There’s a lot of a scuttlebutt surrounding the The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast; partly because its host is an author revered by a generation of aging angsters (not unlike myself), and partly because he’s had two mega A-listers on his show: Kanye West and Judd Apatow. Needless to say, iTunes is a big fan.
My maiden voyage with Ellis’ show was the Judd Apatow episode (part one), and in all honesty, I will probably never listen to the Kanye West episode; I really don’t understand why what he says matters. But I am “aging,” as I noted in the opening graph.
I’ve heard several Apatow interviews over the past couple years, and I like a lot of the things the he’s done, but dude is a serious downer, and speaking of depressing guys, Ellis isn’t exactly Richard Simmons. I know these guys deal in malaise and the existential funk brought on by one’s resignation to mediocrity, but it’s OK to talk about the bright side every now and then. Right?
The podcast advertises “a glimpse into one of popular culture’s most fascinating minds.” Well, what I listened to was engaging, and Ellis certainly is a fascinating guy. But what I also heard was a lot of heavily trodden philosophical jibber jabber about where we’re heading as a society, and how our kids just aren’t going to have the coping skills we all amassed in our hard-scrabble upbringings.
What amazes me is every generation says this about their kids, yet we always think our situation is different. Every era subscribes to a unique perspective on the end of the world, and how things are going down the tubes. And every generation utters the expression, ‘kids today.’ Both figuratively and literally. Granted, this was the very beginning of the Apatow interview, and many other topics were mined, but it was hard to shake that intro. Just a bad jumping off point in my opinion.
Maybe I just listen to too many comedy podcasts.
