Now that the first issue of PiQ has come and gone and everybody’s had their chance to chime in, I’d like to talk about one particular criticism that I’ve heard several times. While I anticipated it, I had hoped that the article content itself would deflect such criticism, since I wrote it specifically for the skeptical viewer.
I am referring, of course, to the Avatar: The Last Airbender feature.
To commemorate today’s historic DVD release of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! Season 1, here’s an extended version of our interview from issue 2, currently on every decent newsstand across the fruited plain:
In 2006, Variety called Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim’s crudely animated cult hit Tom Goes To The Mayor “put simply, one of the weirdest series on television.” A year later, the duo launched the anarchic sketch show Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! and caused many a head to explode. Add Tim and Eric Nite Live, the unhinged internet series they host for Super Deluxe, to the pile and you’ve got an entertainment empire like none other. And while their comic sensibilities inspire uncontrollable laughter in some and uncontrollable vomiting in others, few can deny that they are among modern comedy’s most influential and inimitable voices.
PiQ: Where are you guys in terms of work right now?
Tim: We’re getting ready for a tour and in the middle of shooting and editing season 3, plus we’re doing Tim & Eric Nite Live every week, so just too much stuff.
PiQ: How long are you going to do Tim & Eric Nite Live?
Tim: Until they stop giving us money! We’re addicted to it pretty much. We’re doing blocks of 12 episodes at a time.
PiQ: Did being in an incredibly self-serious environment like film school drive you guys to become comedians?
Eric: That was definitely my experience. We both wanted to be mega-serious, Stanley Kubrick art film directors, and once you get into that environment and see all the bad professors who are washed-up directors it makes you laugh at the whole system in general. We made a bunch of short films that were totally anti-film school, and that was kind of a springboard to what we do now. You think you’re so special and then you see these hundreds of other kids doing the same thing as you. It’s really daunting. We came out to L.A. to intern on film shoots and music videos and both came out saying, “Holy s***, this ladder is so long, how do you move up this thing?” We came back to the East Coast a little defeated trying to find another way in.
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Did we ever say this podcast would be a regular thing? Whoops. After a hectic month or so, we finally sat down and got to discuss some of what we’ve been up to, including Kevin’s trip to Japan, the infallible legacy of Upton Sinclair and our collective realization that some games are just entirely too damn hard for old fogeys like us (and we’re not even that old).
More importantly, there’s also our discussion of Issue 2 and all the goodness therein, like how much we dig Sam & Max, Lucky Star, Iron Man, Tim and Eric, action movies, old game shows and pig creatures? Also, we have another sweet prize for those of you interested, so be sure to listen for that too.
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I read an article today about how tsundere — a combative personality that shows occasional flashes of kindness, as exemplified by Haruhi Suzumiya — is a bunch of old crap. In its place is deretsun, essentially the opposite personality — seemingly nice and modest, but later cold and criticizing.
Of course, I read about this in a Japanese women’s fashion magazine, so there may not be a preponderance of scientific evidence to back this statement up. Here’s what the May ‘08 issue of with had to say on the subject:
“The exact opposite of the ‘tsundere’ that’s been so popular the past few years, this new ‘gap character’ is rapidly rising in popularity. The secret to the buzz: the exasperated lecturing behind the soothing exterior, a sharp combination that’s rare to see nowadays.”
One weblog commenting on this brings up Maison Ikkoku’s Kyoko Otonashi as an example of a deretsun kind of personality — extremely nice, often to a fault, but someone who snaps and lets Godai have it whenever he screws up yet another date or whatever.
This strikes me as the sort of personality that people would find attractive only in the world of anime, but…
Anyone following the whole HD format war mess knows that Universal was the one holdout that stood by HD DVD through thick and thin. As the one HD DVD supporter on staff, I figured that it’d be a cold day in Hell when we’d see Universal announcing upcoming titles for the Blu-ray format. Yet, here we are and today Universal did just that.
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Now that the first issue of PiQ has come and gone and everybody’s had their chance to chime in, I’d like to talk about one particular criticism that I’ve heard several times. While I anticipated it, I had hoped that the article content itself would deflect such criticism, since I wrote it specifically for the [...]
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