by Seth Colter Walls

Doesn’t Yale just burn you up? Remember that episode of The Simpsons where Mr. Burns is told he’ll have to buy Yale an international airport if he wants them to admit his Dangerfield-esque son? I laughed at that pretty hard, when I was in public school. But now, the Philharmonia of Yale is coming to New York to perform a concert of works by Krzysztof Penderecki at Carnegie Hall on April 30. And they’re bringing along Krzysztof Penderecki to conduct — which I have to admit is a rather impressive way to roll. So I guess I can forgive, especially because you can still buy tickets to the Carnegie Hall concert for as little as $7.50 (partial view), or $15 (full view). You should buy now, however!

Penderecki is probably best known for his 1962 piece “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” (image-less YouTube version below), which you could argue would be a lot less famous if it were titled “Threnody for the Traditionally-Minded Opponents of Tone Clusters,” or even if it had kept its original title of 8’37, but then history is history.

I’m also kind of a fan of The Devils of Loudon, his opera about demonic possession.

On this concert bill, I’m also curious about Penderecki’s Symphony No. 4, and the 2008-penned Concerto for Horn and Orchestra. Should be a worthwhile event!

SEMI-RELATED: The New York Philharmonic has just posted an archival performance of Stravinsky conducting the world premiere of his Symphony in Three Movements, back in 1946. It’s a totally free listen. Details on their Valery Gergiev-led Stravinsky Festival are here. (You may recall our prior discussion of Gergiev.)

“She was practically at the top of the stairs, I got the shock of my life because she had a ski mask on and a knife in her hand, the blade was about three inches, I was just in total shock. She tried to disguise her voice and said ‘give me your money.’ The next thing I knew she had pushed me down the stairs. She pushed me pretty hard, I just stotted off the wall, I don’t know how I didn’t flake out altogether. She went into the living room then and that was when I shouted up the stairs ‘Doris, I know its you.’”
-70-year-old Jeanette Hetherington testifies against her neighbor Doris Foulis, whom Hetherington claims broke her leg in an attempted robbery that happened in a little place I like to call Knifecrime Island.

The amazing thing about the 1992 survey of librarians’ attitudes toward sex that got its author, Will Manley, fired from his job at Wilson Library Bulletin is how absolutely chaste it is by 2010’s sullied standards! A few sample answers:

• “38% of the female respondents indicated that if there were a nuclear war and PeeWee Herman was the only man on earth to survive, they would have sex with him in order to propagate the species.”
• “72% of the respondents said they would not let a candidate’s sex life influence their vote in an election for President.”
• “51 % of the respondents would pose nude in Playboy, Playgirl, or Playguy [R.I.P.] for all the money in Fort Knox; 24% said they would do it for $1million.”

It almost seems quaint that only 24% of people would take off their clothes for all to see for a million dollars — which, let’s remember, was a lot more money in those days! Now, all it takes is the promise of fame on a crowdsourced Tumblr and maybe an e-mail afterwards.

by Foster Kamer

As first noticed by Awl resident latke expert Doree Shafrir, it is worth quickly mentioning that the byline of Allen Salkin-once appropriately dubbed the “Seymour Hersh of the Sunday Styles”-has returned to the pages of the New York Times in today’s Dining section.

It is his first appearance in the paper since he was let go in December. The article is about The Cooking Channel, which is trying to be a cooler spinoff of The Food Channel. The word “hipster” is not used once, and it is, in my estimation as a casual scholar of Salkin’s work, “pretty solid.” It also isn’t symbolic of anything, but it does give me faith that 2010 has been and could turn out to be a pretty decent year, as hope continues to resist the cosmic snuffer of the universe.

I’d like to dedicate the following jam to him.

Oh, it’s a tricky job-as Devin Gordon found out. The former editor of Gawker, however, is yet just the latest victim of the hiring thaw in Manhattan media!

To: The Staff

From: Jon Meacham and Mark Miller

We are thrilled to announce that Gabriel Snyder, Gawker’s former editor in chief and a journalist with broad experience in print and digital media, is joining us as Executive Editor, Newsweek Digital. Gabriel helped transform Gawker from what was a guilty pleasure for a Manhattan-centric audience to a vibrant source of real news and information, doubling Gawker’s audience. Gabriel also has been a senior writer at W magazine and at Variety where he covered the film industry. A native of Tennessee, Gabriel began his career as a media reporter at The New York Observer after graduating from Yale in 1998.

