I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

We got back from DC last night about 9:00; an utter crawl through most of New Jersey and a multi-hour stand-still through the tunnel. The trip should normally take 4-5 hours and it was closer to 7. We were so tired by the end that the best “bit” we could come up with was that Mitch was a guy who was completely unaware that he had pissed himself despite all the obvious signs.

We shot with the Stan guys in Arlington on Saturday night, starting pretty late and going until 2. It’s for a new show, not their 102 thing. I actually have no idea when or if it’ll be available to the public. I’ll post it when it is. We shot in a TV station that they had full run of, so it was pretty sweet—especially the sound stage with three cameras, lighting grid, switcher booth… we immediately started thinking what we’d shoot in there if we had access to it all. Jealous!

For part of the video we recreated Welcome to my Study on their stage and it looked amazing! Probably better than the original, cobbled together from stuff we found around the office. We even matched the amount of plants we had on the set, only theirs were plastic. The only think we didn’t have was a terrible painting on the wall, but we gained a really bizarre pattern of cascading colored lights on the backdrop.

I act in this video we made (as the “producer” of Welcome to My Study), and looking at the footage, I was cringing. We had to improvise some stuff and my gears were grinding. Between this and my lack of car-bits, I think already tenuous grasp on comedy has completely atrophied.

When we finally got back to the city, I ordered Thai food and read the Harry Potter book start to finish.
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Mitch has scooped me on this story. His has pictures.

Last night, Will and I had a lovely dinner with the current members of Death by Roo Roo /former members of Monkeydick (and Jon Daly). Then we wanted to watch a shitty movie. I had left Dreamscape at home, unfortunately so we went to his apartment where we watched what he got from Netflix—Little Big League. In this 1994 family film, a 10 year old boy inherits and runs the Minnesota Twins. Will liked the premise but did not like the movie and said he wanted to remake it from the perspective of the players. I suggested a version where instead of a kid, it’s Dennis Hopper’s character, “Shooter,” from Hoosiers, who is the unlikely mastermind of good calls who has to win over the establishment because of his non-traditional—in this case, pathetic simpering dirtbag—appearance. That’s a family film people can get behind.

Also, Little Big League was approximately 10,000 hours long.

I’m going to DC with Mitch for the next couple days to do exciting things! Have a great weekend, internet!

This was sent to me by Chad Carter—
Rose & Camellia

“Mike Tyson’s Punchout reimagined by Jane Austen”

BTW, I have no idea what any of the text says or what the hell is going on, so not surprisingly, I can’t get past the first level.

I took a temp test today. I’ve never been a temp; it appeals to me as much as a shit sandwich, really. But I’m broke. I haven’t had a regular job since April and comical cartoon moths fly out of the pinch-top change purse I keep my dope and booze money in. So I sucked it up and went in (and was wildly late since I woke up AT the time I was supposed to be in the office—ruh-roh).

I took a Word test and a typing test. I’m a largely make-it-up-as-you-go typist, learned from the mean-streets of 17 years of message boards and chatting. I did, I think, pretty fucking well—55 WPM with 99 accuracy.

I did go back and change my typos as I went, slowing it down. I also got too invested in what I was typing, which was about how typerwriters used to be common in offices and now everyone has a personal computer, but really productivity hasn’t increased because of it. I ended up kind of getting lost in my thoughts about how I’d probably be a terrible secretary back in the 60s (the jury’s out on how bad a secretary I’m going to be in the modern age)... and then the test abruptly stopped after five minutes as I was in the middle of typing/daydreaming. Which was kind of sad. I like to see things through to the end.

There was also a Word test. I use Word for typing… only. I used MailMerge once and it was a disaster. I’ve made a few columns and tables in my time (for resumes, appropriately enough). The test was a lot of “click or do the keyboard shortcut for this function” and I was honestly guessing most of the time. I scored “expert” in a lot of the basic sections and “average” on tables, functions and shit like that. I got “needs training” on advanced things and ironically enough scored lowest on “graphics.” I suppose its because if I needed to make a graphic I sure as fuck wouldn’t be doing in in Word. Making squiggly yellow shapes and filling them with rainbow-colored squished type and clip art has never entered my skill set.

