Economics For Dummies

I received a B in Economics 101 in college.  I never took another economics class.  I took calculus in high school and have never done anything above algebra since then.  My brain over the last several years has basically been conditioned to say funny things or things I think are funny.  So I never expected to be able to synthesize the big economic events that have taken place in the United States over the last few years.  Except for the fact that I have done some reading and have looked at the obvious.  So why is everything so hard for people to see and who is to blame for the predicament?  Well there are only three possible reasons: people don’t read, people are liars or people don’t care.

I was never much of a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe in my lifetime, without major significant changes to our economic and political systems, the United States will fall and fall hard in world standing (except in our own collective consciousness).  I fall short of saying there will be a revolution, but something close will occur.

What is happening across the Middle East right now, in my estimation from what I have read and seen is not so much about some anti-religious fervor or some clamoring for USA-style democracy, but more about people not being able to share in some form of economic prosperity.  Now if the Middle East is rising up having never experienced American level prosperity (but able to learn and see it through the Internet), what will happen in this country when people wake up one day and realize that they cannot get what they once believed was a right, or at least a viable opportunity?  Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all, but NOT better to have once been prosperous and realize you aren’t anymore.  The American Dream is moving towards becoming the American Lottery Ticket – it can happen, but it is no longer the odds-on-favorite for a have-not who works hard.  If you are born poor, odds are you will die poor, regardless of how hard you work.  But more than that, this is the generation that is going to be dumber and poorer than its parents’ generation.

In this country we have video games, flat screen televisions, reality television, iPods and a million other gadgets that, despite their considerable cost, have become must-haves from the rich to the barely scraping by.  And even newsworthy issues that seem so divisive, like gay rights, abortion, even war all are mere distractions compared to the economic disparity that is occurring in our country.  I know as a heterosexual man who has never served in the military it may seem wrong to be so dismissive of these issues, but look at any country that has had major uprisings – economics is always what spurs it.  Lack of personal resources.  It just happens that in this country we have all the distractions that come with wealth so there is no massive movement to make issue.  Add up all the people in this country that are gay, having an abortion or in the military and it will still be a smaller number that the people who will be adversely affected by the inequality bomb that will go off without change.  I just always hate how some liberals give a pass to someone who says, “Well sure, I am fiscally conservative, but I am pro choice and pro gay marriage.”  Well all I hear is, “I am OK with corporate America and political whores fu*king over women and gays, whether they have kids and are married or not.”  But here are all the pieces to this puzzle from what I have seen and read:

Companies in the United States used to make things.  They used to have a relationship with workers.  Now the only thing American companies are beholden to are stock prices.  Everything is secondary to stock prices.  Because if a company is successful and productive they can only make stock holders comfortable and CEOS rich, which is not good enough.  But if all else is sacrificed to stock price then that upper crust can become REALLY rich.  How else can one explain how corporate profits hit record highs in 2010, but unemployment did not budge?  But one party will have you believe that more tax cuts and deregulation are needed to improve employment.  So if record profits are not enough to spur employment, the question is how much profit is needed before a company is safe enough to share?

This explosion helped make banking a lot more lucrative than it should be (in addition to an incredible amount of greedy and corrupt individuals).  So you had intelligent people flocking to finance, but not all motivated by a love of numbers, but a love of money.  So when you become an industry attracting disproportionately greedy people, nothing can go wrong, right?  There is a reason everyone is familiar with the stereotype that spawned my comedy bit  “Todd the hedge fund douchebag.”

Meanwhile, since the 198os, big business has been on a two pronged attack to de-unionize workers and curry political favor by investing of money into lobbying efforts (I finally learned this year that the US Chamber of Commerce was not an official body of the government, but an incredibly pro-business lobbying think tank hell hole).  Whether you agree with unions or not (we can all agree that some pensions and benefit plans are too generous and not tenable in this economy), they have always represented a powerful bulwark against corporate overreaching.  Many important worker protections have been brought about because of unions.  And has corporate America (I know that the particular issue in Wisconsin is about government worker unions, but still the GOP has been dedicated to eradicating unions for 30 years) ever shown to act in the benefit of the worker or public in general without prodding or regulation?  Oh, so maybe if we get rid of taxes and unions, maybe THEN corporate America will let us into their party.  I worked at the Bronx DA’s office for 3 1/2 years and anyone who believes this is like a battered spouse who believes this will be the time their husband stops hitting them.  They don’t stop – it only gets worse.

