GO w/ MOE!

"Hierocore" by Moe Hendrix

produced by Blocade

video by Mark Fussell

it's just another wet wednesday

Liquid Liquid was part of NYC's No Wave scene of the late '70s and early '80s that took the freedoms afforded by punk and took them in an artier, funkier direction while being, technically, a lot more primitive and wild than the emerging sounds of New Wave. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth fame co-wrote the definitive book chronicling the movement. There were a few sub-sets among No Wave artists. Generally, there was a side to it that was very noisy and performance art, and a side that was more into funk and rhythm. Liquid Liquid belongs more to the latter. 99 Records in the early '80s was responsible for much of the commercially released recordings of No Wave artists, including "Cavern". After many silent years, DFA Records tracked down Liquid Liquid and released a trickle of new music. The best compilation available for original No Wave is New York Noise on Soul Jazz.

Because of the time and place No Wave emerged, some shards of it became intermingled with the seminal hip hop that was also going on. A great example is ESG's oft-sampled "UFO".

Of course, "Cavern" has a formidable hip hop legacy of its own.

You know how many fake peope are talking about how fake the world is right now?

You know how many fake people are talking about how fake the world is right now?
Community

This episode of Community was in part a movie homage.

Community is my favorite show right now, and favorites are hard to write or speak about outside the realm of hyperbolic superlatives. Talking to a friend once, I noted how I talked incessently about Peter Greenaway despite a generalized lack of awareness or interest, but I rarely mentioned Stanley Kubrick.

"You don't talk about Pink Floyd much, either." she observed.

So it has taken me this long to dish about a sitcom. One doing another movie homage. They pushed the hell out of the Pulp Fiction angle on the social networks for this one. We get some great costuming. Jeff does Vincent Vega with his already established lack of commitment (he's just Jeff in a suit). Shirley goes much further to be Jules, giving herself facial hair where Jeff couldn't be bothered to get a wig.

Britta makes a fetching Mia, Troy and Annie are an adorable Pumpkin and Honeybun, Chang continues his tradition of raceblind costumery as Butch, and clueless, tasteless Pierce is best placed as the gimp (he's hot and his balls are touching a zipper).

It is great fan service, for fans of Community and modern American pop culture at large. Does it service the silent majority of world citizens who don't obsess over movies and music and stuff, who aren't dillegently typing at the internet about their particular media fixations and vendettas? In the words of Shirley, "I'm sorry Charlie Kaufman but some of us have to get up for work in the morning."

I would argue that Community's characters are at the forefront, and with some acclimation are moving, appealing and funny to audiences not so hung up on pop culture that they can track the show's deep, continuous referents and meta-levels. I showed the chicken fingers episode to a friend who hadn't seen Goodfellas and he laughed. Importantly, he had already seen a few episodes of Community.

Furthermore, there isn't a show more hyper-aware of its own detractors, and doesn't hesitate to address and challenge accusations against it. That may be just as exasperating to the viewer that doesn't care about the movies the show loves or the show's opinion of itself. This is addressed, too, but we'll get to that later.*

Anyway, the episode subverts the expectations for a Pulp Fiction jizzerama and instead avoids the Pulp Fiction party for a conversation between the show's handsome hero and breakout star, Jeff and Abed. We see all the elements for a wacky Pulp Fiction surprise party indefinitely delayed because Abed is acting wacky for himself (not as pop culturally fixated and wacky).

Jeff and Abed wind up having the kind of profound conversations only Community really does, finding themselves on the opposite sides one would expect them to be in a pop versus life debate (some disturbing crevasses of Jeff's twisted psyche are also explored). Then it turns out the whole thing has been a movie spoof. Abed has been using Jeff to unwittingly reprise My Dinner With Andre.

I was rather embarassed not to have picked up on this, especially considering how on the nose the homage is. Jeff narrates over a brisk city walk to the restaurant just like Wallace Shawn and Abed embodies Andre Gregory in wardrobe and mannerism. How many TV actors can do more with less than Danny Pudi?

