One of the rare things written for my university satirical rag that doesn’t inspire self-loathing shuddering upon rereading is a piece spotlighting the somewhat paint-by-numbers nature of Dennis Miller’s signature rants. The general reception at that time indicated that it (a) summed up his shtick accurately and (b) therefore ruined Dennis Miller for those who’d previously liked him. Fortunately, Dennis Miller himself has spent the ensuing decade and a half ruining Dennis Miller for those who’d previously liked him, thanks to an ill-advised stint commentating on Monday Night Football and a post-9/11 swing to the political right, where he was most recently spotted using his regular spot on The O’Reilly Factor to respond to Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. While this is as relevant as Miller gets these days, I’ll stretch the definition of the word in order to excuse reposting a slightly edited version of this piece on the grounds of topicality now.
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Hey, what’s up with that Dennis Miller guy?! We’ve all seen him now and then on his HBO show, shooting out obscure references and pop-culture allusions with the cocksure rapidity of a electric hot-air popcorn maker and thought, where’s my friggin’ biographical dictionary?!
Well, now you, too, can write and perform comedy routines just like Citizen Arcane himself! In pure, non-imitable Dennis style, set sail with the sentence, “Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but …” Now proceed to rant about whatever topic you like (anything politically tinged is a good choice), and remember to swear every so often to indicate (a) your righteous outrage about the topic at hand and (b) that you’re on HBO. (What a liar Dennis is! He has every intention of ranting — it’s his bread and butter!)
To help set the tone and direction of your routine, keep in mind that Dennis is a libertarian, so while liberal enough in some respects, he does lean a little to the conservative side, particularly on economic and crime-and-punishment issues. So, while it’s not a big deal for the President to have smoked a little pot, in a perfect world it’d have been Ross Perot hitting the hookah.
First things first: Similes are the cornerstone of a Dennis Miller comedy routine. You can’t get away with simply saying “Rush Limbaugh is narrow-minded.” You’ve got to inject it with a little pizzazz because if Miller didn’t use legions of similes he’d really just be talking, rather than delivering a comedy routine. Let’s look at the art of the elaborate comparison as perfected by Dennis, the man who claims to have put the “smiles” back into “similes”.*
Take the simple sentence “X is good-natured.” Do a little free association: What else is good-natured? The late Mother Teresa, people in hot tubs, people with Prozac prescriptions, and Leave It to Beaver TV mom June Cleaver come to mind easily enough as potentially good-natured entities. Now put your adjective into its comparative form, and cram in as many of your free-association examples as possible. The result should be a sentence along the lines of “X is more good-natured than a Prozac-popping June Cleaver hot-tubbing with Mother Teresa.”
Another oft-used form of simile takes the form “X is so A, he/she makes Y look like Z” (where A represents a particular quality, Y is a person associated with that quality, and Z is a person who embodies the very opposite of that quality). Let’s say that A represents dim-wittedness. Free association time again: Who’s noted for this quality? Col. Klink of Hogan’s Heroes is appropriate, and also wins points not only for being a pop-culture reference, but for being a classic sitcom reference. For even more Miller points, refer to Klink by the name of the actor who portrayed him: Werner Klemperer. Now, who’s an intelligent person? Albert Einstein comes to mind — too easily, in fact. He’s not an obscure enough reference. Werner von Braun is not only smart but in fact the proverbial rocket scientist, so he’ll do fine. Now, applying our formula, we have the following sentence: “X is so dim-witted, he makes Werner Klemperer look like Werner von Braun.” Perfect!
Remember to utilize double meanings of words when constructing similes. For example, let’s say we’re talking about high university entry standards. The word “high” means not only “stringent,” but also “of elevated altitude,” and “under the influence of drugs.” Thus, “university entry standards are higher than a Sherpa jury panel at the all-Nepal hash-brownie bake-off.”
Let’s go back to our Rush Limbaugh example. Through a little free association, we can say that “Rush Limbaugh’s mind is narrower than Calista Flockhart performing an Olympic balance beam routine.” Alternatively, “Rush Limbaugh’s mind is so narrow it makes the crack in the Liberty Bell look like the Gobi desert.” Not bad at all, though either example might have been improved by referring to Charles Blondin, the French tightrope-walker who made the earliest crossing of Niagara Falls in 1859.
This ability to free-associate is key to writing a Dennis Miller comedy routine. Don’t worry about being too obscure; the audience will laugh even if they don’t get the jokes, just to avoid looking stupid. However, if you feel your general knowledge of politics, history, pop culture, and other related fields isn’t up to the task, a few well-chosen reference books will help immeasurably; even Dennis can’t possibly be making this stuff up off the top of his head, after all. In fact, Dennis has a few stock personalities he uses as the butt of jokes time and again when he gets stuck. Aside from the aforementioned obese, conservative political commentator/demagogue Rush Limbaugh, these include the following:
- Luciano Pavarotti, fat Italian tenor
- Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole, elderly American politicians
- Billy Idol, pop musician known for sexual and narcotic excesses
- Anna Nicole Smith, curvaceous, top-heavy model, bimbo, and gold-digger
- Dennis Rodman, flamboyant, gender-bending basketball rebounding champ noted for unusual hair colour
These are your crutches, direct to you from Dennis. Use them in good health.
