Over two decades ago, Terry Eagleton helped define the field of cultural theory with his book Literary Theory. In his latest work, After Theory, he takes a look back, a look around, and a look ahead in the field he helped found. Continue reading “After Theory by Terry Eagleton”
Doug Stanhope: Deadbeat Hero
If you recognize Doug Stanhope, you probably know him from the later seasons of The Man Show, where he played Coy Duke to Joe Rogan’s Vance. But that, my dear people, was hardly a glance into the world of Stanhope. His stand-up finds him teetering on the brink among several forms of utter oblivion. He stares down the evils of narrow-mindedness wherever they may lurk, attacking any and everything you might hold sacred, find wholesome, or think is just plain good.
In spite of his ubiquitous vulgarity, his profane humor, and his relentless vendetta against your favorite traditions, Doug is a good guy. Not only that, but he’s damn smart, too. His comedy is laced with serious commentary, astute observations, and blistering critique. His penchant for the perverse often hides this side of his work, but trust me, you’d have to get up pretty early in the morning. . .
In the midst of all of this obscenity, intellect, and outright venom, though, you get the feeling that Doug is on your side, fighting the big, ugly system right along with you. As he says, “To err is not only human, it’s revolutionary.”
Roy Christopher: Well, this being my first postelection interview, I figure we ought to get into that. I know you’re pissed, but what can we do?
Doug Stanhope: Oh, I’m not pissed anymore. You see, I won $800 at roulette in Shreveport this week. And I just booked a gig at a women’s prison. Then I go to Costa Rica for a couple weeks. I only really get pissed when I’m doing nothing — or nothing that I enjoy — and start living vicariously through CNN. Powermongers will always rise to the top so long as people have a desire to be lead, and the world will always turn its back to all that is unfair, so long as the majority are unaffected.
The illusion that we have any more than a lottery ticket-holder’s part in changing the big picture simply by voting distracts from all the difference we can make on a personal level, even by just cutting a sucker an even break.
RC: Okay, let’s not mess around here, Doug, you’re a smart guy. Do you ever think that your association with The Man Show or Girls Gone Wild betrays the intelligence of your comedy?
DS: Yep. But I didn’t do it for the comedy. I did it for the experience. Sure, the money was good, but I’ve done equally dubious things for nothing but the story. I did Jerry Springer in its heyday — a completely invented story — just because it was amusing. I did comedy on a tour bus to an Indian casino as a goof. I made out with Brett Erickson in a bar in Louisiana this week — deep, plunging tongue kisses — just to annoy dangerous military rednecks that didn’t like The Man Show.
Selling out includes not doing something you’d enjoy, on whatever level, just because of what someone else might think. Maybe you’ve betrayed yourself for thinking I was intelligent.
RC: Maybe I have. How’d you get into doing stand-up anyway?
DS: I was living in Vegas and thought I was funny. I wrote five minutes of jack-off jokes and went to a local bar that had an open mic. Now — fourteen years later — I have a world of jack-off jokes. Only in America.
RC: Who do you like doing stand-up these days?
DS: Guys you wouldn’t know — Dave Attell, Mitch Hedberg, and, of course, Joe Rogan you probably know, but there’s also a whole world of unknowns who never get heard: Andy Andrist, Sean Rouse, Brendon Walsh, Brett Erickson, Brian Holtzman, Lonnie Bruhn are all guys who are brilliant but who knows if they’ll ever be known beyond XM Radio — and only then if they get their shit on CD.
RC: What are you reading lately? Any recommendations?
DS: The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995): Helps you get past the whole Red State/Blue State thing and look at the whole nature of the beast.
RC: What’s coming up for Doug Stanhope?
DS: I’m debating between defecting to Costa Rica or running in 2008. In the meantime, there’s always smoke being blown up your ass here in LA about some television project or another. The road pays the bills but too much of it just makes me hate comedy and humanity equally. If I could keep focus for more than two minutes, I’d write a book. Or maybe do a show on satellite radio. I’d really like to go to Massachusetts and gay-marry Gary Coleman, although I don’t actually know him. It’d really be funny, though.
Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines by Bill Hicks
This is it, folks: the definitive collection of Bill Hicks stuff all in one book. Interviews, letters, lyrics, live routines, etc. are all compiled inside. For the uninitiated, Bill Hicks was the best comedian to ever jump on stage and bless the mic with his wisdom. Constantly railing against governmental idiocy, corporate control, censorship, and the indolence of America, among other things, Hicks took on all the evils of the world and the enemies of the open mind. You’ve heard him — even if it came from someone else’s mouth, you’ve heard his brand of intelligent, caustic wit. Nothing and no one is safe in the range of Bill Hicks’ comedy. Continue reading “Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines by Bill Hicks”
Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing by Benjamin Nugent
Better than even Kurt Cobain, Elliott Smith provides a case study of the effects of fame. Though his rise was just as mercurial, the changes wrought were more profound and more eerie. Benjamin Nugent treats this flight to fame with a delicate touch, showing as many sides of Elliott as he was able to access. The result is a book about the pitfalls of the rise to public attention, its effects on friendships, and a man who fought against everything to maintain the one thing he truly lost: control. Nugent’s book follows Elliott from his growing up in suburban Texas, where his tumultuous home life pushed him inward and toward music, to his beginnings as a performer in Portland, Oregon, then through his chaotic brush with mass consciousness, to his unfortunate suicide in Los Angeles. Continue reading “Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing by Benjamin Nugent”
How To Draw a Bunny Directed by John Walter
Ray Johnson has been called the “the most famous unknown artist in the world.” He was an unsung Pop Art innovator, collaging, mailing, and performing his way through the mid-twentieth century New York art scene. As artist Billy Name says in one of the interviews in the film: “Rauschenberg was a person making art, so was Andy (Warhol). Ray wasn’t a person. Ray was art… That’s why he’s an artist’s artist.”
