No One Wanted This

Democrats Sweep Election, Women Cede Top Place in Comedy



The New York Times magazine’s humor issue (11/12/06) contained a distinct surprise: only one out of five feature stories was about a woman comedian. (That woman? The comic powerhouse Anna Faris, who is the wide-eyed blonde in the Scary Movie movies.) It’s hard to believe, but it seems the tide has turned – men are now dominating mainstream American comedy. No longer will movie trailers declare: “See Margaret Cho! Sarah Silverman! Ellen Degeneres! And some guy!” It might even go the other way, with the women being unnamed in the movie trailer – however unlikely that seems.

Some say it’s high time for a change. For years, the male comedy community has claimed that women comics exploit the advantages of their biology. “Menstruation-based humor is always funny, while non-menstruation-based humor is a lot harder to put over,” one male comic complained.

But the Times magazine suggests male comics have finally arrived at a unified message: that a humor devoted exclusively to the concerns of one sex isn’t fair. And men are all about fairness, while women are willing to exploit their power to gain more power. Well, finally the juggernaut has been stopped.

Who knows if change might not be a good thing? Many claim that for years, women comics have been cruising on the easy rewards of their gender. In the current landscape, it won’t be enough to stand in front of an audience and launch into crowd-pleasing routines about dysmenorrhoea or pregnancy after 40. As the Times humor issue revealed, America now feels that life is a little more complex than a bunch of easy PMS jokes, however hilarious those are.

Investigations into the female comic empire have revealed a widespread complacency. “I don’t understand humor that isn’t female-based,” one highly placed comedienne was quoted as saying. “Everything, from the female arousal response, to pregnancy-related depression and the conundrums of motherhood, is comic gold. Why should we look any further?” But this shortsightedness wasn’t shared by all Americans, however much it seemed like it was. There have been grumblings that a hunting or farting joke might find an audience if given half a chance.

As the Times magazine suggests, the pendulum seems to have swung back-- men have now been given a mandate to assert themselves in comedy. But will they? “I think men have been quietly gaining ground,” said one insider. “Our country is founded on ideals of pluralism. Well – maybe it isn’t, but men deserve to be heard and I think they’re figuring that out.”

In any case, women will have to work a little harder over the next two years. They can regain their place at the top of the comedy pile, but it won’t be easy. A humor based on male concerns is nosing its way into the spotlight and it could be there for a while, spreading its message of pluralism and hope for positive change. This may not be quote unquote funny, but it just might be the message America is ready for.

Those Hard-to-Clean Corners

Does anyone know how to clean the insides of the holes of a toothpaste holder? A porcelain one?

I tried this morning -- it was fairly tricky.

I'm just sittng here drinking wine because I'm too depressed not to, even though wine makes me fat.

Have you ever felt really depressed after some great highlight of your life? For instance, last Thursday I actually edited the 26 minutes of film I shot down to just over 7 minutes, all in order, and with some good, precise edits. I figured out the intricacies of iMovie. I learned to space ahead in teensy fractions of a second to cut at just the right place. I sat at my kitchen table editing for hours and hours -- I didn't want to stop to eat, I didn't want to stop at all.

Now I've slid into some massive trough. I feel like A.J. Soprano. Watching the Sopranos last night was so harrowing. I lay on my couch feeling some hideous darkness seeping through me. The show is like that. It's like there is nothing decent in the entire world. A.J.'s point of view seems correct, and jumping into a swimming pool with a cement block tied to your neck also seemed correct.

Ricky Gervais did a lot of material I already knew well from his dvd, Politics. I guess he thought no one in the States would know that stuff. Plus the sound sucked.

I Meant Hindenberg

I meant Palmetto bugs were the Hindenbergs of the bug world. Not Hindemeths.

Were you all too embarrassed to point out my mistake?

That ranks up there with some of my most vacant moments.

Is anybody out there?

Where Is Everybody?

Readers,
Are you stunned by my newfound prolixity? It's because I have a real, dependable, I-pay-for-it Internet conenction now. It leads to way too much time on the Internet and too many long posts.

Did I say too much about the Palmetto bugs? It seemed wordy, but yet it was a really profoundly ghastly situation.

More on vermin: I have all these little moths flying around. They're easy to kill by clapping my hands on them but they bother me, they kind of plague my peace of mind.

So this morning I went to the hardware store and bought a "moth trap" which is really a glorified fly strip with a "pheromone square." As I was setting it up, the moths became very excited. They were all crowding around. I couldn't wait for them to get on that strip and die. But instead they just flew around randomly. Finally one alit on the glue and flapped frantically. Quickly it ceased its motion and collapsed into a brown smear. "Unpleasant, isn't it?" I said. I can't believe how cold I've gotten.

I hope a lot more will have died that way when I get home.

Hope everyone's doing well!

Gross Me Green

I come in last night and there are two palmetto bugs in my sink. I'd had two drinks but that wasn't enough, that wasn't nearly enough to cope with this scenario. I grabbed a frying pan because these revolting Hindemeths of the bug world are NOT going to scurry quietly away -- they want to tangle with you. They have to be killed because they sort of want to be, they're incapable of not walking towards you, inviting death.

