Posted
2:07 AM
by sport
OK - this is compelling, kinda. Last week a piece of video from my famed archive aired as the cold opening to the Letterman show on CBS. Here's the exciting tale.
My chum, Steve -writer for the show and foremost authority on the Industrial Musical genre- stopped by the house a few months ago for a spot of coffee and chat. It's no secret that the eccentric aura of our home is a rich source of inspiration and renewal to all manner of non-LI-phobic creative types, and Steve is no exception.
Once a particularly dry and acrid intro from some ancient p.d. sales film worked its magic on jokester Steve, it was a short step to the discerning eye of veteran tv funnyguy Letterman himself (in Steve's words, "Dave seemed sort of amused") and then to the vasty reaches of the public airwaves and a nation hungry for nocturnal camp.
You bet I used the "DVR for IO" function of my dauntingly complex cable box to save this moment for the sub-category of my archive concerning those fragments of my collection that have been re-re-used for media meta-schtick applications at sundry levels of public accessibility. It's a small but worthy array, and I'd delve further into it here except that it's very fucking "de trop" to brag about one's cool connections in "the industry."
Point is, now I can save that recording to vhs, rip it to the computer, burn a dvd, and then - at any time I wish - watch the same exact footage - mere seconds of entertainment dynamite - in either its "original" post-context context or in its new, retooled (but exactly the same) mass-media, neo-coffee-n-chat, "sure-you-can-borrow-it" infra-context. Will I? Dunno. Depends on whether I can find a minute amidst the countless amusements afforded by living on Long motherfucking Island: the very crucible of big ideas.
As Sinatra sang: "The Looong... it's so loooong... very looong...."