Dennis Michael Miller (born November 3, 1953) is an American political commentator, stand-up comedian, talk show host, writer, and former sportscaster.

Miller was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live from 1985 to 1991, and he subsequently hosted a string of his own talk shows on HBO, CNBC, and also in syndication. From 2007 to 2015, Miller hosted a daily, three-hour, self-titled talk radio program, nationally syndicated by Westwood One. On March 9, 2020, Dennis Miller + One show, launched on RT America. It ran twice-weekly and featured celebrity interviews.

Miller is listed as 21st on Comedy Central's 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time, and was ranked as the best host of SNLs Weekend Update by Vulture.com.

Early life
Miller was born in Pittsburgh and grew up in the suburb of Castle Shannon. He is of Scottish descent. Miller's parents separated and he was raised by his mother, Norma who was a dietitian at a Baptist nursing home. Miller is reluctant to speak about his father, usually just saying he "moved on when I was very young." He is the oldest of five children.

Miller attended Saint Anne School, a Catholic elementary school. At St. Anne's, he managed the Catholic Youth Organization basketball team for boys 15–16 years old.

His first inspiration to pursue a comedy career came when as a child he was taken to see comedian Kelly Monteith at a Pittsburgh club. After the show, Monteith was kind enough to answer the young Miller's questions about being a comedian. Two other early influences were Jonathan Winters and Tim Conway.

Miller went to Keystone Oaks High School. At Keystone Oaks, Miller was a member of the Physical Fitness Club, and in his senior year he worked on the Keynote newspaper and served on the student council, but lost his bid for senior class president.

By high school, he had already developed a reputation for humor. Despite this, his actual personality at this time was one that was reserved, lacking self-confidence, and hidden under a layer of comedy. He graduated from high school in 1971 with the intent of studying to become a sports writer.

College and odd jobs

At Point Park University Miller became a member of Sigma Tau Gamma fraternity. Miller likened his social status at this period as being lower than Booger of Revenge of the Nerds. Miller majored in journalism. In the fall of his senior year at the university, he began writing for the South Hills Record, mixing humor into his sports reporting. When the paper changed its payment structure to pay around an eighth of a penny per column inch, he quit. He graduated from Point Park in 1976 with a degree in journalism. He later reflected, "I'm just not that interested in other people's business and that's a tragic flaw in a journalist."

After college Miller moved through several occupations, including a clerk at Giant Eagle deli, a janitor, a delivery man for a florist, and an ice cream scooper at the Village Dairy. As an ice-cream scooper, Miller recalled that he was twenty-one, five years out of high school, and wearing a paper hat while working alongside teenagers. A spur to quit the ice cream scooping job was when he took the order of the prettiest girl from his high school, which filled him with embarrassment. Miller later said that at the time he feared that if he stayed in such jobs, his life would become a Franz Kafka novella, and it stiffened his resolve to start pursuing a comedy career.

Leaving the ice cream parlor Miller joined the staff at Point Park's Recreation Room, where he was in charge of the bowling alley, video games, and running the air-hockey league. A patron from that time recalled that Miller sat on pool tables telling jokes and honing his comedy to those in the rec room, which was the only place the commuters gathered. Miller and the other patrons closely followed the NFL at the time as it was the "era of the Super Steelers".

Stand-up

In 1979, after seeing a Robin Williams comedy special on HBO, Miller began to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian.

Pittsburgh

In Pittsburgh, Miller began a comedy career by performing at open-mic nights. He backed out of his first two attempts to perform at an open mic due to stage fright and anger with himself over the question of whether the drive to perform was a need for approval from others. When he finally made his début at the Oak's Lounge on Sleepy Hollow Road in Castle Shannon, most of Miller's family was in the audience to cheer him on.

He began appearing onstage at the Oak's Lounge in Castle Shannon while working at the Giant Eagle deli in Kennedy. Miller lived without a car and without much money in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, hitching rides or taking buses.

New York City

He continued to do stand-up in Oakland and at places like Brandy's in the Strip District and the Portfolio on Craig Street, eventually saving up $1,000 which he used to try to fast-track his comedy career by moving to New York City. Once there, Miller had to bribe a landlord to give him a room for $200, then had to pay the security deposit of $250 and the first month's rent of $250. Thus, he spent $700 of his $1,000 savings on his first day in New York, for a sparse, bunker-like room.

While in New York he submitted a joke for a Playboy magazine contest for humor writing that was judged by an all-star panel including Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, David Brenner, Martin Mull, Art Buchwald, and Buck Henry. Of around 15,000 entries, Miller tied for second and his joke and picture appeared in the June 1979 issue of the magazine. Miller won $500 in Playboys first annual humor competition with the following joke:

Miller gained more exposure when he tried out for the New York Laff-Off Contest. The contest had 40 slots but 32 of them had already been filled by the top regulars who appeared at the three comedy venues sponsoring the competition. Many of the 350 comedians Miller was up against had hours of crafted material, while he had fine-tuned around ten minutes. To his surprise and delight, Miller earned one of the remaining slots. For the competition itself he appeared at the Improv and received a standing ovation, moving him on to the finals. While he lost the Laff-Off, he was seen by dozens of talent agents, resulting in bookings at colleges and other clubs.

While he was working in New York City, Hustler Magazine listed Miller in a piece called "The 10 Funniest People in America You'll Never See on TV". During this time, Miller supported himself by working day jobs such as bartender and payroll clerk, and by night made the rounds of New York clubs The Comic Strip, The Improvisation, and Catch a Rising Star.

Return to Pittsburgh and KDKA-TV

After about a year in New York City, he returned to Pittsburgh. It was there that local television station KDKA-TV was shooting a piece for its Evening Magazine and offered him a job at the station. By the end of 1980 Miller was acting as a warm-up in the afternoons for KDKA's Pittsburgh 2Day. He then began starring in humorous segments for the syndicated Evening Magazine. By 1983 he had become the host of Punchline, a Saturday-morning newsmagazine aimed at teenagers. In one episode he interviewed fellow comedian Pat Paulsen. Miller later reflected on this time, saying that "you have to start somewhere," and that he was "just pleased to be in front of a camera."

During performances at comedy clubs in Pittsburgh, Miller befriended Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld. In 1984 Leno found Miller an apartment in Los Angeles and he and Seinfeld arranged a debut for Miller at The Improv. Miller resigned from KDKA and moved to Los Angeles to try to further his comedy career.

Los Angeles

Miller's brothers Rich and Jimmy joined him in Los Angeles, taking up varied jobs around The Improv such as booking shows, acting as bouncer, and selling tickets. Jimmy became a power talent agent with Gold Miller, and Rich ran RCM Entertainment, booking comedians across the country.

In Los Angeles, Leno was a big influence on Miller, as he was to many upcoming comedians in the area at the time. Young comedians gathered at Leno's home late at night and he offered critiques with humorous, biting wit. Leno also taped television appearances of his group and showed them during such sessions while offering more humorous critiques. Miller later fondly recalled the time, saying it was like "sitting at his knee, querying Yoda".

Miller appeared on Star Search, where he lost out to fellow comedian Sinbad after the two tied on judges' scores; Sinbad won with a higher studio-audience approval rating. Miller made his first appearance on Late Night with David Letterman on June 24, 1985 (other guests were Phil Collins and María Conchita Alonso).

Saturday Night Live

Audition
In 1985, Miller was discovered by Lorne Michaels at The Comedy Store. Miller subsequently auditioned for SNL in Los Angeles, and did well enough for a second audition at Times Square in New York. About 70 people watched this second audition—this was most of the show's staff along with Lorne Michaels, Paul Simon, and Dan Aykroyd. Miller walked into a well-lit room and was told "Go ahead, you have eight minutes, Dennis."

After the New York audition he went to dinner with Michaels and Jack Nicholson. Miller felt that this was just another aspect of his audition, to see if he could handle himself around famous people, so he "just sat there quietly". Miller later recalled the conclusion of the meeting with Michaels: "He looked at me and goes, 'Would you like to do my newscast?'. And I said, 'Yeah, I would', and he said, 'Well, I'll see you tomorrow'. And then I walked out. And I remember thinking, 'My life has just changed.'"

Weekend Update

Miller succeeded Christopher Guest as the Weekend Update anchor. The spot was supposed to go to comic Jon Lovitz, but Lovitz was scheduled for other parts on the show and needed the Update segment to do costume changes, so Miller was drafted to read the news. His comedy was apolitical before SNL but politics came easy through opening a newspaper and building a new act around a few headlines. He made his stage persona a bit sardonic, as he noticed people who had done the Weekend Update segment as nice guys quickly lost the role.

Miller began his fictional news reports with "Good evening, and what can I tell ya?" and closed with "Guess what, folks? That's the news, and I... am... outta here!" Fans of SNL became accustomed to his snarky delivery, high-pitched giggle, and frequently primped hair—idiosyncrasies that were spoofed by Dana Carvey, Tom Hanks, and Jimmy Fallon, all of whom have impersonated Miller on the show.

