Episode 170: "Our Generation's Nessie"

Date

June 6, 2014

Guests

Tara Ariano

Origin of the episode title

Julie wonders if Slender Man aka "Slendermin" is this generation's Nessie

Discussed

Guess what? What? Well, good news: TARA ARIANO is the guest on this week's show, and she's terrific. Tara is a television genius and she created TelevisionWithoutPity.com and is now behind the mighty Previously.TV. Also, she has a dog who is a Great Dane mix and is "Black and White like a cow." Tara shares with us 5 insane moments from new television shows that have gone down in the past year under our very noses. Also at one point, Julie asks Tara "Take me from the pig-fucking to the suicide." Fantastic!

Plus: The dark truth of what Cookie Monster's sister is like, the Slenderman diet, the only condition in which I would ever buy a ticket to MALEFICIENT, a plea for a Mr. Belvedere-themed correction on HWYWiki.com, a warning about Paul Williams, and some more rumination on why you shouldn't beat yourself up - now featuring a staircase metaphor!

Five Insane Moments

1. Sex dream in Ray Donovan
2. Frozen dead monkeys in Helix
3. Emotional crotchless android in Almost Human
4. Pig blackmail in Black Mirror
5. The extra toe in Broad City

Trivia

• Grover and Cookie Monster are not brothers. Cookie Monster probably doesn't have a brother, but probably has a sister whose life is a mess.
• Is Maleficent a thing for millennial gays and their accessories? Julie will only see it if it is just Angelina Jolie lip-syncing an Annie Lennox song.
• The Slenderman Plan is a three phase diet. In the first week, you cut out all carbs and sugar. The second week, you don't eat anything. The third week, you become a ghost.

Download the Episode

Episode Link

Monologue Transcript

170 Tara Ariano June 6, 014

Happy June everybody, June, June, June, June-JUNE. In honor of June busting out all over please do yourself a favor and go to YouTube.com and enter Leslie Uggams June is Busting out into the search field and enjoy yourself some quality diva gibberish from a woman who was in the Roots mini-series which is more than I can say for most people.

Hi everybody it's Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW.

This was a crazy week. Everybody wants to fight! Fight, fight, fight, fight! When did the internet become Mad Max? I have never actually seen Mad Max. Is Tina Turner in it? Yeah the internet is conceptual minesweeper right now. Poor Patton Oswalt is being kept prisoner in the basement of Salon.com. It’s weird that website’s relationship with Patton. If he were paranoid then this would be an example of somebody thinking it’s justified or someone is trying to fuck with him. Every other day someone writes an article, “I may not be familiar with the work of Patton Oswalt but he stinks. He should knock it off, “ or “I spent some time watching his material and it was pretty funny.” Who the fuck are you? Why are you writing this thing? Because we need content. Please.

Do you know what you do when you recycle content? Make a quilt. Put a quilt on the bed. How about that Salon? Stop buying your sheets from the Jaclyn Smith collection at JCPenny. Those are made by exploited children. Make yourself a quilt. What does that mean? I have no idea, maybe a short story anthology.

Guys I got into a couple of things this week I want to put behind me. First and foremost I am completely done picking on, talking about, fighting with or thinking about Jessica Seinfeld. Please for the love of all things holy do not go on her Instagram and @mention me when you see one of her photos. It is none of my business. I don’t want to see any of her photos. I’ve blocker her. She’s blocked me. This is the best. We are moving on. I got a little mean and didn’t feel very good about it. I know some of my contempt for her, not that it is all unjustified, but there’s some jealousy because she has a beautiful family and a lot of money. I’m sure she has one of those fridges that look like the rest of the cabinets. Hers is not the life I want but that is all to say that when we get worked up about people they tend to resemble more of what we have in common with them than what we don’t. Jessica Seinfeld, to me, is an example of somebody I definitely would have grown up with in Scarsdale that went a certain path and I did not. I think a lot of the stuff I see in her is personal. I regret nothing. I do feel bad. I don’t like confrontation. The last thing I want is her husband disparaging me publically. I really don’t want that, unless it serves to me advantage. Even then it is going to hurt.

I’m not crazy about fighting. I like saying mean things. Enough with the meanness. I’m sick of differentiating mean versus nice. This is a new month. Let’s focus on kindness and truth. If kindness can be nice and truth can be mean, so be it, but I am sick of applying ethics that you would apply to a kindergartener’s behavior to my abstract thoughts about life and things.

Here’s the other news, I have plenty of time to think about life because I am doing nothing right now. A couple of weeks ago I got to shoot a pilot. It was the best. It was so fun. Now we’re putting it together, then we’ll submit it. Then we’ll wait to see what happens. In the mean time I’m on hold which is an official way of confirming that nobody is looking for work for me. It’s an extra spice in the panic stew. It’s little bit of Mrs. Dash in the jambalaya. They don’t call it down time for nothing. But Julie you had a show on Sunday.

