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Interview with Bob Odenkirk

nytimes.com

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Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#121

Post by raffael_de »

newsclues wrote: post #87
julienmarie wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, read the piece. He's not saying it from comfort, he's saying it after a heart attack, after his kids grew up, after the form he loved became a young man's game. The farce isn't a punchline delivered from above; it's what's left when the registers that used to hold you don't anymore. And his answer isn't despair, it's "we've got to keep trying… there's a breeze beneath my wings." That's not whimsy. Th…

I find it rather hopeless that people can "survive the trenches" and tell others" that life is meaningless. The perspective that affords that life is cruel to some and kind to others, and it's just random and meaningless really doesn't sit well with the people who have to struggle to survive without the chance for joy in life. If I am just going to suffer endlessly while others enjoy a life of luxury, why not burn th…

Who are you even talking about? Bob didn't say life is meaningless. If you want the perspective of someone who survived the "trenches" and kept a meaningful perspective on life then I recommend the book "Man's search for meaning" by Viktor Frankl.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#122

Post by rickdeckard »

prngl wrote: post #21

This was an interesting interview. Like a lot of great comedians, Odenkirk has a very grounded and bleak view of the world. I suppose a lot of art, comedy included, is a way of coping with their perspective, for themselves and for the audience.

I think it's less about comedy being the outlet to "cope" with what you see, and more about seeing the comedy because you are able to see the world for what it really is.

Most of timeless comedy simply describes the mundane reality of the audience in a way that they realize the absurdity of it.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#124

Post by kakacik »

prngl wrote: post #21

This was an interesting interview. Like a lot of great comedians, Odenkirk has a very grounded and bleak view of the world. I suppose a lot of art, comedy included, is a way of coping with their perspective, for themselves and for the audience.

A lot of comedians, ie standup ones but not only, have had hard lives, suffer from depression, anxieties and so on. The better the ones the more (ie Robin Williams). Making people laugh is their coping, validation and approval mechanism for the world and life.

Such people have different perspectives on life, success and happiness, for better or worse.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#125

Post by palmotea »

prngl wrote: post #21

This was an interesting interview. Like a lot of great comedians, Odenkirk has a very grounded and bleak view of the world. I suppose a lot of art, comedy included, is a way of coping with their perspective, for themselves and for the audience.

> Like a lot of great comedians, Odenkirk has a very grounded and bleak view of the world. I suppose a lot of art, comedy included, is a way of coping with their perspective, for themselves and for the audience.

IIRC, I've heard it said that comedians are not happy people and usually had pretty difficult childhoods where "being funny" was a coping mechanism.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#126

Post by mapontosevenths »

saberience wrote: post #89
mapontosevenths wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many people who were living in the 1700s do you think sat around thinking life is a farce? The name for this view of the universe is "absurdism". It was first espoused, as far as I can tell, when the discourse of Qohelet was recorded in the book of Ecclesiastes. So yes, they had it in the 1700's although perhaps not by that name. > If you're working every day in a coal mine so you can feed your children otherwi…

Note, I didn't say "no people" thought this way. Just that very, very few people thought this way, which is absolutely accurate. Unless you thought most people in the 1700s were sat around smoking cigarettes in cafes discussing the absurdism of life?

I suspect it to be far less rare than you think. Literally every human at some point in their life asks "What is the purpose of my existence?". They are then faced with some variation on "to be or not to be." It is not the exclusive domain of the idle and the educated, they're just the ones who write about it. It's a universal condition, and effects those without leisure equally. If that weren't true religion would not have been the driving force behind much of civilizations rise. Even the overworked and overwrought look for answers. Perhaps ESPECIALLY the overworked and overwrought. So maybe they did not sit about in cafe's discussing it, they mined coal while thinking it quietly to themselves or shouted it in crowded bars after work when they'd had a bit too much to drink.

Hell, I was a teenager working at Taco Bell when I first read Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus". Well before that though many a bean burrito were handed out the window while I considered the absurdity of life. Perhaps my thinking wasn't as nuanced as it would later come to be, but the concepts occurred to me quite naturally.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#127

Post by [deleted] »

julienmarie wrote: post #36
bradhe wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're successful and rich (enough, at least), this is a nice whimsical thing to say. When you're suffering in the trenches, this isn't very helpful.

On the contrary, read the piece. He's not saying it from comfort, he's saying it after a heart attack, after his kids grew up, after the form he loved became a young man's game. The farce isn't a punchline delivered from above; it's what's left when the registers that used to hold you don't anymore. And his answer isn't despair, it's "we've got to keep trying… there's a breeze beneath my wings." That's not whimsy. Th…

[deleted]

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#128

Post by Rooster61 »

Hikikomori wrote: post #115
alexose wrote: post #13

I liked the shoutout to On Cinema at the Cinema. Truly one of the most hilarious and fascinating pieces of comedy in the last couple of decades.

Can't believe that Heidecker keeps getting away with murder.

Oh boy, another one of these jackoffs. Rosetti the Rat couldn't get him convicted because HE DID NOTHING WRONG. You people need to let it go.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#129

Post by hacker161 »

tranceylc wrote: post #62
Phemist wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A triple "It's not this... it's that"...

I can’t be the only one who finds it rude to use AI to contribute to a discussion. I find invasive I had to read what I thought was human. Using it for translation would be different though.

LLMs write like that because people write like that. That they used the rhetorical device three times in a row in a single paragraph makes me think it’s less likely to be LLM and just how that person writes.

Re: Interview with Bob Odenkirk

#130

Post by ryandrake »

chomp wrote: post #120
robofanatic wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The world is like a ride in an amusement park only difference is, in real world there may be consequences that you may not be able to undo so you may have to be little careful while riding.

Well, and some people are able to buy nicer seats on the ride with plush seats and air conditioning, and some people have to sit on hard backed plastic that hurts, and some people around you don’t get a seat at all and fall off and die routinely, and the ride keeps moving.

Yea. "Life is an amusement park ride" is a pretty privileged take. If life is like an amusement park ride, there are about 500-1000 people in the world actually riding it, and the remaining 8 billion or so of us are operators, maintenance staff, concession stand workers, and groundskeepers keeping it fun for those 500-1000 riders.
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