During his time at SNL, Miller released a stand-up comedy album, The Off-White Album in 1988. It drew heavily from the observational and metaphor-driven style he was known for on the show, and showed glimpses of the political humor that influenced his later work. An HBO special, Dennis Miller: Black and White, aired shortly after the release of the CD.

Although Miller spent much of his time on SNL behind the Weekend Update desk, he was included in some sketches. He did a few recurring characters as well as celebrity impersonations including Gary Hart, George Harrison, and Nathaniel Crosby.

Leaving SNL
It was thought that he would renew his contract with NBC until at least 1993, but Miller left SNL in 1991, turning over the anchor's chair to Kevin Nealon.
Miller was happy with his role on the show, but chose to move on because he had turned 38 and his 18-month-old son Holden made him want to strive for things to "make the boy proud."

Miller soon had a late-night talk show in development (The Dennis Miller Show), and it was believed that fans of Letterman would naturally be interested in Miller's show and prefer that over Leno's in that time slot.  He told an interviewer, "I had a great gig and this came up. It seemed like an opportunity that doesn't present itself too frequently in your life, so I opted to take it... I wanted to see what other talents I had, so I decided this was the shot."

SNL 40th Anniversary

Miller did not appear on the 2015 show for the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live, and rumors spread that he and fellow alum Victoria Jackson had not been invited due to their conservative political activism. He took to Twitter to dispel the claims, saying Lorne Michaels was classy, well-mannered and invited everyone, but he declined. He later told an interviewer that he would have loved to be there, but could not due to family commitments.

Eponymous Shows

The Dennis Miller Show

After it was announced that Miller would  start his own show, he was a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Carson offered him some advice while reflecting on his own 30-year career from which he was retiring in May 1992. In preparation, Miller sharpened his interviewing skills by practicing on the show's stage hands. He felt that the secret to interviewing well was listening to the guest rather than trying to set up jokes while the guest is talking. As the date for the show's opening approached, Miller told an interviewer that he was both thrilled and "scared shitless" by the opportunity. He saw Carson's approach as the standard but hoped to be original.

In 1992, Miller began hosting his eponymous late-night talk show. Syndication lasted seven months. Launched in January 1992, it was an attempt by syndicator Tribune Entertainment to carve out a niche in the late-night television landscape after Carson's retirement from The Tonight Show that May and his replacement by Jay Leno. Bob Odenkirk and Norm Macdonald served as writers for the show. The Dennis Miller Show built an insignificant audience and was cancelled in July.

Dennis Miller Live
Beginning in 1994, Miller hosted Dennis Miller Live, a half-hour talk show on HBO. The show was taped at CBS Television City on the same stage where The Price Is Right is taped. It utilized a small set, sparse lighting, no band and Miller speaking to the largely-unseen studio audience from a darkened stage.

Miller hosted one guest per show, with whom he discussed the topic of the day. Early on, guests were all interviewed live via satellite, but soon most appeared live in the studio. Miller and his writing staff won five Emmy Awards during the show's run, which aired 215 episodes over nine years. HBO cancelled the show in 2002.

CNBC show

Background
Miller was considered for a prime-time talk show at MSNBC in 2002 as well as a regular commentator on the Fox News show Hannity & Colmes in 2003 before landing a prime-time political show weeknights on CNBC, simply called Dennis Miller. It began airing on January 26, 2004 in the 9:00 p.m. (ET) slot, which placed him against Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

CNBC announced that they were "comfortable with an unabashed Bush fan in the middle of its prime-time schedule in an election year." Their president Pamela Thomas-Graham said, "When we hired Dennis, we knew exactly what his political beliefs were and his viewers will hear them. The reason we hired him is we think he's witty, smart and interesting." She contrasted his political leanings to that of John McEnroe's, whose own talk show followed Miller's in the lineup.

Miller promised to serve as "an ombudsman" who will tell it like it is and become "incensed" on the viewer's behalf". When asked if he had the credentials to do a quasi-news show, Miller stressed he was an entertainer. "I don't have credibility, I'm a comedian. I'm not Ed Murrow up on the roof in a London Fog reporting on the Blitz."

Content
The hour-long show contained a daily news segment called "The Daily Rorschach," an interview segment, a panel discussion dubbed "The Varsity," and humorous field pieces by fellow SNL alum Tim Meadows and Last Comic Standings Ant. Stylistically, Miller was seen by some as "attempting to be serious, angry, and funny all at the same time," and the show was compared to that of Bill Maher. Reviewers felt Miller's riffs would benefit from a live audience, and the show incorporated a "nightclub-style audience of 100 or so" beginning on March 9, 2004.

"The Daily Rorschach," which were wordy riffs on news events, was reminiscent of his role on SNL's Weekend Update and his HBO show. On Miller's interviews, L.A. Weekly remarked, "Miller may be up front about his own political affiliation, even to the point of shilling for the Republicans, but despite his increasingly aggressive America-first humor, he is unusually evenhanded in his selection of guests." "The Varsity," which offered a wide variety of political viewpoints on current topics,  included frequent panelists Ed Schultz, Gloria Allred, Willie Brown, David Horowitz, Mickey Kaus, Steven Katz, Lawrence O'Donnell, Phil Hendrie, and Harry Shearer. In these segments, Miller acted "less like a host than a fellow conversationalist, and seems as happy to listen as to interrupt."

In the beginning of the series, Miller had a chimpanzee on the show named Ellie, who was declared a "consultant." After a few appearances Ellie was replaced by a smaller, friendlier chimp named Mo. Mo was noted for swinging across the studio on a rope, doing somersaults on the sofa while giving the appearance of reading Variety, and for nuzzling Miller while he gave his monologue.

Reception and cancellation
The group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting objected that one of the show's producers was Mike Murphy, who was an adviser to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (Miller's first guest on the show), and charged that CNBC was setting up a conflict of interest.

LA Weekly praised Miller for approaching the panel in a "relatively relaxed and straightforward attitude." Despite having "worked briefly as a commentator for Hannity and Colmes on Fox, he's far from being a Murdochian attack dog, and he often sits there and sucks it up while people tell him just how awful the administration of his beloved commander-in-chief really is... Miller, it turns out, is considerably more interested in 'diversity' than some of his liberal counterparts."

The show was openly pro-President George W. Bush and its debut coincided with a major decline in Bush's approval numbers. While Miller's rating started out well with his first episode (The New York Times put the figure at 746,000 people), by March 2004 his numbers had slipped to 300,000. This was in contrasted to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which attracted 1.9 million viewers, and which aired at the later time slot of 11 pm.

By April 2005, Miller's viewership had declined to 107,000 (a 59% drop from the year before). CNBC canceled the show in May 2005 as part of the network's move to refocus on financial news (airings of Late Night with Conan O'Brien and shows hosted by John McEnroe and Tina Brown were also cancelled). Miller's show was replaced with a second airing of Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

Westwood One radio show

In January 2007, Miller signed a deal with Westwood One (later acquired by Dial Global, which rebranded itself as Westwood One) to launch The Dennis Miller Show, a weekday three-hour talk radio program. The program debuted on March 26, 2007, and ran through February 27, 2015. A few months into his radio show, Miller noted that his radio show best represented his actual unvarnished views, saying "This time, if I'm fired, they will be firing the real Dennis Miller."

The show's website provided a live stream of the broadcast, which was free, but a subscription to the Dennis Miller Zone (DMZ) was required in order to access archived broadcasts. The show aired on 250+ stations, airing on tape delay on some of those stations between 6–9 pm ET and 9 pm-12 am ET. His on-air sidekick "Salman" (David S. Weiss) also wrote for Dennis Miller Live. His producer Christian Bladt previously appeared on-camera as dozens of different characters during the "Daily Rorschach" segment on his CNBC television show.

Miller's program included serious discussions about American culture, current events, politics, and their place in the global context. The show was infused with Miller's sarcasm and obscure pop culture references. The first hour's opening phrase was a combination of dialogue from the film Thank You for Smoking and a U.S. space program slogan coined by Alan Shepard: "What's up, Hiroshi? Let's light this candle!" Miller's opening phrases for his second and third hours respectively were "Come to me my babies, let me quell your pain", (Powers Boothe as Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones) and "ABC – Always be closing if you want the knife set" (from Glengarry Glen Ross).

Most shows featured three guests (one per hour) as well as calls from listeners. Guests included fellow comedians and SNL alumni, pundits and authors, Presidential candidates, and sports commentators. Regulars included columnists and conservatives such as Debra Saunders, Charles Krauthammer, Victor Davis Hanson, John Bolton, Bill Kristol, and Jerome Corsi.

