Rest in power, the Minority Militant, a.k.a. Keon Enoy Munedouang

Keon Enoy Munedouang (1980-2016)

NOTE: A few more remembrances of the Minority Militant have surfaced online, in addition to the remembrances I linked to in my post below. One of his three sisters says goodbye to him and writes that "You lived your life through your convictions and didn't care what anyone thought of you. I had no idea, the extent in which your writing impacted the Asian American community." Slant Eye for the Round Eye's Adam Chau, who once made a guest appearance on this blog, has posted substantial excerpts from the best of the Minority Militant's cordoned-off Blogspot blog. Over at Reappropriate, Jenn Fang points out that though "TMM occupied a corner of the Asian American blogosphere that had little overlap with my own" and "we may not know one another offline," the Asian American blogosphere is close-knit, and his passing affects everyone in our community.

If you regularly read several blogs written by Asian American authors or you're active in the Asian American blogosphere, you're going to be hearing a lot in the next few days about a reclusive political blogger who wrote under the alias of the Minority Militant. From 2008 to 2010, the Chicago-based Keon Enoy Munedouang, a Laotian American military vet who was found dead last week in Montrose Harbor at the way-too-young age of 35, was one of my favorite Asian American bloggers, whether he was criticizing self-hating Asians who stupidly undergo plastic surgery to look more white, describing right-wing moron Michelle Malkin as a pundit who is "so far right she fell off the edge of a stoop and landed in a pile of jizz after a conservative gangbang convention" or mocking old Vietnamese American Republicans who supported the presidential campaign of Arizona senator John McCain, who had no qualms about continuing to refer to the Vietnamese in public as "gooks" due to the torture he experienced as a Vietnam War P.O.W.

While Phil Yu over at the much more popular blog Angry Asian Man was trying to make "That's racist!" a thing, Keon's favorite catchphrase over at TMM had him consigning the likes of Malkin, or as I like to call her, Uncle Ruckus, and extremely corny Iron Chef America host Mark Dacascos to "the chicken coop." Ken Jeong and former Entourage regular Rex Lee would have wanted to put a foot in Keon's ass for the negative things he wrote on his blog about the comedic (and sometimes controversial in Asian American circles) characters they've played. Jo Koy, a favorite stand-up of Keon's who agreed to a selfie with Keon after one of his shows, clearly didn't know what to make of Keon and ran as far the fuck away from Keon as he could when he requested to do an interview with him for his blog. Keon's drunken appearance at a panel for a 2009 Asian American blogger conference known as BANANA, an embryonic version of the annual L.A. digital media conference that's known today as V3con, alienated some of the other panelists and people in the USC campus audience who weren't familiar with his blog.

Keon's writing wasn't for everybody. It was highly opinionated and outspoken writing (he once wrote, "I am relentless about racism. I cuss like a foul-mouthed sailor"), and he was much more outspoken than Phil, who--while there's no disputing that Phil's a legend in the Asian American blogosphere who has done a lot of good in terms of Asian American representation, speaking out against Asian-bashing and promoting the work of other Asian American authors--has never really been as enjoyably scathing or as in-depth a writer as Keon (or someone like Emily Yoshida over at The Verge or my current favorite Asian American blogger, playwright Philip W. Chung over at YOMYOMF).

I never got to meet Keon face-to-face. All of our brief conversations took place only in comments sections and via e-mail. But I was a regular part of Keon's blog. I drew and designed the header that appeared every day at the top of his posts, back when I was in the middle of an ultimately unsuccessful phase in which I attempted to become a cartoonist and graphic designer. Keon was my only graphic design client.

The logo Keon commissioned me to draw for his blog

Keon was a fan of the webcomic I drew and posted for a couple of years over on this blog. In fact, he was the only fan of the webcomic. Not even I'm a fan of my own webcomic. In fact, I've been considering deleting almost all of the webcomic's installments from my blog. They're that embarrassing. But Keon was the only person--other than my parents and an online friend of mine, current DC Comics letterer Janice Chiang--who believed in my artwork at the time, and I'll always be grateful for that. While some asshole from the discontinued Asian American Movement blog was bashing some of my Minority Militant artwork over in some now-forgotten comments section somewhere, Keon always stood by my artwork.

I never agreed with Keon's choice for his blog header though. He wanted me to draw him wearing a hoodie emblazoned with "TMM," and out of all the header options I designed for him, he liked the one with him in a hoodie the most, but I never really cared for that one. I made Keon look too much like a Jules Feiffer cartoon. A header he rejected, in which I inserted a photo of a bruised and beaten Uncle Sam, was, to me, much more effective at reflecting the pugnaciousness and candidness of Keon's writing than the header he picked.

An unused header for Keon's blog

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Rick and Morty, "Total Rickall"

Occasionally on Friday, I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. It's the "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Has Rick and Morty tackled the Rashomon episode yet? I know Rick and Morty has done a bottle episode ("Rixty Minutes"), and this week's Rick and Morty episode, "Total Rickall," is a crazy hybrid of a bottle episode and that Community fan favorite of a clip show parody where none of the clips are actual clips. But even though the Rashomon episode has been done to death on TV, I would like to see Rick and Morty add its own offbeat sci-fi spin to it (but differently from how Star Trek: The Next Generation's "A Matter of Perspective" and the X-Files episodes "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" and "Bad Blood" previously tackled the Rashomon ep) and do a lot with it visually like "Total Rickall" does when it morphs from being a hybrid of a bottle episode and an anti-clip show and takes the shape of a John Carpenter's The Thing-style paranoid thriller where everyone's driven crazy by being unable to tell apart the real from the fake.



