The 2026 World Series is here, just short of a century after the following footage was shot!
To celebrate, let's post cool cartoons and comedies about baseball. Leading off, here's one of our favorites, Abner The Baseball.
Next at bat: Ub Iwerks' intrepid Willie Whopper, followed by Popeye and Gandy Goose.
Friz Freleng and his Merrie Melodies crew tackled the national pastime quite well a decade before making the epic Baseball Bugs.
Tex Avery made the hilarious Screwball Football for WB in 1939, so it's no surprise that he eventually followed that with a gag-filled opus on baseball.
Would be no surprise if Tex saw Jack Kinney's How To Play Baseball and regarded it as a challenge. Disney animator Dave Bossert wrote all about How To Play Baseball here.
Pondering Charles Gardner's extensive Cartoon Research series Cartoons At Bat, we now transition from animation to live-action.
None other than Babe Ruth appeared in Harold Lloyd's classic SPEEDY.
It's amazing that, given how Buster Keaton loved baseball, he
did not star in a film about the national pastime until 1935. While there were bits about baseball in College and The Cameraman, no extended pieces have Buster bringing comedy, acrobatics and athleticism to the diamond.
The 1935 Educational Pictures baseball 2-reeler One Run Elmer demonstrates Buster's ability to make entertaining comedy on a $1.98 budget.
With an episode of Dumpsterpiece Theatre, an enjoyable and very psychotronic YouTube series from a few years ago. Why? Dizzy Dean, Daffy Dean and Shemp Howard!
Thinking of Ernie Kovacs, who ranks, along with a few silent movie greats, atop my list of favorite comedians.
Am especially thinking of Kovacs' very catchy ditty Hot Cakes And Sausage, which is on the short list of my all-time favorite songs.
This great tune prompted the thought that today's post would actuallybe all about breakfast food. After all, wrote a pancake-packed post on National Flapjack Day last March!
Hot Cakes And Sausage was Ernie Kovacs' song. He used it as an intro to his way-out kiddie show spoof The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space.
The cartoonish quality of The Kapusta Kids In Outer Space brings to mind Eugene, Ernie's homage to silent era comedy. Kovacs was a fan of Jacques "Monsieur Hulot" Tati and one can see the Parisian comedian's influence.
First saw Eugene when the Best of Ernie Kovacs series aired on PBS way back in the 1970's.
The last part of the Kovacs universe this classic television fan became familiar with was his anti-game show, Take A Good Look.
Here, the sight gags, absurdist concepts and surreal sensibility of Ernie's comedy meet the TV game show.
Elements of What's My Line and You Bet Your Life go to the Kovacsian funhouse mirror.
On the game show's panel: Edie Adams, Cesar Romero, Jim Backus, Hans Conreid and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Take A Good Look features future Ernie Kovacs Show stock company members Jolene Brand and Bobby Lauher and makes no sense whatsoever - just the way we like it.
The lost episode of Take A Good Look was found and posted on the Comedy Kings YouTube channel.
Tough to determine how to finish a post on Ernie Kovacs. Invariably, just want to add more of Ernie's hilarious comedy sketches.
Could Ernie have been a great dramatic actor? Yes - definitely!
Shall wrap up today's post with a personal favorite sketch from Kovacs On Music (1959). The entire Ernie Kovacs Show crew, especially Edie Adams, is in rare form.
In closing, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write a Blog seek an expensive cigar for Ernie and thank the Comedy Kings (George Schlatter?) and Kovacs Corner YouTube channels big time!
For some reason, here, today, October 10, 2026, following another lulu of a bad, very bad, not good, no bueno, no fun week in which our favorite MLB team was 10,000 miles from a winning W-L record and the playoffs, we tip our hats to an all-time favorite performer, the one, the only Bert Lahr. . . yes, star of stage, screen and radio, known for his derring-do as The Cowardly Lion, in Lay's Potato Chips ads and Waiting For Godot - THAT GUY!
Wikipedia adds "Irving Lahrheim (August 13, 1895 – December 4, 1967), known professionally as Bert Lahr, was an American stage and screen actor and comedian."
"He was well known for his quick-witted humor and his work in burlesque and vaudeville and on Broadway."
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves Bert Lahr!
Love his first appearances in movies, which featured the ultra-wacky version of Bert Lahr, not toned down in any way, as he is in FLYING HIGH!
In FLYING HIGH, he's part of an all-star cast with, among others, the brilliant comedienne Charlotte Greenwood.
He appeared in short subjects produced by Van Beuren for RKO Radio Pictures in 1933.
