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shut up little man: adventures in voyeurism

April 13, 2012 in movie reviews, reviews

I was unaware that the definition of voyeurism is inherently sexual in nature.  I’ve used the word voyeur in place of eavesdropping and spying for years.  Thankfully the term voyeurism has evolved over the last few decades to include nonsexual phraseology as well.  Of course when I stopped and really thought about it, isn’t all voyeurism perverted, it may not bring you sexual arousal but it’s still perverted.

I recently watched the documentary film Shut Up Little Man, about the audio vérité recordings the became an underground phenomenon.  The not-so-subtle recordings were made from the profanity laced alcoholic quarreling between Peter J. Haskett and Raymond Huffman, by their neighbors, “Eddie Lee Sausage” and “Mitchell D.”  Overtime the tapes were dubbed and passed around to thousands of people.  It led to a series  of tapes/CD’s released by Matador Records, a perverse play, a horrible film, and a million viral interpretations.  The documentary focuses mainly on the journey of those private recordings that became very public.  At it’s heart this documentary is a mystery, who were Peter and Ray?

I first became aware of Peter and Ray during an episode of This American Life, which featured an excerpt from one of these tapes.  It was this wonderfully mysterious recording concerning these two older men who argued and violently threatened each other constantly.  I wanted to know who they were, where they came from, and how they ended up living together.  There is a moral question raised concerning ethicality of spying on these men and releasing recordings of them.  Can it be justified, even for the sake of art?

I must admit that I myself am a voyeur.  Not in a sexual way, I just like to know what’s going on in those hidden places, what stories are occurring that I’m missing out on.  I vividly remember visiting my Grandparents condo in the city.  They lived on the top floor of a twelve story building, from the rear it faced another building, three blocks away.  To me this was fifty little television screens all displaying a unique live story.  As the sun went down they all lit up, people cooking, reading, watching T.V., and being naked.

It didn’t matter what was happening, it was all fascinating to watch people being their most honest self when they thought no one was looking.  I can remember one evening in particular when five separate apartments were all watching the same TV show, I joined in and marveled at the idea of six sets of people all watching the same thing individually, each unaware that anyone else is watching the same thing, except for me.

Another unique quirk of my Grandparents condo was the lobby channel.  It was a direct feed to their television from their buildings security cameras.  Why it was there I don’t know, but I lost hours of my life to that mind numbing channel, just waiting for anyone to enter the picture.

You would think that between Seattle and Los Angeles, the latter would have generated more note worthy subjects to spy on.  Even more so when you consider that we lived across the street from the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre.  Once a year they had their big gala event  and my wife and I would sit on our balcony and watch for hours as Maseratis, Bentlys, and Aston Martins pulled up to the red carpet.  Then we would watch the festivities from our vantage point overlooking the high ivy covered walls.  You could call it people watching, but what is the difference between people watching and spying?

The building across from us was certainly full of stories.  I once caught the woman on the top floor feverishly making out with another woman, practically eating her face.  For whatever reason the couple below her never closed their blinds, including the bathroom which didn’t have frosted glass.  After two years I’d created complex story lines for these people, despite rarely seeing them beyond the window frames.  My wife has often called me Mrs. Kravitz, and though I like to deny the accusation, I know she’s right.  If there’s something going on around I have to know.

But it wasn’t LA that generated the most noteworthy characters to spy on.  Oddly enough it was my apartment in Seattle’s University District.  Thursday to Saturday night was a voyeurs delight, as the University students descended upon “the Ave” and often found themselves stumbling drunkenly down the alleyway behind my apartment.  The building itself had a fascinating troupe.  Our upstairs neighbor didn’t realize that there were other records beyond the Beatles Abby Road.  Every morning at 6 am, Come Together wafted into our bedroom.

Of everyone in the building it was our landlord and his wife who lived in the apartment next to us that provided the most bizarre and cringe worthy story.  When they first took over as landlord I ran into them in the garage and thought they looked like your typical middle age couple.  A few nights later I was laying in bed when I began to hear groaning.  Everyone’s had to endure the sound of neighbors screwing, I’ve never lived in a building without that symphony, but this was different.

This was groaning, but it was also grunting and it was always preceded by a slapping sound.  Not skin against skin, something else, leather against skin?  Wood against skin? I don’t know.  This went on for hours.  Occasionally I’d hear the familiar sound of a banging headboard or a squeaky box spring.  But the following night their disturbing S&M sex would return.  This is where Eddie and Mitchell would have turned on the microphone and caught this whole perverted situation.  They could have become the famous S&M landlords.

I started spending less time in the bedroom and more time on the couch.  It’s not like I could knock on the door and ask them to keep their ass paddling quiet.  I began operating under the notion that if I couldn’t hear it then it wasn’t happening.  Abby Road was no longer an annoyance, it had become my savior.

Some people can look at an open window or hear voices through the wall and disregard them.  I cannot.  I am more like Eddie and Mitchell, except when it comes to the sound of S&M bondage.

I live out in the suburbs now, where there is little eavesdrop on.  Occasionally the next door neighbors will fight loudly on their deck, but in order to hear them I have to go outside myself and that always shuts them up.  Sadly, I miss living in the city with a million little windows into a million lives.  I’m not proud to admit that I find watching or listening to other people live their secret lives, but I do.

The emotional denouement of Shut Up Little Man comes when Mitchell D locates Tony, the sometimes roommate of Peter and Ray.  Tony reluctantly answers a host of question pertaining to the infamous couple and the nature of their relationship.  In a way it’s Tony’s testimony that justifies the exploitation of Peter and Ray on the tapes.

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i’m here

April 3, 2012 in movie reviews, reviews

**Warning this entire article contains spoilers of Spike Jonze film I’m Here.  You can avoid any possible spoilers by simply watching the film below for free.**

A young man faces the abrupt loss of his friend…

That is the plot listed in IMDB for the 2010 Spike Jonze short film.  This either sounds intriguing or completely uninteresting, it certainly isn’t clear what the story of the film is.  The tagline of the poster is equally useless, “A love story in an absolute world.”  The first half of that statement is true, but the second part is a not-so-subtle attempt at product placement by the films’ sponsor, Absolut Vodka.  I went into this film without any idea of what I was going to experience.

I’ve always enjoyed Spike Jonze as a filmmaker, going all the way back to Sabotage and the infamous WAX video, but he really won my heart over with Where the Wild Things Are.  He cuts right to the emotional core of a story and delicately sews in the youthful love, joy, and fear that we are so familiar with.

I’m Here takes place in a near-future Los Angeles where humans and humanoid robots live together.  Because it’s a short film, there’s no exposition, and that leaves us with many unanswered questions concerning these robots and their place in our society.  Despite holding jobs, renting apartments, and going to concerts, they seem to live the life of second class citizens.  Ultimately any questions concerning the reality of this world are unimportant, as the story is about love.  Sheldon (Andrew Garfield) an Apple II-esque robot, falls in love with Francesca (Sienna Guillory) a futuristic, more human looking robot.

The love story is so basic, so simple that what eventually happens is uncomfortably jarring.  Sheldon is a simple robot who goes to work and has little else in his life, Francesca is reckless and spontaneous, you’ve seen this story a thousand times before.  But then it all changes.  Francesca accidentally loses an arm, to which Sheldon responds by giving her his arm.  Then she loses her leg, and Sheldon gives her his leg.  It seems extreme but all in the name of love.  Then Francesca is in a terrible accident and is cut in half.  In order to save her Sheldon sacrifices his entire body, leaving himself just a head.

