It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

Would we drink coffee with Jon Stewart?

Kristy: I’m really kind of shocked this one hasn’t come up before. I actually did a search before writing this, because although I couldn’t remember doing one, it seemed we must have. But if we have, I can’t find it.

The short answer is: Hell yes. How could I not? He’s that William and Mary alumni that gave all the rest of us hope that we might actually be cool some day. And not cool in the frat boy, business major kind of way, because those of us who weren’t that already had no desire to be. Cool in that smart, funny, people listen to me and love me kind of way. There are a lot of things I love about Mr. Stewart. He brings the funny and knows how to use humor to call attention to things that need it and to elevate the conversation. I love that he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously. These things would be enough to make me buy him a cup of coffee. But I’d also sit down with him for a cup because there are things I’d love to ask him: What’s the truth behind his time at W&M? He’s alluded several times to not being happy during that time, was it the general pressure cooker that is W&M or was there something else? None of my business, but that doesn’t matter at the Spacial Anomaly Coffee Bar and Refueling station. I’d love random gossip about what the people he’s worked with over the years are really like. I’d love to know his actual opinions on current events. And just in case he ever misses the ‘Burg, I’d bring him ginger cakes and maybe even a Cheese Shop sandwich.

Cammy:  Oh, hell yeah!  As Kristy said, how could I not?  We owe him coffee for giving us hope.  And it would be interesting to find out how he feels about being the bench mark for W&M students to aspire to (move over, TJ).  I’d like to get his stories of the most surprisingly funny interview-ees.  He’s nerd enough that he’s interviewed a lot more than just entertainment personalities, so which of those writers, politicians, historians, etc. really caught him off-guard with their ability to banter back?   I also need to apologize for hating his guts for the first 6 months he was doing The Daily Show (I was a fan back in the Craig Kilborn days and was pissed when Kilborn left.  I took it out on the new guy.  Until I realized the new guy was way funnier).

I couldn’t think of anyone to have coffee with off the top of my head today, so went with my standard brainstorming strategy of checking Wikipedia’s “born on this day” list and learned today was the birthday of this historic Josiah Bartlett, signer of the US Declaration of Independence.  I’ll be honest, I know nothing about him except what I’ve already written.  But that did make me think of another Josiah Bartlett that would be perfect for this feature.

Would we drink coffee with President Josiah Bartlett from The West Wing?

Kristy:  Yes.  And it doesn’t even have anything to do with his political views (though he and I are fairly well aligned in that department).  I want to have coffee with him because he’s a big ol’ nerd.  Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, speaks five languages, and makes frequent historical and literary references?  Yes, please!  You just know the man could keep up with just about any conversation topic you threw at him.  Also he’s a storyteller, which means that coffee with him is bound to include fantastic tales of a fictional White House, meetings with world leaders, and the Bartlett family.  Finally, but possibly most importantly, the man knows how to bring the funny.  And you know I love the funny.

Cammy:  Sure why not?  First off, we haven’t had coffee with anyone fictional in a while, so that’s a nice change.  Second, I don’t think I’ll have to say much.  Pretty sure he can get going on a lecture and run with it.  While I don’t align with him politically, neither did Ainsley Hayes and she seemed okay with him.  He’s more than just a story teller, the man is a walkin’ book of fun facts.  Like Wikipedia on legs–and who doesn’t love Wikipedia?!?!?  Sure, I may feel stupid for the majority of the get together, but I’ll probably walk away with some serious fodder for my next dinner party.  And, as Kristy said, with this guy, you know at least some of it will be funny.

I promise, barring a conference emergency, this is my last conference related post for a while.  But I thought it might be of interest to some of our readers to hear my strategies for conference presentations.  Or more to the point, how vapid and superficial I can be.

Now professional conferences are a chance for working scholars to share and get feedback on their research.  It’s how you find out what’s going on in the cutting edge of your field.  It’s also a chance to hear leaders in your field, which can be incredibly inspiring (and provide connections for future jobs).

But I’m not leader in my field.  My research isn’t particularly cutting edge.  And a lot of the times it’s on a somewhat obscure subject.  I could beat myself up over all this stuff, but the truth is, there’s a limit to how much control over all that I have.  So my strategy is twofold:  I try to insert humor whenever possible and I make sure I look cute (as cute as I can… I’m not saying I’m all that).

