Daily Prompt: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Me

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“You will meet some people who find themselves unreasonably perfect. Unforgivably, unbelievably golden. Stay away from them.”

No one said this to me as I ventured into life as we know it. I do not know why; if I am blessed enough to be referred to by someone as their father someday, it might be one of the first things I tell the little one. In the hospital. Well, not the first. It might be a part of some advice I give as he or she heads off to college. Perhaps. Or maybe he or she will need to learn it on their own.

“They will tell you that they are their own worst critic themselves, but they will fight you bitterly if you ever criticize them or offer suggestions.”

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“I am my own worst critic.” I have heard this sentence many times and I have even heard me say it about myself. I probably said it about myself a few days ago. It is bunk. Most (not all) of the people who declare this (including me) are asking you to verbally pat them on the shoulder, tell them they need to go easier on themselves, congratulate them for their high standards. (Some people truly are too hard on themselves, but they tend to not declare this.)

A critic’s job is to attempt to figure out how something works, usually a work of art, and point out the spots where it is not working or not seeming to work well enough. Where it is failing to communicate. Ironically or not, it is not a job for someone who likes tearing things down. That’s what a reviewer does, and not a good one. (Someone should produce an annual book, “A Guide to Reviewers.” Very few reviewers are critics in the strict sense, because doing real criticism is grueling and gets into the nuts and bolts of a thing. It is a job in which one writes 25 pages on a two-page long, 48-line, poem. [It was “Skunk Hour,” by Robert Lowell.] On the other hand, there are a lot of writers who call themselves reviewers, but really they are critics who figure things out and explain it all to us, and I love reading them.)

I was the type of kid who liked taking things apart and putting them back together, enjoyed the search for the one necessary part that appeared to make the thing run when it was in place. The one part in whose absence the thing did not function. Now, I know that one could call this “slow-motion breaking things,” as very few gadgets that I played with were ever restored to a state one might call “functional,” but it is the outlook of a critic. I also loved doing magic tricks. How does a magic trick work? It isn’t by magic.

I enjoyed diagramming sentences, which is a similar thing. (My sentences do not vary in structure, much, I know, I know.)

If I had been truly my own worst or harshest critic, well, my life might have headed somewhere else. (I might not be writing.) No, I was my “worst” critic in that I did not see things clearly, how things worked and did not work. I was my “harshest” in that I liked, perversely liked, tearing myself down. And then I would feel angry at myself for my failure to: Get published, or finish a degree, or father a family, or something else. (Hey, you! Yeah, you. You want to know how to get published? Shhhh. Come over here. I’ll tell ya. Closer. Ready? FIRST, WRITE SOMETHING!) I never began anything so how could I legitimately moan at the absence of the sweet rewards of success? That is a terrible critic; really, it is just a bully. I was my own worst bully. (I am not that anymore.)

I was perpetually caught between my devil and the deep blue me.

The above is an honest assessment, briefly sketched. Honesty is a rare social commodity. One ought to attempt, at least attempt, to be rigorously honest. Not brutally honest. That particular word pair, “brutally honest,” has become a common phrase of late, and while I do not know its origin I do know that it is empty. A completely empty phrase. Any honest communication, from “I love you” to criticism, is not brutal if it is honest.

“Let me be brutally honest,” she said. “I like that cologne.”

We can be brutal, and it can be honest, but “brutal” trumps anything the word is modifying. When I was young, I learned the art of telling complete truths, honest truths, about TMI matters just to deflect questioners about things I really did not want to talk about. That is brutal honesty, I suppose.

Criticism, or anything, offered as brutal honesty is neither honesty nor is it criticism. It’s just brutal.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for September 24 asks, “How are you at receiving criticism? Do you prefer that others treat you with kid gloves, or go for brutal honesty?“Because the question was titled, “Handle With Care,” well, here:

How to Be a Live TV Audience

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Comedy Central’s two main franchise shows are both recorded in a part of New York City called “Hell’s Kitchen,” a section of Manhattan that extends about 25 blocks south and west of Central Park and west of Midtown over to the Hudson River. Most of the buildings in the neighborhood are former walk-ups and townhouses that are now offices for media companies; “The Colbert Report’s” studio looks like it was a house or storefront once upon a time.

