"Only a fool would buy soda for the long holiday weekend without first checking Summer of Soda."--some person

Here are the sodas Kate and I have reviewed so far:

Empire Spruce Beer
Thomas Kemper's Ginger Ale
Hank's Orange Soda
Milca Red Soda
Fitz's Root Beer
Fentiman's Mandarin and Seville Orange Jigger
Red Ribbon Root Beer
Pangleheimer's Gourmet Blush
Apple Beer
Nehi Orange

Enjoy 'em!

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So I've spent the last decade or so trying to nudge the nascent humorists at The Yale Record in the right direction. And together, we have significantly increased the whimsy of America's lawyers and management consultants. In retrospect, they probably would've gotten more out of sticking their heads in a bucket. At least that's restful. You can really think.

But the cavalry is coming! John Cleese recently announced that he is retiring to write a book on comedy. There is some hope that laughs will not become an entirely endangered species--the culture that produced him (and Peter Cook, and Eleanor Bron, and all the other luminaries of British Comedy in the 60s and 70s) must be passed on!

Todd Jackson over at DeadFrog.com explores Cleesian humor a bit, using everybody's favorite term paper crutch, Henri Bergson, as well as that Rosetta Stone of all things John Cleese, Life and How to Survive It. Ooh, Professor Cleese, pick me! Pick me!

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As you may know, George Meyer is a television comedy writer here in Los Angeles. He is considered by many to be "first among equals" in that awesome team-effort called The Simpsons. Several years ago, Meyer's college buddy David Owen wrote a glowing profile about him in The New Yorker.

In this profile, Meyer was shown to be somewhat of a free spirit, as well as somebody who had more going on in his head than a running total of his residuals. Along with yoga, much was made of Meyer's despising of advertising. It struck me immediately how strange it was to loathe advertising, while spending your entire career creating things that exist primarily to deliver eyeballs to advertisers. That's a basic fracture, like loving animals but working in a slaughterhouse. Yes, the pay is really good; yes, you're REALLY good at it; but you have this big ol' contradiction you have to square every morning as you shave. I'm not judging, just genuinely puzzled. I don't see how he does it; the idea alone makes my stomach hurt. And when you add in the fact that, to do what he's done, Meyer's got to be 1) really freakin' intelligent, and 2) have a naturally (self-)critical turn of mind...I just don't get it.

Ed Page over at Danger Blog sent me this link, where the gentleman who did an interview with Meyer for The Believer has posted a segment cut out of that interview which deals with just this conundrum. It's interesting, and gave me one thought: Meyer's belief is that The Simpsons does good in the world by exposing its viewers to positive concepts like vegetarianism. (Meyer is a vegetarian and believes that such a diet is superior--I happen to agree with him, though I have a spate of food allergies that makes vegetarianism utterly impossible for me). However: in comedy, the amount which your audience pays attention to your beliefs is function of how much rectitude and wisdom they think you possess. If Lenny Bruce's drug habit had been widely known, only a very few people would've had their minds changed by his words. I think a similar thing is at work here; how much can you change people's minds about consumption with something so thoroughly embedded in our consumption culture? Not much.

Still, it's a nice thought, and nearly everybody in the comedy biz (myself included) indulges in such rationalizations. I'd love to see George Meyer quit "working for Pharaoh" as he puts it; that would be a powerful message to the people coming up now, and a step towards a better comedy than we have today.

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Aficionados of the carbonated arts will want to bookmark my new blog, Summer of Soda. Kate and I are planning to review one strange/storied/non-standard soda every day for the entire season. Check it out.

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Dennis Perrin over at Red State Son has some interesting thoughts about Chevy Chase's ongoing comedic straight-talk. I was particularly interested in what Dennis said near the end, comparing the blunt, righteous anger of comedians during Watergate to the weak tea being peddled today. Even with legends-in-the-making like Stewart and Colbert there seems to be a distance, a sense of "look at how ridiculous these humans are--too bad we are powerless to intervene in their affairs." But comedy CAN move opinion, and the shenanigans being lampooned DO matter--they really effect real people in our real world.

The satirists of the 60s and 70s had an immediacy, and a sincerity which energized their material. They had a personal commitment to reality as a place changeable for the better (and worse) that the current ones seem to lack. Was there ever any doubt where "The Vietnamese Baby Book" stood on Vietnam? Was there any doubt that Hunter Thompson HATED Richard Nixon? Does Jon Stewart HATE Bush? Or does he merely dislike him intensely, while remaining just a tiny bit grateful for the steady stream of material? I simply can't tell. When Stewart and Colbert dropped their "foolish humans" distance and showed the anger beneath, people went crazy for it. People crave that kind of honesty--why don't our comedians and satirists give it to us?