The whole thing wraps up neatly with a montage of Pulp Fiction moments done in the style and narration of My Dinner With Andre, an idea which is in itself a hilarious juxtaposition. The characters are great and the jokes funny even if, I imagine, one has seen neither movie. I don't think any television show crams quite as many types of jokes into a script. If so, probably not at this level of execution, and not with this cast.

*or not, what do i know? i'm not doing a second pass on this.

plan b presents "the creature"

jason kypros and plan b are primed to make moves.

also this video is adorable.

is it worth the asthma?

It's gorgeous, but is it worth the asthma?

Parks and Recreation

It is said here that Pawnee has georgeous sunsets due to the cloud of pollution created by the Sweetums factory. We learn a few more things about the town. Pawnee also has a bed and breakfast infested with cats and run by a killjoy who serves German muffins* before the crack of dawn. Pawnee also has a campground that is lovely to see Chris Pratt fall around as Andy. Toting a guitar, tent, and balloons for his beloved, camping-averse April, whose response to a babbling brook is "Shut up!"

The characters on this show, my current second favorite, are just lovely. Oddly for TV, they all seem to share a genuine affection for each other. A possible exception may be series scapegoat** Jerry, who perfectly spoils Ron's fishing (like yoga for him, but he still gets to kill something) by wondering aloud if his sixteen-year-old daughter should be allowed to take birth control and pondering conducting a teen abstinence workshop.

Adam Scott and Aziz Ansari continue to cultivate an odd couple chemistry as Ben and Tom, both of whom share names with famous partners/antagonists of characters named Jerry. Note that this show also had Andy initially dating Ann, who dressed as Raggedy Ann for Halloween. The show's mid-season debut this season robbed us of another great Halloween episode.

Rashida Jones (Quincy's daughter) as Ann is finally getting funny on this show. She suffered for a little while with the Pam Paradox, wherein the attractive female supporting lead on a Greg Daniels show is stuck being the voice of reaon for a crazy supporting cast. Pam has blossomed as a corrupt office manager showing her geek side with a lovably corny sense of humor. Ann is getting her moments playing a ridiculously attractive person ("sweet, beautiful Ann" as Leslie is apt to describe her) confronted in full adulthood by getting dumped for the first time by another ridiculously attractive person (Rob Lowe giving good cartoon positivity). Ann finally has an oppurtunity to be stupid and act foolishly.

Donna gets to pitch a luxury dog park at the campground before drinking gin from a flask while reading a book called Your Erogenous Zones. Hopefully one day the show will develop its heavy black woman a little bit more, but it is good to know that for now she seems to be the most independent and erotically satisfied character of all.

With all this yapping about this supporting cast, I have been withholding the truth that this is very much an episode about Leslie. Her (so far) charmingly chaste chemistry with Ben is teased nicely. Those two kids are good together and good at their jobs. That last part marks a big disparity between Leslie Knope (rhymes with "hope" and sounds like "nope"), and Michael Scott. Amy Poehler and Steve Carrell share a similar improv-wizard lunatic enthusiasm and commitment in their lead performances on Greg Daniels mockumentaries. But where Michael Scott is very dumb and usually incompetent while fumbling his way to the endzone, Leslie Knope is very smart and professionally hypercompetent, pushing the ball forward as her team accidentally covers her.***

Andy shares more with Michael Scott than Leslie does. They are both soulful, charismatic idiots blessed with an outsized romantic streak. Andy could be very much like Michael if he ever was erroneously placed in an authority position. Come to think of it, he coaches youth basketball much like Michael runs his office.

I don't intend to damn Parks and Recreation with constant comparisons to The Office, but they are inevitably stylistically very similar. More relevant, I would say that Parks and Recreation is in the thick of its sweet spot, much as The Office was in seasons 2-4. That is to say, it is one of the all-time sitcom greats at the moment.