Throw in last year’s Supreme Court Decision in the Citizens United case, which allowed for the flooding of last year’s elections with millions upon millions of anonymous donations from corporations and you have a perfect storm for fu*king over the average American.

Of course this might not be possible without a sizable amount of the population being stupid or apathetic.  So it is not corporate America full on raping the average American in all cases.  It is somewhat consensual.

For example, the Tea Party was brought into life, in part, because of anger against the bank bailouts.  Of course these are the same people that are protesting public sector unions, despite, as one Tea Party protester said when quoted by the New York Times, “I am not sure about all the issues here.”  They are not for the banks, nor are they for union workers.  In other words, they are for whoever the well funded corporate ads tell them to be for, even if they are not sure why.  And to be sure, the Muslim President is on the side of the unions, right?

Or articles I read late last year about Detroit car sales improving.  Great news, right?  Except that, with the exception of the Volt, many of the cars that saw big increases were SUVs.  In America, it seems, everything has become YouTube – our attention span and memory last 5 to 10 minutes at best.  We were going to become leaders in new types of cars, not reliant on oil, but do you think Detroit will really have the foresight for that, if they can jack up stock prices in the short term?  Just today, there were big articles on the price of oil rising because of the unrest in the Middle East.  So now will begin the cry for getting of Middle East oil and Thomas Friedman suggesting gas taxes (a great idea, but one that would probably get President Obama assassinated).  In this country people think with their wallet and fight for their wallet and that is the only way to communicate with people.  If gas were $9 a gallon the people would demand new forms of power for cars.  At $4 a gallon they bitch.  At $2.50 a gallon they shut the fu*k up and drive.  But a gas tax would mean government regulation – boo hoo.  So instead we will wait until the benevolent oil and car companies listen to the market (that they saturate with ads assuring us of their commitment to science and new clean technology to pacify us into silence) to ask for new cars.   We are more likely to run out of oil before that plan would work.

And I have been able to work and go to school and even date people of economic means and one thing I have learned is that many of the people of means in this country do not realize that they are of means.  For example I dated a woman whose family lived in a multi-million dollar home in an affluent neighborhood, owned the property the land was on and lost a ton of money on WorldCom stock.  She insisted that they were upper-middle class, even though by definition, if you are rich enough to have lost a ton of money in the stock market and still own a multi-million dollar home you are not middle anything.  Another time someone mocked a blog of mine encouraging the Obama tax increase for people making $250,000 or more by saying “Oh those people making $250,000 are really making a killing!”  Well, YES!!!!  In the world and in this country, just because you live in an affluent neighborhood or work with even richer people does not mean that making $250,000 as an individual makes you less rich.

Over the last year I have read Winner-Takes-All Politics, The Big Short, the New York Times (particularly columnists Paul Krugman and Bob Herbet- two of the few men I am aware of who seem to have the appropriate level of rage on this topic) regularly and seen the movies Inside Job and Capitalism: A Love Story.  Now some may see this list (which I recommend to everyone reading this) that there is some liberal bias.  But what have I said that is false?  There are basic facts that have happened in this country – CEOS make much more relative to their workforce than they ever had and the top 1% of the country owns a larger portion of the economy than ever before.  And at this time of peak economic inequality in America, corporations have had their handcuffs taken off instead of putting them on – less regulation over the past 30 years, calls for even LESS regulation and lower taxes NOW, Supreme Court decisions allowing a free flow of anonymous, corporate advertising for political candidates and brazen attempts to crush unions for good.  How is this not obvious to everyone?

The problem is that too many people still believe in the American Dream.  It is now more an article of religious faith than reasonable expectation based on fact.  Without that faith all this would be awfully disturbing.  But the Revolution (which will also be pacified by Twitter and Facebook – why do anything when you can just complain?) will have to wait until people can no longer afford their distractions.  And when more people see Inside Job than saw the Justin Bieber movie.

So to answer my question of who it is in this country should be blamed?  All of the above – the stupid people who act and vote against their own interests, the people in political and economic power who lie to us and ourselves for doing and saying nothing while it continues to happen.

The Hills Have Eyes Wide Shut – A Weekend…

This weekend I was featuring at Wisecrackers in Allentown, PA, located in a Ramada Inn.   I had no idea what to expect but I did know that Allentown, PA was not located in the South so there was hope.  But I think most good comedians would be a little apprehensive performing at a Ramada Inn.  Am I going to have to do five minutes on GPS locators before I talk about how crazy my wife, kids and in-laws are before ending with a crowd rousing bit where I bash Obama and the Middle East?  Well fortunately that was not the case.