Another thing to remember is to adapt proper nouns as verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions whenever possible. In fact, Miller’s addiction to overusing proper nouns is positively Douglas Coupland-esque.
Again, an ability to free-associate helps. If someone is stomping around in his Doc Martens in a manner reminiscent of Boris Karloff’s portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster, just say he’s Karloffing around. (But note that it’s never Boris Karloffing; Miller’s penchant for deliberate obscurity puts him on a first-name basis with most references — or last-name basis, as the case may be).
If something is big, it’s K2-sized (Note that it’s not Everest-sized, however; deliberate obscurity precludes the most obvious reference in favour of the runner-up).
Usage of metaphor helps greatly. If you’re referring to a “never ending parade” of something — say, accusations against the president — it’s a Möbius strip of accusations. (Miller may not like foreigners, per se, but he does like foreign words — the more obscure, the better. If you’re looking for plain English, you’ve come to the wrong place.)
To build a sense of camaraderie between yourself and your audience during your rant, periodically call them “folks,” “my friends,” or “my fellow Americans.” Hit the unfortunate targets of your ranting with a few appropriate nicknames; if you’re talking about hillbillies, for example, try “Jethro.” Occasionally throw in “Babe” or “Chi-chi”. This is just to be smug and cutesy, much like Miller’s patented smirk, preening hair-flip, and head-waggle.
At this point, you’ve got the basic rules down, so just repeat until you run out of material for your Miller pastiche, or until you’ve succeeded in getting Ross Perot elected president — whichever comes first. When you’re ready to wind up your rant, just hit ‘em with your old catchphrase: “Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.” You’re done! It’s that easy!
Now, let’s test all this out and see what Dennis might think of, say, Québec separatists (not much, one assumes, given his generally low opinion of the French):
Now I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but it’s obvious that this country is cleaving apart faster than Jon Bon Jovi’s split ends during the great hair conditioner embargo of ‘88. Before the national-unity SWAT team brings me down, my friends, I’m gonna have to say that it’s high time la belle province and the R-O-C go see Wapner and get a Burt-and-Loni-style divorce, because there’s a rift in this nation like the Khyber Pass.
René Lévesque, an über-chainsmoker who made Mount St. Helen’s look like a Cub Scout campfire, blows onto the scene in ‘70 with this sovereignty association idea, like a freshman who wants to move into his own bachelor pad but still score a care package from his parents every month. Can’t blame him, folks. Ever since, Québec has been gorging itself like Belushi in the cafeteria line in Animal House and spitting Bud the Spud back in our face, and we’ve been too scared shitless to do anything about it.
As long as the Québécois put on this show of feeling less welcome in Canada than Dennis Rodman at a Ku Klux Klan rally, they get to live off the fat of the rest of the land like Pavarotti suckling the rotisserie chicken display at an abandoned A&P deli counter.
Jean Charest, a guy who makes Harpo Marx look like Montgomery Clift, got pushed through the doors into the Sadie Hawkins dance of Québec politics and had about as much success as Edgar Winter dressed as Louis XIV at the Coppertone girl auditions. So, my fellow Canadians, now Lucien Bouchard’s Long-John-Silvering his way back into the Premier’s office, and we get the Kafka-esque status quo of a so-called “democratic” separatist government that keeps vowing to hold a sovereignty referendum only if they know they can win it.
I say let ‘em go if they want to. Just drop your cash-box keys and your passport in the dish by the front door, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, s’il vous plait. Go ahead and put pictures of Guy Lafleur, Jean Beliveau, and the rest of the Montreal Canadiens on your new stamps and money, because you won’t be using ours any more, François. Or the name “Canadiens,” for that matter, and if you don’t like it then we’ll be paratrooping in the Mountie from Due South and the rest of the Musical Riding Disney-istas to pen you up behind chain-link fences like Swayze’s dad at the drive-in theatre in Red Dawn.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Well, there you go! Writing a Dennis Miller-style comedy routine is so easy it makes playing tic-tac-toe look like breaking the Enigma code! Of course, that’s just my opinion … yadda, yadda, yadda.
* Note: Dennis Miller has never, to the author’s knowledge, actually made any such claim. He does, however, claim to have had sex with a fish (Ranting Again, p. 2.).
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Goddam
The reason that it’s been quiet around here lately is that I’ve been working on a book. And I’m very excited to report that I’m almost finished reading it. If anybody else here has read The Catcher in the Rye, I’m looking forward to discussing it.
Speaking of reclusive writers (and speaking as a reclusive writer), the passing of J.D. Salinger isn’t the most tragic news I’ve heard all day. That would have to be my girlfriend’s report of one of her kindergarten students wandering around the classroom while clutching an infected ear, whimpering, and dragging a deflated helium balloon behind him on a string. (And it was his birthday!)
