The Abe Froman Files

God decided to have five random people ask me what I think of Olivia Munn, which is weird because I don’t really think of her very often… or at all. And I’m not sure why anyone would solicit my opinion unless they think that our shared asianness (she being half, me being half-hearted) has some meaning, or they think there’s an unspoken connection between asian women with boobs. I mean I knew about Attack of the Show and about the fact that she may have been half naked somewhere on the Internets and that she’s “funny” and that she recently joined the Daily Show and that this hire somehow became a part of the Jon Stewart is a Betty Dodson-hating asshat sexist pig meme.

But really, why should I give a fuck about her first appearance on Stewart’s show or whether she is really talented or a no-talent hottie who isn’t really “funny” so much as “bawdy” and popular with a big crowd of dorks whose consumer spending clout has forced all the mainstream usual suspects to take notice of her. And did I mention that she’s real easy on the eyes and happy to get nearly naked? That never hurt anyone (under the age of 40) either.

Whatever. The Munn would be my preferred mode of procrastination today, using a sprinkling of on-the-clock time to pad out my skimpy knowledge of this supposedly seminal pop culture figure. And here is what I found.

She’s hot. But hotter than I knew! Thanks Google images!!

Her first Daily Show appearances sucked ass. But really that was less her fault than that of the writers who put together a shitty sketch that dragged out a neverending parade of hoary old race and gender jokes. Not even jokes, really. That would be too generous. More like, um, shouted statements of joke fact. “No, I will be the only woman! We can’t have more than one!” “No, we can’t have an Asian AND a Black Man! I’m sorta angry!”

And because it’s so lame, Munn is forced to sort of be lame, too. She has to play straight man to a group that refuses to deliver any punch lines. Does that suck? I guess. Would she ever say that it sucked? Probably not. That would be against the rules.

I wish that she’d been able to debut with actual laughs and that her first appearance had been something more than a way for the Daily Show to rehash (rather joylessly) all of the things that must be rehashed when minorities (or hot chicks) or anyone else enters the ecosystem and makes people anxious. Because, people, I still have no fucking clue as to whether this lady be funny or if she’s just another attractive woman who is considered funny because she dares to touch gross things and contort her pretty face into unpretty faces and that’s, in this day and age, an act of grand subversion.

And either way, do I really care?

The other thing I learned in my Internet travels is that Munn has her own website, which is very well tended and sometimes amusing. She also has a Twitter account.