The Thursday, September 18, 2014, broadcast of “The Colbert Report” was a very special one because I was in the audience, as I wrote yesterday, in “Four Minutes and 24 Years.” Terry Gilliam, the legendary film and theater director (the list is epic and includes: “Time Bandits,” “Brazil,” “The Fisher King,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “The Zero Theorem”) and Monty Python animator and cast member, was the guest.

The studio is on the same level as the street outside, but it takes a lifetime to get there. Sorry, that was a sentence from a television ad for a college course in broadcasting that I am working on. We should go back outside.

The tickets for live-on-tape broadcasts are free, because these shows need a full and loudly enthusiastic house for each and every show and the producers do not want people who feel that sense of hostile proprietorship that can come with a ticket purchase. (They do not want an audience of people with crossed arms and an attitude of, “Entertain me.”) A theatrical performance in front of an empty house could nonetheless be great but a television show performed to silence and a performer feeding off the silence could be horrifying to watch unfold. (Only Johnny Carson seemed to be able to work with a not-yet-impressed audience.)

The producers also do not want an audience of people off the street, happy to receive free things, but not aware of how to be an audience. Talk with a stage actor sometime. He or she will tell you stories of the weirdest things that have happened during performances: cell phones going off, of course, but also people taking the phone call; people walking across the stage (especially in theaters with the stage and seats on the same level) looking for a restroom; audience members yelling at or asking questions of the characters as if they are in their easy chair yelling at a TV screen; babies crying. The audience is supposed to be separate from the performance, with some exceptions. A live television show audience is not at a stage show; the audience is a part of the show: the audience is the soundtrack.

Thus, the audience is coached on this point by producers before the taping begins. And then re-coached. The performance at first felt like a pop quiz to gauge how well we had absorbed the coaching. It also felt like if we were insufficiently enthusiastic, we would be escorted back out to 54th Street.

The process of acquiring these free tickets varies from show to show but all of the shows use the method to establish that the audience is made up of fans. (Willing to be loud. Happy to pretend to not be faking enthusiasm.) Some shows use online trivia contests to winnow out the casual fans. My method was the easiest for me: I have a friend who has done this before (he attended “The Daily Show”) and wanted to do it again and invited me.

(Would that we had attended “The Daily Show” last Thursday; former President Clinton was there that day.)

The tickets one receives for registering online for a television taping are not tickets as one usually thinks of them. They do not guarantee a seat. They guarantee a spot on line, in a covered alleyway where one waits for the doors to open. We arrived early, chatted with the show assistants, and waited some more. The assistants are talented at a particular task: they quickly learn who is with whom, names, who has special needs. My friend’s wife sat with me at a coffeeshop for a few minutes while he held our group spot on line, then they traded: she went back and he sat with me. When he and I rejoined the line we found that we could not see her; one of the assistants got our attention (not vice versa, They. Ran. Us. Down), gave us our seat tickets, and ushered us into a room in the building, where she already was.

My thumb.

My thumb.

In that room, one goes through a security checkpoint and then waits. For over an hour. It is a square room, maybe 25 X 25 feet, extraordinarily air conditioned. Several monitors play old Colbert shows on a “Best of” loop. The walls are plastered with Colbert memorabilia. Over the next few minutes, the entire audience-to-be was herded into this room, which made clear the need for extreme air conditioning. Seeing I walk with a cane, one assistant walked me through the crowd to a bench.

Twice an assistant addressed the crowd. Both times the message was: “This is very special. Stephen is going to chat with you before the show, so have some questions ready.” (Perhaps he does this every show and they tell the audience it is special.) “When you’re watching the show at home, you only chuckle at the jokes because you’re thinking about your own life and you hear the audience in your TV laughing uproariously. You’re the audience in someone’s TV now. Whatever you’re going to laugh at, laugh loudly.”

The doors to the set were opened and people were ushered in by ticket number but in small groups; my group of four friends went in together. The bleachers do not have banisters, something which I was anxious about as a person with spinal muscular atrophy and thus almost no balance on stairs, even with a death grip on a railing. One of the assistants saw my cane and the four of us were thus seated in the front, over by the interview table. The stage manager and then the warm-up act coached us some more in the finer points of yelling our laughter. (Since all of you have heard my voice in an earlier post, you should be able to hear me clearly if you watch the show. Of course.)