Spooner played Garbage Dump for at least 25 minutes. He had a fabulous show at the Bell House. Do you know what? I need to learn how to make good things last in my brain. I enjoy them in the moment. That’s good. It’s something. It’s not like I am hovering above looking down at me pacing through something that should be fun, which I have done in the past at parties, on dates, during S-E-X. I enjoy what I do then it is over and I don’t think about it. Then I find one or two people who don’t like me online and I obsess over it. It’s not something i am proud of, I’m just being honest. In the service of getting out of myself for a second, I will say I had a great time on Sunday. I watched Ted Leo and the Pharmacists thrive and excel at playing a bunch of Alice Cooper songs that sounded so good when they did them that it made me believe that this is how Alice Copper thinks he sounds or wants to sound. Alice Cooper has always rocked, but Ted and his band had the extra ingredient of punk rock. Alice dabbles. I love Alice, but those songs sounded so much better when they (the Pharmacists) played them.

As I mentioned Spoony terrorized the audience with a faithful rendition of Charles Manson’s Garbage Dump which he learned how to play on guitar. You should have seen his face afterwards. He was so happy. There was a certain point halfway through the song where there was total silence. Everybody was staring in disbelief that it was going to continue and it did. That is probably one of the highlights of my life—being backstage and hearing Spoony sing Garbage Dump. By the time her got to the Garbage Pickers of America I had reached another level. It’s probably what Sting and Trudy feel like when they reach hour nine of their disgusting excessive fucking. I got into a different frame of mind. It was wonderful.

Danielle Henderson was a goddamn delight. We imported Jake Fogelnest from the West Coast for the sake of showing some videos. We all enjoyed a snicker or two. Nellie Mackay charmed the audience. She came out and sang Moon River in Portuguese and just accompanied herself on the ukulele. She’s very quiet. It is fun to watch because the way she holds an audience and transitions an audience from whatever bullshit I am giving them and serving in my skeleton unitard and chattering. It is equivalent to when you hypnotize a chicken. I don’t know how to, but you do that thing where you hold the bird and the bird is completely yours. That’s what Nellie does when she sings her first song. You are there. She’s there too, thank god. We showed a video. That was fun. I got out my stuff.

I’m disengaging completely with JS. I said something I regret about privilege and cisgender people. I’m staying out of it. I can’t do it anymore. I care too much. I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt people who are disenfranchised. I want to know more about the struggle of people who are queer, who are Trans, who don’t fit in. I really want to be part of the solution. I don’t want to be part of the problem. I want to be an ally. I think a lot of it has to do with listening more, so on with it. On with the listening I say. This is going to be the best summer ever guys!

I started working on the Joe’s Pub show. I am writing a few medleys. It will be mostly new stuff. That will be fun. That’s at Joe’s Pub. I just started thinking about it. When you are in a life crossroads and you are a shitty roommate to yourself in your head. “Are you going to climb these stairs or what you fucking lazy piece of shit?” Then another manifestation of myself asks, “Could you tell me again what’s at the top of the stairs?” That shitty voice in your head says, “Just fucking keep climbing!” This isn’t fair. I don’t know where I am going can i take a minute and rest? The negative voice says, “It’s your funeral. If you want to stagnate and get older while everybody else passes you.” Why did I even decide to go to a party at a walk-up anyway?

That’s where I am right now.

I’m also less than a month away from my birthday. Who cares? I’m trying to deal with the shitty roommate because she’s very loud when I am not distracted by other things. The more I think about the struggles of my 30s I think a lot of what I have been recognizing as adulthood has to do primarily with dealing with disappointment and not beating yourself up. The two things come in tandem to some extent. There’s a lot of escapism that is very tempting but I think the goal of being aware of when I beat myself up is a lofty one, but manageable to some extent, and the surpassing it—I have no idea how long that is going to take. I talk about this because it is important and I think it keeps you from making things and giving yourself the right to be seen and to be heard, and to be silly and to start new things that don’t necessarily ensure that you can pay rent next month or start a family in time before your eggs aren’t buoyant.

I know that beating yourself up, at least for me creates an IUD state of my mind where no new idea can implant. If I have all of these, you should do this...you can’t hold a day job...you stink...why not this, why not that? It is just barren soil and it is hostile juice in the womb because somebody implanted a shitty roommate. You know what an IUD is right? It is basically a foreign object. Doctors figured out that if you put it in a lady’s womb it will make it impossible for her to be comfortable. I don’t like the idea of putting foreign...anyway. It makes your womb a hostile place and no embryo can implant. I guess I am comparing that to IDEAS!

