Fuck you. What am I gonna do this month? Shit. I don't have to eat this month. If I find out who's fuckin cousin you are... Guess who? You just cost me six thousand dollars. Six thousand dollars! What are you gonna do about it, asshole. Whoever told you you could work with men!? I don't care who's nephew you are, I don't care who you know, I don't care whose dick you're suckin on, you're goin out. I swear to you!, you're goin out. What you're hired for is to help us- not fuck. us. up. You fucking child. This is not a world of men, Machine. No.
- -Ricky Roma (Al Pacino), "Glengarry Glen Ross"

"I was by no means the funniest of my brothers; my oldest brother was way funnier than me- but probably not as damaged, which makes me a comedian rather than just a funny person, you know? Next life, I just want to be a funny person who does something else, like a blacksmith who's funny on the side."
- -Scott Thompson

"I ended up holding the hand above my head to watch the blood all drip down- it was like an early performance art except it was funny."
- -Scott Thompson

"Nothing ever happens really fast, that's the weird thing. Everything happens at such a rate that by the time it actually happens, you're so frustrated with getting there that it all seems normal. That's how show business works- you never actually get a moment of excitement."
- -Dave Foley

I've been thinking a lot my and my age group's position on the generational cusp. Thinking- I've been kind of obsessed. Lately I relate so much in my life to the exact years I grew up and in particular what pop culture I remember.

It started this summer, but the spark was planted when I entered Antioch over 3 years ago. I was talking to a fellow student, one day my senior, about how I was finding how little I could relate to the other 1st years, 3 years my junior. I said that maybe it was the just-out-of-high-school thing, but it seemed more that than- after all, I'd related to just-out-of-high-school kids at City Year for the past 2 years- they who were 1 and 2 years younger than me. This gap seemed to specifically be with people born in or after 1984.

The fellow student said that the generational shift occured in 1984, that kids born that year technically came from the generation after us. These '84 babies (strange irony of "1984" intended or not, I don't know, but it can hardly be ignored) were the children of '80s yuppies or faux-hippies, and grew up with the Internet much more than me (I got online in '95, when I was 14, and that was early for kids my age). She said that she felt that bridge with the '84 babies more than with other younger students herself. I always meant to look more into it but never did. I kind of got used to it, being the older one, when in most other places I was (and still am) the baby.

( Read more... )

from alt.british.comedy

"They won't. It was a product of the 70s when racism was accepted by many, wife beating was the woman's fault and institutionalised homophobia was all the rage.

"Thank goodness we've grown up."

I really hope that last line is sarcastic, but I honestly can't tell. Dry British humor is even more difficult when written.

( Read more... )

For Rachel

So this is what independent film has come to, has it? After years and years of struggling to get it the respect it deserves as a valid art form, this is what we get? "Junebug"? I really don't see how this does any justice to the advancement of the medium of independent film or how it can be remotely confused with the "art" part of "valid art form".

If I have to see such annoying, melodramatic, middle-class angst again I might have to demolish something significantly large. "About Schmidt" was bad enough; why do we have to be tricked into this type of viewing under the guise of so-called independent cinema? I'm sorry, but I really could not care less about the lives of these ridiculously petty people and their ridiculously petty problems, or the ridiculous simplicity of their sheltered, padded lives masqueraded as what human complexity really looks like.

( Read more... )

People bother me sometimes.

I was watching my Henry Rollins Live At Luna Park DVD, and he said:
“Who’s that?”
“Henry Rollins.”
“Oh?... The neck.”
“...Yea.”
“He does stand-up?”
“Spoken word.”
“It looks like stand-up.”
I didn’t respond. He watched in silence for maybe 3 seconds.
“He should have stuck with Black Flag,” all flippant and sarcastic.

I really wanted to bitch him out. I mean dude, what the fuck. Give the guy a chance.

But mostly it was this defensiveness I get about certain artists/entertainers I really admire. Because, when someone doesn’t like them, it’s kind of a personal insult to me.

For example, the kid I knew who whenever I mentioned the Kids In The Hall, he’d say, “I HATE the Kids In The Hall” with such passion. And then he said the same thing about the Upright Citizens Brigade. Aside from this I really like the guy, but there’s something about that that I can never get over (particularly about the UCB, who I know personally). I don’t think I’d feel different if someone told me they hated a certain part of my personality or something.

