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Poor Bill Maher trying to draw parallels with David Sedaris when it comes to being brave in comedy.
lol
Sorry Bill, you wish. I don't think I've ever seen Sedaris sulk or chastise his audience when they didn't respond exactly the way he wants them to. I don't see a crippled little lonely man in his eyes whenever he doesn't get enough syncophantic clapping to keep him going
Maybe you could learn something from the guy in shorts and knee high socks. Like the zero fucks he gave when you made fun of what he was wearing. Or how to be funny without thirty contributing writers sustaining your professional career with jokes they co-opted from other late night shows.
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I didn't think this week was quite as bad, maybe because Bill didn't go off on covid or start blaming poor people for inflation, as he's been doing regularly for awhile now.
And Sedaris is always welcome.
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crumbsroom wrote:
the guy in shorts
They’re actually culottes.
I don’t know why I know this.
Or what I’m supposed to do with this knowledge.
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You know? I think I'm going to finally skip this week's Bill Maher podcast with Russell Brand. My morbid kitty curiosity has only so many lives left.
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Jinnistan wrote:
You know? I think I'm going to finally skip this week's Bill Maher podcast with Russell Brand. My morbid kitty curiosity has only so many lives left.
Ya, my exact thoughts as well.
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Rock wrote:
Or what I’m supposed to do with this knowledge.
I knew they were culottes too. So what you do with this knowledge is pretend you don't know it.
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John Mulaney - Baby J
Not exactly Sunset Strip, but Mulaney's public response on his well-publicized drug problems over the last couple of years delivers plenty of yucks and grins, and, honestly, I can't really tell any major difference in energy level from his previous specials. The delivery remains sharp and snazzy in that bright plum suit. The gamut runs from his childhood need for attention through to that all-too-specific attention that accompanies walking in on your intervention. Just let the man use the bathroom already.
8/10
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Jinnistan wrote:
John Mulaney - Baby J
Not exactly Sunset Strip, but Mulaney's public response on his well-publicized drug problems over the last couple of years delivers plenty of yucks and grins, and, honestly, I can't really tell any major difference in energy level from his previous specials. The delivery remains sharp and snazzy in that bright plum suit. The gamut runs from his childhood need for attention through to that all-too-specific attention that accompanies walking in on your intervention. Just let the man use the bathroom already.
8/10
I am almost never shocked to discover someone is an addict...I've got a nose for such things....but Mulaney was zero percent on my radar....and that is after I think I heard him mention cocaine being an issue for him a few years back. His appearance and demeanor is so opposite to what I generally recognized as 'addict', when I heard from his own mouth he might be, it immediately was rejected from my head
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crumbsroom wrote:
I am almost never shocked to discover someone is an addict...I've got a nose for such things....but Mulaney was zero percent on my radar....and that is after I think I heard him mention cocaine being an issue for him a few years back. His appearance and demeanor is so opposite to what I generally recognized as 'addict', when I heard from his own mouth he might be, it immediately was rejected from my head
He has a bit about being a prisoner of his 'likability', but there's unquestionably a manic quality to him that is conducive to a penchant for coke and pills.
When he started showing up on Seth Myers' show in sunglasses and a trenchcoat - just for a casual interview - some eyebrows probably started raising. (No surprise, Myers was apparently at the intervention.)
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Haven’t watched the special yet, but I believe he was sober at the time he recorded his earlier specials, so that might be why it didn’t seem obvious. I think he said he was definitely using again at the time of that Myers interview.
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I enjoyed the special. I don't think it reaches the comedic heights of The Comback Kid or Kid Gorgeous, but I found it interesting how the messiness and vulnerability of the addiction material brushed up against his ultra-precise, ultra-polished delivery.
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Loved Baby J. Can't recall one way or the other if I laughed more at his other specials, but that's always a little bit besides the point with me and comedy. How else could I reconcile my also love for Gadsby's Nanette (not to mention how off putting I find some of the dogmatic binaries she reveals in that....but still, a riveting performance that still says a lot about what comedy means to her)
Baby J is to me, when you boil it all down, just quality storytelling. Unlike most comedy specials, it has one specific direction, and it moves from beginning to end. But it's immaculately paced, full of insights about addiction as well as how we are always really in performance mode, and is always funny when it needs a little punctuation through laughter.
