THE LEMON BASKET: THE BEST & WORST OF THE WEB
#437 SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2007
Copyright 2007 FRANCIS DIMENNO
http://www.dimenno.gather.com
francisdimenno@yahoo.com
THE IMAGINED LIFE
"Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible."
--Edward Teller
"He who tries to defend everything ends up defending nothing."--King Frederick of Prussia
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."--Oscar Wilde
“A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit, ... I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”--Jerry Lewis
"But why is it prohibited?" asked the Savage. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.
The Controller shrugged his shoulders. "Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here."
"Even when they're beautiful?"
"Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones."--Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD
THE ATTACK THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN ON 9/14
On 9/14 I was sleeping upstairs at my aunt's house, and at 9am my cousin called from the living room downstairs telling me to come down quick--the news was reporting that terrorists had done nothing.
Trauma specialists are standing by--to explain to the children what will have had happened.
The nonexistant victims will need to be compensated.
I plan to give until it will have hurt.
We never will be able to have gone back to the innocence this country experienced on 9/13.
I will remember it like it was today.
It is a day that will live in famy.
Everything will have had changed that day.
I even wrote a special song:
It's the greatest disaster we've never seen
The things that didn't happen on 9/14
747s flew away from the tower
No utilities lost their power
The price of gas continued to fall
It deeply failed to touch us all.
1*SALUTATION
RUSSIA TESTS FATHER OF ALL BOMBS
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22405897-5005961,00.html
2*REFERENCE
MASKS OF THE SPIRIT
Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica
http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft7x0nb536&chunk.id=0&doc.view=print
3*HUMOR
THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED
http://www.subcin.com/clowncried.html
4*NOVELTY
HIGHWAY STAR
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3028198629573686151&q=highway+star&total=1408&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1
5*AVATAR OF THE ZEITGEIST
Daily Variety
September 5, 2007 Wednesday
Lewis apologizes for slur
BY: MICHAEL SCHNEIDER
Jerry Lewis issued an apology Tuesday for using an anti-gay slur during the waning moments of this Labor Day's Muscular Dystrophy Assn. telethon. Joking in front of the camera during hour 18, the 81-year-old Lewis appeared to use the term "illiterate faggot" while referring to someone off-camera.
In a statement, Lewis apologized "to anyone who was offended" and referenced the fact the utterance took place during a 211/2-hour broadcast.
"I obviously made a bad choice of words," he said. "Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well. ... I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses."
Lewis said he hoped the controversy wouldn't take away from the show's "true purpose." This year's telethon raised $64 million, up $3 million from last year.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which early Tuesday called on Lewis to apologize, said it accepted Lewis' statement.
"GLAAD thanks Jerry Lewis for his swift and direct apology for this incident," GLAAD prexy Neil Giuliano said.
ALSO SEE:
JERRY AS ANTICHRIST
The New York Times
May 3, 1981, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Film View;
OF FAITH AND THE MYSTERIES OF JERRY LEWIS
BY: By Vincent Canby
Let us now consider the ''Jerry Lewis Mysteries,'' as if Jerry Lewis, the performer-director-writer-what-have-you, were not a person but the dimly remembered god of an esoteric cult, a Demeter or a Dionysius whose followers regard him as the relic of the divine Minoan child. One cannot explain him. If one accepts any aspect of him, one must accept all of him. Faith, which was formerly backed by Paramount, is still paramount, though now backed by 20th Century-Fox. The initiation rites are rigorous, involving principally, a carefully acquired ability to cross one's eyes and keep them crossed for as long as 90 minutes, or whatever happens to be the running time of the Jerry Lewis movie being watched in whatever temporary sanctuary it's being projected, say, the Trans-Lux 85th Street Theater.
It was there last weekend, in the the company of a comparatively small number of noisy initiates, old and young, that I watched the legend unravel.
...Instead of letting the routine develop, unimpeded, in front of our eyes in one continuous take, he keeps cutting away to the fond reaction shots of the people in the circus audience and of the other clowns, who stand in the tent entrance watching Mr. Lewis with the kind of admiration that I doubt even Laurence Olivier used to receive from his peers at the National Theater.
