"The delights of Brasília are much greater in a heavenly plane"

April 5, 2015 12:58 PM

Reggie Watts gives a tour of the utopian city of Brasília.
posted by maskd (10 comments total)

Reminds me a little bit of This is my Milwaukee.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 2:11 PM on April 5, 2015 [5 favorites]

TIL how Reggie Watts expenses a vacation to Brasil.
posted by pwnguin at 2:54 PM on April 5, 2015 [9 favorites]

He makes it look so easy! These are the travelogues of my future mind/being presented here and now - mucho mi gustatum fuck yes!
posted by Meatbomb at 3:22 PM on April 5, 2015

It's one thing to make the joke that Brasila looks like some alternate universe future from the 70s, it's another to create an entire promotional video around that.
posted by The Whelk at 4:25 PM on April 5, 2015 [3 favorites]

Jenny Slate takes a similar foray into the deadpan with her Catherine series of shorts. Is this what we should call "post-funny"? Am I missing out on some new drug that makes these hilarious?
posted by squirrel at 5:04 PM on April 5, 2015

squirrel, like any humor, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're not. Some people like them, some people don't. I do sometimes and that's okay. You don't and that's okay too.
posted by johnnydummkopf at 8:09 PM on April 5, 2015 [1 favorite]

Squirrel, I think that they're going for more "uncanny" than funny here. Drugs may also be involved, I'm not sure. I'll admit that as a young child in the early '70's this is literally what I thought the grown-up world would like given the stuff that was on TV at the time, so they may have been going for something like that.

And thanks for the posting the link to Catherine, I had not heard of it before. I got the impression, which Jenny seems to have confirmed in an interview that they were intentionally going for something that was neither dramatic nor funny, but as neutral as possible, just to explore the possibility. There were definitely some drugs involved with that one. (Spoilers->)I came away not certain whether I should feel more sorry for the Catherine herself, who was given quite the scare by the 'love interest', or for that guy's character who obviously couldn't handle the tension of existing in such a bland universe and had to act out to feel real. I don't think any of the characters could have passed the voight-kampff test.
posted by mcrandello at 2:44 AM on April 6, 2015

I like this, thanks.

I was standing in line at the Chango coffee shop in Echo Park a few months ago, and out of the corner of my eye saw a woman and a man with a big afro get in line behind me. The man started talking with his friend in a loud, fake British accent. Still not looking at them, I was like, oh god, who is this nerd right next to me who needs a lot of attention. Then he switched to a fake Australian accent. Finally I glanced behind me and saw it was Reggie Watts and thought ah, right.

(I told this story to my friend Laura who was waiting outside the cafe for me, and she said "Reggie Watts? More like Wedgie Watts, am I right? No, really, I saw him go in and he had a giant wedgie!" LA LIFE.)

(I love Reggie Watts.)
posted by jjwiseman at 12:27 PM on April 6, 2015

I don't get the joke. Admittedly, I haven't been to Brasilia, but I've been to Sedona, AZ and it was exactly like this.

Good tip about the praetheons, though.
posted by capricorn at 4:34 PM on April 6, 2015

Brasilia was famously built without sidewalks to be a City of the future where cars would do everything and there would be no traffic ever so the buildings could just stand radiant in grand lawns with no pesky humans messing them up.

So the line "while of course while you can walk everywhere in Brasilia" is funny.
posted by The Whelk at 5:39 PM on April 6, 2015