A quick refresher on this Knight Rider thing...

I didn't do standup Monday night, after all, Franky told me I was going on, then didn't seem to know what I was talking about. But, hey, I worked up a 20 minute set, so I've got that in case I ever decide to do standup. I'm almost just satisfied that I could do 20 minutes if I had to, performing it's just masturbation anyway right? Like our radio show. We didn't broadcast any of them because we had done what we came to do. Oh we did broadcast them? Well when the fuck were they on? ...well that's a shitty timeslot.

Point being Franky has been busy in L.A. - who's Franky you ask? Well that's what we're here to discuss.

To those of you who have received a mass email about Knight Rider, thanks for coming to my blog and here's the whole story (long-time readers come back tomorrow to read how much I hated Lady In The Water.)

So I started this section of my blog called Short-Haired Chick Friday, it's dumb but everyone seems to like it. I pluck a chick with short-hair out of pop culture and run pictures of them as nude as possible under the guise of social commentary on how non-traditionally attractive women are just as blah blah blah..., the point is if you want to see Halle Berry's boobs I think I did that in May.

One day I post about local Burlesque Dancer Michelle L'Amour and get a response from someone who loved the post, her manager, Franky. I don't watch tv, which is not a statement, I couldn't tell you what Brothers Karamazov is about either, but evidently there's this show that's, get this...Star Search minus Ed McMahon plus David Hasselhoff...allright concept, you've got my attention. As it turns out Michelle had been on it, and as it turns out, made some good tv!



...yeah, Youtube has revoked the clip of Michelle, so there's Hasselhoff's Hooka Chaka, because if there's a song that needs to be remade...

So Franky asks me if I know how to do a Knight Rider impersonation? Which, actually, I do, but, like my Ted Knight, I never thought there'd be much call for it. I just kind of like doing those two impressions. Franky tells me the idea for Michelle's next appearance and it's genius and it's good tv and it involves Knight Rider. I record the voiceover of not only KITT but also Michael Knight and call my Mom, who's happy, because I was finally famous. It doesn't take much after ten years of obscurity for Mom to get excited about my career. She tells the entire family. Everyone tells everyone else who tell's their neighbors who tell everyone else.

Then with the one phone call, NBC legal said there was no way we could do the bit. In a very common piece of legality, too many people own too many pieces of Knight Rider, and you have to get them all to agree on the merit of Michelle's striptease. Good luck.

So Mom had to call everyone who had to call everyone else who had to call everyone else and tell them that her son was not famous yet as had been previously forecast, but he might be doing standup on...anyway, life moved on and Michelle performed in last month's Rent Party, doing the same striptease as she did on her inaugural America's Got Talent appearance.

Then...there was hope (yeah right), Franky was working the system (yeah right), I'd get a random text from Franky saying "Knght Rdr mayb go" (Franky was mugged on Sesame Street as a kid and to this day has an aversion to vowels).

And before I knew it Franky calls me Sunday while watching the rehearsal and he's freaking out and loving it. I couldn't believe it. THEN, knowing it had taped I decided to call my Mom and tell her that it was going to be on This Wednesday on NBC, 7pm to 9pm CST.

And do you know what she said?: "So I have to call everybody again?"

VOTE MICHELLE L'AMOUR! (and me)

Big Week Coming Up!

Monday
Tonight I'm doing standup for the first time ever, but I don't know where. It's too bad, I'd love to plug it, but I don't know where it is. Franky set it up, Michelle L'Amour's manager. Like everything I told someone I can do something I'm not sure I can do, and then they hold me to it. I always hated standup because it was so shitty in the 90's, all the good comedians had cleary been used up and it was the same old shit, same old delivery. It kind of died as a for for a while, the standup clubs had plent of fodder to fill their sets but there were very few national showcases. A while back I was returned from my hatred of standup by hearing David Cross. The guy just tells stories, I loved it. I realized not all standup has to be hack. Then Dane Cook came out and I was amazed that he got and hour out of the dumbest shit, the dumbest 90's stand-up topics, car alarms, meeting girls, eating fast food. All the same old dumb shit, and yet he made it funny. I couldn't believe it. So when asked if I could do standup I told Franky yes. Now I gotta pay for saying that. We'll see, I'll let you know how it went.

Wednesday
BIG NIGHT! NATIONAL TV WEDNESDAY! NBC WEDNESDAY NIGHT 7pm-9pm cst
The bit I talked about a couple weeks ago with Michelle L'amour is on! NBC finally got it through all the lawyers they needed to and Michelle (from last week's rent party, watch the video here) will do her Knight Rider dance on the hood of the real Knight Rider voiced BY ME! I just signed the release. I agreed to 30% of the DVD royalties, I got screwed.

