In Which We Party These Limey Fucks Into The Ground

Get Him To A Shrink

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Get Him To The Greek

dir. Nicholas Stoller

Nowhere near as offensive or funny as Neel Shah's "How To Date A White Bitch" (coming to CBS this fall starring Arj Barker as Neel Shah and the chick from Gilmore Girls as some white bitch who loves picnics and probably museums and all that other bougie shit), Get Him To The Greek pushes the envelope a few times, mostly in the gay direction. I just assumed "The Greek" was Russell Brand's bookie and/or dealer/lover.

"I want you to fuck me as hard as you can." "What? In the face?" "Surprise me"

Like basically every (Apatow) movie, GHTTG is about an immature not very masculine guy apprenticing to learn how to put on the mantle/drag of masculinity. AKA how to bullshit, intensely. Jonah Hill's Aaron is a "girlfriend guy" like Paul Rudd's character from I Love You Man and basically all the dudes I'm friends with in real life.

What this means is that he respects women more or less, and has no real interest in putting up a front of bro-dog-ness, probably because because he looks like a cute cartoon walrus and knows that he will never do better than Doctor Peggy Olson. His worst quality is that he is passive about everything in his life but his fandom, which is why Diddy hooks him up with Russell Brand's magnetic manic pirate dream bro.

Jonah has grown into a modern day Rodney Dangerfield, flop sweating his way through strenuous situations. He gets no respect, and at the beginning of the movie he doesn't even try. Which is where Aldous Snow (Vince Vaughn/Jason Segel/Will Oldham) comes in to teach him how to act more like an entitled prick (i.e. "A MAN")

What Russell Brand performs is not traditional Don Draper style masculinity, but that other kind of more androgynous but equally insidious form known as Dandyism. Favored by Brits like Lord Byron, Oscar Wilde, and Mick Jagger, and cornerstone of the indie rock frontman sensibility, heterosexual dandyism is about reveling in your own male sex appeal and objectifying yourself endlessly while subjugating women. 

Carla Gallo: Get Her In A Movie For Longer Than Ten Minutes, Please, C'mon Judd

The best parts of Get Him To The Greek end up being the women and Puff Daddy. Rose Byrne delights and astounds as a Cheryl Tweedy Coleish Brit Brit named Jackie Q, (whose ribald theme song written by The Bird And The Bee's Greg Kurstin and Inara George is one of the more memorable tunes). Carla Gallo is unrecognizable at first and then essentially hijacks the movie for a good ten minutes as a ridiculous drunk slut.

Anna Faris amuses and delights in Jody Hill's Observe & Report from last year

Ridiculous Drunk Sluts starring Anna Faris and Carla Gallo, coming soon to a theater near you in 3-D this fall. (REAL TALK: I will make this 4 SO CHEEP, studios! and spoiler alert all the jokes will involve jizz flying towards the audience and boners swinging around! Molly Lambert, for all your three-dimensional sex comedy pitch idea needs!)

Man how depressing has the press tour for Grown-Ups been? Alternate title for that movie: Menchildren Giving Up with a weird undercurrent of being so depressed about not giving a fuck about ANYTHING. We know Sandler knows better than this because he does other movies that are good on the side, but just doesn't care enough to make his own funny anymore? Like starting with Big Daddy he just stopped caring to try?

Meanwhile I monitor the twitter gender wars between exes M.I.A. and Diplo and Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas. Those are two different couples, but wouldn't it make a hilarious fishes out of water comedy about polyamory, technology, promise rings, gingercide, and truffle fries? He's Just Not That Into YouTube, a modern dubstep take on Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, UStreaming this summer! FUCK USTREAM PAY MESTREAM!

gay porn version title: "Get Him To Go Greek" alternate: "The Cable Guy"

Get Him To The Greek is really a movie about a grown up former fat kid facing down against a younger, fatter, version of himself. There is a lot of father/son weirdness involved as well and the gay sexual tension between the male leads is addressed more directly than in any other bromance thus far (although Pineapple Express and Superbad were both still gayer all in all). Whether or not it actually goes the whole Y Tu Mama Tambien is a matter of discussion for the extended DVD cut commentary track. 

