Memoir publication costs

This post is an auxiliary to the Kickstarter campaign for "Snapshot of a Warped Man" (working title), my memoir, showing the publication proposal by hybrid publisher Mascot Books.

 

UCB move

Just a quick thought. The UCB's Chelsea theater hosted its last performances last night before moving to a new space in Hell's Kitchen sometime in December (the East Village space remains open).

The final night included an opportunity for fans or anyone who signed up to have 60 seconds on their stage to say whatever they wished, and I wished I could have made it and participated. Some time ago, I took classes with the theater and got to perform in some "graduation" shows on that stage. Combined with all the shows I saw at that location, with intense frequency for a few years, it was a formative place for me. I missed it when life moved on and other pursuits took over.

UCB was in that space, a black box style stage under a supermarket, for about 15 years altogether, and I liked having even a very small part in that. I helped document part of that history, from 2005 to 2010 mostly, and the record of that can still be found on jesterjournal.com, under the "Sketch" and "Improv" tabs on the left of the homepage. Hope you enjoy looking back.

Is the future of radio and podcasting in video?

Howard Stern recently signed a five-year deal to continue his radio career with Sirius XM. The deal, Stern has said, happened because the company will make significant investment into video capability for his show. Stern envisions a “virtual world” for his listeners and watchers.

Sirius XM’s overall programming offerings may also morph into video, company executives have hinted. It’s unclear what an expanded entertainment service from Sirius XM – for Stern or any other programs – may actually look like, and whether it will be fed through an app. There also has not been any indication so far about whether the cost of Sirius XM service may increase, and by how much.

Meanwhile, Anthony Cumia, who was fired from the “Opie & Anthony” show on Sirius XM in summer 2014, has since begun his own paid video podcast network, available online, as a smartphone app, and also on Roku video boxes, for $6.95 a month, or less for six-month commitments.

These changes raise a big question for radio or podcast format entertainers and hosts. Is the addition of video worthwhile both artistically and financially? In Cumia’s case, is making his show primarily video format enough of an incentive to get subscribers at his asking price? Especially when Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime and others, with wide ranges of programs (including a lot of talk shows, in Hulu’s case) and large content libraries, are at a monthly price point that is close to $7, or not much more than that.

Stern has a bigger fan base and higher profile than Cumia, but faces a similar issue if the cost of an expanded video and virtual content offering drives up the asking price of Sirius XM service. In the case of Stern and Sirius, this is mitigated by the presence of other content as part of the service, including content that presumably will be similarly upgraded. The other question with Sirius and Stern, however, is that at about $14.99 a month, its programming offering is still rooted in audio-only fare, such as music channels and talk and interview shows, and its distribution channel (specialized car radios and an app) is more limited than that of Netflix – if the result is that Sirius XM really does become a Netflix competitor in the process of the planned changes.

The paid model now being used by former broadcasters such as Stern and Cumia differs from what most popular podcasters use, a sponsorship-based model that is closer to traditional terrestrial radio. The most popular podcasts are split between those by former broadcasters such as Adam Carolla – or current broadcasters providing expanded versions of their shows on podcasts – like Jesse Thorn or Ira Glass – and comedians turned hosts, like Marc Maron and Chris Hardwick. The free, sponsor-supported podcast model seems even less likely to support video or virtual expansion – but the audio-only nature of its programming may be what makes its appeal so strong.

A take on "Man in the High Castle"

Last month, in “The Watch” podcast on “Channel 33,” part of the Bill Simmons Podcast Network, hosts Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald were promising to give their take on the Amazon drama series “The Man in the High Castle.” I’m not sure if they ever got to it.

Since I have binged through its first season, not too long after it was released, I’d like to offer a public service by giving a take on the show. The marketing and advertising for “High Castle” positioned the series as an alternative history story about what the world would be like if the Nazis and Japanese won World War II. This idea has been tackled in other incarnations before, namely the Robert Harris novel “Fatherland” and a cable movie that was made from that book.