In "Total Rickall," alien parasites invade the Smiths' house, pretend to be relatives or family friends and telepathically implant into the Smiths' brains fake memories of wacky adventures with them, hence a bunch of flashbacks to adventures that never actually happened, like that time the family and Cousin Nicky from Brooklyn wound up on board a Nazi sub. I like how the shape-shifting parasites' objective isn't outlined by the parasites in some typical Star Trek alien leader speech. They aren't out to assimilate humanity like the Thing or the Borg (neither do they admit to being lonely and wanting companionship); they're simply on Earth to drive the humans insane (so that they lose control of the planet), and their first step is to infest the Smiths' house and multiply like ants at a picnic--or Tribbles on a starship. And that's where the episode's visual merits come in: thanks to animation, "Total Rickall" is able to take the bottle episode and do things with it a live-action show like Community would have needed extra FX money for or would have been unable to accomplish. The house becomes so overcrowded with parasites disguised as nonexistent characters that Rick pauses to address whatever parallel reality he (correctly) assumes is watching his life as if it's a TV show--a.k.a. breaking the fourth wall--and notes the coolness of standing in the middle of a shot that looks like a Where's Waldo? page.

"Total Rickall" is tons of fun, especially when the parasites, after Rick doesn't fall for their Uncle Steve/Cousin Nicky phase, experiment with a wacky ABC TGIF sitcom character phase and assume the forms of a Mr. Belvedere clone named Mr. Beauregard and a Herman Munster-style Frankenstein Frankenstein's monster (Kevin Michael Richardson). Then when Rick won't fall for the deceptions implanted by Phase 2 of the parasites, the forms the parasites take become even more absurd and desperate. They range from Reverse Giraffe (sixth-season Community star Keith David) to Hamurai (Richardson), a samurai whose armor is covered in ham (if only we all could be a fly on the wall in the writers' room on the day when credited "Total Rickall" writer Mike McMahan and the rest of the writing staff rattled off the names of fake buddies who would pop up in the Smiths' house).



The solution to defeating the parasites comes not from Rick but from Morty, when he notices all the fake memories implanted by the parasites are pleasant memories instead of the always painful and unpleasant memories the Smiths have experienced as a family. The real memories include Summer catching Morty masturbating in the kitchen at night (why the kitchen?: the excuse Morty gave for jerking off in the kitchen was that he was thinking about one of Summer's friends, but was it actually because he was masturbating to the lady on the Land O'Lakes box?); Jerry being too scared to protect Beth from a homeless guy who's trying to assault her (it's reminiscent of Jeff leaving his wife Hayley alone with a mugger who's sticking them up on American Dad); and perhaps the most fucked-up memory of them all, a drunk Beth accidentally hitting Summer in the eye with a wine bottle. Morty's pivotal role in getting rid of the parasites is a good example of how Rick and Morty has range in its writing and nicely avoids making only one character the same voice of reason every week by alternating between Summer as the voice of reason one week, Rick as that (stammery) voice the next week and Morty after that.

When the other family members follow Morty's example and no longer become gullible to the parasites' illusions, it's as if McMahan, Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon are commenting on TV from the past: old sitcoms from the '80s and '90s (and in Summer's case, the cartoons she grew up on) may be nice to revisit once in a while, but to live in that world for real--and forever--is its own form of hell (this is why Republicans are so insufferable: they want to keep America similarly frozen in the sanitized, colorless and all-white Father Knows Best/Ozzie and Harriet vision of America in the '50s and '60s). The parasites have basically transformed themselves into old sitcom characters in their attempt to subjugate the Smiths, and the family discovers the way to fight the parasites is to accept their less-than-ideal reality--it's the same kind of road to acceptance the equally miserable characters on Community had to undertake as they learned to make the best of a shitty place like Greendale--and then use that reality to block the illusions. "Total Rickall" is like a battle--for the soul of modern-day TV--between the bland kind of TV that's epitomized by Nick at Nite or Antenna TV reruns (as well as a few present-day multi-cam sitcoms that could easily fit in with the programming on those channels) and the much less idealized TV that Harmon and now Roiland have become known for, and the latter wins.

Structurally, "Total Rickall" is my favorite Rick and Morty episode of the season so far because although Rick and Morty is one of the most inventive and subversive sitcoms around, it can also be blandly conventional in one or two respects, like whenever it deploys the A-story/B-story structure that's prevalent on other sitcoms or half-hour animated shows, and "Total Rickall" actually breaks away from that structure. I've been starting to get tired of Rick and Morty being off on their own adventure while Beth and Jerry have an unrelated subplot of their own (or Rick dealing with Summer while Jerry and Morty are busy with their own shit). Even "Rixty Minutes" wasn't immune from this divide when it separated Rick and Morty from the drama between Beth, Jerry and Summer for most of the story. Involving Beth and Jerry in the same plot with Rick, Morty and Summer is a welcome change of pace.

Speaking of "Rixty Minutes," I prefer "Total Rickall" as a bottle episode over "Rixty Minutes" because the Smiths are doing things that are much more visually busy than sitting around watching TV. Plus it's got a crazy twist, and it's a more surprising twist than Beth and Jerry reconciling after discovering their parallel counterparts would find their way back to each other: the little family friend known as Mr. Poopybutthole--whom the episode tricks us into thinking is a parasite by adding him to the Rick and Morty opening titles a la a pre-Empire-co-creating Danny Strong as dorky Jonathan getting tacked on to the alternate-universe Buffy opening titles at the start of "Superstar"--is actually not a parasite. He's just an off-screen family friend we've never seen before, and when a paranoid Beth shoots Mr. Poopybutthole and is shocked to discover he's bleeding instead of reverting back to a parasite, it's a funny "milquetoast character we didn't expect to get badly wounded" moment that's up there with Forrest MacNeil getting shot by a stranger he tried to goad into a bare-knuckle brawl a few weeks ago on Review and Chad's dad getting stabbed by Charlie Murphy on The Mad Real World.