Had this film been animation or had it involved rag dolls or people made of balls of yarn I would have found this cute, and extremely romantic, but because it takes place within our world  with real people around them, I found it disturbing.  I couldn’t stop thinking about how Sheldon hadn’t just sacrificed his entire body but his life as well, he is now dependent on Francesca.  And what happens when she loses another arm?  Sheldon has nothing left to give.  I saw Sheldon’s autotomy, as a perverse form of body modification.

Then I learned that I’m Here is an interpretation of a beloved children’s book.  The Giving Tree.  It was immediately obvious, I couldn’t believe that I didn’t see it before.  Just as the Tree gives her apples, then branches, then trunk to the boy, Sheldon (Shel Silverstein) gives his arm, leg, and body to Francesca.  Even the courtship is similar in I’m Here, as they hike through Griffith Park, taking in nature enjoying being with one another.  The final image of the boy as an old man sitting on the stump of the tree, who despite having sacrificed her whole self, she is still happy to meet a need of the boy.  In I’m Here, the final image is of Francesca now with Sheldon’s body, sitting in a wheel chair hold his head which is looking up at her beaming with love, happy to have provided something for her once again.

I watched the movie again and I saw it differently, it was a love story on the deepest level.  It wasn’t one sided, Francesca loved Sheldon as much as he loved her.  He sacrificed everything for her because he loved her that much and because making her happy was all he needed.  It’s not like giving the love of your life a kidney, it’s giving something you only have one of, permanently.

In the year and a half since I saw this film, I’ve thought about it often.  Could I give as selflessly as he does?  In a way it is true beauty, but there is constantly the lingering question in both I’m Here and The Giving Tree.  Were the roles reversed would the outcome be the same?

I’m Here is a beautiful film worth watching every minute of, probably more than once.  Spike Jonze further proves to me that he deeply understands childhood fears, joys, and love, and exploits them expertly on film.

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interview with jessica dobson (deep sea diver)

March 27, 2012 in interviews, jessica dobson (deep sea diver)

 

jessica dobson

Back on March 10th The Shins were making their long awaited return as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.  In a picture that was circulating a lot (in my world at least) was the band and cast members of SNL, and right in the middle of the picture sandwiched between James Mercer and Jonah Hill, on the same stage as Tom Hanks, was Jessica Dobson.  She’s not the type of person who seems to be star struck by being on an iconic television show seen before millions.  She might not have been awestruck but I was.

Deep Sea Diver’s Jessica Dobson has a story that serves as both a cautionary tale and a success story.  By the time she was nineteen she had a recording contract with Atlantic records.  A phenomenal opportunity that most musicians will never get.  By the time she was twenty-two she had recorded two full length solo albums, neither of which would ever be released, and then she was dropped from her label.  You only get one shot at the majors, if it passes you by you’re most likely done and you move on.  It’s a rarity to get a second chance.

It’s a testament to Dobson’s talent as a musician that she’s not just another cautionary tale.  She struck out on tour as the guitarist for Beck, and later as the bassist for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  She went back to Phil Ek (who recorded the second ill fated solo Atlantic album) and recorded a new batch of songs.  Impatient with the bureaucratic label system and probably still with a sour taste in her mouth, she self released the New Caves EP, the first release for Deep Sea Diver.  Its success pushed her to start recording a full length, History Speaks.  It took a year and a half of torment and tinkering  before it was released, but the final result is one of the most powerful debuts I’ve ever heard.

It was a Sunday night two days after the History Speaks record release show, I was busily trying to finish an article when I distracted myself with a video that had been sitting on my screen since the following Wednesday.  No more than five minutes later I was buying the album on Bandcamp.  My heart was pounding like I’d just run a marathon, this is what happens when I find something so amazing that I don’t know what to do with myself.

I assumed that History Speaks was Deep Sea Diver’s well honed and expertly crafted third album, their masterpiece.  That it’s actually their debut is astounding, and makes you wonder just how much better they could get.  DSD (As I’ve  come to refer to them when I’m feeling lazy) with Dobson at the helm, along with her husband Peter Mansen, John Raines, and Michael Duggan work as a cohesive unit as strong as steel.  They take you from indie rock reminiscent of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to beautiful piano infused ballads.  What sets Deep Sea Diver apart from anyone you might want to compare them to are the truly unique melodies that just feel really good rattling your bones.

Of course Dobson’s voice is what haunts me even when I’m not listening to DSD.  It’s like a bottle rocket, blasting off, weaving and wobbling, twisting and turning in ways I can’t recall having heard before, then it explodes.  Her voice sounds redolent to numerous great singers, but I don’t imagine that it’ll be long before those singers are compared to her.  If you can’t tell I think that Jessica Dobson and Deep Sea Diver are about the best thing since sliced bread.  If you haven’t bought their album yet, do so, or we seriously need to reconsider our friendship.

This brings me back to March 10th and SNL where Dobson performed with The Shins as their new guitarist.  It was just three days later that Jessica and I spoke, two days later she would head out on tour with The Shins.  I felt extremely lucky to have an hour to talk with someone as fun, and talented as she is.  The week of its release History Speaks was the number one album at Bandcamp.  In June DSD will join Dobson on tour and open for The Shins.  For DSD it’s only a matter of time before they are seriously recognized.

My conversation with Jessica was absolutely delightful.  I came away with an even greater respect for what she has been able to accomplish given her rocky start.  What follows is just a sampling of the full interview.  You can, and absolutely should check out the full podcast interview here, or in itunes.  It’s the best fifty minutes you’ll spend all day, there’s plenty that isn’t included in this excerpt.

 

18Deep Sea Diver

Brian Snider

How long have you been in Seattle?

Jessica Dobson

It’s been a year, a really awesome year.

And before that you were living in Los Angeles?

Yeah, I grew up in Southern California: born and raised.

While you were in Los Angeles, the city caused you to consider quitting music.  What was it about California that made you want to quit?

LA breeds that handout kind of community.  It’s just shoulder rubbing and it’s a lot more materialistic than I think the Northwest is.  It’s a really uninspiring place to be, I personally like the quiet, we [her and her husband fellow Deep Sea Diver Peter Mansen] live out very close to the woods and a lot of parks.  I got tired of the LA rat race and it’s nice to be away from that.  I wasn’t too inspired by the music scene down there, in Seattle there’s a lot more going on and it seems… not that it’s any easier to come up in this scene, but there’s a lot more support.

What is it that makes the Northwest more bearable than Los Angeles?

It’s definitely slower paced.  I love how spread out the city is, where you have all your different boroughs, Ballard, Capitol Hill.  I find myself going out less.  Seattle people are spoiled, because in Los Angeles you drive everywhere and you have to have a car or else you’re crusin’ with your mom.  In Seattle you don’t have to have a car.  So I find myself walking, running, biking, so much more.  But getting to shows, I feel like I get to the ones I really want to see, whereas, living in California I felt like I had to be out every night and see everything.  Here I have more time to be at rest, and I’m fine being in my basement making music six nights out of seven and just going out once and being inspired by the bands I think are sweet.

You’ve been a touring member of Beck, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and now The Shins. How has playing in those bands helped you shape your own music?

I think anytime you spend time getting into the mind of another songwriter it rubs off on you.  With Beck, that was when I started really getting into pedal-world of different fuzzes and effects.  With the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, that was just bass and I became a better bass player.  It’s funny because I’m not really a bass player but I played bass for them and that was a pretty interesting experience- and I love them.  With The Shins, James [Mercer] actually plays a lot like I do because we grew up listening to the Smiths and a lot of jangly-pop guitar.  But he’s obviously a much different songwriter than I am.  He’s so good at taking the three chord song and putting such a unique melody on top of it.  Where I tend to clutter up songs with what I think are interesting chords, where the melody stands more simple and then the band comes back and is spooning out what doesn’t need to be there.  I’ve learned a lot from James and just keeping things simple.

