Monday, Apr 3, 2006 9:01 AM UTC2006-04-03T09:01:00Zl, M j, Y g:i A T
Exclusive Daily Download: “Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego,” the Dirty Projectors
I truly don’t know what to make of the Dirty Projector’s latest, “The Getty Address”: Lead Projector Dave Longstreth’s riveting, unmatchable voice is all over it, and the album is filled with astonishing bits of arrangement wizardry, splicing together wind septet, cello octet and women’s choir in a style that feels as new in its way as Björk’s “Vespertine” (if not quite as fully realized). But it’s also a sprawling, disjointed and nearly incomprehensible opera (key words include Hernán Cortés, Aztecs and Don Henley), and it would take a lot more than the few listens I’ve given it to begin to grasp what Longstreth is after. But individual songs, separated from this ungainly beast, can be enjoyed without reservation or confusion, none more so than “Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego,” in which a serene choir and a manic chorus of Longstreth’s vocodered voices do battle over a drum machine beat; in which Longstreth sings a lead vocal that is a bizarre and striking reinterpretation of R&B (it seems to me that with artists like Antony, Milosh, CocoRosie, David Thomas Broughton and Longstreth, R&B is providing the most fertile source material for interesting new vocal styles these days); and in which a host of incongruous elements join to make one of the most flat-out brilliant, innovative and exciting pieces of music I’ve heard in a good long while.
It’s official. The class war is waging and there’s no denying it – even “30 Rock” says so.
On Thursday night’s episode of the award-winning comedy, Jack Donaghy — the debonair, Reaganite CEO played by Alec Baldwin — confirmed what some of us have been thinking for a while: “We’re on the verge of a class war.”
Since the show’s first episode, Donaghy has embodied a parodic late-capitalist overlord. In previous episodes, however, the fulcrum of his political commentary fell strictly along party lines: he called Obama a communist from Kenya, described Bill Clinton as president “inter-Bush” and engaged in Reagan-themed role-play sex. The jokes last night broke this mold. His reference to class war was not just wheeling out the Republican canard that higher taxes constitute a war on successful people. Donaghy was talking about unrest on the streets of New York.
Baldwin’s character was mugged in a Manhattan construction tunnel and notes with shock that “my assailant was a middle-aged white man wearing a button-down shirt and Dockers.” His analysis: “The lower classes are getting cranky at the rich earning all their money away from them.” There’s no falling back on tacit racism or pointing blindly at gang violence; Jack — like many of his real life counterparts in the 1 percent – was forced to recognize a structural problem.
It looks like another strong example of the Occupy movement’s insertion into the public consciousness. If we needed reassurance of this, the episode ends with another character referencing “the 99 percent and the one percent.” And in a recent episode of “The Office,” Robert California, the CEO played by James Spader, complains that “the 1 percent are hurting too.” The language of Occupy is firmly lodged in the cultural mainstream.
But some caution before we celebrate the shifted zeitgeist. Occupy Wall Street began as an amorphous assemblage, a challenge to the status quo underpinned by radical politics and new social practices. What does it mean for this movement to sit so comfortably in the narrative of an NBC hit show, couched among popular movie references and soft jabs at wealthy New York lifestyles?
It’s a double-edged sword: the popular recognition nods to Occupy’s resonance, but also wields capitalism’s sharpest tool – recuperation. The risk is that Occupy stops providing a context of unrest and just blends in to the current cultural context as is. If Occupy actions and ideas don’t continue to surprise and challenge people, public awareness of the movement becomes no more potent than knowledge of the latest Ryan Gosling meme. “30 Rock’s” recognition of a coming insurrection might be a self-denying prophecy: what sort of political upheaval is pre-empted by a Thursday night comedy interspersed with commercials?