Alternative history stories, however, are really more concerned with – or should be about – what the politics, society and characters’ lives end up being like in a reality that could have happened, but never did. “High Castle” is different than that, and as a result may end up being disappointing to alternative history fans drawn in by its premise as it was promoted. The DNA of its story comes from the sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick, whose mind-bending works have been adapted for film and TV with varying degrees of success.

“Blade Runner,” “Total Recall” and “Minority Report” are all based on Dick’s fiction and share certain similar plot developments in which certain actions can open up or lead to different outcomes in fantastic or unreal fashion. “High Castle” is really more about this kind of storytelling than about making the alternative history seem believable or rooted in a new reality.

A prominent element in trailers for “High Castle” is the existence of bootleg newsreels that show the Allies winning the war. One thinks that explaining how these newsreels came to be or what they mean would figure prominently in the series, but it ended up being almost a soap opera masquerading as a thriller or spy story, with intrigue around one character, and whether he is a double agent, or whether his sympathies lie with the Nazis or a resistance group. This goes on for the first six or seven episodes until the Phillip K. Dick sci-fi elements really start to kick in, revealing the series’ real intentions.

I’ll try to tell this part without spoiling anything. I’m not even sure I fully understood all the twists or the mechanics of the plotting, but the concern over the newsreels does re-surface in terms of another character, a Nazi officer who is going to betray his comrades and attempt to assassinate Hitler (still in power in the early 1960s, but aging and vulnerable, or so we think). Suffice to say, pre-cognition (a prominent idea in “Minority Report”) comes into play, leading to a different outcome than we expect. And, in parallel, one of the powerful Japanese characters (who control the western half of the former United States), finds himself suddenly in an alternate reality brought on by the actions of that rogue Nazi in the east.

In short, “High Castle” really should be thought of as a Phillip K. Dick mind-bending sci-fi story, with a very slight alternative history veneer lacquered on top of that.

TV sitcoms recap

I had been brewing and tinkering with the following blog idea a little too long, and now it’s probably out of date. I wanted to give a take on sitcoms as the TV season wrapped up, as much as the old-school notion of a TV season from September through May is even still a thing.

So here’s a quick take on a few shows, really my favorites or what’s currently interesting to me, and where I think they stand in their run – are they continuing to build in quality and creativity, holding firm, or declining?

The one sitcom that is truly not just improving but has been consistently “killing it,” with writing and acting on such a high level that it rarely missteps, is:

The Goldbergs (ABC)

The way this show’s first two seasons have gone, it’s inconceivable that it will not continue to be an on-target re-creation of what it was like growing up in the 1980s in the Northeast, and more specifically the Philly suburbs. The only thing that could sink it is if they run out of ideas, but the personalities of the characters are so vivid and well-realized that they ought to easily complete five seasons and become big in syndication – these episodes definitely are going to bear repeat viewing.

These two are definitely on the rise, following their first seasons:

The Odd Couple (CBS) – This version of a classic walks a fine line between being a too-conventional laugh-track sitcom and having a bit more depth, as a multiple camera studio-shot sitcom. The season ended on a promising note, setting up movement forward for the characters, with Thomas Lennon’s Felix hooking up with Emily, who had long been interested in him even though he was oblivious, and Matthew Perry’s Oscar and his ex-wife realizing that reconciling wouldn’t be a good idea.

Last Man on Earth (Fox) – At a certain point in its season, most of its viewers were wondering it needed to or would keep adding cast members. But it made a key plot twist near the season’s end that set itself up very nicely for its now-confirmed second season. Having leads Will Forte and Kristen Schaal leave the growing community, and revealing that Forte indeed has a brother played by SNL castmate Jason Sudeikis, who was marooned in space when most of humanity got wiped out, opens up the possibility of better surprises next year.

And, about some others: The Big Bang Theory (CBS) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Fox) are continuing to work their formulas to good effect, with Big Bang Theory throwing in another character development twist at season’s end.