Friday-Saturday
Obviously a big night as well. Friday Schadenfreude adds a big name to the prestigious venues it's played. The Goodman, Austin, L.A., New York, Edinburgh, and now Lollapalooza! The Ed Bus Tumblers will be there, Michelle Leigh will be there. Kanye will be there. If you haven't bought tickets to Lollapalooza already I highly doubt you're going to buy them now that you know we're involved. But for those who are going to be there, we're at 6pm at the Mindfield stage. Get it? Mind Field? Like the Urban Dance Squad Album? Wait, that was Mental Floss, Deeper Shade of Soul yeah-yeah...

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I'm a sheep, man.

Waiter, there's a lady in my water...It's Short-Haired Chick Friday!

Ladies and gentlemn, I present the star of Lady In The Water, The Village, and Gwen Stacy from Spider-Man 3, Bryce Dallas Howard.



The thinking man's Kirsten Dunst, why does she never look that good in her movies?



I just heard M. Night Shyamalan on Howard Stern (who's new show, by the way, is easily, EASILY the best work he's ever done). Howard Stern is the first place I ever heard of him. Night is a huge fan and called into Howard's show about a week before The Sixth Sense opened. Night took a lot of shit about being Indian that day, he is an incredibly good sport. Night has come on Howard every time during his meteoric rise. Unlike other entertainers like Jim Carrey or Jerry Seinfeld, who during their club days or initial cancellation of Seinfeld couldn't keep out of Howard's studio and now won't go near it. Even after making $4billion on his films, Night has no problem following a dominatrix.



I'll be seeing Lady In The Water this weekend, but needed the tie-in to Bryce Dallas Howard for Short-haired chick Friday and I wanted to come to his defense. I love M. Night, and got a little pissed off during the march to Iraq, I mean the march to the opening of Lady In The Water, I'm so fucking tired of being manipulated by the fucking media.



I've got a degree in communications, I've studied the media for decades, I've manipulated media as an editor and I get it, I don't even see the commercial or the 20 second spot on headline news, I see the angle and the intent and the way they manipulate me so believe I need a blackberry, and make Kate believes that there was a perfectly valid reason for all 7 of Tower 7's poured-concrete re-bar struts to give out SIMULTANEOUSLY because of glass blown from the World Trade Centers.



I'm glad to see in this M. Night controversy all of America has rushed to the side of the little guy, Disney. You know the talking points; ego, spoiled, ego, can't take criticism, democrats just like criticizing the president, ego. It might be conspiratorial of me, but I believe Disney owns some tv networks, I believe some magazines too, they also produce shows, I have a feeling Access Hollywood or Extra is one of them, do we know who owns the E! network? Disney's a pretty big company, I wonder who's ego is bigger and who's is hurt?



My girlfriend started hacking on M. Night the other day about his, get this "ego", and then threw out some jab like "I get it, all your films have surprise endings, and I never see it coming, I get it..." Like it's easy to make a reputation at all in the industry much less develop yourself as a brand, a brand that means quality. That's like saying "Hitchcock, I get it, I don't know what's going to happen next, there's a lot of suspense, and I'm tired afterwards..." or "Coen Brothers I get it, you make genius films."



Plus, that's not what's great about Night anyway. What's great about Night is that he's a genre deconstructor, Unbreakable is his Spider-Man, Signs is his ID4, The Village is his Evil Dead, Lady In The Water is his...I don't know, haven't seen it, but I hear it's his kid's movie. If Unbreakable is his Spider-Man then I want to see his kid's movie. And beyond that he looks so closely at the effect of the fantastic events on people and families with problems, and not in that "Peter Parker's a real-teen" way, but in that "Bruce Willis can find the strength of a superhero yet can't hold his family together" way.



So Disney doesn't like Night's script, claimed the concept was "difficult," as I imagine the concept of The Village was, and Night went to Warner Brothers. That isn't really unique. Warner's courted him (not unique), but they courted him by letting him make the film he wanted to make. Can casting Paul Friggin' Giamatti be considered selling out? Why do I have a feeling Disney was not overly happy with Paul Giamatti to open their summer tentpole, which they're right to do, and Night had options, options he's earned through being really fucking good at making movies.



But Night is a part of the most hated race, the rich and successful, but I can't begrudge him for becoming one off the few directors who's films can be sold on his name. Does Night have an ego? Yes. Is that news? In Hollywood? I love the guy, I think his shit is genius and he'd have to do something different with his movies to make me not want to see them, but Lady In The Water looks like he's doing exactly what I love him for, only the media is telling me otherwise.





