Fun profile by David Carr, the NYTimes‘ media critic, of a blog favorite, “John Oliver’s Complicated Fun Connects for HBO“:
… When HBO announced last fall that John Oliver, a British comedian I very much admire, would be hosting a weekly show focused on current events, I remember thinking, “That will never work.”… So what did Mr. Oliver and his colleagues get right, and what did I get so wrong?
I stopped to see Mr. Oliver at his office on West 57th, across the street from the show’s studio. Mr. Oliver is a 37-year-old comedian hardly in the mold of a television star. His teeth are, well, British, and his hair is not something frequently seen on the small screen. And even though he wears nice suits on the show, they look as if they landed on him from a great distance.
With the show on break, he is wearing sneakers, a blue sweatshirt and green pants. I told him what a bad idea I originally thought his show was, which he finds hilarious, not because he has proved me wrong, but because I was probably kind of right…
“When HBO asked, I sort of felt like I had to say yes,” he added. “I was attracted to that dead spot late on Sunday night on HBO, which is the prime-est real estate that there is. I loved the idea that we could build something and that we would live or die by our attempt.”…
If all that sounds like audience kryptonite, it has been anything but. The show already has an average audience — live and repeats — of four million people, equal to “Real Time With Bill Maher” and approaching the numbers that HBO comedies like “Girls” and “Veep” attract…
So, I asked Mr. Oliver: Is he engaging in a kind of new journalism? He muttered an oath, the kind he can say on HBO for comic emphasis, but we don’t say here, adding, “No!”
“We are making jokes about the news and sometimes we need to research things deeply to understand them, but it’s always in service of a joke. If you make jokes about animals, that does not make you a zoologist. We certainly hold ourselves to a high standard and fact-check everything, but the correct term for what we do is ‘comedy.’ ”
A big segment on “Last Week” builds on the reporting of others — The Washington Post, for instance, on civil forfeiture — and finds the comedy by digging into the absurdities that underlie much of the news. The piece on the visa problems of war-zone interpreters was framed by a donkey, befriended by United States troops, who had a much easier time of it…
***********
Apart from applauding those who fight for truth and justice (especially those using humor as a weapon), what’s on the agenda for the start of the week?
OzarkHillbilly
My wife jumped out of bed at 4 and started bustling about the place in a whirl of activity. “Who are you and what have you done with my wife?” I asked, I mean this is a woman I normally have to coax out of the bed at 5:15 on a workday and takes a half hour just to put her pants on and Dog forbid I should forget to bring her coffee.
“It snowed yesterday. You know, ice? On the road?”
I still think this is just a reasonable facsimile of my wife.
raven
Two days of work and off to the emerald coast of, gasp, Florida through the 1st of December! Got the rods and reels cleaned and oiled, tackle boxes organized and packed to go!
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: How was your trip?
Morley Bolero
I’ll be in the darkroom all day.
Patricia Kayden
“His teeth are, well, British”
??? His teeth are fine, thank you very much.
Haven’t had a chance to watch Oliver’s show as yet but he was always great on the Daily Show so I’m not surprised at his success.
tybee
i’ll be in the dark all day.
tybee
@raven:
good luck!
JPL
@raven: Have a great time and take a lot of pictures.
BillinGlendaleCA
Scar and Halprin are telling me that ACA wasn’t debated, I know I was drinking then; but even I remember that that’s BULLSHIT.
raven
@tybee: I’m weighing boat trips. With both AJ’s and snapper out of season the chance of any size on a headboat is limited. A charter might be better but that would be lesser AJ’s or some species of grouper. I have enough dough saved for two charter trips so I guess I’ll head down to the dock and see what gives when they come in. Then there is a kayak. There is a place that rents the foot pedal type and I really liked that, especially on the bay. What great problems to have!
ThresherK
Piling on others’ noticing, but the ability to spend more than seven minutes on one bit really has paid off in spades here.
Show of hands: Who else here doesn’t take HBO, and finds themselves more interested in catching entire segments of Oliver’s show on the internet than Bill Maher?
Tommy
It is zero here with the windchill. I must be getting old, my blood thinning because I never recall the cold bothering me this much. I think I need to follow Raven to Flordia.
raven
@Tommy: It wasn’t all that warm in the stadium Saturday.
Schlemazel
Our baby & her BFF just left for their return to Colorado so of course there are blowing snow advisories so we can worry about them till they bother to let us know they made it.
