Having read the Podhoretz piece on the Borat film, soon to be released, I made the mistake of expressing my enthusiasm to see the movie, and a commenter set me right:
Borat’s been around for several years. Now every American-Idol watching idiot in sticksville is going to have a Borat t-shirt and what was once funny will be lame.
Posted by Pfc. Leftard | permalink
on 10/25 at 07:37 PM
My first reaction was to think, “what a wanker,” but then I remembered when I was a hip, young person, and a similar thing happened to me.
Everybody knows them now, of course, but when I was in college I used to drive across the river into White River Junction, VT, to The Dive to watch an upstart band, The Smuggles. At that time, they were scruffy Johnny-Come-Latelies, scrappy newcomers from Nowheresville. Everybody was into Punk or New Wave, but I and a group of my friends were grooving to a different style of music, that we called “Funkabilly,” and the Smuggles were it. The Dive was a dingy, beer sodden place near the railroad tracks. You’d pay a $2 cover to the bulldyke at the door, and immediately be assailed by the heady scent of day old puke and Rolling Rocks, $8 to the bucket. The rail liquor gave a bad name to paint-thinner. There was a jar of pickled eggs on the counter next to the register, and a baby wombat in formaldehyde next to that. There was a mirror ball with one side caved in on the ceiling that lurched about as a result of its disfiguration above the dance floor, casting bizarre patterns on the knotty pine walls. And there was Jennie the bartendress, the prettiest girl with one-third of her teeth missing in all of Vermont.
The Schnauzers used to open for the Smuggles on a regular basis. Alvin Scheffler was the manic guitarist. People would set beer down in plastic cups on the edge of the stage for him to kick into the audience. It was heaven. Every half hour or so there would be a “power failure,” and you could hear people taking advantage of the lack of light by the sound of nasal inhaling.
Once in awhile the Schnauzers and even the Smuggles themselves would come over and hang at our table. It was me and C-Mo and Barry and Bakes. Skanky Alice and Smaller Large Dave used to show up sometimes, too. Little did we know that it was all about to end.
Marvell Kite had graduated a year before, and we’d still kept in touch. She was working for Spin, and had come into town for the Winter Carnival. I ran into her in the basement of Delta Chi, and said that she ought to come out to hear The Smuggles when they played Gamma Delt. So we walked down fraternity row to check it out. It was one of their greatest shows, and the end of an era. She was blown away.
She had a friend who was the manager of Tad Magenta and the Mean Drunks, who were big in the East Coast College Circuit, and she recommended the band to them. Tad Magenta was an asshole, but he knew talent when he saw it, and after seeing the Smuggles show the next night, he signed them to tour with the MD. They never looked back.
Oh, yeah, you know the story. You’ve seen it on VH1. After they put out their extraordinary Gulag Goulash CD, Magdalena Queef overdosed and Orville McCloskey stairdove to his death. And I blame myself. I’d gone to see them when they played the Orpheum a few months before. Magdalena had sent me tickets and a backstage pass. But I hardly even got to say hello, they were so busy with the press and their more glamorous city fans.
After they’d made it big, they’d asked the Schnauzers to open for them on their national tour, then pulled the rug out from them at the last minute. The Dive closed in 1984. Tad Magenta succumbed to AIDs in ‘92. Angela left me for some guy with a future. Reagan died. I lost money on AOL during the stock crash. Olivia Newton John got breast cancer and put out a CD. I lost all my connections for psilocybin.
Fuck the Borat film. I’m just not ready to have my heart broken again.
Are you not entertained?!
Play it again, schweetheart.
…..and Blutarsky became a Senator.
You guys are stone cold.
But yeah, Craig, you have the right school.
Seriously Dan, you write the best stuff here. When that deadbeat Goldstein’s not around, anyway.
That was cold.
Thanks, 6Gun. I’ll definitely take that as a compliment. I wish that deadbeat would come back, though.
I drove through White River Junction in 1980 (I didn’t know about the Dive, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn “Holodrome”), if you made it through the forcefield and got out, then life is not all bad.
Though I admit you paint a very depressing picture Dan—pass the Wild Turkey 101!
Well. That was a minute out of my life I’ll never get back. However funny is funny. Chris Farley will always be funny. Martin Short will always be a schmuck.
