Stephen Colbert and the Economics of Fake

When the Super PAC earnings were released at the end of January, the world learned that Stephen Colbert’s PAC, which he really has “nothing” to do with and is “run” by Jon Stewart, had raised enough cash to tip over into seven figures. Pause to ponder: a million dollars of real money raised for a fake political action committee.

I had to really consider the implications. As a true believer in the power of fiction to be more-real-than-real, particularly when reality becomes preposterous, this fiction felt big-sweater-cozy. And as a person with an interest in the history of American humor, particularly the use of satire to lampoon political stupidity, I am well-aware that Colbert’s efforts — though updated through the use of contemporary media — find their great-times-many-grandparentage in the likes of Irving, Lowell, and even Ben Franklin. And, certainly, it’s no surprise that discussions have raged about the impact of Colbert’s PAC, but it’s the money that struck me as significant.

In a toilet-bowl economy and election year — where people have less money to spend and more reason, in theory, to spend it on their political beliefs — people are investing in satire. Real money for a fake message.

But the message — clear as a bell, really — isn’t fake at all, and that’s why I find this investment to be so fascinating and brilliant. By funding this PAC, American voices have funded the role that satire plays in drawing attention to the ridiculous, like the Citizens United decision and the outright lies pedaled in “real” Super PAC ads. By purloining the medium, Colbert has, on multiple fronts and to great affect, influenced the message.

Of course there are questions about over-saturation or a joke-gone-too-far, but I’m not particularly worried about that. The political theater of last year and this is a joke-gone-too-far, and it’s only January. The more Colbert’s PAC rages on, the more fundamentally ridiculous it becomes, the more in line with the level of Theatre perpetrated by the “real” political army marching toward what promises to be the most Fox News-worthy election ever, the more historically significant Colbert’s scheme becomes.

Some suggest that the overall efforts of Colbert and Stewart, while significant in the grand historical context of American satire and humor, do not promote a change in the political discussion. In short, their viewers have already drank the Kool Aid, and these comedians’ shows merely become part of a discussion that is already happening — they are not a value-add. However, I am anecdotally unconvinced. If the Fox News heads and radio hawks are giving Colbert’s “political agenda” real time, and they are, we know he is onto something culturally significant in the now. He, like his friend Stewart, has tapped into that magical moment where the question is asked, “Should we take this guy seriously?” Once the question is asked, it’s clear that the answer is already “yes.”

So despite the reality that there are real people-serving organizations that could be served by the donations going to Colbert’s Super PAC, there is an alternate reality that is of perhaps headier importance: investment in Colbert’s PAC is an investment in a conversation that absolutely needs to happen. It’s a way of participating in a joke-that-is-deadly-serious. Our country is on a screwy path where the investments of a few cloud the conversation, and investment in this satire is well-placed: 100% of the proceeds go to keep the dominant rhetoricians in check, to force them to engage in the surreal in order to peel back the layers and expose what is real.

What Colbert Will Do With the Money

Remember, Remember the 17th of September

For some indescribable reason (my reasons for these things often defy description), I was immediately bummed out by the visage, pants, and lankiness of this morning’s substitute yoga instructor. Since Dana, with whom I practiced too briefly, returned to the east coast, I’ve been adrift, looking for the flow yoga instructor who inspires me to get over my uncomfortableness with the idea of even having a practice to speak of and, well, go with the flow. I suspected this guy would not be him.

He spoke with an inscrutable accent that I guessed to be mere affectation or the product of life as a military brat, dragged from post to post, picking up a lilt here and a dropped consonant there. I found it to be a little annoying. When he off-handedly mentioned that, on his first visit to Occupy LA, he had expected to see a bunch of strangers but instead found only familiar faces, I appreciated the connection to something I respect but doubted his motives: is he trying to impress us?

I can be pretty judgmental of individuals–sizing up motives and weaknesses like a lioness deciding whether to mate with a male or sic her pride upon him. So its surprising–even to me–that I have never shared the skepticism many on both the left and right harbor about the Occupy Wall Street movement. While I have identified with it from the beginning, I’ve never felt an overwhelming desire to pitch my yellow North Face tent (a prized possession) on the lawn of Los Angeles’s City Hall. I’ve visited a number of times, wandering through the maze of tents and signs, peering into the library and kitchen tents; one weekend, I even served granola to a line of Occupiers, all sleepy-eyed and grungy and spirited and hungry. I’d call myself vaguely connected to the movement. I follow along on Twitter and think about it daily and occasionally donate a box of granola and carton of soy milk. I’m certainly no expert.

