for 16 February 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.
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Filler Dear Polly, I have been reading Filler for the last four months or so. I would like you to know that you have portrayed yourself as the most negative and insipid (ninth-grade vocab word) person ever created. Your narcissistic style of aggrandizement and egotism are enough to make George W. "he put the duhhhhh back in W." Bush shake his head in shock. Frankly, your character is shallow and a dum-dum. Sorry. Had to be said. It's really funny and light and cute and ... yeah, whatever. Yours, Josh <Noedig@email.msn.com> Hey, aren't you the guy who started that letter-writing campaign against Seinfeld, urging the producers to make the characters less selfish and despicable? Trust me, the narcissism and egotism are 100 percent real, and I'm pleased to see that my shallowness and stupidity are coming across, loud and clear. Any perceived cuteness is an unfortunate side effect that's caused by a combination of Terry Colon's illustration style and the apparent tendency of Web dwellers to find hateful behaviors appealing. However, these two factors are entirely beyond my control. Selfish and despicable, Polly  Damn it, Polly, I don't read Filler because it's topical and informative; I read because it's chockablock with the classics: spite, envy, malice, and crack. Please, in the future, only mention practical topics like stocks in the context of ... oh, say, angry squirrels bitching about their ... uh, their failed IPOs with evilwhore.com. It'd be much more enjoyable for the all of us. I'm only saying this because I want you to be your gleefully savage best. Michael Locke <locke@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> Savage, huh? Who me? Savage? Never! Wink wink! Nudgey nudge nudge! Tee-hee heee heee! Cute cute cute in her little red suit, Polly Subject: Amazon, thanks for the tip. Polly, I sold a bunch of my eBay that I bought at $10 and bought 5000 shares of Amazon today based on your great tip that "it rocks." Thanks a bunch. Earnings came in below the negative whisper number, the bookstore part has become profitable, and it's trading way up after hours. Let me know when a good time to exit is and I'll buy you some whimsical, lighthearted gifts. Kurt Ruckus Records <ruckus@teleport.com> PS My shoeshine boy says to check out WPNE. It makes CU-SEE Me video-conferencing software, which will be huge with the coming widespread availability of broadband. It totally rocks! Maybe I should replace the Filler I usually serve with incredibly misinformed stock tips. Today I had a definite sense that I was flailing in the darkness of an unpredictable market, waiting for the scary guy with the night-vision goggles to turn my nest egg to a scrambled mess. This is your nest egg. This is your nest egg on E-Trade. Day trading is evil. Being evil myself, I couldn't help but dabble, but my sanity has returned. If I went into massive debt, though, that sure would make a funny and light and cute addition to Filler! Tee-hee! Polly Hit & Run On the subject of choosing one's own name ... I worked in Hong Kong a few years back. There Chinese children are given a Chinese name by their parents but choose an English name for themselves when they become teenagers. For the non-English speakers, this proved somewhat of a minefield, as names would be chosen on the basis of "sounding good" rather than actual meaning. This was no more apparent than in the office where I worked, shared with Anthrax, Frankenstein, and Wanka. Not that I can talk.... Kosten Metreweli <kosten@metreweli.com> You can hardly blame those Hong Kong kids, given the tradition of Hong Kong parents giving their kids pseudo-British names like "Winston," that no actual British people have used for decades. I once tried to give myself a semi-phonetic Chinese variation on my own last name, meaning "Bold Dragon Bird Flying Fish of General Tzo," or something like that, but it never really took off. So who am I to make fun? Yr pal, Tim Dear Tim: Nice Super Bowl stuff. The pulldowns, with their implicit assumption of yadayadayada, are wonderful; I see them playing a major role in the current presidential race. Hell, I have a bad feeling they're already playing a role. But anyway, I can't work up too big of a head of steam over meaningless sports drivel; after all, how many ways can you say, "We lost because we scored fewer points." Much the same goes for huckstering: "Buy it because it's better." The tropes are inherently limited. It's comedy that's got me going. As I think you've done already, it's now possible to let a computer write most of the late-night monologs. And this is by pros who are paid weekly salaries. Large weekly salaries. Worse, this stuff is being delivered by pros who are being paid VERY large weekly salaries. Someone should know better. Someone should have some shame. Damn it, somebody should be worried that eventually people will stop watching