Did you know Tower 7 is only the third steel-structure building to collapse because of fire? The first two ever to collapse because of fire happened an hour earlier.

"...when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes

The Unknown Blogger Strikes Again!

I was wondering what happened to the Unknown Blogger, and now I know. As I was cleaning up the harddrive on my computer I came across a document I didn't recognize. It was an Unknown Blogger post, one I didn't recognize that I had evidently gotten and never posted, his best one yet! It was dated close to when I quit my job, so I think it just got lost in a mental shuffle. Evidently "Jack" saw that I didn't post it and said "fuck this guy." Hey Jack! Don't hate me, here it is, and it's my favorite one so far.

Sports is a Microcosm of the Universe

I've caught World Cup Fever. I admit it. No matter how thoroughly I scrubbed my hands and used the paper towel to open the bathroom door I caught World Cup Fever.

It's actually a fun event to watch. I'm not much of a sports fan to begin with (and any sport that allows a tie is just plain misguided), but it's been a good ride so far. All of the rivalries are lost on me though. "Trinidad & Tobago vs. Uganda"? That's going to be a great contest to see which team can get more people in the world to not give a shit about them!

But let's face it, every sport is stupid as hell at its fundamental level. Baseball is a contest to try to hit a ball with a stick and run around four bases before being touched by the ball. The team that can do that the most wins. Basketball is a sport where the fans try to figure out if Eva Longoria dates the players because she loves them or if she just loves big, black cock. And on and on.

Some sports really are more stupid than others though. In NASCAR, half-wits drive around really fast making left-turns all day long while no-wits show up in droves hoping to see them die. I kid actually because the truth is NASCAR fans really aren't all that different from the fans of every other sport. There's just a more concentrated amount of them. At their heart, every sport needs one particular demographic in order to keep it alive and keep the dollars flowing in -- White Trash.

White Trash is to sports what White Trash is to Motley Crue: really fucking important. They drink all the beer. They buy all the jerseys. They dip all the Skoal. White Trash may be a punchline for, well, everybody except themselves, but without these Ted Nugent-lovin', WWE Wrestling goin', Orel Roberts watchin', champion pig-raisin', CB squelch-adjustin' citizens, our economy would surely collapse. When was the last time you bought a Twinkie? When have you EVER used Crisco, bought a Garth Brooks CD, subscribed to TV Guide or mailed in that Ed McMahon thing?

What's great about watching World Cup soccer is not seeing the actual playing, but rather seeing the comforting image of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic sea of White Trash. From the Brazilians with their yellow and green clown afros to the Nigerians with their face-painting, it pleases me to know that the U.S. has no monopoly on White Trash. In fact, if you multiply it out, there are probably so many non-white White Trash people in the world that we should just change the name to All-Color Trash.

Every culture has their version of them. We may think of the Japanese as a quiet and reverent people, but one look at their game shows and we know different. Okay, maybe not every country is stupid enough to elect someone President who looks like an emcee at a county fair (our bad), but at least tuning into the World Cup the world can see that the equivalent of cheese hats respects no borders.

Let's extrapolate a bit more. There is no life on earth that doesn't have DNA as its building block, therefore most scientists conclude that any life forms we encounter will likely have DNA too. There is no culture on earth that doesn't have a history of myth and religion, so anthropologists suggest that it's likely every culture in the universe will have their forms of myth and religion. Let me be the first to say, I think every culture in the universe has their form of White Trash.

We always depict space aliens as being intellectually superior to us and maybe they all are. But I'm sure they're not all intellectually equal. For every E.T. that turns a Speak-and-Spell into an interstellar homing beacon, there's his cousin that tries to turn the Speak-and-Spell into a machine that can suck off one of his three cocks. Sure they have scientists that figured out how to build a faster than light speed craft, but most of their inventors probably make the alien equivalent of a hat that holds two beers that they can ingest "mentally".

So, when you're watching the new Superman movie (everybody's favorite space alien) just remember that while Superman may be a stand-up guy who's really smart and tries to help everyone, the majority of Krypton was probably killed on their planet trying to figure out how close to $1.00 the big wheel would land on Price is Right while their spaceship was on their front lawn up on blocks.

-=-Jack-=-



Are you a friend of Jack's? iamjacksfriend@gmail.com
Are you an enemy of Jack's? iamjacksenemy@gmail.com

Aquaman!

