Every four years for the last several decades, Americans have to endure listening to soccer fans remind us that "futbol is the most popular game in the world," implying that our apathy toward it is somehow wrong. (I understand the previous sentence implies "Americans" and "soccer fans" are separate entities and that no person can fall into both categories. I understand it and still didn't rewrite it, so you know where I stand.) Bear in mind that pederasty was hugely popular in Greece for centuries and Jerry Lewis is considered a comedic genius in France. One of those things is so disturbing the very mention will make stomachs turn and kill any conversation and the other is having sex with kids. So let's just agree the rest of the world is stupid for liking soccer.

However, because soccer fans are a vocal minority and Hollywood loves to cater to those, the 21st episode of the fifth season of "Quincy, M.E." tried to grab a slice of that hot World Cup excitement. One might expect to see some recognizable soccer stars like Pele or... well, I'm pretty sure there were some other ones. Perhaps a plot where a soccer player dies on the pitch and Quincy has to figure out why? Maybe we'll get a murder at halftime. Can't you just picture the hijinks as Quincy tries to interview some players at practice and they give him a hard time, juggling the ball around him or making him play goalie?

Well, "Deadly Arena" offered none of that. Instead we got botulism, a kid whose hair composed half of her body weight, meandering back story filler, and a romantic subplot between Dr. Pulaski and Oscar Madison.

Let me reiterate. Someone looked at

and
and said, "Dear me, is the air conditioner broken? My goodness, it's getting hot in here." Then, they peppered their flirty dialogue with discussion of the ideal environment for botulism to spawn. Also, at no time is anyone shown playing soccer. There is a girl who kicks around a soccer ball in the parking lot--where she hangs out literally every day and night for a week without her parents noticing--but at no point do we see any on field action.This episode was particularly high in filler. As I was breaking it down, I started to realize how much pointless character backstory is used that has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. Arthur wants to start his own chili brand and retire to a tropical island. The truck driver loves baseball. And a woman who serves no purpose other than to be a third victim of botulism so Quincy can connect some dots gets roughly 45 seconds to jabber on about her husband, her anniversary, her ignorance of soccer, and how many times she's been to this empty stadium instead of the zero her character warranted.

Worst in all this was the fact the Cousin It-haired soccer fan who spends day and night hanging around the stadium parking lot without any adult supervision spends no time explaining that away. Instead, when she winds up in the hospital, the actor playing her father clumsily says, "We thought she was at her aunt's!" completely out of context and gets cut off while delivering the line. No one asks and no one responds, almost as if the character is dead and hasn't caught on yet that no one else can see or hear him because he's a ghost.

How much pointless backstory do the characters yammer on about without contributing anything to the story or the plot? To find out, I edited it all together and found it takes up roughly two minutes less than the above compilation of every pertinent moment of the episode.

It only took five seasons and five episodes, but I finally enjoyed a "Quincy" episode unironically. In "Hot Ice," Quincy stumbles into a diamond smuggling scheme, but refuses to take part in an FBI/Customs Department joint sting operation targeting a mob boss because he'd rather judge the Miss Coroner Pageant. Instead, the Customs agent rope him into the sting against his will and--again, I say this unironically--Agent Nevin is my favorite Quincy supporting character ever. Sorry, Old Window Leaping Ninja, Creepy Ape-Faced Mom Who Yelled At Dr. Asten's Alcoholic Goddaughter For Murdering Her Son, and Badly Dubbed Kung Fu Master. You all just got bumped down a notch. Obviously, I wasn't the only one because he comes back for another episode the next season, which is mind-blowing. Not to get ahead of myself, but it involves jewel smuggling Nazis and mummies.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned that. "Hot Ice" really pales in comparison what without the Nazis or mummies.

Interesting Note: The guy who steals the briefcase/stabs Quincy in the leg/gets judo flipped by Dr. Asten is described in his IMDB bio as being best known for Rover Dangerfield. But stranger than that is if you read his list of credits, the majority are for "Baby V.O." Was he really hired that many times to provide the sound effect of a crying baby from off stage? Can you make a career of that? Or is this a case where he made a crying noise for an episode of "Alice" in 1981, and studios have been using the same recording for three decades the way some laugh tracks today are a recording of an "I Love Lucy" audience from the 1950's.

The next time you hear canned laughter on an episode of "Dog With a Blog," realize almost all those people laughing are probably dead. And turn off "Dog With a Blog." Have some dignity.

I tried to cut together the thirteenth episode of the third season of Quincy, but the final third of it all takes place in a courtroom as Quincy tries to prove a guy's regular beatings of his wife contributed to her later death.

Instead, I decided to focus on how much empty silence there is in this episode.

Three years after addressing the topic of parents beating their kids, Quincy flipped the script for the twelveth episode of the fifth season and addressed kids beating their parents. The topic of elder abuse, however, gets muddied as the writers send Quincy on a quest to learn more about the subject and introduce a second plot about two spinsters who are being starved to death and robbed by a nephew who is so transparently evil that calling his character one-dimensional is attributing it too much depth.

But thing really go off the rails when they lose focus and attempt to tackle the subject of growing old and feeling unwanted and unneeded in general by shoehorning in a tertiary plot based no doubt on some human interest article one of them read about a program that brings together elderly people and abused children and the benefits to both. It is dense with statistics and specific details and introduces new characters, one of whom makes it into more than one scene. It goes like this:

The woman who serves as Quincy's expert on elderly abuse and aging runs a home where elderly people come hang out during the day and do arts and crafts and teach some of their skills in guitar making to abused kids. She wants the county to hire elderly people to staff at least some of its new community center for abused children, but they aren't going to do so because the county has an "old people are worthless and feeble" policy. Also, a guy brings his daughter to the house because her mom smacks her around while he's a work and the girl meets an old lady who helps mend her doll and the old lady gives the mom some motherly advice and agrees to come stay with the girl and her sister while the mom and dad go on vacation because that will stop the mom from being abusive and the county guy witnesses this and decides to hire elderly people for 20% of the staff.

That is longer than the description of most full episodes and yet I was able to remove all traces of it from the edit below and not affect the story arc.

You may recognize Mr. Coogan as "Blue" from Old School or the rich husband of Jennifer Coolidge who likes soup in Best of Show or from any number of the more than 100 roles he's played in movies and TV shows, all of which were old men. Patrick Crenshaw first played a character called "Grandpa" in a 1970 episode of "Green Acres" titled "The Picnic." Through his death in 2005 (and the release of his final movie Air Buddies in 2006), he played such varied roles as:
Old Man
The Old Man
Grandpa
Gramps
Old Man
Grandpa
Ancient Sorter
Old Man
Elderly Man
Old Man
Old Man
Pappy
Old Man
Man Dying in Elevator
Old Man
Codger
Old Gentleman
Old Man
Pop
Old Bail Boy
Old Man
Old Man
Miles Hollings in the "Monk" episode "Mr. Monk and the Very, Very Old Man"

Mock if you wish, but how many actors can work steadily for 35 years (and he worked for years before that, just not in roles where the character's name is a clear indicator that he's extremely old), much less consistently playing "probably won't be alive much longer?"

Also, what's the deal with the birthday party at the end? That seems to be the Quincy writers' room go to denouement scene. "How do we wrap this up? We need an excuse to get people together in a room where they can all discuss the outcome of the subplot endeavors and get a happy ending."
"Birthday party!"
"We've given no indication that anyone's birthday is coming up. And why would the family of a man who committed suicide because his son beat him attend the birthday party of a woman they've never met whose nephew was stealing from her. And why would the detectives and Quincy's co-workers be there?"
"Birthday party!"

