Genre Defying Dramedies

Comedians agree: comedy is tragedy plus time. Some of the best comedy mocks the seriousness of a tragedy. What better avenue to take than making a parody of a drama? I have written articles concerning this before; how parody is so important in understanding ourselves. It's necessary to take a step back and realize what archetypes we've gotten used to and how silly they can be. This fall Adult Swim and IFC are turning out three comedies which are all brilliant parodies of television dramas. Get ready for amazing writing and surprising costars.

The Heart, She Holler

Conan O'Brian calls it, "An ambitiously left-brained show." It is my favorite thing to watch on Adult Swim right now. From PFFFR, the creators of the sick puppet show, Wondershowzen; witness protection reality show, Delocated; and the computer animated acid trip of a bungling bird man, Xavier: Renegade Angel, comes the hillbilly Gothic soap opera comedy, The Heart, She Holler.

The title is based on the titular family's last name, Heartshe, and the Appalachian pronunciation of "hollow." The entire show, in PFFFR fashion, is based on pop-cultural and political satire, as well as surreal and gross plot devices. The Heart, She Holler goes beyond satirising the twisting improbability of TV dramas, and brings it to absurdity. The citizens of the Holler are über hillbillies who have little sense of conscience, hygiene, or modern science. The science they encounter is of little consequence though, because this is a supernatural drama with curses, telekinesis, other dimensions, and a great amount of organ swapping. 

The Heart , She Holler

Featuring Patton Oswalt, as Hurlan Heartshe, cave-boy and heir to the Heartshe estate; PFFFR veteran, Heather Lawless, as Carrie-esq Hambrosia Heartshe; David Cross, who honestly needs a bigger role; Leo Fitzpatrick as The Reverend, who made his start in the 1995 film Kids; Joseph Sikora as Sheriff, who played Hans Schroeder on Boardwalk Empire; and Amy Sedaris plays Hurshe Heartshe in season 2 (replacing Kirsten Schaal). This may be Amy's grossest character to date, even over Jerri Blank.

A consummate professional

Playing the beloved Meemaw is Judith Roberts who manages to be the most amazing corpse-like woman I have ever seen. I just found out that she was the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall in Eraserhead. [Mind blown]

Judith Roberts above: Eraserhead 1971, below: The Heart She Holler 2013

The PFFR crew never disappoint in delivering the creepy. Each episode begins with a short clip from the 1981 documentary Vernon, Florida. It is reminiscent of their use of stock footage in Wondershowzen. Out of context these clips are unsettling. Read the Wikipedia entry on it and find out why it is in fact sad and creepy (and why the original title of the film was Nub City).
In summation: best show on TV this fall.

 

The Spoils of Babylon

This is a six part mini series by IFC involving Will Ferrell, Kristin Wiig, Toby Maguire, Tim Robbins, Haley Joel Osment, and Val Kilmer. Gosh, don't you LOVE it when comedians and regular actors with a sense of humor come together?! Based on the fictional book by fictional author, Eric Jonrosh (Farrell) The Spoils of Babylon chronicles the Morehouse family and love between brother and sister (Maguire and Wiig) in the setting of a Dallas style drama.

The trailer for this looks like a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. The production value is a testament to how serious this community is about comedy. Plot lines and punch lines aside, the stylistic choices - the detail and high production value - are what make a mockery out of real drama. It says, "we can take you on from all angles." I want to live in a world where Eric Jonrosh is an author, and people paid millions of dollars to make this over-the top mini series. The set up reminds me of Walk Hard, in the way it goes full throttle on making fun of a genre. I am looking forward to the premiere on January 9th at 10pm in IFC.

 

 

Filthy Sexy Teen$

Filthy Sexy Teen$

A parody of Pretty Little Liars and the wealthy teen drama genre, Filthy Sexy Teen$ is a pilot created by Paul Scheer for Adult Swim. It features Sam Trammell and Marshall Allman of True Blood fame, Steven Yeun of The Walking Dead, and SNL alum Chris Parnell and Casey Wilson. I cannot wait to see Allman and Yeun in their roles. I could have never guessed this group of actors would come together for this. Clips are few and far between at this point, but considering Scheer is behind NTSF:SD:SUV and Childrens Hospital this quarter hour comedy should be hilarious.

I've Been A Bad, Bad Girl

Fiona Apple's Criminal vs. Miley Cyrus's We Can't Stop

When I saw Miley Cyrus's video for We Can't Stop, I had a case of Deja Vu. There was another epic house party with tons of bodies, pool time, and randomness from 16 years ago. It's a party that has not gone out of style, and I have Fiona Apple's 1997 video for Criminal as evidence.

