R.I.P. ANDY ROONEY (actual RIP, 4 Nov 2011)

http://i.imgur.com/EzTE6.gif http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2011/10/curmudgeonly-commentator-andy-rooney-says-goodbye-to-60-minutes/ http://i.imgur.com/EzTE6.gif

no disrespect tot he man, but here are three minutes of my week i'm gonna be happy to have back

10 years of ILX and no andy rooney thread

When I was little, my dad had a friend named Ande Rooney. It was a bit confusing to me.

remy before you say that you might want to wait to see what they have in store for us next week.

this is bigger than the Superbowl in my household. Will liveblog.

DO NOT COMPARE HIM TO MOSES THAT IS OFFENSIVE TO ME AS A JEW, OR SOMETHING.

YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND

They claim he has wit and wisdom. Challops imo.

How has this guy done this for a living for so long. Also, was he ever a real journalist?

I ran into him IRL in a Saratoga Springs bakery. I was behind him in line and decided to order the same pastry he did. It was good! Only positive contribution Rooney has made to my life, obv.

WAIT HE HASN'T TALKED ABOUT THE WAR YET

OH HERE WE GO

he's been doing this as long as i've been alive! good lord.

i can only presume that, like me, he was born a crotchety septuagenarian.

According to CBS News's biography of him, "Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, 'An Essay on Doors.'[7]

okay lol

Kind of wish his final commentary would be about how hard it is to fold newspapers, or the unreliability of ballpoint pens.

i always wonder if he was ever considered like a genuinely funny humorist to some earlier generation. clearly there's a lot of intentional humor and self-deprecation in a lot of what he does, but never anything that makes you laugh with and not at him.

ok here's the segment:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7383160n&tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel

and with that i now open up the thread for all to post their favorite andy rooney moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jILgTunN3lU

how's morbs doing?

"$2.50....that's two cents for each potato chip."

totally remember him lumping in homosexuality w/ smoking and drugs as reckless activity that will shorten yr life (though that wasn't on 60 minutes but some end of the year thing iirc) but do not remember that racist idiocracy thing at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3SOvXgAgY

xpost:

10:32 in that link i posted before the superbowl youtube

del griffith thank you

B&B return in just 3 weeks and 4 days

here's his actual last segment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGci9ec4BDA

IF YOU DO SEE ME IN A RESTAURANT PLEASE JUST LET ME EAT MY DINNER

he looks like methuselah

would kill to be alive, that spry, still getting paid to be an asshole at 92.

speaking of apparently you can watch NOW g'n'r live from rock in rio.

those eyebrows are an achievement in themselves

very nearly jack lalane

best eyebrows?

jack lalane
martin scorcese
andy rooney
eugene levy

where's Groucho??

I sometimes like to browse this site and just read each entry in the voice of Andy Rooney.

http://www.baddesigns.com/staplers.html

i was gonna say 'real' eyebrows but i mean marty has to have some kind of buttressing under those things

http://img265.imageshack.us/img265/4159/scorcese.jpg

it kind of makes me genuinely sad when ancient motherfuckers like andy and regis and bob barker retire, like shouldn't these guys be taking up space on television until the end of time? it just feels wrong

and larry king! god, larry king

Is Dick Clark still doing anything?

he STILL makes appearances on the new year's eve broadcast after having that stroke a few years ago, and it's really uncomfortable to watch him struggle through it. he actually messed up the countdown to midnight one year.

dick clark's tenacity, or whatever the fuck it is, is really something. even jerry lewis knew when it was time to step off camera.

I haven't watched 60 Minutes in some time, but I do know that even years ago Rooney's hands were shaking so hard he had to clasp them to his desk. It was kind of sad, but we're all going to be there some day.

speaking of, two weeks ago I watched "60 Minutes" for the first time in years and, despite the competition, it's still a damn good show.

yes it is

speaking of apparently you can watch NOW g'n'r live from rock in rio.

i got bored of the andy rooney clip and clicked through to rock in rio, where evanescence are finishing up their set. did gnr play already?

andy rooney should start his own band: senescence

whoa:

Based on ratings, 60 Minutes is the most successful broadcast in U.S. television history, since it was moved into its present timeslot in 1975. For five of its seasons it has been that year's top program, a feat matched by the sitcoms All in the Family and The Cosby Show, and surpassed only by reality TV show American Idol, which has been the #1 show for six consecutive seasons. 60 Minutes was a top ten show for 23 seasons in a row (1977–2000), an unsurpassed record.[1]

60 Minutes first broke into the Ratings Top 20 during the 1976–77 season. The following season it was the fourth-most-watched show, and by 1979–80, it was the number one show.[1] During the 21st century it remains among the top 20 programs in the Nielsen ratings, and the highest-rated news magazine.[18]

There's some of that same feeling when I discover that someone I worked for at my 1995 desk job is still in his old position, and that he's been commuting to work every week since that time. Crazy to think Rooney's been at that desk job for all of our lives.

