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marktgarden asked: "This week's edition has been online for literally *minutes* and you haven't posted your tirade yet? Are you in bed with croup or ague?"
No, those are diseases of rich, pointless, aimless people like Ms. Havrilesky. People like me, who actually live in a country you may have heard of called America, get shot by gangbangers, rednecks or psychotic postmen.
It just happens that I'm on vacation this week, in a place outside the U.S. called Burbank, California. Even attended a book signing party (no, not my book, Bush hasn't finished coloring it in yet). Havrilesky would love it here. A large percentage of the colorful natives here are arrogant, heartless snobs like her. And they would offer her a wonderful life direction; they don't feel the need to put their thoughtless opinions into print, only yell them at each other over a too-loud DJ playing techno crap. If only she'd do that instead...
Not too much to say this week, except that "30 Rock" and "Studio 60" prove that late-night comedy is indeed dead. Intellectuals only find significance in popular culture when that culture appears to be dead; thus the name "culture vultures." They only paid attention to popular motion pictures when the studio system was dead, and they only showed appreciation for TV when cable, DVD's and YouTube made broadcasting a terminal patient.
"Saturday Night Live," the unspoken model for these shows, stopped being the generator of fresh comedy and the showcase for new comic actors a long time ago. (Arguably it never was; did Chevy Chase, John Belushi or Dan Aykroyd ever make movies that really lived up to their hyped status as comic geniuses?) The promise of semi-improvised sketch comedy has evaporated, and these backstage dramas confirm it. Of course, they wouldn't do fictionalized versions of the real history like the drug abuse permitted on the SNL set, or the way SNL's women were shut out of the creative process by the comedy world's intrinsic sexism. If they had, perhaps these shows would be worth watching.