I actually went pretty grim during parts of my sets over the weekend and the crowds reacted positively for the most part.  It was a good moment for me because I usually save grim personal stories for open mics and bar shows in NYC where I know they will be appreciated more.  The sets went well and I sold 8 CDs which was a very good number given the crowd size and limited shows.  So professionally I was very happy with the way the shows at Wisecrackers went.   Here is a short clip from the show (note the handmade sign indicating that it is a “comedy club” and not in any way “the place where I eat continental breakfast each morning”):

When Saturday’s show ended something unexpected occurred.  I heard one of the tables discussing swinging.  Swinging, for those of you who do not know is when married couples sleep with other people.  Presumably it is to keep the marriage fresh, but really it just means you are missing a normal human component that allows you to not mind seeing some dude plow your woman (or see your man do some chick).  Well, my ears perked up like a golden retriever who has heard a bag of treats opening when I heard the word “swingers party.”  I just thought, “these people go to swingers parties?  Gross!”  Both because swinging is sort of nasty and these people engaged in sex is a gross thought!”

So I was getting ready to go to the bar to hang out with a friend from college who had come to the show, but one of the waitresses shared with me that it was a hellish night. Here is the exchange:

Waitress: Oh my God, tonight has been the night from hell. The bar is all messed up

Me: Why?  Are they missing someone”

Waitress: Yeah, (name I forget) had to work the swingers party on the second floor.

Me: Wait, there is actually a swingers party here?

Waitress: Yep.

All of a sudden, a weekend of surprisingly strong shows had the chance to elevate to an incredibly ridiculous weekend full of blog fodder.  In a Ramada Inn at the bottom of a lonely hill in Allentown, PA there were a bunch of 2s and 3s swapping partners and other things. So I went to the bar to have a drink with my friend, his wife and friends of theirs (they were there for the comedy show only), but I could not stopping looking at everyone in the bar with a suspicious eye.  Most of the men sort of looked like some variation of Christian Bale in The Fighter and most of the women looked like inappropriately dressed older versions of Christian Bale’s sisters in The Fighter.  As I continued to watch this I decided to bring my camera from the show back to my room before someone decided to steal it and make the worst porn of all time.  And then walking to my room I saw someone stepping out of the swinger party that took it to another level:

A Midget or little person!

WOW!

All of a sudden I was at a loss for what the weirdest night of my life had been before February 19, 2011.  It was literally like the film Eyes Wide Shut with the characters from The Hills Have Eyes.  And then it would get slightly worse.

I went to my room at 1:30 ready to go to bed.  As I walked to my room I realized that some of the swingers had the room next to me.  And I realized that they had young children.  How did I know this?  Because about 20 minutes after I retired to my room I heard two young children, that I had seen wandering the halls several hours earlier (my guess – ages 10 and 7) were knocking on their door because (this is an inference, but a well-founded one) the swinger parents/guardians had locked them out of the room.  So not only are swingers great partners; they’re great parents!

So the weekend was fantastic for both my stand up and for my blog.  But not so much for my Twitter account.  When I looked at my account last night, my shows and tweets for the weekend had only attracted one new follower “Adult Swingers Club” or something to that effect.  As of this morning they are no longer following me.

FX: The Platonic Porn Channel For White Men

The FX channel broke into the big leagues with the show The Shield about a decade ago.  The show focused on a quartet of caucasian cops who murdered and robbed with impunity.  In other words it was a ratings and critical success and the formula was simple: eliminate the realism and the African-American protagonists from The Wire.  It was over-the-top entertainment, but taken for that it was a solid show (with one of the greatest final couple of episodes of any show I’ve seen not named Six Feet Under).  But The Shield was a sign of the future at FX, which is owned by the News Corp, which owns an even more well-known producer of over-the-top fiction, Fox News.  Here is where FX fits into the pantheon of non-network television show producers:

HBO– The Untouchable Legend.  Even though their shows now are not as great as the Sopranos/Wire/Six Feet Under heyday HBO still makes uncompromising high quality drama and comedy (with the exception of the increasingly Glee-ish True Blood).

Showtime– HBO’s likeable, but much dumber younger sibling.  Dexter is a very solid, but slightly overrated show, Weeds is a piece of sh*t and I think Californication is actually the best show on the Network, but what do I know – I write a blog for 15 people.