That said, a call for a nationwide general strike on May 1has come out of numerous Occupy groups — and the debates around this are as unwieldy, confusing and full of potential as were the conversations leading up to Occupy Wall Street’s public inception on September 17 in downtown Manhattan. No one knew what an occupation of Wall Street could look like or mean; same is true of May Day 2012. How will TV writers, or any writers for that matter, get their heads around this one?
In last night’s 30 Rock, Jack Donaghy warns, “there’s a war going on out there and you’re going to have to pick a side.” Gladly, there’s a side, enraged by the current context and weary of capitalist recuperation, which will never be comfortable as the punch line of an NBC comedy joke.
“Repulsion” is an emotional response that darts past the smug butterfly nets of intellect and rationale to expose my true and shameful feelings: Nothing turns my stomach like a stranger’s display of vulnerability. This reaction sickens me, in turn, and begins a cycle of nausea and self-loathing. I am repulsed, revulsed and repulsed again.
I say a stranger’s vulnerability and not a friend’s, because a loved one’s vulnerability is less of a risk to them, and so less of a burden to me, the witness. In the split moment that a person is vulnerable, or when we project a vulnerability onto them, we become responsible for their existence in the world. In seventh grade, the year-supreme of vulnerability, I overheard a girl in my class talking about her excitement over the year’s first dance. Her mother was taking her to get her hair done, she said, and to buy her a new dress. My skin prickled with discomfort. Didn’t she know the dance wasn’t a “get your hair done” kind of big deal? On the night of the dance, everyone was in a casual dress or jeans. She showed up with an elaborate updo and a ball gown. That moment has forever seared itself in my mind. I wanted to throw up and cry.
This repulsion toward vulnerability is really a resentment at being put in charge of a person who doesn’t know how to play the game of affecting invincibility. The main purpose of this game is pretending death will never come; the smaller goal is to pretend that we are all perfectly self-sufficient. This is why so many people were outraged at Lana del Rey’s “Saturday Night Live” performance: She stopped playing the game and forced us to bear witness to her crippling fear. This is also why people abuse the elderly and disabled and animals — their vulnerability is too obvious and provokes hostile resentment.
But here’s where it gets tricky: When we’re revolted by someone’s vulnerability, we split into two. We imagine that person’s vulnerability in the eyes of the rest of the world, and we ourselves are one of those other people, watching. We’re watching the interaction between ourselves and that person, simultaneously, from the inside and the outside. Our repulsion becomes sadness as we watch ourselves reject them — because if they are vulnerable, then we are, too.
Almost fainting or willing yourself into non-existence is a large part of the Tim and Eric viewing experience, and if you haven’t seen them before, you might have to take the grossness in doses. Start with the more easily digestible, and amazing, Paul Rudd “Celery Man” clip.
And here’s “Biology for Foreign Men,” on “the chubs”:
Chubs aside, the show’s true comic genius lies in its cultivation of moments of sincerity toward increasingly obsolete cultural norms: ideas of success, professionalism, sexuality, masculinity, entertainment or social interaction. It’s this sincerity that causes excruciating discomfort, for witnessing someone else’s belief in something we’ve decided is a joke, is pure vulnerability.
Look at the “petite feet” sketch below. Cowboys play pool. They hear a woman’s footsteps. The woman turns out to be a man with the footfall of a woman. The cowboys get onstage and sing a song. A song about a man with the feet of a woman. This is all funny on its own, but the sketch’s main brilliance is the “actor” playing the petite-footed man and the surrounding extras. They aren’t in on the joke, not in the same way that Tim and Eric are. This is true for most of the supporting actors and extras in the majority of Tim and Eric sketches. In their “Billion Dollar Movie,” a man delivers the duo new work uniforms. They dance around in their new clothes, while the man stands there … and continues to stand there long past the time we’ve expected the scene to cut. He looks uncomfortable, and in turn, I want to throw up.
Just reading ”bottom of the pile” makes me queasy.