I blame irony. The current comedy culture in America arose in the 80s as a "cool" response to the "hot" satire that had dominated from 1955 to 1980. Hot satire is immediate, personal, and hard-to-duplicate; cool satire is detached, often impersonal, and reproducible. Animal House is hot, while Porky's is cool. Office Space is hot, Dilbert cool.

"Cool," ironic satire was immediately championed by the entertainment industry, because it solved the problem inherent in marketing satire: it made people laugh without suggesting that they change. We've been drowning in it ever since. Irony is satirical-seeming--"things are bad"--yet fundamentally passive--"but all you can do is laugh."

But that's a lie; laughing ISN'T all you can do. The ironic stance is based on a false knowingness, a sense of having done and seen it all which is excusable in an 18-year-old but shows ignorance, if not outright corruption, in an adult. Irony's not a worldview, it's a defensive crouch against being exposed as a fool, based on the belief that everybody gets exposed sooner or later. It insists that nothing ever changes, then its passivity makes that so. Irony's perfect mass-satire for our fractious times, because it's a way to comment without taking a stand--but it makes our times more fractious in the process. It's a unclear, excuse-making, self-serving form of communication, and as a form of satire, it's crap.

Since 1980, American comedy's been about getting rich (because everybody else is) treating authority figures like entertainers and vice-versa (because everybody's corrupt, and everything is showbiz). It's Lenny Bruce's cynicism, without his explicit admonitions to be better. Bruce and his ilk said, "Here's how politics is corrupt--so don't be corrupt. Here's how people are racist--so don't be a racist. Here's how morality is hypocritical--so don't be a hypocrite." Bruce self-selected for fans that didn't want to be corrupt, racist, or hypocritical. But the current satirist says, "Be however you want, we'll take everybody. It's all a hustle anyway." Smaller audience versus bigger audience--for the entertainment biz, irony's a no-brainer. And exactly what we don't need right now.

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...and this is how I look now. Actually, things are working out--so far. For those readers out there who might be aging, be aware that thirty-seven's a bracing total. One of those "what is my dream?/am I following it?/did I misplace it on the way to the bank?" times of life; a not-insubstantial piece is gone, yet (with luck, and replacement organs grown in petri dishes) there is still plenty of time left to explore.

We (Jer and Whit, Kate and I) celebrated over margaritas at the Border Grill, then toddled across the street to Harvelle's, Santa Monica's 75-year-old juke joint. What followed was a prodigious banquette-ensconced grooving, thanks to the psychedelic stylings of Deep Eddy (see left, above). Odd, and compelling--a perfect way to ring in another year of life on this odd and compelling planet. Eddy can play the HELL out of his guitar, and was accompanied by a appealling tambourine player wearing a jangly belt.

I wonder if Harvelle's started as a speakeasy--it was founded during Prohibition, in 1931, when there were about 1,000 jobs in all of Santa Monica. It must have been either that or a soda fountain, and the latter seems unlikely, given Santa Monica's bootlegging past.

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Sorry for the silence, folks--I've been hard at work tussling with Sophomore, trying to determine whether it's the best thing I've ever written, or a total piece of crap. Opinions vary, and my own changes on the hour. I fear the truth is somewhere in the middle.

In the meantime, I thought I'd pass along something my wife brought home from film school a while back: it's a list of the 101 best screenplays ever written, according to the members of the WGA. Enjoy!

