Bob & Doug McKenzie

The men responsible for the timeless catchphrase "Take off, you hoser" that kids say all the time, especially in economically depressed urban areas
*special introductory paragraph!
*Great White North
*The Adventures Of Bob & Doug McKenzie In Strange Brew

You watch TV, right? Sure you do. I can tell by how good you are at staring at a screen. Well, long long ago, in the galaxy of Canada, there was this show called SCTV (short for "Second City Tele Vision"). Featuring the talents of such hilarious comedic talents as Catherine O'Hara, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis, the show was a very funny parody of a local TV station's warped personalities and terrible programming. Oh sure, maybe it wasn't as funny as Lorne Thomas's The New Show (whose only skit, as far as I can remember, was one where the front of Dave Thomas' hair rose up in the air whenever he got scared), but it was certainly fast-paced and consistent enough to match the hilarity of such classic stateside comedy programs as NBC's Saturday Night and Three's A Crowd. At any rate, SCTV's Bob and Doug McKenzie were a fictional pair of beer-drinking Canadian brothers portrayed by Rick Moranis (of the Honey, I Slammed Your Uterus series) and Dave Thomas (not the one whose heart was literally smothered in layers of the same greasy, fatty shit that he used to slowly murder an entire nation). They used Canadian colloquialisms like "Beauty, eh?" and "Take Off!," constantly bickered with each other, and were occasionally quite funny. This did not translate well to record.

Or movie.


Great White North - Polygram 1981.
Rating = 4

Heee heeeee. Heeee heee HAEE!! HAAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA!!!! HEEEE!

I apologize for that. I was just picturing a big set of white balls doing a happy dance. The problem with the album is that it's not funny. You may have heard the radio classics "Take Off!" (featuring the only non-horrific lead vocal that Geddy Lee has ever performed) and "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" (not the version with the line "Eight smelly pussies" - that's GG Allin. This is the one that says "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a beer."). These songs are good! They're short, witty, catchy, silly, etc. But the rest of the album is filled with ad-libbed dialogue having to do with spritzing each other with beer, trying to blow the guys' theme song on half-emptied beer bottles, pretending to be preachers and playing stupid, STUPID "album jokes" like including a backward part that you're supposed to listen to by turning your record around backwards (it's just them laughing "This is backwards!" or something equally unexpected and belly-aching), including a "You are our guest" part where you're supposed to read unfunny dialogue from the inner sleeve, talking really fast so you think you've got the album on the wrong speed (actually that part is pretty funny) and trying to drive away people who accidentally put on side two first by NOT TALKING at the beginning of side two (okay, that part's funny as hell.)

Which is why I can't give it lower than a low 4! Because the parts that arefunny are REALLY funny. There's this other great part where the Dave Thomas character tries to end the album with a happy bedtime story, but it ends up being about a violent dogfight, with all kinds of angry dog noises to give the listener nightmares! Oh! And another really funny part is

No, that's it.

Like I said, a REALLY low 4. Two great songs, three other funny moments. Delete the excruciating stupidity that comprises the entire rest of the album. Chalk Great White North up as another inferior Canadian product, right next to The Guess Who's All This For A Song and every single person ever born in that ridiculous excuse for a country.

Except Burton Cummings. He's a good black.

WAIT A MINUTE! I'M CONFUSING ALL MY PREJUDICES NOW!!!!!

Chinks are those women that have mullets and munch each others' logflume, right?

Reader Comments

rottingcarrot@hotmail.com (Brion Briggsh)
SCTV is easily one of the best sketch comedy shows in history along with monty python's flying circus (british), kids in the hall (canadian), and..... well thats all I can think of that's good. Saturday night live has had it's good seasons for sure (1989-1995) but the show has been on since 1974 or something and almost every year that shit show churns out the most bland vomit inducing rancid swill that any number of farmers would never EVER feed to their cattle and goats. Have you watched snl recently? Every second week they show a repeat and when it actually is new you feel cheated out of an hour and a half! Will Farrel has his moments, but that's it!!

