Almost Live!: Still Alive
“Almost Live!: Still Alive” are interviews with the people who helped make the hometown Seattle sketch comedy show ‘Almost Live!’ a hit for more than 15 years. Hear their personal stories and get insights into one of Seattle’s most loved local TV shows.
Episodes
March 31, 2022 • 68 mins
When you talk about the cast and crew of Almost Live!, you're not exactly talking about cookie-cutter versions of personnel. But if you insist on the cookie analogy, we're talking about every kind you can think of: There were ginger snaps, like Nancy Guppy. Sugar cookies, like Tracey Conway. Snickerdoodles, like Steve Wilson, Peanut Butter Keister, Gingerbread men like Bob Nelson, Ed Wyatt, and Joe Guppy - and Animal Crackers with ...
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February 17, 2022 • 56 mins
Like any sketch comedy show, part of Almost Live's ability to sustain week after week, came from a reliance on recurring characters and bits. Uncle Fran, Capable Woman, Sluggy, The High-Fivin’ White Guys, A Woman’s Place, Speed-Walker, the Joy of Painting guy, The Lame List, Green River Dance, The Worst Girlfriend in the World, and more.
But - and I cannot prove this - if you ask most any show fan who’s their most remembered rec...
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December 29, 2021 • 45 mins
When ALMOST LIVE! debuted in 1984, it had several writers, more than a few cast members, a full studio crew - and plenty of critics.
But it had only a single field camera guy. But what a guy! A guy gifted enough to carry the load. His name? Mike Boydstun.
He's far more than a guy with a camera. He's a director, producer, editor, sound designer, lighting specialist, location planner - but most of all, a storyteller. He was the...
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November 10, 2021 • 75 mins
There's a British cage-fighter named Mike Neun. He hits people in the face.
THAT Mike Neun is not the subject of this episode. This one doesn't hit people in the face. He just makes their face smile a lot.
The Mike Neun of this podcast has never fought a cage - and would see no reason in doing so. THIS one describes himself as having the mind of an athlete... and the body of an intellectual. He says he's "the funniest comedia...
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September 24, 2021 • 43 mins
One of the reasons we all live where we do is because of the long line of early explorers and frontiersmen who led the way: People like Balboa, Ponce de Leon, and Hernando De Soto - inventor of the Chrysler hard-top coupe.
And Almost Live! had its pioneers too; its Lewis and Clark's, Daniel Boone's and Kit Carson's. In fact, it is little remembered today, but the early members of Almost Live! often wore buckskin and coonskin cap...
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September 5, 2021 • 57 mins
Even though some members of Almost Live! were pretty good at playing the parts of dumb people - none of them actually were stupid. Well, there was that one guy. Oh man, was he an idiot. He thought the Gates Foundation is a type of girdle. He thought the Kentucky Derby is a hat. He once tripped on a cordless phone. Yea, everybody remembers that guy.
But one of the show's pioneering members wasn't just smart. He was sharp. In fact...
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June 10, 2021 • 69 mins
There was only one Keister on Almost Live. One Conway, one Nye, one Nelson, Wilson, Wyatt and Stainton. McHale was the only one with a prefix (Mc). There WERE two Guppys - Nancy and Joe - but they were married to one another so that doesn't count.
But the show's two different Shafers were unconnected, unrelated and unalike. Scott Schaefer - unlike the show's original host, Ross Shafer - was also a key member of the show nearly f...
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May 1, 2021 • 61 mins
The town of Yakima is not only the self-proclaimed "Palm Springs of Washington State" - but it's also the hometown of some remarkable and famous people. A partial list includes the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
The great short story writer and poet, Raymond Carver, grew up there.
One of the most-admired writers for kids spent time in Yakima - and was the author of Pat Cashman's favorite books about Henry Hugg...
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February 5, 2021 • 93 mins
Looking back at all the people who were part of Almost Live!, it’s notable that there are literally none of them that moved onto completely different careers after the show wrapped years ago. None of the cast members went into the clergy - or became an actuary, astronaut, statistician, pipe-fitter, cartographer, or tried their hand at dentistry. Yes, Joe Guppy DID become a psychotherapist for a while, but he also simultaneously tau...
