Chappelle No?

Isn't it weird how this Washington Post television reporter hates Oprah's guts, and does what she accuses the big O of doing - making it all about her? Jury's still out on Chappelle, but, seeming more and more like pot-related paranoia to this child of Big Chill "those are hash brownies, honey" parents. I am still pretty mk ultra psyched for the 2 hour Liptonapalooza on 2/12!! You go, James!

Ganja Goo Balls by Great Beast

I often peruse Craig's List for comedy. "Women seeking men", the "Pets" discussion board, "Casual Encounters" - all provide ample fodder for my laff needs, while also reinforcing my shut-in's feeling that I ain't missin' anything out there in the big ole world. But no section is a bigger goldmine than "Musicians." For whatever reason, it just rules. If only the comedy greats - Billy, Whoopi, Robin, Carrot Top, Ray Romano, or Larry The Cable Guy had struck upon this formulation. Dumb guy plus music aspirations equals funny, funny, funny. Actually two of the funniest people I know have explored this theme superbly. My friend Frank in his forthcoming book, "King Dork"; and my friend Jon Wurster in his comedy CDs. Today I wandered through this lush garden of humor, eating freely of the ripe fruit of the Gods, and I duly ended up with an MP3 on my hands of a song by a band called Great Beast. Their hit single, is, of course, "Ganja Goo Balls." And I was also shown a vision from our Lord - a Christian band, admitting freely and of their own volition, that their key venues are "coffee houses, prisons, juvenile halls, recovery groups." God bless them, every one.

n.b. You *really* might wanna click on that Billy Crystal link. For rilla, gorilla.

Hustle & Flow

Some of you who have dabbled in (A) the social sciences (B) women's studies or (C) Berkeley, California may be familiar with the idea of the menstrual hut. These crazy rag riders on the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival site have taken "the hut" cyber. Break out the lavender satchels and yarrowroot tea, beyotches!!

An Agenda Observed

So, I got into this novel writing workshop in Brooklyn that starts in a week. I am pretty excited. I intend to work on a storyline that involves grieving, and so I thought I would buy a C.S. Lewis' essay, A Grief Observed . It's a beautiful little book about his wife's death and his own resulting crisis of faith. I went to my trusty Barnes and Noble in Union Square (the same Barnes and Noble where I once wandered through a James Frey "Million Little Pieces" reading by accident). After looking all around for the Lewis essay, I finally broke down and asked the customer service desk people where it was. They directed me to "Christianity" on the 4th Floor. "That's sort of weird" I thought, but, whatever. Then I got there. Between Islam and Astrology was this GHETTO little shelf called Christianity. They didn't have AGO or any of his other jillion books and essays. What the ? I wondered. Then I saw a sub-sub Ghetto section behind it called "Christian Inspiration" and bingo, there, right under a book titled "He-motions; Even Strong Men Struggle were the collected essays and novels of this great, great mind of the twentieth century. Certainly they also have a Narnia display in the kids' section; but they also had all the Narnia books here, along with the Screwtape Letters and 2 dozen other titles. I know that Jack felt inadequate in life compared to Tolkien; could he even imagine the indignity of his legacy living among the Left Behind series, right under He-Motions?

Requiem for a Scream

So tonight I finally got around to watching the new Denzel Manchurian Candidate. Oy. First of all, weirdo cameo appearances by people like Al Franken as a TV pundit (why? how?) and Oprah hanger-on/best friend Gayle King as a reporter (did anyone but me catch that) made NO sense to me.

With vacuous and sweeping references to the Patroit act and the threat of terrorism, the new Denzel Manchurian Candidate was a real MoveOn.org bummer fest. What was originally a brilliant, abstract examination of encroachment on the individual is now a silly, "they are mobilizing against us, fellow boomers, we must re-subscribe to the Nation RIGHT AWAY" partisan diatribe. What was timeless is now mired in specificity. Even Meryl's hilarious Hilary aping can't save this sinking ship, Celine.

What's interesting to me about the original 1962 Frankenheimer version, other than the greatness of the art itself, is that the star, Frank Sinatra, bought the rghts and effectively buried it in the wake of the Kennedy assasination. It seems like a such a grandly Sinatraian act - both touchingly considerate and chivalrous, and totally meglomaniacal. I mean, WTF did this mind control metaphor have to do with JFK? Not even my bro Oliver Stone went there!

