It's a swell time to be an older, white, straight male with a giant ego, a trunk full of dues-paying and/or top-of-the-world VH1 reveries... because chances are you have your own show either on IFC, Showtime, FX, or at the very least, "the Youtubes." No matter what level of fame, micro-success, or just delusional 'web fame' the rest of us Aging SWMs may have garnered, we can all relate to these 1-2 syllable single name titles. Yo, that's us! We're detached. The Generation X kids grown grey, we've been watching as our golden age of cocksmanship, fame, and rock swagger circles down the drain into the sunset. Whether we packed stadiums or just half-filled a small local bar with our relatives once in 1985, we're glad we're not still hoisting amps in and out of bars, fighting off stage fright and anxiety no one will show, fending off a constant onslaught of angry press, slavering fans, grabby jonesers and wannabes and lapel-grabbers and bossy exes. To be still doing it would be a constant reminder none of that shit is as golden as we remember. Since it's all safely behind us now, though, man is it golden!
What most of my generation really wants now, when all's said and done, and that golden sunset is secured in our minds, is simply an outlet, some medium to express ourselves and some kind of audience on which to leave our mark, our initials carved into the bark of the tree, whether the brains of our bored children, pages our blogs such as this, or--now shows, single cam riffs aimed at the critical acclaim garnered by LOUIE. Two of them are currently fresh in the airwaves: new season of MARON (on IFC), and premiere of DICE (Showtime- AYyyy!)I normally don't write about comedy (30s Paramount aside), the real world's funny enough, but having lived six years with a comedy journalist, who told me I reminded her of Marc Maron even before the show came out. I too am 16 years sober, bedraggled, bespectacled, misanthropic, reclusive; have no kids, date girls half my age, and think the real world is going to hell and let fame go to my head so fast I'd almost rather not have it. The small amount I've had for small amounts of time always turned me into a raving narcissistic womanizer, so needy for the next wave of adulation I could barely sleep or stand to be alone for more than a few minutes at a time, and apt to throw a tantrum if I had to pay a cover charge. Similarly, Maron's irritable and needly like a cranky child determined to keep his tantrum up until some giant mommy descends from the sky with a massive royalty check. We're supposed to somehow either sympathize with all his luxury problems, the kind of shit only Eric Schaffer, Ed Burns, Woody Allen, and Albert Brooks would relate to. But I don't like to be reminded that my grandiose schtick isn't that easy to live with day-to-day. I'd never be able to tolerate being in a room five minutes with myself. So my hostile response to Maron should maybe be considered with that disclaimer.
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| good taste in music, but you think Iggy ever whines about needing to quit nicotine lozenges? (great photo though) |
Sure he's on camera a lot, lives in LA, and has his own podcast, but even so, for a straight middle-aged white dude with scraggly facial hair, Marc Maron spends an awful amount of time worrying he's getting fat, or addicted to--how macho!--nicotine lozenges; constantly blaming his surly exhaustion on how he's poisoning himself with "too much caffeine too much nicotine" blah blah. Sure, we've all been there, but no straight man over the age of 45 who's not actually fat should worry about this shit anymore; or at any rate he should know himself well enough by that age to not think buying a bunch of running gear and deciding to quit caffeine and nicotine and junk food all at once right before launching a big talk show is a good idea. No way anyone stays sober 16 years not knowing basic sobriety 101 shit like that, not unless they were never alcoholics to being with.
Fucking Lee Marvin was a drinker; you can fucking tell in his eyes. I can see it in other sober comic's eyes, like Craig Ferguson, but I don't see it in Maron's. I admit he does his nodding off super mess shit pretty well, and he's got the self-pitying atheist mopeiness down, but to not have even a single scene of focused peace and calm before complete mess relapse, I mean just enough to we see WHY he drank and did drugs in the first place, so we can think for a hot second, "hey, he's finally not an asshole, maybe drugs/booze are/is the answer" which makes his turn to asshole five minutes later all the more heartbreaking. That's the stuff Emmys are made of, and Oscars (ala Marvin's, Cage's, Coburn's, Milland's, etc.) and he'd only have to do it once.