Which I suppose makes me an expert, given the spirit of the movement.

I’ve scrutinized the efforts–both earnest and contemptuous and always quixotic–to define this movement and discuss its shortcomings and attributes. The constant clamoring chorus desiring a single, clear, articulable goal or single leader to emerge from Occupy have missed the point completely. And so my effort here is not to add to that particular chorus, though I’m inevitably doing so simply through the very act of writing about it. I suppose I only wish to add another voice to the rhythmic beat of individual voices, to discover what this movement has meant to me and how I can participate in a chorus of a different kind–one that encourages all ideas to have a voice, one that can drown out the cacophony of talking heads that wish to add more noise to the same old paradigms.

I see the Occupy movement as an effort to bust through binaries, the oversimplifying of nearly every aspect of American life into black/white, either/or. Some of the most idiotic attacks on the Occupiers have gone after those involved in it as hypocrites, claiming that mere consumption of corporate goods somehow undermines any questions one might raise about any corporate behavior, no matter how insidious. These people claim: you can’t have it both ways.

The Occupiers gleefully retort, with chants and drums and signs and the People’s Mike: Why not?

It is the People’s Mike, in fact, that I regard as the fundamental characteristic of this movement. Traditional lefty protest–which this both is and is not–tends to be identifiable by its leaders–those who hold the megaphone, which, by virtue of its being the property of someone lends to a hierarchy of ownership and signifies a sort of bureaucracy that mirrors the bureaucracies these movements so often push against. But early on in the Occupy Wall Street movement, an effort to silence the protest–to strip it of the megaphone–strengthened its core principal: everyone has his or her own voice, and everyone has the right to be heard. This perfectly responds to the confusion about a singular message: there is, through this device, a singular voice, but this voice has an endless number of speakers. There is no ownership of this voice, no ability to turn it off, and no dominant rhetoric nor ideology. It is the voice of the individual and the voice of the group. It is not neither nor both.

This exploding of binaries helps to explain the conundrum of consumption. Another popular image of the Occupy movement has been the Guy Fawkes mask. Of course, the history of Fawkes himself dates back 400+ years; however, the mask’s roots lie in the pages of Alan Moore’s graphic novel V for Vendetta. But the image adopted by hundreds of protesters, who are fed up with the monolithic control forced upon them by a government and corporatocracy that are an intertwined massive symbol of oppression, is most readily tied to the film version of the graphic novel, released in 2006 by mega-super-conglomerate Warner Brothers and written/produced by the duo then known as the Wachowski Brothers–a monicker that is no longer used, as Lana (then Larry) Wachowski is a transgender woman. The layers of this historical/written/drawn/filmed image are so vast and tricky that peeling them back is like counting grains of quicksand while standing in it. So if the People’s Mike provides the character of this movement, this mask is its perfect symbol. It’s not necessary to go into the history of Guy Fawkes or the general symbology of masks as a tool–these things are understood easily enough. It’s the mediated layering of experience that is most compelling.

The adoption of undeniably Big Media iconography as the “face” for so many largely anti-establishmentarian protesters provides a glimpse into why one can both be and not be a consumer of corporate content and goods. The perceived dichotomy between corporations and anti-corporate sentiment is one of the many ways in which we can underestimate the complexities of our lives. While the talking heads of news show hosts/guests and politicians consistently strive to stand firmly on black and white talking points, we all know this dichotomy of ideas to be a canard. Nothing is black and white. Nothing is simple. Things are complicated and messy–the gray spaces are where real insight occurs. And so a generation that has been brought up on media imagery cannot simply reject that imagery as a form of protest. This movement co-opts from everything and everywhere: the placards and signs of previous movements, the images of the political protests of imagination–like the one staged in V, the philosophies of those who came before, recycling the ideas (as young people always do) of Marx and Bakunin and Nietzsche and Rawls. But there are new things too–the incessant drumming, the universal leadership (such a brilliant way to avoid scapegoating and martyrdom), the tents.

The tents.

From early October, when tents only sparsely occupied the City Hall lawn.

If Guy Fawkes masks provide the perfect symbol–all layered with the medium and the message and the metaphor and the moment–the tents provide the movement’s central imagery. They are the physical embodiment of Occupation. Tents provide a sense of place–they are stable and constant if not permanent nor impenetrable. They both are and are not a home. With tents, the Occupiers have solidified what is perhaps the single most cohesive message of the Occupation: public space, public access, and public ideas are essential in a democracy.