"Step up in this mothafucker just a swangin' my hair"

The real question is how will we deal with womankind's newest problem: Do we want to fuck Russell Brand? Womanity is split down the middle. Half of us find him repulsive and the other half want to lick the weird cleft between his eyebrows. He's either Brando or the Splice baby depending who you ask. Straight men think he is repulsive.

Is this a subset of the gentleman-dirtbag complex? WHERE DO YOU FIT INTO THIS MATRIX? I waffled before seeing the movie but now I'm definitely in the camp that believes Russell Brand is hot. Weird but hot. You know, in a tall skinny androgyne British guy way. He has a Jarvisy quality about him that can't be denied.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording and star of the upcoming film Get Her To The Great Greek. She is on tumblr and twitter.

"Margoton" - Serafina Steer (mp3)

"Port Isaac" - Serafina Steer (mp3)

"How to Haunt a House Party" - Serafina Steer (mp3)

serafina steer website

photo by erika wall

In Which We Ask That You Reconsider Purchasing This Bill Of Goods

The Power of Objects

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Sex Offender Week on The Awl got me thinking, how long has it been since I wrote something about gender politics? Twenty minutes? Everywhere in L.A. takes twenty minutes! These are my random thoughts on the preeminent intellectual sex symbol television characters of our time. (Timothy Olyphant in Justified, I'll get to you later.)

The Don Draper issue cuts down to some basic things. When women say they want guys to be more like Don Draper, what they are really saying is "we want more guys who look like Jon Hamm." Maybe guys are a little grossed out by how blatantly chicks just drool over him, or jealous because who can compete with a guy who is just naturally incredibly super fucking handsome. But you know, girls are presented with images of physical hyper-idealized femininity a zillion times a day, so I emphathize. 

Other people have said this and I agree, but the Don Draper fantasy is also a fantasy about being Don Draper, which is everyone's fantasy (including Don's). Everybody wants to be hot and talented and rewarded for being hot and talented. Everybody wants to be respected and admired, with a desirable sexual partner in every borough.

Jon Hamm, real guy with the horrible fashion sense of a regular modern day type bro

That masculinity is a performance is not talked about enough, and one thing we need to do more of is help men recognize that it is a performance that they don't have to do (also, to not call them pussies). I see masculine performance everywhere, and it's always weird seeing guy friends put on their bro hats to talk to their bros.

It seems like an act men are doing for each other that neither one really believes in deep down, and even (especially?) smart guys are still prone to it. For a couple of sustained examples, see the recent Robert Downey Jr. and Walter Kirn interview in Rolling Stone, or the David Foster Wallace and David Lipsky book that just came out.

The counterpoint yang to Rivers Cuomo's (nerd who chose to make women the other) yin is Kurt Cobain, whose feelings of being an outsider/faggoty/not a bro actually made him sensitive and sympathetic to women and other historically oppressed groups. Kurt's most subversive and punk instinct was his feminism, which he manifested by wearing dresses on Headbanger's Ball and writing songs like "Rape Me." 

One of Michael Chabon's essays about masculinity was about driving his family through a snowstorm and being totally scared, but insisting on doing it anyway and then pretending he was calm and fearless about it. He talks about how he feigned bravery because his family seemed to need him to do that, that they just wanted somebody to tell them it was going to be okay. So maybe another part of it is that women need to stop telling guys to "man up," because manning up is bullshit that involves stuffing down your feelings, and that never works out well for anyone.

Liz Lemon actually manned up recently on 30 Rock and more or less redefined it as "momming up." The fantasies of manning up/momming up are the same, that somebody else will take charge. Implicit in the taking charge is that the mom or man will disavow all fear, thus placating the rest of the family. The reality is that everyone is somewhat freaked out in the kind of situations that really require charge taking. 

Alex Carnevale said about the Tina Fey backlash (paraphrased) "Why do people want to destroy this beautiful thing that is Liz Lemon? Being pathetic is what makes her original and hilarious." It's true. Watching TV the other day I said excitedly "It's just nice to see so many women portrayed as irresponsible losers." In a lot of comedies, women are often stuck being the straight man, and how boring is that.