You recorded a solo album for Atlantic records that ended up not being released.  What was the story with that?

When I was nineteen I signed a record deal to Atlantic.  It’s the age old story of: signed too young, didn’t necessarily have the right management influence, I didn’t have the right team around me.  I got lost in the system and recorded a record that didn’t even sound like me.  So by the time it was finished I was adamant about it not being released, and so we scrapped it.  Then we recorded another one with Phil Ek up in Seattle, which was awesome, but it never got released because all the momentum was lost.  There’s actually two full lengths I recorded from age nineteen to twenty-two on Atlantic records.  Then I got off the label and released New Caves Ep- self released it, this is Deep Sea Diver.  At the time at Atlantic I was just going under my name, then it became Deep Sea Diver.  It’s funny because I’ve recorded two full lengths, but this [History Speaks] is the first Deep Sea Diver full length, which is really exciting.

With that first recording was there a feeling like this is your shot and you’ve got to make it work because most people won’t even get that opportunity?

When I was driving back from LA and the offer had come through, I remember thinking those exact words: so wet behind the ears and wide eyed, this is my only chance.  I was just talking to my buddy Jessie Baylin, she has almost the identical story of mine, I think just a different major label.  If you don’t have someone who’s actually experienced and been through that [to say] “no actually, keep honing your craft, keep writing good music.  If the deal’s right don’t pass it up.”  I think back at that time when I was nineteen, labels were throwing out a lot more money for younger talent or new talent that they as a label, “the suits” thought they could manage and bring up.  So many opportunities have come my way and they’ve never been any that I’ve gone after, they’ve always just happened to me.  I just had no idea at that age.

How did the transition happen from your second full length that wasn’t released to the New Caves EP with Deep Sea Diver?

I was pretty bummed for a while after I got off the label, and I actually hid away, I became a manager of some restaurant and was pretty unmotivated to release anything.  But I feel like there were a few pivotal people in my life that kind of slapped me back into the music world.  I just released that [New Caves EP] without any expectation, I didn’t know if people still cared.  That was a really good stepping stone into the next season of life, which was a lot of touring and playing with Beck and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and buckling down for a full length.  It put the wind under the wings.

When I first heard History Speaks, I thought I was listening to a well established band and it really surprised me to learn that the album is currently only available on Vinyl and as a download through bandcamp.  Was that a choice, or was that made out of necessity?

In a way I was a bit nervous on waiting on anybody to put it out.  I’ve seen plenty of friends self release records and if it does well or if someone’s interested, the labels will come to you.  It’s okay to put out your own record and not wait on a label and see what happens.  That was my mentality for self releasing this time around.  I did not want to have to wait through contracts, I’ve just been through that so much in the beginning of my career.  It was actually quite easy, self releasing.  Our record label is in our bedroom, there’s boxes of vinyl everywhere and we package it ourselves, and we take it to the freaking post office and it feels really good.  It’s awesome, it’s so much work to self release.  I’ve never worked so hard in my life on the business side of music.  But there’s a lot of really surprising things coming our way that I think wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t put so much work on the front end in.  A lot of people are stepping forward and we got this tour with The Shins and obviously me being in the band had an influence on that, I’m not assuming that we would have got it if I wasn’t in the band.

I’m totally not opposed to being on a label, but so many people are getting smart, sometimes it’s just best to self release and get a distribution deal.  Sometimes it’s best to just do the label thing, or start your own label, there’s no formula these days.  All I care about is putting out good music and if people want to support that, that’s great.

How long did it take to record History Speaks?

We began recording that record in January of 2010 and we literally recorded up until a day before the last song was mixed and sent off to mastering.  It was a good year and a half process, which was beneficial because we were able to go back on a few songs and rerecord.  It’s different when you get to fully tour on songs and we didn’t necessarily get to do that, so we had to trust our ear and the judgement of our friends, to wade through and see what to chop off and what to keep.

What is it like having that much time to record an album?

It drove me crazy, the times when I had no lyrics but we would set a hard date out for ourselves.  It’s weird because sometimes I do so well in really condensed and hard deadlined periods of time.  On a couple of those songs I wrote the lyrics the first day I wrote the song and then a year later I rewrote them, and I think they’re so much better, so I don’t think there’s any formula to it.  Having a year and a half I never expected for it to take that long, I was just living in the moment and rolling with what my gut told me to do next.  Sometimes we had to make some hard decisions to scrap stuff, which then tacked on another month or two to the recording process.  We had to remix things, we even remastered the record, there was a lot of- not second guessing but just not settling for half rate.  And I think the record is not the same that it would have been if we didn’t make any of those decisions that took more time, but in the end it’s a record that we’re proud of and I’m glad that we sacrificed six months or a year.

Are you the kind of person who keeps a little notebook and constantly writes down ideas as they come to you?

Yeah, it’s usually like, one phrase that sets off a song.  Like, You Go Running, was on the front of my field notes, “assisted watch, your lips pulse to the beat of trouble.”  I don’t even know where that came from, I just wrote it down and then it became an entire song, six months later.  Which is so strange, out of one line it was able to birth an entire story.  I don’t understand half the time where these songs and lyrics come from, it’s usually from a phrase I’ll write down or just a word.

You’re going to be going on tour with The Shins, both as a member of the band as well as with Deep Sea Diver, opening for them in the middle of their tour.  After that are you going to be diving (sorry) right back into Deep Sea Diver and building that up more?

Every day I’m working on two things, whether I’m on tour with The Shins, it’s focusing on that.  But anytime I have to myself it’s working on it [Deep Sea Diver].  It’s an interesting situation, I committed to The Shins and I also released a record and there’s some scheduling things that I have to work around, but Deep Sea Diver is my first love.  We’re already writing our second record and so it’s just a lot going on and I’n trying not to focus too much on what I can’t do this year with Deep Sea Diver, but make the shows that we do play count.

Were you surprised by the reaction you got from History Speaks?

Oh Yeah, I was blown away actually, because I knew I was proud of what we put out but I didn’t realize that it would resonate so much with people.  It’s so nice to finally have put something out.  It’s not the praise of people that I care about but, the genuine response of just, “this is resonating with me,” I think that’s incredible.  Because it was really easy to lose track of that over a year and a half- two years.  Especially with the history of me being in the music business.  With New Caves, that was a cool thing to release and I think it was a stepping stone to History Speaks.  I haven’t been able to receive anything like this.  Not that it’s the biggest deal in the world, it’s definitely still a slow ship being built and I’m just excited that it seems like there’s a foundation now to stand on.  It’s exciting times.  I just love packaging up the vinyl and it’s so cool to do it on our own right now.***

Deep Sea Diver at Neumos

Deep Sea Diver at Neumos

Jessica Dobson should or could have ended up little more than a cautionary tale of signing with a major label unprepared at nineteen and having the whole thing fall apart by twenty two.  Looking back she doesn’t see that early Atlantic deal as a bad thing, from that she was able to take her genuine talent and make some really amazing music.

Back in February I posted an article from Jesse Thorn of the PRI show Bullseye.  In the article he talked about twelve artists who were able to achieve a level of success by doing “their thing”, rather than what a larger organization was pushing them to do.  I would add Jessica to that list.  She could have gone forward with that first Atlantic recording believing it to be her chance to make it.  Instead she took a risk and shelved it, and walked away to do her own thing.  She worked hard, took the right opportunities as they came along, and when the stars aligned and the time was right she did her own thing, and self released an outstanding album.