Beth's shaky grab for the nearest wine bottle she can find--a terrifically animated moment of stress--right after she shoots Mr. Poopybutthole and the incident where she drunkenly gave Summer a black eye both reintroduce Beth's alcoholism, which was hinted at in "Rixty Minutes" and a few other episodes last season. Her alcoholism could potentially be more of a problem than her dad's alcoholism because she's a horse surgeon. What if her impaired judgment during surgery causes a mistake that injures a horse, it throws the rider off the saddle due to the pain it's experiencing and the rider winds up crippled like Christopher Reeve? Or what if some other mistakes due to Beth's impaired judgment lead to malpractice suits that cost Beth her job?

Because Jerry has been unemployed since before the start of the first season, Beth and Summer have been the sole providers for the Smiths. I don't know if Roiland and Harmon would have enough time on the show to turn Beth's alcoholism into a major storyline later this season or next season, but I would be interested in seeing how two unemployed parents would affect the rest of the family, in addition to all the interdimensional mayhem Rick has brought into their lives. Whatever way this drinking problem storyline goes, at least Beth, the Smith family member with the least screen time, is getting some more scenes--and a little more to do than just argue with Jerry. Plus it would allow Sarah Chalke to demonstrate more of her ability to burp on cue. That skill is why Roiland and Harmon hired her in the first place. Or is that a fake memory as well?

Memorable quotes:
* "Get off the high road, Summer! We all got pinkeye because you won't stop texting on the toilet."

* "All I have are pictures of me and my friends from school. [Awkward silence from everyone else.] What? What teenage girl has pictures of her family? It's not like we're Mormon or dying."

* "Shut up, Hamurai! Shut up, Amish Cyborg! What is this? '90s Conan?"

Is Christina Hendricks a "trouper" or "trooper"?

A few days ago, I was looking for the YouTube link to that old viral video of a KTLA morning TV interviewer transforming into a total dweeb after Christina Hendricks, star of the recently-concluded-for-good, unlikely-to-do-reunion-movies-guest-starring-the-Harlem-Globetrotters AMC hit Mad Men, mentions how she received news of her first-ever Emmy acting nomination while she was preparing to take a bath. The image of her bathing is all the interviewer can talk about for the rest of the interview. Way to keep it professional, KTLA guy! "He sits there silently for a whole minute, and by the time he gets back into the conversation, he's a stuttering mess. Although to his credit, he still has his pants on," wrote Uproxx in 2010.

This wasn't Conan turning his awkwardness around hot women into the kind of comedy bit Inside Amy Schumer hilariously parodied in its recent sketch about the clichés that always take place during late-night talk show interviews with flirty female guests (I love how Schumer's sketch references that 2009 Conan-era Tonight Show interview where Gwyneth Paltrow's legs somehow got greasier and greasier after each commercial break). This was a journalist who, in front of an all-female news desk, was unable to prevent himself from regressing into a nervous 14-year-old school dance attendee in the middle of one of the least suitable places for doing that, a mostly non-comedic morning news show, with Hendricks throwing in a couple of amusing "Down, boy!"-type responses, like "That [bath story] was like two conversations ago, but thank you for remembering," which were both why the clip went viral. Why do the most awkward and NewsBeFunny YouTube channel-friendly things always happen on morning shows, whether it's The Today Show, The View or Fox & Friends?



Then I finally found the KTLA clip and copied and pasted into TextEdit both the URL and embed code, which is something I always need to do with YouTube videos I might want to include someday in posts such as this. I gave the TextEdit file the name of "Christina Hendricks Handles Brian McFayden's Drooling Like a Trooper."

But as I was typing out the file name, I became unsure about the spelling of "trooper." I kept changing it back and forth between "trooper" and "trouper."

I hear the expression "handling it like a trooper" all the time. But I've never stopped to think, "Where the hell does that expression come from?"

I opened the dictionary in my MacBook. A trooper is either "a state police officer" or "a private soldier in a cavalry, armored or airborne unit." I knew that. I didn't know a trooper can also be "a cavalry horse" or British jibber-jabber for "a ship used for transporting troops." So in the U.K., I guess that means the novel and movie title Starship Troopers sounds to them like Starship Starships. The title Starship Starships would be as absurd as whitewashing the Filipino hero of a sci-fi novel, which Hollywood would never do, right? Oh, wait...

Meanwhile, a trouper is "an actor or other entertainer, typically one with long experience" or "a reliable and uncomplaining person." I always thought it was "handling it like a trooper" because they're handling it like a brave soldier or a slick and smooth member of the '90s R&B group Troop.



I guess "a reliable and uncomplaining person" makes sense too. So which sides have professional writers taken in the war between "trouper" and "trooper"? While mentioning Sopranos star Nancy Marchand back in his Newark Star-Ledger, pre-HitFix days (the year 2000, to be exact), TV critic Alan Sepinwall said, "Marchand, who has cancer, proved herself to be a real trouper." Over at MTV News, where a Nicki Minaj backup dancer who received a snake bite qualifies as news, they said that the bitten dancer "handled it like a trooper." Meanwhile, what do etymologists outside of Dr. Webster, Dr. Merriam, Dr. Wagnalls and Dr. Uptown Funk have to say about all this?