In our conversations with Gabriel, we have been impressed not only with his sophisticated knowledge of Web technique and Internet philosophy but with his understanding of the mission and potential for the soon-to-be re-launched Newsweek.com and our growing stable of digital offerings. Day in and day out, Newsweek’s digital staff has performed heroically, often in very difficult circumstances. Working with us, Geoff Reiss, Dan Klaidman, Carl Sullivan, Kathy Jones, and the rest of our editorial team, Gabriel will help us ensure that the outstanding journalism we produce every day reaches the biggest, most effective audience.

Gabriel formally begins work on May 3 but will come in soon to meet folks. He will report to Mark Miller. Please join us in welcoming him to Newsweek.

by Jeff Laughlin

Lars Jan is walking up to his crew and asking if they are comfortable. He moves toward Chat Logs — the noisier half of his team of musicians. It’s hard to say if they are comfortable, really. They are about to play the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, the crowd is getting rather large and they are hooked up to a Martin Kersels sculpture that wasn’t really intended to promote sound. They are turning knobs and shifting their weight around. They say they are comfortable and talk about the noise ending. They have had one rehearsal. They have never played with the other composer/band in the performance. This is their first live show.

In the corridors, the guards meet and prepare for how many people will be allowed to stand inside the concert area. They are boisterous and seemingly not phased by Jan’s wearing a fake suicide bomb. From their perspective, the art is always all the same. Some guy is going to prove that our ideas about culture are false or true. I talk to Alexander MacMahon, the composer with the accompanying quintet. “It’s gonna get weird,” he said.

A large screen behind the performance scrambles in and out of static and man with a helmet-camera prepares to film the event. “Seems that way,” I said. Ryan Downey — one of the men in Chat Logs — nods approvingly as he fiddles with knobs. Oftentimes, anticipation causes our most vulnerable moments. His feet are tapping, his hands are busy.

* * *

Exactly how does a band play their first show in a sculpture at one of the foremost museums in New York City? I’m not sure anyone knows. Jan, the creator of the project, hired them sight unseen. MacMahon recommended them, Jan approved it. It seems too simple. Didn’t Downey have to date someone famous for a month or something? Didn’t a somewhat credible blog have to write them up? MacMahon heard them on the internet and remembered them.

The front 30 or 40 people in the crowd are let inside the space. Bands go their whole lifespans without having done anything 1/10th as cool as this. Doesn’t it seem unfair?

Jan is interviewed by a “reporter” about his intention to blow himself up. “A Suicide Bombing By Invitation Only” is already an indictment of the bombastic reporting of this generation, a strange dictation of a man’s quest to popularize his intentions, and a look at the counterproductive nature of protests. A group is standing next to me with signs that read [sic throughout] “NOT IN MY BLAST RADUS,” “BOMS NOT FOOD.” The other sides of the signs have references to big businesses — Olive Garden, Pizza Hut, Regal Cinema. The “interview” with Jan ends without him having said a word to the “reporter.” He has two beautiful women acting as handlers and they field all the inquiries. The crowd is still and silent, but I get the feeling the performers would be fine if we acted awkward and waved to the camera. There is a musical interlude after each interview. The first couple of them are the quintet only — very somber, pretty orchestral pieces. Jan thanks people for coming to his death. He warns others that the blast is going to kill them too.

The bands start a musical dialogue. “Protesters” are shouting “Suicide Kills,” and “Racist, Sexist, Anti-Gay/ Suicide Bombing is Not OK.” Their signs are waving furiously above us. The interviews are getting more abstract. The “reporter” is mangling phrases, using makeshift throws to Soledad O’Brien, speaking in higher pitches. Destruction can’t be sold unless there is passion. Terrorists are never just terrorists. They have to be vicious killers or lunatics. In this case, though, everyone surrounding the bomber is crazy. The reporter, the protesters, the bands; they are the crazy ones and the mood-setters. As Chat Logs begins the countdown to suicide, the music is maniacally loud. Downey is caterwauling into the tower as an extra vehicle; an extra instrument. Everyone is staring at the large screen as Jan shares his suicide note. It is a declaration of what he would do as a terrorist. The sites he would bomb if he were in charge. The reporter is improvisational but his questions are pre-ordained, according to Jan. Pre-ordained improvisation cannot be more like a suicide bombing.

