Because I love Louis CK, and I love Dane Cook. And when the two come together . . .
I quote Dane Cook often in class, as a student once noted on Rate My Professor. Dane Cook uses words that I think sound Shakespearean and then I realize Shakespeare does indeed use that word– like “fantastical” (It’s in MacBeth, if you want to know.)
I also have a theory that laughter stimulates creativity, and so I have been known to “warm up” my class by showing them a Dane Cook clip or two before we start our free-writing.
There are a lot of reasons I love Dane Cook, but as this is a blog entry that is really about Louie CK and his show Louie, I’ll try to keep this brief:
Dane Cook once saved my life.
Yes.
During a disastrous trip to Oklamhoma City to visit a long-time ex with whom I had never slept with (I’ll call him E), and because I thought E might be my true soul mate (he was my first boyfriend at 14 and we once held hands in a field, yes, we held hands in a field and we never even kissed), I flew to visit him for a long weekend just after my divorce, and, after the first five minutes, when we realized we that we hated fucking each other and that we barely had two words to say that the other person found interesting, we still both loved Dane Cook. In fact, besides our shared history, our passion for the hilarity of Dane Cook may have been the only thing we had in common.
And so for the rest of our time together, when E wasn’t sneaking me into the Navy base he was stationed at to show me the huge plane he flew for the Navy emblazoned with his call sign, we just listened to Dane Cook’s stand-up on his internet site lying on separate couches in his enormous living room and then made it through the rest of our tortured hours together by repeating the jokes to each other. We both laughed so hard we even tried having sex again, but not even Dane Cook (or that enormous military plane) could make that magic happen.
So thank you, Dane Cook, for providing some moments of joy during a weekend where I spent the rest of the time crying in the shower as my fake tan peeled from my body (yes, the fake tanner I had applied to cover my embarrassing tan lines peeled from my body in flakes of skin that left me looking mottled and streaked) and/or in various public restrooms (we killed another few hours watching Wedding Crashers, which had just come out in theatres, but Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson falling hilariously in love just made me feel even more desperately sad and hopeless and unlovable.)
But this blog entry is about Louie CK and Louie.
So I watched the preview clip on Hulu, and it was very funny, what with Dane Cook being a hard ass and Louie being sort of confused and adorable and yet also faintly dignified, even as he’s asking Dane, in his infinite fame and wealth that has culminated in Dane’s friendship with Lady GaGa, to get Louie two tickets to a Gaga show for his daughter’s birthday.
And then in the kitchen the other day, my sister Lizzy told me that the full episode was (finally) on Hulu. Needless to say, I had been waiting for this moment. As we prepped for dinner, Lizzy told me that everyone has been congratulating both Louie CK AND Dane Cook on doing the episode– for their bravery in addressing (and making fun) of all the rumors that Dane Cook stole Louie Ck’s jokes. I had heard rumors, years before, that Dane Cook stole jokes, but I didn’t realize that Louie CK was the comedian.
So I watched it a few nights ago in my parents’ kitchen, washing dishes after dinner.
Of course, like every episode, “Oh, Louie/Tickets,” is brilliant. Not just because of the tortured conversation with Dane– not just because of the first ending with Louie’s daughter, which I won’t give away– not just because of the second ending, with Bob Saget– not just because I loved the image of Louie’s face in the midst of the army of body guards and the self-important head seccurity guy, with his stained shirt, barking out their locations as they move through the building. Petals on a wet, black bough indeed.
The reason I think “Oh Louie/Tickets” is so brilliant is because there’s a moment, in the beginning of the show, that acts as a sort of ars poetica for Louie CK’s entire aesthetic. An ars poetica for the show itself. An ars poetica for, (dare I say it?), comedy itself.
So right in the beginning of the episode, there’s a scene where Louie is filming a sitcom, during the early years of his career. And after Louie opens a beer using the edge of the table, his show-wife comes into the kitchen and asks him if he just opened that with the furniture and he says yes and she asks him why, when the opener is right there in the drawer and he tells her the table was right there too, she says, “Oh, Louie, I love you.”
And the audience goes, “Awwww,” and Louie says, “Why would you say that?”
The actress looks puzzled, but, trying to play along, she says, “What?”
“I just said a really dick thing. Why would you say I love you?” And then when she storms off the set the producer comes out and Louie asks him, “Why does she say that?”
“It’s cute,” the producer replies.
“I thought we were going to do a show about marriage. Like a really honest, real show,” Louie says. And then, “Are you folks seriously buying this shit?”
And some jackass in the pseudo-studio audience goes “Oh yeah” and everyone laughs and applauds.
While I’m amused at the reference to all the shows like the unbelievably bad and NOT funny According to Jim (“the wife that’s way too hot for the dude and the friend who I would never hang out with . . . “) I’m moved by this:
The producer says that the line, “Oh Louie, I love you,” is cute.
