By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Aug 13, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET That isn’t actually a rhetorical question – I’m at the age when many women are experiencing heat waves unrelated to the weather. But these days it seems like we’re not alone. So is menopause contagious, or is global warming real?
That one WASN’T rhetorical, because the scientific evidence is overwhelming – not just fluctuations in average temperatures, but polar ice cap melting and rising sea levels are hard to ignore. At this rate, before too long houses in Fresno will be considered beach-front property.
But yet again, there are some politicians who almost willfully ignore the facts. I can agree to disagree with people on the best way to protect the planet, cap-and-trade vs. government regulations vs. investments in smart energy, but it’s hard to have a rational disagreement with someone who claims that since lots of places had snowstorms this past winter, global warming is a liberal hoax. And those people tend to have equally delusional facts-be-damned views on things like Obama’s birth certificate or the benefit of abstinence-only sex education (see Palin: Bristol).
I’m all for gentle delusion when it doesn’t hurt anybody – e.g., I won’t complain when my husband tells me I don’t look a day over 35, and I’ll let it slide when my son insists his room IS organized. But there are real-world consequences toward sticking our heads in the sand when it comes to our environment – I’m hoping that eventually, climate change deniers will be as archaic as those old t.v. commercials where doctors are recommending cigarettes. So here’s a song in honor of debunking deleterious denials…
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Aug 12, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET From John Y. Brown, III:
My liberal instincts got the best of me and I felt the need to be an equal opportunity promoter of faith based music for both the heavenly and heathen alike.
Of course, completely tongue in cheek. And very funny. I think.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Aug 6, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET I’ve always prided myself on being open-minded, on recognizing that there are two sides to every question. Being a competitive high-school debater was great training, since we had to argue, convincingly, the pro and con of each year’s topic (which may partially explain why so many debaters ended up in law school). And it’s certainly a skill one can use raising children, keeping us from instantly snapping, “Are you kidding? You can’t wear your rainboots and your SpongeBob sweatshirt to pre-school, it’s 90 degrees out,” or “I don’t want to hear what the guy on that brainscience site said about the intellectual stimulation of videogames.” (And yes, I’ve had both of those conversations and had to resist those lines!)
Even during contentious elections, I’ve tried hard to see the other side – and it helps that I have some good friends whose politics differ from mine. (Which, in case you hadn’t guess, range from really liberal to extremely liberal.) Plus my Republican friends represent a much more civil alternative to the louder advocates of their views (see Limbaugh: Rush . . . ). Of course, the way they often distinguish themselves reminds me of one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, where a woman is telling a friend about her date: “He says he’s a fiscal conservative and a social liberal – which means he’s cheap, and he sleeps around.” But cartoons aside, I can see how they can feel liberal about issues like decriminalizing marijuana or gay marriage, and more conservative about financial matters.
However, sometimes the ‘other side’ goes so far that I simply cannot find any way to understand it, no matter how hard I try, and I can only conclude they are either heartless or insane. (Which makes me feel like Elizabeth Bennett in “Pride & Prejudice,” chiding Jane for trying to find a way to side with both Wickham and Darcy . . . but I digress) I used to think of North Carolina as an oasis of moderation in the middle of the south, a place I could actually see living (and where I could buy a house for the cost of a driveway in California). But lately it seems like many southern states have gone off the deep end in their efforts to restrict women’s reproductive choice, to suppress voting, and to shred the social safety net, and North Carolina seems to be one of the loonier ones. There are a couple of bright spots – the attorney general did point out that establishing Christianity as the state religion was a major violation of the US Constitution, and they’ve drawn so much national attention that things may change. But in the meantime I’ll take advantage of my own personal bright spot – realizing that the tune that kept running through my head was in the public domain, so I could do a guilt-free parody . . .
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 30, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET We’ve all struggled with trying to stop behaviors we know aren’t good for us, and I imagine most of us have some embarrassing episodes in our past. So far be it from me to cast the first stone against politicians whose foibles are played out in the glare of public awareness. None of us would want to be a candidate for office, trying to defend ourselves against a surreptitious youTube video of us telling an off-color joke (or singing karaoke badly). My younger son claims he has photos of me sneaking Reese’s out of his Halloween candy several years in a row, and let’s just say I’m glad that the internet and cell phone cameras didn’t exist that time my college roommates and I went to Martha’s Vineyard.