The day before I was supposed to go in for this tournament of debasement, we heard that we got our contract (after 11 months) to make new episodes of Cakey! for (some internet entity that I’m contractually obligated not to mention). I hope they don’t give me a typing test, too.

I “suspended” my Netflix account for 3 months—the maximum you can put it on hold—but this morning Netflix emailed me to let me know it was back. I went to cancel my account but it had already charged the month on my credit card. So, I need to dig up a month’s worth of movies and then I’ll cancel it proper.

I got to the point with Netflix where it felt like homework assignments I had to get through so I could send back in time to catch the mail pickup. I also ran out of movies I wanted to see. My cue queue is completely empty right now, except of course for this.

Starting around 20 minutes ago started hearing a woman’s voice chanting and singing really loud—like she was right outside my window (I live on the top floor, so that would mean she could fly or at least hover). It almost sounded like a call to prayer, but clearly a woman’s voice and the long held notes were interspursed with “boolla-boolla-boollaaaa” chanting and shouting.

I kept trying to think of the word for the kind of singing it sounded like. West African praise singing*? Is that it? Wikipedia is no help so I assume it has a different name. Anyway, not what I usually hear in the apartment.

I thought, Bill must be editing something weird for Jon Benjamin, but he’s not here. It really is some woman outside the window singing from another roof top. It’s so dark out, I can’t see anything, but it sounds like the voice is in my apartment its so loud.

I might be killed by the ghost of World Music tonight!

Wikipedia didn’t help on African music genres, but I found THIS instead.

I love Thai Iced Tea… it’s my favorite year-round beverage, but in the summer I could drink 20 in a day. But that would be expensive. Unfortunately, the take-out thai counter on A has switched recipes for their tea from “holyshitamazinglydelicious” to “metallic & bitter,” so I have to actually sit down and get one now. Then I feel like I have to get food too, even if I’m not hungry.

Maybe the internets can help me?

Import Food
(this one has pictures of Thailand’s Ice Tea Streetcarts—better than streetmeat!)

CurrySimple’s Tea Syrup
(This one has a joylessly-narrated video!)

Temple of Thai’s “Kit”
I know where to get condensed milk, guys.

Seriously, right?

What’s that all about?

Jesus Christ.

I read three books this week and two comic collections. All were from Will Hines who bi-annually gives away 3/4s of the books he owns. I know… get a library card, right? Jesus.

Two of the books were retarded, but he was offering them for free so I took them.

One was The Sandman Companion, which had one interesting chapter talking about how Neil Gaiman (and a bunch of other British comic book guys) broke into writing/drawing for American comic books in the 80s but then the bulk of it was a bizarre sort of cliffsnotes summarizing all the Sandman comics. If you’re so fucking lazy that you can’t get through a comic book, you’re unlikely to tackle it in essay form. I read pretty much all the Sandman comics the first month of my freshman year of college, I borrowed them off a semi-goth who lived in my dorm. I thought they were somewhat interesting but ponderously smug.

Will also had Bob Newhart’s memoir I Shouldn’t Even Be Doing This!. I pretty much knew all the stories in it through a combination of watching the American Experience biography of Newhart and listening to the DVD commentary on Catch 22. That said, expecting absolutely nothing from this book, it did make me laugh. He talks about getting offered a stand up gig in Lake Tahoe for $2000 a night (he was getting a couple hundred normally). “I wondered what the catch was. Do they beat you up between shows?” That caught me by surprised and I laughed. Maybe the idea of Bob Newhart walking off stage, prop telephone still in hand, and two bouncer times waling on him with bats.

The for-real book I read was Black Swan Green, which is not at all like the author’s last book I read Cloud Atlas. This book was pretty straight-ahead bildungsroman set in a shitty English down in 1982. So, it was pretty much The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole only with more beatings.

