2010 was a big year for Jon Stewart, and thereby for The Daily Show. I didn’t think Stewart could top the October 30 Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear he and Stephen Colbert led, which drew a crowd of over 200,000 to the National Mall in Washington.

Billboard welcoming RNC attendees to
Minneapolis in 2008
(Photo: Flickr/The Zeppelin)

As it turned out, Stewart outdid himself in December with an impassioned shredding of Senate Republicans’ unconscionable filibuster of the Zadroga Act to provide medical and financial aid to afflicted Ground Zero emergency workers.¹

In 2010 The Daily Show also continued to do one of the things it has done brilliantly for several years: point out and mock people who claim to be oppressed, but clearly aren’t. Examples of such people might include certain investment bankers, Christian mega-churches, professional athletes, or many others that generally have it pretty good. In the case of my number six video of 2010, this treatment is given to a richly deserving group: middle-aged white men.²

Samantha Bee, the Daily Show correspodent in this segment, has long been one of my favorites. She had a few things of her own going on in 2010, most notably the publication of her memoir I Know I Am, But What Are You? Her promotion of the book included a wide-ranging interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air and a cute feature piece in the New York Times Magazine. Daily Show video clips featuring her are here; among those that especially crack my shit up are “Shame Parade,” “John McCain’s Air Quotes” (start at about 2:03 into the clip), and “Long Island Wants to Secede.”

I know. I thought it too: “Really? That song?” I’m sure there are plenty of you out there who have thought you’d be perfectly content to never hear it again. On the other hand, there may be some who either can’t recall or somehow escaped hearing Britney Spears’ original rendition. So if you’re curious, here’s a taste.

Photo: Flickr/Bryan Ledgard

But check it out — this synthetic, plasticized swan is improbably re-shaped into an ugly-in-a-good-way duckling by the British folk-rock journeyman Richard Thompson. His vocal approach — aggressive, and more than a little bitter — turns kittenish teen-pop into a sardonic challenge. To cap it off, Thompson bends the song to his will with his virtuosic guitar interludes, at one point even shifting it temporarily into 6/8 time. All in all, it’s been enough to banish the Britney Spears version from my mind’s ear… but I don’t purport to predict its effect on others. Judge for yourselves:

You can download the whole track (and many, many others) at the Richard Thompson store on Amazon or eMusic. His home page, “BeesWeb,” is at www.richardthompson-music.com and he has fan pages on Facebook and MySpace. Thompson has done several interesting interviews with Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air”; this episode from 2009 is comprised of excerpts from a few of them.

Lastly, for those who like photography… aside from the one included above, photographer Bryan Ledgard has many more terrific photos of Thompson (and others) on his Flickr page.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Here it is, the thrilling conclusion of the quiz from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule which I began in the post before this one. Let’s get right to the action:

