Episode 1: Lewis Black playing golf with Aruba’s Weatherman
Description: Lewis Black discovers that Aruba weathermen spend more time at Aruba golf clubs and less weather forecasting since the temperature is always perfect and predictable

Episode 2: Lewis Black in Aruba restaurants
Description: Aruba restaurants in Aruba make Lewis Black speechless by keeping his mouth stuffed.

Episode 3: Lewis Black – Windsurfing in Aruba
Description: Lewis Black gets a taste for what Aruba considers sport as he suits up for windsurfing, surfing and more.

Episode 4: Lewis Black – Massage in Aruba
Description: Lewis Black takes a break at the best spas in Aruba and indulges in a beachfront Massage.

Episode 5: Lewis Black – Wedding in Aruba

Description: Blue skies, beaches and romantic sunsets in Aruba are too much for Lewis Black.  Only he can find the downside to a picture perfect wedding in Aruba.

Episode 6: Lewis Black – Aruba weather

Description: Comedian Lewis Black takes a look at the forecast and ponders what to do with the perfect weather in Aruba.

Episode 7: Lewis Black – Aruba Time Share
Description: Lewis Black questions why people would want to come back to their perfect beachfront Aruba time share year after year.

Episode 8: Lewis Black – Video of Aruba
Description: Lewis Black is convinced the friendly nature of the people of Aruba makes them anything but human.

Episode 9: Lewis Black – Aruba songs and music
Description: Comedian Lewis Black examines why the people of Aruba are so friendly. He blames it on the lovely Aruba music.

Episode 10: Lewis Black – Political video humor
Description: Lewis Black explores the political culture of Aruba and their choice in ties.

Episode 11: Lewis Black – Aruba friendly people
Description: Lewis Black learns how to celebrate after you meet your 90,000 friends on an Aruba vacation.

Episode 12: Lewis Black – Making friends in Aruba
Description: Maybe it’s the weather that makes Aruba so friendly? Even Lewis Black can make 90,000 new pals at a friendly Aruba Resort.

Episode 13: Lewis Black – Aruba Donkey video
Description: Comedian Lewis Black finds out even the donkeys at the Donkey Sanctuary are contagiously friendly in Aruba.

Episode 14: Lewis Black – Ticket to Aruba
Description: Lewis Black inquires about what police are for on the friendly island of Aruba. Turns out the only tickets you’ll find in Aruba are the ones for the airplane.

George Carlin was my first adult comedian. My dad — my parents — loved him. He was a true disruptor and free thinker, using comedy as his platform. Please check out George Carlin’s Wikipedia entry and the lovely obituary from the New York Times.

George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.The cause of death was heart failure. Mr. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, went into the hospital on Sunday afternoon after complaining of heart trouble. The comedian had worked last weekend at The Orleans in Las Vegas.

Recently, Mr. Carlin was named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was to receive the award at the Kennedy Center in November. “In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer, and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Kennedy Center chairman. “His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching.”

Mr. Carlin began his standup comedy act in the late 1950s and made his first television solo guest appearance on “The Merv Griffin Show” in 1965. At that time, he was primarily known for his clever wordplay and reminiscences of his Irish working-class upbringing in New York.

But from the outset there were indications of an anti-establishment edge to his comedy. Initially, it surfaced in the witty patter of a host of offbeat characters like the wacky sportscaster Biff Barf and the hippy-dippy weatherman Al Sleet. “The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight’s forecast . . . dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning.”

Mr. Carlin released his first comedy album, “Take-Offs and Put-Ons,” to rave reviews in 1967. He also dabbled in acting, winning a recurring part as Marlo Thomas’ theatrical agent in the sitcom “That Girl” (1966-67) and a supporting role in the movie “With Six You Get Egg-Roll,” released in 1968.

By the end of the decade, he was one of America’s best known comedians. He made more than 80 major television appearances during that time, including the Ed Sullivan Show and Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show; he was also regularly featured at major nightclubs in New York and Las Vegas.

That early success and celebrity, however, was as dinky and hollow as a gratuitous pratfall to Mr. Carlin. “I was entertaining the fathers and the mothers of the people I sympathized with, and in some cases associated with, and whose point of view I shared,” he recalled later, as quoted in the book “Going Too Far” by Tony Hendra, which was published in 1987. “I was a traitor, in so many words. I was living a lie.”

