Not to mention lyrics like this one, selected almost randomly from "Supreme Clientele:"
Hit Poughkepsie crispy chicken verbs throw up a stone richie Chop the O, sprinkle a lil' snow inside a Optimo Swing the John McEnroe, rap rock'n'roll Tidy Bowl, gung-ho pro, Starsky with the gumsole Hit the rump slow, parole kids, live Rapunzel but Ton' stizzy really high, the vivid laser eye guide Jump in the Harley ride, Clarks I freak a lemon pie
I'm one of the last to add my voice to the chorus of supporters for the Ricky Gervais show. The round-headed object of ridicule on the show, Karl Pilkington, is the focus of a neat little Times piece. (signup required, or just bugmenot it)
Karl Pilkington has debated the merits of eating a kangaroo's penis for breakfast, envisioned a wristwatch that counts down the time left in a person's life and proposed a new population control system in which elderly women give birth at the moment of their deaths. He has mused on topics ranging from caveman "bear pants" to dishwashers on Mars, and reported "news stories" about the triumphs of chimpanzees as bricklayers and television talk show hosts. In so doing, Mr. Pilkington, a 33-year-old unemployed radio producer from Manchester, England, has become the object of a global Internet cult, a Guinness world record-holder and the unlikely harbinger of a technological revolution.
The Gervais show is going pay, and the success or failure of the gambit will be closely watched by podcasters like myself. Personally, I don't have much interest in charging for The Sound, but I do have an interest in quitting my real-life job and working on the show full-time. Or even just making some money for it. Or even not losing so much money on it.
The trick of pay media, of course, is that for entertainment, you pretty much have to be famous first. So maybe I should get famous the way Neil Hamburger suggested on last week's show. "Some sort of strangling, or poisoning, or maybe becoming a vegetable like that woman in Florida."
Julio Franco Official 47-Year-Old MLB Player of the New Sincerity & Official Batting Stance of The New Sincerity
The Knuckleball Official Pitch of The New Sincerity
Fat Official Baseball Player Physical Characteristic of The New Sincerity
Hotfoot Official Childish Prank Adult Baseball Players Play of The New Sincerity Download our "Baseball" Episode from Last Year Featuring Bill "Spaceman" Lee, official former major leaguer, current semi-pro barnstormer of The New Sincerity
This week's Sound of Young America is a probing look at all things moustachioed, including but not limited to: Boston Blackie, Zorro, and your television.
Our first guest is Andy Daly. Andy's been a castmember of Mad TV, Crossballs, and he's currently a correspondent on "The Showbiz Show with David Spade." We talked about the strange creative process at Mad TV, and how hard it is to do something about it. Also, Andy's invented something called Moustache TV, which is a parlor game which involves putting moustaches on your television. He really makes and sells it himself. Richard Montoya is 1/3 of Culture Clash, about whom I blogged last week. They've got a new show coming up at Berkeley Rep called "Zorro in Hell." Besides the stage work, Richard will also be seen in the upcoming Jack Black vehicle "Nacho Libre," from the writer of "School of Rock" and the director of "Napoleon Dynamite."
Also, a sketch from Los Angeles' Diani & Devine, and a plug for our upcoming vidcast of unseen Monty Python footage. Yes, unseen Monty Python footage.
Whatever happened to The Onion’s once-ballyhooed sketch-comedy feature film, originally announced for winter 2004? After stalling when the original co-directors and head screenwriter bailed a year ago, the movie’s back on: Mr. Show veteran Scott Aukerman has been brought in to write new material, and Sanford Panitch, president of production at New Regency, the company financing the film, says shooting should resume “in the next couple of months.” Panitch says an hour of previously completed footage will be used in the final film, which he says he’d like to release before the year’s end. That timetable may be optimistic: A source close to the project says the current Onion leadership probably wants to use as little banked material as possible; another insider points out that no replacement director has yet been selected. An Onion spokesperson would say only that the staff is currently debating the wisdom of a sketch depicting “a prominent Islamic prophet” as a murderous sex fiend.
A couple days ago, I blogged about a new feature on the AV Club called Random Rules. They have celebrities and whatnot put their iPods (or their iTunes, or their non-iPod MP3 players, or their WinAmp) on shuffle and write a graf about the first five songs that come up. No cheating.
Here's mine, but what's yours?