1. Best Film of 1979.
   Absolutely, definitely, unequivocally Manhattan.



2. Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
   The one that made the biggest impression on me was All the Real Girls.
3. Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
   Hurh? How big can a creature be and still be “non-giant?” …Whatever, I’ll avoid making a call on that by going with the creepy little thing outside John Lithgow’s airplane window in Twilight Zone: The Movie. And yes, nerds, I’m aware that it was based on an episode of the old TV show where the passenger was played by William Shatner. I’ve seen it, and it’s not scary — the monster was, by the look of it, nothing more than a guy in a gorilla suit. That’s not menacing, it’s comical! In the Lithgow version, though, it’s this bug-eyed, slimy reptilian thing that zips around really fast and pops up right in your face. It looks like it really could claw apart the wing and bring down the plane. I was a kid when I saw the movie in the theatre, and that lizard thing freaked my shit out.
4. Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.
   The Godfather (behind only The Godfather: Part II).
5. Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.
   A tough one, because I’m a little weary of movie franchises. You know what? I think I could be psyched for a sequel to Heathers, updated to flip the bird to the pretensions of a later time period. Obviously you wouldn’t have the three Heathers anymore, but so what. All that’s important are the Veronica (Winona Ryder) and J.D. (Christian Slater) characters, and the misanthropic comedy. And yes, musical theatre nerds, I’m aware that they’re adapting Heathers into a Broadway musical. I’d be more intrigued by it if I weren’t depressed by the fact that the only new musicals that get produced on Broadway are stage adaptations of movies. It’s almost enough to make me wish Andrew Lloyd Webber would stumble across another book of poems. Almost. As for the show I predict will be daringly titled Heathers: The Musical, I’ll admit that I did get a kick out of the news that it will include a number called “I Love My Dead Gay Son.”
6. Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.
   I’ve gotta say the prom humiliation/revenge sequence from Carrie. De Palma is sometimes guilty of over-indulging in cinematic flashiness, but the Carrie scene directly called for DePalma’s whole bag of movie magic tricks. And oh, did he bring it: He pulls out slow motion, swelling lyrical music, split screen, trippy kaleidoscopic image and sound editing, and his trademark buckets of blood (in an actual bucket, no less). Put it all together and you’ve got a mini-opera, a dream-turned-nightmare-turned-explosion-of-supernatural-vengeance. Bravura filmmaking, and totally badass.
7. Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.
   The dream ballet from Singin’ in the Rain.
   
8. Favorite Alan Smithee film.
   Where Alan Smithee credits are concerned, I think “favorite” is really not the right word. In any case, the only Smithee-credited film I’ve seen is the first segment of the afore-mentioned Twilight Zone: The Movie, on which the 2nd A.D. “smitheed” after actor Vic Morrow was killed during the filming of an action sequence.
9. Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?
   Excuse me? Crash all the way! I’m putting the signs down, Meat. Just follow the signs.
10. Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.
    Bullets Over Broadway. See also the “Part I” post of this quiz re: Jennifer Tilly as Olive Neal.
11. Best Film of 1999.
    Magnolia, hands down.
12. Favorite movie tag line.
    The Fly. Concise, effective, and as it turned out, sticky enough to become part of the general pop culture lexicon.
13. Favorite B-movie western.
    Does Silverado count? Yeah. I say it does.
14. Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.
    Margaret Mitchell, since to my knowledge only the one book of hers was made into a movie.
15. Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?
    I at this time must invoke my right under the fifth amendment to avoid the possibility of, in a manner of speaking, incriminating myself, or at least revealing the depths of my cinematic illiteracy vis-a-vis Bringing Up Baby and My Man Godfrey.
16. Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.
    The only one I can think of at the moment is Dooley Wilson’s iconic rendition of “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca.
17. Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?
    I haven’t seen it, so I’ll say subversive satire. From what I hear, seeing the movie might change my mind, though.
18. Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet.
    I have a hard time answering this kind of question, for the extremely trite reason that there are so, so many people in the history of the movies whose work I admire greatly and whom I would love to meet. Therefore, these five feel quite arbitrary, because I could name dozens of others whom I’d be just as pleased to meet. Anyway, I’ll say Billy Wilder, Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Groucho Marx, and Peter O’Toole. The first three simply due to my profound admiration for their body of work, and the last two partly for the same reason but even more because were/are delightful raconteurs. Here’s a little example of the kind of anecdote I’d hope to hear, from a 1993 interview of O’Toole by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” As the clip begins, he’s been talking about the filming of Lawrence of Arabia.

This little Facebook meme has found its way to me. OK, what am I supposed to do?

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

I’ll do it, and I’ll send it to the friends who tagged me in theirs, but no way am I going to require 25 of my Facebook friends to write lists too. My friends have more important things to do… well, most of them, anyway.