Ummmm. I’m not sure how to take that, Rusty.
Mark,
Don’t know how you possibly could have missed The Dive.
psilocybin in 10 words or less–smooth slide from the sofa to under the coffee table
PattyAnn–those darned prepositions and determiners add up, don’t they?
Yes, Dan, they do, but I couldn’t describe my little living room “trip” with any less words. You wouldn’t have thought I had a bone in my entire body.
And, besides, Chris Farley was never funny, Martin Short used to be funny and Rick Moranis is funny.
Uh, I’ve got no problem with the movie. What I’m lamenting is that everything that was once original in this culture gets turned into a huge fad and then discarded for the next flavor of the month. Maybe you’re looking forward to a bunch of t-shirts that say “Sexytime” and “U-S-and-A” on sale at Spencer Gifts. Maybe you’ll buy one.
I met Martin Short once, on an elevator at a hotel in Manhattan where my buddy Jason and I were at the MLA conference. Jason said, “You’re Martin Short, aren’t you?” And he admitted he was. And we rode in silence for about 15 floors and he got off.
Another brush with greatness.
Chris Farley, I think, is from my hometown, Milwaukee. Or maybe he just went to Marquette.
Out of all of the alumni of SNL, the one who cracks me up the most is Mike Myers. He just has an unbelievable sense of play. My alma mater is a crazy place. People have dubbed it the most conservative of the Ivy League schools, but in point of fact it’s just the most contrarian place in the US, where people are schooled in the arts of satire and sarcasm and rhetoric generally, and grow thick, thick skins, and learn to love to fight. And it drives the leftists nuts that they haven’t been able to gain control of it yet and impose rules of civil conduct that comport with their ideals.
I sometimes hated the place while I was there, but it made me a right bastard to argue with, and it made me very assertive in some ways.
Yeah, Pfc. Maybe. Not.
BTW, if I misinterpreted what you were trying to say, please explain it. Because, if I misinterpreted it, obviously I’m not getting you.
I find it highly amusing that you said you are not ready to have your heart broken again.
It never really gets better does it?
and how the heck did the magic word know that im 31, and im going to always be 31 because I wont make it till 32?
-Farley was sad-funny, because you could see how much heart he put into it, and how he was hanging on. You just knew he was going in the tank soon.
– The cast on Fridays, and I don’t just mean Richards, bagged SNL big time. Some of their skits had me on the floor cryin, trying not to gag on that nights meal, they got it in gear so well sometimes. Chartoff was definate woodie-bait, and Richards did everything but dry-hump her on stage. The Rastarian cook was simply genious, along with the Pharmacist (I can handle it….I can handle it). That show was true “free-form”, something like SNL was in the earlier years, in the Akroid, Curtin, Belosi, and Ratner era.
– Visitors, over for an evening beer, would look at me like I was whacked.
Are you not entertained?!
No.
Have you seen sparkle lady or JD lately?
Inside of 97 is a P+
I wish that deadbeat would come back, though.
For the love of God, please get him back.
Maximus became funnier and more relevant as more people stopped by to bitch about their free stuff.
Man, how I wish I was as cool as you.
Leftards don’t believe true artists make money on the free market. If the populace likes something, then it is contaminated to the populist elites.
Unless of course they hate Bush.
Undoubtedly.
You’re missing the point. This isn’t about being cool or hip or exclusive. This is about the undeniable fact that a joke becomes unfunny and annoying if it’s repeated a million times.
You know, like how porgresives are realty-based.
Private Pyle said:
Oh, OK. So if it’s on HBO where a million people might see it, it’s somehow funnier than on a movie screen where ten million people might see it? Yeah, makes perfect sense.
When I read this first, I do what I often do, and that is skip words just to grab the gist of what’s being said. It can be a bad habit. So, I missed reading the first sentence and thought this was on the level, until the end. Then again, I was up pretty late and am still getting the cobwebs out of my brain.
A fine piece of work, sir.
Everybody knows them now, of course…
Um… I guess I was not then and am not now hip enough.
I won’t be hip enough until I have one replaced.
This isn’t about being cool or hip or exclusive. This is about the undeniable fact that a joke becomes unfunny and annoying if it’s repeated a million times.
Not true. Some guy getting hit in the nuts is enormously funny as long as it isn’t you. And it’s funny everytime you see it.