TV Watch: As the season finale of "The Comedians" airs, some thoughts on it, "Maron" (new episode tonight), "Louie," and "HAPPYish"

Plus Marc Maron on podcasting the president
(And a note on the nuttitude of Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito)


Do you suppose it's a coincidence that a bacon feast has been arranged on the set of The Billy and Josh Show while the bacon-fiendish Josh is on a juice cleanse? Billy knows!

by Ken

This special edition of "TV Watch" has been slotted in at this unusual time so that nobody can claim they didn't have advance warning -- even if only by a few hours -- of tonight's hour-long season finale of The Comedians, on FX, featuring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad as characters called, by amazing coincidence, Billy Crystal and Josh Gad, as well as tonight's new episode of Maron, on IFC, featuring, by the same amazing coincidence, comedian-podcaster Marc Maron playing a comedian-podcaster named Marc Maron. At least where I live they're both on at 10pm, yet another reason to celebrate the DVR.

[Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's 6-3 vote of confidence in the ACA subsidies will just have to wait, the way the Court likes to make us wait. I had something else planned, but I'll probably have something to say at 7pm PT/10pm PT, if only to register admiration for the consistency of the "3" -- Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito -- who demonstrated, as if any demonstration was needed, that even in a case that had no legal foundation whatsoever, they still have no difficulty signing onto the crackpottiest position made available to them.]

For a while now I've been wanting to write about this curious Thursday late-prime-time ghetto of what I was provisionally calling "cranky old white men," in half-hour comedies that also include's FX's Louie, which recently concluded a really strong fifth season, though at eight episodes significantly shorter than the earlier 13- or 14-episode seasons. For those eight weeks it aired back to back with The Comedians, meaning that for those eight weeks FX was putting on one classy hour of comedy.

I don't suppose "crankly old white men" would have been entirely fair age-wise. Louie at 47 (is it my imagination that we heard that age a lot this season?) isn't exactly "old," and Marc Maron, only a year or two past 50, isn't either, leaving only Billy Crystal, and he's paired with the ostentatiously "young" Josh Gad, who seemingly good-naturedly allows himself to be pilloried for his youngness, and general ineptitude. But in our culture, 47 and 51 or 52 really are old, and it really seems to me that we have a subgenre of sorts, featuring the kind of whiny old white guys on whom it seems to be perpetually open season in current cultural commentary. I would note that that we also have a lot of Jews here -- Marc, Billy, Josh. I assume Louie isn't, but I don't care enough to research it. It would probably also be unfair to point out that none of these shows are on HBO, or even Showtime.

"IS EVERYTHING ON THIS PLANET ASS-FUCKING BACKWARDS?"


"And that is where we get our wisdom today": Advertising headhunter Dani (a sparkling Ellen Barkin) commiserates with beleaguered creative director Thom (Steve Coogan) on Showtime's HAPPYish. The "Jonathan" Dani refers to is Thom's boss, and her fuckbuddy -- even in this remarkable cast a standout performance by Bradley Whitford. The dazzling writing, so utterly believable and yet word for word so brilliantly etched that I keep wanting to write it all down to savor, is by series creator-producer-writer Shalom Auslander.

In truth, I can't really tell you (or myself) how good these three shows are. I'm just astonished to find three shows that are watchable. I've written before about my sense of the bottom falling out of TV, and pretty much stopped writing about it, because I figure everybody else seems well enough satisfied with this Golden Age of TV we're living in. I'm a little buoyed not that I've belatedly discovered Showtime's HAPPYish, just in time for its season finale, upcoming on Sunday. I had tried to watch a couple of episodes when I was watching Nurse Jackie in real time and it came on afterwards, and I just didn't take to it. Somehow I drifted into the last couple of episodes -- the ones preceding the finale, that is -- and started to get to know the characters, and then, since the whole thing is up on On Demand, I binge-watched the whole shebang. I think of it now as the show that asks the question "Is everything on this planet ass-fucking backwards?" It's a show that not only starts from the premise that the world is full of assholes, and is run by and for assholes, but includes the understanding that merely sneering at the assholes doesn't make you better than them. But that's another piece for another time.

