If Werner Herzog Reviewed Trader Joe’s on Yelp: “Madness Reigns. The First Challenge Your Soul Must Endure Is the Parking Lot”

in Comedy, Film, Life | September 21st, 2020

I like the Inter­net for var­i­ous things, but it’s lim­it­ed. I’m not on social media, but you will find me in the social media. There’s Face­book, there’s Twit­ters, but it’s all not me.

—Wern­er Her­zog in an inter­view with The Hol­ly­wood Reporter

The night before his 2016 doc­u­men­tary Lo and Behold: Rever­ies of the Con­nect­ed World pre­miered at Sun­dance, direc­tor Wern­er Her­zog declared him­self “still a lib­er­at­ed vir­gin” with regard to his reliance on the Inter­net:

I think we have to aban­don this kind of false secu­ri­ty that every­thing is set­tled now, that we have so much assis­tance by dig­i­tal media and robots and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. At the same time, we over­look how vul­ner­a­ble all this is, and how we are los­ing the essen­tials that make us human. That’s my advice … Cook a meal at least three times a week. Play a musi­cal instru­ment. Read books and trav­el on foot.

That said, he’s not immune to the reju­ve­nat­ing effects of ran­dom cat videos at the end of a tir­ing day, as he told Stu­dio 360’s Kurt Ander­sen dur­ing a pro­mo­tion­al vis­it for 2018’s Meet­ing Gor­bachev:

Per­haps guess­ing that Googling his own name is not one of Herzog’s pre­ferred online activ­i­ties, Ander­son took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hip his guest to come­di­an Paul F. Tomp­kins’ Teu­ton­ic-inflect­ed recita­tion of a noto­ri­ous Yelp review of Trad­er Joe’s in Sil­ver Lake.

To the untrained ear, Tomp­kins’ Her­zog is pitch per­fect.

The spoof’s sub­ject sug­gest­ed that the accent could use improve­ment, but agreed that the text is “very fun­ny.”

And it is, espe­cial­ly giv­en the pedes­tri­an tenor of the same Trad­er Joe’s oth­er 5‑star reviews:

This is the best Trad­er Joe’s loca­tion I’ve been to! Been com­ing here since I was a kid! (I’m 25 now) I’ve moved out of this area but still come to this loca­tion just because it beats the rest of them. — Deb­bie G

TJ is the best!! I’ve been com­ing here for many years, and the food is great!! The employ­ee’s are awe­some! Some of the many things I love to pur­chase here are: salmon balls, smooth­ies like the chia seed straw­ber­ry, pro­tein almond but­ter drinks, coconut smooth­ie, cashew yogurt, south west­ern sal­ad that comes in a bag is BOMB.COM! — Ray­mond M

Tomp­kins tapped Herzog’s fas­ci­na­tion with man’s ani­mal nature and the bru­tal­i­ty of exis­tence for anoth­er Yelp review, award­ing three stars to San Francisco’s Hotel Majes­tic and attribut­ing it to Wern­er H:

Tomp­kins clear­ly savors the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chan­nel Her­zog, log­ging 16 appear­ances for the char­ac­ter on the Com­e­dy Bang Bang pod­cast, includ­ing episodes where­in he dis­cuss­es work­ing with Tom Cruise and his desire to be cast as a clue­less sub­ur­ban hus­band in an appli­ance com­mer­cial. Find them all list­ed here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

Wern­er Her­zog Cre­ates Required Read­ing & Movie View­ing Lists for Enrolling in His Film School

Wern­er Her­zog Offers 24 Pieces of Film­mak­ing and Life Advice

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

The Life, Work & Philosophy of Bill Murray: Happy 70th Birthday to an American Comedy Icon

in Comedy, Film | September 21st, 2020

Image by Gage Skid­more, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Bill Mur­ray is to me what cal­cu­la­tors are to math,” Jason Schwartz­man once said of his esteemed col­league. “I nev­er knew math before cal­cu­la­tors, and I nev­er knew life before Bill Mur­ray.” Hav­ing been born in the 1980s, a decade Mur­ray entered already well-known after three ear­ly sea­sons of Sat­ur­day Night Live, I could say the same. Through char­ac­ters like Nick the lounge singer and half a nerd cou­ple with Gil­da Rad­ner, Mur­ray estab­lished him­self on that show as a goof­ball, but a goof­ball of a high­er order. As the 80s got into full swing, Mur­ray got into the movies, and ever more promi­nent roles in the likes of Cad­dyshack, Stripes, and Ghost­busters assured him a per­ma­nent place in the pan­theon of Amer­i­can com­e­dy.

