New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
Last week a friend sent me links to the preceding videos. They gave me a few dozen gut laughs just when irreverent humor was needed most, and probably saved my whole day.
Then a sense of déjà vu gripped me. Sure enough, we'd all been here before -- specifically, on June 21, 2015. I've no recollection of why the week was bad, and so it goes.
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George Carlin, or a temporary antidote to the thoroughly depressing week that was.
By Friday afternoon, I'd just about had it with the humanoids occupying this continent. Fortuitously, I caught a Facebook posting by my friend BM, pointing to a collection of video clips by the late George Carlin.
I sat on the porch with my iPhone, beer in hand, and watched the clips, one after the other. It would be an understatement for the ages to refer to the experience as cathartic.
Curmudgeons unite: I laughed until I cried. It may not work for you, but verily, I needed that.
George Carlin would have been 78 years old (May 12), and this seems like a great time to look back on some of his best routines. He was a revolutionary comic whose sharp critiques of censorship and organized religion have influenced political and comedic thought for decades. He targeted the orthodoxy and the establishment, always with remarkable success. These Carlin routines showcase him at his best …
It's a fine overview, and as one reviewer wrote, "tantalizingly incomplete." The basic challenge isn't hard to pinpoint; how does one narrow the man's body of work to snippets capable of being fitted into two hours, much less interpret them?
Director Marina Zenovich talks about translating Williams’ comedy to the screen, his inner demons, and what compels her about complicated men
... Fashioned from archival footage, old audio tapes, interviews with Williams’ contemporaries and clips of the comic’s stand-up, Come Inside My Mind is the first documentary to comprehensively examine Williams’ life and art since his suicide in 2014. It includes virtually no narration, save for Williams’ own, which can have an eerie, almost ghostlike effect (if only ghosts were as charming and exuberant as Robin Williams). “Every person is driven by some deep, deep, deep, deep secret,” he says in voiceover about halfway through the film.
It’s a question Williams scarcely addressed, preferring to bare his soul by way of performance. “Steve Martin says in the film, when Robin was on stage, whether it was theater or standup, he was in charge,” says Zenovich. “But in his life he was trying to hold himself together.” Still, the comic’s embattled sense of sense worth threatened to impose itself on an otherwise supremely confident stage persona. As he says in voiceover, recalling advice from a shrink: “Be careful what you talk about, because you may be on stage in front of so many people and start talking about something you’re not able to deal with” ...
For anyone who’s weary of the frantic daily news cycle, The Economist is a breath of fresh air. It’s a London-based weekly magazine (although they call themselves a newspaper) covering global political, social, economic, and business news. They are moderate, quirky, and unconventional.
Zeratsky's analysis almost perfectly mirrors my own, except that I've been reading The Economist since 1988, and subscribing during all but a handful of these years.
I offer these two preludes as preparation to consume the main course, which is Michelle Wolf, and what we're to make of her monologue at a dinner which shouldn't even take place -- and the fact that while this is the main point, it's being missed in the usual hyped-up furor over showflaking.
The Economist's take is spot on, so here it is, in its entirety, with the important passages highlighted.
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The Wolf at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, by J.F. (The Economist) In the age of Trump, calls for civility are calls for servility FULL disclosure: I have never been to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner; I will never go to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The American political press already has a bias toward reverence and access preservation; journalists yukking it up with powerful people whom they are supposed to cover impartially is unseemly. Partly for this reason, The Economist has for several years not sent anyone along. Usually the dinner passes in a flurry of photos and articles about who wore what, which celebrity sat at which publication’s table and a recounting of the hokey jokes told by whichever safe comedian they wangled into hosting. But occasionally something more interesting happens. Over the past two days Washington has worked itself into a tizzy over Michelle Wolf’s unusually scathing monologue. She mocked everyone: Donald Trump (“the one pussy you’re not allowed to grab”), Kellyanne Conway (“If a tree falls in the woods, how do we get Kellyanne under that tree”), Ivanka Trump (“about as helpful to women as an empty box of tampons”), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (“She burns facts and then uses the ashes to create a perfect smoky eye”), and the press (“[Mr Trump] helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster, and now you’re profiting off him.”). Matt Schlapp, a conservative lobbyist and the husband of Mercedes Schlapp, a White House communications director, tweeted that he and his wife “walked out early from the wh correspondents dinner. Enough of elites mocking all of us”—though precisely what definition of “elite” includes