To dig deeper into these ideas, I think we need to consider geography, space, and some heady French dudes–most notably Lefebvre and Foucault and Baudrillard. I’ll leave the latter two alone in this piece, though within their (often nearly impenetrable) works lie clues to the bones of this movement’s anatomy, if not the sinew and muscle. Lefebvre, however, will get his moment. In a discussion of class hegemony, he writes:

Hegemony implies more than an influence, more even than the permanent use of repressive violence. It is exercised over society as a whole, culture and knowledge included, and generally via human mediation: policies, political leaders, parties, as also a good many intellectuals and experts. It is exercised, therefore, over both institutions and ideas. The ruling class seeks to maintain its hegemony by all available means, and knowledge is one such means. (10)

If we replace “ruling class” with “The 1%,” something begins to take shape. And I don’t think The 1% is merely defined by financial wealth. Many who fall into the quantifiable distinction of the 99% balk at the idea that economic inequality has led to a corporatocracy in which ideas are divided into binaries of To and Not To or Buy or Not Buy, and there are those who are of the economic 1% who understand that these binaries help to limit choice, opportunity, and freedom. But the symbolic 1%–as practiced by a far larger segment of the population than that mere 1/100th–is this hegemony that wishes to control both space and conversation–both “institutions and ideas.” In recent weeks, for example, we’ve seen institutional power exercised through the use of police who attempt to divide Occupiers from the spaces they occupy (cops function as a form of mediation–the medium through which the hegemony, both political and corporate, sends a clear message). The Occupation, on the other hand, succeeds most as a completely new model–a society in which the free exchange of goods and ideas are marked by the ownership of things (iPhones for Twittering and tents for sleeping in) and the not-ownership of anything (a donated library, donated food, the People’s Mike). And the embodiment of these various ideals–as vast and diverse as those who espouse them–is seen in the embodiment of public spaces all over the country and the world. Zuccotti Park, myriad city halls, parks and campuses–these are merely places, no more singularly significant than one person’s voice or ideas. It is not the place that matters–it is the space and the people who occupy it.

And I think this movement has impacted the way many Americans understand space. Edward Soja, jumping off the insights of Lefebvre, identifies a Third Space–the breaking down of binaries to create a space that is both inhabitable and conceptual, “an ‘in between’ position along some all-inclusive continuum” (60). This Third Space produces an open alternative that is “both similar and strikingly different” (61). In the language of the Occupation as I understand it, this is where the tattoos of movements past layer over and under the inking of a new conceptualizing of the meaning of a movement. If there is a dominant hegemony (is this even an “if”?) that wishes to bifurcate all of our experiences into easily digested either/or poles, then the only way to re-imagine our lives in a completely different way is to live inside our paradoxes–we are consumers and revolutionaries and media whores and adbusters. In order to survive the complexities of a world that is constantly–and wrongly–being whittled down into easy-to-market pieces, we have to embrace the confusion and revel in a lack of understanding in order to truly understand. Or, to draw again from Soja, the Third Space occupied by this movement is perhaps “distinguishable from other spaces (physical and mental…) and a transcending composite of all spaces” (62). If some of us–through conversations about tents and parks and public spaces and what they represent–begin to even conceptualize this sort of non-binary understanding of ourselves and our place in the worlds of race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, politics, media, and poetry, then this movement has already succeeded in altering the dominant conversation in some fairly profound ways.

As it always is, today’s yoga class was a journey, one I’m always happy to be on, in spite of legs that shake in the warrior poses and spaghetti arms that battle through each chaturanga. But I have my strengths, too–the ability to lay my belly on the ground when my legs are splayed wide to the sides or to fold into an odd pretzel, arms clasped behind my back, legs creating a helix in front of my head, which is firmly implanted near my crotch. Like all yogis this new guy encouraged us to venture as far into the poses as we could, or desired to, listening to our bodies and adjusting for the particularities of the day. There’s a clear line from this sort of yogic thinking to the Occupy movement–there is no one size fits all, and the search for enlightenment is individualized and shared, singular and universal. And, despite my own penchant for applying theories and philosophies in order to comprehend ideas in a measurable way, perhaps it’s often best that some ideas defy the ability to reason with them, forcing the thinker to dig deeper and deeper (…breathe into the pose to take you deeper…), revealing and refuting and re-imagining and renewing. Some things are best left inscrutable because scrutiny leads to being “pinned and wriggling on the wall” like the existentially doomed Prufrock, measuring life with coffee spoons. Or with price tags. Not everything should be so easily quantified.

By the end of my yoga class, I had somewhat warmed up to my new instructor. Despite his unplaceable accent (I knew Dana was from Maine the first time I met him, having gone to graduate school with a man who had the same strange accent, marked by a sort of geographically-specific speech impediment) and impossibly pointy elbows, shoulders, and knees, he kicked my ass a little bit, and I respect that. After class, a fellow practitioner, clearly as curious as I, asked the yogi where he comes from. He chuckled, obviously having been asked before, and responded, “I’m from Cleveland.” Now that was not the answer I expected.

Works Cited

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1991.

Soja, Edward. Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996.

Where’d Club Sauce Go?

Took a little hiatus. I’m somewhat sure this blog is considered dead, buried, and forgotten.

And yet I’m sort of in the mood for a good resurrection. Who’s in?

You’ve Got the Look

I think it’s time for a refresher up in this bitch. I’ve been absent. This is a somewhat general state of being–busy with things that I love but are of the world outside, not of the world inside. I wanna jump start my heart, you know? So maybe a new theme will offer inspiration. It’s not quite as sunny as the last, but more stark and assured. I also might occasionally move away from the themes of media and pop-culture just a bit. Not that those aren’t exceptionally important to me. Just that there are other things, too; I should stretch out a bit, dabble.

I’m writing this from a coffee shop in Portland. I’ve had so much coffee today that my heart is racing a bit too fast, and my head is a bit too light. It’s an odd but familiar sensation. It’s about 100 degrees outside–hotter than it’s been all summer back home in Los Angeles. I’ve always had mixed feelings about this city–even when I lived here 14 years ago. It’s so…livable. Coffee shops and bars on every corner. Everyone has a bike and a dog. All the food is organic. It would be so easy to be lulled into a friendly state of ‘alright’ here. But there’s so much whiteness and the rain leaves the city scrubbed clean and this unreal quality makes me uneasy. Like in a David Lynch film, there are unseemly things hiding under the roses. There must be, right? I’m incapable of believing in a Caucasian Valhalla such as this.

It’s nice to be away from Los Angeles, where it never rains so the dust and car exhaust just build up, a gray film that covers anything not dripping with the kind of resources that allow for excessive scrubbing. The smog is sometimes so thick that the mountains retreat behind a yellow curtain like something out of Tennessee Williams. Poverty chokes families because they lack jobs, services, and affordable housing. The diversity is downright Benetton, but the racism is systemic–it’s in our schools, our health care, our food options.

But over the last ten years I’ve learned to love my city. The possibilities are endless, and it’s always changing–sometimes even for the better. My city will never grow complacent. It will never settle in and say: “This is good. I like it as it is.” This evolution–which sometimes goes wildly awry–is fundamental to being an Angeleno, and, though I’ll always be a Detroiter, I’ll always be an Angeleno, too. As I get older and more set in my ways, I can hardly bear to imagine myself settling anywhere else because other places allow for settling; Los Angeles eschews going gently into that good night and attacks its many mistakes and occasional victories with the vigor declared by one of its great sages, Warren Zevon: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Demented and Sad but Social

For the four years that spanned the early mid- to late mid-eighties, John Hughes defined me. I was always a little younger than his characters—when Samantha Baker turned 16 in the spring of ’84, I was 11. By the time Keith and Watts graduated in ’87, I was just about to begin my own high school years. For those of us who waited in line outside the local theater to see the R-rated Breakfast Club at 12-years old with our moms or squatted on the floor in front of the front row to see Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—twice, I give you this gushy revisiting of the movies that defined a genre as well as a generation.

Sixteen Candles (1984)

The first of JH’s teen films also defines his affect on the zeitgeist—a direct response to the silly plotless comedies (think Porky’s) that characterized teens as punchlines, but not quite as brutal as Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). Samantha Baker was Every Girl—a sophomore enamored with the hottest senior in school, a dorky, braced freshman puppy-dogging her every move—she was the insider/outsider that we all could identify with. While other films gave us distinct types (the brain, the athelete, the criminal), Sixteen Candles gave us pedestrian. Sam was, like most 16-year olds: completely regular. And her conquest of Jake Ryan (even despite the unfortunate panties incident) gave the rest of us regular girls a little hope that we could be noticed, too. We just had to live with being a little less funny than the teens in Sam’s world.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Definitely the most serious of Hughes’s teen films, The Breakfast Club is in some ways his most indelible. While Samantha Baker was perfectly normal, the five teens in this movie were the ultimate outsiders—spending the Saturday at detention with a bitter principle who had lost all ability to identify with the students who were his charges. Even the insiders—the jock and the princess—were outsiders, cultivating a simulated identity in order to appeal to their peers and parents. The five teens in The Breakfast Club were types that became individuals over the course of a day trapped at school, and, for those of us who saw types in our own schools (even if those types were slightly different or blurred), we began to understand how similar we all were to each other.

Interesting side note: at my high school, there had been a crew of asshole jock guys called the Rat Pack. They actually did things like tape nerds’ buns together. The group was in its death throes my freshman year, and, by 1988, they were pretty much gone, leaving our high school with less-defined group demarcations (there were still cliques and still assholes—they were just less organized, more rogue groups). I contend that The Breakfast Club had something to do with this permanent shift at many schools.

Weird Science (1985)

Hughes loved nerds. He was one, after all. The bra-headed adventures of Gary and Wyatt gave us Hughes’s most gonzo and light teen movie, a welcome break from all the angst we had to face in his previous outing. In his third film with Anthony Michael Hall, he clearly trusted his young protégé with broader comedy, and he rewarded the nerd with the girl. However, the movie’s most memorable character is Bill Paxton’s Chet, Wyatt’s military dillhole of a brother. Torture from an older sibling (this is Hughes’s only film that goes this route—most of his characters have younger sibs) is most definitely an unforgettable teen trope, and the broad ridiculousness of Weird Science allows for Chet to get his comeuppance in the form of transition into an alien blob—now if that’s not an obvious metaphor, I don’t know what is.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

The last teen film directed by Hughes is also in some ways his most successful. Equal parts teen disillusionment and high-concept comedy, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off does not dwell on external teen politics; its focus is existentialism. Adults, some sympathetic and some not, have no clue how complex and intelligent the teens that surround them really are. But, despite the grandeur of its intentions, the movie never gets mired down in the philosophy it espouses. Instead, it has fun. And as viewers we enjoy the ride—particularly the parts in which obsessed principal Ed Rooney is tortured for his juvenile behavior while our teens behave as semi-thoughtful adults.

Pretty in Pink (1986)

Hughes handed over the directing reigns to Howard Deutch with this outing, and the effect is obvious. While Pretty in Pink explores all the traditional teen themes, it is more a collection of fantastic moments and songs than it is a successful film. However, Duckie serves as the first crush-worthy nerd (so much so that Hughes had to write another film where the loser wins romance to rectify the mistake of giving Blane—Blane!—the girl), and there are, as always, a slew of quotables. It’s amazing to watch this film now and think that we all wanted to dress like Ringwald’s Andie, who resembles a grandparent’s couch cover. But Pretty in Pink is like that—it is a collage of indelible memories set to, let’s face it, the most awesome soundtrack ever. If The Breakfast Club inflenced high school politics around the country, this movie changed the music we identified with, giving the loser punk types the leverage we would use to take over (and quickly help corporatize and ruin) radio in the early 90’s.

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987)

Also directed by Deutch, this movie is a total mess—bad editing, bizarre story gaffes and other rookie stuff. It feels like it was rushed through the pipeline and slapped together with duct tape. It is also the Hughes film I have watched the most, warping two VHS copies before DVD ever existed. This is Hughes’s most punk rock script—where the typical high school assholes are footnotes in celebration of outsiders. Even the object of Keith’s affection (there’s no limit to the love I felt for Eric Stoltz as a teen), Amanda Jones, is an outsider, posing with the rich kids in a vain attempt to make it through high school with as few bruises as possible, getting seriously bruised in the process. While Hardy Jenns, Amanda’s popular boyfriend, remains unchanged throughout the movie, his counterpart, the punk Duncan, gets to grow and change, proving that he’s a standup guy under his tough exterior. However, there was nothing more dear to a young punk girl-in-training than Mary Stuart Masterson’s Watts, the tomboy drummer that, after all the heartbreak and pain, gets her man. This movie, for all its demonstrable faults, proves that a strong friendship between freaks is a much better foundation for true love than raw attraction to a great pair of legs.

Though such awesome Hughesian films as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Christmas Vacation, and Uncle Buck deserve attention all to themselves (particularly Uncle Buck, which is as good as Hughes’s best teen films), it is the above six movies that became a coming of age mantra for Generation X as it birthed its way from adolescence to adulthood. When we were, in our heyday, described as alternative, slacker losers who would never do as well as our parents (raised in the 50’s on poodle skirts and perfection) had, we could look at these movies and grin, knowing we—whether The Criminal, The Princess, The Brain, The Athlete or The Basket Case—did the best we could with what we were given.