My suspicion is that all four of these shows are actually really good. But right now I'll settle for "watchable." Remember that I'm not one of those TV snobs who's all the time saying how there's nothing to watch on the tube. At least until recently, I couldn't find enough time to watch all the things I wanted to. And what I find most frightening is that the real crap isn't coming from the major broadcast networks, although the major-network crap has certainly been getting crappier. No, the real crap is the very stuff on cable that all the "serious" TV critics are pointing to as the new era of "quality" television. Building on the breakthroughs of shows like Oz and The Sopranos and The Wire and Mad Men and Breaking Bad and Sex and the City and Nurse Jackie, the cable programming honchos are giving us a lot of shows that look like real shows but are, well, crap. I mean, Game of Thrones? True Detective? All the AMC shows except MM and BB? Really now!

For now, knowing how easy, relatively speaking, it is to catch up these days on previously aired TV shows, what with cable repeats, On Demand, and DVD, I some brief notes about The Comedians and Maron, while there are still new episodes to come in the current seasons, and some longer notes about Louie. Actually, I thought I was going to confine myself to brief notes about all three, but I started writing about Louie, and that turned out to be not such a brief note.

THE COMEDIANS


Action!
After the firing of a series of directors (starting, amusingly, with Larry Charles, one of the actual show's actual creators and exec producers as well as lead director), the head writer of The Billy and Josh Show, Mitch (Matt Oberg), has been pressed into service as "interim" director, and for once Billy (Billy Crystal) and Josh (Josh Gad) are in agreement -- they're not thrilled.

I wrote optimistically about The Comedians at the start of the 13-episode run, and I have to say I've been well pleased with what's followed. Thanks to strong casting and writing, much mileage has been gotten from the premise: that for Billy Crystal to get back onto series TV, having pitched a sketch-comedy show to FX in which he plays all the major roles, male and female, Tracey Ullman-style, he has to accept a forced pairing with the schlemielish young Josh Gad.

It really is a terrific cast, for whom it must be a treat to write. There's producer Kristen (Stephnie Weir), everyone's punching bag, and clearly not for the first time in a life chockful of outsize horribleness that leaves her perpetually an ungentle touch away from breakdown. And there's the voluptuous production assistant Esme (Megan Ferguson), for whom one might feel sympathy for her inglorious job if she actually did her job. And there's head writer Mitch (Matt Oberg), who -- as we see in the above clip -- has created an image of his life in his own mind that bears hardly any relation to how anyone else sees him, least of all in his perpetual illusion that he has a shot at Esme. Then there the series irregulars, notably (as I mentioned before) the great Denis O'Hare as Denis the FX president, an inspired amalgam of frighteningness and cloddishness into which I imagine Denis has poured any number of suits he's known in his years in the business, and the always-radiant Dana Delany as Billy's wife Julie.

I looked at nearly all the clips of the show that FX has posted, and it looks to me as if they've searched out the show's unfunniest stretches, or in some case bits that don't really represent the show ripped out of context.

LOUIE

There aren't many more dramatic examples of How Network TV Sucks than the contrast between FX's Louie and Lucky Louie, the strained, awkward, kind of creepy sitcom of which Louis CK did nine episodes for HBO in 2006-07. Lucky Louie wasn't the worst thing ever put on TV, but it wasn't very funny, or interesting, and never offered much of an answer to the question of why it was on the air, beyond the fact that somebody at HBO (yes, in this parable HBO plays the role of Big Bad Network) had the idea planted in his/her head that it could be a good idea to have Louis CK do a show for them. Well, it could have been a good idea, but this show sure wasn't.

After what must have been a bruising experience, Louie dusted himself off and came back with Louie, produced for FX on a shoestring budget, with Louie doing all the jobs on the show that one person could handle. Wikipedia quotes Louie saying --

I went [to Hollywood] and I had other networks offering me a lot of money to do a pilot, and I got this call from FX and they said 'Well, we can't offer you a lot of money, but if you do the show for us, you can have a lot of fun.' He was offering me $200,000 as the budget for the whole pilot and I was like 'So, what do I get paid?' and he was like 'No, that's the whole thing, $200,000...' I said 'Look, the only way I'm doing this is if you give me the $200,000 -- wire it to me in New York -- and I'll give you a show. But I'm not pitching it, and I'm not writing a script and sending it to you first.

