Lily Tomlin

This Is a Recording
$16.98
It's been a long time since I chortled away listening to Miss Lily Tomlin doing her character Ernestine "Dimes are my bread and butter" the saviour of the Telephone Company.
The highlight of the album would have to be listening to the Queen of the Telephone Company interrupting the Queen Bee of Hollywood Miss Joan Crawford, (Vice President of the Pepsi Cola Company) who is speaking long distance to someone in Paris.
Ernestine has lost her dime in a Pepsi Cola machine and she wants it back - pronto.
One can imagine a startled Crawford asking "Where's Paris ?" as we hear the response from Ernestine "still in France,I think," then snorts.
Bowls me over every time.
It's wonderful to have Ernestine on CD thirty years after vinyl, and each of my work mates were presented with a copy from moi, to celebrate having Ernestine and Vito back in our lives.
(We are, I might add,all receptionist /telephonists ourselves).
Not being American, I did have to remind a few who Mrs Mitchell was - we certainly remember Watergate - Martha the Mouth was reknown back then.
The discussion between Ernestine and the Bordello Madame is hilarious -"nobody has more familar equipment than yours?" - and the rare opportunity to hear Ernestine grovelling "Your Eminence, your Magnificence", when believing she is talking to the Pope (it was a different kind of Godfather).
From standup comedy to Laugh In, hit movies (Nine to Five being one) and more recently,the immortal West Wing, Lily Tomlin has come a long way baby - but I'll always love Ernestine.

Lily Tomlin: The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe
$16.98
This play has been available for a number of years on VHS/DVD -- and I finally added it to my library.

Anyone who enjoys/ed Tomlin's characters will be amused.

Anyone who wants to open an evening of serious but fun discussion, has a great asset.

Anyone who wants non-sensical comedy should make another choice. This is for thinkers who enjoy humour.

Lily's Detroit
$16.99
Whether Lily was reticent to bad-mouth her childhood digs or the author and editor left her pithier comments out of the final edit, this commentary has virtually no values attached to it. I'm sure Ms. Tomlin has a lot to say about Detroit, the government's abandonment of cities, her mixed feelings about revisiting her old neighborhood. Sadly, none of that is here.

The Best of Lily Tomlin: 20th Century Masters - The Millennium Collection
$11.98
If reviewer Anomaly had bothered to read the liner notes to "20th Century Masters - The Millenium Collection: The Best of Lily Tomlin", it would be clear that of the three albums excerpted on this release, only "This Is A Recording" WASN'T co-written by Jane Wagner. The other two, "And That's the Truth" and "Modern Scream", also contain material written by others, as does "...Recording". But what should be apparent even to a six-year old is how fall-down-funny ALL this material is. The reviewer didn't like the earlier material possibly because of the natural evolution of talent involved, NOT because it wasn't written by Lily and her partner. If the reviewer had been a fan since the beginning, she wouldn't be so nit-picky. This is classic stuff here.