Listen!

Harrigan is a docent at the Guggenheim, leading tours — "interactive discussions," which I now realize is redundant, "of current exhibitions" — and I thought it would be fun hearing her talk and a wide open door into art appreciation, so I followed her and about seven other people around the museum's current show, Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe. Not to be confused with the similarly-subtitled X-Files movie coming out this summer, like nine years too late.The centerpiece of Cai's show is Inopportune: Stage One, seen here lifted off someone's Flickr page. It's a pretty spectacular sight, and I don't have my own photograph because the Guggenheim has a team of security nazis telling tourists "no photography" and just being utter tools in general. I'll have more to say about this later.

It took me a while to get a grip on what's going on here, even though Cai's liner notes (or whatever the art museum equivalent is called) make a point of his trying to make the show straightforward and free from the elitist art references that occlude so many other modernists' meanings. First I saw a bunch of cars hanging from the ceiling with colored light rods sticking out of them. Then the colored light rods sort of fused with my mental images of fireworks, which is closer thematically, yet still utterly wrong as an abstraction of the artist's experience and intent.

I've never been good at this art appreciation thing. I sat through my Art Humanities class in college convinced it was one giant trick question: everything was pulled from somebody's ass, on either extreme of obvious or obscure and never just fitting together neatly. We might be looking at a slide of Raphael's Madonna of the Goldfinch and the professor will point out that the figures of Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist form a triangle, and a triangle has three sides, and there are three manifestations of God in the Holy Trinity so (duh!) this painting of Mary, two creepy naked babies, and a bird represents the Holy Trinity, and the class will be gaping like she just solved the Da Vinci Code. Connecting any three points with straight lines will make a triangle — sort of the definition of a triangle, there — and there are lots things that come in groups of three. Maybe Raphael was foreseeing the Stooges. It's possible.

Spoiler alert: Inopportune is Cai's artistic depiction of a car-bombing, conceived in the media frenzy after 9/11. We got the background from the non-interactive part, the respite, of the discussion: Post-9/11, pretty much up till the present day, the morning news would start your day off with whatever footage of a car skeleton, a rubble-strewn street, and some number of people dead came over the wire last night. In his frustration, Cai and his uncredited team built Inopportune, a kind of multiple-exposure image of a white Chevy exploding up into the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda. I was actually pretty fond of Fireworks in Dangling Cars, at least on an aesthetic level, but it's one of those things where you take a second look and see the work of someone who's bitching about media overexposure through a five-story installation in the entrance of a major museum. Discuss.

The methodology behind these "interactive dialogues," Museum Tours 2.0, comes straight from the darkened college lecture hall. Harrigan gave us a little background, then asked, "What do you see?" There's always somebody in the group who's really eager to speak up, plus somebody in the group ready to give an abstract answer to a very temporal question. "Liveliness. Chaos." (It's not Mondrian, but you'd need a really OCD life to pull uncontrollable chaos out of Cai's exhibition.) "Why do you think Cai insisted on using American cars?" Harrigan asked us, loaded but inevitable, and, "[There's an unmodified white car on the lobby floor, by the admissions line, and another one on the top floor, at the very peak of Wright's famous circular ramp.] Do we think the cars are falling, or are they going up?" And Final Jeopardy: "Why do you think Cai chose to call this show I Want To Believe?" In teacher mode, and she's good at this, Harrigan reminded us that there are no wrong answers — no mention of stupid answers, however — so feel free to speak up...

...except there are wrong answers, and I respect Cai for that. The cars, another spoiler coming up, are deliberately falling upwards, for example. This revelation turned him from an attention glutton in my mind to a pretty clever guy, at least with regard to Inopportune. You can't pick up the visual evidence in the picture I copied, but Cai's car-bombing in time transitions from (an abstraction of) reality to a sort of consoling quantum-mechanical fantasy: the explosions' colors become cooler and less realistic, blues and pinks, as the installation reaches upwards, and he imagines the car landing on the top floor, whole, and upright. Cai's thoughts on the piece pretty clearly draw an image of hope against the depressing media blitz, but that's really facile for somebody in his position, like I said, hanging from the ceiling of the Guggenheim over thousands of gawking visitors.