The second part was advice from one of my advisers (who I must say, practices what she preaches).  The first part is… well you know I like the funny.  I think “If you can’t be interesting, be funny” are words to live by.  And I try to.  I discovered today that my friend J follows a similar strategy.  When I commented on what a bad strategy it might be, he said, “Look the bottom line is, at a certain point during conferences where people lose their ability to process theoretical material.  But they can always tell whether your blazer fits and your shoes are snazzy.”  (Honestly, I think there are a lot of people out there who don’t notice what anyone’s wearing, but that’s another matter).

Truth be told, I don’t know if any of this works on my audience.  But I know that it works on me.  I’m much more comfortable being funny than being deep.  And wearing a cute pair of tights, snazzy heels and a nice pencil skirt really does make me stand a little taller. Literally and figuratively.  It makes me more comfortable up there, which probably makes me more articulate.  And maybe, just maybe makes me more fun to listen to.

Or maybe not.  This year an older gentleman began snoring loudly during my paper.  But at least that brought the funny.

Would we drink coffee with Weird Al?

Cammy:  I found myself bopping at my desk today to “White and Nerdy.”  For some reason, it’s just been a while since I’ve listened to Weird Al, and I was struck again by how entertaining and clever his stuff is.  This, combined with the fact that Kristy and I had once decided back in college that Weird Al is one of those celebrities that would be cool enough to hang out with to mock TV and play table-top games*, yes, we are go for coffee.  Smart, funny people like him, who are observant enough and creative enough to remix and mold pop songs into coherent comedy pieces are exactly the kind of people you want to hang out with because they are likely to come up with something new and hilarious while sitting there with a hot beverage.   Y’don’t quiz people like this on their inspiration, you just watch it unfold and hope you can contribute enough to the conversation to maintain the roll of the funny.

Kristy:  Abso-fraggin-lutely.  This is an appropriate choice for the evening, because I was polka-ing earlier this evening.  The man is kind of a wonder if you think about it; I don’t think a lot of people take him very seriously, but at then end of the day, the man is a talented musician, a witty lyricist, and he has staying power most pop stars would kill for.  And did I mention he brings the funny?  I also appreciate that he brings the funny without ever being mean.  He just seems like someone who would be fun to hang out with.  Someone it would be fun to watch do the most basic things.  Here’s hoping coffee lasts a long time.

*Note that in the MTVMPB world, this kind of hanging out with games and TV requires a level of coolness above and beyond just coffee.

I strongly suspect that many of our readers are already familiar with this week’s time vampire.  It’s even been linked in our comments once.  But I discovered a few days ago to my great horror that friend of the blog Mary had not been introduced.  I felt like I had failed as a friend.  So lest we fail any of our other readers here’s a delightful little Time Vampire:

The Sassy Gay Friend

In a nutshell it’s a series of videos focusing on moments in literature and history when characters make really bad decisions and hypothesizing how things might have ended different if said character had a sassy gay friend.  (spoiler:  Sassy Gay Friend always makes things better).  Yes, recent videos are sponsored by Mio (I haven’t tried Mio, but it contains sucralose and is therefore evil), but they are still amusing.  I love them because not only do they bring the funny, they bring the smart funny.  They poke fun at absurd moments in literature which people never talk about (SGF to Juliet:  You took a rufee from a priest!).  Also they are full of allusions to other literary works (I don’t want to remember that night I spent with Bob Marley).  They’re the kind of videos that simultaneously amuse you and make you feel smart because you actually did your English homework.

The nice thing about this Time Vampire is that it’s not going to suck away too much of your time.  There aren’t that many videos and (sadly) new ones aren’t released that often and none of them are more than a few minutes long.  But warning:  watching one will probably result in you needing to watch them all.  And even once you’ve watched them all they may become a minor addiction.  Not so much an addiction as that thing you turn to when you get down.  “Man, I’m sad.  I’m going to have to watch some Sassy Gay Friend.”

