Am I too dry?

So I've had more than a few people ask me if some of the "quotes" I've been using in my blog are true. Some are, some aren't. I would like to remind everyone that this is not cnn.com, if you want your news, go elsewhere. I always provide a link to the article I am commenting on, so you can check that out if you like. These writings of mine are of a satirical nature; I say satirical because it sounds much nicer than slander. Anyway, I don't want to be a dick about it, I just wanted to clear things up for everyone. Thanks for reading, or in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I eat babies".

Brrr, I thought this place had a furnace?

At the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, (yes, that Auschwitz) Vice President Dick Cheney wore a puffy parka, a knit ski cap and boots to a ceremony marking the occasion. It's been reported that most of the other foreign dignitaries wore formal overcoats and dress shoes, but apparently Mr. Sensitive was a little chilly. During a brief speech, Mr. Cheney lamented the lack of Gore-Tex available to most holocaust victims, as his oversize garment made his visit to Auschwitz "not so bad".

Thanks everybody!

Thank you to everyone who came to the last two Animals From the Future shows. I haven't written in a while just because things have been so crazy, but it really meant a lot to us that we had a supportive audience to cheer us on. We're looking to put on a new show each month at the Evidence Room, so we're really excited about what the future holds. To everyone who didn't get in last night, we're very sorry, we had no idea things would be so jammed.
THANK YOU EVERYONE!

Don't call it a comeback!

Congratulations, cancer! That's right, for the first time ever, cancer has overtaken heart disease as the number one killer of Americans under 85. This raises the question: Can murder be far behind?
I believe we, as Americans, should make a concerted effort to make death at the hands of our fellow man the premiere way to die in this country. Between you and me, the title is there for the taking!

"This is a situation in which neither one of us wants to be No. 1" because far more deaths could be prevented, said Dr. Rose Marie Robertson, chief scientific officer of the American Heart Association.

You see? They're asleep at the wheel! Which only came in at number 78, by the way! Think about a world with no disease, no bloated health insurance industry and a life expectancy of 36 years old! I know, it sounds like paradise, but this isn't just the idle day dreams of a sillyheart, this is well within our power to accomplish. I think it honestly comes down to the fact that you just need to try a little harder.

what a pussy

I saw this article the other day. This whiny little bitch got a nail stuck in his brain without even knowing it and now he won't shut up about it. "Boo hoo, I've got a nail stuck in my brain." Please. Now he's complaining because he has a $100,000 medical bill from the operation to remove it! You just can't win with this joker! You can't have it both ways, pal. Do you want the nail in your brain or not? God! People like this make me sick. This is why the whole world hates America. Our "go-getter" attitude of self-reliance has all but evaporated, to be replaced with a sticky residue of irresponsibility and helplessness. All I can say is thank you; thank you Patrick Lawler for taking this opportunity to contribute to the downfall of society.

See, we're not so different, after all

So apparently there has been a rash of coach-chokings during children's hockey games in Canada. I suspect that this can be blamed on the influx of disenfranchised Americans fleeing George Bush's America, but I'm not sure. When I visited Disney World earlier this month, my father, a Fox News devotee, had to be co-erced into watching the Circlevision movie at the Canada Pavilion in Epcot. He wouldn't go anywhere near France. Anyways, it all seems so silly to me. Candians aren't so different from us. We're all (North) Americans. So they didn't want to go to Iraq, with all we know now, can you blame them? That's one thing that bothers me about the ideologs: their inability to forgive (forget apologize) in the face of the overwhelming evidence that they were wrong. Is it that some people really think that Canada should have our back no matter what? Is it a "never take sides against the family" type of thing? One thing is certain: my dad needs to lighten up. I'm going off on a tangent. I think this demonstrates the real difference between us and them:

"The father appeared in court on Monday on a charge of choking. Newspaper reports said the coach finished the game after the incident and did not appear to have sustained serious injuries."

