Presenting:

 I heard Martin Mull before I saw him. The summer I took up playing the tuba, I became moderately obsessed with all things tuba. It just so happened that my parents were willing to support this obsession, and they bought me Mister Mull's 1973 album, "Martin Mull and his Fabulous Furniture In Your Living Room." It was purchased with an eye for the second track, a little number titled "Dueling Tubas." As it turned out, this became a favorite, but not the favorite bit on the record. The one that stays with me to this day is "Licks Off Of Records." 

The kind of parents I had, my mother in particular, were always on the lookout for things that I might find interesting. It was at the foot of my parents' bed late one night that I first saw King Kong. It was a similar late night introduction to America 2 Night, the talk show parody that appeared in the spring of 1978. It was the spinoff of Fernwood 2 Night, which aired the year before and was itself spun off of Mary Hartman Mary Hartman. Which give  you the lineage and progression of these brief moments of less than conventional TV comedy, but it gave me the foundation of the arid wasteland of dry comedy available through the eyes of Martin Mull. 

It was also in the summer of 1978 that I paid to see the movie FM in a theater, based solely on the fact that the smarmy DJ Eric Swann was played by Martin Mull. Sure, there were cameos by Linda Ronstadt and Jimmy Buffett playing live, but I was there for the Mull. 

Over the next few decades, Martin Mull would show up in various bits and pieces of movies and television. I was especially fond of his turn as Teri Garr's boss in Mr. Mom, and was happy to have HBO long enough in the eighties to see his mockumentary, The History of White People In America. He showed up in groundbreaking TV shows like Roseanne and Ellen. 

And he was a painter. Seriously. 

But mostly he was Martin Mull, willing at any moment to show himself up as a pompous know-it-all ready to be whittled down to anyone else's comic effect. He stomped all over the Terra for nearly fifty years, and this past weekend that stomping ceased. He went to that big green room in the sky at the age of eighty. He will be missed. 

Thanks again, mom.