I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I admit the only reason I watched Carnivale was a morbid curiosity to see a Toby Huss sex scene.

requested indirectly by swilkes who would have preferred Phil Hickle, which I didn’t deliver

(x-posted to my half-assed Tumblr and my flickr set)

So, QI’s over. Have I Got News for You is on hiatus.

So, to fill the gap I’ve found Would I Lie to You, which actually may be almost as good as QI in terms of being funny as you’re guaranteed David Mitchell every episode and guaranteed Rob Brydon for every episode after the first 2 seasons. (And Lee Mack is pretty good, too)

There also are no British politicians taking up guest spots, instead it is frequently cast members of Eastenders which is as inscrutable as British politics.

Episode picked at random, as I watched all of the episodes one after another and they all kind of flow together making it hard for me to pick out a “best” episode to post here. It has Richard E. Grant in it because… why not?

Check this uploader’s account for other episodes.

Brandon Bird’s Law & Order art show was a huge success! Law & Order showrunner/L&O:CI co-creator/”brains of the operation” René Balcer even bought one of my prints. He bought every artpiece with Goren in it in the gallery.

Here’s the whole show: http://www.brandonbird.com/stories.html

Here’s a place to order prints of some of the pieces, including my Detectives Look for a Racist and Two Teens Disappear in a Museum, both printed on very nice watercolor paper & signed in an edition of 50 each.

The UK college nerd who posts these on YouTube seems to have discovered girls, so they aren’t going up as quickly as usual. Heartbreaking.

Perhaps this will be the new exclusive use for this blog… just posting youtube links to British panel games

This is a radio show hosted my David Mitchell (so, you’ll just be looking at his headshot for the duration; no video) which I’ve not had much luck finding more than 2-3 other episodes online.

It’s also some kind of QI cross-over, so it has BUILT IN APPEAL.

The only good thing about this rotten new year… a new episode of QI

So, into the vacuum left by QI, I have entirely switched loyalty to “Have I Got News For You.” And co-incidentally, the new season starts PRETTY SOON.

And, even better, the BBC site and video clips are NOT OFF LIMITS TO U.S. VIEWERS. We can actually watch them (the best-of clips & webisodes, not full shows). Check YouTube for full shows (not a great source… missing about half of last year’s run)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/haveigotnewsforyou/

I particularly recommend any clip with Boris Johnson, the greatest fictional character of all time. And if you haven’t yet, WATCH Brian Blessed Hosts HIGNFY, Loses Mind.

This is my first use of YouTube’s ‘Playlist’ feature. The idea is that if you click this link and then choose “Play All Videos” from the upper right (just below the banner at the top), all 5 sections will play with only a momentary pause between them.

Silvija will be disgusted to see her most hated Jimmy Carr (or squinty Michael Ian Black as I think of him) has returned. Can the merits of David “Peep Show/Unbelievable Truth/Mac vs. PC” Mitchell balance him out? (I say yes, but I also don’t have a problem with Jimmy Carr.) Also featuring Sniglets Hall in a Late Night with Conan O’Brien t-shirt rather than the cowboy shirts the stereotype-minded costumers dude him up in as the “token American.”

But I can’t embed it here (as far as I know), so for aesthetics I will also post the first of five here:

This is the finale for the year. I didn’t love F series… I thought E series and D series were on the whole much funnier. Still, completely bereft now that the season is over and there wasn’t a costumed theme episode in sight.

I have already watched every episode of Room 101, TV Heaven, Telly Hell, Comedy Connections, and post-1996 Have I Got News For You on YouTube, so I have to find a new show to seek out.

On the plus side, some memory lane meanderings with old chum Emma Thompson*. On the minus, the facts are all kind of too obvious (but I am both an obsessive over film minutia and American, so may not be obvious to them) and not enough hilariousness.

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Only one episode left this season (in 2 weeks), can you believe it?

*Will Hines didn’t know Emma Thompson used to be a sketch comic. He also didn’t know Hugh Laurie was too, and he was actually famous for it. Ha ha, Hinesy.

continued in 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

This is a QI XL because it is both “xtra large” and 40 minutes long (XL = Roman numeral for 40). Even the title is nerdy.

Continued in Part 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

This is a funny, but usually restrained, UK comedy/politics panel show called Have I Got News For You. When Lord of the Hawkmen/Gimli {sic – not BB}/Augustus hosts it goes batshit crazy. (This is a couple years old.)

I’m posting these more as a service to friends rather than an actual entry—this season has been pretty elusive to track down (and frequently taken down). I don’t think this is an overly-good episode, but it’s nice seeing some panelists who haven’t been on the show for a couple seasons.