Breakfast on Pluto, a film by Neil Jordan

I've been waiting for this film since pre-production! Neil Jordan is one of my favorite filmmakers, and Pat McCabe one of my favorite writers- together they created, and Neil directed, nearly 10 years ago, the film version of "The Butcher Boy", based on Pat's novel. Anyone who knows me knows how obsessed I am with this film (and book). This is their second collaboration.

BBC America - Nylon

I saw this show when I was living in Scotland, it was kind of lame but it being half in New York fed my nostalgia. Whatever problems I have with the turning everything in downtown New York into gentrified bourgeois white hipsters thing, which this show seems to portray exclusively without shame, it is beautifully shot and regularly offers the most amazing views of both London and New York.

I'm interested in how people get into music, film, TV, theatre, books, etc. Often (especially if it's obscure) there is a story behind it, or a memory, or a string of other things.

For example, lately I've been listening to Rip Rig & Panic a lot (one of Neneh Cherry's pre-solo groups). I first heard them in an episode of "The Young Ones"; it was one of the two performances of the show that I really dug (the other being Amazulu).
...I got into "The Young Ones" as a natural progression in my path towards British comedy dorkdom- I'd been hearing about the show for a long-ass time until finally my good friend littlemidget lent me (for what turned into a lot of years) the box-set.
...I got into British comedy first through "Absolutely Fabulous". When I got cable in 1998, I watched Comedy Central constantly, that was when the channel aired three episodes of "AbFab" every Saturday (or was it Sunday?) from 4-6pm.
...How I got into comedy... that I'll have to think about.

Tell me one of yours, please! :)

My last days in New York were spent as such:



Taken by kissmolnar- thank you for fulfilling this particular fantasy!

"[John] Hughes was unforgivably remiss as far as multiculturalism goes. These are all suburban white kids, for god's sake! If The Breakfast Club were made today, Judd Nelson's part would be played by Tupac, and Anthony Michael Hall's by B. D. Wong. Ally Sheedy's character would be a lesbian, and the Emilio Estevez character wouldn't exist."

- Jason Cohen and Michael Krugman, "Generation Ecch!"

"The Baxter" (2005)
a Michael Showalter film, as part of the 2005 RI International Film Festival

Hooray for this movie! I didn't know Showalter could be serious. Oh, it was funny of course, the comedy was dead-on as was to be expected, but it was also a well-done film with a good storyline.

The comedy supported the storyline, as opposed to it being the storyline, a la "Wet Hot American Summer", or "let's make a two-hour sketch". I am in full support of both ventures. That's what I meant by not knowing Showalter could be "serious": I had only seen him do- and therefore was under the impression that he was only capable of the doing- the latter. So that was nice. And though the overall storyline might have been predictable, even bordering on Hollywood formulism, it was also very creative and cute, engaging and entertaining, and it had its tonic twists. And there was no sex. (Sex in movies bugs me. Ben Elton summed it up perfectly well in "Popcorn". I'll get into that some other time.)

( Read more... )

If you have no idea what this is all about, you should really watch "The Dead Zone".
Or, a picture if you must.

I was showing my mom "Bottom". I told her that Jennifer Saunders' husband was in it. Upon seeing our man Adrian Edmondson, she said jealously:

"So THAT's the husband of our lord and savior?"

I think I figured out my Anthony Michael Hall obsession. It was baffling me. Usually the reasons for my many (and often fleeting) obsessions reveal themselves almost immediately- in fact, they often preceed the obsessions and influence them. Makes sense, doesn't it? That's why this whole Anthony Michael Hall thing has been so bizarre. I wasn't sure where it was coming from.

It started with incredulity. The famous "Dude. It's Anthony Michael Hall" I utter every time I see him on TV, all grown up. A short and forgotten phase when "Pirates Of Silicon Valley" came out, then again last year when I discovered "The Dead Zone" TV show. This year, I started watching "The Dead Zone", and have been annoying everyone unluckly enough to be around me: "Dude. Dude! It's Anthony Michael Hall. Anthony Michael Hall. Dude."

( Read more... )