Third, if you were really "cross-addicted" as the saying goes, but haven't done any of it for 16 years, sorry but you won't relapse on just pain pills if your back is bad enough to deserve them (presuming you don't have, like 200 pills prescribed by a dangerously incompetent doctor). I went through that shit when I busted my knee and my natural urge to horde the 20 pills I got was enough that I only took them when I needed them, and wound up needing them all. But if you take pills the way Maron does in this show, son you would be dead. Tolerance shrinks to normal schlub levels. Oxycontin tabs are NOT nicotine lozenges - you can't just guzzle them in the bathroom like M&Ms, not unless you want to die, and besides it's a huge waste of a good stash. They don't give automatic refills on Oxy anymore, and a real addict wouldn't waste them. He clearly never went to AA or he'd have realized trying to juggle pain medication with nicotine withdrawal has never worked once in all of human history. And sorry but if believing in God makes you happier, and you're currently miserable, then you're an idiot to not believe in God. It will be interesting to see him in rehab in future episodes (ONLY on IFC) and if he actually exits his navel long enough to help another alcoholic, to become selfless long enough to be a worker among workers, to genuinely open up to a sponsor, do the 12 steps sans smarminess, i.e. to grow even just long enough to learn to be nice to one other person, the way say Don Draper finally learned to do in the final episode of MAD MEN. (See 'chop wood, carry sponsors.'
But I bet he won't. Because I don't think he really is an addict as opposed to being one of those jerks (and AA is full of them) who has no will power, and overdoes everything and rather than trying to practice moderation, decides to quit just to prove he's got it together. And then he blames the jerkiness on not being able to do the drugs. In other words, he blames drugs for his prickly jerkiness, and then blames the lack of drugs for his prickly jerkiness. And in short, he is a prickly jerk either way. Rather than learn from his mistakes, his weaknesses, he blames everyone else. Sure, it's his character --the show invites us to view him with a certain amount of derision, to profit perhaps by his example. But it also expects us to identify with him to the point we share his Terry Zwigoff-esque alienation from the banal absurdities around him and think, yeah Marc - these people really are fucked up, the social order is a mess.
Even so... I'm rooting for him to get his head out of his own ass. Maybe even praying... but if Maron himself has no higher power, how will that work? Spiritual awakenings are a tough think to fake.
And then there was DICE!
Back when I was a wobbly little feminist in the 80s-90s I used to hate Andrew Dice Clay the way I hated Adam Sandler, frat boys, sports, snarky teen sex comedies, and half the kids at my very working class Italian-American Jersey High school. Badda Bing! By senior year I'd figured out they were actually cool, it was my sensitive Swedish senses were overwhelmed by their boisterousness. Still, I didn't want to be like them, and hated the perceived misogyny and monosyllabic shop kid goomba-ish Dice and Sandler represented. I became a punk kid, then I realized all my punk friends were gay and didn't tell me and I became a hippie. Then I thought the hippies were naive and that the Dead sucked. In the 90s I was amidst the ecstasy and cocktails crowd, but they were subsumed by swing dancing and cocaine...
In short, I've wandered through many camps and hated them all sooner or later. And now more than all combined do I hate the smarmy bearded hipster co-op 20somethings of Williamsburg and car commercials (Maron types who make a big deal out of their quitting smoking rather than just dying like a MAN). I feel like they're my fault - that wobbly pre-PC feminism come home to roost. Now I miss the boisterous blue collar energy of my high school. Those kids had balls, earthy joi de vivre. And the kids today do not. Looking back on high school I realize I was the asshole, masking my snobbishness in nerdy introversion. Maron is like that too, and I'd avoid him if I saw him at a party, like he'd cancel me out, like two wrongs making a zero.
But DICE, the Tangiers Las Vegas lion, the Bickle in repose, living with girlfriend Natasha Leggero? Yeah I'll hang out with him. He reminds me of my old pal Johnny. That's a case of a wrong and another kind of a wrong making two rights. Unlike ego-paralyzed Maron, Dice throws himself forward and doesn't back down or overthink things - i'ts a kind of hangin'-brain style confidence that most guys who get their own 'this is my sadsack life at 40+' shows like this fail to deliver.And lord we need it.
I never heard Dice's "hickory dickory dock" era cock-related bro humor, I avoided it like the plague at the time, but I can't imagine it's any more offensive or frat boy catering than anythinng else on cable. Sure he's from Brooklyn, but like Robert De Niro in Scorsese movies, he's a Jew doing an impersonation. To say he is that thing is like saying De Niro actually still has the Lufthansa heist money. I've realized over the years that the loud Italian-American working class kids I didn't like in HS weren't inordinately bad or mean (3) to me; I was just super sensitive and they spoke very loud and boisterously and I'd seen way too many movies about kids like me being bullied by kids like them not to be constantly defensive. But now that the whole of American masculinity (4) is all non-smoking gym-going beard-growing, soft effeminate voiced little bitches buying Mitsubishi Gallants on their iPads, their high little voices so geeky and soft like they're fuckin' Mr. Rogers on estrogen, they're what's wrong with this country! The bullies were RIGHT to push them in the mud back in the 80s, man. Badda Bing!
