Last night I was eating pizza and drinking wine with some of my favorite people, Tamar and her husband George. After trading stories of crazy dating situations, we ended up getting caught in a YouTube entertainment wormhole. It started out innocently, watching videos of people falling and babies laughing, but quickly evolved into audio tapes of Orson Welles and old television clips of some of the greatest performers of all time.
Tamar somehow navigated us to watching an endless amount of clips of Andy Kaufman - a man I’ve always adored - but hadn’t watched in a long while. The above Swiss Cheese clip was just one of my favorites from last night. He was so undeniably likeable, even as this unreasonable character in a check out line. For me, his likeability never diminishes, even when wrestling women and pretending to be a misogynist. Simply because it wasn’t ever about degrading women. Anyone who doesn’t live to be offended can revel in the splendor of the brilliance, the strangeness, and the commitment to the character and his ongoing “feud” with Lawler.
But it’s his remarkable ability to say anything and everything with his eyes, to control every emotion of our being without words, just a simple collection of looks, that solidifies him as one of the absolute best. In his interview with David Letterman in 1980, he’s riveting. He’s also so sympathetic that you want to wrap him up in your arms and listen to him talk the night away in that odd mousy voice. Or give him money, as the audience proceeds to do. The commitment to his variety of characters, and the often times extremely subtle changes between them, in my eyes, is what made him a genius.
Here’s a link to a few more of our favorite finds from last night:
Today is a ferocious bummer with the loss of Adam MCA Yauch. I grew up at a time when MTV played videos and I watched A LOT of it. This was hands down my favorite. “Sabotage,” of course, taking a close second. All Beastie Boys records provided a soundtrack for those wonderful adolescent angst years where ones greatest complications were which boy to make out with, what to do with the long summer days of zero obligations, and when could I watch more TV. Thanks, dude, for the music. I promise to keep listening until I one day come to an end.
I think I’ve expressed a few times my unhealthy obsession and romantic fantasies for Hemingway. I’m not ashamed (obviously) to admit it. I love this photo of him looking foxy while canoeing and being all manly. Except I just can’t help but wonder why no one told him his fly was open.
