The A.V. Club - My World Of Flops

Concluding Case File #37: Moment By Moment

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0500

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flop, critical failure, or lack a substantial cult following.

Cinematic chemistry is a strange and unpredictable beast. Oftentimes couples conceivably having mind-blowing offscreen sex come off like people who can barely tolerate each other’s company onscreen, as in the case of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez in Gigli. The boilerplate romantic comedy calls for people who originally can’t stand each to fall hopelessly in love by the film’s end. But what happens when the star-crossed lovers who originally seem like they can’t stand each other still seem to feel that way long after they’re supposed to be on their way to a happy ending?

That’s the case in 1978’s Moment By Moment, a film that has come to personify ...

Bureau Of Regrettable Ideas Case File #36: The Simpsons, The Yellow Album

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0500

When a pop-culture phenomenon grows big enough, fast enough, it creates a vortex that sucks in everything in its path and demands more. Fads of the highest order create an intense hunger for more product, which can’t be satiated until the fad burns itself out. At that point, it’s time for stores to be stocked with the detritus of the next culture-wide fad. It’s goodbye Menudo, hello New Edition, or possibly the other way around.

But when something reaches that level of ubiquity and global popularity, it stops being viewed primarily as art or entertainment, and becomes an industry. And industries die unless there are new products coming down the pipeline at a steady clip. That’s when things start to get dicey, when smart people make stupid decisions out of greed and fear that the money-train might stop rolling before all the money is unloaded. This ...

Treat Me Like The Gift I Am Case File #35: Hey Paula

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that flopped financially, were critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

Paula Abdul has accomplished a staggering amount for a woman generally perceived—in recent years, at least—as a tipsy, pill-addled flake. While still in college, Abdul became a cheerleader for the L.A. Lakers and quickly moved up to become head choreographer. From there, she became one of the most sought-after choreographers in the world. She won an Emmy for choreographing The Tracey Ullman Show, she choreographed the legendary dance across the giant keyboard in Big, and she played a significant role in shaping Janet Jackson’s tomboy aesthetic as her early choreographer.

Having conquered the world of cheerleading and dance, Abdul moved on to an even more demanding field when she leveraged her music-world connections ...

Supermarket Brands Sponsored Case File #34: Foodfight!

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that flopped financially, were critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

We as a culture feel the need to protect children because they lack the bullshit detectors necessary to see loveable cartoon mascots as ad-agency-generated shills designed to sell products in a ruthless marketplace, and not as magical friends whose incredible products will fill the holes in their lives that they didn’t even know existed. Children, God bless them, possess open minds that can also be unoccupied trash receptacles for the clattering, cacophonous detritus of consumer culture: commercial jingles, innocuous pop songs, catchphrases from asinine movies and television shows, and above all else, advertising in all its myriad forms. We feel the need to enforce laws attempting to separate advertising and content in children’s entertainment because ...

Eco-Friendly Case File #33: The Goode Family

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flops, critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

For a man whose oeuvre is famous for being ignored, misunderstood, moved around, sabotaged, and generally done in by the malevolent forces of commerce, Mike Judge has experienced an extraordinary level of success and influence over the past 20 years. He’s the mind behind two incredibly resilient hit animated series: King Of The Hill ran an impressive 233 episodes over the course of a decade-plus run that saw it changing air times and getting pulled from schedules repeatedly. Beavis And Butt-head was an even more iconic and zeitgeist-friendly smash, a savage, generation-defining satire that was adapted into a hit movie in 1996 (Beavis And Butt-head Do America) and resurrected by MTV not too long ago ...

Epic Boondoggle Case File #32: Jamie Kennedy’s “First Night 2013” New Year’s Eve broadcast

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 10:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flops, critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

The rules are different on New Year’s Eve. On New Year’s Eve, binge drinking isn’t just accepted, but actively encouraged. Hell, in some places it isn’t just actively encouraged; it’s angrily demanded. Sobriety, caution, and self-restraint suddenly become the exclusive province of fuddy-duddies, killjoys, and teetotalers out to destroy everyone’s buzz with their L-7 lameness. On New Year’s Eve, everyone of drinking age is expected to get wasted and exercise terrible judgment, quite possibly with the stranger they’re expected to sloppily exchange saliva with as the clock strikes midnight, lest they be considered a hopeless wallflower or dateless wonder by their friends. For one night at least, we ...