As I was editing this one, I realized it wasn't living up to my memory of it. "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is from the second season. Watching in order, it stands out because of its over-the-top melodrama and Quincy's righteous crusade to save a kid from child abuse even if it means kidnapping the kid and having the police cover for him. When I first watched it, I tweeted that it would have been more subtle to have Jack Klugman stare directly into the camera and scream, "CHILD ABUSE IS BAD!" for 50 minutes straight.

However, after seeing some of the later episodes from the fourth and fifth seasons, "A Good Smack in the Mouth" is rather discreet.

Most off-putting about this episode is the creepy vibe to Quincy's compassion for the abused Joey. Jack Klugman's interaction with child actors always come off like borderline pedophile. Go watch his interaction with Timmy's sister after her birthday party is ruined. It's even more disturbing when you watch multiple episodes and realize how many women Quincy dates, but never touches or kisses or hugs. I don't know if this was Jack Klugman being overly friendly with child actors or if it was a character trait chosen to illustrate how ill-suited Quincy is to human interaction thus explaining his decision to become a doctor for dead people.

As I watched this episode, I began to wonder how much editing one would need to do to manipulate the scenes of this episode into a disturbing story about a pedophile who becomes obsessed with a boy named Joey but then finds himself competing with the boy's pedophile father for the kid. And in the end, once he wins the boy, he gets bored and sells him to a couple that wants to have sex with a kid.

Answer: Surprisingly little. Many of these scenes are unaltered.Also, they say Joey's name a lot in this episode. Unfortunately, this isn't all of them because I didn't download all 50 minutes of raw footage. This is from about 60% of the episode.

In the third episode of the fourth season, Quincy dedicated an hour to explaining autism to viewers. Eight years later, Dustin Hoffman would win a much-deserved Academy Award for his portrayal of Tom Cruise's autistic brother in Rain Man. Unfortunately, Hoffman must have been too busy shooting Kramer vs. Kramer in 1978 so the casting agents for "Quincy" had to go with a kid who was told to continually wave his hand in front of his own face. He also has an over the top freak out scene that makes the entire episode worth watching. You've certainly heard the comment that an actor was "chewing the scenery." In this case, he chews his co-stars.

On one hand, the show's producers' hearts were in the right place. Autism is still widely misunderstood today and they worked with experts in the field to help educate viewers, but so often the show misses the mark. The premise is based on the idea that an autistic kid died because he was sent to a home for retarded kids and was able to slip away because the caretakers didn't bother to stop him from seeing the combination to a lock on the back gate since they assumed he'd never be able to memorize it.

Quincy and his expert-on-autism friend become convinced that the exact same fate is preordained for another possibly autistic boy who is going to be sent to a home for mentally retarded kids. Because the show is about autism, it gets a pass because people are too concerned about being labeled "insensitive" to criticize. But if the episode was about a guy being hit by a meteor or struck by lightning and Quincy spent 45 minutes shaming the browbeaten bureaucrats who are in charge of an overwhelmed, underfunded observatory or weather station for not being able to take precautions specific to one other person he has convinced himself could someday get hit by a meteor, it would be laughable.

Furthermore, the fact that the "happy" conclusion of Timmy's story arc is "Good news! Your child will never be able to interact with society! He still poses a threat to your friends, neighbors, and yourselves! But there is a 30% chance he might be able to dress himself someday if he gets very specialized training, which he won't be able to start for a year so you'll still be caring for him, the doing of which has essentially destroyed your marriage and driven you to the brink of insanity." And the parents are fucking thrilled! Their prayers have been answered and they're ready to consummate their "not getting a divorce" right there in front of their puzzle-putting-together son and a room full of middle aged men behind a one-way mirror.

Perhaps the epitome of how much the show's good intentions miss their marks comes in the denouement when Quincy tries to make up for Timmy's sister's ruined birthday party. It's supposed to be touching and sweet, but what is creepier than the notion of a 50-something-year-old "friend of the family" getting an eight-year-old girl all dolled up in a fancy dress and taking her to a bar down by the harbor where four other men she's never met are eagerly awaiting her arrival with a birthday cake and her parents are nowhere to be seen?

Bonus Content
You may be thinking, "Hey, that actor playing the autistic kid looks familiar. And so does the girl who arrives at the birthday party a minute and a half in. Where have I seen both of them in another scene together?" That's because two years after this episode aired, they did this:

If the words "Quincy versus a ninja" aren't enough to convince you to spend eight minutes watching this, I'm afraid we can't be friends.

But, just in case, here's a bunch of other reasons:
1. Quincy solves the murder of Not Bruce Lee
2. Quincy bows to all the Japanese people he meets. I could watch Jack Klugman bow to Asians for an hour straight
3. Mako
4. Harold Sakata is clearly reading cue cards and in some cases sounding out the words phonetically
5. Despite that, they still had to bring someone in to dub over Harold Sakata's lines
6. Pretend the date Joanna Kearns mentions is with Alan Thicke as Jason Seaver
7. The most unexpected "murderer reveal" scene outcome of any Quincy episode

Those who follow me on Twitter are all keenly aware that I have spent a significant portion of this summer plowing through Netflix's catalog of "Quincy, M.E." There's no good reason except that I must not like myself very much.

Some episodes are more cringeworthy and cliche-laden than others. It's hard to make a case that you should take 52 minutes to sit down and watch a truly terrible episode. That's why I will periodically be presenting the highlights of especially bad episodes condensed down to 5-10 minutes for the budding Quincy-phile on the go.

I will begin with 1980's "Unhappy Hour," a very special episode about teen alcoholism. While in the first four seasons, "very special" episodes were rare, in the fifth season, the producers dedicated approximately two out of every three episodes to some public service announcement-worthy cause of the day. This might have been to garner more Emmy buzz or it may have been because writing those episodes was so simple since 60% of the dialog sounds like it came straight from pamphlets a showrunner grabbed from some non-profit's office.

"Unhappy Hour" shifts the focus from Quincy to Quincy's boss, Dr. Astin, and his alcoholic teenage niece. It features cutting edge computers, a story of redemption and failure, a mystery, and almost every line you've ever heard from every other after school special, made for TV movie, and junior high health class filmstrip about alcoholism.

Also, one can assume that most of the scenery used in this episode had to be replaced after shooting because of all the teethmarks the actors left.

BONUS CONTENT: Full "It felt like someone was hugging me" monologue:

When learning a new language, the hard part isn't memorizing a bunch of new words to substitute for the ones you already know. To truly master a language, you must understand idioms. Figures of speech don't translate directly even across the same language--Bob is not my uncle, you limey! Stop saying he is!--so you can imagine how difficult it must be for a native Russian or Spanish or Greek speaker to figure out what Americans mean when we say we're beating a dead horse because we have a chip on our shoulder

If, however, you ever find yourself in a scenario where you are teaching English to someone and he takes pause at the phrase "phoning it in," the solution is a simple one. Hand him a copy of Incredible Hulk Annual #17 because there is no more clear example in history and that includes all the times people have literally used a phone to complete a task.

I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of bad comics. My first paid writing gig and my first published book both owe a debt of gratitude to my obsessive dissection of stories about Lois Lane bathing in mercury and radiator fluid and Jimmy Olsen trading brains with an ape and Mr. T fighting inner city ninjas. As such, I wish Incredible Hulk Annual #17 was half as terrible as a Superman, Wonder Woman, and Supergirl shilling for Radio Shack. Unfortunately, it can't quite muster the effort to be bad enough to be accidentally entertaining.

