Books:
Amoralman by Derek Delgaudio
So some Janice rec’ed this autobiography of a loner card wizard who, rather than going down the (apparently) traditional loner card wizard route of becoming a magician, instead becomes a dealer hired to cheat at private high stakes poker games. It's short and a decent enough read plus all the cheating at poker stuff was pretty interesting. I'd say if it's marred by anything it's that the writing is pretty meh and the author tends to wax philosophical and - and I guess I can’t really blame him for this but I'm noting it - he kind of couches the entire book as a moral journey where he comes out the other side. But of what? He acts as if it it’s implicit that you’d become a cheaty dealer then later decide it was a bad thing and leave it, but really it isn’t implicit and it made me feel like he either wasn’t admitting/aware of some truth about himself or knew the truth but thought it made him look bad so made up pablum instead. It’s as if he came up with the title, thought it was clever, and decided to contort his story into it. He doesn’t explain why, at a moral level, he became a cheaty dealer nor why he decided to leave it behind nor where he was thinking he’d be headed if he continued down his cheaty path nor what he was planning to do instead. But maybe my issue with this lies in my own lack of morals because I wasn't viewing cheating the mob at poker as a moral issue but rather as a cool look into a world I was unfamiliar with. Again, the book was short so in some ways what I'm saying are quibbles because you're not in the thing long enough for it to really matter, but I wish the author had given more details about the cheating, the world he was in, and why he dove headfirst into it, and less about a moral commentary on all that. Regardless, if you're into biography, this would probably be a good airplane/beach read in that genre.
Gunfight by Adam Winkler
This nonfiction book is a history of the 2nd Amendment and is structured around an early 20teens Supreme Court gun rights case intercutting with the history of how it all got there. Other than in obvious ways when there’s a school shooting and the like, I never really gave much thought to why the 2nd Amendment exists from the POV of the country’s creation let alone its impact on jurisprudence. I mean moving aside everything you’re thinking right now about seemingly everyone being armed at all times, imagine (as this book shows) you’re a Black family in the South in the ‘50s - or a Pilgrim-y White family in England in the (16)50s - and the only thing that’s standing between you and a lynch mob (because certainly the sheriff/police aren’t on your side) is your gun. This i.e. the 2nd Amendment, apparently, is precisely why Whites went around disarming Blacks in the ‘50s, to make for some nice, safe bullet-free lynching down the road. See? What’s your thought on the unfettered right of gun ownership in that situation, the one where you and your family are in the group on the other side of the mob? To me at least, it made me think about what the 2nd Amendement is really guaranteeing, which isn’t so much arms in and of themselves but rather a warning to one party - historically for our British ancestors who wrote the Constitution that party was often a state-sponsored group of religious oppressors - that the other party may be legally armed and therefore, party one, you might be well advised to find some other way to resolve your differences than violence because you’re at risk as well, i.e. a guarantee of cold war so don’t start shooting. America’s founders may not have foreseen the consequences but I’m not entirely sure they wouldn’t think the tradeoff was worth it given their own histories. As you can see, for me this book presented history in ways that made me think and also showed the futility (forget about legality) of any sort of gun control, like good luck getting 300,000,000 guns out of circulation. All history and thought aside, the book is also filled with fun factoids – the gun was invented by a monk! modern-day right-wing gun-nuts are actually a consequence of what happened with the Black Panthers! – and is a pretty interesting look at Constitutional law through the lens of American history.