According to Talkers Magazine, as of spring 2011, Miller's show had an estimated 2,250,000 weekly listeners. Miller and Dial Global signed an agreement in early 2012 to continue his show for three years. Miller ended the radio show after his contract expired on March 27, 2015.

Eventually Dennis joined the podcasting world with "The Dennis Miller Option" which was a sort of continuation of his old radio show, albeit only for an hour weekly. It featured interviews with some of the same guests from the radio days, emails from listeners, and the usual Miller rants. He decided to retire from the show after the Elections in 2020 as he felt that the political climate had become too divisive.

Dennis Miller + One
Miller hosted Dennis Miller + One, on RT America, a channel funded by the Russian government, from March 9, 2020, until early 2022. The half-hour program was produced by Ora TV and aired twice weekly, featuring interviews with sports and entertainment celebrities. In line with the name of the show, Miller interviewed a single guest for the entire half hour. The show replaced Larry King Now, on which Miller had been a frequent guest host until King's death in February 2021. In February 2022, Miller quit the show due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, shortly before RT withdrew from the American market in March.

Other endeavors

Miller hosted the MTV Video Music Awards in 1995 and 1996. He was also the host of HBO's 1996 series of election specials, Not Necessarily the Election.

He has appeared in various television commercials, serving as a spokesman for M&M's candies, 10-10-220 long-distance service, Miller beer, and the Internet service provider NetZero. About these activities he has remarked: "Everybody has to sell out at some point to make a living."

Monday Night Football

Background
In June 2000, Miller auditioned as an announcer for ABC's Monday Night Football, a program which was struggling with declining ratings at the time and needed a new announcer after the firing of Boomer Esiason. Miller's audition was alongside Al Michaels, the current announcer for Monday Night Football, in a mock broadcast. Miller's NFL knowledge surprised those in attendance. He had grown up watching the 1970s championship Steelers and was an avid watcher of the NFL draft. He had even inquired about an announcing job with Fox after they had acquired rights to show NFL games in 1994. Michaels later told an interviewer, "It was way beyond what we expected. I had no idea that he knew as much about football as he did. He made points that other analysts we brought in never made, and his points were more salient, more interesting, and better stated."

In late June 2000,  Miller was announced as a new color commentator on Monday Night Football. ABC Sports President Howard Katz told The Associated Press that he approved of trying something new with the show and taking a risk. The Los Angeles Times called Miller's hiring "one of the boldest moves in sports television history." After the announcement, Miller appeared on the July 3, 2000, cover of Sports Illustrated with the title "Can Dennis Miller Save 'Monday Night Football?'" Miller told reporters that he would not try to dominate the show and insisted that his role would not be that of a comedian. Miller stated, "I'm going to try to stay in the background and ask questions a fan would ask. The rants are my HBO show and I won't try to recreate that."

Commentary
Miller and the new broadcasting team began airing through the preseason, starting on July 31, 2000. The show's official season opener was on September 4, 2000, with the Denver Broncos at the defending Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams. Miller's performance at the official opener was met with mixed reviews. AP and The Boston Globe held that Miller had improved from preseason, but The Washington Times said he "comes off as being a smug, smarmy, smirking sort," and The Toronto Star suggested, "Send Miller back to the Comedy Channel. ... This guy just isn't very good." As his first season progressed, Miller's critics held that "he sounds scripted" and the show's ratings continued to decline. As the ratings did not improve, writers from Newsweek and USA Today began openly calling for Miller to be let go.

Throughout Miller's football coverage his commentary was sprinkled with esoteric references. A common Miller-ism was after a Hail Mary pass fell incomplete, he would say "Hail Mary is denied—separation of church and state." He also once referred to "The Greatest Show on Turf"—the St. Louis Rams receiving corps—as the "Murderer's Row of Haste." Online options arose to offer definitions to references made by Miller on Monday Night Football: a website called "Dennis Miller Demystified," Encyclopædia Britannica'''s "Annotated Dennis Miller," and the Shadowpack (a "content aggregator, formatter, and e-commerce app") giving real-time explanations on personal digital assistant. Miller stated he was flattered by such attention.

Leaving MNF
Although Miller signed a contract for a third year, ABC soon began negotiations with veteran football commentator John Madden. Madden had worked at Fox Sports for eight years since the network had won the contract for the NFC Conference games away from CBS in 1994. Since getting the NFL contract, Fox had lost $4.4 billion and was looking to cut programming costs. Madden's contract for the next year would cost Fox $8 million so, when ABC was approaching Madden, Fox agreed to let him out of his remaining year. In March 2002, it was announced that Miller would be replaced by Madden, who was signed on February 28, 2002.

Miller later reflected that "the football thing was fun for me. I was in the middle of a maelstrom and I just decided not to pay attention to it because, for me, getting hired was a freakish act of nature." Elsewhere he said, "as soon as Madden left Fox, I pretty much knew I was going to be whacked. Here was Madden, the Pliny the Elder of football announcers. And they were going to stay with the kid? I was having fun. I had alienated half the community, and probably half of them liked me." Al Michaels, while overjoyed to work with Madden, praised Miller, saying, "what he tried to do was the hardest thing ever attempted in broadcasting. No other non-football person or someone of that ilk could have pulled it off as well as he did."

In 2010, TV Guide Network listed Miller's stint at No. 12 on their list of 25 Biggest TV Blunders, while Awful Announcing put him at No. 1 in their list of the Top 10 Sports Media Busts.

Fox News, game shows, and Sports Unfiltered
Miller frequently guested on Fox News in the late 2000s. He appeared on 13 of the 17 aired episodes of the comedy show The 1/2 Hour News Hour in 2007. He had a weekly segment called "Miller Time" on The O'Reilly Factor, and has also appeared on Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld.

Miller briefly co-hosted the game show Grand Slam, which aired on GSN for eight episodes in 2007. For one month, Miller hosted Amne$ia for NBC. The show was a replacement program commissioned during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike and was canceled once the strike was resolved and scripted programming returned to the network.

In November 2007, Versus tapped Miller to host Sports Unfiltered, a weekly one-hour sports talk show. It was canceled after eight episodes.

Comedic style

For the first year and a half of his comedy career, Miller relied heavily on props, but he felt this limited him and switched to using purely language. To address the stage-fright he developed when initially beginning his stand-up career, Miller later stated "I got up there and acted like the guy I always wanted to be to get through it... it's a part of me, but it's not the real me." He kept his hands in his pockets to appear unfazed, or adjusted his cuffs during an audience laugh to give the appearance of indifference to approval. Miller pointed out that part of his act is to show a "hipper-than-thou" persona, but then purposely undermine it at regular intervals for comedic effect.

Miller has a laid-back style (for example, calling people "babe" or "cat") and an acerbic, brooding sense of humor. His specialty is the rant, which typically begin with "Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but..." and end with "...of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

Miller listed his comedic influences for The New York Times as including "Jonathan Miller, Richard Pryor, Richard Belzer and Mr. [Jay] Leno." When the Times asked him about the comedians Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, to whom he is often compared, Miller stated that he had been impressed with transcripts of Sahl's early work but that as Sahl's career continued he became too tied to the Kennedy family and became a "savage name-dropper," which diminished him in Miller's eyes, and served as an example for him to avoid. Miller had no respect for Bruce, telling the Times, "Lenny was a heroin addict, and I couldn't care less about heroin addicts. Once I hear a guy is a heroin addict, and they tell me he's a genius, I think, 'Really?' I'm not trying to be judgmental. But anybody whose last vision is of a tile pattern on a bathroom floor, I don't know what kind of genius they are."

Describing his career Miller stated, "It's all been built on arcane references, precision of language, and a reasonably imperturbable nature on TV. The basics are there, but I've been getting paid, making a living and having fun with it for next to 25 years, and you know that blows my mind that I've stuck with it. That's my favorite part of showbiz, hangin' in, knowing that something good is coming along. ... When I was starting, I thought I'd have to have a sword-in-the-stone moment of inspiration where I'd have to lay around for it to be visited on me. SNL was just a machine, and if you screwed two or three 'Updates' up, guess what, they have someone new and ready to go. So I learned how to pick up any newspaper and have five usable jokes in five minutes. "I don't ever wanna get self-important. I'm a comedian, and I want everyone in my life to know it. The stream-of-consciousness style is my monkey trick. I sit there, I watch stuff, and cultural references bump into my head. I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid."

Miller has referred to his casual stage-style as "quasi-Dean Martin insouciance." When asked if he has accepted others' title of him as "the 'intelligent' comedian," he replied, "The smartest thing I ever did was not buying into the fact that people thought I was smart. I was telling jokes about where I named the robot maid for The Jetsons. It's just a joke. I just did jokes. I never had my head up my ass that I mattered. I'm trying to get laughs... I'm OK [intelligence-wise]. I remember I had a writer once who told me—and we disagreed about everything, so I know he didn't think I was smart—but he said, 'I'll give you this. You have a deep drawer and a nice retrieval system.' I always thought that was a good appraisal of whatever limited comedy gift I had. I have a pretty good memory for pop arcana and a pretty quick retrieval system."

