Shut Your Cakehole, Caruso

Somewhere, there’s a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow missing a very solemn, very fugly leprechaun dressed in black.


If there is a more ludicrous television characterization than that of Lieutenant Horatio Caine as played by David Caruso on CSI: Miami, I haven’t seen it. For those of you who don’t watch the show, Caruso stars as the ringleader of a squad of crime scene investigators who work in and around Miami. Aside from the obvious gaffes – like, which hack writer thought the name “Horatio” would inspire anything besides eye-rolling and/or snickers? -- CSI: Miami deserves special praise for using so many formulaic ticks and gestures to flesh out Caine’s persona in lieu of any actual character development.

Caruso’s Caine is such a smug, obnoxious prick that I can’t help but wonder if Caruso is portraying him that way deliberately. He’s certainly nailed down a few gestures and mannerisms that just annoy the living shit out of me – so much so that I get a masochistic thrill out of watching the show just so I can see how many times in any given episode that, for example, Caruso puts his hands on his hips, turns his head so he’s not directly looking at any other actor and then delivers his portentous pronouncements as if he’s some brilliant, infallible, inscrutable cross between Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Spock and Socrates. If you’ve ever seen one of these instances of TV magic and not felt an immediate urge to bludgeon Caruso with a heavy object, than you must be a robot or something.

And as CSI: Miami prepares to launch yet another season next fall, there are literally hundreds of scenes of Caine putting on those fucking sunglasses while delivering a supposedly witty bon mot with the same exact vocal inflections. I’ve seen more varied and nuanced performances in old Clutch Cargo cartoons. Why, somebody should make a clip that strings a bunch of ‘em together, so you can see what I’m talking about.

Oh wait, somebody did:

I like the way the person who edited this video left in Roger Daltrey’s scream from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” CSI: Miami’s theme song – it helps underscore Lt. Caine’s sheer ridiculousness.

And as for those show-opening witticisms, I liked them a hell of a lot better when Jerry Orbach as Detective Lenny Briscoe on Law & Order did it – he came off as a regular guy with a realistically cynical perspective on his job, not a sanctimonious douchebag. Caruso should check Orbach’s performances out on one of the innumerable L&O marathons running on TNT or USA – he might learn how to change up his line delivery.

Mallard Fillmore Finally Funny, Albeit Accidentally

Bruce Tinsley, the mastermind behind the brutally unfunny "comic" strip Mallard Fillmore, was picked up for DUI a few weeks ago. The blogs were all over it, of course.

The strip's fans say that those who dislike Mallard's antics hate the strip's politics, and while that certainly plays a role in my own personal irritation with it, my main gripe is that IT JUST ISN'T FUNNY. Needless to say, Tinsley's arrest was the first time he ever made me laugh.

In fact, the funniest Mallard Fillmore was a parody strip done for America: The Book:


That is, until now. This strip ran a couple of days after Tinsley was arrested:


Man, you can just taste the frothy irony mixed with deep, rich schadenfreude. Cheers, Bruce!

Borat 1 Douchebags 0

From The Associated Press:

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A judge rejected a request by two fraternity brothers to block the DVD release of the hit spoof movie Borat.

...The South Carolina fraternity brothers sued Nov. 9, claiming they were tricked into making racist and sexist remarks to British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

...The fraternity brothers claim the filmmakers got them drunk before getting them to sign release forms agreeing to appear in the film. Their names do not appear in the lawsuit. The film “made plaintiffs the objects of ridicule, humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress,” the lawsuit claims.

Klosterfuck, Or: If This Is the Voice of My Generation, I'd Rather Be Deaf

The essays are very solipsistic and self-absorbed, I'm totally conscious of that. To me, book writing is fun, and I basically just write about things that are entertaining to myself.
--Chuck Klosterman

Another thing that interests me about the Eagles is that I hate them.
--Robert Christgau

Something that interests me about Chuck “Voice of His Generation” Klosterman is that I hate him.