The Grammarphobia Blog says "trouper," which also means "a member of a performing company (theatrical, singing or dancing)," also known as a troupe, has evolved in the 20th century so that the term can be used to refer to "a hard worker, a good sport, a reliable person, a mensch." Their stand on "Trouper or trooper?" is "trouper" over "trooper" because it's been spelled "trouper" since the 19th century, but due to Google searches showing "like a trooper" to be more commonly used than "like a trouper," "trooper" is alright with them too.

I also checked with a site called Daily Writing Tips. The site, which notes that "troop" and "troupe" both originated from the same French word ("troupeau," a variation of "troppus," the Latin word for "flock," according to my MacBook's dictionary), takes the following stand: "If the context has to do with courage, trooper is appropriate. If the context has to do with cooperation, dependability and the show business attitude of 'the show must go on,' then trouper is the word to use."

Joan from Mad Men was both a bit courageous (to be awake and sharp-witted that early in the day) and very unflappable in the face of live-on-L.A.-morning-TV drooling. So either spelling is correct--unless you're in the galaxy where a band of rebels has been fighting an oppressive intergalactic empire for decades and "handling it like a trooper" means you're handling it like a genocidal space Nazi in a shiny white helmet.

Tip-Top Quotables: Special World Cup 2014 Edition

My favorite monthly section in old Source magazine issues was "Hip-Hop Quotables," in which the Source editors printed out their favorite new rap verse of the month, from the first bar to the last. "Tip-Top Quotables," which I've named after that Source section, is a collection of my favorite quotes of the week from anywhere, whether it's a recent TV show or a new rap verse. "TTQ" won't appear on this blog every week. It'll appear whenever the fuck I feel like it.

* "Now I pity the fool who is going to tackle with Aryan Mr. T. Now what's happening here? Now they're trying to give him some milk, and I don't think that's going to work because he knows it's going to be laced with something."--soccer-culturally illiterate Peter Serafinowicz on mohawked Portuguese player Raul Meireles, during his hilarious and awesomely deadpan live commentary with Reggie Watts on the June 22 U.S. vs. Portugal match

* "Still not sure which one's Portugal and which one's U.S.A."--Serafinowicz

* "If you're thinking the audience look a little strange, it's because they're all CG. It's a computer-generated audience today because of a mix-up with the tickets. Nobody was invited."--Serafinowicz

* "And if you're just joining us, the score is Oosa zero minus one Por. 32:10. 32:16. Goodness me! Oh no, wait, that's, that's the clock. That's how much time we have left."--Serafinowicz

* "Now this game's sponsored by Boodveiser, and that's possibly the reason for a lot of this sluggish play because they've all had about four or five pints before the match started."--Serafinowicz

* "And it's very strange for a rapper such as Common to be doing so much goalie work, but, um, you know, he's just a rapper, so let's give him a little bit of a break."--Watts on U.S. goalie Tim Howard

* "Now if this result holds, the U.S.A. stay in the game, and Portugal will all be executed, according to the rules of the Brazilian government."--Serafinowicz

* "We also want to remind you to pick up the new copy of Common's new album. It should be out in stores next week."--Watts signing off

* "Everyone is cheering their countries in their favorite sport. The rest of the world calls it football. In America, we call it... a fucking waste of time."--Triumph the Insult Comic Dog (Robert Smigel), Conan

* "If you like watching porn in reverse, this sport is for you."--Triumph

(Photo source: Gavin O'Connor the actor, not the filmmaker of the same name who directed Miracle, Warrior and the Americans pilot)

(Photo source: Desus)

(Photo source: Stephen Colbert)

(Photo source: XGroverX)

"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: South Park, "World War Zimmerman"

(Photo source: South Park Archives)

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

South Park's handling of the George Zimmerman trial and the Stand Your Ground law was an episode I was dreading for the last few weeks because libertarians like Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren't exactly known for having the most progressive views on race (as exemplified by how Asians have been portrayed on South Park). Also, what is there to find funny about Zimmerman's killing of Trayvon Martin and the emotional debate about racial profiling that the Zimmerman verdict intensified? Plus it's later-era South Park, which, much like later-era Simpsons, hasn't made me laugh out loud in years (the last time South Park was laugh-out-loud funny was when it ripped apart the writing on Family Guy) and has been stuck in a formula (storylines that parody the latest popular reality show or cable sensation, like Investigation Discovery programming in last week's "Informative Murder Porn").

But instead of making light of Martin's death, "World War Zimmerman" pokes fun at Zimmerman's paranoia about anyone with a dark complexion--this is clearly not a pro-Zimmerman episode--and racists' dumb reactions to, well, anything that's outside their extremely limited purview, particularly the Zimmerman verdict and African Americans' feelings about it. Cartman's always terrible treatment of Token (Adrien Beard), the show's sole black character after Chef was written out of the show in typically grisly South Park fashion, is a reliable laugh-getter. Both the poem and "I Was Not the Bullet" school assembly rap song that Token has to endure from Cartman, the king of racism in the town--as well as Cartman's silly World War Z-inspired nightmare about an outbreak of black rioters--automatically make this an above-average later-era South Park episode. The delightful visual of the detestable Zimmerman being fried on the electric chair--after he shoots a white kid, of course--also bumps this episode up.

