Maury Povich

The first thing you notice about going the Maury Povich show is how very little goes into the set.

It's located in an old hotel on 33rd Street, where the bathroom is public and frequented by the homeless. The set is absolute crap: cardboard walls, cheap chairs, and a box of Kleenex on a table. A trashy electronic remix of Rhianna's "Umbrella" played on a loop. We sat in folding chairs arranged haphazardly around the set.

Maury came out to adoring fanfare. Unlike most TV hosts, he is completely in touch with why his audience loves him. They want hugs. He gives hugs. They want to tell their most hilariously trashy secrets to a 69 year old guy in a black turtleneck. He wants to hear them. He loves that they love him and loves that they love him in the way that they do. He spits out aphorisms like "When times are good, I'll have a Forty Ounce."

My show's theme was a common one: Baby Mama Drama, aka "You are NOT the father!"

At first the show was off-putting. I mean, we're talking lowest common denominator of American pop culture. Real people come to this show, all of them poor rural whites or poor urban blacks, to have their problems quickly addressed and dismissed by a rich, skinny, old white guy who married Connie Chung and whose dad wrote for the Washington Post for seven decades and who may or may not have access to real DNA testing equipment.

They're sobbing, these real people, and surely they aren't completely faking their sorrow. Surely a woman who doesn't know the biological father of her son is upset about that. They're airing their dirty laundry on television, and though they undoubtedly wouldn't have signed up for this show if they were camera shy, when they're proven wrong it can't be a good experience.

There's a pattern on the show, weird in its regularity. When Maury delivers his dramatic catchphrase, when he triumphantly shouts "You are NOT the father!", the most offended party always runs from the room. The person is usually a woman who mistakenly thought she'd finally pinned down the right man. She collapses somewhere in the hallway. As she sprints, a cameraman follows, and we see the action on TV. Maury jogs over and tries to console her, but he has to keep the show moving. This is what always happens. They always run from the stage, though they always break down before they leave the cameras' range.

As this same story repeated itself in rapid succession, always the same except the characters, my arms slowly uncrossed. Maybe it was the frequency of insane revelation that sobered me to the ludicrousness of what was before me. You see, in the course of about forty-five minutes we saw probably a dozen paternity cases. Each time, we heard those same five words.


(Note I didn't add the music here. I just needed the clip.)

In between guests, audience members rushed on stage to dance with Maury, to hug him, to get a friend to take a picture of them on the set.

This is what warmed me to the show:

A woman struts onto the stage, dressed to impress. Her name is Fo'eva. (Maury: "Or, as I call her, 'Forever'. But she says it's Fo'eva.")

Fo'eva has two kids, Eternity and Christopher. Her newest is a boy named Sincere. This is her seventh time on the show. Each appearance was to prove paternity. Two of those prior times were to test the that of a man named Terrance. Both were negative. He's on the show today to test his DNA against Sincere.

Terrance is announced and comes out with his arms spread wide. The crowd loves him and he loves the way the crowd loves him. He and Fo'eva spar the way you'd expect:

T: Fo'eva, get it through your head that there's no way I'm any of these babies' father! I'm never gonna get with your skanky ass!
F: As soon as we left last show, you were all up in this coochie! You're messed up.
T: Your shoes are messed up!

According to Terrance's timeline, he and Fo'eva didn't have sex anywhere near the time to get her pregnant, so she wasn't on the show for truth and child support, but to smear him. She didn't deny that.

When the time came, and Maury told Terrance he still was no father, Terrance got up, gleeful and proud. He ran up and down the aisles, high fiving people who had been, I guess, rooting against his fatherhood. Everyone but Fo'eva was cheering and laughing. The audience, Maury, and even I was overwhelmed by the situation. Terrance had won. For the third time, Terrance had won. And somehow, so had we all.



I still don't really understand what's going on with people in these shows. Is everyone on it so desperate for a paternity test that the only reason they come on the show because they can't afford one at home? I sincerely doubt that. Are people there actors, either duping Maury's staff or in their employ, and relishing their few minutes on national television but free from any actual baby mama drama? I sincerely doubt that, too. They cry too well and they never break the fourth wall with a snicker.

When women ran down the hallway, sobbing at news that they still can't tell their kids who their real father is, their mics usually stayed clipped to their shirts and their weeping and moaning carried through the loudspeakers for a disconcertingly long time. There's some complex emotion going on with these guests. It's related to the utter trashiness of some of our pop culture, but it would be wrong to chalk it up as just garbage and dismiss it wholesale. I honestly don't get what's going on there, and if I did, I think I'd understand America better.