TV/Streaming:
Songland (Seasons 1 & 2):
This reality competition show in which 3 songwriters are whisked off with 3 different producers to have all life and meaning squeezed out of what they wrote and contorted into a knock wood Spotify-busting hit for a particular (usually atrocious) guest artist each week is both horrific and riveting. Mostly riveting (unless you hate the music of that week’s artist - I’m looking at you Boyz II Men - in which case it’s excruciating) because in all honesty it’s not like someone’s turning, I don’t know, some otherwise soul-stirring piece of musical gorgeousity into one of those seemingly endless modern-day sea shanties that keep infecting my Youtube playlist or that even more annoying thing where EVERY SINGLE SONG starts with the singer digitally transformed into bird noises or, most frantic thumbs-down inducing of all, the crop of female (or however they identify) singers who all do that exact same horrific faux Billie Holliday vocal tone that’s about 4 bajillion times worse than my other least favorite noise of all time (a fork slowly scraping the bottom of a styrofoam cup - I’m being vulnerable with you all, it’s my aural kryptonite!). Meaning this show is junk to junk, i.e. taking a mediocre singer-songwriter-coffee-shop-type song and turning it into, say, a mediocre Jonas Brothers song, or, in one case in which no one was even bothering to pretend the entire purpose of industry-machine music is money, a country song that could also crossover into being a Jeep ad. The show itself seems pretty fake and overproduced but it doesn’t matter really because some version of this is how we get the Top 40 we all know and love (or know and pretend not to love but secretly listen to anyway (or know and truly hate)), and I find that process to be interesting. For example, in one episode the songwriters came in with a hook and no lyrics - literally just "lala" the whole time - which is considered a viable jumping-off point for a hit (and I hate to admit it, but the lala hook was kinda catchy); in another, an intimate emo-pop song is converted into some One Republic vomit. I find something very watchable about transformation even if that transformation is from pop-drek-1 to pop-drek-2 thus I was glued (or, for the artists whose music made me want to rip the speakers out of my TV, delete-friendly) for both seasons and hope there’s a season 3.
Emily in Paris:
My original plan (well insofar as anything in Media Report involves a plan) was to ignore writing about this show because I hated it within, like, a minute, DNF’ed after an episode or two, and then completely forgot about its existence (this would be the “plan to ignore writing about it” part). But then, like a high-fashion, bushy-browed, and very svelte kraken, it emerged from the sea bottom of my brain by showing up all over the interwebs as being nominated for a bunch of friggin’ awards and Janice could be silent no longer! So sorry about all this, Emily in Paris or wherever you are right now, as you were going to dodge Janice’s laser incisiveness - to hardly mention unremitting hotness - but these award nominations demand otherwise!
The Golden Globes (“golden,” as we all learned very loudly this year, being the only non-White color associated with any of the HFPA members) with its long Pia Zadora-laden history of being incapable of having even the vaguest definition of what constitutes “merit” when it comes to its own award nominations - as made clear, some (me) would argue, by nominating this shizzle mcnizzles for anything other than a quick wipe and a flush - does at least have the distinction of giving awards, as a fellow (genius) Janice once pointed out, based on the following criteria: the Golden Globes, being foreign press, first give awards to (a) non-Americans and especially to non-Americans in something that’s anti-American then to (b) Americans in something written or directed by non-Americans/anti-Americans then finally to (c) just plain-old Americans but only if they’re so megastar that their mere presence gives the whole mess a sheen of validity. Meaning it’s no surprise that a piece of garbaaage (a) set in Paris and (b) starring a Brit playing a (c) clueless asshole American was a shoo-in for a nomination.
The basic setup of this ostensible comedy is that some American company buys a French marketing firm and the woman who’s supposed to go supervise everything can’t go due to pregnancy so sends her plucky young non-French-speaking junior executive, the eponymous Emily, to oversee the merger. So, like, we’re already so far into idiotland only around 10 minutes into episode 1 that I thought there must be some key tonal piece I was missing. Because otherwise we’re meant to swallow (a) some junior exec is going to be completely responsible for overseeing a merger and (b) the whole “doesn’t speak French” stupidity, not because non-French speakers can’t help out with French companies, but because the show transforms that linguistic obliviousness into an anti-masker level of American jingoistic pride - it’s not merely that she doesn’t speak French; it’s that hey mes freres, the American Revolution inspired the French one and not the other way around so wouldn’t it be better for all you Revolution-copycatting, croissant-loving, beret-wearing poodle-lovers if you were only ever spoken to in the True Tongue? Stylistically the show seemed to be trying to invoke some Audrey Hepburnish thing so I thought well maybe we’re in some heightened reality or something? But, no, we were actually just not in reality at all because Emily arrives, acts like she’s the only one in the world of marketing who’s ever heard of Instagram, issues a series of directives, all in English to her French-speaking colleagues and… and.. oh I can’t even be bothered! It’s hateful at like 30 different levels but especially the notion that success merely requires one to say the first thing that comes one’s mind - seriously, the entire show seems based around how, for example, Emily tosses off this one self-oblivious thing and then becomes huge on that Instagram thing only she knows about - as opposed to, oh, hard work (or any work) to hardly mention the exceedingly bizarre choice the show made to have all the French people speak English with Pepe le Pew French accents even when Emily’s not around.
