Kenny Powers Sheesh

Ever wonder how you’ll come back in your next life? I sometimes think that I, this over-wrought ever-apologizing caricature of delicate feelings and political correctness, might come back as Kenny Friggin’ Powers from Eastbound and Down.

"How do you find this so funny?" my husband asks as he sees me laughing at this HBO series, "you who have always hated the very idea of crude language?”

I have always hated the idea of crude language.... mostly. I really hate movies with bodily function jokes and I also hate the idea of me using crude language, so I don’t. Once, at age 19, back from college for the summer and hanging my things up in my bedroom closet, I let a double handful of wire coat hangers rattle to the floor in a wild tangle and said ‘sh__.” My mother zipped around the corner, materializing out of nowhere, to stand ashen-face before me. “Is this the kind of language my hard-earned dollars are going for?" she hissed. "To teach you language like THIS?”

That cured me for decades.

The real truth is I never could quite carry off the swearing thing. All I’ve really picked up over the years is the correct use of the word, “yo” (at the end of the sentence, for emphasis.) You also seem to use “dude” that way, as when you want to point out to someone that they’re being a baby, as in “Dude it’s a five paragraph compare-and-contrast piece. Just write it!” (I spend a lot of time helping high school kids with their homework in case that isn’t obvious.)

I hope you can view this YouTube video on your device, so you can see what I’m getting at here. This is a kind of dream sequence from Eastbound and Down with main character Kenny Powers who refers to himself in the third person with a form of the ‘f word’ for a middle name. Besides being the only clip I could find without swearing in it, it’s also a perfect illustration of one of the key elements of comedy, which is juxtaposition. Here’s this rough, egocentric former ball player now cut from the roster and trying to make a life back in his hometown as a sort of teacher’s aide at the middle school. What’s funny is the contrast between his adult cynicism and the sweetness of these pint-sized children.

This might even be the very first episode of the first season of the show which is now halfway through its third and very last season. Actor Danny McBride has done some very good straight roles too, as when he played the temporarily reluctant bridegroom with George Clooney in Up in the Air.

I guess all I’m saying is we won’t have Kenny Friggin Powers around much longer. Take off the white gloves, set down that teacup for a bit and see what you think. For the the R-rated more accurate version you can just go right to YouTube and click on almost any other scene.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN5EnOPhnWI]

Not in Front of the Kids

They cleared out an entire mall this morning because somebody said some guy had a rifle. Turned out an hour and God knows how many taxpayers’ dollars later we find out it was an umbrella.I was at Target some six miles away when the scare was still ‘live’ and heard a little kindergartener exclaiming about it to her father. “Everyone just had to LEAVE! Everyone! Can you believe it?” “Hmmmm,” said her dad who didn’t appear to even hear her.  Anyway he was walking three feet ahead as she trotted fast to keep up.I sure hope he didn’t tell her about the gun scare and the threat of a man committing murder. Maybe he had the radio on in the car and she heard it for herself.The only time I ever thought about murder was the year the Martin Scorsese film Casino came out and I went alone to see it just because some  reviewer raved over it. Casino has Joe Pesci in it so I knew there would be both violence and many examples of the language’s most unimaginative word.The story is about Las Vegas back in Mob times and just as I feared I almost passed out during the scene when someone got his head put in a vise in the early scenes; and I'm still literally haunted by the scene in the desert where the two poor guys are forced to strip to their little underpants before getting shot to death.Still, it was my fault; I went to see the movie of my own accord - unlike the two very young children in the row in front of me, brought by their moron of a father. Once I noticed them three-quarters of the way through the film I could think of nothing else. The little boy, maybe five, was staring silent and dazed at the screen. As for his sister, maybe a year older, she couldn’t even look.  She kept glancing over at the walls and up at the ceiling, her little feet, which did not reach the floor, going back and forth, back and forth in agitated fashion.When the movie ended the father stood to stretch, turning part way around as he did so. That’s when he saw my face. His idiotic remark, delivered in sheepish fashion?  “They’ll sleep tonight!”  I wanted to slap his big dumb face and take away his children . It was rainy that day too as I remember, so I actually had my umbrella. I only wished it was the kind tipped with poison at the point.Here's the trailer for Casino which also stars Robert DeNiro and Sharon Stone. You can find many more violent scenes from it on YouTube if you like.  If you  don't mind having your humanity diminished. Just for Heavens's sake make sure no children come in the room while you're watching. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t09aGcMjnWM]

Healthy as a Horse

Sometimes you just don’t want to get on that treadmill. Most times actually. I can think of a thousand other things I’d rather do than get on that thing. Yesterday for example I sewed up a hole in the fingertip of some gloves I never even wear - they smell like onions no matter how much I wash them - and THAT kept me away from the treadmill for a whole hour.

They’re great gloves and I have like eight pairs of them, bought on the Internet and hoarded away because I’m pretty sure they’re no longer making them.  I also love the way you’re supposed to clean them: you just put 'em on and then wash your hands in your favorite liquid detergent. It’s as easy at that and every time I do it I think “THIS is the way to bathe a baby: just figure out a way to put the baby on like a hand puppet!"  Or even if they just came with a terrycloth handle on the back.These are the things that are too weird for me to say in the paper but there’s evidently nothing you can’t say in The New Yorker. In the latest issue here's Tiny Fey using the F-word right alongside all the fancy ads like the one for that mystery camp that shows a close-up of a 12-year-old boy staring fixedly into the middle distance. The F-word! In the piece she’s agonizing about whether or not she should have another child and finally says “Maybe I’ll just wait ‘til I’m 50 and give birth to a ball of fingers.”See, she’s funny AND she’s willing to put herself in a bad light: a girl after my own heart. I tried to take up swearing ten or 15 years ago but I was too old for it; couldn’t get the hang of it at all. Plus it wouldn’t really fit with my image as a person who only uses the Mother Teresa stamp on her bills and letters.....I could go on but I turned the treadmill on like 40 minutes ago and then wandered away to get a bottled water before getting sidetracked by you guys here, and that's sure a waste of electricity! Better go turn it off and read more of this New Yorker. :-)

(Note the old guy in the background. Dangerous practice!)