This one got dark, huh? Not all of it worked for me — the aunt episode seemed like a golden opportunity to spend a half-hour of television sitting in a car with whiny kids, which would’ve been a little braver than, well, what happens. The family stuff was confusing: in Season 1, we spend a lot of time with his mom and brother, and then this season invented multiple new sisters and ignored the previous characters. The show likes to bend its sense of plausibility into the absurd then snap back to real-ish life — its ability to generally accomplish that is an impressive strength, but how many siblings can he have?
The two episodes covering the USO tour were a necessary break from the bleakness, and done really effectively. Most of it’s really incredible television; the final moments of the last episode are consumate Louie. But I feel like I’ve seen too much. I don’t know if there will be anything to laugh at in Season 3. At this point, I just want dude to start eating more salads and maybe try a little yoga on the weekend. I had a lot of the same feelings during this last season of Mad Men, but I got over them.
Somewhere, Judd Apatow is kicking himself and calling Paul Rudd to apologize.
I assume this is for the new movie he’s in that he learned Spanish for. I’ll confess to not thinking about Michael Cera much since I was too shy to talk to him at SXSW last year. (I was starstruck. Can you blame me?)
Best parts: an “indie” band going after airplay on “major radio stations”; getting “good reviews” from the “indie press,” the indie press being the Deli; the crushing revelation that going backstage doesn’t mean champagne and caviar; taking voice lessons (do that shit on YouTube, guys); $25,000 in musical instruments, or more than any Sub Pop band spends recording entire albums; “we pay a guy to send email blasts” — so, uh, a publicist? Maybe this is why he hasn’t emailed my “hip blog”; this sentence: “Abner (still in school) could easily make $10 an hour working at a bar on weekends”…
Bon Joviver. You’ve probably seen this. It’s perfect.
Of the three members of Stella, Wain, a writer and director, has had the most mainstream success in recent years; his perspective on his career is probably a lot less neurotic and, well, disappointed than Michael Showalter’s. They are all heroes to me.
Excerpt from Charlyne Yi’s really bittersweet and amazing “World of Pain,” a play I was lucky enough to see in the flesh last year. (They opened with this clip, then segued into the stage acting.)