A final warning to our readers:  There are a lot of imitators out there.  And to some extent, who can blame them?  I mean, just yesterday Mary and I were speculating on how Eowyn might have benefited from the help of a Sassy Gay Friend.  (Though just now we have decided that Boromir would have benefitted from one even more)  The difference between us and them is we respect the SGF enough not to make a poorly done and not all that funny Sassy Gay Friend:  Lord of the Rings on our own.  So we strongly recommend that you not watch any Sassy Gay Friends that do not work for Second City.

What, what, what are you doing?

Tonight’s Time Vampire comes via a colleague of mine who linked it on Facebook (yes, I know Cammy, it’s a scary place and I shouldn’t go there).  I love this time vampire because it’s updated frequently and consistently brings the funny.

I hate this Time Vampire because it’s frequently updated and consistently brings the funny.  Which means that every time I’m desiring a little procrastination, it provides.  I’ve become quite the junkie.

This vamp is called Damn You Auto Correct! Basically it consists of funny autocorrects from text messages on iPhones.  I’ll confess that having never used an iPhone myself, I don’t quite get it.  My desperately in need of updating cell phone doesn’t have autocorrect.  Any mistakes in my text messages are my own.  Apparently the iPhone feature is malicious?  I don’t know.  I don’t get how it makes some of the corrections it does, but I hope they never fix it.  Because in its present form it’s providing me with lots of funny.  However, my productivity will go way up if they do manage to create a more efficient feature.

Tonight’s Time Vampire isn’t exactly a ravenous one.  It’s just a little guy, so it can’t eat up too much of your time.  But we all know how little bits of time slurpage can add up.

Also, you all need to know about this one because it brings the funny.

I was introduced to Dear Girls Above Me by a colleague.  Can’t remember why she brought it up, but she did and then I had to google it.  Then I had to check it every day.  Then I had to read the archive. Then I remembered that there were important things I was supposed to be doing.  Then I kept reading through the archive instead of doing them.

The premise (and you all should know by now that I don’t care whether it’s true as long as it’s funny.  But I would guess this is true) is that the author, Charlie McDowell (son of actors Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen I’ve recently discovered) (more importantly cousin of Dr. Bashir), posts crazy things he hears from the girls who live above him.  Then he adds short commentary.  Then I snicker.  Or stare in horror (seriously, these girls are not just annoying, they’re annoying and weird.  In a bad way).

The bite on this vamp is small since most of the posts are twitter sized and it’s not always updated daily (what?  Does Charlie have better things to do than creep on his neighbors?  Doesn’t he care about us?).  And it hasn’t been around all that long so the archive will only suck away but so much of your time.  So I recommend you check it out.

Also according to IMDB Charlie and I have the same birthday.  For whatever that’s worth.

Anyway, Dear Girls Above Me has been added to my increasingly long list of sites to check when I don’t want to read about ethnography or study Russian vocab.  When I don’t know a thing about Russian by the end of the semester we’ll blame it on Charlie’s neighbors.

Tonight’s post is a quick one.  Just a guilty pleasure.  Something on the internet that amuses me.  And I’m easily amused.

In particular, I’m amused by Kevin Smith’s ongoing twitter war/fauxmance with Megan Phelps.

If somehow you’re fortunate enough to not know who Megan Phelps-Roper is, she’s the granddaughter of Fred Phelps, founder of the Westboro Baptist Church. Yes, the one’s whose url is hate speech and who protest soldier’s funerals.  I guess Megan’s the younger, hipper contingent because she spreads the WBC’s message of hate via twitter and Lady Gaga parodies.  Yeah.  I want to feel sorry for her, knowing she’s only the product of her environment and she’s been indoctrinated into what she is but… she makes it really damn hard.

I imagine given the opportunity, most of us have more than a few choice things we’d like to say to Megan and the WBC.  But let’s face it, telling them how despicable they are only fuels their fire.  I think Kevin Smith has hit on a better tactic.

He flirts with her.  Every time she tweets some kind of criticism of him or announces the WBC will be picketing one his events, he acts like she’s hitting on him.  He responds by gently chiding her with the fact that he’s married.  Then he offers to see if he can talk his wife into a three way.  Then he offers to share his pot with her.  It’s basically a fifth grade technique (albeit with slightly more adult content), but I like it anyway.  I don’t think any of its going to change her mind or make a difference.  Megan seems pretty set in her ways, though she is young, so there might be hope.  And honestly, I think she likes the attention.  But whatever.