I was never really a fan of 2 Broke Girls, but what I do catch of it seems to be getting worse and worse, with an ever-hackier stream of innuendos continuing to decline in quality. Might be only one more season of this before it has to be put out of its misery.

And shamefully there is not a single NBC sitcom I can think of that has any importance to discuss here. One Big Happy (already canceled?) was an even worse version of Up All Night. Yet NBC exiled Community to Yahoo, and passed on picking up Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which was so good, I just binged (smashed?) the whole thing on Netflix in a few weeks. As my friend Wayne Thomas would say, all their programmers should be fired.

----

Postscript (added June 7, 2015): I have to amend something in this blog item -- the last season of Community on NBC was strong, but I have now see the first episode of the sixth season on Yahoo, and something has gone drastically wrong with that show. The tone was completely off, the characters were no longer displaying their personalities as we'd come to know them over the past seasons of the show, and there were several attempts at jokes and humor that felt flat or hacky. Not sure what has happened, but if NBC had a right of first refusal on this material, it's no wonder that they would have passed.

Comedy Books Roundup

Of the upcoming books by comedians or comedic performers being promoted this year at BookExpo America, the publishing industry’s annual trade show, the common trait to most of them is that they aren’t just autobiographies or collections of stand-up or comedy material.

To begin with, titles by Whoopi Goldberg, Aziz Ansari and Dick Van Dyke all contain a self-help or advice element. Ansari’s “Modern Romance,” coming in just a few weeks (for which we hope to have an early review), finds the comedian blending research from social scientists with his own comedic angle on relationships as he delivers in his act.

In the fall, Goldberg will publish “Whoopi’s Big Book of Relationships,” her own personal take on love and marriage. And Van Dyke will publish “Keep Moving: And Other Tips and Truths About Aging,” a follow-up to his memoir, “My Lucky Life.”

There are a couple other comedy-oriented titles to look forward to, also being promoted at BookExpo: “Why Not Me?” by Mindy Kaling, which sounds like it might also be in the self-help genre, but has been described as personal comedic essays, and “Gumption” by Nick Offerman, a follow-up to his “Paddle Your Own Canoe,” that basically puts more of his solo comedy material out there, in the vein of his “American Ham” special.

Late Night Hosts Trading Block

Inspired by a recent Grantland column about wish-fulfillment of who should or shouldn’t be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, our longtime supporter and new columnist, Wayne Thomas, takes the same approach to the late night talk-show host shakeups of recent months.

From what I've seen, James Corden works big time. Hell, maybe he should get the Late Show, he could easily compete with Fallon and Kimmel. Fallon, beyond his music bits, his interview skills kinda suck. Why can't Stewart and Colbert stay/go back to their respective shows? They were the tops. I miss Ferguson and even Kilborn. Too bad there isn't a place for these guys.

Most of these shows would work better if they were a half hour. Maybe except Kimmel. His guests always seem relevant, his interview skills are killer, and he gets great bands (Van Halen, anyone?). So here are my late night re-assignments:

Jon Stewart: He stays with The Daily Show, gets rid of the boring guests at end of show, that's where he interviews pop stars.
Colbert: Stays on the Colbert Report, Larry Wilmore goes back to being the senior black correspondent on TDS
John Oliver: Stays exactly where he is, he is killing it.
The Tonight Show: Give it to Kimmel, the show itself is an institution, stays/goes back to California.
Late Nite: Give it back to Conan, the show is too late as it is anyway, and nobody watches TBS.
Seth Meyers: Fired.
Jimmy Fallon: He's good for some music parodies, he could show up with the Roots as a reoccurring guest on Late Nite or go back to SNL
SNL: Fire Lorne Michaels immediately. Reduce it to an hour, no musical guest or maybe one song, bring back Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
The Late Show: Yeah, Letterman needs to retire, he's overstayed his welcome just as Carson did. Give the show to James Corden.
Late, Late Show: Hmm, reduce to a half-hour, bring back Ferguson, maybe one guest per night. Definitely get rid of Reggie Watts, send him back to Comedy Bang-Bang, then cancel Comedy Bang-Bang.
Craig Kilborn: Since I took Kimmel from ABC, maybe ABC can put Kilborn back on the air, light hearted half-hour pop star interview show, which he'll probably quit in five years anyway, 'cause he's ungrateful.
Carson Daly: Fired.