Still, Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most influential books ever written for a teenage audience, second only to Gordon Korman’s This Can’t Be Happening at Macdonald Hall, so his loss is keenly felt. The real tragedy of his death, as my friend Matt noted on Facebook, is that J.D. Fortune continues to live. Of course, I’m pretty sure that, as Michael Hutchence’s replacement as INXS singer, J.D. Fortune is contractually obligated to eventually hang himself with his belt in a hotel room, so that situation will resolve itself.
Immediate reactions to Salinger’s death ranged from fears that misunderstood teenagers everywhere who hadn’t even read The Catcher in the Rye would get morose about it to hopes that the news would inspire some of those teenagers to actually read the book. More likely, however, now that Salinger is no longer alive to block all film adaptations of his work, all these morose, misunderstood teenagers will likely simply watch the upcoming blockbuster major motion picture version of The Catcher in the Rye, starring mopey Twilight vampire Robert Pattinson as Holden Caulfield.
Face it — it’s a lock to happen. And of all possible news involving J.D. Salinger — a hypochondriac who experimented variously with Scientology, Christian Science, and drinking his own urine; a fifty-three-year-old who wooed an 18-year-old writer for Seventeen magazine by mail; a Jew who married an alleged former Nazi party official — I think that would be the most shudder-inducing.
Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up. I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something. Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 20
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Incidentally, the timing of Salinger’s death is interesting to me in that it happened on the the same day on which I stumbled across an old friend on Facebook at whose home I first read The Catcher in the Rye in a single sitting while waiting for my turn to play Sid Meier’s Pirates!
And speaking of friends, Facebook, and piracy, quotation is the gentleman’s plagiarism.* If I begin a sentence with “As Milton Berle used to say …” I might get the laugh, but who actually did the hard work? Probably one of Fred Allen, Bob Hope, George Burns, or Jack Benny, the last of whom the unrepentant Berle once quipped, “I listened to him on the radio last night; he was so funny, I dropped my pad and pencil.”
So, let me repay Matt back for the use of his best J.D. Salinger gag by linking you to the J.D. Salinger parody he recently wrote after reading The Catcher in the Rye for the first time, as well as the amazing shitstorm in the comments. After all, if you liked Matt’s joke, why not read more? And if you hated it, why not give him hell?
*That said: Talent borrows, genius steals.**
** Which I lifted from Morrissey.***
*** Who swiped it from Oscar Wilde in the first place.
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And Here’s the Kicker
If you’re looking for a good bathroom book, I enthusiastically endorse Mike Sacks’s And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on Their Craft — first, because the short interviews are well-suited to quick and easy digestion, and second, because you may occasionally lose control of your bowels with merriment. Perhaps my favorite part comes from “Deep Thoughts” author Jack Handey, regarding longtime Saturday Night Live head writer Jim Downey:
Here’s an example of how Jim’s mind works: He once went to one of those places in Times Square where you can choose your own headline and have it printed on the front page of a fake newspaper. So Jim had one made up to read something like CITY COUNCIL TABLES REZONING RESOLUTION.
The guy at the fake-newspaper shop was explaining to him, “No, no, you want it to say something like JACK’S BIRTHDAY CANDLES START FOREST FIRE.”
Jim remained unconvinced.
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The Banter Report
Location
A lazy Saturday morning, drinking coffee in bed.
Banter
Girlfriend [entering the room and tossing me a clementine]: Here. Don’t get it on my nice white sheets.
Me: First, these aren’t white sheets — this is a white duvet cover. Second, you already threw the orange on the white duvet cover. And third, this isn’t an orange — this is a clementine.
Girlfriend: What? I never called it an orange. You did.
Me: Yes, but you thought it was an orange.
Girlfriend: … Yes, I did.
Outcome
Disagreement erupts when I subsequently peel the fruit’s rind into the shape of what she insists looks like an elephant’s ears and trunk and I believe more closely resembles an adult human male’s genitals, as was my intention.
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Location
The local pub.
Banter
Me: Is the pork sandwich pulled pork?
Waitress: No, it’s more like … well, it’s like a McRib.
Me: Ah, the McRib — the Disney classic of fast food. You know how every so often they put out Cinderella on DVD for a limited time only, and then it goes back in the Disney Vault? Same with the McRib — they put it back on the menu every few years and then take it away again before the novelty wears off.
Waitress: Well, maybe it just takes several years to raise the special animal the McRib comes from.
Me: Ah, yes — the McCow.
Outcome
Waitress chuckles politely. I subsequently realize, over a steak sandwich, that the special animal from which the McRib is made should theoretically actually be the McPig.
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Location
In a group at a restaurant, where I notice that a friend who recently went on a date with an Irish guy named Finn is suddenly drinking a Guinness instead of her customary Diet Coke.
Banter
Me: Hey, isn’t that a Guinness?
Girl who recently dated guy named Finn: Ha. Yeah, well, you know.
Me: That’s a Finnish beer, isn’t it?
Girl who recently dated guy named Finn: What? No, it’s Irish. It’s like the most famous Irish beer there is.
Me: I thought a lot of Finns drank Guinness.
Girl who recently dated guy named Finn: Do they? I didn’t know that.
Me: I can think of at least one Finn who probably drinks Guinness.
Girl who recently dated guy named Finn: Oh yeah? Who’s that?
Me: I think we both know at least one Finn who drinks Guinness.