USA – Annoying Puns.  it seems that USA has one requirement: the show must be able to be summarized in a pun-filled title.  Royal Pains, Burn Notice, White Collar and their newest featuring a hot chick in the poster – Fairly Legal – Less Lawyer, More Appeal (get it!!!!!).  Which is leading to the their next big show – Dr. DoMore – Less Sore Throat, More Deep Throat.

TNT– My sister-in-law likes The Closer.  That is basically all I know.  And they picked up Southland, which is the shittiest of the “gritty cop dramas.”

AMC– The “We are better than you network” and the only potential challenger to HBO.  Everyone loves Mad Men, but anyone who reads these posts, my tweets or my Facebook page knows that the best show on television right now, by a mile, is AMC’s Breaking Bad.

That leads us to FX:

Platonic Porn For (Preferably Conservative at Heart) White Men

Here is the evidence of all the shows I can think of from FX:

The Shield– angry, white cops take on foreigners, and Mexican and black gangs in LA.  They kill at will, drop the occasional racial slur, but are always the badass heroes.

Nip/Tuck – Two white dudes give chicks boob implants and have lots of sex I think.  This is the one I never saw, but I think that is a fair assessment.

Rescue Me – A bunch of white firefighters and their light-skinned minority firefighter friend have lots of sex working as the number one non-celebrity/investment banking/athlete profession for getting women for white men.

Sons of Anarchy– A bunch of white, anti-big government, motorcycle riding men and their one Puerto Rican member pit Mexican and black gangs against each other through gun running (but they also fight white supremacists to show that they’re not THAT bad).  They manage to keep corporate America and big government out of their sleepy town that they rule with a leather-clad, tatooed iron fist.

Justified – A white US Marshall returns to his Kentucky hometown where he doesn’t quite play by the rules, in a place where everyone has a gun and isn’t afraid to use it.  There is a black woman on the show.

Archer – an animated show that is presumably a tip of the cap to the hipster comedy crowd (which is pretty big in urban markets the same way Mitch Hedberg was huge in Camden, New Jersey).  There is one black character as well.

And their newest show, which I really do like a lot – “Lights Out”.  It is about an American born heavyweight boxing champ making a comeback.  Other than Nip/Tuck’s abundance of fake boobs, the white Heavyweight champ is right up their with Sarah Palin as the conservative white  man’s fantasy.

So basically, FX has become the official channel of the Tea Party: the “keep your taxes out of my town, keep your hands of my guns, keep your minorities off of my screen and let me see some fake tits” channel.  I enjoy Sons of Anarchy and Justified, but they are not great shows.  They are solid shows.  I think my favorite is Lights Out, but most of these shows  just feel like someone has taken Fox News pundits and made them actions stars.  Individually, the shows are entertaining, but in the aggregate it is hard to ignore the overwhelming trend, even if I sound like a 1986 Al Sharpton.  So I guess for all those tea party folks who have been begging for their country back, their prayers have been answered.  Just turn on FX any night of the week.

Pretend Like You Don’t Know Me

Here are my two newest videos.  If you like them forward them around, the same way you would if you did not know me.  Because let us be honest – in the age of YouTube and Facebook you are comfortable bombarding friends and co-workers with videos of people you don’t know because there is no personal connection to the video.  However, if you forward something of a friend it is somehow embarrassing and lame, even if the video is much better than the panda jerking off in a zoo cage video you just sent them yesterday. 

So pretend you found these on the internet and want to share them instead of saying, “these are funny, but J-L can go fu*k himself” or “I don’t want to bother my friends with videos from someone I know because it will look like I am just trying to help out someone I know. And that is lame.”   Just do it – pretend they are videos of a cat getting kicked in the nuts or whatever video has gone viral today.  Thanks.  🙂

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Hostile Hostel Comedy

Having spent all of yesterday cooped up in my apartment listening to and watching CLE programs (the bringer shows of the legal world – paid programs lawyers are required to take every two years to keep their license to practice in good standing) I was eager to get out and do some comedy.  So nothing – neither a snowstorm, nor missing American Idol (in hindsight I think a lineup of Steven Tyler, Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell would be the greatest AI lineup that can never happen) would keep me from the show.

The show was at a hostel on 103rd and Amsterdam and unlike some other hostels I have performed at, this one seemed fairly cheery – like a renovated college dorm.  So I walked down to the basement, which is where places like to keep comedians and checked in with the show’s producers.

The first thing I learned watching the comedian on stage, who I know personally, was that there was a creepy man who appeared to have possibly kidnapped a woman and her children.  I was not there to learn the whole story, but it seemed to have the comedians laughing with disturbed delight.

