Kevin Marshall's America
Tweetin’ is a great way to meet friendz!
“Guys, swastikas are okay because it showed up on jewelry overseas in the last few decades in a misguided and ignorant attempt to ‘reclaim’ a symbol that hadn’t been important for thousands of years until it was used by the Nazis to represent hate, genocide, and terror.”
The Academy Awards have never been stalwart protectors of fine art, but it seems to have degraded and become more shameless over time, particularly with its penchant for rewarding films that have little to no artistic merit or message other than being “a love letter to movies.” As if the inundation of montages for the sake of montages weren’t bad enough, we now have awards given to films that say only “movies were great and still are.” The Academy has become an old man, his left hand pressed against the looking glass while furiously masturbating with his right hand, squinting so that he can remember what he used to look like. In short, nearly obscene and absurdly pathetic.
The worst, though, was Billy Crystal rolling out his blackface Sammy Davis, Jr. routine that I’m still trying to figure out how he got away with in the eighties (I figure it might have something to do with the fact that the rest of the all-white Rat Pack would beat up on Sammy with racist jabs while others disowned his blackness because of his Jewish conversion). But in 2012, it’s every bit as inexcusably ignorant and stupid under the guise of false context as the second appearance of the racist African jungle men in this year’s Best Picture winner “The Artist.”
Comedian Paul Scheer put it best when Octavia Spencer won the Best Supporting Actress award for “The Help,” tweeting “Octavia Spencer’s win shows just how far we’ve come since Billy Crystal performed in Blackface.”
Yes, this year’s Oscars telecast did harken back to yesteryear. For all the wrong reasons.
…is like watching an old man furiously masturbating in front of a mirror, squinting as he tries desperately to see himself as he once was decades prior.
It gives me no shortage of pride, gratitude, and appreciation to announce what is in my young career my biggest moment yet in stand-up comedy.
Next Saturday (March 3rd), I will feature for Comedy Central vet and NYC stand-out Gina Brillon at the Comic Syndrome Comedy Club (Savannah’s on South Pearl Street in downtown Albany).
Tickets are $15 for the show / $25 for the show AND a three course meal. Doors open at 7:00pm, with the show itself starting at 7:30pm.
If you’re going to make one show this month, make this IT.
At this point in my life, I’m pretty sure the walrus is more limber than I am. Sigh.
My favorite is the Walrus doing sit-ups.
An open letter was penned to Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch and signed by seventeen womens’ rights organizations, calling out the organization for its excuses and double-talk they give in regards to theocratic political organizations that advocate and institute oppression against women and gays.
From the New York Review of Books’ blog:
You say, “It is important to nurture the rights-respecting elements of political Islam while standing firm against repression in its name,” but you fail to call for the most basic guarantee of rights—the separation of religion from the state. Salafi mobs have caned women in Tunisian cafes and Egyptian shops; attacked churches in Egypt; taken over whole villages in Tunisia and shut down Manouba University for two months in an effort to exert social pressure on veiling. And while “moderate Islamist” leaders say they will protect the rights of women (if not gays), they have done very little to bring these mobs under control. You, however, are so unconcerned with the rights of women, gays, and religious minorities that you mention them only once, as follows: “Many Islamic parties have indeed embraced disturbing positions that would subjugate the rights of women and restrict religious, personal, and political freedoms. But so have many of the autocratic regimes that the West props up.” Are we really going to set the bar that low? This is the voice of an apologist, not a senior human rights advocate.
I couldn’t agree more.
Continue reading »
I read a thoroughly entertaining and engaging essay by Matt Evans for The Morning News on the legend of Frances Farmer during one of my breaks from work this morning and was struck by how often tragic fantasies obscure what I feel are the grounded yet infinitely more compelling real-life tragedies.
From the essay, titled Burn All the Liars (taken from Nirvana’s ode to Farmer from their ’94 album “In Utero”):
This idea of Frances as, I guess, some chewed-up Barbie doll tossed into life’s Goodwill box is, in the spirit of Professor Harry Frankfurt’s philosophical treatment of bullshit, On Bullshit, bullshit. Arguably, Frances, although damaged by her repeated institutionalizations, saw her best and happiest years after This Is Your Life. Happy years cut short only by the sad-but-predicable effects of a lifelong cigarette habit.
Despite the assertions of a hack critic turned faux biographer and a Hollywood film heavily influenced by the lies he peddled, Farmer was not routinely molested by cartoonish villains in an Asylum until she was lobotomized into a lifeless husk that aimlessly roamed the Earth for three decades after. The truth is more spectacular, more life-affirming, more depressing, and yes, more tragic. It’s full and complicated, which sometimes makes it hard to fit into a two-hour narrative or in words that a person can grasp with just a passing glance.
Harder, but not impossible, which is why it’s always worth it to put in the extra bit of work to find the truth. It doesn’t matter if you’re telling the story or absorbing it. It’s always, for the sake of art and truth, worth it in the end to find out what really happened. It’s always more fascinating and only serves to enhance the story. Though she was still in many ways a victim to outside parties and circumstance, she was not a victim of a lobotomy. Nor did she have outside forces conspiring against her. It seems, rather, that despite all the unfairness that needs to be noted when discussing her treatment, Farmer was her own greatest enemy. Or, it might be more appropriate to say, her greatest enemy was the disease of alcoholism, which like with so many of us, gripped her through her ascension, her decline, her pitfalls, and ultimately made all of them worse and contributed to her tragic story.
READ: Burn All the Liars by Matt Evans (The Morning News)
Really excited about this month. In addition to these I have several others that I’m waiting for more info on. Stay tuned!
TUESDAY, MARCH 6th 9:00pm
MICHAEL RAIVE featuring FRANK GENTILE
Hosted by KEVIN MARSHALL
Cost: FREE
@ Pinto & Hobbes (142 Washington Ave., Albany)
SUNDAY, MARCH 11th 5:00pm
CARLISLE CAREY w/s/g KEVIN MARSHALL
@ Bat Shea’s (95 Ferry St., Troy NY)
FRIDAY, MARCH 16th 8:30pm
THE ROAST of JENNIFER McMULLEN (from Fly 92)
w/ KEVIN MARSHALL, SANDY BEACH, LUKE DONOVAN, & MORE
Cost: ???
Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)
FRIDAY, MARCH 30th 8:30pm
KEVIN MARSHALL & FRIENDS
w/s/g TBA
benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Cost: $10
Drink specials all night long!
@ Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)
I have several dates confirmed for March with two others that should be announced within the week.
It’s going to be a busy March. Buckle up, kids.
TUESDAY, MARCH 6th 9:00pm
MICHAEL RAIVE featuring FRANK GENTILE
Hosted by KEVIN MARSHALL
Cost: FREE
@ Pinto & Hobbes (142 Washington Ave., Albany)
SUNDAY, MARCH 11th 5:00pm
CARLISLE CAREY w/s/g KEVIN MARSHALL
@ Bat Shea’s (95 Ferry St., Troy NY)
FRIDAY, MARCH 16th 8:30pm
THE ROAST of JENNIFER McMULLEN (from Fly 92)
w/ KEVIN MARSHALL, SANDY BEACH, LUKE DONOVAN, & MORE
Cost: ???
Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)
FRIDAY, MARCH 30th 8:30pm
KEVIN MARSHALL & FRIENDS
w/s/g TBA
benefit for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
Cost: $10
Drink specials all night long!
@ Waterworks Pub (Central Ave., Albany)
STALK ME