The book gets off on a dull foot with a story about the soldier who gave Hulk his name nearly slapping his kid, drawing a parallel to Bruce Banner's own abusive father. Peter David wrote that and the second story, in which Betty Banner makes friends with Tyrannus by teaching him about makeup.

Both stories are boring, but competent. Neither felt like it was begging to be told. But compared to the rest of the filler in this issue they seem to rank right around the Warren Commission Report in terms of importance.

The third "story" is a two-page parody of the old Mean Joe Greene commercial for Coke. In this case, five people who won a drawing to appear in a Hulk comic learned just how terrible that prize could be. Instead of getting to be in a Hulk comic drawn by Dale Keown, they wound up in a "Popsi" joke drawn by some anonymous Bullpenner.I have to say the part that annoyed me most was that the kids later call Hulk "Mean Joe" and he throws them his torn shirt, which winds up the size of two king-sized comforters sewn together by the time it reaches the kids. Of course, had I won what I believed to be a legitimate contest and bought a double-priced comic book to find my "likeness" was used in a throwaway joke that neither the writer or the artist wants to be credited for, my "part that annoyed me most" might have been different.

The next story focuses on Rick Jones, who is on a book tour promoting his autobiography, "Sidekick". After a signing, someone tries to run Rick down with a truck, but a kid who considers himself Rick's biggest fan shoves Rick out of the way. Rick goes with the kid and the kids' girlfriend to a diner and gets up to leave after fifteen minutes because he's tired of listening to the kids go on and on about how great Rick is. The art for this story was done by John Statema, who is probably best known for not actually dying back in 2001 when it was reported that he did. What's a shame is that in Jerry Ordway's obituary, he neglected to mention the mind-blowing fact that Statema went his entire life without ever seeing an actual human being eat an ice cream cone."Woman in foreground is eating an ice cream cone? Where am I supposed to find reference for that? I supposed I'll have to lightbox the cover image to this VHS copy of Fat Black Cock Worshippers Vol. 5... again!"

The kid follows Rick out to the parking lot and the same truck tries to hit Rick again. Rick subdues the driver and we learn it's a former member of Rick's Teen Brigade who is jealous because Rick has had a good life while his own has been mediocre. Rick then takes the opportunity to shit all over his biggest fan.That's the guy who's on a national tour promoting his book about how he's been buddies with Hulk, Captain America, Rom: Spaceknight, and Captain Marvel and became a card carrying member of the Avengers simply by hanging around celebrities--often in spite of Bruce Banner warning him to get away for his own safety--belittling an emotionally stunted teenager who gets bullied at school regularly and has toilet bowl caliber self-esteem for being excited about saving his idol's life and knowing a lot about Rick Jones at a signing of Rick Jones's autobiography.

Of course, the kid sees Rick is completely correct and apologizes for being a weirdo and wishes Rick well, leaving the reader to wonder what the point of any of it was. There is no compelling reason to tell this story. Rick comes off as an asshole. The pathetic bullied caricature remains a pathetic caricature now bullied by his idol. The obsessed former fan club member angle comes out of nowhere and is given all of one panel to be explained. The only moral to the story appears to be that a complete lack of understanding of perspective and anatomy or ability to transfer same to paper does not preclude one from being paid to be an artist for the world's largest comic book publisher.The only redeeming think about Rick's story is that it's followed by an even more pointless story starring even less interesting characters, Achilles and Ulysses of the Pantheon. And the only redeeming thing about Statema's art is that it's followed by inker John Stanisci's attempt at being a penciler.If my eight-year-old son drew that, I would spill a glass of iced tea on it before he could ask me to hang it on the fridge. When Hulk editor Bobbie Chase saw it, she said, "I'm going to put this in a book that dedicated fans will have to pay twice as much to read as they do for the monthly comic drawn by a man who is already coming to be known as one of the quintessential artists in the decades long history of this beloved character."

The story is about a kid with superspeed who gets recruited by Justin Hammer to help Whiplash, Ringer, and Barrier (I've heard of 33% of those guys before) steal some plans to an experimental aircraft. Ulysses and Achilles show up, the kid realizes Justin Hammer is a criminal, and everyone fights for a page and a half, which allowed John Stanisci to cash a fat paycheck for drawing this.Ultimately, the bad guys are beaten up, though it's not always clear how it happened because Stanisci makes an effort not to draw action whenever he can instead show the aftermath of action. (In Stanisci's defense, writer Eric Fein likely shares some blame here for trying to fit so much action into four panels tightly backed on the bottom half of a page.)While the kid expresses concern that his family is in financial straits due to his mother's medical bills, and feels guilty for taking a job without considering it might be illegal to break into a high security technology firm, but laments being out of work regardless of the morality of said work when one's family is in need, Achilles and Ulysses congratulate themselves on a mission accomplished.

What? This was a decade before George W. Bush declared "Mission accomplished" prematurely, so this isn't an ironic, timely reference. Rather, it appears the comic book ran out of pages and Fein had no choice but to end his story by having the heroes be completely blind, self-obsessed shitheads.

Again, the story seems utterly pointless. The kid isn't joining the Pantheon. Achilles and Ulysses are not developed as characters (which is the subject for another post at another time). The villains are D-list characters who, likewise, do not develop and could be any number of interchangeable mediocre, barely known villains.

Overall, Incredible Hulk Annual #17 is a dumping ground for what was probably audition material for artists like Statema and Stanisci that Marvel then threw into a giant-sized package and sold in bulk. None of the stories in it makes even the vaguest attempt at capturing anyone's imagination, much less out attention.

In light of Chris Sims's love letter to Nextwave not-so-cleverly disguised as an answer to a question about monster hunters in comics--in which he disqualifies one character from being comicdom's greatest monster hunter for not having been around long enough then hands the title to a character who's been in one 4-issue miniseries and a 12-issue team book that wasn't about monster hunting--I dug up my 2006 review of Nextwave #1.
----------------
I'd heard varied reports around Comicblogtopia. Some people said Warren Ellis's Nextwave was great; others took the stance it was terrific. A few bloggers have indicated Warren Ellis's semen has a rich buttery flavor and is delicious on a baked potato.

I've made no attempt to hide my utter contempt for Fell and Ellis's lame, forced pseudo-weirdness within. When I picked up Nextwave, it was with the promise from Chris that "even though [he knew I] didn't like Fell, [I] would really like Nextwave because it's completely different."

All I needed was one frame to tell me Chris is a dirty, dirty liar.

This is what passes for humor when you are Warren Ellis or when you are eleven years old. Absurdist humor is much more difficult than it looks, and sadly, as it looks extremely easy, it's quite inviting to people who think they are funnier than they actually are the world over.

All you need is to list a bunch of really bizarre images and you're a comedian! Right? A weasel is only mildly funny on its own, and a giant weasel is even funnier. Dress it as a cheerleader and you're getting somewhere. Have the giant weasel dressed like a cheerleader use a human as a bucket and pants everywhere are being wet with laughter.

The fact there is no art accompanying that caption tells me one of two things, possibly both. Either Ellis felt that caption was so funny on its own, no imagery Stuart Immonen could provide could possibly live up to the idea people would form on their own, or he hadn't quite decided exactly what he was going say there by the time Immonen started drawing it.

The follow up to that frame, which actually came earlier making it the "I'm pretty sure this book is going to suck but Chris promised me it was good so I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and keep reading" frame:Oh, no, you di-in't! New Jersey is so burned right now! Making fun of New Jersey is so not cliche! I also am proud of myself for recognizing that Dirk Anger is a parody of Nick Fury. Hang on... Fury... Anger... Those are synonyms! Damn, that's sweet!