(It seems impossible, by the way, to say whether "CK," Louie's own professional shortening of his tongue-twisting family name, is properly spelled "CK" or "C.K.," since usage is split in his performing credits and products as well as on his own website.)

The first season aired in 2010, and it was good -- original, funny, often harsh, and humanly interesting.


In Part 1 of "The Road," the two-part Louie Season 5 finale, Louie gets embroiled in a lonely act of Good Samaritan-ship on the shuttle train to his airport terminal, then discovers --

The format resembles the original Seinfeld Chronicles: giving us the imagined life of a standup comic of the same name as the star, blending samples of his standup act with, well, scenes from the life. But that's just a format -- and we remember that Seinfeld actually shed the format along with the Chronicles name, abandoning the standup segments. They're integral to Louie, because what Louie does as a comic is a crucial part of who Louie is and why -- a guy who has spent his life trying to entertain audiences by giving them bits of truth about the way we live our lives. A guy who isn't pretty and doesn't have easy answers to life's questions and has absorbed a lot of hurt, and managed to recycle it into a wry, carefully crafted reflection of the struggle to get through the day, the month, and the year with a little pleasure, a little companionship, and a little dignity.

I don't know anything about Louis CK's life, so I don't know how similar the TV Louie's life is, and I don't care. What I'm invited to watch is the character he's putting on the screen. I assume the two Louies have important things in common, like the degree of caring for their professional craft and for having some kind of fulfilllment in their personal life. The TV Louie is a divorced dad of two girls, sharing custody with his ex-wife, and there clearly isn't anything more important in his life than his kids, and one of the things Louie the show does really beautifully as well as amusingly is to document what a complicated, mystifying, punishing process parenting is. Another thing the show does beautifully is to make real, and sometimes painful as well as sometimes funny, the basic human need for the warmth of romantic companionship -- and, yes, sex, fully understanding that Louie at 47 isn't likely to be any woman's idea of Prince Charming. He's clearly never gotten over his ex, and never gets over the sting of the apparent ease with which she's gotten on with her life, missing him, yes, a little, but getting on with her life. That sting, of course, is compounded by his halting efforts to get on with his.

As regards the professional craft, the TV Louie has the distinction of having achieved a certain status in his work, the bone-wearying profession of traveling the four corners of the country getting behind a microphone and making people laugh. He's not what we might think of as a "star," but he makes a living, and most of those zillions of comics and would-be comics traveling those same circuits have at least a nominal sense of his standing in the business. The many comics who are his friends rather than just acquaintances have the respect born of understanding how hard it is to make a living that way and to do so according to the standard he sets for himself.

I know I didn't properly appreciate the earlier seasons of Louie. I often didn't feel like watching the episodes as they stacked up on the DVR. But I usually enjoyed as well as admired them when I finally watched, though I have the distinct feeling that I may have simply erased an entire season. A lot of that, I think, had to do with finding the right viewing angle for the show, lining up its sensibilities with mine. I suspect that those earlier seasons would make an interesting binge-watching experience, as I noticed myself keeping up with this just-completed season more attentively and more satisfyingly, and a lot of the time being blown away by it, in particular by the two-part season-ender, "The Road," which depicts just that: Louie on the road, and having a hard time of it, the knocks coming more regularly and harder, until finally an easy-way-out comic he has no respect for, and who has no respect for him, seems actually to make him question everything he believes about this job, makes him wonder whether he's been fooling himself, making the job harder when all the audiences want is for someone to give them laughs, and the cheaper the better.

WHICH LEAVES MARON


Yeah, out of context this looks kind of like a conventional TV bit, but I think you get at least some of the distinctly Maron-ish touches.

I've written a number of times about how Marc Maron established himself as one of my heroes during the all-too-brief but ever-so-glorious run of Air America Radio's brilliant morning show Morning Sedition. The TV Marc we've been meeting in Maron for three seasons now is pretty familiar from the many years of all sorts of comedy he's been doing in a career that, like Louis CK's, has all the hallmarks of success in this grueling profession except the rewards. Of course for Marc we have the added, or perhaps central, element of the thinly veiled rage, the self-loathing, and the large measure of assholitude.

