Awkward Moment Theater

When I was in New York last year, I wrote sketches for a group called New Media Comedy. Some of them were performed live in the 2007 New York Underground Comedy Festival, and now three of them have been filmed and placed on NMC's Myspace page. Apparently they're really big on the concept and are going to produce some more sketches for it and maybe do some live shows using this as the glue. So even stuff that I'm not going to write will have my name on it. Ah, the "Created by" credit.

Here are the three that have been produced so far. I'm really happy with two of them especially. One has some creative changes that I totally understand but a joke I was on love with got cut. But it is much closer to my original vision than the other set of scripts I had produced by someone else, so for that I am happy. Although the other people paid me, so there's a tradeoff I suppose. But that is "The Biz" I guess, better to learn it now. But here without further rambling by me, is Awkward Moment Theater:

Awkward Moment Theatre 1


Awkward Moment Theatre 2


Awkward Moment Theatre 3

I am (an) Iron Man (fan)

Iron Man is a character that I never in my history of comic book fandom cared about. When talk first started circulating about an Iron Man movie, my thought was “I guess they’re hitting them all eventually,” considering that we’ve already been subjected to Ghost Rider and Daredevil/Elektra. Especially now that Marvel has founded their very own studio so that they can produce movies themselves instead of selling the rights and points on the back end to others, it seems fairly certain that their catalog of heroes isn’t going to be closing itself off to the multiplex any time soon.

But after seeing Iron Man, I’m sort of ok with that. Provided of course, that the movies they make are more like Iron Man and less like the Fantastic Four franchise. It isn’t that Iron Man is any amazing special film, but it isn’t terrible. In the spectrum of superhero movies, it falls somewhere maybe slightly behind the first X-Men, but well in front of the awful third one. It isn’t Spiderman II, Hellboy, or Batman Begins. But it certainly isn’t Daredevil.

There is one thing and one thing alone that makes Iron Man such an enjoyable movie. Robert Downey Jr. The script is ok, and Jon Favreau does a pretty decent ass job in the director’s chair for it too, but it is Downey that carries the weight of the movie on his metal clad shoulders. He plays Tony Stark with such a flair for delightful bastardness, yet does not fall short at the moments when he must also show real emotion, real conflict as his character realizes his place in the world.

Downey brings to the table the most enjoyable performance in a popcorn movie since Johnny Depp set sail as Captain Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Despite Stark’s personal conflicts, he is the least angst-ridden super hero in recent memory, delighting in every moment he spends refining and eventually kicking evil ass in his suit. It is an interesting twist on the paradigm of the costumed hero that Stark is more weighed down by the impact on the world he has created as a normal person, albeit a larger than life normal person, than he does as a costumed crusader. His joy in being a superhero reminds us of something often forgotten in many of the overly dark failures in comic book adaptations the last few years, the reason so many little kids want to be superheroes in the first place, it looks kind of fun.

My Man Crush on John Edwards Has Not Faded

I tried posting this yesterday but had technical difficulties

You Don't Know What Love Is: My Relationship With the White Stripes and Music In General

I love the White Stripes. This is a declaration that seems sort of silly in 2008. Why take the time to write about your love of a band that has been around since 1999, and has held a firm foothold in the mainstream realm of "cool" music since 2001's "White Blood Cells"?

The reason is this: my love of the White Stripes is something I have only recently become aware of. I have always been aware of the band, I've noticed the hundreds of magazine articles with Jack and Meg white on the cover, I've always stopped my channel surfing when an MTV or VH1 was playing one of their videos, I've turned up my radio whenever "Seven Nation Army" has come on, I've played "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" on many a jukebox, and I have acquired the occasional single of theirs via itunes or other, less legitimate means. I even rocked out to a burned copy of the debut album of the Raconteurs, Jack White's side project, that was given to me by a former coworker. And yet, somehow, in the years between 2001 and now, I have never listed the White Stripes when asked about my favorite bands, and I have never purchased any of their albums.

In fact, I have even gone so far as to roll my eyes when other people have told me that the White Stripes are one of their favorite bands, when someone tried to inform me of the genius of "Icky Thump," I would tune them out. Somehow I had convinced myself that I didn't like the White Stripes, even though I have never heard a song of theirs that I do not, in fact, love. Consistently I have discussed the songs of theirs that I like as the exception. "Oh, I'm not really a White Stripes fan, but I love The Denial Twist." "But I love My Doorbell." "But I love their cover of "Just Don't Know What to do With Myself."