Next on stage was one of the show’s producers and that is when the show went from slightly awkward to off the charts uncomfortable.  He began by doing some crowd work and then he got to a man who can best be described as a sad and more grizzled looking version of Patton Oswalt (for complete descriptiveness the comedian is an Asian guy from long Island and admits in his routine that he sounds like Sly Stallone).

It began as mildly humorous, but then came that crucial moment in any crowd work exchange.  It is the point where the audience member makes it clear that he or she no longer wants to be involved.  The comedian must have missed that tipping point because this is what happened over the next 5 minutes:

Sad Patton Oswalt (SPO): OK!  Move On – I thought this was a comedy show!

Asian Stallone (AS): DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A COMEDY SHOW – NO ONE HAS LAUGHED SINCE I HAVE COME UP HERE!!

Te crowd laughed a little bit and then AS proceeded to tear into whatever New York State county SPO said he was from

SPO: My mother died recently and I was (trail off, but I am guessing it was about needing a laugh or not wanting to get harassed).

At this point SPO stood up, which raised the tension in the room.

AS: I have been talking to everyone in the room and they were fine with it, but you have to cause a problem!

I believe there may have been expletives also, but the SPO began to approach the stage.  And like a Jerry Springer guest eager to scrap at the slightest shot of provocation, AS dropped the mic and immediately went chest to chest with SPO.  No punches were thrown, but AS did drop some gems like “Don’t step to me!” and “I will drop you SON!”  Yes, Asian Stallone dropped a “son” on a 40 year old man.  The only thing missing from this late 1980s showdown was someone calling someone a “herb.”

Sad Patton Oswalt left, but came back a few minutes later demanding an apology, to which we were all greeted by another drop of the mic and a threat to call the police, to which AS responded, “It’s 9-1-1!”

So after witnessing enough things to make it the weirdest and most awkward show I have ever performed on, it went right to an 11 with the next performer: a burlesque dancer.  I do not know how burlesque came about, but it is somewhere between a Hooters waitress and a stripper, but with the unjustified pretentiousness of a sommelier.  It is like someone told a stripper, “Hey, you are not hot enough to strip, but just pretend to be an ‘artist’ and then you can do burlesque because there is no oversight committee for burlesque.  Like modern art, poetry slams or jazz music, no one wants to look stupid and tell you to stop or will have the balls to actually tell you to put on clothes and stop inducing the gag reflex of straight men because your ‘art’ is irritating.” So after seeing a woman shake a bare ass and pasti-covered breasts the next comedian went on for about 5 minutes in front of 3 tired and bewildered audience members.  The it was time for your headliner… me!

I proceeded to get alternating reactions ranging from laughs to abject horror (admittedly jumping from Hallmark cards to abortion jokes is an emotional journey).  Which is exactly the range of emotions I had at the show as well.  I felt like I was the star of a David Lynch film, but without the obligatory critical praise.

Tomorrow night I am headlining a fundraiser for Haiti – let’s hope it is less awkward.

Battle Of The Overrated – The 2010 Oscar Nominations

I did not realize that the Oscar nominations came out this morning, but when I did there were no big surprises.  Just a lot of frustration.

BEST PICTURE

‘Black Swan’
‘The Fighter’
‘Inception’
‘The Kids Are All Right’
‘The King’s Speech’
‘127 Hours’
‘The Social Network’
‘Toy Story 3’
‘True Grit’
‘Winter’s Bone’

My first beef is that Inside Job is not nominated.  A brilliant, penetrating documentary that is the scariest film since The Exorcist.  If you told me that Hollywood did not want to be too political so they did not select a film that clearly (but completely justifiably) lays most (but certainly not all) of the blame for our country’s economic woes at the feet of Republicans I would accept that.  But then explain…

The Kids Are All Right.  This movie is so fu*king average it is absurd.  But it has lesbians in a regular relationship.  WOW!!!!  Unlike Milk or Brokeback Mountain, which actually showed hardship and triumph in gay rights and gay relationships, this movie is just a bland, unfunny and unmoving film.  But it is about gay people and it does not suck so Hollywood has showered praise on it.  If not for The Blind Side last year, this would be the best case for moving the nominations back to five films a year.