From The Hallmark Aisle Of The Vast Wasteland Case File #31: New Year’s Eve

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s a twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flops, critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

For decades, it was commonplace for film critics to dismiss movies by comparing them to television shows. If a drama was contrived, melodramatic, and over-acted, or if it flaunted contempt for verisimilitude, it would often get compared to a soap opera. If a comedy had a weakness for labored set-ups, glib punchlines, broad characters, cheap stereotypes, and frantic mugging, it would often get compared to a sitcom. At the same time, if a television show illustrated unusual ambition and vision, it would frequently get praised for being cinematic in scope, sensibility, or style.

These comparisons implied a certain hierarchy of art forms that placed cinema above television. That wasn’t always the case. In the ...

“…And Introducing Chewbacca’s Family!” Case File #30: The Star Wars Holiday Special

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is Nathan Rabin’s a twice-monthly survey of books, television shows, musical releases, or other forms of entertainment that were a financial flops, critical failures, and lack a substantial cult following.

Star Wars has a tricky dual identity. It has created one of the most revered and popular mythologies of our time, a rich, dense universe that trumps even Lord Of The Rings and Star Trek in its influence and enduring popularity. It would be hard to imagine a world without Star Wars. Yet Star Wars is also, on some level, silly space nonsense designed to entertain small children and sell toys.

Star Wars fandom borders on a secular religion. In a fascinating Vanity Fair piece on the subject of this Case File, one of the Star Wars Holiday Special writers refers to it as a “sacred text” his addition is somehow supposed to have discredited ...

Stooping To Stumble Case File #29: That’s My Boy

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0600

When Rock Of Ages and That’s My Boy flopped the same paradigm-shattering weekend, it felt like a glitch in the matrix. How could both films pander so egregiously, yet fail so miserably? Did America no longer enjoy paying money to have its intelligence insulted and its basest instincts appealed to? If people weren’t going to see a movie just because it stars Adam Sandler or Tom Cruise and enjoyed a blitzkrieg-like ad campaign, then what certainties were left in this sick, sad, strange, unknowable world?

The twin failures of That’s My Boy and Rock Of Ages represented, on some level, a refutation of glib, easy ’80s nostalgia. The Reagan decade served as both ...

Two Heads Aren’t Better Than One Case File #28: Best Of Both Worlds/Unfinished Business

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0600

My World Of Flops is a featured column in which A.V. Club head writer Nathan Rabin writes a twice-monthly essay about a book, television show, musical release, or other form of entertainment that was a financial flop, critical failure, and lacks a substantial cult following.

Last year, I took a buddy to see Jay-Z and Kanye West perform at the United Center as part of their Watch The Throne tour. The tickets were not cheap. In fact, they were almost inconceivably expensive. Yet I plunked down a small fortune because I was convinced I wasn’t just paying to see a show. I was investing in an experience I would remember until the end of my days, and paying to see a cultural event I might never have an opportunity to witness again: two giants of hip-hop at the top of their game uniting for a lavish spectacle that ...

Spooktacular Halloween Case File #27: Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:30:00 -0500

The Blair Witch Project was a glorious anomaly in part because it was the rare successful, zeitgeist-capturing horror phenomenon that refused to birth a lucrative and prolific franchise. That might also partly be because The Blair Witch Project seems a bit cursed. Of the three core actors, only Joshua Leonard was able to continue to make a living as an actor. A decade after The Blair Witch Project ignited an avalanche of parodies, homages, and knock-offs, Michael C. Williams was moving furniture for a living while studying to be a guidance counselor. Heather Donahue grew medical marijuana in between intermittent acting gigs, while directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez were unable to leverage the incredible success of their debut into anything more impressive than a few forgotten direct-to-DVD horror movies.

In some ways, the filmmakers and the would-be film series were victims of their own success. The Blair Witch Project ...