Making jokes about New Jersey is on par with jokes about airline food being bad or how "black folks and white folks be different, y'all."

The greatest example of successful absurdism is Monty Python. Unfortunately, Monty Python tends to convince more people than any other source of the seeming simplicity of absurdism.Just put together a singing trio of vikings in a diner that serves Spam with every dish and you have a classic sketch that will be quoted by teenaged boys for decades to come.

Nextwave has a very basic plot: a superhero team crosses paths with Fin Fang Foom. The absurdist moments should be garnish to that, but instead become blaring sirens and flashing neon signs announcing "Warren Ellis is SOOOOO fucking clever."

Why is Fin Fang Foom wearing purple underwear? So Ellis can refer to it repeatedly because it's SOOOOO fucking clever. Why was "The Captain" originally known as "Captain "? Because it's SOOOOO ing clever. Why are the Human Resources henchmen made of "slabs of genetically modified kelp"? Because as I learned when I was at the beach in 1986, "kelp" is a funny word.

I could go on and on, and in fact, I have. Instead, maybe I'd be better off discussing all the parts of Nextwave that didn't suck and/or were actually funny.

Dirk Anger's hightech, top secret communications device:Admittedly, that's pretty fucking clever.

If there is a better example of a song mailing it in than DJ Kool's "Let Me Clear My Throat," I can't think of it.

1. The song is 95% "The 900 Number" by 45 King (also known as "The Ed Lover Dance Song" to viewers of "Yo! MTV Raps" in the early 90's), which is in itself just a looped sample from Marva Whitney's "Unwind Yourself." The rest is the opening horns from "Hollywood Swingin'" by Kool and the Gang. I grant you that hip hop is rooted in sampling, but these are two well-known samples and had been well-known for years before this song came out.

2. Many of the lyrics are "samples," too. While not lifted as an actual recording, lines like "Can I kick it? (Yes, you can!)" and "I'm in love... I'm all shook up," are familiar lyrics from other songs. Hell, even "Let me clear my throat" was one of Ad Rock's most memorable lines on the Beastie Boys' "License to Ill" album.

3. This song was recorded live in a club, so I supposed it's possible Biz Markie was pulled on stage without any warning and asked to freestyle some rhymes on the spot. I hope this is the case, because that's the only excuse I can think to justify the lack of effort on his part to spin a lyrical masterpiece... or even to make any sense. By his third line, he's resorting to making noises ("Ahhhh-uuuhhh-huh-huh. Remember that?") and a moment later, he admits he's not going to worry about saying anything meaningful because the words don't really matter ("Tick tocka. Tick tocka doodle die, no matter what I say, it always comes out fly"). I also really wonder what the comparison that prompted the simile "The ladies in here are like fruit in a cup" was (other than a meaningless line to rhyme with "shook up").4. Why the hell is this considered a DJ Kool song? Clearly Doug E. Fresh was the only one who really contributed anything. What does Kool need to clear his throat for? It's not like he's saying much other than repeating the same four or five lines ("Here we go now. Here we go now. Here we go now. Here we go now. Here we go now." "Everybody jump. Jump. Jump. Jump. Jump." "Have mercy, babe. I hope ya don't mind.") and shouting out a role call of rappers who apparently had more on their agendas than Doug E. Fresh and Biz Markie that evening. Hell, the crowd has as many lines in this song as DJ Kool does.

At intermission of Backwards in High Heels, I struggled to recall how long it had been since I'd seen anything quite as terrible on stage. The show's script should be taught in writing classes as an prime example of what not to do. I worked backstage on the show for three weeks and even during the closing performance, I was still discovering new problems that had slipped past my radar the first 24 times.

Credit where it's due, the talent of the cast deserves some recognition for keeping the audience from walking out at intermission. That it took me days to recognize so many of the flaws in the script is a testament to the actors' ability to bury some of the show's worst aspects beneath a layer of quality singing and dancing.

The play's script manages to miss the mark so thoroughly and so often that it's difficult to decide where to begin the dissection. It says a lot that the biggest laugh of the night is for the recorded announcement asking people to turn off their cellphones and "if you're going to eat any hard candy, please unwrap it now." From poor use of music to lazy research to expository writing to scenes that defy description, there is not a single redeemable aspect of this script. The only enjoyment audience members will have is if they manage to completely ignore the dialogue and plot and treat it like a revue of old Astaire and Rogers numbers--and that's what the play's producers should have set out to create in the first place.

The essence of drama is conflict, and Backwards in High Heels has none. We know who Ginger Rogers is, so there is no question whether she'll make it to the top. Instead, we anticipate the hurdles she'll have to clear along the way, but there aren't any. Whatever problems arise are all dealt with in a matter of minutes without any real tension. When Ginger marries a drunk against her mother's wishes and watches her career suffer for it, she leaves him two minutes later and returns home, where her mother has a script for the Broadway play "Girl Crazy" waiting for her. When her contract is up at RKO Pictures, it takes all of twenty seconds and the threat that she'll go talk to Fox or Paramount before she gets everything that she requested without any further negotiation.

Interpersonal conflict is all handled in "tell-don't-show" style. When Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are first paired, it's clear she doesn't like him, but we don't know why. Finally, she says something about "that night in the backseat of your Studebaker." Wait, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers worked together on the vaudeville circuit? And they dated? Why didn't we see that? Given that the play is also telling (and not showing) us that Ginger's mom was overbearing and made it difficult for any man to date her, how did she wind up in the backseat of Fred Astaire's car?

The tension between Ginger and her mother is supposed to be the heart of the show, but it never really works since the writer refuses to ever put either character in the wrong. They butt heads over issues--Mom is too overbearing because she doesn't want her 17 year old daughter dating an old drunk chorus dancer, yet Ginger dates and marries him, as well as four other guys, without Mom getting in the way; Ginger doesn't listen when her mother tells her to keep making movies with Fred Astaire and not to do Kitty Foyle, but Ginger does and wins a Best Actress Oscar for it--but there is never a sense that a rift has formed between the two.

There are moments where Ginger's mother is nitpicky about Ginger--for example--missing a turn during a dance number, but where the scene is supposed to make Lela Rogers come off as cold and calculating, instead we know that she tried to talk Ginger out of pursuing a career in show business, warned her about how difficult it would be to succeed, and ultimately relented to her pestering daughter's wishes. So her "There is no second place in show business. You either win or you're out of the game," comes off less as an impersonal disappointment than it does as a legitimate reminder to an impetuous teenager who expects to take Broadway and Hollywood by storm.

At intermission, the elderly woman beside me--who was from Dallas and grew up her whole life loving Ginger Rogers because she was from Fort Worth--asked what I thought so far and I reluctantly told her it was "the worst thing I've seen in years." She dismissed my review because I didn't "know the music." "I know all these songs. I can sing them all," she told me. I had to explain that I knew all the songs because they were all clichés. Who has grown up in America and never heard "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," or "Baby Face," or "I've Got Rhythm"? When a lazy director wants to establish "It's the 1930's" in a movie, TV show, or play, he plugs in a scratchy, monotone version of "We're in the Money" and moves forward.

However, while I might be familiar with the songs, they do not transport me back to my childhood and remind me of a time that I didn't have to hobble around on a walker while wearing an adult diaper and find ways to fill my afternoons by being bussed to terrible matinées while I awaited the inevitable release of death. And that is the the essence of the greatest failure of Backwards in High Heels. Producers are relying on audiences to have such inherent interest in Ginger Rogers and old-timey songs that they'll overlook the convoluted story.

