Helm’s huge influence as a singer, drummer and all-around musician is widely and rightfully hailed, not least by Jon Pareles in his New York Times obit. The man’s wonderful acting turns in a handful of movies is (perhaps understandably) getting somewhat less play.

What mention there is of his acting usually highlights his first movie appearance, playing the titular father of Loretta Lynn (Sissy Spacek) in the 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter. Of my few memories of that film, one of the clearest is Helm sitting inside the family’s house after returning from work. He stares blankly ahead, motionless, the exposed skin of his hands, neck and face blackened by coal dust, with a single rivulet of blood running from one nostril over his mouth and down his chin.

More recently, Helm appeared in a brief but unforgettable role in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005). The film’s star and director, Tommy Lee Jones, presumably had known Helm since working with him in Coal Miner’s Daughter a quarter-century earlier. By then, the ravages of the throat cancer that would eventually kill him were quite evident (although he would apparently regenerate somewhat in subsequent years). Skeletal and raspy, he played a blind hermit encountered by Jones and his captive, Barry Pepper, as they flee from the law toward the Mexican border. When the good-ol’-boy lawmen eventually ask Helm’s character if he’s “seen anybody come through here lately,” he hollers, “I ain’t seen anybody in over thirty years!”

Levon Helm acted the way he sang: plainly, direct from the unvarnished root of himself. He wasn’t a trained actor, he was the kind of actor who played people who themselves were untrained. Despite the artifice of cameras and crew around him, Helm was one of those face-value who didn’t “act” per se, he’d just be. He was simply not capable of being inauthentic.

He would always be primarily a musician, of course — indeed, would need music to stay afloat. As fate would have it, the United States’s absurdly expensive health care system threatened to bankrupt even the famous Levon Helm after a few rounds of cancer treatment in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s. He opened the barn of his country house in upstate New York for “Midnight Rambles” where he and musician friends would play into the evening. Locals would attend, chipping in a few bucks to take in the music and do some dancing.

Helm referred to these periodic events as a variation on the old Rent Parties that country folk used to organize to avoid losing their lodgings, just as he was in danger of losing his house to pay medical bills. But hey — like the Republicans and Tea Partiers say, hands off our health care! Obamacare and its insurance mandates are an unconstitutional government takeover of the health care system! Even as mild as it is, with no public option, and if people (or even famous musicians) are losing their houses because of medical bills, they should be glad they’re losing their houses in America, the land of the free, motherfuckers! …But I digress.

Let’s get back to remembering a great artist. It was the raw, elemental authenticity I described earlier which imbued songs like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and “Up On Cripple Creek” with the folkloric essence that captivated countless music lovers. For my example of choice, it made him one of what must be a mere handful of people not named Bruce Springsteen who could sing “Atlantic City” as if he’d written it, and it had been his all along.

So here is the late, great Levon Helm singing that very song in 2008, accompanied by Midnight Ramble regulars including his daughter, Amy.

Farewell, Levon.

[Rated NSFW]

Somebody give those two girls a series. Although they get all the laugh lines, I would be remiss to not also recognize the excellent “straight-man” work of Brad Holbrook and Tracy Toth as the Today Now! anchors.

Video number 4 on my 2011 list may well be the most NSFW thing I’ve ever posted. Remember “The Committee” from last year’s list? “You’re So Hot” surpasses that level of dirtiness not by a wide margin, but by a clear one nevertheless. Don’t freak out — it’s not pø®n or anything. Nothing at all graphic is shown in the clip, but a whoooole lot of very graphic things are said. Which is, as you’ll see, kind of the whole point. A point, I might add, which I continue to find hilarious.

In case you’re wondering, yes, Chris Mintz-Plasse (with the bowtie) was McLovin in Superbad. And yes, Dave Franco is the younger brother of James Franco. They made a really funny series of instructional acting videos for Funny or Die a few years ago, in case you haven’t seen them.

Trivia tidbit: the brothers Franco and I grew up in the same town, Palo Alto, California (the age gap is wide enough that I don’t know them or anything, though).

