The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, April 15, 2013 - 7A The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom Monday, April 15, 2013 - 7A Louis still king of comedy I don't cry when I watch TV Famed comedian as vulgar as ever on 'Oh My God' By MAX RADWIN Daily Fine Arts Editor Louis C.K.'s fourth HBO com- edy special, "Oh My God" pre- miered this Sunday with more hype than it could possibly B+ live up to. Nev- ertheless, the Oh My God most popular and successful Special stand-up come- HBO dian of the last decade (does "C.K." stand for "Comedy King"? It's starting to look that way) delivered another solid hour of ingeniously filthy jokes. C.K.'s comedy specials seem to age like a fine wine. This one too looks promising for a second and third listen-through when he puts it up on his website for five dollars in September. But for now, "Oh My God" just isn't as "hilarious" in the sense of the word that C.K. so bril- liantly tore apart in his third, and perhaps best, album, and which forces audiences to hold him to such an incredibly high standard. There are countless moments when C.K. is at his best, though. If possible, he has actually improved at being vulgar. It's almost thera- peutic or refreshing to laugh at his twistedness - like he's giving everyone a much-needed break from riding their moral, politically correct high horse. Who else can make a joke out of killing an old blind dog, the benefits of slavery and suffocating a kid in a plastic bag? (Of course, it's funnier when he tells it). Somehow, he manages to use this level of vulgarity with- out second thought and in jokes that are flat-out brilliant. In the rare moments that wane, or during the bits that just aren't as sidesplitting, that brilliance is still there. That's what separates C.K. from any run-of-the-mill John Caparulo: There is always a profundity to what he is saying - that what is being talked about, in his best joke or worst, has a sense of importance and relevance. Like any good joke should, his topics shine a spotlight on some don't cry when I watch TV. When asked what movie or show makes me cry, I laugh. "None of them," I say, met with disbelief. I've read studies and psychology articles on whypeople cry when they watch TV shows, hop- KAYLA ing to reverse UPADHYAYA engineerthe explanations and come up with a succinct answer for whyI - someone who has seen more onscreen breakups, breakdowns, deaths and despair than the average human - can't get those tear ducts flowing. Most give the obvious explanation: empathy. I saythat's bullshit. My dry eyes aren't for lack of emotional connection. I feel for fictional characters to what some might call an unhealthy degree. My friend Christian overheard me talking to another friend about how all I wanted was for Blair Waldorf to be happy, and the fervor in my voice convinced him I was talking about someone I knew and not the Queen B of the CW's "Gossip Girl." I got more mad at a friend for calling Betty Draper a "cunt" than I did when a group of my friends forgot my birthday in seventh grade. The emotions are there - the physical response is not. I don't cry when I watch TV, but ifI did, here are the thingsthat would make me cry: Vampires. Iwish I were kid- ding, butthe number oftimes I've overflown with emotion over a damnvampire show, of all things, now surpasses the number of times I've had to explain why "True Blood" sucks. So, no, Alex- ander Skarsgard can'tquite crack my hardened interior, but plenty of other fanged folkshave done the trick, like in seasontwo of "The Vampire Diaries,"when Elena walks to the top of a hill with her longtime vampire boyfriend Stefan and tells him she's only a17-year- old girl, she has her whole life in front of her, and she doesn't want to be a vampire. Or inthe following season when Caroline explains to her father- who's ironically gay - that he can't make her vampirism go away. Musical montages. Every. Damn. Time. Score ascenewith a power ballad fromthe early2000s, and you've got me. "Revenge" and "Pretty Little Liars" consistently exploitthis weakness. Bitches breakingdown. My favorite characters on most shows aren't quick to cry. So, when they doit'spowerful. The first time I saw Olivia Pope shed a tear on "Scandal," I thought the world was ending. Anything and everything Jason Katims has ever touched. At Paleyfest this year, when panel host Michael Ausiello asked Katims - the manbehind"Friday Night Lights" and "Parenthood" -if he and his writers make con- scious effort to include at least one tearjerker moment in every "Parenthood" script, he said no. The writers, Katims explained, are always surprised by the scenes that end up carrying the most emo- tional weight. "Parenthood"brims with in-your-face sadness like Kristina