russell brand - C or D?

http://gawker.com/russell-brand-destroys-msnbc-talk-show-host-for-treatin-513992493?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Apparently, this happened...

I watched it yesterday and was like huh, that was not really as exciting as the headline made it sound. Couple funny moments though.

yeah otm. my boss sent it to me and was all "oh this is brilliant" and i expected a lot more - it's just a bit rambling and weird.

I don't really know how that show normally goes.

Being 'rambling and weird' (in his sort of fairly strained and uninteresting version of weird) is what he does though isn't it? I don't hate the guy but I've never got his appeal either.

Obv. this sort of (US) TV show is not the usual forum for his shtick though. When did he start dressing like David Essex?

they call him willy and the one dude says, "yeah, i really can't understand this guy when he talks"! i'm not sure what he was supposed to do with that, even if he had attempted to play along. it's not artie on joe buck but he went in on them.

i never got the appeal either but recently i really sort of liked him on norm macdonald's show. the concept of his new show, which he got a chance to explain to norm, sounded horrible, though.

i did not realise until this thing broke that in the US it isn't considered rude to refer to someone who's in front of you by a third-person pronoun rather than addressing them directly.

to me that reads like a definite slight - and so doing it in what's ostensibly an interview would feel like a public insult, and pretty... humiliating?

but if it's not rude in American culture then it must seem like he is throwing a strop about nothing.

Calling him Willy Brandt was sort of funny. I mean, it is easy to get the two of them confused right?

Good Bundesrepublik skillz

xxp: I dunno. It would depend on context. In this case, it seems pretty rude to me.

yeah he was surprisingly good natured here imo? i'd have probably got the raving hump if i was in that situation

the third person pronoun thing was just part of the entire package. what was his response supposed to be when the one guy started riffing on how he couldn't understand brand on the radio but he was fairly comprehensible in person?

All of the hosts seem kinda high.

By which I'm trying to not say "dumb".

how could it not be rude in any place to speak about someone as an object of idle curiositity while in their presence

I think that that one woman was calling him 'he' because she was clearly unsure of his name. She tentatively called him Willy at one point cos obviously the subject of German reunification had been weighing heavily on her mind, but then she reverted to 'he' again after that. So I think it was more awkwardness due to that than it was bad manners.

That would make sense if Mika hadn't emphatically introduced him at the beginning of the segment.

Third person in front you was considered rude as hell when I was growing up in the states, but I am old and from good stock.

Come on, surely that's considered rude in the US. I've never heard otherwise.

Well, I mean, there are certain contexts where it might not be, but I think in those cases, it would not be rude in the UK either.

As far as what passes for rude in the US -- this wasn't in the US, it was in TV. Cable TV. Morning "news."

morning "joe"

the guy named joe wasn't even there. if that IS his real name.

I saw this. It's pretty good toward the end when he does an imitation of the inane discussion style of these cable news talk shows, but most of it is just rambling. I could do without the come-ons too, but I guess it's as good a way as any as disrupting the show and throwing people off their guard, which is the point. Whoever that guy was (I guess it's not Scarborough? I've never watched the show) seems like a moron.

iirc the dude brought up russell's chest display before he brought up mika's, and her degree of swooning was pretty priceless. just seemed like your standard amusing enough russell brand talk show appearance to me, but i guess maybe people aren't used to his shtick

or maybe they're more familiar with your standard morning joe episode than i am and laughing at the atypical madness

Dunno anything about this show, but that clip implied it was being simulcast on the radio? That might explain the third person/what he looks like stuff.

it kind of seemed like the morning joe hosts weren't very well prepared for his schtick

I think Brand has become something of a hero in the last year or two. He openly acknowledges what an insecurity-driven twat he used to be and I think he's genuinely trying to be good. His, um, cultural contributions have been notably improved as well - he's not a bad writer and if he took himself more seriously I think he could even be a very good one.

His FX show is awful. He'll have a grain of a funny insight here and there and just bury it with babble.

yeah it helps that I read his articles but mostly avoid his TV appearances

"Any of you who know a little bit about history and fashion will know that Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis," Brand reportedly said at the podium. "The Nazis did have flaws, but, you know, they did look f--king fantastic, let's face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality."

http://www.eonline.com/news/455738/russell-brand-defends-hugo-boss-nazi-jokes-at-gq-men-of-the-year-awards

http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/201385/rs_560x415-130905113450-560.russell-brand-tweet.cm.9513.jpg

I was watching the Channel 4 programme on Colour footage of the rise of Hitler and the name Hugo Boss came up in relation to the Uniforms he designed then mentioned in his standard adverts during the Reich. I was trying to place where I knew the name from, not sure if it was this controversy or how popular his firm was at certain times and who was wearing clothing by him in the 60s & 70s.
Henry Ford apparently donated all the profits of German sales of Ford cars to the Nazi party in the late 20s/early 30s too. Not that taht has anything to do with his Brandness.

I'd tend to think what Brand says in that soundbite quoted above was pretty accurate.

ugh "nazis looked great" is such a lame, old gag.

I like his performance in the tempest. This adlib (an extra on the disc) is kind of amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBOMSzhIfjk

Just got round to watching the GQ thing. Genuine lols.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inB-6R1-4ng

fantastic.

russell brand's quite funny

it's pretty wonderful. more hypocrisy than bill hicks, obv, but he's the closest thing to him

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/sep/13/russell-brand-gq-awards-hugo-boss

it's almost as if the fashion industry is especially humourless

being ejected from a gq awards seems like a better evening than staying at the gq awards.

oh he is very annoying tho isnt he? like bill hicks, yes.

one day u will turn up, browbeaten & genuflecting, at the tentflap of the ilx commune, and we will let u in

Hicks' canonization conveniently overlooks a lot of straight dickery imo

I guess Brand has that Puck-ish thing going for him, the subversive glint. Hicks was just angry. Sometimes funny, but often mostly angry. But Brand seems as well suited to the internet age as Hicks was to the underground comedy era.

ilx has been browbeating me for years tbrr, the absence of genuflection is prob more down to their being bad at is than any real backbone on my part, either way i'm not going near yr flaps on my knees

it took me a long time to get over the twitchy annoying visual and stop being irritated enough to actually listen and/or pay attention to him but I have to say I really do enjoy him

Dating Jemima Khan, apparently. He splashed out and took her to Song Que.