Bewildered girl who recently dated guy named Finn: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Outcome
Banter failed.
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The 10 Most Dead People of 2009
Among the notable deaths in 2009: the TV careers of both Jon Gosselin and Jeff Dunham, the scrupulously maintained virginity of Kevin Jonas, and the carefully constructed public heterosexual identity of Taylor Lautner. A lot of actual people died this year as well when the H1N1 virus became the most popular Mexican export since tacos. None of these were celebrities. But many celebrities did die of other causes, and as they will be more widely mourned than the average Joe, it’s fair to say they’re more dead. But who is the most dead? Read on.
10. Billy Mays
Before cocaine use was fingered as a contributor to his heart failure, confusion surrounded the death of TV pitchman Billy Mays. At first it was thought that he had incurred a fatal head injury during a bumpy airplane landing. But could it have been lethal beard poisoning via a shoe polish overdose? Was he slain by rival pitchman Vince “ShamWow!” Shlomi, who had already beaten up a hooker earlier in the year and perhaps acquired a taste for blood (we know Vince at least tasted blood; he beat her up when she bit his tongue and wouldn’t let go). In retrospect, of course Billy Mays was coked up. No one could shout like that without performance-enhancing drugs. He was like the Barry Bonds of yelling. But the shouting finally stopped, with TV remote mute-button manufacturers suddenly worrying about the future of their industry and with Bonds’ godfather and fellow baseball legend Willie Mays surely receiving hundreds of concerned phone calls from people slightly mishearing the news.
9. Ted Kennedy
2009 was a bad year to be a cast member of 1970s British sitcom Are You Being Served? (see Mollie Sugden and Wendy Richard), an ex-presidential cat (see Socks Clinton and India “Willie” Bush), or the world’s oldest member of either sex (see Henry Allingham and Gertrude Baines), though the clock is pretty much always ticking for people in that last category. It was also the worst year since 1977 to be a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd (see keyboardist Billy Powell and bassist Ean Evans). But anyone on the Wikipedia disambiguation page for “Ted Kennedy” in August 2009 must have been crapping himself: U.S. senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy and Toronto Maple Leafs hockey great Theodore “Teeder” Kennedy” died within two weeks. So which is the greater Dead Kennedy? Well, on five occasions, one of them won the Stanley Cup, a greater prize than even the President’s Trophy awarded to the team with the highest regular-season standing. The other never even won the U.S. presidency once. Advantage: Teeder.
8. David Carradine
Many fighting men went down for the count in 2009, including Brazilian jiu-jitsu founder Hélio Gracie and former heavyweight boxing champion Ingemar Johansson. And, as usual, several names were crossed off the Alive Wrestlers list, including Captain Lou Albano, Cousin Junior, Andrew “Test” Martin, “The Golden Greek” John Tolos, “Playboy” Buddy Rose, Umaga, “Tiger Mask II” Mitsuharu Misawa, Billy “Red” Lyons, Steve Doll, La Parkita, El Espectrito Jr, Waldo Von Erich, and lastly and most appropriately, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams. But most tragic of all is that martial artist and Kung Fu actor David Carradine no longer walks the Earth. In fact, he and INXS singer Michael Hutchence are very possibly practicing the rear naked choke on each other in heaven right now. You’ve heard every possible Kill Bill pun by now, so let’s just note that if the Grim Reaper is taking out washed-up actors who owe their career revival to Quentin Tarantino, his aim was surely off when he took Jett Travolta rather than his famous father, who, with the release of Old Dogs, has long-squandered the goodwill earned with Pulp Fiction.
7. Ricardo Montalbán
We bid good riddance to spree killers such as Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad and Manson family member Susan Atkins. Of course, neither is responsible for as many deaths as Vietnam War architect Robert McNamara or Dungeons & Dragons co-creator David Arneson, the latter of whom has the blood of untold numbers of orcs and goblins on his hands. But even they pale next to the genetically engineered tyrant Khan Noonian Singh, who caused an estimated 30 million deaths worldwide during the Eugenics Wars of the late 1990s (an event understandably glossed over in the VH1 series I Love the ‘90s). “From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!” hissed Khan—aka Ricardo Montalbán—at the ending of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “We’ll see about that,” might be the answer of Mephistopheles, Montalbán’s occasional guest and adversary on the long-running TV series Fantasy Island. As we lay Ricardo Montalbán to rest in a coffin lined with soft Corinthian leather, we cannot predict which will prevail in their eternal struggle. We can say only this: Of all the souls we’ve ever encountered, his was the most … superhuman.
6. Bea Arthur
2009 saw the passing of not only the famous Taco Bell Chihuahua but also Chanel, a dachshund recognized as the world’s oldest dog, and Gibson, a Great Dane recognized as the world’s tallest dog. Of course, the title of world’s oldest and tallest dog was long held by Bea Arthur. Though best-remembered by younger audiences as the acid-tongued Dorothy of The Golden Girls, she came to fame as the titular character of the sitcom Maude and as the menacing Balok puppet in the Star Trek episode “The Corbomite Maneuver”. (Compare this with her Golden Girls neighbor Richard Mulligan, who started out as Sam the Eagle on The Muppet Show.) She is worst-remembered for the long-suppressed Star Wars Holiday Special, in which she performed a song-and-dance routine in the Mos Eisley cantina, standing out among Wookiees, Rodians, and Aqualish as perhaps the most imposing creature in that wretched hive of scum and villainy. So intimidating was the broad-shouldered Arthur, in fact, that she continues to inspire fear from beyond the grave, so let it also be noted here that she was also a tireless advocate for animal rights, a gay icon, and completely awesome.
