When talk becomes art

A long time ago, Mr. Brilliant told me that Oscar Wilde once said, "Never meet the artist, for he is always less than his work." It seemed like something that Oscar Wilde would say, and as those who recognize that the title of this blog comes from a Wilde quote know, we here at B@B, like just about everyone from the Smart-Ass New York Jew School of Writing, have embraced Oscar as a kind of muse.

From Dorothy Parker, who alone among us had the decency to credit Mr. Wilde:

If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.

...to Fran Leibowitz and the many other snarky writers who emerged in the 1980's and beyond, Wilde's wry view of the universe has represented the kind of coping through humor that those of us who otherwise would tend towards despair have sought as a lifeline.

There's no denying that whether it's recognized or not, most of today's humorists hearken back to Dorothy Parker, who proved that if your head is going to be a mess, at least you can be witty and clever about it; and therefore indirectly back to Oscar Wilde, who navigated the hellish existence of being a gay man in Victorian England and still managed to leave us with not just a wealth of brilliant writing, but some of the most cogent aphorisms on the human condition.

Because if you can't laugh while the maelstrom of your mind plays its tricks on you, you'll end up in a fetal position in the corner.

Which of course brings us to the new daily online videocast, which just completed its second week, put together by Air America's Designated Family Shitheads, Marc Maron and Sam Seder. That these two most prominent casualties of Air America's horrifically interchangeable revolving door management over the past four years are back in the fold is enough of a miracle, but it seems they've been allowed to put together a show that showcases what each of them does best, without the limitations of radio -- the FCC-required language censorship, the breaks for commercials for John Cummuta's Get Rich Quick system and Hydroxytone wrinkle stopper, the need to build ratings quickly so that Al Franken and Randi Rhodes can get paid.

It's well-established by this point that the cancellation of Morning Sedition was the first in a series of bad decisions made by assorted management types hired by Air America investors in an attempt to quickly build something that took conservatives over a decade to do. Managing Air America has been seen by far too many of its executives as a vanity project, with Danny Goldberg using the network to promote his record label and Mark Green using it to give himself a show to which no one is interested in listening.

Perhaps it's because there are no doubt a fair number of premium subscribers like myself whose memberships are up in February and who were planning to cancel because once Ron Kuby was hired instead of Sam Seder to replace Randi Rhodes in afternoon drive time, there was no longer any reason to subscribe at all. But somebody in Charlie Kireker's new team realized that a) the future of Air America is not in AM radio (to which no one under the age of thirty listens anymore), but in streaming media; and b) very quietly and off-premises, Sam Seder and Marc Maron were putting together a weekly videocast that had generated a loyal and faithful audience of people who had been around since Air America's founding in 2004 and more importantly, had built a strong relationship with these on-air talent that had only grown the more they were screwed over by company management. So Air America Radio became Air America Media, and who better to kick off this trip into uncharted territory than the gonzo red-haired stepchildren who had been around, at least on the periphery, since the beginning.

Since I am once again gainfully employed, I'm no longer able to catch the broadcast live, but at least for now, previous shows are available free at the Maron v. Seder web site, and they are definitely worth your time.

In a just world, the Maron v. Seder videocast would prove to the world why intelligence is a GOOD thing, and just how boring a world full of Sarah Palins and that awful woman who finally tipped John McCain over the edge by claiming in her toothless voice that she can't trust Obama because he's an Arab would be. When you have a show in which Sam Seder is the straight man, you know you're in for an hour of some damn fine political snarkin'.

Sam has been doing yeoman work for over four years for people who have had no appreciation for what he does, taking whatever time slot they were willing to give him, and then staying on as Air America's blogger. But during that time, he also built his own show web site and learned enough about the technology to build the weekly VODcast and plant the seed that opened the door to what's being broadcast, on the web, OPPOSITE THEIR OWN RADIO GUY, at 3:00 PM Eastern time on weekdays.

But it's Marc Maron, who's been out in the wilderness of L.A. for the last few years, doing stand-up gigs, enduring another failed marriage, keeping his radio chops warm by filling in occasionally on Air America and NovaM, and wondering what he's going to do with his life, whose glee, and perhaps even relief, at once again having a daily outlet, whose creativity is exploding on this show. This show, from Thursday October 9, so far lacks old favorites like Rapture Watch and Lawton Smalls the Planet Bush correspondent (Kent Jones being too busy putting together his nightly sixty seconds on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show), but promises a number of new features, including "The Cat Psychic", an expansion of these videos done earlier from his house in L.A., and "The Angry Chef", which to my mind is a Comedy Central show screaming to get out.

"Ive accepted that my destiny is to to work with another angry Jew who's more successful at pretending he's not messed up than me, and we play off each other," Maron says, fully aware that he doesn't want to be part of any club that would have him as a member -- including those clearly sad, pathetic souls who were loyal Morning Sedition listeners, who organized countless letter-writing campaigns over the last few years in vain attempts to get him back into the Air America fold, and who were actually guilty of nothing more than recognizing the best damn radio comedy since the days of Jean Shepherd.

Which brings us back to the quote I cited. As it turns out, the quote is not from Oscar Wilde. I did some research a while ago and it seems to be from José Ferrer as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge, but whatever. It still applies. And so I'm going to ask you to watch Thursday's show right here. If you can't watch the whole thing, at least watch the opening rant about music and then tell me if that isn't an artist at work.

Maron always recounts in his publicity biography the story of a woman who said he's like Woody Allen, only he's Iggy Pop Woody Allen. I disagree. For sheer transportative storytelling, he's Iggy Pop Garrison Keillor. (I would have said Iggy Pop Spaulding Gray, but Maron is depressed enough as it is.)

It's genius, I tell ya. But don't tell Maron. He thinks people who recognize his work are stalkers.