For most of Parks and Recreation's run, Leslie has been the underdog battling institutional apathy and budget cuts that stymie her limitless well of great ideas. Now, after executing her biggest idea to resounding success ("Harvest-Best!" trumpets the same paper that ran the headline "Knope Grope Is Last Hope" after a city official clutched her breast while having a heart attack) her script is flipped. Everybody defers to her expecting a triumphant follow-up to her recent home run.****

Poehler gets to spend most of the episode in a manic showcase of poignant self-doubt and type-A determination to work through the problem, and she is majestic. Leslie is lucky enough to have Ron Swanson to characteristically spend most of the episode avoiding involvement with anything before solving problems with a little bit of grudging paternal intervention towards the end. After an existential crisis, it comes as no surprise that Leslie's still got it and is a fountain of positive inspiration and good ideas. She needed only a good night sleep and Ron to lock her in a room full of cats to get it.

*"...the fuck is a German muffin?" -Ron Swanson

**much like Toby on The Office, except the whole cast seems to indulge in the irrational hatred that Michael Scott inflicts upon that character

***i'm not very good at sports metaphorism

****george, you just told yrself stay away from sports metaphors. don't push it

my stories (pt. 1)

apparently it will take me 2 nights to describe and comment on nbc's thursday night programming. here i have some words on 30 Rock and The Office.

I'd like to help, but my hands are tied

30 Rock

30 Rock is hilarious, but it hurts to watch with limited Tracey Morgan/Jordan. With the Tracey presence, it is a joke carousel about to fly off the wheels creating a dizzying euphoria where you don't have to think about everything too much because it has that screwball snap and lunatic absurdity. These jokes could be uncomfortable if they didn't fly so fast and take place in show biz, satirizing a community that is uniformly crazy while being both hypersensitive and brutally mercenary and calloused.

So far as I know, the show is written by a Benneton conglomerate of top notch New England joke slingers. Something in the show, in the dialog and the "wacky" situations, is almost unbearably misanthropic. This is impossible to overlook without the active participation of Tracey, himself a brilliant racist caricature. What goes on there? It is strange and beyond my comprehension. Donald Glover came through the show in its better years. In this episode, Hannibal Burress, current in-house black comic genius, had a walk-on as a prison inmate Jack was going to put in a Trading Places kind of scenario.

Why is this how they put Hannibal into the show for a single line of dialog? This is a cartoon show, but every cartoon beyond the single comedy writer lady trying to have it all and the bluebood titan of industry forces its characters into buffoonery, malice, criminality, and so on and so on. So of course it is funny. Funny and deeply troubling. There is no black male life in 30 Rock between Harvard snob, celebrity lunatic, and criminal/homeless. That is the triangle, and within it, a void. Gay men don't fare much better.

Unless they are played by Will Arnett, who is always a delight here, reducing Alec Baldwin to gossiping like a schoolgirl. Even better are the schoolboy imagination games they play in confrontations, this time jockeying for metaphorical roles in "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".

Very funny episode, and not as egregiously hateful as the show can be (which is still pretty egregious). They seem to think the LA uprising is a good setting for a cutaway flashback, which it could have been if it meant more than a lame "out-of-towner-in-LA-doesn't-know-how-to-refer-to-the-freeway" gag (okay, still funny thanks to Fey's performance).

Beneath all this ranting about the hate coursing through 30 Rock's well-educated witty veins, I think the problem is I don't give a rat's ass anymore. Liz and Jack have a nice dynamic, and everything else is a vehicle for laughs and zaniness, which hit hard once but have a bitter aftertaste. Maybe I shouldn't speak since I haven't rewatched an episode in a year or so (not like my glorious love affair with the program in season 3).

But back to the hatestream. I'm mad at it, because it is messing up my default love of Tina Fey. And my type adoration of the pretty smart girl with glasses. The show avoids a lot of questioning on the front of its queasy regard of society beyond this rarified existence. Because we all know it is smarter and prettier than us and will embarass us if we dare question it.