... It was as if, being members of the cult, they recognized this gesture as the equivalent to a secret handshake, as a sign of brotherhood.
6* DAILY UTILITY
Betty Boop: I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You (1932)
http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=4958518
7*CARTOON
READ A BOOK
http://file23.blogspot.com/2007/08/notarappercom-read-book.html
ALSO SEE:
SCRUB ME MAMA WITH A BOOGIE BEAT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7cvsh2iIwQ
RACIST CARTOONS AND BLACK STEREOTYPES
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LMrdcs4ucc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH4ivOyO0PQ&mode=related&search=
8*PRESCRIPTION
JERRY LEWIS VS. BUDDY RICH
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/43649/buddy_rich_jerry_lewis_drum_solo_battle_1965/
9* RUMOR PATROL
9/11 MYTHS
http://www.911myths.com/
10*LAGNIAPPE
ASKEW REVIEWS
http://www.askewreviews.com/past.htm
11*DEVIATIONS FROM THE PREPARED TEXT: A REVIEW OF
OTHER MEDIA
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/across_the_universe/
343. CONTROVERSIES IN POPULAR CULTURE
SARAH SILVERMAN
People who make unfounded assertions in the form of broad generalizations generally don't know what they're talking about.
And many people who make pronouncements about funny have never written an original joke in their lives.
But in a democracy, amateurs seem to think their uninformed and wrongheaded opinions are just as good as those belonging to people who know what they're talking about.
However, there is something to be said for the theory that lewd sex talk by a hot chick is a turn-on for the guys.
Exhibit A: Ms. Silverman.
Her # 1 detractor appears to be named Mr. I Just Don't Get It.
But she's not always writing jokes for "normal" people.
Anybody can do THAT.
At Stitches on Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, in 1985, when I appearing onstage with Elaine Garcia-Gold, I never dreamed that seven short years later she'd be drooled over by repugnantly senescent Bob Hope.
Was she innovative? Not really. Did she have the looks? Yes.
As a transgressive comic, Silverman follows in the direct tradition of Lenny Bruce and, to a lesser extent, George Carlin and Richard Pryor.
On the one hand, Silverman is using her looks to get ahead. On the other, in a male-dominated fraternity, this is actually a shrewd survival strategy.
If nothing else, whether conciously or not, Silverman is a master of memetics.
You may dispute the role of memes, "units of cultural information;" and yet, the recognition of how these units interrelate is a large part of Silverman's schtick.
SEE:
See: "Wild publics and grotesque symposiums: Habermas and Bakhtin on dialogue, everyday life and the public sphere," by Michael E Gardiner, in The Sociological Review, Volume 52 Issue s1 Page 28-48, June 2004.
ALSO SEE:
Hartford Courant (Connecticut)
September 2, 2007 Sunday
SILVERMAN TESTS BOUNDARIES;
MASTER OF UNCOMFORTABLE HUMOR STARS IN NEW COMEDY WITH GARLIN
BY: RON DICKER
If you were told that a filthy comic with boundary issues was stripping down to undies in a movie, you might not watch. Think of all the doughy funny people out there.
But if that comic were Sarah Silverman, you'd want a front-row seat.
Silverman stars and strips in ``I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With,'' a fat man's romantic odyssey opening Wednesday, both in New York and on IFC in Theaters pay-per-view.
Silverman is the slender, raven-haired New Englander who can disarm with her looks as much as with her shtick. She reigns as one of Comedy Central's top draws on ``The Sarah Silverman Program,'' playing a version of herself. Her Los Angeles apartment serves as the set, and the budget is so low, she says, ``Doug the Dog does not get paid. He does it for the art of it.'' She still hits the club circuit and has notched a successful concert film, ``Jesus Is Magic'' (2005).
