Dear Button,

It was Pam Brady’s birthday last week (Pam’s one of the “South Park” writers), so where else could we go but Vegas? We couldn’t simply have cake and ice cream. For Pam, ultrashenanigans had to ensue. And that could mean only one thing: Caesar’s Magical Empire.

The cheese factor was high as our mysterious, robed maitre d’ guided us into a circular room and began speaking in sync with recorded music and cued flames. Suddenly, the ceiling began to rise, climbing farther and … No, wait! The floor was actually dropping! They fooled us!

That’s how the evening went. You never knew what was coming next. And after several carafes of vino, my eyes were even less attuned to the world around me. No matter, it made the magic much better.

After a sit-down dinner and magic show, we were led off to see several other performers. First was Sophie the fire-eater. Dressed in what would best be described as a Roman bikini, she did much to boost our morale. But then she accidentally spit her flame goo onto Kyle.

The next act was a snorefest — a guy in a tux made apparently unbroken metal rings attach to and detach from each other. Plus, he didn’t have a hot assistant. The last act, however, did.

Her name was Stacy, but I shall always call her Dream Stacy. Although she never responded (in words) to my shouted proposal of marriage, nor to my cries of warning as she climbed into various contraptions of magical apparatus with the prospect of being cut in half and run through with swords, I would like to believe she was comforted hearing my sweet voice calling from the darkness.

Needless to say, all this magic gave the group a powerful thirst. But before we could reach the Forum bar, we were cornered by Apollo, an employee of the Magical Empire who, although he had the night off, was hanging around at work. Once he found out who we were, he tagged along until after the show and then did some tricks for Pam on her special day.

Well, I had been watching the other magicians closely, and my eyes were quick enough to figure out the tricks. So I thought catching Apollo would be easy, since we were standing in a circle around him. I was wrong. Each new trick baffled us. Finally Pam shouted, “Apollo, stop fucking with my head!”

Trey Parker was also blown away and quietly asked me to get $200 out of his wallet — a tip for Apollo. I took out two Ben Franklins and folded them in my palm. Then Apollo did some amazing trick, and we all howled in disbelief.

“Noooo!” Trey shouted. Then he leaned over to me: “Make it $300!” Another great trick. “Noooo! Make it $400!” And on and on.

Let’s just say Apollo had a pretty good night.

But the chaos had just begun. After retiring to the Forum bar to recover from the mind screwing Apollo had just given us, we slowed things down with a traditional gift exchange. However, a new zenith of mayhem was just around the corner. After the last package was opened, a squeaky little song began to play over the bar’s P.A. system. It started in low, then it started to grow.

It was a birthday song for Pam that Kyle had recorded and sped up so it would sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks. Pam looked around in a daze, not certain what the song was or where it was coming from, but certain from the looks on all the faces around her that shit was about to go down.

Pam scanned the room, nervously anticipating whatever it was we had up our sleeves. Then she caught sight of it, and her head fell off. From behind the bar came a dancing midget in a panda suit whom Trey had flown in from Los Angeles. Everyone but Pam knew it was coming, but no one could believe it when it actually happened. Around and around the Panda bear danced as Pam held her head in disbelief.

Well, that’s where we all figured the night would peak out, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as we dabbed away the last tears of laughter. However, Mr. Parker was just getting started.

Trey had put away some scotch throughout the evening and was feeling particularly saucy. So when someone from the band performing at the Forum bar jokingly asked if anyone in our group could sing, Trey jumped onstage and whipped out Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said.” I laughed so hard I had to turn away, only to see the entire casino floor gathered around the bar to watch.

Love,

David

P.S. I think I got the whole “girl, boy, dating, love, relationship” issue resolved. Trey and I were watching an HBO documentary called “Hookers and Tricks: Trick or Treat,” which detailed the lives of several prostitutes and regular johns. Frankly, it was the last place I expected to find such a nugget of wisdom. But sure enough, a little over halfway through, the filmmaker is in a strip club doing some interviews and asks this big black guy in dreads and overalls, “What’s the difference between love and love?