Updated

I just saw Justin linked to this on the front page stating that "Adam laughs at the faux Aquaman trailer" A) It's real, the WB, or CW, whatever it is, actually shot an actual pilot to an actual show about Aquaman, filtered through that Smallville lens. And B) I'm not laughing, I just paid $2 over at iTunes for the fucking thing. I love it. Bring on the goddamn Blue Beetle tv show, Red Tornado, Apache Chief. I have yet to see a bad superhero adapatation, that's how deep my mania sinks!

the original post

How cool is it that they shot a pilot for the "big joke" of superheroes, Aquaman? And put some real effort in it to make him cool. I love it. Well now the pilot is available on iTunes, check it out

Error

I was editing the other day and I fucked up, small error, I cut into a shot with the camera out of focus. I quickly changed my error, paused, then undid. The I went to the previous shot and extended where it began so that it included the zoom I'd previous cut out. I then started looking for all the times the camera shifts by zooming or focus. I found where Steve took the camera completely off the group of the yellow-shirted fake stock analysts that populated the entrance to our last Rent Party doing he bit where the guys hang out in front of the Merc and smoke and talk to passing hot women.

Check out the first 40 seconds of the video in the screening room, the error defined the style of the segment. It was a great error. It's such a catch 22 how badly we need error. How do you get better? Fail quicker. If we don't take the leap then we'll never figure it out. I didn't know I'd be moving to California on Sept. 16 when I quit my job in June, and had I stayed I would've never decided to move. Had I not quit my job I would've never felt the pressure to tell my roommate that he should look for a roommate. He would've never had practical reason to ask, so I had to set a date. Schadenfreude, for the most practical reasons possible of any people in my life, needed to help me figure out the earliest I could leave, it would not be until Sept. 16th.

It's all so impulsive and scary. I could fail at any moment. My feet are so cold. It's so comfortable here. But, I'm a filmmaker. That's it. I've always been one, it's what I wanted to do all my life, and film is a hobby here. Chicago was a place I went to study my other love, comedy, which, really, is kind of a hobby here too. Of course you can make movies anywhere in the United States but like five guys do and they all own houses in L.A.

Maybe I'm a sellout, I feel this wall of silently rolled eyes at this decision. I just don't want to be that guy that thinks moving to L.A. automatically makes you a success. I also don't want to be that guy who heard from a guy who said that nobody who's ever moved there ever succeeded, they're all still waiters, that no writer and no actor, producer, director ever succeed except for these special people, and that special success is not for anyone else, it's all used up because L.A. sucks. I also have to question how good a screenplay most of those waiters have.

Can't back out now. I've decided, and I would look like a super loser to the hundred people I've told. And you. Maybe I'm making an error. But then, maybe there are no errors but rather simply variations on being correct.

Ace Responds

In case some of you don't dig deep into the responses to Todd Voorhies' blog, I thought I'd reproduce a hilarious resonse from one of his blogs. Mr. ****** ****** under the pseudonym "Ace."

Ace said...
Gamecocks, what!

Fake punt, what!

Dude,

Todd, you fuckin fag, it's your boy Ace. Remember me from Lambda Chi, we had the "Chi in The Sky" jam fest mountain weekend where it was fuckin, Theta Chi and Lambda Chi? That shit was the bomb, dude. My favorite part was when we were joking and you were all like, man we should change it from "Chi in The Sky" to...fuckin.."Chi in the Sky and We're all Real High" cause we were so fucking high. Those Jam bands were awesome. I really liked that one that ws just 4 dudes playing bass solos all at once and that fucking hilarious dude who sang that rap song like a Phish song. Becky got so wasted that night she let me put it in her butt. And the next day everyone was like, what's that smell, it smells like shit, and I was like, "Fuckin, that's probably my dick cause I fuckin put it in Becky's ass last night, brah!" And everyone was fucking tapping the rock with me except that douche Kevin who said anal was for Fags. Why did he say that man? that kind of hurtful shit does not belong at mountain week. I mean, fuck dude, that was a chick's ass. I'm no fag. I hate fags, dude. You know that. I mean a chick's ass is totally fucking different that a dudes hairy ass with his fucking balls and shit all hanging down. That's like saying if you, man i wish I said that to the guy, that's like saying if you get a blowjob you might as well get one from a dude cause dudes have mouths just like girls. Just like they have rectums. That made me so mad, dude. I mean it's fuckin obvious I'm not gay, I fuck bitches all the time. I love to fuck bitches and I make one fucking crack about getting Becky's shit all over my foreskin and all of a sudden I'm some kind of fuckin faggotty queen? Give me break. So anyway, do you still like getting pissed on by chicks?

-Ace

Happy Monday

Anti-Cultural Society

So on Friday night I did my second to the last show with The Anti-Cultural Society at Donny's Skybox, directed by Sean Cusick. I finally got my lines down in every scene and then completely dropped them in the one scene we didn't run through but Kevin Sciretta was there to pick up the slack and I don't think anybody noticed. Meanwhile in the other scenes I was so comfortable with my lines that I started throwing in all kinds of new lines, and getting some laughs. It was the first time I've actually had fun in one of those shows, as one is apt to do when one's lines are finally memorized and you can just perform. Next week, last show, stop on by.