In fact, I felt the music was another stumbling block. Musicals that rely on non-original music are handcuffed by having to shoehorn the narrative of the song into the narrative of the story. This is why the writers of Across the Universe, the musical based on Beatles songs, had to name their characters Jude, Lucy, Maxwell, Prudence, and Jo-Jo and were desperately looking from the start for a place to fit in a lovely metermaid.

(On a side note, I was shocked to find that there is no one in Mamma Mia! named Fernando.)

Backwards in High Heels makes no attempt to have the songs connect with the plot. It's like a musical for dogs. Don't listen to what the actors are singing, just how they sing it.

The opening number, "Fascinating Rhythm," has Ginger Rogers declaring "Oh, how I long to be the girl I used to be!" despite the fact that the entire show is about how much she doesn't want to be that girl and wants to always be growing as a dancer, singer, and actress, expanding her stardom. During the scene where she needs to negotiate a new contract with RKO Pictures, the writers opted to have a janitor outside her dressing room sing "Face the Music." Why? Because they thought if would set a mood of tension with the opening line of "There may be trouble ahead..." Please overlook the fact that the rest of the song is about enjoying moonlight and romance and dancing.

But the worst use of any song is in what is also the most baffling scene of all. A flashback explaining why Ginger Rogers didn't know her father is done in the style of a silent film--although the characters talk and sing--with her father portrayed as a mustache-twirling villain who kidnaps infant Ginger out of her cradle while singing "Babyface." It's clear that the writers gave no more thought to the scene than saying, "There's a baby. This song has 'baby' in the title. Go with it."

The so-called biography also plays loose with facts and timelines. I understand that "based on a true story" stories always are heavier on the "based" than the "true," but in this case, it seems like the writer just took as many "underdog defies the odds" tropes as he could and molded Ginger's life around them instead of using the biography as his starting point. After all, Ginger was offered a movie contract when she was six years old, so it's hard to think of her as an underdog defying the odds.

For example, when Ginger Rogers made her Broadway debut in "Girl Crazy," she wasn't a chorus girl, but had a starring role. She also had already made movies at that point, including one with Ethel Merman, who was also an up-and-coming star at the time, so why write the scene to make Ginger a virtual unknown who would be intimidated and starstruck by meeting Merman for the first time?

In real life, when Ginger married Jack Pepper, he was 26 years old; in the play, he is repeatedly referred to as "an old drunk." In real life, the couple were married for just over two years and had an act on vaudeville; in the play, they are married for a few weeks before she leaves him because of his excessive drinking and womanizing and the negative impact having to care for a house is having on her career. In real life, the couple remained cordial, never said a bad thing about one another, and Pepper continued to work regularly for the next 40 years, often with Bob Hope; in the play, Ginger leaves him and we are left to assume he drank himself out of show business within a week.

Bear in mind that everything I've described above is based on five minutes of free time and the combined resources of Wikipedia and IMDB. That implies that the writer of Ginger Rogers's biographical musical spent less time and effort than that. Moreso, it implies that the writer was more interested in having a "Ginger holds her own against a major star and proves she's as talented as anyone" scene and a "Ginger nearly throws away her entire career on a stupid mistake" scene than in telling the true story of her life.

I understand that I am being hypercritical, but as a writer I found it particularly grueling, realizing that the books I write for ten year olds about superheroes are more closely scrutinized than this play. My editor wouldn't hesitate to point out that a character who enters then two minutes later calls out another character for being "a half hour late" was, himself, twenty-eight minutes late. The scene on the set of Kitty Foyle has Ginger Rogers exasperatedly telling lighting technicians that they've done their job wrong, rewriting the script, and explaining to a costumer that she can't wear a fur coat to play a poor shopgirl. My editor would probably point out that the scene implies that everyone in Hollywood other than Ginger Rogers is an idiot who doesn't know how to do his job. And her Oscar acceptance speech would never get past a first draft.

I assumed that her Oscar acceptance speech, which ends the show and brings the entire story full circle by repeating several lines from the play's introduction, was a transcript of her actual 1941 speech. It rambles and stutters and stops, and I got the impression that possibly Rogers, knowing that she was at best the fourth horse in a three-horse race between Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Joan Fontaine, didn't bother to prepare a speech and was caught flat-footed when she actually won. While I haven't been able to find a transcript online, someone on the show who'd seen the archival footage informed me that no, the speech is entirely the work of the playwright.

Overall, the script to Backwards in High Heels feels like it was rushed into production to beat another Ginger Rogers musical to the box office, which apparently it was. Around the same time, Ginger and Me was also being worked on. Considering the only traces of it on the internet any more are two articles from a Cape Cod news website, it's safe to say Backwards in High Heels won the race.

But it's hard to consider this a victory.

I am working on a truly terrible musical. While the cast does the best it can, the script is awful on so many levels that despite writing several thousand words about it, I still have examples of idiotic misuses of songs or stupid statements that come up with every rehearsal or performance. Until I decide to publish the full review, I'll plug in a few of these "bits that don't fit."

The climax of the play takes place when Ginger Rogers finally gets her chance to take on a serious dramatic role in Kitty Foyle, for which she wins a Best Actress Oscar. I assumed the speech she delivers is based on an transcript of her actual acceptance speech, but I can't find any record of that online. Either way, it features one of the stupidest things an actress accepting an award for acting could ever say, whether the scriptwriter or Rogers herself is to blame.

The play makes a point of people--and especially her mother--being shocked that Ginger Rogers would take on the role of a mother, because she doesn't have kids. Better to stick to playing a woman who dances with Fred Astaire since apparently in 1940 actresses didn't understand the concept of "pretending." Sad news for that guy who Bette Davis gunned down in the opening scene of The Letter (for which she was also nominated for the 1940 Best Actress Oscar).

When Rogers wins the Oscar, she says, "I don't have any children, so I can't imagine how a mother would feel."

Really? So you want to tell the people who just rewarded you for your acting that "As an actress, I can't imagine how anyone who is not exactly like me might feel." Isn't that the first thing you have to do as an actress? Why not add, "And despite my complete lack of imagination, I just won an Oscar! Suck it, Hepburn!"

Two years ago, Travel Channel watched Guy Fieri on Food Network and said, "Oh, we gotta get one of those." Somehow, they found Adam Richman and gave him instructions to duplicate the mindnumbing boredom of watching a guy travel to different cities and eat stuff like "Diners, Drive-Thrus, and Dives," but to add an element of disgustingness to it. Thus was born "Man Vs. Food."

Now, Adam may be one of the nicest guys in the world. In fact, my friend Thomas met him a few months ago and said as much. However, on the show he's trying so hard to duplicate the low rent Guy Fieri experience--and I can't imagine why anyone would want to do that--that I long for the advent of affordable 3D televisions so I more accurately pretend to punch him in the face from the comfort of my living room.

If you haven't seen it, the concept of the show is to have Adam go to a city every week and seek out three restaurants with some kind of special signature dish. The first 18 minutes of each episode is a straight up travel show. The twist that sets it apart from "Triple D," (as all the cool kids call it) and actually makes it slightly more enjoyable--in the way that a punch in the gut is more enjoyable than a punch in the balls--is that the third restaurant always has some food challenge.

The challenges always fall into one of two categories:
1. Eat way too much food.
2. Eat food that is way too spicy.

In some cases, the challenges are fairly reasonable. These tend to be longstanding challenges that restaurants have had for years. Others are suspicious, and one wonders if they were made up just to attract attention from the "Man vs. Food" producers. When no one has ever succeeded at your challenge, maybe it's time to admit that serving nine pounds of meat between the equivalent of two loaves of bread on a bed of two pounds of French fries with a half gallon of coleslaw that must all be eaten within 30 minutes isn't a "challenge" as much as an impossible task.

