Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Aziz Ansari

If you're a comedy geek or a hipster (I deeply dislike hipsters, but they nailed it with this guy), you might know who Aziz Ansari is. He's a stand-up comic who is very close to my heart, because he reminds me of myself in a few very notable ways.

1. Ansari graduated from NYU. I go to NYU.
2. Ansari is Indian and speaks Tamil, a South Indian language that I also speak.
3. Ansari is very funny.

The similarities are outstanding and simply can't be ignored. More than anything, though, Ansari's comedy style reminds me of jokes I make or would make if I had any sort of guts.

In an interview I read with Ansari, he mentions that he got into stand-up because a lot of people told him that he was funny. At the risk of sounding like a braggart, people have told me this too, but there is a very good reason I haven't followed through on it, and that is that while I think of myself has having a good sense of humor, it takes a lot of work to be a good stand-up.

I've done amateurish stand-up attempts, but there is a fundamental difference between being funny with your friends and being a good comic, just as there is a difference between being good at drawing and being an artist. When you're with your friends, just hanging out, it's easy to be funny. All you have to do is react to a situation or premise and direct it with a one-liner or witty remark. When you're a stand-up comic, you don't have the luxury of being reactionary and acting off an existing humorous situation, because you have to create the premise, and then make it funny. You are telling a whole story, whereas with your friends in that room, everyone is already on the same wavelength. It is actually very tough, and doing it well requires a lot of practice and finding something that is both universal, so an entire audience can get it, and specific, or at least specific enough to be original.

I will say this in my favor, though. I once heard Jon Stewart describe how he got into stand-up comedy, and he explained the whole idea of creating a premise v. reacting to one (yes, that idea was Jon Stewart's and not mine.) But he also said that good comics have a brain dysfunction in which their brain will turn to a joke or think of something funny in an almost involuntary way. It's just what happens, and you can either choose to control it, or let it run free. I have never heard a more accurate description of the way my brain works, and this has a tendency to get me in trouble. For whatever reason, good or bad, my brain seeks to turn any situation into a joke, and I get a huge thrill when a flippant or off-the-cuff remark I make gets a bunch of strangers to laugh. The interesting thing is, I have no loyalty to any "style" of comedy. Whatever form it takes: rude, sarcastic, witty, mean, intelligent (it usually isn't), or the most likely form of wholly accidental, if it gets a laugh I have no problem with it. It's sort of unnatural to love the idea of making strangers laugh, and probably suggests a desire to fill some void or lack of attention on my part, but I'm not a psych major. All I know is it gets me high to make people laugh, more so people that I don't know because it seems more honest that way. I don't get it, but more often than not I go with it.

When Jon Stewart was talking about either controlling or letting your brain go, he mentioned that he became a comic and let his brain run wild because he was "too weak to fight it." My problem is that I'm to weak to unchain it.

Monday, August 29, 2005

A Room With a View

Last night was my first night in my new dorm, and I have to admit I'm rather pleased. Our apartment is large and in charge, affording us a huge common area, kitchen and bedrooms. But perhaps the best feature of my bedroom is the view. The entire north wall of the bedroom is windows, which means I have a view of the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Metlife Building, and 3 Park Avenue, where I was an intern for a corporate attorney years ago. At night, while laying down in bed, it is easy to get the impression that one is simply floating over the city, since all you can see is the midtown skyscrapers. I love it so far.

The only drawbacks to my first day at NYU have been the hellacious time waste that was setting up my computer for the internet, and the price of my economics and statistics textbooks. My roommate Matt supplied me with a hearwarming tale, one designed to lift the spirits, of a friend of his who had to spend $400 for a SINGLE chemistry book. Honestly, who needs to know chemistry that badly?