Criminal is one of those life-changing videos I saw when I was 10 years old. Maybe it chipped away at my innocence a bit, but musically Fiona Apple would become one of my favorite artists. Apple was 20 when this video debuted, as is Cyrus. Watching We Can't Stop, and knowing Miley Cyrus's fan base of tweens, makes me wonder if there's a group of 10 year-old girls watching it and having the same feelings I had over the Criminal video; curiosity over how unsafe everything is, what it's like to be a "grownup." Realizing it's kind of cool to be dangerous. Thinking maybe some day I'll get to be strung out in someones nice house.  

Apple's and Cyrus's respective videos both take place at a wild house party that maybe got a little out of hand. Apple's take is a bit more sinister. She's writhing around, awake when everyone else is asleep, as if wrestling with guilt. The opening line of the song is I've been a bad, bad girl. Other lyrics include Heaven help me for the way I am and I've done wrong and I want to / Suffer for my sins.

The point of Cyrus's song is that the party got out of control and therefore everything went as planned. The song has lyrics such as, We run things, Things don’t run we and It’s our party we can do what we want. It's unapologetic.

Apple's video was directed by Mark Romanek who also directed Closer by Nine Inch Nails, which can explain why it aint no party like a Romanek party cuz a Romanek party has at least a little bit of dread in it.

We Can't Stop  was directed by Diane Martel who has a huge resume including directing credits for - unsurprisingly - Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, which has a similar usage of taxidermy, stationary bikes, butt-touching, large captions, platform shoes, and product placement.

Despite differing messages in the song lyrics, here are some visual similarities that seem to be the archetypes of a wild music video party.

Let's start with holding the camera on these electrical appliances.

Lay on the floor. Watch your head when you get up, though.

Stretch out your clothes.

Sing just above the water.

Have fun in the pool. ...Or don't, Fiona.

Stuffed animals.

Get freaky in the kitchen.

Hang with your friends. (The 97' version had more photo-taking and less twerking.)

Snuggle up to a shirtless guy with no identity.

It's so tired in here!

Do inexplicable things with food.

Put your fingers in your mouth.

Get creepy.

Misuse the furniture.

Have fun in the bath tub.

Bend your legs, show off our thighs.

Pink goo.

Essentially the same things happen in both videos, but the color pallet and song lyrics change the meaning quite a bit. Both say, "Look at these people carelessly sleeping all over each other." With that visual, Criminal implies the decline of western civilization. Everyone is kind of in a stupor they will probably regret. We Can't Stop tries to depict a group of young people who do weird and provocative things with each other, and yeah, they're probably high on something, but there's a charm to it. Everyone seems to be having fun. Everyone in criminal seems kind of indifferent.

Here are the full videos for your enjoyment.

To Build and Walk Away:The Pruitt-Igoe Myth

Pruitt-Igoe contained an amount of negative space that once witnessed and understood evoked feelings of dread. I didn't know I was looking at the Pruitt-Igoe apartment complex when first watching the segment in Koyaanisqatsi in which a series of unkempt apartment complexes are shown in sweeping areal shots. I had seen large apartment buildings before, nothing seemed awry. When the shots come in closer, and it was apparent that the buildings were lifeless empty shells, the horror becomes clear. Every window was broken, like there was an effort put into Pruitt-Igoe's special appearance: just enough damage to convey everything bad in this world, while still being able to stand. How could this have happened? It was like a carcass lying in the open. 

Before it was demolished in the 1970s, Pruitt-Igoe was supposed to be a turning point in the socioeconomic heath of St. Louis, MO. A modern public housing project conceived during the 1950s that would provide low-income families with apartments that were dream homes compared to the slums they were familiar with. It consisted of 33 11-story apartment buildings, which was one of the largest complexes in the USA at the time. It was advertised as a utopia, or more realistically, a clean civilized place that would promote idealist white civilized behavior, or even more realistically, a place to segregate the poor black population; a band-aid.

The St. Louis government paid for the construction, but failed to pay for the upkeep of a massive ecosystem they didn't understand. The documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, directed by Chad Freidrichs, investigates the factors that lead to the devastation; a problem even larger than the original slums they were trying to eradicate.

