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MONDAY, DECEMBER 3 2012
HOROSCOPES Because the stars know things we don't
Aries (March 21-April 19)
Today is a 9
Listen to the competition. You'll soon have time to relax. Study the practical aspects, and come up with a brilliant scheme. Ask for more and get it.
Taurus (April 20-May 20)
Today is a 9
Have the party at your house. Friends help you make a solid connection. The way you did it before won't work. Move quickly without rocking the boat.
Gemini (May 21-June 20)
Today is a 7
Your mood changes dramatically You're even smarter than usual for the next few days. The very idea you were looking for appears from afar. Use imagination, not money.
Cancer (June 21-July 22)
Today is a 7
You're entering a two-day profitable phase and can afford a home upgrade. Get down to bare essentials: simple and comfortable. Outside obligations interfere with private time. Schedule them.
Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)
Today is a 9
Expand your resources. Life's easier and you're more confident for the next few days. You can afford to fix things, if there's a roadblock, meditate. Entertain suggestions.
Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)
Todav is a 6
You see your creative path clearly as you enter an intuitive phase. Review plans. Take a page from your partner's book. Discipline is required. Get your antiques appraised.
Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)
Today is a 9
There's a zinger in your work environment. You may have trouble getting through to someone. Associates provide deeper insight. Spend a little. Limit travel for now.
Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)
Today is an 8
Attend to career goals today and tomorrow. Anticipate disagreement, and keep at it. Bring playfulness to work, and let your thoughts settle. Stay out of the way.
Sagittarius
(Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
Today is a 7
Miracles could be possible. Travel is not a good idea, but do make contact. Read the manual, and study a technical subject. Call upon experts. Finish an old job.
Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)
Today is an 8
Organize your finances today and tomorrow. You get a boost from friends and your partner, who all want your attention. Don't start the new project yet. Do the scientific research.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)
Today is an 8
Consider all possibilities, and entertain suggestions. It's a good time to ask for money. Study takes priority over regular chores. Let another represent you. Discover romance today and tomorrow.
Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)
Today is a 7
There's too much work. Listen to both sides of a controversy. Allow the process to unfold. Put your partner in charge. Good news arrives.
EXCESS HOLLYWOOD Review
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Swanson (Tim Heidecker) turns to irreverence to mask a life of hollow narcissism in Rick Alverson's hipster satire "The Comedy." The movie is currently available on iTunes and VOD.
'The Comedy' receives mixed reviews
LANDON MCDONALD
lmcdonald@kansan.com
"The Comedy" is an aggressively bleak, covertly hilarious showcase for ionic detachment taken to near-sociopathic extremes.
Swanson (Tim Heidecker), a slovenly Williamsburg, Va. hipster, spends his days in a fugue of entitled indifference, waiting to claim the balance of his inheritance from his ailing millionaire father. The movie, which follows Heidecker's character and his merry band of trust-funded pranksters as they amuse themselves with crude and increasingly humiliating escapades, is an exercise in relatively aimless misanthropy that nevertheless contains moments of bruising insight on a culture numbed by the twin opiates of irony and soulless self-indulgence.
We watch as Swanson lurches from his houseboat to the streets of Williamsburg, clad in alarmingly short pants and fashionable sunglasses, inserting himself into other people's lives and generally reveling in his own awkward audacity, especially when the situations turn confrontational. This is a man who delights in bringing out the worst in people, especially those he views as his social inferiors. For example, he walks into an inner-city bar and, just to see the bartender's reaction, demands that they hire him on the basis that he'll attract more affluent white customers. During a pseudophilosophical conversation with a girl at a party, he praises Hitler's skills as a public speaker and later introduces himself to another girl by
attempting to convince her that he's a convicted rapist.
So why spend 90 minutes trapped with such a pathetic, hateful character? Because Heidecker, half of Tim and Eric, the transgressive comedy duo behind cult TV hits "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and "Tom Goes to the Mayor," makes Swanson a compulsively watchable pile of human wreckage. His dead-pan delivery and knack for physical slapstick, honed to an absurdist point after years of touring with the "Awesome Show" cast, exaggerate Swanson's repulsive behavior without taking the edge off.
Eric Wareheim, Heidecker's regular collaborator, also appears as the hairiest member of Swanson's posse of man-children. Like the rest of "The Comedy," their scenes together were largely improvised and carry the same inspired grotesquerey they brought to their "Billion Dollar Movie" earlier this year. Standout sequences include a church invasion, a taxicab sing-along session and a pornographic vacation slide-show. Yet these moments of relative levity are offset by some genuinely disturbing material, especially a much-discussed scene where a character has a seizure while Swanson looks on with baleful disinterest.
Critical reaction to "The Comedy" has been decidedly mixed so far, with many saying it embodies the very excesses it seeks to condemn. The film allegedly set a record for walkouts at this year's Sundance Film Festival by audiences who were either unfamiliar with Heidecker and Wareheim's previous work or
SUDOKU
Difficulty Level ★
CRYPTOQUIP
12/03
taken in by the on-the-nose title.
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Today's Cryptoquip Clue: X equals S
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Yet I'll defend director Rick Alerson's movie as a daring example of black comedy, where laughter is mined from pain and, in some cases, a degree of self-recognition. Tim and Eric, along with their mentor Bob Odenkirk and fellow comedians like Louis C.K., are often accused of finishing what Andy Kaufman supposedly started: the death of traditional comedy at the hands of subversive, discomfort-laden "anti-humor." Here, they acknowledge their role in changing the art form and warn against the nihilistic isolation of extreme hipsterdom by actively engaging in it.
Or something like that. Frankly, humor is such a subjective pursuit that it's pointless to risk over-analyzing it. "The Comedy" is a deeply unsettling character study of a man seemingly beyond the help of a narrative contrivance like redemption, but I'll admit it made me laugh hard and often. Tim and Eric fans, I hope you know what you're in for.
Final rating:
CROSSWORD
—Edited by Christy Khamphilay
ACROSS
1 Word with special or photo
4 Gorilla
7 Riches
11 Chick's sound
13 — Perignon
14 Frost
15 Western state
16 One of the Seven Dwarfs
17 Race place, for short
18 Line on a letter
20 Authentic
22 Varnish ingredient
24 Pass by
28 Very ornate
32 Figure of speech
33 Elderly
34 Tolkien creature
36 Jacob's brother
37 Burdened
39 Bucks
43 Puppy's call
44 Conked out
46 "Jaws" villain
50 Have on
53 Two fives
55 Screen symbol
56 Therefore
57 Old French coin
58 "The King —"
59 Noggin
60 Put on
61 Superla-tive ending
DOWN
1 Piece of work
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2 Rose of baseball
3 Burn some-what
4 Do sums
5 Needy
6 Host
7 Home of Eagles and Flyers
8 A billion years
9 Young fellow
10 Saute
12 Popular house-plant
19 Online help page
21 Boxing legend
23 Billiards stick
25 Leaning Tower city
26 Rise high
27 Flightless flock
28 Island near Java
29 Culture medium
30 Start over
31 Finish
35 Plaything
38 Born
40 — Vegas
42 Old-fashioned
45 Erte's art style
47 Teen's facial woe
48 Fishing gear
49 Make a scarf, maybe
50 Char-lotte's creation
51 Before
52 Khan title
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