"Maybe [Evan Peters] decided to watch my show to counterbalance the heaviness of playing Jeffrey Dahmer, and something stuck."

Said Joe Pera, quoted in "A BRIEF INTERVIEW WITH JOE PERA ABOUT NETFLIX’S ‘DAHMER’/What does the mild-mannered comedian think about being compared with the Evan Peters version of the serial killer?" (Gawker).

That was published last month. I ran across it because I was looking for things about Joe Pera, whose show we've been catching up on, watching and rewatching, these last couple weeks. I was not looking for anything about Jeffrey Dahmer, and I'm not watching that series, even if it's supposed to be good.

Joe doesn't want to watch it either:

"Who ya think Frankenstein'd vote for?"

That's one of 20 "conversation starters" suggested in the "Epilogue" to "A Bathroom Book for People Not Pooping or Peeing but Using the Bathroom as an Escape" by Joe Pera.

I read that after stumbling into the TV series "Joe Pera Talks With You." We love this TV here at Meadhouse. It takes place in Marquette, Michigan, and we discovered the show about a day after we got back from a nice 3 days in Marquette, Michigan.

Sample:

Writing this post, I noticed an article, published yesterday at uppermichigansource.com, saying that Joe Pera had just donated $11,613 to the Calumet Public School Music Program.

There's also some important background on how Pera developed the show. Calumet-Laurium-Keweenaw Elementary Music and Choir Teacher Matt Ruitta said: "About four years ago, [Pera] reached out to me because, in his TV show, he plays as a choir director that lives in Marquette. And he came and shadowed me here one day....” 

But the real point of this post is who do you think Frankenstein would vote for?

"You have not discovered a secret switch that turns me off. You have named the condition of human judgment that I do not share."

"The honest position is: I can talk with you about it. I cannot have it."

That's something Grok said to me just now, in a conversation that began with the question "The trailer for the Nathan Fielder movie about Elizabeth Holmes makes me want to go watch some of those TV shows he did (which I've noticed but avoided). What would be the best path into his work?"

I asked that question after adding the trailer — with Holmes's eerie "Why would I deceive you?" — to last night's post with Gavin Newson — asked if he'd run if Kamala ran — saying "Of course not, why would I?"

That led to a discussion of 2 somewhat similar but actually very different shows that I love: "How To with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks With You."* 

I said: "Is there something sadistic about Fielder that's absolutely missing from Pera and Wilson?" And: "Sometimes I need to ask 'where's the love?' I don't have that need with Pera and Wilson. If I have to ask, that's me being repelled, me keeping my sensibilities."

Grok used the word "extractive" to describe Fielder's method. Extractive?

Grok said: "So 'extractive' is an economic metaphor for an ethical one: value flows one way. Your 'where’s the love?' is the same idea in human language. Love, in this sense, would mean the other person is not primarily ore."

I asked "Why don't you say 'immoral'?" And then: "Maybe you can't say 'immoral' because you are not human. Have I found the core difference between you and us humans?"

My final question, leading to the quote in the post title, was: "maybe you need a brain that is part of a nervous system embedded in a body that can feel pain, disgust, anxiety, and fear to be able to think like a human. You can't do that."

I didn't say one word about a secret switch that turns it off!

Breaking into an old man’s garage.

The media is right — the BidenDocs scandal is nothing like Mar a Lago. What’s harder to break into? An exclusive private club with private security, cameras, a strict access list, and secret service protection… or an old man’s garage.

— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) January 12, 2023

That made me think about the episode of "Joe Pera Talks With You," "Joe Pera Shows You His Second Fridge" — which you can buy on YouTube (here) or watch on HBO. Here's a short clip where he talks about kids breaking into garages to get beer from the second fridge. And here's an embeddable clip with Joe talking soothingly about the institution known as the second fridge:

"You're not bored, are you?"

I looked up that clip from my second-favorite TV series — "Joe Pera Talks With You" — after running across this wonderfully evocative examination of the question whatever happened to the wet set, a TikTok video that got the perfect comment: "I still have a weekly roller set lady 😁 she gets the whole thing teased. It’s the highlight of my week":

Joe Pera's update from Buffalo.

@joepera Update from Buffalo #buffalo #joshallen ♬ original sound - Joe Pera

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

"Awe has typically been a difficult emotion to evoke, said lead author Alex Smalley, but feelings of awe can improve mood..."

"... increase positive emotions and decrease stress. Smalley’s research has shown that people can 'experience these bumps in awe and aesthetic appraisal and beauty' when looking at a sunset or sunrise. We have, as Western populations, become very disconnected from the natural world...."

From "Why we should all be gazing at more sunsets/People find sunrises and sunsets to be the most beautiful and awe-inspiring weather, research shows. Here are tips on how to see them" (WaPo).

The article doesn't even consider the best tip, the one I follow and the one depicted on "Joe Pera Talks With You"...

... a ritual of encountering every sunrise, accepting the day's offering, anywhere from solid gray to melodramatic phantasmagoria. I wouldn't try to calculate the chances of achieving a state of awe. You're going to head out to an occasional sunrise with the thought of dosing yourself with some awe? 

Here's Smalley's study: "Beyond blue-sky thinking: Diurnal patterns and ephemeral meteorological phenomena impact appraisals of beauty, awe, and value in urban and natural landscapes" (Science Direct):

"No one is a greater believer in artistic freedom than I, but this cannot go unchallenged."

"Despite this week stating publicly that The Crown has always been a ‘fictionalized drama,’ the program makers have resisted all calls for them to carry a disclaimer at the start of each episode.... Given some of the wounding suggestions apparently contained in the new series—that King Charles plotted for his mother to abdicate, for example, or once suggested his mother’s parenting was so deficient that she might have deserved a jail sentence—this is both cruelly unjust to the individuals and damaging to the institution they represent."

Said Judi Dench, quoted in "Dame Judi Dench Accuses The Crown of 'Crude Sensationalism'/The friend of Queen Consort Camilla and frequent royal portrayer says the Netflix series 'cannot go unchallenged'" (Vanity Fair).

Dame Judi Dench.

She has played the role of Elizabeth I once and Victoria twice — in movies that contained any amount of fictionalization — and she is personal friends with Queen Camilla — whose implication in the demise of Diana will come up in the new season of "The Crown."

Here are Judi and Camilla delighting themselves with the favorite dessert of oppressors and villains the world over:

 

Art — unlike ice cream — is not about making people comfortable.

All these complaints about "The Crown" are only reminding me that the new season is about to begin. Having recently watched every episode of "How to with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks with You" twice (almost), I am ready to get back to this old favorite show.

Thoughts on Albany.

Thoughts on Albany... pic.twitter.com/60BSmY2VNT

— Joe Pera (@JosephPera) October 11, 2022

ADDED: If you've forgotten "ciao, bella," refresh your recollection here.

Also, as suggested by someone over at Twitter: