Jeff Vaughn noticed on YouTube the presence of a portion of The Steven Banks Home Entertainment Center, a one-man stage-show celebration of creative procrastination. The full version of Steven Banks‘ show goes on 40-odd minutes (the other portions are online), and is something you’ll either love or hate depending on your similar time-wasting tendencies:
I saw the Home Entertainment Center when it was first on Showtime and have reshown it until the electrons are falling off the tape. I actually used to be able to gauge the health of my long-term relationships with that show — once I had been dating a woman for a safe period of time, I’d show her the Home Entertainment Center. Either she’d hate it (meaning things were not to be) or tolerate it (meaning she might tolerate my own bursts of irrationality). There were surely other, better tests known to science, but never mind.
There was a 30-minute pilot for a Showtime series that followed; I have that, again on old VHS, but there was no series. Then there were episodes of a PBS series which included an actor and actress playing all the supporting roles, male and female; I have a couple of those. Not quite the same as the stage show. I don’t think it’s on DVD anywhere — it desperately needs to be.
Banks is now head writer on Spongebob Squarepants, and along a different vein has done the character act “Billy the Mime,” who appeared in “The Aristocrats,” miming the movie’s title joke. Again, I can’t find the DVD anywhere, but he does have a storybook out in King of the Creeps