True Grit – No doubt it would be nominated, but this movie was just not as great as everyone is pretending.  Everyone who was late to The Big Lebowski or No Country For Old Men has jumped on this bandwagon because they don’t want to miss the next “cool” movie from the Coen Brothrs or Jeff Bridges.  It was a solid movie, but the chronological error pointed out by Adam Carolla on his podcast a few weeks ago (I won’t spoil the ending by saying what it is) alone should knock it from the ranks.

Black Swan – Eh.  This is the movie for the pretentious, artsy folk who also pretend to love jazz music and modern art.  The movie kept my attention for sure and is not bad, but I think I am still bitter over The Wrestler getting fu*ked over.  And Darren Aronofsky – can you please come up with a different ending to your movies.  It was like watching The Wrestler if he had been a pouty, one-expression waif.

The King’s Speech – First off – can people stop introducing Colin Firth as “the handsome” or “the very handsome” Colin Firth.  He is like the male Cate Blanchette – the actress that Hollywood keeps calling beautiful even though no straight man gets even a little extra blood flow for.  But this movie has everything Hollywood likes – a lame disability like stuttering (for the Glee crowd that keeps talking about bullying), British actors and a backdrop of Nazi Germany (thank God – we almost made it a year without a major Hollywood film invoking the Holocaust).  The movie was solid and like Black Swan, and True Grit worthy of no more than a B+.  The Kids Are All Right is a solid C.  And the fact that Carlos is not nominated is also a fu*king joke.

And in the spirit of full disclosure I agree with Toy Story 3, The Social Network, The Fighter and of course Inception.  I have not seen Winter’s Bone yet, but it is on pay-per-view.

BEST ACTOR

Javier Bardem, ‘Biutiful’
Jeff Bridges, ‘True Grit’
Jesse Eisenberg, ‘The Social Network’
Colin Firth, ‘The King’s Speech’
James Franco, ‘127 Hours’

I have not seen Biutiful (Javier Bardem), but Edgar Ramirez of Carlos was off the charts awesome.  Speaking four languages over the course of a 5 hour film, weight gains of around 40 pounds and being a complex character seems like a combination of Christophe Waltz in Inglorious Basterd and Robert DeNiro in Raging Bull, but he was not worthy of a nomination I guess.

That said I will be pissed if James Franco does not win.  Then again he did not stutter during the movie so his chances are slim.

BEST DIRECTOR

Darren Aronofsky, ‘Black Swan’
David O. Russell, ‘The Fighter’
Tom Hooper, ‘The King’s Speech’
David Fincher, ‘The Social Network’
Joel and Ethan Coen, ‘True Grit’

WHERE THE FU*K IS CHRISTOPHER NOLAN!??????????  That is all I need to say.

BEST ACTRESS

Annette Bening, ‘The Kids Are All Right’
Nicole Kidman, ‘Rabbit Hole’
Jennifer Lawrence, ‘Winter’s Bone’
Natalie Portman, ‘Black Swan’
Michelle Williams, ‘Blue Valentine’

Who gives a sh*it.  I suppose it is down to Annette Benning (which is what I think Warren Beatty said when his penis was tired of slaying Hollywood) and Natalie Portman.  At least they are better than The Blind Side.  But don’t blame my indifference.  Hollywood uses about 95% of its female-directed energy making stars out of hot, untalented women (I’m talking to you Precious) so that the only time a woman is nominated from a movie people care about is when it involves Merryl Streep or Kate Winslet.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Christian Bale, ‘The Fighter’
John Hawkes, ‘Winter’s Bone’
Jeremy Renner, ‘The Town’
Mark Ruffalo, ‘The Kids Are All Right’
Geoffrey Rush, ‘The King’s Speech’

Bale – deserved and the race is over.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams, ‘The Fighter’
Helena Bonham Carter, ‘The King’s Speech’
Melissa Leo, ‘The Fighter’
Hailee Steinfeld, ‘True Grit’
Jacki Weaver, ‘Animal Kingdom’

Reiterating my point – the best roles for women are consistently in this category because most great movies are built around men so this is the category where you can often see great roles in relevant movies for women.  Amy Adams, Melissa Leo or Hailee Steinfeld would all be worthy winners.  Fu*k The King’s Speech (on principle, not because it is terrible) and what’s Animal Kingdom?

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

‘Another Year’
‘The Fighter’
‘Inception’
‘The Kids Are All Right’
‘The King’s Speech’

Inception is the most original story in a movie I can think of in a long time – The Usual Suspects comes to mind as the last extremely original film I can think of.  Any other choice in this category is a fu*king joke (only because of how awesome Inception was).