* * *

A low drone deafens the crowd. Chat Logs is playing now and it is overpowering. They are nodding with the pulsating beat. The crowd is locked in on them. The sculpture is buzzing as if this was the original intent. I can see my friend M____ cough but it is inaudible.

Once the bomb “explodes,” we are told to lay on the floor in silence for a while. Even the bands are lifeless mounds at this point. The signs are all in stepped-on heaps. A woman takes snapshots. The aftermath of the destruction is our warmth huddled on each other. Chat Logs are among it all, reveling in their completion. Their story is a rehashed version of old truths. We all know that reporters are ridiculous actors and that suicide bombers exist within our realm, but maybe we don’t know how they function. How does a band function knowing it has never functioned?

During the suicide note, Jan held up a series of signs. To paraphrase, “have you ever seen a piece of modern art and felt like you could have done it yourself?” It’s a question most people have asked if they have any interest in art. What separates us, now, from the great minds? Didn’t the masters have to be technically skilled at one point? Are they now? To that end, one could say that the entire piece was a sham. However, “Invitation” had elasticity, elitism, a circular philosophy handed to the patrons. The countercultures are weighted by their own stupidity. The televisions are shape-shifters. The cameras are on, but they are not inescapable. What we learn is not perfect, but we must think ourselves indelible. Otherwise, we misfire when we get our breaks.

Later that night, I hit on a waitress and got blown off, but I just kept thinking that if I catch my break, I will own my moment. When I press my button, my message will be clear. If anything, seeing Chat Logs’ beginning, Lars Jan’s “ending” and laying my head to the cold Whitney floor inched me toward meaning. Not bad, to start.

The skies over Europe have reopened after days and days of being blocked by ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano, with 80% of scheduled flights expected to take off today and all of them supposedly going airborne tomorrow! But given that there are some 95,000 cancellations that need to have their passengers rerouted, we can probably expect to hear complaining about The Deal With Airports for another couple of days, at the very least.

by Halle Kiefer

Last week, we noticed that local TV-owning lady Halle Kiefer was watching ‘Glee’ and having issues with it. Still having never seen it ourselves, but knowing that many of our pals, including Ana Marie Cox, love ‘Glee’ unreservedly, we asked Halle to help us make sense of it, episode by episode. Herewith, her report.

This week’s much-anticipated Madonna episode kicked off with a profoundly overcomplicated explanation of why head cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester will be permitted to blare Madge all day through the loudspeaker in every room of the high school. The simple answer is just good ol’ fashion faux date-rape blackmail, but the more ramble-y one has to do with Sue’s deep respect and admiration for the Material Girl, another middle-aged tendon-y blonde with a taste for power and dubious singing ability. Principal Figgins concedes to the plan because, as was explained last week, Sue has threatened to show the photos she took of them in tracksuit flagrante to Figgins’ wife, a tactical move that would seem to imply that the unseen Mrs. Figgins has never seen, heard or, or spoken to Sue Sylvester before in her life, because wow, Sue has really amped up the crazy lately.

Unfortunately, the show then inexplicably turns away from Sue Sylvester and starts focusing on other characters! Ugh, you people again! Why do you have to eat up our precious Sue Time? Maybe it’s just me (OR MAYBE IT’S JUST GLEE) (Ugh, I’m sorry) (but yes, it is just Glee), but throughout the course of this episode, Rachel really starts to become a microcosm of everything that is wrong with this show. There is no real emotion coming out of her, ever; she’s 90% pouts with an occasional toothy smile. As she explains to the ladies of Glee how her secret boyfriend Jesse St. James from a rival glee club had suggested they “go all the way,” she has two facial expressions: Mildly Perturbed and Mid-Belt. That’s it. That’s all we’re getting, so we better work with it here by, I don’t know, not having her talk so much?

Also, I know it’s supposed to be a campy hyper-reality (like 70% of the time, I guess?), but am I the only one who is more than a little skeeved out by Rachel’s lady-child cherry lip gloss and white cotton panties pervo-fantasy wardrobe? Oh, no, just everybody? Seriously, ick. I keep getting older, and they stay the same barf.