Likewise, I hate watching the spicy challenges where someone takes good food and goes out of their way to make it inedible by dumping two pounds of spices into it. What's the point? "Look at how tender this pulled pork is... and now I'm going to completely fuck it up so you can't taste it." Why not just invite Adam in to drink a quart of pureed habaneros and forget the whole facade of it being a food challenge?

But the part of the show I hate most is the clips they feel compelled to include of locals watching Adam take part in the challenges. They tend to fall into one of two categories:
1. I don't really want to say anything, but since you're putting a camera in my face I will give you an opinion on whether or not I think Adam will succeed.
2. Please, please, please, Mr. Producer, put me on a basic cable television show for two seconds. I will read whatever scripted lines you have for me or act stupid and/or slutty if necessary.

Furthermore, those two categories can be broken down into smaller subcategories. Watch the below montage and follow along:
1. Adam is the man.
2. I've seen The Waterboy and deserve to be on TV because of it.
3. Adam can do it.
4. Kids who've had cameras in their faces because adults told them to be cute.
5. I can read a clock.
6. Skepticism.
7. If I interrupt Adam and speak directly to him, they'll have to put me on TV.
8. I'm a cute girl who wants to be on TV so badly I'll pretend to be attracted to Adam.
9. I'm drunk.

While the repetitive categorical style of the comments on every show is annoying, a few soundbites find a way to be even more grating than usual.

0:30 -She says she knows he can eat this entire burger, then adds "If you can do this, you can do anything." If we extrapolate that statement, she believes--nay, knows Adam Richman is omnipotent.

1:15 - That guy took a lot of time to think up what he was going to say to Adam, but didn't stop to consider how he would exit the stage.

1:18 - Why? Why the fuck are they chanting "USA! USA!"? Is that just a reflex in that part of the country? Is this what Sarah Palin meant by "Real America?"

2:00 - You know what? I think maybe Adam really is the nicest guy in the world for the fact he didn't punch his producers the minute they let this drunk idiot come anywhere near him. His ability to humor Drunky while trying to eat six-pounds of burrito meat is more impressive than if he'd finished the burrito.

My kids finally convinced me to watch an episode or two of Nickelodeon's new show, "Victorious," with them yesterday. I had seen a few minutes from the end of another episode and wasn't too impressed. Like many of Dan Schneider's other shows (iCarly, Drake & Josh, Zoey 101) the funny scripts took a hit from poor teenage overacting--except for anything with Gibby in it on "iCarly." That kid is fucking hilarious.

That's not to say I wasn't interested in "Victorious," just for the wrong reason. The only thing I knew about it was that its star, Victoria Justice, had previously guest-starred on an episode of "iCarly" where she wore a sports bra for 80% of the show and made me feel like 100% of a creepy perv for the rest of the week."Victorious" wouldn't make me feel much different. I wasn't prepared for was the highly sexualized content in a show about a half-dozen sexy teenagers who go to a performing arts school. Of course, I'm far from the type to jump on a soapbox and decry how we're corrupting our youth. Instead, I want to know where the hell were shows like this when I was fourteen? Do you know how hard it was to masturbate to "Saved By the Bell" and "Double Trouble?"

In this particular episode, the kids went to the beach in an RV and, in a take on the classic trope of "people getting locked in stuff" (i.e. walk-in freezers, bank vaults, elevators stuck between floors) another RV parks beside them while they are getting ready, preventing them from getting the door open. The air conditioner doesn't work and the windows can't be opened, which is all an excuse for flat-stomached teenage girls in bikinis to lounge about getting sweaty.Meanwhile, one of the girls had already left the RV to go pee, serving as a reverse McGuffin that the trapped characters must wait to find and save them. Unfortunately, she gets sidetracked when she bumps into four hot dudes on the beach and...

Whoa...

Um, I mean what really caught my eye was that sexy hip shake. That is not something a cold person does to get warm. That is something a drunk sorority girl does when she's trying to win a wet T-shirt contest.And just in case that was too subtle, the four guys then surround her for a Supersoaker circle jerk.Now, I'll grant you the Ghost homage was pretty funny, though I doubt any of the kids watching the show got it... which indicates to me that the producers understand, "While our target audience might be kids, a significant portion of our viewers are creepy dudes in their 30's and 40's who want to see sexy teenagers, so throw in a few jokes for them, too."

And once you realize that, it's hard not to overanalyze everything else. Why does the pottery guy later emphasize his desire to "glaze" her pot for her? Why do the four guys want to eat tuna with the girl? When they get snowcones, is there something symbolic about her getting cherry? She sure is eager to get rid of her cherry (snowcone) since she gets a brainfreeze from eating it so fast.

And of all the images to include in a montage...... I guess it could be worse.

For the first 55 minutes of Red Skelton's More Funny Faces, Red treated his audience to bad jokes--when he could manage to tell them between overpowering guffaws of fake laughter--and pantomime performances by three other people, despite the fact the audience was there to see him. Imagine if Guns and Roses--the real band, not Axl and the guys he playing with today--reunited and were playing to a sellout crowd. But after playing a quick, poorly rehearsed medley of "Yesterdays," "Civil War," and "You Could Be Mine," they brought out a trained dog act. After that, they return to the stage for a half-assed, flat, out-of-tune rendition of "Paradise City." After that, more dog acts, including a few routines featuring Izzy Stradlin and his four Pomeranians.

While the G&R crowd probably would have burned the building to the ground, Red Skelton's audience couldn't have been happier. Because, as we've previously stated, the 1970's were completely devoid of entertainment. Fucking "Three's Company" was a top rated show!

Now, imagine Guns and Roses is coming back to the stage. Axl offers a heartfelt thank you to everyone for supporting the band and shares how great he felt when Appetite for Destruction and how much it meant for him and how often people come up to tell him about how much they love the album... then detours into a political rant that kind of misses the mark because he's trying to relate "Sweet Child O' Mine" to support for a school voucher program. Finally, the familiar opening chords of "Sweet Child O' Mine" blast from the amps...

And after about sixteen bars, the band stops and everyone leaves the stage.

That is essentially how Red Skelton closes More Funny Faces.

In short, "This is my most popular character. Everyone loves this character. Even people who aren't fans love this character, and since you guys are fans I can only imagine how much you love this character. Let me put on the costume I always wear when portraying my most popular, most beloved character. We should do away with welfare, Medicare, and civil rights. Okay, are you ready? Here it is... my most popular character... good night!"

You have to assume that people willing to pay a lot of money to trudge out into a packed amphitheater in the dead of winter in Toronto to see a hack comedian twenty years past his prime are pretty hardcore fans. If they get nothing else, they're going to want to get some Freddy the Freeloader.

Instead, Red Skelton gives them a Freddy cocktease. And he didn't even take the time to make the eye makeup not look like shit. What a fucking asshole.

I also find it interesting that instead of performing as Freddy the Freeloader, he opted to discuss what Freddy the Freeloader means in terms of Skelton's own right wing politics. It should be noted that Skelton was a pretty hardcore conservative who got upset that he couldn't bring on Spiro Agnew and blamed liberals within CBS for the cancellation of his show in 1971.

However, the character is Freddy the Freeloader. He's a panhandler who steals from people. He may have a heart of gold, but at his core he is a layabout beggar who leeches off the more productive within society. One cannot make the case that "he doesn't ask anyone to provide for him." In fact, that's exactly what he does. He's not Freddy the Guy With a Steady Job That Pays the Bills.