Very Nude Rent Party

And then, completely warmed up, I went to the Rent Party which was either a huge success if you talk to the audience or completely fell apart if you talk to Schadenfreude. The acts were great, Pimprov went over very well, the Pajama Men brought some amazing new material, and there was a lot of variety from Deb Downing-Grosz's Spanish Guitar-wielding Contessa to Michelle L'Amour, who took off all her clothes. That's one of Michelle's gigs, she dances and takes off her clothes. In the "completely fell apart" department we never set up very well why she was doing it, so we just looked like heels who wanted some nudity in the show.

The environmental bit of the evening was great, but not well rehearsed. We "went public" with Schadenfreude stock and had a pit full of Schadenfreude Mecantile Exchange workers doing all the bits about those guys being coked up and ordering more stock as each sketch raised the stock or lowered the stock. Then we "bombed" with Kate's bit where she makes fun of Rita Rudner and plays Karen Keller who does so poorly she has a mental breakdown onstage and starts applying lipstick saying "pretty pretty, pretty dreamer." So the stock tanks and then we've got to do something. So I suggest that it's Friday, that I'll do Short-Haired Chick Friday onstage, making the mistake that anyone in the audience reads our website, two different audiences I now realize. Nobody knew what I was talking about. So I pulled a bystander, Michelle L'amour, out of the audience, completely dressed as Snow White from her performance on America's Got Talent. I thought it would be funny to pull a "random" out of the crowd and they happen to be dressed like Snow White, people were confused. Then she takes off a lot of clothes. She did great, of course, very sexy, and unique for a Schadenfreude shwo, but our setup was bad, nobody knew why we were having a woman take off her clothes.

Thanks to everyone who came out, surprise visit by Sara Tolbert, our first intern from 1999 and looooooong time Schadenfriend, hadn't seen her in a while, buut it look like we'll be seeing her at Lollapalooza.

Sunday Screenwriting
We took another stab at the Alderman screenplay. So rough. I think it's in good condition, I sleep well knowing we've got a great script and then we hit it and it's so rough and it really looks like I haven't been monitoring it at all. I'm the leader on the project and I've let the reigns drop. We probably lost two hours with simple shit that could've been fixed on my own. So I'm loading in some rent party footage and then going through the script with a fine tooth comb so when we meet next on it, it will only be story concerns, which it won't be. We have three more days and then we're done done. August 9th, that's it, last day. We have to set an out time on this or we'll still be working on it in September. And we have to write a book. And Lollapalooza, and I'm moving to L.A. on Sept. 16th.

Saturday Morning Cartoons

While looking for Tom & Jerry I found someone had put this up, he goes by the name Tyler, love it!

Again, IS your boss around? Because it's short-haired chick Friday!

I wouldn't suggest looking at this if your boss is even IN today. Very sexy stuff. In fact, just to be sure, you may want to have your boss killed before you look at this.



A while back I posted a Short-Haired Chick Friday featuring local (and since that blog NATIONAL) Burlesque talent, Michelle "Toots" L'Amour



So I got an email from Franky, her manager, complimenting me on the blog and agreeing with me that Michelle has a pretty amazing ass.


That's Franky.

He wanted to meet because one of the points I had made in the blog was that I found burlesque shows that showcase comedy were never funny.


Ridiculously cute, isn't she?

I was mostly making my comment on Burlesque from what I know of Lenny Bruce when he used the platform of introducing burlesque shows to single-handedly crossfade vaudeville to the standup we know today. Franky wanted to know if I might be able to help add some jokes and I was more than happy to help out.



We met at this bar next to The Music Box. The main room was kind of packed so I went to the back room which was amazingly unpacked and full of girls, after I tried to order a drink I realized I'd crashed a bachelorette party.



So then I met Franky and Michelle. It was so weird. I mean I've pretty much seen Michelle naked, and then talked a bunch about it on our website. If you know me and my tastes though, I run a lot more jeans and t-shirt than dresses and high-heels. Well here was Michelle in jeans and a t-shirt, and she was SO DAMN CUTE! We talked for quite a while about the shows Franky was cooking up and agreed to meet again and take a look at some of the stuff Franky had done and come up with a few sketches we could shoot for their website.



In the meantime Michelle went national.



After three solid weeks of phone tag during which I quit my job and decided to move to L.A., Franky and I finally got together and wrote some skits, and in the interim Franky asked me if I knew anyone that knew how to do the voice of KITT from Knight Rider. Odd question, but I gave my shot at it.