Without missing a beat, the guy replies: “Love is a motherfucker. But love, that’s butt naked and a cheese sandwich!”

Truer words were never spoken.

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Kim Jong Il was one of the most chilling figures of the modern era, with a harrowing human rights record. But of the tyrannical madmen who have died this year, he was also the one who made the oddest pop culture splash. Moammar Gadhafi’s ability to rock a golden muumuu will never be paralleled. But from “30 Rock” to “The Daily Show,” the departed North Korean leader will be missed. Was it those rock star shades? His fondness for olive green? The way he really knew how to throw a tank-rolling, goose-stepping military parade? In a word, yes.

Sure, Saddam Hussein got to play a role in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 1999 opus “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” But it was Mr. Jong Il who really stole the show in Parker and Stone’s subsequent puppet masterpiece “Team America: World Police.” Kim’s not just a homicidal maniac in a big house — he’s a guy who really, really loves to put on a big show. He’s also a man who can’t quite pronounce “inevitable,” who struggles with the isolation of success, and who, it turns out, is actually a bug from outer space. Now that’s a villain!

What makes the puppet Kim Jong Il such a classic comedic character is that he’s not all that far from the Western perception of the real guy. This, after all, was a man who loved the movies so much he wrote a book on “The Art of Cinema.” He loved them so much he owned thousands of DVDs – “Rambo” and Elizabeth Taylor were allegedly among his faves. He loved them so much that early in his career, he had South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress ex-wife Choi Eun-hee kidnapped to forge the North Korean film industry. The results included the somewhat less subtle than “Triumph of the Will”-rampaging monster masterpiece “Pulgasari.”

Jong Il not only forcibly created entertainment, he inspired it. He became part of a pivotal plotline on “30 Rock” last season, when Jack Donaghy’s wife, Avery Jessup (Elizabeth Banks), wound up abducted by the internationally fearsome “convenience store owner.” It was a crazy sitcom twist – based on the very real imprisonment (and subsequent release) of Current TV’s Euna Lee and Laura Ling in 2009.

Even as he retreated from the spotlight throughout his later years, Kim Jong Il became all the more dominant a force on the Internet. Is there a more elegantly straightforward, satisfyingly amusing Tumblr than Kim Jong-il Looking at Things? There is not. Have you ever seen photos of Stalin smiling merrily at great wheels of cheese? I rest my case.

He was a complicated man. A man who apparently had a penchant for water slides and could golf a 38-under-par round. Would you tell him he couldn’t take that mulligan? What can you say of a person who has been played by both Margaret Cho and Gilbert Gottfried? A man who’s provided more material for “The Daily Show” than anyone not named Jim Cramer? A guy like that doesn’t come along in too many lifetimes. Now that the leader is dead, his legacy on the evening news will no doubt be harrowing. But as Elizabeth Banks tweeted Monday, we are indeed at a pivotal moment in history” — one that leaves joke writers and Tumblr bloggers just a little “sad and ronery.”

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As I watched Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of Comedy Central’s “South Park,” collect armloads of Tony awards for their satirical musical “The Book of Mormon” Sunday night, a disquieting and thrilling realization popped into my head: These potty-mouthed clowns might very well be America’s greatest and most consistently inventive humorists.

Of course they have competition. There’s “The Daily Show,” for sure, though I’d argue that Jon Stewart’s version is as much a news program as a comedy series. But for audacity, visual flair, musical chops, verbal invention and gut-busting silliness, not to mention consistency of vision over time, I think the “South Park” boys trump all comers — including the creators of “The Simpsons,” a landmark show that started to flag halfway into its endless run, and Seth MacFarlane of “Family Guy,” whose show has its moments but has never quite risen to the heights of conceptually driven insanity that Parker and Stone reach so often. At their best, I’d put Parker and Stone up there with “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “SCTV,” Ernie Kovacs, the Marx Brothers, George Carlin and W.C. Fields, all of whom skated along the edge of the surreal and willfully outrageous, doing pirouettes and blowing raspberries at anyone who tried, like yours truly, to call them great and significant.