For those who cared to look, there has long been evi­dence of con­cen­trat­ed thought and feel­ing behind the dead­pan impul­sive­ness of Mur­ray’s onscreen per­sona: his sup­port­ing turn as Dustin Hoff­man’s lemon-eat­ing play­wright room­mate in Toot­sie, his pas­sion-project adap­ta­tion of Som­er­set Maugh­am’s The Razor’s Edge, his post-Ghost­busters escape to the Sor­bonne.

It was in Paris that Mur­ray stud­ied the work of the Gre­co-Armen­ian Sufi mys­tic G.I. Gur­d­ji­eff, who describes a path to enlight­en­ment called “the way of the sly man,” one who makes max­i­mum use of “the world, the self, and the self that is observ­ing every­thing.” This con­cept, accord­ing to the Wise­crack video above, has become inte­gral to Mur­ray’s dis­tinc­tive way of not just act­ing, but being.

That counts as just one of the the­o­ries advanced over the decades to explain the curi­ous phe­nom­e­non of Bill Mur­ray. The man has also been called upon to explain it him­self now and again, as when an inter­view­er at the Toron­to Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val asked what it feels like to be him. His response takes the audi­ence into a guid­ed med­i­ta­tion meant to make every­one lis­ten­ing under­stand how it feels to be them­selves, right here, right now.

Main­tain­ing this sense of the moment, as Mur­ray lat­er explained to Char­lie Rose, is one of the goals of his own life — and pre­sum­ably not an easy goal to achieve for some­one who’s been so famous for so long, a con­di­tion he address­es in the 1988 inter­view ani­mat­ed for Blank on Blank below. “I’m just an obnox­ious guy who can make it appear charm­ing,” he says in sum­ma­tion of his appeal. “That’s what they pay me to do.”

That same year, they paid him $6 mil­lion for his role in Scrooged (play­ing, inci­den­tal­ly, the most obnox­ious char­ac­ter of his career). He’d already been cau­tioned against the dan­gers of such rapid­ly acquired wealth and fame by the fate of his fel­low Chicagoan and SNL alum­nus John Belushi, who by that time had already been dead for five years. Mur­ray had also, he says, under­gone a “spir­i­tu­al change” that showed him “there was some oth­er life to live. It changed the way that I worked,” giv­ing every­thing “a dif­fer­ent pres­ence, a dif­fer­ent ten­sion.” Onscreen, this change cul­mi­nat­ed in the roles he took on after putting broad come­dies behind him begin­ning with 1999’s Rush­more, the break­out fea­ture by an up-and-com­ing direc­tor named Wes Ander­son.

Cast­ing Mur­ray oppo­site the teenage Schwartz­man, Rush­more showed that he could be more affect­ing — and indeed fun­nier — in minor emo­tion­al keys. A few years lat­er, Sofia Cop­po­la’s Lost in Trans­la­tion took him to Japan, where he drew an Acad­e­my Award nom­i­na­tion with his per­for­mance from the depths of cul­tur­al and per­son­al dis­ori­en­ta­tion. Today, on Mur­ray’s 70th birth­day, his fans impa­tient­ly await his appear­ances in Ander­son­’s The Paris Dis­patch and Cop­po­la’s On the Rocks, both of which come out next month. Hav­ing long since become an insti­tu­tion (albeit an insis­tent­ly uncon­ven­tion­al and unpre­dictable one) unto him­self, Mur­ray can sure­ly look to the heav­ens and say what, with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic earnest­ness, he told his SNL audi­ence he want­ed to say 33 years ago: “Dad, I did it.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray Explains How He Pulled Him­self Out of a Deep, Last­ing Funk: He Took Hunter S. Thompson’s Advice & Lis­tened to the Music of John Prine

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Art Exhib­it on Bill Mur­ray Opens in the UK

Watch Bill Mur­ray Per­form a Satir­i­cal Anti-Tech­nol­o­gy Rant (1982)

Watch Dan Aykroyd & Bill Mur­ray Goof Off in a New­ly Unearthed Ghost­busters Pro­mo­tion­al Film (1984)

Lis­ten to Bill Mur­ray Lead a Guid­ed Med­i­ta­tion on How It Feels to Be Bill Mur­ray

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Four Classic Prince Songs Re-Imagined as Pulp Fiction Covers: When Doves Cry, Little Red Corvette & More

in Books, Comedy, Design, Music | September 14th, 2020

There’s a book-lined Knowl­edge Room in the late Prince Rogers Nel­son’s Pais­ley Park, but the Prince-inspired faux-books that artist Todd Alcott imag­ines are prob­a­bly bet­ter suit­ed to the estate’s pur­ple-lit Relax­ation Room.

