Meet Opera's Anna Nicole Smith

Here's my interview with soprano superstar Sarah Joy Miller, which first ran in the Village Voice: SarahJoyMiler.jpg

What does a train-wreck sound like sung soprano? Sarah Joy Miller will show you. She stars in the opera Anna Nicole which opens at BAM on September 17 after a hugely successful run in London. Miller is giving musical voice to the waitress/stripper turned pin-up girl, whose rise and fall now look like an appetizer for today's reality-TV obsessed culture, feasting on fame, wealth and death. We sat down with her for a discussion about gold-diggers, trolls, and why singing in a fat suit is so fun.

You've been in Anna Nicole Smith's skin for months. How are you guys getting along? Do you like the person you're playing? I've grown to love her. When someone says not-so-nice things about her now, I actually get a little offended. I love her honesty and her transparent desire for love and adoration, and I think that she represents what we all have as far as wanting to be loved and accepted. But she was very open about it and there was something magical about that.

She's a tabloid caricature. How do you humanize Anna Nicole Smith? We start from so early in her life. I play her from a young age, before all the drugs and implants and all of that and it's a very innocent point of view. Of course we get into all the stuff we're all more familiar with, but she had a tough childhood in Texas. She dropped out of school at 15 and was pregnant by 19. She was trying to care for her son and had a crazy family situation with no real support system. So when you look at it that way it's sort of extraordinary what she accomplished.

Some people think Anna is the archetypal gold digger. Is that unfair? Interesting question. Looking at her relationship with [elderly billionaire] J. Howard Marshall, I think that she had no understanding of boundaries or what a really healthy relationship looked like. It would be naïve and stupid to say it wasn't about the money, but I think it was also about wanting a family, love and acceptance. Marshall was almost like a father, and it's sort of demented to look at a married couple that way, but that was part of it. And because she had no example of what that sort of relationship should be like, it filled something for her. She said things like that at the time, and I really think she believed a lot of that.

It might have been the only time in her life she ever felt safe. I definitely agree with that.

Opera is maybe our highest status form of expression. This work is about two of its lowest status forms: tabloid sensationalism and pornography. What can we learn about Anna, and humans in general, through opera that we can't learn any other way? This piece is so unique: it has jazz elements, musical theater elements... I've never seen anything like it. Plus, if you look closely at any of the well-loved operas --take Violetta in La traviata, Manon... there are similarities, it's just that the stories are so much older, we don't find them as scandalous now. I don't think that it's really all that different. I think there's a lot to be learned from the way this opera was written. It's more than just a sad retelling of a woman's demise. It questions fame in our country and how we tear its recipients down in an operatic cycle. It doesn't blame anyone for that, but it creates a conversation.

See also: Patti Smith Counts Down Her Top Five Operas

There may be purists who question whether the New York City opera should be performing work like "Anna" at all. What would you say to them? I love traditional opera. My heart is always in that. I could sing Violetta 72 times and still want to sing it again. But it's important that we have new works because that's how an art moves forward. I can understand: there's a lot of salty language and crazy situations in this opera. But that's what was so incredible: This all happened. And more... we're not even depicting everything that occurred. But there are always people who aren't going to like what you're doing. What great opera didn't premiere to at least one person saying it was awful?

Anna Nicole Smith fought the trolls all her life. Are there trolls in the opera world? I haven't had anything like that, thankfully. But maybe I'm not looking hard enough.

Will this opera enter the classical repertoire? In a hundred years, will audiences still watch La Boheme, Tosca... and Anna? [Laughs.] Oh gosh. Hard to imagine. But this is an important piece for the time we're living in.

Anna had an Amazonian body type. You do not. You're more runway model than ruebenesque. Oh, thank you!

How do you bulk up for the role? Well, I depict her from such a young age. And what a lot of people don't realize is that she was very tiny-chested as a young girl, before she had work done. So it works in terms of seeing the extremes of transformation because I start out as young and girlish, and then I wear these extraordinary prosthetic breasts, and then, in the last act, I wear a fat suit to simulate her weight gain. Beyond that I've been eating like crazy, but the thing is, working this hard, it's so hard to keep the weight on.

Our hearts bleed for you. How did it feel to be big girl for once, and how does that inform your physical and musical choices? It's a window into her psyche. Her drug use was getting so out of control, her weight was, I think, a way of suffocating herself--it was like she didn't want to be around any more. So to have a suffocating suit helps to feel where she may have been mentally. And as a singer, I've never had a lot of weight. So to feel this sturdiness is a completely different sensation.

