I happened on to Private Parts the other day and it reminded me of the two comic mentalities of Howard. The scene was of a woman at home getting off sitting on a speaker while Howard made vibrating sounds into the microphone. The original bit was stupid and fake and Howard's acting in that scene was like the TV talk-show Howard, loud and over broad ... definitely lowest common denominator stuff and definitely not Oscar caliber. On a show this week he was letting Sal go on at length about wiping (every time Sal said "sphincter" I hated him) and at some point he (Howard) talked about how hilarious it would be if High Pitch Eric sang the Tailor Swift song Shake it while standing next to some guy urinating in a men's room. Huh? He has always acknowledged his love of duty jokes and such. I have never found them funny. Yet he can riff and comment extemporaneously on such a high level, make a staged event like an amputee beauty contest compelling and funny and conduct brilliant interviews....really like no one else.
OMG..the Hi-Pitch bit would be FANTASTIC! I'm with HecticArt.
I mean, if it's not that, it's saving kittens and AGT talk. As much crap as we gave Howard for being "gross-out, immature" etc...maybe absence really does make the heart grow fonder.
For me, Howard is Robo Spanker, Daniel Carver, Dial-A-Date, Win Fred's Money, midget bowling, Kurt Waldheim Jr, HPE and a dead fish, chickens picking NFL games, Fred getting drunk and falling down the steps, Siobahn, etc.
Maybe the 23,000 hours of tapes was the downfall..paying all that money and then there's no need to have actual content. (And even for a while, some of those "specials" were played in the same order just a year or so later!)