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

‘127 Hours’
‘The Social Network’
‘Toy Story 3’
‘True Grit’
‘Winter’s Bone’

The Social Network.  Aaron Sorkin can fu*king write circles around people.

BEST DOCUMENTARY

‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’
‘Gasland’
‘Inside Job’
‘Restrepo’
‘Waste Land’

I saw Restrepo and Inside Job.  I have heard Exit Through the Gift Shop is very good, but if ever there was a time for the Hollywood blowhards to make a political statement it should have been to nominate Inside Job for Best Picture.  A best picture nomination raises the profile of a movie.  A best documentary nomination simply confirms the film’s image as some geeky, academic exercise.  Perhaps if Inside Job had spoken of how the banking industry had hurt gay couples and Holocaust survivors it would have been nominated.  Lesson for all you filmmakers out there.

Utah Jazz Week Journal Part 3: Is Rooting For…

Saturday night I travelled with two buddies and fellow comedians Jim Dodge and, as of Tuesday at 6pm on the Game Show Network,Newlywed Show contestant Pat Breslin.  Both of them are Philadelphia 76er fans and we went to the game last year (along with approximately 50 other people in the emptiest arena ever for a professional, non-WNBA sporting event.  The Jazz won easily.  But this year I had a lot more concern.  The jazz had lost three straight games to the Wizards (awful), the Nets (more awful) and the Celtics (respectable, but awful because of the previous two losses).  After seeing the Jazz go 5-0 in the five games I attended last year I was unsure if they could stop from going 0-3, even if the 76ers suck.  My concern was well founded.

The Jazz sucked something awful.  They are playing basketball with the same enthusiasm that I send out booking e-mails.  Despite rooting for the team since I was 7 I am pretty much ready to write off this season.  However I was still trying to figure out the possible reason for the incredibly awful play of the Jazz.  Is it because I am a Yankee fan and at some point one has to pay a price for rooting for the Goldman Sachs of sports?  Probably not.  Or is it the fact that I am a Pittsburgh Steeler fan?  Is a 4 game losing streak the price to pay for rooting for a rapist to win one playoff game?  Maybe – what I fear is that it may be a mathematical equation then.  Perhaps x = number of rape allegations and you raise that to y, which is the number of playoff wins you want?  So if the bye week counts as 1 playoff win and the Steelers win against the Ravens is another then that would explain a 4 game losing streak.

X(Roethlisberger sex assault allegations) to the Y(Steeler playoff wins needed) power = number of Jazz losses

So bad news for Jazz fans, I am rooting for a 16 game losing streak.  The bad news is it looks like that is definitely possible the way they are playing.  The good news is the Steelers 7th Super Bowl is looking more and more likely.  The Jazz are at the Lakers for their next game.

Utah Jazz Week Journal Part 2: New Jersey Nets

So after a painful and disgraceful loss to the Washington Wizards the Utah Jazz got just what they needed – the New Jersey Nets.  So last night I travelled to the Prudential Center in Newark (really nice arena, but made me sad to know the Nets will abandon the arena in less than 2 years.  I looked at all the employees like the Cars in the small town in the Pixar film Cars; one day they will be underemployed.).

It was also Russian Cultural night so in addition to Russia’s most famous basketball player in town, the Jazz’ Andrei Kirilenko, there apparently were also tons of prostitutes and skin care technicians in the arena. The national anthem was sung by some Russian woman who won a Russian contest.  It may have been the best rendition I have heard since Whitney Houston’s at the Super Bowl many years ago.  It was that good.  Side note – Alexander Ovechkin was at the game as well.  I think that tells you how badass the Nets’ owner is (like Michael Corleone requesting personal appearances from Johnny Fontaine).  He got the world’s greatest hockey player to come to a Nets’ game!  But I don’t think Mikhail Prokhorov asks a second favor.  Sadly the anthem would be the highlight for me and the Jazz.

The Jazz put up another stinker of a game.  They played the exact same way against the Wizards.  So similar it almost looks like a game plan.

  1. Play like crap in the first quarter.
  2. Pull even at halftime
  3. Play the 3rd quarter like you are trying to lose the game and go down at least 15
  4. Wait until 7 minutes remain in the game and then play your balls off and lose narrowly

The Utah Jazz, whether you hate them or love them, always played hard and with great execution.  It is why they were able to win, even when they had limited talent.  This team is not doing that.  It is the first time I have ever seen the Jazz underachieve.  The coaching and talent they have should result in a top 6 NBA team, but they are playing like a bottom 5 team.  But there were other things to annoy me, making the trip to Newark a huge disaster.

