Childish Gambino

like that old 'young comedians showcase' HBO special where John Candy hosts and does a few minutes of material before introducing the comics, i'm just like no dude, i love you but no, this is not you

"armchair cracker" is just a much funnier and snappier way of saying "i'm white btw"

I'm not sure if it's that having fame before standup means you're going to be bad at standup. I think it's more that standup is really its own discipline to such an extent that you need to practice and work really hard at it to get a level of comfort and to be successful on the stage. More likely that if you're already famous, you're not necessarily willing to put in that work -- or you'll sub in the stuff you're already comfortable with without developing the new skills. xp

i thought golvbino got 'discovered' at NYU doing stand up, or was it improv?

xpost Robin Williams has had moments where he's not "on" and being a scene stealer. And that's usually when he's in an ensemble as well.

Neither DG nor williams have have much restraint, they're always going for the home run comedy moment when sometimes it would've served them better to lay off the shtick. There's also the lapses into bad taste they both share.

Anyway, Derrick Comedy is DG's equivalent of Robin's early stand-up career, Community is his Mork and Mindy, and the next fifteen years of him dominating either movies or tv is going to be like Robin's run in the late 80s and 90s.

LOL @ the idea of donald glover "dominating either movies or TV"

adam brody is inescapable these days

"armchair cracker" is just a much funnier and snappier way of saying "i'm white btw"

I think the words "ian cohen" made "armchair cracker" or "i'm white btw" an unnecessary part of the pfork review

http://www.southernsavers.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cracker-Barrel-Logo.jpg

how does henry rollins fit into all of this

ftr i do wish donald glover had gotten the spiderman role

Henry Rollins confronts Donald Glover about the use of the word Blipster in a NYC record shop xpost

album would've had a lot more semen jokes

xp

I'm not sure if it's that having fame before standup means you're going to be bad at standup. I think it's more that standup is really its own discipline to such an extent that you need to practice and work really hard at it to get a level of comfort and to be successful on the stage. More likely that if you're already famous, you're not necessarily willing to put in that work -- or you'll sub in the stuff you're already comfortable with without developing the new skills. xp

― Mordy, Friday, December 2, 2011 11:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

that's exactly what i meant fwiw, i just didn't want to type all that out

oh, yeah, otm then

plus it's also the refuge of guys who become comedy stars in TV or movies and then stop getting a lot of roles and realize they can make good money filling a comedy club any night of the week even if they're really not built for that line of work, which is how we get something like the Michael Richards debacle

LOL @ the idea of donald glover "dominating either movies or TV"

The second Community gets canceled he'd be offered his own show by FX and Comedy Central, probably network tv, and would get a first right of refusal for every single role that Aziz Ansari would get offered.

how many references to sister, sister does it to get to the center of donald glover

The second Community gets canceled he'd be offered his own show by FX and Comedy Central, probably network tv, and would get a first right of refusal for every single role that Aziz Ansari would get offered.

― Cunga, Friday, December 2, 2011 11:01 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i just

by proxy you're comparing the careers of robin williams and aziz ansari, which....

I get a little off-track, bear with me...

rereading this p4k article & wondering if maybe childish gambino doesn't lack self awareness per se but just isn't up to the minute on rap trends? i get the feeling that we're in a whineyesque bubble here, what was for the past two years a trickle of stereogum updates (Beyonce Ass Moved by Grizzly Bear Concert) has only really become a tide circa somewhere between mbdtf & take care. not sure how perceptible the trends ian cohen &c (myself incl) are distinctly aware of are on a macro/college campus level

i don't think that donald glover's awareness or unawareness of the growing intersection between rap and indie music has much to do w/ whether or not he succeeds in creating an outsider persona, unless you want to give him pity points for ignorance

i think the outsider persona is more palpable to other audiences, incl ones that share that ignorance. not that that isn't an audience who also share the horrible taste & sense of humour. but in the same way most people hearing Foster the People are unaware of indie dance pop trends of the past three years, probably fewer are aware that it's indie rock artist bon iver mumbling crap eight minutes into a kanye single, or know who lil b is aside from a guy who makes funny jokes about bitches wanting to have sex with him for improbable reasons. and i think the childish gambino persona is considerably more novel if you're not clued into these micro-narratives. not that you're not an asshole if you like this music--but it frames an argument about his Self Awareness around audience groups & the reviewer's nerd knowledge rather than the music itself

but Strongo man you're breaking my heart

lol sorry man. god knows i've put in my time trying to like it. and it's not as if you don't know i watch hella tv so this isn't some Hipster Shits on Something He's Never Seen from His Olympian Williamsburg HQ or some shit.

there's something about the rhythm of it that's off to me. i get the same vibe from parks and rec and happy endings and a lot of other current shows. the 30 rock rhythm on +8 or something.

relatedly/unrelatedly i fell really hard for the drake album while ilx was down

community has a fabulous rythm & density of jokes imo but i hate 30 rock and parks & rec

what, we don't like auto-tune the news around here

parks and rec makes me strangely angry, like i get really resentful that there arent any jokes [lazy childish gambino zing]

parks and rec makes me strangely angry because it's the third iteration of the office and i think we've all had enough at this point

community is television for people who frame their Mensa membership cards but still eat boogers

dying

lol

Shit like this makes my fucking skin crawl:

"If there was any doubt that Community was one of the smartest half-hour comedies to ever air on network television, allow us to enter this into evidence...."

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/11/community-beetlejuice-easter-egg/

Might as well replace "Community" with "xkcd" and "comedies" with "web comics" if that's your definition of smart. Oh, sigh, why couldn't Buñuel muster such droll commentary when he did Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie?

An endless string of meta-commentary and audience-aggrandizing patter was so **SMART** when it was called <i>Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back</i>. Get bent.

you know we have a community thread

haha i prefer this guy to whiney

idg the using html tags thing

it's meta

And putting some imaginary line in the sand between this cutesy, hyper-pop-culturey, clever-qua-clever shitcom and the Twitter raps of Childish Gambino is like pretending Jackass didn't spawn the Steve-O rap album

discreet charm of the bbcode

what about arrested development, do you have a rant about that

I hear there's a movie coming out

http://skreened.com/render-product/e/w/a/ewawenekyfqmmowxcaax/ham-squad.american-apparel-unisex-fitted-tee.white.w760h760.jpg

arrested development sucked/sucks shit too, but i dont need to make longwinded hipster refs to express that.

i have to say the buñuel reference convinced me its not whiney

rereading this p4k article & wondering if maybe childish gambino doesn't lack self awareness per se but just isn't up to the minute on rap trends? i get the feeling that we're in a whineyesque bubble here, what was for the past two years a trickle of stereogum updates (Beyonce Ass Moved by Grizzly Bear Concert) has only really become a tide circa somewhere between mbdtf & take care. not sure how perceptible the trends ian cohen &c (myself incl) are distinctly aware of are on a macro/college campus level

― wil smif, Saturday, 3 December 2011 05:17 (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

well part of the problem is that he seems to have not been keeping up with rap trends for the past decade, or that because he is sooooo indie, he only has a handful of rap records and doesn't know what the shit his record should sound like in 2011.

nah come on the buñuel ref is classic whiney