MEL'S DRIVE-IN

Mad Mel, looking far more dapper and personable (until you look into those eyes) than Nick Nolte or Paul Reubens did under similar circumstances, pays a visit to L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca's pad

The infectious and brilliant pop-rockers Fountains of Wayne chronicled the apprehension, uncertainty and frustration of a woman trying to make her way on the stand-up comedy circuit in their wry and observant should-be-a-pop-classic tune “Comedienne,” which can be found on their most recent collection of B-sides and album outtakes entitled Out-of-State Plates. The subject of the song begs no obvious connection with the recent misadventures of a certain rage-filled, possibly homophobic, allegedly anti-Semitic actor/film director. But as I was listening to the album over the weekend, the emotionally wrenching chorus of the song struck me in a different light, as its meanings settled onto a whole new set of circumstances, an entirely separate performance stage, and informed the would-be Owner of Malibu’s predicament with FoW’s particular sense of empathy for characters on the fringes of society, the ones who don’t claim to own California beachfront colonies populated by the super-rich. As the chorus kicks in, FoW gives us a glimpse inside the woman’s head just before she takes the stage, and I wonder if Mad Mel had similar thoughts just before he stepped out of his car, into the red-and-blue flashing night lights on Pacific Coast Highway, and began his own bizarre, ruinous and all-too-revealing stand-up routine for the CHP officers this past weekend:

“She knows she knows
There are gonna be times
When no one goes
For her funniest lines

Comedienne
Please make up your mind
Are you laughing or crying
Are you killing or dying tonight?”