As befitting any celebrity of Chuck's meager stature, a backlash is already well underway -- has been for a year or two, in fact -- and should hit maximum velocity once the reviews for Klosterman's latest book* start trickling in, but here at Death May Be Your Santa Claus, the Klosterman animosity has been festering for a good long while. Because, fucking hell, I hate Chuck Klosterman.

I've never met the guy, of course, but I still hate him, because Klosterman embodies a school of writing that permeates what passes for journalism these days, wherein every article, story and sidebar is nothing more than a glorified diary entry in which the author, instead of describing the ostensible subject, writes about how the ostensible subject relates to the author and how the author personally reacted to the subject and, if the reader is lucky, what the author had for lunch that afternoon. Frequently, if the subject is a famous person, the writer will try to make the reader believe that during the course of writing his piece, the writer and his subject became close buds because the writer is just that cool. And if the subject is female, the writer will try to make the reader believe that he was this close to fucking said female subject because the writer is just that much of a stud.

In other words, nearly every article written by writers of this ilk is not about Ostensible Subject; it is about The Writer Writing About Ostensible Subject. This is also known as taking the easy way out, or phoning it in, or half-assing it, because it takes more skill, preparation and integrity to do the job correctly.

In all fairness, Klosterchuck isn't the only guy making a living with this schtick. Other notable "writers" who are more gifted at self-promotion than they are with, you know, writing, include smug assclowns like Joel Stein and A.J. Jacobs, but thankfully, no one is characterizing Stein or Jacobs as the voice of their generation (so far). Unlike Big Chuck.

It's a certainty that Chuck (and Stein, and Jacobs, and Chuck's colleague at Esquire, Scott Raab) had some English instructor somewhere tell them, "Write what you know." The problem with this platitude is that it used to be understood that the writer would then go out and learn a few things (i.e., get some actual real world life experience) so that he would then have interesting things about which to write.

This is why Klosterman and his ilk fill up innumerable lines of copy describing episodes of Saved by the Bell and/or their painfully vanilla sex lives -- when the totality of your life experiences can be summed up with "watching TV" and "going to college," the well runs dry pretty quickly. Yet these cretins have built lucrative careers chronicling their pampered, sheltered upbringings and the consequent gigantic sense of entitlement they instilled in them. God bless America.

Now, I'm not down on Klosterchuck because of his success... although, actually, I am, because in all sincerity, damn near anybody (and by "anybody," I mean "me") could do what Chuck does, but somehow, he and/or his agent has convinced quite a few folks that Chuck's bullshit observations are weighty and significant. Except if I was cashing a hefty book advance, I'd keep the self-aggrandizing digressions and general navel-gazing to a minimum and put some real fucking content into my writing, but then, my work ethic is a little sturdier than Klosterman's. Jealous? You bet your ass I am.

(Having said that, I do have to admire the fucker for managing to sucker major media concerns into paying him to crank out the dreck that he cranks out. Stick it to the man!)

Also, I'm not hating on the Big K merely because he frequently writes in the first person (I'm writing this on a fucking blog, for Pete's sake). I'm down on Chuck because when you parse any of his four -- yeah, FOUR -- memoirs, or his column in Esquire, or if you catch him speaking in his nasally, whiny voice in Metal: A Headbanger's Journey, it doesn't take very long at all before you realize Klosterman rarely, if ever, has anything meaningful or insightful, or even witty, to say. Don't believe me? Read this excerpt.

(Note to Chuck: The reason she didn't love you wasn't because you're not John Cusack; she didn't love you because, well, you're Chuck Klosterman.)

Furthermore, I'm down on Chuck because when he drops his Chronicler of Our Times/Voice of a Generation act and writes a straightforward article and can manage to not wander off into his trademark brand of tedious self-examination, he's actually pretty good. A few years ago, he wrote a story about classic rock cruises in Spin ("Ship of Dreams") that was downright touching in spots. "Irony Maidens" was another nice piece, as was this Q&A, in which he managed to make the Bravery -- or at least, their singer -- seem like decent human beings.

But those days appear to be a tiny speck in the rear-view mirror of Klosterman's career trajectory. A recent example of Chuck's vapidity is the essay he cranked out for the Criterion release of Dazed and Confused, which reads as if it was written 20 minutes before it was due while Klosterfuck was sitting on the toilet.

There are many drinking games one can play while watching Dazed and Confused: Take a swig when someone says "man," take a shot each time Wiley Wiggins touches his nose, etc. Here's a literary drinking game: Read Chuck's essay in the DVD booklet and swallow a mouthful of your favorite alcoholic beverage whenever Chuck refers to himself in the first person. If you live to see the next day, you have the constitution of a Merchant Marine, because while the subject of Chuck's essay is supposed to be Dazed and Confused, it's actually all about Chuck and how it took him a year to see the movie and how he's always stoned when he watches it and how Chuck interviewed Richard Linklater once and they talked about how cool Chuck is and blah blah blah. In other words, shut up, Klosterman.

When you read a critical assessment of a CD, movie, book, if the writer has done his or her job, at the end of the review, you will say to yourself, "I should listen to that CD" or "I should see that movie" (if it's a positive write-up). When one reads Chuck Klosterman, one doesn't think, "I really ought to see this movie." One thinks: "Gee, I sure would like to hit that fucking douche bag Chuck Klosterman in the head with a crowbar."

*Klosterman's new book is called Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas. The title by itself is offensive because 1) ironically or not, Klosterman is comparing his ouevre to that of Led Zeppelin, which would be analogous to and nonsensical as, say, Creed comparing themselves to Martin Scorsese, and 2) because Chuck Klosterman has never had an idea in his life, let alone any dangerous ones.

Death of a Salesman

From the AP:

HOUSTON (AP) -- Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay, who was convicted of helping perpetuate one of the most sprawling business frauds in U.S. history, has died of a heart attack in Colorado. He was 64.

Call me a paranoid cynic, but when you're as connected as Ken Lay was, faking your own death, fleeing the country and then spending the rest of your life (and your ill-gotten gains) on a private island in the Caribbean isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, no?

Employee of the Month

I work with a guy I’ll call “Stan.” Stan is, generally speaking, a nice guy and, generally speaking, I get along well with him. Stan is also a musician. Like many musicians, Stan thinks that since he can play an instrument, this means that his knowledge and taste in all things music-related is incontestable. If Stan likes it, anybody with functioning ears should like it and if they don’t, they are clearly incapable of appreciating anything but the most unrefined crap, and if Stan dislikes it, then anybody who does like it is an idiot, or worse.

The punchline: Stan is a jazz aficionado, the absolute worst kind of pretentious, self-congratulatory music snob there is – this is coming from me, remember – and furthermore, Stan is a drummer. [Insert your own joke here.]

One weekend morning, Stan brought in a CD – jazz, of course – to play over the anchors’ IFB earbuds. The show is airing, they hit a commercial break, and Stan plays his disc. A minute or two goes by and the anchor says, “What is this shit? Turn it off.”

Stan was quite livid. For the next few days, he bitched that the anchor made him turn his CD off. “These are some of the finest players in the world, and she calls it shit,” he pouted and mumbled. “Finest players in the world … finest players … these are some of the finest players…”

Stan’s first mistake was trying to foist his tastes upon other people. His second mistake was bringing in whatever the fuck it was he brought in – some Ornette Coleman bootleg recorded in a graveyard in 1961, perhaps – and assuming that his grateful coworkers would lick it up: “Wow, Stan, this 27-minute free-form sax solo that’s going absolutely nowhere is the shit, dude! Burn me a copy!” That’s pretty damned conceited on Stan’s part, and I always admired that anchor for taking him down a peg that day.

Anyway.

I get a lot of advance CDs. This is a perk of being a freelance music critic. I have most of these materials sent to me at work. Today I received a promo of Young Widows upcoming debut album Settle Down City, which is due in August. Young Widows are a Louisville band that used to be called Breather Resist. They decided on a name change when their singer left the band. Regardless of nomenclature, the group plays a pretty heavy, powerful, hardcore-derived style of indie rock with a regular use of dissonance. It’s not entirely inaccessible, but it’s definitely rough sledding if you’re not into this kind of music.

Stan was loitering near my cubicle and he saw the CD. Better yet, he saw the press clippings that accompanied the CD, and right on top was a blurb that appeared in Spin proclaiming Breather Resist a “next big thing.” Spin used the unfortunate phrase “Louisville, Kentucky quartet that exorcise early-‘90s emocore” to describe the band. Stan picked up the clips pack, gave it a brief perusal and then announced to no one in particular, “Well, here’s another band that proves the less talent you have, the more popular you become.”

Where to begin? Well, for starters, I didn’t ask Stan, but I would be willing to bet my own liver that he’s never heard Young Widows or for that matter, Breather Resist, play a single note, so how does he know they have no talent?

Another thing: Spin is a shitty rag, but it is a national magazine and a lot of people read it. How many times have you been in Spin, Stan? Being in Spin is certainly no gauge of artistic merit, but just by being mentioned in it (two years ago), they’re quite a bit further up the musical food chain than any band you’ve ever been involved with, and Breather Resist doesn’t even exist anymore.

Here’s another Stanecdote: He engineers CDs for local bands. Once he brought in some tracks that he had been working on. He couldn’t stop boasting about how great they were, how the band’s songwriting was “solid” and how they “just have a really good sound.” Naturally, they were a thoroughly anodyne pseudo-alt-country knockoff with atrocious lyrics and utterly boring songs – complete and utter shit, in other words, and if Stan had one-tenth the impeccable taste that he says he does, he would’ve realized this. Instead, there he was boasting about this useless band that made Hootie & the Blowfish sound like the fucking Beatles. What a chump.

Dismissing Young Widows sight unseen (or sound unheard, in this case) was an incredibly arrogant and ignorant thing to do. Was he being glib? Oh, sure, but knowing what I do about Stan, it wasn’t too hard to read between the lines.

“Look at these guys, making a living playing the music they create, touring the country, not having to punch a clock or listen to some prima donna newsreader telling them to turn off their cherished jazz CDs. Oh, how I envy and hate them.”

Pity Poor Piven

You know how you can like an actor or actress, even though you don’t know them personally? Certain individuals have a weird charisma that makes you enjoy their work, or they exude some quality that you find appealing? Well, I’ve always liked Jeremy Piven -- until recently.

Piven spent much of his career playing schlubby everyman types, hence his appeal. He frequently appeared in movies that starred his buddy John Cusack. He was really good in Ellen. He even provides the voice of the Elongated Man in Cartoon Network’s Justice League. So far, so good. But in the past few weeks, he’s also been profiled in a few publications and the interviews he gives just scream “asshole.”

Frex, as the cover star of the March 2006 edition of the generally useless magazine Cargo, Piven offers his advice on fashion, grooming and suchlike, which is pretty amusing in and of itself, but he waxes so pretentiously that you can’t help but chuckle at the vapid self-absorption he displays.

Plus, he repeats himself, with “If you let them, clothes will dictate how you move through space and how you hold yourself” followed a few grafs later by “…for me, it’s really how she moves through space.”

Moving through space: what a perfectly asinine turn of phrase. I’d like to slap the dogshit out of the Rodeo Drive sales clerk who contributed it to Piven’s vocabulary. You get the impression Piven thinks it makes him sound knowledgeable and sophisticated, but it merely makes him sound like a pompous jackass.

Furthermore, in all the pictures that accompany his interview, he's doing something fruity with his hands. He looks like he's trying to appear natural -- you know, like he's moving through space -- but he just looks stiff.

