It's time for the Weird Accordion to Al column to become a real book you can hold in your hands and read on the toilet and everything!
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Episode 97: "Joe Jonas Wears a Maroon and Gold Letterman Jacket With White Sneakers”
Original airdate: June 24th, 2016
One of the many things Comedy Bang! Bang! shares with Al’s music is verisimilitude. When Al wanted the roar of the title character in “George of the Jungle” to sound authentic, for example, he didn’t recruit the services of somebody who could sound like Bill Scott, the voice of the iconic cartoon character: he got Scott himself.
On a similar note, when Scott Aukerman wanted someone to play McG, the succinctly monikered McGenius behind such Mcmasterpieces as Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and myriad Offspring and Smash Mouth music videos for “Joe Jonas Wears a Maroon and Gold Letterman Jacket With White Sneakers”, he didn’t get a hungry young comedian or a UCB alum with a McG vibe: he got McG himself.
“Joe Jonas Wears a Maroon and Gold Letterman Jacket With White Sneakers” cross-pollinates Rent and The Big Chill through the story of Scott’s bohemian friends, a tight-knit coterie of filmmakers, actresses and musicians united in their disdain for bourgeoisie convention reuniting for the funeral of their dear friend Steven, the most daring and adventurous of the bunch.
Scott remembers his old friends as dedicated members of the counterculture so he is shocked and disheartened to discover that they have all sold out, as evidenced by the happy sound of a cash register ringing merrily that punctuates their materialist sentiments. The guitar strumming musician of the group happily volunteers that he “traded my guitar for a turntable and no money for millions of dollars!” by becoming a superstar DJ.
The heavyweight thespian Scott once knew now makes a lucrative living doing fast food commercials and McG, well, he went on to become McG, who is no longer making experimental films but, as he happily boasts, “When I was directing the Charlie’s Angels movies I experimented by using some Dutch angles!”
Al’s old pals want to bring their love of all things grossly commercial and exploitative to Steven’s memorial by adding product placement for energy drinks, Mexican fast food and Wendy’s to their friend’s funeral.
Scott is at first aghast at how his friends sold out until they show him a video of their younger selves in which the young actress is practicing for a Wendy’s audition, the future superstar DJ is contemplating making exceedingly commercial using technology that does not yet exist and McG is putting the final touches on Offspring’s “Pretty Fly for a White Guy”, a song Al of course parodied as “Pretty Fly For a Rabbi.”
It turns out that Scott is the only one who betrayed his younger self and ideals. As the woman who makes her living advertising fast food hamburgers sternly informs the host, “We stayed true to our dreams-our shit dreams” while the young Scott vows never to be the host of a talk show.
The fictionalized Scott ended up doing exactly what he swore he would never do, talking to interesting people like a wonderfully game, pink-haired Joe Jonas, who proudly shows off a little bird that he uses in place of a cell phone on the questionable logic that it does everything a phone does, like play music (after a fashion) and tweet (sort of) and, well, that’s about it.
Like so much of Comedy Bang! Bang!’s talk show banter, it’s delightfully silly and child-like. That combination also applies to the episode’s second guest, Neil Campbell (a longtime writer and Executive producer for Comedy Bang! Bang! and fixture of the podcast) as The Time Keeper, AKA Maxwell Keeper, an eccentric young man who posits himself as a mystical master of time blessed with the wisdom of the ages when he’s really just a strange man who works in a watch repair shop and talks in a rasp at once juvenile and ancient.
Al’s job as band-leader involves performing the music that plays while guests walk over to the couch. This involves scat singing of the non-verbal variety much of the time but he also sometimes sings about the guests, like when he implores of Jonas, “Joe Jonas, Hey Joe Jonas, do you have 5 bucks you can loan us? If you can spare a 20 that then bonus, give us your money, Joe Jonas!” with a signature look of comic caveman aggression, his brow furrowed, a stern expression on his face.
Of course this would not be Comedy Bang! Bang! if it not indulge its curious fixation with library music with a faux-advertisement for the episode’s non-existent soundtrack of songs that sound a lot like very expensive Motown classics (the kind that filled the zeitgeist-capturing, wildly successful and influential soundtrack to The Big Chill) but are actually soundalike library music tracks.
The Big Chill/Rent plot pays off beautifully when “Steven” pops out of his coffin, very much alive, and starts yelling, “Y’all done got pranked! Ya jackasses!”, which is fitting, since Steven is actually Steve-O from Jackass, who faked his death solely for the sake of a viral prank video and all those sweet, sweet clicks.
I’ve seen every episode of Comedy Bang! Bang! at least six or seven times at this point. I’m something of a fan. Yet the revelation that the Steven Scott and his friends are so tackily/solemnly mourning is actually frequently naked MTV prankster Steve-O nevertheless had me literally howling with laughter. You know a comic twist is brilliant when you experience it repeatedly and it still makes you laugh but genuinely surprises you as well.
Scott learns a lesson here. As always, it’s the wrong one. Upon discovering that, actually, selling out is good, our host brightly volunteers, “The most popular art is the best art. If you get those clicks, well, then you’re making hits. And, if you want the views, that’s good news.”
Scott is so pleased with his epiphany that he’s moved to express it through song along with his old friends and his band-leader.
“Hey Al, want to join us?” Scott inquires.
“Not particularly”, Al deadpan perfectly until Scott tells him it’s a song parody at which point he happily acquiesces and Scott and the reunited friends, minus Steve-O, sing a miniature parody of “525,600 Minutes” from Rent with the new, ferociously materialistically lyrics, “525,600 mouse clicks/525,600 views on your page/The best kind of art is a vid that goes viral/How do you measure up in this digital age?”
Then McG steps forwards to painfully croak, “Download Charlie’s Angels!”
It seems downright peculiar that this sonic nugget is the closest five time Grammy winner “Weird Al” Yankovic comes to performing a proper song parody in his twenty episode stint as band-leader but then he’s an unusual guy and Comedy Bang! Bang! Is weird in a most delightful way.