In short, if the White Stripes were a woman, they would be that girl I was friends with for a long time but never realized I was in love with. And I think perhaps this has something to do with the nature of my consumption of music in general. I have had similar moments of discovering fandom of a particular artist after the fact, such as Oasis, or Travis. Very rarely do I discover an artist and have that immediate connection. Even my favorite artist, Ben Folds, whose music I have been mocked by my friends for my obsession with, was re-connection, having bought "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner" in high school, and listened to it maybe twice, before decided it sucked. This is the same album I actually had to repurchase years later and consider to be the best work done by Ben Folds Five before the group split up and Ben became a solo artist. It wasn't until I was in my twenties that I heard the live version of "Still Fighting It," and soon devoured everything else Folds has done, as well as having gone to see him live four times in the last five years.

So what happened with the White Stripes? The only thing I can think of is that I had heard of them before I heard them, that they were already being pushed to be as the Next Great Thing so hard that I never even took the time to consider that they actually could be. So even when I enjoyed everything I heard by them, I took for granted how talented they are because this had been told to me on such a regular basis.

It reminds me of a long running debate I have with my friend Lauren over the perceived greatness of the Beatles. I often joke with her that she "hates" the Beatles, due to her perception of their being overrated. The debate mostly boils down to the fact that the Beatles can be considered as having come along at exactly the right time, in an era before the internet, before cable TV, before the ability to walk into a bookstore and find countless titles on the magazine rack dedicated to the critical deconstruction of music. That in the 1960's, it wasn't as hard for a successful band to dominate all media, because there was much less media to dominate and news traveled quite a bit slower. I concede that there are many annoying people who would like to assume that rock and roll began and ended with the Beatles, that all that came after are pale imitations, that attribute far too much influence on the modern music scene to the four boys from Liverpool. But at the end of the day, the Beatles made fantastic music and they should not be written off simply because of the overzealousness of their most obnoxious fans. The fact that I, having been born in 1981, over a year after John Lennon's death, yet can still appreciate "Nowhere Man," or "Let it Be," is significant towards the quality of the music.

And such is the way I now understand the White Stripes. They are a truly talented pair of musicians, and it simply took me a long time to understand that. I never had to think about if they were good or not, because I'd already been told so. I've been told it for years by outside sources and written them off as a result of it, but when I finally took the time to view them outside of the articles, the interviews, the commentaries of the peanut gallery, what was left for me was the music itself. And when it's just me and the headphones, that's where I get it.

Keith Olbermann: My New Hero?

Really, Gerry?

Geraldine Ferraro. Really? You don't see ANYTHING wrong with what you said? And the Hillary campaign is the victim here, according to you? You're the one who brought up the issue of race, and then suggest that the backlash of racism is absurd? You have said that attacks on Hillary, for example suggesting that her marriage to Bill is the only reason she is where she is, is sexist, but you saying Obama being where he is only because he's black isn't racist? Sorry Gerry, you can't have it both ways. I'm glad you resigned, because I want to believe deep in my heart that your comments do not reflect Hillary's campaign, just as McCain has already criticized members of his, and lost base supporters, for their similar comments.

And quite frankly, your comment has some truth, just not in the way you meant it. Of COURSE his being black is part of what got him here today. But not in the way you say it, in that his being black makes him a novelty. His race has absolutely shaped his place in the campaign, because it has shaped the man he is. It is without question tied to his identity, and as such is directly connected to the way he grew up, and the way he saw the world as he grew. None of us has any way of knowing how Obama would do in this campaign if he were a white man or a woman of any color as you say, because it is impossible to separate him from his racial background, just as it is impossible to separate Hillary from her marital history or you from your gender during the Mondale/Ferraro campaign in 1984. None of us would be where we are today without the things that shape our identity.

So what exactly was your point in what you said? Is it that any black man who ran for president in 2008 would have become the frontrunner of the Democratic party? I don't think so. It is Barack Obama's character, his charisma, his ability to inspire people that has led him as far as he has come, just as it is Hillary Clinton's warrior spirit that has kept her in the running as well, her knowledge of how to play the game, and her ability to garner the devotion of her supporters. Neither candidate is "lucky" to be where they are, they have both been fighting for their entire careers to get to this point, and they both deserve the position they are in and the right to have their voices heard in this primary.

Ammendment to my Rant from earlier:

Couldn't have said it better myself, Bill: