Don't Ban Tracy Morgan From TV. Ban America From Comedy Clubs.

Hey, Offended America.. do you have a moment?

I deny neither your right to be offended by Mr. Morgan's use of the "R" word, nor your admirable desire to see that word disappear from common discourse.

But you walk a very dangerous line by calling for the head of a comic whose utterances were confined to a club stage. Comedy is not always about safely providing chuckles to the masses. Sometimes it's about walking the razor's edge between the safety of what is publicly said and rawness of what is privately thought, however wince-inducing those thoughts might be. Sometimes it's about rooting out absurdity via shock tactics.

Should rape jokes have no home on stage? What about the "N" word? Pedophilia? If so, then, by all means, let's also send brilliant comics like Louis CK, Chris Rock and Lewis Black into therapy as well.

The Plagues: Rated G

While not a religious woman, my mother felt that the time was right to host a Passover Seder dinner for our family. It's appropriate, thought she, to give my children an understanding of some important Jewish traditions, whether we "believed" them or not. I agreed.

To give the event a bit of verisimilitude -- separating it from the standard-issue gorge fest that is most family meals -- she and my father lit candles, told the story of the holiday, served a huge meal sans hog or leavened bread, hid the matzah and asked the four questions (in short: why is this night different, why no bread, why bitter herbs, what's up with the double-dip?)

Of course, what would a celebration of Jewish heritage be without some discomfort? That came, with some level of intensity, in the form of the "Bag of Passover Enrichment Toys For Kids," which until that point had been unopened. What spilled out when the drawstring was pulled? Among other things:

• The ten plagues finger puppets, one miniaturized catastrophe for every little finger


• The "death of the first born" jigsaw puzzle, featuring a grieving Egyptian mother standing over her prone child
  

I don't know what's worse, the Old Testament barbarity or its Disneyfication.

Curiouser and Curiouser

The new Alice in Wonderland is tedious, poorly staged and unimaginatively shot. In other words, it's another of many misfires from critics' darling Tim Burton. Burton typically has interesting ideas that are undone by his formal inadequacies as a director and a storyteller (among other problems, his scenes are never fluid, always relying on two-shot edits, and his films run on at least 20 minutes too long). But Alice is bereft even of any good ideas, unless you count his tweaking of the narrative from its original "journey of the innocent" to "return of the teen feminist." But even here, the title character is mostly a cipher, blandly reacting to the "wacky" supporting characters who are rendered mostly in cheap, jerky CGI. Worse, Burton's desperation to make the material more "edgy" leads him to paint every scene in grim palettes of grays and plums. Since 3D glasses tend to darken the frame by about 20%, everything is even muddier than intended. You used to at least be able to count on Burton for a florid, lovely-at-the-edges mise-en-scène. Not anymore. As for the rest Burton's oeuvre, it's pocked with similar sloppiness and unrealized possibilities. A closer look at two of his most celebrated films...

Edward Scissorhands.
Arguably Burton's most championed work, the film has a lot going for it. The cotton candy vision of suburbia was quite new in its time, before derivative crap like Cat in the Hat made it cliché. And Johnny Depp's performance remains the finest of his career -- innocence and loss perfectly realized in his pinched, silent-era expressions. Buster Keaton would be proud. But the critical giltterati chose to ignore the embarrassing final half hour in which the neighborhood bully, played with a fat layer of "must-rid-myself-of-16 Candles-awkwardness" ham by Anthony Michael Hall, gets in a deadly confrontation with Edward. All warmth and ingenuity are drained away as Burton hastily solves all problems with a standard-issue bad guy death. What a shame.

Batman.
This late 80s hit could have been so much better. Burton clearly wanted to get back to the darkness of Bob Kane's original comic book series. But he couldn't completely escape a fondness for the "POW! SPLAT!" campy essence of the 60s television series. The result was a confused mess (as opposed to Christopher Nolan's brilliant films with Christian Bale). Burton got things right with the casting of Michael Keaton and the fetid stench of Gotham City's police corruption. He got things wrong with Jack Nicholson, whose performance went squarely for the Burgess Meredith/Frank Gorshin paradigm. Still, the biggest problem with Batman remains Burton's biggest problem as a director. He cannot stage an action sequence, even a little bit. When Batman takes "flight" or chases down a villain, the scene demands a fluidity and elegance commensurate with Anton Furst's grand guignol production design. Unfortunately, Burton resorts to inset cuts (see Batman lifting off, cut to his feet landing) which effectively kills rhythm and detonates the main character's almost superhuman physicality.

I have far more hope for Burton's next film, Frankenweenie, an allegedly animated remake of his cute 1984 short film. Pure animation, as opposed to the hybrid mess of AIW, clearly relaxes Burton. In this world, where he started his career as a Disney concept artist, he finds the emotional fringes of his characters. That's why The Corpse Bride remains Burton's best work.

Sometimes, it takes the stroke of a pen and the tap of a computer to find the beat of a heart.

Regressive

Every family has one. The "crazy aunt," now in her mid-40's but clinging to what's left of her youth like a whelping puppy to its mother's teet. Her attempts to appear physically and spiritually in her 20's take on tragic forms. She pitches her voice at a glass-cracking frequency to maintain an outwardly wacky joie de vivre that masks the budding desperation inside. Worst of all, she wears flame red lipstick and caked eyeshadow that would have seemed garish decades ago.

Apparently, the marketing whizzes at Progressive Car Insurance thought: that's our spokesperson!

Have you seen these irritating, ubiquitous spots? Set in an oddly Matrix-like "store," they feature clueless insurance "shoppers" who need the spastic guidance of Flo, the Progressive shopkeeper. Flo alternately educates, pumps up and gently chides them. But instead of comic warmth with an edge, Flo exudes screechy silliness...nothing more.

Even on their own terms, the Progressive commercials don't make a lot of sense. Consider the one where an increasingly excited customer shouts "yes!" after every discount benefit question. It ends with:

Flo: "Isn't getting discounts great?"
Customer: "YES!!!"
Flo (now taken aback by his enthusiasm): "There's no discount for agreeing with me."
Customer: "I got carried away."
Flo" "Happens to me all the time!"

What happens to you? You get carried away...errr... agreeing with yourself? If so, why admonish the customer's enthusiasm if you're guilty of it all the time? Flo (and her campaign) deserve to be dumped in the same advertising graveyard populated by Herb from Burger King and Joe Isuzu.

Nobody Cares

Nobody cares about the "really weird" dream you had last night.
Dreams are completely random images and sounds caused by neuronal firings in the brain. In other words, they are surreal by definition. So, no, your dream was not different or interesting or “weird” (what a ghastly, unimaginative words that is). In fact, the only dream of note would be one steeped in normalcy. And, by the way, your dream also has no deep meaning…at least not in the banal “Intro to Psychology” way you think it does. In the mid-70s, the activation-synthesis scientific theory negated Freud’s ridiculous assumption that dreams are “subconscious wishes to be interpreted.” In the end, a tunnel is a tunnel, a flower is a flower and a murder is a murder.

Nobody cares about your status in FarmVille.
This game allows members of Facebook to manage a virtual farm by planting, growing and harvesting virtual crops and trees, and raising livestock. I don't happen to play FarmVille. Know why? BECAUSE I'M NOT SEVEN YEARS OLD. Even worse than grown men and women playing pretend farm is the fact that they post their minute-by-minute pretend farm status. So in order to get to a worthwhile item on Facebook (few and far between anyway) I have to fight through dozens of messages like: "Deb just harvested her chicken coop and found some Treasured Golden Mystery Eggs, and wants to thank her friends for feeding the chickens!" and "Vicki noticed that her crops are a bit on the dry side because they haven't been fertilized yet!"

Playing children's game all day, eh Vicki? Can't imagine why your "crops" are dry.

Hardcourt Rituals

Yes, the NBA's outside shooting continues its decades-long erosion thanks to the steady influx of high schoolers. Yes, the trash talking, shirt popping and chest pounding have grown to epidemically thuggish heights. But we'll save the social commentary for another day and, instead, focus on two much smaller NBA items -- rituals, if you will -- that are teeth-gnashingly irritating.

The Free Throw Gathering.
A player is fouled in the act of shooting. He goes to the "charity stripe." He shoots the first of two free throws. He either makes or misses the shot. Is the ball then immediately returned to him for the second shot? No. First, said shooter must be surrounded by his other four teammates who pat him on the head, back and ass, bump his fists and offer words of wisdom. Why? If the foulee misses the shot, does he really need to be somethered with rhythm-busting encouragement? If he makes it, are congratulations really in order? This is, after all, a completely uncontested, 15-foot shot that professional basketball players should make at an 80% clip. Enough already.

The Swatted Shot Celebration.
Need evidence that we're at the apex of the "look at me" era in sports? Look no further than the state of the blocked shot. There's no denying that the act is a thing of beauty -- stunning leaps, stretched limbs, halted ball trajectory. But here's the thing: unless the ball is secured afterward, the blocker has done his team virtually no favor at all. Bill Russell, the former Celtic great, probably blocked more shots than any other player in history (such records have only been kept since the 70s). But he definitely kept more blocks in play, thus giving his team possession of the ball. Today's shot blocking "specialists" are too enamored with the spectacle of the ball being swatted into the tenth row to worry about such trivial things. Who cares if the other team gets the ball back? I get to wag my finger, roar and watch the crowd salivate!