No American would let some guy choke him and then not sue and milk the injury for all it was worth. And this part I just love on its own:

"The mother of an 11-year-old was banned from Toronto-area arenas in 2004 after exposing her bra and shaking her breasts in an apparent attempt to intimidate the opposing team."

I could make some joke here about the temperature level of an ice rink, etc. etc., but I think we're all above that, as Americans.

This about sums it up for me.

This is from my new favorite song.

But now it's just another show
You leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care don't let 'em know
Don't give yourself away.

remember slim goodbody?

holy shit, this used to give me nightmares as a kid. I think it was on captain kangaroo or something. people in body suits shouldn't be allowed anywhere near children. even when I was four, I knew this was wrong.
"ok, so he's wearing a suit that shows his insides... so where's his nutsack?"
I need to go throw up now. I can't believe this guy is still around. no wonder kids are so messed up, I thought I was the only one.

I'll put YOU in a corner

Hey, is it just me, or does Patrick Swayze totally co-opt that old dude's big moment at the end of Dirty Dancing? It really bothers me, because the guy who runs the resort is getting all sentimental and whatnot about how the Jewish kids want to go to Europe these days and then suddenly this greaseball shows up and puts the whole thing on pause while he does his little dance routine. Am I the only one who was really touched by that "Join hands and hearts and voices" song? Look, if you want to go and tell off Jerry Orbach, that's fine, but do it on your own time. It's just not cool to barge in and ruin someone else's moment like that just because you want to bang some girl with a big nose.

today I packed up the rest of my stuff, handed in my keys and said goodbye to the one place in Los Angeles that ever felt like home. As I walked to my car, I saw a squished and dirty pink teddy bear lying on the street under the front wheel of a pickup truck. And I could totally relate to how he was feeling.

good news!

Once again, I have given the grim reaper the slip. I got the results of my cat scan and stress tests today and everything seems to be pretty good. Now I can finally focus my energy on my 8000 other problems. Thanks to everyone for their concern, it means a lot knowing people care about me.

Bill Gates' haircut

Microsoft is good at co-opting other peoples' technologies, we all know that. It's when they start pushing their own ideas that they usually end up tanking. Microsoft Bob? Internet Explorer Channels? Who knows, maybe these bad ideas weren't original either. But if nobody is rushing forward to take credit for their failures, it's not too hard to see why.
To me, there is a fundamental lack of understanding about what people want. They want things that work. They want problems fixed. They don't want a bunch of stuff nobody was asking for in the first place.
In an interview with USA Today, Bill Gates had this to say about subscription services for digital media:

I tend to be very optimistic about subscriptions because they just give you so much freedom. Take the capacities in devices, where you can get like 9,000 songs on them. How many people are going to pay $9,000 (at about $1 per song)? You've got me and a few others.

So people are going to have devices that aren't very full, or they're going to have music that they haven't paid for, or they're going to have a subscription. I think people really want to be honest.

This is wrong on so many levels. First of all, nice of him to remind us how rich he is, huh? He should have said, "you people are poor". Anyway, Mr. Gates, I think your math is a little off the mark. Sure, if someone was to start today and go out and buy 9000 songs at a dollar a piece, that would be fairly expensive. I like this example because it's so realistic. What about the fact that many people with an mp3 player already have an extensive cd collection? Nine grand sounds like a lot, but that's $9000 spread out over many years. Which is why you buy a 40 gigabyte mp3 player. So that you have room to fill it up, over time.
One of the reasons for the success of the iPod and iTunes, in particular, is the fact that they let you own your music. People like owning things. I don't know the particulars of Microsoft's subscription policies, but I don't want to have to make sure that I'm hooked up to the internet to play "my" music.
Who's asking for this? These are bad solutions to made up problems. The music industry just had a great year. They saw a problem with illegal downloads and they dealt with it. If people are stealing music, sue them for it, even if they are ten years old. Don't come up with a convuled and anti-intuitive page one re-write of the whole concept of music buying, just because you think you're smarter than everyone else; that you know what they really want.

happy new year!

this is what happens when they let people take computers on airplanes:

I’ve been thinking about life a lot lately. Things like that happen when your girlfriend breaks up with you. And you’ve just spent 16 days with your parents. And three days from now you get the results of your CAT scan and stress test.

