Woody Allen vs Gallagher

I used to do predictions for the new year. Long ago, in the early '80's, a friend and I sat in a restaurant in the middle of the night. I had a roll of cash register paper in my coat pocket. We had read the psychic predictions in The Weekly World News so he started making his predictions which I wrote down. I left that roll if paper in my coat pocket and as the next winter rolled around I found it in there and read it and his predictions started coming true. And these were specific and surprising things. He predicted the assassination of Indira Gandhi and a couple of other things---they spotted a planet orbiting another star for the first time, something I didn't think was possible. After that, he made predictions every year. He wanted to repeat his success and played it safe. He kept predicting Pat Nixon's demise, but she didn't die until the year he didn't predict it.

When I wrote mine, I kept predicting that someone like Bob Denver would make a low budget movie and be hailed as the new Woody Allen. I predicted that a few times a year. I don't think I ever predicted Gallagher would be the new Woody Allen.

Gallagher was a prop comic. He was known for using a sledge hammer to smash watermelons on stage. 

And he was big in his day. He had a number of Showtime specials. I saw one. I thought he was funny at the time but I was in high school. What did I know.

More recently, Gallagher has become bitter and racist. There were elements of that in his early work, too. He was interviewed on Marc Maron's podcast and told about an early Iranian-hating joke. Gallagher was balding with long hair on the sides and back, he wore suspenders and roller skates. Deeply embarrassing today. 

He defended his racist jokes on Maron's show. 

"Can I do a Jew joke that they don't want to pay?" he asked, perhaps not knowing Maron was Jewish.

"Why? It's not true."

"It's not true---why do people laugh?"

He stomped off Maron's show---out of the hotel room where they were recording. I saw a video on YouTube of him being kicked off a radio show. They kindly let him come on to promote a local appearance somewhere. He showed up too early then he was rude to the host.

Gallagher has taken to criticizing current comedians. He doesn't like them drinking water on stage and he thinks they should scale back the obscene language.

So I just read Woody Allen say the same thing in his book. For centuries, actors have performed Shakespeare on stage without bottled water. Allen thought they should be less dirty. He was fine with dirtiness but thought they should be more selective. Express themselves more simply maybe, I don't know.

On the other hand, Allen said that current comedians have taken comedy far beyond anything he did in his stand-up days. 

Gallagher thinks they shouldn't talk about themselves or any serious issues in their lives.

"They can't play a state fair," he said.

"Who wants to play a state fair necessarily?" Maron said.

"Everybody," Gallagher said.

So. That's where all this was going. There's a single point of agreement between Gallagher and Woody Allen, although they likely have different reasons for thinking what they do and Woody Allen isn't an idiot.

Maybe it's like James Bond. People tend to prefer Sean Connery to Roger Moore, but is it only because '60's fashions look better to people today than '70's fashions do? 

Woody Allen did have a brief period of balding with long hair in Sleeper, but generally his hair has been tastefully cropped and his clothes have always looked normal except for the saddle shoes he wore for a time.

But, no, no. The differences between Gallagher and Woody Allen aren't matters of fashion. Of course they aren't. What am I thinking.