Battle won. War lost.

Skates + Death + Olympics = NBC Heaven

When the mother of Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette died of a heart attack shortly after arriving in Vancouver to see her daughter's Olympic performance, you knew what was coming: epic pathos milking. And NBC did not disappoint. Consider:

• Color analyst Sandra Bezic, the queen of pretentious over-enunciation, declaring that Ms. Rochette is both the "daughter of Canada" and the "daughter of the Olympics," is an "incomparably courageous soul," and "made magic on the ice." True, if magic involves double-footing multiple landings.
• Scott Hamilton, whose voice registers higher than a shitzu's yelp, weeping his way through two days of analysis and stating that this performance was "not about medals." Please. The only way Ms. Rochette would not have earned a medal was if her routine involved urinating on the maple leaf flag.
• Meredith Vieira, "View" yacker turned Today Show co-host, informing Ms. Rochette that her mother is "definitely smiling down upon [her]." Of course she isn't, for two reasons: 1) the dead do not "live on;" 2) if they did, abusive parents of skaters would still never smile, particularly when their daughters only earn bronze.

Here's an idea: instead of fetishizing death, NBC should, just once, give the public a brief education on the baffling difference between a salchow, toe loop, lutz and axel.

The Clinical Definition of "Sex Addiction"

Being a male.

3rd Quarter Joy

The most sublime moment of the Super Bowl telecast was not the successful outcome of Sean Payton's kamikaze onside kick call; it was not the sight of Drew Brees holding his bewildered, oddly named son, Baylen, aloft at the game's conclusion; it was not The Who's mix-master performance of "Pinball Baba O' Blue Eyes Fooled Again."

It was a commercial. From Google. And it is the best, most perfectly realized piece of television advertising in over a decade.

Consider the run of juvenile spots that surrounded Google's 3rd quarter oasis: castrated men, pantsless office workers, stunted beer drinkers, whorish women (thanks, GoDaddy.com) and, of course, tired anthropomorphism (fiddling beavers, vengeful dogs, talking flowers, screaming chickens). These derivative, desperate attempts at "entertainment" have only a passing connection to the products they represent, and, worse, wouldn't stand out on an average WB sitcom.

Now take a close look at Parisian Love, Google's brilliantly simple 60-second story. Yes, I said story. Because what Google does that's so revolutionary by today's bombastic, set-up/punchline standards is to convey a full narrative arc -- nothing less than the romantic life of a young, then not so young, man -- entirely through the use of its own search engine. And because there are no actors nor settings, we are drawn in even further to flesh out the story ourselves. That is advertising at its most elemental and beautiful.

Closed-Captioned For the Seeing Impaired

As my beloved Philadelphia Eagles plod to their inexorably mediocre finish, I’m distressed that my travel schedule will force me to see most games on the televisions of our country’s bars and restaurants. It’s not the quality of the picture or the patrons that have me on edge (although both promise to be low-grade). It’s the closed-captioning.

Sure, when it comes to late night talk shows, sitcoms and hundreds of other programs whose currency is chatter, cc’ing is essential for our low-frequency friends. But why must we be subjected to chunky blocks of courier type dominating the screens of sporting events, for which visuals are everything? Since even the most bionic eared cannot hear the announcers at crowded eateries anyway, closed-captioning hurts everyone.

And, for the love of Christ, if we must endure closed-captioning, hire a stenographer! If I read one more “Touchtown!” or other typographical monstrosity, I’m hurling my bar nuts at the screen.

The Double Entendre Is Not the Funny Part

Late last night, during a somnambulant round of Comcast channel surfing, I came across a movie called “Big and Hairy.” As it turned out, the title was not the funny, nor titillating, part.

“Big and Hairy,” I quickly learned, is a sub-mental, 1998 made-for-TV movie starring former Walton, Richard Thomas and featuring a character named Picasso Dewlap. So why bring up this relic, if not to snicker at its masturbatory title? Because, patient reader, the description of the movie turned out to be the most inadvertently hilarious bit of copy I’ve read in years. Here it is, word for word:

“A boy recruits a young Bigfoot onto his basketball team, with unforeseen consequences.”