Does it change the sound of your voice? It comes down to strength. And with opera, so much of that strength needs to be relaxed strength (if that makes sense), so having size gives you a feeling of strength, but there's a relaxation to it. So I like to make sure I'm not too thin. It does make me feel better on stage.

I'm going to tell my wife that. I'm not putting on weight, I'm gaining "relaxed strength". There you go. Take some opera lessons and make it realistic!

Opera lessons and Pizza Hut? That's a great deal. Do you have a personal favorite line in the libretto? In one of Howard K. Stern's arias in act II. He's basically singing about how they can capitalize on Anna, and make money off of her: "What else do you got for the yard sale of your life?" When you look at Anna, when she was pretty and sexy, of course, she sold that. But then when she gained all the weight and became a little ridiculous, she still sold that. She was her own version of Lucille Ball. Not only was she exploited, but she exploited other people, and I love that.

And what's Anna's best line? My aria at the very end. She sings: "Tired now, Danny. Momma's nearly there/ Nothing left for me/ Man I got so close/ I had the dream, but lost it before I knew it/ You know, the usual/ Made some bad choices, made some worse choices/ Then ran out of choices/ All my life I was plain wrong/ I was weak when I thought I was strong."

That's fantastic. And you have an album of arias coming out too, right? That's right, coming out the same day we start Anna.

Will you be in the lobby selling merch after the show? [Laughs] Quick change and then--smile! Maybe not. But you can buy it in the lobby!

Would you ever play another tabloid train-wreck? Maybe Lohan the Opera? Hmmm. I might need a palate cleanser after this.

Thanks Sarah.

Dita Von Teese Has an "Official Corset Trainer"

ditavonteese.jpg Here's my interview with Dita Von Teese, which first ran in The Village Voice:

Dita Von Teese might be offended when we call her the Founding Mother of Modern Burlesque, but the shoe fits. Teese spent the 1990s dragging striptease back from the grimy brink of tawdriness, recovering a lost, pre-war world of fan dance glamor. So if you've enjoyed a burlesque show in the last 20 years, you should be slipping a 20 of appreciation into Dita Von Teese's psychic g-string. Teese has now crossed over into the fashion world, with her own lingerie line, and a coveted spot on Vanity Fair's International "Best Dressed" List. She's back in New York with a new show, "Burlesque: Strip, Strip, Hooray!"--a 90 minute piece, performed at the Gramercy Theatre from Sept. 30th to Oct. 4th. It features some of her most talked-about acts of the last few years: the Rhinestone Cowgirl (she's head-to-toe in pink Swarovski crystal), the Gilded Cage, and the Giant Martini Glass (her signature, with a few new twists). We sat down with Dita to talk about body-modification, mysterious Parisian dream girls, and why letters from prison can be just delightful.

TC: OK, you're washed up on a desert island, and you can only take ONE outfit with you. Go. DvT: I'm going to go for a one of my 1950s Hawaiian sarongs. I have an excellent one that comes with a matching cape.

Practical. You're one of the best-dressed people on the planet. Does it ever get exhausting, the sartorial demands you place on yourself? I sometimes get overwhelmed. You could make a great parody short film of me being swallowed by my clothes. I have a huge archive of vintage, but at this point I have so many things that I'm never going to wear that I buy just because I love it or I want to fantasize about wearing it. "Ooh, this will be great when I'm riding an elephant in India."

Nothing is more embarrassing that inappropriate elephant-wear. The public sees you as so immaculately put together, all the time. Are you ever, like, in sweatpants? No, but I have my own version of a casual look. Maybe ballet flats and a '50s dress. I just have a different point of view: jeans and sweatpants aren't comfortable to me. They're itchy and tight and involve more thought process than zipping up the back of a dress and running out the door.

What part in your upcoming show are you most excited to show crowds? What's really blowing your hair back artistically right now? One of my favorite numbers is now in the show, where I'm in a big gilded bird cage. My favorite moment of the night--because usually there's not a hair out of place on my head--is when the cage rains water on me, and people see me completely dripping wet. People don't usually see me that way.

Hoo boy. Anyway. Any person who watches your show sees the incredible focus you bring to it. How do you get in the zone for that kind of performance? Talk me through the last five minutes before you get onstage. I have a cocktail. And I have to be in a good mood. There's a rule, in the two hours before I go on, I'm never wrong about anything. No one is allowed to tell me I'm wrong, no one is allowed to say anything shitty to me. I am the Queen of the fucking universe for that hour or so before I go onstage. So I don't talk to journalists then either.