 ---

Wayne, I’d have some tweaks to this – and you do know, none of this would ever in a million years happen, but anyway…

Tweaks:

Give John Oliver an hour. 30 minutes is too short for him. They extended the recent Edward Snowden episode anyway.

With ABC tied to ESPN, ought to make Kilborn do double duty, make half hour of his show about sports and air on both networks. Or re-team him with Keith Olbermann.

More substantially, too soon to anoint James Corden ‘King of Late Night.’ Samantha Bee and Jason Jones should have taken over The Daily Show.

Why not a version of Marc Maron’s “WTF” interviews in the 1:30 am “Later”/Carson Daly spot?

What, nothing about Bill Maher?

 

J.B. Smoove Reins It In

Catching comedian J.B. Smoove’s appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman on February 4, I found it interesting how this very physical comedian whose movements on stage are broad and big, adapted to being a seated guest on a late night talk show.

J.B. Smoove’s interactions with Letterman were still more physical than verbal – again, interesting, because Smoove is also very talkative as a performer. Paying tribute to Letterman because of his upcoming retirement, Smoove told Dave that he needed to strike a pose befitting his status as an icon, setting Letterman up nicely – he leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head, a “what me worry?” grin on his face and raised a blurred middle finger.

Smoove is no newbie either, and these two old pros were riffing and improvising within the physical limitations of staying seated. Smoove responded that he never wanted to be looking directly at the camera, striking a thoughtful pose of his own, then hitting on another bit of physical comedy.

“I just wanna be pointing things out,” Smoove said, stretching his arm out toward stage right, “like I’m on the grassy knoll. Something ain’t right over there!” Letterman chuckled in recognition in this surreal bit of humor that Smoove generated.

Further Thoughts About Band-Dom and Mike Doughty

Having caught up to “Circles” by Mike Doughty, mentioned in a previous blog entry, I’m very much wondering why he chose to revisit his Soul Coughing songs in the way he did here. If I were reviewing the album, I’d only give it about one star out of five. Most of the revised versions find Doughty delivering the words with less feeling and more by rote than he did on the originals, and the backing music used is more monotonous and lacks the nuance that his old bandmates, however much he despises them, provided.

Just two tracks here really do anything different or worthwhile, and those are the songs “Mr. Bitterness” and “St. Louise Is Listening.” The former makes the song something different and more mysterious with an acoustic guitar treatment, and the latter cranks up the intensity with Doughty’s vocal, which adds a portentous tone different than the original.

The new version of “Super Bon Bon,” the song that first turned me on to Soul Coughing, is really disappointing, wrecked utterly by a needless and unnecessary chattering background vocal effect that Doughty has added here – even without that and/or without the original arrangement, this version would still seem flat.

I like both Soul Coughing and Doughty’s solo work, but Doughty said in his memoir “The Book of Drugs” and elsewhere that the Soul Coughing recordings aren’t how he envisioned those songs as the main author of them. If that’s so, and this is how he imagined the sound of these songs, then he really gained something better from those collaborators, even if they never got along.

It’s possible these versions could somehow grow on me over time – the enunciation of the words is in some cases clearer – but that alone isn’t enough, and sometimes overall sound and production is more important to great music. It’s not like Doughty can’t or doesn’t do that in his solo work – check out a short track like “More Bacon Than The Pan Can Handle” or for that matter, “Golden Delicious,” the album it’s on. It just appears that in revisiting the Soul Coughing songs he couldn’t help but let his conflicted feelings about that time hamper the work. There are countless creative things he could have done with those songs that weren’t attempted.