Big-Haired Case File #26: Rock Of Ages

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0500

About a year and a half ago, I found myself aboard a Carnival cruise ship as part of Kid Rock’s Chillin’ The Most Cruise for reasons far too ridiculous to get into here. One night, I watched a Southern-fried slab of country beefcake named John Stone in a performance that seemed designed to highlight the impressive condition of the singer’s abdominal muscles more than his singing. His vibe was Chippendales-meets-Urban Cowboy, all rhinestone flash and shit-eating grins. And the crowd was eating it up. “I have no idea who you are, but, cowboy, take me away!” squealed a woman up front. I sat a table with three fiftysomething women from suburban Detroit who were there as part of a girls’ weekend out. I had nothing in common with these women besides my pure Midwestern blood.

Then something magical happened: The telltale first few bars of Journey’s ...

Younger, Sexier, Inherently Doomed Case File #25: Saturday Night Live’s 1985-1986 season

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 11:00:00 -0500

When it comes to the long, complicated history of Saturday Night Live, perception is reality. It didn’t take long for a cultural consensus to emerge that the 1985-86 season of Saturday Night Live, the show’s 11th, was an almost unmitigated disaster that nearly finished the job the aborted 1980-81 season began in destroying a comic institution. Over time, a general agreement that the 1985 season was the worst thing to afflict the show since the reign of “Ayatollah Doumanian,” the arch-villain of the 1980 season, hardened into conventional wisdom.

Vitriolic reviews, low ratings, and the ever-present threat of cancellation played significant roles in the perception that the 11th season was an epic, unsalvageable boondoggle, but the show itself played into this emerging narrative with sketches, conceits, and an audacious season-ending stunt riffing on the widespread perception that Saturday Night Live had sunk to a new low. Like the ...

Something Close To Madness Case File #24: The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0500

I choose most of the flops I write about for My World Of Flops, but every once in a while, a flop chooses me by being so spectacular, public, and mind-boggling that, as a professional chronicler of pop-culture failure, I’m duty-bound to write about it. John Carter was such a film. So was Delgo and, now, Delgo’s spiritual progeny, The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure. The film currently holds the sad distinction of beating Delgo’s record for the lowest opening weekend of any film that showed on more than 2,000 screens domestically. Delgo made an astonishingly awful $511,920 its opening weekend despite receiving a massive national release, but Oogieloves somehow managed to limbo under that sorrowful sum with an opening weekend gross of $443,901.

How can a film fail so spectacularly? The answer is crazier than anything in The Oogieloves In The Big ...

How Bad Can It Be? Case File #23: Saturday Night Live’s aborted 1980-81 season

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:00:00 -0500

The infamous Jean Doumanian-produced 1980-81 season of Saturday Night Live occupies a crucial place in the show’s mythology as the worst of the worst, a 13-episode trainwreck that nearly destroyed a comic institution in its relative infancy. The season has such a dreadful reputation that even in a YouTube age where seemingly everything is available, I never expected to be able to watch the season legally. I imagined that NBC would hide its shame by burying the show so deep that not even the most dogged comedy geeks would be able to find it. So I was surprised and a little delighted to discover that while full-season DVD sets of Saturday Night Live conveniently end with the 1979-1980 fifth season, the notorious sixth season is available in strangely edited 40- to 45-minute versions on Netflix Instant and Hulu. These are not the full episodes—the musical performances are entirely ...

Beyond Disappointment Case File #22: Your Highness

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:00:00 -0500

When I was 14, I briefly lived with a wealthy foster family, until they discovered that, being a hormone-addled, rage-choked teenager, I was less interested in attending school than in ditching class every afternoon to rent R-rated videos as part of my epic quest to discover which movies had boobs in them, an obsession that consumed most of my adolescence. As the end of my time as a foster child approached, I asked my temporary mother-type figure if she was disappointed in me and she replied, with an absolutely exquisite sense of melodrama, “Nathan, I am beyond disappointed in you.”