We can ruin anything. What's the cocktail of choice? Clean liquor. A little Cointreau on ice with a Perrier and lime.

Are you still tightlacing? [The practice of wearing a tightly-laced corset to achieve extreme modifications to the figure and posture.] I don't sleep in corsets, or do any official corset training, much to the dismay of my official corset trainer, Mr. Pearl. But I've been wearing corsets since I was 18. I don't have the quest for the smallest waist anymore. At my very smallest I was down to 16 inches on a very good day, but generally onstage I lace down to about 19 inches.

I'm doing the opposite: loose-lacing. It's a demanding regimen of quesadillas and ham. Oh god, that makes my stomach hurt more than a corset does.

Last we heard, you were in a relationship with a musician (Theo Hutchcraft of Hurts). Is that still true? No, I've been single for the better part of a year, and I've had about six boyfriends since that last episode. I've been really good at keeping my love-life under wraps. But I'm currently single.

Why do you love musicians? I'm still a sucker for musicians. The creative element, I guess. It's not a groupie thing. It's about admiring it, because I'm not musical at all. I've been a muse for a number of musicians and it's pretty great to have a song written about you. That whole tribute-muse, artist-muse thing is very appealing to me.

I bet you get a lot of fan art. Best and creepiest, please. People get me tattooed on them a lot. Women, mostly. When they're really big, prominent tattoos of my portrait, and when they're really beautiful, I find it a massive compliment because of the relationship between pin-up art and tattooing, I see it in a different way--I don't think it's crazy. And for someone to choose your portrait is a big tribute. I'm always very honored.

Any facial tattoos? Nope, and I'm glad.

Strangest piece of fan art? I get the occasional letter from prison, which I really enjoy. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but they're always really polite. And they never ask for naked pictures, because they're not allowed to have them in jail. So they ask for nice photos.

You don't live in Paris anymore. Why? I left my apartment there about a year ago. There was too much pressure having two home bases to keep up with--there and L.A.

Has any part of you become permanently French? I guess I became even more of the mythical French girl that I always read about in books when I was young, the one that wears berets and is mysterious.

I grew up in England. The mythical French girl was very important to us. Have you ever actually seen her? The only mythical French girls I've ever seen were always imported, sadly. The ones I saw walking around Paris are from different parts of the world, except for the grand dames who are over 60 years old. The young ones are all wearing black tights and jean shorts, no makeup except thick black eyeliner and smoking cigarettes.

That's a poor excuse for a mystery dream girl. She should be leaping onto a tram in Chanel, and you see her for five seconds, fall in love, then she's gone forever. I saw one mystery French girl. Just ONCE. I was walking along, and suddenly this 50s Porsche convertible cruised past me, and I saw a flash of red lipstick, and long white scarf, and she just threw me a little wave. Then she drove away.

That's perfect. She might have been English.

Was she chewing gum? Because if so, she was. Couldn't tell.

Thanks for talking, Dita.

Thrilled by a terrible film

http://www.impawards.com/intl/germany/2013/posters/hannah_arendt_xlg.jpg I just watched a terrible film about important things.

Hannah Arendt is a biographical drama about a German philosopher. A Jewish thinker who fled Germany then Nazi-occupied France, Arendt was hired by The New Yorker magazine in 1961 to report and reflect on the trial of Adolph Eichmann.

Eichmann was a senior Nazi official and one of the central managers of the Holocaust. He fled to Argentina after the war, living in hiding for over a decade before his capture by the Israeli secret service. He was tried for murder and crimes against humanity in Jerusalem, found guilty, and hanged.

The trial was an international media event, and sparked intellectual uproar (if there is such a thing) in part due to Arendt’s writing.  She coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the actions and world-view of Eichmann. Rather than seeing him as a Satanic monster, Arendt argued that his evil sprang from a submission to dull, bureaucratic fiat. He abdicated his obligation to think, she argued, and became a cipher for the will of the Reich and of Hitler. Eichmann did not follow evil thoughts to commit his evil actions, Arendt said. He was a mediocre man who committed evil precisely because he gave no thought to his orders at all.