In short, a blight has fallen upon the American masculine identity, and the no bullshit laid-back badass middle age badda bing of Dice is needed like King Arthur needs a slug from a grail of 121 proof Booker's before the final battle in EXCALIBUR. Iron John deep, Dice brings a no-toupee faux macho to the table that's way less misogynist-- if you just look under the hood--than the MARON type. Dice grants Leggero as much power and respect as he grants himself; he's never surly with her or trying to hide something except in a kind of roundabout playful rapport. He falls asleep going down on her, obsesses about table cloth fabric for his gay brother-in-law's wedding, and then interrupts the ceremony not for some homophobe reason but because the Elvis impersonator conducting the service is a jinx. The couple believe him because everything's been going wrong - they get a Liza impersonator and it all flows smooth. He parties with some group of affluent bachelor party hipsters and gets in a brawl with them when they dis Joan Rivers! In an effort to be more tender introduces his Jewish side into their love making (wearing a yarmulke and shyly introducing himself to her by his real name of Andrew). She's frustrated at times with his man stuff, but never caries it farther than a scene or two, never bothering with trite cliches like left-up toilet seats and oh I guess work is more important than Jimmy's soccer game and I asked you to do one thing, wear a tie for church, or zzzz. None of that shit, or if it is, it's casual bickering stuff rather than big WASPy life and death squabbles we're used to. "I'm just bustin' your onions," she says giving him shit about his theory of why he's giving cash on her brother-in-law's gay wedding. Dice just rolls along with it. This is a couple who can bicker and cajole in an easy rhythm, without damaging their relationships or nervous systems or our eardrums. It's refreshing. Did all that negative controversy he generated from shocked women in the 80s-90s soften him up? Is this show his chance to show us Andrew? Or is it me who's hardened? When I was a squeamish feminist in the 1980s the PC movement was still young and vulnerable, but since then it's became all powerful, dogmatic, I'm still a feminist but I've come to hate academic-PC thug overreach more than I used to hate the other way around. In fact, I've come to believe that Joe McCarthy was right! Commies have been undermining America's educational system since the Cold War! But I know the me of 20 years ago would think I'm just a right wing paranoid nutcase.
I accept the charges, you time machine-travelin' bastard!
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| Dice tries on a chair |
Unlike Maron, Dice doesn't have a drug or depression issue (at least on the show), but he's in the less narcissistic and more good time-oriented Las Vegas. In one great scene he winds up doing a bunch of blow and shots on a party bus for a high roller's bachelor party, gets in a fight defending Joan Rivers' honor, and winds up with his ass kicked.. by a goddamned hipster! That's badass on so many levels. He went to bat for his friend Joan, a woman he admired rightly, and in the context of the show presented himself as both fearless and not a great fighter, which is fine- you can lose all the fights you want as long as you have courage to throw down! Dice either does drugs or doesn't but never apologizes whines or frets or tries to quit and can't. Courage.
Dice in the end is a MAN amongst pinks, punks, and pussies. Strutting through Vegas like he's king of the forest; he's what made the hottentots so hot, even if now, eh, they've been hotter. It doesn't matter if the man he is or is playing is "Dice" or not. Courage. He knows everyone by name, from parking attendants to waiters to casino owners, treats them all with first name respect and vice versa. Courage. Sure he leans on his past glory like a crutch, but as he says many time, he was once packing stadiums for tens of thousands at a crack, but is he bitter and kvetching about not being at that level anymore? Not really. The women are safe from him, he's got a lady and his eye doesn't wander. The dudes around him are cool until proven shady (rather than vice versa). His local legend status is enough for him. As much as any fading icon can be, Dice is content.
Meanwhile Tin Man Maron is still trying to feed his squeaky wheel ego through that teensy oil can beak, out in the Hungry Ghost "I me Mine I me mine I me mine" L.A. The Woodsman forgot to carve him a heart. That hollow-chested Maron would be considered the liberal cool one and lionhearted Dice the intolerant bully instead of the opposite is endemic of the shallowness of America's post-PC masculinity.
What's Dice got that Maron ain't got?
Tolerance. Badda Boom!
What's Dice got that Maron ain't got?
Tolerance. Badda Boom!
1. And everyone is as famous as they want to imagine (we never know who's reading us or watching us online at any time-- with the cumulative result no one actually needs to for us to feel like we're getting through.
2. . Who was the idiot creative writing teacher who first thought we should always put pet names front and center in short stories? They were an idiot. They always get a big laugh in New Yorker lit readings, but I think it's way too cheap.
3. see my rant against one of them in my Remote in Reach: The WALL
4. remember I'm only talking about trends in masculinity at least on TV and the movies; not real life except as a dim reflection.