes, the whispered secrets with every guest prior to interview (the best ucc arsenio sketch was when they got some dude to impersonate eddie murphy and he and ars embrace and immediately fall about the place), the uncontrollable fits of feminine laughter.

credit is also due to magnotti for the being the one white to guy ever come out on top during the regular segment where they played the dozens (the dis that i remember best, which he delivered in an intense deadpan, is "your mom is so ugly, she walked by a public restroom and all the toilets flushed").

posted by jomilkman @ 10:08 AM