This very idea made some people furious. Critics felt it diluted Eichmann’s responsibility for mass murder. But that was not the most incendiary thing Arendt wrote. She argued that some European Jewish leaders (particularly managers of ghettos in Poland and elsewhere) were in the grip of that same banal evil, and essentially collaborated with the Holocaust. By seeking accommodation with the Reich, Arendt argued, Jewish leadership acquiesced to evil in a similar manner to Eichmann. Without the help of community leaders in concentrating Jewish populations, confiscating property and submitting to the Ghetto mentality, “there would have been chaos and plenty of misery, but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four-and-a-half and six million people”. Again, she argued: evil emerged from an unthinking submission to bureaucratic decree. For this, she was vilified. Lifelong friendships broke down. Her academic career was wrecked. Yet she refused to moderate her views.

Great stuff, right? Whether you think Arendt’s ideas were brilliant or batty, this is wonderful territory for a deep, powerful, “thinky” film. I am so glad people wanted to make it. But the result was appalling.

I’m in an acting class, taught by JoAnna Beckson. We study the Meisner technique. My dumbed-down, one-sentence summary of Meisner is: “actually feel something real – in the moment - while you are performing in character”. I’m sure that is a hopelessly naïve description, but it’s the best one-line definition I can write today, in this moment. The technique can be abused by self-indulgent actors,  like everything can. But I already see how powerful the training is. If she wants to convince an audience that her character is feeling emotional turmoil, the actor must feel that turmoil, in the moment. I did not believe FOR ONE SECOND that any of the principle performers in this film (Arendt, her husband, her editor, her friends, her critics) felt ANYTHING that their characters were supposed to be feeling. Their acting technique boiled down to: “if your character is happy, make a happy face. If they are worried, make a worried face. And if you can’t think of anything else to do, look vaguely tense about this whole situation”. It left me speechless. If you can’t feel real feelings about THIS kind of subject matter (hope, despair, justice, evil…) what CAN you feel?

Practically every performance in the film was also choked with classical stage drama mannerisms. Whenever people were happy to see each other, then didn’t just “feel” it. They “acted” it. They held each others’ forearms and gazed sentimentally into their eyes and TOLD each other how happy they were to see them. I don’t know who exactly is to blame for this (script, director and performer all seem guilty) but it was dreadful.

The director also seemed to think this: “back in the 1960s, most people smoked cigarettes. Therefore, everyone in this film MUST smoke cigarettes at all times, and use the action of smoking as a prop and crutch to support how INTENSE they feel about all these INTENSE ideas flying around”. Every puff of smoke and flick of ash was a distraction from the main thrust of the film: it was infuriating. The work is supposed to be about the human struggles of good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, love and hate. It is NOT about the fucking cigarettes.

But I’m glad I saw the film. You learn as much from the bad as the good. It’s a perfect example of what NOT to do, both as an actor and a director. And without it, I would never have known much about the Eichmann trial, Arendt, or her ideas. So I’m giving one–and-a-half cheers for this utterly terrible film that taught me a lot.

The best thing about History on the whole internet

If you like learning about the past, you have to listen to Hardcore History, a podcast made by Dan Carlin. Until I started listening, I had no idea how little I knew about:

-       the Mongols (e.g. they wore coats made of hundreds of mouse skins sewn together. Gross.)

-       German Anabaptist fundamentalism in the 16th century (e.g. Free Love is not a 1960's invention: charismatic cult leaders have been saying “and now God says I can have sex with everyone” for at least 400 years)

-       Why the most sophisticated empire in history (Rome) fell to the medieval equivalent of biker gangs (the Goths)… i.e. because they made the same mistake as The Rolling Stones did at Altamont: hiring The Hell’s Angels to do security.

-       ….and a million other things.

Carlin speaks for a few hours on each topic, in a free-wheeling lecture from loose notes, studded with quotations from eye-witness accounts and great historians of the period he’s studying. It’s passionate, funny, and mixed with whip-smart analogies to contemporary history and attitudes. I'm stunned that something this good exists. It’s a 21st century equivalent of those amazing A.J.P. Taylor lectures... ....but BETTER. Yes, I know that's sacrilege, and yes, it's justified.

The most recent episode ("Blueprint for Armageddon I") is focused on the lead-up to, and first few months of, the First World War. I usually hate military history: too much blood and guts. But Carlin avoids all that crap. His point is” “no one ever expects or wants war, and yet humans go to war all the time, despite ourselves”. There was an intellectual current in the early 20th century that said, “a big European war will never happen, because we all know it would be a total disaster for everyone”. Europe was crisscrossed with alliances and obligations to go make war in defense of other nations. Warfare was fully industrialized for the first time, meaning there was practically no limit to the causalities each belligerent could inflict on others. Everybody knew the risks. And yet… Europe did it anyway.