I'm pretty sure there are one or two of his specials I have yet to see, so I should probably get on that.
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I don’t think I ever made it all the way through Nanette lol
I’m sure it was an interesting enough special on its own, but the media coverage it received was insufferable.
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Although what little coverage I’ve skimmed of Baby J has been insufferable in the opposite direction. People acting like Mulaney is being duplicitous and whatnot. Or attacking his need to be liked. As if that wasn’t the point of the special.
Last edited by Rock (5/02/2023 12:31 pm)
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Rock wrote:
I don’t think I ever made it all the way through Nanette lol
I’m sure it was an interesting enough special on its own, but the media coverage it received was insufferable.
I've grown to find Gadsby generally insufferable. And much of what makes her this way can be found in that special. Lines like "we are not flesh vases for your dick flowers" should normally be enough to sink any hope of me taking someone seriously, especially if they repeat the line half a dozen times, slightly more enraged with each reading...but...there are lots of good things to be found in her talking about the stories we tell to eachtoher, to ourselves and which stories we choose not to tell. And why?
It's hardly surprising that the coverage any comedy gets is insufferable though. For both lovers and haters of any comedian these days, I just don't want to hear what they are saying if it is being amplified over twitter. And, as shockingly stupid as what you say Mulaney is getting for this special, and that is shockingly stupid, is it even remotely surprising that those commenting on comedy don't understand the first fucking thing about comedy. How it works? How a joke is structured? Or how somethings are not meant only as joke? Or sometimes only meant as one? So much nuance! It's almost you have to pay attention and not always be taking notes over what isn't being said absolutely perfectly, according ones own code of outrage ethics.
Comedy breaks the minds of the humorless. And the stupid. Which I guess is how it should be....I just wish there weren't so many of those two things out there.
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One of those AV Club/Jezebel writers listed a couple of reasons that she could understand why someone wouldn't want to watch John Mulaney anymore. The first was based on the way he may have treated his ex-wife whom he divorced shortly after rehab. Which....not really any one's business, is it? This has become a common thing with these people, where they feel like weighing in on all of these celebrity divorces as if they know what's going on behind the scenes in their lives. People get divorced every day. Divorce is not a form of domestic abuse. Get the fuck over it.
The second reason for shunning Mulaney is that he continues to be "chummy" with Dave Chappelle, which is problematic apparently. These are the kinds of people who forced Patton Oswalt to apologize for posting a picture of him hanging out with Chappelle at a comedy club last year (and Oswalt obliged because he's a softy ally). Like with the above reason, these people seem to think that they have the right to arbitrate celebrities' personal lives and relationships. Anyway, none of this obviously has anything to do with comedy or Mulaney's talent or material, so what fucking ever.
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I've been trying to catch up on Documentary Now - the 4th season isn't yet available on Netflix.
One of my favorites is Searching For Mr. Larson, which isn't really even a parody of comic strip docs (ie, Dear Mr. Watterson) so much as a send -up of the entire swath of these modern types of documentaries which are more centered on the personality (ego) of the filmmaker than the subject matter which is ostensibly being explored. You can blame Michael Moore I guess for this plague of a subgenre. Our "host" goes...on a journey. And what he finds, what he truly discovers. Is himself. I loathe these kinds of masturbatory narcissistic excuses for content with a passion, and I didn't think anyone could ridicule them worse than Albert Brooks already pre-emptively did in Real Life, but it looks like this cur of a film category has found its defining muse in the precious dip called Fred Armison.
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Jinnistan wrote:
One of those AV Club/Jezebel writers listed a couple of reasons that she could understand why someone wouldn't want to watch John Mulaney anymore. The first was based on the way he may have treated his ex-wife whom he divorced shortly after rehab. Which....not really any one's business, is it? This has become a common thing with these people, where they feel like weighing in on all of these celebrity divorces as if they know what's going on behind the scenes in their lives. People get divorced every day. Divorce is not a form of domestic abuse. Get the fuck over it.
The second reason for shunning Mulaney is that he continues to be "chummy" with Dave Chappelle, which is problematic apparently. These are the kinds of people who forced Patton Oswalt to apologize for posting a picture of him hanging out with Chappelle at a comedy club last year (and Oswalt obliged because he's a softy ally). Like with the above reason, these people seem to think that they have the right to arbitrate celebrities' personal lives and relationships. Anyway, none of this obviously has anything to do with comedy or Mulaney's talent or material, so what fucking ever.
