Plot
This day really isn't all that different than every other day, except today Ned's gay son Jonah wants to go to a college party, his wife is bringing home her elderly father to live with them, and his outrageous boss seems to have become even more crazy and demanding than would even seem possible. As his wife tries to take care of her father and reconnect with him, Ned tries to reconnect with Jonah, and then without trying, he seems to have formed a connection with his co-worker. If he can get through days like these, he should be able to get through anything else life throws at him.
Keywords: adultery, airport, alarm-clock, alcohol, apology, ashes, belief-in-reincarnation, bikini, black-eye, boss
Not quite the party you signed up for...
It's never too late to change. [Scandinavian DVD.]
Garrett: [to Ned] You're not nearly as boring as you pretend to be.
Ernie: You were never able to take criticism either.::Jeannie: I think it depends on how it's given.::Ernie: There's no easy way to give it. It's like medicine. You just take it... if you really wanna get better.
Ethan: Will everybody at the prom be gay?::Jonah: Yeah. That's why they call it the gay and lesbian prom, moron.
Jonah: I'm not interested in being with someone who's older. I... I just wanna dance with other people who are gay.::Ned: I think I'd rather talk about the smell of pee.
Garrett: What about anal? My straight friends tell me anal's the new oral.
Garrett: Bestiality, the final frontier.
Ned: [to son chatting the on the Internet] You're not talking to people you don't know, are you?::Jonah: Uhh, you mean potential pedophiles?::Ned: Mm-hm.::Jonah: Just ones that live around here.
Jeannie: Ned...::Ned: I think he should change, or he can't go.::Jonah: This is what people wear to a dance.::Ned: Why don't you just go in a jock strap?::Jeannie: You're being ridiculous.::Ethan: You can sort of see the outline of your penis in those.
Ned: Did that sweater look that gay on me.
Ned: I better go pick Jonah up before someone else does.
Plot
"Dakota," a young soldier on a pass in New York City, visits the famed Stage Door Canteen, where famous stars of the theatre and films appear and host a recreational center for servicemen during the war. Dakota meets a pretty young hostess, Eileen, and they enjoy the many entertainers and a growing romance.
Keywords: actor, actress, bandleader, burlesque, chinese, comedian, dancer, dummy, engagement, entertainment
The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by the musician known as Count Basie. The band survived the late 1940s decline in big band popularity. In the 1950s and 1960s, it produced notable collaborations with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. The group has continued to perform and record since Basie's death in 1984.
Count Basie arrived in Kansas City, Missouri in 1927, playing on the Theater Owners Bookers Association (TOBA) circuit. After playing with the Blue Devils, in 1929 he joined rival band leader Bennie Moten's band.
Upon Moten's death in 1935, Basie left the group to start his own band, taking many of his colleagues from the Moten band with him. This nine-piece group consisted of Joe Keyes and Oran 'Hot Lips' Page on trumpet, Buster Smith and Jack Washington on alto saxophone, Lester Young on tenor saxophone, Dan Minor on trombone, and a rhythm section made up of Jo Jones on drums, Walter Page on bass and Basie on piano. With this band, then named The Barons of Rhythm, Basie brought the sound of the famous and highly competitive Kansas City "jam session" to club audiences, coupling extended improvised solos with riff-based accompaniments from the band. The group's first venue was the Reno Club in Kansas City, later moving to the Grand Terrace in Chicago.
William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".
Butch Miles (born Charles J. Thorton, Jr. on July 4, 1944 in Ironton, Ohio) is an American jazz drummer. He has played with the Count Basie Orchestra, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra, among others.
Miles, who cites Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and Jo Jones as favorite drummers, began playing snare drum at the age of 9 and majored in music at West Virginia State University 1962–1966. After receiving his degree, he went on tour with the Iris Bell Trio. Miles was with the Count Basie Orchestra from 1975–1979 and returned for ten years from 1997–2007, and leader of the group Jazz Express in the 1980s and '90s. He has also performed at the Newport and Montreux Jazz Festivals.
Butch Miles is a member of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame 2011 class of inductees. He is currently a professor in the School of Music at Texas State University-San Marcos.
Ray Charles Robinson (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004), known by his shortened stage name Ray Charles, was an American musician. He was a pioneer in the genre of soul music during the 1950s by fusing rhythm and blues, gospel, and blues styles into his early recordings with Atlantic Records. He also helped racially integrate country and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, most notably with his Modern Sounds albums. While with ABC, Charles became one of the first African-American musicians to be given artistic control by a mainstream record company.Frank Sinatra called Charles “the only true genius in show business.”
The influences upon his music were mainly jazz, blues, rhythm and blues and country artists of the day such as Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Louis Jordan, Charles Brown, Louis Armstrong. His playing reflected influences from country blues and barrelhouse, and stride piano styles.
Rolling Stone ranked Charles number ten on their list of "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" in 2004, and number two on their November 2008 list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In honoring Charles, Billy Joel noted: "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley. I don't know if Ray was the architect of rock & roll, but he was certainly the first guy to do a lot of things . . . Who the hell ever put so many styles together and made it work?"
Jerry Lewis (born March 16, 1926) is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis.
In addition to the duo's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.