Last night, we linked you to this video featuring three funny men, two of whom were Jeff Hoover and Tim Kazurinsky. I'll tell you about the third guy in a second.
First, though: My pal Kim "Howard" Johnson writes this to me about Mr. Kazurinsky…
Tim has been living in the Chicago suburbs for close to twenty years now, and the older he gets, the funnier he gets. Nowadays, he seems to do more writing than acting (which is a great loss to us all). He can write anything — his 2001 drama, My Beautiful Son/aka Strange Relations, which he wrote for British TV, won a BAFTA award for Julie Walters, and Tim was nominated for his script. If a TV series (particularly a comedy) is shooting in Chicago, or one of his friends is producing a show (According to Jim, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Still Standing, etc.), Tim nearly always ends up appearing in it. There's a long list of his credits on imdb, of course, but I should mention that Tim is also the go-to guy for Second City here in Chicago for so many things, and volunteers his time for any number of charity events, student projects, moral support, and countless other things for which he never gets any credit. He appeared on a panel I hosted at Second City a few months ago for The Funniest One in the Room, my Del Close biography, and was characteristically brilliant, insightful, and hilarious, usually at the same time.
Years ago, when Tim and his wife Marcia had kids, they decided to leave NY and LA so they could raise them in a Chicago suburb. Had he stayed on a coast, he would undoubtedly be rich and famous today. But he's still got plenty of funny left in him, and if he can be coaxed out of Chicago long enough to do a few more films, don't be surprised to see a resurgence…
Wouldn't surprise me one bit. As I said, Tim was an oasis of comedy during a period of arid desert on Saturday Night Live. People were so busy saying "The show's not as good as it used to be" that they didn't notice that his segments generally were. Tim also has a fan in Dan Castellaneta, who wrote me to say…
Tim started in Chicago where I use to see him at the Second City. I met him when I started performing myself. He would come back to Chicago occasionally to improvise with us. As you know, Tim was also an incredibly funny guy, some of the sketches he wrote Second City are still classics and done by the Second City Touring company. He's also one of the nicest guys I've met there.
Not surprising. Meanwhile, Jeff Hoover — the second guy in the clip, the guy who also does the great Jerry Lewis impression, sent his thanks and a link to this article about Jerry. It's a recent interview with Mr. Lewis, who is about to get a big honorary Oscar at this year's ceremony. Jerry continues to be Jerry, making odd and candid admissions about things like why he shouldn't have made the deal to let Eddie Murphy remake The Nutty Professor and why the character in King of Comedy was the most like him of all the characters he's played. Well worth a read.
Which brings us to the third man in the video. That is, it turns out, comedian Mike Toomey, who is known for many wonderful things. One of them is a great impression of Adam West. In the clip below, we see Mr. Toomey perform his Adam West impression on the news in Chicago…and then return later to do it for Adam West. (And by the way, this is not an official announcement but I wouldn't be the least surprised to see Adam West at the Wondercon in San Francisco this year…)
Here — watch Mike Toomey in action…