Personal life
Miller married Carolyn "Ali" Espley, a former model from Vancouver, British Columbia on April 24, 1988. Espley is best known as the girl in Kajagoogoo's 1983 "Too Shy" music video. The couple live in Santa Barbara and have two sons who were born in 1990 and 1993.

Political views
Although in his early years of fame it was perceived he was a staunch liberal and an outspoken critic of Republicans, in recent years Miller has become known for his neoconservative political opinions.

Early outlook
When asked if his political outlook was a result of early influence by his parents, Miller told a reporter "I didn't know my dad—he moved out early. And my mom's politics were kind of hardscrabble. She didn't think about Democrats or Republicans. She thought about who made sense. I've been both in my life. Somebody can say they don't understand why somebody drifts. But I've always found people who drift interesting, 'cause it shows me the game's not stagnant in their own head. They're thinking."

In 1995, Miller told USA Today: "I might be profane and opinionated, but underneath all that are some pretty conservative feelings. On most issues, between Clinton and Newt Gingrich, I'd choose Newt in a second, even though he is a bit too exclusionary." Miller also declared himself a "conservative libertarian" in a 1996 Playboy interview.

Miller later told American Enterprise that one of the reasons he became more conservative was due to liberal critiques of Mayor Rudy Giuliani's approach to fighting crime in New York City, which began around 1994. "When I kept hearing liberals equating Giuliani with Hitler—that's when I really left the reservation. Even before 9/11, I'd travel to New York and say, 'Wow, this city certainly seems to be running better. Giuliani is the kind of leader I admire. When it's five below zero and you arrest somebody to get him inside off the street—that's not something Hitler would do. It made me realize that I was with the wrong group if that's what Hitler looked like to them."

Post September 11 attacks
Following the September 11 attacks, Miller's political ideology changed significantly and his conservative views became more publicly known. His move from the Democratic to the Republican Party was further facilitated by watching a 2004 presidential primary debate between nine Democrats. "I haven't seen a starting nine like that since the '62 Mets," he remarked.

In 2006, Slate commentator Dennis Cass describes Miller's political evolution from a "left-leaning, Dada-ist wisenheimer" to a "tell-it-like-it-is, right-wing blowhard." The perceived change did not surprise former SNL colleague and former Democratic Party Senator Al Franken, who noted Miller had always had a "conservative streak." In another interview Franken stated, "Dennis was always sort of conservative on certain kinds of issues. I am not quite sure why he decided to become a comedian with a dog in the fight, but as a comedian with a dog in the fight I sympathize with him."

His political outspokenness led him to become one of the few Hollywood celebrities backing George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. In 2003, The Weekly Standard called Miller "the loudest pro-Bush/pro-war voice in Hollywood", and quoted his comments on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from February of that year, where Miller advocated invading Iraq and vented his displeasure at France's lack of support for the idea. Los Angeles Times noted that he was "raising his political profile" at this time, and that he "spoke out passionately in favor of the war in Iraq. He has made frequent appearances on conservative talk radio; he does weekly political commentary for Hannity & Colmes, a Fox News Channel talk show." That same year, The National Review wrote, "Conservatives ... have welcomed and even cheered the comedian's unabashed patriotism and endorsement of President Bush's foreign—and, in certain cases, domestic—policy." They noted that "During appearances on The Tonight Show, he has also advocated profiling at airports and oil-drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."

While he was not at all shy about expressing his conservative views on topics such as taxes and foreign policy, Miller was quick to point out that he is quite liberal on many social issues. During a 2004 interview, Miller said "If two gay guys want to get married, it's none of my business. I could care less. More power to them. I'm happy when people fall in love." He added, "I think abortion's wrong, but it's none of my business to tell somebody what's wrong. So I'm pro-choice. I want to keep my nose out of other people's personal business." In 2006, he noted in an interview with Penn Jillette that his liberal attitude on social issues made him a libertarian, saying "that's what I am, I'll be honest with you."

In 2007, Miller admitted that his open conservatism may have cost him some passing acquaintances, but it has not affected "my dear friends. I certainly hope our friendship runs deeper than that. I still have some ultra-liberal friends." In a 2012 interview, Miller showed no concern over whether his political stance had made him less popular or robbed him of the credit of popularizing comedic rants, saying, "I'm a 58-year-old man and I'm happy where I'm at. I don't think about any of that. I go on O'Reilly once a week, I do my radio show and I go on the road about 20 dates a year... If you're 58 and you're still worrying about whether you're popular, what are you, in eighth grade?"

George W. Bush
Miller made several jokes about the George W. Bush administration before 9/11. He poked fun at George W. Bush's intelligence on Monday Night Football, saying "God, the man thinks Croatia is the show that's on after Moesha." In another incident he joked, "Bush can't walk and fart at the same time." In January 2001 on his HBO series, Miller joked, "Condoleezza Rice has often been described as W's 'foreign policy tutor.' Oh, yeah, I love the sound of that. It's nice to know we're signing our nuclear arsenal over to a man who needs after-school help."

After 9/11, Miller's opinion on Bush changed significantly. In 2003, Miller told an interviewer that he was impressed by Bush for pursuing "the liquidation of terrorism," even though "that's not gonna be finished in his lifetime... But to take the first step? Ballsy." In October 2003, Miller praised Bush in an interview with The American Enterprise, saying, "He's much smarter than his enemies think he is. I think he's a genius. People whine about him getting into Yale—the way I see it, if your old man buys a building you should get into Yale! But I think he could have gotten into Yale on his own; he's a very smart man." He also noted Bush's faith, saying "In this messed up world, I like seeing my President pray... This is an infinitely complex world, and at some point one has to have faith in one's religion. I find it endearing that President Bush prays to God and that he's not an agnostic or an atheist. I'm glad there's someone higher that he has to answer to."

Miller began to appear at events for Bush starting in 2003. In June, Miller spoke at the President's fund-raisers in San Francisco and Los Angeles. After the San Francisco appearance, he was invited to ride in the Presidential limousine and fly on Air Force One to travel to the dinner at Los Angeles. Miller also sat in the gallery at President Bush's State of the Union address on January 21, 2004. That same month, Miller told The Associated Press that his CNBC show was not going to do any jokes about George W. Bush, explaining, "I like him. I'm going to give him a pass. I take care of my friends." Miller later reflected in a 2008 interview: "I thought it was so integral that he got re-elected that I laid off him for awhile."

Reflecting on his thoughts near the end of Bush's second term in 2007, Miller still had good words when talking about Bush. "After 9/11 it was a different world. One where crazies strap a bomb to their kids in the name of religion. Bush and (Rudy) Giuliani were fearless leaders during the national crisis. Thank God Bush chose to stay on the offense."

Candidacy consideration
In 2003, Rob Stutzman and other members of the leadership for the Californian Republican party, after seeing the political success of Arnold Schwarzenegger, approached Miller in an effort to draft him to challenge Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer.

When asked about the possibility of facing a Miller candidacy, Boxer spokesman Roy Behr dismissed his odds: "The Republican Party has gone through a desperate search to find someone who is remotely credible—they've looked at everybody and everything, and they couldn't find anybody, so they're looking at bringing in the circus." The Weekly Standards Bill Whalen saw that, with the ascent of Schwarzenegger, other celebrities were considering political careers (such as Republican Kelsey Grammer). Examining Miller's chances for the Senate seat the Standard pointed out that it was "hard to imagine a candidate quicker on the draw or more withering in a debate" and noted other Republican celebrities successfully made the transition to elected politician because they "embodied optimism." Miller, the Standard proclaimed, was seen in contrast as "both terribly erudite... and decidedly yuppie (the comedian endorses DirecTV and Amstel Light...) Not to mention a little too edgy for some Republicans." When asked about Miller's chances, Martin Kaplan, director of USC's Norman Lear Center, theorized that Miller might face a tough primary battle to win the Republican nomination from other members of the party that had actual political experience.

By November 2003, The New York Times did a piece on the Republican opposition to Boxer and reported that "Mr. Miller was never serious about the idea, Republican officials who spoke with him say. ... 'Dennis has never contacted us,' said George M. Sundheim III, chairman of the state Republican Party". The Times pointed out that while the Republican Party was talking about drafting him, Miller "had signed a multiyear contract with CNBC as a political talk show host."

Miller, invoking his pleasant home life in Santa Barbara with his wife and two children, later told The New York Times, "They inquired about my availability to run against Barbara Boxer, but I'm not at the point where I would consider it." He expanded on the subject in an interview with Time magazine saying he had declined the draft offer because "At some point that involves moving to Washington, D.C., sitting in a room all day with a moron like Barbara Boxer. I'm just not interested." He told the Associated Press, "Maybe when I get older I would think about it, just as a lark, view it as its own form of a TV show. I think it would be fun to get in there and turn out the whole process—just refuse to play, and don't budge. Get rid of me if you want, but I'm just going to do what I want."

