My Summer Lair Chapter #51: What Are You Talking About?
Gavin Stephens welcome back to My Summer Lair.
President Trump to Charlottesville to racism and Nazis to diversity to comics books to Whoopi Goldberg’s lack of eyebrows. (Seriously…how can anybody throw her a surprise party!) This is one of the most bizarre My Summer Lair conversations yet it all comes together like an A-Team plan.
The Big Easy is Gavin’s latest comedy album available September 1st, 2017.
In The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart Jon stresses what would make The Daily Show successfully work was developing a sound philosophy behind the joke before making the joke. In other words you couldn’t just make a cheap W. Bush joke for cheap laughs; first writers had to develop a perspective and take a stand. That makes an enormous amount of sense. (In a horrifying and total contrast to Stewart’s Daily Show we’re seeing the John Oliver effect these days: it’s that arrogant moral superiority mirroring social media’s MY fundamentalism is better than your fundamentalism. It’s so gross.)
So while not the typical laughs I was hoping from a stand up comic’s visit I’m happy to let the conversation go where it went because it’s clear Gavin is thinking about these things. Jokes will come out of this thinking and from having dynamic conversations like this. All of this reminds me of the “talent is more important than morals” bit in HBO’s Jerrod Carmichael: Love at the Store. In hindsight it’s a powerful bit I should have brought up when Gavin and I were discussing Joss Whedon and others resoundingly and weirdly condemned by social media.
Oh I mention there are 4 or 5 X-books; I am wrong: currently Marvel is publishing 10 X-books s’part of ResurrXion: All-New Wolverine, Astonishing X-Men, Cable, Generation X, Iceman, Jean Grey, Old Man Logan, Weapon X, X-Men Blue and X-Men Gold. Whew. Gavin is right…that is a lot. How much of that is good? I’m reading 5 of them.
We close with Star Trek which returns to our basic theme: Be Good. But. Great is better than Good. Star Trek has lasted for 50 years because it’s well written; well acted…well except for Enterprise.
Gavin Stephens @ W • T • F
Host & Photography Sammy Younan
Recorded: Tuesday August 22, 2017 at 6pm
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