There was a similar complaint about Mulaney in Salon that almost got me gritting my teeth down to dust on my bus ride to work the other day
A choice quote, talking about what the author dubs 'cancellation comedy'
The strangest thing about this genre is that it assumes that more comedy is the answer to problems created by comedy. Stand-ups love to "joke it out." Lenny Bruce, when facing prosecution for violating obscenity laws, reportedly tried to convince his lawyers to let him perform his set in front of the United States Supreme Court! Do filmmakers make feature-length movies about their own #MeToo accusers? Do dancers dance themselves clean? Do poets – never mind, no one reads poets.
Yes, how confusing. Why would such things end up in a comedy set? Why would a comedian ever think to go there? Comedy certainly should never reflect upon itself, and a comedian should never draw inspiration from their life's own controversies and experiences. And why would Lenny Bruce ever want to be so arrogant to think his stand up set would have any relevance in a trial trying to censor that material? It's not like that might provide the necessary context and tenor of what the words say and what the actual material means. He just can't resist the audience, I suppose.
What a dim cunt.
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It should also be mentioned that this article also gets into the John Mulaney maybe should be cancelled because he got a divorce angle.
It mentions this when it clarifies that it isn't suggesting cancelling him for being an addict (that wouldn't be fair! And we're the fair and empathetic ones!), even though at times it feels like this is very much a part of the equation when, we can at least assume, his addiction was an element in what led to the dissolution of his marriage.
I'm glad this cancellation shit seems to be getting less traction the last year, but it's clearly not stopping the more rabid idiots out there from getting more and more obtrustive, more and more invasive, more and more puritanical as they try to monitor absolutely element of a persons personal life, and attacking them if it doesn't measure up to what they feel is ideal.
I honestly can only hope that the more rational people who have been approving of this kind of tactic in the past are now seeing how vile and ridiculous it has become.
The notion that people can no longer tolerate a persons art, or even the person themselves, because they had a messy end to a relationship (and seriously, how many people who have been in casual or serious relationships haven't??) is exactly where these ludicrous people were always heading as soon as they were being held less and less accountable for having a serious reason for their boycotting and cancellation fever. When just their feeling that someone had done something wrong was enough reason for them to demand punishment.
What I want to know is when can we start cancelling these fucking snoopy morality police pieces of shit? How is the behaviour of these parasites not toxic?
Oh, that's right, never, because they use the exact correct words that are considered exactly correct at this exact moment in time. What a bunch of empty fucking heroics. What a bunch of bullshit that they are trying to protect the marginalized. This is just more narcissitic horseshit from people more interested in being up on a soapbox then saying anything of worth. Fuck them.
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crumbsroom wrote:
There was a similar complaint about Mulaney in Salon that almost got me gritting my teeth down to dust on my bus ride to work the other day
A choice quote, talking about what the author dubs 'cancellation comedy'
The strangest thing about this genre is that it assumes that more comedy is the answer to problems created by comedy. Stand-ups love to "joke it out." Lenny Bruce, when facing prosecution for violating obscenity laws, reportedly tried to convince his lawyers to let him perform his set in front of the United States Supreme Court! Do filmmakers make feature-length movies about their own #MeToo accusers? Do dancers dance themselves clean? Do poets – never mind, no one reads poets.
This writer seems to be suggesting that Bruce's defense is somehow less reasonable than the obscenity laws themselves, or that Bruce's obscenity was some kind of problem that required fixing in the first place. And "dancers dance themselves clean"? What in the fuck? Are they talking about Patrick Swayze over here? Kevin Bacon? You know, only the villains thought the dancing was dirty to begin with, right?
If you were to tell me that this quote actually came from a conservative publication like the National Review, I wouldn't blink an eye. That such prudish indifference to art and speech is now coming from these leftist culture warriors is beyond disgraceful.
I had to look up this Jacques Berlinerblau, and blau blau blau indeed. He mentions that this issue with Mulaney's supposed treatment of his spouse has "sparked rage", but gives no actual details over why. What exactly did Mulaney do? I guess he broke her heart.
I hope that "Gen Z" is savvy enough to recognize when they're being used as an excuse to justify this kind of bullshit.