Even for naturally funny comics and actors, it’s a daunting enough task that the bit usually lasts for under thirty seconds. Comedian and former Simpsons writer Dana Gould, however, is no usual guest:

[Mildly NSFW]

For more Dana Gould, I guess his web site would be a logical place to start. He did a great episode of WTF with Marc Maron, although he did it long enough ago that it’s no longer available for free.¹ I also find him to be well worth following on Twitter, where he is @DanaJGould.

I clicked through some of the other Larry King Game clips on the KPCS YouTube channel. None of them approached Dana Gould level, but a few I can recommend for a quick giggle are comedian Paul F. Tompkins, musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic, poker champion Annie Duke, and comedian Greg Proops. To watch all four as a playlist (2:18), click here.

To be completely honest, I haven’t yet watched a full episode of The Kevin Pollak Chat Show. But I definitely plan to, because among the show’s extensive archives are chats with some people of whom I am a big fan. Apart from the full Dana Gould interview and the four mentioned in the preceding paragraph, I am psyched for the ones with Christopher Guest, Garfunkel & Oates, and Bryan Cranston.

That, my friends, is what they call getting pwned. Even the jarring cut to the context-less moment from Team America doesn’t diminish Damon’s (pardon the pun) schooling of microphone chick and the shitty cameraman.

As some readers already know,¹ I am the son of two teachers. I suppose I could therefore argue that my passion about our society’s devaluation of teachers is one teacher greater than Matt Damon’s; kidding aside, I’m very pleased that his celebrity, combined with his wit and eloquence on the subject, prompted this video to go viral on YouTube. As another actor (albeit a considerably less well-known one) born of educators, I’ll indulge the interviewer’s clunky comparison of the acting and teaching professions in another way.

The renowned actress and acting teacher Uta Hagen had the thesis that our society in general does not respect acting as a legitimate occupation. Acting is perceived as something which more or less anybody can do, but some people just have more talent for it than others. Everyone has played make-believe games as a kid, so everyone considers himself a valid critic of acting. It’s my contention that popular attitudes toward teaching have become disturbingly similar to this casual disregard for acting.

Everyone has to go to school, the perception goes, and everyone knows from experience that some teachers are more effective than others. It is thought that pretty much anyone who has graduated from school could teach, since there will always be at least a certain number of teaching jobs. Hence, everyone considers himself a valid critic of teaching. Don’t think so? Listen to microphone chick in this extended version of her Matt Damon encounter, in which she claims that having attended school in the L.A. Unified District qualifies her as an teaching expert equal to Damon’s mom.

The key difference between the acting and teaching professions is, of course, that public school teachers are paid with public money. To the libertarian/Tea Party crowd, “public money” is a hex. It’s their “Lord Voldemort.” With the ideal of eliminating essentially all taxes, these every-man-for-himself fanatics took aim in new, more pernicious ways at public school teachers during the year 2011.

Setting the tone was Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who interpreted his 52-47% victory in the 2010 election as an overwhelming mandate to eliminate the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees. Not all his state’s public employees, mind you — just the ones who weren’t policemen or firefighters.² That leaves what, about 95% teachers and 5% janitors and DMV clerks.

Fortunately Governor Walker’s anti-teacher budget touched off a substantial backlash. The most immediate reaction was a protest in and around the State Capitol that went on for months, at its height involving about 100,000 demonstrators. After the budget was passed, Walker’s Tea Party allies pursued their stated intention to recall Democratic Party State Senators who had fought against the measure. This plan backfired when the eventual vote resulted in the recall of only two State Senators from office, both of them Republicans.

The situation with regard to teachers and education policy is still crucially important, of course. It calls for more Matt Damon-style pwnage, whether or not it comes from Matt Damon himself. The countryside is still crawling with ignoramuses who think that the economy sucks because some teachers are getting tenure… as opposed to, say, too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks taking advantage of their industry’s deregulation to create securities out of bullshit, crash the global economy and stick us with the bill.