Things Kelsey Grammer Says

Just saw that Kelsey Grammer is going to be the face of RightNetwork, a cable channel catering exclusively to conservatives because apparently Fox News doesn't exist or something. Here's Kelsey now, disparaging "partisan politics," among other things, while openly shilling for right wing TV.

I guess the idea behind RightNetwork is to provide non-news/political pundit content for the conservative audience, and one of their pilots is Right2Laugh, a showcase of right-wing comedians. Here's the teaser for it. Uh, yeah.

Let me say, for the record, that I am open to the idea of conservative comedians. Nick DiPaolo was really funny before he went completely off the deep end, and Jeff Foxworthy manages to be funny, be a Republican, and work clean, which requires almost occult levels of wit and timing. Denis Leary has conservative tendencies, as relevant as political alignment is to that Boston Irish mindset of being insanely angry all the time.

However, the problem with a lot of conservative comics is that their routines are too much about proving their own conservatism and less about telling jokes or being funny or exploring the absurd, or really connecting with the audience in any meaningful way. In the teaser I linked, there's maybe one or two jokes that might work beyond an echo chamber in lockstep agreement with the comedian (and only one joke, the one about the Obama coin, that got more than a tepid response from the crowd). Otherwise, the content and delivery don't cover any ground beyond the sort of "X walks like this, but Y walks like this" bullshit pandering that is a staple of ineffective comedy.

That said, Kelsey Grammer has been funny before. And if one of his sex tapes ever goes public, we'll all definitely have something to laugh at.

Shit My Dad Says

My dad is planning a trip to visit me in the city, and he recently sent me a list of must-do activities:

• Fly kites
• Write poems
• Read and sing to old people at a retirement home
• Go huntin' with Junior
• Beg for spare change and loosie cigarettes in front of Penn Station
• Offer bike taxi rides at Central Park, but just with regular bikes so people have to sit on the handlebars. It's NYC, someone will take us up on it.
• Create our own performance art in Bryant Park that involves us punching each other in the stomach. You friends can take shifts. People must be punchees if they punch (one simple damn rule).
• Sell chicklets and Padre Pio key chains in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral
• Re-enact famous movie scenes in Greenwhich Village (because I think beatniks would like this).
• Camp out overnight in Central Park along side a road, and heat up a can of beans on the fire 'cause: My daddy tole me, look here Mac the best friend you'll have is a railroad track. So when I's 13, I said I'm rollin my own, and I am leavin and never comin home. And I'm lost, I'm lost at the bottom of the world. Sittin by the fire with a busted nose. The moon's the color of a coffee stain, and I'm lost, I'm lost at the bottom of the world.

I am pretty sure he is serious. These are just the kind of activities my family and I do together. When I am home for Christmas, we basically just get drunk in front of the fire place, eat dinner every night at Dontinos, and occasionally we will have a Twisting Competition or throw my cats Fish Taco Fiestas and make them wear sombreros. (Following the Twisting Competitions are always hours of bickering over who won the Twisting Competition. Dad's twisting style, if you ask me, is a little too wild and doesn't even really resemble twisting. Mom's is a little to unenthusiastic. Mine is just right.) I also go on long runs in the woods with my dad, and I go shopping with my mom. We lounge on the couch and watch Lifetime movies.

And when people come to stay with me in New York, I am a pretty shitty host. Every time my friend Patty visits, we dream of doing these awesome things, but we often just sit in a coffee shop and make farting noises or pile into my apartment and play kazoos. When my mom comes, she specifically says, "I don't want to go to any goddam museums. No cultural activities." (She openly "hates art.") We drink, shop, make fun of people, and smoke hookah. And that is pretty much what people can expect to do when they come visit me.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to visit me, you've been warned. (And you may want to brush up on your twisting style.) And I'm also on the hunt for anyone willing to participate in my dad's punching-eachother-in-the-stomach performance art. Let me know if you're interested.

Shit My Mom Says

This just in from the Parenting experts: Moms cheat more on their man the day after Mother's Day than on any other day of the year.

Blogs are all abuzz about this news, but I'm really not that surprised.

As I've said before, I work for a parenting website and fully understand the gravity of this holiday. If you fuck it up by not honoring mom correctly, you're doing the kind of damage that requires months of therapy sessions.

When I was a little girl, I said to my mom, "Mom, there's a Mother's Day and a Father's Day. Why isn't there a Kid's day?"