The more disturbing belief of Freddy--and by extension of you and me and a little bit of all of us--is that he doesn't want equal rights. Freddy the Freeloader understands that some people don't want to have to look at a filthy hobo while they're eating their lunches, so he's willing to eat out back behind the restaurant, and he can't understand why the darkies can't do the same without raising a fuss. Freddy the Freeloader knows he's not as good as the rich, prominent, heterosexual white men who run the country and wishes the poor, gays, blacks, and women would accept the same!

If this is Red Skelton's most popular, most beloved character who symbolizes all that Red believes and stands for, then fuck you, Red Skelton, fuck you in hell.

Red Skelton's More Funny Faces began as a terribly unfunny observation of what comedy used to be in a time when people were so starved for amusement that "Chico and the Man" was considered groundbreaking entertainment.

After some bland jokes covering hot topics like bad women drivers and drunks, Red manages to throw in an appearance by one of his famous characters, Clem Kadiddlehopper, which the people of 1979 react to as though Santa Claus and Jesus jointly announced that everyone was getting a new Rolls Royce made out of orgasms with all-winning-lottery-ticket interiors.

Before I share the comedic brilliance of Clem Kadiddlehopper, let me share a story. In fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth grade, I remember doing poetry lessons that included "Beans" poems. The idea of the poetry lessons was to teach us about different styles of poems and to have us write our own sonnets, haikus, limericks, etc.

The "Beans" poem was a standard part of this curriculum, I assume because it was the easiest to mimic. The poem was just a list of types of beans (pinto beans, green beans, baked beans, kidney beans, etc.) with the ending "Most of all/Best of all/I like jelly beans." The assignment was to pick a different thing and make a list of types of that thing, then end with some kind of twist thing that shared the name but didn't quite fit, like big dogs, little dogs, fluffy dogs, mean dogs, but last of all, best of all, I like hot dogs! Or:

Tough jobs,
Cushy jobs,
Part-time retail jobs,
Fat cat desk jobs-
Those are just a few.

Mall jobs,
Office jobs,
Low-paying menial jobs,
Afterschool jobs,
Dirty jobs too.

Temp jobs,
Service jobs,
Don't forget freelance jobs.

Last of all,
Best of all,
I like blowjobs!

Why did I take the time to go off on this tangent? Because that poem that I spent three minutes writing represents about the same level of effort that Red put into his bit featuring his second most popular character ever.

As I noted last time, proponents of Red Skelton like to point to the fact that his material is safe enough to share with your children. That's largely because it written at the same intellectual level as children. "I'll read a poem about frogs that doesn't entirely make sense--"Mom says no but then there's Dad." Huh?--then I'll have a bunch of frog puppets pop up from behind the couch and I'll shoot them with a toy gun," could easily be the plot of my daughter's next "play" that she'll perform in the family room.

At least Clem Kadiddlehopper is a notable Red Skelton character. Where More Funny Faces really goes off the rails is when Red takes a break and hands over roughly twenty minutes of his hour long special to mimes.I'll just go ahead and assume you didn't watch that entire video. It says something about the absolute lack of entertainment in the 1970's that anyone knows Marcel Marceau's name. How many other famous mimes can you name? Do you think there's a reason for that?

Every couple of years, America will take an interest in some foreign country and try to co-opt bits of its culture. In the mid-80's everyone was saying, "G'day, mate," every restaurant tried to incorporate some variation of "shrimp on the barbie," Fosters beer sales went from absolutely nothing to slightly more than nothing, and Paul Hogan and Yahoo Serious enjoyed careers as film stars. A few years later, sushi restaurants and karate dojos began popping up in every strip mall. In the 60's, the British Invasion hit America and somewhere in the 1970's someone decided what America really needed was wine bars, fondue sets, and mimes.

Fuck but the 1970's sucked! Oh, and what's the deal with those fucking stupid mime outfits with long sleeves but the low-cut scoop front that exposes the 1970's forest of chest hair? It serves no practical purpose other than to announce, "I am a mime. You can tell because I am wearing a lycra mime outfit! You know... in case the fucking white makeup didn't tip you off."

Marcel Marceau does another routine where he acts as a lion tamer and a mime couple does some kind of routine where she's a balloon and he's got her by a string. When Red Skelton comes out between their acts, he engages in pantomime himself. As we all know, the key to good mime is not speaking. One must show and not tell. Only through the actions can the audience relate to the performer. If you have to explain it, you suck at miming.

With that in mind, please listen to Red's intro to his Eiffel Tower pantomime routine.I propose that all entertainment be given the same treatment. At the beginning of a movie, there should be a short clip of the director saying something like, "Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I am so happy you came to see Usual Suspects. This is the story of five career criminals who wind up in a very sticky situation, working for a mysterious man named Keyser Soze. Some people debate whether Keyser Soze even exists, and he does. In fact, what you'll find is that Kevin Spacey's character, Verbal Kint, is actually Keyser. I think you'll really enjoy that twist. Okay, again, thanks for coming and I hope you enjoy The Usual Suspects."

And, just in case making people who paid money to come watch you perform sit through half an hour of mime while you chill in your dressing room isn't insult enough, Red Skelton saved the biggest fuck you for the last five minutes.

Next time: Red Skelton, Cock Tease

If I could go back in time and punch anyone from history in the face, it would be Red Skelton.

Skelton is known as a classic American comedian by those who have never seen him or have no idea what humor is. If you look up his DVDs on Amazon or Netflix, you will find overwhelmingly positive 4-to-5 star reviews, but if you actually read them you'll find they are written only by the people who are so devoid of any taste that they could actually sit through an entire hour of this tripe.

The key thing you will notice in every positive review is a harkening back to "the good old days when comedians didn't have to work blue to be funny." They'll lament that "the youth of today have been poisoned by the lack of censorship" and "good clean humor seems to have left the public venue of entertainment" and "it is so sad that comedians now have to use profanity to make people laugh" Again and again, the endorsement you will see most often is "you can let your kids watch this and not worry that they'll be exposed to anything offensive."

True, Red Skelton won't bust out Carlin's "7 Words" or Patton Oswalt's "A Blowjob Behind the Tilt-a-Whirl." But suggesting that anything Skelton does or says is superior to either of those routines merely because of a lack of words deemed inappropriate by arbitrary standards of an uptight minority is either dishonest or moronic.

Those who claim Skelton's humor is funny--or more importantly funnier than modern comedians--do so with that same condescending moralizing and unconvincing zealotry of vegans insisting grilled eggplant tastes better than steak.

I first was exposed to and became dangerously obsessed with Red Skelton in 1997. I went to Los Angeles for a job interview with Fox Sports Net and stayed with my friend, Dan, at his apartment near USC. After dinner, we were hanging out debating what to do and a Red Skelton special called More Funny Faces came on PBS. We didn't change the channel immediately because we started discussing the fact that we'd both heard of Red Skelton and knew him as a comedy legend, but that neither of us were familiar with any of his material. As because of our hesitation, I have wasted countless years of my life hating Red Skelton.

Within the first two minutes of More Funny Faces, we knew we wouldn't be doing anything else for the rest of the evening.

The performance is like opening a time capsule. Presented without any context it gives a baffling look into the terribly entertainment-starved decade of the 1970's. Skelton's opening is a series of jokes that are typical old school stand up. For the last two decades, comedians have come to focus more on routines, taking a subject and making multiple humorous observations about it, rather than just telling jokes that have a set up and a punchline and are completely unrelated to the previous or following joke. Also, modern comedians' routines tend to focus on personal experiences or experiences to which we can all relate as opposed to "three guys walk into a bar"-type jokes.