We don’t pay for HBO but I do track down bits of both Real TIme and Last Week online, both are enjoyable for different reasons and neither makes me feel I need to pay for HBO.
HeartlandLiberal
First winter storm in Indiana. Here in south central Indiana, woke up at 4:45 to two inchs of snow on the ground.
Of course my wife has an 8:00 appointment with cardiologist, and the garage door died last week, and is stuck, with the car sitting outside in the drive. Guess I will go out and warm it up for 10 minutes,and at least scrap a couple strips for the tires through the snow on the driveway to the road. And of course the car I would prefer for this weather, the front wheel drive Volvo, is sitting trapped in the garage with a dead battery. We did not drive it at all for past two months, so it showed its contempt for our lack of attention.
Sort of feeling like how John seems to feel when life smacks him around sometimes, at the moment.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nice. Never got to do anything I really wanted but still nice. Took 2 days going down via US 61 so I could see a few of the Blues landmarks (Muddy Waters birthplace, the location of the Harlem Inn, the Crossroads, etc)
We spent most of Monday chasing after one of my son’s dogs as he got shuttled around Baton Rouge thru various animal control facilities. Tuesday, we went to Fountainebleau State Park where we took a 6-8 mile hike along Lake Pontchartrain and never once climbed a hill more than 6 inches high. The reason we went was there was a hole in the wall joint nearby that sold the real Cajun food I went to down LA for. So of course it was no longer in business. Wed the wife was crippled from the hike and didn’t want to do anything, so I headed to the riverfront and spent the afternoon at the USS Kidd and museum by myself. On Thursday I wanted to force the issue of Avery Island (thanx for the tip, 2 people down there echoed your sentiments) but I could tell that was more effort than the wife wanted to put into “vacationing” so we went to Magnolia Mounds Plantation where we heard how well slaveowners really treated their slaves. Pretty cool anyway.
Took 2 days to drive back so we could stop at Vicksburg National Military Park and I only got to see half what I wanted there (the wreck of the USS Cairo is really cool).
All in all I saw enuf to know I need to go back. Got some good quality time with the boy which is all that really mattered. He seems to be happy and to have put his demons to rest. If it takes 400 plus miles between him and his mother to give him some peace, so be it. I’ll deal with it.
BillinGlendaleCA
I spend most of the evening trying to figure out how to install a wifi thermostat. Looks like i need to get a 24VAC adapter and a relay.
Tommy
@Schlemazel: I am not sure why but HBO doesn’t seem to want to enforce copyright infringement for both Real Time and Last Week on YouTube. I find I can get clips that total the entirety of each show without much effort.
Now the rumor just needs to be true HBO is looking at their own streaming service. I got rid of cable months ago. I could afford the price, but it was still staggering for me to get the channels I wanted. Why I have to pay so much to get seven HBO channels when I only need one or the highest priced package to get basically educational kinds of channels is beyond me.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know if it is still open in Baton Rouge, but out by Tiger Town there used to be this place called the Silver Moon Cafe. It is literally on the other side of the train tracks. Total hole in the wall and maybe some of the best food I’ve ever had.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Sounds great!
Schlemazel
@Tommy:
I assume that HBO views those ‘leaks’ as good advertising. It gets the shows talked about & people wanting to see them. I am not sure how the cable companies are not drowning in cash, they charge way too much even for the basic stuff that we don’t pay for any extras.
RAVEN:
Hope you have a great trip – sorry I didn’t get a chance to wish you a happy birthday but I didn’t see the notice till much later. SO anyway happy belated.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Just a couple other thoughts. Sounds like a wonderful trip. I will also say Avery Island is well worth the time. So is the Honey Island Swamp Tour outside of Slidell. With a screen name of “Ozark” I know you know the beauty of the outdoors. But if you’ve never been deep into a swamp, well I can’t really put to words how beautiful it is.
Keith G
John Oliver gives me hope that there are ways for liberals to talk about important issues and have people listen to them. Now, I know that Oliver’s exact style of communication can’t be used and I also realize that four million people is not a huge amount considering the size of the electorate, but it does seem to me that there are ways for liberal Democrats to craft messages that will be heard by the greater population and will land on fertile soil.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: My son lives right by Tiger Town (they were still cleaning up Monday morn after LSU’s epic overtime letdown) so you know where he lives, and yeah, that is the other side of the tracks. Don’t think the Silver Moon is there anymore.