5. Farrah Fawcett
It’s ironic that Marilyn Chambers and Marilyn French died within a month of each other, considering that it’s hard to tell from their names which was the adult-film star and which was the feminist writer. Certainly, neither sounds so much like an adult-film star as Oral Roberts, who was called home by God this year, fulfilling a longstanding threat by the Heavenly Father. But no one on this list was responsible for more boners than ‘70s sex symbol Farrah Fawcett (with the possible exception of Bea Arthur, but it’s hardly fair to count Bea’s own penis). Men and boys everywhere dreamed of going to bed with Farrah and would have counted the experience worthwhile even if they awoke to find themselves doused with gasoline and set aflame (as happened to Farrah’s abusive husband in the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed). That famous image of those impossibly white teeth, blow-dried hair, and perky nipples was worshipped as a religious icon in countless dorm rooms. Now that the one-time Charlie’s Angel has become the real article, she’s seen it for herself: God personally completely wallpapered the walls of heaven with that poster in 1976, and He isn’t taking it down.
4. John Hughes
The children of the next decade won’t grow up with Soupy Sales, who made pie throwing an art form and influenced a generation of fans as diverse as Pee-wee Herman and Howard Stern. Nor will they know Les Lye, who as a key cast member of You Can’t Do That on Television was responsible for the spilling of more gooey substances than even the late Marilyn Chambers. In 2009, copyright terms of life plus 70 years began ticking on both senior executive Roy E. Disney and Mouseketeer Cheryl Holdridge. Alaina Reed Hall, known as Sesame Street’s Olivia, joined Mr. Hooper after a struggle with breast cancer (which is at least easier to explain to Big Bird than how David suffered a heart attack during a struggle with psychiatric hospital staff). But the greatest loss is the premature passing of John Hughes, who spoke to older children with a series of teen comedies and created a film franchise for younger ones by essentially remaking Straw Dogs as a slapstick comedy, recasting Macaulay Culkin in the Dustin Hoffman role. The sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wasteoids, dweebies, dickheads—they all adored John Hughes. He was a righteous dude. Don’t you forget about him.
3. Brittany Murphy
The world of letters lost many giants this year. John Updike up and died. It was ashes to ashes for Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt. Sci-fi writer Philip José Farmer bought the farm. And grammarian William Safire is dead—or has died; either expression is used. Yet, none of these wordsmiths ever turned a phrase quite like the daffy starlet Brittany Murphy did several years before her heartbreakingly young death regarding her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher’s May-December relationship with Demi Moore: “I suppose the crux of their relationship is that to him, age doesn’t matter and to her, size doesn’t matter.” Somewhere at this moment, Dorothy Parker is high-fiving Brittany for that quip. And knowing those two, they’re sitting round a table and getting drunk as hell right now.
2. Ed McMahon
As the end of this list approaches, several remaining names deserve recognition. There’s broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite, America’s most trusted man and discoverer of the substance bearing his name. There’s radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, from whom we finally heard the rest of his story. There’s even Equalizer star Edward Woodward, now neutralized. Most obviously, there’s Patrick Swayze, People Magazine’s 2009 Sexiest Man Not Alive, who at this very moment is learning to use his ghost powers from (and being chased off a subway train by) the late Vincent Schiavelli. But this is the penultimate slot on the list, and only one name can fall second-last: Ed McMahon, the eternal second banana. A one-time pitchman of products on the boardwalk of Atlantic City—just as Billy Mays once was—McMahon represents where Mays might have gone had he stuck to OxiClean rather than oxycodone. “The Human Laugh Track” was a longtime talk-show foil for Johnny Carson and, for seven bewildering episodes in 2004, alien puppet Alf. He worked alongside Dick Clark on TV’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes, Jerry Lewis on his annual telethon, and MC Hammer in a Cash4Gold commercial aired during Super Bowl XLIII. With due respect to the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Chanel the dachshund, and Gibson the Great Dane, Ed McMahon was man’s best friend.