Bert headlined 2-reelers made in Astoria (western portion of Queens), New York for Educational Pictures, previously the producers of silents starring such great movie comedians as Lloyd "Ham" Hamilton, Lupino Lane and Al St. John.
NO MORE WEST (1934) in particular is a riot and presents that zany version of Bert.
In further Educational 2-reelers produced starring Bert, he's not anywhere near as "ngognogngognog" extreme and in this writer's opinion, not anywhere near as funny.
Still like Mr. Lahr and thank Ralph Celantano and Geno Cuddy for posting the following 1936 short subject. It's entertaining enough, but tones down Bert.
Bert rocks the house with none other than Bette Davis in the "Jealousy" sketch from the 1952 Broadway show, "Two's Company," telecast on The Hollywood Palace on February 20, 1965. Thanks, Bette and Bert!
Here's Bert on OMNIBUS.
And with Jimmy Durante on The Tyrone Power Show!
Remember seeing Bert's memorable guest appearance on The Red Skelton Show way back when.
Between appearances performing in musical theatre on prime time television (Cole Porter's Lets Face It) and such Broadway shows as The Fantasticks, Bert starred in numerous TV commercials.
He made many terrific ads, quite a few for Lay's Potato Chips.
In the 1940's, Terry Toons created a Bert Lahr lion character, enhanced by the imaginative and super-rubbery animation of Jim Tyer.
How do we finish this tribute? With Bert Lahr bringing his comedy to radio on The Fred Allen Show?
No, we finish with a classic commercial featuring Bert as the Blatz Beer sphinx!
On Sunday morning, the first in October, shall we be industrious and fruitful? No, I don't think so, definitely not. Feel more like this guy right now!
So this Sunday, we're watching 1950's commercials, starting with our favorites, Bob & Ray, as Bert and Harry Piel.
The Wizard Wick Deodorizer Company gently reminds overworked and under-appreciated 1950's housewives that offensive odors linger in your home for hours!
Can't wait to celebrate National Jell-o Week!
Don't forget, modern gas brings home automation!
The gang here especially likes animated cigarette commercials.
Relax - it's light up time!
Instead of the dance of the hours today, it's the dance of the marching cigarettes.
On the topic of marching cigarettes, animation and painting genius Oskar Fischinger beat everyone to the punch.
Indeed, we Way Too Damn Lazy To Write a Blog love love love stop-motion commercials, especially those produced by Joop Geesink's Dollywood.
It is our pleasure at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog to celebrate both our 20th anniversary of blogging AND National Silent Movie Day with a bunch of classic cartoons. Leading off: that guy responsible for Andy Panda, Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy and Smedley (the dog voiced by Daws Butler), Walter Lantz!
Batting second: a mosquito. Now it's INSECT TIME, courtesy of Winsor McCay.
In The Roaring 20's, suave and debonair Felix The Cat is the predecessor of The International!
Here, Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat tangles with a germ - not The Germs, A GERM.
And. . . speaking of silent era cartoons, some of the best of the best were produced by the Fleischer Studio, reknowned for Koko The Clown ("Out Of The Inkwell"), Betty Boop and the inventive animated version of E.C. Segar's Popeye from the Thimble Theatre comic strip.
Today we celebrate the 20th anniversary of this blog - thrilled and delighted to still be here and eking out a post weekly - with the following contribution to the 2026 Silent Movie Day Blogathon, hosted by The Everyday Cinephile and Silentology. The spotlight's on favorite comedians who brought the laughs and no doubt would be most amused to know they are still doing so 100+ years after their heydey. We'll start with the toast of Great Britain, the most adept acrobatic comedian not named Buster Keaton or Al St. John, Lupino Lane.
Before becoming the king of London's musical theatre in Me & My Girl and swinging The Lambeth Walk, Mr. Lane tumbled, climbed and somersaulted his way through numerous classic comedy shorts in the teens and 1920's.
Silent comedy expert Steve Massa adds: Lupino Lane was an international stage star, and, along with Douglas Fairbanks and Buster Keaton, one of the great acrobats and comic action heroes of the movies. Born in London in 1892, he was part of the Lupino family—a famous theatrical clan that started its reign in the 1600s. Stanley and Barry Lupino, very popular in England, were cousins and Stanley’s daughter Ida Lupino became a big movie star in America.
Lane began his career as a child in pantomime, under the tutelage of his father Harry, and became known as “Little Nipper,” or just Nip for short. He had a thorough training in tumbling, juggling, mime and even shooting through “star traps” (trap doors in the stage floor that were connected to catapults that would allow a performer to suddenly pop into a scene).