a stand-up comic but excludes high-ranking White House officials remains unclear. Several people, liberals as well as conservatives, demanded that Ms Wolf apologise for mocking Mrs Sanders’s appearance—though of course Mr Trump has made juvenile derision of people’s looks his stock-in-trade. Margaret Talev, the head of the White House Correspondents’ Association, tut-tutted that Ms Wolf’s monologue “was not in the spirit of [our] mission,” which was “to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honouring civility [and] great reporting…not to divide people.” Among those who failed to receive that message, apparently, was Mr Trump, who in a nifty bit of counterprogramming held a rally in Washington, Michigan during the correspondents’ dinner. He skipped the event for the second straight year. Mr Trump accused the media—whom he has previously called “the enemy of the American people”—of making up sources and hating his supporters who attended the rally. One worked-up attendee at the rally screamed at reporters, whom he called “degenerate filth”, to leave the country. After the speech, Mr Trump’s people pressed their advantage. Mrs Schlapp told a reporter that “journalists should not be the ones to say that the president or his spokesman is lying.” This raises an obvious question—if not journalists, then whom?—with an equally obvious answer: nobody. Mr Trump’s communication staff would prefer it if nobody pointed out when he and his media team lie. Ms Talev invited Mrs Sanders to sit at the head table because she “thought it sent an important decision about…government and the press being able to work together.” But of course, that is precisely what should never happen, particularly with an administration as ambivalent about the First Amendment—among other norms and laws—as this one. (The Justice Department recently removed a section entitled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial” from its internal manual for federal prosecutors.) Calls for press-corps civility are in fact calls for servility, and should be received with contempt. Some might argue that insults do not deserve the same protection as investigative journalism, but that is a distinction without a difference. Anyone who wants to outlaw or apologise for the former will end up too timid to do the latter. In open societies, self-censorship—in the name of civility, careerism or access preservation—is a much greater threat to the media than outright repression. The only person owed an apology here is Ms Wolf, for being scolded by the very people who invited her to speak, and who purport to defend a “vigorous and free press.”
Welcome to the Hot Potato Spa Lounge in the gorgeous Merchants National Happy Ending Building on the “massage corner” of Pearl and Main in beautiful downtown New Albany.
APPLAUSE
Our very special guest tonight has been drinking iced tea, eating PBJs and wowing the GOP precinct committee conclaves, and now he’s here for this exclusive one night engagement.
CHANTING: KZ KZ KZ KZ KZ KZ KZ KZ KZ
He’s waited long enough, don’t you think? Now, give it up for New Albany’s next mayor, Kevin Zurschmiede!
APPLAUSE, HOOTS, HOLLERS
Hello, New Albany! I’m awfully happy to be here, and let me tell you, after these past few weeks, I can only hope all the red hot NA chicks will still vote for me in November
HAR HAR HAR HAR
Of course, I may have to run for mayor somewhere in Thailand.
HA HA HA HA
But seriously, how could anyone expect a 54-year-old white guy from li’l ol’ Nawbony to know anything about sex slavery? Heck, I thought human trafficking is what happens when trucks run over those walkability nut jobs like that Baylor guy.
AUDIENCE MEMBER LAUGHS SO HARD HE SNORTS BUD LIGHT THROUGH HIS NOSE
And you wanna know what else gripes my cookies?
NO WHAT? TELL US PLEASE C’MON YOUR HONOR
Some has-been Democrat getting’ all prissy about porn flicks (rolls his eyes).
HA HA HA HA HA HA
I mean, like SHE’S never gone out with a six pack of Red, White and Blue and looked through the slats at Theatair-X. Man, I miss the drive-in.
HAR HAR HAR HAR
Porn, schmorn. It was just a remote control malfunction, geez louise. Me, I’ve never learned how to use those newfangled remotes. Once I was waiting to have my teeth cleaned, and I pushed the wrong button – BOOM, right there in the dentist’s office, naked folks going at it like they were Asians in a SPA or something.
HA HA HA YOU’RE KILLING ME HA HA HA
Of course, nothing REALLY happened. It was that soft core North Korean stuff.
OOOHHH AAHHHH ... DOING THE REPUBLICAN WAVE
I tell ya, this place is full of Democrats, and I don’t get no respect.
CHEERS, WHISTLES, LAUGHTER
I picked up the newspaper, and it said the police department was investigating my tenants. And they weren’t even talking about one of my rundown rental properties!
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR
Seriously, what’s the police have against these nice young Asian gals? A JOB’S a JOB, right?
HELL YEAH TELL E’M KEV YOU DA MAN
Enough of all that. Keith says I don’t have to cop a plea, and besides, once all the bleeding hearts started yammering, I cleaned house, so tell me, what does the sign on the door of the Hot Potato Spa say nowadays?
WHAT DOES IT SAY?
Beat it. We're closed.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Thank you, thank you. Now I’ll probably have to rent the space to some penny ante tax preparer. You’ve been a great crowd. Don’t forget to donate to my campaign on the way out.
APPLAUSE. CHANTS. SOMEONE RECITES THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE.
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