For one, the Nets dancers now appear to be dancers.  They used to be  glorified strippers bouncing around, but now the cleavage is gone and they actually look like they are trying to execute dance moves.  In past years it was a 50/50 proposition of whether one of the dances would blow the Nets’ mascot at midcourt.  Now, they just act like regular dancers, instead of exotic ones.  Perhaps the Nets’ billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov has already moved the former dancers directly on to his private jet.

The other terrible news was two part.  Kim Kardashian was at the game, so I had no problem telling my girlfriend, who was at the game with me, that this might be my chance.  I mean, why would Kim Kardashian be at the game (a Jazz-Nets game?), if not to meet a tall, underachieving man with a black father?  She is the Queen of the B list black athletes, so maybe she is ready to take a few more steps backward and date a G-list half-black comedian?  Well it turns out I was right, but only because she is now dating Nets’ forward Kris Humphries, who I cannot tell if he is a caucegro, but he looks like it.  So she is coming closer to my territory since she is dating a D list pro athlete.  So once Kardashian is on husband number 8 territory in her 50s she should be at the J-L Cauvin level of desperation.

But what was more disturbing than the Kardashian news was the fact that three male friends of mine (a screenwriter manager, a person who works in real estate and a comedian) all knew that she was dating Kris Humphries.  That is an absolute disgrace.  My girlfriend watches E! and she was not as up-to-date on Kim Kardashian’s dating life as three heterosexual men.  As Adam Carolla said with the title of his recent book, “In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks.”

So The Nets no longer employ whores as dancers, Kim Kardashian continues to date the wrong mediocre men and the Jazz played the worst game of basketball I have ever seen them play in person.  I guess it can only get better when I head to Philly on Saturday for Jazz-76ers.

Utah Jazz Week Journal Part 1: Washington Wizards

This week is my annual group of Utah Jazz games on the East Coast (but no Knicks’ game because they play at MSG on March 7th).  So there will be a lighter emphasis on comedy and a heavier emphasis on Mormon-favored hoops teams (fitting given that Big Love began its final season on HBO this Sunday).

So yesterday I was in Washington D.C. on Martin Luther King’s birthday to honor his legacy in a fitting way: watching black men run around for teams owned by white men.  The Jazz played horribly and lost.  It was the first time I had seen a loss in person in almost 4 years.  As far as highlights – Javale McGhee of the Wizards had one of the best dunks I have ever seen in person – an and-1 alley-oop, and Deron Williams played a great game for the Jazz.  Here’s McGhee’s dunk:

Other than that it sucked.  The only thing that suffered more than Jazz fans (the Wizards are terrible) was the legacy of MLK during the game.  Here is a breakdown:

  • Before halftime there was a montage of MLK clips.  No problem, right?  Well, there is when they are accompanied by “I gotta feelin'” by the Black Eyed Peas – America’s favorite multi-cultural anthem writers.
  • Also before halftime, the attractive and annoying (so a net plus) woman who walks around the Verizon Center doing promotions on the jumbo-tron, said the following: “In the spirit of MLK day, we asked the Wizards players, ‘If you had a holiday, what would it be?'”  Then all the players gave silly answers, often about relaxing or having the day off of work or getting money.  Exactly – because nothing says “in the spirit of an assassinated national hero” than “let’s see what other ridiculous ideas for a holiday we can come up with.”
  • At halftime they played the I Have A Dream speech.  It sounds almost cliche today, until you realized – oh Sh*t – this is the original!  And it was a very stirring speech, except that the Chipotle blimp kept motoring around the arena.  The message – some things are more important than equality, inspiration and heroes.  Like corporate sponsorships.

Another pet peeve of mine, with sports arenas in general is inconsistency of concession stands.  My brother, who bought the tickets for Christmas for me, purchased club seats, which are very nice and in a semi-segregated area (MLK DAY!).  The problem is that the only snacks you can have are sort of deluxe snacks.  Why can I not want a pretzel and Twizzlers if I have more expensive seats?  Why would I want a Mexican bistro with my hoops game just because my seats are semi-special?

So sadly the Jazz lost.  Sort of sad when you think about it.  The Jazz are named for the heavily African-American influenced art form founded in Salt Lake City, while the Wizards are a name sometmes associated with bad treatment of African-Americans.  But I guess on MLK day it was ok for once for the Wizards to be grand.