The 411; Teens and Sex - A Katie Couric special

Let me see if I can summarize this dense, informative piece for you:
Katie is blowing the lid off terms like "hooking up" and "friends with benefits" while letting us know that there's a lot of
(1) Teen Sex
(2) Sex in the Media
(3) Lack of Communication between Parents and Teens
And there* appears* to be *some sort* of causal relationship between these elements.
Move over, Stossel!!!

Take my syndicated columnist, please!

In the latest example of the great trend of the 2000's - the end of journalistic ethics - the National Review online now revealed that one of their Bushie attack dogs was actually a paid contractor for HHS. Hola, Maggie! Welcome to the storied legion of Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, once lying hacks, now rich and famous best-selling book authors. The weirdest thing is that NRO isn't even disturbed or planning to fire her. WTF do you have to do to lose your job over there? I once lost a job at a hair salon for taking 2 sick days. No respect, I tell you. No respect.

Where is Colin's son when you need him?

If only the FCC was as concerned about this outrage as they were about "Nipplegate."

Red State Mommies RULE!

Ah, Monday. It can only mean one thing. Ok, two things. It means the boyfriend goes to work in money-makin' Manhattan, and I have the whole palatial estate to myself (to "work" from home). It also means that I get to watch "Trading Spouses" on Fox, one of my many beloved reality TV selections. "Trading Spouses," like its companion show on ABC, the better-titled "Wife Swap," offers two families the chance to "trade mommies" for two weeks, in exchange for $50,000. This week, the controlling and bitchy neatnik Mia from MN went down to gun-thumping Chattanooga to live with the Howard family, while their very own heart-of-golder, Angie, flew north to attempt to bring some fun and warmth to the uptight Hammond clan. Angie's intro gushed "We may not have much money, but have each other," and a little deja-VIEW crackled in my brain. "Hey, I think I've seen this one before." I thought. Oh, no; that was the down-home cajun Mom who swapped with weird Cali vegan meglomaniac who made everybody watch animal rights films while she cried. No, no, it was that plastic surgery trophy mom who tried to give the kids make overs. Wait, I *had* seen it before, a million times. Tonight's episode, like many, many, many of them are, was about watching the richer family revealed to be a bunch of shallow, cold, pretentious automatons, while the poorer, but funner, family may be quirky, and may have hundreds of taxidermied crocs around the compound, but, dammit, they love one another. Inevitably, the poor family is southern/red state and the rich family is more urban, from California, or Maryland, or Minneapolis. It sort of makes me wish my southern upbringing had included some buttoned-down, carosel-eschewing, army-insulting, chitlin-rejecting mom from the north. Then, when we were finally reunited, my whole family could have danced around the moonlight, catching fireflies, strumming guitars and generally revelling in the simple pleasures of God, family and country.

Fat Pig

Welcome back to Ytossie. I have been gone for a while, since election night to be precise. No, I wasn't in a Bush-reelection- depressive state, unlike many of my fellow boho types. I've been facing a few - uh - challenges, not the least of which has been planning my wedding, which will basically be an elopement except pre-planned. You know, no one invited. Just us and some mail-order minister blowing a conch shell and draping us in orchids while talking about freedom, creativity, and the lyrics of Jimi Hendrix.

Now, don't get me wrong. Love the family. I do. But the "big day" is set to be just us. So why is it that I spend almost every day in the gym, doing reps, picturing the tankini and sarong?

In the midst of this, I went to see the new Neil LaBute play, Fat Pig, which was playing in the West Village at a tiny little theater on Christopher Street. This is a play about a successful man with a harpie ex-girlfriend and beastly friend at work. He starts dating a heavy woman, and, in typical LaBute fashion, things get as ugly as possible from there. For starters, let me say that Andrew "Weekend At Bernie's 2" McCarthy acted circles around everyone else in the play.

Ultimately, I have to give Neil credit - he leaves no stone of ugliness between the genders unturned in his search for material. And the last time I saw weight issues tackled in earnest, I believe it was in the horrific and permanently damned Shallow Hal. But in LaBute's grafting of the model of interracial couples onto that of - what? - intersize couples, he missed a few things. He made the subtle discomfort into blatant outrage. He wrote an office as though it were a high school, with people running to show the photo of "the fatty" in the cafeteria, and highly juvenile commentary firing through emails, all around, between colleagues and friends.