That’s how I felt after watching David Gordon Green’s 2011 stoner fantasy-comedy epic Your Highness. I wasn’t just disappointed in Green and star/co-screenwriter Danny McBride, whom I consider one of the funniest men alive. Disappointed didn’t begin to do justice to my feelings. I was ...

Dignity, Always Dignity: Case File #21—Fat Actress

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 11:00:00 -0500

Sometimes I think women of the world should file a massive, gender-wide class-action lawsuit against the sum of pop culture (and, to a greater extent, culture as a whole) for perpetrating a massive, generations-long conspiracy to generate an epidemic of eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression by promoting impossible beauty standards, then viciously punishing women who fail to live up to them.

But the truth is the parasites over at Us Weekly and its ilk aren’t organized or ambitious enough to plot and execute that kind of massive undertaking. Instead they channel the ugliness, warped values, and institutional sexism that plague our culture and encourage it to flourish via countless dispiriting articles and photo spreads where impossibly beautiful women with nearly perfect bodies are pilloried for allowing cellulite to accumulate on frames we demand be as smooth, svelte, and free from imperfections as a Barbie doll’s. It is ...

You Know, For The Kids? Case File #20: Clifford

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:00:00 -0500

Adult actors playing children are almost invariably creepy. Grown men and women given the undignified burden of impersonating kids understandably lean toward broad mugging and outsized caricatures heavy on wide-eyed innocence, adorable lisps, and broadly telegraphed obnoxiousness. Play a tot too seriously or subtly and how is anyone even supposed to know you’re playing a kid? Better, then, to dress in overalls and mug to the rafters.

Adults portraying children consequently tends to work best in the context of sketch comedy and theatrical performances. The original cast of Saturday Night Live was aces at playing children, especially the girlish Gilda Radner. Radner also had the considerable advantage of only having to sustain the illusion for the length of a sketch. Live shows, meanwhile, benefit from the greater leeway audiences tend to grant performers who are in their faces, not captured for posterity on television and film. The physical intimacy ...

Funky Man Case File #19: Ramones bassist Dee Dee King goes hip-hop

Nathan Rabin — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:00:00 -0500

It seems like every punk-rocker in the world wanted to be a Ramone except for Dee Dee Ramone, the group’s bassist and the songwriter behind many of the band’s most beloved songs. If Joey Ramone was the voice of the Ramones and Johnny Ramone the sound, then Dee Dee Ramone was the band’s tragic, self-loathing soul. For Dee Dee, to live was to suffer.

Dee Dee had a genius for transforming the sadness, self-loathing, and degradation of his life into entertainment. He wrote songs about heroin addiction (“Chinese Rock,” co-written with Richard Hell), male prostitution (“53rd & 3rd”), and self-loathing that were so peppy, catchy, and energetic, it was easy to overlook their overwhelming sadness. In his tormented personal life, Dee Dee alchemized the love and adoration the Ramones generated into pure, unbearable misery. On any given night, Dee Dee might have been the single most miserable person ...

Thrilling Adventure Tales Case File #18: John Carter

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0500

If those jerks James Agee and Walker Evans hadn’t selfishly already used it for their empathetic exploration of poverty and privilege, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men would be a terrific name for a compilation of New Yorker profiles. The venerable magazine leans heavily toward erudite hagiography in its eloquent, effusive portrayals of the super-geniuses it covers. That’s certainly the tone of Tad Friend’s October 2011 profile of Andrew Stanton, the director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E as well as the then-upcoming John Carter, a big-budget, live-action, would-be tentpole movie based on a series of pulp novels by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs that Stanton devoured as a kid.

It’s easy to see why an institution like The New Yorker might revere Stanton. As one of the driving forces behind Pixar, Stanton was and remains an essential part of the brain trust behind one of the ...

Contest-Winning Case File #17: Jesse & The 8th Street Kidz

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:00:00 -0500

MTV experienced such massive, unprecedented success with Total Request Live after its 1998 debut that the youth-culture juggernaut felt empowered to experiment further with pop-culture democracy by letting the wise council of elders that constituted its audience choose the network’s next on-air personality via its Wanna Be A VJ contest. The job requirements were pretty basic: All a VJ really needs to do is look reasonably presentable while looking at a camera and introducing videos.

