Ten years ago today, I stepped into my first class at the UCB Theatre. I signed up for classes on a whim–there was one class with an opening on Saturdays from 9-12, the only time I could guarantee I wouldn’t have to be at work, and I figured I could meet some interesting people. I could write for days on what followed, but suffice it to say, it was probably the best thing I’ve ever done. Personally and professionally, nothing has been more fulfilling than the relationships I’ve developed and the experiences I’ve had in and around the theater. If you’re from UCB, basically, we’re family, thank you for everything, and I’ve got your back. This much should be clear by now.
Which brings me to my next point. A little over eight years ago, I started a variety show, School Night. Back then, there weren’t a lot of places to perform outside of the UCBT, and people were frustrated with their opportunities to develop as improvisers. I had an idea on the way home one night for a show with short, low-pressure improv sets, emailed Owen Burke when I got back to my apartment, and two weeks later, we started what is now the longest running variety show in New York. School Night is my baby, and I love it very much.
But, I live in New Hampshire.
For the last eight months or so, I’ve been happy to book the show, and have been graced with some of the most awesome guest hosts a guy could ask for. But to keep the show vital and consistent, I’ve got to hand over the keys. And I can’t think of anyone who can drive the show forward than Sasheer Zamata. So I’m very pleased to welcome her as the new host of School Night! Sasheer is an amazing performer, a charming host, and a skilled producer, and I can’t wait to see what she does with the show. Please join me in welcoming her, and thank you all for an amazing decade at the UCB. Looking forward to starting the next one!
CONGRATS PURNS!
[video]
Terrifying horse mask has the greatest customer image gallery on Amazon
Over the course of editing today’s “When The Commentariat Attack” Inventory I ran across this terrifying horse mask. What I didn’t realize until now is that the terrifying horse mask has an amazing gallery of customer images. My favorite is above. There are eleven pages of such photos. Enjoy, and sleep well.
[video]
Cartoonists Matt Groening and Lynda Barry the 1980s. Photo by Lynda who is sticking her arm out.
Her newest book, Blabber, Blabber, Blabber, is dedicated to Matt. They met in the late 70s at The Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington.
“I See What You Did There” of the day
(apologies for the eye-strain, click to enlarge)
Film Comment’s Laura Kern finds a clever way to cut her workload in half, doubling her vitriol for 2 new films in the process.
for what it’s worth, your humble host doesn’t think that either of these films deserve such scorn, but… ya know… i see what you did there.
This is Rick, the NYPD “Hipster Cop.” I briefly met this guy while reporting on the Occupy Wall Street Radiohead concert that never happened. He was standing next to the Occupy Wall Street spokesman who had told me over and over that day that Radiohead would definitely be playing no matter what their publicist said, just come down.
When I met him, Hipster Cop was wearing a bright red Mister Rogers cardigan and a white button down with a clipped tie, grey wool slacks and spotless oxfords, a smirk on his face. He was the most sharply-dressed guy I had seen pretty much all week, and I work in Soho. Hipster Cop almost looked too well-dressed to be a Radiohead fan; like, maybe he only listened to LPs of obscure Japanese bands from the 80s. But I asked if he was bummed about Radiohead’s no-show: “They’re finished,” he joked. “Nobody’s going to listen to their music anymore.”
But he was a cop! Which I learned when he flashed a badge hooked discreetly onto his belt and shooed away the uniformed officer who eventually came over to move us from the street where we were chatting onto the sidewalk. You could tell she was embarrassed; guess he’s like that cool detective at the police station that nobody wants to talk to about movies or music or anything ‘cause he’ll scoff at them.
Since then, Hipster Cop has become sort of a meme at Occupy Wall Street. This woman even called him “infamous.”
What if all cops looked like this? What if pepper-spray cop Anthony Bologna looked like this? What if, during the 2008 NYC Republican Convention, CNN broadcast live footage of dozens of hipster cops charging through the tear gas behind riot shields with Pavement bumper stickers on them, beating protesters with vintage 1920s nightsticks they picked up at the thrift store, precisely-clipped ties fluttering behind them?
Update: This NYU student, Brett Chamberlain, just tweeted to me that Hipster Cop asked him out to dinner.
No joke he asked me out to dinner. his name is Rick btw. Community affairs / detective with
#NYPD precinct 1. I told him if he saw me in cuffs and let me out I would go to dinner with him. He missed his chance when I got arrested.I don’t know… It’s almost too good to be true. Gay hipster cop finds love at the anti-capitalist protest? #OccupyMyHeart
(pic via Lucy Kafanov)
A.J. Daulerio’s buzzsaw tattoo, which you can see him procuring in the above photo, will turn three years old this January. It has been that long since I won the Mayor’s Bet with Daulerio, thanks to the Arizona Cardinals’ stunning victory over the Philadelphia Eagles. (You may remember that there was also a Cookie Sheet involved.)
