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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Saturday, January 31, 2004
Real Funny
P and I went to see two comedians last week, and their styles could not have been more different. One was David Sedaris, the author, New Yorker contributor, NPR commentator and all-around neurotic wit. I’d picked up Sedaris’ Naked a year or two ago and found it laugh-out-loud funny, except when he strayed off the topic of his crazy family. But seeing him read live, in an unusually packed Unitarian church hall, gave me a whole new appreciation of his work. Sedaris writes like the bastard son of James Thurber and Woody Allen, and his reedy, dour voice sounds just like that of the cartoon dog Droopy. The evening had a wonderful rhythm to it; Sedaris would read two or three exquisitely-crafted sentences and then pause as the room shook with laughter. He didn’t smile at such moments, he didn’t try to ingratiate himself; he just sat there glumly waiting to speak again like our response was so much tolerable noise. Naturally, we loved him all the more for it.
Sedaris has no qualms about inviting you to laugh at his family and its foibles – his nighttime fear of flesh-eating zombies, his mother’s new-found love for her paper shredder – but he also has a wonderfully unhurried ear for language. Calling home one night to complain about his boyfriend, he learns his mother is doing jury duty and has been sequestered. To most of us, this would not be a rich source of comedy, but Sedaris takes a moment to marvel at the unusual combination of “mother” and “sequestered” in the same sentence. “It was like hearing the dentist had been canonized,” he said. The room shook again, and the sentence took up lodgings in my brain. I was surprised to discover, at the end, that most of the stories he had just read had not yet been published and were still in draft form. He was constantly writing, room-testing and rewriting throughout his reading tour.
No such love of craft was evident in the comedian we saw a few nights later: Kevin Nealon, formerly of Saturday Night Live, who was appearing at Cobb’s Comedy Club. Where, to my everlasting shame, I took P to on one of our semi-regular mystery dates. Cobb's is slap-bang in the middle of the most touristy part of town, but some years ago I saw the excellent Greg Proops perform there. How bad could Nealon be?
The answer was unbelievably bad. Brain-numbingly bad. So bad he had to rely on tired, desperate retreads of SNL routines; a back pocket full of weak Weekend Update news bits written on index cards; a pathetic attempt at a chat show using reticent audience members as guests; and yes, even a racist joke or two. “I used to have an Asian girlfriend. I didn’t know. I thought she was just tired,” she said. Safe in my San Francisco haven, I didn’t know anyone told jokes like that any more. I felt the sharp snap of it, like a punch in the gut.
Nealon knew how much he sucked. “I got nothing,” he admitted, sotto voce, more than once. But like Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, the worst part of it for him must have been getting away with it. Because the crowd of tourists and frat boys was stinking drunk – Cobb’s has a two-drink minimum, and this was Friday night – they brayed and whooped at anything he said. He could have been up there reading the phone book as long as he threw in the occasional Hans and Franz “pump you up!” catchphrase. P observed him standing outside afterwards while I went to get the car. He was clutching a notebook and a novel, looking sad, trying to get through to his wife on a cellphone while fending off a gaggle of drunk 22-year-olds. The club owner introduced herself, said they’d met before, and Nealon feigned the memory. “And I realized, ‘this is his life now,’” P said as we drove home. Recycling jokes across America, fending off drunk tourists, clinging to the last few threads of an ill-deserved TV fame – and wishing, perhaps, that he had a tenth of the talent of a really glum comic writer.
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