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth uses heartbreaking footage of the apartments as well as interviews with former tenants. It is shocking how disparate their memories of Pruitt Igoe are; from the joys of their first Christmas out of the slums, to family members brutally murdered in the playground. The intentions of the St. Louis housing authority begin to get hazy as the film goes on. Some who are interviewed described the complex as a prison. Living in Pruitt-Igoe was supposed to be an opportunity, but it came with a price. There were regulations that prohibited "able-bodied husbands" from living there, effectively breaking up families so wives and their children could qualify to live there. Telephones and televisions were prohibited also. All of this lead to overwhelming feelings of isolation. And while young children were taught to fear the white men in suits who regularly checked homes to be sure their fathers were appropriately absent, there was a total lack of regulation in keeping the buildings safe from criminals, fire, and filth. It was doomed from the start to keep everything good out and drag complete negativity in, until it literally had to be imploded.

Toynbee Tiles and the Drive to Understand an Insane Thought Process

In case you don't know, the so called "Toynbee Tiles" are the epitome of underground gorilla propaganda.

First and most prominently found in Philadelphia - but also found in cities across the north east/west, and in South America - the Toynbee Tiles are messages adhered to the pavement. Starting in the early 1980s, the same message was seen repeatedly throughout Philly, "Toynbee Idea, In Kubrick's 2001, Resurrect Dead, On Planet Jupiter." Sometimes they would be accompanied by side notes that said things like,  'Murder every journalist I beg you.', 'That's when I begged them not to destroy it. Thank you and goodbye.' and 'I am only one man.' Absolutely the ramblings of a sad and paranoid individual. But no one could figure out who this person was, or even how they could manage to put these tiles on busy streets and highways all over the country and abroad without a trace.

The 2011 documentary by Jon Foy, Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, follows a man's obsession with finding the meaning, origin, and maker of the Toynbee Tiles. Justin Duerr , the protagonist, says, "'Toynbee Idea' was the first thing I put into an Internet search." Obsessed with the tiles since 1994, Duerr and a group of like-minded friends set out to find the Toynbee Tiler and understand his message. Where Duerr and his friends take you is unexpected. In the course of the film they cover underground societies, railroad routs, shortwave radio, and the lore of Philly locals. 

Justin Duerr over a Toynbee Tile

What can be surmised from the main four lines spotted over 100 times throughout Philly, can be broken down as such:
Toynbee Idea - Reference to Arnold J. Toynbee, a British historian who believed that the molecules of the dead could be put back together to resurrect all previous human life.

In Kubrick's 2001 - Stanley Kubrick's film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which shows themes of cyclical life and death.

Resurrect The Dead - See Toynbee Idea above.

On Planet Jupiter - A monolith is found on Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey which is the only obvious tie between Jupiter and the rest of the lines. 

The tiler appears to believe that the movie 2001 takes Toynbee's idea further by showing how we can execute this theory on Jupiter. But how did this person come to that conclusion, why is it so important that the message gets across, and why do they have to be incognito? 

After learning about the tiles, the viewer needs answers. That's what makes Resurrect Dead amazing to watch: the palpable excitement of the chase. The documentary succeeds in making Duerr's enthusiasm contagious. Anyone can relate to the concept of seeing something strange that maybe most people overlook. It's the idea that someone out there is trying to send a message, and in their bizarre manner of doing so, it feels like it's just for you (since everyone in the street is just walking over it like it's not there, instead of making a massive crowd around it. No, it is just you standing there taking photos and getting in the way of commuters).

This story is reminiscent of my own case of unexplained phenomena. Over the past two years of living near a particular CVS in Allston, MA, I have noticed odd piles of ground up food next to an electrical box. The box is right outside the CVS and is not particularly close to any restaurants - not close enough to make this spot an obvious dumping ground. Every once in a while (I have not found a pattern yet) the food will be there at night. The offerings are either cooked rice, ground-up white bread, or a mix of the two. The piles are sometimes so big they lean against the electrical box as if it poured out of the vents. The next day it is completely gone, leaving a perpetual dark grease spot.

A massive offering that has been spread about.

A smaller, grosser looking pile.

I have never seen it being put there, or seen what eats it up/takes it away. My guess is that pigeons eat it, based on one time I found red beans scattered about as if rice and beans were put there but the birds could only consume the rice. And all the bird poop. But who is the person offering up this food like a sacrifice to an electrical box god?

Only red beans left...

Much like Duerr's Toynbee Tile investigation, I want to know what this person's intentions are. When the message is that cryptic, being able to solve it means to understand another person's thought process. A connection is made. The non sequitur becomes a sensible part of life.

 Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles is available on Netflix.

Room 237: When the Director Haunts the Audience

After watching Room 237, my perception of ghosts has changed.

Room 237 is a documentary in which theorists and experts of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining share their findings concerning hidden messages in the mise en scene of the film. The Shining is already terrifying on the first watch. It is undeniably tense, and creepy, and gory. In the next watching of The Shining one might notice more creepy details; a notable turn of phrase, color themes, a missing piece of furniture.