Well, the series we’ve each been both looking forward to and dreading for more than a decade now is finally here: My St. Louis Cardinals and his Philadelphia Phillies meet in the National League Divisional Series in about an hour. Another wager felt appropriate. But we are older now, more mature, and the stakes needed to reflect this process of growth. Also: I am not getting a goddamn tattoo. I am not an idiot.
Thus:
If the Philadelphia Phillies beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLDS, Will Leitch must:
*** Must make a $100 donation to the charity of A.J. Daulerio’s choice.
*** As dictated by Mayor’s Bet tradition, must take A.J. Daulerio out for a romantic sushi dinner.
*** Let himself be hit by a 90 mile-per-hour fastball from a pitching machine, on camera.If the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLDS, A.J. Daulerio must:
*** Must make a $100 donation to the charity of Will Leitch’s choice.
*** As dictated by Mayor’s Bet tradition, must take Will Leitch out for a romantic sushi dinner.
*** Must allow Will Leitch to tase him, on camera.So, there’s the bet. Go Cardinals. Please.
Today Erica Eisdorfer, the longtime manager of the Bull’s Head Bookshop at UNC-Chapel Hill, is retiring. (She’s also a novelist whose first book, “The Wet Nurse’s Tale,” is almost absurdly entertaining.) In a few minutes, they’re having cake down in Chapel Hill to celebrate thirty years of Erica running one of the best bookshops in the state. I am pretty sad I cannot be there.
One day at the Bull’s Head long ago an enormously pregnant Erica Eisdorfer lit into me for giving her attitude when she told me to shelve that cart of books that she’s asked me to shelve an hour before. “Dan, it’s not your job to think of funny things to say when I ask you to do something,” she snapped. Her hair was pulled back in a bun and she seemed as wide as she was tall; I might never have been more terrified in a work environment than I was at that moment. She was loud enough so that the other sales clerk that morning, who was shelving books, peeked out from behind Cultural Studies and assiduously turned around and walked to the back of the store. The back of my neck felt hot. “So please,” Erica continued, “get off your butt and shelve the damn books!”
I shelved the damn books. Later that day she went off and had a baby.
I mention this story not because it’s in any way emblematic of my four years working with Erica, or her 30 years working at the Bull’s Head. I mention it because I *don’t* remember her yelling any other times, which, given the spectacular regard in which I held myself in those collegiate and post-collegiate years, suggests a level of self-control on Erica’s part that verges on sainthood.
And while I was surely the worst of the characters in the Bull’s Head at that time, I was not the only character; one great thing about working at the store was Erica’s determination to hire interesting people of all stripes, and so the Bull’s Head became the place where I learned about not only books but indie rock, behavioral psychology, tattoos, Marxist philosophy, classical Greek, and pie crust.
Erica had hired all those people to be themselves, so it seemed that while we all worked hard, we also were there to fulfill secondary duties that were just as important to the life and spirit of the store as shelving or pulling or shipping or receiving. Margaret was on the sales floor to be unbelievably nice to everyone, even the horrible people. Katri was in the receiving room to verbally slice and dice the pitiful student employees like me who thought we were funny. George was in the office to dispense nuggets of ancient wisdom. Stacie was in the returns room to play Sebadoh at top volume. And yes, sometimes it seemed that I was getting paid not just to work but to, you know, think of funny things to say when Erica asked me to do something.
Though I took plenty of literature classes at Carolina, the Bull’s Head was really the foundation for the reader, writer and thinker I am today. Erica and everyone else at the store took books and writing very seriously, and I learned from that; I also developed my taste by reading the books passed down by all the wiser employees at the store, from the comics that Don told me about to the great southern writers Margaret loved to the actual writers who stopped in the store, most of them because they knew and trusted Erica and saw the Bull’s Head — correctly — as a bastion of free-spirited intellectualism in an academic environment that was (and is) getting more and more regimented every year.
So thank you to Erica Eisdorfer for being the best boss I ever had — the best boss, I bet, that most people who’ve worked at the Bull’s Head have ever had. Thanks for not yelling at me all those times you could have. Thanks for seeing something in me, and fostering it, and letting me create YAS and plenty of other (failed) experiments. And then thank you for writing the greatest recommendation letter anyone has ever written, which I am pretty sure was single-handedly responsible for getting me into grad school and my first job. Thanks, in short, for being a great reader and writer and leader and fighter.
Congratulations on your retirement!
With love,
Dan
What does Sean Connery call his farts?
“I have a general suspicion of big theme movies—when you look at big life-affirming epics from [William] Wyler or [George] Stevens or something, every individual shot is just so dead that it contradicts whatever humanist message they’re trying to put across, whereas someone who seems to be as nihilistic as George Romero is just so alive imaginatively on the level of shots and how he’s arranging things, and that seems to me a much more life-affirming experience than so many of these big lumbering humanistic classics.” — http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-09-14/film/you-cannot-send-shit-through-the-internet-and-other-life-lessons-from-critic-dave-kehr/2/