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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.

“Get Out of My Face” (often referred to by the delightful acronym “GOOMF”) is a brilliant parody of the dick-swinging, rapid fire sports pundit barking match shows which have become a staple for ESPN — ones like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.¹ The Onion’s first installment of GOOMF appeared in the summer of 2011, and it laid me out laughing:

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Per IMDb, I am pleased to inform you that the stars of GOOMF are Robb Pruitt as Kenny Kennedy and Levan Reid as Doc Brooks.

One of the things I love about GOOMF is the deliberate graphic overload, which is barely an exaggeration of the number of shiny bells and whistles that often clutter up the screen on SportsCenter. It’s impossible to catch all of the silly headlines that scroll by on the bottom-margin news ticker and pay full attention to the characters’ dialogue in a single viewing; if you don’t have time for multiple viewings of the clip, I transcribed them all here for your quick reading convenience.

For the slightly more serious-minded, the style being parodied in this video was recently the subject of a trenchant article in The Atlantic by Patrick Hruby, entitled “The SportsCenter-ization of Political Journalism.” The jist:

Turn on ESPN. There are score tickers and headline crawls, slick graphics and constant teases for upcoming stories, everything creating a sense of urgent immediacy. Now switch to Fox News. Visually speaking, it’s the same eyeball-grabbing formula. (Well, replace scores with stock prices, and garrulous sportscaster Chris Berman with a frosted blonde news babe). This is the SportsCenter-ization of the news, in which coverage of Washington — and the world, really — apes a glossy entertainment product dedicated to spectacular touchdowns, gee-whiz statistics, prefabricated drama, insta-debates waged by a nattering, revolving-door athletic punditocracy and the very latest updates on Brett Favre’s various bodily appendages.

If the Broncos beat the Patriots later today, watch tomorrow for Fox News to start ginning up a Tim Tebow write-in campaign for the remaining GOP primary states.

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:

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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.

Dan Savage (photo: Flickr/mattoly)

Of course, the full effect is only available by hearing Dan speak his words. Nevertheless, here are some highlights for the benefit of those unable to listen (or who simply prefer to read):

My favorite question [at the press conference] was this: “Why would you do this after you were married?” Because Lord knows, nobody goes online and flirts — or masturbates, looks at [or] downloads porn, or creates through the interactive-ness of the web their own porn moments — no married person does that. The worldwide web is just this big jack-off-a-thon for single people.

You know what? Members of congress, like members of the press, get horny sometimes. And sometimes male members of congress, like male members of the press, think with their dicks. And sometimes married men rub one out with an assist from the worldwide web, my media colleagues! Film at fucking 11!

Weiner was horny and went online and flirted and beat it a few times, like millions of Americans have done and will continue to do, every damn day, forever.

Another reporter asked Weiner if he had a drinking problem. Because you know, only a man who was drunk or on drugs could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? And lots of women too? This desire to pathologize behavior that isn’t sick — that is really common, and human, and completely and instantly understandable — that itself is pathological.

Weiner does not have a “problem.” Weiner has a computer. It is the same problem that all Americans these days have: we have computers, and sometimes we make fools of ourselves on them. Think of your own life: think of the shit you’ve done online. If all of it was dragged out into the public eye, as this has been dragged out into the public eye, would your relationship survive? Would your professional life survive? No.

Everyone’s talking about “what Weiner did.” You know what? Something was done to Weiner.

I realize I’m shouting now… I just get upset when I see everyone pretend to not know what they do know about human sexuality and the way it works. And this sort of willful obtuseness on the part of the media, that plays into American sex-phobia and hypocrisy about sex. And this posturing.

Everyone is talking now about Weiner like, “He’s a congressman, and he had to know that this could happen — that these pictures could surface and be made public — and that was reckless, and displayed a kind of bad judgment that we can’t have in congress.” We wouldn’t want bad judgment in congress, not now, not after 200+ years of a bad-judgment-free congress.

Congress 20 years from now, 30 years from now, is going to be solely comprised of people who have taken pictures of their junk and put them online. Every teenager in America is online, is flirting, dating, putting up internet profiles, looking for love… is sending pictures of their junk! Sexting!

Soon, we will have a congress that is entirely Anthony Weiners. What are we going to do then? Are we really saying that the only people who are fit to serve in the U.S. Congress are the people who have never gone online and done anything inappropriate? Because what we’re really asking for, then, is to be ruled by the Amish.