Rachel continues to reject Finn’s affections, still devastated after he destroyed their beautiful day-and-a-half long relationship when he failed to immediately get that her neuroticism was actually a deep and abiding love. O fake high school! Vulnerable to outside influence, Rachel and Finn are quickly circled by Jesse and Santana respectively, who for their own selfish, incredibly complicated reasons are hungry for their sweet, sweet, virgin flesh (it’s not that complicated: basically 50% of high school students in their county are apparently predators who should be in some kind of prevention program).

Back in the gym, we get the first of the episode’s impressive 7 Madonna songs, the Cheerios busting it out to “Ray of Light.” Hurray! And it was…good? It’s hard to judge? What with all those STILTS getting in the way? Stilts which just came out of nowhere and were never addressed again? I hated the way the female cheerleaders had regular skirts and tights, then just stilt pant legs starting at the knee. Come on! Every emotionally disturbed cheerleading coach knows that the illusion of the full pant is essentially to the success of stilt use!

The best line of the evening was Sue snarling “sloppy freakshow babies” through a megaphone after the Cheerio’s finished their beaming, flawless routine. Classic Sue! Will Schuester watches, always watches, eternally watches from the bleachers (remember when he used to teach high school? Me neither!) smiling that toothless smile of his, and decides that he TOO will use Madonna to inspire his group to great heights. Of course he does. Of course. Why wouldn’t you to co-opt the one thing in the world that your erratic, hostile coworker has ever loved for the sake of a meaningless weekly vocal exercise? Especially when this same coworker has proven time and again that she is 1) emotional unhinged, 2) not above breaking a wide variety of our nation’s laws and 3) just moments away from completely snapping and crushing your skull between her aging but powerful thighs. Always thinking, Schue.

The ladies and gentlemen of New Directions (did I miss the episode with all the nude erection jokes, or is it a fish in a barrel situation at this point?) are immediately split down the gender-line, save Kurt, on Schue’s proposed all-Madonna project, which conveniently sets up the episode’s female empowerment subplot (which centers primarily on boning). Sometimes I wonder if the head writer for this show has actual physical hams for fists; this was one of these moments. The nay-saying men, consisting of Artie, Puck and Finn (nice try Hot Asian Dude, better luck next week getting acknowledged in any way!) are immediately like, “Argh we hate Madonna! Her powerful sexuality scares us! Also glee club is already gay enough, right?” Which, fine, maybe they would think that on some level, but my God, how many other incredibly fabulous lady performers’ songs have you done been doing, and you are only now getting uncomfortable with the idea? YOU HAVE BEEN IN GLEE CLUB FOR MONTHS. GET OVER IT ALREADY. It’s not getting any straighter! Rachel sort of proves them wrong by leading the ladies in a cute, fine rendition of “Express Yourself”, which was is fine and cute and they are all adorable, good singers, but really, after you set the bar with the little taste of heaven that was Sue Sylvester’s “Vogue” video, well, you had better BRING. THE. HEAT. for the other songs. Mama needs her medicine/costume changes!

Rachel and Finn also have a tasty little duet with “Open Your Heart to Me” in the library/book store (save for when Finn dumps a bunch of library books off the shelves in the heat of the moment, because, what?) knowing that they are tempted by the potential to hump other people, but wishing that they could be together, which they can’t because… aaaaaaah, why? I don’t really know! Is it because of pride? It’s pride, isn’t it? It is soon established that despite the fact that both of them are idiots and want to be together, both Rachel and Finn are going to make elaborate plans to lose the big V that very same night. Emma also climbs aboard the pork train after Sue disconnects her intercom, telling Emma that she didn’t deserve to hear Madonna like everyone else, as she has the same sexual energy as “that panda down at the zoo who refuses to mate.” How mean and true! Taking matters (read: boners) into her own hands, Emma tells Will that she too plans to seduce him that night in a sure-fire great idea of a plan that will surely end with no hurt feelings/pregnancy scares. OR WILL IT!?!?

It will. But let’s take moment to focus on the real heart of the episode. I can’t be alone in saying that I sort of felt a jolt to my… what is it called again?… ah yes, heart, when Schue finally snaps back at Sue’s constant critique of his profoundly goofy hair. “How is the Florence Henderson treating you?” he snarls to Sue’s slack-jawed surprise, “Maybe try a new setting on your Flobee?” Oh snap, indeed. He really went for the throat with that Flowbee reference there.