telling the family about her cancer diagnosis and recording a farewell to her children. But the more subtle moments linger with me long after an episode ends,like Julia learning Spanish so she can connect with Victor or Max final- ly gettingthatngoddamn vending machine back in his school. No tears, but plenty of feels. I don't cry when I watch TV, but I came pretty close one time. Two summers ago, I was living alone in Jackson, Mich. I spent my AC-less evenings with my good friend, Netflix. Iwas in the midst of my first straight-through view- ing of "Buffy." My friend LaToya had warned me that season five was one of the series's most emo- tionally tumultuous, butnothing could have prepared me for "The Body," an episode full of death, grieving, silence and intimate camerawork. All it took was an 1,100-year-old vengeance demon discovering the absoluteness of death to break me. A single tear rolled downmy nose onto my bare knee. "Kayla's First Tear," my friend called it. I don't cry when I watch TV. Or when I read books or see movies. I don't cry when I say goodbyes or I'll-miss-yous. Only in very rare instances of emotional release do tears escape the crevasses of my too-dark eyes. My friends call me robot, cyborg, Cylon. But 0 promise you, I feel Just watch me watch any show helmed by Joss Whedon and you'll see a jolt of emotion surgethrough my center. "Ohmygod," you'll say, just like all my housemates do. "Are you going to cry?!" Don'tgetyourhopes up. Upadhyaya is definitely FX Livin' the life. truth of society, but it's a truth that always seems to exist beyond just his own fat, white-guy point of view, and which you will inevi- tably encounter yourself when standing in an elevator, watching seals at the zoo or, as C.K. sug- gests, filming your own asshole for 20 minutes to put on Face- book. While "Shameless," "Chewed Up" and "Hilarious" are now untouchable hours of comedy, "Oh My God" joins "Live at the Beacon Theater" and "WORD: Live at Carnegie Hall" as C.K.'s second-tier specials, though still worlds above most. Perhaps "Oh My God" lacks the specificity of these earlier albums, in which C.K. would delve into lengthy, situational tangents that layer brilliant observation on top of brilliant observation. Some jokes feel like they are abandoned early, or cut short by the man who usually takes things too far. Sure, you've got Sigourney Weav- er breast-feeding, but it's just not quite the same as the detailed recounting of a 4-year-old slip- ping and falling in a pile of her own shit. If you've watched only one of C.K.'s stand-up specials or even just a single episode of "Louie," you'd know that he loves his kids. His two daughters undoubtedly come up in each of his albums and like every- thing else that comes out of his mouth, it's funny without fail. But they are much less pres- ent in "Oh My God." It's almost as if there isn't anything more for C.K. to say about them. The absurdity of a 9-year-old is just not different enough from the absurdity of an 11-year-old to keep it fresh. And five years removed from divorce, C.K.'s relationship status threatens to bear this same staleness. Just wait until he remarries, or his kids hit puberty, get boyfriends and start smoking weed. That's going to be one hell of an album. F IN E A R TS N OT E BOO K Don't let Laurie Anderson s UMMA art exhibit frighten you By LENA FINKEL is a pretty cool way to display DailyArts Writer art. But is it also completely freaky to walk into a pitch-black Laurie Anderson's "From the room with only the image of a Air" exhibit at the UMMA is teeny tiny lifelike person star- truly one of the most disturb- ing you down? Absolutely. ing things on campus you might Not to mention that eerie ever see. music is playing in the back- The exhibit is deceptively ground of Anderson's speech. simple and yet immediately Even more unsettling than shocking. The piece is held in the music is the faint sound of a small room, no bigger than 10 laughter in the background. feet by 10 feet, that is complete- And trust me when I say, noth- ly pitch black. When you round ing that the holographic Lau- the corner to enter the room, rie Anderson said was funny. the only light comes from the In fact, she wasn't even saying five-inch tall hologram of Lau- anything at all. She was merely rie Anderson sitting in a living telling a story about how she room chair accompanied by her took her dog for a 10-day walk, dog, also in a chair of her own. only to have her dog become But the image is projected onto the object of a group of vul- small clay structures, making tures' desires. the holographic image seem The punchline of the story completely 3-D and lifelike. is that the look of fear on her Projecting an image onto clay dog's face is the same look that l t t t yA *A