Also, dig this cover blurb: "Entourage's Jeremy Piven on How to Become the Most Valuable Playa [sic]." Even though he didn't write it, it still makes him sound like a douche.

But it gets better. In LA magazine’s nightlife issue (via Defamer), Mr. Moving Through Space offers up this following gem: “If I have a rapper like Common rolling hard with me at a club and I hand him a mic and he hits five songs in a row and the crowd goes crazy, I don't feel guilty about drinking on the house.”

Rolling hard with me? Oh, is that how you roll, MC White Bread? Jesus Christ, what a name-dropping tool.

And finally, what’s with the hairpiece, Piven? For serious. You’re not fooling anyone.

Oprah's Book Flub

In a peculiar about-face, Oprah had my favorite memoirist back on her show today and gave him a civil yet stern dressing down for being a lying sack of shit.

Frey admits lying; Oprah apologizes to viewers

Of course, the joke's on Oprah: Frey's still a successful writer (barely) with a fat bank account -- which she handed to him on a silver platter when she selected his lousy book for her Book Club. With all her money, she should have just hired some goons to break his legs or something.

Fuck the Bullshit It's Time to Throw Down

The Smoking Gun has published a very intriguing takedown of A Million Little Pieces, James Frey’s best-selling drug abuse diary and recent Oprah’s Book Club selection. It’s a lengthy, exhaustive critique, but here’s the gist: Frey is full of shit.

The Associated Press (via ABC) weighs in thusly, but Gawker's two cents are more succinct: "… It’s clear that Frey has taken some serious dramatic liberties. And that might not be such a big deal if he hadn’t consistently, appearance after appearance, insisted that all the events — even the little details — in the book are 100% true. Hell, he even brought Oprah to tears. And if you make Oprah cry under false pretenses, well, we just can’t stand by that."

No offense to Oprah or her fan base, but it probably doesn’t take all that much to move a bunch of sheltered suburban soccer moms to tears.

Now, from a purely technical point, Pieces is an annoying piece of crap. Frey has an extremely irritating writing style that features random capitalization of certain Words and Nouns which gives his Prose a pompous, Teutonic air that looks ugly on the page and somewhat hampers the readability of same:

"My closest friend is some kind of Mobster. My Roommate is a Federal Judge. My other friends are Crackheads and Drunks. I sort of have a Girlfriend, and she's a Crackhead and a Pillpopper and she used to be a prostitute...”

He doesn’t use quotation marks, either, a stylistic tic that draws attention to itself (“Look at me and my literary affectations!”) while, yes, greatly hampering his writing’s readability. And he uses the word fuck and its various permutations throughout the book because, you know, he’s just that much of a tough guy hardcore bad-ass motherfucker (the fact that Frey feels the need to constantly reinforce his image of tough guy rebel indicates that he probably isn’t nearly the hardcase he thinks he is and deep down, he knows it).

Indeed, most if not all of the press releases, articles, reviews and interviews that accompanied the publication of A Million Little Pieces boasted plenty of self-aggrandizing macho posturing on the part of Frey in which he proclaimed not only his greatness as an author, but also his Fury (sic), his raw intensity, his in-your-face realness, his utter bad-assedness, man, and if you can’t handle it, well then, fuck you, you sissy motherfucker. He has the acronym FTBSITTTD tattooed on his arm; it stands for “Fuck the Bullshit, It’s Time to Throw Down.” You know Frey’s straight up for reals now – he’s got tattoos, yo.

Frey is hardly the first self-obsessed hack to hit the jackpot with a self-consciously “dark” and “harrowing” memoir (see also: Elizabeth Wurtzel). What Frey actually is, however, is a pampered little rich kid who couldn’t handle his drugs in the long run, so he ended up scribbling out a 382-page love letter to himself about the whole tedious thing, which in the end kind of makes him the sort of sniveling pussy-ass writer he claims to despise.

Via his offical web site, Frey responds: "So let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won’t dignify this bullshit with any sort of further response."

I guess that settles it, then. Suck on that, bitches!