Michael Che: A Must See

Michael Che, the newest Daily Show correspondent, has also done an episode of Comedy Central's showcase series "The Half Hour" that I can say is well worth catching, even just on the basis of having seen the short highlights version available here for non-subscribers (or for streaming purchase here).

Just to quickly give an example of the imagination Che has in his material -- he mentions the US debt to China, and says "I don't owe China billions of dollars. I owe Sprint $90. So you must be doing a lot of roaming, or something..."

In just a few segments so far on the Daily Show, Che is already also making his mark, especially in a piece he did with Jordan Klepper satirizing the recent campaign by gun nuts carrying in public, which can be seen in full here.

So, with his debut splash on Comedy Central and getting started as a Daily Show correspondent, Michael Che is clearly a comedian to watch.

Finding The Science of Band-dom (With Apologies to Mike Doughty)

Two groups and singers that I've been a big fan of over the years are Live, which was fronted by Ed Kowalczyk and Soul Coughing, fronted by Mike Doughty.

Both frontmen departed in a fracturing with their bandmates. Doughty broke up the group after a three-album run through the late 1990s while Live had a much longer run and sold more albums than Soul Coughing. In both cases however, the singers were outsiders who joined with three bandmates who already knew each other and were playing together. (Details can be found in Doughty’s autobiography The Book of Drugs, to which this blog entry is indebted.) 

So the question and the point of this blog entry is whether the output when these singers when with their bands was greater than they have managed solo. Anything is going to be matter of taste, certainly – and the fracturing of the music industry right around or before the time both singers ended up becoming solo artists did not help their causes. Once Doughty and Kowalczyk went solo, however, they lost the organically connected bands that gave their songs an extra something, however disconnected these singers may have been personally from their bandmates.

Kowalczyk began his solo career five years ago. It's evident now that all the lyrical and songwriting inspiration of Live was all him, and he still is coming up with great songs like “The Garden” in 2012 and “Seven” in 2013. If these also had the music business promotion behind them that he enjoyed with Live, they would have been huge “Throwing Copper” size hits.

Doughty has been solo much longer, since about 2000, and has gone with a semi acoustic style without the hip-hop inflections his Soul Coughing bandmates provided. Without those though, a bit of the propulsion his music had sometimes is missing. However, I am a bit behind on his recent work, and more than 10 years after Soul Coughing broke up, he’s revisited his favorite songs from those ays on a new album [provisionally titled “Circles,” but really titled with all the names of all 13 tracks] more in keeping with his style as a solo artist, which will be interesting to hear. Maybe a follow-up blog entry in store…

Comedy Books Roundup

Each year, the Blog drops into BookExpo America (BEA), the publishing industry’s annual trade show, to keep an eye out for books about or related to comedy.

A few better known personalities have books coming out in the fall, that were already being promoted to booksellers at the show, namely Norman Lear, Neil Patrick Harris and B.J. Novak. Norman Lear, the creator of “All In The Family” (which the Blog has been enjoying recently, catching episodes never seen or remembered…), now 91 years old, will be publishing “Even This I Get to Experience,” an autobiography that will include accounts of how he created that and other classic TV sitcoms.
 

Neil Patrick Harris of “How I Met Your Mother” and myriad awards show hosting jobs, was on hand to promote “Choose Your Own Autobiography,” also planned for October, in which he will have fun with the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” format books to tell his own life story.

In addition, B.J. Novak of “The Office” was on hand promoting “The Book with No Pictures,” a children’s book that is a follow-up to “One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories,” his collection of short fictional comedic stories, published back in February, in the style of Woody Allen or Albert Brooks.
 

But celebrities aren’t the only authors of note, of course. Rainbow Rowell, an author previously unfamiliar to the Blog, had attracted a long line of attendees to her signing of her next novel, “Landline.” Her novels, while dramatic, are laced through with comedic aspects.

