August 13,
2004
Today is the day to get all superstitious and whatnot.
Luvvie Smalls is now available for your romantic queries.
Today's interviewee is a writer who wears many hats. You may know him best as the author of the satirical Politically Correct Bedtime Stories books, but that's not all, folks. He's a humorist and essayist whose work has appeared on stage and on the airwaves of NPR and I'm proud to say he's another addition to the magnificent house of humor Chicago has built.
The James Finn Garner Interview: A Chunk Under Twenty Questions
Who or what is that kid
at the bottom of your web page?
I donÃt know who that kid is. I
found him on some general GIF download page, along with fluffy bunnies for
Easter and lurching ghouls for Halloween.
I just like to have him around.
It makes me happy to think heÃll be eating oatmeal and grinning in
a perpetual loop from now til Doomsday.
If you were to map political correctness since its inception
as a term or concept, what was its height? And where are we now?
On the one hand, Paris Hilton doesnÃt mind talking about her sex video,
but on the other, Outkast gets slammed for dancing around in
Indian (Native American?) garb at the Grammys.
I guess the height of PC was the Reagan-Bush era.
Conservative thinking was on the rise, and progressives became convinced
that, rather than doing something useful like getting elected to office, they
could fight conservative thinking through emphasizing new words, paradigms,
and methods of communicating. ThatÃs
when speech codes were introduced on campuses, which was when it first caught
my eye. It later spread through
government agencies and private businesses.
The phrase eventually became a convenient catch-all for things a person
didnÃt like or wanted to get away with, e.g., "IÃd like to give my wife a
hit in the head when she does that, but that wouldnÃt be politically correct."
(The phrase should be said in a whining or effete voice for maximum
effect.)
I donÃt think we live in a PC era these days at all. On both the left and the right, the name of the game is win and the devil take the hindmost. Even the pretense of civility is considered a sign of weakness.
And political correctness is disconnected from outright vulgarity like Paris HiltonÃs Öwell, life. AmericaÃs full of cheap sleazy people and morons to watch them. And Outkast? I think their music is fun (while still a Parliament rip-off) but I donÃt look to them for political messages. Pop culture certainly has its PC hotspots (like the Chief Illiniwek controversy), but since itÃs populated by freaks looking to get attention, political correctness just isnÃt part of the equation.
Then, of course, there is the FCC fallout from the Janet
Jackson affair. Why do you think
the government is cracking down now? And how long do you predict this new
enforcement will last until weÃre seeing boobs on TV again?
This is an election year, so all the powers that be in Washington are going
to make token efforts to get the
networks to police themselves. But
it will all come to nothing in the end.
To the media and the politicians,
and of course to Janet and Justin, money is the name of the game.
One side feigns outrage, the other pretends itÃs an issue of artistic
and intellectual freedom. Boobs will be bouncing back on TV by this time next year, as
long as someoneÃs tuning in.
Why do so many comic performers come from Chicago? Is
there anything about the city itself that incubates humor?
Chicago breeds comics for a great number of reasons.
ItÃs a great urban city, with many different types of people rubbing
elbows with one another, which is important for performers (and writers) to
observe. The city is easer and cheaper to live in than NY or LA, so trying
out new material, concepts and formats is a lot easier.
And the expectations are different.
In the coastal media centers, every performer has to do his or her
thing with the stench-filled maw of television panting in the wings, and so
they have one eye on being funny and one eye on being the Next Big Thing.
It takes a very strong personality to thrive and create under those
conditions.
After reading about "Sponsored
by Suddsy Soap, the Clean Soap in the Han-dy Paste," I assume that
you were a fan of old radio. Were you, and if so, who were your favorites?
Radio to me is a
great, underused medium. As the pace of life gets faster, our chances to really listen
to it become fewer. When I was
11 or 12, I used to listen to the National Lampoon Radio Hour and the Firesign
Theater, as well as a lot of freeform, cannabis-infused radio from Canada.
Combine that with my love of classic comedy from the 30s to the 50s, and of
course IÃm going to enjoy old radio.
I began to appreciate old radio much more when my buddies and I were developing
the Waveland Radio Playhouse, a live comedy act in which we would perform
in real time our invented scripts from old radio shows.
For inspiration (and material to steal), weÃd listen to old tapes.
Although I liked Burns & Allen, Amos & Andy, and W.C. Fields, I loved
Jack Benny the best.
His radio show was much better than his old TV show.
Some very surreal humor, things like driving his pet polar bear to
the vet in an emergency. Do yourself
a favor and find some of these tapes in the library to take on your next road
trip.
What were some
of the strangest acts from your old cabaret show, "The Theatre of the Bizarre"?
We had quite a few. Some
of the best ones came from Matt Walsh and Matt Besser of the Upright Citizens
Brigade. The Bucket of Truth
(different than what ended up on TV); Matteo Potpouri, spokesman for NORML;
Oogly, the Icelandic prop comedian; and of course, the Titty Brothers, before
they were censored for television and became the
Titte Brothers.