At this point I only knew about one gross, sickening, light brown disgustoid that had ruined my plan to eat a bag of Veggie Bootie, have seltzer with lemon and watch Conan. I didn't see the two at the same time. Yeah. I know.

First I screamed. The vile football-shaped thing crawled up out of the sink onto the narrow ledge of the counter and I banged it with the frying pan. It fell on the floor. Dead? No, of course not. It takes more than one sharp bang with a frying-pan to kill one of these mothers. It lay on its back with some appendages waving feebly. I was forced, reader, to crush it with a heavy boot. Did it crunch? Of course. You're spared nothing. Even then I wasn't free from its horribleness. I had to get it off my floor. I thought a piece of cardboard and a plastic tub to cup over it would be the thing but as I had neither item, I had to use a wad of paper towels and pick up its smushed body which again could not be accomplished without the noise of its mortality issuing forth.

Sickened! I threw it into a garbage bag and tied it up and then I saw the second one. I threw a lemon at it (direct hit), and then I tried to bang it with the frying pan even though I couldn't get a clear shot, and then I turned on the water and aimed the dish-rinsing hose at it, and then I banged a pot lid over where I thought it was, and I actually think it squeezed out of the window screen because it knew its time was up.

What in the name of god have I done to deserve all this vermin?

To quote Belle and Sebastien: "What is it I must do to pay for all my crimes?/ What is it I must do? I would do it all the time, do it all the time now."

That's a beautiful record -- If You're Feeling Sinister.

In non-bug news, I'm trying to edit the movie I shot last week. I'm trying to edit in iMovie and of course it's really hard, and I find ways to avoid working on it because I can't really do it. But it's exciting that we finally got together, me and three actors, to film the first robot secretary sketch.

And me and my friend S. are going to see Ricky Gervais tomorrow night!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ricky Gervais.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hanh?

Take the Money and Run was on TV a few weeks ago. It had a totally klutzy feel but was full of charm. Near the end Woody Allen as Virgil Starkwell is in jail, after a series of luckless capers. He's pacing around unhappily behind bars. He has that great flyaway hair that is hilarious in itself. Growing frantic, he bangs a tin cup against the bars and calls out: "God!"

Actually he said "Guard!" I realized a second later.

Some Good Things About New York

1. No mirrors in clubs. In some of the coolest bars, when you finally get up to go to the bathroom to see if your 'look' is holding together, there's no mirror, only a ton of graffiti, so you have to go back out with no inner check, just your outer self still operating, and it feels kind of good and unusual.

2. The bars. It has the best bars, street for street, than any city I've been in. These are real bars, where there's a gleaming wooden expanse to rest your arms on and admire the bartender and look at fellow patrons with open curiosity. Often restaurants have this bar section and it's warm and welcoming with great old wooden decor. Yes. Bars.

3. Beer! Ha, there isn't one point that doesn't involve alcohol. No, but this one is: beer by the bottle. I've never lived anywhere else where you can just yank an India Pale Ale or other fine beer out of a 6-pack and buy it on its own. I'm not sure why New York permits this, but it's a great custom. I used to live in Clinton Hill and there was a ritual: at the end of a hard work day, we'd all trudge up the subway stairs, wait at the light and troop into the corner deli where everyone went to the back and bought one bottle of beer. Oh, occasionally two. And cigarettes, sometimes. Obviously, we were all going home to studios where we'd drink the beer alone. It was warming, it felt very communal. Now I live in a richer area where the custom isn't as cemented. And the beer costs a lot more.

4. Flowers. The city takes a lot of care to plant flowers that offset the effect of the towering gray slabs. The flowers are beautiful colors, too.

5. Pumpkins. In the fall, the city puts pumpkins in the giant flower holders and around street-light bases. They glow when it's dusk, and it's pretty cool.

6. Start times. In Michigan, jobs and school started at 8 am. In New York, rush hour lasts well beyond 11. I'm sure it starts around 7 but I don't know because I've never been asked to be anywhere before 9, and even that was always elastic, and employers are forgiving because of the subway.

7. Good looking people. They live here, and it's fun to look at them.

8. Parks. The parks are well maintained and if you've lived here even a few months, you thank god for them daily.

Okay that's only 8 but it's not too bad, is it? I wanted to balance the crabbing I do about NY all the time.

I'm Trying I'm Trying I'm Trying I'm Trying

beckett suggested recently that I fix my links list so it doesn't say "Edit Me" anymore. All right, I tried. I managed to write the urls of some friends' blogs over the "Edit Me" phrases. But they weren't the tidy little links beckett and his ilk make, and they weren't actually links. You couldn't click on them and go anywhere.