Also of interest for coming months, and spotted at the show, was “Best to Laugh,” by Lorna Landvik, a comedic Hollywood novel that is populated with quirky characters similar to those created by Janet Evanovich in the mystery genre.

 

You may order or pre-order any of the titles noted above on Amazon through the links on the titles.

High Points and the Overlooked

I don’t always get to everything that I might review on Jester, or want to review. Certainly, there have been some great hours of stand-up released as albums, as HBO specials, or otherwise, that for lack of time over the past year or more, I haven’t highlighted on Jester.

Thinking about what was missed that may or did rise to the level of Aziz Ansari’s 2010special, “Intimate Moments For A Sensual Evening,” or further back, to Dave Attell’s now-classic album “Skanks for the Memories” from 2003, a few specials come to mind. In the past year, Sarah Silverman’s “We Are Miracles” special (for HBO) was an especially good piece of work that had previously escaped my attention. Aside from new plays on acting innocent or naïve while saying very transgressive things, Silverman closes the special with a greatly outrageous song, that would have been passed around underground in the days before online media proliferation.

Stretching back even further, over the past five years or more, there have been some HBO hours that have stood the test of time so far as being great. Ricky Gervais’ “Out of England,” from 2008, is one of these, from its delightfully ridiculous opening where Gervais takes the stage to a bombastic Queen song with big lights spelling out “RICKY” behind him on the stag, to the piece where he reads verbatim suggestions from a 1980s public service postcard encouraging gay men to practice safe sex, all couched as “Why not …” try this or that ridiculous action, like coming out an open window.

Also, looking back over specials that I have reviewed in the past year or more, certain ones stand out as having had great work in them, or especially memorable and quotable moments. Liam McEneaney’s “Comedian” has too many of these to start quoting or choosing any single one, but his story of an inept friend trying to rob a bank in the South Bronx certainly is a stand-out. Smaller classic moments include Pete Holmes’ bit about delight with homophones (soundalike words), “Pierce!!!/Juan!!!” in his special “Nice Try, The Devil,” and Kyle Kinane’s story in his “Whiskey Icarus” special about sitting next to a guy on a flight next to him who had brought a trash bag full of pancakes to eat on the journey.

I just bring all of these up, both previously reviewed and un-reviewed, as examples of what I would want to say if asked what stand-up specials I really thought were the cream of the crop in recent years.

Huffman Koos: Fraudsters extraordinaire, who don't even know the meaning of customer service

Here is the complete story & sets of FB posts. Please re-post to Huffman Koos FB page at facebook.com/HuffmanKoos and on their Twitter handle: @HuffmanKoos (will provide short bit link to do soon...)

From 20 hours ago (night of Dec. 31):

This is the beginning of the story that happened last night (as told to the company on their FB page, and still they are playing games with me): ...

I hope it's a Happy New Year's Eve for you, because it certainly isn't one for me, as our furniture delivery that was scheduled for between 11 am-3 pm today STILL hasn't shown up and no one there is making any visible effort to find out...

This quote on your website is such a JOKE: We strive to give customers the best possible experience they can have when purchasing furniture. ... Well you have given me the worst possible experience I could have had. Now we have to spend our New Year's Eve dealing with these IDIOTS!!! I recommend anyone reading this never do business with them.

Update from today (Jan. 1, 2014):

Huffman Koos furniture. A fraudulent enterprise. To continue the story I started posting last night, they finally arrived with the furniture 4 1/2 hours AFTER scheduled delivery window of 11 am-3 pm. Then ran off with my keys and are being slow and uncooperative about returning them. Also read this for background on their CEO, who was convicted of fraud, and somehow is STILL their CEO (as confirmed by one of their employees who I asked within the past hour)!!! Unbelievable.