Matt Walsh also
did one of the funniest bits ever with an old performing buddy, Kevin Ervick,
called the Teamsters ChildrenÃs Puppet Theater.
It was basically two blue collar guys named Smitty and Jocko who squatted
behind a pallet, waved some dolls above their heads and made a lot of crude
jokes about their wives and mothers-in-law, all in the guise of giving the
kids a puppet show. They also
did a very vulgar, very funny deconstruction of the old "WhoÃs On First?"
routine, which started with a line like, "Hey, Numbnuts, I just bought me
a baseball team."
Then there was
the Bleeder, a recent accident victim who came out in a bathrobe with a head
bandage on. He tried to tell
jokes, but when he came to the punchlines, he became very excited and began
to bleed from his headwound. The
WorldÃs Most Dangerous Comic, who attempted automated suicide if he couldnÃt
coax three laughs from the audience in three minutes.
And the divorced guy with the freeze-dried
cat.
There were quite
a few others, but we ran for more than two years, so IÃm forgetting some.
And itÃs always funnier in performance than in recounting.
You have worked
on two animated cartoons. What about the medium of animation appeals to you?
I think IÃm just very juvenile.
IÃll sit and watch a half-hour of "Tom and Jerry" or "Ed, Edd and Eddy"
before suffering through an episode of "Friends" any day.
The obvious answer is that you
can do things in animation that you canÃt do in real life.
Computer technology has changed that, however, and now anything can
be done on film. IÃve been on
the set of a few films and been on the sidelines for TV production, and I
find it absolutely the most tedious thing in the world.
All the laborious set ups, the indifferent technicians, the bored and
demanding actors, the fakeryówhy anyone would want to do that for a living
or artistic expression is beyond me.
IÃd rather joke around with a lot of juvenile people like me who can
make drawings come to life.
You wrote an
ode to Tiger Stadium. Which do you think are some of the other more odious
parks or stadiums in the country?
I havenÃt really been in enough to make a judgment.
I didnÃt find Tiger Stadium odious at all. It wasnÃt very attractive
from the outside, but was gorgeous on the inside, intimate, smoky green, humungous
scoreboard, press box almost hanging by brackets over home plate.
It was better than old
Comiskey Parkófewer columns, fewer seats pointed in the wrong direction--because
the architect for that stadium learned from his mistakes and four years later
built Tiger Stadium. It was idiosyncratic
and steeped in history, and if I ruled the world, the owners should have worked
harder to improve and adapt it.
What are you
working on now?
Right now IÃm working on the worldÃs first clown noir thriller.
Set in Top Town, a big city ghetto filled with washed-up circus performers,
my detective hero is Rex Koko, a talented clown who has been unfairly blamed
for a tragedy that affected everyone in his circles.
I had intended to call the book "Honk Honk, My Darling," but will probably
go with "Rex Koko,
Private Clown." He was a
very popular character in our old radio show performances.
Who are some
of your favorite writers?
The best book IÃve read in the past five years was Michael ChabonÃs "Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."
IÃm also a big fan of TC Boyle,
Terry Pratchett, Raold Dahl, David Sedaris, Saul Bellow, Flann OÃBrien, PG
Wodehouse. I used to love Martin Amis, but since "London Fields," he
seems to be flaming out in his own bitterness.
On the classic side, Twain, Nabokov, Dickens, Runyon.
WhatÃs made
you laugh lately?
I just got the DVD sets for "The Upright Citizens Brigade" and "The Kids
in the Hall," which have been like a tonic. Of course, "The Daily Show" is the funniest regular show on
TV, despite Jon Stewart trying to be Tim Russert.
YouÃve said
in interviews that you do not come from very humorous stock. So do your parents
enjoy your work or do they wish you were a banker?
My mother doesnÃt have the slightest clue about what I do.
She really thought "PC Bedtime Stories" was based on straight-ahead
politics, like a Capitol Steps routine.
She was happy, though, once I made some money at it.
That meant she could stop worrying about me.
My dad died when I was 20. He
didnÃt want me to be a writer because he knew no one who could give me any
guidance or tutoring, and was afraid IÃd live my life in poverty.
ItÃs a mystery what he would think of my comedy.
He was a taciturn man with a very guarded sense of humor that exploded
at strange times. I remember
he used to laugh like crazy at "The Addams Family" when Gomez blew up his
model trains, so I think I got almost all my sense of humor from him, somewhere,
somehow.
It didnÃt hurt in the least.
I was grateful for the strong reaction.
JPT was so high-brow and stupid at the same time, people either loved
it or hated it. Bernie Sahlins,
one of the founders of Second City, saw us once and heaped us with praise.
It all depends, I think, on how much you want things that are funny
to make sense. Sometimes they
just donÃt and you can still laugh at them.
How does it feel to be the 102nd person interviewed
for Zulkey.com?
It is an honor, a privilege, a compliment, a solemn duty, a blessing, a curse,
a charge for future generations, a quick poke in the eye, a monument to civilization,
a gas gas gas. Thanks for asking.