And about your canada bashing. I know your an american and it is second nature for you to be utterly ignorant about the rest of the world so I won't waste time bashing your feeble intellect. I would just like to respond to your statement that nothing good has come out of our rediculous excuse for a country. Sticking to the topic of comedy I will list some of the canadians that dominate or dominated your entertainment industry: Mike Myers, Jim Carrey, Norm Mcdonald (who kicks your sorry ass), john candy, rick moranis (those honey i did something to the kids movies suck but his work on SCTV is pure genious), dan aykroyd, leslie neilson, martin short, eugene levy, catheryn ohara, tom green, harland williams, Phil Hartman(also kicked your ass), william shattner (unintentionaly funny but still funny especially his album-"the transformed man"), wayen and shuster (they were supposedly funny a long time ago) tommy chong, and i'm not going to bother with listing canadian comedians who are laughing at you from within our borders. As for american comedians you've got: rosy o'donnald, bob sagat, jimmy falan, everyone else who makes saturday night live today (not a good thing), the cast of friends(i will admit one of those fuckers is a canadian), the cast of suddenly susan, the cast of sex and the city, that fat gay guy with the beard and scruffy hair, whoppie goldberg, carrot top, that guy on the subway commercials, tim allen, the olson twins, jar jar binks, steve guttenburg, cameron diaz, the people responsible for the family circus and marmaduke ( i guess marmaduke is alright), freddie prince junior, pauley shore, joan rivers, chris tucker, etc.

I'm bored of typing.

optimist1@sympatico.ca (Ian Crawford)
As a Canadian I would naturally find your prejudice very pointless but you are entitled to your own opinion in both your land and mine. I own the Great White North Album and it is easily one of the funniest things I have ever heard. I do have to say that it manages to be funny without resorting to sexual innuendo and swearing. I can see how that would turn you off as your sense of humour is obviusly limited to words like "boobs" and "ass." The point of Bob and Doug was to have silly fun as you have mentioned but the fact that this segement as well as the rest of SCTV ws completely improv seems to have lost you. Improv means that one person really had no idea what the other was about to do. That alone requires a certain talent. I would also like to point out the NBC's Saturday Night drew from Second City in both Chicago and Toronto, the improv troupe that SCTV is based upon so many of the same comics of the original "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" got their start in the same regard. A great exapmle is Martin Short who spent several years on Second City and SCTV before spending one year on SNL. Simply put that SNL drew from the best trained comedic actors, ones that could improv when skits went awry.

Adam Hammack
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
------------------------------------------
Wish I lived in Canada!
That said, I think you guys may have taken Prindle's patent-pending "Ethnic/Cultural HateSpeech" schtick a little too seriously. Someone who has as many problems with America as he does is bound to see that (Celine Dion aside), Canada would be a much more peaceful and enjoyable place to exist than here in war-torn, battle-weary America. Especially if you happen to be gay, smoke pot, or don't think that it's your place in the world to institute democracy everywhere whether the world likes it or not.

I happen to think SNL used to be pretty good. If you say that it was better than the Kids in the Hall though, I'll kill your first-born child. They were even better, in my humble opinion, than the Pythons.

(And by the way, lest we forget, prindle left out South Park creators Trey and Matt, so he obviously couldn't even point Canada out on a map. Don't fret for him...)

So did anyone else think that the Space Ghost episode with Dave Thomas on it might have just been the best one ever? Anyone?

Hister333@aol.com
Dude, I actually own this record...I found it on cassette for $1 at Goodwill last week. And, yeah, I dunno if even Canadians can sit through 45 straight minutes of "Great White North."

I dunno if you know this, but I read an interview with Rick Moranis in Playboy back when SCTV was on, and he said that in Canada there's a law that every tv show has to have two and a half minutes of "purely Canadian material." So the writers of SCTV said, "Fine. We'll fry bacon, drink beer, and say "'Ay" for two and a half minutes." And thus the completely forgotten duo was born...

slb23@shaw.ca
I picked this up on vinyl LP for a buck or two a few years back. There are really only a few good cuts on this album. It sounds like the whole thing was recorded in a day (or even a couple of hours) or something. The Good cuts, IMO, are as follows: "Take Off" (with Geddy Lee from the band Rush on lead vocals), ""Welcome to Side Two", "You Are Our Guest" (it's quite a neat concept, if you ask me), and "Twelve Days of Christmas" (the radio generally plays it around xmas time almost every year up here in the great white north). The other tracks are not so good.

Maybe drinking while listening to the album will make it funnier....

Note: The LP (and probably the CD as well) has a short unlisted (hidden) track at the end.