Will and Matt had their show on Wednesday which went better than expected—there was an audience… of strangers… who came to see it. It was an unadvertised try-out at an awkwardly early hour and there were over 30 people there.

Afterward, Will, Matt, me, Mitch and his girlfriend Kaveri went to a bar for food and beers. At some point in the evening we were talking about clones. Probably Mitch made his usually statement to Will as if it had just occurred to him, “Hey, we look similar.” Some time after that I asked if you could get a clone of yourself, would you marry it. Mitch instantly said “yes.” Will looked horrified and said “God, no.” So, there it is.

It was rainy and gross so people started to peel off and go home. Will and I were going to split a cab, but it was super early so I went out to Williamsburg so we could watch Meatballs which came in Will’s Netflix and neither of us had ever seen. Despite Will recalling his grade school classmates assurances that it was “hilarious” and “you could see boobs in it,” we discovered neither of these to be true.

I borrowed an Optic Nerve collection and some Johnny Ryan thing for my ride on the L and uncharacteristically, got unwanted attention from drunk Billyburg douchebags. While waiting for the train, I sat next to a scruffy-bearded hipster who reeked of PBR who said “Is that Adrian Tomine? Is it good…” I made some disinterested small talky whatever and he sighed wearily and started in “It’s probably better than this Jewy jew jew book I HAVE to read—Oh, I’m Jewish by the way, I didn’t want to offend you—I mean, I FUCKING GET IT, you’re a Hassid and you have 17 kids. Your life sucks, I don’t want to READ about it.” The train pulled up about five minutes into his complaint assault and I slipped into a different car.

I switched to the Angry Youth Comix collection as I sat down and a different extremely drunk shouty retarded-seeming guy bounded up to me tapping my book and yelling, “That’s Johnny Ryan! He’s AWESOME and FUCKED UP! He RULES! Gababababsbsb!” trailing off into incoherent mumbling as he bounced away to a different part of the car.

Lesson learned, don’t read comics on the L train at 1 AM on a party night like Wednesday. Fuckers.

Stewardess Uniform Collection

What people in other countries call the “@.”

My email address is now nobodyssweetheart-pickled herring-gmail-dot-com

I “directed” a sketch show that’s having a work-out on stage this week. That means the sketches are all done but we haven’t had a lot of time to rehearse or nail down the cosmetic particulars of transitions and cues… we weren’t planning on debuting the show until next month but the opportunity presented itself. I made a party hat for one scene and a harpoon prop for another; my “directing” has mostly consisted of complaining and making them buy me sandwiches.

The sketches are pretty good—about half are from a show done a couple of years back and half are new. Two of the sketches are my favorites of all time from any sketch show ever, see if you can detect what they are.

It is appearing on Wednesday, July 11th, around 7pm at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. The cost is five dollars.

The show features Matt DeCoster and Will Hines. The title is “Seven Fights: A Sketch Show About Winning,” but the title doesn’t actually refer to anything in the actual show… it’s a bunch of sketches.

You should come and see it.

In my ongoing effort to upload “Welcome to My Study” on every online service that exists, I created two SuperDeluxe accounts last night at 3 AM. The site is very slick and the writing is kind of cloying but as far as I know, no one ever goes there.

http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/people/nobodyssweetheart
This is newer videos (Glenn, Good Taste, Study) and I’ll add to it later (Hugh Bue)

http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/people/mr_ghost
This will only be Cakey! and My Wife, The Ghost… I’m not putting anything else on it.

We were in talks A YEAR AGO to have Cakey be one of the commissioned series for SuperDeluxe’s launch. It never happened despite our rep occassionally assuring us that “something’s coming” every 4-5 months, so I figure I might as well just put the old stuff up and get it seen. Even though no one ever goes to SuperDeluxe.

I suppose you could “friend” either of those accounts if you felt like it.

