i1 I
2W The Michigan Daily We nd, etc. Magazine - Thur y, September 16, 1999
0
WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
ThedormStore.com
You've probably noticed advertisements for a slew of online college bookstores on the radio or television. These companies are all
trying to provide your textbooks online. Another company is trying to do the same thing with furniture and dorm supplies.
ThedormStore.com is the dorm supplies answer to sites like ecampus.com and bigwords.com. Everything - from hampers to
microwaves - is available for purchase on this site, The site has a really cool feature that allows you to make a wish list of products
and email it to someone else (parents,'rich uncle, personal shopper) to buy for you. Best of all, shipping is free.
The Mchigan Dail'Weekend, etc.
case they make it huge. The
Detroit. (313) 535-3440.
THEATER
As Bees in Honey Drown See
The Genius of Goethe HOSTI/
Ensemble commemorates Goe
birthday with scenes from his
The show also features work ft
rary artists Dante and Italian
Boito and Gounod. Mendelsso
Michigan League. 763-8587.
dents.
ALTERNATIVES
Gelek Rinpoche Brunch and
grating spiritual practice intc
sored by Students for a Free
Michigan Union Pendleton Roo
Open Mic Offers a chance to a
cuss literature. Borders. 11 a.
i
Green reigns as
king of teen humor
By Paula Span
The Washington Post
NEW YORK - The idea, comic Tom
Green explains as he and the MTV
video crew head downtown in a van, is
to show up on Wall Street as a trader -
the Arctic Circle variety, steering a dog
sled, offering pelts and pots in exchange
for people's handbags or cameras - and
then record the way passersby react.
"Hopefully, we'll get in some trouble,"
Green says. "The goal is trouble."
Naturally, he will swathe himself in a
massive fur parka, which is currently
stashed in the rear of the van.
"Everyone on the show condones the
slaughter of animals," Green notes.
"Encourages it!" a production assis-
tant chimes in from the back seat.
It takes a while to set up the rather
elaborate scenario - Green in mukluks;
a wheeled "sled" laden with fur swatch-
es, hunks of cheese and a plastic sala-
mi; a mutt named Cosmo - and then
Green's off down the street doing his
hit-and-run comedy. And the most
arresting thing about it, frankly, isn't
how completely demented the scrawny
guy looks in his Nanook ensemble. Or
the way he hands a startled business-
man a slab of Havarti in exchange for
his suitcase, then ticks - off sidewalk
vendors by grabbing their merchandise
and leaving them dented cookware. Or
even the encounter - the video clip that
will probably wind up being used on
the show - where Green charges into an
office tower and encounters a security
guard who sternly tells him, "You can't
bring your dog sled in here."
It's that after only five episodes of
"The Tom Green Show" on MTV, star-
ring an odd Canadian comedian whom
virtually no one south of the border had
heard of a month ago, a whole lot of
people under 30 recognize the man in
the mukluks.
"Oh, it's Tom Green," someone mur-
murs as the comedian tries to wrestle
away a woman's scarf.
"Tom Green, wassup, man?"
"Funny (expletive), man."
Which was not precisely the reaction
that Green and his writers, always in.
search of outrage, had in, mind. But it
will do.
You can't exactly call his half-hour
show "alternative comedy," which is the
overbroad label for non-punch-line fun-
niness mixed with performance art. "It
makes you think of someone in a black
turtleneck, scrunching in a corner with
candles, drinking pig's blood," Green
objects.
You could call it adolescent humor,
given that it highlights such bodily-
fluid encounters as Green sucking milk
from a dairy cow's teat or delivering a
stream-of-consciousness monologue
while buying condoms. In fact,
Canada's Comedy Network, which
began airing a version of "The Tom
Green Show" last year, proudly round-
ed up various critics' pans - "sick,
offensive" and "amateurish and infan-
tile" and even "a circus of cruelty and
mayhem" - and trumpeted them in a
promotional spot. But its 27-year-old
star sounds wounded. Fond as he is of
fart and pee jokes, "I want the show to
be labeled a smart comedy show, not a
gross-out comedy show," Green says,
gamely trying to have it both ways, all
ways.