But honestly, seeing Jane Lynch’s wounded face over the dark sounds of “Frozen” made me feel terrible! A hole had been jabbed in her brittle, grandiose protective shell, and Sue was exposed for what she really was, a bully with frankly a little bit of a mullet. That’s when SUE HULKS OUT! Storming away, Sue grabs a kid and throws him into a locker, going ape and ripping the books out of another student’s hands, cursing the whole time. Oh ho, here we go, I thought. There are finally going to show some sort of repercussions for America’s Favorite Sociopath and her mounting crazy behavior.

Haha, nope! I should have known, there won’t be any real-life consequences for (admittedly hilarious) assault in Glee World. Kurt and Mercedes (who are made out of spun sugar and gold/why this show is still worth watching) follow her and learn that due to home bleaching accident precipitated by the release of Madonna’s True Blue on her 6th birthday, Sue cannot grow her hair into the luxurious mane she craves, her secret jealousy toward Shue’s thick, wavy locks always threatening to leap out (“But that would make you 30,” Mercedes points out. “29, actually,” Sue says, eyes steely.) Because they are SWEET BABY ANGELS, Kurt and Mercedes agree to do Sue a favor to help her live out her fantasy. And so the “Vogue” video is born. As my friend pointed out, in the real world getting the AV club to use school equipment on school property during class time to record the cheerleading coach dancing with a corset and cone-bra would be grounds for at least dismissal, if not placement on some sort of online registry. My main issue is, hello, we’ve already seen the video! The episode version was exactly like it was in the promo (read: flawless) but seemed an odd move considering that whoever would be drawn in by the video would also ostensibly we watching this episode.

On a different note, where are people’s gay dads in this episode? So much talk about gay dads, and then all of a sudden when a certain high school diva is about to break it off/get broken off, they are no where to be seen. Do you think one of Rachel’s gay dad’s pick up that caped nightgown she had on, or what? It was like they picked it out of the 25 cent lingerie bin at the Best Little Whorehouse in Texas’ garage sale.

Now I wonder, is Rachel moderately worried about this big life decision? WELLITHINKYOUKNOWTHEANSWERTOTHAT. Eyebrows say… yes! The couples, finally overcome by the scintillating sexual chemistry between them (I’m currently enrolled in Sarcasm 201, and I just need a C on the midterm to pass!), decide to put on their matching nightgowns and rub their pieces ’n’ parts all over each other. The six-part “Like a Virgin” started out adorbs, but the longer it went on I more uncomfortable watching people older than I am playing teenagers grinding together in song on their four-poster beds. Predictably Rachel and Emma chickened out before they did the deed, which is for the best considering Jesse St. James is being employed by Idina Mendez to seduce and sabotage Rachel’s glee career, and Schuester is just, ew, I don’t know, something ain’t right about him on some very basic level. In a great plot move, Finn actually did sleep with Santana! I am surely looking forward to the tearful, fist-clenching solo reserved for pregnant Quinn for when she finds out! WHERE IS MY PAPA DON’T PREACH, GLEE? Gosh darn it, WHERE IS IT?!?!

And, then, just when I think I can’t take any more furrowed brows, just when I can’t look at any more earnest mouths singing into other earnest mouths, we cut to Kurt and Mercedes headlining the pep rally for the Cheer-ios, dueting to “Four Minutes” and just DOING THE DAMN THING. They should replace Glee with a show where due to a bus accident and a will written while drunk, Kurt and Mercedes are sent to live with Sue Sylvester, where they have to learn about life and love, and also they transfer to a new school so I don’t even have to look at Rachel again. They can call it Divas Live.

Kurt and Mercedes’ scene also gets at what is most winning about Glee: the transformation of average-people losers into huge fabulous stars for just one minute out of their otherwise stupid, crappy lives. That’s how musicals function; that’s why Rent or Hair or any other equally atrociously corny show can be so empirically silly, yet leave people weeping during the intermission. Sometimes something is so cheesy, so smothered in hot delicious cheese, that it can basically be itself classified as cheese, and then how can it help but be delicious? And seeing Kurt and Mercedes in their little matching cheerleading uniforms was epically fabulous. Afterward, Kurt and Mercedes inform Schue that since he isn’t giving them solos in their shows, and since Sue actually repaid them the favor of putting together the Vogue video, they are choosing to be in both Cheerios and glee club. Shue is very inappropriately angry (dear adults in this show: get lives! For you and the children!) and the spiritual imbalance between a triumphant cheerleading coach and a sad-sack glee teacher is restored to its proper place.