As it turns out Franky had a great idea for Michelle's next appearance on America's Got Talent, to have Michelle do a striptease on the hood of a mockup of KITT with me doing the voice! I told my Mom who told everybody in the world that her son had finally made it.



And then lawyers got involved. Knight Rider is no longer owned by the network that airs America's Got Talent and the bit got nixed. Although Franky told me that the bit may not be completely dead. Wish us luck!



I think Franky and Michelle are onto something huge. Modern Burlesque will soon be a huge industry. It's tasteful stripping, something suburban housewives can buy into because it's classy, and something their husbands can get into because it's boobies. Anytime a guy can get away with wanting to see naked women and not be considered a dirty heel, that's a billion dollar industry.



Michelle will be at the Rent Party tonight, so stop on by and say hi to this Talented American.



And if you're not sure if these Rent Party's are worth your time, I urge you to watch the montages of the last three events. The last one took like six hours to edit, so please, go watch it.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

I was always a huge fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the underground comic from the early 80's, very cool, very hip, great black & white art.



And then, unbelievably, they made a cartoon and three movies based on that underground comic. Never saw that coming. Anyway, there's a new CGI movie coming out and it look friggin' cool. Check it out.

A hodge full of podge

Hey all, no time to dig deep into come-socks or Power Records today, still hurting from seeing Def Leppard in Tinley Park last night!!



It was quite an adventure, I'll give a full report, but my suggestion is, if you have to go to Tinley Park, drive, and if you do take public transportation, keep in mind the Tinley Park Metra stop and the the Tweeter Center are about three miles apart, not really walking distance, and if you fuck those two things up, keep in mind the Holiday and La Quinta (Spanish for "The Quinta") Inns may be booked with rockers from Aurora.

Until then all I have to distract you is Aint It Cool News' DVD Release Report. They have a very thorough report on what's coming out and I always love this column because it's amazing what geek luxuries are always coming out. Complete Seasons of Ultra-Man and as much Bruce Campbell as you really would care to enjoy.

Also, Stephe posted this and I haven't laughed this hard in a good long time, so I posted it here for the few of you silly people who might not check Stephe's section all the time, which is too bad because he's ten times the blogger I am.

Fucking enjoy, and, uh, earmuffs.



Oh, and of course, you're Daily Man-Thing

Time to do laundry

Time to do laundry. I was out of socks yesterday so I threw on the least jogged-in socks I could find in the closet. A couple hours later I smelled come. I think I put on a come sock. Either that or somebody came, which is completely possible and probably more likely than me putting on a come sock. I come in one sock, there's a one in 30 chance I could grab the come sock. So I think somebody came. Or maybe I was wearing a come sock. Either way, time to do laundry.

Your Semi-Daily Moon Knight

Guy with pony-tail and guy with drill - FIGHT!

Last Time on Falcon Crest!

Maggie's news assignment on vineyard worker's lifestyles becomes a personal concern to the Giobertis when Maggie's interviews reveal that an extortionist is terrifying Falcon Crest employees. Puzzled as to why undocumented workers suddenly stop working for him, Chase urges Maggie to find out the reason through her interviews. When Chase learns that a man is blackmailing the vineyard workers with threats of deportation, he, despite Angela's warnings against becoming involved, manages to rout the extortionist. When Emma discovers that she is pregnant, Lance realizes that the last thing he needs is another heir competing for the Falcon Crest fortune. Consequently, Emma tumbles down a flight of stairs and has a miscarriage.

NIGHT OF THE LAUGHING DEAD

When I was a kid I would haul my Emerson Big Big Portable Record Player around and listen to these Power Records productions put out in the 70's.


The back hood of mine was covered in Empire Strikes Back stickers.

This was my favorite:


Listen to it here.

Close second


Third


Some others I had and listened to over and over and over.



Ah the days before VCR's and Cable.

That Spider-Man vs. The Werewolf one was awesome, it was not fun-gunning adventure like the other Spider-Man records, it was almost...serious. The music wasn't hokey it was weirdly suspenseful. Very mature compared to the others. When J. Jonah's "Nooooooooo", Peter Parker's angst "why don't you just leave me alone?" the werewolf's howl when Spider-Man rips the pendant off...great stuff. Almost like a sci-fi soap opera.

So anyway, I found a awesome site that houses LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of these files not only have the Spider-Man, Superman, and Batman Records that I had and listened to every fucking day in my single-digit years but also story-records for Star Trek, Planet of the Apes Conan the Barbarian, and Kojak! I had no idea.

Here's and complete catalog and awesome site where you can download many of them.