I think we can all agree, for lots of people, the skinniness monster is big. It can involve a ferocious competitiveness between women, and degrading dismissiveness in men. But even then, bitchiness tends to be a subtle art. Successful down-looking involves maintaining your plausible deniability at all times, much like Nixon and Dean tried to. The play would have been better for me if it hadn't involved a main character facing a weird 1984-like world of stark choices when it comes to junk in the trunk. LaBute's attempt to demonize the characters who held these beliefs did not change the fact that theirs was the moral of his story. He wrote a world where weight rules all, and if the implication is that it's wrong, but true, I find that to be a tremendous literary cop out. I don't like cheap values disguised as moral complexity.

I'll be thinking of this as I hit the treadmill this week to attempt to look good enough for my private wedding that no one is invited to.

It's Like Playing Trivial Pursuit With Gramps

Here in the data center on Election Night 2004, "It's Like Playing Trivial Pursuit With Gramps" was a quip by my boyfriend while watching the excruciating attempt to simulate liveliness by shockingly non-retired old dudes Dan Rather and Ed (Anyone Got Some Weed? Do You Like My Turtleneck? ) Bradley. If you knew the Gramps in question, or had, in fact, played Trivial Pursuit with him, as I have, you'd know the drudgery invoked. Another Charles classic was "Look at this Murderer's Row of Hacks" upon seeing Carlos Brown, ("internet hack"), Larry King ("decrepit hack"), and Jeff Greenfield ("used to have a semi-relevant career hack") babble ad nauseum about how "Ohions care about jobs." They were, I guess, no match for MSNBC's B-level fest with fedora enthusiast Willie Brown and former balletrina Ron Reagan. Anyway, here I am, waiting to see who will be the leader of the Free World and it's a tight race and the votes aren't all in - yet the news coverage on TV is unbelievably banal, tedious and dead. It's weird, Jeeves.

Ben, The Evil, Homicidal Pet Rat

So, I haven't been writing on here for a few days because I have been trying to write a review of Michael Jackson's new album, "The Ultimate Collection," a five-disc, 57 song + DVD career retrospective. It's truly a herculean task, and I have to do it in only 200 words. It's almost impossible for me to decide what I want to say when so many promising topics introduce themselves. Consider his first solo hit, 1972's "Ben." From the film of the same name, it is a love song to a pet rat. Not only that, but a pet rat who turns evil, and recruits an army of evil rats to kill humans. See, the something's-a-tad-off-with-the-lad theme has been brewing for a while. But who made it impossible to ignore? Is it our salacious media? Our culture of celebrity worship? Or maybe it has been his own aggressive public weirdness for the last 3 decades. I just don't know. But thinking about him, I can't help but compare him to another LA music genius/weirdo, Brian Wilson. Both had young success. Both had overbearing fathers who were clearly jealous of their talent and intent on crushing their sensitivity. Both made weirdo pop albums. But Brian turned his demons on himself. All he did was get fat, set up a tent in the living room, and do drugs. Jacko seems to have become a child predator. So does a music reviewer really owe it to him, or to the art form itself, to overlook that? I don't know. My boyfriend is a genius writer and editor himself, but he fell asleep and my deadline's tomorrow. I read his - my boyfriend's - review of Elliott Smith's posthumous album today in his magazine, and it literally brought me to tears. The way he uses words is just so elegant and - I don't know- thoughtful? Soulful? I can't even write well enough to describe how good his writing is. Anwyay, I am going to keep on chopping away at my MJ review, which is now 400 words, twice as long as it should be. And it has no point. And it's riddled with cliches. Wish me luck. At least, even if the piece turns out so crap that the editor won't run it, I have learned something cool and weird. And that is that the bridge of 1983's "Wanna Be Startin Something" goes like this: “You’re a vegetable/ still they hate you/ you’re just a buffet / you’re just a vegetable / they eat off you.”