In 1970, Mr. Carlin discarded his suit, tie, and clean-cut image as well as the relatively conventional material that had catapulted him to the top. Mr. Carlin reinvented himself, emerging with a beard, long hair, jeans and a routine that, according to one critic, was steeped in “drugs and bawdy language.” There was an immediate backlash. The Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas terminated his three-year contract, and, months later, he was advised to leave town when an angry mob threatened him at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club. Afterward, he temporarily abandoned the nightclub circuit and began appearing at coffee houses, folk clubs and colleges where he found a younger, hipper audience that was more attuned to both his new image and his material.

By 1972, when he released his second album, “FM & AM,” his star was again on the rise. The album, which won a Grammy Award as best comedy recording, combined older material on the “AM” side with bolder, more acerbic routines on the “FM” side. Among the more controversial cuts was a routine euphemistically entitled “Shoot,” in which Mr. Carlin explored the etymology and common usage of the popular idiom for excrement. The bit was part of the comic’s longer routine “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” which appeared on his third album “Class Clown,” also released in 1972.

“There are some words you can say part of the time. Most of the time ‘ass’ is all right on television,” Mr. Carlin noted in his introduction to the then controversial monologue. “You can say, well, ‘You’ve made a perfect ass of yourself tonight.’ You can use ass in a religious sense, if you happen to be the redeemer riding into town on one — perfectly all right.”

The material seems innocuous by today’s standards, but it caused an uproar when broadcast on the New York radio station WBAI in the early ’70s. The station was censured and fined by the FCC. And in 1978, their ruling was supported by the Supreme Court, which Time magazine reported, “upheld an FCC ban on ‘offensive material’ during hours when children are in the audience.” Mr. Carlin refused to drop the bit and was arrested several times after reciting it on stage.

By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade. In addition to his irreverent jests about religion and politics, he openly talked about the use of drugs, including acid and peyote, and said that he kicked cocaine not for moral or legal reasons but after he found “far more pain in the deal than pleasure.” But the edgier, more biting comedy he developed during this period, along with his candid admission of drug use, cemented his reputation as the “comic voice of the counterculture.”

Mr. Carlin released a half dozen comedy albums during the ’70s, including the million-record sellers “Class Clown,” “Occupation: Foole” (1973) and “An Evening With Wally Lando” (1975). He was chosen to host the first episode of the late-night comedy show “Saturday Night Live” in 1975. And two years later, he found the perfect platform for his brand of acerbic, cerebral, sometimes off-color standup humor in the fledgling, less restricted world of cable television. By 1977, when his first HBO comedy special, “George Carlin at USC” was aired, he was recognized as one of the era’s most influential comedians. He also become a best-selling author of books that expanded on his comedy routines, including “When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?,” which was published by Hyperion in 2004.

Pursuing a Dream

Mr. Carlin was born in New York City in 1937. “I grew up in New York wanting to be like those funny men in the movies and on the radio,” he said. “My grandfather, mother and father were gifted verbally, and my mother passed that along to me. She always made sure I was conscious of language and words.”

He quit high school to join the Air Force in the mid-’50s and, while stationed in Shreveport, La., worked as a radio disc jockey. Discharged in 1957, he set out to pursue his boyhood dream of becoming an actor and comic. He moved to Boston where he met and teamed up with Jack Burns, a newscaster and comedian. The team worked on radio stations in Boston, Fort Worth, and Los Angeles, and performed in clubs throughout the country during the late ’50s.

After attracting the attention of the comedian Mort Sahl, who dubbed them “a duo of hip wits,” they appeared as guests on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar. Still, the Carlin-Burns team was only moderately successful, and, in 1960, Mr. Carlin struck out on his own.

During a career that spanned five decades, he emerged as one of the most durable, productive and versatile comedians of his era. He evolved from Jerry Seinfeld-like whimsy and a buttoned-down decorum in the ’60s to counterculture icon in the ’70s. By the ’80s, he was known as a scathing social critic who could artfully wring laughs from a list of oxymorons that ranged from “jumbo shrimp” to “military intelligence.” And in the 1990s and into the 21st century the balding but still pony-tailed comic prowled the stage — eyes ablaze and bristling with intensity — as the circuit’s most splenetic curmudgeon.