Contrary to what I thought, the show is not taped in real time; Colbert made one verbal typo and they recorded a do-over, the commercial breaks were over ten minutes each, the interview with Terry Gilliam was over 15 minutes, of which about not quite 10 made the show. The affection between Colbert and his staff was obvious: at one point, while a hairdresser was combing his hair, he started pretending to comb hers. He indeed took questions before the show and again after. All told, we were in the studio for a bit over an hour for a 21-minute show.

The broadcast will be available for free on the website for the rest of this week, so here is the link: The Colbert Report with Terry Gilliam. And here is the 60 second edit:

It was a fun day and night in NYC, thanks to Gerry, Theresa, Ron, Bob and Kevin, and all of New York City. Even the panhandler on the train from Secaucus.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for April 9 asks, “If you could learn a trade—say carpentry, electrical work, roofing, landscaping, plumbing, flooring, drywall—you name it—what skill(s) would you love to have in your back pocket?” TV host. I am heading to NYC today with my one and only, Jen, to view tonight’s taping of “The Nightly Show,” starring Larry Wilmore. It is in the same theater as “The Colbert Report” was recorded each night. That is the reason for re-running this column from September. Tune in tonight at 11:30 EST on Comedy Central to see if you catch a glimpse of me and my love. Full updates tomorrow.

The Fish-Slapping Dance

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“If you had to come up with one question, the answer to which would determine whether or not you could be friends with a person you’ve just met, what would it be? What would the right answer be?”

“That’s a great question. Oddly comprehensive, yet a little intrusive at the same time.”

“I agree, but my usual ice breaker question is to ask people that I have just met what their ice breaker question is. So, what is it?”

“Did you want more coffee?”

“That’s your question?”

“No. Your cup is empty. Free refills, hon’.”

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The speed with which one can determine the depth or length of a friendship—somewhere between forever and not at all—is inequal to the facts of a friendship. How many reminiscence-conversations have you had with friends in which you have learned that either your memory of meeting a friend is faulty or that the friend did not like you on first encounter? I have had both types.

I hinted in a recent column, okay, I explicitly stated in a recent column that if you find the “Fish-Slapping Dance” funny, you and I will more than likely be friends for life.

It may be the Monty Python troupe’s quickest route to the biggest laugh. I wrote, “If you do not find the ‘Fish-Slapping Dance’ funny, it may be because you find the waste of intellectual effort offensive. Or perhaps fish jokes generally turn you right off. ‘How is this funny?’ becomes the same question as ‘Why is this funny?’ ‘Why is T H I S on my screen?’ The ‘Fish-Slapping Dance’ actually can be seen as a depiction of the ‘How is this funny?’ conversation. Michael Palin, the ‘little fishes,’ dances the question, and then John Cleese, the ‘big fish,’ delivers the only possible retort: ‘It is or it is not.’ Splash.”

I can over-intellectualize and explain how the bit does not work, but every attempt I make falters the moment Michael Palin hits the water, when I laugh, sometimes quietly and sometimes out loud, every time.

I knew approximately two things when I wrote this a couple of months ago: that my girlfriend, the closest friend I have, probably does not know much if any Monty Python material and that I do not know if we share a sense of humor, even though she and I laugh a lot at many of the same things and same comics. For instance, her response after listening to some recordings of my radio show was to say that it was nice hearing my voice and that I sounded like I was enjoying myself. It is a comedy show.

Thus, I was rather nervous when I posted the Monty Python video above, several weeks ago, as she might very well read what I wrote, view the classic bit of comedy, and then instant message a break-up with me. I did not know what I did not know, but I was going to learn sooner or later. Are we companions for life, based on one sixteen-second joke?

“I’ve been sitting in my office, laughing at that.” she wrote me that night. Thus, my belief that the Monty Python “Fish-Slapping Dance” is the litmus test of comedy, a proof of companionability, was sustained.

Kindergartners may have the most effective conversations for establishing a friendship: favorite color, up versus down, best food. Matters of eternal importance like those. I try to remember this and always keep track of what is important to me, just in case someone wants to know on the spot: Green, the number 4, the letter N, the word Yes.

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The WordPress Daily Prompt for September 23 asks, “If you had to come up with one question, the answer to which would determine whether or not you could be friends with a person you’ve just met, what would it be? What would the right answer be?“