By Matt Zoller Seitz
While travelling to Los Angeles for the twice-yearly TV Critics Association press tour (see the last item in today's All TV column, expounded upon in the paper's TCA blog), I had to spend a fair amount of time on the phone with my credit card company, asking them why a sizable payment made last week had not yet been applied to my balance. I'll spare you the details, except to say that the situation was resolved, and that the three-way phone conversation between me, the credit card company and the bank should have been a Marx Brothers routine.
I am too tired to write a substantive item today. I have to unpack, decompress and watch pilots. In the meantime, here's an insightful New York Times review by Gary Giddins of some books about the brothers, with a thumbnail assessment of how Hollywood neutered them.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Hello, I must be going
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9 comments:
Your blog is pretty great so far. Keep up the good work.I'm gonna start one myslef soon, but I can't come up with a good title.
How about Grand Epic?
Have you ever read that book of Groucho Marx letters? Some of them are downright hilarious, more hilarious than most of the pilots you are probably slugging through right now. If you happen to see one about an angry film critic from Joisey beating people who liked Match Point upside the head with a pimp stick while singing "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle and Flow, let me know. Someone stole my life story. What sucks is that, for the obvious reason, it'll be on UPN.
As for the support departments of banks and credit card companies, they use scripted software to assist you with your problems. At one point in my illustrious programming career, I wrote software like this. Hey, Superman had a day job too.
You call with your problem, and the technician clicks a tab or button that provides them with a canned response to your problem. This saves the bank/credit card company from having to train people to do such minimal tasks as think or know what the hell about which they are talking. The bank saves money, and passes on the savings to you, which you use to pay for all the cell phone minutes that evaporated when you asked a question for which there was no canned response tab.
Please note that I was responsible for the delivery mechanism, not the canned responses. They came from the support department. Like Will Rogers, I didn't make the news, my software just reported it.
May you find a Fox Force Five in your group of pilots, or at the very least, Peter Graves and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Yeah, I should probably just stick with Grand Epic.
How about The EpiCenter, Mssr. Grand Epic?
I actually own a copy of the Groucho letters. They're great. It makes me a bit sad, though, to realize that people were once capable of dashing off letters which, while certainly not as funny as Groucho's, were at least lively and distinctive.
When I read old letters by my late grandfather -- alluded to in this blog's inaugural 01/01 post "Open House" -- I am stunned by how much more eloquent he was than, say, half the New York Times bestselling authors from last year (many of whom probably just yammered into a tape recorder, then had an intern or ghostwriter transcribe it). And he was a farmer's boy who had to pay the kid next door to smuggle books to him, because his own dad had forbidden him to read.
His penmanship sucked, though.
Sorry, what were we talking about?
Damn you, Odie Henderson. For the last half day I have been unable to get the phrase "pimp stick" out of my head. I wonder: would that be, perhaps, a cane with an ornate handle? The sort of thing Snoop Dogg would pose with? Or a hickory stick? Or the sheathed instrument employed by Alex the Droog to thrash his mates?
Enlighten me.
I'm going to sound like James Joyce in answering your question: Yes yes yes (and I said yes and he said yes oh yes oh yes oh come on James, what the hell were you on when you wrote this?)
Pimp sticks take many forms, but they usually have two things in common: an ornate handle, usually round or shaped like a golf club and--if you're truly old school--a sharp surprise hidden inside. Snoop Dogg has posed with them, and the weapon the number one malchick uses on his droogs fits the description as well.
In my old neighborhood, and in the pre-Disney Times Square of the '70's I so fondly recall, you would see macks walking with all kinds of canes, from sleek and stylish to intricately carved African sticks made of heavy wood. You would see the former far more than the latter, for pimp sticks are for show, not support. Remember, pimps are called "pimps" because they "pimp," or walk in a stylish manner. A good cane accentuates the pimp's pimp.
If you sweet talk me, I'll send you a picture of me at the Player's Ball. I'm no pimp--just a guy with a funny walk from a bad knee that occasionally hobbles him--but I wore a purple suit complete with dyed alligator shoes, an ominously conditioned fedora, and my stick made its debut. It's worth seeing. Trust me.
Odie, please send me that picture. I suspect that I was born so that I could see it.
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