However, the subject seems to be different when the bad behavior is sexual, and engaged in by elected leaders. (Which should give you a clue that my Martha’s Vineyard escapade was pretty benign, and didn’t actually involve anyone important or anything worth photographing . . . . ) Part of it is often the hypocrisy factor (see Gingrich, Newt). And part of it is the “you’re kidding, right?” disbelief at how stupid some people can be (see Danger, Carlos, or all the comments about how Bill Clinton could have had just about any gorgeous liberal starlet or international political figure instead of cheating on Hilary with a frumpy, not particularly brilliant intern). But the larger concern is that these are people who are telling us to trust them, with our laws& our tax money. Therefore, when they engage in clandestine activities, it isn’t just between them and their cheated-upon partner.
So when still MORE revelations came out this week about Weiner’s continued sexting after he’d insisted he had turned over a new leaf, the general reaction was “enough already, just go away.” (I don’t know about anyone else, but that famous original grainy shot of his bulging underwear continues to give me nightmares.) But he’s not alone – Bob Filner now acknowledges that as Mayor of San Diego, he engaged in a plethora of unsavory behavior, from the now infamous “Filner headlock” which he used to express sweet nothings to his employees, to groping constituents and telling his staff they’d work better if they weren’t wearing underpants. However, he keeps insisting that these acts were just evidence of a problem he has, not actual sexual harassment. (Which begs the question, what WOULD he consider sexual harassment? I guess it’s okay as long as he didn’t insist on women giving him lap dances as a condition of keeping their jobs?) And on top of everything else, both Weiner and Filner have extremely bright, attractive wives – sort of like our horror that if Halle Berry’s husband cheated on her, the rest of us are screwed. (But I digress . . . .
Honesty is a big factor, but I have to go back to the “how stupid can you be?” question. (Like how Eliot Spitzer claims to be a brilliant fiscal manager, after shelling out thousands of dollars for overpriced hookers, not to mention the weird thing he had about keeping his socks on . . .) These are people who seek public attention, so you’d think they’d be a little more careful about their public behavior. But the unsavory details continue to emerge, and the middle-school-level jokes keep popping up (the NY Daily News is having a field day with headlines about Weiner, as one might imagine from the newspaper which once announced “headless body found in topless bar,” which is the first headline I saw when I moved to New York). Even my teenage son has seen the Weiner memes, with every possible variation on ‘pulling out’ or ‘sticking out’ you could imagine.
As a feminist, a registered Democrat and a former New Yorker, of course I hope Spitzer & Weiner withdraw from the race so voters can refocus on the important issues facing the city, and as a Californian, I hope Filner resigns once he realizes that 2 weeks of rehab may not be sufficient after years of thinking the way to reach out to a constituent is to grab her buttocks. But as a comedian, these guys are the gift that keeps on giving – I thought after last week’s song, the subject would be passe, but I guess they all could still use a little musical advice to “Zip It Up!”
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jul 29, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET  The Dan and their fans do The ‘Ville!
The moment of truth was when Donald Fagen strode onto stage. It was more of a cautious shuffle than a swaggering stride, but it was “him.” Sunglasses and all—and it was a hip-looking cautious shuffle. And it was on!
Steely Dan was and is the smartest smoothest jazz rock pop band of my generation. At first sight Donald Fagen could have been confused for theowner of beachfront condo rental properties in South Florida about to address an audience. And we in the audience could have been confused for an AARP gathering to discuss time-share investment opportunities. We in the audience weren’t dressed to impress each other. But dressed with an understated hipness that included a tacit agreement that “I’ll pretend you look as hip, if you pretend I look hip.” But none of us were there primarily for a social event. We were there for the music.
And the music began. Instantly Donald Fagen seemed to morph from middling condo realtor into a bleached out Caucasian version of Ray Charles. And with whom, like Ray Charles, it is clear from the first note that the audience is in the presence of a musical maestro —who can do things musically (almost as an afterthought) that others would never even imagine attempting.