In Maron too we see Marc both at work -- in comedy clubs and of course in the garage from which he famously does his podcasts -- and at what passes for play, standing up to life and getting beaten back down. Again, it's taken me awhile to align the mental antennae, but this season I've been finding the mind meld easier and the shows more fun -- though again I'm guessing that the change is more in me than in the show.

Look who's come to Marc's garage!


It was the president's own preference to do Marc's WTF podcast in its native habitat, Marc's garage. As we'll see, there was heavy Secret Service presence, which may or may not account for Marc's cats being sequestered in a bedroom. They weren't happy.

Mere hours after the podcast on Friday, Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air got Marc to talk about the experience.



Here are some samples, from the Fresh Air website (link above):

On the White House reaching out

I'm like, "What do I do, do I go to Washington? Do I go to his hotel? What happens?" And [my producer] Brendan says, "They said they want to do it at the garage." I'm like, "That's insane! The president is just going to come over to my house? My two bedroom, one bathroom house and sit in my broken-down garage?" It's where everybody [who I interview] sits, it is the place where [the podcast] happens, but I couldn't even wrap my brain around it.

On cleaning up the garage for the president

I have a lot of clutter on the desk and the Secret Service certainly helped me with that. I have like a pocketknife on my desk; I have half a hammer, like this weird hammer that's broken ... they were like, "Yeah, the knife and the hammer gotta go."

On the safety precautions that were taken

There was a sniper on the roof next door. ... There was a bunch of LAPD on the periphery, down at the bottom of the hill that I live on. ... There were Secret Service people all over the place, and that's how it went. There was a Secret Service guy behind me during the interview who I didn't see at all. I was so intent on focusing on the president.

To hear the podcast itself --

Visit the WTF with Marc Maron website.

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TV Watch: "Maron" revisited, following an absolutely terrific Episode 3

Off-the-Marc: Episode 3 (view clip at link)

Look who shows up at Marc's door! Says Marc: "The character in the show is not exactly my father. My dad's name is Barry; the character in the show is Larry. My father is more frightening than Judd Hirsch." However, Marc assures us in "Off-the-Marc: Episode 3" (here's the link again) that all the stories attributed here to "Larry" Maron, such as the incident when he ran over Marc's ankle with his car, can be properly credited to Barry M.

by Ken

I've made the point often enough: I'm suspicious when shows are said to come together only after a couple of episodes. In my experience it has usually turned out that the creators had their act together from the start, but what they were trying to do was sufficiently unexpected that I just missed it for that early while.

In this spirit I definitely plan to rewatch the first two episodes of our old Morning Sedition friend Marc Maron's new IFC half-hour comedy Maron, which I wrote about last week with something less than unalloyed joy. However this rewatch turns out, I think it's important to get on the record that this week's Episode 3, "Jeff Garlin Meets Marc's Dad," struck me as sensational. Where the earlier episodes struck me as pleasantly harmless retreads of fairly well-trod tales of a comic's neurosis and self-loathing, the new one seemed to me trenchant, inspired, and hilarious from start to finish.

As promised last week, in the new episode we were introduced to Marc's father, as played by Judd Hirsch. He turns out to be the kind of dad any of us would recoil from in horror, not least when we recognize traits of him in ourself. "Larry" is a bipolar dreamer 'n schemer, who dreams 'n' schemes in his manic phases, leaving those around him to watch the dreams and self-destruct in his crashed periods.

Suddenly this time out, working with that same premise -- that the TV Marc is a lightly fictionalized version of the real Marc, who seems to see his decades' worth of investment in a career in comedy as a bust -- all Marc's anxieties and frustrations were played out in deeply real, involving character interactions -- involving not just Marc and Larry but also Marc's podcast guest, Jeff Garlin, and Marc's loyal but none too helpful friend comic Andy Kindler.

