Light On Dark Water

Eleanor Morton Is Funny

Much of the time, anyway. She is a Scottish comedian whom I stumbled across on YouTube while looking for something else. I've watched a dozen or so of her videos and many of them made me laugh. So that makes her a successful comedian in my book. She can do English and American accents very convincingly. Here's an American:

And here's an English:

But I do love the Scottish accent, presumably her native one, especially in women. So for me the best skits are the tours of various establishments guided by the listless, bored, and frankly somewhat hostile Craig. Here he is showing you around a distillery:

"Comedy" is not among my available categories for blog posts. I could create it, but this is probably just a one-time lapse. I'll just tag it as philosophy.

Maclin Horton

25 responses to “Eleanor Morton Is Funny”

  1. Rob G

    Those are great. Going to look up more of them.

    Reply
  2. Mac

    They’re uneven but you’ll definitely find some you like.

    Reply
  3. Janet

    I like the first one. That movie has been made a thousand times.
    There is a bourbon trail around L’ville, and we toured the Evan Williams distillery once. Our guide was a bit more cheerful. We didn’t buy the $75 bottle of bourbon.
    AMDG

    Reply
  4. Mac

    Did they give you any free whusky?
    Just by way of interesting information: $75 is a high but not extremely high price for top-of-the-line whiskey of any kind. The prices can be mind-boggling. The most extreme is Pappy Van Winkle, which officially retails for I think around $200 or so (liter?) but is resold for way more. As with most such things, I’m pretty sure an element of snobbery gets involved. I’ve always want to see a blind test done with some of those connoisseurs.

    Reply
  5. Rob G

    Evan Williams Bottled-in-Bond, which sells for about $18 a bottle in these parts, consistently ranks as the best bourbon under $30 on many lists. I’d like it better if it weren’t 100 proof.
    The most I’ve ever spent on a bottle of whisky was $90.00 for Lagavulin 16. Of course, it lasted me almost a year, so I didn’t feel too bad about it.
    Funny about the blind taste test. A friend and I were talking with a bartender from Kentucky who had worked at the distillery where Basil Hayden is made. He told us that B.H. is basically the same as Old Grand Dad, just aged a little longer and put in a fancier bottle at double the price. He advised us that if we liked B.H. to just buy O.G.D. instead, as the vast majority of drinkers would not be able to tell the difference between the two.

    Reply
  6. Mac

    I suspect our prices are higher due to sin taxes and a state monopoly. As it happens, I’m going to the liquor store later today and will check the price on that Evan Williams.

    Reply
  7. Mac

    I’m pretty sure I’ve tried Old Grand Dad and didn’t especially like it. I think I tried the standard Evan Williams and liked it well enough. I assume it’s not the same as the bottled in bond.
    I like 100 proof. More bang for the buck. 🙂 I always dilute bourbon a little, so 100 proof just takes a bit more dilution, and it goes further. There’s a Wild Turkey 101 proof that I like.

    Reply
  8. Mac

    To my surprise, the EW is $18. That’s for 750 ml. If your price was for a full liter, that would be significantly cheaper. Basil Hayden, on the other hand, is $42 for 750. I guess we’re talking about the same thing–it looks the same as the one on the BH web page. Oddly, I didn’t see Old Grandad, though I’m sure they’ve had it in the past. More of those supply chain problems, maybe.
    Last Christmas my wife bought me a bottle of Jameson Black Barrel. Oh man, that was some great stuff. It’s $44.

    Reply
  9. Janet

    We got a tasting session, but that equaled about 4 sips.
    It was about 7 years ago, and I don’t remember how much the really expensive bottles were–way more than $18.
    When Bill worked at CBU, he would get bottles of all kinds of spirits at Christmas time from different professors or higher-ups. I think they bought them by the case and handed them out. We got some pretty good stuff, and still have a couple of bottles left over 5 or 6 years after he left there. We are not really drinkers.
    AMDG

    Reply
  10. Mac

    Some years ago, more than ten, we attended the wedding reception of the daughter of a guy Karen worked with. He gave us a bunch of his leftover liquor, but it was mostly liqueurs. It must have taken us several years to go through a giant bottle of Frangelico.