1. Michael Jackson
Film score writer Maurice Jarre wasn’t the only one decomposing this year. Brill Building songwriter Ellie Greenwich was going to the chapel and was gonna get buried. There was Les Paul (not to be confused with Les Lye), who invented the famous Gibson Les Paul electric guitar (which has nothing to do with also-deceased Laugh-In actor Henry Gibson). Seeds singer Sky Saxon and Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton are probably forming a gloriously loud garage band in heaven right now, and former Beatles and Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein is probably trying to figure out how to rip them off. Also gone: Jay Bennett, Vic Chesnutt, Jim Carroll, Dan Seals, Stephen Gately, and DJ OD—whoops, DJ AM. And if Peter and Paul had a hammer, they’d have to nail shut Mary’s coffin. But perhaps the biggest loss was that of Wham! singer George Michael. Oops, no—it was actually the host of the sports highlight TV program The George Michael Sports Machine who died. (This is as confusing as learning that Björn Borg the swimmer died this year rather than the five-time Wimbledon champion, or that the late Claude Lévi-Strauss was an anthropologist, not the inventor of blue jeans.) In that case, you might have heard something about the passing of Michael Jackson. Enough has been said about this, so let’s simply raise a glass of Jesus juice to him this New Year’s Eve. And if, at the stroke of midnight, the King of Pop should descend to earth in an alien spacecraft and emerge to sing and dance and put on the comeback performance of a lifetime in front of an amazed and delighted Times Square crowd … well, let’s say we wouldn’t put it past the ultimate showman.
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X-mas VII
Every year when I was a child, we would put up our Christmas tree on the weekend closest to December 15. As I mentioned around this time last year, my girlfriend has different ideas about when a Christmas tree should go up. For her, just after Hallowe’en is about the right time. I put my foot down on this and insisted that ours go up no sooner than American Thanksgiving. We Canadians might not wait until then to gorge on turkey, but we do increasingly observe Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season.
In the end, I was deceived into erecting the tree about a week early, sometime around that other day of thanks, World Toilet Day. But with that job long out of the way and the ides of December nearly here, this lazy Sunday is a good time to upload my annual Christmas mix instead. As usual, it clocks in at just under 80 minutes, which makes it ideal for burning to a CD. Here’s the playlist:
- Band of Horses – “The First Song”
- The Pearlfishers – “Snowboardin’”
- Brian Wilson – “Christmasey”
- Remington Super 60 – Here Comes Christmas
- Barenaked Ladies – “Do They Know Its Christmas”
- Reverend Horton Heat – “Pretty Paper”
- Jill Sobule – “Merry Christmas from the Family”
- Everything But the Girl – “25th December”
- Fireflies – “X-mas Song”
- Ivy – “I Hate December”
- Daniel Martin Moore – “Christmas Time Is Here”
- Rosie Thomas – “Christmas Don’t Be Late”
- Ryan Adams – “Hey Parker, It’s Christmas”
- My Morning Jacket – “Christmas Time Is Here Again (Bring Out the Joy!)”
- Departure Lounge – “Christmas Downer”
- Glasvegas – “Cruel Moon”
- Summer Cats – “Plastic Christmas Trees”
- Hello Saferide – “Ipod X-mas”
- The Features – “The New Xmas Wishbook”
- Nellie McKay – “A Christmas Dirge”
- Russell deCarle – “Blues for Christmas”
- Lily Frost – “I Don’t Need Presents”
Download it here, if you like. Or don’t. Really, I’m just trying to give a little something back to the world after sneaking a DVD of Robin Williams’ RV into an unattended shopping cart at the grocery store earlier and ruining the day of whoever will have to buy and watch it. That wasn’t really in the spirit of the holiday season.
* * *
As before, the download links to my previous holiday mixes (detailed here, here, here, and here) are still active, you lucky people.
X-mas I (2003)
X-mas II (2004)
X-mas III (2005)
X-mas IV (2006)
X-mas V (2007)
X-mas VI (2008)
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Here are some links
After weeks of chronic headaches, I couldn’t help noticing yesterday that the right half of my face had swelled up like half a pufferfish, which theoretically should scare off half of all potential predators, but instead landed me in the emergency room last night. It looks like an abscessed molar is to blame, but I figured I’d make sure it wasn’t salivary gland cancer, as I don’t want to end up like Roger Ebert (that is, like a Phantom of the Opera lookalike, not like an internationally respected film critic).
Five hours in the emergency room were not for naught, however. For one thing, it gave me the chance to endlessly recycle one of my favorite dumb jokes: a deliberate misquoting of a scene from Rushmore. (“I like your nurse’s uniform, guy.” “These are ER scrubs.” “E are they?”) And for another, I would never have otherwise overheard a thuggish, gangsta-looking, baggy-panted guy with a bandaged finger griping, “Man, I could be home watching Grey’s Anatomy!”
Anyway, that’s why I haven’t written much in the last few days, and it’s why I’m not writing now. Instead, I pass along for your perusal this collection of links:
- In addition to the pains in my head that have made it hard for me to live but I go on anyway (like Phil from the warehouse), my ability to communicate has been limited by Rogers Cable’s decision to deny internet and phone service to me and a number of other customers yesterday. The silver lining to this not-atypical occurrence is that it gives me a chance to catch up on reading the contents of many of the dozens of open tabs that continually cause my Firefox to crash. Noteworthy among my recent long-form internet reading (and you’ll see that I really do apparently read men’s magazines for the articles) are the Johnny Carson Playboy interview, Matt Latimer’s account in GQ of working as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and an Esquire story about a horrific chimpanzee attack, which makes me feel a little better about my own current facial disfigurement.