She fucking whipped her head around and said in one of those harsh, devil-mom voices, "Every day is Kid's Day." She was totally right, and it was the first time I realized what a big deal this holiday is. Moms may pretend like it's no big deal (but have you ever noticed, the sort of don't act like it's no big deal?) but they take it very seriously. As they should. I haven't done a FRACTION of a FRACTION of the selfless things moms do every day for their kids. (But, I must admit, now that I’m not technically a "kid" anymore, and I’m not a mother or father, I'd like a day of my own.)

Anyway, to cover my ass this Mamma's Day, I have compiled a list of the greatest advice and how-to's my mother ever gave me. Thanks, mom!

Don't mix drinks Before I was old enough to drink, I remember her New Year's Resolution: Drink MORE vodka. This makes her sound nuts but it's actually really responsible advice. If you drink more vodka, you'll probably drink less beer and have less-excruciating hangovers. Probably.

The Eye Roll In my early school days, I was nerdy and almost friendless (I blame this on the suspenders/clip on tie/ kangol hat outfits I wore, which were my mother's fault in the first place -- I mean why did she let me out of the house like that?). But when girls were really mean to me -- really cruel as girls can sometimes be -- she told me not to say a word but to roll my eyes at them. That, she said, is way more powerful than anything you can say, and it won't get you riled up. I noticed it drove the LiLo's of my elementary school ca-razy.

Kissing ass isn't bullshit, it's practical Every year at Christmas time, my mom leaves a six-pack of beer and a card for our garbage collectors out with our trash cans. She then glues herself to the front window until they drive by to pick up the garbage, and then see (and joyfully accept) their gifts. My mom treats everyone well. It's smart to be nice to people in your life, like the garbage man. You never know when he's going to be able to help you. (Another nice thing would be for me to stop calling him the "Garbage Man", which is like one step above calling him "Poo Captain".) This is also related to more advice my mom gave me: always do the extra credit.

Don't date the townies It was the only parting advice she gave me when she dropped me off in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for college.

If you're feeling shitty, buy something Extra points if it's glittery or bright pink.

You're never too old to love Disney World In fact, Disney World is better when you're an adult. When I take over the place, I'm banishing anyone under 5 years old. (And if you want a wheelchair, you're going to have to pass some sort of "DISABLED TEST". But that's another story.)

The positive effects of swearing, and, specifically having a trademark swear word. Hers: mother FUCKER!!! And calling un-courteous drivers "ass wipes"

Talking or trying to get anything done really doesn't make any sense until you've had 18 cups of coffee Thanks a lot, mom. I've been pretty much addicted since birth. Aren't you supposed to halt your caffeine addiction when you're pregnant?

Get dressed up for everything When my mom picks me up from the Cleveland Airport, everyone looks like shit. They're all wearing Crocs and have deep pantal wedgies (that they don't even seem to notice.) But then I see my mom, she's always wearing a cute patterned, pastel skirt and blouse, with a bright jacket, gloves, a tiny purse and pears. And I am so proud that she is picking up me and that I am her daughter.

And finally, the most important advice of all, one that she has pounded into my brain for as long as I can remember:

Don't murder anyone in Texas

She also taught me how to:

• Make huevos rancheros
• Drive backwards really fast
• Determine the entire plotline of a Lifetime movie after watching the first 3 minutes
• Say "Look at my butt" in Italian
• Eat Taco Bell bean burritos while driving a stick shift car

Thanks mom! Your efforts toward rearing me into a bean burrito eating, dressed-up eye roller did not go unrecognized. Don't cheat on Dad or murder anyone or run away, okay?!

You people are beasts

WELL.

I'd try explaining my lengthy absence from this blog, but I doubt anyone reading it remembers that I'm a contributor. Even I forgot until recently. Still, I suppose I owe you people something. This video is a good approximation of what my life has been like since the last time I posted here.

Anyway, as some of you may know, I am an ad critic. Which means, among other things, that I am no stranger to hate mail. This was a particularly fun item:

With regard to your comment... "How they thought this would reflect well on the brand is anyone's guess. Maybe they downsized the people in charge of thinking this stuff through."
That, or maybe they just went for it. And didn't over think it. That or, they didn't make a decision based on fear. Whatever the case, they tried.
Of course, you wouldn't know anything about that. Instead, you -like all the other Ellsworth Tooheys of the world- do your best to justify your existence by doing nothing more commenting on other's efforts. Attempting to gain some modicum of self worth with your smug and glib little quips. Sad.
I'll be expecting the requisite glib/smug/ironic comment back from you. So, take your time. And make it a good one.

