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Vernon-Jackson
Long Island City
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Mike makes stuff. Mostly involving words, notes, thoughts, and images. Also a podcast. Enjoy. 

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Blog

A blog featuring Mike's Images & words. Occasionally sounds. 

Interview: Miry's List

Mike Blejer

I've known Miry Whitehill-Ben Atar for a long time. Basically since she had one last name and zero teeth. Over the past six months she's started Miry's List (which is why I no longer get to call her Miriam), a crowdsourcing organization that provides necessary resources and services to recently relocated refugees from Syria, Jordan, Afghanistan, Iraq and other places around the world. I recently worked with her on a list, then and sat down to talk about the kind of work she does, the Trump Muslim Ban, her experience bringing a refugee to protest in the Women's March, how she helps in her community, and how you can help in yours. Do it. Do it today.

Listen to our chat below, and check out a few pictures before heading over to Miry's List yourself and deciding how you can help.

Blame Comedy

Mike Blejer

Oh thank god, someone finally figured out who's responsible for the republican party's voting for Donald Trump: Jon Stewart! According to Jesse Bernstein of Tablet Magazine, Stewart and his smug liberal culture of mocking the dumbness of the GOP platform caused them to... become dumber? Is he some kind of Judo or Jedi master, destroying them by their own hand?

I mean look, I'm all for a fair apportioning of blame, but I'm really not following this guy's argument. Let's break it down:

  1. Jon Stewart exhibits "liberal smugness."
  2. Therefore he is ignorant (the author doesn't really explain how this conclusion is reached).
  3. Because Stewart's critiques called Fox News and co stupid, people didn't engage with the (stupid?) ideas presented by Fox News and Co.
  4. ???
  5. Therefore, Donald Trump.

Bernstein's claim that the Democratic party's share of the manual laborer vote is due to "intellectual elitism" isn't at all supported by the facts or any argument other than "it feels right." I think a far more worthwhile analysis here would look at the role of gerrymandering, money in politics, and the right's heavy reliance on social wedge issues like creationism, gay marriage, and abortion rights to drive their voters. The right endorsed trade deals and union busting while simultaneously failing to deliver on any of those social promises -- and this really highlights how the idea that Democrats insult the poor while Republicans honor them is just obviously absurd, which is what gets us the Donald Trump republican anti-establishment revolt.

It's also just obviously crazytown to blame Jon Stewart for the rise of Donald Trump, when the viewers of the Daily Show -- if they're as smug and elitist as this author claims they are -- almost certainly haven't taken part in any of the actual votes which selected Donald Trump.

My takeaway: This guy is putting the cart before the horse, by insisting that the ideas being put forward by the GOP and FOX News over the past 20 years have been by and large worthy of reasoned discourse and not ridicule. But this is obviously a false dichotomy, since the whole value of Stewart, Colbert, Bee, and Oliver's takedowns has been in their sharply honed razor edge of reason which they've used to cut apart the illogical arguments of the right, and it's telling that the video in the article is of a Bill Maher segment, i.e., a liberal who many liberals consider to be a smug blowhard.

Finally, at what point is it ok to call a Republican politician dumb? Was it not ok with Bush but now it's ok with Trump? Is it still not ok? Is it somehow Jon Stewart's fault that the intellectual republican party has trickled out of a slowly sinking ship since the 1950s? This article provides no actual insight into the mechanics or ethics of criticizing an opponent's views on their merits and ultimately just boils down to "hey that's mean." Well ok, sure I'll grant you that calling someone dumb is a little bit mean, but it's nowhere near as mean as denying rights to gays, women, minorities and oh yeah, quietly fucking over the poor while you promise them it's totally Jon Stewart's fault. And staying silent while someone tries to do all of that? That'd be pretty mean too. As the saying goes, "All it takes for meanness to succeed is for good cultural critics to be nice."

America Passes Nationwide Ban on High-Profile Gun Think-Pieces

Mike Blejer

A recent Mic.com headline reads "How Many High-Profile Gun Killings Must There Be Before America Takes Action?" But I'm here to tell you that you will sooner read the headline above: America Passes Nationwide Ban on High-Profile Gun Think-Pieces.

And really, isn't it time? I mean how many of these mass printings do there have to be before we finally pass effective, common sense legislation to end the scourge of violent articles which threaten the rights of law-abiding gun owners. With a range of choices from The Atlantic, to Slate, to Mother Jones these high-caliber magazines assault rifles and handguns alike.

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Married to the Snob

Mike Blejer

                                All men be like this...                                 &…

                                All men be like this...                                                    But all women be like this.