Ten Actors Whose Names You Should Know

10. Enver Gjokaj
Gjokaj is one of the many actors on Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse with an unpronounceable name. Dollhouse is a unique opportunity for the actors who get to play “dolls,” people who have their identities wiped clean and replaced with various personas, because they play a diverse stash of characters. Playing the doll Victor has been the perfect milieu for Gjokaj’s talents—a promising look at what this young actor can do.

9. Andrea Anders
I bet Anders hopes you don’t hold Joey against her. But now that she’s on Better off Ted, her comic chops really shine. She’s funny, odd, quirky, and adorably mid-western.

8. Aziz Ansari
You probably know him best from his angry Twitter message, but this young comedian has recently taken off as the resident asshole, Tom, on Parks and Recreation and as the unwatchable comedian Randy on Funny People. It’s hard to get a sense of where the comedy ends and the person who Ansari is begins—and that’s a good thing for funny.

7. Carla Gallo
Judd Apatow has made stars of his in-group of boys from his television days; however, the women have struggled a bit more to break into his mega-hit comedies. Still, you can find Undeclared‘s Gallo getting kicked in the face by Steve Carell or crotch-bleeding on Jonah Hill in the Apatow oeuvre. Keep your eye on her as a young porn star on Californication. And maybe Apatow will write her a role that matches her promise.

6. Kat Dennings
Also a graduate of 40-Year Old Virgin, Dennings cut her teeth screeching about teen sex from behind a bathroom door. Equal parts adorable, quirky, and every-girl, Dennings also starred as Michael Cera’s romantic partner in Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist.

5. Demián Bichir
The Mexican actor who plays Esteban Reyes, the proud papa of Nancy Botwin’s newest progeny, can only be described as sexy/scary. He’s beyond handsome—the kind of guy who talks to thermostats just to turn up the heat. And he somehow pulls off being equal parts sympathetic and psychotic, a perfect match for a woman who is as repellent as she is irresistible.

4. Rosemarie DeWitt
DeWitt has had a big couple of years, playing the uber-enlightened Midge on Mad Men, the title character in Rachel Getting Married, and Charmaine, Toni Collette’s selfish sister on The United States of Tara. She has made a career of playing second fiddle to big, enigmatic characters, and she still manages to get noticed.

3. Aaron Paul
Now that Paul is nominated for an Emmy, maybe you’ll remember his name as much as you remember his characters. Causing viewer schizophrenia playing sweet-hearted, upstanding Scott on Big Love and beyond-fucked-up-meth-head Jesse on Breaking Bad, Paul has become a must-see element of some seriously must-see shows.

2. Chris Pratt
You’re going to laugh, but I first noticed Pratt when he played Everwood‘s affable dumb stud, Bright. Now he’s Andy on Parks and Recreation, and, seriously, every word this guy says is gold. He’s surrounded by some big-time comic talent, and he’s the funniest damn thing on the show. I could watch him deliver lines all day long.

1. Callum Keith Rennie
There’s always that one actor you would watch tie his shoes. Rennie is that guy right now. He spooked the crap out of me as BSG’s Leoben and then romanced me within an inch of my life as Californication’s Lew Ashby, may he rest in Best Character Ever peace. He should be in everything. Preferably wearing a kilt.

To Die By Your Side Is Such a Heavenly Way to Die

Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of The Smiths. In fact, I’m notorious for this amongst my peers, as each of them carries Morrisey nostalgia in their tortured-youth-that-was satchels. I would never, however, imply that I am immune to similar musical nostalgia. My distaste for The Smiths belies my passion for The Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and, of course, The Cure.

So when I saw the preview for 500 Days of Summer, I was intrigued, but I was also concerned about the one scene with the two leads in the elevator bonding over the morosely romantic lyrics of “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” I was concerned that the film would be too precious. After all, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a Gen Xer or Yer who extols the virtues of The Smiths. I was worried that, if the movie somehow treated this fetish as unique, it had a fucked up definition of unique.

Luckily, the movie is well aware that there’s nothing particularly special about being a 25-40 year old Smiths fan; in fact, it hangs its thesis on the knowledge that this is patently mundane. Just not to Tom, the film’s loveable-but-arrested hero, who is mumbled to life by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. And, though the audience is told flat out that it is not watching a love story, fans of the grumpy idealism of mid-80’s new wave may just find themselves falling for the film’s obvious misrepresentation early on. We are, like Tom, victims of our own nostalgia.