The folks from this documentary studied The Shining meticulously. Their continuity errors and coincidences turned into theories about hidden messages from Kubrick. The messages and symbolism he hid in the film are like ghosts in and of themselves.

Repeated Native American imagery hints that they were the ghosts haunting the Overlook Hotel. "We built it on an Indian burial ground." Where have I heard that before?

A movie about a haunting is scary on the first viewing because of the surprise elements, but if there is something new to notice in the next viewing that can rekindle the same fear. It causes one to question what is perceivable. What am I missing? What demon was right behind me and I didn't notice?

This is what you get when The Shining is played backwards and forwards at the same time.

Kubrick's added touches (whether he meant them or not - but he probably did) make the avid viewer witness to a real haunting. It is a haunting of the audience by the director. The director is communicating with the audience as a ghost would to it's haunted; without words. He does it with continuity errors in the furniture, things out of place, subtle hints in the shapes of props, the colors characters wear.

Kubrick 1. was very secretive, 2. detail-oriented to say the least and 3. is dead, making these hints literal messages from beyond the grave.

Someone thought the hotel manager got a ghost boner when he shook Jack's hand. While it is undeniable, I'm not sure why it's important.

I know I'm not alone in saying that documentaries such as Room 237 are thrilling. Once you thought you saw The Shinning too many times to be scared, the people in these interviews inject more "ghosts" into it. The most interesting part is that we all know it's just a movie; the ghosts haunting the Overlook Hotel are fictional. Kubrick's hidden messages are not actually scary ghosts, yet hearing about his sly trickery, his subliminal mind teasers, will give you chills. This is because people like to be in control. That's why ghosts - if they exist - are scary; you never know when they will strike, how they will show themselves, and to what severity it will effect you. A powerful and genius director such as Kubrick has power over his cast, set, and audience, with the way he chooses to withhold and dispense information. We continue to find the specters of his cinematic message to this day.

Still, no one in the documentary explained this...

My Twin Peaks Infographic: Sneak Peak

Do you ever get so excited about something that you want to present it to the general public in excessive detail regardless of popular interest? I guess that's what geeking-out is.

Let me preface my confessed geek-out by saying, David Lynch is somewhat of a hero to me, and I attribute Twin Peaks to the creative awakening of my teen years and beyond. Seeing Twin Peaks opened my eyes to a world where scary, creepy, awkward, and ominous were valued attributes of legitimate art.

Over the course of 3 days and a bad cold, I re-watched all 30 episodes of Twin Peaks on Netflix. I hadn't watched them in about 10 years, since I originally spent my winter break of 9th grade viewing every episode of the VHS box set I got for Christmas.

A fun side effect of the time in between viewings was recognizing actors I never realized were in Twin Peaks. It was the knowledge of ten extra years of movies and TV added to my internal IMDB. There were some connections between actors I already knew about, like how Russ Tamblyn (Dr. Jacoby) and Richard Beymer (Ben Horne) were both in 1961s West Side Story, or how Billy Zane and Heather Graham may be two of the most famous actors to come out of Twin Peaks, or how Jack Nance (Pete Martell) has a role in pretty much in every Lynch movie. But there were some connections that kind of blew my mind.

Like how the actor who played Luther from The Warriors (David Patrick Kelly) was also 90's shirt wearing icon, Jerry Horne. 

Is that shirt real?

Revisiting Twin Peaks - this time with a fine toothed comb - I became inspired to do some research. I scoured IMDB and Google Images to try and find what the major cast did before and after the show. Since Twin Peaks went off the air in 1991, the cast has gone their separate ways, but not without running into each other from time to time. I love the before and after images; seeing how an actor ages and how versatile their roles have been.

Being an obsessive organizer, my interest in the comparisons and connections inspired me to make an infographic. I wanted to make something that would map out all the connections I thought were fun and informative.

It's still a work in progress, but below is a sneak peak at the format. 

One fragment of my Twin Peaks infographic.

I color coded the character photos from TV shows and movies that had three or more actor connections. Notice in the key below that Star Trek and X Files are shows of note. The scifi genre is common in this group. I also wanted the color scheme to be relevant to Twin Peaks. The icon of an owl and the garish neon green from the Twin Peaks font represents Twin Peaks itself.  The others in the map key are cherry pie red for other David Lynch projects, black coffee (dark brown) for Star Trek, Laura Palmer's blue dead lips for X Files, and Laura Palmer's golden broken heart necklace for miscellaneous pair ups.