Thursday, August 25, 2005

I've had enough Law, but I could use more Order

My sister has a tendency to get hooked on television shows. I remember in the late 1990s, wild horses couldn't drag her away from Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. She was the only person under the age of 300 who watched PAX. After that, she became a rabid fan of "Trading Places" before it was cool to like that show. She likes to point out that it was one of the few times that she was ahead of the curve, and she's right. I openly mocked her and the show, not thinking it would ever take off and become the multi-trillion dollar beast it is now. Lately, the TV show she is digging is Law and Order: SVU. I've got to give her credit on this one, because if you want to feed a ravenous obsession, SVU is your go-to show. The damned thing is one four hours a day on two different channels. Plus, with six or so seasons there's quite a backlog of shows for the diligent fan to peruse. I stupidly worship shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus, which has been off the air for 30 years, and Arrested Development, which was almost cut from Fox's lineup but comes back in a few weeks. In those cases, I do the only logical thing and shell out hundreds of dollars for DVDs.

The Law and Order franchise is, let's face it, a juggernaut. I haven't done the math, and I don't care to, but I think there are about three or four Law and Orders in production, and in all of these shows I have the same problem. I like the police work just fine, but I'd like to see more trial. For me, the trial is where you make your money, that's where the drama is. I know someone is going on trial, there is no suspense there for me. It's pretty safe to guess someone is getting arrested, usually while in his house and saying things like "What's this about?" and "I never killed anyone." And plea bargains are boring. What kind of episode would it be if the cops spend 20 minutes trying to tail you and book you, and you just go "Oh yeah, I totally did it. So does my cell have HBO or what, because I really love that show 'The Comeback.'" I also need the trials because I briefly held delusions of wanting to be a lawyer, but threw them away when I remembered that:
a) Lawyers have to read a lot of dense material, some of which has words like 'habeas corpus' and 'caveat emptor.' My Latin is kind of weak.
b) Law school costs a lot of money.
c) When I worked for two summers at a law firm, not a single lawyer I met enjoyed being a lawyer. They were typically more concerned with ordering Gucci shoes and trying to find one mammoth fee that would enable them to retire in Aruba.

While I'm not going to be a lawyer, I'd like to believe that they are still out there fighting the good fight on NBC. It assuages some of my Wall Street borne guilt.

So my program note to the Dick Wolf, give us more trials. They are gripping and can be somewhat cerebral when done right and make for some good distractions while I avoid writing papers. And as a side note, all the police scenes that you shoot make me late for class when you film around Washington Square Park. Move that inside, and it's all gravy.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Sometimes, connecting with your fans is a bad thing

In a move designed to pry America's collective attention from unimportant things in the news like the Middle East and rising healthcare costs, network television stations broke in with this important news:

He is now going by 'Diddy.'

Yes, according to every website on the internet, Sean Combs has now decreed that he shall be known only as Diddy. Apparently, Diddy is "more personal" and Combs believes the P. was getting between him and his fans. He is now more "exposed."

Of course, being more exposed and personal with his fans will be tough to do from one of his many enormous mansions or yachts, but if anything can connect an artist with the people who spend money to buy his merchandise, I'm sure it's removing one letter from his pseudonym. And it was a wise move, because I believe P was getting between R Kelly and his fans too. But that's just what I heard.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

No, not that one, the REAL Orange County

As I was casually flipping around the TV today, I came across MTV's latest televisual crackfest, Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County. I'm pretty sure that title is a joke, but who knows what the real Orange County is like? While I was born and raised on Long Island and now go to college in Manhattan, I've been to California many times, and I like it a lot. I'll spare you the usual East Coast posturing of how Los Angeles sucks, because to be honest, Los Angeles is nice. However, I can see why many people outside of LA hate it. I remember seeing an interview with NY Times columnist David Brooks, who had written a book on America, describe how the rest of the world views the United States. He said, "The world looks at America in the way that America looks at Beverly Hills." It later became clear that America is seen as vain, stupid, materialistic and entirely self-obsessed. All these traits are commonly used to describe Los Angeles, and while I usually defend La-La Land, that was before I saw our friends in Laguna Beach.