Their success is all the more remarkable when you consider what true outsiders they were, and to some extent still are. Back in 1992 they were just a couple of students at the University of Colorado who’d produced a goofy little short film titled “The Spirit of Christmas.” Within five years — thanks to help from Fox executive Brian Graden, who gave them $2,000 to turn the short into a “video Christmas card” that he could send to friends and birthed the very first viral video sensation — they’d landed a Comedy Central show, “South Park.”

Their rise was so sudden that there was no reason to think they’d last. Most overnight successes freeze up in the spotlight or reveal themselves as one-trick wonders. Not Parker and Stone. They’re safely ensconced in mainstream culture — almost everything they do is connected to Viacom, the gigantic parent company of “South Park” network Comedy Central — yet they still seem mysteriously and delightfully outside of it. What other American humorists have been so successful within the mainstream over such a long period while routinely landing on news pages (most recently for Comedy Central’s censoring of their jokes about Mohammed) and maintaining an almost punk rock edge?

Sure, some episodes have been sharper and more coherent than others; like a lot of the aforementioned iconic clowns, Parker and Stone practice a type of humor that is by nature hit-and-miss. But over the past few days, I’ve rummaged through prior seasons of “South Park” looking for duds and have found surprisingly few. The stuff that seemed astonishingly vital at the time still does, and the stuff that felt subpar — such as the Season 1 episode with the Ethiopian – has proved better than I remembered, sometimes much better. Even a weak episode is likely to contain a scene or subplot so terrifically unhinged that it makes you dizzy. A “C” effort from these guys is better than a latter-day “A+” effort from “Family Guy” or “The Simpsons.”

And an A+ — such as Season 10′s “Hell on Earth 2006,” wherein Satan decides to rent out the W Hotel in downtown South Park and throw himself a Sweet 16 party — is one for the ages. The Satan stuff (a continuation of the great hell sequences in their 1999 animated feature “Bigger, Longer and Uncut”) is a barbed skewering of skeezy reality show participants’ narcissism, and the audience’s rubbernecking smugness; that by itself might have been enough to sustain a half-hour episode. But Parker and Stone aren’t content to do just enough. They always want to give us more than we expected, to go further, to overwhelm with sheer imaginative excess. So they add a subplot with the boys summoning the spirit of murdered rapper Biggie Smalls by repeating his name into a mirror à la “Candyman,” and yet another subplot that finds mass murderers Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy being dispatched from the underworld to pick up a giant cake shaped like a Ferrari and deliver it to Satan’s bash. The “Three Murderers” become the supernatural version of the Three Stooges, squabbling among themselves, getting into wacky high jinks, and beating, stabbing and disemboweling themselves and various innocent bystanders. These bits are breathtaking for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that they explore the connection between comedy and cruelty incisively, but without becoming dry or self-regarding.

Hell on Earth 2006
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Another of Parker and Stone’s admirable qualities is their resistance to political pigeonholing. At some point, representatives of every American party or movement have tried to claim them as standard-bearers, only to get a thumb in the eye soon after. Are the “South Park” guys liberal? Conservative? Republican? Democrat? Libertarian? Pro-choice? Pro-life? Pro-capitalism? Pro-socialism? I suspect they’re mainly anti-complacency, and anti-bullshit.

I’ll never forget watching their 2004 political satire/puppet epic “Team America: World Police” with two different theatrical audiences — one in lower Manhattan, the other in suburban Dallas — and hearing both crowds chortle as Parker and Stone beat up on people or ideals they thought worthless, then squirm when the humorists started butchering their sacred cows.

Parker and Stone fire on targets and settle scores. But their work almost always has a structural integrity that makes it feel more substantial than a rant-of-the-week. For instance, the epic, three-part, 2007 “South Park” episode “Imaginationland” is one of the definitive statements on American pop culture in the age of terrorism and endless foreign war. But it’s not just a finger-wagging editorial about how to behave or not behave, or how to think about the relationship between the American imagination and the media that feeds it. It’s self-contained and self-supporting, a stand-alone piece that has internal logic as rigorous as that of any big budget fantasy film that takes itself seriously.