Unfortunately for EVERYBODY, this number is not the end of the show. O, that it had been! They also pack in the manliest dramatic reading of “What If Feels like For a Girl” ever put on by a glee club, and a so-so gospel-choired “Like a Prayer.” But once you see Kurt with a headband dropping it in front of the entire high school, that’s it, the show is over. Quit while you’re ahead. So, overall, a better, less creepy episode than last week, but man, I really have to start caring about some of these main characters, or this series is going to Ugly Betty itself into oblivion. Until then I’ll just have to continue my letter writing campaign to have HAD (Hot Asian Dude) at least be allowed to wear a name tag.

Halle Kiefer is really busy on Tuesday nights.

Today’s Observer has a big piece about mandated niceness at Long Island’s once-respectable tabloid Newsday, specifically within the sports section. I don’t know if I know a single person on the planet who reads sports sections for coverage that avoids speaking plainly about its subjects, but perhaps the demographic number-crunchers at Cablevision, which bought the paper in 2008 and which also owns the Knicks and the Rangers, have identified this fan demographic as one that is underserved?

Or maybe not. A month ago, the Long Island Press published a detailed account of some of the frustrations inside the newsroom, including deep cuts to employees’ salaries through a new contract. In today’s Observer piece, John Koblin talked to Wallace “Wally” Matthews, who was until recently a Newsday sports columnist:

In February, he was assigned to write a column on Groundhog Day about the Mets. He said he wrote a “sarcastic” column about how the Mets seem to suffer from the same problem year after year. He said there was no name-calling. “Hank called me and said, ‘You know this can’t get into the paper,” said Mr. Matthews. “I said, ‘If it’s not getting in the paper, then I’m done writing columns. I know I still know how to write a column; I just don’t know how to do it for you.”

Mr. Matthews said he was told he had “the wrong tone.”

“They don’t want sarcasm in the paper,” he said. “What they want is straightforward analysis of why they’re having problems. You can’t have fun with it. You have to say the Mets need help at first base because Daniel Murphy is hitting .220.”

As a sometime Long Islander who (not to get too personal here, but oh, why not) was in large part inspired to write by because of the rich coverage offered by the hand-staining Newsday in its heyday, the decline of the paper, both in terms of its size and its content, has been especially painful to watch. Once a mammoth tabloid that had to turn away potential advertisers for reasons of space, Newsday is now a flimsy collection of charticles and graphsticles and celebrity fluff that’s only turning away sponsors if they have competing corporate interests with Cablevision. Sure, there are lots of other reasons for the paper’s decline that reach far beyond the current ownership — that circulation scandal cost them a pretty penny, and print journalism as a whole has had its own share of problems.

Many people, when talking about recent decisions by the higher-ups at Newsday, focus in on their idea to take all their content behind a pay wall, throwing up the old “35 paid subscribers in three months” number that was noted by a previous article in the Observer. This statistic, when presented on its own, is a little misleading; subscribers to either the print version of Newsday or Cablevision’s high-speed Internet service, both of which have pretty solid market penetration even when you factor in the competition from Verizon FiOS and the inflated circulation numbers, don’t need to pay.

But this whole episode seems like another reason to believe that the higher-ups there just don’t get the Internet. One has to wonder why the Dolans would seek to further compromise their competitive advantage (which, for most professional sports outlets these days, equals Honesty Plus Access) over the ever-growing number of other sports media out there — devil-may-care blogs, acid-tongued Tweeters, the competing shouters who take up increasing real estate on sports-related cable stations. Especially since there was a time that at Newsday, Telling It Like It Is was once a marketing asset.

(It’s probably worth noting that Marty Noble, the Mets’ beat reporter at the time that ad was made and for many years before and after, is now covering the team for its official site. I worked with him there for a season!)

