Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Peter Ames Carlin Caves to the Man! Lenny Bruce Credentials Revoked!

I love it when would-be comedy writers finally get their shot. Take the Oregonian's Peter Ames Carlin, stuck in the mundane job of analyzing the TV industry. I exchanged emails with him once about Leno and I got the impression he was very disappointed about the Lenny Bruce quotient. It was clear to me that Carlin disapproved that the late night monologues didn't reach his level of hipness. See, you have to know the gig. I write for hundreds of DJs and the last thing I want is an email saying I got one of them fired. I have seen Leno apologize for a factual error in one of my jokes, and that wasn't pleasant either. So, part of comedy writing is being confidant enough in your own level of inner dorkiness, to be able to write for a client without causing a big apology scenario. You would think being a TV-industry analyst, Carlin would have some understanding of that. Hell, even Lenny Bruce - who used to go on TV too - understood that.
But no. Then a break came; a way to right this wrong through the blog world. Peter finally got a shot to cut loose. To share his comedic gifts with the world. In this post, copied from the OMI site, he was bemoaning how his Oregonian-related blog hadn't been linked. Well, why don't we all just read it together: ....."Oh sure, there's one link on the TV page (the one that has yrs truly's name with a vestigial hyphen between his 'Ames' and his 'Carlin') but still nothing on the blog page. Let alone the O-Live front page, which may be asking way too much. News priorities, and all.
And yet my colleagues down here urge me to turn the phantom-ness of my blog into a strength. Or an experiment, at least. Like for instance, what kind of messed-up stuff could I put into this space, and get away with it? And wouldn't it be easy, seeing as no one but me is reading it?
Here are the top candidates:
1. Hello?
2. Please call an ambulance, I need help. Right now.
3. Is it acceptable to pay a hooker in cocaine?
4. No. Really. Hello?
5. Anyone know how to get blood out of carpet?
6. I'll give $1,000, cash, to the first person to write in.
7. Hellllllllooooooooooo?
8. I've fallen and I can't get up.
9. What are you wearing?
10. Is this thing on?

So we have an Oregonian columnist posing the question "Is it acceptable to pay a hooker in cocaine?" Peter Ames Carlin had finally arrived. He had showed how hip he really was. His Lenny Bruce quotient was soaring! For one brief shining moment all was well in the comedy universe. This is where the Oregonian complains but Carlin says, "Screw you. This is my right to talk. You can arrest me if you want. I'll show you just like Lenny Bruce showed you!" Well, no actually, that's not how the story ends. Here's our cutting edge's comment today from the Oregonian's site, complete with a cute little bit about superegos and other Reader's Digest type stuff: "Juvenile and Beneath Me
Let's say you don't have your own superego. That's the part of your psyche that tells your wilder, crazier id part when to pipe down and stop causing trouble. So you definitely want one, lest you become Charlie Sheen or something. And if you don't have your own you should maybe find someone else who can perform that function for you. Someone with common sense, say. So the one I have on staff took a look at some recent work of mine that appeared in this space and rendered a judgment. See also: the title to this entry. And upon further reflection my highly functioning id has seen the light, identified it as such, and feeling chastened, has returned to the proper course. Hence the disappearance of previously posted materials. Back to show business as usual, and let's never speak of this again."

Dude, what happened? Is that the sound of you backing down to the Man! Take my advice. Forget about the desperate comedy writer bit, and stick to writing about "Desperate Housewives".

2 Comments:

At 1:17 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Another body buried under the tombstone reading, "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."

 
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