Deep Sea Diver has already begun work on a second album, and they will join the Shins on tour in June.  Sometime this Summer you can expect to see History Speaks on itunes.  Make sure to check out thedeepseadiver.com for any new music or shows.  You can also watch Jessica shred it up on the guitar for the entire tour with The Shins.  History Speaks is currently available as a digital download or a limited pressing of vinyl at Bandcamp, with cd’s coming soon.

Don’t forget to check out the full podcast interview here or in itunes.  Jessica was a wonderful guest and we really had a great conversation.

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the funniest thing i’ve ever seen: gibby haynes

March 16, 2012 in comedy reviews, reviews

This has been a strange week here at secretly-important, I conducted an awesome interview with Jessica Dobson of Deep Sea Diver, my wife and I found out that we’re going to be having a baby girl.  Then Dick’s Drive-In was listed as the most life changing burger joint in America by Esquire.  I’m not sure what any of that has to do with this article, or even what makes the week strange, trust me it just was.

When my wife and I moved to Los Angeles, we lived in a tiny apartment across the street from the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center and kitty corner from the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre.  Our first month there we probably attended two dozen different shows, it was our refuge, it was what helped us get through those tough early days in a new city.  What little spending money we had for fun was deposited into the UCB register, three to four times a week.

In high school I was a devotee of the Upright Citizens Brigade TV show on Comedy Central with Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, Amy Poehler, and Matt Besser.  Ass Penny’s, Supercool, and the hot chicks room were unparalleled.  It was incredible to see these people now, performing with other great improvisors live in front of me, just a block from my apartment.  If you were a comedy nerd like my self than walking anywhere around that two block span of Franklin boulevard, you were guaranteed to see more than a few “famous” comedy faces.

The UCB’s signature show was Asssscat, which is little more than a variation of an old improv game.  Every Saturday night a group of the theaters best performers would get together along with a guest monologist, who is given a word from the audience which they spend roughly five minutes telling a story about.  Then the improvisors spent about thirty minutes improvising scenes based on the monologist’s story.  They do this three times each.

Generally the monologist is a mystery and you have no idea who you’re going to see that night.  Secretly-Important person Molly Prather has appeared as a monologist, so have people like Jello Biafra, and Jon Hamm.  You don’t really go to see the guest, that’s just a special bonus, you go for the first-class improv.  One night however, it seemed that we were all there for the guest.

The founding UCB members always come out before the show starts and ramp you up, letting you know what Asssscat is.  Then the monologist comes out.  This time I recognized the name: Gibby Haynes.  If you don’t recognize the name don’t worry your totally forgiven, unless you travel in the right sort of circles that name means nothing.  Gibby was the founding member of the psychedelic crap-rock band the Butthole Surfers.  They’re most mainstream album Electric Larryland was not terribly famous and the music generally is not accessible.

But Gibby has been around a long time and most importantly was around at a time in music when he made connections and friendships with some very iconic people: Kurt Cobain, Henry Rollins, Johnny Depp, Timothy Leary.  In turn he also did a lot of drugs, drugs on a level that should have killed him.  Obviously he didn’t die, and survived to become the guest monologist that night at Asssscat.

His first word was a gimme “Rock-n-Roll,”  the guy is Rock-n-Roll he could have spent two hours just telling you the introduction.  Which he nearly did.  As I said before generally the guest will get about five minutes to tell a story sometimes longer if they’re really in a groove, but usually the guest will only be able to recall five minutes worth of story.

Gibby’s drug addled mind gave you about two minutes worth of story and another fifteen riffing on the most insane and bizarre moments of his Rock-n-Roll life.  From literally losing a car in Los Angeles, to being thrown out of Timothy Leary’s house by Henry Rollins, to more things being shot into his veins than you can shake a stick at, including bleach and his own tears.

It was the only time I ever saw the monologist upstage the improvisors.  They were good and I certainly laughed, but as Gibby was telling his stories you could just see in their faces, “oh shit!  We’re supposed to improvise crazy shit like this.”  How were they going to beat a story of Dr. Timothy Leary going down on Gibby while he was asleep?  How do you even begin to top Gibby confronting Moby for sniffing his wife’s underwear?  You can’t, you just can’t.

Walking home that night my wife and I felt like we had just completed an hour and a half work out.  Our chests were sore and our faces ached from laughing so violently hard.  I’ve tried time and time again to figure out what exactly was so funny about the whole experience, I’ve watched clips from the evening since then and have never laughed as hard as I did that first time.  The conclusion I finally came to was this: you never knew what he was going to say from one moment to the next, he wasn’t a great storyteller, you didn’t even know if what he said was true.  Something about watching the rocker, aged like a cheap headcheese, rambling about the most insane events you could imagine, was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.


Blood Babies UCBcomedy.com
Watch more comedy videos from the twisted minds of the UCB Theatre at UCBcomedy.com
ASSSSCAT: Gibby Haynes: Tim Leary’s Houseguest UCBcomedy.com
Watch more comedy videos from the twisted minds of the UCB Theatre at UCBcomedy.com

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hotel congress

March 5, 2012 in columns, mostly non-fiction

february 17, 2012

tucson, arizona

congress: the action of coming together

A few weeks back my wife and I took a trip to Tucson, of all the places to pay a premium price on airline tickets it would not have made the list.  Tucson is located in the Southwestern quadrant of Arizona, a state I’d visited just twice before and in all honesty it had not left a strong mark on me.  This was the land of Jan Brewer, John McCain, and as I was later informed: the land of a mandatory ten day jail sentence for a first drunk driving offense.  All that said, I’d never been to Tucson, I didn’t have any strong impression of what it was like there, the only reason I was going was because two friends who are very important to me were getting hitched.

When my wife and I decided to move to Los Angeles we visited these friends for a weekend.  I hadn’t been to LA since before the riots so everything was new to me.  We’d been advised to avoid the freeways and instead took the surface streets from LAX to Los Feliz.  Anyone who’s made that drive will understand when I say that I was less than impressed (it’s far from scenic).  It wasn’t until we crossed Franklin boulevard that I got a glimpse of what was to be my Los Angeles for the next three years.  Tucson was no different, all my assumptions were correct, at least until we crossed Congress street.

I began to understand just why we were here of all places, celebrating the congress (sorry it’s the title of the piece) of these to great friends.  The wedding was to be held at the Hotel Congress, this also happens to be where we would be staying for the next three nights.  The  hotel was built in 1919 across the street from the Amtrak station along the Union Pacific Railroad.  As it was explained to me the happy couple romantically found the hotel while taking the train to New Orleans.

Hotel Congress was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 2003, their real claim to fame has to do with a fire in 1934 and the capture of notorious bank robber John Dillinger.  The hotel itself was like a time capsule.  There are no keycards, no televisions, no digital alarm clocks, and the plumbing is original.  Each room comes equipped with a rotary phone that connects to a switch board (yep) at the front desk.

Our room was my romantic writers fantasy, I needed only to sit at the antique desk and peer through the wood venetian blinds, to become Raymond Carver or David Foster Wallace.  I fantasized about a sweltering August evening, a bottle of Whisky half empty on the side table, a banged up black Underwood typewriter looming on the desk, onion skin paper littering the vanity, the floor, the bed, the bathroom.  A woman who’s name I can’t remember and won’t ask for slinks from my bed and leaves my enclave in the middle of the Sonoran desert.  My great American novel scattered somewhere in that room.  That was all fantasy, the reason for being there was far more romantic.