I want to address howwasyourwiki.com which is my favorite website but there are a couple of things I need you to fix. First of all please remove Mrs. S. from the enemies of the show. I do not need that. Do you remember when Jerry went on Letterman and called the woman who accused his wife of plagiarizing the ‘c-word’? I don’t need that. I don’t need to be in the New York Post or is it the Daily News Russian Malloy. Please remove her from Enemies of the Show.

Howwasyourwiki.com for those of you who don’t know is a very helpful one stop shopping destination for things that are important that go on every week with us, with you and me in your brain and head. There are entertaining things I read. Jimmy does not want to be Jacks or Johnny. It is actually upsetting. He wants to be Jeff. He saw an infomercial for something and he thought the guy in the tennis shirt was cool. His name was Jeff and now Jimmy wants to be Jeff Jazz.

There’s a section on the site if you click ‘Episodes’ there’s a beautifully curated, but not yet complete, index of all of the episodes of what we’ve done so far with descriptions and trivia. It’s wonderful. It makes me proud to look back at. However there is an entry, #138 with Julianne Moore, named Oooooh! which came from a story that Jake Fogelnest shared with the Billy on the Street writer’s room in which Mr. Belvedere came into a reading of the television show Mr. Belvedere and accidently sat on his own balls and made that noise.

Some prankster, some Banksy type has gone into the the HWYWiki entry for this very episode and changed the specifics so that it is not about Mr. Belvedere but is about Eric Allen Kramer who is apparently the source of the ‘Who Jackie’ story. This drives me insane this is not the case. Please for the love of god somebody go to the How Was Your Wiki page and change it so that it reads, someone lied to Julie that Mr. Belvedere, Tracy Wells, not to be confused with Tracy Letts. Oh no! It’s not Tracy Wells. Tracy Wells plays Heather. What the hell is going on? Christopher Hewitt played Mr. Belvedere in 117 episodes, from 1985-1990 do you believe that? What a gig. Flush with money. Bob Eucher is still alive. Please change Eric Allen Kramer to Christopher Hewitt and change Roseanne to Mr. Belvedere, thank you.

The other thing I want to address is my idea about the relationship between Cookie monster and Grover and I hope it is not racially motivated because both of them are blue. Are they brothers? Are they cousins? This is something I have been thinking about because they are both wonderful Sesame Street Muppets. They are my favorites on Sesame Street. You can’t like Snuffleupagus because then it looks like you are into old men’s balls and wispy pubes. That pachyderm is like a Dali painting. You can’t like Snuffleupagus the best. If you like Big Bird I picture you are like Temple Grandin. I imagine Temple Grandin really connects to Big Bird? Who else is there? Forgetful Jones? Give me a fucking break. Oscar the Grouch, I guess but he’s a little bit too Limp Bizkit and not enough Beastie Boys. I can’t believe Spin Magazine went out of business before they hired me as Editor in Chief.

Anyway Grover and Cookie monster are definitely related. Are they brothers, probably not. Here’s why. Cookie Monster doesn’t seem like the kind of individual who has a brother. Cookie Monster seems like he has a sister and she is a mess. Cookie Monster has a sister a couple of years older, and is named Irene or something. Irene is, I don’t know, 39, she works in production. She works way too hard. She takes so much shit. Her credit cards are maxed out. Cookie Monster’s should do the world a favor and go to a debtor’s anonymous meeting for once. Skip a Weight Watchers meeting and deal with your finances. That’s what Suze Orman would say if she hadn’t died in that tanning bed. Let’s all think about Cookie Monster’s sister tonight as we go to sleep and pray to the judges of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop Challenge that she will be ok. She won’t. Cookie Monster’s sister Irene is never going to change. She can try to change, and it is charming whenever she has a new book that she thinks is going to be the answer or she met a new guy, she stayed on Paleo for 3 days, but it’s just not happening. Every once in a while Irene dreams about the days before she ate the Apple. Or did she give the Apple to Adam. I don’t know how the origin story of this particular slut-shaming goes. I know there was a snake.

A snake without Alice Copper is like a day without sunshine.

When Cookie Monster’s sister dreams every once in a while she remembers a time before she knew she wasn’t beautiful and that not being beautiful was the worst crime a woman could commit. She goes back in time and Irene Cookie Monster is just herself. Brownies are delicious. Sunshine feels good. Her imagination had absolutely no limits. Then she wakes up and goes to work. I will be passing around a hat. If you could donate money to the Eric Bogosian fund for performing in dark rooms, they do not take checks.

I haven’t seen Maleficent. I don’t know if it is a thing for millennial gays and their accessories such as myself. Is that ok to say? Is it ok to call myself a hag still? Maleficent is in theaters and Angelina Jolie is not a real human. She is a Real Doll who works for UNICEF. Glen Hetrick put things in her cheekbones. She looks fabulous. I would buy a ticket to see Maleficent if I had it in writing that it’s just her lip-syncing an Annie Lenox song. If that movie is lights go down, previews, shut your cell phone off, opening titles are beautiful graphic Danny Elman, air conditioning, Maleficent steals your focus. She lit exquisitely and then, (sings) ‘Why.’ I’d be thrilled! Thrilled I say. But Julie, then the movie would only be 4 minutes. Exactly! We’d have more time for pizza pies.

If I started an ironic pizzeria in Brooklyn how much time would I need to set aside to count my money? If I set aside a pizzeria with big plastic pitchers of Coke, with birthday parties and I don’t even know. People off the El Gran stop would lose their goddamn minds.

I don’t know who Slenderman is. I have read 4-5 descriptions of him, and the whole goddamn myth. I guess there was a crime. The whole thing is bupkis and it’s nonsense. Kids need to get their shit together! Slenderman is a silly notion except that I heard his new cookbook is going to be fabulous, all on the Slenderman Plan, which is a three phase diet. It’s all carbs and sugar the first week. The second week you don’t eat anything and the third you become a ghost. I guess it’s the new thing. I think it is incredible that Reddit is expanding to the diet, fitness and nutrition world. I am really excited to see they are branding some lifestyle materials.

Slenderman...Come on everybody. Is this our generation’s ‘Nessie’? How is ‘Nessie’ not a character on House of Cards or a nickname that Frank Underwood has for his wife? By the way did you get this season that his wife calls him Francis? Is that clear? She doesn’t call him Frank. I don’t know if you have noticed that. “Nessie, the fish have become the fowl.” That’s what Kevin Spacey would say to the camera. “Good old Nessie, I suppose the tiger has a taste for meat.”

I don’t mean to sound that I am not paralyzed with gratitude because I had the opportunity to do my dream job, to shoot this pilot. I am still figuring out if that was my week in fantasy space camp or if it was training for me to actually go into space. I also had a fabulous show on Sunday. I want to thank everybody who came out. I know I promoted that show really hard and it was annoying to follow me on social media. Believe me, I pray for a day when I don’t have to shove that stuff down your throats, but not today and it ain’t tomorrow either. Joe’s Pub, Joespub.com. It was really nice. It was a nice reunion. We were back together again and having so much fun. It was like a hootenanny. We were together--Hotlips, Spoony, Jake and Ted. We knighted Danielle so now she is officially Dame Danielle Henderson. We had a knighting ceremony; she and Jon Lawless are the only knighted entities in the How Was Your Week World. It was great. It was really special.

John (?) has questions. Let’s see what he has to say.

Is Snoopy as Joe Cool Groovy?

Yes.

Is Frieda of the Peanuts comic strip a worthy candidate for the RHHOF?

No. The little red hair girl is in the RHHOF though.

Ryan Hotlips Houlihan has not done a very good job of describing who Iggy Azalea is. There was something on my feed that said, “Listen to this mash-up of Iggy Azalea’s Fancy with Reba McEntire’s Fancy. I thought, “Nope,” my version of that is listening to Bobby Gentry’s version of that in full. Who is this Iggy Azalea person? I’ll watch a video. She’s a tall white blond model chick. What the fuck? That’s stupid. If you want someone who can rap really well and be great why does she have to look like that? There are probably a million women that don’t look like that and are better.

Guys I have really cutting edge ideas about the music industry. No one will listen to me because I am almost 36. Iggy Azalea—I have almost no interest in her. Who do I like now? I don’t know, Paul Williams. He’s very hot. He’ll talk to you about addiction for twenty five cents. You don’t even have to ask him. All you need to do is think about it really hard and he will show up and be in your living room. He’s bring his own dry erase board and talk to you about addiction. Paul, I don’t know if this is in line with AA. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving.” All right. Then one of your gay lady friends comes over and asks, “Who’s the blonde?” “Denise, shut it! Shut it for one hot minute. Would that be too much to ask?

Who else sent me notes this week? Max Jones. Max Jones is a teacher. “May is so crazy for teachers that I forgot to send my monthly love offering. Aw, so sweet Max, thank you. I have the best people in my life. People who listen to this show are the only people that I need. All right, let’s start the show. I want to make it clear, I’m not apologizing for the things I have said and done, I’m just moving on. You can tell I’m moving on because of how much I am talking about it.

We only have one guest because one guest is all we need.