Death At A Funeral

I'm always uncomfortable to see people reposessing material to appeal to a different demographic. I suppose it's related to seeing mainstream music and culture being assimilated and imitated for commercial use by Christian bands and t-shirt companies.

But I'm more uncomfortable with this because Chris Rock is a stand-up comedian of the highest order, who assumably obeys that code that comedian's are famed to follow: never steal a joke. It's considered incredibly reprehensible within that fraternity. Remember Joe Rogan's campaign against Carlos Mencia for stealing his material (rather than just for his awful TV show and truly horrendous delivery)? I recall a fairly lousy "Studio 60" episode ("The West Coast Feed") focused entirely on this code, where comedians walked down hallways at high speeds, waving their arms and yelling "I never stole a joke in my life!"

It's one thing to re-make a movie for a different time, to update a story and give it new life. But Death At A Funeral was made in 2007 and just happened to be a film that not many people saw. Rock recast the film with black actors and is re-releasing it to a larger audience. It's almost the exact same film: shot in a similar location, with all the same jokes, even some of the same actors (though to be fair, who would you ever pick for that slot other than Peter Dinklage?). Check the trailers:

2007 Version:

2010 Version:

 Eerily similar, no? And having seen the original film, I can promise you that there are no jokes in this trailer that did not, in some form, appear in the first version. Which, just to remind you one more time, came out three years ago. Three.

One final note: you could make this same argument concerning television - the British and American "Office's", for example - but that's a unique medium. I could go on about this for a long time, but in brief, TV works based on the concept that original premise is simply the jumping-off point for characters. Writers adapt to the individual actors playing the parts and the producers adjust the series' tone as time passes. It's nearly impossible to truly recreate anything in television for more than a few episodes in a row. More importantly, TV creates a weekly relationships with its viewers, and that's something that can't be communicated through a DVD set released two years after the fact.

Everyone thinks I'm not handy, just 'cause I tend to break stuff

Over the past couple weekends, I've been working on redoing my apartment. This is a big step for me. I'm not the sort of guy who straps on his toolbelt and regrafts a table, or whatever the hell it is handy people do. Me, I do things the old-fashioned way. I buy cheap furniture from Target and ditch it when it falls apart, like the pioneers did.

But no longer. I have become a man's man, and I will regraft any tables I please. And to prove it, I'll let you know that it's not called a "toolbelt." It's called a "bag." Don't forget it.

And to prove it further, here's some pictures from the adventure.

This is what my apartment looked like at the outset:

Not an auspicious beginning. My desk is there in the back, and it's seen some good innings. I've had that desk since I was three, and I think it might have been a hand-me-down at the time. It's been through quite a bit - I tended to carve drawings onto its surface as a child - but I'm fond of it and want to hang onto it. Here's a couple closeups:

And here's a closeup on one of the drawers. I'd always thought they were black on purpose. Imagine my surprise when it turned out that it was just corrosion.

You can tell from the picture that I did all my sanding, staining, and painting on the Houston Defender, the excellent - and free - local black newspaper, of which I helped myself to a few dozen copies. In my defense, I did actually end up reading it, and I enjoyed it very much, especially the interview with charming character actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, of whom I am a longtime fan.

I sanded it down and added three coats of stain, sanding in between coats. I wanted to make it look attractive and well-maintained while keeping a lot of the character that made me like it so much (not that I needed to worry - nothing on this planet was gonna make that desk look new again). Here's the finished desk:

I also got handed down an old table and chairs from a friend that was vastly superior to my current setup, thought that certainly isn't saying anything (it's bad to have a glass dining room table you're afraid to put anything onto for fear it might collapse and shatter/kill you). I sanded them down and painted them a matte black, and added new seat cushions:

One of the major problems of my apartment was book space, so Claire and I went to Ikea on one of those biannual sales they're so known for, and bought a giant new bookcase. Then I sanded down my other two bookcases and painted them the same matte black as the table and installed them in the living room. Of course, that took some rearranging, so I ended up switching my whole living room back-to-front:

Which brings us to the fact that Best Buy's prices on the LG models finally dropped, so I also bought a brand-new HD TV, seen here. It's only 32", but I'm sitting four feet from the thing, so I can't imagine I'll need anything bigger.