There are relatively few rooms in the hotel, forty by my count, all located on the second floor.  At one point there was a third floor, which burned in the 1934 fire and subsequently added to the mythology of the hotel and its dozens of ghost stories.  Our supernatural experience occurred our first night.  Our cab driver informed us that one common story centered around a little girl who burned to death in the fire, I thought he was full of shit, doesn’t every old building have a ghost or two?

There’s a bar in the lobby which is loud, if you’re looking for a quite escape this is not the place for you, it’s loud until around three o’clock after that time it gets quite(r).  It was right at three that I thought I heard a faint knock on the door, I wasn’t really awake and pretty drunk so I didn’t move.  A few minutes later we both woke up to the sound of our phone ringing, it was the front desk informing us that they’d received a call about our smoke detector.  There was nothing wrong with it, it never went off, well actually it did the following morning thanks to a steamy shower.  I’m not convinced this was a ghost, but you can’t deny that it was odd.

It was only fitting that the name of the hotel was Congress and that we were there to celebrate a congress.  Not only a coming together of two people but a coming together of many people, some meeting for the first time and others reacquainting.  Part of the charm in my three days there was just knowing that around every corner loomed the possibility that I will run into someone I know.

Our first two days in Tucson had been spent almost exclusively within the confines of the hotel, Sunday, we ventured out into greater Tucson.  It’s nothing to write home about, with the exception of a few interesting looking museums and the hauntingly beautiful Saguaro National Park, the city is basically nothing.

I had expected the wedding to be beautiful, I had expected to see people I’d not seen for some time, I had not expected to enjoy parts of Tucson as much as I did.  You can go to any city in almost any part of the world and you can be guaranteed that the hotels will all be similar, designed to have all the comforts of home even when your 20,000 miles from home.  My time in the Hotel Congress was nothing like being home, and nothing like any other hotel I’d visited.

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interview with molly prather

February 9, 2012 in interviews, molly prather

In the Fall of 2007 my wife (then girlfriend) and I moved to Los Angeles.  We were in our early twenties and we moved without jobs, knowing just two people in the entire city.  Looking back I can’t believe we did that.  Nevertheless our years in LA would shape our personalities, our relationship, and our friendships.  One of those friendships was with writer/performer Molly Prather.

Our apartment was kitty-corner from the Upright Citizens Brigade theatre on Franklin avenue, I could see the sign from our bedroom window.  With limited funds, my wife and I spent two or three nights a week there watching the best comedy around for nearly free.  The performers there became my heros.  After two disastrous and short lived jobs my wife found herself working for a newly opened Silverlake coffee shop.  This is where my wife met Molly and by proxy I did too.

One of the truly hidden joys in living in a city like Los Angeles is meeting someone and having no idea who they are, then later learning they are an incredibly talented artist.  Molly was a severely funny person to hang out with and get to know, but she was also a gifted performer on the stage.  She collects stories like their little bricks, then takes those bricks and builds a house of humor. 

She walks in the footsteps of solo performers and monologists like Spalding Gray, Josh Kornbluth, Bette Midler, and early Whoopi Goldberg.  Her stories are painfully honest, had many of us gone though the same ordeal we would probably be too afraid to confess to a room full of people.  Because on some lower level Molly is confessing to the audience, confessing the exploits of her past.  When she’s on stage you continually find yourself saying to yourself, “I can’t believe she’s telling us these things.”  Then you laugh hysterically because not only is she funny but her shows are well constructed.  Molly’s quick to contribute that to her creative partner Eric Hunicutt.

Her first fully produced show was That Girl, compiled from years of service at a New York bar, Jake’s Dilemma.  This is the heart of Molly’s work, boys and bars.  They say that you should write about what your familiar with and that’s exactly what she does.  Her ability to comment on the patrons of a bar are as acute as Mamet’s ability to write for lowlifes or Fitzgerald’s to write aristocrats.  When necessary she can even point the finger at herself and admit to being one of those embarrassing patrons.

Along with her solo performance pieces Molly has worked as an actor most notably on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, portraying sluts, hookers, and a combination of the two- politicians.  Perhaps most bizarrely she wrote numerous fitness videos including Tera Patrick’s Fit for Sex.

Anyone who knows me even just a little, probably knows that I have a deep love for solo performance and comedy.  Molly is a genius at both.  It was a given that we would consider her a secretly-important person.  Through the magic of the Information Superhighway, I, my wife, and Molly sat down together via Skype for what was a typical Molly conversation…

Full speed-gems-of-intense awesomeness, blunt, and hilarious.  In my experience with Molly, what you see is what you get.  A brilliant writer performer with sharp wit, and a love for Andy Sidaris films and musical theater.  Of the interviews I’ve done to this point, most translated to the page pretty smoothly, this one not so much.  This interview is a great teaser for the full podcast of the conversation we had.  That podcast will be released Monday February 13th and is a must listen.

Brian

You lived in Seattle briefly when you were young but then moved to Orange County.  What was it like growing up there?

Molly

I hate when people ask me where I grew up, because I feel it’s not indicative of my personality at all.  I feel like I didn’t grow up until I moved to New York.  I was a total tomboy, I wore overalls and Vans and followed my friends band Kleenex around like it was my fucking job.  I went and saw punk bands every weekend.  I didn’t even care about boys until my junior year of high school.  Orange County is such a benign place to grow up, I didn’t drink in high school, I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t have sex, I skateboarded and went to the Block and walked around.  And I was a fucking cheerleader.  My goal junior year, no joke, was ‘do I become a Clipper girl or a Laker girl?’  I heard that they both made $50 a game, and I was really weighing the pros and cons of being a Clipper or Laker girl.

Then my friend was like, ‘Did you apply for college?’ And I was ‘what?’  By the grace of god she applied to Cal state Fullerton in their musical theater department.  And so I did that too- I was raised by wolves and had no idea what was happening.  I was so uninteresting until I was 22, then I fucked one of my college professors and that’s when it all started.

What was the catalyst for moving to New York?

Me and my best friend Courtney moved moments after graduating [college].  Because we were going to be on Broadway.  Again, not high aspirations, much like the Clipper or Laker situation my goal was to be the understudy for Epenine in Les Miserables on Broadway.  It wasn’t even to be a role it was to be an understudy.  I truly believed, ‘six months hands down I will be understudying on broadway.  Cut to that not happening at all.  I did book my first off-Broadway audition which was Frankenstein the rock musical.  It was a dark time in my theater career.

I moved to New York with the full intention of being a broadway musical theater actress.  As soon as I got there I didn’t understand how insane it was that I had $900 and a backpack.  Looking back that was crazy.  We literally were like ‘hmm, the guy who used to play piano for our high school musicals lives there, let’s sleep on his floor for a month.’  Cut to me sitting on my backpack in Times Square sobbing outside TGI Fridays, on the phone with my mom like, ‘we have no where to go’-sleeping on a floor, not on a mattress, sleeping on a linoleum floor in Astoria Queens for a month before we could get an apartment.  No one was going to rent to two girls whose parents wouldn’t cosign and [had] no bank accounts because we didn’t have enough money.  It was crazy.  The fact that everything worked out was because we were twenty-two and so fucking stupid we didn’t know any better.

When did you start working in comedy?