comedy that isn't funny. No? Sure, mass-produced comedy, like mass-produced anything, is less than wonderful. And it is all in the timing. (See if you can catch Dame Edna if she ever drops by your neck of the woods or if you're ever in hers. The material is horribly weak, but the timing and the nuance are brilliant.) And maybe I was younger then. But didn't comedians once tell jokes in their standup? You know, with set-ups and movement and punch lines that were funny because they actually hurt, just a little? Didn't there used to be a certain antagonism between audience and comic, an "I dare you to make me laugh" that forced an edge or a point on the routine? When the audience applauds the comedian before he opens his mouth (just as when an audience in the theater applauds the entrance of a Big Name Star — have none of the people ever seen a play before?), the inherent tension between audience and act disappears to the detriment of both. This is going on too long. I liked your stuff. A lot. I really truly wonder who's enjoying the rest of what passes for comedy. Alan Kornheiser <askornheiser@prodigy.net> You underestimate content. "We lost because we scored fewer points" is like saying "The Germans lost because the Allies had more stuff." Quite true, but should that really stop us from endlessly second-guessing the Italian campaign, savoring the blunder at Kursk, or berating that goddamned Monty for not closing the Falaise gap? I think not! As for the devolution of comedy, two rules will always remain: "Comedy is tragedy plus time," and "If it bends, it's funny; if it breaks, it's not!" Yr pal, Tim Addled Brains Nice job! I wasn't surprised by Michael Woolf's take, which always seems to gauge people in terms of social status, but the Lubow piece was strangely credulous of claims to her sainthood and brilliance. And how about the photo of her on the book jacket which must be 20 years old? Cynthia Cotts <ccotts@villagevoice.com> To say nothing of the text beneath the book jacket photo, which speaks volumes about Renata's leviathan self-image and clotted, Germanic punctuation style: "Renata Adler has had an unrivaled career as a reporter; novelist, and short story writer; intellectual gadfly; and New Yorker staffer. Educated at Bryn Mawr, Harvard, the Sorbonne, and Yale Law school, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, and the film critic of The New York Times. The author of prize-winning short stories, a prize-winning novel (Speedboat), and countless admired and controversial articles for The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, National Review, New Republic and other publications, she lives in New York." You know, somehow I think her career was rivaled, and those stories probably could be counted, if someone were really determined. (Just two get the ball rolling, I count two uses of the phrase "prize-winning," four snooty institutions of higher learning, and the names of three prestigious fellowships herein....) Your uncredentialed, quanitfiable, and extremely rivaled correspondent, Holly Martins "It serves to remind you how unwholesome, gnat-straining, and sanity-threatening it is to fetishize a magazine as your all-purpose culture arbiter." Suck ? Cheers, Jeff Richardson <jeffr@bf.rmit.edu.au> No, you see, at Suck we always, always leave the doors closed. Holly Martins Out of Luck Subject: zzzz, snore, Fags ... I guess you do have to supply fodder for the local pillow biters. Guess I'll give Suck a miss for another month. Roy Taylor <roy@eagle-marketing.com> Don't worry, little pillow biter. We'll have some queer content in another month just for you. Yours, Jonathan Filler Subject: Incompetence Dear Polly, The reason I write is to bring your attention to a recent result in psychology which you might use. A couple of psychologists did a study which indicated that people who were incompetent at some particular task (a written test, I think) thought they were much more competent than they were. Meanwhile, the high-scorers on the test thought they were somewhat less competent than they actually were. Leonard <leonard@dc.net> This is not the best news for those of us whose self-esteem has about the price-to-earnings ratio of some of your more grossly overvalued Internet stocks. Oh my god, what a metaphor. At any rate, that study provides just one more bit of proof that the overconfident should stay the hell away from the stock market. Overconfident low-scorer, Polly Are you having it, or something? Where is the blazing wit that I look forward to? You must be having sex. It slows your brain down. You know that. Cut it out. Sincerely, Josh Schoof <josh@kevco.cx> My brain is slow because I visit my dwindling Amazon shares too frequently to wish them well. To whisper, "Buck up, little campers!" But your letter is a clear case of projection. Keep rationalizing that uneventful sex life of yours! Good things come to those who rationalize. Blazing git, Polly |
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