The Knowl­edge Room was con­ceived of as a library where the world’s most famous con­vert to Jehovah’s Wit­ness­es could delve into reli­gious lit­er­a­ture, reflect on the mean­ing of life, and study the Bible deep into the night.

Alcott’s cov­ers harken to an ear­li­er stage in Prince’s evolution—one the star even­tu­al­ly disavowed—as well as sev­er­al bygone eras of book design.

Lyri­cal­ly, there’s no mis­tak­ing what Prince’s noto­ri­ous 1984 “Dar­ling Nik­ki” is about. There’s a direct line between it and the cre­ation of parental advi­so­ry stick­ers for musi­cal releas­es con­tain­ing what is polite­ly referred to as “mature con­tent.”

Alcott’s 1950s pulp nov­el treat­ment, above, is sim­i­lar­ly graph­ic. Those skintight pur­ple curves are a promise that even pur­pler prose lays with­in, or would, were there any text couched behind that steamy cov­er.

“When Doves Cry” makes for a pret­ty pur­ple cov­er, too. In this case, the inspi­ra­tion is a 1950s self-help book, enriched with some Freudi­an taglines from Prince’s own pen. (“Maybe you’re just like my moth­er, she’s nev­er sat­is­fied.”)

Alcott remem­bers Prince being “an incred­i­bly lib­er­at­ing fig­ure” when he burst onto the scene:

There was his flam­boy­ant, out­ra­geous sex­u­al­i­ty, but also his musi­cal omniv­o­rous­ness; he played funk, rock, pop, jazz, every­thing. Pur­ple Rain was the Sergeant Pepper’s of its day, a wall-to-wall bril­liant album that every­one could rec­og­nize as a remark­able achieve­ment. I remem­ber when I first saw Pur­ple Rain, at the very begin­ning of the movie, before the movie has even begun, the Warn­er Bros logo came up and you heard the sound of an expec­tant crowd, and an announc­er says “Ladies and Gen­tle­men, The Rev­o­lu­tion,” and the first shot is of Prince, back­lit, sil­hou­et­ted in pur­ple against a dense mist, and he says “Dear­ly beloved, we have gath­ered here today to get through this thing called life.” And I was instant­ly, incon­tro­vert­ibly, a fan for life. The con­fi­dence of that open­ing, the sheer audac­i­ty of it, adopt­ing the tone of a priest at a wed­ding, in his Hen­drix out­fit and hair­do, the sheer gutsi­ness of that state­ment, alone, just blew me away. And then he pro­ceed­ed to play “Let’s Go Crazy” which com­plete­ly lived up to that open­ing. After that he could have run Buick ads for the rest of the movie and I’d still be a fan.

Decades lat­er, I was sit­ting in a Sub­way restau­rant at the end of a very, very long, tir­ing day, and was feel­ing com­plete­ly exhaust­ed and mis­er­able, and out of nowhere, “When Doves Cry” came on the sound sys­tem. And I was remind­ed that the song, which was a huge hit in 1984, the song of the year, had no bass line. The arrange­ment of it made no sense. It was a song put togeth­er by force of will, with its met­al gui­tar and its synth strings and its elec­tron­ic drums. And in that moment, at the end of a long, tir­ing day, I was remind­ed that mir­a­cles are pos­si­ble.

Alcott’s mirac­u­lous graph­ic trans­for­ma­tions are round­ed out with a com­par­a­tive­ly under­stat­ed 1930s mur­der mys­tery, Pur­ple Rain and an inge­nious Lit­tle Red Corvette owner’s man­u­al dat­ing to the mid-60s. Prints of Todd Alcott’s Prince-inspired paper­back cov­ers are avail­able in his Etsy shop.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

Clas­sic Songs Re-Imag­ined as Vin­tage Book Cov­ers Dur­ing Our Trou­bled Times: “Under Pres­sure,” “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” “Shel­ter from the Storm” & More

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Face of Bill Murray Adds Some Joy to Classic Paintings

in Art, Comedy, Film, History | August 21st, 2020

Bill Mur­ray isn’t one of those actors who dis­ap­pears into a role.