Something strange I noticed about Baton Rouge, or at least the places we were: There would be 2 or 3 blocks of really nice houses, then 7 or 8 blocks of…. not quite slums but definitely down on their luck apartment blocks. I saw that time and again and I always felt a little bit of whiplash.
Hal
Our first real snowfall in upstate New York and I really regret signing up for overtime. But I have already decided to treat myself to a glass of wine after work.
I’m also bracing for the grand jury decision in Ferguson. Facebook will undoubtedly be filled with lots of comments on what a thug and criminal Mike Brown was. I actually saw a post last week where someone complained about how it was racist to have a black history month and a united negro college fund, so I’m sure more helpful advice is on its way.
PurpleGirl
I have errands to run today and it has rained all night and will continue raining during the day.
I spent part of the weekend following a cat in Vancouver not having her kittens. I hope she has them today; the doctor says there could be up to 8 babies due. There were up 3,000 people signed in to the kitten cam at various points.
ThresherK
@BillinGlendaleCA: The condo we’re tenanting at has this Cooper-Hewitt-approved classic (updated, with a thermometer).
I will contact our owners to get a modern, charmless, dull oblong one we can program. Next, I want to do something about that pesky Art Deco elevator.
Tommy
@Keith G: There is hope. I know a lot of people that are not liberal. Not even close. When I have more than a few seconds to talk about this or that topic it still stuns me how often they don’t disagree with me. That we are far closer to agreement than the politicians and media outlets would like us to think. Sure there is maybe 18% of the far, far right we can never reach. But that still leaves us a whole lot of people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
It was one of the things I really wanted to do. Sigh… I learned long ago not to try to do too much, quality not quantity, and that was just a bridge too far. Next time.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: Wave or holler if you get as far south as Miami or the Keys.
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: Not to add other things for your next visit, but they have basically reenactments/Creole towns deep south of the state. See how they lived, cooked, several hundred years ago. What I found so interesting is many people in the state, although their numbers are fading, still live about the same way.
raven
@Schlemazel: Aw thanks!
raven
@Mustang Bobby: We go to 30A up in the panhandle twixt Destin and Panama City. Last time I was going to the Keys I got in a wreck in Atlanta, broke my back and spent 2 months in the hospital and a year in a full body cast. That was 40 years ago, always wanted to go back!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: How many is it now?
Tommy
Oh Destin. My family has no connection to FL, but my brother and his wife got married on a beach in Destin a few years ago. I am more of a woods and mountain guy. Never really understood the pull of a beach. Had a condo right on the beach. I didn’t wear a shirt or shoes for about seven days. Lived off fresh fruit I bought and the cheap happy hour raw oysters at a little bar. I vividly recalling thinking to myself I now understand how somebody can become a beach bum.
raven
@Tommy: What’s interesting is that Bon Creole lunch counter in New Iberia is a stone ass Cajun joint!
Mustang Bobby
@raven: The Keys are pretty much the same as they were when you started your ill-fated trip. Have a great time, and as my dad says about fishing, I wish for you a tight line.
raven
@Tommy: It’s turned into fucking Atlanta over there. I only go there to get on a boat these days. 30A, on the other hand, is really mellow this time of year.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: There it is!
raven
@Mustang Bobby: I was also in Miami for the 72 convention, Flamingo Park was a trip.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: I was at UM then, but not over the summer so I missed the fun. If you made it down to Coconut Grove, you would have been in my neighborhood. Back then it was a funky little village. Now it’s lousy with high-priced eateries and boutiques. Gone is The Joint, which was a great clothing store, and The Hamlet, the first gay bar I ever went to on purpose.
Suffern ACE
@BillinGlendaleCA: well there was one side with a complex proposal that no one wanted to read and the other side that thinks we should have spaghetti suppers to pay for chemo therapy. They should have met in the middle.
Elizabelle
@raven:
Does you need an assistant?
Will you be serving turkey or pompano for Thanksgiving?
Tommy
@raven: When I was there it seemed like the textbook example of a tourist trap. But my parents are members of this high-end timeshare and I was in a condo on the beach with a full kitchen. I had driven and had all the supplies I needed. Outside of those oysters I mentioned I almost didn’t spend a penny. Those are nice vacations :).