Not that Summer, played by the always lovely Zooey Deschanel, is not worth our affections. Her wide blues eyes, reflecting both child-like wonder and craziness, reflect Tom’s affections like the season for which she is named reflects the sun. She is a vehicle for years of indoctrination by music’s most confusing time, where we believed that love was both possible and painful, as epic as a coma and as sweet as a razor blade.

What is delightful—and all too recognizable—about 500 Days of Summer is that it doesn’t dwell unnecessarily on nostalgia (it’s there, we get it, and it’s only directly addressed once, and not by Noah Taylor during the world’s longest elevator ride), and it does not become precocious or hip in its references, costumes, or set design. It’s about two people who are, admittedly, a confused conglomerate of retro pastiche, but this does not turn them into caricatures; instead, it helps them to be complete and complex people. This underscores the film’s thesis, which is, again, that nothing is particularly extraordinary unless we imbue it with our perceptions, our senses, our over-developed love of things that are, most often, sound and fury signifying nothing.

Because, while Tom clearly believes that death by Summer’s side would suit him just fine, we understand that Summer is not meant for him because, as objective observers, we can clearly see that the lens through which he sees her is as much a mirage as the latent desire to be hit by a ten ton truck is ridiculous.

So It’s Been A While…

…And it’s not that I have nothing to say. Life gets in the way of this life-once-removed space. But there are some ideas a-brewing, and only a few of them have anything to do with hockey.

Sit tight. Clubsauce will return.

Reacting to Reactionary Television…An Exercise in Absurdity

In his recent Guardian inverview, Kiefer Sutherland defends the reactionary content of his hit show, 24.  Indeed, he should.  He’s right.  It’s fiction, and as such it should not be held responsible for the disgraceful actions of our military.  This is at best a case of misplacing the blame.  

So I’m not particularly interested in that aspect of the 24 discussion.  What does interest me is Joel Surnow’s conservative mania as it affects fiction.

I watched the first two seasons of this show.  The first was thrilling, the second ridiculous (Kim battles mountain lions–oy), and then I gave up a few episodes into season three, which was downright didactic and reactionary and, yes, a little too xenophobic for my taste.

But I’m watching this season because my friend Annie is on it and, hell, I can’t very well miss it, now can I?  And Annie has been a delight–all wide blue eyes and freckles and she got buried alive, so that was cool.  But I find myself drifting away from the central content when she’s not on screen.  I blame this on Surnow’s desire to debate those who would blame his show for glorifying torture.  It seems that Surnow himself has forgotten what Sutherland believes to be demonstrably clear: his show is fiction.  Instead, he uses it to engage in a dialogue with his detractors, and this dialogue is lead to what should be buoyant drama.  

Sure, I’m a liberal, so I find all this torture to lack in taste and subtlety, but I like a little torture in my TV.  I’m a fan of shows that LOVE torture: anything by Joss Whedon, Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock (different kind of torture, but no less painful).  The reason these shows thrive where 24 fails is that they exist in a purely fictional world.  Any link to American politics is metaphorical–beautifully hidden within a Dali-esque mirror.  24 simply takes its message too seriously, and it’s seriously taking the fun out of the show by delivering its reactionary mumbo jumbo with such earnest didacticism that it’s incredible anyone would take its content to heart.

There Remain No Witty Titles for End-of-Year Lists

It’s amazing, really, how far the mighty have fallen.  Just a few short years ago, we had no shortage of excellent scripted shows on TV; now, the new ones are, for the most part, the same old drudgery, and some of the older reliable ones have turned into dreck.  But there are a few shining stars this year, and, as is my annoyingly predictable habit, I’ve got a list.  As you know, I like the list.  It’s the cliché of all clichés, but, shit, I’m a huge fan of clichés—you should know this by now, reader.  So off we go!

10. Swingtown

Never heard of it?  That’s no surprise, and, due to this 70’s-era melodrama’s dismissal to the summer season’s usual roster of teen dramas and dance-offs, you will never see more than the 13 episodes that are now on DVD.  But for a few sweaty weeks, Swingtown amped up my summer viewing with its excellent performances (it’s impossible to pick a favorite, though Grant Show is a revelation in his mustache, tiny bathing suit, and manly chest hair), its edible designed-within-an-inch-of-its-nostalgic-life sets and costumes, and its heartfelt idealism.  This show is a “before the fall” tale that is so soaked with ironic innocence that it could only take place in the “me” decade to a soundtrack of pre-maybe-girlfriend-beater Jackson Browne tunes.  But these people are amazingly real for all their tokenism, and it’s hard to say goodbye, even after just barely getting to know them.