Nor is he much of a chameleon on can­vas, how­ev­er icon­ic, as artist Eddy Tori­goe demon­strates with a series that grafts Murray’s famous mug onto a num­ber of equal­ly well-known paint­ings.

Tori­goe told Digg that he was inspired by acci­dent, when he was struck by the uncan­ny resem­blance between Gilbert Stuart’s Lans­downe por­trait of George Wash­ing­ton, and a pho­to of Mur­ray post­ed by a Red­dit user.

He down­loaded both images and bus­ied him­self with Pho­to­shop.

The rest is his­to­ry.

The Pres­i­den­tial update is an improve­ment in ways. Mur­ray-faced Wash­ing­ton appears kind­ly, and not averse to a bit of fun. No teeth of enslaved peo­ples com­pro­mis­ing that mouth.

While Mur­ray is capa­ble of main­tain­ing a straight face—wit­ness his work in Lost in Trans­la­tion, The Razor’s Edge, Ham­let 2000, and Torigoe’s homage to Whistler’s Moth­er, above—more often than not a cer­tain puck­ish­ness shines through.

One won­ders what would have befall­en painter Jacques-Louis David had he bestowed The Emper­or Napoleon in His Study at the Tui­leries with Murray’s goofy expres­sion.

And it’s well estab­lished that a key ele­ment of Grant Wood’s oft-par­o­died Amer­i­can Goth­ic is the pok­er faced reserve of its male sub­ject.

Had they been alive today, it’s con­ceiv­able that Lucas Cranach the Elder’s por­trait of Mar­tin Luther might have depict­ed a lighter side of his friend, some­thing more Mur­ray-esque. Though giv­en the Ref­or­ma­tion and his 95 The­ses against Indul­gences, maybe not….

Explore more of Eddy Torigoe’s Bill Mur­ray-enriched mas­ter­pieces of art, includ­ing self-por­traits by Rem­brandt, Fri­da Kahlo, and Picas­so, on his web­site.

via My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bill Mur­ray Explains How a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Paint­ing Saved His Life

Bill Mur­ray Reads the Poet­ry of Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti, Wal­lace Stevens, Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins, Lorine Niedeck­er, Lucille Clifton & More

Mas­ter­pieces of West­ern Art with All Gluten Prod­ucts Removed: See Works by Dalí, Cézanne, Van Gogh & Oth­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Gilda Radner Does a Comic Impersonation of Patti Smith: Watch the Classic SNL Skit, “Rock Against Yeast” (1979)

in Comedy, Music, Television | August 14th, 2020

Gimme Mick, gimme Mick
Baby’s hair, bulgin’ eyes, lips so thick
Are you woman, are you man
I’m your biggest funked-up fan
So rock me and roll meeee…
‘Til I’m sick

                                —(the fic­tion­al) Can­dy Slice, Sat­ur­day Night Live

Sir Michael Philip—aka Mick Jag­ger—cel­e­brat­ed his 77th birth­day ear­li­er this sum­mer, a mile­stone his fel­low Rolling Stones Kei­th Richards and Ron­nie Wood observed remote­ly, as befits seniors at par­tic­u­lar risk from COVID-19 infec­tion.

You, Mick Jag­ger, are Eng­lish and go out with a mod­el and get an incred­i­ble amount of pub­lic­i­ty

You, Mick Jag­ger, don’t keep reg­u­lar hours

You, Mick Jag­ger, have the great­est rock ‘n roll band in the his­to­ry of rock ‘n roll, and you don’t even play an instru­ment your­self

It’s a bit sober­ing, watch­ing the late Gil­da Rad­ner, expert­ly preen­ing and pranc­ing as the then-36-year-old, yet-to-be-knight­ed Mick in “Rock Against Yeast,” the star stud­ded Sat­ur­day Night Live Sketch from 1979, above.

Read­ers over the age of 36 who want to get seri­ous­ly bummed out, poll your under-35 friends to see who’s heard of the ver­sa­tile Gil­da, an orig­i­nal Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Play­er and one of America’s most com­pli­cat­ed sweet­hearts.