    Reply
  11. Rob G

    No, our EW is $18 for 750 ml., so same price as you. My go-to bourbon, if you want to call it that, is Bulleit, which I generally drink with one ice cube. I used to lean toward Knob Creek, but I like Bulleit just as much and it’s cheaper.
    A guy I knew from work had a bottle of Canadian whiskey that was given to his grandfather as a retirement gift around 1980. It was in a wooden presentation case, and was a brand that is no longer in production (I forget what it was called). He was going to open it and drink it as a sort of lark, but I told him that before he did that he ought to check online in case it was worth something, given its age and the fact that it was a discontinued brand.
    The next day at work he came and said he was glad I told him that, because bottles like the one he had were collectibles and were going for $400.00 online.

    Reply
  12. Mac

    Wow! But there are currently produced whiskeys that sell for that and more just off the shelf.
    I like Bulleit, too, though I’m not at all sure I could tell the difference between it and anything comparable in a blind test.

    Reply
  13. Robert Gotcher

    She is very funny, but also foul-mouthed, which, as I get older, I can tolerate less and less.
    Well, to be honest, I could never tolerate that much.

    Reply
  14. Mac

    Actually she seems relatively mild in that respect to me, which is probably a bad indication for me.

    Reply
  15. Stu

    For a long time I was a Makers Mark snob. Now I just get that when I’m out and keep Wild Turkey (80 proof) at home – I like the smell and the taste more than Jim Beam for instance. I don’t really like Jack Daniels (sour mash whiskey as opposed to bourbon). Knob Creek and Bulleit are both quite good.
    Now I wonder if I’ve ever had a bourbon or single malt scotch that I did not like? Not to mention the various flavors of Jameson that are around (Mac mentioned one) – they are all pretty great!

    Reply
  16. Mac

    I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted Maker’s Mark. Maybe I’ll try it.
    Pet peeve, one of my many: I hear people ordering “Jack and Coke.” Like you can tell the difference between 1.5 oz of Jack Daniel’s and anything remotely similar after you’ve mixed it with 10 or 12 oz of Coke.
    I tried both Jameson and Bushmill’s at one time. One is the “Protestant” one and the other the “Catholic” one. I wasn’t all that taken with either. But that Jameson Black was something else. Too expensive for me to drink regularly but maybe I’ll get it for Christmas again this year. 🙂

    Reply
  17. Rob G

    Never liked Maker’s Mark much. For a long time my default was Jim Beam Black Label, which seems to me to be a great balance between taste and price.
    Tried a very nice Canadian whisky called Collingwood not long ago. Can’t get it in Pa. unfortunately, but will check in Ohio next time I’m across the line.
    Ran across an interesting fact last week — the bestselling Scotch in the world is Johnnie Walker (no surprise there), but the second bestselling one did surprise me: Ballantine’s. Apparently it’s the second bestselling Scotch in the world everywhere except in the U.S., and it has won a number of awards for blended Scotch. I don’t think I’d ever heard of it prior to reading this, and not sure it’s even available in Pa.

    Reply
  18. Mac

    No idea whether it’s available here or not. Someone gave me some Glenlivet a couple of years ago, and it was really good. But no scotch has given me the pleasure that some bourbon has.

    Reply
  19. Rob G

    I’m the opposite with bourbon vs. scotch. Unfortunately my favorite scotch, Lagavulin 16, is now up to $120 a bottle or so. Pre-Covid you could get it for about $85, and I’d buy one bottle a year and be happy. $120 will necessitate waiting for Christmas.

    Reply
  20. Janet

    The Outlander one was pretty funny. I must admit, I’ve not seen Outlander, not even the bits with Craig’s pal James, except about the first 30 seconds, during which there were two pretty sexy sex scenes at which point I could pretty much see the writing on the wall and turned it off. I am glad to learn from this video that my suspicions were correct.
    Thirty seconds may be a bit of hyperbole.
    AMDG

    Reply
  21. Mac

    I didn’t see that one. She has a lot of these. I may have skipped that one because I don’t know that much about Outlander. Just enough to know that I wouldn’t like it. Way back in the early ’90s I was in a Compuserve forum for writers and the woman who wrote that book was in it. She was just getting started, either had just published or was about to publish the first one in the series. I was envious because it didn’t sound like a good book, or at least not one I would want to read, but she was probably going to be successful. As indeed she was. Wildly, I guess.
    Anyway sounds like I may know enough about Outlander to find that skit funny.

    Reply
  22. Mac

    Very funny. “This is some woods…”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b24QP0gJ4o4

    Reply
  23. Janet

    Yes, I loved that.
    AMDG

    Reply
  24. Robert Gotcher

    I liked the one about the first day on the job for a guillotine operator.

    Reply
  25. Mac

    I liked that one too.

    Reply

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