Anyone who's watched any quantity of comedy on cable knows Andy as the pursuer of the same sort of career in comedy as Marc, and he's quite charming in this episode. Like when he's trying to lure Marc off to the gym with him to work a laundry list of muscle groups -- after which he'll never go back to the gym. Or there's a hilariously painful moment when, as the hubbub in the RV that Larry has parked outside Marc's house starts to draw a crowd on the sidewalk, Andy makes his best stab at crowd control, beginning, "My name is Andy Kindler. You might remember me from Season 7 of Last Comic Standing."

Marc has a funny-sad phone conversation about dear old Dad with his brother Josh in Arizona, which is cut short when Josh has to deal with a domestic situation. "My kids are now beating the shit out of my wife's kids," Josh reports, adding, "Did I screw up my life?"

Marc's sense of hopelessness about his career also came into clearer focus in this episode. True, he did try to sell his profoundly uninterested agent on the proposition that "podcasts are the future of television." But to his podcast audience he confided:

You'll never make a lot of money until you make someone else a lot of money. I mean, you'll make enough to survive, but if you want a vacation home on the cape, or a Sherpa to carry your coffee grinder up Everest, it's not gonna happen -- until you make yourself an exploitable commodity. Not really my thing. But I can tell you this from experience: It's easy to maintain your integrity when no one is offering to buy it out.

Wow! There are heaps of wisdom here, wisdom that I think you'll agree are by no means limited to the comedy business. As I say, I definitely plan to look at Episodes 1 and 2 again, but on the basis of Episode 3, Maron has etched a place on my "must watch" list.

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TV Watch: "Maron" -- So why not watch? I mean, it couldn't hurt you, could it?

"There's no such thing as a career in comedy," Marc informs his mother (Sally Kellerman), who has mastered the technique of talking to her son without actually listening, in Episode 2 of Maron, "Dead Possum." No, this isn't an actual embedded clip, but you can view the clip here. I'm sorry I couldn't embed the clip for you, but when I did, I lost all my paragraphing in the whole post. (I'd like to see some manager or software nitwit at our bloghost killed for this. If nothing else, it would teach him/her -- though I'm guessing it's a him -- a lesson. But does anybody care what I'd like to see?)

by Ken

As longtime readers know, back in the days of Air America Radio (does anyone remember Air America Radio?), I had a pretty intense involvement with comic Marc Maron as cohost and comedic driving force of the network's brilliant morning show, Morning Sedition. AAR was such a miasma of managerial arrogance and incompetence that it's easy to forget that it put some pretty decent programs on the air, in particular that dazzling morning show, which was hilarious as well as politically dead on target. And despite the truly stupefying ineptitude of the people who ran the network -- who surely deserved to be executed, several times if possible -- the show was building a fan base most everywhere it was heard, despite the best lack-of-effort of said managerial nincompoops.

The nincompoops, being too stupid and broadcast-illiterate to have any glimmering of the caliber of property they had under their roof, did their best to dilute it and make it a conventionally dimwitted morning radio show. And then they did the only even stupider thing they could think of to do: They canceled the show. These were people so ignorant, they had no clue how hard it is to develop such a property. Since that was the point at which it would have needed overseers who knew how to nurture it and make it grow, naturally the cause was hopeless. The only thing the lowlifes knew, apart from stealing the money they were paid for their stunning incompetence, was how to destroy what could have been a cornerstone of their franchise. All they had to do was pull the plug, and that was one thing they knew how to do.

The show's demise left a lot of us fans angry and bereft. In the years since, I've seen Marc Maron's name a number of times involved in projects of one sort or another, and when I was able to sample them, they seemed to me okay but nothing I needed to involve myself with.

Now IFC is giving us a half-hour show called Maron Fridays at 10pm -- and, judging from a quick search on my online cable guide, pretty much any other time of the week you'd care to watch. If you check your listings, you can probably still catch both episodes that have aired so far, "Internet Troll" (with guest Dave Foley; no, he's not the Internet troll) and "Dead Possum" (with guest Denis Leary, who's also a producer of the show). You can also watch full episodes online.

The premise is this Marc Maron character in the show is a fellow in mid-life who pursued a career in comedy which didn't quite turn out the way he had hoped; ditto for both of his marriages. He found himself not only single once again but reduced to doing a podcast in his garage in the L.A. area, which caught on and began attracting celebrity guests. As Marc himself explains in any media forum to which he can cadge access (including on-cable behind-the-scenes features), the TV character is pretty much himself, the major difference being that on the show he's acting.