Honestly, I didn't think it would be possible to make something more dreadful than Mrs. Maisel, but apparently there is and is there a Golden Globe category for that? Because if so I’ve totally found the winner.
Movies:
In and of Itself by Derek Delgaudio - The same Janice who rec’ed Amoralman also rec’ed this movie, a filming of the one-man theater show by the author, and could I possibly resist reviewing both in the same Media Report? No I could not! The film version of the one-man show was shot over several days and covers some elements from his autobiography intermixed with audience participation and a few card tricks but mostly it’s the thing that irritated me in the book writ large, i.e. this quasi-mystical/moral overlay to his life journey that implied meaning while feeling utterly detached from what he was talking about. Even more than with Amoralman, I felt like I was watching someone lying to me because it felt as if he couldn’t face the truth of his life choices. For a film entirely about identity, that was not a good look to this Janice. There’s also, not magic exactly but close-up card trickery maybe and, ya know, Amoralman spent quite a bit of time with the author discussing how he didn’t want to be a magician and, um, here he is doing a one-man magic(ish) show, well what up with that? I realize the two weren’t meant to be consumed back to back but that happened and still, he’s one person telling his life story so shouldn’t they be at least kinda the same? The movie is basically a somewhat amorphous combo of autobiography and musing on the nature of self all couched in a Russian roulette metaphor for identity that made zero sense to me. In fact, every time he waxed philosophical about bullets and whatnot, it all just felt like the self-psychology equivalent of word salad - philosophy bibimbap? - because the metaphor ultimately meant and added up to nothing other than a construct to mark time in the show, i.e. 6 bullets so 6 segments. Also, and I won’t spoiler anything by telling you the details, but the final audience participation segment - in fact all of them - made it feel like 25% of the audience were plants. I admit part of this might be because a fellow Janice and I saw an early production of another illusionist’s (Derren Brown’s) show years ago and it became so fucking clear that everyone called up to stage was an audience plant that I basically assumed the same thing here which resulted in a repetitive and boring filmed experience. Perhaps seeing it live you can convince yourself it’s real; filmed, it felt like actors and an end credit sequence that could’ve been shot anywhere or anytime (not spoilering the details but it supposedly proves something from the show is real but actually proved nothing). Having heard/seen both Derek DelGaudio pieces, my assessment is he’s someone who could, maybe, be interesting if he’d let himself be vulnerable instead of trying to sound smart or like his idea of a good person because, by the end of the film, I felt like I’d been watching a shady person pretending they were over being shady which only served to make it clear how shady they actually were - and that, actually, is someone I’d be interested in hearing from.
Jan, as usual I mostly agree with you, but hon, you are totally wrong on Songland. The appeal there is that any act of creation—seeing people MAKING SOMETHING—is to watch a process be acted out and demystified, and not even remotely about the end product. Doesn't matter if the finished song sucks, we watch this show to see how a single idea in someone’s head goes through at least 4 iterations within one episode. The germ of a song the songwriter brings in; the hint of what that song might become based on suggestions from three pro songwriters; what that song does becomes after a pro and an amateur collaborate; and the final version, the one recorded by an established artist that goes out into the world. If the songs were any good —to start with, or midway, or even at the finish— we wouldn't get this fascinating look at the process. In fact, the songs being good would ruin it. I know you aren't slamming SONGLAND, Jan, but you’re kinda damning it with faint praise.
Hon, I know you get a bit tetchy these days about anything to do with music after finally abandoning the accordion, but you need to check yourself here and let your readers know this is a show 100% worth watching. If i didn't know better id say somebody is not getting gummied for reality/competition TV and that’s a big no no in the world of balanced criticism.
Love ya, just saying.