How to

“Picking Up Girls Made Easy” (1975)  Check out the liner notes!

“How To Speak Hip” Mercury Records (1959) Brian Wilson reportedly was a fan of this record and listened to it during the recording of Pet Sounds. (This is born out in excerpts from the Pet Sounds session outtakes where he makes reference to the album.) Del Close also put out the very funny “Do It Yourself Psychoanalysis Kit” record.

Del was one of the founders of Second City, performing with folks like Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Barbara Harris and Joan Rivers in the early ‘60s, eventually leaving Chicago to do a stint with the Committee (and folks like Howard Hesseman) in San Francisco in the ’60s. While on the West Coast, Del was a regular on My Mother the Car and had a recurring role on Get Smart. And in his spare time, he used to do light shows for the Grateful Dead.

In the early ‘70s he directed Second City, and discovered John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Betty Thomas, George Wendt, Tim Kazurinsky and John Candy; most of them still consider Del their most important teacher.

The words creative genius may be bandied about far too frequently, but in Del’s case, they truly apply. Del remains an incredibly important figure in American comedy/improv, and his influence will long live on. He was undoubtedly the best (and most influential) improv teacher in the U.S., and traveled all over giving his workshops. He didn’t invent improv, but he is probably most responsible for making it into its own art form, particularly with the work he’s done in long-form improv in the past 20 years.

Del Close died March 4, 1999 at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. He was 64. Del’s Will was fairly straightforward, but there was one odd provision. He bequeathed his own skull to the Goodman Theatre, to be used in their productions of Hamlet, with him getting a credit in the program.

Hear How to Achieve SEXUAL HARMONY in Marriage. Are we to think this married couple just had good sex then decided to push the kids on the swings? Is that even his wife!? Is he hitting on his neighbor’s wife at the playground in the middle of a weekday afternoon?

And quite rare (sorry!).

First get them alone in separate rooms. Make sure you can see their hands. Sit them down …

A “how to” record every guy needs. This is Julie Newmar, a fifties pin-up queen and men’s mag mainstay. In the sixties she became Batwoman on the TV series “Batman”. Like the Bettie Page, a staple of any cheesecake collection.