What I care about is it makes me snicker.  And it’s the end of the semester, and I need all the laughs I can get.

So thank you Mr. Smith—you’ve brought the funny yet again.

Would we drink coffee with Anna Russell?

Kristy: Absofragginlutely!  Are you kidding me?  Of course, I’d drink coffee with Anna Russell!  Granted, I’m gonna go for an iced coffee because I totally anticipate it coming out my nose before the meeting is over.  We are talking about someone who was once called the funniest woman in the world.  And with good reason.

My main source of knowledge about Ms. Russell comes from a podcast of an interview with Shelagh Rogers that Cammy put on a CD for me.  At the time of the interview Anna Russell was already in her 80s and still feisty and hysterically funny.  Totally the kind of old lady I want to be.  It’s also amazing to think of all the things she lived through and everything she achieved as a woman from her time.  The entertainment business is still male dominated and comedy even moreso.  I’d love to hear her take on the business and all that.  Plus, think about people watching with this woman!  Basically… I just want to listen to her while trying to not snarf my coffee.

Cammy: YES!  Anna Russell is hi-frackin-larious and absolutely brilliant.  I was introduced to her by the same Shelagh Rogers podcast I shared with Kristy–CBC Sound’s Like Canada’s Digital Extra.

Her best known work is basically turning classical music into sketch comedy.  Her most famous piece–and one included in the Digital Extra–was The Ring of the Niebelungs (An Analysis) which crams the entire Wagner Ring Cycle into a 30 minute sketch that nearly made me pee my pants laughing, and yet, was basically spot on to that massive operatic work.  And it’s not just verbal–Russell was a trained and talented musician who basically give you a greatest hits collection.  If you know Wagner, you’ll find it hilarious, and if you’re new to opera you will find it far less intimidated after this, I guarantee.  And that kind of broad appeal is evidence that this woman was made of awesome.

But more than her work, the interview revealed that this woman was just as much of an entertaining character in real life as on stage.  She treats the telling of her own life story with the same kind of hilarity as the telling of the Niebelung Saga.  And with the kind of history she has (involvement in the early days of radio, doing time in an English boarding school, immigrating to Canada….) the wealth of information she could turn into gut-busting comedic performance over coffee is basically endless.   She claims more than once in her telling of the Niebelung Saga “I’m not making this up, you know!” — she doesn’t need to make it up, because she makes it funny.

Kristy: I just feel like one of us needs to say, “But that’s the beauty of grand opera–you can do anything so long as you sing it!”

It’s midsemester.  Otherwise known as the season where I start having thoughts like, “If I were in jail, no one could make me finish this paper.”  And then I start genuinely pondering what I could do to get me sent to jail, just long enough to avoid the rest of the semester.  And due to a couple other things I won’t go into, I’ve kind of been in a rotten mood.  A mood that was saved by this week’s time vampire.

I don’t have any personal beef with “mommy bloggers.”  I even know a few.  I think they’re swell.  I imagine.  I have to be honest, I’ve only sampled them.  ‘Cause for an outsider… well, their appeal is limited.  I can see where for mothers of small children it’s probably helpful to hear from other mothers of small children and get advice, know they’re not alone, etc.  But you have to wonder sometimes, how do their kids feel about being used for social networking?

Enter Bedtimes are for Suckers which one of my online friends linked last week.  This blog is run by four-year-old Lily, who’s determined to show the other side of the story.  Lily counters her mother’s mommy blog and lets us know what kids are really thinking.  For someone who’s twenty-six years away from preschool years, it’s enlightening.  Now I understand how difficult it is for children to have their parents rifle through their candy on Halloween.  And how munchkins manipulate adults.  And that there are others who lie awake at night wondering what will happen if the world runs out of cake.

Okay, okay, so the real reason I like this time vampire should be obvious by now.  Lily brings the funny.  In quantities so large the belie her small size.  And this week, I’ve really needed a laugh.  So I haven’t had a lot of time for the vampires to suck away, but I gladly let Lily suck a bit of it up.  She deserved it.