Googa Mooga Extras

Also in the Extra Mooga section of the Googa Mooga festival on May 19, comedians played a part in the foodie-oriented presentations, with Aziz Ansari in particular greatly livening up a panel with chef David Chang, longtime food writer Ruth Reichl and musician/DJ James Murphy.

Ansari, whose new comedy album and special arrives soon and will be reviewed here, made light of eating samples presented to the panelists during their program. He repeatedly reacted to unintentional slips of the tongue by Chang, saying they would start race wars or other explosive activities. Chang, Murphy and Ansari had recently traveled together to Tokyo to do a piece for GQ, so Ansari was able to needle the others at times without genuinely upsetting them.

Food world personality Anthony Bourdain closed the Extra Mooga program of events as sunset neared, attracting the biggest and loudest crowd of any of the programs, garnering the most rock star-like status from the audience’s reactions. Bourdain had to play ringmaster by fielding audience questions for his entire program and the back-and-forth was rowdy, finding him raising his voice a lot to keep control of the proceedings.

This produced some highlights, but also a lot of not-so-thoughtful exchanges, like one question about who Bourdain “would like to deep fry” and another asking him if he had ever “sexted.” In one highlight, Bourdain did answer an eight-year-old girl’s query about how to cook unicorn. He also engaged in rants about favorite targets like the James Beard Foundation, and of course, foodies and hipsters. “Chefs are not rock stars,” Bourdain said, but in this program, it certainly seemed Bourdain was getting treated like one, and maybe even playing to that a bit.

Story Arcs in Miniature

I've been away from this blog for a little while, and couldn't quite stick to the mission I set out at the start of the year of turning this into a meta-comedy-in-the-media-critic sort of enterprise. This entry might seem a little inconsequential, but it's something I noticed.

People do go on about how attention spans are shrinking. I think I saw another piece of evidence of this. On the new HBO show, "Veep," which features Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and which I like so far, the opening credits set out the whole backstory in what must be an unprecedentedly brief amount of time. It's a quick, animated progression of news headlines about Louis-Dreyfuss' character, a senator who ran for president but didn't make the cut in the primaries and ended up becoming the running mate and then vice president. That whole arc is communicated in what must be less than five seconds, and then "Veep" leaps into its first scene.

The show itself, particularly its dialogue, is pretty rapid fire, to the point where Gabi finds it stressful to watch, but I like the wit and sarcasm, the writing and situations, enough to keep it on my list. I wonder if I may be accelerating my ability to focus, a bit too much though, by becoming a fan of it.

NYT story on monologues

NYT story on monologues

Interesting piece -- will drill down on these performers when I get a chance. The Jester site has written about Ophira Eisenberg and Dave Hill in the past.

I'm glad baseball is back

Chicago vs. Chicago: Round 1 from Nick Offerman

Where are they now update

Through Jester's monthly shows calendar, the site has been able to show when performers and shows that were previously featured are turning up again. But it's occured to me that this doesn't quite capture when performers previously featured from shows in New York have gone on to Los Angeles and made their mark in TV and movies, so I'm also going to start using this blog space to call attention to some of that.

Lennon Parham (see interview, 5/20/08) and Jessica St. Clair (see review, 11/18/05), it was recently announced, are going to be prominent in an upcoming NBC sitcom, "BFF," debuting April 4.

Also, as you may have seen, Jason Mantzoukas (see interview, 9/9/07), who co-starred with St. Clair in the show reviewed and linked above, is also now L.A.-based, has been turning up in numerous shows, both as a writer and performer, including Fred Armisen's "Portlandia."

The Espresso Book Machine

The Espresso Book Machine

I found out about this in looking for interesting media ventures for one of my graduate classes, but thought it might also be of interest to readers of this blog and the Jester site.

Aereo -- savior for cord cutters?

This New York Times story last week noted plans for Aereo, a new service being backed by Barry Diller, and set to launch in New York next month (March). Aereo will set up arrays of small broadcast TV antennas in remote locations in Brooklyn and elsewhere. Subscribers, for $12 a month, will be able to rent their own single antenna in the arrays. These antennas will be fed into the Internet to stream broadcast TV content to Roku boxes and similar devices for home TVs, along with embedded DVR capabilities.

I'm really pleased to see this venture making plans to launch, although it seems a bit tricky that there may be a waiting list and they haven't responded to a sign-up inquiry yet. I "cut the cord" from Time Warner back in August after getting frustrated with their poor customer services and callous attitude about their excessive subscription costs. The cable companies' greed in this respect has worked for a long time. I'm surprised that with the Roku technology available now, more people haven't cut the cord as well. I think that Aereo could very well be the tipping point for cable TV. It's a momentous development that will affect all entertainment.