For those who can’t get enough of my inexcusably verbose essays on pop-cultural arcana, you’re in for a special treat: Now you can listen to me wax esoteric for four half-hour segments!
I recently sat in on the podcast Spinal Tap Minute, moderated by Heidi Bennett and Sean German, which deconstructs Rob Reiner’s classic 1984 comedy This Is Spinal Tap minute by minute. Coincidentally, I’ve written previously about Spinal Tap on this blog, demonstrating how the band seamlessly emerged from the contained narrative framework of the movie—in the absence of precedent for such a fourth-wall traversal—to evolve into the longest-running instance of reality-blurring performance art in the history of contemporary pop culture. (And the joke is still ongoing: Harry Shearer is currently prepping the Derek Smalls solo album Smalls Change.) Tap’s influence on comedic storytelling—from the “mockumentary” format so prevalent in our sitcoms (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family) to the fictional-character-who-walks-among-us pasquinade of The Colbert Report—can’t fully be quantified.
Michael McKean (as David St. Hubbins), Harry Shearer (as Derek Smalls), and Christopher Guest (as Nigel Tufnel)
But it can be more deeply appreciated, and that’s what I attempted to bring to the table during the four episodes to which I contributed. These are my first-ever podcasts, so your feedback—should you take the time to listen—would be most welcome. (Who’s gonna be the first to offer up that dreaded two-word review: “shit sandwich”?) Here’s a content rundown (with links to each episode):
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