I Know That Guy; Or, Oh Dear

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Bill was talking about comedy, and Matthew J. Brady referred in comments to a Daily Show segment about “the asshole who equated community organizers with crack dealers.“


Here the segment is. More to the point, I knew the fellow in question. Years ago I was a copy editor at the newspaper where he worked as a reporter. I tried bragging about this connection when the segment aired, but nobody much cared. Still, I knew him. 

The fellow was … well, how can one put it? I can’t say he meant well. He didn’t; he was the sort of winger who lives to insult liberals. But I can say he didn’t quite know what he was doing. He didn’t process that insulting people inspires dislike, not affection. He seemed to operate according to this syllogism: “If you act as if someone is stupid, that means he is stupid; if one person is stupid, that means the other is intelligent; if a person is intelligent, he is admired; if a person is admired, he is liked; so if you act as if someone is stupid, he will like you.” Yes, the fellow was a treat and we all looked forward to working with him.

And all the while he thought he was scoring a hit. He knew he was being obnoxious, I guess, but he didn’t know what being obnoxious means. Or, at least, he didn’t know the basic facts about the topic that everyone else knows.

Now there he is on The Daily Show, trotting out his party piece about Osama bin-Laden being a community organizer (hey, like Francis Marion! or Captain America!) and having no idea that John Oliver and The Daily Show will not be charmed by his little jeu d’esprit. Oh dear, the timid, confiding half-smile with which he reveals that those poverty activists were mean to him! Oh dear, the sadness of life.

Who Is More of a Man: Superhero or Samurai?

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I have an article up on comixology about the age old debate. Here’s the first paragraph:

Nerdy schlub schlubs his way through life, kicked by men, mocked by women, and generally whumped by the blunt end of life. Then, one day he is irradiated, blown up, lobotomized, and pickled. Also, his father dies. Suddenly he’s big and strong and improbably muscled. He flies (or, bounces, or swings) his way through life, kicking men and pushing from him all the women who can’t possibly understand his agonized and lonely quest. And yet, beneath that muscled exterior, does not the pale schlub still tragically and silently schlub?

I also talk about Freud-gnomes. So good times.

Can’t Sit Down

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So I took the various recommendations for stand-up comedians (thanks to all who commented), but I’m left (mostly) feeling like Noah with Achewood. Mostly obvious jokes delivered with the assumption that being on stage is a virtue. Demetri Martin, Zach Galifainakis, pretty flat I thought.

Even Patton Oswalt, who’s likable enough, seems to base his routine on statements of obvious facts? Like his 80s metal bit– metal has always gleefully parodied itself. His descriptions aren’t as funny as the music videos.

I liked Jim Gaffigan, though. His routine doesn’t seem like an audition for a sitcom. And it’s intricately designed for the stage, which I appreciate.

More generally– he also seemed like the only comedian not just taking shots at people. He layers it so he’s often the butt, or you can’t tell who’s the butt. But Patton Oswalt just seems like this guy who makes fun of people different than him (getting back to what Miriam said) while standing above it all.

I could be wrong, as I’ve only watched three or four clips for each. But I can say it’s a trend in American humor. The Daily Show, say, does a lot of media commentary, but on slow news days they humiliate civilians on the street. I think it’s rather American– I recall an essay in the English film journal Sight & Sound about a rash of American indie docs that ridicule their subjects. (American Movie, Michael Moore, anything set in the rural South, the camera loves rubes and freaks.)

So the comedian/filmmaker’s in control and unassailable. Feh. I’d rather watch them suffer as the fee for my attention.

So, Downtown.

Japanese comedy duo, did manzai standup until ’91, now mostly variety shows. Brilliantly inventive & cruel variety shows.

I like their “No Laughing” year-end specials. Like 2007’s “24 Hour Absolutely No Laughing Hospital,” with punishment games if someone laughs. Plenty of ridicule and humiliation, but all aimed at the show’s hosts, who dress as nurses and get whipped whenever they laugh.

Scores of comedians gang up on them to make them laugh. Elaborate gags, huge production numbers, random appearances by Black Jack. What’s not to like?

Comics connection: early in the show, UMEZU Kazuo, author of The Drifting Classroom and Cat-Eyed Boy, shows up as part of the hospital’s Special Rescue Team. The training drill requires him to sprint to a dummy & revive it. (He’s in his 70s.)

While running, he falls into a concealed pit. Hilarity ensues.


Then, a bunch of black-clad nurses show up and beat the hell out of the show’s four stars who laughed at this poor guy. That’s comedy!

You Will Believe a Man Can Crawl

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A Bush jackass over at the Justice Department wrote a snotty e-mail about Mary Frances Berry, who is black and a longtime pillar of the civil rights movement. The snotty e-mail came to light because of a government inquiry into the jackass’s suspiciously political hiring practices. So, as a side-effect of all the other trouble he’s in, the jackass had to write Ms. Berry a letter explaining what he meant when he said that he liked his coffee “Mary Frances Berry style — black and bitter.”

And, courtesy of Talking Points Memo, here the letter is.
UPDATE:  Berry gets a laugh out of the business, this item also via TPM.
2nd UPDATE:  No, the suspicious hiring was done by the boss of the jackass, not the jackass proper.

Hewlett Packard Scanner Bleg

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I just plugged the thing in, my first scanner. After you do a scan, where do you find the scan that you’ve done? When I look at the menu item for Open Project (I think that’s the term), it’s all grayed out. Yet I know I’ve done at least one scan. I lined up a picture on the flatbed, the picture showed up on my screen, and I clicked Accept. The Help files says that’s what you do when a scan is ready to go. I even did a Saveas and gave the scan a name. But now … gone and nowhere for me to look.

No instructions in the box, and the Help files I downloaded have no items about finding saved files.
Fuck. I know the answer is something simple, but this still pisses me off.

Gene Roddenberry’s Favorite TV Show to Watch

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Barney Miller. He used to be a cop and found the show true to life.


I was happy to hear he liked it. Barney Miller has always been one of my favorites. That and Married … With Children are two superior tv shows that earned followings but never got much media fuss.
From Inside Trek: My Secret Life with Star Trek Creator Gene Roddenberry by Susan Sackett

Useful Definitions

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Years ago, on my first job, I had to write an obit of the man who invented Twinkies. Since I worked for a reference publication, I included a definition of Twinkies for future generations: “a tan, cream-filled cake roughly the shape of a cylinder.” That caused people around the office to laugh at me.


Now the political publication The Hill defines rickrolling, though to slightly less absurd effect:  

37 seconds into the video, though, viewers are RickRoll’d, which is when a copy of the music “Never Gonna Give You Up” by 80s musician Rick Astley surprisingly appears instead of an image the viewer was expecting


The viewers in question are watching Speaker Pelosi’s try at rickrolling, a very tame sample. The finest specimen I’ve seen is here.