This transcendent little sentence gave way to a cascade of questions:

• Why was it only after Bigfoot joined the basketball team that “unforeseen” events occurred?
• Wouldn’t unforeseen-moment-number-one be the mere presence of a 10-foot beast?
• Don’t unforeseen consequences require a control group of seen consequences?
• If so, where is the history of Sasquatch hardwood action from whence to draw comparisons?
• In this vein, what could possibly be unforeseen – that he only pulled down 15 rebounds per game? That his outside shot was a bit flat?
• Ultimately, wouldn’t the only unforeseen consequence be Bigfoot not ripping the limbs from every opposing player?

This Year's Overrated "It" Comedy

An elderly man's lumpy, cellulite-ridden body. Three men getting tasered in the head and balls... by children! Characters endlessly screaming "We're fucked!" or, for a change of pace, "This is fucked!" (usually uttered by smug, charmless Bradley Cooper). The standard-issue categorization of women as Bellicose Shrews or Angelic Strippers. A swishy Chinese villain shouting broken-Engrish insults. (Race-baiting and homophobic stereotyping in a single character -- neat trick!)

For these and many other sub- 4th-grade delights, please see "The Hangover," directed by stunted hack Todd Phillips (also responsible for "Road Trip," "Starsky and Hutch" and "School for Scoundrels"). Even the laughs earned by the grandly original comic performance of Zach Galifianakis are curdled by the early admission of his character, Alan, that he "can't be within 200 yards of schools or Chuck E. Cheeses." Ick.

Only one part of "The Hangover" succeeds brilliantly, but you'll have to wait about 100 minutes to see it. An end-credits photo montage, filling in the characters' temporal blanks, reveals the circumstances by which a tiger, a baby, a run-in with Wayne Newton, a missing tooth, and other roofie-feuled mysteries came to be. What is so deeply, honestly funny about these still-lifes is the disparity between the maniacal joy of the moment and the inevitable next-morning comedown.

But more than that, photographs are the ultimate distillation of time, inviting the audience to quickly absorb and flesh out what is frozen before them. And, of course, rarely is the moving picture as funny as what's in our own heads. Particularly when that moving picture is "The Hangover."

Is That a "3" or a "B"?

If the Internet has made our lives so much easier, why can I not order a pair of socks online without a PhD in Sanskrit?

The Allstate Prophet

When asked about the death of Natasha Richardson last week, fellow actor Dennis Haysbert (best known as President David Palmer in the TV series "24") said the following:

"God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. It was her time. God called her home."

Once -- just once -- I'd like to see an interviewer question this kind of offensive, stone-age nonsense. Suggested follow-ups to the smug stentor:

1) What do you mean by “handle”? Wracked with grief for the rest of your life, but short of committing suicide? That kind of “handle”?

2) Do you think a false claim that Ms. Richardson is in an invisible house in the sky offers her young sons succor, particularly the one who was with her during her tragic fall?

3) Why have you become a shill for Allstate Insurance when, by your logic, there are no accidents... only God's plan?

Irony Exposed!

"An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic ... don't you think?"
- Alanis Morisette

No, I don't.

While irony's precise meaning is difficult to pinpoint (and let's forget Socratic irony altogether), we can generally agree that it is marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent (literal) and intended meaning, whether in the form of a spoken phrase or a situation.

I bring Ms. Morisette's oldish song to the fore because it symbolizes the word's still rampant misuse. Just yesterday a colleague, referring to Thursday's plane crash in upstate New York, said "Ironic that one of the victims was a 9/11 widow." No, it is not ironic. There was no incongruity between an expectation of a reality and what actually happened. It is a coincidental shame that so much tragedy has been heaped upon one family, but far from ironic.

Similarly, a "black fly in your Chardonnay" is not within seven football fields of irony. The simplistic line is meant to cleverly juxtapose the third world and the refined. I suppose it does, in a seventh-grade-Intro-to-English-class way (see, student, if it landed in tap water it wouldn't have been such a cultural jolt!). But there's absolutely no contrast between surface and underlying meaning.

Now if I, a proud atheist, were to be struck and killed by lightning you could say that it's ironic. But since there is no God, and since all wise people know that lightning is caused by successive portions of air becoming a conductive discharge channel as the electrons and positive ions of air molecules are pulled away from each other and forced to flow in opposite directions, you'd be wrong again. So fuck off.

Those Carrots Sure Do Glisten!

Armed with my new 60", 1080P, 100,000-1 contrast-ratio television, I was abuzz with the promise of heretofore unknown high-definition delights. Replay of the Super Bowl with its reds and blacks and fireworks popping? Documentary on the rain forest, every leaf and exoskeleton tactile? Fresh print of Citizen Kane, Greg Toland's deep-focus photography revealing even more secrets? Ah...there it was. The top category in Comcast's On-Demand menu: "HD Programs." One remote click away from a world of revelatory visuals. What would be at the top of the list?