Well it's past midnight on the East Coast. Good to know that Andy didn't go all Sparky Schulz on his last day on the job.

here are three minutes of my week i'm gonna be happy to have back

I'll give you 57 more. Hint: garbage TV "journalism."

oh, hi morbs

I'll give you 57 more. Hint: garbage TV "journalism."

Two curmudgeons walk into a bar...Rooney always seemed corny to me the ocassional time I'd happen up him, but I tuned in last night for the history. Pretty good; I'll give him credit for ending on the "let me eat my dinner" line rather than getting all mushy.

"upon him"

so where do i submit my application for this job

here are three minutes of my week i'm gonna be happy to have back

I'll give you 57 more. Hint: garbage TV "journalism."

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Sunday, October 2, 2011 11:12 PM (Yesterday)

idk, i watch 60 minutes more for entertainment value as news. their worst move was killing off ed bradley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWP03kHpfdY&feature=youtu.be

idk if this was posted or not & i guess it can be deduced from the full segment above but still

I hate Andy Rooney (there live on past Chicago threads long rants about my Andy Rooney hate) and I am so glad he's retiring. Now he can sit at home and be confused about modern technology like dimmer switches and paper clips without loosing his impotent rage on the viewing public. Like, seriously, if he spent have as much time learning how things work as he did ginning up petty rage about trivialities, he'd have no schtick. And that's what it is. Tired, boring schtick. Good riddance.

Although he is kind of the patron saint of the Irrational Anger thread, to which I am an enthusiastic contributor, so maybe looking at Andy Rooney is too much like looking in a mirror…

brb getting my brows waxed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu_PCGJ-rkA

I always liked Andy Rooney, I guess because he reminds me of loved ones long past. I had no idea he was 92, my memories of watching 60 Minutes with my grandparents are so fresh! When it comes to anger he has nothing on the younger generation. Or some of my elderly neighbors.

I think he lost a buncha tolerant GenXers when he mocked the vigils after Cobain's suicide

I'll give you 57 more. Hint: garbage TV "journalism."

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Monday, October 3, 2011

Is this another of your knee-slapping I-haven't-seen-this-show-everyone's-talking about routines?

no, I saw Mike Wallace chasing guys down the street enough in the '70s, not to mention the Clinton adultery hairshirt. It can't have changed much.

Good grief, it occurs to me that Rooney was 75 when Cobain shot himself.

I don't think his incessant whining was exactly The Sound of Young America in 1994 anyway.

60 minutes: the best in parchment journalism; somewhere between yellow and taupe, with little pockets of transparency, and ed fucking bradley

Still think of Steve Croft as "the new guy".

To stop watching the only decent investigative journalism show on TV because in its 40-plus years it's often served the ruling class is a poor answer, Morbs. Might as well stop reading newspapers then.

Wished the (relatively) young chick had gotten the final interview with the rooney--would have been much different than just the two old geezers reminiscing about the war.

AR kept talking about being a *writer*. I just don't see how that shit he recorded for the teevee qualifies as *writing*.

Anybody else think that Jeremy Renner looks like a young Steve Croft?

Renner has the kind of doughiness that will turn to seed after fifty.

Might as well stop reading newspapers then.

wellllll....

I don't think his incessant whining was exactly The Sound of Young America in 1994

I was speaking of kidfolk TOLERATING him, like many of you apparently have.

Of course Rooney "wrote," 60 Mins didn't hit the air til he was nearly 50.

On Every Older Relative's Bookshelf:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LsVqhM8uaVQ/TS8zXLfQl_I/AAAAAAAAEVU/tt4huXurDh0/s1600/RooneyFewMinutesBook.jpg

wasn't Joe Piscopo doing Rooney sketches on SNL 30 years ago?

^^He's got a little Sorkin going on there. xpost

Passing Gas With Andy Rooney

I don't believe in laughing at grieving people (I cried when Kurt Cobain died) but to someone who lived through WW II maybe it seemed bizarre to make such a public spectacle out of a suicide. I remember when that happened and thinking "how am I going to explain this to my grandparents". I prefer someone as old as Andy Rooney criticizing it than a boomer, I must say.

There may be a criticism to be made there, but Andy R's "these damn kids and their dead pop stars" shallow, willfully ignorant bs is not that criticism.

I guess that's part of my hate for this guy. He's not even that good at his own schtick. He could easily find explanations for half the mundane crap he bitches about not getting if he wanted to.

Alfred, I'm sure if 60M scores some major "investigative" scoop I'll read about it here.

also Rooney didn't start the "Few Minutes" til '78, he won plenty of awards and did his share of hard news before that.

The Cobain segment was truly ugly. I recall him criticizing not just the mourning fans but Cobain himself for not working, or not doing real work or something, which I thought was a bit rich coming from someone who does 2-3 minutes of mostly trivial riffing as a weeks' work. I did forget that he used to be a real newsman, though.

So basically, though, Rooney is a guy with a long career, whom millions of people will remember entirely for what he did as a retiree coming into the office once a week. How many other people can say that?

Jimmy Carter?