For more details, read here:
http://cliffviewpilot.com/huffman-koos-honcho-admits-skimming-3-8m/

The book on comics

Saw the documentary "Dear Mr. Watterson," about the comic strip "Calvin & Hobbes" by Bill Watterson. Berke Breathed, the creator of "Bloom County," talks about Watterson in the film, and shows a cartoon Watterson drew on a letter to him with a caricature depicting Breathed giving in to the merchandising machine.

When these comics were both being published in their original runs, I was a bigger fan of "Bloom County," because it seemed edgy to me. What the documentary explained, that I didn't realize at the time, is that Watterson was the real revolutionary because he never allowed his work to be merchandised in the form of toys, lunchboxes or anything else. Watterson wanted the strip to stand on its own merits, for all time. That stance appears to have gained "Calvin & Hobbes" a deep and abiding appreciation from fans to this day.

Absent

I've been away from keeping up my site jesterjournal.com as much recently, and completely for the past couple weeks. The former because life events have taken over now; the latter because my computer melted down, and it's in the shop right now (so there hasn't been an updated October calendar posted, or new reviews recently).

Wish I could actually put this on the site itself for explanation, but that may take a few more days at least. I wanted to get it out there somewhere.

Anyway, once the technical problems are sorted out, it still will be running on a reduced basis because of these other focuses happening now. But I hope you'll still check it out and refer back to it from time to time.

The Big Sitcom Theory

A lot of my family and friends are fans of "The Big Bang Theory" but I really have never favored many of the CBS sitcoms, especially the rat-a-tat, joke-joke-joke Chuck Lorre style ones.

This is a few weeks old now, but I did catch Bob Newhart's guest starring spot on the aforementioned show, and the respected comedy icon had a nice way of slowing down the pace with his performance, holding everything a beat or two longer than normal for the show, and thus making the episode funnier than it might otherwise have been.

Newhart's performance reinforced my point -- a sitcom needs something more than just hammering away with jokes to really be interesting. He injected something else into the proceedings, even on a multi-camera, largely studio-bound show.

Killing Spree

What I put out there with Jester is an intense interest in comedy performance, but I’m just as equally into well-told dramatic TV and film, and have been for an equally long time – I just don’t write about it very often. 

Anyway, I’ve gotten inspired to do so again by catching up to episodes of the AMC series “The Killing,” which returns next month for its third season. I’m currently on the first few episodes of season 2 and thankfully have managed to avoid any major spoilers. (Please don’t tell me any!) I had heard people were disappointed and felt let down that season 1 did not conclude with a resolution of the murder case at the center of the story, but when you marathon-watch the episodes, that doesn’t matter so much. 

From the start of watching The Killing, I was immediately reminded of one of my favorites, the 1990s NBC series “Homicide,” whose creators Tom Fontana and David Simon went on to do the HBO series “Oz,” “The Corner,” “The Wire” and “Treme” (the latter three being all Simon’s), among other works. Despite the mastery of those shows, The Killing, in tone and subject matter, could be called the true successor to Homicide.

It starts with something as small as the credits’ theme music -- airy flutes over percussion that sounds like wood striking wood – and the visuals of abstract close-up colors depicting sirens, rain, a murdered body and other images. The tone of this introduction then bleeds into the action and the story itself. The Killing’s central detectives, Linder (Mireille Enos) and Holden (Joel Kinnaman), parallel Homicide’s Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Bayliss (Kyle Secor). Linder and Pembleton are the intense, focused ones and Holden and Bayliss are more casual and sometimes screwed-up.

A large portion of Homicide’s first season also focused on the murder of a young girl, with Pembleton and Bayliss chasing several red herrings and dead ends. Some of the criticism of The Killing – admittedly I had to skim it to avoid spoilers – sprung from fan frustration at the way one possible suspect after another was eliminated as a possibility, leaving our protagonists Linder and Holden no closer to catching the killer. In the current television and pop culture universe, audiences have less patience for this type of storytelling than they might have when Homicide aired – hence the online chatter.