I haven't seen World War Z, but the gags that reference the famously troubled Brad Pitt blockbuster still manage to be funny. I like the little detail of Cartman wearing that stupid-looking scarf that's wrapped around Pitt's neck in World War Z trailers and publicity shots. (By the way, it's called a shemagh--frequently pronounced "schmog"--and it's used by desert soldiers to shield their faces from dust and sand, but in scarf form, it's goofy-looking. Pitt looks like he's about to join Steven Tyler for a rendition of "Cryin'.") The running gag of Cartman repeatedly causing planes to crash (in order to stop what he thinks will be an outbreak of black rioters) killed me.

Is the surprising number of genuine laughs in "World War Zimmerman" due to the involvement of former SNL cast member Bill Hader, whose Weekend Update nightlife reports as Stefon and dead-on impressions of the likes of Alan Alda and Judd Hirsch were recent (and sometimes deleted) highlights of SNL? For South Park's 17th and current season, Hader, who served as a creative consultant on South Park in the past, rejoined the animated series as a full-time writer. That's what I thought Conan O'Brien should have done after bouncing from NBC: return to The Simpsons as a staff writer to steer that leaky ship back to glory.

Memorable quotes:
* "We need to go somewhere the spread won't take hold, like Iceland."

* General: "We need you to shoot a young African American for us." Zimmerman: "I gave that up." Government agent: "You're the best, Zimmerman!"

* The general's reaction to a daytime attempt on Zimmerman's life by Cartman, who put himself in blackface: "My God, I didn't even see him!"

The uncensored cut of "World War Zimmerman" can be streamed in its entirety at South Park Studios.

5-Piece Cartoon Dinner (02/20/2013): Archer, Gravity Falls, Bob's Burgers, Robot Chicken and Adventure Time

After the vacuum cleaner in the "Legs" episode's flashback, Katya is the second machine Archer has banged. That can only mean one thing: watch your back, El Camino.

Every Wednesday in "5-Piece Cartoon Dinner," I dine on five of the week's most noteworthy animated shows. The episodes are reviewed in the order of when they first aired.

One of my favorite recurring bits back when Conan O'Brien hosted NBC's Late Night was "Closed Captioning," where a disgruntled captioner would sneak insults about Conan and Andy ("Audience laughs. Barely.") into the closed captions. The snarking would escalate into threats to derail Conan's show with pranks like the captioner pulling a fire alarm or flashing his junk on-camera to delight his girlfriend, which the captioner would end up doing. The captioner who types up the captions for Archer may not be as disgruntled about his show as the Late Night captioner was during Conan's era, but he makes Archer's captions equally fun to read by slipping in occasional Easter eggs that can be missed when the captions are shut off, like translations of the unsubtitled Japanese lines uttered by creepy Krieger's holographic anime child bride in the solid Valentine's episode "Viscous Coupling."

The captioning also drops a hint that Archer's cyborg ex-fiancée Katya (Ona Grauer), who also resurfaces in "Viscous Coupling," is conning Archer during the description of her reaction to the recording that Archer badly doctored to try to win her back and make it sound like her current beau Barry (Dave Willis) cheated on her aboard the space station ("KATYA: [almost feral sobbing/screaming]"). Other sitcoms use the Hallmark holiday of Valentine's to display their warm and uplifting side (particularly Parks and Rec), but because Archer is a dark spy comedy, its Valentine's episode involves characters like Katya using their sexual relationships with others to get ahead in the spy game--a view of relationships that's far from warm or uplifting.

And because much of Archer's humor thrives on kinky or freaky behavior, the show's idea of a Valentine's episode is gag after gag of ISIS employees indulging in their usual kinks or getting sexually violated while passed out (in "The Wind Cries Mary," Archer learned he was sexually assaulted in his sleep by his best friend Lucas Troy, while here, Pam tranqs Cyril and Ray and makes them do a tentacle porn video). While this would get tiresome in the heavy Truckasaurus hands of the writers of lesser adult sitcoms, "Viscous Coupling" exercises restraint with these gags by leaving most of the twisted sex-related acts of Archer's co-workers to our imaginations, which is funnier than cutaways that graphically show the freaky-deaky. Simple and effective shots of Cyril and Ray waking up naked, intertwined and with tranq darts in their necks while they discover an octopus swimming in the nearby toilet, followed by hilarious and off-screen "Noooooooooo!"'s, are all we need to put two and two together.

While we're quick on the uptake in regards to gags like the aftermath of the off-screen tentacle porn video shoot or the unremarked-upon ligature marks on the neck of erotic asphyxiation addict Cheryl/Carol after her night out with a fireman, Archer isn't as quick on the uptake in regards to Katya, who tricks him into bringing back to Earth her marooned-in-space beau (with the unintentional help of an oblivious Krieger). Barry, in turn, isn't aware that he too has been tricked by Katya so she could attain her ultimate goal: ousting him from his top position as head of the KGB. In addition to being an enjoyable anti-Valentine's episode about the loneliness Archer has wound up experiencing as a result of his self-serving behavior, "Viscous Coupling" nicely sets up both a future Archer-vs.-Barry rematch and a new role for Katya as Malory's KGB counterpart. And if Archer doesn't take better care of his hearing ("Damn you, tinnitus, you're a cruel mistress!"), a future in which all his favorite Burt Reynolds flicks have to be watched with the closed captioning always switched on may await him.

Other memorable quotes:
* Lana: "Your apartment is one level. How do you have a dumbwaiter?" Archer: "It goes sideways."

* Katya: "Yes, my dear Sterling, come for me. Phrezzing, boom."

* Krieger, as Archer tries to lure him with the image of cyborg fights between Ray and Barry to persuade him to keep Barry trapped in space: "Bup bup bup bup bup! Stop. My penis can only get so erect." Hologram bride: "Honntou ne... [Very true...]"

