low culture

How psyched was I that Paper Magazine decided to buck newsstand trends and go with a coverboy who’s not only not promoting some new piece of shit project, but who also has the distinction of being so uncool he’s positively cool?
It’s heartening in this day and age of publicist-driven entertainment coverage to see a magazine stick its collective neck out and put someone on the cover like Paul Reubens, AKA Pee-Wee Herman. This one’s not for the trendsetters: it’s for the fans, man!
I didn’t pick the issue up, so I don’t know if they talk to him about his voice over work in Disney‘s new film, Teacher’s Pet, but who care, right? It’s Pee-Wee friggin’ Herman, and he’s awesome!

Our big cool (imaginary) friend Elvis Mitchell reports from Park City about I Like Killing Flies, a film we mentioned a few weeks back. (On the Menu at Sundance: Quirky Chef and Dancers, The New York Times, Jan. 21, 2004)
Here’s director Matt Mahurin on his star: “Kenny would be pontificating about his ideas about life and death and sex and politics and even food… And when you went in, you would enter whatever family drama was going on that day.”
Check out the last few anonymous comments attached to our original Flies piece to see one person who’ll definitely skip this film.

Like the late great Nell Carter before him, ABC News‘s mustachioed muckraker John Stossel wants us to Give [‘im] a break!
His new book, available at your local airport newsstand, right next to Bill O’Reilly’s Horton Hears a Who’s Looking Out For You, is modestly entitled Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media….
Lifting a page from Spike Lee and Ralph Wiley’s By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of Malcolm X…, Stossel’s elliptical title continues inside of the book: “With a Million Motherfuckers Against Me.”
Since Stossel “hate[s] waiting around time” (“Please do not make me wait unnecessarily”) here’s my super-speedy impression of the book: crap.

Max (Jason Schwartzman) and Amy: neither one of them has the slightest idea where this relationship is going.
The Onion A.V. Club‘s Nathan Rabin interviews the hilarious and lovely Amy Sedaris this week.
Since Amy (along with collaborators Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, and Mitch Rouse) created one of the most pathetic losers ever to (re-)attend high school, it’s interesting to catch a glimpse of her own school days:

O: What was your high-school experience like?
AS: I wasn’t a cliquey person, and I think that’s because I came from a large family. I got along with everybody, and I usually got along with the people that people didn’t like. I always liked my teachers, and I was in a lot of after-school projects. I was a Girl Scout until my senior year, when I couldn’t be a Girl Scout anymore. I was in clubs like Junior Achievement, and I ran track and field. My grades were good, but then toward 11th grade they were nothing. I always went to summer school.

She sounds like a regular old Max Fischer, huh? The only thing missing is the little one-act play about Watergate.
Related: Max Fischer grew up to become Joel Stein, right? Sic transit gloria, indeed.

A happy (campaign) trail for Vincent Gallo?
And now, that other endearingly nasty compassionate conservative offers his State of the Union address:
“I want to thank you guys for inviting me here today. It’s a big honor… In my whole life, no one’s ever invited me or included me in any Republican event. As a matter of fact, I used to go to the Rush Limbaugh show with my best friend Johnny Ramone and a couple of other friends, and Rush never … acknowledged us. So I’m thrilled to be here.
“There’s a picture of me at 6 years old campaigning for Richard Nixon. I’ve always been the same. Always. I was against hippies… I’ve been on 125 magazine covers worldwide during my career—which is a lot for an unknown person who doesn’t have a career—and I’ve written about 200 articles in all kinds of magazines, and I’d like to let you know that there is media bias in an extreme way against the Republican Party…I would like to end my speech today by just saying, in terms of Europe, you know the United States has a great President—a, very, very great President—when the French hate him!”
—Vincent Gallo, model/ actor/director/musician/
Speedo-aficionado/Republican.
From The New York Observer, G.O.P. Gallo, by Lizzy Ratner
Read the whole story for the painful story of how liberal bias (and that commie-Calvinist Paul Schrader!) prevented Buffalo ’66 from winning anything at Sundance and for this little gem: “the Republican Party needs hipsters. If it wants to broaden its base, it needs hipsters.”
Yes, but they’ll settle for Vincent Gallo.