It’s terrifying. Because how often do we think of “war” today? Does anyone in prosperous West Europe or America consider that a massed conflict like WWI could happen again? No one does. The very idea is preposterous. “The costs would be so great! It would be insane! None of our politicians are that stupid!”

Yes they are. Because yes they WERE. And yes, they always will be.

Please listen to this podcast. It’s unbelievably fantastic.

Walter White's Mixtape: The Best Songs About Meth

Methmixtape3 Where there be drugs, there be songs. The Velvets will rhapsodize their smack, Redman will tell you How to Roll A Blunt... musicians just can't help writing odes to the junk that messes 'em up. But where is the Meth songbook? The charts aren't exactly packed with serenades to the meth experience. Maybe crystal doesn't have the same rock n' roll cache enjoyed by your cocaines and your heroins (facial scabs and bad teeth don't get you a Rolling Stone cover). But by some estimates, the speedy little crystal is America's third favorite drug (after booze and weed). So let's give meth its moment in the musical sun. We did some digging and found the 10 best songs to enjoy whenever you want to kick back, smoke rock and break very bad.

Rufus Wainwright, "Go or Go Ahead" Who knew you could write a sweet, slow ballad after being up for three days on a meth binge (a fact admitted to by the man himself)? Maybe Wainwright broke through the tweaky paranoia barrier and found the zen-like calm at the end of the meth rainbow? Or maybe he was just out of his tree and got very lucky.

Korn, "Helmet in the Bush" You should sit down before we give you this shocking news, but... Korn have smoked their share of meth. And this little ditty is without doubt the best song ever written about how difficult it is to get an erection after smoking a big bowl of Dirty Tina. "Helmet in the Bush": we clear on that image? The helmet refers to the tip of a male meth smoker's penis. The bush is his public hair.

The Mountain Goats, "Letter From Belgium" What Bob Marley is to weed, surely the Mountain Goats are to meth. Heck, they wrote a whole album (We Shall All Be Healed) about a group of friends addicted to crystal in the meth-addicted musician's spiritual capital: Portland, Oregon. Yeah we're all here chewing our tongues off/ Waiting for the fever to break, sings John Darnielle on this track, and who hasn't felt that way on something they shouldn't have taken so much of?

EyeHateGod, "Methamphetamine" Yeah, this one's about meth.

The Fugs, "New Amphetamine Shriek" You don't get many cool-points for smoking a big bag of crank. No one will think you're a bohemian, they'll think you're a loser. But even anti-war 60's psych-rock pioneers The Fugs liked to lose a few days grinding their teeth and twitching every now and then. Tell the drug-snobs to stick THAT in their pipe and smoke it. Right after you use it to smoke all the meth.

Primus, "(Those) Damn Blue Collar Tweekers" Les Claypool sings this anthem to hard-working, hard-smoking tradesmen who throw up sheet-rock for 16 hours straight, and barely feel the nails they accidentally shoot into their hands. Be grateful to them: their shoddy but rapid workmanship is the reason your landlord could poorly refurbish your apartment for eight dollars and then overcharge you for a "completely renovated" space.

Scissor Sisters, "Return to Oz" Who would have thought the Scissor Sisters would pen the most high-minded meth song out there? Lyrically comparing the Wizard of Oz story to the meth addiction that claimed many a gay club kid in the early 2000s, you can kind of hear Jake Shears' heart break as he tells us "what once was Emerald City is now a Crystal Town."

Third-Eye Blind, "Semi-Charmed Life" The classic, maybe even the ultimate meth song. The track even got a bunch of major FM airplay, and "The Man" even forced the band to bleep out the words "crystal meth" on the radio edit. This ensured EVERYBODY knew the song was about meth, as opposed to Third-Eye Blind's small, committed, meth-smoking fan base.

Bruce Springsteen, "Sinaloa Cowboys" Leave it to the great blue collar balladeer to point out a subtle economic truth: cooking meth pays way better than farm work. You wouldn't think so, but Miguel the Mexican laborer finds out the easy way: by cooking up a bunch of meth. But then the lab explodes and kills his brother. Bummer. It gives and it takes, this crystal thing.

Green Day, "Geek Stink Breath" These were the good old days for Billy Joe Armstrong. Before his much publicized alcohol and prescription pill problems, the Green Day front man only had a meth problem to worry about.

