We’re so crazy about HBO’s Bored to Death that we’ve spent the entire season meticulously footnoting every episode. But we wanted to do something a little bit different in celebration of last night’s climactic finale, to give those who already miss Jonathan, George, and Ray an opportunity to relive Season 3′s highlights. With that lofty goal in mind, we’ve compiled a self-guided tour of Bored to Death’s most recognizable locations, from the Coney Island Wonder Wheel to the Grand Central Oyster Bar. After the jump, follow around as we take you neighborhood by neighborhood to the places where the characters worked, played, and ate in Season 3. Here’s hoping it helps tide you over until next year. Read More »
Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode seven, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode six, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode five, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode four, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode two, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
Lit geeks, amateur sleuths, and brownstone Brooklynites, rejoice! Our favorite HBO sitcom, Bored to Death, has returned for a third season — and last night’s premiere was a lot of fun. This year, it seems we’re looking forward to a whole lot of daddy issues: There’s Jonathan searching for the sperm donor who is his biological father, George coming to terms with his daughter’s relationship with a much older man, and Ray trying to grow up just enough to be a responsible part-time parent to his own baby.
Although we enjoy the show’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re launching a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us as we go minute by minute, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions — and feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.
More exciting news for what we consider an under-served demographic — lit geeks who also really love TV: Author Sam Lipsyte, who took us on a walking tour of Astoria when his hilarious book The Ask came out last year, is developing a new show called People City for HBO with Sideways producer Michael London. The “offbeat comedy” will focus on “a 25-year-old man hired by an eccentric New York couple to be their child’s caretaker.” So, we’re imagining that it’s like a male version of The Nanny Diaries, but with Lipsyte’s trademark dark humor mixed with intense outrage sprinkled throughout. Given April’s announcement that the network would be adapting Jennifer Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, into a series, and the ongoing success of Bored To Death (which was created by Jonathan Ames), it seems like there’s a real give-New-York-City-authors-their-own-TV-show trend happening at the moment — and it’s one that we wholeheartedly support. Will you be tuning in? [via The A.V. Club]
In a new interview with Paul Harris at the Guardian, Jonathan Ames says, “I don’t really recognize success. I don’t see myself as on an upwardly mobile trajectory. I see myself as on the edge of a cliff about to fall off.” The author of the infamous essay, “I Shit My Pants in the South of France,” and the creator of the HBO series Bored to Death divulges to Harris that “privately I can still feel wounded, feel terrible and hate myself…” thus revealing that he is yet another self-hating New York Jew who loves to complain about his lot. And for this, we will love him, especially since he boxes under the name “the Herring Wonder” and sports a crooked nose and jaunty little hats.
Authors often appear in their own works of fiction as thinly veiled surrogates — Kilgore Trout is widely believed to be Kurt Vonnegut’s alter ego, and Hunter S. Thompson is barely distinguishable from Raoul Duke — but occasionally authors also infiltrate their own stories as characters named for themselves. Whether purely narcissistic or a tool of artistic commentary, the author-as-character literary technique lends an element of surrealism to the reading experience and draws attention to both the act of narration and the act of creation — as well as their shared unreliability. Check out these novels in which the author appears as himself (or at least a fictionalized version thereof) and see for yourself.