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Parker and Stone have done some of their sharpest and craziest work in the last couple of seasons — for the record, that’s seasons 14 and 15, at which point most TV series are either long-canceled or coasting on the memory of past triumphs. This season’s send-up of the royal wedding — a 12-tiered wedding cake of riffing — was one of the single greatest episodes the show has produced. The goof on the ceremony itself (substituting the “Canadian royal family” for the Brits, with Parker-as-cable-newscaster ending every other observation with a variation of the phrase, “as is tradition”) belongs on a short list of great self-contained surreal set pieces, alongside the “Hail, Freedonia” number from the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup” and the duel with the Black Knight in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (You can watch it below at the 1:30 mark.) “People in attendance now gently tossing Captain Crunch as the prince passes by, as is tradition … [The] Canadian prince now dipping his arms into the pudding, as is tradition … The princess will, of course, scrape the pudding off the prince’s arms, symbolizing their union … This is a glorious day for our country, and indeed the world.”

Last week’s half-season finale, “You’re Getting Old” — in which Stan’s 10th birthday afflicts him with cynicism, and prompts arguments between his parents about how one’s taste in pop culture almost inevitably hardens over time — might have made a great series closer if Parker and Stone had decided to hang it up now. But why would they when they’re producing work like this, which makes an unpretentious but true statement on generational tension, aging and nostalgia without turning self-important?

Parker and Stone have managed to seem as though they’re still a couple of wiseacres sitting in the back row of the classroom, goofing off and making trouble, when in fact they’ve spent the past decade-and-a-half winning Tonys and Emmy and Oscar nominations, and diligently assembling a body of work that should be the envy of any animator, stand-up comic or editorial cartoonist. It’s been a remarkable run. And as long as the show stays interesting — and it has; much more so than any of its long-running animated competitors — there’s no reason it shouldn’t continue.

Since I’ve managed to go a whole column without running a clip from “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” let’s close with one, shall we? All hail Satan. He can dream, too.

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More Matt Zoller Seitz.

Thursday, May 5, 2011 1:24 PM UTC

“South Park” eviscerates Tyler Perry and his fans

The Comedy Central cartoon takes on Madea and her self-loathing audience members

By Drew Grant

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Topics: Rachel Maddow, South Park, Television, Tyler Perry

Tyler Perry drops by "South Park."

Tyler Perry is something of a divisive figure. We’ve already seen Spike Lee decimate Perry in the pair’s ongoing feud, and it’s a well-documented fact that audiences of Tyler’s extremely popular Madea series don’t give a crap what Spike Lee thinks of the “coonery buffoonery.”

Last night, “South Park” gave Perry a long-awaited noogie when he showed up to accept at the school’s comedy awards show. (Called “The Kathy Griffin Awards” – how I wish those really existed.)

Perry continues to pop up throughout the episode, and Token Black (the only African-American “South Park” kid) continues to laugh before stopping himself in self-loathing. Even Obama isn’t exempt from the “South Park” stereotype of every black person loving Perry. “I know it’s embarrassing, but I simply can’t help myself,” says the president.

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Drew Grant is a staff writer for Salon. Follow her on Twitter at @videodrew. More Drew Grant.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011 1:04 PM UTC

“The Book of Mormon” leads Tony Award nominations

"South Park" creators lead the field for Broadway's biggest prize

By Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

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Topics: South Park, Theater, Tony Awards

In this theater publicity image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Andrew Rannells, center, performs with an ensemble cast in "The Book of Mormon" at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in New York. (AP Photo/Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Joan Marcus)(Credit: AP)

When the Broadway season began last year, a big brash musical about Spider-Man was supposed to muscle its way to multiple Tony Award nominations. Instead, a pair of goofy Mormons may be the ones to beat.

“The Book of Mormon” nabbed a leading 14 Tony Award nominations Tuesday morning, earning the profane musical nods for best musical, best book of a musical, best original score, two leading actor spots and two featured actor nominations.

