Althouse

"I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it."

Said Bob Dylan, asked if he streams movies on Netflix to relax.

But that word "relax" did not resonate with him. He's already relaxed — "too relaxed... like a flat tire; totally unmotivated, positively lifeless." So he says. But that doesn't mean he's looking for things to stimulate him, because it "takes a lot to get me stimulated" and he's "excessively sensitive," so he's liable to go from totally inert to "restless and fidgety." There's no "middle ground." 

On or off. One extreme or the other. Maybe that works for someone who performs on stage and then must spend so much time in a travel routine. He can fall asleep "at any time." He also says "I can write songs anywhere at any time."

He muses — comically — about songwriters who have a routine: "I heard Tom Paxton has one. I’ve wondered sometimes about going to visit Don McLean, see how he does it."

"And styles of comedy have political and cultural histories. Bluntly, scholars who study political communication and humor often find that liberals are ironic smart alecks and conservatives are outraged moralists. Some of us are a bit of both, but most of us have a psychological need to be one over the other.... Unfortunately, outrage makes more money, and today’s conservative media is much better at outrage."

Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom in "In the Political Talk Show Race, Outrage Is Winning" (NYT).

Dannagal Goldthwaite Young, a communication professor at the University of Delaware... pulls together a lot of research on psychology, history and media to explain why we find funny what we do. The need for closure is a big one. If you have a high need for clear-cut moral rules, then satire, which asks us to skewer our own beliefs, is going to make you pretty anxious....

Conservative media seems to be doing quite well. Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro are two of the most popular podcast hosts in the nation. There is no liberal counterpart to either.

Huh? What about Rachel Maddow? Last I looked, hers is the most popular podcast. Two sentences later, we're told that "MSNBC looks for its footing after Rachel Maddow’s exit." 

When you look across media platforms, it is easier to see how conservative psychological preference for outrage bodes better for their growth in satellite radio, lifestyle media and, of course, social media.

Wait. I am not accepting that liberals don't go for outrage. Rachel Maddow is all about liberal outrage. There's no skewering of one's own beliefs! Liberals aren't satirizing themselves. There's no subtlety or self-deprecation. There's mocking of the other side — mocking based on outrage — and rectitude about oneself.

Said Joe Pera, quoted in "A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH JOE PERA ABOUT NETFLIX’S ‘DAHMER’/What does the mild-mannered comedian think about being compared with the Evan Peters version of the serial killer?" (Gawker).

That was published last month. I ran across it because I was looking for things about Joe Pera, whose show we've been catching up on, watching and rewatching, these last couple weeks. I was not looking for anything about Jeffrey Dahmer, and I'm not watching that series, even if it's supposed to be good.

Joe doesn't want to watch it either:

I don’t wanna watch it. The past week I’ve been getting a lot of texts and emails from old friends that I haven’t heard from in years, and I’m excited to open them because I think they’re gonna say something like, “I heard you’re on tour this fall, wanna get beers when you’re in Ithaca?” Or something like that. Then I open them and they’re just like, “The actor on Dahmer sounds like you.”

I did watch the short clip from "Dahmer" — at that link — and I thought the actor had more of a Wisconsin accent. Maybe non-Wisconsinites think all Midwest accents sound alike. I can't easily distinguish between southern accents. Pera says his accent is from Buffalo, and: "people say the Buffalo accent is like Midwest mixed with Canadian."

That is, Pera's accent isn't even a Midwest accent. Buffalo is New York, and people debating what counts as the Midwest may argue about some marginal inclusions — Ohio? Kansas? the Dakotas? — but I've never heard New York in the mix, perhaps because Upstate New York is hard to see next to its attention-getting brother "Downstate New York." I put that in quotes because no one says "Downstate New York" — and Upstate New York is either too modest to complain or too inconspicuous to be heard complaining. 

They're right about the constraints of television, but I want to show you this amazing segment of television from October 9, 1970, when the host, Dick Cavett — and guests Jeanne Moreau and Lee Marvin — kept almost entirely quiet for minutes on end while Truman Capote stumbled and mumbled his way to the most important question in the world:

I prefer short things, not necessarily TikTok short, but "How to with John Wilson" short...

When I do watch a movie, sometimes it's something new that I've been reading about — I saw "Elvis" and "Blonde" — but sometimes it's something quite random. Last night, I watch the 1921 Swedish silent movie "The Phantom Carriage." 

I like to keep blog posts short, though sometimes I go long. Right now, I can go short, because the Criterion Channel made this minute-a-half presentation of 3 reasons to watch the movie (with an especially interesting image at the very end):

1. The "squirrel" is crazy about the trampoline.

2. Yeah, I'll back you up on that.

3. Joni Mitchell, in 1970, telling the audience they're "really a drag."

4. Orson Welles saying he puts loyalty to friends above art.

5. He just happened to find everything he was looking for at World Market.

6. The rigors of Chinese womanhood.

7. How to write about characters who are not autistic.

1. The lizard's table manners.

2. The chef disapproves.

3.  A drawing of chaos and order.

4. Sidewalk chalk art.

5. Broadway Barbara can help you get a good night's sleep.

6. Nurse Melissa is back with her Nancy Pelosi lip-synching.

7. Infuse other exercise classes with religion the way yoga classes use Hinduism.

8. "I want to be the Bob Woodward of 'Family Feud' clips. I want to lead a ragtag group of journalists into the Steve Harvey reaction underworld, like that movie 'Spotlight.'"

9. Evel Knieval and all his friends.