Radio Diatribe

“I really want to go, but I can’t because I have a project that I have to do that is, like, not retail.”

From Michael Ian Black is a Very Famous Celebrity: “Some People Do Not Like Celebrities”

I only hope these same people will accept and support me on my next television project, Albert Schweitzer Can Suck Me, in which I use my winning sense of humor to rip the famed humanitarian a new asshole.

On Dave Eggers, in an interview with Claire Zulkey:

Zulkey: Michael, according to the Page Six gossip columns, author Dave Eggers will simply refer to himself as “Dave” in the byline of his next book. How does it feel to have three times the name as him?
MIB: It only makes sense that I would have three times the name as Dave, since I am three times the man. Seriously, however you measure it, I am three times the man as that shit heel Dave Eggers. I’ve got three times the pecs, three times the delts, and three times the glutes. I could kick Dave “I’m brilliant” Eggers’ ass from here back to that crappy literary magazine from which he came. Dave, if you’re reading this, put up your dukes, fucker, because I’m going to rain pain on your backside.

From an interview with Stuff magazine:

Interviewer: Does your role as a gay guy in Wet Hot American Summer ever get you hit on by guys?
MIB: I do well with men. I think men like me because they assume I’m gay because I come off as kind of gay.
Interviewer: Does the wedding ring throw them off?
MIB: I don’t think it does. The fact that I’m oftentimes seen giving hand jobs reinforces the wrong impression that I’m gay. The obviously incorrect impression. I don’t know where they get that. It might be the fact that I’m often getting fucked in the ass. People tend to judge a book by its cover. Just because I’m giving you a BJ doesn’t mean I’m into dudes. That’s the furthest thing from my mind when I’m sucking you dry. I’m not into it, I’m doing it, but I’m not into it at all.

From the interviewers’ introduction for the an interview with kittenpants:

I asked Michael if we could interview him, and also why he thought so many people were finding kittenpants via the google search “Michael Ian Black gay.” His response:

Who is this ‘we’ you keep referring to? As in, ‘We’ll send you some questions.’ Your little rinky-dink web site is obviously the product of one person, you, and boasting of this immense staff is not going to fool or impress anybody. As far as the person who searches your site for ‘Michael Ian Black gay,’ that was me. Mystery solved.

During an interview with Gothamist:

The only reason [Michael Showalter] wanted to make the movie was so he could fucking be in it. He’s so fucking self-absorbed. He would have played all the parts if he could. He’s like Peter Sellers without the accent or the talent.

A few days ago, I’ve made a startling discovery: mathNEWS was semi-relevant for a very brief moment in 1996. For those of you who have no idea what a mathNEWS is, it is the publication of Math students at the beloved University of Waterloo; at least that’s what it is officially. Unofficially, and more realistically, it is largely an excuse for Dungeons & Dragons addicts, who, by the way, are obscenely obese or dorky or both, to, umm uhh… I guess I don’t know ’cause I’ve never met them; I just hate mathNEWS and the dorky fatties for writing it.

Anyhow, back to the story: it turns out Filler, the legendary web column written by the beautiful, sexy, charming, smart Heather Havrilesky under pseudonym Polly Esther, featured a link to mathNEWS on its May 1, 1996 inaugural issue.

I’ve never felt so close to someone that I admire since that guy at the Gap told me he met Thurston Moore once at a garage sale in a Chicago suburb.

Apparently, it’s completely unclear whether I am male, female, or even a person. I’ve read through my past entries, and well, I couldn’t tell whether I am a guy, gal, or industrial meat grinder. So here it is, some rudimentary information about me that, assuming they are all true, could narrow me down to one of about 300 people.

Resfest is once again coming to Toronto.

I bought tickets for Four Seasons of Traktor: A Retrospective and Triple Threat. I decided against going to this year’s headlining event, the Beck retrospective. While I worship Beck and most of his music videos, I’ve seen them repeatedly, and it didn’t seem like it’s worth the time, especially since Beck’s not going to show up.

I just fucking love Tokion. It’s one of the very few ‘hip’ magazines that are insightful, informative, and actually hip, if slightly pretentious.

The latest issue (issue #49) features interviews with Sufjan Stevens, Amy Sedaris, and Takashi Murakami among others.

In the magazine’s interview with Sufjan Stevens, it is revealed that he is named Sufjan because his parents were in a cult, and the leader of the said cult liked to give Muslim names to his followers’ newborns.

Go back a dozen pages, Amy Sedaris learns from her interviewer that the name of the after school special where a nerd played by Helen Hunt does angel dust for the first time, jumps out the window, and cuts her wrists with shattered glass is Desperate Lives.

Skip forward eight pages, the interviewer asks Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse whether “he was worried that someone was going to be mad that [he] took it to the landfill instead of the scrap yard” after Brock told the interviewer that he dumped his junk car in a landfill, only to correct himself by saying he actually to took it to a junkyard one sentence later. That’s a typical issue of Tokion.

The best interview by Tokion (that I’ve read), I have to say is, the one with Mike Mills, the up-and-coming director whom I salivated over (in a very creepy way) on this very blog.

Mills talks at length about how much he hates art-school-y people (no one fucking gives a shit about whether Helvetica is in or not, he remarks) before proceeding to single out Sonic Youth as the most art-school-y people he has ever met, although he is pretty sure they never went to college. (Note: His comment is made all the more asinine by the fact that he is a graduate of the ultra-prestigious Cooper Union. Incidentally, the school is the venue for Tokion’s annual Creativity Now conference, possibly the most pretentious art-themed event in existence. Last year’s coference featured Kim Gordon as a panelist.)

He also rips on Tibor Kalman, the ex-editor of Colors and Mills’ ex-boss and label Beastie Boys’ now-defunct Grand Royal magazine, for which he was a graphics editor, as essentially juvenile and uninteresting. (Note #2: Grand Royal’s editor was Spike Jonze, Sofia Coppola’s ex-husband, who Sofia apparently found juvenile, uninteresting, and uncultured.)

The best part of the interview, after the Sonic Youth bit, of course, is where Mills complains about how no one can get a movie made unless there’s some famous actor willing to be in it. The interviewer points out that Mills only got funding for his movie, Thumbsucker, because of Keanu Reeves agreed to do it, and for the rest of interview, he becomes angry and resentful.

In stark contrast to interview by Tokion, Mills is quite well-behaved in practically all other interviews he has done over the last couple months — perhaps he was coking out when Tokion interviewed him?

Interviewing hip people, making them angry and/or confused, publishing the embarassing episode for all to see: that’s what makes Tokion so great.