* Archer speaks for many viewers like myself when he discovers that Ray's choice of bathroom reading is tentacle porn: "Seriously, how is that even a genre?"

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

* "Sorry, that's, uh, just a sympathy boner."

* Barry: "So tell Archer I'm coming for him--phrasing, boom--and both Barrys out."

* A frustrated Archer to Krieger: "Hey! Thanks, Neil deGrasse Tyson!" Hologram: "Oooooh, deGrasse Tyson-san..."

(Photo source: Archer Wiki)

* A Malory-like Katya: "Now who do I have to screw to get a drink around here?" KGB soldier Boris: "Nobody, ma'am. Unless you wunt. And if you do wunt, I ken be buttum. No problem there."

The AFOS block "Assorted Fistful" will be renamed "AFOS Prime" on Monday

It's time to make another block title change. What better month is there to make such changes than month #1, January?

"AFOS Prime" (random film and TV score tracks) airs at all times on A Fistful of Soundtracks, except during the slots that are occupied by "Chai Noon" (Bollywood joints), "New Cue Revue" (cuts from newer score albums), "Rock Box" (existing songs), "Rome, Italian Style" (music inspired by late '60s and early '70s scores), "Soda and Pie" ('80s themes) and the newly rechristened "Beat Box" (funk, synth and hip-hop scores).

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Cameo, "Candy"

Song: "Candy" by Cameo
Released: 1986
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in The Best Man (and was stupidly omitted from the Best Man soundtrack album). It also turns up in the Death at a Funeral remake.
Which moment in The Best Man does it appear?: The Cameo jam is the bachelor party lapdancing music for Candy (Regina Hall), an Audre Lorde-reading stripper Murch (Harold Perrineau) falls for. It also plays while the characters do the Electric Slide at the wedding reception at the end of the movie. "If you ask me, it's impossible to not like a film that ends with the entire cast doing the electric slide to Cameo's '80s funk classic 'Candy,'" wrote online film critic Michael Dequina in 1999. True that.

When Hall appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2005, her entrance music was "I Want Candy" by The Strangeloves. Someone in The Max Weinberg Seven must have been a Best Man fan (La Bamba?).

Jim Gaffigan, the whitest cat u'know

Throughout this year, I'm posting older material--like non-Blogspot stuff from a few years ago, unpublished writing I've kept buried in my computer and transcripts of interviews from A Fistful of Soundtracks' terrestrial radio years.

Here's another one from my archives, an alternate version of a 2006 plug for Jim Gaffigan, who's gotten me hooked on bacon again, and whose latest Comedy Central special, King Baby, premieres this Sunday night.

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The moment you hear the words "airline" and "peanuts," you know you're trapped in a room with a bad observational stand-up (or an ancient Evening at the Improv rerun full of 10 of them). On the other hand, a really good observational stand-up is someone like Indiana-born Jim Gaffigan.

Like other observational comics, Gaffigan fixates on food, but not on exhausted food-related topics like peanuts, Taco Bell or that other '80s classic, Grape Nuts ("What is the deal? It's neither a grape nor a nut!"). His favorite punching bag is Hot Pockets, which are like calzones if they were made by a crackhead and come complete with a jingle that makes "By Mennen!" sound like Kid A ("Hoooot Pocket!").

Gaffigan frequently beats up on his own appearance, like another self-deprecating paleface, Conan O'Brien. He's turned his whiteness into the key gag for a series of cheapo and very funny superhero cartoon spoofs created for Late Night with Conan O'Brien. In Pale Force, a buffed-up Gaffigan and his cowardly sidekick Conan (both voiced by Gaffigan) strike fear into the hearts of evildoers with their pale skin and laser-firing nipples. The next episode of Pale Force ought to be a celebrity deathmatch between the melanin-challenged men of steel and those albino twins from The Matrix, with Powder as the referee.

In an avclub.com interview, Gaffigan said he doesn't curse anymore onstage. "Clean stand-up comedy" are three words that often scare people away, though not as badly as "Kevin Federline rapping." What's unique about Gaffigan is that he got funnier as he did away with the profanity, which is like Richard Pryor in reverse. At about the same time as the F-words vanished, he developed a falsetto "inner voice" character--an unamused, prissy female audience member commenting on Gaffigan's jokes. It's become an audience favorite. With his clever riffs on junk food, religion and Tom from MySpace-style yellow fever ("I only dated one Asian girl, but she was very Asian. She was a panda"), Gaffigan proves that curse-free observational humor doesn't have to suck like, well, a Hot Pocket.

Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993-2009)

I remember first becoming a fan of Late Night with Conan O'Brien--despite its tired gags about docile Asian (or rather, gaysian) male hookers--back when Conan and Andy did a clever series of shows called "Time Travel Week," and during a reenactment of a Civil War battle on Civil War Night, they brought out ultra-frail Civil War veteran Carl "Oldy" Olsen (a character who was retired in 1998 after the actor who played him died). That's how old of a Conan viewer I am.

Everyone's chiming in with their favorite memories of Conan's Late Night run (the Masturbating Bear, Triumph at the Attack of the Clones line, the Walker, Texas Ranger Lever, the writers' strike shows), and sure, those are all amusing moments, but I'm more fond of the weirder, lesser-known bits that haven't been featured in any of the clip montages that Conan has shown during his final Late Night week, like "Time Travel Week" and the following:

- The Hunky Newcomer, an O.C.-ish intern who squints his eyes and pouts to the accompaniment of Simple Plan's "Welcome to My Life."

