Once again, I'm stuck in Asia when the Oscars roll around.
I've missed them the last, what, six years, having been in Japan and Cambodia without cable. Now I have cable, true, but I think the show's airing taped, a couple of days after the event. (Incidentally, cable in Cambodia is weird -- you get channels from Italy and the Philippines and Taiwan and Indonesia and Thailand and Malaysia and Singapore. Rich Cambodians can even watch selected Canadian dramas, should they so choose. Nobody in Canada watches Canadian dramas, so I'm not sure why Thai TV carries them, but...)
I'll get to see the show, I guess -- just not live.
That's when Chris Rock works best.
Chris Rock is, I think, one of the funniest stand-up comedians I've seen in the last decade. Probably the funniest. Because he tells the truth.
Notice I said 'stand-up'. On Saturday Night Live and in the movies, Rock comes across as rather stiff and uncomfortable. Not a good actor, I don't think, although the movie he directed, Head of State, had its moments. They were few and far between, but when they hit, they hit.
Chris Rock live, however, no-holds barred, is a sight to see. He is blunt and political and nasty. He stalks the stage like a panther looking for its kill. More importantly: he's funny. Laugh-out loud funny. Sometimes piss-your-pants funny. Sometimes silly, often crude, always blatant. Seinfeld says what we're all thinking; Rock says what he's thinking, which is always riskier. And usually funnier, too.
(At the same time, I don't think he oozes comedy. Guys like Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy and Martin Short and Mike Myers -- if you think they're funny, that is -- seem to me to be touched by the comedic gods. They are comedy personified. And, yes, three of those dudes are Canadian, but I'm not nominating them for nationalistic reasons. I swear. Look, we guys also gave the world Celine Dion, so I know we're not perfect.)
Rock works for his jokes. He gets that wild look in his eyes as he stalks out the laughs before slaying them, and us. They are, quite often, pointed commentaries on racism in American society. I can't vouch for their accuracy, not being American, but I can vouch for their impact. He's funny.
(Not that he's only about race. Funny is funny is funny, and he's funny no matter what he's talking about. He's got a quick, agile mind. I saw him on Regis once talking about his newborn daughter: "I just hope she doesn't end up on the pole." Regis asks him what the 'pole' is. Rock says: "The stripper pole. If your daughter ends up on the pole, you have officially failed as a father. End of story.")
The Academy Awards, God love 'em, can be a bit stuffy, though. I have no doubt Rock's jokes will be clean. I have no doubt they'll be funny, too. I just wonder if some kind of comedic disconnect will take place, because everybody's so uptight and waiting and wondering if they're going to win that little bald and golden trophy, and then they have to sweat it out and listen to Rock try and slam the industry that they're a part of. If the audience's not into it, if they wait a little too long to laugh, that silence might seem really long and really deep as it passes on through the TV screen.
But good luck to him. Chris Rock tells the truth (as he sees it), and he seems to me to be in the tradition of Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart and Jerry Seinfeld, who were all reporters whose primary beat was life itself, the small stuff and the big stuff. Fundamentally, the human stuff.
Let's hope Rock rocks so he'll keep on having a forum for telling the truth for as long as we want to hear it.
Friday, February 25, 2005
AS TIME GOES BY: JOANIE LOVES CHACHI, INEVITABLY FALLING ICE CREAM CONES, AND WHY NOT TO CHEW GUM ONSTAGE AT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION
I refuse to believe it's February just because the calendar says it is, not only because it's bloody hot and freakin' sunny out, as it is all day, every day, but also because I'm convinced that time has sped up since I've graduated university, that the universe itself has undergone some radical shift in temporal distortions, unless it's only now, on the cusp of thirty, that I'm finally realizing how life works.
Kurt Vonnegut knows how life works. He's simultaneously the funniest writer I've ever read and also the most serious. Don't know how he does it, but he does, and in one of his older books I'm reading right now, Palm Sunday, he often returns to the idea of time, of how all of us are mere newcomers to this world, of how, when children accuse their parents of being screw-ups, the best one can say is, essentially: "What do you want from me? I just got here!"
It's true, isn't it? We all just got here. I'm (supposedly) going to be thirty this year, but I can't quite believe it, because last week I was in Grade Five, standing at the front of the class giving a stellar speech on why comic books are the greatest known things in the history of mankind, and just the other day I was graduating high school, chewing gum while I was up on stage the whole time before getting chewed out in turn by Mrs.Forgeron when I went to go pick up my coat at the end of the night: "Scott, you were chewing gum up on stage the whole time!"
(The moral is: Don't chew gum during really important events, because your high school English teacher will rip you a new crevice for doing so.)