Political support
In 1988, Miller voted for George H. W. Bush, a fact he brought up in 1992 as proof that he was "essentially conservative."

In 1992, Miller, who had endorsed the candidacy of Jerry Brown during the Democratic primaries, moved his support to Independent candidate Ross Perot. Miller volunteered for Ross Perot's candidacy at his San Fernando Valley campaign office. Miller told a reporter, "I don't know that you need to know that much about him. He's an outsider, and the two-party system is going to hell." Miller stated that he had become "really grossed out by the system after observing the behavior of politicians in both parties during the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. When Ross Perot dropped out of the Presidential race on July 16, 1992, saying he feared a conspiracy against his family, many began to joke about his sanity. On July 30, 1995, Miller told a reporter, "I'd vote for him [Perot] tomorrow. I don't think he's a genius but I love the thought of him at State Dinners mistaking the Queen of Denmark for Kaye Ballard. People say to me, 'You wouldn't want Ross Perot with his finger on the button.' But believe me, they would never let Ross Perot near the real button. They would rig up a stunt button for him, and if he ever pressed it, it would squirt him in the face with milk or something."

In 1995, considering the candidates for president, Miller told a reporter, "I don't respect Bill Clinton. He's the same as [George H. W.] Bush or [Bob] Dole. Clinton's my age, and I know how full of shit I am. So I look at him and think, 'I know you. You're the guy who used to tap the keg.'" He continued to mock Clinton when he won the Presidency, and later admitted to voting for Bob Dole in the 1996 election (despite Perot being on the ballot in every state).

On February 21, 2007, while appearing as a guest on The O'Reilly Factor, and again on May 25, 2007, while appearing as a guest on The Tonight Show, Miller stated that he initially supported Rudy Giuliani for President in 2008. After Giuliani's departure from the race he redirected his support to John McCain. Miller said that he gave Barack Obama six to eight months before forming an opinion on him, because he saw that his election was inspiring to black youth and hoped it would be healing. He came to the conclusion that Obama was mostly hype, and in actuality, "He's an inept civil servant who stinks."

Miller endorsed Herman Cain in the 2012 Republican primary, but later dropped his support, saying of Cain, "He can't win!" He later campaigned for Mitt Romney in the general election. After the Presidential election of 2012, Miller appeared on Fox News and said that under Obama, the US is on the road to the "European model".

In 2016, Miller did not endorse any particular Republican primary candidate. By December 16, 2015, he told Bill O'Reilly, "I would vote for any of them over Hillary, except for Lindsey Graham... and Pataki." Miller became a strong supporter of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. general election, addressing a tweet to Republicans who were uncertain after Trump wrapped up the nomination: "Don't kid yourself. At this point, any vote for anyone that is not Donald Trump is a vote for Hillary Clinton. Also, both Presidential boxes left blank is a vote for Hillary Clinton because, as mindless as Liberals can be, even they don't enter into suicide pacts with that petulant, whiny part of themselves."

Media

Film
 Barracuda (1988)
 Madhouse (1990) – Wes
 Disclosure (1994) – Mark Lewyn
 The Net (1995) – Dr. Alan Champion
 Never Talk to Strangers (1995) – Cliff Raddison
 Bordello of Blood (1996) – Rafe Guttman
 Murder at 1600 (1997) – Detective Steve Stengel
 Joe Dirt (2001) – Zander Kelly
 Thank You for Smoking (2005) – himself
 What Happens in Vegas (2008) – Judge Whopper
 The Campaign (2012) – himself
 Joe Dirt 2 (2015) – Zander Kelly

TV shows
 MTV Movie Awards (1992) - himself/host
 The Dennis Miller Show (1992) - himself
 Dennis Miller Live (1994- 2002) - himself
 Space Ghost Coast to Coast (2003) – himself
 Boston Public (2003) – Charlie Bixby
 House of Cards (2013) – himself

Comedy specials
 Mr. Miller Goes to Washington (1988)
 The 13th Annual Young Comedians Special (1989) (host)
 The Earth Day Special (1990)
 Black & White (1990)
 Live from Washington, D.C.: They Shoot HBO Specials, Don't They? (1993)
 State of the Union Undressed (1995)
 Citizen Arcane (1996)
 The Millennium Special: 1,000 Years, 100 Laughs, 10 Really Good Ones (1999)
 The Raw Feed (2003)
 Dennis Miller: All In (2006)
 The Big Speech (2010)
 America 180 (2014)
 Fake News, Real Jokes (2018)

Audio
 The Off-White Album (Warner Records, 1988)
 The Rants (Random House Audio, 1996)
 Ranting Again (Random House Audio, 1998)
 Rants Redux (Random House Audio, 1999)
 I Rant, Therefore I Am (Random House Audio, 2000)
 The Rant Zone: An All-Out Blitz Against Soul-Sucking Jobs, Twisted Child Stars, Holistic Loons, and People Who Eat Their Dogs! (HarperAudio, 2001)
 Still Ranting After All These Years (HarperAudio, 2004)
 America 180 (New Wave Dynamics 2014)

Print
 The Rants (Doubleday, 1996)
 Ranting Again (Doubleday, 1999)
 I Rant, Therefore I Am (Doubleday, 2000)
 The Rant Zone: An All-Out Blitz Against Soul-Sucking Jobs, Twisted Child Stars, Holistic Loons, and People Who Eat Their Dogs!'' (HarperCollins, 2001)

References

External links

 Annotated Dennis Miller Archive
 Real Detroit Weekly Interview

1953 births
Living people
20th-century American comedians
21st-century American comedians
American comedy writers
American satirists
American game show hosts
American libertarians
American male comedians
American podcasters
American sketch comedians
American stand-up comedians
American talk radio hosts
American television talk show hosts
Conservative talk radio
Primetime Emmy Award winners
KDKA people
Warner Records artists
National Football League announcers
Writers from Pittsburgh
Point Park University alumni
Male actors from Pittsburgh
Fox News people
American political commentators
CNBC people
Pennsylvania Republicans
20th-century American non-fiction writers
21st-century American non-fiction writers
American people of Scottish descent
Writers Guild of America Award winners

Dennis Miller


Gento was the fourth and youngest son of Genseric, the founder of the Vandal Kingdom in Africa, and father of the vandal kings Gunthamund and Thrasamund.  According to Procopius, at the Battle of Cape Bon,the Vandals seized a Roman ship.  A Roman General named John leaped off the ship to his death despite Gento, "offering pledges and holding out promises of safety."  Gento died in battle in 477.

Gunthamund (c. 450–496), King of the Vandals and Alans (484–496) was the third king of the north African Kingdom of the Vandals. He succeeded his unpopular uncle Huneric, and for that reason alone, enjoyed a rather successful reign. Gunthamund was the second son born to Gento. Because most of Genseric's immediate family was dead, his elder brothers having been murdered by Huneric, Gunthamund found himself as the eldest male member of the family when Huneric died in 484. In accordance with his grandfather's laws on succession, which decreed that the oldest member of the family will be the successor, he was proclaimed king.

Thrasamund (450–523), King of the Vandals and Alans (496–523), was the fourth king of the north African Kingdom of the Vandals, and reigned longer than any other Vandal king in Africa other than his grandfather Genseric. Thrasamund was the third son of Gento, and became king in 496 after all of Genseric's sons and his own brother, King Gunthamund, had died.

References

 Hermann Schreiber: Die Vandalen, Bern, München 1979, S. 158, 231–2, 237–8

Kings of the Vandals
Vandal warriors
477 deaths
5th-century Arian Christians

Gento (son of Genseric)


Thomas Rudborne was an English Benedictine monk of St Swithun's Priory, Winchester, and a chronicler writing in the middle of the fifteenth century.

His Historia Major covers the period 164 AD to 1138, and is centred on the Old Minster at Winchester. He cites carefully from English chronicles, Marianus Scotus and Martinus Polonus. He includes legendary material and hagiographical writing on Saint Swithun.

References
Antonia Gransden (1982), Historical Writing in England II, pp. 394–8

15th-century English historians
English Benedictines
English chroniclers
English Christian monks

Thomas Rudborne


Spider Baby: or, the Maddest Story Ever Told is a 1967 American black comedy horror film, written and directed by Jack Hill. It stars Lon Chaney Jr. as Bruno, the chauffeur and caretaker of three orphaned siblings who suffer from "Merrye Syndrome", a genetic condition starting in early puberty that causes them to regress mentally, socially and physically. Jill Banner, Carol Ohmart, Quinn Redeker, Beverly Washburn, Sid Haig, Mary Mitchel, Karl Schanzer and Mantan Moreland also star.

