And it seems there's nobody left for tennis, and I'm a one-blog man. Which brings me to today's emergency blog entry (EBE? Is that worth anything, National ANSI Acronym Guild? (NAAG, or NAANSIAG) ) You know, the term "pseudo-documentary" is thrown around all too often these days, most often in association with Michael Moore. The same could very well be said (by me) about Howard Stern: Shut Up and Listen. In general, after starting strong it comes off as a bit of a paean to Howard... what does that word mean, anyway? ... okay, got the dictionary here. 1. in ancient Greece, a hymn of thanksgiving to the gods, esp. to Apollo ... Close enough. Howard reminds me a bit of David Lee Roth who, in his music videos, surrounded himself with a gallery of Grotesques designed to make him look good on the one hand, and plenty of babes on the other, typically of the L.A. beach varietal. It's an ancient bi-fecta that probably shows up in nature.
Also, at one point in the doc the interviewers are talking to a dude on a mo-ped who sums up Howard's radio show perfectly for me, saying it's a "boring, endless conversation that goes nowhere." We see the guy drive off, then a guy behind the documentarians says "You want to talk about Howard? I love Howard!" and the relieved documentarians say "Oh, thank God." To be a good documentary, and more importantly, not be a pseudo-doc, it's important to maintain a certain ... stand-off-ishness, to show no bias, especially on screen.
But, most importantly, here's the world exclusive, not necessarily the documentarian's fault. This video still is from the doc, and looky look, kids! It's none other than South Park's front man Trey Parker! Here he's doing a character, of course, one of the effeminate adults on the South Park show. Kinduva brunette Marilyn Monroe kind of a vibe who overly uses the word 'poignant' to describe poor ol' put-upon Howard Stern. Unfortunately, Mr. Parker was constrained to using irony to describe his true feelings for Mr. Stern: if you look online somewhere there is a quote of condemnation from the South Park camp, calling Mr. Stern's humor vulgar and offensive; in short, just like South Park. Hmmm... lost the link to it. Okay, found it. I should've searched ' "trey parker" howard stern ' instead of ' howard stern "south park" '. Lesson learned. Also, I guess Kevin Smith was friends with Howard, at least until Howard pointed out to Kevin that Jersey Girl was a critical and commercial failure. Good for you, Howard. But don't you understand? He made Clerks 2 just for you! Love, don't hate.
Oh, but I got off track again, didn't I? As elusive as consciousness itself is, we can all at least agree on the fact that Howard Stern, as the pseudo-doc itself says, has made "millions of friends, millions of enemies, and (most importantly - my editorializing :) ) millions of dollars." I just wonder if his $100 million move to satellite radio lost him some fans. After all, even Prince went into a kind of semi-exile after word of his 7-album, 100 million dollar contract got out. And I must give a brief shout-out to documentarian James Riffel. Keep up the good work, sir! And watch your ass, Ken Burns, because in the great Decathlon in which all filmmakers of every stripe are running today, this guy's liable to sneak up behind you with the Olympic torch and singe it for you, and get Digital Domain to put it all on film.
p.s. Michael Moore hates America? If I were him, I'd sue! I'd never agree to that! Say it isn't so, Ian...
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