In college I’d taken some classes at the Groundlings and when I moved to NY I was, ‘I think I want to do more of that kind of stuff’- and right away I did.  Second City had a program I did, and I started doing UCB [Upright Citizens Brigade].  I think it was 2006 when I was like, ‘oh, I don’t want to do musicals.’  The reason I did musicals was because I like doing musical comedy and making people laugh.  When I was at UCB I was like, ‘I don’t give a shit if I sing, I just want to make people laugh.’  And that kept evolving, I did some sketch stuff, and I did some improv, but when I started writing my own material for cabarets, that’s when I started to be like, ‘oh, maybe this is what I do’- tell little stories about things that have happened to me.  The thing that I like to do was make the things that happened to me funny.  I think it was a way I kept from being severely depressed.  Either we can make fun of this stuff or we can fucking kill ourselves.

What were those early stories about?

Boys, always boys .  When I am eighty and they do a retrospective on my life it’s just going to have been about boys.  I wish I was more interesting.  I’ve always had that fascination with the broads like the Mae West’s and the girl who drinks whisky and kisses boys and kicks them.  I want to be that girl.

What was the reason for your move from New York to Los Angeles?

One of my really good friends at the time had sold a pilot, and I’d worked on it (he would say I didn’t) but I helped him with it and watched him take his idea from his one person show [and] turn it into a pilot and sell it.  UCB had just opened up their theatre out here [Los Angeles] and people were starting to migrate.  I felt like I had gone as far as I could go in New York.  I spent the last year in New York going ‘what the fuck am I doing here.’  It felt like everyone that I knew that moved to LA were all writing for shows.  It was really based on the fact that UCB had opened up out here and all the people that I knew that were here didn’t have survival jobs.

I lived in New York for eight years and I always felt two steps behind, and LA- I came here with that same mentality, but now I feel like I’m two steps ahead all the time.

When you got to LA was there an adjustment period when you learned that they weren’t just handing out industry jobs on arrival?

The first year was interesting.  My last four months in New York I started writing my one person show about bartending [That Girl].  And when I moved out here I was like, ‘I’m going to put my one person show up out here then [I’ll get] famous, because that’s what happens to everyone else when they do a one person show.  My goal was to get my show into the Aspen comedy festival because that’s how everyone got everything at the time.  By the time I’d written my show the Aspen comedy festival was over and it never happened again.  So i’d spent a year writing a show for a festival that didn’t exist.  That’s when I took a class at IO [Improv Olympic] and Eric Hunicutt was my improv teacher and I said to him, ‘I just moved here I need some help.’  So I sent him my script and he was like, ‘i’m directing your show.’  And that was the beginning of Eric and I working together for the last four years.

My show did really well, I started doing it at the perfect time at UCB, when they didn’t have a lot of shows.  I did it like fifteen times there, which would never happen now, but they didn’t have enough programing, so I would literally get an email at the beginning of the month [saying] can you do two spots this month?  Thanks to Eric that show became the best version of itself and I got really great press, and getting really great press got  me more shows and getting more show got me more press.  That first show is why I got meetings and I know people and I’ve built relationships that I have now.

I had a meeting with Seth Morris the artistic director at UCB at the time, I had asked to do Harold Night because that’s how you promote your shows, and he was like ‘how about instead of Harold Night you do monologues for Asssscat.’  And I was shaking I was so excited.  To this day I don’t know if I’ve ever been more excited.  I grew up in New York going to Asssscat every Sunday watching Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, the fact that they would want me to stand on stage and participate was mind blowing to me.

What is the difference between standup comedy and solo performance?

Seeing a lot of story telling shows but not a lot of stand up, the difference is- with storytelling, whether your doing the Moth or a one person show, the audience enters with the agreement that not everything you say has to be hilarious.  That you can be real and have your vulnerabilities and express who you are.  There’s almost a safety in storytelling that you just don’t have to make everybody laugh every second.  With stand up there’s that pressure, if you go up and you’ve got five minutes, the whole idea is to make people laugh, laugh, laugh.  the goal of storytelling is to make people listen and engage them.

For me coming from such a strong comedy background I had to train myself to not freak out during a one person show when people weren’t laughing.  You have to learn that people are listening and their totally engaged.  It took me years to get to the point where I’m okay with silence.  If I write a punchline and nobody laughs- I’m such an asshole, there will literally be times where I’ll write a stupid joke like my mother would tell and nobody laughs and I’ll be ‘you guys’ and I’ll say it again because I’m that desperate for attention.

Your most recent show is Fuck! Mary! Kill! can you tell me about that a little bit.

My inspiration was, I wanted to have a show with the word fuck in the title, I came up with the title of the show first.

I feel like my first one person show, That girl, was my education in telling a story.  Between my first show and the Moth I feel like I got a better sense of who I was as a storyteller.  My best stories are about boys, so I had this title and I have these great stories that I found through either doing Asssscat or the Moth or the Armando show.  So I have these stories that are about these dudes, how do I make this title and these stories  come together- I fucked a lot of dudes, some of them aren’t around anymore and I’ve yet to get married, we’re going to make this work.  And I did, I forced the party of ‘I’m going to make these two things work together.’

What do you have coming up next?

I’m going to try and start performing again.  I took the year off from performing go finish my feature.  I’m hosting Asssscat on February 12th.  I feel like I’m at this point where I don’t know what happens next, for the first time in years.  I don’t know, I turn 34 on January 12th, I’ll probably fucking die soon.*

 

 

Molly took much of 2011 off to work on her film and television scripts, which we can only hope will be made soon.  I would like to express my hope that Molly does return to the stage soon, she a breath of fresh air in what is an art form dominated by the melodramatic.

You can catch Molly hosting Asssscat at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Los Angeles February 12.  You can find pretty much anything you could ever want to know about her at her website mollyprathercomedy.com, where you can also watch the entire performance of That Girl.  A little side note about that specific performance, I proposed to my wife about thirty minutes before hand… so every time I recall my proposal I will think of Molly’s show.

Don’t forget to stay tuned for the full podcast.  If in the past you just read the interviews and don’t listen to the podcast let me highly recommend listening to this one… it’ll be well worth your time… I promise.  The podcast will be available on the website and in itunes Monday February 13.

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f*ck! marry! kill!

September 20, 2011 in events

There has been a general lack of articles this past week.  Well, actually there haven’t been any posts since my previous garden article Tuesday September 13.  A death in the family has left me utterly speechless, and trying to write an article comparing and contrasting the use of the song Shout in Animal House and Wedding Crashers has felt less then unimportant.

Instead I’ve been trying to find something less mentally consuming to comment on.  Like links to great shows occurring in Los Angeles…

We’ve featured Molly’s blog Molly Bartend’s here before, hopefully you’ve read it and subscribe to it because each post is like a little nugget of wonderfulness.  I’m writing about her once again because she will be preforming her show F*ck! Marry! Kill! at iO West in Hollywood this Thursday.

I had the great pleasure to see the show two years ago at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater, and I can’t recommend it enough.  A master story teller, she ranks up there with my favorites, Spalding Gray and Josh Kornbluth.  Funny, honest, insightful and real.  If you’re in or going to be in Los Angeles this Thursday September 22, then consider yourself all booked up.  There is not a movie or a concert or even an improv troupe worth seeing over F*ck! Marry! Kill!  Do it for me, do it for Molly, most of all do it for yourself.

All the information you need on this show can be found here!

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interview with Caety Sagoian

August 15, 2011 in caety sagoian, interviews

Dating back to when this website was a blog on wordpress, we advertised  (art + community + callings + interviews).  Up till this point we had delivered on all with the exception of the interviews.  We’ll I’m happy to say now… it’s really true.