UPDATE: Got taken down for “Violating Terms of Service”

This link is good for now—http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyPFhZ2EGSs&feature=channel_page

In every Catalan navity scene there is a figure taking a dump behind the Baby Jesus. It is called the Caganer or “shitter.” It is often made in the likeness of a celebrity or world leader.

I first heard of Caganers on my favorite television program, QI (which makes Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me look like it’s taking a dump by comedy-panel-quiz-show comparison despite often featuring my hero Paula Poundstone.)

Take it away, Stephen Fry—

The UK Telegraph presents a slide show of this year’s crop.

This all was confirmed by college chum Mo, who picked up not only the caganer but the Caga Tió as a part of her personal Christmas traditions on a trip to Catalonia.

Catalan children beat presents out of a pooping log on Christmas with sticks—where has our American Christmas spirit gone?

Twelve crazy months of Mad Men shenanigans illustrated by me, featuring scenes from both seasons.

40% Off Calendars
Enter the coupon code CALENDARSAVE during checkout to receive 40% off calendars through November 27, 2008 .

Buy this now on zazzle.com

Get a paper doll while you’re at it. I can’t believe no one’s bought one.

Doing this calendar probably took a year off my life.

Following link to link to link I found this someone out-of-my-depth blog on Japanese culture.
NeoJaponisme

It seems geared towards academic hipsters and expats living in Japan (and being hiply academic over there) who are fluent in the language. The blog is in English, but sprinkled with kanji to clarify points. I was enjoying skimming it… it’s has a more interesting (cynical, grouchy, arty) point of view than the very G-rated and general-interest J-List blog (G-rated blog from the site that introduced the US to the Hello Kitty vibrator).

Then, in their archives I discovered my new favorite thing ever. Japan’s answer to The Electric Company—CURRICULUMACHINE.

A sample Curriculumachine sketch:

• To teach the word “shoeshine” (靴磨き), a shoeshiner is sitting down while a customer comes by, drops his briefcase, opens his fly, and urinates on his face.

The NeoJaponisme article does an amazing job of explaining the show so best to just hop over there and read the whole thing. Curriculumachine sounds amazingly terrible in the same way Pythagoras Switch is amazingly adorable.

Also, I find Electric Company (the real American one) both off-putting and depressing for reasons I have trouble putting into words. I may have watched it as a kid (I was the right age for the tail end of its syndication) but don’t really have any specific memory of it. I rented a couple of the DVDs when I was directing Free to be Friends (which was a comedy-musical stage show based on 1970’s New York kid show The Magic Garden and Free to be You and Me that we did at UCBT and then at the NY Fringe Fest). I dunno… it bummed me out for some reason. Especially the troupe of actors waving to the camera at the end. Maybe it’s the earnestness? And they’re all dead now? (They are not actually all dead now… but that’s what the waving makes me think of.)

Read Part 1 here
You know, when I first started blogging a jillion years ago (on the Improv Resource Center) I used to write entries like this on like, every damn thing I did. It was exhausting. Probably even more so for you, dear reader.

I also neglected to mention in part one I had to pass up tickets to see Doctor Atomic with Silvija which I had been looking forward to for, like, a month. (Doctor Atomic is a modern minimalist opera about how Robert Oppenheimer gets an atom bomb dropped on him at Los Alamos and becomes an immortal superhero and goes to live on the moon.)

I also failed to add the braggy footnote that Amy Poehler once played me in the “Hospital” episode of the third season (#303) of The Upright Citizens Brigade TV show. At the time, it hurt my feelings because it was a pretty unflattering impression, however accurate. But now I can brag about it. Brag brag braggity brag.

—

The doorman at the place asks Jack “These guys all with you?” “Yeah, sure” he says, not even looking who he’s waving in. It’s a big Times Square restaurant/brewpub/bar which is already massively packed. There’s nowhere to sit, really, and if you do sit there’s waitress service. If you look for a place to stand, you’re constantly getting out of the way of waitresses shuttling past with trays of four dozen beers on them

Mitch and I beeline for the back bar and decide the occasion and our social discomfort calls for bourbon. I hadn’t eaten all day and had already had a week of insomnia behind me, so I decided to ride the poor judgment train all the way to the station. The bar is not an open bar and it actually costs a goddamn fortune. Luckily Mitch gets it due to me buying him a drink the last time. I sometimes think our friendship is almost entirely based on an elaborate network of entangling who-owes-who-a-drink alliances and if one of us ever went on the wagon our relationship would resemble Europe 1914. (That makes little sense). Although my memory is woogly, I don’t think I actually paid for a single drink all night… thanks chivalrous/enabling party peers!