25 Random Things About Me

1. I am a compulsive copy editor and a remorseless grammar nazi (in case you hadn’t noticed).
2. I am geeky enough to use HTML markup when posting things on community web sites. In case you still hadn’t noticed.
3. I’m seriously considering getting a bicycle to use for getting around town, in order to both save money on gas and get more exercise. The only drawback I foresee is the increased chance of severe injury due to LA’s shortage of bike lanes and surplus of reckless drivers.
4. I’m discouraged at having already written this much and only being on #4.
5. Guiltiest dietary pleasure: ice cream.
6. I just decided that if I’m going to write this much, I’m damn well going to make it a blog post — come to think of it, then it’ll automatically become a Facebook note anyway. Screw it, I am now composing this on WordPress.
7. I first used a computer in about 1981 when my elementary school obtained three or four machines and stationed them in the library. They taught us to program a little bit of BASIC, which never really came in handy. Within a couple of years I was writing school essays on my family’s IBM PC and telling people how totally choice WordStar for DOS was.



8. I am not a grammar martinet with regard to casual conversation. The standard for spoken English is necessarily much broader than the one for written English. How dull and colorless would conversation be without the wild cards of things like dialect and slang?
9. I inadvertently stayed up working on something until 2:30 A.M. last night, and it’s altogether possible that I’ll fall asleep before I finish this.


She’s worth every penny

10. Pretty soon I’ll need to go pick up my dog Bella from her bi-monthly cardiac ultrasound re-check appointment at the vet. I’ll feel lucky if we get out of there for less than $350.
11. I can’t believe I already need to do laundry again.
12. Every so often I hear the Italian woman in the building next door having sex. Usually it’s when I need to concentrate on something else, but can’t, because she apparently likes her nookie with a generous supply of fresh air via her open window. C’est la vie, she’s clearly faking it most of the time anyway.
13. In my opinion The Office has fallen off a little bit lately, especially compared to 30 Rock, which still consistently cracks my shit up.
WARNING: items 14, 15 and 16 contain a high level of geekery. Viewer discretion is advised.
14. I’d love to be able to uninstall iTunes (and the irritating Apple Software Update app piggybacked onto it, which pesters me daily to install something called Bonjour for Windows) and use Songbird for everything. The problem is my iPod, which I like to use for listening to podcasts. With Songbird’s graduation from Beta into its full 1.0 release, its functions for podcast reading, metadata editing, and iPod device support went from “useless or nonexistent” to “kind of a pain in the ass, but it works.” It just ain’t there yet.
15. Which reminds me, I have a couple of web-related crusades of principle going, so I think I’ll give them each a number on Ye Olde List here. First in line: the iTunes Store. Think we’re supposed to stop hating them because they’re finally selling songs without DRM now? Think again. The new “DRM-free” media files they’re selling still have the customer’s registered e-mail address embedded in them, making any future copies thereof potentially traceable to that customer. Also, if you want DRM-free versions of music you already bought from the iTunes Store, they’ll give them to you… for 30 cents per song. That’s right, they want to charge you again for music you already paid them for. Say it with me: the iTunes Store sucks. Buy your MP3 music downloads from Amazon, where they’ve always come without DRM and at the higher-quality 256-kbps bitrate that iTunes just now started providing.