Or in Red's case, "two seagulls are flying together"-type jokes.

It's not really fair to criticize Skelton for not being funny here because the humor style has changed. However, it's interesting to observe what an unprofessional demeanor he has by today's standards. Even hacks like Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook wouldn't set up a bit by saying, "Oh, I got a joke for ya. I got a joke for ya." Of course you do. That's why the audience is there. You are on stage with a microphone and they paid money to sit in a room and hear you tell jokes. The statement "I got a joke for you," delivered with that spur-of-the-moment-inspiration tone implies you are up there half-assing it with no planned script and are happy giving us whatever pops into your age-addled mind.

Also, imagine David Cross laughing so hard at his jokes that it looks like he may wet his pants. Red has been doing some of these routines for fifty years, yet he cackles at the audience like he just heard them himself at every punchline.With the exception of the final mug to the audience in that clip, Red never does this during his pantomimes (yeah... more on that next time), so it's clearly a conscious decision on his part.

If this was all More Funny Faces had to offer, it would have quickly faded from our memories, forgiven for its slice of terrible reminder that the 1970's existed, but as you can guess from the fact that Dan and I still discuss it and analyze it the way two war veterans might recall seeing an child run into the crossfire of a gun battle on the streets of Kabul, it got much, much worse.

Next time: Fourth grade poetry and mimes!

ADDED: It has been pointed out to be by a horrified reader that Red's elephant and hippopotamus joke from the above clip is more commonly told with a racist theme, substituting a person of Jewish heritage for the elephant and an African-American for the hippo.

Mind? Blown.

The other night, I was watching "Louie" and saw a commercial for that new Christopher Nolan film about inhabiting dream worlds where nothing makes logical sense and everything is surreal. What's it called?

Oh, right. The 2010 Major League All-Star Game on Fox.

Who is this ad supposed to appeal to? Nothing seems to make sense. I understand the message is "The All-Star Game is in California and most of the people east of the Pacific Time Zone think the entire state is one big beach, so use that to sell the idea," but there are so many conflicting messages.

When your sport that used to be known as "the national past time" now can't draw flies, when the records that were held sacred to fans for decades have been shattered by men we now all know were chemically enhanced superfreaks that the league tries to pretend never existed, when your steadfast devotion to traditionalism and rejection of technology robbed a player of a one of your sports greatest achievements--a perfect game--what do you think would be the worst possible symbolic message you could send fans?




Gaze ye upon my works and despair! I'm going to go with "showing everything associated with baseball crumbling to dust." The only way this symbolism could be more clear would be if Peyton Manning jogged through at the end of the commercial and knocked over the sand stadium.

Just as God created Adam from clay, so, too, are Chase Utley, Hanley Ramirez, and other top players formed from dirt. This game's being played at the Angels' stadium, right? They can't play on the beach...

Hey, guys! You like hot chicks? Good news because one of our greatest pitchers looks kind of like this hot chick! See?


The Kaiser has returned! He's ben hibernating beneath the sands of Southern California beaches and the only ones who can stop him are Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter!

Oh, I take it back. The stadium is on the beach. At least in the sense that all of California is a huge beach where people hang out in swimsuits all day and try to give gays the right to marry--at least, that's what it is if you live in Missouri and have never been there.

Sorry, buddy. Tonight, when she's with you, she'll be thinking about us. That's right. Major League Baseball is gonna fuck your girlfriend if you're not careful.

What the fuck? Where did the mutant kid come from? We just saw this stadium rise up from the dirt and tower over people. Now a kid who is taller than the stadium walks up to adorn it with an Angels logo. Is this a world within a world twist? It's like in Men in Black when the galaxy was in the charm on the cat's collar, but then in the end we saw that the Milky Way was inside a marble that alien kids were playing with.

My take on this is that all the people on the beach in the earlier scenes, including the players, are all figments of the imagination of an autistic child--like the finale of "St. Elsewhere."

And where the fuck are this kid's legs? The distance from the bottom of his rib cage to the ground is about the same as the height of his head. That means everything from penis down has been lopped off. Holy shit! Somebody chopped an autistic child in half, but keeps him alive to build elaborate sand castles that he populates with his imagination. That shit makes the Saw movies downright reasonable.

Upfront, I have to admit I don't listen to a lot of "new" music. By the time something hits my radar, it's usually been out for a couple of years. Going through my listing of all the MP3s I own dated 2009, 149 are from The 99 Most Essential Tchaikovsky Masterpieces and 50 Essential Classical Film Moments. If I were to pick my favorite album I bought this year, I'd probably lean toward Bongo Rock by The Incredible Bongo Band, a 2006 collection of music from the late 60's and early 70's.

With that substantial warning tag, here are my eight favorite songs of 2009:

Gameplay Music/Theme from I MAD3 A GAM3 W1TH ZOMBIES 1N IT!!!1
Xbox Live players could download this game for one dollar, as the theme will inform you. When I first saw people linking to gameplay video, it took two or three viewings before I realized the fun of the lyrics about making a game with zombies in it.

We Will Robot Rock You from DJ Hero (Daft Punk vs. Queen)
As long as we're talking about music from video games, here's a video game ad that lasts about a minute, which means I spent easily two hours of the past year listening to this song. I really don't want to play DJ Hero, because I'm certain I'll suck at it. I just want them to release the MP3s of all the mash-ups done for the game, starting with this one!


Like a Life on a Prayer by [MMM] MadMixMustang
Staying on the topic of mash-ups, a significant chunk of my hard drive was taken over by downloads from Bootie USA thanks to monthly reminders from Chris Sims on Twitter whenever new collections are available. My favorite of the 2009 additions was this soulful mix of my favorite Bon Jovi song with a nod to Madonna at the end.


Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up (Rick Astley vs. Nirvana) by DJ Morgoth
This is a more straight up A+B mash-up, but is done excellently and was a nice change of pace from normal rickrolling.


Hurt Feelings by Flight of the Conchords
Kicking off the "stuff I actually paid for" portion of the list is my favorite song off Flight of the Conchords newest album, I Told You I Was Freaky. There are a few good songs--maybe not as many as last year's self-titled album--but the clincher for me was the heartfelt cries of "I'm a man! I'll try a small men's wet suit!" and "The day after my birthday is not my birthday, mum!"


Science is Real by They Might Be Giants
I've been a big TMBG fan since I first heard Ana Ng in junior high and I've been kind of torn by the fact that they've done so much kids' music in recent years. On one hand, it gives me a chance to expose my kids to TMBG, but, on the other, I want some music for me. This year's Here Comes Science is another kids' album, but it covers topics that a lot of adults might find a little too intellectual.


Storm by Tim Minchin
For a more adult version of the above song--and by that I mean fuller and more thorough, not pornographic--check out Tim Minchin's tribute to rationality.


If I Didn't Have You by Tim Minchin
Minchin's Are You Ready for This? was my favorite album this year. His humor and ability to address serious topics in a well-thought-out and reasonable way that cuts the legs out from under opposition. In this song, he explains why many love songs are statistically wrong. Other great songs from the album include The Good Book, laying out many of the flaws in the bible, Confessions, one man's attempt to reconcile the passion he knows he should have to fix all the things he knows are bad in the world with his true passion, and A Song For Phil Daoust, an open letter to a critic. When I hear it, I change the name "Phil Daoust" to "Terry Cole." I'm sure there's someone in your life you'll be able to substitute into the lyrics.