Matt Walsh (not the one of UCB fame, so really why the hell do I even care) recently wrote a blog about how single dudes need to "grow up" and "get serious" and stop "hanging out" and "hooking up." Obviously I invite you to go and read the blog, but if you don't want to, I'm happy to offer my very own impression of this blog:

"Ahem ahem, as someone who unquestioningly accepts the gender stereotypes and norms passed down from previous generations, I feel that my having gotten married means that I am more mature than other people and am justified in condescendingly lumping all single women together as a group, defining their desires, and then telling all single men how they ought to behave in order to match up to all single women. Trust me, because I got married and bought a laptop, so I should know."

My dear Married Asshat, I have married friends who are immature. I have single friends who are not. I know girls who want to get married to the next guy they date, I know girls who never want to get married at all. I know people who view sex as a serious emotional endeavor, and I know people who view it as a great way to connect with someone and get some exercise in the deal. And I don't judge them all by my standard of success.

You know what the great and terrible thing is about men and women? There are a lot of them, and there are guys who want to live out traditional marriages just as there are girls who do. And they can find each other. And there are guys who want to "hook up" and "hang out" and there are girls who do. And they can find each other too. People benefit not from "getting serious," they benefit from honestly communicating what they're looking for and what they'd be happy with, and then trying to find someone who is in roughly the same boat-- not by trying to change everyone to fit by their standards of success.

Here are some other things I know. I know that the divorce rate today is around 40-50%. I know that 10–15% of women and 20–25% of men *admitted* to having engaged in extramarital sex (and this was from a 90's study, I'm betting it's higher today). I also know that women weren't given the vote till 1920, and talking about the good old days of marriage is like talking about the good old days of governmental accountability or the good old days before the church sex scandals. The fact that you know more about other people's business today than you did throughout history is a testament to the power of the internet, not a testament to how innocent the good'ole days were. If you want to dress up the past as a pastoral antediluvian eden, a myth that is really only accepted by children and those who are so lazy they can't even be bothered to type in "history of marriage" into google or spend 10 minutes reading wikipedia, you can go ahead and do that but don't expect anyone with an internet connection and brain to come along for the ride.

Comedy's Musical Ghetto

Mike Blejer

For a lot of Comedians the notion of music in comedy is synonymous with the word hack. I know this because I've gotten onstage with a guitar a number of times in the past and, before having done anything heard comics groan "great, another guitar comic." In fact, one of the first times I met the fantastic comic Hampton Yount it was when I'd left my guitar after a show for a minute, he chased me out of the room with it in hand and said "Wait! You almost forgot your career!"

It's interesting that the word hack is typically used to talk about things that are overused, when really the frustration that arises with musical acts relates more closely to the notion of a computer hack. Because the thing about music is that it taps into a pre-linguistic, non-rational part of the brain. That's why there are certain songs which we love but know none of the words to, and why there are certain songs we hate but can't get out of our heads (see the chunk from Radiolab's Pop-music episode, Earworms, as well as their episode on Musical Language). For this reason, comedy has never had, and probably will never have the kind of huge fanbase that musicians can get. Yes there are comedians with big fanbases, but any comic can tell you it's not the same as the pure unadultrated love that musical acts get. It's because a lot of comedy hits us on the level of language and understanding and "funny ideas." It includes taking a position, and positions are tricky. You can disagree with a comedian, but as Demetri Martin has said, "you gotta agree with a song."

Using music on stage is a way to win the audience's favor without having to convince them via the avenue of the funny idea, so it feels like a cheat. In a way it's like the way Seinfeld has talked about cursing in comedy as "cutting across the bases." Yeah, you made it home, but you didn't run the whole way around. -- That said, the lyrical use of profanity from such comedians as Louis CK, Lewis Black, Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, the entirety of Martin McDonagh's In Bruges and let us not forget the wide world of Armando Iannuci's creations, most paradigmatically captured in this reel of Malcolm Tucker (Aka New Who's new Doctor). Oh and I think Carlin may have had a thing or two to say about bad words too

But I digress. Point is, with a few exceptions I'll discuss later, music in comedy is viewed as being an unfair trick, which I think is unfair, and tricky. Because there are any number of other "audience hacks" which comedians use all the time to gain audience love that don't involve music. These include, but are no way limited to: The rule of threes, listing things, yelling or generally using a bunch of energy (aka "selling"), repetition, references, callbacks and broadly speaking having a lyricality to their performance style. All these are things which if used for no reason can get to be hacky. Hell, this is why people tend to hate on Seth MacFarlane, because he tends to use repetition or other comedy techniques without any clear reason (consider, by contrast, Stewart Lee, whose use of repetition seems to be invoked for specific effect and for me at least evokes the kind of call and response that you hear in prayer). Sure, take away Demetri's guitar and some of those jokes might not work,  but that's because (for some of his jokes, though very few in the last special) the guitar is part of the delivery mechanism. It's not that the jokes aren't funny without the guitar, it's just that they might have to be restructured to tell in a different way without it. Take away Louis Black's ability to curse or Jerry Seinfeld's ability to go up at the beginning of a sentence and then down at the end and they might have to restructure some of their bits too.