These actors have either been given no direction, or purposefully incongruent direction. Their presence is awkward and forced, or often worst of all, they’re genuinely having fun, excited to participate in showbiz, not knowing that we’re laughing. It’s this not knowing, a lack of awareness of context that makes us so uncomfortable. Half of the whole is in on the joke — and half of the whole is not. The burden this imbalance places on us is why many people can’t stomach Tim and Eric, don’t understand them, or walked out of their Sundance screening. But this is exactly the reason why Tim and Eric are brilliant.
It’s important to mess with the spiritual structure of the world — the architecture of ideas, institutions, identities and even the structure of filmmaking. Only by doing this can the ludicrous nature of the game be revealed. Maybe one day we will overcome our repulsion toward weakness and admit our fragility on a daily basis. On that day Tim and Eric will no longer be unsettling, but until then, in a very twisted way, they’re helping us get there.
CNN is reporting that Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate who in the past decade has lavished $17 million on various Newt Gingrich political groups, will cut a $10 million check for Winning Our Future, the super PAC that’s aligned with the former Speaker, by the end of this month.
But the main beneficiary of his largesse will probably be a candidate other than Gingrich: Mitt Romney
Since the Florida primary, Adelson has been sending signals that he understands Gingrich is very unlikely to win the Republican nomination, that he is perfectly comfortable with Romney being the nominee, and that he doesn’t want to hurt Romney’s long-term prospects of beating President Obama.
There are also signs that Adelson, whose political involvement stems mainly from his hawkish views on Israel and the Middle East, isn’t enthusiastic about the man who has supplanted Gingrich as Romney’s chief GOP foe, Rick Santorum. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week:
Mr. Adelson doesn’t oppose Mr. Santorum, but he doesn’t share the former Pennsylvania senator’s socially conservative positions, including his strong antiabortion views, associates said. Mr. Santorum was one of only two Republicans who didn’t meet with Mr. Adelson in October around the time of a candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Viewed in this light, Adelson’s new $10 million gift could be seen as an indirect contribution to Romney. After all, Gingrich seems to run best among religious conservatives in South, where several states will vote in early and mid-March. Santorum, who has already demonstrated strength in the Midwest, badly needs to fold those southern voters into his campaign if he’s going to have a real shot at knocking off Romney. A revived, or partially revived, Gingrich could severely complicate this task.
By the same token, a revived Gingrich probably wouldn’t be much of a threat to Romney, who has had little trouble beating back the former speaker during his two previous surges. Gingrich, with all of his personal and ethical baggage and with all his influential enemies within the Republican Party, is a much easier target than Santorum for the Romney campaign.
The ideal scenario for Romney would be for Gingrich and Santorum to be equally viable in the upcoming contests, splitting up the conservative vote and allowing Romney an easy path to victory. But if he has to have one main conservative foe, he’ll be much better off if it’s Gingrich. To the extent Adelson’s $10 million makes either of these scenarios more likely, it’s a huge boost for Romney.
What may be most interesting here is the apparent ideological gulf between Gingrich’s actual voters and his chief financial backer. Gingrich has been pitching himself as the candidate for conservatives who want a true believer and who see Romney as the embodiment of a Republican establishment that doesn’t really share their values. But it turns out that the guy keeping the Gingrich campaign alive is precisely the kind of Republican they suspect Romney is.
That slyly funny Brit Ricky Gervais will get all the praise and smarty-pants chittter-chat this weekend for his admittedly insurrectionist new series “Life’s Too Short.”
But let’s raise a peach Schnapps and give a rebel yell to his HBO comedy companion Kenny Powers, that maniac in a mullet and a muscle shirt, and the new season of “Eastbound & Down.”
Actor, writer and Will Ferrell buddy Danny McBride so embodies the larger than life Powers that it would be hard to separate him from the horrible, self-centered former big-league pitcher forever trying to adjust to a new chapter in his life. He’s such a real character that an actual minor-league team, the Pensacola Pelicans, extended a contract to the fictional Kenny Powers two years ago.