There has been a general lack of posts this week mainly due to the hours upon hours I’ve spent editing my first interview with Caety Sagoian. I’m publishing a very edited interview with Caety as a bit of a teaser, something for everyone to read and get jazzed up for our, wait for it… first podcast.

Podcasts are like assholes, everyone’s got one, and some people are one.  We’re trying to make a good one that can hopefully separate itself from the hoard of other podcasts already out there.  My goal is to have a new one up every week or at the very least every other week, preferably we’ll interview a new secretly-important person each time.  Sometimes it may just be me and some kind of regular guest humorously discussing a topic.

Prior to the release of each podcast interview I will be publishing a heavily edited written transcript of that interview.  This will be something for those who don’t listen to podcasts to read and get some of the high points of the interview, maybe even convince them to check out the podcast. I hope you enjoy.

It occurred to me while preparing to conduct my first interview that the subject is someone that I’ve known for nearly ten years.  Caety and I met at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle our freshman year, we were placed in the same section of the theater department which meant that we had all the same classes together.

From the first time I met her I was a victim of Caety’s instant likable personalty.  I couldn’t help but like her, she probably could have called my mom a whore and I still would have liked her, she’s just that kind of person.  By the end of our freshman year she, our classmate Kevin, and my future wife became very good friends.  The “whoretet”e we called ourselves.  Looking back on it I’m not exactly sure how we all got so close, I think it might have been because all four of us were involved in a freshman theater festival together.

When my wife and I decided to get married we  arrived at the idea of having her be our officiant .  She did a beautiful job and I couldn’t think of anyone better to have done it.  She made quite the impression on our non-college friends and family and twice since our wedding people have inquired to us about her availability for officiating their wedding.

This is Caety the friend.  Caety  the artist is no less likable or impressive.  She has a wickedly sharp tongue and can spit out a phrase that would make you wish you had a t-shirt printing factory on speed dial.  A voice that could rip your heart apart, at our wedding it was my wife’s request that Caety sing a song At Last.  This will sound cheesy and it is, but there was not a dry eye in the house.

When thinking about who I should interview for the website Caety was one of the first people to come to mind, she is the definition of secretly-important.  An immensely talented actor, voice over talent, and singer songwriter, I often wonder why the whole world doesn’t already know about her.

Caety came over to my house on what of course was the hottest day of the year here in the ever cloudy Pacific Northwest.  I had run test after test with the microphone none of them however, with a fan running in the background.  Subsequently when you eventually listen to the podcast you will notice a slight fan sound keeping Caety and I from melting in my not-so-sound-proof office.

She was an absolute pro about the whole thing and after recording for about an hour she had to run out and take her brother to the airport.  She offered to come back afterwards and we ended up recording for another hour and a half.

brian s snider

You were born in southern California.

caety sagoian

I was born in Long Beach and we lived in Dada Point, which is a beach side town in the OC.

When did you decide that you wanted to be in the arts?

I always knew that I wanted to perform in some aspect.  From a very young age I was incredibly performative.  My mom put me in all those clichéd little kid classes, not like a stage mom, in fact the exact opposite of a stage mom.

I remember being in this ballet class and I couldn’t do any of it because my little chubby body could not pirouette.  I remember we had this performance and everyone was in these pink leotards, apparently they didn’t come in adorable chubby baby size.  So I had this green leotard and I looked different from everyone.  I remember really not being able to cartwheel.  I was already not part of the crowd and  us performing and me making the conscious decision, ‘Screw it, I’m going to somersault,’ because I knew I would look good rolly pollying across the floor.  I guess that was the moment I knew I’m going to do it my way.

I think you can tell the true actors when they’re young because they really ham it up.  They go with what they like and if the audience likes it, they’ll do it a million times.

Oh yeah.  I’m sure I was an annoying little kid.

You started acting… when?

The first real acting I did, I was twelve or thirteen, and my mom made me do a summer theater program.  I really didn’t want to do it and my mom said, ‘Give it a week, if you hate it you can stop.’  She’s a genius because I fell in love with the whole process and continued to do it throughout high school.

How did you approach college?

College was really important to me because I looked at it like ‘I’m going to be a sponge.  I’m just going to soak up all the information and I’m going to use it.’  I never wanted to look at it five years later like, god, I regret going there.

 As soon as you graduated what did you start doing?

I was in an internship the last couple of months of senior year at the Seattle Shakespeare Company, we did Cyrano de Bergerac.  It was a really cool experience, getting to work in a professional theater setting while your still in school.  Then I auditioned for the Seattle Children’s Theater in the fall and ended up getting cast.  I kind of came out of the gate getting cast in good parts in professional theaters.

You’ve developed a relationship with the Seattle Children’s Theater.  Over the last five years you’ve worked there a lot.

I’ll be doing my seventh show with them this fall.  (Harold and the Purple Crayon)

How did you begin in music?

My mom and dad said I sang before I talked.  Music has always been maybe the most important thing in my life.  It’s always been my biggest passion, but I always had this voice that never quite fit in any particular situation.  I was never right for choir and I was never really right for musical theater because my voice never really was pure enough.  I never found the musical slot that I fit in very well.

I took a jazz voice class my senior year of college and the final for that class was that you had to sing at a live jazz club.  It was so thrilling  to get to sing and then realize ‘Oh, I can do that.‘  At the same time in college I met Asa Taccone, who became a very important musical figure in my life.  Asa move to LA right after college and he was definitely pursuing music full time.

In the summer of 2008 he said ‘Why don’t you come on down here and let’s make a music demo.’  I went down to LA and I lived with Asa and his housemates for about two weeks, and we wrote and recorded this demo.  I made it in hopes of shopping it around and pursuing a music avenue.

You have a demo, what is the rest of the life of it?

I wasn’t really able to do anything for myself, to give myself a music name.  And really it was because I was in Seattle, and all the opportunities I really wanted were in Los Angeles, I was able to use that demo to book all sorts of other different things.  I was able to get music parts for different commercial campaigns.  Even though it was a couple of years ago I think there is one particular song on there [the demo] that still has a life form. **

This has been a very brief excerpt of my interview with Caety.  The full interview will be available in our podcast later this week. (the secretly-importantcast).  There you be able to hear Caety discuss her college years, working as an actor, how she became a voice over talent, and how her music career began.  You can also hear our discussion about musician and producer relationships as well as Caety’s unbelievable story of being the runner up to Nikki Blonsky for the film version of Hairspray.

You can see Caety performing in Harold and the Purple Crayon at the .  You an also hear her voice over work in various places including the voice of Bowser Jr. in the Mario Bros. games.  She also has a voice over as well as on camera spot on the PBS show Biz Kid$.  Last but certainly not least, if you do nothing else you must check out her myspace page which is the exclusive place to listen to her incredible demo.  I promise once you hear it you’ll want to hear more by her.  We’ll also be playing a few of her songs throughout the podcast.

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who used it best #1: step brothers vs. (500) days of summer

August 8, 2011 in columns, who used it best


Occasionally my wife will buy US Magazine and when she does I usually make sure to check out one of my favorite tabloid pictorials “who wore it best.”  If you have chosen to spend your time by bettering your life rather than flipping through the pages of celebrity toilet paper then let me explain the premise.  Who wore it best will pit two celebrities against one another by showing a side by side comparison of each wearing the same outfit.  Online readers then have the chance to vote on… who wore it best.

In honor of my favorite tabloid pictorial we will be introducing a new series here on the website, Who Used it Best.  In this series we will take a look at two movies that use the same song.  For our first Who used it best, we will compare and contrast the use of Hall and Oats, You make my dreams come true in both Step Brothers and 500 Days of Summer.

