Eminentoes That Garofalo Woman
Vinciguerra, Thomas
EMINENTOESI by Thomas Vinciguerra That Garofalo Woman R ecently I tuned in to "The Tonight Show," where Jay Leno was holding forth with Janeane Garofalo. She was winding up a book tour and Leno...
...To thine own self be true and all that, but in cases like this, a little hypocrisy may be good for the soul...
...Maybe it's part of her I-don't-give-a-rat's-etc...
...Dress her in her usual dishabille, and you have a walking billboard of attitude and angst...
...I actually enjoyed her in The Truth About Cats and Dogs and The Matchmaker...
...Here's my question for Ben: What took O you so long...
...1999...
...From what I can see of Ms...
...Poor Jerry...
...It's not that I'm fed up," she said...
...Garofalo spelled out her own version of integrity...
...Not to mention the bod...
...But Ms...
...More typical, though, was her appearance in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, where she arrived to the strains of Jaws-like music, proclaimed, "What a waste of a tank of gas...
...Brainless redneck ass@# %!" An endearing ingenue...
...Within the same hour that she was gracing Leno, she had popped up in a "Seinfeld" re-run...
...and confronted a hayseed classmate thus: "Why don't you @#$%&*1 a sheep or your sister or yourself...
...On "Seinfeld," she was musing about decaffeinated coffee —how do they get the caffeine to leave...
...Actually, I think she's a little older than Gen-Xers, meaning that she should know better...
...In memoirs of bulimics, in innumerable chat rooms, on Springer-type slugfests, spilling all seems to be the goal...
...Certainly not when, as she did on an HBO special, Ms...
...one can be consumed by one's neuroses while not feeling obliged to share them with the world...
...She looks at the world with a glassy-eyed gaze...
...I vaguely remembered that episode: Jerry had fallen for her because she was so much like him...
...I won't lose the weight, I promise you this, in my career...
...I'm not sure that either makes for great comedy...
...I have a hard time escaping her, too...
...Janeane, baby, truer words were never spoken...
...Those films were charming vehicles, and her attitude worked well because sheevolved into a different person by movie's end...
...Garofalo the inevitable by-product of an overfed, slothful culture...
...In many respects, Ms...
...Garofalo typifies Generation X, or whatever tag her age group goes by these days: narcissistic, whining, disengaged...
...I have a hard time figuring out this fixture of Comedy Central, this ostensible funny girl...
...Garofalo's appeal, I'll happily buy that person an allexpenses-paid trip to Camden...
...If Jerry had been doing that sort of daydreaming, he would have at least worked up a childish wonderment...
...Parenthetically, no one has yet explained why, if her name is spelled "Janeane," it's pronounced "Jeanine," rather than "Jane-Ann" or even "Jane-Ain...
...And where does it go...
...That's not the same thing as self-deprecation, whose wonderful and honorable practitioners include Rodney Danger-field, Oscar Levant, and Joan Rivers...
...Alas, that's not what's in vogue these days...
...Which is, I think, the idea...
...Behold—archetypal American youth, ca...
...But my hat's off to her for her ingenuity: She has parlayed THOMAS VINCIGUERRA is a frequent contributor to the New York Times...
...America's ubiquitous and always annoying ingenue...
...Garofalo played it deadpan, as if she were chewing gum—anything just to keep her mouth busy...
...A few days later she was on "The View," talking about vaginas...
...She was winding up a book tour and Leno asked if she was tired of it...
...Garofalo—and I admit that most of the time my eyes are shut—her stock in trade seems to be an all-encompassing self-loathing...
...If anyone can explain Ms...
...I believe America is fed up with me...
...It had to do with their break-up...
...She refused to shed pounds, she said, because somehow that would compromise her: "Seriously, I am such an eye-sore when I land at LAX...and they can kiss my fat ass, I swear to God...
...I promise you because that would be a sellout...
...posturing...
...Not necessarily...
...It's times like these that I thank my parents for conceiving me in a century that has clickers...
...Incidentally, the book she was touting on Leno was co-written with Ben I Stiller...
...the worst elements of Elizabeth Wurtzel and Andrea Dworkin into a career...
...62 September 1999 • The American Spectator...
...I doubt that candor for its own sake, though, is perforce virtuous...
...Garafalo, by contrast, seems to have two recurring themes: (i) "I hate myself and I want to die," and (2) "All men are scum...
...Is Ms...
...Her comic genius usually amounts to a listless, unmodulated recitation of gripes...
Vol. 32 • September 1999 • No. 9