I put together a new one-sheet to send out to get jobs. The other one didn’t really go anywhere, but I’m scraping bottom for work so I need to try something—

You can see it really big on my Flickr

What to do if you’re 9 years old and desperately need to get married? Go to Yemen.

Who were the great pederasts and catamites of history?
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Moon pies had reached a peak of their popularity during the 1950s, when many workers bought them as an inexpensive snack to tide their hunger for a while. Around this time, the typical cost of a moon pie was about five cents, and a soda to drink was also a nickel. The popular legend of moon pies states that R.C. Cola became the drink of choice to accompany a moon pie, because a serving of R.C. Cola was typically larger than a serving of Coca-Cola or other sodas. The combination of “an R.C. Cola and a moon pie” became inseparable, and was often referred to as the “working man’s lunch.”
—
BONUS - NOT FROM WIKIPEDIA

What if I find myself at a backgammon convention where no one speaks English?

Well, that’s fine and dandy for backgammon, but my game is the ancient sport of Emperors, Go! Is there anything in the Wizards bag for me?

I got ripped off at the laundromat. I ended up pumping 7 dollars of quarters into a defective washer. I loaded in the appropriate (criminally priced) amount of quarters and it didn’t go. I told the lady working there, and she gave me a pissed stare and then told me “you have to load it twice” (meaning, two rounds of $1.75) and I said I did. I have been coming to this laundromat for five years and she knows that… I know how the washers work. I repeated that I did and she gave me the cold shoulder and walked away.

My options at this point are to unload all my shit, move it to a different washer and put in another $3.50, writing off the first set of quarters as a loss. I don’t want to move my clothes and about half of the washers have posted “Out of Order” signs. The odds aren’t good. I put another $3.50 in to the washer I’ve already committed to, partly out of stubbornness that she’ll realize I wasn’t lying and give me my money back. Still doesn’t go. I tell her, she gets her plastic tub of quarters, pokes at the fusebox with a broom handle and makes her way over. She slams the door a couple times, opens up the change try and shakes it and then loads in $1.75 and the washer starts. She gives herself a “I told you so… you’re trying to rip me off” and stomps away. I say “I put $7 into it” and she ignores me completely.

So, she has accused me, a customer she recognizes when I come in, of pulling some sort of hustle where I “pretend” washing machines are broken so that she’ll have to pay for half the fare. That’s the most retarded scam ever. I’m pretty irritated and thought about saying “I’m never coming here again,” but what the fuck would they care? Laundromats always make money. They can be the shittiest in the world, but people will go there because they have to and they pick them based on where they live.

Hell, I’ll probably continue to wash my clothes there because I don’t have any other choice. Laundry is heavy and I’m already hauling it up and down 6 flights of stairs. I’d end up taking it to the Hitler Laundromat if it was a block closer.

(Actually, I’d make a special trip to the Hitler Laundromat regardless of where it was.)

I will now make an announcement that will instantly make me into a pariah whose opinions of everything will be dismissed unquestioningly:

I thought Ratatouille was boring.

I love drinking. Seriously, I can’t get wasted enough in one week. I woke up very late, and then had dinner with my parents who were in town for a friend of theirs’ birthday. We ate at a totally unremarkable restaurant, picked at random walking around the Upper East Side (where their hotel was located).

On a whim (after my dad announced he was tired and wanted to go to sleep thus asking me indirectly to leave the hotel room), I called Will Hines who I believed to be at a Morrissey concert at that very minute. Turns out, Morrissey had a sore throat. So Hines made himself a lo-cal Salmon dinner and was sitting home alone (presumably weeping). He agreed to meet me in Wiliamburg.

We drank at three bars, none of which I remember the name of (one was a dive bar with watered liquor, one was an Italian restaurant, one was called “Zebulon” and had a LOUD band). We are both un-hip and ugly, so no one hit on us—we could concentrate solely on uncomfortable truths of our lives and the drinking of alcohol. After that, I ate pizza and Will read some comics he bought from a street vendor. Then we went home in opposite directions.

We all make mistakes.