A Commonplace Book

Contrary to what you might expect given his outspoken distrust of all things written word, Stephen Colbert has published a book, “I Am America (And So Can You)”. There’s an accompanying audio-book version with the same title, and word has it they’re not exact replicas of each other. No doubt someone at the publishing house is hoping to sell both versions to a few of the more die-hard members of the Colbert Nation.

To compare it to its cousin in source material, the literary companion to The Daily Show, “America (The Book)”, was fairly spectacular but was also somewhat divorced from the show itself. The authors took the tone of the show and applied it to American history as well as American politics, ending up as a sort of cross between The Daily Show and The Onion. Colbert’s book, meanwhile, stays closer to home, and I think that might have been a poor decision.

I’ve been more than well aware of how much the live aspect to The Colbert Report amplifies what I like about it, but listening to Colbert’s humor without the crowd and with careful editing really takes something away from the humor. Without going too deeply into the increasingly frustrating divide between The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (and I also hope without sounding too harsh), I think its fair to say that Stewart has regressed into poor imitations of Bush and Cheney for punchlines while Colbert has been pushing into new territory and experimenting as a comedian.

Watching Colbert flub a joke because the on-screen “Alpha Dog Of The Week” graphic barks too early is just as funny as watching him land a joke with perfect comedic timing. Similarly, there’s something amazing, even watching from home, the way he can get the crowd involved. I’m even fairly certain that the flub is planned, but I don’t really care as long as I can get lost in Colbert’s fantastically bizarre universe of wrist injuries, Tek Jansen novels, and killer bears.

By staying close to the format of the show and the character but channeling it into book format, I think Colbert and his staff of writers might have missed the opportunity to push in a different direction, something they do so well on their TV show. Its good for what it is, but the restrictions of the format have left it far short of even the more mediocre bits on the show.

A preview clip from his book can be found here.

And now, your moment of zen:

The Product

I just received my much-anticipated Gelaskins iPhone cover today, and I feel a bit like the kid who orders The Musculator from the back of a comic book. You know, this kid?

I’ve really come to appreciate the pop surrealist look as a sort of 2-D counterpart to the aesthetic of the vinyl toy scene, so the chance to wrap my precious new Apple toy in an equally precious cover was hard to pass up. And as I hoped, the art itself and the quality of the print is great. (You can see it at the top of this post: Blow Fish, by Nanami Cowdry.)

The Problem

It’s not really a skin. It’s definitely not a cover. It is a sticker. Granted, it’s a very pretty and very well made sticker, but it is still very much a sticker, and there are two problems with this.

The first problem is that, despite the offer of a freely available matching wallpaper, it is very obvious that the back of my iPhone has had a sticker slapped on it and nothing else. The pictures at Gelaskins only show a direct shot of the front and the back, giving an accurate picture of what your phone will look like but not a very accurate picture of what your phone will look like. The pictures I’m referring to are here.

The second problem is that this, being a sticker, provides zero protection. Its very possible that other Gelaskins for other products cover the entire device and provide a protective layer, but the iPhone skin only protects a fairly unimportant rear.

The Caveat

I should have known all of this.

My unhappiness with the Gelaskin is more a function of my not reading closely enough than anything else. It’s not like they don’t mention the size of the skin; they do. And it’s not like they don’t provide multiple pictures of it; they do. The problem is mainly that I had somehow convinced myself it would be more along the lines of a substantive case, like such.

So it was only $15. Why not just toss it and get the InCase cover linked above? Because the InCase cover is hideous. Do I really want my phone to look like the underside of a pair of Tevas?

I really liked the idea of a fully protective but still aesthetically pleasing phone cover. And since both InCase and Gelaskins are still in business, I think there is at least a market for both of these things separately. I’m hoping that in the near future one of them will move in the direction of combining the two. So I understand that it might be hard for Gelaskins , which I assume is a fairly small company, to take their archive of licensed art from stickers to rubber/gel covers. But if they did I would absolutely be first in (virtual) line to get one.

I watched Hotel Chevalier once it was released on itunes, but refrained from commenting on it until after I’d seen The Darjeeling Limited. I’m glad I gave it that two or three day waiting period, and the addition of some context didn’t hurt.

I think.

You see, I’ve had a running problem with a few of the popular indie/twee films of the past decade (e.g. Lost in Translation and Rushmore). It seems actors like Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman have discovered they can under-act to the point of sleepwalking through a role and still receive fairly flattering commentary from the critical base. (Note: I have no actual proof of their critical success. Just go with me here.)

I know that both Murry and Schwartzman are talented and have shown a more dynamic range of emotion in other movies. So when Hotel Chevalier was 13 minutes of Jason Schwartzman looking implacable, my hopes for The Darjeeling Limited were seriously undermined.

Perhaps because of those slightly lowered expectations, I was pleasantly surprised at the liveliness of The Darjeeling Limited. Of course, like most of Wes Anderson’s films it still left me with a strange desire for more information, more exposition. But alas, it was not to be. I suppose that, also like most of Wes Anderson’s films, I should be satisfied with the fact that I enjoyed it and not second-guess the details.

And thats what makes me think that focusing on Jason Schwartzman as a walking advertisement for lithium might be missing the forest for the trees. The characters fuction in the first as focal points for Anderson’s preciously organized sets and in the second as a sound board for dialogue which propels the plot forward towards more preciously organized set-pieces (and the occasional rumination on the difficulties of escaping the past).

Maybe focusing on any particular part of this movie (especially the actors, like we reflexively do on most other movies) really misses the point. Maybe Schwartzman, as an actor, is just as important as the luggage he carries.