Will Hines writes: “The only thing I care about is who hit on who, who made out with who and who was doing what drugs”

Unfortunately, I can’t really answer any of these. As far as I saw, none of these things were happening, which in the case of the last one seems really odd coming from UCBT where the motto has always been “Whenever two or more are gathering in my name, spark up a doob’.” (I don’t smoke marijuana… does my wooden dated slang give it away?) Of course, we were in a public place and any coke-snorting or meth-eathing or opium-dosing was probably done in a back hallway or something. I didn’t see it backstage either. Bobby actually said before we left that when his parents came for a visit, they kept saying how clean everything was and how nice the people were—they had images of Belushi in their heads. But he also said that parents-visiting-behavior was kept well up because everyone had been in that position before.

I can tell you famous people who were there though. I mean, other than the SNL cast and Jack McBrayer. I was talking to Rich and his wife (and told them dropping their baby’s crash helmet was a big branding misstep… it was her hook!) and he says “Oh, meet Jenna and her boyfriend.” And I shake hands and say hello and only ten steps away from the table get “Oh, that girl from The Office is called Jenna… that must have been her.” Near the end of the night I was standing within earshot of someone saying “I’d like you to meet Eddie Izzard….” who I also would totally not have recognized. I’m celebri-stupid. Horatio Sanz was there and we chatted briefly (he was a UCB regular)... he’s lost a ton of weight and looks totally different. Lorne Michaels was in the back room eating. There was a guy who probably wasn’t famous but he was really, really tall. Did I miss anyone?

I shook hands with John Slattery and said hi to Elisabeth Moss (who hugged me before she left, so it went better than last time). I talked to Michael Gladis for a while at the front bar where someone kept handing him tequila shots which he was trying to politely decline. I took one off his hands, but it may have been one of the worst decisions of the night since I was still tasting it three days later (blecch). I was cagey about talking to Jon Hamm who was totally holding court up in the front. He was taking pictures with people as they approached to pay homage to his beatific wonderment etc.

My pal Ashley who was my sometimes TV buddy this season (I don’t have cable and went to people’s houses to watch the show) and had been romantically obsessed with J.H. since mid-season. She and Jack went up and chatted, mostly about St. Louis, and she came back flushed. “He is so handsome, I literally had to sit down after talking to him. I could not form words…” In her regular life, she is quite a talker so that’s huge. I do not find him quite so swoon-worthy (not my type, but he shouldn’t feel too bad about that), but I was still intimidated. So, some time and more dutch courage later, I did come up and say “Hi… I’m the one who does the pictures.”

Seriously, Matt Weiner all over again. Pulled into a massive hug. Those are amazing he says! Oh man, they look so perfect for the period! (I wish now I hadn’t gotten so blotto so I could remember it more.) Both he and his girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt were as nice as possible. Ashley took a picture (which I redrew above).

It’s about 4 AM now, people are thinking about going to the AFTER after-party. Most people are peeling off. It’s at a bar that’s on my way home, so I figure I might as well. Ashley and Jack say bye. I see Fred Armisen walking by and asked if he remembers running into me at the Sol Moscot on 14th St and waiting for our perscriptions together in the waiting room five years earlier and he said he did, asked where my glasses were and then said “You’re really cute, you know that.” Which I take as “adorable” and not “creepy.” It was delivered adorably, not creepily.

Mitch takes off. Sue and Lutz take off. I’m on my own so I split a cab with Michael down to Professor Thom’s in the East Village. “Remember the password is ‘Swordfish!’” someone is yelling. A Horse Feathers reference, how drole. Ok, fine, drunk guy. We take the cab down there and go up to the upstairs secret after-hours bar and a guy really asks for the password. Swordfish.

It’s dark and moderately crowded, but not with people we know really. Since it’s not a public bar, you can smoke in it, which is always kind of a time warp. My first few and most heavily-bar-going years in New York were pre-smoking ban so I view it with both nostalgia and revulsion. Much as I feel towards Catholicism. He’s very method; he smokes like a wheelbarrow.

After a while, Jon Hamm, Jennifer and Sudeikis (again… I THINK. I suspect I may have been subjected to a mind-control experiment and my programming goes off whenever I’m forced to recall whether Jason Sudeikis is involved… all previous information is erased) were there and we had drinks with them. I don’t remember what was discussed but there was yelling about art and then I said something about maybe being asked to do some work officially for the show and Jon went on an enthusiastic rant that ended with a hilariously salty “go for the gusto” encouragement that I can’t reprint and him telling me “Get a lawyer!”

Now, it never even occurred to me how weird this whole moment was that at 6 AM I was in a bar being bought a round of drinks by Don Draper and being yelled at. At no point in the entire evening did anything really seem odd or really overwhelming. I imagine my emotionally-deadening depression I carry with me was taking the edge off.

At some point after that I was in my house throwing up in the sink. I had a New Years Eve style hangover for two days afterward (compounded by the insomnia I already had and continue to have).

In short, a good time was had by all… the end.