for 26 January 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler: Irrelevance Dear Polly, Classic Filler! Irrelevance with flair! I hope that one day, when I read your bio in Parade's "Keeping up with ..." column, I will learn that your life is the antithesis of the pathetic and petty persona you project. Because I do read your work as a double espresso of bitter irony with an underlayer of resilient mental health. Faithfully sharing your obscurity vicariously, as I reflect on my own, I. R. Relevant Mellow planter and former pants-crapper slave Oh, ha ha ha. Yes. I exist on a higher plane of consciousness than most mortal folk, and it is from these great heights that I can peer down and observe the pathetic and petty people in their little ant-farm-type lives below. Oh, how they amuse and excite me with their dippy misunderstandings and emotional fumblings. As I sip my double espresso of bitter irony (oh, but the espresso itself is never bitter, I assure you — naturally I'm proactive and self-actualized enough to have learned the tricks of smooth, tasty espresso making), I wonder what it's like to struggle and stumble and miscalculate and misinterpret and say stupid shit. Ah, but I can only wonder. At the peak of mental health, Polly  Oh Polly, I feel your pain. I just don't care. I have to read my case book now so I can get a good grade in law school. That way I can afford to send my kid to military school and take vacations in Hawaii on a regular basis. Irrelevantly yours, TomB <tbernardi@pcolor.com> W-W-What do you mean, you don't care? I don't get it. How can you say that? Don't you know that you're hurting my feelings? You care more about your stupid case book than you do my feelings, don't you? You always put law school before me! It's not fair! OK, now I'm really upset. I'm gonna sit here and wait until you send me an apologetic email. I'm waiting. You'd better send it, buddy, or you are in big, big trouble, I'm serious. I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Still completely mentally healthy, damn it, Polly Quit whining. At least people read your crap. <Smilg.Larry@orbital.com> Hey, no one said that I was irrelevant. I was talking about you guys. Mildly delusional, but overall still relatively sane, Polly Subject: And the beat goes on Hi there, Polly. Have you actually ever set Steve up with a date, or is his presence in Filler purely a means for you to belittle his desperate loneliness? I'm up for the challenge, if you will. I'm a little saucy, and I'm sure I could take Steve on. I live on Bainbridge Island, but regularly go to Seattle to get drunk with my friends at any establishment that has a buffalo head hanging above the bar. I'm 23, attractive enough that all of my male friends have tried to pull some stunt or another with me, and intelligent enough to read Celine but not Goethe. Hey, we could even bring a tape recorder on the date so that you could document the initial fumblings of two pale-skinned and bitter alcoholics! You could write a column about it with minimal thinking! Hey, all of these exclamation points makes it look like I'm shouting! Yup, Amy Hmm. You're young, really hot, smart, and you drink a lot? No, I can't set you up with Steve. He'd be too happy and that would really, really annoy me. Unchartably emotionally screwed up and pathologically selfish, Polly Hit & Run I'm so glad that Time Warner and AOL have merged. Now we've taken one more glorious step toward a world where every single thing that we can see, read, or hear will be, thank GOD, in-SANITIZED for our protection. I had one of those nasty, almost-original thoughts creep into my head the other day, and it made me feel dirty and un-American. Decent, sexy, successful, gigantic, professional-looking, predigested images and "ideas" are a heck of a lot better than the lonely, ineffective, little, impotent dribble that you guys put out. If you come to your senses, get an attitude adjustment, get on the fast track, accept Jesus, and start dressing for success and going to the gym more often and a few of you (you know who you are) might still be able to get a real job with a top-notch "firm" that has a good chance of being acquired by a multinational information-based corporation that's really going somewhere! Oops, I gotta go! Meds-wagon's comin' around! Later ... Tucson John <jargent@earthlink.net> Your email reminds me of that Chris Farley speech where he air-quotes all the key phrases: "So I'm not 'classically handsome.' I don't have 'washboard abs.' My breath isn't 'fresh.' I don't 'shower often.' I can't 'see' my 'penis.'" And so on. Yr pal, Tim Sucksters: While I enjoyed your review of the coming-to- a-mall- screen-near-you biopics of misunderstood comedians, I feel you overlooked