I Have Seen the Future and It is Adorable

God bless this tiny little robot!


I just got back from seeing WALL-E and it is absolutely amazing. It's everything you could possibly want in a movie. It's a dark satire. It's a eye-popping sci-fi extravaganza. It's a silent comedy. Hell, it's even the best date movie of the year and I'm saying that partly because it's a terrific love story and partly because you should instantly ditch any girl who doesn't like it (I already told the girlfriend she lost major points by refusing to see the opening midnight show with me. Fortunately she gained them back by being so gung ho to see The Dark Knight that she's already looking up IMAX ticket prices.)

I knew it was gonna be great. I mean, Pixar has yet to disappoint me (granted, I never saw Cars due to the Larry the Cable Guy involvement). Really, when one of their movies comes out, it's not a question of whether it will be good but rather how high it will fall on their veritable hall of fame. Now that I've seen it, I have to say, WALL-E makes its way pretty high up there.
Of course, the number one spot still belongs to Monsters Inc.

I really love Monsters Inc. I always will. I've got a book n the art behind it. I've got a talking Sully action figure I picked up at a garage sale (that really doesn't sound like John Goodman, by the way). It is so damn good that I feel no shame admitting (in a public online forum, no less) that it marks the closest I've ever come to crying in a movie theater. I mean, if this ending scene doesn't make you tear up, you are heartless:
(Spoiler Warning, obviously)

Seriously, it bums me out people don't talk about this movie more. However, when you make so many good movies like Pixar has, some are bound to get lost in the shuffle.

ps. You have to check out this great site Pixar created for the movie. It's a fake homepage for the ubiquitous corporation that runs humanity in WALL-E and it's absolutely hilarious. There's good stuff everywhere, all the way down to the Privacy Policy at the bottom.

It all (as well as a few images in the film) kind of reminds me of Mike Judge's great movie Idiocracy. However good that movie was though, Luke Wilson will never be as fun to watch as that tiny robot. And I don't even mean that as an insult!

I Know All

You know what's one of my favorite things in the world? I love to impart obscure knowledge. And I'm not talking random obscure knowledge, the kind that makes you sound like some Rain Man-esque weirdo listing irrelevent facts. I mean obscure knowledge that fits into a conversation. The kind where, after you say it, people are like, "Dude, how the hell did he know that?".

Today at work I walked into an office to drop off some papers and caught the tail end of a conversation. All I heard was this one guy saying, "...but Rutgers has dissappointed me."
I assumed he was talking about our football team or something, so I asked him what's up. The conversation went something like this (and keep in mind I had just wandered into this office at that moment):

"How has Rutgers dissappointed you?"
"They don't have any cooking classes?"
"They don't? Well, they have Food Science classes."
"Right, but I'm looking for just a simple cooking class."
"Ah. Well, there is a cooking school in New Brunswick."
"There is?"
"Yeah. It's on top of the soup kitchen. I believe they
sometimes prepare food for the soup kitchen."
"Cool."
"Yep. The soup kitchen's called Elijah's Promise. Well, see
ya'."

It's not that anything I was saying was particularly awesome. It's just that these are incredibly obscure facts that the average person walking into the office wouldn't know. Of course, I only knew them because

1. I go to Rutgers.
2. A family friend was a food science major at Rutgers.
3. I did community service at the soup kitchen.
4. I saw the chefs in training while there.

Still, the only thing that would have made me feel better would have been if there were a couple mega hot girls in the office and, when I left, I did so by jumping on a motorcycle, donning my hot shades, and riding off into the sunset.

A Few Quick Notes

• The new Sigur Rós album is absolutely amazing.
• Mansour Pourmand, the director and producer behind the original film, Zipperface, has written Dave, Andy, and I an e-mail giving us his blessing to bring Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical to the next step.
• Did you read that second bullet point?! That's fucking crazy!

Sorrow Hill Filming Diary #1

Be a film actor, kids! It's glamorous!

Well, that's me in make-up for my first day of filming on Grindhouse Pictures' horror film Sorrow Hill. And here, as promised, is a little write-up of how the day went:

Anyone who's been following the film on its official production blog knows that filming on this thing has been pushed back more times than Joan Rivers' face. Ron (the director) and his crew have been hit by so many ridiculous little problems that you'd think God Himself didn't want this movie to get made (maybe he read the original script and saw the now-deleted masturbation/prayer scene). The financing was shaky for awhile, the set got vandalized, and the lead actress had to leave due to scheduling problems. The fact that we finally got to start this thing last week is a miracle and it's not one that any one's taking lightly.