Emotions In Motion

Is there anything more gruesome than a delighted Karen Hughes? She looks like Patrick Swayze in drag in that Wong Foo movie.
The presidential debate tonight toyed with my emotions. I went into it despairing that it mattered; convinced that Bush would win if he only seemed semi-normal. Then, as the discussion began, my hopes rose. I thought that Kerry had drummed up some new material and that Bush was boring, repetitive, and cranky. To me, it was a total choke on Bush's part. He seems like a man who doesn't want to be running, who resents the personal inconvenience to him. Kerry was more refined, concise and calm than ever. Then came the pundits, saying Bush wiped the floor with Kerry. Ok, it was only Sean Hannity who said that, but CNN's polls have it at 2 points. You know what? If the American people think it was a toss up tonight, then they deserve whatever they get. At least Wonkette made it fun.

I Have Stopped Believing

It's not too late to sign up for the once-in-a-lifetime Rock and Roll cruise with REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey. A lot of things in this world depress me, and this is no exception.

Healing The World

So, maybe it's just the cold medicine, but I am enjoying this first-season Surreal Life marathon on VH1 way too much. My favorite moment: Corey Feldman's comments about his on-air nuptials. Of his decision to have both a Rabbi (star of his own one man show "Religion Out of The Box") and a Christian minister (MC Hammer): "I think it sends a really positive message to the world.

Hay Hollywood, Go Home

I have been trying to get together something to say about last night's debate all day but I have yet to think up anything smart. It was dispiriting to see that Cheney's authoritative, mean-spirited, alpha male routine won him the immediate praise of every TV pundit I saw. I was somewhat heartened to read that Sullivan gave it easily to Edwards, and that when corrected for bias, even the ABC poll had it basically tied. However, there are times like these when I doubt the whole principle of democracy. It seems inevitable that Bush will win on Friday, since all he has to do to win is be more of a guy you'd wanna have a beer with. The only real reason he lost on Thursday was that he was a pouting, impatient, peevish guy instead of our smirking, Hey Buddy in chief. I doubt our process; I felt this way in the primaries too, when it seemed that once Iowa had gone Kerry, so did everyone else. There was no listening to policy or comparing character; it seemed like, once there was a winner, he was the winner, and the momentum was unstoppable. Now I feel, watching the "debates" that Cheney "won" by being a mean, evasive, superior, careerist, and that Bush will "win" by not being as weird as Kerry. I guess democracy means embracing permanent anti-intellectualism as our fundamental mechanism. But maybe I am just feeling outnumbered and surrounded by dummies. A TV show is shooting on my street today in Brooklyn and my landlord has posted a sign on our building which reads, "Hay Hollywood, Go Home."

Uncle McScrooge V. Richie Rich

I know we are all fascinated by the Veep debate tonight. Will Cheney softball? Will we get to see the glint of darkness in his eyes? Will wonderboy's flashy grin and Daddy-was-a-Mill-worker, Norma Rae antics work? This piece in the Washington Post ("the chatty paper") today claims that Cheney is the de facto NSA. I've read before that Condy is less an NSA than a Bush lap dog, viciously guarding her proximity and access, and expending far more energy on her relationship to the man in power than on her job itself. Kinda reminds me of power publicist Chloe Walsh, who somehow managed to parlay her closeness with Jack White into a whole career. Sleaze, pandering and mediocrity always triumph over actual work. Just comtemplate the success of Maxim magazine if you disagree. Bah, humbug!

De Very Same Skippy

We are living in a wonderful time. I don't know if anyone but me is aware of it, but the apotheosis of Western culture is upon us. I am referring, of course, to the new commercial for Skippy Peanut Butter Bars. One marvels at the Darwinistic process which begins with opposable thumbs and ends with CGI Rasta Elephants rapping over dancehall beats. Could anything but the hand of the Divine guide such matters?

The first time I saw the ad, I knew. It was clear what cultural forces were at work. The anti-carb diet mania, which has given us totally redundant 1/2-carb versions of Coke (C2) and Pepsi (Pepsi Edge) must've caused someone at Skippy to scratch his head. Hmmm, he must've thought. Our product is relatively high-protein, relatively low carb. Could be a trendy Atkins-snack, if you ignore the massive amounts of sugar involved. Maybe we could market "to go" tubes of Skippy as a hip, low-carb, snack. And what would be the best way to market this product? What would be the most effective means of communicating that the bar is pure Skippy? No granola, no caramel, no chocolate.

The answer they came up with: CGI Rasta elephants on a set resembling MTV's Spring Break. On an idyllic beach, the Rasta Elephants take the stage. Summer gear and macramed hats are in tow. They rap and dance reassuringly, all to a dancehall beat:

"Skippy, dat wot's in de bar; de very same Skippy dat wot's in de jar.
Bom diddy Bom diddy Skippy, Bom diddy Bom diddy Skippy."