The Bookmobile: An Excerpt From “Reality Matters: 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can’t Stop Watching”

Reality TV: we all have feelings about it. Particularly the contributors to Reality Matters: 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can’t Stop Watching

, a new collection edited by Anna David. It includes essays by Awl pals Will Leitch, Richard Rushfield and Mark Lisanti, among others, so you should probably buy it. In this excerpt, John Albert discusses his feelings about “Sober House.”

The After-Party

There are times when one can glimpse something like a passageway to hell. That is precisely the feeling I had watching the reality show “Sober House.” It was as if a wormhole had opened leading directly from my couch into a tawdry Hollywood where troubled celebrities will humiliate and debase themselves, even risk death, for one more moment in the spotlight. Throughout the years, I have perused on-screen murder scenes and televised surgeries, even watched multiple seasons of “The Real Housewives of Orange County.” But this show genuinely disturbed me. These were not bullet-riddled bodies or sunburned Republicans with fake boobs. They were people whom I recognized, both literally and figuratively, and it left me troubled.

The truth is, I have been addicted to reality television for years. Until recently, I simply hid this fact. People would discuss what they had done the previous evening, reading books or watching foreign films, and I would simply lie. I would tell them I had spent hours viewing savage Internet pornography or simply curled up in the fetal position weeping. Anything was more palatable than the truth: that I had sat for hours on my couch and watched reality television. And I’m not talking about the few socially acceptable shows like “Project Runway” or “Top Chef.” Like most addicts, I had long since turned to the hard stuff. In the early years, I was able to convince myself that watching seminal shows like “Cops” and “The Real World” was merely a form of social observation not unlike viewing documentaries such as Nanook of the North or The Sorrow and the Pity. That became distinctly less believable as I watched hefty actors being weighed on a giant egg scale during “Celebrity Fit Club.”

So what draws me to shows where fading celebrities are humiliated for the sake of entertainment? Is it the vindictive pleasure of watching previously anointed ones tumbled unceremoniously from their thrones? That’s definitely possible and I’m not at all immune. There was a night in my late teens when I went to deliver a small parcel of cocaine for a local drug dealer. I arrived at the designated address and was surprised to find the homecoming king and queen of my high school huddled in an empty apartment, paranoid and nearly broke. Oh, how the mighty had fallen, I remember thinking, as I left with their last few dollars. I think for some people there is a similar jolt of superiority in watching a show like “The Surreal Life,” where someone like Motley Crue singer Vince Neil is reduced to performing in a childlike talent show with Emmanuel Lewis from “Webster.” I’m also aware it could simply be my own sadistic tendencies. Fair enough.

But then, while watching “Sober House,” I suddenly hit bottom. Something felt noticeably different. The show is a spin-off of the series “Celebrity Rehab” and follows seven down and out celebrities as they attempt to stay off drugs while living at a sober living home run by radio personality and addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky. Perhaps the reason “Sober House” affected me when other shows couldn’t is that I can relate to that world. After finally kicking drugs and alcohol for good back in the eighties, I actually did a stint working at a rehab facility. I know well the insanity of those places. Besides the near weekly drug relapses, there was sex between staff and patients, more than one suicide, and an epic fist fight between two staff members after one insinuated that the other’s girlfriend had been spotted at the “Toto house,” a near legendary site of cocaine fueled hedonism owned by a now-deceased member of the popular soft rock band Toto. I also know some of the people on the show. Counselor Bob Forrest is an old friend from the LA punk scene. When I was sixteen, he watched, unmoved, as I took off my clothes and stumbled into a swimming pool while overdosing on Quaaludes. In my world, that’s like going to college together.

I would like to believe I was vastly more serious about my recovery then the people on the show, but the fact is, I acted just like them. I used drugs in every rehab except for the last, and once jumped out of a second-story hospital window (I was aiming for a tree) wearing a flimsy hospital gown and no pants in a desperate attempt to get high again. Nothing says stoic self-control like picking twigs out of your ass while trying to flag down cars.

John Albert grew up in Los Angeles. As a teenager, he co-founded the cross-dressing death rock band Christian Death, then played drums for seminal punk band Bad Religion. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Blackbook, Fader, and Hustler, among others. He has won awards for sports and arts journalism and has appeared in several national anthologies. His book, Wrecking Crew (Scribner), which chronicled the true-life adventures of his amateur baseball team-comprised of drug addicts, transvestites and washed up rock stars-has been optioned by studios three times so far.

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