And Louie says, “We can’t have a show where everybody says whatever because it’s cute.”
“What do you want her to say to you?” the producer asks.
“What do I want her to say?” Louie responds. ”I’m leaving you.”
“That’s not funny,” the producer says.
“Yes it is,” Louie says. ”That’s hilarious. Come on. And then she leaves. And she takes the kids. And then he has to finally face himself. Wouldn’t you love to do that show?”
Needless to say, Louie quits the sitcom.
But that moment, when Louie says that the wife saying “I’m leaving you” would be funny– hilarious even– that’s real. It’s true. Louie’s right.
And truth, in the end, is what makes comedy.
* * *
So there’s much to say about Louie CK and the hilarious/hysterical moments of facing the self: particularly poignant is the date that was just taking a turn over a plate of doughnuts (“Come watch me eat a doughnut,” Louie tells his date in an attempt to prolong the evening) when Louie is threatened by the angry young high school boy and after he’s bullied into pleading with the kid not to beat him up, the woman says his handling of the situation was just not sexy.
Even the opening preview hits my gut: Louie gorging himself on an enormous slice of pizza, framed by a shop window, taking huge bites and then throwing the crust into the garbage, while the soundtrack repeats, “Louie, Louie, Louie, you’re gonna die.”
So much, incidentally, that resonates with my life, even though I’m a Left-Coast-New-Age-Hippie-Chick-Foodie-Feminist and Louie is a Cynical-Embittered-Lonely-New-Yorker-for-Life.
And saying that, the scene that kills me the most is the one where this woman, a fellow single parent, invites Louie to fuck using her bitching about the most recent actions of the PTA as a pick-up.
The dialogue is painful in the woman’s utter lack of social graces and Louie’s surprise and attempt to handle the thing gracefully and, pulsing underneath the awkwardness, their mutual loneliness, their very human need for connection. And of course, it’s funny.
And it gets even more painful (and thus funnier) when he shows up with a bottle of wine (Oh, Louie) and then he kisses her (by the way, it looks like Louie CK is a fucking great kisser. There are a lot of episodes where he tries to kiss women: the evangelist against masturbation, the fellow stand-up comedian who is too hot for him, and, most memorably, Joan Rivers in her suite in Vegas) and this PTA-hater, Mother of Gabriel (she’s one of those women who loses her whole self in her child) is apparently un-moved by his passion. She says, as if she’s surprised, “Oh, are you ready to have intercourse now?”
Oh. God.
And then Mother-of-Gabriel makes Louie go get lubricant-free condoms. A special kind of Lube. And Vagisil (“My vagina is irritated,” she says, which is an absolutely perfect concrete, specific, detail, the kind I tell my creative writing students to pack into their fiction and poetry.)
And then there’s the blueberries, she wants fucking blueberries, which Louie obediently goes and gets.
I see myself in that annoying woman, so self-centered and yet so hopelessly awkward and yet so real– so honest. She’s real about her irritated vagina (I would just die before I told a lover that my vagina was anything but a glowingly ripe, dripping wet, luscious peach– a ripe persimmon– a salty mango) and she wants those blueberries enough to plead with him on the phone while he’s buying the aforementioned condoms, lube, and Vagasil.
And Louie, bless his “I just want to have sex” heart, goes and gets them for her.
And then she comes out with this granny nightgown on (again, so funny, so real) and then starts rubbing lotion on her legs, and it’s the sort of fucked-up sexy moment because Louie’s turned on.
Perfect. You take what you can get in this world, and the thing is, as my friend Corey said once, “Ugly people do have sex, Jen,” and I’ve definitely had my share of sex with ugly people.
Because everyone is beautiful in their private tragedy. You just have to start looking– really looking– to see it.
Note: I introduced one of my friends to Louie because he introduced me to Trailer Park Boys. And while I thought one of the main characters, a red-haired fuck-up named Ricky, was so ugly and disgusting and repulsive the first few episodes, by the time we were almost done watching the first season I thought Ricky was really handsome. And by the time we watched the fourth season, I was totally in love with Randy’s face. Every time the camera shows him I was like, “God DAMN Ricky’s hot.”
But the real brilliance of this episode, of the show itself, is a very real moment. This woman, still wearing the granny nightgown, now pushed up around her thighs and on all fours, has asked Louie to spank her, and after Louie’s looked a little bit confused, and after he’s hesitantly smacked her on the ass a few times, and just after he’s started to get into it, and after she’s said, “I’m a bad girl, daddy,” and after he’s like, “Yeah, you’re a bad girl,” and he’s finally relaxed and in the moment and enjoying himself . . . she starts crying– this hysterical sobbing– and it’s funny and brilliant and sad and tragic and yet hilarious.