Harry "The Hipster" Gibson, "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" A deep cut from way back in meth music history, Harry Gibson was getting ripped off his tits and playing eight straight piano gigs a night while your grandpa was still in short pants. Benzedrine is chemically extremely similar to methamphetamine, and was not only used by soldiers in WWII and Vietnam, but gets name-checked in On the Road and Howl. See kids? Meth is old school cool.

Diplo Attempts to Break Twerking "World Record" With Twerk-Wall at Electric Zoo

Here are two people twerking Two questions, ladies. 1) Do you have an ass? 2) Can you twerk so hard you could churn butter with it?

If you're a YES on both, Diplo needs your help. This Sunday, the dirty beat impresario brings us his latest creation: "Butts Around the World," wherein he will attempt to break the "world record" of twerkers twerking at one time with his patented "Twerk-Wall." If some of those words make sense to you, and you're interested in joining Diplo on this noble quest, here's what's what: You can win one of 50 free tickets to this weekend's Electric Zoo dance music festival on Randall's Island by sending Diplo a video of yourself twerking to, naturally, twerk4diplo@gmail.com. If his #expressyourself contest from last year is any indication, the competition will be fierce. Diplo and his assorted Mad Decent Bros will review each video submission with what we can only presume is absolute seriousness (lab coats, clipboards etc.). Presto Chango, Twerk-Wall assembled.

We guess "Wall" must now be the official collective noun for a group of twerkers. Like if lions hang in a pride, geese in a gaggle, twerkers always work in a wall. Maybe Oxford English dictionary--which just added "twerk" online--can weigh in. Either way, this is not Diplo's first twerk rodeo. The title track on his 2012 EP Express Yourself is basically an audio instruction manual in how to twerk, and after its release Diplo ran a contest for fans to send him photos of their twerk handstands. Since then, Diplo's Twitter and Instagram have been glazed in a sheen of butt-sweat, as fans send in soft-(and not so soft-)core twerking pics and videos which the man gleefully reposts. That's partly why the GIANT PERVS at Buzzfeed encourage you to follow him.

Again, Diplo is billing this as a "world record" attempt at assembling the greatest numbers of twerkers ever twerking in one place, because the Guinness people (shockingly) have no entry for this. It's a little silly to claim the record with just 50 twerkers when you consider Diplo has spent much time in New Orleans (he shot his twerk-heavy "Express Yourself" video there), and you can find twice as many folks twerking there at 2 p.m. in a Wal Mart. But we guess the record has to be OFFICALLY claimed by someone, and will surely be smashed soon after. But for a brief period in time, you could get your name in the record books. Just think how proud your parents will be.

And how should we feel about this jiggling wall of girl flesh, seducing the eye-balls of 100,000 EDM fans? In a word: good. In two words: mad good. The slut-shaming of Miley Cyrus for all her hard twerk at the VMAs shows us that body-hatred and puffed-up prudery are alive and well in those sexless ivory towers of the lamestream media. Twerking is not just good. Twerking is LIFE. (Or, at the very least, can earn you a scholarship.)

Be safe out there.

(cross-posted at the Village Voice)

“Ralph the Robot”: character sketch for proposed TV pilot

Name: Ralph the Robot

Place of birth: Robot Spawning Facility 6, on the planet Celath.

Siblings: Being a robotic race, Celathunes have no concept of siblings. But seven other Celathunes were created that day in that particular Spawning Tower. In a way, Ralph is an octuplet.

Education: Argh, Who cares. This is dumb. I hate my own idea.

Address and occupation: This is such a stupid concept. Why would someone from such an advanced robot civilization visit Earth?

Friends and acquaintances: I’m quoting from my notebook: “The robots eat soil to live, and Ralph’s planet is running out of soil, so they need our soil and they sent Ralph to get the soil”. Really? That’s the back-story? It makes no sense. Why would a mechanical being eat organic matter? Moron.

Describe their apartment: Wasn’t this supposed to be a gentle comedy, with a “fish-out-of-water” robot? If they want our soil, these robots are colonists to be feared and destroyed. Fuck the kooky human roommates and their life lessons. This is race war and they are race traitors. We don’t need understanding. We need tanks. And fighter planes. And the pitiless will to blacken the rivers with robot blood.

Describe their house or apartment: Another thing – we want to set this in London, right? THERE’S NO SOIL HERE, IDIOT. Ralph would go to Norfolk, meet NOBODY, and gobble bags of loamy dirt like a sad fat girl on prom night. This premise doesn’t just have holes in it. It’s a Swiss cheese with leprosy getting gang-banged by forks.

