Beer and wine flow in the Renton Senior Activity Center's auditorium, where the Lindbergh High School jazz choir is midway through a sterling rendition of "Fly Me to the Moon." The crowd is more generationally diverse than the location might suggest. The event at hand isn't only for seniors; it's an auction to benefit the Renton Historical Museum.
John Keatley
John Keatley
Keister's encyclopedic knowledge of Seattle was key to Almost Live's success.
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At a table near the stage sits John Keister, the former host of Almost Live, widely regarded as one of the most successful locally produced sketch-comedy shows—or local shows of any kind, perhaps—in the history of modern American television. Keister, never one to rely on a Men's Wearhouse palette, is dressed in a black blazer and purple shirt with a diagonally striped tie. It's been 11 years since the last new episode of Almost Live aired (weekend reruns on KING-5 still win their 1 a.m. time slot), but the 54-year-old Keister looks unmistakably like his lanky self, the top of his head still as shiny as an NBA championship trophy, the remaining hair on his temples a bit whiter for the days.
Keister's not here to suck down brews or bid on a cruise, he's here to perform. Not only is he emceeing the auction, he'll also be delivering a stand-up set in what anyone familiar with Almost Live might consider hostile territory. Back in the show's heyday, a 15-year run that both predated and outlasted grunge, Keister and his cohorts mercilessly ripped on Renton and its South King County neighbors—most notably, Kent. But then they basically did that to everybody, all but inventing and most certainly cementing a plethora of cultural stereotypes that remain embedded in the region's DNA.
As the jazz choir files out, Keister rises to the stage and begins a round of local historical trivia, quickly diverting off-script to ask the crowd "where did Renton High School students contract the most communicable diseases?"
"The Loop!" the crowd responds, virtually in unison, in reference to the set of roads which ring downtown Renton's perimeter.
Keister, who was raised a short distance up the Lake Washington shore in Seward Park and attended Franklin High School, begins his set by acknowledging his lambasting of Renton during his TV tenure, recalling one joke about how the 1990 collapse of the I-90 bridge created "the biggest crisis in Mercer Island history: They had to drive through Renton to get to Seattle. You guys didn't take that one too well."
The crowd responds with knowing laughter, giving a formidable former adversary a verbal slap on the back. In fact, since Almost Live ceased production, Keister has cut televised spots promoting Renton's resurgent civic pride.
"I'm sort of a student of high-school nicknames," he then tells the crowd. "West Seattle High changed its name from the Indians to the Black Jack Dealers. But Renton High is still the Indians and Franklin is the Quakers, even though there was no nonviolence when I was there. Snohomish High has the whitest student body in the area and they're the Panthers; Rainier Beach has the blackest and they're the Vikings." He says he recently asked a Rainier Beach student about this, who replied that they simply painted the Viking brown, "so he's Hispanic."
Keister has clearly made his peace with Renton, but fans of Almost Live might be surprised to find him performing in front of a room full of suburban history buffs for another reason: He should be bigger than this by now. His post–Almost Live accomplishments are hardly insubstantial, but by his own admission, he didn't envision having to hustle for gigs like he has since the show folded. He should have made it, like his former castmates Joel McHale (The Soup, Community) and Bill Nye, the Science Guy.
Back when Almost Live's original host, Ross Shafer, left to take over Joan Rivers' late-night chair in Los Angeles, Keister, his then-wife expecting twin boys, stood at a crossroads. The quintessential Seattleite, Keister stood pat, and has played a critical role in putting the city on the map. But has Seattle, drunk on self-importance, returned the favor?
Keister was on staff at the University of Washington Daily in the '70s alongside future Rocket editor and rock biographer Charles Cross; Orange County Register film critic and founder of rogerebert.com Jim Emerson; Tacoma News-Tribune political columnist Pete Callaghan; and Pulitzer winners David Horsey (Seattle P-I) and Evelyn Iritani (Los Angeles Times).
"We all had massively long locks of hair," Cross recalls.
Upon graduation, Keister went to work at the Seattle Sun, which he describes as "a Capitol Hill hippie newspaper that ran articles about shutting down the Trident Sub base, macramé, and sprouts." The Sun had an entertainment section dubbed "The Rocket," which skewed toward more aggressive fare.
"The hippies, mellow as they were, simply could not stand the punks," recalls Keister, "and eventually 'The Rocket' went off on its own. I followed."
That was 1979. Keister wrote under the pseudonym Johnny Renton, "passing judgment on performers and ridiculing everything else." A couple years into the gig, KING-TV called, wanting Johnny Renton to do a weekly music segment for the station. Keister told them he couldn't do the show as Renton, but could do it as Keister. Hence, in 1983, "The Rocket Report, With John Keister" was born on a pre-MTV music-video show called REV, hosted by Heart guitarist Roger Fisher.
