from gchat:
Lynn: photoessay please about pleasantly weird vs unpleasantly weird hats. on my desk by 5.
me: you will have it.
and so:
unpleasant.
unpleasant.
unpleasant.
unpleasant.
unpleasant.
pleasant.
pleasant.
pleasant.
undecided.
undecided.
analysis to follow in a subsequent post.
i clearly did not get sued. ah well.
some thoughts on the eve of the iowa standaroundandeatsandwiches:
it gives me heart that the white dude is trailing the woman and the black dude, no matter what happens next. this probably couldn’t have happened 50 years ago, and while the country is not where it should be with regards to this sorta thing, it’s a step, albeit a weird one.
it’s a weird election year, generally. my friend hal informs me that i’m living painfully in the past when i mention that mccain was dead in the water not too long ago, that rudy’s collapse is strange and seemingly out of nowhere and that i fear fire. perhaps true, but i still think it’s all weird. strange too that no one on the dem side has particularly fallen apart. they’re all running remarkably competant campaigns thus far. not very gutsy ones, but the workmanship is there. the pride is back!
i think undecided voters are weird too, or i used to, but then i figured out their secret.
see, i get conservative thought, although i don’t agree with a lot of it (though i am remarkably into letting people have guns). and i get liberal thought, though a lot of my fellow hippies make me want to stick a fork in my eye (get some guns, hippies). what i can’t understand, what strikes me as impossibly retarded, is the mindset of someone who can’t pick between two reasonably different things. and don’t give me that ‘they’re the same’ noise. yes, they get paid by the same masters, but on several key points, liberals and conservatives are polar. for me, i agree more often with democrats, so that’s usually where i vote. done. that was easy.
that there are major differences couldn’t have gotten more obvious than in the 04 election. i didn’t love kerry, but i fucking haaaaated bush. most people didn’t react with such passion, but they did react. and if some of them like him, and that’s their business. but no reaction? to either of them? that’s fishthought.
being unable to make a binary choice like that is inhuman (in the literal sense). it would render someone so monumentally challenged that simply picking what sandwich to eat would be impossible. are you in favor of legal abortion or not, fucker? like the war or don’t? tuna salad or mozerella? it’s fucking not hard. you have a reaction to these things. you probably lean one way or the other on enough of them that picking one is pretty simple.
or you’re a vegetable. but i don’t believe that i live in a country like that, in spite of the number of people who seem to laugh at leno. so if you’re not a vegetable, hypothetical undecided voter unlikely to ever stumble across this blog, i say, if you’re not a vegetable, there is only one other option and it is that you are a jerk. you get off on the attention. you like the feeling that you’re deciding an election. you love stringing us all along.
you political cockteases.
hi. improv everywhere is one of my favorite things about living in new york, and not solely because they’re responsible for me getting a grainy photo in the mail with the words “is this you???” written on it in sharpie (something about that another time, maybe).
they do fun stunts. they’re good people. it’s nice. they improve things around here, you know?
anyway, some things happened:
first, i.e. did a thing in best buy.
then they sold shirts to commemorate it on neighborhoodies. they had this logo:
then best buy got a little miffed. first they cease and desisted neghborhoodies. who ceased and desisted.
then they c&d-ed i.e., who posted some thoughts about it.
then they c&d-ed a totally random blogger who posted a bit about the shirts being cool. seriously. to his credit, the dude isn’t pulling the original post, complete with pics of the shirts.
it was about at this time i started wondering if i could get a cease and desist from best buy for merely mentioning this. i kinda doubt it, but it’s worth a brief post to see. i mean, we are talking about one of the least friendly shopping experiences one can have (seriously, have you been inside a best buy? it’s like stalin put together a labor camp for his political enemies and threw some overpriced electronics on the walls for the poor fuckers to try to sell). it’s not a stretch to imagine, especially considering the above, that that’s the sort of culture that extends to their legal team.
time will tell, i suppose. if my three posts/no promotion blog does get a c&d, i’ll be sure to mention it, though it’d be a minor miracle, since boing boing, digg and a bunch of other outlets are already howling about it.
it’d be really cool though.
by the by, there are links in here, but i’m still playing with the template and they don’t show up unless you mouse over them. so… mouse over stuff, i guess, until i fix it? sorry.
so, whatever this thing i’m typing into turns out to be, i guess i’d be remiss in my duties as a dude on the internet who likes comedy if i didn’t mention some notes on a show i saw last night. as you probably know, the writer’s guild of america is on strike, and while that’s going on, most television has ground to a halt under the terrifying and unreasonable demands that writers get paid for their work.
seriously.
right, so, in the interim, the cast and writers from 30 rock, which is a show that is awesome, decided that they’d put on a benefit show for their staff, who are going unpaid as the strike drags on. i happened to be one of the lucky souls to get a ticket, which made me feel like both a mover and a shaker. the show, 30 rock: on strike, played last night at the upright citizens brigade.
it opened with tina fey coming out and thanking a bunch of people, including nbc for not suing them. she mentioned that this was an actual episode, filmed prior to the strike, so it’ll air in a few weeks, and please, could we not blog about it. i think what i’m doing here is probably ok as long as i don’t mention episode specific stuff, but if anyone wants to tell me otherwise, let me know.
edie falco couldn’t make it, her role was played by paula pell, who was hilarious, but otherwise the cast was all there. they did the show in a style of staged reading, cast holding scripts. one of the writers, whose name i didn’t grab read the directions. and we were off.
general, non-spoiler, non cease and desist, impressions:
it’s a very funny script. one of the funnier i’ve seen. awesome!
jack mcbreyer is the funniest man alive.
i’ve witnessed alec baldwin dry hump paula pell.
seriously, jack mcbreyer is the funniest man alive.
it worked very well as a stage piece. a treat to see. a treat, i say!
jack and lutz (who is also one of the funniest men alive) improvised the ‘commercial breaks’, which i also think fall safely into the realm of no c&d, so i’ll tell you about them.
jack asked for suggestions of products to endorse. the first was ‘beer.’ they mimed being on a fishing trip.
lutz: nice to have you out here, son
jack: fishing makes me think of mortality.
lutz hands him a beer.
and so forth.
for the next, they got the suggestion of tapmons.
lutz and jack start playing basketball as goofily as possible.
jack: cheyrl’s been driving me crazy!
lutz: you probably need to stick a tampon up in her.
long pause to play dork basketball.
jack: what do you mean?
lutz: my wife always calms right down when i stick a tampon up in her. here. [he pulls something out of his ass.] oh god, that’s not a tampon.
jack: i know. i’ll buy a tampon… at. the. store.
and so forth.
suggestion: photocopier.
lutz and jack start using a couple photocopiers.
lutz: hey, nice photocopier.
jack: yours smells funny.
lutz: it’s stinky and old. i think every time i put a piece of in it, poop comes out.
some other conversation happens where lutz gets a new photocopier, then:
lutz: thanks! i’m gonna sell this one on the black market.
jack: racist.
and finally:
suggestion: flamethrower.
lutz and jack start playing basketball as goofily as possible.
jack: cheyrl’s been driving me crazy!
lutz: you probably need to stick a flamethrower up in her.
and that’s about it. or, at least, about everything i think i can talk about without infringing on the intellectual property of general electric.
the night was pretty great.
i hope the strike ends soon, though (with the writers getting what they ask for).
‘Fortunately, the good Samaritan found him before the snakes and alligators got him.’ -Just spoken on the CW 11 10 o’clock news.
welcome to this.