The film was released to relative obscurity, but eventually achieved cult status.

Plot
At the decaying Merrye House, feared by locals, the Merrye children Ralph, Virginia, and Elizabeth have lived in seclusion with the family chauffeur Bruno ever since their parents died. All three have advanced Merrye Syndrome, a genetic affliction unique to members of the family which causes them, starting in late childhood, to regress down the evolutionary ladder mentally and physically. They exhibit a playful innocence well before their years mixed with feral madness. Ralph is a sexually advanced, but mentally deficient simpleton who moves through the house via the dumb-waiter. Virginia is obsessed with spiders, and has more than once murdered visitors in a game of "spider", trapping them by rigging a window to snap shut on them before hacking them to death with butcher knives. Elizabeth is regarded by Bruno as the most responsible of the three, but is also conniving and infatuated with the concept of hate. The children hold a steadfast respect and affection for Bruno, but increasingly disregard his admonitions against their darker impulses.

Virginia's latest victim is a delivery man serving notice that Peter Howe and his sister Emily, distant relatives of the Merrye family, are coming with their lawyer Schlocker and his secretary Ann, seeking to claim the property as rightful heirs. Bruno hastily coaches the children in enough social etiquette to pass muster before the visitors arrive. Schlocker is outraged that the children have been in the sole care of Bruno (who did not acquire legal guardianship) and have never attended school. Bruno tells him the children are mentally retarded and resists the suggestion to put them in an institution, having sworn to their father to protect them for life. Emily and Schlocker insist on staying overnight to examine the situation, but with only two rooms available, Peter takes Ann into town to stay at an inn.

Schlocker investigates the house, going down to the basement, where he finds the Merrye patriarch's siblings are kept in a pit. Virginia and Elizabeth murder Schlocker to prevent him from reporting this discovery. Bruno realizes it will be impossible to keep this latest murder covered up, and leaves to fetch dynamite from a nearby construction site, planning to blow up the entire Merrye family rather than allow them to be confined. In his absence, Emily finds Schlocker's body as Virginia and Elizabeth are trying to dispose of it. The girls chase Emily out into the woods, where she is captured and raped by Ralph.

Finding no rooms available in town, Peter and Ann return to the mansion. Elizabeth, fearing the consequences if their crimes are discovered, escorts Ann to her room, leading her into the clutches of Ralph, while Virginia starts a game of "spider" with Peter, tying him to a chair and preparing to "sting" him with her knives. Elizabeth intervenes to ask for help with Ann, who is struggling against her and Ralph.

In the woods, Emily awakes traumatised and delirious. Sexually aggressive and murderous, she returns to the house and attacks Ralph while his sisters defend him. Meanwhile, Peter escapes his confinement and frees Ann. Bruno arrives with the dynamite and urges Peter to flee. Peter escorts Ann to safety as the house explodes behind them, killing Bruno and the Merrye family.

Peter, as the sole remaining heir, inherits the vast Merrye family fortune, marries Ann, and writes a book on the Merrye Syndrome phenomenon. His branch of the family, being rather distant, has never been afflicted by the syndrome. However, ten years later, while wandering outside, Peter and Ann's young daughter is fascinated by a spider.

Cast
 Lon Chaney Jr. as Bruno (as Lon Chaney)
 Carol Ohmart as Emily Howe
 Quinn Redeker as Peter Howe
 Beverly Washburn as Elizabeth
 Jill Banner as Virginia
 Sid Haig as Ralph
 Mary Mitchel as Ann
 Karl Schanzer as Schlocker
 Mantan Moreland as Messenger
 Carolyn Cooper as Aunt Clara
 Joan Keller Stern as Aunt Martha

Production

While working as a private investigator, Karl Schanzer mentioned to two of his clients, Gil Lasky and Paul Monka, that he was an out-of-work actor. Struck by the coincidence, they in turn told him that they were interested in producing a movie, and Schanzer pointed them towards director/screenwriter Jack Hill, who he had met while working on Blood Bath. At the time Hill had not even the beginnings of a script for the film he wanted to make, but Lasky and Monka were impressed enough with his rough outline to green light the project.

Hill wrote the script with Lon Chaney Jr. in mind for the part of Bruno, but though Chaney read and liked the script, his agent said that the maximum fee the producers could offer for the film's lead role - $2,500 - was far too little for an actor of Chaney's prestige, especially since horror films were what he was most renowned for. However, when the producers later sent an inquiry as to whether John Carradine (who was represented by the same agent as Chaney) would be interested in the role, the agent wrote back saying that Chaney would accept the part for the offered $2,500.

Hill wanted Mantan Moreland for the part of the messenger because he believed that in light of Moreland being known for comedic roles, his character being brutally murdered would be a good opening shock to audiences.

The location chosen was the (now historic) Smith Estate in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The film was shot between August and September 1964. However, due to the original producers' bankruptcy, the film was not released until December 24, 1967. Spider Baby suffered from poor marketing as well as a series of title changes, being billed alternatively as The Liver Eaters, Attack of the Liver Eaters, Cannibal Orgy, and The Maddest Story Ever Told. Although these alternate titles have little or no relation to the plot, the latter two appear in the opening narration by Chaney: "This cannibal orgy is strange to behold in the maddest story ever told." The opening titles of the film also dub it Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told. Hill conceived the title The Maddest Story Ever Told as a play on the title of the then-recent film The Greatest Story Ever Told.

The cinematographer was Alfred Taylor, who had previously worked on the film The Atomic Brain. There was no power available in the Smith Estate when the opening scene was filmed, so Taylor arranged a series of reflectors to guide sunlight into the house and thereby provide lighting for the interior shots. The entire production cost about $65,000, and took only 12 days to shoot in black and white. The film was released as a double bill with Hell's Chosen Few.

Release
Spider Baby first opened theatrically in Fremont, Ohio, as a double feature with The Wizard of Mars on December 8, 1967. It opened in Shreveport, Louisiana, the following week, on December 13, 1967.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on , with a weighted average rating of 7.16/10. Author and film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film two and a half out of a possible four stars, saying, "At its best it's both scary and funny." Bruce G. Hallenbeck commented in his book Comedy-Horror Films: A Chronological History, 1914-2008 that "Spider Baby has a diseased, sickly atmosphere that anticipates that of David Lynch's Eraserhead (1976), with Alfred Taylor's black and white cinematography contributing images of death and decay that are still disturbing today." He particularly noted Lon Chaney, Jr.'s performance as being among the actor's best, portraying Bruno as a likable but misguided "enabler" for his wards.

Home media
In 1999, a DVD of the film's original laserdisc transfer was released, including a cast and crew reunion and a commentary track by Hill. In 2007, Dark Sky Films released a version featuring Hill's director's cut, a new commentary with co-star Haig and multiple documentaries on the making of the film. In 2015, British home video distributor Arrow Films released a director-approved Blu-ray/DVD combo special edition of the film.

Legacy
In 2009, Spider Baby writer/director Hill and END Films launched the "official Spider Baby website", featuring historical information about the film, director/cast biographies, video clips and photo galleries.

Spider Baby The Musical

A rock and roll musical stage version of Spider Baby, directed by Helen Acosta, featured libretto and music by Enrique Acosta with lyrics by Enrique Acosta, Lorien Patton, and Helen Acosta.  It was originally developed at Empty Space Theatre in Bakersfield in 2004 and had gone through several other developmental workshops. It played small community theaters, looking for a wider audience. It opened at the Empty Space theater in Bakersfield, California, on Halloween 2004. In October 2007, it opened in Brookings, Oregon, at the local Grange Hall, and in Orlando, Florida, at the Black Orchid Theater.

In 2009, the musical toured with stops in Fresno, Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Tehachapi and San Francisco. A 2010 multi-city tour had stops in Las Vegas, Toronto, and Los Angeles.

The musical played from October 15 to December 5, 2010 at The Lyric Hyperion Theatre Cafe in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

In 2012, it played in San Diego, California, at the 10th Avenue Arts Centre as part of Gamercon and Terror at the 10th, respectively.

The soundtrack for the musical version was the final project at Buck Owens' recording studio in Bakersfield.

In music
The film's theme song has been covered at least three times: By the band Fantômas on their film-score covers album The Director's Cut, by crossover thrash band The Accüsed on 1988's Martha Splatterhead's Maddest Stories Ever Told as "The Maddest Story Ever Told", and by Kid Congo Powers.

In 2023, Waxwork Records released the soundtrack as part of the Rob Zombie Presents series. It was pressed on coloured vinyl and housed in special packaging featuring artwork by Graham Humphreys.

Remake
In 2007, independent film producer Tony DiDio began preparing a remake of the film, featuring original director Hill as executive producer, and Jeff Broadstreet as director.