Just as Homicide did, The Killing points out that real life doesn’t usually offer the decisive resolutions that the Law & Order franchise, for all its dramatic excellence, still does. With that, The Killing yields great characterizations even in small parts. The detectives’ interrogation of Belko Royce (Brendan Sexton III) and that character’s twisted relationship with his mother recalls a scene in Homicide’s first season about Calpurnia Jones, who kills off husbands and family members for insurance money. The detectives are interviewing her very dim nephew, who reveals, “My wife, Aunt Calpurnia…” You can just imagine the rest.

Aside from this dark comic example, larger aspects of both shows have parallels – highlighting depressed American cities outside the media capitals of NY, LA, SF and DC as their settings – Seattle and Baltimore respectively. The police brass in both shows are mired in department politics and bureaucratic pressures. And when there’s real danger, you really feel it, as when Pembleton is threatened in “The Gas Man” episode and when Linder makes a discovery about mayoral candidate Richmond toward the end of the first season, while at his apartment to speak with him.

With so many parallels, the creator of The Killing, Veena Sud, has got to be a fan of Homicide. Sud previously did extensive writing and editing work on the late, lamented CBS show Cold Case, and undoubtedly is steeped in crime fiction television as a viewer as well.

Even if The Killing doesn’t go beyond a third season – which is still a possibility if the twists and turns don’t continue to stay true to this crime fiction TV standard, it’s already made a mark as a classic piece of work, and an inheritor of the Homicide mantle.

Adam Carolla - Dennis Prager evening

While on vacation in Southern California this past week, saw a performance of Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager's touring conversation show at Cal State Northridge on March 16. As a frequent listener to Carolla's podcast, but less familiar with Prager, a conservative syndicated radio talk show host, it appeared to me that Prager, who may be more well-thought out on his own air, lost some of his logic in trying to keep up banter and witticisms back and forth with Carolla.

At one point, remarking on political correctness, Prager said we are choosing between fighting evil and fighting carbon emissions, which is really a false choice. Just because we ought to fight evil, it doesn't mean we shouldn't also be concerned about global warming, or can't be. Prager also pulled up another example of what he believes is liberalism gone too far -- President Obama's admittedly misstated remark, "you didn't build that," made while attempting to explain the benefits government can provide, like an interstate highway system. But again, Prager couched his criticism using a false choice, saying that the same roads liberals want to claim credit for as infrastructure that supports commerce -- are also the same roads rapists use. Well, sure, but society would never build anything if it went by the possibility that it could conceivably make crimes possible on a very tangential basis.

In contrast, Carolla is experienced at making what could be considered political points and doing so humorously, which showed on this evening. Further elaborating on those who allege that there is "white privilege" in society that ought to be compensated, he tells a story of applying to be a firefighter in L.A. when he was 19, and not getting called to take the test for nine years. Carolla decided to go take the test anyway at that point, and of course found minority applicants in line to take the test who had only just applied that week. Skillfully told, as you might agree.

Carolla may enjoy working with Prager and the banter they have, but I expected a bit more after having enjoyed a previously recorded version of this show that the duo did last year, in which they seemed to draw the humor more organically out of their conversation. On this night, Prager sounded more unglued, possibly out of an effort to try and keep up with Carolla's wit, or to be as entertaining or funny, when that isn't really his forte.

The Heisenberg - Disney experiment

I recalled that when I went to the Googa Mooga fest in Brooklyn's Prospect Park last May, and wore my Heisenberg t-shirt referencing Breaking Bad, I probably got about 3 or 4 compliments or comments recognizing the show.

Here in Southern California for vacation, on the inevitable Disneyland day, I decided to break out the Heisenberg shirt again.

Granted, there may be a lot more people that I encountered, at a much faster rate, and over a longer time, but I still got more nods for Heisenberg there than in the heart of hipster Brooklyn ... 7 overall. Perhaps Disney patrons are hipper than anyone might have guessed.