16. Next, a Colbertian wag of my finger at Internet Explorer. I would say “people who use Internet Explorer,” but Google Analytics tells me that would implicate 40% of the visitors to this blog over the last month, and I dearly love each and every visitor I get. Even the ones who use a shitty browser. Never mind that IE is the bane of any web designer’s existence (unless you’re a web designer, in which case I don’t need to tell you). There is simply no humane reason for anyone to deny him or herself the improved ease of use, configurability, speed, and stability of the superior alternatives: either my favorite, Firefox, or any of Safari, Opera, Google Chrome, Flock, and the Mac-only Camino, among others will do (but for God’s sake, not AOL Desktop). Seriously, do yourself a favor.
17. Now that I’ve heard Terry Gross interview Darren Aronofsky on Fresh Air, I really want to see The Wrestler.
18. All due credit to the Cardinals for peaking at the right time, but I’m rooting for the Steelers.
19. Every move Rod Blagojevich makes still leaves me saying, “Can you fucking believe this guy?” Wow. Not even a decade in, and he’s already making a credible run at Douchebag of the Century.
20. I believe that my biggest liability as a blogger is my constitutional inability to write something brief. However, in this instance it was not I who decided the list had to be 25 items long.
21. It is downright nippy in my apartment right now, but after last month’s bill I don’t want to keep cranking up the thermostat.
22. I haven’t used most of the Amazon gift certificate my brother gave me for my birthday yet. Possible items include Season 2 of The Shield on DVD (God, I already miss that show). Earlier today I also thought of two more glaring holes to fill in my music library, namely, Sam Cooke and Junior Walker & the All-Stars.
23. I’m having trouble restraining myself from putting up little cop-out entries for these few remaining list items… whoops — see, that one got by me.
24. Our refrigerator in this apartment is at least 25 years old. When it first cycles on it makes a sound like a garbage disposal that a piece of silverware fell into, which lasts for about ten seconds before trailing off. I barely notice it anymore, but it tends to startle guests.
25. I’m far from perfect, but one thing I’m very good about is always putting the toilet seat down.

Since I ended up not doing this on Facebook, the tagging people thing doesn’t really apply. I’ll forward a link to this post to some friends and hope some of them leave comments here. Even if their comments are just to ask why I wasted their time with this frivolous crap. Don’t be shy, mock me!  I’ve teed it right up for you with this list, so bring it, bitchez!

As is often the case, there’s an episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. Actually two episodes, but I think of them as one. I’ll explain.

I’d listen to Terry Gross interview a
doorknob.

Among the many reasons I find Fresh Air consistently fascinating are the occasional segments by Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist who formerly taught at Stanford University and now is on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley.¹ I am partial to most anything related to language, as I’ve indicated elsewhere. Further exciting my interest is the way that Nunberg investigates the vernacular of today’s popular media. The June 29th episode of Fresh Air contained a short Nunberg commentary on the extreme pronouncements of conservative pundits and the effect they have had on what now passes for political discourse. On the July 6th program he was given a full interview wherein he expounded further upon the same subject, which apparently forms the core of his new book Talking Right (which carries the lengthy but colorful subtitle, How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show).

Geoff Nunberg, looking very
book-jackety.

Hearing Mr. Nunberg’s thesis touched off a bit of a mental conflagration, my mind cycling through observations collected over recent months and years, tracking new associations between seemingly disparate elements. There’s a whole lot of shit to think about here, and I’ll be doing so for a long time yet. My sense of things is that Nunberg’s observations serve to underscore a fundamental characteristic of our society at the present moment: the sheer volume of information that pervades our lives in this Information Age does not draw us together as an informed community — it isolates us from one another.

There are as many messages available on a given subject as there are channels on a satellite TV service, or movie critics on Rotten Tomatoes, or WordPress blogs.² Having this many options is a marvelous thing, with the only catch being that it necessitates critical thinking. Critical thinking is hard. When you’re pleasantly flopped onto the sofa with a beverage after a long day at work, and your remote comes to rest on Ann Coulter in time to hear her say that liberals believe in Darwinian evolution because they see at as carte blanche to kill, maim and oppress under the guise of “survival of the fittest,” critical thinking is downright inconvenient. It’s easy to see why the average viewer would be more likely to just keep watching and listening, rather than risk missing whatever bold condemnation she might utter next in order to ask him or herself, “What evidence could Ann Coulter provide to support such a claim? Has she interviewed scores of left-wing criminals who all cited Darwin as a moral get-out-of-jail-free card?”

Many have remarked upon the major media outlets’ shift into presenting news material as entertainment. Since politics has always been a major subset of news reporting, I suppose it is not surprising that its treatment in the news media is now less about journalism than it is about show business. It’s political discourse in which the intended response is not more discursing (so to speak), but plain old cursing. It may counterproductive to the course of our nation, but hey — the Nielsen ratings are terrific.