For­tu­nate­ly, she’s not entire­ly for­got­ten:

I can per­son­al­ly attest, and I feel com­fort­able speak­ing for Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph and Rachel Dratch when I say that see­ing Gil­da as a kid…[she was] so authen­ti­cal­ly her­self and so reg­u­lar in so many ways. She was not a piece of cast­ing, she was who she was on TV. We all saw that and said, ‘I want to do that, and it’s pos­si­ble because I see her doing that. It was an ear­ly exam­ple for me of how impor­tant rep­re­sen­ta­tion is, for every­one from every walk of life. Gil­da was our equiv­a­lent of Michelle Oba­ma. —Tina Fey

Gilda’s not alone in hav­ing left us at a young age. Some of her “Rock Against Yeast” cast­mates and the celebri­ties they spoofed made sim­i­lar­ly shock­ing ear­ly exits:

John Belushi 

Bob Mar­ley

Guest host Ricky Nel­son, appear­ing as him­self

Music pro­duc­er Don Kir­sh­n­er—embod­ied here by musi­cian Paul Shaffer—made it to a ripe old age, ie: just a year younger than Sir Mick is now.

Actu­al­ly, Gilda’s Mick rou­tine was fil­tered through the fic­tion­al Can­dy Slice, a satir­i­cal take on God­moth­er of Punk Pat­ti Smith—now a ven­er­a­ble 73-year-old Nation­al Book award-win­ning mem­oirist, gear­ing up for next month’s “high-end mul­ti-cam­era visu­al and son­ic expe­ri­ence,” i.e. vir­tu­al book read­ing for last year’s Year Of The Mon­key.

Smith, who over the years has proved her­self to be a very good egg, admit­ted to NPR that while  her band found Gilda’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion “hilar­i­ous,” she took a while to warm up to it:

When I was younger, I—it sort of both­ered me because, you know, she makes a big thing about, you know, I think it’s like the white pow­der and the vast amounts of cocaine in the record­ing stu­dio. I had nev­er even had cocaine. It was­n’t how—it’s not how I work. But I thought it was actu­al­ly hilar­i­ous besides that. She was a great artist.

It was—actually, it was a priv­i­lege to be played—it was a priv­i­lege to have Gil­da Rad­ner project what she thought I might be like. And the fun­ni­est part was since there was a big con­tro­ver­sy over the armpit hair on the cov­er of “East­er,” she brushed the hair under her arms, and I think she had like a foot of hair com­ing from her armpit, and we were all laugh­ing so hard.

She was a great artist, and cocaine or not, I salute her. And I feel very lucky to have been, you know, por­trayed by Gil­da.

Read a full tran­script of “Rock Against Yeast” here, while heav­ing a sigh of relief that that singer Dol­ly Par­ton (Jane Curtin) con­tin­ues to walk so vig­or­ous­ly amongst us.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bill Mur­ray & Gil­da Rad­ner Deliv­er the Laughs in Two 1970s Skits for Nation­al Lam­poon

Lorne Michaels Intro­duces Sat­ur­day Night Live and Its Bril­liant First Cast for the Very First Time (1975)

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Classic Punk Rock Sketches from Saturday Night Live, Courtesy of Fred Armisen

in Comedy, Music | August 10th, 2020

Come­di­an Fred Armisen is best known for his years on Sat­ur­day Night Live, his eight sea­sons of sur­re­al sketch com­e­dy (with Car­rie Brown­stein) on Port­landia, and his unnerv­ing com­mand of region­al accents and impres­sions. True fans also know that for much of his career he’s also been a musi­cian, pri­mar­i­ly a drum­mer, since col­lege. Start­ing in high school, he’s been in var­i­ous bands, includ­ing Trench­mouth, the Blue Man Group, and some­times sit­ting in with Seth Mey­ers’ house band.

So the above skit from SNL is fun because Armisen gets to indulge his love of punk music. It’s a basic set-up, a 40-some­thing groom and his best buds “get­ting the band back togeth­er” to play one more song at a wed­ding. But here the band used to be a polit­i­cal punk band along the lines of Fear, The Dead Kennedys, and Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies, and the anti-Rea­gan lyrics (you too, Alexan­der Haig, you fas­cist!) have been pre­served in amber.