I've never been so repulsed and attracted to a show. The characters are so empty, sometimes I can see the stage lights shining right out the back of them, but they've drawn me in with their pathetically one-dimensional storylines. The plot of the show is as such: Lauren (hot girl) likes Stephen (hot guy) who likes Kristin (younger hot girl), but also has feelings for his friend Lauren (aforementioned hot girl.) Kristin is shallow and manipulative, while Stephen and Lauren are saintly and pure. Case Closed. Sounds boring right? You're so stupidly wrong, my dismissive reader. You made the same mistake I made, meaning you ignored rule #1 in television: people will stop whatever they are doing to watch attractive people, especially if those attractive people are young and usually in bikinis. I was so stupid to forget that in my passionate and pseudo-intellectual snobbery, I like hot people on my TV screen, it even makes me feel hot by proxy. The kids on this show, as a magnificent bonus, are also prone to Dawson's Creek-esque exchanges, like so:

Lo's Mom: Lo, it's not a fashion show
Lo: Every day's a fashion show, Mom.

You can't write that stuff. Or can you? Since debuting last summer, the show has confused people with its claims that it is all real, while managing complicated two camera shots, always being around when important and unexpected events occur, being completely linear and having guys with appearing and disappearing facial hair. I, for one, don't care if the show is a little bit staged or completely false. It's a potent mix of attractive people with minor but overly dramatically portrayed problems. Plus, I think those kids are legit--I checked them on thefacebook.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

No Know-It-All

One of the strangest things I dealt with during my first year of college was the number of people who told me I was smart. In high school, if anybody thought I was smart, they never said it to me, and in my family, I would never be called smart due to my habit of losing things and not being able to follow simple directions. Yet in college many of my friends, roommates and even some of my professors indicated that I was smart. This naturally threw me for a loop, until I read an article in Esquire by AJ Jacobs. Jacobs is the author of The Know-It-All, a story about his quest to read the entire encyclopedia, a quest he fulfills. The facts he picks up are disparate and usually pointless, but it makes for an interesting read because Jacobs is very funny and writes it knowing that the excercise is both bizarre and comical. I, while not being smart, am like Jacobs in that I have an enormous warehouse in my mind brimming with irrelevant shit. I am constantly busting out facts about Austria, high fructose corn syrup, the 22nd Ammendment, and a host of other worthless crap. It is this collection of trivium that I think is confused for being smart.

To me, being smart requires powers of analysis. I can look at data and remember it pretty well. I don't know if I have a photographic memory, but sometimes it seems that way. So while I can recall the data that was in front of me, I usually cannot solve the problem asked of me. Knowing a little about a lot of things, in my mind, hardly makes me smart, but rather makes me scatterbrained and useless. I have a lot of interests, and I am a very curious person, so I spend a lot of time navigating the paths of wikipedia, not really learning but taking in facts about the election of 1824 and the Suez Canal. When it comes to subjects like history, it was always easy for me, because most classes you take about history before college are just remembering what was in the story and repackaging it. This was right up my alley as it required no real skills, but a great chance to be a poseur and an intellectual ass, two areas where I excel. Now I am an economics major, and while I lack analytical skills, I can usually detect causality. How this all plays out remains to be seen.

The point (which I've long since lost in my ramblings) is that I greatly respect smart people. Understanding how things work or having an analytical mind that can solve problems are seriously valuable talents. If I were smart, I'd feel like the standard and responsibility that often comes with intelligence would be cheapened by some college schmuck who spouts off arcane nonsense about Augustan literature or the geology of Death Valley. I'd probably kick him in the face.

I hope I've made my point, which is that I'm not smart, but I am like AJ Jacobs and know a lot of unimportant stuff which makes me SEEM intelligent. By the way, if you're an attractive girl who is "into" smart guys, this entire post was one huge meta self-deprecating farce and satire. Honestly.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

He's sure in charge of me.

This is a very short, but very important and serious post. I feel like I'm going to be found out, so in the interest of full disclosure, I have to say this. If I don't, I think I'm going to burst.