As with so comedies built around unlikable central characters, it was tough to warm to someone so callous, dimwitted — and truly redneck. You got the feeling that some fans of the Confederate-flag waving, doobie-smoking Powers were just cheering on his antics, and longed to emulate him.
In the first season, getting hired as a gym coach at his old small-town North Carolina high school proved tough to take for a flamed-out former major leaguer. Last season, he took off for Mexico, to wallow in all manner of incorrect antics, cockfight cartels and drug mishaps. But back in the states for this third and final season, Powers has been signed by the (fake) minor-league Myrtle Beach Mermen and is living large once more.
For years, McBride and his comedy co-writer Jody Hill talked about moving the show to the so-called Redneck Riviera and now it’s happened: It’s the intersection of trashy tourist culture, chain restaurants, souped-up jet skis, tattoo shops, monster trucks, muscle T’s – in other words, a Kenny Powers paradise. He takes to it like a man with his boogie board, done up in Confederate flag and pot leaf design.
He’s even got a best friend that plays up their mutual jerkiness, Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live” fame, pitch-perfect as his catcher and pal Shane. The two cads who imagine themselves players (and wait outside the high schools for their girlfriends) egg each other on with extreme handshakes and exhortations (to the mystification of the rest of the locker room).
Powers’ one-time sweetheart April Buchanon (played by the remarkable Katy Mixon), scarcely seen in Season 2 after he ditched her at a gas station, is back in Shelby raising their now 1-year-old child. Kenny can barely bring himself to hold the baby.
Forced into fatherhood, the clueless Powers ferries the tot in a backpack that he’s cut holes in for breathing, straps him in shotgun in Shane’s big-wheel pickup (with weird DeLorean doors), uses a curtain affixed with duct tape as an all-day diaper and tries to figure out which kind of soda the kid likes best. At the beach, he digs a hole and covers him with a towel to keep him from getting sunburnt (or getting away while he body surfs).
His infant-handling skills go far beyond anything seen in “Raising Hope” or even “Raising Arizona.” There ought to be a disclaimer that no babies were hurt in the filming; after a while, you start to wonder.
And as they traverse this dangerous comedic edge every bit as skillfully as Gervais does with the little-people humor on “Life’s Too Short,” McBride celebrates the Southern-fried dirtball culture of flyover America like some “Red State Diaries”; it’s a veritable HBO “Hee-Haw.”
David Brooks had to write a column about something, and his deadline was fast approaching, so he glanced at the sports page and saw something about New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin, and he was like, yeah, that works.Next stop, most-emailed list!
Lin is a point guard who rocketed to near-instant celebrity when he came off the bench and had a series of monster games, dragging the Knicks to a .500 record while their two biggest superstars were sitting out games. His celebrity then became a “mania” in part because he’s Asian-American and a Harvard graduate, two rarities in the NBA. It also obviously doesn’t hurt that he plays for the dominant team in the nation’s biggest media market (also it’s the fallow period between football and baseball). That’s basically the whole deal, and if you’d like to learn more read Andrew Leonard’s account of the early social media explosion and Alexander Chee’s take on Lin and Asian-American identity. Whatever you do, don’t read David Brooks’ take on the Lin phenomenon, because David Brooks doesn’t understand basketball or social media or race or religion or American society in general.
Here is Brooks’ first paragraph:
Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports.
Here is the next sentence:
We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow.
Haha OK. This is the point where you hit “select all” and then “delete” and start your column again. Brooks must’ve started this thing like 10 minutes before his deadline. (No time to edit it!)
So, yes, a “religious person in professional sports” is like the least anomalous thing in the world, besides maybe “a racist comment under a YouTube video.” Or “an old white guy in political punditry.” (Also, minor note, but: I think there’s actually a decent number — enough to make Lin not particularly “anomalous” — of prominent Asians and Asian-Americans in professional sports, unless you’re only defining “Asian-American” as “of East Asian descent” and you’re only counting the “big four” leagues as “professional sports.” And you’re not really counting baseball.)