And I've never seen Mrs.Forgeron since that night, and, while that isn't particularly strange, one not having seen one's high school English teacher since, well, high school, it does kind of make me sad, because that's the last thing I remember of her, and it's a funny moment, a human moment, and it's imprinted in my psyche, that single point in time before time itself started to rocket forward, with me in the caboose, hanging on for dear life.
So, yes, we all just got here, and guess what? We're all leaving here soon, too.
A morbid thought?
Not necessarily. As Woody Allen once said (far funnier than I will), not only is there no God, but trying finding a plumber on a Sunday.
In other words, the practical aspects of life are often more of a pain-in-the-butt than the cosmic questions. And death is certainly a pain-in-the-butt, but you can't get more everyday than that, or more mind-blowingly, galactically incomprehensible, either.
And they're the same thing, in any event -- the daily life and the cosmic. It's all tied together in this impenetrable, unfathomable spiral of space and time that scoots us along. We hang on and go for the ride. I'm trying to figure out how to survive Phnom Penh one day at a time, while the solar system continues to expand and contract, or do whatever it does.
(Not that I can understand all that, either. Like space -- how come there's no up or down? Can someone explain it to me in a way that actually sounds logical, or plausible, or even possible, 'cause I just don't get it. Whenever someone accuses me of writing a story or a blog that isn't plausible, I just point up at the moon and say: "Is that freakin' orb plausible?" Okay, I don't really say that, but I've thought about it.)
I think the best thing do is hope and plan for a long and healthy and happy life, understanding that it's going to go by in less than a blink of an eye, that disease and death are all we have to look forward to, and that all of our random acts of kindess and violence, our Valentine's Day cards and Christmas hugs, our stabs-in-the-backs and momentary moments of heartfelt reconciliation are all merely candles in the wind, as transitory and meaningless as Joanie Loves Chachi. (Not their love, which I'm confident is eternal and bursting with meaning, but their show, which was actually pretty good, if my seven-year old self can be trusted. So maybe there was some meaning in its demise, after all, if only because it allows me a fond memory of me and my best friend Mariano, both age seven, laughing with glee on the porch of my old house at a Mad Magazine parody of the show, Joanie Loves Chooch it was called, where Joanie spent the entire story plotting to kill Chachi with a kitchen knife. I remember so much of that moment, that stupid and wonderful childhood memory, and I refuse to believe that it happened twenty-two years ago. Not possible. Didn't that show just get cancelled two years ago or something? Seems like it...)
And don't discount or discard those strange, fleeting moments of bliss, those seconds of happiness that suddenly pop up when you're combing your hair, or stepping out of the shower, or watching a three year old drop his ice cream cone onto the floor as his eyes grow wide in disbelief at the unfairness of the universe. (Get used to it, kid.)
They're all we've got, those moments.
Maybe they're enough.
Kurt Vonnegut knows how life works. He's simultaneously the funniest writer I've ever read and also the most serious. Don't know how he does it, but he does, and in one of his older books I'm reading right now, Palm Sunday, he often returns to the idea of time, of how all of us are mere newcomers to this world, of how, when children accuse their parents of being screw-ups, the best one can say is, essentially: "What do you want from me? I just got here!"
It's true, isn't it? We all just got here. I'm (supposedly) going to be thirty this year, but I can't quite believe it, because last week I was in Grade Five, standing at the front of the class giving a stellar speech on why comic books are the greatest known things in the history of mankind, and just the other day I was graduating high school, chewing gum while I was up on stage the whole time before getting chewed out in turn by Mrs.Forgeron when I went to go pick up my coat at the end of the night: "Scott, you were chewing gum up on stage the whole time!"
(The moral is: Don't chew gum during really important events, because your high school English teacher will rip you a new crevice for doing so.)
And I've never seen Mrs.Forgeron since that night, and, while that isn't particularly strange, one not having seen one's high school English teacher since, well, high school, it does kind of make me sad, because that's the last thing I remember of her, and it's a funny moment, a human moment, and it's imprinted in my psyche, that single point in time before time itself started to rocket forward, with me in the caboose, hanging on for dear life.
So, yes, we all just got here, and guess what? We're all leaving here soon, too.
A morbid thought?
Not necessarily. As Woody Allen once said (far funnier than I will), not only is there no God, but trying finding a plumber on a Sunday.
In other words, the practical aspects of life are often more of a pain-in-the-butt than the cosmic questions. And death is certainly a pain-in-the-butt, but you can't get more everyday than that, or more mind-blowingly, galactically incomprehensible, either.