The musical, about two Mormon missionaries who find more than they bargained for in Africa, was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of “South Park,” and Robert Lopez, co-creator of the Tony Award-winning musical “Avenue Q.” The trio teamed up with Casey Nicholaw, who co-directed with Parker and choreographed.

It has received 12 Drama Desk Award nominations, six Outer Critics Circle Award nominations and a Fred & Adele Astaire Award nomination, which recognizes excellence in dance. The musical is also grossing more than $1 million a week and is selling out — the place “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” was supposed to be before its implosion.

“The Scottsboro Boys,” a searing tale of 1930s injustice framed as a minstrel show, received 12 nominations, including best musical, best book of a musical, best original score as well as a leading actor and two featured actor nods.

Among others who earned nominations were Al Pacino, who played Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” Vanessa Redgrave in “Driving Miss Daisy” and Sutton Foster for “Anything Goes.”

“There’s absolutely nothing cookie-cutter about this season,” said Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the Broadway League, which jointly produces the Tony awards with the American Theatre Wing. “The theme is that there is no theme.”

Of the 42 new productions this season, there were 14 musicals — 12 new ones and two revivals — and 25 plays, a whopping 16 of them brand new. The last time there were 16 new plays produced in a single season was 1986-87.

It is also shaping up to be a lucrative time for Broadway, with total box-office grosses already at more than $987,057,484, or 3.6 percent more than the same time last year. Attendance this season is at over 11.4 million, up 3 percent from this time last year.

The awards will be handed out June 12 at a new location: the Beacon Theatre on the Upper West Side of Manhattan after producers lost their long-term space at Radio City Music Hall. It will be broadcast live by CBS.

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More Mark Kennedy.

Monday, May 2, 2011 12:01 PM UTC

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture

How the terrorist invaded our TV and film, from "Family Guy" to Morgan Spurlock

By Drew Grant

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Topics: Family Guy, Osama Bin Laden, South Park, Television

Five instances of Osama bin Laden hiding out in pop culture

Osama woos a camel on "South Park."

In the past decade, Osama bin Laden invaded our sense of safety, but also our pop culture. Here’s a look at the top five most memorable appearances by the slain al-Qaeda terrorist in TV and film, from the irreverent to the bizarre.

1. “Family Guy”: While American audiences found dread in bin Laden’s cryptic video messages, Seth MacFarlane found gag reel opportunity. The show’s famous FCC-baiting episode “PTV” depicted the terrorist in Afghanistan cracking up during a taping of his own terrifying video message. Botching the pronunciation of “Ramadan,” the cartoon bin Laden breaks character to say, “Did I just say Radaman? What is that? Yeah, maybe Dennis Radaman is going to punish you with his crazy hair.” Bin Laden made several appearances on “Family Guy” throughout the years, though many never made it to the screen.

2. “South Park”: The first post-9/11 episode from the Comedy Central show was titled “Osama Bin Laden has Farty Pants” and showed the four boys meeting their Afghani counterparts and getting captured by the head terrorist. In a typical “South Park-ian” twist, the episode was surprisingly pro-America, with Stan saying, “America may have some problems, but it’s our home, our team. If you don’t want to root for your team, then you should get the hell out of the stadium.”

3. “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?”: Morgan Spurlock’s satiric Middle East travel documentary didn’t quite capture the zeitgeist like “Super Size Me.” The 2008 film found Spurlock hunting down the terrorist while his wife was pregnant with their child — a reflection of just how futile the search for bin Laden seemed by then. But the film did poorly with critics, earning only a 38 percent approval rating over at Rotten Tomatoes.

4. “Tere Bin Laden”: Better known in the states as “that Bollywood comedy about Bin Laden,” the 2010 satire featured a reporter who lies about having an interview with Bin Laden, shades of Jack Kelley at USA Today.

5. “Postal”: This videogame-to-film adaptation was never going to be known as the best of its kind, and that’s a low bar to jump. However, the 2007 film based on a first-person-shooter game hit new lows when it depicted an Americanized Osama Bin Laden holding hands and skipping around with George W. Bush.