Describe their work environment: Yes, what would Ralph’s job be like? Oh wait. Ralph wouldn’t have a job, because Ralph is a robot without emotions or motivation. He doesn’t want money, or love, or understanding ,.. just … a big plate of soil. Does that sound like a compelling character I want to invite into my home every week for 22 minutes in prime time? I’d rather watch a fatal house-fire.

Describe where the character shops for groceries: Plus the robot concept has been done, like, a gazillion times, better than I could ever do it, covering every conceivable topic: Transformers, Short Circuit, the android on Star Trek…

What kind of car do they drive? … Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, The Terminator, everything ever made in Japan…

What kind of clothes do they wear? So this is why we quit a perfectly respectable job selling sports equipment? It’s not too late to go back. Jim said the door was always open. Christ, I’m such a coward. This is why Enid left. It’s only 7.30. The off license is still open. I still have those pictures of her breasts on my phone. Fuck it. Just… fuck it.

For more information about ‘Ralph the Robot’, contact: Brian Walker

c/o The Sports Hut, 27 Burwash Street, Deptford SE8

The bro vs. the old guy

Wonderful scenes in the Lower East Side last night. I leave a bar with my friend Lucas. We see a typical, backwards-cap-wearing bro arguing with an older man in the street. The bro is puffing himself up. He yells a question: "I make a thousand dollars a week, man... what do you make?" The older gentleman replies with amusement: "Me? I'm homeless." Homeless with the win.

In the beginning

I have to write this down before I forget it. My first month doing standup comedy in New York was one of the most exhilarating of my life.

I’d spent years in the improv scene, and it was great. It was missing something, though. Everyone was so well-intentioned and nerdy, and for the most part, adorable. But there was also a slightly dishonest edge. Despite all the lip service to “group mind” and “make the other person look good”, most people were very ambitious. A lot of people approached improv in a very professional, political way. Everyone wanted to be on a UCB house team, and didn’t do much to hide it (I was just as guilty of this). I don’t hold it against anyone. New York is an ambitious place, and the genuine selflessness of improv takes years to cultivate. No one really gets it for half a decade. But the atmosphere had weird side-effects. The scene sits in a desperate fog of permanent forced niceness, like the people Stallone and Snipes meet in “Demolition Man”. No one ever criticized a choice, or a show, or a performer, because who knows how that person could help you later down the road? Everyone told everyone they were great, even though 99% of us were terrible.

I started doing standup, and it was the perfect opposite. No one was “professionalist” in outlook. All standups harbor dreams of being stars, but it’s hard to bullshit your way into anything in standup. Comics (and audiences) can smell that desperate triangulation a mile away, and they hate it. At the open mic level in New York, everywhere you looked were people whose highest goal that day was to be the funniest, most profane pirate possible. Most of the time, they died on their ass. But they were taking real fucking risks. Niceness was refreshingly non-existent. The currency was respect, not empty compliments. If your jokes worked, you were funny. If they didn’t, you bombed, and people laughed at you, but hey: you had the balls to be up there. Props to that. Come back next week.

In that first month, I saw some genuinely unhinged performers. I’ll tell you about three.

1. The female performance artist who sang-spoke acapella rants against two targets. A) men who couldn’t satisfy her sexually, and B) the government for taking her kid away. She performed in a one-piece black thong bathing suit and stripped naked during her act. “Why?” she would scream, “why did you take away my fucking child, Mr. FBI?” (Probably because they saw your act. And the FBI don’t take away kids, you lunatic.)

2. The Japanese comedian who told hacky jokes about shampoo or sandwiches, and capped every single punchline with “Ahhhh, Who Let Da Dogs Out?” (read it in the most stereotypical Asian accent – it’s funnier). He said it at least twenty times in five minutes. By the end he was murdering, each laugh bigger than the last. An early lesson in the power of repetition when you want to get a reaction.  Haven’t seen him since, which is probably a good thing. That magical night can stay special.

3. The 40-something bespectacled white guy who claimed to be a “chemical rapper”. He rapped the Periodic Table in a perfect monotone for ten solid minutes, without telling a single joke, doggedly reading through all 117 elements. By the end it was like a Gregorian Chant, and we listened in awkward, respectful silence. The cheer at the end was one of relief…and disbelief that this had even happened.

These people were unhinged and delusional. It’s a fringe subculture where genuine oddities get as much stage time as “the next big thing”. Ironically, these weirdos were exactly the kind of freaks the improv scene thought they were, but really weren’t.