I’m on an airplane. I think we’re flying over Kentucky or thereabouts right now. I always get sentimental and nostalgic on planes. I look out the window at night and see clusters of lights and think about the families that live in those lights. They live in some little town in the Midwest that I’ve never heard of, in a few seconds, I pass over it. But to them, that’s their whole world. One that I will never know, though I must admit I am curious. I think that there is so much love in this world. A light in the dark. A family in their home. People who love each other.

But also people who drive each other crazy. People who throw tantrums and say things like “I hate you mom”. These are the people who cut you off in traffic, they have different political views than you, they yell at waitresses for no reason. This may be hard to hear, but some of the people who died in the World Trade Center were jerks. They cheated on their husbands and wives and they beat their kids. It’s the law of averages. Not everyone is a saint like me.

I guess what I’m getting at is that even that jackass who totally just cut you in line at Pirates of the Caribbean and is now pretending that he didn’t is someone dad’s or someone’s son. He’s got to be somebody’s best friend. Maybe he saved some orphans from a burning building, you just never know.

Yes, I just went to Disney World. They have a ride there, actually it’s a 3D movie, called “Mickey’s Philharmagic” There are different characters and scenes from Disney movies projected on a giant screen with music. It’s really amazing and I almost started crying at several parts. A lot of the vignettes were about flying. As I walked out, I comforted myself with the realization that I too can fly. Because inside of each and every one of us is the heart of a child where there is the power—just kidding. But seriously, I can. In a world of constant motion where things like acceleration and velocity are just terms to place ourselves in relative space, flight is reduced to a mere sensation. Flying, to me, is being really, really good at something you really, really love to do. When I step onto a stage and I bring words I wrote to life and people are laughing, I am flying. When I step onto a stage with nothing and me and a few other people create something out of thin air and make people laugh, I am flying.

But what I really want is to be a rock star. I can make people laugh, it’s easy. I’m very cocky about that. I get impatient with those who can’t, because for me, it’s simple. When I see them struggle, sometimes my reaction is “oh, really now.” Like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting when the Swedish guy second-guesses his work and so he lights it on fire out of sheer contempt. But I’m a mediocre guitar player and only my mom thinks I can sing. Which rules out my rock star dreams.

I can make people laugh, but what I really want to do is make them cry. I want them to feel like I do right now, sitting on an airplane listening to my iPod thinking about the fact that I’m 29 and poor and my girlfriend just broke up with me and my parents live 3000 miles away and I only see them once a year and for all I know, I could be having open heart surgery next week.

But then again, I’m not sure it’s fair to say that you can’t move people by making them laugh. Maybe it’s not in the same way and it’s not all the time, but I think I’ve seen it happen. I don’t think that satire really changes the world the way some satirists like to tell people it does. People don’t watch Saturday Night Live and say “You know what, George Bush really is an idiot, I’m voting Democrat!” More than likely, they already thought that to begin with and have now just had their opinions validated. Or if they disagree, they just write it off. It’s easy to write comedy off. I think the approach that political satire takes is too direct; too, ‘on the money’, to actually work. I think the way you change people, if at all, is in a much smaller, subtler way.

There’s a sketch they do on SNL called “Debbie Downer”, with Rachel Dratch playing the title character. It’s a goofy concept with no high-minded satirical notions, but it’s funny. Every time I’ve seen it, every single person in the cast performing it has broken at least once. That kind of laughter comes out of a space of pure joy. I’ve seen it. Those people on that stage are happy to be where they are. They are thinking of nothing else at that moment. And it spreads. I watched that sketch when I was thinking I could never be happy and I found myself smiling. That’s something, right? It can’t be nothing. At least, I hope not. Fuck it, at this point, I’ll take it.