What somehow became clearer in the post-9/11 media coverage, and I think what's so obnoxious about the images of terrorism broadcast that they reinforce the fundamentalists' attitudes towards your fear and your role in the larger world. The crawl, the talking heads, the dead count in Iraq (but, rarely in the Sudan, Myanmar, or — until it could be linked with Westerners protesting a sports event — Tibet): the world is so complicated, run by corporations and institutions, that you, the average nine-to-five worker or dispossessed immigrant, have zero agency. You might join with 71% of your fellow population calling for an end to the war in Iraq, and the guy running the show just says, "So?" With Inopportune, Cai crosses from media outsider to insider (the fact that he was always an art insider notwithstanding) and becomes the same shrill, dogmatic voice that pushed him into the project in the first place.

Inopportune rejects dialogue, and I feel like it does so much more insidiously, non-profit, than the media does. Yes, you can talk about the work, how it makes you feel, how you respond to it, in a group of six camera-wearers and a grad student volunteering her time. So long as you're insulated, you remain a consumer instead of a producer. So long as what you say doesn't actually matter. That's why you're not allowed to take pictures — it's not like the artist doesn't want his work preserved as a framed two-dimensional digital representation, because there are plenty of professional photographs of I Want To Believe flying around the web. Cai... well, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt... his patrons maintain their power, their importance, by being the sole presenters of the work, just like the mass media. Why have curators if some yokel visiting from Podunktown can decide whether Cai's work is important, and by whatever philistine pseudo-Democratic American Idol Kinkade-skewed criteria they use, no less!

So I'm being subversive here, saying what I really think of the piece, just like getting your daily news off of Digg.com. But I realize that without Cai's notes, and the Guggenheim's curation, I would've just been looking at some cars with lights. It's not that I mind being told what somebody else thinks; it's the disingenuous nature that starts controlling how I think that bothers me.

It's A Blanket!

I am such a sucker for mood lighting, soft techno-lounge music, and gimmicks, so I've been dying to spend an evening at trendy Manhattan club Duvet. Duvet, in addition to throwing Hunkmania every Friday and Saturday evening ("Indulge your bachelorette party fantasy, celebrate a birthday or the have the ultimate girls night out. Celebrate being a woman and enjoy life with these Sexy HUNKS!"), spoils the "dress to impress" crowd's hedonism with bottle service in bed, literally. Thirty dining beds, banquettes, and seven private "intimate" bedrooms where you either want to be the night's first couple or you want to just avoid. (I assume they're for people who don't exactly have a private zone at home.) Everyone's got to stand out somehow; if I ever got the chance to own a club, I'd call it "Hammock" and replace all the seats with... well, hammocks. Hey, it's better than my other idea, "Bidet." (But worse than my blanket fort cafe idea.)

I got my chance last night, cover-free, courtesy of Netparty, and it was... I guess the right word would be "comfortable." Really, all the excitement you'd expect from sitting on a bed. But as someone who'd like to see Western fashion move towards an all-pajama direction, I felt a sort of kinship. Like if you go the Olive Garden, is there any good reason you have to sit up straight, keep your feet off the table, not scratch yourself there?

Mites. Forgot about mites.

I thought folks would be claiming beds right away, but it looked like young professionals showed up for the happy hour first and sleepytime later. Personally, I like exploring first, so found the Ice Bar, the jellyfish aquarium (Duvet's website says it "houses over 100 exotic jellyfish," but I counted five), the bathroom, then found an empty giant bed and, you know, sat on it. Pros: 400-count sheets, imported Italian pillows. Cons: not as comfortable as the Brookstone bed, not allowed to jump on the bed (I assume, I didn't ask), and right, no duvets! Took my shoes off. Laid back, curled up. Wasn't bad. I mean, I could do the same thing at home; I even have the right lighting.

I really wanted to get out my laptop and shine under its soft gray light, but the mattress and booze still didn't put me enough at ease. Inevitably, someone thinking they're duly pitying me would come up and remind me, joshing, "Hey, work is over! Get out there and have some fun!" Which would be the point — not that my personal projects, this writing and stuff, isn't fun to me — but nobody's drifting my way in the first place and I only opened the computer like an anglerfish, passively luring folks over. I do want to try it some day, but I need to think of a witty, but friendly retort first. Instead I started chatting with this girl whose friends left her alone — second unsolicited, unprompted conversation with a chick ever! Yay! (?)

I'd go back, with friends, but I bet what you're dying to hear about are the bathrooms! God, the best thing about these posh places are the comically nouveau trendy bathrooms, as if the concept needs improvement. Duvet has two bathrooms, both obviously designed by someone who's never used a public bathroom before. First motif is the one-way glass doors, so there's a mirror on the outside and tinted window inside, so you don't miss a minute of the party while you're evacuating. Of course I knew no one could see inside, but the setup doesn't ameliorate any piss anxiety, especially since the top floor bathroom's right freaking there, behind the clear jellyfish tank and it's a swinging door and there's no lock. Second motif is no toilets or urinals, just a drain running along the wall, like the one you're not supposed to use at the gym shower, and kind of fenced off. I took pictures. I hope they're expecting me to tie my horse to those posts or something, because there's no way I'm peeing there.

Meeting

I met up with some friends, and some friends of friends, this evening and brought them to P.S. 1, which... if you ever want to impress your crew with both how much obscure, over-the-river New York City you know and how coolly Zen you are, P.S. 1 is the singular place to bring them. It's a branch of my still-loathed Museum of Modern Art and full of dippy, over-commentaried installations, but redeemed by James Turrell's awesome sanctuary Meeting, guaranteed to leave jaws agape.

It's both easy and hard to describe: a white room, wooden bench around the perimeter, and a hole in the ceiling. A skylight, literally. Turrell pulls off some sort of optical illusion where the ceiling's maybe twelve feet over your head, your eyes scan across to the hole and the sky is right there. At my first Meeting, there was a debate among my friends, "Is that just twilight projected onto a screen? It has to be. I bet they're pumping cold air and wind in the room... no, look, there's a plane. How did he do that if it's a screen?"

Once your mind resolves the issue, the Turrell room is a great, chilly little place for meditation. No one will stop you if you need to sit in lotus position for hours or perform corpse pose on the bench, and there really aren't too many places where a bunch of grown adults, strangers to each other, will lie on a dirty carpet together and it won't be awkward. Plus we got lucky with a perfect, deep pink evening where the illusion crept closer and closer as dusk turned to night.



Credit for the photos goes to Harrigan, who's a photo ace. Seriously, she was setting the aperture and exposure manually. I can barely take pictures that aren't motion-blurry...

Same scene. My picture:

Harrigan's picture:

Not that my picture doesn't have its charm, but I was going for something a teensy bit different.

Also on display, this guy. Min Tanaka, a conceptual artist putting on a special live exhibition. So watch the video, and see if you can guess what his conceptual art gimmick is. (Note: I had the camera sideways, filming, figuring it would correct itself. Oops. Doesn't matter, since he's not any less inexplicable rotated ninety degrees.)

If you guessed that he "dances the space around him," because you are unaware that "dance" is an intransitive verb, then you are correct. Also, he doesn't like being videoed, since some security ninny told me to put the camera away, even though there were at least five professional photographers in the room, blocking everyone's view, and taking snapshots. So I didn't get on camera the part of his dance where he randomly bangs his head against the wall, presumably because the space told him to do so.

I Followed in the Footsteps of Giants

The Columbia Alumni Association held their first "rooftop happy hour" event of the summer at the China Club, a New York hot spot that the China Club website describes as "one of America's most glamorous nightspots." Wow. Me and my hundred-fifty thousand dollar education really hit the big time. Just how classy is this place? They held the premiere party for The Waterboy there! Bruce Willis frequents the club... playing sets with his band. So does Hanson. (It appears they still exist.) Donald Trump is a familiar face, and here's some pictures of Paris Hilton wasting space at the China Club. God, I hope they disinfected that place. There's a joke that will never, ever grow old.

It turns out that the China Club really isn't my scene. What is my scene, then? Probably someplace where the management isn't worried that I will potentially be murdered in their establishment. The security at this place makes the long, shoeless lines at the airport X-ray machine look sane. First, there's the velvet rope and some guy with an overactive pituitary gland. Do you even really need the velvet rope? I think its contribution to the overall security plan is quite negligible. Anyway, there's Pituitary Guy — he's the one who checks your ID. Then there's Little Guy Who Hands You Your Ticket. He's one of the less important components of the whole ridiculous entry ritual, second only to the velvet rope.

Okay, so you go inside, and it's like the crummiest apartment building you've ever been in. There's a flight of stairs, and that's it, and it honestly reminded me of Castlevania back when it was on the Commodore 64 and it didn't have enough memory to actually present you with decisions about where you wanted to go. I proceeded to level two: the metal detectors.

I go through the men's metal detector and another beefy security guy takes like ten minutes figuring out how to open up my bag. He looks through my stuff — I feel kind of bad for him, because I keep a lot of garbage in my bag, like used tissues or half-eaten Mars bars from Halloween, or for all I know, there could be a bloody tampon in there. Generally, what do I care, since it's my garbage and I'm the only one who goes through there. Here's what Beefy Guy says to me, no kidding: "You're a brave man, carrying that computer around the city." Really? Cause Pituitary Guy outside might be just for show and exclusivity, but they wouldn't have you manning these metal detectors unless they expected to find something. And I'm pretty sure it's not your A-list clientèle trying to sneak weapons in here down their pants. Maybe somebody in 50 Cent's entourage, maybe.

It gets better. I didn't set off the metal detector, and there's not so much a plastic spork in my bag, but Beefy Guy finds it necessary to pat me down. I want to repeat that. I am a five-foot, six-inch 130-pound white kid with glasses who codes websites and is afraid of spiders, and this guy thinks I'm packing heat. Fucking awesome! I wish I had a gun with me, just so I could be like, "Yeah! You're the first person in twenty-five years to ever get it right! You deserve a promotion!"

Another flight of steps, level three. Here's the cashier, except there's no cover so I just hand her the ticket that Little Guy Who Hands You Your Ticket gave me two minutes ago. You couldn't just tell the cashier that there's no cover till eight or whenever? You really need to kill the rainforest here?

Now there's like four more flights of stairs, and they get just darker and scuzzier the higher up you go. Eventually, you make it up to the roof, the Jade Terrace and the photos off the website are complete bullshit. There's no couches, tables, or Oriental rugs inside, and that island of plants in the middle of the rooftop lounge isn't there. Instead, there's this authentic Chinese uh... birdbath, I guess. I don't know what it is, but the police barricades around it really set it off nicely. In reality, the place has all the class you'd expect of a celebutard hangout featured on The Insider, even if it wasn't "I Love The 80's At A Hundred Decibels" night. Much like the people who frequent the China Club, the whole atmosphere struck me as overblown, fake, and totally tacky.

Let me explain just how tacky the China Club is. Have you ever been to a barbeque with your friends, and somebody went to Home Depot and bought a couple of those tiki torches, so you could all pretend you're in Hawaii, eating poi and having a limbo contest? Now imagine giving that person a budget of a couple million dollars and a neon sign that says BAR. That's how tacky the China Club is.

You might want to know what goes on behind the velvet ropes. Well, on one "Legendary Monday," these two bar skanks did a frightening impression of your grandparents making out. This woman thought she was hotter than she actually is. This guy made an ass of himself, and if there's a God, picked up a few venereal diseases in the process. Basically it's a bunch of people, many of whom are unaware that they look like Gorgons, trying way too hard to have fun.

Hanami

Today was a sunny afternoon, around sixty degrees, perfect to spend at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden — unless God hates you and cursed you with allergies. I'm not a big fan of plants, but there are two good reasons to check out the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens when the weather's right: the Japanese garden and the cherry-blossom season, which is in peak bloom right around now.