- Speaking of things that have been so hideously destroyed as to be unrecognizable as their former selves, there’s National Lampoon. Like Mad, National Lampoon was once a great satirical magazine and is now a brand in bad shape, but I’ve talked about that before. Here now is National Lampoon’s 1971 satire of Mad.
- And speaking of masterful takedowns, KTLA anchor Sam Rubin’s furious calling out of Perez Hilton is easily my favorite Perez Hilton–related headline since will.i.am’s manager briefly made me respect the Black-Eyed Peas after punching out the internationally reviled man-child. (My least favorite Perez Hilton–related headlines, incidentally, are written by Perez Hilton himself and involve multiple exclamation marks. Despite their shared fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been disgusted with Hilton’s abuse of punctuation.)
- Shortly after my girlfriend ran across this Paste magazine spread chronicling the evolution of the hipster, Mike “The Math Librarian” Martelle (recently named as having the top nickname among MMA fighters you’ve never heard of) sent along this story about a mysterious spiral of blue light appearing in the skies above Norway, with the comment “Hopefully an opening to another world where hipsters don’t exist.” This possible portal may or may not have been caused by the malfunctioning of the Large Hadron Collider, which the Math Librarian has strenuously opposed ever since initially misreading its name as “Large Hardon Collider”.
- And finally, in other correspondent news, your favorite Internet humourist Jay Pinkerton alerted me to a list of the 85 best Morrissey songs that’s worth reading for, in the words of The Stranger, “the wealth of hilarious fake Morrissey song titles accumulating in the comments.” What would be really great is if Morrissey had the sense of humour to co-opt any of these made-up titles and actually write songs called “I Have Been Peeved” and “Catherine, I Dislike You” for his next album. (Jay submits “These Mints are Only Vaguely Minty” and “Barbara, I’m Merely Flexing” to the canon. I answer with “Reports of My Death Have Been Unfortunately Exaggerated”.) Also worth noting is the strange WWE comic-book spread Jay forwarded without comment. I don’t even know what to make of it except that Matt Hardy is clearly nowhere near that jacked. In fact, the inability of the artist to provide realistic depictions of the WWE superstars is probably the reason the writer has them refer to each other by name—usually in boldface—in each word balloon, just so the reader can piece together who’s involved in the story. Thanks, Jay Pinkerton, for the link.
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Eulogy for Umaga
“When the death of Umaga was announced to us yesterday morning, there struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twenty-first-century life in many lands, and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them. A new sense of values took, for the time being, possession of human minds, and mortal existence presented itself to so many at the same moment in its serenity and in its sorrow, in its splendour and in its pain, in its fortitude and in its suffering.
“The Samoan Bulldozer was greatly loved by all. He was respected as a Samoan and as a bulldozer far beyond the many realms over which he bulldozed. The simple dignity of his life, his manly virtues, his sense of duty, his gay charm and savage nature, his example as a son and a brother and a cousin in the Anoa’i wrestling family, his courage in hair-versus-hair, triple-threat, or falls-count-anywhere matches — all these were aspects of his character which won the glint of admiration, now here, now there, from the innumerable eyes whose gaze falls upon World Wrestling Entertainment.
“We thought of him as Vince McMahon’s representative in the “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23, bravely facing off against Donald Trump’s champion, Bobby Lashley. We thought of him when calmly, without ambition, or want of self-confidence, he assumed the heavy burden of the Intercontinental Championship and succeeded “The Rainbow Warrior” Jeff Hardy. We thought of him, so faithful in his study and discharge of the orders of his manager and handler, Armando Alejandro Estrada; so strong in his devotion to the enduring honour of Samoa; so self-restrained in his squashing of jobbers; so uplifted above the petty squabbling over title belts, yet so attentive to it; so wise and shrewd in choosing between the Samoan drop or the diving headbutt.
“All this we saw and admired. His conduct in the ring may well be a model and a guide to Samoans and other savage island grapplers throughout the South Pacific today and also in future generations. The last few months of Umaga’s life, with all the pain and physical stresses that he endured — his release from World Wrestling Entertainment for violation of its Wellness Policy due to his purchase of the growth hormone somatropin from an online pharmacy, and Umaga all the time cheerful and undaunted, undisturbed and even unaffected in spirit — these have made a profound and an enduring impression and should be a help to all.
“He was sustained not only by his natural buoyancy, but by the sincerity of his complex polytheistic faith and ancestor worship. During these last months, the Samoan Bulldozer walked with Auraka, the all-devouring Polynesian god of death as if he were a companion, an acquaintance whom he recognized and did not fear. In the end, death came as a friend, and after a happy wrestling tour with Hulk Hogan in Australia, and after a good-night to those who loved him best, he fell asleep watching television, suffered a heart attack, and bled profusely from his nose, as every man or woman who strives to fear the creator god Tagaloa and nothing else in the world may hope to do.
“From his debut on the April 3, 2006 episode of Raw to the New Year’s Revolution pay-per-view in January 2007, Umaga was undefeated. Never at any moment in all the perplexities at home and abroad, in public or in private, in house shows or televised matches, was Umaga ever pinned or made to submit. Well does he deserve the farewell salute of all World Wrestling Entertainment superstars and fans.