As the ``Cheese'' press release touts, you can indeed see Silverman in skivvies. Her Beth seduces Jeff Garlin's James in the directorial debut of Garlin, Larry David's sidekick from ``Curb Your Enthusiasm.'' In its deadpan way, ``Cheese'' evokes ``Marty,'' the 1955 Oscar winner in which Ernest Borgnine lives with his mama past the leave-the-nest date.
Beth appears to be what ``Cheese'' refers to as a ``chubby-chaser.'' The real-life Silverman has her own fleshy mate, talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, but insists the movie is no wink at her personal life. There's plenty of room for that onstage. Asked in this e-mail interview to fill in the blank, ``When you include Jimmy in your act, he absolutely hates it when ...,'' Silverman responds, ``I talk about his balls.''
Movies from ``School of Rock'' to ``Rent'' have corralled Silverman's outrageousness, as does ``Cheese.''
``Acting is much more of a team sport,'' she says. ``And you get second chances. And the interim between honing a particular line is much shorter -- just in between takes instead of in between gigs. Too technical?''
She still revels in the thrill of the kill. The Jewish comedian's standup targets include those wellsprings of mirth known as the Holocaust (``60 million would be unforgiveable'') and AIDS (``When God gives you AIDS ... make lemonAIDS!''). She traffics in irony.
``There's nothing more unappealing than explaining a joke, or getting a joke explained to you,'' she says. ``The whole thing is ugly. It's supposed to be funny however it's inferred, and if it's not, then you have to move on.''
Paris Hilton wasn't in on the fun when Silverman opened the MTV Movie Awards in June. With the jail-bound heiress in the audience, Silverman sniped that the guards were going to paint the cell bars to look like penises. ``I just worry she is going to break her teeth on those things.''
To clarify reports that she was sorry afterward, Silverman explains, ``I didn't apologize to Paris. I said to someone only that I felt bad for her as I was up there because the crowd cheered so crazily when I set it up by saying she was going to jail. I look down and this grown man with a camera is in her face. Of course I'm going to do a joke about her and I'm going to do the best joke possible -- I don't feel bad about that. I feel bad about her life and probable perception of who grownups are. Does that make sense?''
Growing up in Bedford, N.H., Silverman came by her forked tongue through nature and nurture. Her mother, Beth Ann, a theater director at the local college, encouraged her to speak her mind. Silverman played Charity in a school production of ``Sweet Charity'' and told jokes at a local Mexican restaurant.
She tried college at NYU but dropped out to pursue standup. Three years later, ``Saturday Night Live'' hired her as a regular for the 1993-94 season, then reportedly faxed her pink slip.
In 2001, she achieved brief infamy for a gag about jury duty she did on ``Late Night With Conan O'Brien.'' A friend recommended a racist rant to get out of serving, so Silverman said she considered writing ``I hate Chinks'' but can't do it. Silverman said she proudly wrote instead, ``I love Chinks -- and who doesn't?'' Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans objected. NBC and O'Brien apologized. Silverman called Aoki ``a douche bag.'' End of contretemps.
Despite her polished political incorrectness, she still fumbles a performance on occasion. ``It sucks,'' she says. ``You don't feel right again until you have a great one.''
Anxiety has produced a bit of the tears-of-the-clown in Silverman. She once missed three months of school because of panic attacks. Traumatized by her parents' divorce when she was 6, she wet the bed into her teens. She keeps depression at bay with Zoloft, and at one time was smoking pot four times a day. ``I realized it's only a treat if it's every once in a long while,'' she says. ``Otherwise it's kind of a job.''
Among her comedy influences, she lists an all-star team of film writers and actors: Ruth Gordon, Steve Martin, Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, Charlie Kaufman and Wes Anderson. She mentions Kimmel, too. They have been dating since 2002, but Silverman confirms she would not marry until gay people are allowed to ``and possibly beyond. Why ruin a good thing?''
As ``Cheese'' illustrates, Silverman has never shied from committing to show business, even if it means getting down to bra and panties. It's like watching Lenny Bruce with a cuter butt.
12* APPROBATION AND OPPROBRIUM
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Comments: 3
Peace,
libramoon