"And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women -- except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like paying for their own rape kid and stuff. But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years -- whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know, actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."
Whatever happened to brevity? Once upon a time, it was not just the soul of wit, there was a strong literary preference for the shorter book, from Utopia to Heart of Darkness. More recently, The Great Gatsby, for my money the greatest novel in English in the 20th century, comes in at under 60,000 words, a miracle of compression. The novels of that great triumvirate -- Waugh, Greene and Orwell -- average 60-70,000 words apiece; even 1984 is not much over 100,000 words.
That neglected genius, Robert Louis Stevenson, used to say: "The only art is to omit." In a letter to a friend, he declared -- in words that should be nailed over every writer's desk -- "If there is anywhere a thing said in two sentences that could have been as clearly and engagingly said in one, then it's amateur work."
"For the record, I am not afraid to hit someone with my car as an act of aggression. I think polite drivers should be met only with aggression, to teach them a lesson. If I'm following someone whose [bumper sticker] says, 'A Rind is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Compost!' I just want to throw garbage out my window."
"There's so many kids, and their dads are covered in tattoos, and I just think the common question for a child in Portland is not 'Where are babies from?' but 'What is a tattoo? What is a panther leaping out of a rainbow? What does a mermaid sitting on an anchor symbolize to you, Dad?' I wonder how parents are dealing with the tattoo questions. That haunts me at night."
Portlandia premieres on the Independent Film Channel in January, it will portray this city as a day camp for adults -- a town where tourists stand in line at Stumptown Coffee like it's a Disneyland ride, feminist booksellers teach classes on how to write journal entries, and diners prefer to eat at a restaurant only after they have visited each of its source farms
Much of the series' humor hinges on the perception of Portland as a haven for boutique lefty frivolity -- as [Fred] Armisen puts it, "Portland is where young people go to retire."
A finished sketch for the pilot shows Brownstein and Armisen playing retail artists who visit a North Mississippi Avenue store and customize every item on display with the same suggestions: "Put a bird on it!"
Fallon's best segments are upbeat and rarely have targets, let alone victims. Jay Leno, by contrast, is known as the "nice guy" of late night, but even a signature bit like "Jaywalking" revolves around asking normal people questions, then chuckling at their dumb responses. David Letterman is late night's crotchety truth-teller, and he perpetually looks like he might walk off his own show in disgust. Fallon's biggest hit so far came when he staged a number with Justin Timberlake in which they performed a medley tracing the history of rap, starting with the Sugarhill Gang and ending with them bum-rushing the audience to "Empire State of Mind." There wasn't even a real joke at its heart (whereas on Conan, the same bit might center on "Isn't it funny that dorky white Conan is rapping?"). But the clip earned over a million views online.
Fallon's feel-good-jamboree approach might sound fusty and old-fashioned, but it's actually a very modern antidote to free-form irony. "Our research has told us that young viewers respond less to angry comedy," says Brent Haynes, the senior vice-president of comedy and animation at MTV, which recently hosted Fallon on the teen-oriented game show Silent Library. "These viewers don't have a strong sense of rebellion, because they're generally happy with their lives. So their comedy is more about surprise and randomness. And Jimmy's a very hopeful guy. He doesn't have a 'That's fucked' attitude. It's more of a 'That's silly' attitude." If other late-night shows echo the snarkier outposts of the Internet, Fallon's smartly plugged into the Internet's more earnest side: the part where fans flock to gab about last night's Glee or watch videos of adorable puppies.
"I'm on so late I'm definitely the last seconds of anyone's attention," says Fallon. "So I just want to give them something dumb to laugh at, so they go, 'That's funny,' then fall asleep."I don't watch a whole lot of late night talk shows; and when I do, I don't watch too much of Fallon's show. Though, as mentioned in the article, I sometimes see funny bits from his show the next day online (which doesn't really help his ratings, I know). I think he does good stuff, and I do think he has an interesting approach to late night. It does seem like he's doing the show simply for him and his friends involved with the show. It really does look like he's just having fun, and that's refreshing.
"For me, I think there's a good balance of tone in [Casino Jack]. But I think a lot of people aren't used to films that have that balance of tone. In the last 30 years, independent film has become what I call Pottery Barn cinema. It's a little bit ostentatious, it's beautiful to look at, but it's lost its sense of storytelling."
Randall Terry -- he of the "chain yourself to the sink of an abortion clinic, declare bankruptcy to avoid making legal payments to the National Organization of Women, run for Congress under the "Right to Life Party", hire a Bill Clinton impersonator to discredit your opponents, compare the University of Notre Dame to Judas, list your "three black foster children" on your resume [!], disown one for converting to Islam, disown another for becoming pregnant, disown the third for being gay [wow, he really picked 'em!], respond to George Tiller's murder by calling Tiller a murderer" style of politics -- is now official campaign manager for D.C. congressional candidate Missy Smith.
"I've never been able to write prose well. I've certainly sat down and attempted to write short stories, but I get up from the chair very quickly. I don't have the mastery of language that's required. One of the reasons why a lot of my characters are high is that it's easier to write for people who are stoned, who are not very smart and don't know big words. I don't have great powers of description. Even my screenplays don't describe things well. Some screenplays go into great detail about what the setting looks like and feels like, and I'll just go "Interior. House." And that's it. But I admire people who do it very well. And I had the thought in the back of my head that I would one day put more effort into seeing if I could express myself in that way."
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