- Conan experiments with having an all-kid studio audience for an entire show. Whenever the testy six- to eight-year-olds express their boredom with guests Dave Foley and Myron Kandel from CNN, Conan either brings out the Boredom Monster to entertain the kids or gets the CNN financial expert to stand up and do the Chicken Dance.

- "Max on Max," a porno video of a naked Max Weinberg humping a naked Max Weinberg.

- A lengthy parody of Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Same and its dream sequences, in which the pale Late Night host proceeds to blind viewers' eyes by unbuttoning his shirt and imitating Robert Plant.

- Conan and Andy can barely keep their composure while a robot shits into a toilet during one of their "Staring Contests."

- Conan realizes the stupidity of his campaign for a 10th anniversary rerelease of Dirty Dancing after he plays back Jennifer Grey and Jerry Orbach's unintentionally funny crying scene (which Conan later reenacted with Orbach when he guested on the show).

- The search for Grady from Sanford & Son.

- Andy's little sister Stacy, who's obsessed with Conan. (She was played by a pre-SNL Amy Poehler.)

- The audience's horrified responses to Mick Jagger and Uma Thurman's "If They Mated" baby. The kid has such a disgusting-looking face it makes the V lizard baby look adorable.

- Years before Conan found comedy gold in the immensely popular Walker Lever, Polly the NBC Peacock shows Conan a clip of a badly aging Chuck Norris as part of a jab at craggy old CBS. The elderly Norris impersonator's fighting moves are priceless.

- Wrist Hulk.

- After a sketch in which Superman flies home to find Lois Lane in bed with her lesbian lover and he starts to masturbate, the camera cuts back to the actor who's playing Superman. He's still rubbing his chest long after the sketch ended, and a mock-disgusted Conan runs over to stop him.

- Conan and Andy watch a clip of the new Ninja Turtles ripoff Embryonic Rockabilly Polka-Dotted Fighter Pilots.

- Conan shows a blooper montage of Mr. T cracking up during the taping of a classic remote in which they went on an apple-picking field trip. T's pig-snort laugh is so bizarre and hilarious that viewers ask Conan to air the blooper montage again.

- The day after a fire chases Late Night out of Studio 6A, Conan tapes an entire show outside the building, near the Rockefeller Center skating rink. Left without a clip to plug guest Samuel L. Jackson's The Long Kiss Goodnight, Conan has to rely instead on a flipbook of the scene they were going to show. Then when people walk onto the makeshift set without realizing Conan and Andy are taping, Conan says, "It doesn't get any crappier than this."

- Though a 2003 New York blackout forces 30 Rock to turn to reserve power, Conan and announcer Joel Godard attempt to do the show with only flashlights to light the studio. But after about 15 minutes, they give up, turn off their flashlights and cut to a rerun.

- A forgotten uncomfortable moment, and it's not exactly funny or a favorite moment, but it's interesting because it shows how closely tied Conan is to SNL, which gave him his big break as a TV writer: in 1998, he asked Chris Rock about his upcoming projects, and Rock joked, "I'll be in Lethal Weapon 4, starring Brynn Hartman." Then the audience booed. (Brynn Hartman was Phil Hartman's wife. She killed her husband and then herself a few months before Rock made the joke.) Conan tried to defuse the situation by saying, "It's okay. We knew them. We can joke about it."

- "Clutch Cargo" Bob Dole (voiced by Robert Smigel) longs for his previous life as a pirate: "Oh, how I miss Squawky."

Oh, how I miss Late Night with Conan O'Brien already.

My snarky movie summaries (Part 2)

Previously: Part 1.

The Hills Have Eyes II
Somebody should feed Larry the Cable Guy to these redneck mutants.

The Host
This popular monster movie from South Korea has a deleted scene in which the mutated sea creature snacks on that Korean-bashing douchebag Rex Reed. Then the monster pukes up his remains because it can't stand the taste of washed-up movie critic.

The Illusionist
Edward Norton stars as a magician who comes to Jessica Biel's rescue. He makes her memories of Stealth disappear.

The Invisible
¿Quien es mas emo? ¿Justin Chatwin de The Invisible o Milo Ventimiglia de Heroes?

Killer of Sheep
You know African American cinema is in trouble when Soul Plane gets better treatment than this long-buried Charles Burnett cult favorite.

Lady in the Water
The much-maligned M. Night Shyamalan based his latest film on a bedtime story he told to his kids. It could have been worse, like Uwe Boll grabbing a pile of his own feces and calling it a movie. Oh wait--that was BloodRayne.

The Last Mimzy
Aliens befriend a couple of kids by giving them toys. Isn't that how Michael Jackson preys on little boys?

Lemming
Another one of those movies where you're left wondering which part of it is a hallucination and which part is real. Unfortunately, those lame car commercials before the feature presentation are not a hallucination.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man
The acclaimed Canadian singer/songwriter is the subject of a new doc. Once upon a time, Cohen's "Hallelujah" wasn't a bad song. Now thanks to repetitive airplay on prime-time drama shows, "Hallelujah" has turned into the depressed white person's "Macarena."

Letters From Iwo Jima
Clint Eastwood depicts Iwo Jima from the Japanese POV in the second of two Iwo Jima movies. A third Iwo Jima movie will be produced by the people behind the Look Who's Talking movies. This time, it'll be told from the POV of babies whose thoughts are voiced by Bruce Willis ("Do tanks tank? Do rifles rifle?").

License to Wed
We always cry at wedding movies that suck.