Anyway. On to the end.

After the first segment of the show, Maury addressed us. "We've got a whole 'nother show of Baby Mama Drama coming up next. But in the meantime, we're going to take you outside, feed you, and bring you back in!" We cheered. God, did we love Maury. The most entertaining show I'd seen, a cultural riddle, free lunch, and more!

Staff members escorted us outside. Why did we need to leave the building? we wondered. There was a line stretching out the door, where people were waiting to see the show we'd just left. Did we have to get back in line? "Yeah, you've got to get in the back; these people have been waiting. We can't promise seats."

No seats? Then where's that free pizza?

"Pizza? What are you talking about?" said the guard. He closed the door in my face.

Maury, you slick bastard.

106 and Park

Bewilderment. That was the dominating feeling I had during my time at 106 & Park. In the most basic sense, it's Black Entertainment Television's version of TRL.

Like TRL, another show designed for young people and with mostly high schoolers in the audience, 106 & Park doesn't care to warm up its audience before releasing it before the cameras, apparently assuming its audience will already be energetic enough. Thus while the warmup for shows for adults is a comedian or at least someone who's trying to get people excited, the pre-show for youth shows is a downer. Like, "Listen up! There will be no gang signs. There will be no calling attention to yourself. You will dance when we say to and stop when we say stop. You will cheer when we tell you to cheer and be quiet at all other times!" That sort of thing.

I attended this show with my friend Anthony, known to Royals fans as the driving force behind the world's number-three Kansas City Royals blog. He took this amazing picture of the waiting room. No one knew what 106 & Park referred to, though in general kids were friendlier than those at TRL and more ironic about going to a taping.

A few kids regarded us curiously, asking us if we we knew what this show was, why we were there, etc. We asked what the show was about, and we were met with a bit of "dancing...music...it's more for African-Americans." I am so not here to write an essay about race and hip-hop culture--to ape an ex's favorite phrase, that's way too "complex, problematic, and multifaceted". I'd also like to steer clear of the "I was a white guy at a rap show, and it was confusing to me!" shtick. Alas, avoiding that will be more difficult.

We were ushered onto metal bleachers in the back and rearranged several times to make us less and less visible. I felt like I'd wandered onto the set of a Bollywood film. At times, everyone broke into a chorus, and everybody knew that song but me. At every commercial break, people would break into dance, and everyone knew when to do that but I could find no clues. Each time, a few would scramble to a spot in the middle of the enormous set and dance for three and half minutes. It all seemed intuitive and mystifying.

Whereas TRL downright peddled sex to adolescents, here a girl was admonished for dancing provocatively in that dance spot in a too-revealing dress (it was very revealing): "if you're wearing something you'd be embarrassed for your mom to see you in, don't even think about coming down here."

Apparently videos were playing throughout the show; again, I could rarely tell what was going on. Suddenly there was an amateur R&B competition on a stage ahead of me, and everyone was beckoned to leave the stands to crowd the stage. Three young guys were to each take a turn singing a single song, with their own backup dancers if they brought them:

1. A normal, competent guy from Charlotte
2. A flashy guy from Charlotte who kept lifting up his shirt
3. An off-key singer from Brooklyn

I adopted the pose I always do at shows where I don't know the music: standing, arms crossed, staring hard at the performer, judging. This wasn't quite what they wanted in their shots of the crowd, so I was moved to the back.

Then Djimon Hounsou came out. He was remarkably well-dressed, soft-spoken and not-interested at all in 106 & Park. He's in a lot of good movies but most recently did this:





After an eternity of confusion I was sent home, but not without a new Rick Ross cd. Next Thursday: Maury. It's a good one.

Oh no, music! A Secret Show with John Vanderslice and St. Vincent

I realize I'm somewhat betraying my goals of this project when I write about music. First among many differences between posting about Bjork or John Vanderslice instead of Martha or Maurey is that I truly do love the work of the former two, while my emotional attachment to television personalities isn't quite as strong. Also, music is not free with the price of cable. Also, you can't see the musicians I talk about by turning on your TV. Also, the work of these musicians is familiar to far less Americans. Thus my new pledge: I will only blog about music as a supplement to my every-Thursday postings, never as a replacement. And I still only write about experiences relevant to TV or the experience of being an audience member.