Her utter hysteria is hysterically funny.
* * *
I started this blog because I wanted to write about food, sex, and literature . . . well, this show sort of brings it all into sharp focus for me. Pizza and blueberries and spanking and special lubricants to avoid irritation and the way comedy can so quickly turn to tragedy and then back again.
When I taught Reading Drama (aka Reading Plays), I taught only tragedies. About midway through the quarter, my students, overwhelmed at the incest (How I Learned to Drive) and bestiality (The Goat) and murder (Othello) and gouging out of eyes (Oedipus) would want to read comedies for some relief, and I would tell them that the tragedies ARE funny.
Oedipus, screaming at Tiresias, the blind seer (get it? See-er?), telling him he is blind when of course it’s Oedipus who is the blind one. And then, of course, when he finds out he has fulfilled the prophecy by killing his father and marrying his mother (there’s something funny about that too) and even more funny still, that he’s done these things even as he’s tried to avoid them . . . that’s funny.
The difference between tragedy and comedy, I’d tell my Shakespeare students, is that tragedy ends in a tableau of bloody bodies draped across the stage. And comedy ends in a wedding.
After that quick and dirty, nothing about tragedy and comedy is clear or clearly demarcated, because I find the endings of tragedy, even the ones that end in the most violent deaths, are actually far more hopeful and, dare I say, happy, than the comedies.
For a long time, I’ve been troubled by the end of Shakespeare’s comedies. They may end in a wedding, but we all know how most marriages, even the ones that last, end up. As Dane Cook says in The Nothing Fight, “Two weeks in and you’re like No Way, but I’ll hang around for 5 to 6 years and then we can end this thing violently. Plenty of time.”
For example, sitting at Butterfly Herbs one summer afternoon, this kid sitting next to me told me he had played Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. I asked him what he thought about the last few lines of the play (which are uttered by Benedick.) He didn’t remember what they were, so I told him:
Think not on him till to-morrow:
I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.
Strike up, pipers.
The “he” is the villain of the story, the Bastard Prince John, the one who has caused all this trouble. So even in the midst of the wedding feast, there’s this allusion to torture. Which, although the lines are literally the bad guy getting what he deserves– the punishment of the wicked– it sort of unsettles the “happy” ending. The final image of Much Ado is no tableau of bodies, rather, it’s a wedding dance, but the last lines of the play leaves me with an uneasy feeling.
Since they are uttered during a wedding feast, I can’t help but think about the struggles that are about to come for Beatrice and Benedick (who both have been basically tricked into declaring love for each other and bicker constantly, albeit cleverly, throughout the play) and for Hero and Claudio (who mistakenly accused his virgin bride Hero of adultery and, when she “died” from shame, was like pretty much like, “Oh well. The whore deserved it.”)
I mean, what does that allusion to torture NOT say about the fate of these two marriages?
* * *
The episode Bummer/Blueberries ends in Gabriel’s mother’s dining room, eating cereal while Louie watches her. There’s something about the sort of paternal feel to Louie’s body language and her attempt to further discuss the PTA that just breaks my heart.
Because Louie didn’t just leave after her almost psychotic break. Because Gabriel’s mother didn’t order Louie out. Because they sit there and she eats cereal in the harsh light of a single bare bulb and there’s a strange sort of intimacy in that moment of communion, even though she’s the only one eating.
I’ve so been that woman.
And I’ve been Louie.
And I’ve been in that bedroom– I’ve been in that breakfast nook.
* * *
Dane Cook has a skit called “The Friend Nobody Likes.” And in it, when he talks about the fictional Karen, “bag of douche”– “the one person, in every group of friends, that nobody fucking likes,” the friend “you basically keep . . . to hate their guts.”
He says, “And I”m looking out and some of you are like, mmmm, I disagree. Well you’re the person nobody likes!”
When I first heard that skit, I was indeed the person thinking, “I don’t think our group has a friend like that.”
And then the epiphany hit me. And I thought, “That’s so true!” and laughed.
Dane Cook says, “I know, it is so true, and that’s why it’s funny. It is so true. That’s why it’s funny. Because it’s so true. Hence, funny.”
In the end, I think, we all have to face ourselves. And laugh.
Because what is true and what is funny have an inverse, reciprocal, shared relationship. You can’t have one without the other.
Tragedy is comedy and comedy is tragedy and both are real and true.
And that’s something that most comedies about love and dating and marriage have denied us– the general hilarity of our hysteria– the sobering reality that feels like tragedy and comedy at once.
Because we all are broken, in some way, and yet somehow we find people who want to rub up against our broken edges– even if it is just for one night.
And because, to quote the Indigo Girls on 10,000 Curfews right before they play “Least Complicated“: ”You have to laugh at yourself, because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.”