This sitealso has TONS of links. Really great site. Great link after great link, he even has a link to the Spider-Man Rock Opera!

But the best thing they had was the one Power Record I've always been looking for.



The fucking Man-Thing. This record was advertised on the back of The Spider-Man: Mark of the Man-Wolf album and I always wanted it, thinking "what the fuck is a Man-Thing" and knowing how realistic and mature the Man-Wolf album was I couldn't imagine what this one would be like!!!

I finally downloaded it using the above sources and it absolutely EXCEEDS all expectations. Stephe is going to help me link it to a future blog, you have got to hear it. First of all it's all serious and weird like Man-Wolf with a fucking CREEPY soundtrack that sounds like a harpsichord with a very nervous player. THEN, like the Man-Thing comic that narration is all in second person "You are Ted Sallas, scientist, trapped in he body of the mindless Man-Thing." THEN the very first minute of action is a clown sitting in the Everglades, crying, having run away from a circus. Okay, Crying Clowns, Man-Thing, Everglades, Harpsichord, Second Person narration, we're talking a magically disturbing combination here. And then, children listening on your Emerson Big Big Portable Record Players, the clown BLOWS HIS FUCKING HEAD OFF!

And you know how they have that tone that tells you to turn the page? That tone come right after the gunshot! AWESOME!!!

Pure art. Pure fucking art.

These were all made for kids with tougher skin and less parents in less Christian Coalitions.

And while I'm at it, I found this great blog on my journey with an amazing assortment of albums you can't believe existed.

ASHEVILLE! The bit continues...

A while back Steve Delahoyde



applied to a online contest to create a travel video for the town of Asheville. Click here to see my previous post about it.

Asheville has posted the videos of the entrants! Now you can see the bit as it should be see, with Steve and Waki's alongside the other entrants. Hilarious. Great stunt. While it's funny to see it alongside the other entrants, do not begrudge Steve and Waki their previously selfless act of comedy. Selfless acts of comedy are one's in which you will not see the outcome. It's about the joke, it's not about you.

My favorite selfless bit of comedy was one Bart came up with. Wear a bright pink jumpsuit to an amusement park. And follow a family around and whenever they take a picture, run into the backdrop. So every picture, if they look close enough, will have this unmistakeable guy in a jumpsuit in the background.

I once took Bart to a party that Gillian invited me to. We found a camera and took our pictures with everybody at the party, then replaced it. Selfless. But Gillian did eventually get the pictures and give them to me, everybody we took our pictures with looks really freaked out.

Politics Sunday!

John Dean

John Dean has new book out, can't wait to read it. His last book Worse Than Watergate was an incredibly detailed account of why Bush should've been impeached one month into the Iraq War. I read the whole thing in an hour at Borders. I never do that. It laid clear everything I felt I felt but didn't know why.



I'm convinced his new book was written specifically for me. He covers the specific thing that's fascinated and scared the fuck out of me about the Bush Administration all along. The psychology they employ to breed frothing fantatics, which is exactly the same tactic the Nazi's used and Orwell wrote about. A lot of people throw around "Nazi" when they want to defame their enemy. Many Republicans called Michael Shiavo a Hitler, but I don't remember him singling out an enemy for the public and breeding their hatred of them to help support his criminal cabal.



There were millions of Nazi's, you could never successfully create such a regimen by looking around for fantatics, to do so you'd have to find the flaw in all humans and exploit it, and as appendicitis has proven, humans are slow to evolve. The Milgrom experiment showed that given a strong leader and the guarantee of no accountability, humans can easily be made into monsters. You, me, even a pixie know-nothing can be made to wish harm on others for their strong authority figure.

You've all met people who are stupid right? Look at Michelle Malkin in that last link, if she were a guest of some friends for a beer at the Burwood Tap and she starts spouting about all the shit she knows, how stupid would you think she is? Just look at her, so obviously an idiot in need of attention, and they definitely know how to get attention (here's a hint, the facts have nothing to do with it).

Bitch slaps

Putin bitch-slaps Bush!

Bush really is the master of his own dilusions, and it makes him look like such an asshole when he's finally saying it to someone other than a Fox reporter or a group of PR-placed soldiers and other people (read: the rest of the world and 66% of the United States) disagree. The live in such a bubble it's astounding, and considering we're the only remaining superpower, it's really fucking bad for the world to have no leadership at all.

Juan Williams bitch-slaps Bill Kristol. Another master of his own delusions.

And finally, The Deep-Seeded Anger of Those In Power Over The Fact That There's Power They Don't Have

Glenn Greenwald delivers a very detailed account of the new Nazi's and how angry they are at the new Jews.

