Another Blog! One With Focus!

Yes, it’s been a damn long time since I blogged, but I’ve come back with a vengence. I’ve got two posts on my new blog:

http://wikiwood.blogspot.com

It’s called “WikiWood”, and it’s all about User Generated Content, Viral Video and other entertainment online. Wiki, meaning “created and defined by multiple users on the web” and Wood, as in “Hollywood”. You hate it now, but it’ll grow on you. Just you watch.

So that doesn’t mean that this blog is dead, it just means that I’ve got a new, more focused online presence now. This one is going to be reserved for random crapness and tomfoolery.

How to Make the Cutest Puke Ever

Step 1: Eat an entire bag of marshmellows.

Step 2: Swallow three handfulls of candy hearts, whole.

Step 3: Puke.

With a Name Like Perry Bible Fellowship, It’s Gotta be Funny

My buddy Aaron Feaver sent me a link to Nicholas Gurewich’s Perry Bible Fellowship site today, and I wasn’t anywhere near prepared for what I found. I honestly laughed for about five minutes straight, clicking from comic to comic. Besides being really funny and smart, his stuff all has a really unique look (the look even differs from one comic to the next).   It’s the first fresh take I’ve seen on a comic strip in awhile, and I have to say that it’s required browsing. Oh, and it’s weird.  And Weird > Non-Weird.  Here’s the link:

http://www.pbfcomics.com/

In other news, I have about three definitions in the queue that Urban Dictionary has yet to approve. Fuckers.

Goodbye Kurt

I was lucky enough, in High School, to have “Cat’s Cradle” as assigned reading. I remember not knowing what to expect, and I soon found out that there was no way that I could have ever expected the unique beauty that is a Kurt Vonnnegut book. The ideas, the commentary in the book was so lofty, but he managed to keep it all grounded and relate able. As a moody teenager, I could appreciate his trademark dark humor. It was a true blessing to be introduced to that book, because it opened me up to Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5, Sirens of Titan and so many other dark, satirical and weird masterpieces. I’m an avid fan of both sci-fi and comedy, so his work was a regular Reese’s Cup to me.

And now he’s gone. I checked AintItCoolNews.com before I went to sleep last night, and the first article announced that Kurt Vonnegut died at the age of 84. They wrote a really nice and really long passage about him here. It’s not really a surprise, he’s 84 and he smoked for nearly his whole life, but it’s a real loss. Not only to the world of literature, but to the world at large. I’m not the kind to mourn the loss of a celebrity of any kind, but his death actually depresses me. This is a guy that contibuted a lot to my intellectual growth when I was growing up, for better or worse, and I’ve never read anything by him that I didn’t like. And I think the world needs him – he’s an insane voice of reason amidst a throng of the unreasonably sane. Plus, he has a cool mustache. My mom nailed his philosophy on the head in an email to me today:

“He thought the world was intrinsically crazy and the best we could do was to help each other muddle through it.”

Right on Mom. You nailed it. Here’s another great way of describing him, from the brilliant Jessica Hagy:

There’s so much I could say about him, so much more he deserves as a proper Eulogy, but I’ll stop here. If you haven’t read him, I strongly urge you to pick up just one of the books mentioned above. They’re all worth the 10 bucks, promise. In honor of him, I’ll end this thusly – not with a tear, but with this: Ting-a-ling!

ADDENDUM: Kurt’s Wikipedia page

ADDENDUM 2: Here’s some Great Vonnegut Quotes. Click!

Jesus, Robots and Bill Cosby: My Holy Trinity

In honor of Easter, here’s a video that falls into the comedy subgenre I love most, behind Robot humor and before hipster ironic Cosby humor: Jesus humor. Jesus humor is pretty much a slam dunk. You can have him do just about anything and it will be modertly funny as long as it’s slighty out of character. And what’s out of character for Jesus, you ask? Just about everything. Just look at G4’s mediocre Office Jesus. Jesus is the go to guy for the lazy, hacky, comedy writer. That’s why he shows up in almost every episode of Family Guy. Second best go to guy would have to be Mr. T. I pity the fool that still writes a Mr. T joke and considers themselves original in any way. Damn it. Did I just say “Pity the fool”? Fuck.

And this is too late for this year, but here’s a great recipe for next year’s Easter Festivities. It’s called “Beer Up the Butt Chicken”. Really, it is.

http://bbq.about.com/od/chickenrecipes/r/bl80418b.htm

Nerdgasm

Fellow Jiblogger Dave Schapelle just posted a listing of ways to tell if you’re a geek, and I just found one myself. If this post makes you crack up like I did, you’re probably a geek…

http://www.billanastas.com/blag/2007/04/03/talk-to-you-soon/

Bill’s got a great cooking blog too – http://www.insanecooking.com. Dude makes a mean cheesecake. That was the straightest way I could have that last sentence, and it still came out pretty gay.

In other news, Urban Dictionary finally posted my submission –

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=celebrilarity

Hooray for e-complishments of little or no value!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Markets the Fuck Out of This Thing

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film is likely going to be a rambling, cheap looking, sporadically funny movie, much like the show. The normal episodes are 12 minutes long, and they have trouble sustaining that sometimes so a full length movie? Eh… BUT they’ve done some great marketing for it, and I love a few of the creative ways they’ve decided to put themselves out there.