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Now that’s what I was looking for!
satby
@raven: Yeah, enjoy!
Hunter
Dateline Chicago: 12 degrees this morning — about 0 with wind chill — and not what you’d call sunny, even though in theory the sun is up. I’m not going to call my family in Florida this morning so they can tell me how chilly it is — only in the upper 70s — and I either have to go out in this or stop smoking right this minute.
I’m going back to bed. Call me in May.
Tommy
@raven: That looks like my kind of place. My best friend when I was there was from Vermont. As two guys from the North, we fell in love with the culture, food, history, everything. We might have driven every inch of the state at least twice. Looking for that hole in the wall. A place where I could hardly understand what someone was saying and they’d note that we spoke “funny.”
Tommy
@Hunter: Being only a few hours south of you I know the feeling. I woke up this morning and was like WTF.
MomSense
@raven:
Have fun!!
Tommy
Hey Raven are you a catch and release fisherman? If you catch it and eat it. Cool. If you release but just do it for sport. Cool again. This isn’t a loaded question. I am just curious.
dmsilev
@Hunter: Yeah.
Not looking forward to the walk to work this morning.
raven
@Tommy: If what I catch is outside the limit I almost always throw it back. If not it goes in the cooler.
Tommy
@raven: I am with you there. I don’t hunt but fished a little. I always eat what I catch. How my mom’s dad taught me. I think he’d have said wasn’t that kind of the point of going fishing in the first place :).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Last week on election night my moderate conservative friend was ranting at me about how awful, awful the economy is thanks to the mismanagement of the Democrats. Last night she was telling me in disbelief how her 401k doubled in the last quarter.
Gene108
@Tommy:
When 35% of the population votes, you only need to win over 18% of the public to win every election.
Baud
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
There are a number of people of moderate income who also believe that Obama raised their taxes.
Tommy
@Gene108: I know the math. That 18% would GOTV for assistant dogcatcher. So I agree with you. But we have to do a better job on our end.
FlipYrWhig
Loving that one of the NewsMax headlines is “Shampooing Hair Everyday Not Good.”
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh no. I do that!
Elizabelle
Light rain in Northern VA. 40 degrees; love the sound of rain.
Tomorrow will be way colder — high of 32, but dry. This would be our first snowstorm had that cold arrived today.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: Thanks, Obama.
Cervantes
@FlipYrWhig:
That one’s just a place-holder until the check from the American Shampoo Council clears.
Tommy
@Baud: It hurts the head. I’ve talked here maybe a lot more than I should about my parents. But I think experiences and trying to tell a story is important. My parents inherited a ton of money. As the older of the two males that will inherit the money I get a fair amount of their financial documents. The most telling is what we call the “last to die insurance policy.”
A policy that is moved up or down to ensure my brother and I will not have to pay inheritance taxes. The policy is ballooning. Because, well my parents investments are skyrocketing. I don’t see how people can’t understand this. Things are out of wack. The rich are not getting poorer. Not by a long shot.
My parents are not “job creators.” They don’t spend a ton of money. My mom is very happy in a Dollar General. They’ll go to three stores to save a dollar. Use coupons.
Again the rich are not getting poor right now. They are not being taxed into the ground. Obama isn’t the anti-christ.
Gin & Tonic
I envy you people getting snow. It was 37 and raining hard when I walked downstairs this morning. Looks like VT and NH are getting snow, though, so that’s good.
Howard Beale IV
Oliver’s a gem. Too bad he’s on break until 2015.
FlipYrWhig
@Cervantes: “One Weird Trick To Clean Gray Hair!”
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: I refuse to use the term “job creator”, as it is just utter bullshit. If they are job creators when they hire people, they are job destroyers when they lay people off. People do NOT create jobs. Good economies do.
OzarkHillbilly
@Gin & Tonic: My Mediterranean born and bred wife will say, “Take the snow and keep it then!”
Elizabelle
@Tommy:
Alas, appears Baton Rouge’s Silver Moon Cafe burned down in 2007. Mama Seabelle seems to still be around,but she’s catering from home and put out a cookbook last year.
Sounds like she hoped to reopen, but perhaps the following years’ recession did in those plans.
She does have a Facebook page for her cookbook, which might be available at a few Baton Rouge stores or out of print … shame.
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Agree about the sound of rain. It always calms me down.