It's the experience of being a spectator bit that brings me to the keyboard now. The other night I saw John Vanderslice for the third time since becoming infatuated with 2001's Time Travel Is Lonely, and for the second time saw one of the most amazing shows of my life. I have a complex relationship with Vanderslice:

• I have sang with him on stage: in the spring of 2007 I read that he sometimes allows fans to come up and sing his songs during shows, emailed him my three favorite songs, and come May went up on stage and sang "Radient With Terror". I didn't forget a single word.
  

• I recently interviewed him about his recording process for EQ Magazine (sorry, the link's only to the Mag's site and not to the actual interview).
  

• I'm pretty sure that despite the first two things I've done with him, he has no idea who I am.

• Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, his music is deeply personal and his lyrics are decidedly not. His lyrics are almost exlcusively about fictional characters, and I can't think of any contemporary singer-songwriter who's so deeply in touch with himself as an artist who doesn't ever bother to write about himself. That he's so careful with his material, yet so egoless, so concerned with form and the form of his content, is what draws me so closely to his work.

Everyone who's a devoted fan of pretty much anything--music, fashion, good food, sports, etc.--creates a personal relationship with the material that enthralls them. A real fan will learn where those works come from and develop something of a made-up relationship with a real person responsible for those works. Steelers fans talk about Ben Rothlisberger like a busy and successful older brother, congradulating him when he's on and adopting indignation when he forgets his bike helmet. Wilco fans repeatedly criticisze or praise Jeff Tweedy to their friends, though Tweedy will never hear the opinions of 99% of them. And I have a complex, meaningful, but one-sided relationship with John Vanderslice, even though he doesn't know my name, and Bjork, and Jeff Magnum, despite his being a recluse, and Freddie Mercury, even though he's dead.

Vanderslice played four shows in four consecutive nights in New York. But I caught a tip from a friend that he was doing a fifth, smaller show the middle of this frenzy, scurrying from a big show at the Bowery Ballroom to nearby Pianos for an after-show show. There was no band, just Vanderslice and a violinist, going through every song from his previous two albums besides the ones he played two hours earlier. Then he moved to the floor, inviting the small crowd to circle around him. In the crowd was members of his band: his drummer had a single tom, his keyboardist a xylophone and accordian. Annie Clark, also called St. Vincent, another singer with whom I have a one-sided but meaningful relationship, was there to sing backup. There was no amplification, so everyone just shut up and listened to the actual instruments and people singing. I was a few feet away from two people who, as cheesy as it sounds, have brought significant richness into my life. It was as intimate a show as I could imagine, and it was downright magical.

"Thank you so much for coming," Vanderslice said. "Now it's time for a dance party!"

This is another thing he likes to do at shows, or at least I've heard: have dance parties. From interviews I gather he's really into both hip-hop and electronica, and he immediately started dancing. He was unselfconscoiusly there to have a good time, but the same couldn't be said for his fans, or even his bandmates. My roommate Eric, who's been in awe of Vanderslice's latest for the past month, went to talk to him and came back 30 seconds later. "I didn't know what to say."

I, meanwhile, was scoping out St. Vincent. I caught her momentarily alone and sheepishly asked if I could take a picture with her (for this blog, of course, though she didn't know that). I told her my girlfriend and I bonded over her music (not true) so she wouldn't think I was trying to mack her like the guy who talked her ear off before I could get to her. She seemed slightly uncomfortable but agreed to the photo, and when the picture turned out kind of dark, I couldn't bear asking for a re-shoot.

Our fellow audience members got drinks and stood by the walls, huddled with their friends and glancing at the musicians, or filing out. No one danced. It was like a middle school dance. I'd forgotten what real awkwardness was like. It was like this.

That's why I'm writing this. We can form what incredibly intense relationships with even the mildest of celebrities. We don't have to read tabloids to know intimate details about them. We can know some of their deepest thoughts, or their life history, or what their love life is like at the moment. They're both real people and important people figures in our lives. They can share with us incredibly moving and intimate experiences, and they become our experiences and they're no less meaningful for that. But when they break that fourth wall and go where we can briefly interact back with them... it's just kind of awkward, you know? And a little weird.

I don't feel any of Vanderslice's videos do justice to his music, so I've included a clip of someone who shares my thoughts on the man's work.