The choice between the final two candidates couldn’t have been clearer. One was a smart, funny, quick-witted, and polished improviser and music fan named Dave Holmes. He was unmistakably the right man for the job, a steady hand on the wheel who would be easy to work with, a consummate professional and a quick study. The other was a 6-foot-4 teenager named Jesse Camp who was so underfed and towering he looked like ...

Bonfire Of The Vanity Projects Case File #16: Give My Regards To Broad Street and Magical Mystery Tour

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:00:00 -0500

Imagine, for a moment, that you are Paul McCartney. Everywhere you go you create a frenzy of excitement and exhilaration. If you choose to escape your coterie of handlers and flunkies and head down to the local Starbucks for a latte, the barista who serves you will probably never forget the minute and a half she was blessed to spend in your presence. She might forget birthdays and anniversaries and the names and genders of her illegitimate children (this is one debauched, forgetful barista we’re talking about), but she’ll never, and I mean never forget the time she served coffee to the great Paul McCartney.

The excitement you cause isn’t limited to encounters with anonymous service employees. Even movie stars and other rock stars are overwhelmed to be in your presence for even a little while. The world is one big green light for you. People find ...

Commercial-Minded My World Of Flops Case File #15: Cavemen

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:00:00 -0500

Let’s not delude ourselves: Network television exists primarily as a means to sell advertising. Oh sure, we may hold Parks And Recreation and—to pick a completely random example I doubt will have any extra resonance for this particular audience—Community, near and dear to our hearts, but from a coldly commercial standpoint, these shows serve largely to help sell feminine hygiene products, body sprays that will supposedly cause the men who wear them to be sexually ravaged by beautiful women everywhere they go, and diet beverages women are strongly discouraged from consuming, lest they spontaneously grow penises upon their very first sip, or something.

Network television is essentially an advertising-dissemination machine that sometimes accidentally results in great, challenging art, or at least crackerjack entertainment. Yet when it was announced that ABC was going to be creating a network sitcom out of a series of Geico insurance commercials about ...

America-Hating, Flag-Burning Commie Pinko Case File #14: An American Carol

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0500

It isn’t much of an exaggeration to call the three-headed comic beast that was Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker (brothers David and Jerry Zucker and pal Jim Abrahams) one of the architects of contemporary comedy. Beginning with 1977’s John Landis-directed The Kentucky Fried Movie—still the gold standard for sketch movies—the filmmaking trio introduced a pop-culture-crazed aesthetic that delighted in nailing the tone and detail of whatever it was spoofing: disaster movies, blaxploitation cheapies, kung-fu schlockfests, police procedurals, or Elvis movies. ZAZ films specialized in dazzling comic density that hurled throwaway gags at viewers faster than they could process them. They didn’t delineate between high and low culture, smart and stupid jokes, pointed satire and scatological silliness. It was all fodder for some relentless, ingenious comic minds.

Three nice, middle-class, Jewish boys from Shorewood—the same Milwaukee suburb where Josh Modell and I grew up—Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker ...

Landfill-Ready Case File #13: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600)

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0500

Has there ever been a greater disparity in quality, reception, and popularity between a beloved pop-culture milestone and its adaptation than in the gulf between E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial the hit movie and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial the nearly universally loathed Atari 2600 videogame? The only contender I can think of is the slight dip in quality between Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the album and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the movie musical, which was an epic boondoggle, but at least didn’t threaten to bring down a corporation and possibly entire industry the way the Atari E.T. did.

In theory, adapting E.T. for the home-videogame market should have been a simple matter of cloning E.T. for another medium. But adaptation is a tricky business, and videogames simply did not have the technology to do justice to E.T. in 1982. Adapting ...

Ragingly Heterosexual Case File #12: Sincerely Yours/On The Line

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0500

To young girls for whom sex can seem scary and unknowable, there’s something ingratiatingly non-threatening about the soft, effeminate sexuality of young heartthrobs like Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, Davy Jones, Corey Haim, Ricky Martin, Andy Gibb, Lance Bass, Jordan Knight, Tevin Campbell, Zac Efron, and Robert Pattinson. These potent figures of fantasy hold out the possibility of soft-focus romance while keeping the messy, complicated realities of sex at bay, even if such figures’ real-life sexuality made those fantasies even more unattainable.

