In my new role as blogger, I’ve been struck by the pull of what I can only describe as Andy Ronneyization, wherein having a forum where you speak alone makes you more and more likely to be snarky, and complaining, and increasingly Scrooge-like: closed-hearted, quick to jeer, encased in your own bile, and ultimately insane.
This is why I have no intention of ever doing a podcast or radio show by myself, and why it’s good that people can comment here and call me on it if I start talking shit. It also means that even if Wes is too busy to be blogging right now so you only have my self-sick voice to hear, then I’d better make most of my posts directed towards philosophy resources on the web so that that wide swath of external personalities gets brought into the picture and it’s not just me extruding myself until I am but a husk.
Serendipitously, I ran across a review of a recent Gallagher appearance (yes, that awkward watermelon-smashing comedian) that shows starkly what can happen if you monologize too much:
Read “Gallagher Is a Paranoid, Right-Wing, Watermelon-Smashing Maniac,” by Lindy West, from Seattle’s “The Stranger.”
If that’s not enough punishment for you, here’s an Onion AV Club interview with him. And even though after looking at his behavior on the video embedded in that article I think that his problem is not that he’s operating in a vacuum (he has an audience, after all, and in this video at least is dickishly interacting with his opening act), I’ll stick by the original thesis of this post out of sheer doggedness.
I suppose the fate of a self-deluded Gallagher is at least not as bad as that of monologist Spalding Gray.
-Mark Linsenmayer
Leave a Reply