Prince -- Controversy
I was a Michael Jackson fan as a kid, I only came to Prince in college. I had dismissed it all as synth-pop garbage in my mind, but boy was I wrong. This is actually one of my favorite Prince songs, from Controversy, which is a cool album. Not as good as Dirty Mind, but the same kind of hard synthy funk that he moved away from when he got REALLY big. He played this song at a show my girlfriend and I went to at the Fillmore, Valentine's Day two or three years ago. Great show, although there was a group of REALLY drunk late-30-something white women who were REALLY awful.
Killer Mike -- Niggas Down South
This is from The Killer Mixtape, which he put out last year. Killer Mike might be the most underappreciated rapper out. He can really, really spit. He's got flows and his lyrics are great. He's sort of like Big Boi, but he has a ferocity in his flow and voice that Big Boi doesn't. His voice has impact. "Ask your older brother 'bout me / I'm O.G."
D'Angelo -- Playa Playa
This is from Voodoo, which is among my favorite records of all time. It's a vibey record, which is a word for shitty Maxwell albums and stuff, but the only other records that can match it for me in that department are Blowout Comb by Digable Planets and Fresh by Sly & the Family Stone. Not just a make-out record. I saw the Voodoo tour (again with my girlfriend), and it was probably my #1 concert experience ever. I await the followup patiently.
(an episode of This American Life)
Not sure if this counts. I've heard almost literally every episode of This American Life.
Raphael Saadiq -- Uptown
This is a great song from Saadiq, who coincidentally produced "Untitled" from Voodoo. He was also a member of Tony Toni Tone. It's about conflicts over leaving the hood.
Akon -- Gunshot (Fiesta Riddim)
This is from this great mixtape Akon put out last year called Illegal Alien Vol. 1. I dunno if there were more volumes, if so, I should get them. I love Akon's voice... it's tough to find a male singer suited to singing what's basically hip-hop. Akon's voice is thin, but it's really haunting. It's spry, too, or maybe sinewy. He can sing with hip-hop phrasing and it sounds right. The best song on this mixtape was a "freestyle" over the beat from Anthony Hamilton's "Comin From Where I'm From" called "Senegal," about Akon's childhood in Africa. Like this post? Click here to subscribe to the blog.
Maybe you've seen their great Comedy Central Special, or seen them on stage at an event like SF Sketchfest. Maybe you saw one of the sketches they managed to get on SNL the years they were writing for the show, like "The Falconer." If you've never seen them, trust me, they're great.
But have no fear! Experience the magic of Slovin & Allen two different ways:
As half of Nichols & May, and a founder of the Second City, she helped invent contemporary improv and sketch comedy in the 50s and 60s. It would be easy to diminish her work in that time by calling her a great female comic (as opposed to a great comic), but I think her gender is significant.
Comedy tends to reward women who are either beautiful accesories (like the women in a Frat Pack movie) or disgusting embarassments (think of the female characters on Mad TV). May's characters drove the Nichols & May sketches, and they were never simply outrageous debasements. In fact, they were quite the opposite... and they weren't ditzy or steely bitches either. To do that and be as funny as they were (and even are) takes astonishing talent, and courage besides.
Besides directing four films (most famously "The Heartbreak Kid" and most infamously "Ishtar"), she's stayed pretty quiet since the Nichols & May days. She had what I thought was a hilarious small part in "Small Time Crooks," which was one of Woody Allen's better outings lately. She wrote two films directed by Nichols, "The Birdcage" and "Primary Colors." She's largely been quiet, though.
On this week's Sound of Young America broadcast, I'm going to have Andy Daly. Besides being the host of Comedy Central's "Crossballs," and being a former castmember of Mad TV, Andy is one of the funniest people I've ever seen improvise. More importantly, he's created "Mustache TV," which, he claims, is "The hip parlor game that's sweeping the nation!"
Apparently it involves placing mustaches on your TV set, then getting points when they land on a face. Or, I guess, a face lands on them.
Sound of Young America pal Nick Adams is about to start touring the world behind his new book "Making Friends with Black People." I'll try and get him on the show, but in the meantime, check out this interview with him in which he makes the following promise regarding what he'd do with his $$ if the book takes off:
Wait until Bjork tours again, then follow her from city to city filming a documentary that chronicles her African-American fans around the world. I call it, Black Fans of Bjork.
If you listen to the show, you heard me offer a brief memorial note for the late James Yancey, aka Jay Dee, aka Jay Dilla upon his passing. He was one of the greatest hip-hop producers ever, a revolutionary in the field. This article in the Detroit Free Press details his struggles with a rare blood disease, and later with lupus, which eventually claimed his life. His friends from the hip-hop world supported him in his last days, and his mother took care of him to the end, massaging his fingers when they swelled painfully from beatmaking in his hospital bed.