Celebrity Rehab in HD.

That's right. Chief among your HD options is this ghastly pap masquerading as docu-healing. This country's yen for the Schadenfreude Channel (stocked with exploitive garbage like Home Makeover, American Idol and The Bachelor) is bad enough. Must we also have it served with the same clarity as the BBC's Planet Earth? Yes, you thought you saw Jeff Conaway's stomach contents, Gary Busey's darting-eyes and Steven Adler's drooping mouth before...

Where's a tube TV when you need one?

You're a Fool. Literally.

On a recent Today Show, chirpy, self-loving weekend anchor Jenna Wolfe made, as the unintelligent often do, a verbal gaffe of inclusion. During one of those idiotic wildlife segments, Ms. Rose was holding a snake when the frightened reptile relieved itself on her arm. Her eloquent response: "Oh my God. It literally peed on me!"

Forget the breathless, teenage-like first part and pay close attention to her unfortunate use of the misunderstood and over-utilized adverb. "Literally" should never be used as a mere point of emphasis (it is not synonymous with "really"), nor as an intensive before a figurative expression (you can't say "I'm literally going to throw you to the wolves" unless you really are).

So, Ms. Wolfe, unless you were artfully contrasting what happened with novelistic, existential snake urination, you have blighted your show once again.

Utterances of the Damned

* I don't have the bandwidth -- A perfectly fine word for the transmission capacity of electronic communications has been transmogrified into a business cliché for personal time. Even in its correct form the word has been dying since 2005, so the unoriginality is twice as acute. The next time a colleague complains of a lack of bandwidth, might I suggest that you engage in a little wordplay of your own. Tell them that, based on their bi-weekly trip to the Macaroni Grill, they have plenty of "band width."

* There you go -- This patronizing response to another's attempt at humor is the spoken equivalent to a pat on the head (and is usually accompanied by a preening smile and a "you-da-man!" finger point). Please, either serve up a full-throttle, white-lie laugh or have the honesty to level with your office's Pauly Shore about his lack of comic skills.

* Sooner, rather than later -- Are not the final three words strongly implied by the first? Indeed, a full 75% of this bizarre expression of urgency is unnecessary. Imagine the same cadence in other situations: "This coffee's too hot, rather than cold." "Pump me harder, rather than softer!" (Apologies -- I never miss a chance to paraphrase from the late-night Cinemax classic, Shaving Ryan's Privates.)

Adjectivally Challenged

“The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
- Henry James

"The Dark Knight was awesome."
- Probably You

"Awesome" overkill started innocently, as part of the Valley zeitgeist of the early '80s. When Jeff Spicoli shouted "Awesome! Totally awesome!" in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, his was a sincere, pot-fueled burst of exuberance, a West Coast bridge to the "groovy" legacy of the '70s. His character found a comically absurdist way of reforming Henry James's beauty-is-everywhere meaning. But now the word has been drained of its glory by millions of linguistically challenged mammals who carelessly flick it in front of every item or event that induces modest pleasure.

That which truly inspires awe? The Manhattan skyline. The Grand Canyon. The sea. Birth. That which should not? Most everything else, including an over-edited superhero sequel marked by a morose lead performance. I can guarantee that your meeting was not "awesome," nor was your burger, your coffee, your friend's joke or your child's crappy 1st grade play.

Banish These Practices

* Feng Shui Consulting - Feng shui, the ancient bullshit art of arranging objects to facilitate positive "energy," has spawned that ubiquitous cottage industry: the consultant. That's right -- a few thousand dollars can earn you the services of people like Rodika Tchi (whose picture, below, is even more grating than her faux Far East moniker). According to her about.com bio, "Ms. Tchi has been feng shui consulting for numerous private residences and businesses for more than 10 years and has taught feng shui at the University of British Columbia." Taught? Feng Shui? At a University? I can only imagine their course offerings: Molecular Biology, Business Administration and The Art of Moving Your Couch Three Inches to the Left.

Rodika Tchi

* Dumping Gatorade on Winning Coaches - This annoying practice has been giving coaches hypothermia since 1985. (Sometimes worse. 72-year-old coach Coach George Allen died not long after his Long Beach State players dumped a bucket of ice-water on him following a season-ending victory.) Last year, Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers was even showered with the hideous substance on a basketball court. 1985 is the year that brought us such cultural touchstones as New Coke and Eddie Murphy's "Party All the Time." Do we really want anything else from that era to survive?

* Saying "Knock Knock" Instead of Knocking - A knock is a socially acceptable auditory intrusion. Softly saying the words as you peek into my office does not reduce its impact. It is akin to poking a goose feather at my earlobe.