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:

Web Urbanist is a pretty great blog when you’re looking for something that surveys trends in urban culture and art; it is a good counterpoint to a site like Wooster Collective, which posts more frequently but usually with only one work or artist per post.

Web Urbanist recently covered a variety of urban sports and in the time-honored tradition of this sort of list, I felt there was one unfairly left off. Buildering is in a way similar to parkour as a means of reappropriating urban space, although different in that it has been grafted onto the city experience, while parkour has developed whole-sale out of it.

Buildering is a portmanteau of the word “bouldering,” meaning rock climbing usually done low to the ground and without ropes, and the word “building.” I think the meaning of the word “building” is fairly widespread.

The footwork and other technical aspects of buildering aren’t very flashy and don’t lend themselves to melodramatic fisheye lens shots like the other sports of which Web Urbanist had video. All the same its hard not to admire the strength of the athletes and their ingenuity of finding places to climb in an otherwise unscalable environment. One more video of a buildering competition in Cologne, Germany:

Seriously, James? Does that even mean anything? And that wasn’t a rhetorical question. I think its one of the most brilliant, crass, and impenetrable phrases I’ve ever heard; the more I like it the more I don’t understand it.

Without focusing too much on one particularly brilliant turn of phrase, I want to aid in spreading this video as widely as possible. A quick search of my email shows I’ve sent the link to at least two other people in the past two months. Obviously a 48 hour old blog is the best place to continue its dissemination.

So why pass this video around?

Suburbia-bashing seems a particularly well-honed skill of many writers for both screen and print. I guess it could rise out of any number of wellsprings: maybe a desire to lash back at the author’s roots, maybe to justify thousand dollar a month New York City rents, or maybe out of a genuine dislike of the stereotypical suburban malaise.

But while I might agree in in very little parts with a movie like American Beauty, I walked away (from a second viewing years after the first) impressed at the sheer laziness of the creator, who consistently goes for the easiest blows possible. McJobs? Check. Repressed homosexuality? Check. Escape from complacency through “art”? Check. Sure, Desperate Housewives is a satire, but are its targets more than straw women?

In both of these examples, Suburbia is a character, but a poorly sketched out one at best. It dominates everything, but the assumption that it is a dark and looming presence goes unexplained and uncontested. James Howard Kunstler has a far superior take on Suburbia. More than just complaining about the problem, he knows how to fix it.

I couldn’t possibly do justice to the liveliness of Kunstler’s lecture, and there’s probably not much I can add to a lecture given 3 years ago and mentioned elsewhere since, so I’ll leave the video as its own testimony to the importance of design in creating livable and enjoyable spaces.

I will reiterate that unlike his fellows in fiction Kunstler does more than just whine about the way of things. He grabs it by shoulders, shakes it vigorously, and screams “Snap out of it!” Whether you agree with his advice or not, its nice to see someone stepping into the ring, rather than commenting disdainfully from afar.