“It is at this time that our compassion and sympathy go out to his brothers, the Tonga Kid and Rikishi; to his cousins, the Headshrinkers; and to Rosey, his partner in the tag team 3-Minute Warning. Our hearts go out tonight to his uncles by blood, Afa and Sika, the Wild Samoans, and to his uncle by marriage, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who sustained Umaga through all his toils and problems, and taught him the strategies of the Samoan strap match, the art of eating raw fish during interview segments, and the cultural significance of tribal facial tattooing. May they be granted strength to bear their sorrow.
“To Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, another of whose cousins is dead — former WWF champion Yokozuna having perished shortly after October 1999’s Heroes of Wrestling pay-per-view — there belongs the consolation of seeing how well Umaga carried on his legacy and bravely endured the heinous sledgehammer attacks of his mortal foe, Triple H.
“Now we must leave the treasures of the past and turn to the future. Famous have been the reigns of terror of the wildmen of Samoa. Some of the greatest periods in wrestling history have unfolded under their wildness. Now that we have Jimmy Uso now signed to a WWE developmental contract, our thoughts are carried back nearly a decade to his father, Rikishi, who, in many ways, embodied and inspired the grandeur and genius of the WWF’s Attitude era. Jimmy Uso has already been acclaimed as first of a new generation of the Anoa’i family legacy.
“Tomorrow, the proclamation of Jimmy Uso’s sovereignty will command the loyalty of his native island and of all other parts of the South Pacific. I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the World Wide Wrestling Federation era, may well feel a thrill in invoking once more the prayer and the anthem Fa’avae i le Atua Samoa!”
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The pot calling the kettle drunk
If you think it sounds like a bad idea to invite me to read aloud to a class of kindergarten students, (1) I agree with you and (2) you’re obviously not my girlfriend, who is actually probably my girlfriend because she has a lot of bad ideas.
The book I read aloud yesterday was not the one in my hand when I walked into the room, Chuck Klosterman’s new collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur. (I simply brought it to read on the bus.) This disappointed at least one five-year-old boy who got excited when he saw a dinosaur on the front cover. This also spared a five-year-old boy from learning about Chuck Klosterman’s theories about why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women, which is really nothing anybody wants to think about except Chuck Klosterman, Rivers Cuomo, and some (but not all) Asian women.1
Anyway, despite his occasional misuse of “i.e.” and “enormity”, I’ve made it through 85 percent of the Klosterman book without my usual recurring impulse to punch him in the face. But the even more surprising thing about the book is this:
I’ve mentioned this before but got so many of the details backward that it bears repeating: I once watched an old episode of Friends with my brain-damaged housemate’s boyfriend, who was waiting for her to finish getting ready. It was the episode in which Joey and Chandler have an extra Knicks ticket and are lukewarm to Monica’s suggestion that they take her boyfriend Richard (portrayed by Tom Selleck) until they realize they might get a chance to drive his sports car and fall all over themselves to invite him.
At this, my brain-damaged housemate’s boyfriend burst out laughing and blurted, “Who wouldn’t want to go to a basketball game with Tom Selleck?!”
This is something that has stuck with me for a long time because it was simultaneously true and idiotic. On one hand, yes, it would undeniably be a good time for anyone2 to just hang out and catch a major-league sporting event with Tom Selleck, a famous person who seems nice. On the other hand, this guy was clearly misunderstanding the very nature of a fictional television program and that Tom Selleck was playing a character on said program rather than himself.3
By sheer coincidence, in the essay contained in Eating the Dinosaur about the stupidity of laugh tracks and how they’re meant to condition people who are too stupid to decide if things are funny for themselves to laugh when they’re meant to, Klosterman cites this exact scene out of the ten seasons and 236 episodes of Friends. It’s like he specifically wrote this piece for me, intentionally reminding me of the single dumbest audience member I’d ever seen laugh at something at the right time for the wrong reasons. It’s uncanny.
1. On a similar note, yesterday I suddenly laughed out loud very hard after imagining a five-year-old returning a copy of Finnegans Wake to the library while sobbing inconsolably because it turned out to have nothing to do with Mr. Dressup.
2. Except Rosie O’Donnell, of course, but who wants to go see a WNBA game with her?
3. This raises the question of what this guy even thought Tom Selleck was famous for in the first place, if not playing fictional characters such as Thomas Magnum, Quigley Down Under, and Mr. Baseball. Or did he somehow know Tom Selleck in his capacity as a high-profile member of the National Rifle Association?
* * *
On the subject of inappropriate utterances, my girlfriend wanted me to mention this, and while it didn’t seem to merit a post of its own, this seems to be a good place. The other day, we were in the LCBO — not our usual LCBO, but one in a seedier part of town that we’d gone to for something that wasn’t in stock at the other one. As we stood in a long, slow-moving line, the customer behind us got impatient and shouted at the lone cashier, “Shouldn’t you get some help?!”
I, my girlfriend, and most likely everyone else in line looked back at the red-faced, jittery man clutching three two-liter bottles of malt liquor and shaking in a fit of equal parts impatience and delirium tremens, and simultaneously thought the same thing: “Shouldn’t you?”
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