Okay, so today, home again with my cold, I doodled around on some html sites trying to find instructions for hyperlinks. They were there, they were just too cryptic for me. I cut and pasted a few formulas but I didn't get anywhere. Except! In the course of trying to add the right code to the smarterstronger blog url, I actually did make it into a link! Now I just have to get it to be small and cute, like other people's links, and to be a different color, like other people's links.

I know how you feel about my efforts, beckett. You pity me. If you don't outright ridicule me. I know because I could see those links sitting there, not really links, but stupid urls, and they looked to me like something my mother would do. And I would pity and ridicule her for something like that. When she first got a computer, she would try to type the address of a site into the Google search bar, and things like that. "How can you be so clueless?" I would think, stifling my laughter, or not, as I corrected her. But I know that's how you feel toward my ignorance because someone like you can't physically believe someone else could be so out of it in terms of links.

Note, though, I am doing better with italics.

I'm Sorry

I ended up watching part two of the PBS Mormons show last night and it was quite moving. I felt uncomfortable about my blog post while I watched it. I don't want to jump on the bandwagon of British sneering at American piety. The Brits have a phobic attitude to the mention of God or the idea someone might pray or believe.

It's a much more common thing here, and the reason might be the one suggested by my American Aesthetics professor at CUNY: Americans are so religious because when they came here, the geography and weather were so challenging that they needed something to lean on. The geography continues to play a role, maybe, in our loneliness and depression, so much higher than in Britain.

Once in England at my father's house, someone sneezed and I said, "Bless you." It was habitual after a few years in New York. No one answered and it hung in the air like a horrible gaffe. How could I have alluded to the existence of a diety? How tacky! But in New York you're blessed all day long by strangers. The first time someone said it to me on the subway, it was very unexpected, and touching. But at work we also say "bless you" after someone sneezes. Maybe it's because having a bad cold here is harder like everything is harder here. We don't have cars, we have to schlep everywhere ourselves. If you have to go to the doctor you have to ride the subway -- by the time you get back home, you're usually sicker.

I don't know. Some of our best, most brilliant songwriters (David Berman, Cat Power, Will Oldham) sing about God. It doesn't strike the American ear as grotesque, even if you're a non-believer. It's an idea in common parlance here. Plus we don't despise religious people, like Brits do.

I enjoy a witty takedown of an eccentric religion like Mormonism. But I wish to dissociate myself from any gleeful contempt that I sang the praises of in the post below. I shouldn't have -- I am terrible -- I have sin in my heart.

Hitch

I'm watching Christopher Hitchens on the Daily Show. He looks amazing for someone who reportedly still (still? He looks about 36, but isn't he around 50?) drinks and smokes a lot every day. He has pink cheeks, bright blond hair and is not as bloated as some heavy drinkers -- he's not bloated at all. He looks calm and alert, and he jokes reasonably nimbly with Jon Stewart, though he may be slightly sedated -- there's a slurred sound to his voice. Stewart is quicker than him though Hitchens comes through with some sturdy wit, cocktails and all.

Hitchens has a great piece on Slate right now about Mormons. Right when PBS comes out with a giant, sober two-night thing about Mormons' cracked beginnings and crazier proceedings, Hitchens pops up with this hilarious book chapter about what a narcissistic nutter Joseph Smith was and how dumb and credulous his followers were. Hitchens' contempt is evident in every syllable, but he's so surefooted he skewers them with light finesse, needing nothing more.

In other news, I had a cold this weekend and I watched The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslewsky, spelling approx.), The Aviator's Wife (Rohmer) and Before Sunset (Linklater). Ranked in order of excellence: Before Sunset, Aviator's Wife, Double Life of Veronique. The Kieslewsky is visually beautiful and artful, and sometimes poetic, but also precious and ultimately not very moving. There are too many tricks with the narrative - you can't get involved with any of the characters, though I loved the singer Weronika and the song she sang with the choir -- she sings so passionately she seems to die of ecstasy. Unfortunately the story loses much of its intensity after that.

The Rohmer was lighter than air but midway through the Veronique movie, struggling to keep straight the parade of identical-looking, long-faced, artistic men who fall in love with the admittedly stunning Irene Jacob, I felt nostalgic for its light, playful touch. And even if the characters in the Aviator's Wife aren't profound or artistic (ick what an equation), they're interesting because we're right in close to them, seeing them smile and wince, feeling their feelings with them.

Before Sunset has left me stunned three times now. It's just an amazing movie, a swift emotional roller coaster that moves you in different ways depending on what points it glances off you each time. This story that seems so simple, about a couple who meet on a train in Europe and have one of those incredible times where you're talking as fast as you can with someone who is as enchanted as you, and every moment is suffused with some perfect rightness and the whole world recedes while you pursue this attraction, and then they meet again 13 years later with all their walls up, their faces thinner and more accustomed to frowning, but they can't stop smiling from delight at seeing each other again, yet it is so dangerous to go near that intense feeling again, as they've learned in the intervening years how deeply they were struck -- the whole thing is so everlastingly wrenching and touching and universal that it will stand with the best of Renoir as a deeply felt exploration of what it is to be human and to love.