Current sitcoms are full of wonderful omega females. Julia Louis Dreyfus's Elaine Benes is the template (maybe Rhoda if you want to go back further, maybe Gracie Allen if you want to go back even further than that) and she is great in CBS's Old Christine (as is Wanda Sykes). Amy Poehler is amazing on Parks & Recreation, as is Aubrey Plaza. All the minor female roles on The Office: Angela, Kelly Kapoor, Meredith, Phyllis. 

Modern Family's ginger/bear gay couple, and originator The Sarah Silverman Show's 

Sarah Silverman on The Sarah Silverman Show should sue Modern Family for ripping off their Ginger + Bear gay couple. They even stole the way that Brian Posehn and Steve Agee's characters never make out on the show because their intimacy is so deeply normal and boring like any other super long term serious couple. 

As for Liz Lemon's sexuality, it's something I think about all the time. We always hear how she'd rather do anything than have sex, but she apparently fucked Grizz (LOL). Comedians are almost always oversexed, for a comedian to be sort of prim and prudish is a great and relatively un-mined field for comedy.

did they get this idea from Kristen Wiig's baby doll hands Lawrence Welk character?

However the fact that she cast Jon Hamm as her love interest and has a now twice-mentioned Disney prince fetish (who doesn't?) tells me that Tina Fey's sexuality is actually a much deeper well that is quite far from being entirely pumped yet. 

But she should never be criticized for not admitting that she's hot, as though that equivocates to not "owning" her sexuality. Tina Fey is markedly more of a second wave feminist than a third. She is against strip clubs and will definitely not be thrilled when her daughter is old enough to shop at American Apparel.

All gender is a performance. That all it takes to turn Tina Fey from a normal person into a bombshell is some makeup, high heels, and a push-up bra is mostly a testament to the extreme fetishistic powers of makeup, high heels, and push-up bras.

Not to undermine her fantastic rack, but the boobs and the dark eyeliner and stripey mauve blush are just a smokeshow for what is actually hot about Tina Fey, which is (duh) her brain. That she is hottest with her glasses on just reinforces that we are actually attracted to how fucking smart and funny she is.

"Hot" Tina Fey is just Tina Fey in "sexy" feminine drag, just like Don Draper is just Dick Whitman/Jon Hamm in hyper-masculine drag. Maybe women just like guys in a suit. But it's actually probably just because rape fantasies (Don D. Raper).

"Rape fantasy" is kind of an oxymoron, as actual rape is by definition unpleasant, and at the very least the concept is a lot more grey-shaded than the words imply. Also, you know, lots of people fantasize about and fetishize things they have no interest in acting out in real life. See you in the rape tunnel!

What Don Draper and Liz Lemon really stand for is the fairly common fantasy that somebody else will step in and take care of everything else for you. Once thought of as a primarily female fantasy, the truth is that nobody wants to work full time in a soul-killing job, and men and women now both aspire equally to being stay at home trophy spouses. This is not a great or realistic fantasy for anyone because a) everybody has to work and b) basing your identity around somebody else will lead to resentment and contempt. That's why The Feminine Mystique got written in the first place!

Tying up your self-esteem with somebody else's accomplishments, even/especially somebody you love, is going to screw you over and make you feel terrible in the long run. However in a terrible economy where the bulk of jobs are both super shitty and competitively sought after, it makes a lot of sense. But if you really want to be happy, it's best to take the wheel yourself. Otherwise you're going to be so pissed when Don Draper drinks too much and crashes it into a ditch while fbanging Bobbie Barrett (and also like "her?") and it'll be nobody's fault but your own.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She is on twitter and tumblr.