He also notes that the casting of Judd Hirsch as his father (that comes up in Episode 3, next week) gives him a better father than he has in real life, something he assures us he has reported to his real-life father, who was apparently a little jumpy about the show. It seems unlikely that that made Dad less jumpy.

In Episode 1, Marc was freaked out to find out that he had that Internet troll, whom he tracked down with the sidekickish assistance of podguest Dave Foley. In Episode 2, podguest Denis Leary enabled him to track down the source of the mysterious stench he had noticed in his house: a dead possum in the crawl space under the house. (The concept of a crawl space, it turned out, was new to Marc.) I've found both episodes entertaining enough to continue watching, though I have to say the neurotic-self-loathing-comic thing seems awfully famjiliar, from maybe about a zillion sources, a number of which struck me as funnier. Still, the show is pleasant enough. I do have to wonder, though, if "pleasant" is where a show like this really wants to be going.

As I thought back to my one incandescent Marc Maron experience, Morning Sedition, it occurred to me that however personal Marc may have allowed himself to get on MS, the show was never about him, and he was almost always hilarious, with all that neurosis being released so dazzingly into the political cosmos. I can see where he might think that the one thing he has left which is uniquely his is his own life. However, I'm thinking that perhaps the last thing he might want to be doing is a show that is entirely about himself. Hey, it's just a thought.

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That's right, it's Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson!

THIS IS THE CORRECT CLIP, I HOPE (thanks, WaPo!): Gene Robinson spoke yesterday in the Washington Post newsroom after the announcement of his Pulitzer Prize for commentary. You can hear him talk about the moment, at 10:45 on Election Night 2008, when he got to call his parents from the MSNBC set and inform them that they had lived to see the election of a black president. I realize this is technically a "spoiler," what I've just written, but I don't think it will spoil the moment for you.

by Ken

First off, not to worry, nothing has happened to Howie -- he just had an overnight business trip, and should be back in his blogging chair momentarily.

Second, I really don't think we can let the day pass without taking note of Gene Robinson's Pulitzer triumph yesterday. It was a happy moment last night when Rachel Maddow almost exploded with pleasure at being able to introduce as her guest "Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson." It's probably more thanks to his incorporation in the Countdown and Rachel Maddow Show family than to his newspaper writing that Gene has come to seem like family -- like, for that matter, one of the newspaper columnists he beat out, a fellow named Krugman.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: KRUGMAN HAS NEVER WON A PULITZER

This is, I believe, the fifth time he has been passed over -- and by "passed over" I mean in the sense that he was nominated but didn't win. Since he began writing his NYT column, in 1999, has there been a year in which he didn't deserve the prize?

It's easy to joke that Krugman will just have to console himself with the Nobel Prize he just snagged, even if it is for work he did eons ago. However, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that he occupied a position of such special loathing in the eyes of the Bush regimistas that the politics of the Pulitzers made a prize impossible while the regime was in power.

I'm certainly not going to begrudge Gene Robinson his Pulitzer, which was awarded specifically for his 2008 election coverage. But one of these years Krugman is going to score his first Pulitzer, and I wonder how many people are going to be startled, then shocked, to realize that he's never won one.

It may be worth a moment's reflection to consider how the progressive presence in media has resurged under the pressure of the living catastrophe of the Bush regime. I don't think I've ever been stinting in my gratitude to people like Krugman and Frank Rich and Jon Stewart, and then the the upcomers like Marc Maron on Air America Radio's much-lamented Morning Sedition show, and Rachel Maddow on AAR, and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. And now Keith's and Rachel's MSNBC shows have given us an entire family of more or less trustworthy talking heads.

It's frustrating that such a sizable part of the country still hasn't absorbed the lesson in the horrors of Modern Republican (or Movement Conservative) government dished out in eight years of the Bush regime. But there's some comfort in the newly released AP poll showing, as Ron Fournier (yes, Ron Fournier!) and Trevor Tompson put it:

"For the first time in years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, a sign that Barack Obama has used the first 100 days of his presidency to lift the public's mood and inspire hopes for a brighter future."

