I’ve heard and seen bits of John Mulaney’s stand up routines over the past few years, but I finally downloaded the full “New In Town” performance last week. Immediately one of my top full-length stand up shows of all time. Like George Carlin, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedberg kind of all time. He’s just spectacular at building a funny idea into a huge comedy payoff. He crafts his material meticulously, such that each routine has a cadence that evokes big laughs while carrying the story somewhere we’re all eager to follow next.
So, yesterday Twitter told my brain something wonderful: Mulaney just finished taping the fourth episode of an upcoming sitcom for Fox. The masterful Martin Short costars, along with Elliott Gould. The show even has Lorraine Bracco and Penny Marshall, for fuck’s sake. Please, please gods of comedy and television, make this show as great as it should be. Don’t erode away the things that make Mulaney so funny in the first place in an effort to make him “more relatable” for “maximum demographic draw.”
In the meantime, here are two excellent Mulaney clips from “New In Town.” They are not completely ruined by Comedy Central’s shitty site, which is full of commercials, clips edited several minutes too short, and bleeped dirty words.
UPDATE: Wow, and Comedy Central’s embed code also blows. Here are “links” to the clips:
When I was about 25, some friends and I planned to raft down the Chattahoochee River. It’s not like white water rafting; it’s a lazy beer guzzling float down a stretch of the river north Atlanta.
You must have at least one life jacket for each person in your raft. You don’t have to wear them, you just have to have them with you in the raft. The park rangers love to write pricey tickets for non-compliance.
So, I had the task of obtaining some cheap life preservers for the group. I went to the K-Mart nearby. In the outdoors section they indeed had the standard issue orange life preservers. Except they were all children’s sizes. But since all you have to do is hold them up to show the rangers when they ask, it didn’t really matter what size they were. They’d never know the difference.
I had one other item I needed to get on this shopping trip, which I grabbed on the way through the store.
So, checkout time. I dropped seven children’s day-glo orange life preservers on the belt. And a box of 12 condoms. (I was ambitious and optimistic at 25.) Only at this moment did the incongruous pairing of these items occur to me. The checkout guy gave me a legitimate what-the-fuck look, and I looked right at him and said, “Be Prepared.”
It seems to me that SeaWorld could’ve saved itself some future problems if it had reconsidered this conversation from 40 or so years ago:
“OK team, we want to bring whales to the park. We’re going to put the giant whales in tanks with humans and have them perform tricks together, largely for huge crowds of families with children. Any suggestions on what type of whales we should get?”
“Uh, how about killer whales, Larry?”
Controversy has smothered the summer fish circus SeaWorld since CNN first aired the combustible documentary Blackfish a few months ago. (I first typed “searing documentary” but couldn’t abide the unintentional fish pun.)The film makes a passionate and riveting case against SeaWorld’s captivity of orcas, the massive killer whales that have drawn hundreds of thousands of people to its parks for decades.
As part of the swift, fervid backlash against SeaWorld, many musicians backed out of a summer SeaWorld concert series. Several celebrities have spoken out on record, including this scathing indictment by whale-cocked drumstick-twirling marine biologist Tommy Lee:
Shortly after making this statement, Tommy Lee got online to search for cow vaginas
It’s almost impossible to watch Blackfish without at least questioning the wisdom of keeping the big fish captive for our entertainment. You don’t soon forget harrowing scenes of orcas turning on trainers and dragging them to the depths of the tanks. As damning the movie is, I always maintain some skepticism when people with a specific and personal agenda attack something. There is always some truth in the middle that they distort or ignore. I’m sure there are many good people at SeaWorld who really do care about the well-being of the animals in the parks. In fact, I am certain that SeaWorld cares. Here’s how I know:
Which brings this meandering post to its elusive topic: SeaWorld’s insulting, annoying and staggeringly inept response to Blackfish. SeaWorld seems determined douse a brush fire with kerosene until the entire forest burns to ash.