I'm a bit jealous, since every plant I touch turns to dust in a matter of days. We've got something that kind of resembles a garden at our house, tulips and lilies, but its life cycle is so depressing I wish it weren't even there. Fifty-one weeks of the year, they're just these ugly brown leafy sprout things. One day in April, they bloom and they're gorgeous, and for the next six days, they pretty much fall apart, leaf by dying leaf. I don't know what I'm doing wrong: they get food and water and only occasionally run over by my car.

We've also got a bunch of hideous, non-flowering plants in front of our house and I'm surreptitiously trying to kill them, with no success at all. My dad actually pays to have these monstrosities put into the ground, and I'm supposed to water them. (Dad, plants have survived hundreds of millions of years without me watering them. We're disrupting their natural evolution! This is just playing God! Uh... plant God.) I don't get the point of non-flowering shrubbery — aside from their role in the carbon cycle and keeping life on the planet functioning, I mean. They're just big blobs of fauna, without any structure like a bonsai tree, shape like an evergreen, or color like flowers. And they attract bees, but thankfully not so many lately.

Seriously, pests though they are, the disappearing bees — colony collapse disorder — is a big damn problem. No bees means no pollination, which means no plants, which means no animals that eat the plants, which means no food for us. On that happy note, here's the obligatory pretty pictures.


Ironically, the cherry blossom garden and the Zen garden are both full of New York City's perennial Japanese tourist population. Which confounds me. When I get the time and money to visit Tokyo, it's not like I'm gonna be spending my vacation at Hyper-Convenience U.S. Mart.

This... Isn't... Jeopardy!

I've been a vast repository of arcane, useless knowledge since my earliest days, when I'd spend hours after school reading the World Book Encyclopedia. There was something about those glossy pages that made them much more enticing than running around the playground; that, and there weren't approximately five billion wasps living in the encyclopedia. I didn't actually realize that accumulating trivia might have some long-term benefits, the most prominent being that I joined the quiz bowl team and got to play with those buzzers just like a real game show... from the 1960's. Look, if you're into painting, or playing tennis, or the flute, how often do you get to push a button and have an electronic gizmo make a noise? Never. That's how often.

But here in America, it's hard to find a quiz bowl — probably thanks to our proud heritage as ignoramuses — and even harder to find a good one. Last night, Harrigan, Jason, and I tried out Quizz-Off, the misspelled, apparently ad hoc pub quiz down at Pete's Candy Store of the drunken spelling bees, and it was a little disappointing. The questions were comically simple (see my note about our proud American heritage above), but more importantly, I don't remember quiz bowl ever being so lethargic. This is why you need the buzzers: to eliminate the long, dead periods between questions, while the team is conferring and writing out their answers in triplicate, or worse yet, while the emcee is walking around the bar, handing out crude photocopies of the pictures in the visual round. We didn't stay long.

I'd go back to Pete's though, maybe for their bingo night or poetry series, and of course to be jealous of the huge factories-turned-lofts all around Williamsburg. Just not to show off how smart I am.

Much better — smarter and somewhat entertaining — is The Big Quiz Thing downtown at The Slipper Room, which contrary to the self-promotion on the website, is hardly New York City's sexiest event space. I've been in sexier auto body shops. It doesn't matter every other Monday night anyway, cause everyone's keeping their clothes on for trivia night. The Big Quiz Thing is emceed by Noah, who's half Wink Martindale and half campy Reno lounge act. I go to The Big Quiz Thing and I'm usually too distracted by his sequin-covered leisure suit to actually answer questions. At least he keeps the show moving with fast questions, inane music, and the sometimes-amusing banter between him, DJ Gretchen, and useless guy in the background Eric. It's not Jeopardy!, but despite the cheese factor, The Big Quiz Thing succeeds as a trivia contest, with a good range of questions from the Stuff You Should've Learned In School to stuff you've probably never seen before but a team of smarties could work out. The $200 prize and $1.89 trophy isn't bad either.