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January 20, 2021 • 100 mins
The guest this time is Joel McHale. Actor, comedian, author, producer, TV host... and had nothing to do with "McHale's Navy." He hosted "The Soup" for 11 years on the E! Network... and starred in the NBC sitcom, "Community" for six. He's been in dozens of movies, TV shows, commercials, and video games. He hosted the ESPY awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, People's Choice, the Webbys - and even the White House Correspondent's Di...
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January 6, 2021 • 71 mins
A warning: Parts of this particular episode may be too… well… too highbrow, too donnish, too erudite… too filled with words you have look up. Nonetheless, if you are at familiar with Shakespeare - and specifically, his great character, MacBeth - you are familiar with his work. But there is another McBeth - the one that’s the subject of this podcast. And this one is much funnier. Certainly funnier than Othello - both the character A...
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December 9, 2020 • 95 mins
First of all, this episode must begin with a shocking revelation: Bill Nye believes in crazy conspiracy stuff. Nutty things like Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. Kooky notions like electromagnetism, thermodynamics, relativity. And even, yes, dare he say it: Climate change. Nye ridiculously thinks that ideas not supported by observation and real data, or science if you will, have more rigor than ideas based on pure opinion, so...
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November 25, 2020 • 73 mins
The most popular freshwater aquarium fish of them all is the guppy. It is live-bearing - no eggs. It likes flake food, and is generally peaceful. But the guppy is also considered one of the wittiest in the fish kingdom... perhaps second funniest only to the clown fish - and, frankly, the clown fish’s pie-throwing and seltzer-down-the-pants routine is getting a little old.
But a JOE Guppy is quite another matter. Some might guess...
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November 11, 2020 • 100 mins
It was probably inevitable, but as a weekly sketch comedy show, Almost Live! was often compared to network television's Saturday Night Live. Why not? Almost Live! aired on Seattle's KING TV every Saturday night, immediately adjacent to the venerated SNL. Both shows had 'live' in their title. Both traded in sketch comedy. Both featured regular ensemble casts of performers and writers satirizing the world around them - the national S...
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October 28, 2020 • 82 mins
Someone once asked me what a TV producer does. That someone was me. I asked me what a TV producer does. Maybe I should ask Bill Stainton instead. Because he WAS a TV producer - specifically, the TV producer of "Almost Live!" If that show could be compared to a farm operation, then Bill Stainton was the cruel overseer... the guy making sure the crops got in each week. Keeping the farm analogy going here, he was the guy who did the h...
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October 14, 2020 • 110 mins
One of the reasons we decided on the podcast name, "Almost Live!: Still Alive" is because, happily, everybody from that show is still with us. Not necessarily still with IT... me most notably... but everyone otherwise is still breathing and reasonably coherent. However, there's one person who narrowly escaped being the exception - because not only did we nearly lose Tracey Conway some years ago when her heart suddenly decided to st...
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September 30, 2020 • 66 mins
Stanford University is one of the most prestigious colleges in the nation. Some of its alumni include a guy named Larry Page, who’s the founding CEO of Google. It’s true. You can look it up on Bing if you don’t believe me. Other famous graduates are Sigourney Weaver, Reese Witherspoon, Tiger Woods, Rachel Maddow, John Steinbeck, Ken Kesey, Senator Henry Jackson - and the people who founded PayPal and Netflix. But of all Stanford’s ...
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September 16, 2020 • 94 mins
Perhaps one of the reasons ‘Almost Live!’ found a place on TV for so many years was because - at its core - it was a distinctly local show. The jokes were almost entirely focused on Puget Sound towns, neighborhoods and places - and none of those places was a more frequent target than a suburb called Kent. And no member of the ‘Almost Live!’ writing and performing group was more informed about that town than Bob Nelson - the only on...
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September 2, 2020 • 72 mins
If Almost Live! could be compared to a baseball team, Steve Wilson might have been the groundskeeper. At least on game day. He was the guy in charge of grooming the diamond; preparing the field, cutting the grass, drawing the foul-lines, and raking the infield. He got the field ready - but then, taking managerial duties, he positioned the players and coached them up. He was the show's studio director. Like most of the show's regula...
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August 19, 2020 • 61 mins
In the earliest days of the show, Almost Live! was heavily influenced by a male viewpoint. A few actresses were introduced in those first years - Andy Stein and Lynne McManus - among them. But the show's first more regular female member got aboard largely because she happened to be the girlfriend of one the show's regular cast members - Joe Guppy. We’ll spend some time with him in a future podcast. But this one is about Nancy - and...
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