During his live 1996 HBO special, “Back in Town,” he raged over the shallowness of the ’90s “me first” culture — mocking the infatuation with camcorders, hyphenated names, sneakers with lights on them, and lambasting white guys over 10 years old who wear their baseball hats backwards. Baby boomers, “who went from ‘do your thing’ to ‘just say no’ …from cocaine to Rogaine,” and pro life advocates (“How come when it’s us it’s an abortion, and when it’s a chicken it’s an omelet?”), were some of his prime targets. In the years following his 1977 cable debut, Mr. Carlin was nominated for a half dozen Grammy awards and received CableAces awards for best stand-up comedy special for “George Carlin: Doin’ It Again (1990) and “George Carlin: Jammin’ ” (1992). He also won his second Grammy for the album “Jammin” in 1994.

Personal Struggles

During the course of his career, Mr. Carlin overcame numerous personal trials. His early arrests for obscenity (all of which were dismissed) and struggle to overcome his self-described “heavy drug use” were the most publicized. But in the ’80s he also weathered serious tax problems, a heart attack and two open heart surgeries.

In December 2004 he entered a rehabilitation center to address his addictions to Vicodin and red wine. Mr. Carlin had a well-chronicled cocaine problem in his 30s, and though he was able to taper his cocaine use on his own, he said, he continued to abuse alcohol and also became addicted to Vicodin. He entered rehab at the end of that year, then took two months off before continuing his comedy tours.

“Standup is the centerpiece of my life, my business, my art, my survival and my way of being,” Mr. Carlin once told an interviewer. “This is my art, to interpret the world.” But, while it always took center stage in his career, Mr. Carlin did not restrict himself to the comedy stage. He frequently indulged his childhood fantasy of becoming a movie star. Among his later credits were supporting parts in “Car Wash” (1976), “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” (1989), “The Prince of Tides” (1991), and “Dogma” (1999).

His 1997 book, “Brain Droppings,” became an instant best seller. And among several continuing TV roles, he starred in the Fox sitcom “The George Carlin Show,” which aired for one season. “That was an experiment on my part to see if there might be a way I could fit into the corporate entertainment structure,” he said after the show was canceled in 1994. “And I don’t,” he added.

Despite the longevity of his career and his problematic personal life, Mr. Carlin remained one of the most original and productive comedians in show business. “It’s his lifelong affection for language and passion for truth that continue to fuel his performances,” a critic observed of the comedian when he was in his mid-60s. And Chris Albrecht, an HBO executive, said, “He is as prolific a comedian as I have witnessed.”

Mr. Carlin is survived by his wife, Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law, Bob McCall, brother, Patrick Carlin and sister-in-law, Marlene Carlin. His first wife, Brenda Hosbrook, died in 1997.

Although some criticized parts of his later work as too contentious, Mr. Carlin defended the material, insisting that his comedy had always been driven by an intolerance for the shortcomings of humanity and society. “Scratch any cynic,” he said, “and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.”

Still, when pushed to explain the pessimism and overt spleen that had crept into his act, he quickly reaffirmed the zeal that inspired his lists of complaints and grievances. “I don’t have pet peeves,” he said, correcting the interviewer. And with a mischievous glint in his eyes, he added, “I have major, psychotic hatreds.”

In memory of George Carlin, here they are:

• Shit
• Piss
• Fuck
• Cunt
• Cocksucker
• Motherfucker
• Tits

I bumped into Michelle Santos on Facebook yesterday and we Kama’ainas got super nostalgic all over each others’ Facebook Walls, and here are some excepts:

Michelle:

Aloha oe, Chris!! Pehea `oe? E pili mau na pomaika`i ia `oe!!!

Chris:

Aloha kakahiaka, Michelle. Mai ka’i no au. Aloha mai e!!

Michelle:

eh, howzit, Brah? Whaddsdascoops? when we do talk story? I miss da kine local grinds…opihi and combomeals…onolicious, man…Fo´real. Been back to da Rock lately?

Chris:

It’s been since 1998, which has been a decade, which is very sad. I don’t even know if I would move back if I had all the money in the world, although I have become very very nostalgic recently so I might try to make a trip this year or next year. I miss Zippy’s and Graces and I miss Kona and Manoa. I miss Sans Souci Beach right in front of the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel and I miss hanging out with my Kama’aina friends at Outrigger Canoe Club. I miss Scuba diving in Waianae and eating burgers at Kua Aina burger at North Shore. I miss North Shore and driving the circle island in my Triumph TR6. I miss talking pidgin and wonder if I am even fluent any more. Rap Replinger is still my favorite comedian of all time. How about you?