Reagan wd be funnier answer

^
+1

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/25/showbiz/andy-rooney-hospitalized/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

HIS DESK WAS HIS POWER

:-(

rip

someone add "no, really" to the thread title

Oh wow, this really happened?

He observed that “there are more beauty parlors than there are beauties” and that “if dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.”

He made clear he thought that Gen. George S. Patton and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom he had known personally, were gasbags. He actively disliked New Year’s Eve, waiting in line for any reason, and the bursars at whatever colleges his children attended.

He once concluded that “it is possible to be dumb and be a college president,” but he acknowledged that “most college students are not as smart as most college presidents.”

On the subject of higher education, he declared that most college catalogs “rank among the great works of fiction of all time,” and that a student of lackluster intellect who could raise tuition money would find it “almost impossible to flunk out.”

remind me not to have "minor surgery" when I'm 92 btw.

or ever really if it can be avoided

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA6olYa-FBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBowSYaKgFM

“The Romans had Cicero. The English had Dickens. America had Andy. He hid a philosopher’s genius behind the honest prose of Everyman. Apparently, God needed a writer.” — CBS News Anchor Scott Pelley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGCg6EO-sr4&feature=related

Rest in peace, grumpy prince.

These CBS News guys get such long, full lives: Schorr, Rather, Rooney. RIP.

Purely by coincidence, I spent the last couple of nights rewatching The Insider. Wow--like many people, I'm sure, I didn't realize this thread was for real this time (I didn't hear about the hospitalization). The timing reminds me of Charles Schultz, whose retirement/death was also about a month apart.

he could have filmed about five year's worth of segements in a day. they could have run them forever. and they all could have been death-themed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5xqYeTQLTU

rip big dog. up there telling saint peter about things you dont understand.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/05/us/obit-andy-rooney/index.html

Had forgotten about the anti-gay and anti-Black statements (I think he denied the latter)that got him suspended at one point

when i was a kid, i'd watch 60 mins w/my parents every sunday and rooney was like the treat at the end for sitting through all the boring crap leading up to him. i always liked cranks. was shocked years later when i found out about all the homophobias he was doin'

To-do list:

1) retire
2) 6-month round-the-world trip
3) schedule minor surgery

There is no such thing as minor surgery.

minor surgery is when someone else is having it --a quote

RIP. He was always my favorite thing about 60 Minutes. I like grumpy old men. Every time his little segment was over I'd be like "Wait a minute... he's right!"

didn't know he was a racist and a homophobe though.

Really RIP. I only knew him through parodies for a long time, but saw some segments and against all odds he really was ahead of his time. A videoblogger decades before it was invented.

Also, I love love love his curmudgeon attitude.

didn't know he was a racist and a homophobe though.

He's old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1PO7nyyLn0&feature=player_embedded

Oh this is so awesome!

r.i.p.

loved you

Good grief, it occurs to me that Rooney was 75 when Cobain shot himself.

I don't think his incessant whining was exactly The Sound of Young America in 1994 anyway.

― Pleasant Plains, Monday, October 3, 2011 10:30 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Andy Rooney or Kurt cobain?

^ <3 ^

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu75b4enCE1qz6f9yo1_500.jpg

Lookit that cute mouth.

Andy Rooney or Kurt Cobain?

Actually, if he'd paid attention to the words, you would think Andy Rooney would have loved "Hey, wait, I got a new complaint."

http://yooouuutuuube.com/v/?b=1&yt=g1PO7nyyLn0&width=192&height=120&flux=0&direction=rand

andy rooney game still one of my favorite internet things ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGvoRMvItbI&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzM2TF72l9A&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWP03kHpfdY&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWP03kHpfdY&feature=related

oops sorry meant this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWP03kHpfdY&feature=related

uh okay never mind.

lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxQxtetpGLo

okay i did it. i'm like andy rooney on computer. that's one of my faves.

the best andy rooney games have a nice zen-like quality.

rooney otm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyf3lJdfgj8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLwMYguAzQM&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7PXyeDxtfk&feature=related

^^^ would buy a DVD of these koans.

i have a boxful of oranges at work

just watched the Bill Gates one upthread though, that was pure gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDEEGfbIHF4&feature=related

Actually, if he'd paid attention to the words, you would think Andy Rooney would have loved "Hey, wait, I got a new complaint."

― clemenza, Sunday, November 6, 2011 3:38 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

forever in debt to your priceless advice!!!

every nirvana song is actually about andy rooney. little known fact.

I need an easy friend
I do with an ear to lend
I don't think you fit this shoe
I do won't you have a clue

He's harassing that poor schlump of a shoe salesman.

he was the Colbert of The Greatest Generation (TM)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS5nZOiQAjg

Heaven needed the ultimate cloud yeller

Penultimate, if you're still here to make that post, amirite?

lol @ the rooney/nirvana connexion

Never knew this guy to be a wit, but I saw this in a 2007 essay (http://www.divinecaroline.com/22323/34969-andy-rooney-forty) about women over 40:

For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.

Not bad, Andy Rooney, not bad.

lol

actual RIP

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsfX6xqCBks

otm

"Picasso earned the right to do anything he wants"