Though occasionally marketed as a sex symbol with youth appeal, Liberace was never a conventional teen idol, but he boasted a similar appeal to women at the other end of the age spectrum. He was a safely impossible figure of romance and fantasy to women of a certain age who swooned to his fancy costumes, extravagant pianos, weakness for candelabras, and soft good looks without having to worry ...

Pissing Off The Parents Case File #11: Lil Wayne’s Rebirth

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:15:00 -0500

It’s hard to become a healthy, functional, stable adult if you didn’t have anything resembling a childhood or adolescence. That’s doubly true if your childhood was sacrificed on the altar of celebrity and fame. Child stars are often doomed to spend their adult lives trying to recapture everything they missed because they were just too famous, rich, and busy to enjoy all the soul-wrenching bullshit civilians go through in making the perilous transition from childhood to adulthood.

So perhaps Rebirth, Lil Wayne’s ill-fated, much-delayed, commercially underwhelming, critically reviled 2010 “rock” album can best be understood as a successful man’s attempts to experience via music the adolescence he missed while recording iconic songs and releasing platinum albums while luckier kids were busy making out with Suzy Homecoming Queen in the back seat of her daddy’s Camaro, or drinking Thunderbird with their burnout buddies under the ...

(Insert Double Entendre Here) Case File #10: Sextette

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:00:00 -0600

Mae West wasn’t just ahead of the curve during her 1930s prime; she was a veritable one-woman sexual revolution. Unencumbered by shame, self-consciousness, and the shackles of propriety, West was utterly unafraid to turn herself into a bawdy cartoon of female sexuality, to say and do things no one else would, to fly flagrantly in the face of social respectability. Mae West was a countercultural hero. She was a feminist and gay icon. She was a genius. She was a pioneer. She was an icon. Everyone from Lady Gaga to Nicki Minaj to Madonna to RuPaul can trace their lineage directly back to West and her purring, drawling, quipping outrageousness. She was rock ’n’ roll well before rock ’n’ roll existed, embodying its rebelliousness, raucous sexuality, cheeky humor, and unabashed vulgarity.

That doesn’t mean that West should have actually made rock ’n’ roll records. In a fascinating interview ...

Crossing The Federline Case File #9: Britney & Kevin: Chaotic and Kevin Federline’s Playing With Fire

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600

“I do not know why FKF [Fat Kevin Federline] holds such fascination for me. I’ve never met Kevin Federline and do not know anything about him as a person, but I project onto him all the worst fears I have for myself: fear of wasted potential, fear of failure, of losing my family, of making terrible hair decisions. When I see those paparazzi images of FKF, sometimes sporting dopey cornrows, sometimes waddling across some anonymous poolside deck beer in hand, I imagine a guy who does not know who he is, what he is supposed to be doing, or how he wound up in the unexpected circumstances of his own life. This is how I feel about myself 90 percent of the time.”—Michael Ian Black, You’re Not Doing It Right

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s what makes us human. But it takes a staggering level of delusion ...

Exquisitely Passive-Aggressive Case File #8: Michael And Michael Have Issues

Nathan Rabin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0600

On his WTF podcast, Marc Maron has an amusing conception of beloved ’90s sketch-comedy group The State as an assemblage of twentysomething pied pipers who hypnotized their young and suggestible MTV audience into following them down whatever weird path or detour their careers might take. In a fascinatingly tense conversation with Maron, Michael Ian Black is quick to point out that his fame is incredibly relative.

Black is arguably the most famous alumnus of The State and its suit-wearing splinter group Stella (Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain). From his early days on The State, he’s made being famous, vain, narcissistic, and relentlessly self-promoting the cornerstones of his decidedly meta persona as “Michael Ian Black.” He even named his second stand-up comedy album Very Famous. His first was the equally mock-hubristic I Am A Wonderful Man. Black may be a ubiquitous superstar in the corner of pop culture that ...