"Talkin' Smooth" - Kate Voegele (mp3)

"Manhattan from the Sky" - Kate Voegele (mp3)

"We The Dreamers (demo)" - Kate Voegele (mp3)

In Which We Examine The Finest Magazine Runs In Human History

15 Best Print Magazine Runs of All Time

by MOLLY LAMBERT & ALEX CARNEVALE

Sometimes people ask us where we get the inspiration for This Recording. This is a complicated question. As with all things, This Recording evolved over time, like Emily Blunt and Jim Halpert looking more like one another. These are the fifteen magazine runs that left the biggest imprints on our minds and fingertips.

15. The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an institution, but like fellow New York institution SNL it's hard to call it consistently good even though some sections are sporadically outstanding. The New Yorker is often a gateway drug for people growing up in media unsaturated areas. It's like The Catcher In The Rye or On The Road in that it's often the most loved bible for an aspiring intellectual person during periods they will later think of as formative but also semi-embarrassing. Unless you are Wes Anderson your tastes have probably evolved from what they were when you were 14 and starved for blurbs about opera. That said, there is nothing wrong with having a spot in your heart for The New Yorker, the way you would for any first love. Just don't go sending them any weird facebook messages late at night. 

14. Crawdaddy! (1966-1973)

Before it turned into a generic music magazine, the idea that you could write something, print something in a magazine you wrote with all the run-on sentences and ridiculous unprovable generalizations and slang words and anything else you wanted to, was not a brand new concept when Crawdaddy! perfected it, but it might as well have been.

13. Spy (1992-1995)

Like any other satirical magazine, Spy had descended into a parody of itself by the time Bruno Maddox was appointed editor. Both of its founders (Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson) have been a lot better at coming up with ideas than sustaining them, but in the case of Spy it was never intended to last for decades. I literally learned there was no Santa Claus from reading a (hard to obtain as a child) copy of Spy.

12. Might (1991-1995)

Dave Eggers's San Francisco magazine was known for rambling essays on provocative topics. Some have cited their "Are Black People Cooler Than White People?" as the first recorded LOL. They also did an issue that was entirely about cheese, and let David Foster Wallace make the argument that AIDS was going to make sexual pursuit better and more rewarding by making it more difficult. If you write about all the things you find interesting it is possible that somebody else will also be interested, or better yet become interested just because it's written well.

11. Life (1940-1965)

Life is just a magical blend of content that really should have been in Parade and photographs that should stay forever in the Smithsonian. Once it became a weekly, Ed K. Thompson used a trio of female editors and the pages improved under his reign. If they paid the right person for a feature, the writing could be incredible, but usually it wasn't. Life went through many subtly different approaches, like a true variety show. One issue could be a mind-blowing meld of ultimate design and approachable prose, another would be as vapid as People. Throughout, the photography was the real show, bringing the impact of full color and the wide breadth of the world to American homes.

10. Sassy (1991-1995)

Sassy was the best ever teen mag, the best ever women's mag, and the closest thing to a 'zine in the world of real magazines. It was pretty revolutionary in a pre-blog universe to find a magazine that told you straight up that other magazines aimed at girls were bullshit. Despite the sometimes annoying "cooler than thou" attitude Jane Pratt pushed, so much of Sassy holds up to a modern reader versed in blogs: the Kurt and Courtney interview, the fashion editorials making fun of fashion editorials, the Hunt for the Sassiest Boy In America.

9. Entertainment Weekly (1991-1996)

Before the first mass-market arts and culture magazine worth a damn lobotomized itself to compete with U.S. Weekly, Jeff Jarvis' Entertainment Weekly debuted in 1990 as the perfect combination of easy reading and incredible craftsmanship. Softening the teeth off clever graphic bits and listicles like Spy and Esquire's Dubious Achievements, EW brought to the print world what we think of today as commonplace internet sarcasm. They also may have invented the collectible review index of every episode of popular television shows (such as Seinfeld and The X-Files) long before DVDs made following along a probable task.

8. National Geographic (1981-2009)

From layout to design, National Geographic took the photographic best of Life and expanded its view. No magazine has changed so little and still been so relevant to the world to which it was originally borne. Richard Pryor called NG "the Black Man's Playboy" and the mag has taken some heat over the years for touching up photos of the third world. Under the leadership of Chris Johns, NG has exceeded Pryor's pejorative and reinvented the magazine as a series of subtle investigations. The nature photography/pornography is as compelling as ever.

