On this day in 1906, Lou Costello — the Costello half of Abbott and Costello — was born. A lot of comedy from that era hasn’t aged especially well. Some routines feel painfully dated, some grate on modern ears, and others lean so heavily on long-vanished cultural references that they might as well require footnotes. But then there are the rare bits — usually built on razor-sharp wordplay or beautifully constructed absurdity — that are engineered so precisely and performed with such flawless timing that they feel immune to time. Those routines don’t just survive; they keep working, generation after generation.
Lou Costello was just plain funny in a way that still works decades later. He had that rare gift of making outrage adorable — wide eyes, sputtering disbelief, and perfectly timed double takes. As the excitable half of Abbott and Costello, he turned confusion into an art form. “Who’s on First?” isn’t just a clever bit of wordplay; it’s Costello slowly unraveling in real time, and you can practically hear the gears grinding as he tries to make sense of nonsense.
What makes him great is how physical and musical his comedy was — the rhythm of the lines, the pauses, the eruptions. He could go from cocky to completely undone in seconds. A lot of comedians since have borrowed that “regular guy trapped in madness” energy, but Costello did it with a kind of sweetness that kept the frustration funny instead of mean. Fun Fact: Since 1956, a gold record of their "Who's on First?" sketch and a plaque have been on display in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, NY.
Digby's Hullabaloo: Well, This Is Creepy.
The Mahablog: A Quagmire in the Making.
The Rectification of Names: The Opposite of Iraq.
Attention space nerds! March could be the best month for the northern lights for nearly a decade — if the sun stays active.
Round Up by driftglass of the Professional Left Podcast and Science Fiction University
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