Like most SNL sketch­es it unfolds kind of how you expect (and just kinda…ends), but man, this must have been fun to shoot. And yes, that’s the Foo Fighters/Nirvana’s Dave Grohl on drums.

If that skit was a trib­ute to Amer­i­can punk, then this oth­er one is a nod to the Sex Pis­tols and the steady right­ward drift of John Lydon. Armisen plays lead singer Ian Rub­bish (you know, of Ian Rub­bish and the Bizarros) whose lyrics decry and attack everything…except for Mar­garet Thatch­er. The Queen? She’s use­less (and oth­er words we can’t write on Open Cul­ture), but Mag­gie? Ian has a soft spot.

This 2013 skit came short­ly after Thatch­er died and Amer­i­cans were treat­ed to videos of some Britons (not all, but *a lot*) cel­e­brat­ing her death much as you would the death of Hitler or Mus­soli­ni. Good­bye, good rid­dance, and let me know where she’s locat­ed so we can pee on her grave. That sor­ta thing. And if that’s where you’re at, you might find the turn this sketch takes a bit too nice. But kudos to ex-Pis­tol Steve Jones for turn­ing up and doing the Rut­les-like thing. There’s even a nice par­o­dy of the infa­mous Bill Grundy inter­view.

(Bonus info: Ian Rub­bish and the Bizarros played some actu­al shows.)

Armisen had anoth­er crack, by the way, at the reunion joke. In Sea­son 8 of Port­landia, the “Band Reunion” skit brought togeth­er Hen­ry Rollins (Black Flag), Krist Novosel­ic (Nir­vana), and Bren­dan Canty (Fugazi) to bring back Armisen’s character’s band “Riot Spray” and record one more time. (Brown­stein only fig­ures a bit in the skit, but her reac­tion is price­less). The humor is just a lit­tle bit more mel­low, a bit more empa­thet­ic, and hurts just that lit­tle bit more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

The Sex Pis­tols Play in Dal­las’ Long­horn Ball­room; Next Show Is Mer­le Hag­gard (1978)

Ian Rub­bish (aka Fred Armisen) Inter­views the Clash in Spinal Tap-Inspired Mock­u­men­tary
Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Rick and Morty as Absurdist Humor, Yet Legitimate Sci-Fi with Family Drama (Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #54)

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | July 30th, 2020

Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt address the 4‑season 2013 Adult Swim show, which cur­rent­ly has a 94% crit­ics’ rat­ing on Rot­ten Toma­toes. What kind of humor is it, and how are we sup­posed to take its sci-fi and fam­i­ly dra­ma ele­ments? While its con­cepts start as par­o­dy, with an any­thing-goes style of ani­ma­tion, they’re cre­ative and ground­ed enough to actu­al­ly con­tribute to mul­ti­ple gen­res. How smart is the show, exact­ly? And its fans? Is Rick a super hero, or maybe essen­tial­ly Dr. Who? What might this very seri­al­ized sit-com look like in longevi­ty?

We also touch on oth­er adult car­toons like South Park, Solar Oppo­sites, The Simp­sons, Fam­i­ly Guy, plus Com­mu­ni­ty, Scrubs, and more.

Hear the inter­view we refer to with the show’s cre­ators. Watch the video we men­tion about its direc­tors. Vis­it the Rick and Morty wiki for episode descrip­tions and oth­er things.

Some arti­cles that we bring up or oth­er­wise fueled our dis­cus­sion include:

Also, do you want a Plumbus?

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Comedians Speaking Truth to Power: Lenny Bruce, George Carlin & Richard Pryor (NSFW)

in Comedy | July 28th, 2020

No mat­ter how stren­u­ous­ly peo­ple claim to sup­port free speech, hard­ly any­one believes we should get to say what­ev­er we want, how­ev­er we want, wher­ev­er we want. We all just draw the lines dif­fer­ent­ly between speech we find tol­er­a­ble and that we find beyond the pale. There are rea­son­able argu­ments for estab­lish­ing legal bound­aries, but comedy—goes one line of thought—should nev­er be sub­ject to con­straints. Any­thing goes in stand-up, since the comic’s role is to say the unsayable, to shock and sur­prise, to speak truth to pow­er, etc.