Don't worry; it's de very same.

Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter

Last night I went to see a band play. The artist is a nouveau 1970's country act from Seattle called Jesse Sykes. I liked the album a lot, with its spare sound, sort of a mixture of Cat Power's ethereal melodies mixed with Son Volt's catchy fake-country-by-way-of-indie-rock twang. However, the live show was another matter entirely. The show was at Brooklyn's best venue, The Hook, where the artist was put to shame by the vast superiority of everyone in her band, The Sweet Hereafter. It was only the violinist/backup vocalist's lovely, spot-on harmonies that made Jesse's weird Patti Smith caterwauling bearable. Jesse seemed to know about 4 strummable chords, and if that guitar player she snagged from Whiskytown (a band I never liked) didn't write all those songs for her, I will be a monkey's publicist. Oh, wait, I already am. I kid, I kid. Between the repeated false starts, the self-conscious languidity, the endless prattle about how "whisky helps," I was ready to head on home before the show even finished. Jesse is on Barsuk Records, home of the inexplicably huge Death Cab for Cutie. I mean, I like them too, but their next NYC gig is at The Roseland, the 3800 capacity venue where I saw Justin Timberlake and my most beloved band of them all, Oasis. So, one woman's opnion: the disc is pretty good, the show was awful, but hey, every night out can't be a champagne supernova.

The War At Home

I am a happily engaged woman, lucky to be with a very deep, thoughtful, kind, funny man. However, like any couple, we fight. Sometimes our fights are like anyone else's: money, the dog's constant destruction of our property, family, general irritations. But other times we seem to fight about politics, which always surprises me. It's not that we disagree on larger issues, and we both read the same journals and newspapers. More often than not, he seems to chafe at my critique of liberalism. What makes it interesting is that he almost entirely shares my views. But somehow, I sense a fear that I will "go too far." The other night, we clashed while discussing the announcement by Tony Blair that he was seeking a third, but not a fourth, term. Sorry, Terry McAuliffe, despite your pronouncement on John Gibson's show on 9/30, he is not "retiring" because the Bush foreign policy kills all who touch it. In the words of Aersosmith, Dream On. I was saying to my beloved that I think it's a shame to see Blair go, and unfortunate that he seems to be leaving under a cloud of suspicion. My fiancé replied that the suspicion was somewhat deserved, at which point I interjected that I didn't think the famed British intelligence on Iraq had been "sexed up," as was charged. "Yes it was," he insisted, and we were at an impasse. What makes this disagreement interesting is that we had largely read the same pieces about the case; the excruciatingly detailed narrative in The New Yorker, and the website of The Hutton Inquiry itself. Yet somehow, we came to opposite conclusions. From my memory, there were two inquiries, I believe, both of which held the BBC, not 10 Downing, responsible, despite charges that Alastair Campell et al leaned on Kelly. In fact, wasn't the head of BBC, Greg Dykes, removed over the incident? Anyway, that was my understanding. But there are, and always will be, charges and insinuations. I think that what we were really fighting about was my comparatively greater comfort with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the fact that I am pretty much undaunted by the absense of WMD. My fiancé, I know, feels much more conflicted than I, and he finds my strident support for the war to be unfamiliar terrain. We are both life-long Democrats, successors to the Boomers, protesting apartheid in college, memorizing the litany of U.S./C.I.A. crimes. Now we find ourselves just as likely to direct our seemingly endless supply of personal bile towards Michael Moore as towards John Ashcroft. It takes a great deal of personal certainty to let go of pat partisanism. I know that he is right, that in my case, there is a truculence born directly of personal anger at the murder of a friend on 9/11. He, on the other hand, is, by nature, coming from a more considered, careful, thoughtful position. Fortunately, it was only a minor and temporary flare-up; we were quickly reunited (and it felt so good, Peaches and Herb ), when RNC weirdo, and my fiancé's fellow UGA classmate, Ralph Reed, showed up on TV. Hiya, Ralphie Boy. I was regaled by stories of working at the Red and Black, their college paper, and what a reactionary douchebag crank Reed was, even then. All was again well at 116 Berry. I don't know how it is in your family, but nothing unifies us like a new, shared object of contempt.