I put the new Ikea bookcase in the bedroom and took down all my Star Wars posters (I couldn't bear to throw them out, so I moved them to the laundry room) and installed a set of paintings I bought from New York artist Steve Keene, whose gimmick is that he simply produces paintings in mass quantities. I spent $27, counting shipping, and received 18 paintings - ranging from an impressionist take of the famous Abe Lincoln photos to an Smiths album cover - of which I put up 12.

I guess that about covers it. I mean, I changed out a few other things here and there - I rebuilt my coatrack - but that's all the big stuff. And let me just say, I've gained a new respect for those people who are actually good at this stuff. I spent the week following this sick at work, as my body simply decided it had been through enough and wanted to spend every free moment lying down.

Of course, it turns out that when you don't have any sandpaper, brushes, paint, stain, and other relevant artifacts, fixing up an apartment can be just as expensive as just buying all new stuff, and while I think the thrill of accomplishment is worth the cash, it looks like I'll be eating in for a while.

At least I've got a table to eat it on.   

The Conan Corundrum

I want to unnecessarily stress that none of the following in any way discounts my support for Conan O'Brien. The internet is a trecherous place to state anything anti-Conan these days. So let me state that I've been a fan of his since college, and spent many happy hours watching his show over a midnight bowl of Froot Loops. But now that Team Conan has taken over the internet and planted it's flag, it's time to admit some harsh realities.

As much as Conan has a case that he's getting screwed by NBC over the Tonight Show, it's not like there's no reason behind the network's madness. The Tonight Show's ratings were poor right from the get-go, not just since The Jay Leno Show started. One of the major criticisms of Conan was that his style wouldn't adapt to the earlier time slot, and they were right. People either felt that he'd changed himself too much to fit the format, or not enough. They're both right, Conan made a conscious effort to make himself more palatable to the average viewer and cut out some of his more absurd tendencies, which doesn't change the fact that Conan's comedy is by nature absurdist. Letterman watered himself down because he couldn't appeal to a broad audience unless he toned down his bitter sarcasm; even Leno watered himself down, because he couldn't be an everyman unless he was willing to file down all his hard edges. Conan is an everyman because of his hard edges, working to make himself more acceptable for middle-aged middle America makes him seem more Hollywood, not less.

For all of Conan's talk of "a show in its infancy" and "building a lasting audience," there seemed to be limited momentum in play. The Tonight Show was being beat soundly by Letterman, and it's not as if Conan was a sure thing coming in - even back on Late Night, Craig Ferguson's ratings were similar to Conan's despite starting a half-hour later. Even Craig Kilbourne used to compete with him. Conan appeals to a market of people who don't watch late night television consistently, which is why he's only getting 2.5 million people to watch his show but 30 million people to complain that they're cancelling it. 

It's no different than "Arrested Development," for all the people who loved the show, it still got cancelled. The fans complain that the show arrived just a little late, if it was on television now it wouldn't have gotten axed. But they're wrong: the problem wasn't with the show, the problem was that the fans couldn't be bothered to really stick with the show week to week. There were too many people willing to wait for the DVDs, too many willing to catch up "whenever they found the time." I know, because I was one of them.

No matter what anyone says, there wasn't anything wrong with Conan. He did as fine a job hosting the Tonight Show as you could ask him to, the problem was that he himself just lacked the broad appeal necessary to sustain that sort of show. That's why Leno, as vanilla as he seems, as much of a hack as his critics claim him to be*, still fits the bill better as a Tonight Show host. No one loves him, but no one's really bothered. And when you're a show that's designed mostly to lull people to sleep, that's all you can really ask for.

Conan shouldn't go to FOX, he shouldn't try to put himself into competition with Leno - as much as popular support seem to dictate he could win the battle, he couldn't. His fans are too fickle to watch his show consistently - Christian Lander mocked them for this today on "Stuff White People Like" - and he'd be much better suited to finding a market that suits the niche he feels. He should go to Comedy Central and start a talk show after The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Cable's a different world: if two and a half million people watch him there, he'll be considered a massive success. And there's only so long you want to keep playing that lovable loser card.

 

* I'm one of these critics: Leno is a hack. just want to remind everyone that I watched the first episode of The Jay Leno Show, and while every major publication referred to it as "groundbreaking" and "the future of television," I pointed out what should have been inherently obvious: the show was terrible and would fail sooner rather than later. It seems amazing now that anyone ever thought anything else.