The best website ever, Media Matters runs down the hundreds of instances of Conservative hate the media doesn't cover while talking about hate on the blogosphere. You know, liberal hate. Hate in the form of science, new ideas, and the transparency of government guaranteed by the framers of the Constitution. Silly framers, they never foresaw how under attack America would be by truth. Truth is so mean, why does truth not support the troops?

If 33% of the United States is so up in arms about the dangerous 66% that needs to be stopped. Let's get our own Civil War on, I'm sick of this playing gentleman bullshit. Give me a war I'll support and let's end this argument for another century. Let's fuck this place up and give them their endtimes. The angry conservatives will lose because they've been told by their media and politicians that Liberals don't own guns. They will be very surprised. Believe it or not the funny comedian who curates this blog owns two guns and I'm a pretty good shot. Hey, just speaking their language. Seriously, I want this bullshit era of politics over with so we can get back to curing cancer, putting men on Mars, and being great world leaders.

A Post-Apocalyptic Short-Haired Chick Friday!

Last night at the Neo-Futrarium the audience was witness to a future.



A dark future. A fucked up Apocalyptic mess. An apocalyptic future in which we still hated the Russians and information was still stored on "tapes."



I was reminded of Tank Girl. Well, technically I was reminded of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn and Robot-Jox, but that doesn't lead me to short-haired chicks. But, and this is important, the fucking apocalypse happened, accept it.



Tank Girl was an iconic image of all that's great about short-haired chicks, she's an independent take-no-shit grrrrl who's ability to cynically brush off any serious situation gave her the upper hand in a future with evil warlords looking to abscond with the last of earth's water (aren't they always?).



I forget much of the concept of Tank Girl except that she roams the post-apocalyptic future in a tank and meets up with lots of half-kangaroo men and throws around a lot of snarky comments on serious situations, and there's Malcolm McDowell (isn't there always?)





But that's not the point here, the point is, THE APOCALYPSE HAPPENED!



War has been outlawed and all disputes are settled by men in giant robots and women in Tanks. Conner Kalista and Sandy Marshall put together the staged reading of Robot-Jox and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn for It Came From The Neo-Futrarium V: Bride of the Neo-Futurarium.



Man was it fun, we are such 33 year old children living out our childhood fantasies. Which we've been doing it for a while, we dressed up as the cast of WKRP for the New City Photo shoot, we got to play the cast of Up The Creek for our last gig at It Came From The Neo-Futurarium, we're playing Lollapalooza, just a bunch of big kids. I guess anybody who's in entertainment who's not a big kid should probably leave.



At the end of Robot-Jox Sandy and Conner come out as the Robots while Justin and Joe Dempsey pretended to be the robot operators inside the robots. We wanted to dress the Sandy & Conner up in shitty box costumes, the idea was ditched due to time constraints, but I couldn't have that. Just having Conner and Sandy boxing wasn't funny enough, so a couple hours before the show I quickly put together some shitty robot costumes out of U-Haul boxes for the bodies, soda boxes for legs, and Brita and a Space-heater boxes for their heads. It was hilarious. Sandy was wearing real head-gear and I told him to slip the space-heater box over it because it was funnier, but Sandy liked how all the red matched which is a weird rationale. Conner, having much more respect for comedy, ditched the headgear for the Brita box, very funny.



They made Tank Girl into a movie in 1995. I guess they were down to the bottom of the barrell, all the other comic books had already been turned into movies, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, so Tank Girl was next. Lori Petty has to be one of the best bits of casting ever. She really is Tank Girl.




That's Naomi Watts as Jet Girl, FYI

So the audience was wearing thin, they were laughing less and the combo of Metalstorm and Robot-Jox was starting to drag on, too much of a good thing. But the final showdown between the two big robots, Conner and Sandy, was finally here. At first the two robots lumber towards each other in robot fashion.



And then after one robotic punch, Conner returns with a real human punch and then Conner and Sandy start beating the piss out of each other onstage for real. The audience had that rarity of shocked laughter, Conner took one to the face knocking Brita box off (at this point I regretted telling him to go for the Brita box, but it was funnier), and a sweaty Conner returned a shocking blow to Sandy. The audience gasped and then laughed because it was such a disconnect from this heretofore calm staged reading and yet completely within the theme. Great ending, violent and hilarious.



Lori's obviously on her way to a Cure concert there, or perhaps just breakfast. I found a lot of old pictures of Lori because she's basically a dude now.



But she is an artistic dude and I'd have no problem with a paint-splattered artist Tank Girl running around my loft making art that I have to pretend is good to get a little Tank Girl nookie. But I don't think Lori likes guys. The point is, the apocalypse happened.