I've granted the show enough satire licences. Truth is it hates (and not in that delightful Virginia way). I'm sure it hates you, too, and has a lot of cruel, brilliant gags to throw at yr lifestyle and demographic. And you should love it because it is presided over by a lovable mess of a clever lady.

Still, very funny.

Well that's Dallas

The Office

Yeah, I cried a little, so what? Yr heart's made of stone?

So the exit strategy is official for the moment. Michael Scott should be marrying Holly Flax and heading up to Colorado to help look after her parents. This was set up well. Michael has no idea how real humans talk, so he's going from notions he's picked up from his still juvenile media intake, and he makes an awkward call to Holly's father to request approval to propose to her.

Remember when Pam was the receptionist? When transferring calls, she would fake him out and let him work out his first greeting instinct, which would usually involve mean-spirited sarcasm and/or a bad impression. Of course, calling Holly's dad, he opens up by insulting her and threatening to fire her. Then he asks the real question. Then we learn he was talking to voicemail.

The fallout of this indelicate message, when Holly hears back from her parents, is her realization that her father is beginning to suffer from senility if not outright dementia. Even in a delightful episode such as this, good Office always leavens the merriment with something real.

Oh, yeah, the delight! The staff is holding a garage sale in the warehouse amidst the big proposal plotline. Oscar gets to pawn off all of his Will & Grace crap that was mistakedly given to him as gifts. Ryan relishes bragging about conning his mom into preparing foodstuffs that he has now bottled for sale. Also, he has appropriated the likenesses of Phyllis and Oscar in his packaging. I rilly love writer BJ Novak's portrayal of Ryan, quietly shifting through the seasons into several shades of douche (excepting his glorious star arc in season 4 climaxing in "Night Out").

Dwight masterfully scams all of his co-workers through trade. One weakness he notes is Ryan's misuse of co-worker's faces, and he uses this to trade Stanley's photo album to him. Dwight works his way from a thumbtack to a telescope, which Jim manages to trade from him for a bag of magic beans.

This season has been a bit off as the writers deal with Carrell's impending exit and try to shift to the rest of the cast, but it has been doing better lately. The highlight of the garage sale plotline was Darryl, Andy and Kevin staking money on Dallas (the TV show): The Board Game. Darryl and Andy as a team are a recent surprise. It turns out Darryl, following up on his occasional role with Michael, rilly takes to mentoring dim white men. Kevin slides in easily as he jammed with them on the novelty frog song earlier this year and he has a gambling problem. He gets to give good exasperated victim through much of the game before sneaking away with victory. "Well that's Dallas" becomes The Office's equivilant to "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown".

Incidentally, I hope Michael Scott burns something down before he leaves our lives. Preferably Utica. To the ground. We almost have this pleasure tonight before Pam intervenes. Michael's first proposal gesture involves sloppy gasoline writing very close to the office building and the automobiles of its workers. Pam is still very good at being a maternal firewall for Michael's most destructive instincts.

Speaking of that bitch, she's not as much of a bitch anymore. After her initial vulnerability and sadness, Pam had a period with Jim as the smuggest asshole couple in the paper company. Now that child rearing and grown up bills have humbled them, Pam has returned to lovability as the office manager, a title she fraudelently created for herself. She even organizes the office to help Michael craft a more sensible proposal plan.

This is where the (slight, I promise) crying comes. Michael takes Holly on a walk through the building, up and into the office. Along the way, he points out the moments he and we remember. Some that he didn't see (Toby's announcement that he's leaving for Costa Rica). Some that we didn't see (those two crazy kids have done some sweet and freaky things up and down the staircase). Some more memories as we stroll through The Office proper. Then they get to stroll past the cast fake proposing (I would also pay to see an Angela-Holly erotic encounter).

Yes, this is fan service, but it is fan service done well in comparison to "Threat Level Midnight" earlier this season. Finally, Michael does get to start his fire in a way. Several candles surround Holly's desk when he finally gets down on one knee and presents his awesome ring to her (he went by the "three years' salarie" rule). The sprinklers go on and our favorite lovers kiss soaked after a proposal spoken in some strange Yoda-Kermit-? language only they get.