The concert opened with a middling performance of Green Earing but was followed with the epic Aja—which set the tone for the rest of the evening. The young drummer wasn’t Steve Gadd….but had moments that were Gadd-esque and by the close of Aja the audience had tapped into their inner Steely Dan.
Walter Becker reminisced with the audience during Hey Nineteen about a night involving Cuervo Gold and made us all feel like we had attended the same high school as he reminded us, “You all remember what it is was like. You know what it’s like now. And that is that and will always be that way.” We were peers more than fans.
Donald Fagen introduced “King of the World” from the album Coundown to Ecstasy saying it is a “new song for the band” that they hadn’t played since the 70’s and was “from a different life.” Adding to the audience, “You all can relate to that, right?” Although King of the World started clumsily The Dan found their bearings and finished elegantly. It was an inspired and inspirational moment. In addition to reveling in the music the audience was reminded that sometimes we, too, are still capably of conjuring up our creative energies and elegantly reprising something we did in the 70’s –and doing it almost as well as we did back then.
The audience began to bond with each other as we remembered that one of the things we liked about being Dan fans is that it made us feel a little superior to everyone else. Steely Dan is known for their smarty pants lyrics that take the listener to places other bands have never heard of (or if they have heard of it, wouldn’t know that it’s a chic place to go). We secretly suspect that our Dan audiences have a higher percentage of MENSA members than most other concerts. A few in the audience stood and tried dancing the entire concert, which also reminded us that Steely Dan fans weren’t always the coolest kids in high school—just the ones with the best taste in music. It’s hard to dance to Steely Dan anyway. They were always more about the music than the concert experience. In fact, for yeas they refused to even play concerts preferring instead to create flawless sounds from the studio with some of the best back-up musicians in the industry.
The highlight of the night was Bodhisattva about midway through the concert. They brought down the house with a riveting rendition of the band’s most rockin’ song. Which is fitting. A Bodhisattva, after all, is an Eastern religion enlightened being who compassionately refrains from entering Nirvana in order to save others. I think Steely Dan serves that role musically in their own Western way. And we are the beneficiaries.
As the band played on our reaction as an audience reminded me less of a typical frenzied and interactive rock concert audience and more like an audience that simultaneously followed Timothy Leary’s admonition to “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” That’s what Dan fans tend to do. When they turn on their music anyway. We behave well in concerts. Many in the audience may have had a cool buzz but no one passed out. Although nearing the end of the concert a handful of us had nodded off since it was well past our bedtime. More of a personal intermission power nap than falling asleep. We wanted to be alert for the encore.
And we weren’t disappointed when they chose to cue up Kid Charlemagne for the finale. At least that was the last song I heard. We left a little early to beat the crowd. Sure, we Dan fans love our music but we are also practical and a little self-absorbed, too, and hate being stuck in traffic.
As the Palace doors opened into the streets we talked freely to one another like we were in the same high school but just hadn’t spoken before. We all seemed to leave a little happier than we arrived. And feeling a little better about ourselves and the world we live in—and the world we lived in when we first discovered our band.
Earlier in the evening Walter Becker spoke to us not as a faceless audience but as casual peers as if we were at the house of a mutual friend and we were all just standing around downstairs listening to him and his friend Donald Fagen play the party. He reminded us that back in the day we were good. And hadn’t changed all that much. We liked hearing that and even applauded. But more importantly, as we walked back into our individual worlds after this brief escape, the performance had put us back in touch with a part of our best selves. The music helped us remember our better selves—perhaps even remembering ourselves better than we really were.