And they're the same thing, in any event -- the daily life and the cosmic. It's all tied together in this impenetrable, unfathomable spiral of space and time that scoots us along. We hang on and go for the ride. I'm trying to figure out how to survive Phnom Penh one day at a time, while the solar system continues to expand and contract, or do whatever it does.
(Not that I can understand all that, either. Like space -- how come there's no up or down? Can someone explain it to me in a way that actually sounds logical, or plausible, or even possible, 'cause I just don't get it. Whenever someone accuses me of writing a story or a blog that isn't plausible, I just point up at the moon and say: "Is that freakin' orb plausible?" Okay, I don't really say that, but I've thought about it.)
I think the best thing do is hope and plan for a long and healthy and happy life, understanding that it's going to go by in less than a blink of an eye, that disease and death are all we have to look forward to, and that all of our random acts of kindess and violence, our Valentine's Day cards and Christmas hugs, our stabs-in-the-backs and momentary moments of heartfelt reconciliation are all merely candles in the wind, as transitory and meaningless as Joanie Loves Chachi. (Not their love, which I'm confident is eternal and bursting with meaning, but their show, which was actually pretty good, if my seven-year old self can be trusted. So maybe there was some meaning in its demise, after all, if only because it allows me a fond memory of me and my best friend Mariano, both age seven, laughing with glee on the porch of my old house at a Mad Magazine parody of the show, Joanie Loves Chooch it was called, where Joanie spent the entire story plotting to kill Chachi with a kitchen knife. I remember so much of that moment, that stupid and wonderful childhood memory, and I refuse to believe that it happened twenty-two years ago. Not possible. Didn't that show just get cancelled two years ago or something? Seems like it...)
And don't discount or discard those strange, fleeting moments of bliss, those seconds of happiness that suddenly pop up when you're combing your hair, or stepping out of the shower, or watching a three year old drop his ice cream cone onto the floor as his eyes grow wide in disbelief at the unfairness of the universe. (Get used to it, kid.)
They're all we've got, those moments.
Maybe they're enough.
EITHER WAY
Sometimes I think it would be nice to move back to my hometown and get a small apartment and find a job at the arena where I used to play hockey as a kid, Bill Burgoyne Arena, where I could work in the concession stand, serving Cokes to parents who wait patiently for their kids to emerge, stinky and sweaty, from the after-game calm of the dressing rooms, as my parents once waited for me. In the downtime I could read books, jot notes for my own book, observe a place and a time that was once simply part of my life and is now only a memory of life. I could get reacquainted with the city and the people that made me. Not a bad gig, really -- the cold of the arena, the sounds of slapshots and whistles, the faces of the kids. I could take a skate every now and then, I'm sure. Hot chocolate whenever you want. There are worse places to work.
And then I think no, no, Matsue is the place to live, because Matsue is this small town in Shimane Prefecture in Japan, along the west coast, where I once visited because the great writer Lafcadio Hearn, Greek by origin, lived there, writing his thoughts and observations on Japanese life and culture in the nineteenth century, which helped me formulate my own (probably wrong) theories on Japan, and I wanted to see what he saw, feel what he felt. I went and visited his house, the house that he lived in over a hundred years ago, the house where he wrote many of his books. Very cool (to someone like me). It's a nice town, quiet and near the ocean, and not so small that you would become lost in your own foreignness. There's a few English schools there, and even though I vowed that I wouldn't want to teach English in Japan again, it wouldn't be all that bad, all things considered. A change of pace from the Tokyo suburbs and the Phnom Penh lunacy. There would be the ocean relatively nearby, and temples, and I could work on my Japanese. I'm sure there's lots of local festivals throughout the year that would bewilder and fascinate me.
I think I could carve out a life, either way.
And then I think no, no, Matsue is the place to live, because Matsue is this small town in Shimane Prefecture in Japan, along the west coast, where I once visited because the great writer Lafcadio Hearn, Greek by origin, lived there, writing his thoughts and observations on Japanese life and culture in the nineteenth century, which helped me formulate my own (probably wrong) theories on Japan, and I wanted to see what he saw, feel what he felt. I went and visited his house, the house that he lived in over a hundred years ago, the house where he wrote many of his books. Very cool (to someone like me). It's a nice town, quiet and near the ocean, and not so small that you would become lost in your own foreignness. There's a few English schools there, and even though I vowed that I wouldn't want to teach English in Japan again, it wouldn't be all that bad, all things considered. A change of pace from the Tokyo suburbs and the Phnom Penh lunacy. There would be the ocean relatively nearby, and temples, and I could work on my Japanese. I'm sure there's lots of local festivals throughout the year that would bewilder and fascinate me.
I think I could carve out a life, either way.
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