SeaWorld defends itself with an aggressive, name-calling assault, partly in the form of incessant pay-promoted tweets such as this one:
I want to invite SeaWorld, vegans and self-assured atheists to my next dinner party!
Wow! Way to do everything wrong SeaWorld! I have no idea what communications agency SeaWorld works with, but either the agency is giving poor advice or SeaWorld executives are so blindly angry that they are forcing the issue. This fails in every way possible.
1) It’s defensive. SeaWorld sounds like a guilty politician caught fucking the housekeeper, reacting with indignant and angry denial.
2) It’s dismissive. Blackfish worked. It fueled real emotional responses for a wide audience of people. Now SeaWorld opts to insult those people for being naive to “propaganda.” If you make someone mad, then call them stupid for being mad, you just make them that much less eager to forgive you or even listen to you.
3) It’s self-defeating. SeaWorld has done more to promote Blackfish than anyone besides CNN. SeaWorld has introduced the controversy to countless people who had probably never heard of it to begin with.
4) It’s pedantic. Here is SeaWorld’s lengthy response to Blackfish. The movie grabbed attention with vivid, emotional and sometimes tragic human and animal stories. SeaWorld responded with a manifesto that reads like a labyrinth court deposition. SeaWorld splits semantic hairs and haggles over chronology and minutiae that won’t sway opponents and will likely inflame neutral observers. Case in point:
The film depicts a killer whale collection in Washington State that occurred 40 years ago. It leaves viewers with three false impressions: (1) that SeaWorld continues to collect whales from the wild to this day; (2) that Tilikum himself was collected by SeaWorld; and (3) that the collections done four decades ago were illegal. None of this is true. SeaWorld does not collect killer whales in the wild, and has not done so in over 35 years. Tilikum was not collected by us. And the collections four decades ago were conducted in compliance with federal laws, pursuant to federally-issued permits at that time.
Thanks, SeaWorld! Now I completely understand why those whales have sad floppy fins and drag your trainers to their terrifying deaths in your torture pools! No one who watched Blackfish will be moved or fooled by this turgid barrel of words.
5) It’s annoying. This will probably end up being the longest post I’ve ever written here. Not because I’m an activist for the cause. It’s because SeaWorld annoyed the shit out of me. It’s relentless, aggressive tweets irritated me so fiercely that I first started responding to them on Twitter, and then took to writing this rant that at least 17 other people will see. Aim at foot, pull trigger, SeaWorld!
I found Blackfish compelling, and at times sad and terrifying. But I’m not a someone who thinks about SeaWorld much to begin with. I’m middle-aged with no kids. I hyperventilate and explode in hives just passing through the Orlando airport, filled with loud, overpacked huddles of sugar-and-Mickey-bloated families navigating the airport as if it’s a corn maze.
So I’m not someone who would have ever even considered a trip there. Blackfish would’ve likely drifted to the back of my consciousness. Except SeaWorld just wouldn’t let it.
So, SeaWorld, here is the lesson of the title you should heed. Given your noisy, belligerent and self-destructive response, what you should have said was nothing. (Impatient viewers skip to the 3:40 mark.)
Nestle voluntarily recalled its Philly Steak and Cheese and Croissant Crust Philly Steak and Cheese Hot Pockets because they are disgusting. No, wait, it’s because they might contain meat from “diseased and unsound animals.”
Hmm. Is this really a huge departure from the typical contents of a Hot Pocket? Don’t we have pretty low expectations to begin with?
This follows last week’s recall of 9 million pounds of tainted meat by Rancho Feeding Corporation. (Coming this fall on NBC: Meat Recall, which stars Thora Birch as a brash, no-nonsense USDA inspector with a photographic memory.)
Also, someone on Twitter asked the very valid question: When they recall meat, do they fix it and give it back to you? Like a Kia?