While he did have health insurance, his medical expenses were huge, and they've fallen on his mother. Friends from the hip-hop community are helping, but if you'd like to help, you can make payment to:
Mrs. Maureen Yancey
Donations can be mailed to:
Maureen Yancey 132 N. Sycamore Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90036
I found this piece in the NY Times fascinating. The Historical Statistics of the United States is 5,000 pages of data about this country... can you imagine?
Among the information inside:
Fewer than 1 in 10 black children under 5 live with both parents; workers with the highest hourly wages now work the longest hours; there are more religious workers (also bartenders, gardeners and authors) than ever recorded, and more shoemakers than at any other time since the Civil War; only half of Americans have access to fluoridated water; a growing share of poor people live in the suburbs; philanthropy compared with the gross domestic product has been declining since 1960; more Protestants and Jews say they attended religious services within the last week than at any time in the last 50 years; the nation is producing record amounts of broccoli; it took four days on average to travel between New York and Boston in 1800; attendance at horse-racing tracks peaked in 1976, but rodeo attendance is at an all-time high; and the proportion of people who have no opinion in presidential approval polls is the lowest in a half century.
I think I discovered Norm MacDonald when I was about 14, and all the way through high school he was a huge hero of mine. He's never quite gotten his act together since his SNL days, although his first sitcom was pretty decent. I met "Big Time" Gene O'Neill when, our Freshman year in college, he let slip that Norm was his hero, too. This is Norm on Letterman, immediately after he was fired from SNL's "Weekend Update," purportedly because the head of NBC, Don Ohlemeyer, was pals with OJ.
Perhaps the world would be a better place, would give it in each city a troupe like Improv Everywhere. Meanwhile for the fifth time they celebrated this year the NO Pants Day in the New Yorker underground, one day, which becomes obviously each year more popular.
The interview on the side linked above is rather good, in order the group knows to learn, it is also a rather hear-worth consequence of the transmission.
Culture Clash - "Saving the Pinche World Since 1984"
As long as we're talking about my comedy heroes, let's throw Culture Clash into the mix.
I grew up in the Mission in San Francisco, a working class, largely (but by no means exclusively) Latino neighborhood. At the time, at least... these days it's an Authenticity Theme Park for assholes who eat black beans and tofu in their burritos and drive Jettas. But I digress...
When I was about nine or so, my mom quit her job working in an antiques store and went back to graduate school. She ended up getting a master's degree in Latin American Studies. One of her classmates was a member of Culture Clash, a comedy group that was then starting to gain some notoriety around SF and LA. Another member of the group worked at the Galleria de la Raza, down the street from my house. I was pretty dubious of attending anything my mother reccomended, but I went to see Culture Clash with her, maybe on the San Francisco State campus, I can't remember. What I saw blew me away, and I've been going to see CC as often as I can (not too often, they live in LA now, and theater ain't cheap) ever since.
What's great about Culture Clash is the way they combine a set of pretty disparate elements into a whole that feels really organic... it's sketch comedy, there's some clown influence, some traditional Artistic Theater, some politics, some La Raza Pride (a subset of politics, of course). And they're FUNNY.
In the years since I first saw them, they've broadened their scope, with a series of documentary theater pieces about various places... one of them was actually about the gentrification of the Mission. They've also tackled Aristophanes and even a TV show on FOX (this was back in the "Married... with Children" days)
When Carlos Mencia got famous last year for telling stupid offensive jokes about "beaners," then patting himself on the back for breaking down barriers or whatever, I thought of CC. These guys really do break cultural taboos without fear, really do satirize both the racial politics of America and Latino lifestyles, and they really are FUNNY. Really, really funny. Above all else.
Culture Clash have a new show about Zorro, called "Zorro in Hell," about to premier at Berkeley Rep. Richard Montoya, one of the group's members, will be on the show this weekend. I'll try not to gush.
The always wonderful Onion AV Club debuted a great feature today. They ask folks they like to genuinely and truly put their iPods on shuffle and describe the attraction of the tunes that come up.
Jethro Tull, "Up The Pool" EM: I have lots of Jethro Tull because I also am mad at organized religion. When I was in high school, I really liked Jethro Tull, and I still enjoy it. I think that I really loved and identified with their brand of arrogant orchestral rock...