9. Breaking Bad

After the first episode of this lovely little show, Chereth and I immediately agreed that we were watching an Emmy-worthy performance by Bryan Cranston.  Despite this, we couldn’t have been more surprised when he was nominated for an award, a more still when he won the statuette.  This show is a tour-de-force, plain and simple, but it’s inaugural season also plays like a 6-hour movie.  Creator Vince Gilligan (ex X-Files), who wrote (oh my!) all six episodes creates a seamless experience from week to week, delivering a show that feels more like bare-bones British TV than Hollywood polish.  It doesn’t hurt that Breaking Bad is shot and takes place in unassuming Albuquerque, a place that, thankfully, eschews both polish and normalcy at every tumbleweed. I can only imagine what little gifts season two will bring.

8. Battlestar Galactica

Was this even on this year?  I honestly have no idea, but season four (part une) brought so many surprises, so much character development and tension, that BSG is officially the anti-Heroes, tumbling into a quagmire of its own delicious making.  There’s nothing I love more than TV that gets messy—a controlled, focused mess, of course.  But Ron Moore and company know exactly what they have left to achieve, and each episode of this penultimate half-season was more gripping than the last. 

7. Pushing Daisies

People must not have room on their plates for lovely little fables anymore.  It must be Brian Fuller’s fate to create delightful shows that no one will ever see.  I’m so sad that we’ll have no more Daisies, because my life needs a little irony-packed magic.

6. Weeds

You thought Weeds would come back for season four its old reliable self, didn’t you?  Yeah, me, too, but we got so much more than we bargained for.   The show at once became both more serious and more ridiculous (almost Dali-esque) and delivered a season that was heads above the show’s previous stong efforts.  Nancy Botwin is no angel, indeed, but she’s also no devil, and for the first time I’m truly riveted by the prospect of where she’s going to go next. 

5.  The Rachel Maddow Show

Trapped in a boy’s club of angry screamers on both sides of the aisle, Maddow emerged as the singularly thoughtful and erudite spinster (in the sense that she does spin, not in the sense that she’s an old maid, which she’s demonstrably not) in the cable news juggernaut.  Just when there was literally nothing left to take seriously on cable news, along came Rachel, who deftly thinks before she speaks, and gives her viewers something more than vitriolic fat to chew on.  Viva la femme (with just a splash of butch)!

4. Dexter

Here’s a show I thought was pretty awesome as it was, but, in its third season, it delivered a flawless run of episodes.  Flawless.  Each week ended with me perched on the edge of the couch, and this tension and exacerbation was not due to nail-biting “who’s next” mystery—it was thanks to incredible character building.  The sociopathic game played between Michael C. Hall’s Dexter and Jimmy Smit’s maniacal ADA Miguel Prado is so riveting that this show, so often about bloody murders and dumping bodies, became a study in evil, and challenged the viewers’ basic definitions of that four-letter word. 

3.  Californication

A lot of people don’t have the stomach for Hank Moody.  I, on the other hand, could snuggle up with him in my house for days.  Both remarkably witty and dripping with pop-culture laden sap, Californication achieves what films like Vanilla Sky can only attack on the surface: Hank and his co-horts (Lew Ashby most notably) are slaves to the idea of love, shaped by movies and songs and books and the life of the once-removed, that they simply can’t sort the reality from the white noise.  Careful viewers are rewarded with sappy lines stolen from lyrics, a clear harbinger of certain failure for the show’s lovable but clueless crew of misfits.  Californication is enjoyable as pulp, but it’s even more rewarding when viewed as literature.

2.  Mad Men

Season two slowed to a snail’s pace, parsing out moments for each of the myriad characters.  We saw how truly broken both Don Draper and his bride are in their mundane, suburban existence, how desperate the seemingly unflappable Joan is for permanence in love, and how driven the once shy Peggy.  While everyone on Mad Men is as picture-perfect a character as the sets and costumes they inhabit, this was the year for the ladies, and the women of Mad Men skyrocket this little critical darling into the pantheon of TV’s greatest.

1. 30 Rock 

Everyone agrees this was Tina Fey’s year.  Sarah Palin, blah blah blah.  But it’s Liz Lemon that makes me shriek with joy week after week, and there’s no cast on TV that more reliably delivers bon mots that challenge the greatest comedies in history.  Equal parts Mary Tyler Moore, The Bob Newhart Show, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 30 Rock is the most consistently finger-on-the-pulse relevant show on the boob tube.