Lions for Lambs
Meryl Streep, you don't know the history of U.S. military strategy in the Middle East. Tom Cruise does. You're being glib.

Live Free or Die Hard
John McClane has been described more than once as "an analog man in a digital world." Nah, he's more like "an R man neutered by a PG-13 movie."

The Lookout
The title character is a man who suffers from brain damage and amnesia after a traumatic accident. You would want to also if you saw that horrifying White House Correspondents Dinner clip of Karl Rove trying to rap and dance.

Manda Bala
Errol Morris called this documentary about corruption and frog farming in Brazil "powerful," while Vomiting Kermit from Late Night with Conan O'Brien gave it two out of four oatmeal raisiny heaves.

Miami Vice
Where the hell is Elvis the alligator? Did he want too much money?

Miss Potter
Renee Zellweger is so squinty-eyed she makes Clint Eastwood look like Astro Boy.

Next: Parts 3 and 4.

Earle Hagen (1919-2008)

Best known for composing themes for sitcoms like The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show and That Girl, Earle Hagen died at the age of 88 on Monday.

Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg Times once mourned the death of the original TV theme song (he blames its demise on the CSI franchise and House, which both rely on preexisting pop tunes for their opening credits, and ER, which shortened its opening theme from 49 seconds to eight seconds in 2006). We've also lost many of the legendary Silver Age composers who wrote several of the best of these tunes (Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and now Hagen).

In a TV Guide article about TV theme composing that I fortunately saved to my computer before the magazine's site took it offline, Hagen recalled how he came up with his most famous theme, "The Fishin' Hole" from Andy Griffith, which went through several different orchestral incarnations that he intended for a 50-piece band until he settled on a more minimalist tune--the perfect opening for a small-town sitcom:

Composer Earle Hagen fiddled with the melody for months before genius struck: "I thought, 'Hey, I ought to be able to whistle that.'"

Why not go there in the first place? Because the creative process is like peeling an onion, says Hagen, 83. "Half of coming up with something good is throwing away what's not. For Andy, I sat at my desk, thought about [the music], worked it out on paper — and threw it away. That happens a lot."

Few composers have scored as often as Hagen, who, over 33 years, generated a trove of TV themes...

Yet none proved more difficult to deliver than the feel-good, finger-snapping tune that would put Mayberry on the map. "Andy was the nightmare," Hagen says. The man who wrote a rhythm and blues classic ("Harlem Nocturne") was stumped by a show about a down-home sheriff and his bumbling deputy. But by simplifying things, Hagen finally nailed it. With a tape recorder running, he whistled the theme as his then 11-year-old son, Deane, snapped his fingers.

Nearly half a century later, the song moseys along, on lips everywhere. "Andy says he still can't go anywhere without somebody whistling it," Hagen says. "It has become a part of America."

The same could be said about Hagen's other themes. My favorite Hagen main title themes are from I Spy and The Mod Squad.

Most hour-long '60s dramas either recycled their score music (Star Trek) or relied on library music cues (The Fugitive) to save money. The big-budget I Spy was different. It was one of the few '60s dramas in which every single episode received an original score from teaser to tag. Hagen once said composing the music for I Spy was like scoring an hour-long movie each week. He raised the bar for TV scoring--he was the '60s equivalent of present-day composers like Lost's Michael Giacchino and Battlestar Galactica's Bear McCreary, who stand out from other TV composers by writing an insane amount of original music each week and relying on 40- or 60-piece orchestras instead of less expensive (and less interesting-sounding) synths.

In 2002, Film Score Monthly released a terrific compilation that featured Hagen's never-before-released cues from I Spy, including the stereo version of the supercool main title theme.

The Mod Squad theme, which is often performed by the Max Weinberg Seven in between segments on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, is awesome too:



(Poor Julie can't run. Pete and Linc have to help her up. Despite her Roger Moore-like inability to run, Rashida Jones' mom remains the hottest hippie on TV.)

Hagen also penned the frequently covered 1939 jazz standard "Harlem Nocturne," which the '80s Stacy Keach version of Mike Hammer adopted as its opening theme. Here's one of my favorite versions of "Harlem Nocturne," done by Jim Campilongo & the 10 Gallon Cats:

"I invite the American people to suckle on my teats!"

Hulu finally posts something I've wanted to rewatch for so long: the 1996 Dana Carvey Show premiere, which features the controversial Clinton sketch that basically killed the series in its opening minutes. (Carvey's multiple prosthetic boobs and the hilariously oblivious animal actors are Robert Smigel trademarks that would later resurface in Smigel's Triumph bits on Conan.) The Clinton sketch is left intact, but the Taco Bell-bashing musical number has been deleted, perhaps due to pressure from some corporate entity (Could it be... PepsiCo? Pepsi-owned properties like Taco Bell and Mountain Dew agreed to take turns sponsoring episodes of The Dana Carvey Show, not realizing that Carvey's writers would bite the corporate hands that fed them).

I watched The Dana Carvey Show in college and thought the series' funniest bit was "The Ambiguously Gay Duo," which resurfaced the following season on SNL. Stephen "Ace" Colbert and Steve "Gary" Carell were part of the cast and were members of the now-legendary writing staff, which also included Smigel, Louis C.K., Charlie Kaufman (the Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind screenwriter) and Conan staffers Jon Glaser and Dino Stamatopoulos. (The show is also available for Netflix subscribers at the site's PC-only "Watch Now" feature.)

Jesse Thorn remembers The Dana Carvey Show. [The Sound of Young America]
The Dana Carvey Show gets graded, along with several other sketch comedy shows. [The High Hat]