DJ Shadow, "Changeling" DC: God, what a fucking great… I have amazing taste in music! This album is unbelievable, fucking great, not one bad second on there. If you played it now for people that are doing stuff influenced by DJ Shadow, it's still better than that stuff.
Oddly, the guy from Modest Mouse has an Andre Nickatina track on his iPod. I can't decide if that makes sense or not. One way or the other, Andre Nickatina creeps me out.
Browsing through the New York Times today, I noticed that the 1990 Bill Murray vehicle "Quick Change" is coming out on DVD. It's a truly underappreciated film (so is "The Man Who Knew Too Little," by the way), and I had no idea he co-directed it.
Early in the film, there's a scene where Murray is holding up a bank dressed as a clown. The elderly security guard looks at him and asks, "What the heck kind of clown are you?"
Murray pauses, gives a perfect hangdog look, and says, "The crying on the inside kind, I guess."
Perfect moment.
One of "Big Time" Gene O'Neill's favorites.
Quick Change
To date, Bill Murray's only credit as a director (shared with the writer Howard Franklin) is on this modest but delightful comedy from 1990. It finds Mr. Murray as a disaffected New York City civil servant who hatches a complicated scheme to rob a Park Avenue bank (it involves a clown costume and a vest of dynamite) only to find his escape plans seriously frustrated by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a situation with which every New Yorker can identify. Accompanied by his co-conspirators, Geena Davis and Randy Quaid, Mr. Murray tries every trick in the book to get to Kennedy Airport in time to catch his plane and is finally reduced to taking a bus, piloted by Philip Bosco, that goes (and here is the important nuance) near there.
"Quick Change" is a crisp, efficient and subtly subversive film that makes you wish Mr. Murray would get back in the driver's seat instead of drifting through another lazy celebrity roast like "Broken Flowers." Mr. Murray has always been a comedian with something more, a secret reserve of melancholy that sets him widely apart from his fellow "Saturday Night Live" alumni. "Quick Change" just hints at the angst eating at his character, and that's enough to lift it to another level. Warner Home Video, $14.98, R.
A big part of my interest in comedy today comes from the Saturday Night Live that I watched as an adolescent. When I was about ten, my dad inherited some stuff from a family friend who passed on. Besides the 1977 Chevy Nova (metallic brown), we got a big black and white TV that ended up in my room. I watched SNL almost every week from about 1991 to 1994 or so. This sketch, with Janeane Garofolo, was one of my all-time favorites, and certainly my favorite fake commercial. "When my monkey's cleaning power is all used up..."
I have a soft spot in my heart for Disneyland... I'm not an obsessive like some, but my paternal grandparents lived in Orange County, so I went every other year or so as a kid. I've always been coaster-phobic, too, and Disneyland is a great theme park if you don't like roller coasters.
My two favorite attractions, as a kid, were Captain Eo and the submarines. Both of those are gone now, replaced by "Honey I Shrunk the Audience" and, eventually, a Finding Nemo ride. Thankfully, Star Tours is still there, and it still features the voice of Paul Reubens, aka Pee-Wee Herman. The combination of Star Wars and Pee-Wee was enough to send me into space as a kid, with or without the ride itself.
There are two things I've always wanted to do at Disneyland, though, but have never done. One of them is to visit the secret dining club. Jordan Morris, "Boy Detective" grew up in Orange County, and had never been until college, when he dated a lady whose grandfather was a bigwig at Kodak. He said it's as great as you might imagine. He went to the bathroom, and they refolded his napkin while he was gone. Someday I'll get in there. Someday.
My other Disneyland dream is to ride the Monorail. It used to be that in order to ride the Monorail, you had to stay at the Disneyland Resort. Now, my family had very little money when I was a kid, and I certainly wasn't staying at the Disneyland Resort. More like my grandparent's living room, or maybe the Motel Six in Mission Viejo. So all I could do was admire the monorail from afar.
But I just went to Disneyland with my sweetheart and her family this weekend, and I've got great news... anybody can ride it now!
Well, anyone can make the short, one-way trip from Tommorowland to "Downtown Disney," they Disney mega-mall between Disneyland and California Adventure. But dammit, I rode the thing! MAXIMUM FUN.
I literally drew them out of a hat... one that actually looked exactly like the one to the left. Congrats to Jeremy.
For those of you who aren't Jeremy, buy yourself tickets. Trust me, Louie CK is worth every penny. I'll be at Wendesday's show with the lady friend, say hi. Thursday, the very funny Tony Camin will be the featured (middle) act. He's one of the quickest comics in the business, a really funny guy.