While Lin’s Christianity is obviously of great importance to Lin, it honestly has barely anything to do with what made him an instant superstar, except for when hacks want to compare him to Tim Tebow, which is dumb, because Lin is suddenly famous because he’s really good at his sport while Tebow’s whole shtick is succeeding despite being awful at being a quarterback. (If Lin had been a college superstar and high draft pick who was famously inept at the fundamentals of his position, the Tebow thing would be an accurate comparison, but Lin is in fact the opposite of that.)
Having contradicted his own faulty premise five sentences into his column, Brooks rambles on about how he has noticed that being good at sports and being pious is sort of contradictory, because being good at sports doesn’t involve much “humility” or “self-abnegation.” Then we have some boilerplate theological musings, about how sports is like modern society and how Abrahamic religious values contradict modern cultural values, especially regarding individual achievement. (YAWN.)
But even while grappling with the tension between religious values and contemporary cultural values, which is basically well within Brooks’ wheelhouse, he demonstrates a hilarious misunderstanding of sports, and what sports are “about,” because Mr. Brooks has been spending far too much time in his cloistered elite liberal media ivory tower munching on brie and arugula and not enough time among Real Americans in their “Sporting Taverns” watching “The Big Game” over a pint of mass-market domestic lager.
For many religious teachers, humility is the primary virtue. You achieve loftiness of spirit by performing the most menial services. (That’s why shepherds are perpetually becoming kings in the Bible.) You achieve your identity through self-effacement. You achieve strength by acknowledging your weaknesses. You lead most boldly when you consider yourself an instrument of a larger cause.
The “two moral universes” of religion and societal achievement may be “irreconcilable” — I am not a religious person and hence don’t care — but that has very little to do with Jeremy Lin, or basketball, or politics, which Brooks for some reason brings up in the last paragraph, because he wants to pretend this column has been about something other than extended free-associative riffing on the fact that a famous person is religious.
In conclusion, the New York Times should probably consider having someone take a quick glance at David Brooks’ columns before they publish them.
I truly don’t know what to make of the Dirty Projector’s latest, “The Getty Address”: Lead Projector Dave Longstreth’s riveting, unmatchable voice is all over it, and the album is filled with astonishing bits of arrangement wizardry, splicing together wind septet, cello octet and women’s choir in a style that feels as new in its way as Björk’s “Vespertine” (if not quite as fully realized). But it’s also a sprawling, disjointed and nearly incomprehensible opera (key words include Hernán Cortés, Aztecs and Don Henley), and it would take a lot more than the few listens I’ve given it to begin to grasp what Longstreth is after. But individual songs, separated from this ungainly beast, can be enjoyed without reservation or confusion, none more so than “Jolly Jolly Jolly Ego,” in which a serene choir and a manic chorus of Longstreth’s vocodered voices do battle over a drum machine beat; in which Longstreth sings a lead vocal that is a bizarre and striking reinterpretation of R&B (it seems to me that with artists like Antony, Milosh, CocoRosie, David Thomas Broughton and Longstreth, R&B is providing the most fertile source material for interesting new vocal styles these days); and in which a host of incongruous elements join to make one of the most flat-out brilliant, innovative and exciting pieces of music I’ve heard in a good long while.
Jack Donaghy fears the 99 percent 
Tim and Eric’s comedy of repulsion 
Who is Newt’s sugar daddy really helping? 
“Eastbound and Down” heads to the Redneck Riviera 
David Brooks: “I have heard of Jeremy Lin” 
Come back, “Colbert Report”! 
Anthony Shadid, the best of his generation 
Billionaire Romney donor uses threats to silence critics 
Secret papers turn up heat on global-warming deniers 
The enormous mistake Mitt can never admit 