Reason #105 To Love Grounded

...is that you can come by in the morning, around 9:45 or so, sit down, order a coffee, and feel up one of the hot but not hot in a conventional way baristas. Grounded is this coffee shop in the city that I shouldn't be telling you about because it's a perfect storm of awesomeness and tinyness, and it's tough enough to get a table in here without you, dear reader, stopping by. (Although if you do stop by — you'll have to get a map and find it yourself — and you see me on the couch in the back, I'll slide over and make some room.)

There's this guy two tables down who's gotta be in his fifties and, okay, first I just saw him talking to the barista when she came in for work. Maybe he's a regular or whatever — he's there on his laptop minding, presumably, his own business and she came up to him. They're chatting. Whatever. Some people are just friendly, and Grounded has a brand of unpretentiousness all its own. The other, hotter but still not hot in a conventional way barista even smiled at me when I forgot to take back my buy-ten, get-one-free card, which those bitches at Casablanca Tea Room would never, ever do. Okay, but now Fifty-year-old Guy is sort of touching her, around the waist, like she's his prom date or something.

Maybe they're friends. Close friends.

My eyes are going back to my laptop but it's not two seconds later and he's all over her in ways that would definitely get him in trouble with the wife later on, massaging her thighs and ass like she's made of dough. You know that jar they've got up by the register that says, "Tips are good for karma?" Looks like they're good for something else, too.

A few minutes later, after she's punched her timecard or whatever, she goes back to this guy's table with her nose in a bag of organic fair-trade coffee, the most erotic of all the olfactory sensations, and they're ready for another go-around. Jeez, some of us are here, trying to think of stuff to write in our blogs, and you two really need to get a room. Still, it's always nice to know the possibility exists; it's a huge improvement over the Starbucks "they can touch you, but you can't touch them" policy.

Pictures of Animals Doing It

I went to the Bronx Zoo yesterday because Wednesday's pay-what-you-want day and I'm cheap. I went two years ago on a cold, snowy weekday and had an awesome time, and yesterday wasn't bad either. In the wintertime, a lot of the animals are down in their Bahama summer home, which is okay with me cause the zoo is really huge and hard on your feet and you never get to see everything anyway. The real problem was the most dangerous prey and their obnoxious little offspring and strollers and crap; I was kind of hoping the weather would be lousy and they'd all stay inside their dens, but it turned out to be a warm, sunny day. Plus the zoo is a lot prettier in the fresh snow than it is deluged in muddy slush.

Here's the highlights:
Baby giraffe, and damn these animals are awkward. Every step he took on those thin, thin legs I was sure something was going to shatter.

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Some sort of monkey. You can't really see it in this picture, but she (I assume) is leaping around her cage with a baby guenon clinging to her belly. It would've been really cute if she weren't surrounded by a million toddlers and their moms all saying, "Awww, look at the little baby monkey! How cute!"

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Adorable mice.

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As an antidote to the mice, I present lizards putting on a show. It's too bad they mate very slowly, or there might have been more parents answering their kids' awkward questions.

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I actually took this picture the last time I was at the zoo, but these white-naped cranes are the real reason I came. They're lanky but majestic birds and I could watch them dance around all day. Now through the magic of digital photography, you too can feel like you've watched the cranes all day. You're so lucky....

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I was on my way out when I ran into this peacock. Being birds and all, they don't really stay inside their pens, although they know that home is where they get fed. This guy was nice enough to walk right up to us, and I got some nice photos. Too bad I didn't get a picture of him flying back into his pen, cause when he opens his wings, he's freaking huge.

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Black leopard.