And I like fall weather, even the gray and the wet. . . . Hmm, I think the only weather I don’t like is extremely hot and humid. And I can handle that when appropriate, e.g., tropical vacation. Just don’t like it as the summer default for the big city. Sigh, looking at you, NoVA/DC.
Elizabelle
Here’s Mama Seabell’s Silver Moon Cookbook website, not so operational at this point, but a lovely video of her embedded.
And, Tommy, you got me thinking of Santa Rosa, NM, whose own “Silver Moon Cafe” on Route 66 popped up on the search. Had some chile verde there a few years ago. Good meal.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack:
Tomorrow high of 32. Allegedly. But dry. The sighthound will have to put on a sweater. The housecat will need her heated throw.
Steeplejack
@Elizabelle:
Kitty the greyhound is surprisingly cold-hardy for having –2% body fat. She doesn’t make a big deal of going outside when it’s cold, and there were a few times when I checked the door to see why she hadn’t come back (from the fenced backyard) and she was taking the sun and sniffing the breezes. But she does prefer warm, thank you very much.
The housecat is at her workstation by the computer right now—red microfleece throw wrapped around a heating pad set to either 2 (“keep warm”) or 3 (“low simmer”), depending on how cool it feels in here. She’s a good old cat—supposedly 14 years old—so she’s entitled. I’ve had her only two years; I got her when a friend’s aged mother-in-law gave up her house and went into assisted living.
Elizabelle
@Steeplejack:
Pets rock.
Still on the hunt for Mama Seabell stories. Here’s one from before the fire. This one’s from the original place, on Chimes Street. The one Tommy probably remembers.
She had a jukebox that played blues 45s. Sigh.
No agreement on whether to call her Mama or Momma, but everyone agrees, her cooking is superb.
Must make pilgrimage to Baton Rouge and try some of Momma’s cooking. From her house, now.
Josie
@Hunter: My middle son went to Northwestern in Evanston after having been raised in the tropical climate of deep South Texas. Imagine how many anguished phone calls I got that first winter. He said his ears never got warm for months.
Cervantes
@Elizabelle: She spells it “Mama.”
Elizabelle
@Cervantes:
Yeah. That’s what I’d go with.
Mnemosyne
I have an interview today, so fingers crossed. It would be a step down in title, but a move into an area I’m very interested in, with room to move up, unlike my current position.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Good luck. Fingers crossed for you!
low-tech cyclist
@Patricia Kayden:
I remember seeing a couple of the shows where he was filling in on the Daily Show, and thinking, “this guy needs a show of his own.” Now that he’s got one, and is doing amazing things with it, I’m not the least bit surprised.
Howard Beale IV
Now THIS is how you do Paul McCartney covers.
Mnemosyne
@low-tech cyclist:
I saw an interview with Oliver after his show was announced where he said that he told his wife that he had been asked to fill in on “The Daily Show” while Jon Stewart was out and “all of the color drained from her face.” I’m guessing that’s one of the reasons his HBO show is weekly instead of daily — neither one of them liked the idea of him having to do a show every single day, with all of the prep that requires.
(And last night’s show tweaked him a little bit about that — “Jimmy Fallon does five shows a week.”)
JustRuss
Oliver’s right, he’s not doing journalism, at least not as it’s practiced these days.
dance around in your bones
I saw this post this morning and watched John Oliver (whom I greatly admire as well) at about 6:30am, and had to stifle my laughter with the bedclothes so as to not annoy my roommates :)
He is just stellar – he ways always stellar on Jon Stewart’s show, so I didn’t have too many concerns about his success. I’m just glad I can watch his episodes on my laptop because I no longer have TV service.
ETA: What the hell is wrong with his teeth? Americans have a funny idea of plastic fantastic teeth that frankly look weird to me. And I’m ‘Murican :)
Mnemosyne
Aaaand … my interview got postponed. D’oh!
Fort Geek
@Elizabelle: Supposedly, copies of the book can be found at Pam’s Capital Corner Market, but the site’s dead. I put in a query at their Facebook page, so we’ll see.
You guys’ve got me wanting black eyed peas.
Elizabelle
@Fort Geek:
Thank you! I made a note to call Pam’s Market; saw a July (?) FB posting they were expecting more copies. Let me know if you hear they’re keeping a list.
It was a good day to learn about Mama Seabell. Love the internet for that.