Only Me is an especially stellar Lupino Lane comedy short.
He plays a slew of parts, a la Buster Keaton's The Playhouse.
Lupino Lane is the equivalent of a whirling dervish in many of his 1920's starring vehicles. The stunts in Sword Points must be seen to be believed.
Directors of the diminutive whirlwind's action-packed adventures included Roscoe Arbuckle and Jack "Preston Black" White.
He and his talented brother - and frequent co-star - Wallace Lupino make like Doug Fairbanks, poke fun at "the glory that was Rome" and tear up antiquity in Roaming Romeo (1928).
While Lane is outstanding and charming in such talkies as The Love Parade, the sheer physical comedy that fills the 2-reelers he starred in for Educational Pictures (a.k.a. The Spice Of The Program) is something to behold.
The nimble Lupino Lane brings us to another nimble comic who starred in movies both in the United States and Europe, Marcel Perez (1884-1929).
For those who haven't seen Marcel Perez, also known as Ferdinand Perez and Marcel Fabre, he was a pioneering, irreverent and dancer-like comedian who gleefully thumbed his nose at the pomposity and conventions of the early 20th century.
Between 1900 and 1923, he starred in 200+ films under a slew of different character names (Robinet, Bungles, Tweedy, Tweedledum, Twede-Dan), both in Europe and America. He also directed other comedians, notably "A Ton Of Fun," after his starring career ended. Talented leading ladies Nilde Barrachi and Dorothy Earle shine in supporting roles.
There's a sleight of hand recalling the graceful deftness of Max Linder while also a more cartoony sleight of hand that brings to mind both the earliest European screen clowns and a key contemporary, the popular American silent movie comedian who quite literally was the son of a professional magician, Larry Semon, known as Ridolini to those who saw his films on European television.
The Extraordinary Adventures Of Saturnino Farandola is a particularly amazing Marcel Perez opus.
The silent movie-crazed (and movie crazy) gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall be posting mass quantities of our personal favorite classic comedy short subjects and cartoons for the occasion!
Very talented scribes, terrific silent film experts and ridiculously knowledgeable cinephiles will be celebrating National Silent Movie Day 2026 with cool writings. A few of the posters have been on our blogroll for quite a few years now - and with good reason - and the gang here is thrilled that Silentology, Silver Screenings, CrÃtica Retrô and nitrate glow in particular are still at it, consistently creating great content.
We'll close today's post by whetting the appetite for silents with some excellent 1920's cartoons, beginning with pre-Mickey Mouse Disneys. These were produced back in the days when the likes of Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising and Friz Freleng were, rather amazingly, working for Walt.
And. . . can't finish without following those with some Otto Messmer cartoons!
While perusing, as opposed to the 1920's and early 1930's slapstick we often focus on, the latest news in the world of comedy (notably, two talented comediennes and filmmakers, Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter, joining the Saturday Night Live cast for season 52), the gang here tips a top hat worn in 1926 by Raymond Griffith to one of our favorite comedy writers and comics, Robert Smigel.
Since anyone who even worked on the periphery of show business is now required by federal law to have a podcast, here's Robert's podcast!
First remember seeing Robert Smigel on Saturday Night Live.
An SNL writer during one of the show's best eras, the latter 1980's and early 1990's, Mr. Smigel appeared in the "Bill Swerski's Superfans" sketches (Da Bears), among others.
Former SNL cast members Dana Carvey and David Spade had Robert on their podcast, by this time mandated by federal law.
And now, what readers have been waiting for, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, who has his own YouTube channel!
Triumph recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
What's the best way to conclude a post about Robert Smigel? With some episodes of TV Funhouse, the series he produced for SNL from 1996-2008.
The TV Funhouse segments are frequently the funniest and most satiric segments of these SNL shows.
The topical humor from 20+ years ago still rings true in 2026.
Some of these ideas originated on The Dana Carvey Show, which briefly aired on ABC prime time in March-April 1996.
This very funny and wildly irreverent sketch comedy program, created by a crew of inventive writers and performers (including Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert), would have killed in late night as competition to SNL and Mad TV, but was definitely a tad too extreme in its humor for prime time.
Could The Dana Carvey Show have aired at 10:30 p.m. (just before the news) and not freaked people out? Uh. . . maybe. Airing at 9:30 after Home Improvement? No.
And, with that, we conclude our tip of the Jimmie Hatlo hat to Robert Smigel - and watch more TV Funhouse.