First and foremost, there’s the LCD displays they used to tag numerous locations in various cities, most famously Boston where they caused a big stir. Basically, a few panicky people (in positions of authority) thought that these things were bombs. It’s LCD guys, not IED. They got themselves in some trouble, but the attention was great. In terms of their target demo, I think this was seen as a victory, and not a blunder. Plus, it alerted a bunch of people outside their audience to their presence, which in this case is admitedly a mixed bag. If ya missed it the first time around, here’s a story on it:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/

Lately, they punked everyone again by announcing that they were going to screen the entire movie on Adult Swim this past Sunday. And what was the date last sunday, you ask? The first of April, fool. Obviously, they didn’t play the movie. Well, they did, but not really. See below…

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/200053/aqua_teen_hunger_force_colon_movie.html

Their site is pretty good too – http://www.kingcolon.com. They followed Snakes On A Plane’s lead, which let you personalize a voice message from Samuel L. Jackson to send to your friends. They up the ante by providing three different characters, though, and a number of messages. Also check out “the worst game ever”, which really is the worst game ever. There’s more to do and see on the site, and if you need a good laugh and a bit of nostalgia, check out their low bandwidth site option –
http://www.adultswim.com/shows/athf/movie/indexLb.html

Good shit. Everything ties really nicely into the show’s sensibility too, which can best be described as the love child of Kevin Smith, Ted Nugent, Stan Lee, Douglas McAdams and both Cheech AND Chong. Oh, and they were all huffing paint thinner during inception and throughout the entire pregnancy. Check it out, if you haven’t seen it, just know that it’s hit and miss.

JibJab Sticks it to MSN, Fox News and CNN With the Latest

Ok, so I’m a little biased, sure, but I think this is a really good piece. It’s smart, funny, and says exactly what I’ve thought about cable and broadcast news for a long time: it’s exploitive and idiotic. Sure, they report on important stuff about 25% of the time, but c’mon, there’s so much more to know about what’s going on out there. Here’s the piece, I’ll stop blathering and just let you watch.  I have to just link to it because stupid wordpress doesn’t allow embed code.  They have their own lame-o way of doing it which I’m sure they think is really unlame but it limits you to only using YouTube, Google Video, and something called Daily Motion.  Verdict?  Ultra lame.

 http://www.jibjab.com/what_we_call_the_news

Check out the behind the scenes blog, I worked on it and it’s got some great insight into the whole process.  Excelsior!

Special Report: Bike Cops Not as Cool as Real Cops

In a study released this wednesday, the LAPD was disappointed to find exactly what it had suspected all along: cops without cars are less likely to have a threesome than police officers with cars. “At the core of this, however, is another problem,” explained Dr. Rob Dietrich at wednesday’s press conference, “they’re dorks. Who ever got laid in the back seat of a schwin?”

Bike Cops hang around, sharing their stories of loneliness and sexual frustration.

Dr. Dietrich’s colleague, a Professor Hufenpuph of Harvard School of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, agrees. “The natural state of sex has an inherent ‘coolness’ about it. A certain ‘phatitude’. Mustangs are cool. Bikes are half as cool because they only have two wheels.”

The study’s main subject, Leonard Berkle, provided just the kind of lameness that many of the projects scientists and investors had predicted he would. “Well, just look at him. Jesus,” Explained BioDerm’s Publicity Relations President Donna Turner. “Jesus.”

Berkle was dropped into a number of situations where coolness was a crucial and deciding factor and was forced to perform against the odds. Pre-fabricated domes provided fully functioning replicas of Mardi Gras, Daytona Beach and the Sunset Strip.

“We were disappointed, as we suspected we would be,” says Dietrich “He failed to pick up any one. This includes the transvestites and blind people that were introduced late in the experiment. Hopeless.”

An exasperated Leonard Berkle fails to pick up on another female, despite her headgear.

George Washington Will Rape and Kill You.

According to this music video, at least. Aside from being really funny, I like this video because both elements, the music and the accompanying visuals, fit together really well. Two great tastes that taste great together. It’s the whole slacker aesthetic – if you listen to the song the vocalists sound like they haven’t slept for days, and the music is stripped down. Kind of reminiscent of Violent Femmes or the Breeders – the early stuff anyway. Add the crudely drawn, barely animated accompaniment and you have something that meshes perfectly. It’s done by a guy named Brad Neely. Big props to Matt Kolokoff for this one.   I usally hate forwards but every time I get one from Matt I open it because I know it’s gonna be damn solid.  More props to Aaron Simpson, curator of Cold Hard Flash.com for having this gem in his JibJab JokeBox and for giving me the heads up on Brad Neely’s site.  Cold Hard Flash is a must for any animation fans out there, especially if  you’re into Flash.  But even if you’re not, this is such a comprehensive catalog of what’s going  on in broadcast and internet animation that it goes beyond just a fun read – it’s also incredibly informative.  Can’t say enough good things about it!

This has inspired me to write some Martin Van Buren fan fiction. Sure, he’s not the most popular president but that’s probably because he never had a cool music video. He’s got some much potential – just look at those sideburns! More to come…

Martin Van Buren: The perfect President to fight Robot Zombie in a reinvisioned Post World War II Russia.