Ris­ing com­ic John Ear­ly (“the left’s fun­ni­est come­di­an,” The Nation pro­claims) finds all this grav­i­tas a lit­tle absurd. “It’s just a weird, weird, time to be a come­di­an,” he says in a recent inter­view. “I feel there’s no greater tes­ta­ment to the fact that our pub­lic insti­tu­tions have failed us than the fact that come­di­ans are some­how moral author­i­ties of this moment. We give so much pow­er to come­di­ans and their plat­forms, and I’m absolute­ly hor­ri­fied by it.” To expect peo­ple who tell jokes for a liv­ing to have the best han­dle on what pow­er needs to hear may be expect­ing too much. “Please don’t ever lis­ten to me,” says Ear­ly.

Anoth­er argu­ment goes that since come­di­ans are just enter­tain­ers, they can say what­ev­er they want, no mat­ter how vicious or demean­ing, because it’s “just a joke.” What­ev­er the mer­its of this posi­tion, when we look back to the great­est comics who shocked, sur­prised, spoke truths, etc., we see that they took jokes seriously—and that the tar­gets of their humor were insti­tu­tions that actu­al­ly held pow­er. This was maybe a pre­req­ui­site for how endur­ing­ly fun­ny they still are, and how rel­e­vant, even if some spe­cif­ic ref­er­ences are lost on us now.

Before Ear­ly, Lenny Bruce went on TV to tell view­ers of his 1959 jazz spe­cial that all enter­tain­ers, him­self includ­ed, are liars. It’s just the nature of the busi­ness, he says, then goes through a bit where he shows—with real news­pa­per head­lines all print­ed on the same day—how news media also exag­ger­ates, embell­ish­es, and lies to sen­sa­tion­al­ize crime. In under two min­utes he rips through the cher­ished illu­sion of jour­nal­is­tic objec­tiv­i­ty; just as Car­lin, who also built a career on say­ing the unsayable, tears up the U.S.’s most cher­ished beliefs, above.

The Amer­i­can Dream is a scam, Car­lin says. Argue over free speech all you like, but pol­i­tics is a dis­trac­tion. “For­get the politi­cians. The politi­cians are put there to give you the idea that you have free­dom of choice. You don’t.” (One is remind­ed of Devo.) In a scathing rant, Car­lin goes after the biggest game, the cor­po­rate own­ers who con­trol the politi­cians, the land, and “all the big media com­pa­nies, so they con­trol just about all of the news and infor­ma­tion you get to hear.” He deliv­ers his most famous line: “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it,” and the audi­ence applauds with recog­ni­tion of a truth they already know.

Leave it to Richard Pry­or, the com­e­dy stan­dard of speak­ing shock­ing truths to pow­er, to bring these obser­va­tions togeth­er in the inter­view clip above that takes digs at his own integri­ty as a TV enter­tain­er, the slip­pery nature of tele­vi­sion exec­u­tives, and why they feared the kinds of truths he had to tell. “What do you think [they’re] afraid you’re going to do to Amer­i­ca?” he’s asked (mean­ing specif­i­cal­ly white Amer­i­ca). He responds in all seri­ous­ness, “prob­a­bly stop some racism.” If peo­ple can laugh at hard truths, they can rec­og­nize and talk about them. This is a prob­lem for those in pow­er.

“If peo­ple don’t hate each oth­er, and start talk­ing to each oth­er, they find out who’s the prob­lem,” Pry­or says. “Greedy peo­ple.” Racism is a strat­e­gy, like sen­sa­tion­al­ist crime head­lines or promis­es of a bet­ter life, to keep peo­ple dis­tract­ed and divid­ed. Those who pro­mote it don’t need per­son­al rea­sons to do so. “It’s part of cap­i­tal­ism to pro­mote racism,” Pry­or says. It’s how the sys­tem works. “That sep­a­rates peo­ple. And if you keep peo­ple sep­a­rat­ed it keeps them from think­ing about the real prob­lem.” Maybe we are free to say what we want, but Pry­or has a warn­ing for those who emu­late peo­ple in pow­er, even if they think they have the best of inten­tions. The inter­view seg­ment ends with the sounds of duel­ing cesspools.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Car­lin Per­forms His “Sev­en Dirty Words” Rou­tine: His­toric and Com­plete­ly NSFW

New Dig­i­tal Archive, “Richard Pryor’s Peo­ria,” Takes You Inside the Dark, Live­ly World That Shaped the Pio­neer­ing Come­di­an

Lenny Bruce: Hear the Per­for­mances That Got Him Arrest­ed (NSFW)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast