Hello World

The Aristocrats was pretty hilarious. If you're unfamiliar with the reference, "The Aristocrats" is the name of a joke that comedians have been telling each other since the years of Vaudeville. It's a very basic framework that leaves lots of room for improvisation and comedic showmanship, and the basic point of the joke is to take it as far over the top as possible. Everything is fair game: scatological humor, incest, bestiality, and anything else you can think of, they're all on the table. The movie is just a series of interviews with dozens of comics, talking about this joke and telilng their versions of it.

I am desperately wishing I could tell you all the funny parts but a) that would be extremely rude and b) they wouldn't make sense out of context and without seeing them performed. At any rate, I'll just say this: the best renditions of the joke were not the most crude but rather the most surprising. And Bob Saget, who has a reputation as the bluest comedian out there, was pretty gross but underwhelming. Anyway, if you appreciate comedy (and especially if you appreciate the art of comedy) this is a must-see, if only because it's rated NC-17 for nothing but language--and believe me, it wasn't a close call.

Two thumbs way up [censored]!

EXCERPTS FROM THE DIARY OF AN ASPIRING DEATH-METAL FRONTMAN:

4/3/05

Dear Diary,

Writer's block. The suffocating algal bloom that can suddenly infest even the healthiest, most free-flowing fonts of creativity. And now it has struck me, its most unlikely victim! I simply cannot figure out where to go with this song I am writing. The first line is good: "I will kiss you with your intestines wrapped around your face. / I hate you so much I love you, you cheap disgrace." After that, however, I am at a complete loss. The tortured life of the genius is not to be envied, Diary.

This is hilarious. Go and read it.

Also resonant for me: AN OPEN LETTER TO MY ABILITY TO LOSE INTEREST IN THINGS EASILY.

I've noticed recently that more and more often, business don't require a signature for small credit card purchases. I'm pretty much on board for this, since signatures obviously aren't too important--I've used credit cards for weeks or months before noticing that I haven't yet signed the back of them. And as this guy demonstrates nobody gives a damn about signatures, anyway. Link summary: a guy decides to see how weird he can make his signature before somebody challenges him on it. He starts with illegible scribbling, then moves on to geometric designs and drawings, and then started signing other people's names.

He committed some more credit card hi-jinx, if you're interested.

Unrelated link: check out this optical illusion, which really works!

Part of Jay Pinkerton's piece about the biblical story of Jonah (link). Go ahead, check it out.

Yes, more Star Wars stuff. But this will be significantly shorter than the 2500 word abomination I unleashed this morning.

The Billboard Country Music Top Ten If Kenny Chesney Were Anakin Skywalker and Renée Zellweger Were Padmé Amidala
"You're So Beautiful (Only Because I'm So In Love With You)"

"Do It To Me One More Time (Like You Did By The Lake At Naboo)"

"You Had Me At 'I Will Not Condone A Course Of Action That Will Lead Us To War'"

For the rest, click here for the FameTracker article, which is so hilarious I want to paste it all here, but I won't, because that would be unjust.

Here's one I just made up, though: "I Love You So Much (I'm Going to Betray Everything We Believe In)" Not bad, but not so catchy.

A selection from The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

The crippled freighter sailed into my view from the bridge, crossing the crescent of Bespin and making for black space. In moments we would have them!

"This will be a day long rememebered," I said.

...Which is pretty much when the Millennium Falcon escaped to hyperspace.

I sighed. Why me?

I was even too dispirited to crush Admiral Piett's trachea.

Now I am in my hyperbaric chamber, listening to music (Rotan's Sonata for Holotyne) and trying to get a grip on things. Betrayed by a mimbo, surrounded by incompetence, my soul in knots; lost Skywalker, lost Organa, sold Solo...

The Emperor is going to barf when I tell him.

I know I should try not to get too excited about the next (and, theoretically, last) installment of Star Wars... but I can't help myself. The previews look awesome, and Tom Stoppard rewrote all the dialogue so it might not suck, and, oh yeah, Anakin turns into DARTH VADER.

( The full contents of a spam email I just received: )

Caption this image of, well, you can see what it is. Jokes about the rampant HoYay are welcome.

The winner gets ephemeral fame on the internet.

Holy crap, this is hilarious.

Short story: A ridiculous voicemail from a mother to her son made its way around the entire Columbia University campus in the early '90s.

Go here to download the 17 minute long NPR "This American Life" clip. You won't regret it. The narrator's buddy rules.

Well, why wouldn't they make penguins walk through the metal detector?

The weirdest part, aside from the idea that these tiny penguins might be smuggling box-cutters onto a plane: the fowl were coming home from a visit to an Anheuser Bush brewing plant. I'd love to hear the explanation for that (I just hope that it wasn't paid for by any lobbyists).

Link to slideshow [from boingboing]

This is not meant to poke fun at dead children, but, well. Do you think the AP reporter or editor didn't find this funny?

(CNN) -- Nearly 30 elementary school children in the Philippines have died after eating fried cassava balls obtained from a vendor, a local official told CNN.

"Some said they took only two bites because it tasted bitter and the effects were felt 5-10 minutes later," Dr. Harold Gallego of Garcia Memorial Provincial Hospital in the nearby town of Talibon told AP.

The vendor who sold the cassava balls insisted nothing was wrong with them and ate a few to prove the point. Now she, too, is in critical condition.

Open Letters to People or Entities Who Are Unlikely to Respond That Are Unlikely to be Accepted by McSweeneys^*

An Open Letter to My Real-Life College Roommate, Charles Emberlee (Pedophile)

An Open Letter to My Own Perineum

An Open Letter to the Ugly One from the Backstreet Boys

An Open Letter to the CEO of Taco Bell, Who Better Up His Security

An Open Letter to the SLUTTY SLUTTY Girls of Kappa Delta

An Open Letter to Barbiturates, Sweet Lady of the Evening

An Open Letter to the McSweeneys's Editors Who Keep Rejecting My Lists

^* This list was recently rejected by McSweeneys.

Stars Evacuated from London Hotel

Hollywood stars Brad Pitt and Matt Damon were evacuated from an exclusive London hotel Thursday when a fire broke out. Four fire engines rushed to Claridges in Mayfair, where the pair were scheduled to give a press conference in the ballroom, to promote new movie Ocean's Twelve. A London Fire Brigade spokesman says, "Four fire engines were sent to the scene after a call at 11am. They are still there. I believe there was a small fire on the ground floor, probably in the kitchen area." Claridges restaurant is run by flamboyant celebrity chef and holder of three Michelin stars Gordon Ramsay. Damon and Pitt aren't the only famous guests currently at Claridges - Jim Carrey, who is promoting new movie Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events, and Sir Mick Jagger, who is living in a suite at the hotel, were both also seen fleeing the scene.

When pressed, the Fire Brigade spokesman admitted, "some unfamous people may have also been in the hotel. They won't be missed."

More or less from imdb.

Also, Now Playing at the Zombietown 12-Screen Cineplex by John Moe.

Breakfast of Tiffanys
RAAAAAA!!!-bin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Brain Man
Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy
My Dinner of Andre
Alive (two screens)
Ocean's 11 with the Tops of Their Skulls Removed
Better Off Dead
A Beautiful Mind
Throw Momma From Her Brain
Foot Loose

One of the newest lists at McSweeney's, which I'm sorry but I still love about 60% of the time.

Great moments in college prankery:


At last week's Yale/Harvard football game, Yale managed a coup. Just go ahead and click on that link and then get back to me.

Okay. So they stole that idea from this one, which is #1 on this top 10 list of college pranks. My personal favorite has got to be the theft by the Harvard Lampoon staff of Massachusetts' Sacred Cod. The story is simple genius:

They knew that the main obstacle between them and the successful completion of their task was not the Boston police, but rather a source closer to home: the Harvard Crimson (Harvard's daily newspaper). The staff of the Crimson and the Lampoon had long been fierce rivals, never missing an opportunity to take each other down a notch. The Lampoon knew that if given the chance, the Crimson would do everything in its power to sabotage the Lampoon's plans. Therefore, the Crimson could be allowed to have no inkling of what was to happen. A diversion was in order to distract its attention.

On Wednesday April 26, 1933 editors from the Lampoon raided the offices of the Crimson and kidnapped J.M. Boyd, a Crimson staff member, dragging him away to a secret location off campus. This infuriated the other Crimson staffers, who promptly focused all their attention on finding Boyd.

The best prank I can remember from college is probably moving a friend's room's furnishings (everything that wasn't bolted down) into place in a common area--everything was placed exactly as it was in his room, only now it was in the hallway. Not exactly CALTECH material, I know.

From Amazon.com:

***** Far-reaching epic of untuckedness, March 20, 2004
Reviewer: A reader (Minneapolis, MN USA)
Having spent his rod toiling in the black meat market of Tunisia, Billy regains some measure of sanctimony with the discovery of not one, but two golden papyri. While symptomatic of the lugubrious nature of most bodily discharges, this heartfelt work of punctuated equilibrium dares to draw blood. And draw it, yet, with a vengeance, for within its sonorous monotones lie hidden reverberations of spinal fusions, domestic ciphers, and ultimately, the hard-won novocaine of the masses. At the climactic moment, I wept. With this work, Keane has opened the floodgates of Nairobi. What more need be said? --This text refers to the Paperback edition

***** Tucked to DEATH, July 29, 2003
Reviewer: "hysterical_woman" (7th Layer of Hell) - See all my reviews
Thelma Keane, the most unstable of the Klan, is sent over the edge by Dolly feminist taunts that Strange Lisa is a better lover then Bil and is even better endowed. She becomes obsessed with being the perfect mother, for about two minutes, then she finds a bottle of Barcadi. But that night, she finds a wire hanger in Jeffy's closet, along with Anardo's body, but that's another story. Taking from her mentor Joan Crawford, she does what she sees is right. I don't want to give away the ending, but I for one will never eat bacon again.

More examples available here.

From: My Strange Roommate
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 11:49 AM
To: Jake
Subject:

to which party are you attending with respect do the debates of the
presidential contenders?


From: Jake
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:00 PM
To: My Strange Roommate
Subject: RE:

I have no idea what any of that means. Make sense please.


From: My Strange Roommate
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:03 PM
To: Jake
Subject: RE:

Word must dance, to slip the minders' glance


From: Jake
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 12:15 PM
To: My Strange Roommate
Subject: RE:
tacklebox flash pliers. delicious marble influenza? purple, purple, trace bees.


From: My Strange Roommate
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 1:17 PM
To: Jake
Subject: RE:

Haha. It's verifiable that plier stocks did render granite pear most
updownly, but marble flu granted no such mule fireworks, and the
accusatory is most ground licked!

Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth has been formed to counter the deliberate misrepresentation of George W. Bush's drinking record. We seek to portray him as he was, and still is: a "lightweight."

We, the men who were served drinks alongside George W. Bush, have partied with real party animals-- on the shores of Lake Tahoe, up and down the Gulf of Mexico, in the harbors of Kennebunkport. We have seen good men down a dozen kamikazes, and then swim once more onto the beach. We have watched the buzzed and brightest of our generation play beer pong until they were bent double, like beggars under sacks. We have known these party animals, and we have partied with them.

And George W. Bush is no party animal.

Is it possible that in addition to being a hideous warmonger, our president is also a pansy?

Much more at the site.

Isaac Brock leads the band Modest Mouse, which is currently touring behind the 2004 album Good News For People Who Love Bad News.

The Onion: If you could send one message to the children of the world, what would it be?

Isaac Brock: "Grow the fuck up."

Directors, producers, actors, and enfants terribles Trey Parker and Matt Stone are most widely known as the minds behind South Park.

The Onion: If you could send one message to the children of the world, what would it be?

Matt Stone: "Give up. Just give up, now. Give in, give up."

Trey Parker: "Start fuckin'."


From the Onion AV Club.

These guys, who are responsible for the Chekov book-signing prank (thanks for the link, untoward among others), are awesome. I would like to ride the subway without pants on and give away fake mixed drinks.

Punk 2: You’ve got to protect people from the crazy people. What do you do?
Lovejoy: I’m a priest of Scientology.

(awkward pause)

Punk 1: Well, I like to intervene by throwing rocks at old people.

The best, though, is this thoroughly-bizarre scene, which is absolute genius.

A smart lady tried to get $9.998325 x 10^5 in change at Walmart with what was, shockingly, an inauthentic million dollar bill.

Update: apparently a lot of people are coming to this page from google searches or something--please, somebody, tell me what you were searching for when you got directed here!