Michelle:

i came back 2006. It is a rough place if you are a local. But as a tourist it is fine…I miss the beaches. I lived next to Ala Moana Shopping Center where my apartment penthouse was across the beach. I missed swimming there every morning..Lanikai, North Shore, Waikiki night life, Hanohano Restaurant on Sheraton´s penthouse, Snorkeling, sharkdiving, skydiving (it´s warmer there than in Norway for this activity…brrrrr) I miss my moped ;) I had my car parked all the time and just zoomed with that everywhere. I also miss Tantalus where I used to live since I picked fresh Hawaiian flowers there every weekend. I miss the pancakes at Ken´s house in Big Island, the lilikoi pancake sauces, chocolate and caramel macadamia nuts, fresh kona coffee…Ward Center Theater…

Chris:

Everything is flooding now. I miss Volcano National Park. I miss Molokai and all the Duduois. I miss Manele Bay on Lanai. I miss the Parker Ranch and what Hilo used to be. I love love love taking the drive up to Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. I miss looking at the snow and the crazy telescopes up at the top of the world. I miss Madam Pele and Maui and Manapua and the Punahou carnival and I miss Kolaipuhaku and Kaimuki and the drive along Kalanianaole highway. I miss being tan and I miss freediving off of Diamondhead and of being a Divemaster. I miss using Velvia film and shooting beaches and bikinis. I miss seducing women by packing picknics and taking either the motorcycle or the convertible roadster on the circle island, stopping for shave ice with ice cream and azuki beans in Hale`iwa. Wow, lau lau — now I have to sing to you….

Michelle:

aaaawww…i can tell you miss it very much. I know…i miss taking my dates on private beach picnics. I have this private beach that I always get and have awesome sunsets by Gold Coast. Man, lau lau??? hehhehehe, it certainly better than poi. I have to put so much sugar on that poi. Double-whammy on the carbs! Yikes! You should see my picture in Diverse and see how tan I was…I miss that too. I didn´t even have to lay on the beach…I just get cooked…;)

Well, Michelle Santos has herself a blog, a firm, MJS Strategies, and actually blogged about our chat as well, Aloha oe! (Part 1).

I have never heard Fair Game with Faith Salie before, but my local NPR Public Radio affiliate, WAMU 88.5 is now showcasing this amazing new, amazingly hip radio show, described as,

“a new satirical news and entertainment program … hosted by Faith Salie, possibly the only Rhodes Scholar doing comedy today … Fair Game covers the important stories of the day and uses insightful humor to tease out what it all means. The show also features newsmaker and celebrity interviews, live music, and regular appearances by the country’s best comedians. Think of it as a variety show for the highest common denominator.”

Bloody edgy, brilliant, and almost as good as a cutting-edge podcast — in fact, there is a podcast!. Topical, sexy, and funny.

Career
After Fey graduated from drama school at the University of Virginia in 1992, she moved to Chicago, getting a day job at a residential YMCA to take night classes at The Second City. She made what she later described as an “amateurish” attempt at stand-up comedy, and learned that the key to improvisation was to “focus entirely on your partner. You take what they’re giving you and use it to build a scene.”

By 1994 she was invited to join the cast of The Second City, where she performed in the Jeff Award-winning revue Paradigm Lost. She is also a veteran of The ImprovOlympic.

Saturday Night Live

With then-head writer Adam McKay’s help, Fey became a writer for NBC’s Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1997. By 1999, Fey was SNL’s first female head writer, a milestone she downplays by pointing out that the show has had few head writers.

As co-head writer of SNL’s 25th anniversary special, Fey won a 2001 Writers Guild of America Award; she and the writing staff also won a 2002 Emmy Award for their work on the show.

In September 2005, she went on maternity leave after giving birth to a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond. Her Weekend Update role was covered by Horatio Sanz for several weeks before her return to the show on October 22, 2005, noting:

“I had to get back to work. NBC has me under contract; the baby and I only have a verbal agreement.”
Fey confirmed during a July 2006 Tonight Show appearance that she would not be returning to SNL for its 2006-7 season.

SNL sketches
Some recurring sketches written by Fey include:

Parodies of Live with Regis and Kelly and The View
The Girl with No Gaydar, cowritten by Rachel Dratch
Boston Teens, cowritten by Dratch

She is also credited with:

Colonel Angus, portrayed by Christopher Walken in a sketch filled with word play on the colonel’s name
Mom Jeans commercial
“Talkin ‘Bout ‘Ginas” (Parody of The Vagina Monologues)

Weekend Update
In 2000, Fey and Jimmy Fallon became co-anchors of SNL’s Weekend Update, a pairing that ended in May 2004 when Fallon last appeared as a cast member. (Fey also was co-writer of the Weekend Update segment). Fallon was replaced by Amy Poehler. It was the first time that two women co-anchored Weekend Update.