Let's not kid ourselves about the difficulty of the road ahead. But things look a lot less bleak than they did in, say, the darkest hours of 2003 or 2004. And congratulations again, Gene!

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Attention, Morning Sedition fans: Planet Bush Bureau Chief Lawton Smalls is back, and he insists indignantly, "I will not be stimulated!"

"Congratulations, Marc, you got your wish. The United States of America is officially a Communist state. Everything you wanted -- redistribution of wealth, atheism, nanny state, meth orgies, enforced homosexuality, abolition of sports, mandatory drug addiction, on-demand abortion, preschool prostitution, free jazz, beards -- it's all there. We've gone to hell in a handbasket, hell in a tie-dyed handbasket, and I'm pointing a finger at you."

-- former Morning Sedition Planet Bush Bureau Chief Lawton Smalls (at 21:18), on yesterday's Air America Radio Break Room Live

by Ken

We have important stuff to talk about, like whether Senate Dems will muster the 60 votes they need to be able to proceed to confirmation of Hilda Solis as a secretary of labor who's actually concerned about the interests of working people. (And why is that Americans are so hostile to working people, and do we pay a price for it?)

And what's the deal with the Obama Justice Dept. apparently asking the remaining 51 U.S. attorneys (out of the total 93 -- did the other 42 really just disappear?) to stay in place, at least temporarily. Aren't these the worst of the Bush-DoJ-worst USAs? Were they at least asked for the letter of resignation standard at the start of a new administration, so that they can be replaced, as per custom, in the first year or two? You know, so the Republicans don't screech "politicization" when they're finally replaced?

Important stuff, but meanwhile, although I've known that Sam Seder and Marc Maron are doing something on Air America Radio in the afternoon, since I don't have afternoon radio access, it's been murky to me exactly what. But I just stumbled on a half-hour clip of yesterday's Break Room Live, where Marc -- with Sam in Los Angeles this week -- among other things greets old Morning Sedition friend, erstwhile Planet Bush Bureau Chief Lawton Smalls.

In case you're wondering what Lawton is so worked up about in the above excerpt, it's:

"That stimulus package. Uh! Lord, it even sounds dirty. Now what secretary from the Department of Gay thought that one up?"

Marc rattles off a list of provisions with the package, and to each one Lawton declares, "Pork!" But doesn't the new president have to do something about the economic disaster? The solution to everything, Lawton insists, is, 'Tax cuts, Marc, the bigger the better -- they're straight out of the Bible!"

"Hussein Obama Fearcard scared everyone into believing there's a, quote, recession -- I'm doing that thing with my fingers -- so he could strong-arm this stimulus poison down America's throats."

And of course, as always, as soon as Marc issues Lawton a reality check, the poor fellow is reduced to bawling like a baby (as illustrated in the AAR video images) -- for a while, at least. Welcome back, Lawton!

Note: I think you can play a clip of just Lawton's appearance from the AAR website, but I couldn't get an embed code. Eventually I've got to go back there and try to figure out what the heck this BRL thing is. AAR does like to keep its secrets.


UPDATE: I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED THAT LAWTON
SMALLS IS REALLY OUR FUNNY FRIEND KENT JONES

Most of us first encountered Kent, who now does the "Just Enough" segment on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show, as one of the hugely talented writer-performers on Air America Radio's brilliant and brutally unsupported morning show, Morning Sedition. Those of us who made the move from Morning Sedition to Rachel's totally different but also quite brilliant AAR morning show continued to hear Kent on that. Now I've turned to Wikipedia to fill in the picture a bit:

After the cancellation of Morning Sedition in December 2005, Kent continued to write and perform on The Marc Maron Show until its cancellation in July 2006. He most recently appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, with daily Sports and "Kent Jones Now" segments and additional co-hosting, especially during her "Ask Dr. Maddow" and "Pet Story" segments. The Lawton Smalls character still makes "calls" to The Sam Seder Show and was on the Nov 7th 2006 live webcam election coverage with Rachel Maddow.

Kent left Air America on Friday, December 14th, 2007, as a result of a "business decision" by the management.

Somehow, "business decision" doesn't seem quite the word to describe what's gone on at AAR since, well, its creation.

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