an obvious candidate: Michael O'Donoghue. True, his biographer has a vested interest in seeing his life dramatized; but I believe O'Donoghue's story works well as a post-Man on the Moon project. He was the guiding spirit of the original National Lampoon, establishing the cut-and-slash style of humor that lesser writers milked for the better part of a decade. He also set the early, aggressive tone of Saturday Night Live before it became the recurring character cash cow so derided by cosmopolitan types like yourselves. Basic Story: Small-town boy comes to New York to write plays, falls in with a bohemian crowd, and soon becomes their Byron. Hooks up with a few Harvard boys and teaches them the finer art of comic assault. Brings this style of humor to network television, which leads to a Hollywood contract, a cameo in Woody Allen's Manhattan, and torrid affairs with Margot Kidder and Carrie Fisher. Tragedy: Was edged out of SNL for being "too dark," a complaint later echoed by Hollywood producers who wanted O'Donoghue's heat but not the hassle. Other than Scrooged, a film he disowned, O'Donoghue's screenplays gathered dust, and before long he couldn't even get a Fox TV pilot off the ground. He then died of a massive brain hemorrhage on the floor of his Manhattan brownstone. Taxi-style "Look, I'm Successful" Montage: Playing the sinister recurring character Mr. Mike on SNL; doing drugs with John Belushi; throwing tantrums in the Lampoon and SNL offices, destroying phones, knocking over file cabinets, kicking holes in walls; dining at Reno Sweeney's with girlfriend Anne Beatts; falling off a cliff while tripping on acid in Mexico. Show Biz Entity Razzed: Lorne Michaels, for not appreciating O'Donoghue's dark genius (although he got him out of numerous financial holes); Hollywood types who O'Donoghue detested; Chevy Chase. Casting: As with Bill Hicks, either Norton or Spacey would do, especially Spacey. Speaking of casting, you surely know that Campbell Scott played Robert Benchley in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. Too soon for a reprise? Dennis Perrin <bauerperrin@mindspring.com> OK, OK, OK, Dennis. Let's stick to one thing at a time, here. How do you know so cotton-pickin' much about Michael O'Donoghue, anyway? Is this a pitch? Have you already plowed through the first act of this thing? You know, don't you, that the second act isn't going to be nearly as easy? You know that the scene where O'Donoghue is dining at Reno Sweeney's with girlfriend Anne Beatts is going to have to be cut in half, right? You're realistic about these things, right, man? You also know that in the file cabinet scenes, someone, we're not sure who yet, is going to have to get seriously injured? You're aware of the basic requirements here, correct? You're not thinking arty, indie no-stars, are you, because that's career suicide, you got it? You got that? Dennis, baby, we're losing you. Are you with us? Your loyal agents until someone hotter comes along, the Sucksters The Rabbit in Winter OK, I'm picking nits, and I'm sure you wrote your article on Hef back in 1999, but it appeared in 2000. You stated that a pregnant Lisa Rinna appeared on the cover of Playboy "last year." Lisa Rinna was on the cover of Playboy in all her bloated glory in 1998. I remember it specifically, sitting on a table with a copy of Cosmopolitan and an overflowing ashtray in the basement of a hair salon. Damn my photographic memory! :) Alexia Henke <alexia_henke@exchangeny.deutschinc.com> So did you write one of those letters to Dear Playboy: "Thank you for featuring the heavenly Lisa Rinna. This vision of the beauty of motherhood truly took this reader's breath away!"? the Sucksters Dear Mr. B: Nice piece. I'd have tagged it Rabbit Redux, but a fine piece none the same. Still, especially given that this is Suck after all, I wonder if it wasn't a bit too kind. (Kindness is good, of course. What do the two films that have been named best films of the year by the national film critics board — whatever the hell that is — have in common, other than the fact that nobody has seen either The Dreamlife of Angels or Topsy-Turvy, because the first opened and closed in 15 minutes with US$1.27 in marketing money and the second is playing in three places nationwide? Both are essentially kind films that sympathize with their subjects. Kindness just may not be needed here at Suck.) Mr. Hefner is playing out the third and last act of his play as farce, and the only thing worse than being drafted into a war you didn't know was being fought is being drafted into a war you know damn well was fought and lost decades earlier. His battle is over; we can lust after and fuck and regret anyone we damn well please (and don't think that isn't a real