And we felt for the first time in a long time like maybe we really were that good after all— and, like Steely Dan, could still be again.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET This is a particularly hard time to be a political humorist – so many news stories are volatile and disturbing. Topics like the Zimmerman verdict, abortion restrictions, cruel anti-gay legislation in Russia, and horrible heat waves don’t suggest anything funny, and besides, it feels inappropriate to joke about such sensitive topics. What’s an independent writer to do? (lacking the writing staff of The Daily Show)
Fortunately, cheating by prominent figures never goes out of style, and we’re getting a refresher course thanks to the New York City elections, in which Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner are actually ahead in their respective races for Comptroller and Mayor. Apparently, the old adage is true, that any press isi good press, because name recognition seems to be more important to voters than the misbehavior which led to each of them resigning not that long ago. Mark Sanford has also returned to public office, after turning The Appalachian Trail into a permanent teenage boy joke. And just to make sure the whole subject stays current, now we have the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who is accused of harassing women employees with unwanted attention and suggestions that their work would improve if they weren’t wearing undergarments. (Filner vigorously refutes the accusations,insisting he didn’t do anything wrong, he just likes to hug people, but he knows he has a problem and will seek help. One of the odder denial/confession combos I’ve ever heard – but stay tuned, the city has opened a hotline for employees and constituents to make complaints. This could get really fun!)
So while these sex scandals won’t solve global warming or Congressional deadlock, they can help take our minds off of the more upsetting news stories for a few moments; we can chuckle with glee over the more salacious details (like Spitzer’s opponent turning out to be the madame whose employees he patronized; you’d think she’d prove to be a better financial planner, since she got him to pay $4,000 a pop . . . but I digress . . . )
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 16, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Having taken on the challenge of writing a new political comedy song every week, as well as writing songs regularly for children’s music publishers, I am regularly confronted with the question of from whence comes the kernel of inspiration. Or in less high-falutin’ terms, “oh crap, what am I gonna write this week?” But that’s sort of the point of these regular challenges, seeing how we respond to the regularity. (Such as “Julie and Julia,” how a home-chef blogged about cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering French Cooking,” and how it transformed her marriage and made her a media star, or those articles that pop up occasionally in women’s magazines about couples who decide to try having sex every day for a year, only none of them end up getting played by Amy Adams. But I digress . . . )
There are those who say inspiration flows from a higher power, like in the movie “Amadeus” where Salieri envies Mozart, whom he thinks is basically taking dictation from a divine source. And others say there’s no such thing as pure inspiration, it’s mostly persistence and hard work. Most famous writers will advise their audiences to write what they know, and to write regularly. (When I was in middle school, our class got to attend a lecture by Ray Bradbury, who met with us afterwards, and he detailed his writing method, he got up every day, put his rear end in his chair, and made himself write 10 pages. Sometimes the words flowed effortlessly and became the germ of a new novel, and sometimes he took several hours to write 10 pages of “I hate writing.”)
So when it comes to political comedy songs, of course I start with perusing current events, but usually I still have to do the plant-the-tush-and-force-myself. Sometimes a meme or topic is trending too strongly to ignore, like the 2012 election’s “Binders Full of Women” or the recent flap about Paula Deen (so I at least have a subject matter). But every now and then, a line or a tune will simply pop into my head – not that I claim to be Mozartian with some sort of direct line to divine inspiration, but I do sometimes wonder where that comes from. And this started when I was a kid – in 6th grade, I accompanied Amy Wood and Lori D’Itri in the school talent show, singing the recent hit song “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” (Yeah, it was that long ago. Altho I skipped a grade so I was only 10. So I’m not that old.) Anyway, the sheet music listed other titles available from the publisher, including a title that cracked us all up, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.” We thought that was really weird, and all of a sudden a tune and a lyric popped into my head:
(sung to a jaunty ragtime tune)
“I left my heart in San Francisco,
I left my lungs in Waikiki,
I left my legs in old New Mexico,
And now there’s nothing left of me!” That was the moment I decided to become a songwriter. (And someday it will make a terrific anecdote for a t.v. interview . . . )
I don’t have those moments very often, when a whole section of a song just materializes, but it’s wonderful when it happens. And this week, after reading a slew of articles about the combination of failed attempts at reasonable gun legislation, and the recent spate of state restrictions on abortion, the title and first few lines of this week’s song popped into my head. I imagine the combination of these two sensitive issues will prompt some pretty vehement responses (although so far, the angriest youTube comments I’ve gotten have also been the worst in terms of spelling and grammar, which makes them a little less ominous . . . )
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jul 16, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET  I’ve noted several times on these pages that while Alannis Morissette is one of my favorite songwriters (“You Oughtta Know” is one of the best breakup songs ever penned), her song “Ironic” is in my opinion the worst song of all time.