This show loves showered proposals, because a loving couple making out in the rain (or the sprinklers) is beautiful. So beautiful that the supporting cast, acting as our surrogates, can't help but eavesdrop and barge in for hugs and high five/fist bump miscalculations. Then the news that Michael will be leaving shocks them. As it did us.

raise yr swords

Jim Jarmusch is an adored figure, but he runs hot and cold with me. His movies are uniformly gorgeous, so that's a plus. He creates profound cultural juxtapositions in the form of deadpan comic sketches, which is nice. Occasionally, however, I just get the impression that he has thrown together different hipster* archetypes or cultural anomalies and had them pause interminably between dull, flat statements as a default formula for "understated comedy".

This is not the case for the one movie of his I consider a classic, 1999's Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai. This gem does everything a Jarmusch joint is supposed to do. It incorporates an original score by a modern master (RZA here, who also gets the best 30-second walk-on ever as "Samurai in Camouflage", a role he embodies effortlessly). This score oddly suits an unlikely tapestry of characters with specific cultural settings and affectations. In this case, Forest Whitaker leads as an urban bear living in a shack on a tenement rooftop keeping a pigeon coop and living by the code of the samurai.

Also the retainer Ghost Dog has selected is a flunky Italian mobster in a floundering crime family. And his best friend is a black immigrant ice cream vendor who only speaks and understands French. As they talk, not understanding each other, they consistently are saying and thinking the same things. The way events transpire have both Ghost Dog and the crime family passing their torch to young women in a feminist touch that was sneakily always there.

In any case, one of the greatest services a Jarmusch movie does for me is inevitably teaching me some cool old shit that I never would have taken the initiative to look up on my own. The movie is framed around quotes from Hagakure: Book of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo. From these leaves:

Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall, there was this one: "Matters of great concern should be treated lightly." Master Ittei commented, "Matters of small concern should be treated seriously."

We here at Fat Little Monkey are many things. None of us all of them, but all pertaining to most of us. Pop culture junkies. Seasoned drinkers. Compulsive liars. Children of hip hop. Flowers in the attic. Virginians. Haters. Lovers. ELO fans. Plenty of other things that will come to light as we bloom. We are all willing to write at the risk of inviting accusations of frivolity and irrelevance. This pop culture shit is real for us. Personally, if I write at length on my stories (mostly NBC's Thursday night sitcoms), please know that I take it as seriously as yr lonely, aged, single aunt takes her daily soaps.

I take it as seriously as a heart attack (which I don't take terribly seriously, so it goes). This pop culture infatuation is a way of getting at something (and everything potentially). Like all forms of art and life and philosophy, it all winds up becoming an ether of referents through which we can express ourselves without even knowing what we're saying about ourselves. Pop happens to be a pool we like to swim in. I hope you might join us...the water's warm, Lisa.

And what of the name? What does it all mean? What is it about? These are questions I dodge, sometimes artlessly. The public craves definitions and parameters, but it also demands prequels and tell-alls that it ends up gagging on. I don't want to say what this Fat Little Monkey is. I will share that it hopes to include writers we like writing what they like. Still, I don't want to take anything away from any image or feeling that name gives you. Yes, I know it's likely to involve a portly, diminutive primate.

If you take anything from the Fat Little Moniker, take this: this thing is alive, with all of the thrill and frustration that entails. The Fat Little Brand is in its infancy, and will grow and transmogrify until it dies, spectacularly or in a slow burn of mundane anticlimax. It's a living thing. It's a terrible thing to lose.

*We here at Fat Little Monkey have no negative baggage with the term "hipster". I use it here for lack of a better word due to my limited imagination. For anybody still caught raging against "hipsters" (which is so 2002 anyway), just know that yr resentment tacitly makes you one of them. That's not a problem for us. Is it for you? Ask yrself why then go cry in the shower.