change from when he started Playboy), and we are no more happy and no more human now than we were then and still are forced to make that unmapped trip back into the rag and boneyard of the heart. As I said, thanks for the fine writing. Terry's art is, as always, scarily good. Alan S Kornheiser <ASKornheiser@prodigy.net> Back into the rag? Don't you mean back on the rag? You get a lot of earnest replies to your earnest responses, Alan. Now and then we need to willfully misunderstand you, just to keep your flame of love for Suck lit and burning bright. Sort of like we're playing hard to get. Sort of like sex, back in the days before Playboy. Now people have to write books with titles like The New Modesty and A Return to Not Being a Total Slut. But your basic point, that we're no more happy and no more human now than we were before Playboy? We agree with that. In fact, we were just saying the same thing about the advent of the minivan. Minivans are innovative and everything, but the truth is, we're no more happy and no more human now than we were before the minivan busted onto the scene. Happier than a Dodge Caravan, the Sucksters Dear Sir or Madam or Thing, I followed your link on today's column to the barnesandnoble Web site for The Century of Sex: Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution, 1900� and found — "bn.com customers who bought this book also bought: Crossword Puzzles in Large Type #22, Charles Preston." (We told you you'd go blind if you didn't stop it.) Mark Lutton <Mark.Lutton@newsedge.com> If The Century of Sex came in large type, then we'd be talkin'. What does it mean when, as I read the phrase, "Beatty and Nicholson running wild," the first Beatty that popped into my head was Ned, not Warren? Slightly worried, Tony Nowikowski <tony@nowikowski.com> You should be worried. We forgot Ned Beatty existed, and frankly, we regret the fact that you reminded us of him. Thanks a lot, Nowikowski. the Sucksters It's just sex, people, get OVER it. I read this, the latest SUCK installment, and said "Whaaaaaat?" Who CARES? Do normal (adult, not overaged adolescents) people with regular lives really spend this much time wondering about how they "measure up" or whether they're still attractive to the opposite sex or the quality and quantity of their orgasms? And if they DO, what in hell are they gonna DO about it ANYWAY — we are ALL constructed with built-in limitations, if you catch my meaning. Yes, sex is pleasurable. Yes, sex is important (where would we all be WITHOUT it?). And, yes, the '60s brought on a much-needed sexual revolution, bringing the subject out of the dark hole it had been stuffed into by earlier, more puritanical, and more hypocritical generations. Yes, to a moderate extent, Mr. Hefner and the Playboy philosophy had a hand (God, no pun intended!) in that revolution/evolution. But did it really matter? Really? In the face of racism, nationalistic oppression, economic ruination via amoral corporate greed, and international war and pestilence (natural and manufactured), does Playboy and the mind set and lifestyle it attempts to engender actually MEAN anything? I think not. HERE'S an idea for those who worship at the Hef-man's slippered feet: Read a BOOK (NOT a magazine or a how-to or a technical manual or a gossip rag or ANYTHING by Anthony Robbins or L. Ron Horse-manure — I mean something that informs or challenges or excites you as a person, mentally and spiritually) from cover to cover without complaint; grow the hell up (leave ... high school ... BEHIND you! If the last time you experienced any sort of validation was THEN, then you're grossly polluting the genetic-societal pool — please REMOVE yourself!); LOOK IN THE MIRROR — if you think that air-brushed sexually-compliant, emotionally-vapid, perfect Barbie Doll women are the answer to your problems, then riddle me this: What in HELL would they want YOU for, you out-of-shape, pot-bellied, acne-ridden, barely-literate, no-to- low-income, living-vicariously- through-your-sports-heroes, socially-inept LOSER? Hefner? Suck wrote about HEFNER seriously, like there's some great philosophical import to him and his creation? C'MON...! They're just pictures of nekkid chicks already ... how in the world did THAT become something that mattered (exploitation issues notwithstanding)? Joseph Armstead <JArmstead@ mdbe.com> "Yes, sex is pleasurable"? Admittedly, sex is enjoyable? Granted, sex can be fun, sometimes? Do people who have a lot of sex make statements like this? We don't know about you, but we find that sex informs or challenges or excites us as people, mentally and spiritually, much more than reading books does. Mister, you need to get laid. the Sucksters |
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