My favorite song, ever, is the theme to "Charles in Charge." I listen to it on the subway every day. I can't stop.

I feel so much better.

Thursday, August 04, 2005

A way to kill hours

My new favorite website. I've actually known about it for a little while, but today I spent a lot of time on it, and it just sucked me in, thanks to pearls like this one.

Chick #1: What is up with that dude?
Chick #2: You mean that little girl over there?
Chick #1: Yeah. Oh, OK.

--Tompkins Square Park

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

The Smartest Man in the World

While I don't fully understand it, my economics and politcal science classes exposed me to game theory, and now I'm very intrigued by it. The whole methodology of studying how people act in a strategic situations appeals to both the junior economist and the pop sociologist in me. Today, when I was listening to an interview with Tim Harford, he talks about one of the founders of game theory, a man named Jon von Neumann. von Neumann was actually a Hungarian-Jewish mathematician who was regarded, in his time, as one of the most brilliant men on the planet, and that's not a title that gets thrown around a bit, but here it may be warranted. He did make contributions to economics, physics, astrophysics, computer science, and mathematics and came up with such cool names for his work, like artificial viscosity. von Neumann was believed to have been blessed with near total recall, and his ideas and theories are used in so many facets of science and technology its incredible.

In the interview I listened to with Harford, however, he mentions that once when von Neumann was putting Albert Einstein on a train, he put Einstein on a train going the wrong way. It kind of lowers the bar for "Smartest Man in the World" a bit.

To finish this fetishized tribute to von Neumann, I'll conclude with two quotes of his that I enjoy. One is a kind of meta philosophical idea, and the second is included because while I like game theory, I'm awful at math.

"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

Never Far From My Heart

I was listening to some "hip-hop" music on the radio today, which I don't do a lot of. I don't mean to distance myself from rap music, as I actually listen to and like a lot of rap music. These days, however, I find most rap consists of telling me:

  1. Rappers are incredibly rich. They are so wealthy that they buy things they don't need, like or want and set them on fire on the lawn of a rival rapper.
  2. Rappers weren't always wealthy. In fact, they used to live in a small shoebox at the bottom of the East River with their 75 brothers and sisters, all of whom have their own South Pacific islands now that said rap star has made it.
  3. If Rapper B thinks they are richer, better with the opposite sex, more talented, have more fans, and are better respected in the rap community than Rapper A, Rapper B and all those people who agree with his take on the situation are unfortunately mistaken and will pay dearly, likely at the hands of a Rapper A's associates.
The notable exceptions to this are rappers like Common, Immortal Technique, and to some extent Kanye. I'm sure there are other good, socially conscious and talented rappers out there, but I don't know them. If you do, let me know and I'll be sure to give them the appropriate amount of "cred" and "props" respectively.

But today on the radio, I heard a familiar voice on the radio as I listened to New York's blazin' hip-hop and r&b. It was a sound I knew so well, and yet couldn't place. It was at this time that I absently pondered, "whatever happened to Puff Daddy/P. Diddy/Diddy/Marathon Man?" Then, the unmistakable cry of "Bad Boy baby" reminded me. Oh, there he is.

I'm not sure why, but Diddy tells me the name of his rap label every 3 seconds. It isn't as though anyone who wants to buy his album needs to know the label. I've never gone into a record store and said "I say my good man, I'd like to purchase a new hip-hop album. I'm not sure of the artist, but it was undoubtedly urban in nature and belongs to the label of Bad Boy. Could you assist me?" Of course, I'm not from 1937, but endlessly bleating "Bad Boy" only annoys people when they are trying to drive or dance, and briefly halts the flow of pounding...uh, allegro. (Ok, I don't know music terms, but it jerks the music out of actual music and into an advertisement, and a pointless one at that.)

I wonder if Diddy chanted "Bad Boy, Bad Boy, Bad Boy" as he ran the 26.5 miles of the marathon. I'd have thrown down some of Nelly's Pimp Juice and got the hell out of there.