4/10

P.S. a note to Hister333: it's "Eh", not "Ay" :-)

cuthbert@personainternet.com
Hmmm the play on russian roulette/deer hunter with beer hunter wasnt too bad either, but then again I was in highschool when the lp was released

Also Matt Groenig the creator of the Simpsons was Canadian, and if he wasn't he sure as hell should be

C yah out there

Add your thoughts?


The Adventures Of Bob & Doug McKenzie In Strange Brew - Mercury 1983
Rating = 3

Hey this is Bill Jockstrap, an actual jockstrap. You know, after a long day of smelling a guy's balls, it's great to go home and listen to a hilarious comedy album. This album sucks.

Somebody let Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis make a movie of their Bob & Doug McKenzie characters, and the movie was awful. I'd know this because I saw it. If you want to see a funny hockey movie, see Paul Newman's Slap Shot. If you want to spend 90 minutes going "Where are the jokes?" then see Strange Brew by Cream on their Disraeli Gears LP by Eric Clapton of throwing his baby out a window fame.

This soundtrack is clever in that it's not just a soundtrack, but a comedy album that isn't funny at all as well. Half of the snippets and jinkets are dialogue and music from the film, but the other half are Bob & Doug McKenzie trying to teach you, the listener, about filmmaking. They try to write a movie scene but get stuck on the line "I did it, you knob" for the entire album, to the point that the theme song for their 'movie' ends up being "I did it you knob/I did it you knob/I did it, I did it/I did it you knob." It's not as funny as it sounds, and it doesn't sound funny at all.

Track titles include "Shakespeare Horked Our Script," "I Did It, You Knob," "I Did It Again, You Knob," "This Isn't Our Second Album," "I Didn't Do It, You Knob" and "Welcome To Our Movie." I was hoping to laugh my ass off while listening, but wound up frowning my butt off, which is an entirely different experience. Why can't comedians be funny every once in a while? Come on now, nobody turns to comedians for drama. Except Bill Murray, who by all accounts is completely insane and an asshole. On a related note, I read the new Chevy Chase biography and its title should have been Chevy Chase Is The Most Sensitive, Caring, Honest And Wonderful Man Who Was Ever Born by Fat Lonely Ass-Kissing Shitty Writer Woman.

This album is extremely hard to follow if you don't remember what the movie is about. Why are there aliens at the beginning? Who's that one guy? What's going on?

The theme song is corny '80s keyboard and big metal guitars and corny vox and reverb on drums - SUX! Luckily it's on here twice. Thanks, John Parr or wheover!

Here are some jokes I wrote down from the album, so get out your Joke Notebook and write these dwon for your next Joke Day at work:

"We filmed it in 3B -- 3 beers and it looks good, eh?"

"We got a special orchestra that can play in rewind." (*pushes fast-forward on the tape player*) "Jesus, that's a lot of music they just played."

"How do you spell 'knob'?"

"The theme song is finished. We're just waiting for clearance." "Oh. What's he gonna play?"

"Don't call 'em 'broads,' okay? They're 'women.' Or 'girls.' Or 'chicks.'"

If you're a big fan of Bob & Doug McKenzie, this is like a dream come true for you because it features all of your favorite scenes from the Hamlet ripoff movie as well as lots of brand new moronic dialogue to supposedly laugh at. But that's the problem; when you're born with the name 'Rick Moronic' and you form a comedy team with a guy named 'Dave Dumbass,' your resulting movie and album are bound to succotash some major assassash.

Look! It's a gigantic dick! -o

Well, it's gigantic compared to mine. :7( Mine is only 6756383446637375t88366347fh3h57566cc657373hfh373753666rh3hh873747fy3r77rh3hf773g4537743gfgfg3747633g736gfg3g7434636fgg3g4637477g7fh3h434737g734h3h437g7734h3

Here's a little quiz for you. Am I at this moment:
A. Drunk
B. A woman

leave your answer at the pud!

Ow I didn't say write it on a brick and throw it at the pud, angrily.

Reader Comments

jorgestudios@yahoo.com
AHAHAHA! HAHA! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHA!

That Eric Clapton throwing his baby out the window is so fucking cruel. Now THAT'S what I call comedy!

You never fail to disappoint, Mr. Prindle.

Add your thoughts?


TAKE OFF! And buy a copy of "Great White North"! (right here)


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