There were a majority of actors who paired off on various projects, or happened to be on the same show but at different periods of time. I labeled all instances of two actors in a show or movie under gold, for the aforementioned heart necklace. This is in reference to a plot point in season one where finding the other half of the necklace was imperative, thus 'Find the Other Half'. Part of this choice was made because there were too many TV shows and movies and not enough contrasting color combos to make a coherent chart identifying all of them individually. Also giving the viewer a challenge makes the infographic more interactive. Since all the pairs are identified under the one color, it causes the viewer to search for the commonalities on their own.

Another fragment

Basically I'm saying, "Let me IMDB that for you." so you don't have to get into an internet search k-hole, where you realize it's 2am, you have 20 tabs open in Firefox and you're watching the trailer from The Boyfriend School.

Let me do that.

When the project is completely done, I will post it here and anywhere that will take it.

Oranges: More Than What You Need To Know

I was going to write an article praising Minneola oranges (my fave) and bashing Navel oranges (let's be honest: hit or miss, right?). After eating and photographing the fruit that was going to prove my point, I realized they were both delicious and bizarre.

Come inside!

Here are the photographs I took on my citrus journey, and some eye-opening facts about oranges.

  Eat a Navel Orange and take your mouth on a time machine ride

... with a clone who has a conjoined twin inside it. 

Kill...me...

Navel oranges have a mutation that causes them to develop a conjoined twin fruit at it's base. This mutation also leaves it seedless and sterile, making cutting and grafting the only means of cultivation. 

In 1873 three navel orange trees were brought from Brazil and planted in Riverside, California. The trees started producing fruit in 1878. Today, one of the three original trees is still alive and producing fruit.

Since grafting branches onto other living trees does not allow for selective breeding, all navel oranges can be considered fruits from that single nearly 150 year-old tree. They have exactly the same genetic make-up as the original tree and are, therefore, clones.

Names, names, the magical fruit...

Not the most impressive nip I've ever seen

The knob on a Minneola is called a nipple.

The Minneola tangelo is a cross between a Duncan grapefruit and a Dancy tangerine. Fancy pants.

Minneola, Florida sounds really boring and depressing. They appear to have a high unemployment rate, are considering building a horse racing track to create jobs, and are not currently growing their namesake fruit. 

The name Tangelo comes from the Honeybell variety of tangelo, which is a hybrid-cross between a Thompson tangerine and a pomelo. Also, pomelos, where have you been all my life?

What came first, the fruit or the color? Believe it or not, oranges are not named for their color. The word "orange" comes from a transliteration of the sanskrit "naranga" which comes from the Tamil "naru" which means "fragrant."
 
Before the late 15th century, the color orange existed in Europe, but without the name; it was simply called yellow-red. Spanish and Portuguese merchants brought the first orange trees to Europe from Asia in the late 15th and early 16th century.

In parts of Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia, the orange was called and is still called the "Chinese apple."

It's like apples and Chinese apples? 

Oranges and your body

 Use a straw while drinking orange juice, because the acids in the juice can cause the enamel of the tooth to erode. Therefore, the less contact juice makes with the teeth, the better.

You will have to eat 7 cups of cornflakes to get the same amount to fiber you would get from one medium orange. 

You can get gout from drinking OJ:

Fructose-rich beverages such as sugar-sweetened soda and orange juice can increase serum uric acid levels and, thus, the risk of gout. In a study, compared with consumption of less than 1 serving per month of sugar-sweetened soda, the multivariate relative risk of gout for 1 serving per day was 1.74 and for 2 or more servings per day was 2.39. The corresponding relative risks for orange juice were 1.41 and 2.42. Thus, the side effect of drinking orange juice is gout.

source - www.zhion.com 

 

In conclusion: 

 135 year-old clones, conjoined twins, nipples, depressing Florida towns, pomelos, everything you know about colors is wrong, Chinese apple just doesn't have the same ring to it, sad teeth, happy colon, gout.

HBO Makes a Good Choice in VICE

Two of my favorite sources for documentaries and entertainment are coming together!

On April 5th, HBO premiers it's newest series, VICE. Yes, that is VICE magazine, the website that has been pumping out daring docs about war, third world countries, pollution, drugs, sex and other controversial topics. Vice is not afraid to show something strange, or gross, or perverted, or depressing, or just plain real. As correspondent Ryan Duffy explains, they are attempting to tell untold stories.

Like I've said about VICE documentaries before, "The documentaries are presented in a relatable and vernacular style, which does not necessarily over-simplify the message; it makes you feel like you're taking in a genuine experience."

HBO is an excellent venue for VICE, in the way that HBO is unafraid to present controversial programing, and I am happy for VICE for getting recognition from a major cable network.

What is Vice? Featurette