How To Draw a Bunny documents Ray’s life as best as it could be done. Many were acquainted with him and his work – and many over long periods of time – but no one seemed to know who Ray was. His entire life was a performance. And so too, it appears, was his death (the mystery surrounding his apparent suicide opens the film). He never went to openings, never had his own art show, despised galleries, was meticulous about his prices, and truly worked outside the art system his entire career.
Ray Johnson started or helped start many of the techniques and trends for which other artists are known: the use of copy machines and collaging; using images from advertising, brand logos, and pop culture icons; and mail art, or as he called it, “correspondence art.”
How To Draw a Bunny is a fun collage in itself: a collection of interviews of artists who knew Ray, including Chuck Close, Christo and Jean-Claude, James Rosenquist, the aforementioned Billy Name, and Ray Johnson himself; many great photographs; and, presented mostly in black and white, the film maintains the opening mood of mystery throughout. It’s a fun and intriguing look at an artist about whom one may not have heard, but will certainly be better off with his acquaintance.
Pete Miser: Camouflage is Relative
“Rap is something you do. Hip-hop is something you live.” — KRS-One
I first saw Pete Miser rock the mic live in 1996. He was the lead mouth in a Portland, Oregon, outfit called the Five Fingers of Funk, and they were opening for De La Soul at Seattle’s Fenix Underground. I was intrigued because I had previously only heard Pete do the spoken word thing on a compilation of Pacific Northwestern poets and personalities, Talking Rain (Tim Kerr Records, 1993). His flow that night in Seattle rode atop the live, organic grooves of the Five Fingers like a true veteran lyrical navigator. I made a note in my mental. Continue reading “Pete Miser: Camouflage is Relative”
Under the Overpass Written and Directed by Gariss
In this short but fascinating film, a wheelchair-bound homeless man, Michael, begins his day when he wakes up under an overpass, slowly maneuvers into his wheelchair, and heads to a local coffee shop. After cleaning up the sidewalk out front, collecting his pay (a cup of coffee), he makes his way to another overpass where he sips his coffee, and pulls out his flute. Unbeknownst to the hurried passersby, through his music, Michael is transferred to a world with able legs: legs able to run, jump, and leap with joyous abandon. Continue reading “Under the Overpass Written and Directed by Gariss”
The Laws of Cool by Alan Liu
Even with as many texts as have come out exploring and explicating our so-called information age, there has yet to be a more exhaustive account of just what the hell has happened than Alan Liu’s The Laws of Cool (University of Chicago Press). Nevermind the misleading title. This isn’t another exposé on “cool hunting” and finding out what the kids are into. This lengthy tome is about how most of us came to be knowledge workers in the factories of information.
To call this book “exhaustive” is an understatement. I can’t stress the reaches of Liu’s research or the sprawling implications of his book enough – and reading it is quite the lengthy process. Every time one thinks that Liu has found his bounds, the next chapter opens another door on which one wouldn’t have even thought of knocking. Yet, it’s a cohesive work, written with unwavering wit and erudition.
Exploring the Foucauldian climate of the corporate control culture, set off by IT and the mainframe, Liu shows how managers came to be “seduced by the system” (as Ellen Ullman put it in her book Close to the Machine). They used the abilities of their information systems to keep tabs on their workers – even where there had previously been no problems. His use of temperature-related tropes (e.g., “hot,” “cold,” “warm,” and especially “cool”) is confusing at first, due to the previous uses of such terms (i.e., as slang or as in McLuhan’s ubiquitous probes). These temperatures eventually come together to illuminate the weather of the twenty first century workaday, from the stifling of hot emotions by the cold machine to the warmth of friends and family and the cool of today’s assimilated, yet über-hip “knowledge workers” (“We work here, but we’re cool,” quoth Liu).
Taken whole, The Laws of Cool is a high relief, topographical map of the workscape of the early twenty first century. Couple this with Ken Wark‘s A Hacker Manifesto and you have a crash course in post-Marxist labor studies.
Andrew Feenberg: Questioning Technology
“Technology marches on, over you or through you, take your pick.” — Stewart Brand
As technology marches on, who, besides alarmist Luddites, is keeping tabs on the changes it’s bringing about? One such person is philosopher Andrew Feenberg — and he does it with a philosophical pedigree that no one else can claim and from a critical stance that no other can maintain. His many books on the subject illuminate numerous aspects of technology’s ever-increasing influence that are so often overlooked in similar texts, yet he maintains an even keel: Andrew uses and embraces technology, so his critical perspective comes from the fray, not the forest. Continue reading “Andrew Feenberg: Questioning Technology”
Chris Ware by Daniel Raeburn
In the much-maligned medium of comic books, Chris Ware is one of the artists that justifies — even as he transcends — the medium. His work encompasses aspects of typography, graphic design, fine art, Joseph Cornell-style cabinet-making, story telling, and, of course, comics.
Daniel Raeburn’s book is the first to explore the expanse of Ware’s work. The book itself consists of a brief biography including in-depth interview sessions with Ware, and an extensive selection from all aspects and eras of Ware’s work. Included are pieces and layouts from Ware’s Acme Novelty Library series, Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, and Quimby the Mouse, as well as drawings, sketches, paintings, toys, display cases, etc. In addition, Raeburn has assembled many of the work of artists who influenced Ware, and many catalog pages from which Ware lifted some of his layout ideas.
Chris Ware represents a brief but thorough overview of one of the most important visual artists working today.