101. Notorious
100. Memento
99. The Wild Bunch
98. The Grapes of Wrath
97. The Searchers
96. The Hustler
95. Hannah and Her Sisters
94. Patton
93. Do the Right Thing
92. Psycho
91. The Verdict
90. Sideways
89. Forrest Gump
88. Field of Dreams
87. 8 1/2
86. Harold and Maude
85. La Grande Illusion
84. The Princess Bride
83. Rear Window
82. Cool Hand Luke
81. Being There
80. Witness
79. The Producers
78. Rocky
77. Adaptation
76. Raging Bull
75. High Noon
74. Being John Malkovich
73. Amadeus
72. Thelma & Louise
71. The Lion in Winter
70. The African Queen
69. Dog Day Afternoon
68. Star Wars
67. E.T.
66. Jerry Maguire
65. Singin' in the Rain
64. Terms of Endearment
63. Jaws
62. Moonstruck
61. The Silence of the Lambs
60. L.A. Confidential
59. It Happened One Night
58. Ordinary People
57. Crimes and Misdemeanors
56. Back to the Future
55. Apocalypse Now
54. Manhattan
53. All the President's Men
52. The Lady Eve
51. Broadcast News
50. The Sixth Sense
49. Schindler's List
48. The Bridge on the River Kwai
47. The Maltese Falcon
46. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
45. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
44. The Best Years of Our Lives
43. Taxi Driver
42. Raiders of the Lost Ark
41. Goodfellas
40. When Harry Met Sally
39. The Sting
38. American Beauty
37. The Philadelphia Story
36. Midnight Cowboy
35. The Usual Suspects
34. The Sweet Smell of Success
33. The Third Man
32. Fargo
31. His Girl Friday
30. Unforgiven
29. Sullivan's Travels
28. Shakespeare in Love
27. Groundhog Day
26. Double Indemnity
25. The Wizard of Oz
24. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
23. Gone with the Wind
22. The Shawshank Redemption
21. North by Northwest
20. It's a Wonderful Life
19. To Kill a Mockingbird
18. On the Waterfront
17. Tootsie
16. Pulp Fiction
15. The Apartment
14. Lawrence of Arabia
13. The Graduate
12. Dr. Strangelove
11. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
10. The Godfather 11
9. Some Like It Hot
8. Network
7. Sunset Boulevard
6. Annie Hall
5. All About Eve
4. Citizen Kane
3. Chinatown
2. The Godfather
1. Casablanca

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Today is the 38th anniversary of the day Bobby Kennedy got shot--no, it wasn't marked on my calendar, Slate reminded me. I thought I'd take a short break from revising Sophomore to share some thoughts.

I come by my Kennedy assassination fetish honestly: My mother was raised Catholic, and my seldom-seen father died when I was young. By 1978 or so (when I was nine) I was spending too many hours delving into JFK books filled with timetables and testimony, alibis and ballistics, tryng to figure out what had happened. This fascination persisted for years. I never understood then why the adults in my life all got so emotional when I asked about it. Now, of course, I get it: to me, JFK's death felt like ancient history, but it was no more remote than the Challenger explosion is today.

The JFK assassination is a maze with no end, and I eventually lost both the heart and stomach to run it. I read about the murders of Martin Luther King and RFK, too, but they seemed (wrongly, it turns out) too open-and-shut to sustain my interest. Eventually life--by which I mean, girls--took hold, and I moved on to other things. I was fortunate; these riddles are poisoned. Attempting to solve them is a religion that eats its acolytes.

When I think of the assassinations now, there is no curiosity or nostalgia; because they have never been definitively solved, I feel that they are still with us. History is fact robbed of its ability to injure; these events still bite. And so, when I saw RFK on Slate today, the long-haired, doom-etched RFK of '68, I felt the bite again, and not a little dread. JFK's death was about the unthinkable happening, but his brother's murder was the world confirming the terrible fact of what it had become. Or maybe, what it always had been.

Forty years on, Kennedy-King-Kennedy looks to me like the moment things started going bad, when control really clamped down from above, and apathy really took root below. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, and without a shred of romanticism, I think that direction was set by the assassinations of the 60s--not only by the loss of those people, their ideas and their ability to inspire, but also by our getting used to unsolved public murder as business as usual. That is a coarsening equal to any suffered by the Roman Republic. Is it merely coincidence that we've turned from a country of possibilities to one grinding out the same tragic, hoary imperial script? The country is traumatized, directionless, hurt; and a generation of politicians have risen who are experts at keeping us that way.

We go around in circles, searching for Kennedy-manques, a right wheel turning around a chewed stump where the left wheel used to be. If you don't like metaphors, here's a fact: All of the "lone nuts" of the 60s weakened one side of the spectrum, in favor of the other. We may think that's a mournful coincidence now, but I doubt future generations will. In my dark moments, I'm convinced that those bullets marked the beginning of American civilization's decline, the time when our capacity for fear and corruption decisively outstripped our desire for positive change. Perhaps the internet will save us; perhaps this glorious chip-and-wire hive-mind is stronger than the gun. I hope so.

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There are a lot of interesting things going on over at Dead-Frog.com, Todd Jackson's uber-comedy site. I highly recommend it to any comedy volk. I check it every day; it's like sampling the NY scene without paying NY rent.

He's just posted this interview with the UCB's Matt Besser. I was intrigued to hear that UCB is apparently creating a humor magazine, "Don't Think." That sounds like a winner idea to me--they can get good material for free/cheap, have a natural audience to sell it to, and the obvious distribution outlet in their theaters...

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