Tuesday, May 19, 2009

IT'S THE SINGER, NOT THE SONG...

Naiseng, a longtime employee of the Archie McPhee Catalog people, gives his brutally honest assessment of some of the company's most popular products.

This really helps to illustrate just how a prop, devoid of a talented comedian's ability to "sell" said prop, can (and very often does) look completely stupid and totally useless in the cold light of day.





I think that I would prefer watching Naiseng either alone or without the condescending demeanor of the host. This pretty clearly illustrates the talent of someone like David Letterman, who could present the same material in the same way without giving you the impression that he was personally insulting the subject.

"Dying is easy; presenting ironically humorous online videos based on a foreigner's difficulties in comprehending an American hipster's pop-cultural sensibilities based on encountering a series of non-related items from a mail-order novelty catalog is apparently quite hard, or at the very least much harder than it looks on late night television."




1 comment:

Mat Coes said...

Hey Pat, congratulations on getting the blog back up.

But I've got to disagree on this one. I don't see any disrespect there (and I'm hyper-attuned to that sort of thing). I see it more as an ironic self-commentary on the goofiness and uselessness McPhee catalog.

best
-mat