Perhaps I am holding Alannis to a higher standard, but the main trouble with “Ironic” is that she doesn’t understand the definition of the word “ironic.”
Nothing that she terms “ironic” during the course of the song “Ironic” is “ironic.” Rain on your wedding day is disappointing, it sucks, but it isn’t ironic. A black fly in your chardonnay is gross, but not ironic. And so on…
Fortunately, Rachael Hurwitz has come along to correct the record.
And while the vocal quality and production value don’t match up to the original version, her grammar is excellent. And the video is pretty funny: (h/t Jill Smith Muth)
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 9, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET Like most people from my generation (late-baby-boomers or early whatever-is-in-between-that-and-Gen-X?), I was taught to respect my elders, my teachers, or anyone in a position of authority, even if I disagreed with them. This apparently outdated training gave us very good manners and some real difficulty in calling our parents’ friends by their first names even when we were parents ourselves. It also meant that we behaved respectfully toward bosses or elected officials even if we couldn’t stand them or their politics, so that up until recently, political discourse always at least had the veneer of politeness.
These days, of course, it’s easy to point to the collapse of civility everywhere from Congress to preschool. (And yes, there’s a joke in there somewhere about how I just insulted preschoolers.) Some of this informality is welcome – for example, since between my husband, my kids and myself we have three different last names at my house, it’s just easier to go by my first name; and I certainly don’t long for those days when my mother put on a girdle, stockings, a dress, heels, and even gloves to go to the grocery store. But as many writers on this site have pointed out, not holding back our opinions is part of why there’s such partisan gridlock in government. Can’t we manage to be polite and courteous even to people with whom we disagree? (And how many of you had the equivalently old-fashioned education to notice that correct grammar?)
I like to pride myself on that ability to rise above petty differences. It’s worked with my ex-husband, to the point where we can sit together at our kids’ events, and only my closest friends know all the mean-spirited little digs I was tempted to throw out there but didn’t. It’s worked with my friends who have different political views – yes, some of my best friends are Republicans. (Of course I live in the San Francisco area, so Republicans here tend to have liberal social views along with being more fiscally conservative; on the other hand, one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons showed one woman describing her latest date to a friend, “He says he’s a social liberal and a fiscal conservative – which just means he sleeps around and he’s cheap.” But I digress . . . )
However, sometimes it’s just too hard to stay polite and respectful, particularly when someone says or does something too egregious to ignore. (Or in kids’ parlance, “He started it!”) And this can be true even for Supreme Court justices. I had my first taste of head-scratching behavior by one of these lofty figures when I spent a semester in college as a DC intern. (This was back when being an intern had nothing to do with jokes about Presidential infidelity.) Our group got to meet with Potter Stewart, who had just made headlines with his statement that while he couldn’t define pornography, he knew it when he saw it. Not only did he reiterate that view to us, he elaborated by explaining he’d had to view quite a bit of the material in question to come up with his conclusion. Somehow, the idea of a fairly elderly man in a black robe rationalizing his porn consumption knocked the Supreme Court off the pedestal in my mind – I realized they were just people like anyone else, extremely influential, and presumably more intelligent than most of us, but not necessarily. (Not to mention the fact that a Supreme Court justice discussing pornography with sophomoric college juniors was already pretty surreal, as well as giving us all bad cases of supressed snickers.)
So speaking of ludicrous statements by Supreme Court justices, I had planned to resist the temptation to write about Antonin Scalia’s ranting opinions, dissents, and other tirades in recent months, but the combination of his “argle-bargle” comment and his son now claiming that homosexuality simply doesn’t exist was just impossible to ignore – and impossible for me to remain civil and completely respectful. (Although I will give the man credit – he makes the nation’s highest court both colorful and great material for comedians!)
“The Scalia Song”:
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jul 2, 2013 at 3:34 PM ET
I realize that this is supposed to be an attack video; but the tune is so catchy that if I were the Grimes campaign, I might appropriate it for a positive ad campaign.
What rhymes with Alison Lundergan Grimes?
- Better Kentucky times.
- Fewer electoral crimes.
- Gin and tonics with limes.
Come on, RP Nation — your turn:
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