7. Rolling Stone (1967-1971)

Even though it primarily sucks now, Rolling Stone will throw a curveball every now and then and run a totally awesome piece of investigative journalism about like some goth teenagers killing somebody, or a guy who has a huge cock and it's ruining his life. Not to mention, they recently ran the first of John Mayer's twofer crazy interview spree. Music writing has actually never been Rolling Stone's strongest suit, but all the counterculture trimmings are where they still knock it out of the park sometimes.

6. Creem (1971-1980)

Cooler than Rolling Stone, Creem featured articles from a dream roster of counterculture writers like Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Nick Tosches, Richard Meltzer, Patti Smith, and Cameron Crowe, all of whom made or embossed their names here (plus countless other staffers who did all the work). The original arrogant confrontational blog, indier than thou when it still meant something, Creem articles expose all other music criticism as falsity. Our favorite kind of snobs, Creem touted the MC5 and ABBA equally.  

5. National Lampoon (1971-1979)

Exploring one specific type of humor to the nth degree, the original National Lampoon had all kinds of great writers and a list of their credits would only remind us of the douchebag P.J. O'Rourke became within five minutes of attaining any notoriety whatsoever. Like its spiritual heir The Onion, there wasn't a whole lot of subtlety here, but a few decades ago, everything was generally subtle and Lampoon seemed like a wild alternative to the mean.

4. Mad (1958-1963)

Patti Smith once said, “After Mad, drugs were nothing.” During an extremely censorious time in American life, Mad put the lie to everything, savaging the culture and revealing its hypocrisies.

3. The New York Review of Books (1976-1992)

Before the best writers were published everywhere you look, they were published in the NYRB. At times stilted and pedantic, the Review was best when it opened itself up to wackier explorations of artistic merit, and writers who could stretch out of the academic confines of what was expected from a 'book review.' Their choices in the last decade have reshaped the review into something more familiar, but at its best the NYRB had a lively letters section replete with non-academic exchanges that rivalled comment wars on blogs. It's fitting that something so ancient as a book review could prefigure something so modern.

2. Time (1939-1945)

Before Time became the absolute mess it is now, two men made this venerable institution the most well-written compendium of critical thought ever to enter the public sphere at the time. Whittaker Chambers joined Time in 1939; soon enough he and James Agee were the primary composers of the arts section of the magazine. Chambers ascended to the magazine's editorial board, and kept writing. It only got better from there.

1. Esquire (1961-1973)

Looking at issues from George Lois' ten year run at Esquire under editor Harold Hayes makes one nostalgic for the type of journalism that had style and substance. The current Esquire now spends its entire day trying to become a bizarre hybrid of Maxim and a "serious" magazine. Under these two titans Esquire knew just what it was.

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here. Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

barbara epstein and bob silvers in 1963
Other Magazines We Couldn't Live Without Until Print Died

Ranger Rick 

3-2-1 contact magazine 

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine

Car & Driver 

Games 

Gamepro 

Electronic Gaming Monthly 

Nintendo Power 

the eXile

Harper's

Cat Fancy

Playboy 

The Believer

Oxford American

Magnet 

Highlights

Spin 

Mojo 

XXL 

Ben Is Dead

Chunklet

Sunset Magazine

LA Weekly/Village Voice

FOUND Magazine

Premiere 

Cahiers Du Cinema

Whole Earth 

Wired 

VIBE 

NME 

McSweeney's

Trouser Press 

WET magazine 

Weird Tales

Wizard 

Psychotronic Video 

Photoplay

Stop Smiling

Heavy Metal

Aspen 

Down Beat 

International Times 

JET

The Arkham Sampler

Mademoiselle

No Depression 

Martha Stewart Living 

Gourmet

The American Mercury (ed. H.L. Mencken)

American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge (ed. Nathaniel Hawthorne)

291 (ed. Alfred Stieglitz) 

X

VVV

The Little Review 

Fuck You 

GOSH!

Brill's Content

The Germ

Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.

- George Lois