In addition to these weirdos, I shared stages with the funniest young comics in New York: Mark Normand, Chris DiStefano, Leah Bonnema, Bryson Turner, Michelle Wolf, Monroe Martin… just murderously funny people. Mix that talent with the totally depraved, delusional nutbags? I was hooked immediately.

I’m not done with improv. I think it’s a life-changing thing. I just wasn’t good enough at it, and approached it the wrong way – as a tool to somehow “make it,” or get validation. I’m older now. I realize that was foolish. Next time, I’ll approach it like standup. Where the only instruction is “just work hard and get good.” It’s life greatest lesson.

New jokes (that'll be old soon)

Cops have arrested a senior Tiffany's executive for stealing from the company. Told them those jewel-encrusted staplers were a bad idea. Governor Chris Christie has made a playlist for music website Spotify. He says it's eclectic: perfect for a jog, the gym, and hanging with paramedics afterwards.

A key part of Obamacare will be delayed for one year, says the White House, but then we'll definitely get it. Definitely next year. Isn't it great when the President sounds like a coach who missed the playoffs?

Shame of normal things

Why are human beings ashamed of completely natural things? My bowels work and I have a sex drive. I shit, and I pleasure myself. But I do it in extreme private, usually in tiny little rooms with locked doors. So do you. Why? Shitting is the same as eating. They’re two equally important steps in a process with many parts: nourishing our physical bodies. But when we eat, it’s a party. Come over and eat with us! Even better, we’ll go out! Some special people will make special eating things, JUST FOR US! We eat together, like a big family. But we shit very separately, one-by-one, in a little box, far from of sight.

Maybe it’s a deep symbolic thing. Eating is the beginning of a process, shitting is the end. I guess our species likes beginnings. Weddings are about lives beginning, and are big joyous occasions: literally everyone you care about is in the room. Divorce is different. You get divorced in absolute privacy, like your relationship taking a shit. It happens in a tiny room. Only you two are there. Maybe there’s a guy handing you paper, but you’re both pretending he’s invisible.

Beginnings are hopeful. Ends are depressing. We call everything that ends “a new beginning”, because we just don’t want to deal with that fear and shame of an ending. We lie to ourselves.

We shit and we jerk off in private because of fear and shame and taboo. Maybe it’s the root of our symbolic vocabulary. Other animals don’t have it. They do whatever they like with their bodies, completely in the open, whenever they want. But then no orangutan ever wrote a novel. Maybe our urge to do symbolically “dirty” things in private is linked to that creative urge. We hide some things. And they end up coming out in other ways.  It’s odd to think Shakespeare wouldn’t have written Hamlet if he could just take a good, non-self-conscious shit in front of everyone, but maybe it’s true.

Skinny fat

I’m skinny fat. I have a skinny person inside me, but he drank and ate garbage until he wasn’t. I am soft all over. Never been hard. The only hard things I have are a penis and some arteries. You know those hard guys? You always grow up with some of them. They are just hard all over. Every little muscle is popping out and demanding attention at the same time. Tight. I ran into one of the hard boys from my high school a few years ago. He’s now a very soft man. I want to say I didn’t enjoy it, but I did. I felt the 13-year-old boy inside me talking trash in an imaginary locker room. “Not so hard now, are you. It sucks not looking perfect doesn’t it? No, you’re gay. Shut up.” etc.

It is genetic? I don’t know. Both my parents are fat. But both of their parents were skinny. I’m suspicious of the genetic get-out. It feels like I’m just looking for a way to make my fat not a moral failing. I feel angry at myself for looking like this, and I know most of the things that would make me NOT look like this. I’m just too lazy to do them. But I can’t make peace with it. I make pasta. Then the cycle starts again.

Fat is a moral issue. It must be. It’s about responsibility. On a deep level, I’m fat because I don’t want to take responsibility for my life. When I think about quitting drinking, or committing to eating healthy, I hand the power to validate my choices over to other people. Quit drinking? But my cousin will tease me over Christmas. Stop eating junk food? But that means I can’t connect with my best friend, who eats no vegetables and seems eager to beat his father’s early death record of 59. Because that’ll show him.

I tried to eat healthy last week. But I went on two light benders anyway. A full bender is planned. A light bender just… happens. In a moment, you’re drunk. Like a sudden zen enlightenment, the word just comes to you: “shots.” The kind of night where you make no plans to drink heavily, but wake up in your clothes spooning a pizza crust.

This post made me hungry. I wonder if the donut shop is still serving bagels. It’s OK if they’re not. Wait, does cream cheese taste good on a donut? Let’s find out.