Totally New

Before fruit guts defined his entire public persona, Leo Gallagher spent a surprising amount of time doing crisp pedantry. The centerpiece here is his routine dismantling the English language, picking apart why tomb, bomb, and comb refuse to rhyme, why a completed structure is still called a building, and why statues cut off at the chest are labeled busts. He plays the role of an exasperated schoolboy with a stage full of hardware, aiming his irritation at spelling rules rather than the world at large.

Directed by Wayne Orr, the 55-minute performance was taped at the Mayfair Music Hall in Santa Monica. It originally aired on Showtime in 1982, picking up a CableACE Award nomination the following year, before finding a second life on Paramount home video in 1991 as Gallagher tapes became suburban rental staples.

At this point in his run, Gallagher was practically an industry unto himself. He was cranking out nearly an hour of television a year for cable, booking theater tours that filled houses without mainstream critical backing, and refining a formula of oddball contraptions and observational complaints. The Sledge-O-Matic arrives right on schedule at the finish, but the show before the plastic sheets come out is lighter and far less combative than the material that followed later in his career.