Celebrity impressions
Barbara Pierce Bush
Bea Arthur
Janice Dickinson
Kathleen Willey
Mary Ann Mobley
Paris Hilton
Paula Zahn
Vanna White

30 Rock
Fey developed a situation comedy, 30 Rock, for NBC’s fall 2006 schedule.. The show is produced by NBC and Broadway Video, with Lorne Michaels and two former producers of The Tracy Morgan Show, David Miner, who is also her manager at 3 Arts, and Joann Alfano. She also writes and stars in the sitcom, said to be based on her experiences at SNL. The show’s title is a reference to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where SNL is produced.

Similarities between 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip led to speculation that only one of the two shows would be picked up. Alec Baldwin, who played the network executive in the 30 Rock pilot, said “I’d be stunned if NBC picked up both shows. And ours has the tougher task, as a comedy, because if it’s not funny, that’s it.” Kevin Reilly, the president of NBC Entertainment, was supportive of Fey, describing it as a “high-class problem”:

I just can’t imagine the audience would look at both shows, choose one and cancel the other out. In some ways, why is it any different than when there have been three or four cop shows on any schedule, or Scrubs and ER, which are totally very different?

Evidence of the overlapping subject matter between the shows (as well as the conflict between them) is the fact that Aaron Sorkin, the creator of Studio 60, asked Lorne Michaels to allow him to observe SNL for a week, a request Michaels denied.

It’s just bad luck for me that in my first attempt at prime time I’m going up against the most powerful writer on television. I was joking that this would be the best pilot ever aired on Trio. And then Trio got cancelled.

In spite of the overlap in subject matter, it was announced on May 15, 2006, that NBC had picked up both shows.

The show debuted to mostly positive reviews, however ratings its original timeslot on Wednesdays at 8 PM were weak. Rather than cancel the show, NBC moved the show into a revamped Thursday Must See TV comedy lineup at the end of November sweeps. After its first episode in its new Thursday 9:30 PM timeslot on November 30, 2006, the network picked up the show for the entire season

Other work
She partnered with fellow cast member Rachel Dratch in the critically acclaimed two-woman show Dratch & Fey at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado, and the Chicago Improv Festival. Lorne Michaels saw her at one of the performances, which led to her becoming the co-anchor of SNL’s Weekend Update.

She also appeared in Martin & Orloff, a surreal comedy which premiered at Austin’s SXSW.

Fey wrote the script and co-starred in the 2004 movie Mean Girls. Characters and behaviors in the movie are based on Fey’s high school life at Upper Darby High School and on the non-fiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (ISBN 0-609-60945-9) by Rosalind Wiseman. The cast includes other present and past cast members of SNL including Tim Meadows, Ana Gasteyer, and Amy Poehler.

As of April 2006, Fey is working on a script for a Paramount Pictures film by the name of Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill that is said to be based loosely on the true story of a Hasidic rock musician.

Personal life
Fey was born in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia to a Greek American mother and a father of German and Scottish descent. Her brother, Peter, remembers a drawing she did when she was about seven: it showed people holding hands, walking down the street with wedges of Swiss cheese. The caption read, “What a friend we have in cheeses!”

Fey was exposed to comedy early, saying:

“I remember my parents sneaking me in to see Young Frankenstein. We would also watch Saturday Night Live, or Monty Python or old Marx Brothers movies. My dad would let us stay up late to watch The Honeymooners. We were not allowed to watch The Flintstones, though, which my dad hated because it ripped off The Honeymooners. I actually have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone my age.”

Her dream to entertain first was at Philadelphia Phillies baseball games, as she wanted to become a ball girl.

Fey attended Cardington Elementary School and Beverly Hills Middle School; by middle school she knew she was interested in comedy, even doing an independent study project on the subject in eighth grade. She graduated from Upper Darby High School in 1988.

Tina Fey is married to Jeff Richmond, a composer on SNL. They met before their jobs on SNL and dated for seven years before marrying in a Greek Orthodox ceremony on June 3, 2001 . They have a daughter, Alice Zenobia Richmond who was born on September 10, 2005.

I was a loser in College because the only lyrics I knew were all the words from every Rap Replinger album.

Rap’s Hawaii was a really pathetic TV special based on Rap’s rap but since production was so bad, it sucked, although it is still Rap!