Ellsworth Toohey, by the way, was an art critic in The Fountainhead whose secret plan was to destroy excellence by enshrining mediocrity. That this dude finished The Fountainhead is no small feat; rather, it proves that he likes the smell of Ayn Rand's farts as much as she did. He's a stronger man than me in that respect, because I didn't get very far into that book before Rand's utter dogshit writing got the best of me.

But if he's serious about tearing down mediocrity, he should be fighting back-to-back with me against a marketing culture where "growing the brand" has become a justification for poorly conceived or pointlessly random ideas that do nothing for the product they're selling. The whole POINT of advertising is to sell things, after all, and merely raising awareness of a product is fruitless if said awareness is negative, or even opaque. The ad he's defending leaves me, the viewer, connecting the Walmart brand to a clown screaming at a room full of terrified kids. Not an inaccurate image, God knows, but not one that reflects well on Walmart. And brands do this ALL THE TIME.  It is a function of creative and artistic laziness that protects bad ideas at the expense of good ones (this Kodak spot is an example of what I think is a good one). If Captain Objectivism wasn't so busy getting his precious feelings hurt by strangers on the Internet, he would see that.

Also, I write for Adfreak to justify my existence at the expense of others? No, I work for money - Verizon doesn't accept justifications of my existence in lieu of payment, thanks. But I'd rather be Ellsworth Toohey, for all his faults, than yet another blowhard asshole who thinks he's John Galt.

I'm a Lady! Lauren's Finally Growing Up

I was tired getting dressed this morning, so I absently mindedly reverted to OLD Lauren and slipped into one of my borderline inappropriate outfits. Lately I have been trying to dress more like a lady, banishing my "is-that-a-dress-or-a-long-shirt?" outfits to the back of my closet, along with my kinda-skirts. If I don't concentrate on dressing appropriately every day, though, I end up leaving my apartment wearing something like what I wore today: a skin-tight, pro-boob-spillage, shiny green shirt, a black lace skirt with a slit up the entire right side, a view of my lower buttcheeks, and strappy high-heel sandals that I can't even walk in. To offset this little number, I was wearing a carrot necklace. (That was not a typo. I mean carrot, not carat. A huge orange thing on a necklace strand.)

Anyway, I was uncomfortable all day at work so at lunch time I actually hauled my ass back to the Upper West Side and changed. And as I sat waiting for the subway, feeling all ridiculous, I realized I should be proud of myself. Wanting to respectfully dress for success is a sign that I'm finally growing up. I used to not worry about letting a buttcheek or two fly, but now that I'm at 26-year-old lady I realize I have to dress the part.

I'm growing up in other ways, too:

• I have stopped eating cold pizza for breakfast.
• I listen to NPR.
• I often wake up hours before I need to go to work and read The New Yorker and eat oatmeal (not the changing-color kind) in the "breakfast nook" (the barstool crammed next to the refrigerator in my apartment.)
• I went to Webster Hall to see Kid Sister and was fully aware that I was 8 years older than everyone there, and the kids 8 years younger than me realized it, too.
• People have started asking me if I have kids. (Yeah -- I'm more mature than kids. Har Har.)
• Instead of paying my bills online or mailing a check in, I walk my checks to the bank and pay for them in person. (This makes me more like an 80-year-old.)
• I got into an argument over who likes purple more with a Starbucks employee (long story), and I actually said to him, "I was wearing purple before you were even born."
• I joined a book club -- a real book club -- where we don't just get drunk. (I'm still in that book club.) But in this new one, we read things like An Education, and On Chesil Beach. (Erotica and Seventeen magazine were also group selections.)
• I have to turn off all the lights when I sleep. (This means no more falling asleep to Parental Control reruns.)
  

I changed (into a black skirt, white collared shirt, and pink cowboy boots) and headed back downtown. On the 1 train, I ran into Larry, the janitor who works at my gym.

"Do you work up town?" he asked.

"No. This is embarrassing but I didn't like my outfit today so I went home and changed."

"I do that all the time!" He said. And the woman next to him chimed in. "Me too!" And the woman next to her touched my wrist and said, "Everybody does that sometimes."

I do not think that is true, but I am really glad I changed. I felt much more comfortable, and after chatting with Larry we started dancing together in the aisles when some guys with bongos started a drum circle at 42^nd street. I love New York.