Step Brothers

This is not the first time this instant classic has been featured on the website, you might remember its previous appearance in Comfort Movie.  That said it was the first of a pair of movies to bring about the relative resurgence of Hall and Oats from the depths of music trash can.  Readers should take comfort in knowing that while Step Brothers is one of my favorite movies, this will not sway my decision on way or the other.

How they use it.

I won’t delve too deeply into the plot of the film but what you need to understand is that the two main characters Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly) become 40 year old step brothers when their parents marry.  At first they are unreceptive to one another, you might even say bitter enemies but after a dinner with Brendan’s brother Derek Huff (Adam Scott) in which they both find a common hatred for someone other than each other, they become best friends.  In fact the song begins with Brennan saying, “Did we just become best friends?” To which Dale responds “Yup!”

What follows is a montage of two 40 year old boys becoming friends in ways you would expect two 10 year old children to.  Karate in the garage, measuring their penises, mixing mentos with Diet Coke, sword fight (the one with pee), watching Steven Seagal films, and concludes with both turning their two twin beds into a makeshift bunk bed.

What makes it great.

Watching John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell act like ten year olds is comedy gold and this montage is filled with the activities that brothers and best friends do when they are young to help bond one another.  What makes the whole thing better is the fact that they seem to bond by doing all of them over the course of two hours after having spent the first third of the movie as bitter rivals.  Each activity as described above is funny enough on its own but when combined they become outright hilarious.

Drawbacks.

Quite honestly there are only two drawbacks to the song as used in the movie and they equate to someone answering the, “What are your weaknesses?” question with “I work to hard.”  The fact is all I could really come up with is that the whole scene is far too short, the song could have gone on longer to include more bonding experiences.  Perhaps it would have thrown the pacing of the film off, but I don’t really care about pacing when watching two 40 year old men have a “sword fight.”

The other drawback to the scene is that because the movie is already off the charts hilarious the montage doesn’t stand out as particularly great.  Sure whenever I hear the song You make my dreams come true, I always hear “Do you want to do karate in the garage?” in my head.  But that is not better than say “I smoked pot with Johnny Hopkins,” or “It’s okay that mines not movie quality.”  While a great scene it does not rise above the rest of the movie.  If you’re wondering what exactly those two quotes mean then you have not yet experienced the immortal genius of Adam McKay’s Step Brothers.

(500) Days of Summer

This movie tends to be rather polarizing, people either loved it for it’s sweet indie odd ball qualities or they hated it for all the same reasons.  Personally I fall right in between, it’s a great concept which is executed well, the script is sometimes wonky but with a great actor like Joseph Gordon-Levitt to balance it out most of the time I forgive it’s flaws.  My real problems with the film are that A. Zooey Deschanel is not the incredible woman the film asks us to believe she is.  In fact she’s just a bitch, never once do I see her side of the story.  B. The film takes place in Los Angeles but the characters seem to be living in a city more like New York.  It was not a surprise to discover that it was originally written to take place in San Francisco.  C. During a Karaoke scene Joseph Gordon-Levitt sings The Pixies, Here comes your man which I head never once heard anyone sings at Karaoke.  Just as with Step Brothers, I will act as a mostly partial judge and will not allow my frustrations with portions of the film to obstruct my decision making.

How they use it.

Just as with Step Brothers let me give you some context for the use of the song.  (500) Days of Summer, is a story about 500 days of Summer (Zooey Deschanel) in the life of main character Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  The story is told out of order jumping from day 5 to day 105 in just moments, most often happy scenes jump to scenes of sadness and depression.  In the story Tom meets Summer and is instantly in love with her, Summer meanwhile sends mixed messages to Tom about what exactly she is looking for, a fling, friendship, or a relationship.  The song comes into play when finally Tom gets into Summers apartment and they have sex for the first time.

He awakes refreshed and ready for a new day, emerging from the building and thrusting a fist of triumph in the air.  As the song plays he dances his way down the street, hugging and high fiving strangers as he goes along.  At one point to stops to fix his hair in a shop window and instead sees Han Solo winking back at him.  From there we delve further into an absurd dance sequence where the ridiculousness climaxes when a cartoon blue bird lands on Toms finger. He continues by dancing his way into the elevator at work.  The song closes as the doors to the elevator close, when they open we have jumped ahead a hundred days or so and now Tom is depressed.

What makes it great.

At times the film can be a bit moody, though there are very funny moments this scene really stands out as outrageously hilarious.  The director uses various story telling techniques including a split screen that depicts a scene in fantasy and reality, the songs bit of absurdist humor comes at just the right moment in the film to help try and justify the use of a mysterious narrator, or the unique story telling techniques.  The Han Solo reflection is a stroke of genius, it takes you by surprise and the director really earns the laugh and then justifies it to the audience with the dancing.  The last part of what makes the scene great is that unlike Step Brothers where the song is used as a back drop, in (500) Days of Summer it is used as narrative.  The characters are dancing to the music, they can actually hear it, and this takes it to a whole other level of musical theater mockery.

Drawbacks.

In (500) Days of Summer the scene completely stands out as arguably the best in the movie.  Subtract the scene from Step Brothers and I don’t love it any less, subtract the scene from (500) Days of Summer and the movie loses a great deal of likability.  While I was formulating the idea for this article I discussed the movie with a number of people some who did and some who didn’t like the movie but across the board everyone thought this was the best scene by far.

The other drawback of the scene is context, as the audience we immediately understand what has occurred, Tom has finally had sex with Summer and he is celebrating.  The problem is that Summer is such an appalling character that I have a hard time believing that one could really be that happy about reaching home plate with her.  I can’t really think of any actress who contains the qualities that the character of Summer supposedly possesses, Zooey Deschanel definitely does not have them.

Final thought.

Before Step Brothers and (500) Days of Summer I can’t say I was a fan of You make my dreams come true, now I have it on my ipod and use it as an instant pick me up.  This I credit directly to two movies that use it well.  I didn’t develop any kind of scoring system to determine the winner, instead I will rely solely on intuition.

It was very close and could have gone either way but in the end I had to go with (500) Days of Summer.  While I enjoy the movie, to me it is just not as good as Step Brothers, but the fact that the song use in the movie was so much better from everything else I had to give it the nod.  As I mentioned before there are plenty of equally funny scenes in Step Brothers but for (500) Days of Summer the scene really stands out.

Of course this is just my unsolicited opinion, go ahead and watch both scenes and then vote in our poll here.

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my life behind bars (mollybartends.tumblr.com)

July 21, 2011 in columns, mostly non-fiction

I’ve never reposted an article here on this site before, but this one from the very talented Molly Prather needs to be seen by as many readers as possible.

http://mollybartends.tumblr.com/post/7771903271/do-the-right-thing

First of all if you don’t know Molly… you should, and the best way to start is by going to her website http://www.mollyprathercomedy.com/.  I met many talented people in Los Angeles, and while all of them are equally deserving to be acknowledged for their hard work, Molly is right at the top of that list.

I read Molly’s article three times and took a massive sigh of relief each time.  To know that there is another person who feels the same as I do about life’s distractions keeping me from work and thus jeopardizing my desired success, is comforting.

Not only do I imagine a chapter in Tina Fey’s book dedicated to all the things she had to give up in order to become successful, I also know that there must be a chapter called “don’t be a  lazy asshole”  this applies directly to me. I’m someone who can become distracted by just about everything and can always convince myself that it is more important to reorganize my t-shirts then edit the end of my play.

All that said, just go ahead and read Molly’s article.

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