So there is no convenient description
for what happens Monday nights at
10:30 except that it's highly unpre-
dictable, as likely to prompt gasps as
laughs, and a hit for MTV Of the net-
work's 'prime-time shows, it's No. 2
among MTV's core 18-to-24-year-old
viewers (behind "Celebrity
Deathmatch") and No. I among 12-to-
34-year-olds.
I Green, a goateed beanpole who has
suggested he belongs on the cover of
Sickly Man magazine, looks bleary by
the end of the day. After the trader bit,
he spent all afternoon impersonating a
consumer reporter, striding into 14th
Street stores to demonstrate that the
appliances he'd bought earlier were full
of spaghetti and meatballs and demand-
ing explanations. Like so many of the
professionally outrageous, though, he's
calmly articulate off-mike and off-cam-
era. Eating eel rolls at the sushi place
near the office, explaining and defend-
ing himself, he's ... nice.
hIfact, he's still reeling from the fact
that just two days earlier, he made his
first U.S. talk show appearance - with
David Letterman, whom he'd only been
watching and worshiping his entire life.
Green showed the video of the time he
had his parents' Honda secretly spray-
painted with a lesbian love scene and
See TOM GREEN, Page 58
Om Puri and Rachel Griffiths in Udayan Prasad's "My Son the Fanatic."
Annie Hail (1977) One of Woody Allen's best
about a couple that can't live together but .
can't live apart. MLB 4. 7 & 10:20 p.m. $4,
$5 dbl.
My Son The Fanatic (1999) A middle-aged
Pakistani taxi driver finds solace in a hooker
he befriends. Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty
St. 7 & 9 p.m. $5.50.
What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966) Woody Allen's
first film is a Japanese spy film that he comi-
cally dubbed into English. MLB 4. 8:40 p.m.
$4, $5 dbl.
MUS/C
.Swingin' Utters Can you say 0i? The Utters
sure as hell can. The Teen Idols open the show.
The Shelter. 8:00. (313) 961-MELT.
Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Artists in this
installment of the festival include Uncle Jesse
White, Thornetta Davis, Jimmy Dillon, Steve
Turre, and Pharoah Sanders. Gallup Park. Noon.
$20 ($15 for students).
Speedball Opening the show are Five Horse
Johnson (no relation to Blazing Saddles, hon-
est) and Disengage. Magic Stick. 9:00. (313)
833-9700.
THEA TER
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead See
Thursday. 11 p.m.
As Bees in Honey Drown See Friday. 8 p.m.
ALTERNATIVES
Stand-Up Comedy See Thursday. 8 and 10:30
p.m.
COURTESY OF MIRAMAX
Sunday
CAMPUS CINEMA
Tarzan See Saturday. 5 p.m.
The Lady Vanishes (1938) An early Hitchcock
film about an elderly English governess who
disappears from a transcontinental train.
Angell Aud. A. 7 p.m. Free. .
My Son The Fanatic See Saturday. 7 & 9 p.m.
Strangers On A Train (1951) A Hitchcock film
about a pro tennis player who finds himself
stalked by the man who killed his estranged
wife and wants him to kill his mother. Angell
Aud. A. 9 p.m. Free.
MUSIC
Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival Final install-
ment of the weekend-long event will be closed-
out by Keb' Mo'. Not to be missed. Gallup Park.
Noon. $20 ($15).
Jackyl Remember the song they did with the
chainsaw? Be afraid, be very afraid. And be pre-
pared to rock. Very hard. I-ROCK Nightclub.
(313) 881-ROCK.
Monda
CAMPUS CINEMA
German Animation (1999) A fe
German animation. Michigan T
Liberty St. 7 p.m. $5.50.
My Son The Fanatic See Satu
MUSIC
Bird of Paradise Orchestra Gu
friends? Yep, they still play big
still do it at the Bird. Bird of P
662-8310.
Jazzhead Do you like acid? Do
Do you like Acid Jazz? You the
Jazzhead. Fifth Avenue, Royal
9922.
ALTERNATIVES
MFA Works-In-Progress Ex
Thursday.
Jazz in Leonardo's The univer
Program showcases the Sat
Group. 8-10 pm Pierpont Comi
Tuesda
CAMPUS CINEMA
Howling Diablos Will they ever get a big time
record deal? Doubtful. But go see them, just in My Son The Fanatic See Satur
Kevin Costner stars in "For Love of the Game."
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