I want to follow up on my little Daily Show: Live! posting back there. Getting to the show was tedious – they make a huge-ass deal about having you arrive no later than 4:30, even though taping doesn't start till well after six, and there's a whole lot of standing around, waiting, and hoping the audience manager doesn't confiscate your cell phone. I don't know if they were afraid someone would start chatting with their Faves in the middle of the taping (it seems unlikely) or if they were afraid a phone would ring in the middle of the taping (which, I don't see how confiscating them helps with that, cause it's not like the phones know that they're away from their owners). I was just glad they did, because the jackass standing near me in the audience pen was calling all of his friends just to brag about being at The Daily Show. Not even subtle or anything: "Hey, man, sorry I totally forgot we were supposed to hang out tonight, but I'M AT THE DAILY SHOW so maybe can reschedule to a day when I'm not AT THE DAILY SHOW." Shut up, jerkface. You give cell phone users a bad name. You and people with Bluetooth headsets.

The show was hilarious and Jon Stewart was really, typically funny… plus he took more audience questions than he did the first time I saw a taping. Stewart also introduced Louis Black – his stand-up show at Columbia was probably the second-funniest moment of my college career – and did a longer, ad lib satellite bit with Colbert that won't be in the broadcast show. Anyway, if you're in the city, and you feel like standing on a long line with little hope of making it to the front, I recommend trying to get tickets to The Daily Show. Much better than Letterman.

Oh yeah, my seats sucked again. Better than last time, though: front row. Just that I spent most of the taping looking at either the back of Stewart's head, or the back of the cameraman's head.

Also, I found the warm-up guy – they bring a loudmouth comedian out right before taping to get the audience all ready to laugh – I found him painfully irritating. Like, we clap for him and he's gotta be one of those "I can't heeeear you…" types of people. There's two-hundred fifty of us clapping; I'm pretty sure you can hear us. It could've been merely disappointing: The warm-up was this guy Paul Mercurio; I've seen him do stand-up and he's pretty funny. But I can't freaking stand when the comic has to make an unwitting, unwilling audience member part of his routine. Especially when I'm that unwitting, unwilling audience member. It's like being in class and having to spend the whole two hours with a mantra, mentally discouraging the professor from calling on you.

After five minutes of seeing how loud we can clap and scream (answer: loud), we've got to practice telegenic laughter, which is deep and guttural. We do it as a group a few times, then Paul Mercurio points to some older British guy who won't laugh for shit, then he points to me and has me telegenically (and spontaneously) laugh. For comparison, I guess. What can you do? He'll make fun of you if you don't laugh, and he'll probably make fun of you if you do… but I really wanted to just be honest with him: Do or say something funny, and I'll laugh. That's how it's supposed to work, dude. I can see him in front of that Gotham brick wall: "Hey folks, how're you all doing tonight? Laugh. Laugh, dammit! I COMMAND YOU!"

Unlucky Audience Member

I'm getting to see a taping of The Daily Show as part of my fake news class, and I couldn't be (too much) more excited. I saw The Daily Show live once before, in my sophomore year of college, and it was probably the funniest half hour of my higher education… unlike the Letterman show: painfully, but not unexpectedly, lame. The only thing is that I seem to have the absolute worst luck as a studio audience member, like I always get the seat way, way, in the back corner, overlooking the sound booth. They've got some intern or something usher you into the studio – it's a very slaughterhouse type of experience – and it just never pays to be first in that line. You might know, for example, that Letterman comes out before the show and talks with his audience, but I bet you didn't know he completely snubs the entire damn balcony.

And I always get the most pathetic guests. The first time I saw The Daily Show, the guest was Rob Morrow. Who? Exactly. On Letterman, I got to squint at Kristen Davis – post-Sex and the City shark-jumping – and some nine year old who knew a lot about baseball. I guess Regis Philbin and Al Franken were busy that night. And tonight's guest is the author of Stem Cell Wars, some book I've never heard of. If I were home, I'd be checking out what's on Futurama during this segment of the comedy.

What really irritates me is that you can only get ten group tickets at a time, so our class had to split up and go to two different tapings. Guess who the special guest was for the other taping... George fucking Clooney. I don't even like George Clooney or care about what he has to say (really, I don't, shut up George), but at least I recognize him. When I pass him on the street, I text a message to the Gawker Stalker page. Rob Morrow – so what, he was in Northern Exposure? That was like fifteen years ago. I wouldn't even give up my seat on the subway for him.