Different Uses of repetition

 Of course, it's easier to point to a guitar and say "aha, bad thing!" than to describe the kind of structural elements which are also not in and of themselves "funny ideas" that still lure the audience into liking the performer or their style. And there are fewer music comedians, and when something is rarer, it's easier to spot, or as Mitch Hedberg once said to Shecky Magazine when compared to Steven Wright “I love Steven Wright but as far as him being an influence, I can’t measure that. Let me say this… if I made potato chips, and I decided to pack them in a skinny can, people would say I was like Pringles. But what if I packed them in a bag?”

We tend to notice the things which stick out and each individual becomes more of a representative for the group as a whole. This is part of the reason why when people see a showcase lineup (where you often have comics who are younger and still working their act out) with 6 really funny male comics , 2 mediocre male comics, 1 really funny woman comic and 1 mediocre woman comic they end up leaving going "women aren't that funny." And then when I point out that the other girl was really funny you say "well yeah, I mean she's one of the good ones." Well sure, in your sample size you saw a bunch of hilarious guys, but half of the women you saw were just ok, so she's going to represent more women for you until you see enough counter examples to realize "oh wait, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about." -- Throw in some societal stereotypes, a dash of confirmation bias and the fact that from a sexual selection standpoint men don't tend to care if women are funny so there's no social pressure for funny women the way there is for men and you've got yourself a terrible argument for why you shouldn't buy tickets to see Maria Bamford (There are a bunch of other reasons for this artifact, some of which were recently covered by the excellent Jen Dziura). 

Similarly, you see fewer musical acts, so when you see one that isn't amazing you may think that indicts all of music in comedy. And then you see Reggie Watts, Flight of The Conchords, Steve Martin, Demetri Martin, Zach Galifianakis etc... and go "well, they're one of the good ones."

As a sidebar, Reggie in particular isolates the "sound of funny" where he delivers often meaningless sentences but referencing all the tonal and rhythmic parts of what make a bit work, in a sense giving a master class in the distinction between content and delivery mechanism. This is analogous to Andy Daly's bit from Comedy Death Ray where he provides a whole comedy show based just on hacky language, or Jeffery Joseph's bit he does entirely in spanish to a non-spanish speaking audience (I don't have a recording of it, but lord almighty if you're in NY see him live).

One other thing which I think affects comedians moreso than the rest of the population is this: comedians often have hyperactive brains and a somewhat detached, ironic or cynical worldview. This isn't always the case of course, but a lot of us are more comfortable engaging with negative feelings and finding surprising ways to be positive about them or doing the opposite with positive feelings. For many of us it's hard to turn your brain off, and it's hard to stop making clever snap judgments in every direction our head turns till someone snaps our neck for being so judgy. Music can be a way to get away from the noise in our heads. It can be a place where we engage emotionally, a place we can feel really happy without having to make a joke undercutting it, or a place where we can feel really sad without an aside about how in a 3rd world country someone is currently having their head bashed in, so buck the fuck up. I think for some comedians it can feel like bringing comedy to music is missing out on what is, for them, the best part of music. And, since any given musical comedian you're going to see is not going to be "one of the good ones," it probably isn't going to be your perfect ideal of comedy. And I have sympathy for this view. But I don't think that it makes sense to generalize from the subjective to the objective. It's one thing to say "I don't like it because of facts about who I am and how my brain works." It's another thing to say "it's hacky," "it's lazy," or "it's bad." 

I like comedy that wrenches my gut, and I like comedy that changes the way I see an every day thing, and I also like comedy that I can tap my toes to. I think there's room for all of these things (as long as they're not women because obviously I just said that part to get laid). 

All that said, one of my favorite bits of non-musical comedy is about music, and although I totally disagree with the point he's making, I'll leave you with the audio track from Paul F. Tompkins' amazing bit, "Jazz is Lousy," and below are a few videos of musical comedy, comedic musicians, and anything else that came to mind that I myself rather enjoy. 

 

 

Enjoy. Or don't. Your call (he said, like a passive aggressive jewish mother).