Broadstreet stated in an interview, "We're going to stick very closely to the basic story of the original film, and at the same time dig deeper into the backstory of the inbred Merrye family." The new script by Robert Valding "expands on the themes of unconditional love, and also the story elements of cannibalism and the mutant relatives in the basement".

It was announced in 2023 that filmmaker Dustin Ferguson acquired the rights to Spider Baby and is planning to produce a remake.

Preservation and archival status
In 2012, the film was preserved by the Academy Film Archive, using the original camera negative. A new fine grain master positive, new duplicate negative and new prints were created, as well as analog and digital soundtrack masters.

References

External links

 Spider Baby official website

 Spider Baby the musical

1967 films
1960s English-language films
1967 horror films
1960s black comedy films
1960s comedy horror films
American comedy horror films
Films directed by Jack Hill
Incest in film
American black comedy films
Films about cannibalism
American black-and-white films
Films scored by Ronald Stein
1967 comedy films
1967 drama films
Films shot in Los Angeles
1960s American films

Spider Baby


In art, a vanishing point is the point in a perspective drawing where lines that either parallel to each other or  are not parallel to the main subject of the painting come together. At this point the two parallel lines seem to converge. It can be experienced in real life while seeing a parallel set of rails or the two parallel lines of a road .

Other websites
Design Notes: Perspective from Jim Saw at Palomar College

Art

Vanishing point


Matt Marcy (born 1976, Los Angeles, California) is an American comedian-magician known for his original, comedy illusions.  In 1997 he was named by the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle) as its top ranking young magician when he was just 20 years old.  He was a Master of Ceremonies at Wizardz Dinner Theater at Universal Studios Hollywood.  He is now primarily a corporate entertainer, and has performed for a variety of celebrities and dignitaries, including Prince Faisel of Saudi Arabia.  He was also an opening act for The Amazing Johnathan at the Sahara Hotel and Casino and the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, and recently appeared on the A&E TV show Magic Castle After Dark.

Marcy wrote and consulted for Walt Disney Imagineering in the Theme Park Productions department, including for the Thea award-winning CinéMagique at Walt Disney Studios Park in Disneyland Resort Paris.  He has also written for Magic Magazine.

In 2006, Marcy released his own instructional DVD, Simple Tricks...To Blow Their Minds!

In 2018, Marcy performed on the show Penn & Teller: Fool Us, but failed to fool the hosts.

He has a political science degree from Brown University.

References

External links
 Official website

American magicians
Living people
1976 births
Academy of Magical Arts Junior Achievement Award winners

Matt Marcy


Loch na Creige Duibhe is a small freshwater loch in South Morar, Lochaber, in the West Highlands of Scotland. It is orientated east to west and drains into Loch Màma to the west. It is thought that Loch Màma and Loch na Creige Duibhe were at one time a single loch. Debris brought down by the Allt Dearg stream has likely caused the lochs to be separated into two bodies of water.

The loch was surveyed on 11 July 1902 by James Parsons and T.R.H. Garrett and later charted as part of Sir John Murray and Laurence Pullar's Bathymetrical Survey of Fresh-Water Lochs of Scotland 1897-1909.

References

See also
 List of lochs in Scotland

Creige Duibhe
Creige
Lochs of Lochaber

Loch na Creige Duibhe (Lochaber)


The Potterrow Mandela Centre or Potterrow Student Centre is operated by Edinburgh University Students' Association in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Site and architecture
The name "Potterrow" recalls a medieval suburb which stood outside the town walls. Its Victorian buildings and street layout disappeared when the university demolished the area for redevelopment in the mid-1960s. With its distinctive large Plexiglas dome, the building was designed by noted architects Morris and Steedman and completed in 1973. The centre was refurbished in 2012.

Use
Potterrow contains a variety of student entertainment and support services including a shop, a bank, two cafés, Edinburgh's largest nightclub, the university's Chaplaincy, The Advice Place and the main EUSA offices. In 1986, students voted to rename the centre in honour of imprisoned anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela.

During the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August, the building is used as a comedy venue under the name Pleasance Dome with five performing spaces, operated by the Pleasance Theatre Trust.

Gallery

References

Buildings and structures of the University of Edinburgh
1973 establishments in Scotland
School buildings completed in 1973

Potterrow Student Centre


Walbottle is a village in Tyne and Wear. It is a western suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne. The village name, recorded in 1176 as "Walbotl", is derived from the Old English botl (building) on Hadrian's Wall. There are a number of Northumbrian villages which are suffixed "-bottle".

Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, refers to a royal estate called Ad Murum near the Roman Wall where, in 653 AD, the King of the Middle Angles, Peada, and the King of the East Saxons, Sigeberht, were both baptised as Christians by Bishop Finan, having been persuaded to do so by King Oswy of Northumbria. Historians have identified Ad Murum as a possible reference to Walbottle.

Ann Potter, the mother of Lord Armstrong, the famous industrialist, was born at Walbottle Hall in 1780 and lived there until 1801.

Notable people
 Both George Stephenson and Timothy Hackworth, who can fairly be called the joint fathers of steam railways, worked at Walbottle Colliery in the early 19th century. The railway pioneer William Hedley also worked in the colliery.
 Nixon introduced wrought iron rails (rather than cast iron) with a square cross-section on the Walbottle coal Railroad in 1803.

Born in Walbottle
 Thomas Tommy Browell (1892–1955), professional footballer.
 Richard Armstrong (author) (1903–1986), who wrote for both adults and children. He was the winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1948 for his book Sea Change. He is also known for a biography of Grace Darling in which he challenges the conventional story: Grace Darling: Maid and Myth. He is often described on the cover of his books as "author and mariner".
 William Wilson (1809–1862). Mechanical Engineer who pioneered railways in Germany in the nineteenth century.

Worked in Walbottle
David Besford, ( 1946 - ) former pupil of Walbottle Grammar School, returned to spend seven years as Head Teacher.
 William Robert Messer, ( 1948 - ) former pupil of Walbottle Grammar School (1959-1966) returned as Head of Art and Design from 1980 to 2008. Involved in the rebuild of Walbottle Campus 2006–2008.

References

External links

 Westerhope Online: Community & Radio

Villages in Tyne and Wear
Geography of Newcastle upon Tyne

Walbottle


Until The Ink Runs Out is the second full-length album released by metalcore band Eighteen Visions. It is often considered to be the bands' finest release by much of the older fans, as well as the record that gathered national attention for the band, due to the rising of Trustkill Records.

The album was recorded in a four-day session at Doubletime Studios, where they had previously recorded twice (once for a demo sometime in 1999, and once for the No Time for Love session) for a budget of just over one grand. This was the band's first release to feature Keith Barney on guitar, and would ultimately be the last to feature Javier van Huss on bass.

Good Life Recordings 12" vinyl came out first. The vinyl had the words "Hair Dressers of the World" on side A and "Unite!" on side B on the matrix runout. It was limited to a pressing of 1000 on black and 200 on pink. Trustkill then released the CD version which first came in digipaks, but in pressings after 2002 it was released in jewel case. For some odd reason the CD version listed "Elevator Music" and "The Nothing" as combined songs, while on the vinyl they are actually on different sides of the record). The CD omits "Elevator Music", which is a dark ambient interlude intended to split the album in half (finish the A side in the case of the vinyl). "Prelude to an Epic" was combined with "Flowers for Ingrid" on the CD, though this time the songs are both intact.

The album featured a multitude of film references, including the intro from "She's a Movie Produced Masterpiece" being taken from Back to the Future (1985) and an intro and outro from "Champagne and Sleeping Pills" from The Shining (1980). The intro from "That ain't Elvis playing Piano" is from The Dorsey Brothers "Stage Show" recorded in 1956. The ending from "The Nothing" is taken from the closing scene of 'The Elephant Man' (1980).

It is during this era and touring that the band defined themselves and created the style of "fashioncore", which at the time was simply to be different from the over done dressing of the metalcore scene (sports jersey and baggy jeans). For the tour, the band painted the amps and mic stands of gold paint and set up various doll heads around the stage, which were written and drawn on by James and Javier, who were finishing up beauty school. The tour proved to be somewhat disastrous for the band at this time, first missing a total of 9 shows within a month, mostly due to van problems, and the cold fronts building up between Javier and the rest of the band. In fact, directly after the return home from the 18 Visions/Throwdown tour, Javier was told by a friend of the band that he was being replaced by Mick Morris of the band xClearx, which the band had played some shows with earlier.

"Prelude to an Epic" was later re-recorded as "The Epic" for a bonus track on their self-titled album.

Loudwire named the album 21st on their list of "25 Best Metalcore Albums of All Time".