As always with these stories, the real fun is in the details. So let’s take a closer look at some of the meat products Rancho Feeding Corporation recalled:
“Beef Carcasses” (wholesale and custom sales only)
2 per box “Beef (Market) Heads” (retail only)
4-gallons per box “Beef Blood” (wholesale only)
50-lb. boxes of “Beef Feet”
50-lb. boxes of “Beef Hearts”
Apparently, the bulk of the recalled items were from the Rancho Pagan Ritual Meats Division. But here’s the real story the “mainstream media” missed:
30-lb. boxes of “Mountain Oysters”
In the famous words of Barry Zuckerkorn: “Those are balls.”
That’s right, mountain oysters are beef testicles. Apparently also known as mountain tendergroins and cowboy caviar. So yet again, the news media miss the real story, and headline editors miss this golden opportunity:
“Ball Recall, Y’all”
Of course, as in all matters of the Hot Pocket, we ultimately defer to Mr. Gaffigan:
A final word to friends in the Northeast who mocked our snow, and those on the West Coast who mocked our earthquake:
New York: Your pizza and your bagels aren’t really that much better. Shut up already.
Los Angeles: I don’t care if you have an IMDB credit as “Fleeing robber #3” on a CSI episode, or that your agent once repped Stephen Baldwin. You’re a waiter.
Move aside, 1980 U.S. men’s hockey team and your so-called “Miracle on Ice.” Last night in Sochi, we witnessed a true miracle as Russian ice dancer Ekaterina Bobrova dislodged a large chunk of hot dog from partner Dmitri Soloviev’s windpipe with a nifty Heimlich maneuver.
oooh kaaay, ahhma gonna icesh dansh now
This could only be funnier if a moth flew into his mouth. I think it was supposed to be some dance of the zombies theme. I’m sure some ice dancing artistry happened soon thereafter, but this just looks ridiculous.
And for my splendid friend Loring, it evoked Anne Hathaway’s famous scene of assertive emotion in Les Miserables:
I have had containseggs readers ask me what the “goddamned right I’ll be heard” line in the site masthead means. And by “readers” I mean one religious friend who was mildly offended that it says “goddamned.” The other 12 daily visitors move on and continue searching for egg recipes.
For sure, it’s not based on any religious hostility. I am agnostic, which means I’m an atheist but I’m just not a fucking asshole about it. Fundamentalist atheists are as annoying as vegans and Deepak Chopra.
Instead, like most important guidance in my life, the line comes from a Modest Mouse lyric:
“Well I’ll go to college and I’ll learn some big words
And I’ll talk real loud, goddamned right I’ll be heard
You’ll remember the guy who used all those big words he must’ve learned in college.”
I have long found this a perfect perspective on puffed up academic and intellectual self satisfaction. It occurred to me again the other day when I saw people on LinkedIn and Twitter sharing this and clamoring to be clever by proxy:
My immediate reaction to this was, “Oh, fuck off. Don’t you have a TED Talk to give somewhere?”
Sure, there’s merit to the notion that we communicate more directly and personally than ever. But that’s not new. Smart marketers and sellers in any business have always realized that people think and buy emotionally and personally above all else. It’s true if you’re a consumer buying shoes or a CEO signing off on a $10 million software purchase.
The guy unveiling “H2H” in the picture is Bryan Kramer. I didn’t know of him before seeing this. Looking him up, he’s a deservedly respected CEO of a company called purematter, which has an electric portfolio of content marketing for some big name clients.
And he’s a smart marketer, creating an early buzz for the “Human to Human’ concept that, alas, is also the name of his upcoming book. People are eager to associate with a big thinker’s Next Big Idea:
But “human 2 human” is an idea contrived solely for its own existence. It’s there to be talked about and fawned over, not to do or invent or solve something, nor to challenge us emotionally or artistically. It’s an intellectual fart that we celebrate as an achievement, ignoring its fleeting presence and pretending not to notice its staleness.
All of which reminds me of this outstanding cartoon by B. Kliban, an immaculate commentary on intellectual self satisfaction:
Kliban was most famous for drawings of cats that overshadowed his other brilliant, subversive and hilarious works. If you’re not familiar with Kliban, do yourself a favor and check out some of his collections.
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