Track listing
 "She Looks Good in Velvet" - 3:35
 "She's a Movie Produced Masterpiece" - 5:10
 "Champagne and Sleeping Pills" - 6:14
 "Who the Fuck Killed John Lennon?" - 5:24
 "Elevator Music/The Nothing" - 5:29
 "Wine 'Em, Dine 'Em, Sixty-Nine 'Em" - 3:47
 "That Ain't Elvis Playing Piano" - 3:48
 "Revolutionizing the Sound of Music" - 3:46
 "Prelude to an Epic/Flowers for Ingrid" - 6:27

Credits
 James Hart - lead vocals,
 Brandan Schieppati - rhythm guitar, vocals
 Keith Barney - lead guitar
 Javier van Huss - bass, piano, keyboards
 Ken Floyd - drums, percussion, programming, guitars, cowbell, album layout
 Jeff Forrest - producer, keyboards
 Troy Peace - artwork and logos
 John Golden - mastering

References

Eighteen Visions albums
2000 albums
Trustkill Records albums
Good Life Recordings albums

Until the Ink Runs Out


The Abbey Gateway, St Albans was built in 1365 and is the last remaining building (except for the Abbey itself) of the Benedictine Monastery at St Albans, Hertfordshire.

It was besieged during the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, and was used as a prison following the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539.

It housed the third printing press in England, from 1479.

Since 1871 it has been a part of St Albans School.
The gateway marks the end of Romeland and the start of Abbey Mill Lane. Located next to St Albans Abbey and also next to the bishop's Private Residence (Abbey Gate House) the gateway is a good way to spot Abbey Mill Lane.

References

Buildings and structures in St Albans
Gates in England

Abbey Gateway, St. Albans


Clara Dorothy Bewick Colby (1 August 1846 – 7 September 1916) was a British-American lecturer, newspaper publisher and correspondent, women's rights activist, and suffragist leader. Born in England, she immigrated to the US, where she attended university and married the former American Civil War general, later Assistant United States Attorney General, Leonard Wright Colby. In 1883, she founded The Woman's Tribune in Beatrice, Nebraska, moving it three years later to Washington, D.C.; it became the country's leading women's suffrage publication. She was an advocate of peace and took part in the great peace conference at San Francisco during the exposition. She also spoke on behalf of the soldiers of the Spanish War. During the Spanish–American War (1898), she was officially appointed as war correspondent, the first woman to be so recognized.

In addition to being a suffragist and newspaper publisher, Colby was a lecturer, an interpreter of Walt Whitman, and a writer. She was a delegate to the International Congress of Women (London, England, 1899); delegated by the governor to represent Oregon in the First International Moral Education Congress (London, 1908); and a delegate to the First International Peace Congress (London, 1911). She served as vice-president of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, from its formation, 1881–1883; and president, 1883–1909. She was corresponding secretary of the Federal Suffrage Association of the United States. Colby wrote magazine articles for Arena, Harper's Bazaar, Overland, Englishwoman, and others. She was a newspaper correspondent for the International Peace Union, Woman's National Press Association, Oregon Woman's Press Association, Higher Thought Center (London), Woman's Freedom League, National Political Reform League, and International Woman's Franchise Club (London). She often appeared before state legislatures and congressional committees on behalf of woman suffrage; she also aided woman suffrage in England.

Family, education and intellectual development

Colby was born in Gloucester, England in 1846, the daughter of Thomas and Clara Willingham (Chilton) Bewick. The family settled near Windsor, Wisconsin when Colby was eight. Being part of a large family, she had few opportunities for attending the district school, but her father encouraged and assisted his children to study in the winter evenings, and in this way she prepared herself to teach in country schools. Colby's grandfather, Thomas Bewick, was a notable naturalist and engraver.

At the age of nineteen, Colby went to Madison, Wisconsin to live with her grandparents, Stephen Chilton and Clara Medhurst Willingham Chilton. Here she entered the University of Wisconsin–Madison, then in its infancy, which was struggling with co-education. She exerted a marked influence in securing the admission of women to the university and the adoption of the principles of co-education in Wisconsin. She was graduated in 1869 as the valedictorian and Phi Beta Kappa in the first class of women graduated from the school. At once, she became a teacher of history and Latin in the institution, while pursuing graduate studies. She married Leonard Wright Colby, a graduate of the same university, in June 1871, and moved to Beatrice the following year, where he was elected to the Nebraska State Senate. Amidst the hardships of pioneer life in a new place, the young wife found her family cares all-absorbing, but her taste for study, her love of literature and her natural desire to improve the conditions about her, led her to establish Beatrice's free public library in 1873.

Activist
Colby edited a department in the Beatrice Express called "Woman's Work," and in 1883, she founded, published, and edited The Woman's Tribune. For several years, she was deeply interested in the movement for woman's enfranchisement, devoting her journal to the advocacy of this reform. The Woman's Tribune took the prize at the Paris Exposition in 1900 for its neatness and workman-like appearance, and it filled an important place in the history of the suffragist cause, being for a time the recognized organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association. A contemporary and friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, Colby lectured extensively not only to general audiences, but before legislative and congressional committees. In 1888, at the time of the great International Council of Women in Washington, D.C. Colby published the Tribune daily during the week of the council, and continued it through the Woman's Suffrage Convention the following week. It is probably the first instance of a daily woman's paper being published by a woman. During the period of 1885–1898, she served as president of the Nebraska Woman Suffrage Association, and in 1895, she served as the chair of the Federal Suffrage Committee. She spoke in behalf of the soldiers of the Spanish–American War (1898); during the Spanish–American War, she was officially appointed as war correspondent, the first woman to be so recognized. She was also an advocate of peace at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California in 1915.

Lecturer and author

With an interest in esoteric spirituality, Colby was a contributor to Stanton's The Woman's Bible (1895). Colby lectured extensively in almost every state in the U.S. as well as in England, Ireland and Scotland, and also gave lectures at Budapest and other places in Europe. She took part in most of the great suffrage campaigns which were carried on in the different states in the effort to secure the franchise by vote of the electors. She made her home in Oregon for a time, taking part in several of the suffrage campaigns of that state. In 1899, she attended the Great International Council of Women held in London. While there Colby made the acquaintance of many distinguished suffrage workers. She served as a delegate to the International Moral Education Congress (London, 1908) and, in the same year, to the International Women Suffrage Alliance (Amsterdam). From the time of the discontinuance of the Tribune in 1909 until 1912, considerable time was spent in England in helping the English suffragists in their struggle for justice and in making acquaintance with many prominent English reformers. Of her experiences in England she published, from time to time, her accounts in the Washington Herald. Among other writings she prepared a book entitled "The History of London" (unpublished), which was preserved by her sister, Dr. Mary B. White of Palo Alto, California. From 1911 through 1913, she served as a delegate to the International Races Congress (London, 1911); International Woman Suffrage Convention (Budapest, 1913); and the International Peace Conference (The Hague, 1913). During the winters of 1913–15, Colby lectured in Washington on topics such as:
 "Delia Blanchflower," Mary Augusta Ward's new woman suffrage novel
 "Austria-Hungary, Its History and Conditions"
 "Florence Nightingale"
 "Women in the Building of America"
 "Woman's Work in English Fiction"
 "Bohemia, and the Burning of John Hus"
 "Euripides, and his Types of Greek Women"
 "The Lion with Seven Darts in His Paw."
 "Hroswitha Who Wrote Dramas a Thousand Years Ago; and Women of the Monasteries"
 "Fanny Burney and Dr. Johnson"
 "Rudolph Eucken, and the New Religious Idealism"

Personal life

Clara married Leonard in 1872 and they removed to Beatrice, Nebraska. Although they never had children of their own, they adopted a boy, Clarence (born ca. 1882), in 1885 from an Orphan Train. In 1891, Leonard returned home from the Battle of Wounded Knee with a Sioux baby, Zintkala Nuni (Lost Bird) and adopted her; Clara was away at this time, lecturing on suffrage issues. Leonard left with Lost Bird's nursemaid, and the Colbys divorced in 1906. Lost Bird remained under Clara's care but was sent away to Indian Boarding Schools until age 17. A lifelong Congregationalist, Colby nonetheless had an interest in the New Thought spiritual movement; she served as an honorary leadership role in the International New Thought Alliance. Her health faded in her final years, and Colby died at her sister's home in Palo Alto in 1916 of pneumonia and myocarditis. Her ashes were buried in her childhood hometown of Windsor.

References

Further reading
 John Holliday: Clara Colby : the international suffragist, Gold Coast, Australia : Tallai Books, [2019],

External links

1846 births
1916 deaths
People from Gloucester
People from Beatrice, Nebraska
American suffragists
University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni
University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
American newspaper publishers (people)
American newspaper editors
Pine Ridge Campaign
American Congregationalists
New Thought people
War correspondents of the Spanish–American War
American women's rights activists
Journalists from Oregon
Writers from Nebraska
Writers from Oregon
Writers from Wisconsin
Women newspaper editors
Journalists from South Dakota
Journalists from North Dakota
Journalists from Montana
People from Windsor, Wisconsin
Media founders
Women founders

Clara Bewick Colby