Ron set up an aggressive shooting schedule to catch up on lost time and that's why I was up at 5:45 am and heading down to Atlantic City to try to get 75% of my scenes shot in one day.

I'm not a morning person. I never have been. Hell, I'd rather work from 7 at night till 7 in the morning rather than the other way around. So it's not surprising that I was a bit grumpy the night before the day of filming as I tried to get to bed hours earlier than usual. Fortunately I was going to do something I was really excited about or else I would have been downright unbearable (I'm assuming of course that I wasn't. Only the girlfriend knows for sure).

I arrived on set at around 8:20 am. It was 20 minutes after I was supposed to get there since I had mistakenly assumed that there wouldn't be much traffic at 6:30 in the morning. Everything was alright however since I had to wait anyway to get my make-up done.

Now that I've brought up the make-up, I can't say enough about how amazing it all is. Unfortunately I only have pictures of myself, but some of the stuff these two girls, Nicki and Miranda, did is so incredible. The most amazing stuff right now is what they did with John Delrosso (yes, Nicole's dad, for anyone wondering). He plays Lazarus, the main villain, and the dude is uber-creepy in the role. The only problem is that Lazarus is supposed to be 40 years older than he is. However, the girls do this amazing job on him that includes make-up, latex, and hair extensions that has to be seen to be believed.

Speaking of hair, we had the final discussion about mine. To recap, when I was cast I had a giant afro. I then buzzed it off, totally forgetting that I needed it for the movie. Ron had been flip-flopping on whether he wanted me to keep my hair short as it now was, or buzz it down again. In the end he decided just to wax it flat to my head as if my character hadn't showered in a decade and had been sleeping in a vat of rotten gelatin the entire time.

That wax (which was some ultra nasty concoction beyond that of any normal hair product) was only one part of the junk they put on me. They put make-up around my eyes to give me that special crazy look. They also covered me in this fake dirt stuff they had which went all over my costume, body, face, and even in my hair. If any of my housemates are wondering who ruined the shower, it was me, during my hour long rinsing that night.

The worst part of the make-up for me was that gunk on my teeth. It was this black wax crap (think wax lips) that I had to rub on my teeth and needed to be touched up every few takes. It's horrible stuff that made it so I had to eat my lunch like some kind of boa constrictor/horse hybrid, dropping rolled up slices of turkey meat into the back of my throat to be chewed by my wisdom teeth alone.

If you listen to the most recent episode of Ron's radio show, he and Rick (who plays my also-crazy brother) talk about how much fun the set is and how great everyone is. It really is true. Everyone is incredibly nice and fun to chill with. This includes people new to the set.

Like I said, the lead actress needed to be replaced. Nicole ended up getting bumped up to the role which was great since it meant that I got to do my big fight scene with someone I've known and worked with for a few years. However, it meant that the creepy scene I had to do would be done with an actress I'd never met before and wouldn't meet until half an hour before we filmed it.

When I got to the set, Ron introduced her to me by saying, "Leah, this is Jon. He's the one who will be molesting you." This was awkward, especially since it's the same introduction I've received before every blind date I've been on.

Fortunately Leah turned out to be as cool as everyone else and the scene wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as it could have been.

It was my first scene in the movie (both to be shot and in the actual film itself) and we started filming around 11ish.

The scene is this: Jessica (one of the unfortunate victims in the film) is strapped down to a gurney and is told by a crazy woman, Mama Jean, that she is to be the asylum's new "breeder". Mama Jean (who's played by this great actress named Michelle) then opens up a near by cage to release her two sons (Rick and myself) whom she hopes Jessica will "choose" to be her mate. This leads to a lot of creepiness involving us feeling up her legs and threatening her with a knife.

A while back, I was talking to Greg about watching the video of the first movie he was in. He talked about how he couldn't watch his death scene since it was just plain weird watching himself die. I thought at the time that that was something I wouldn't have a problem with and would actually find pretty funny to watch. However, while I wouldn't mind watching myself die in a movie, I am pretty sure that I never want to watch this scene of me molesting a girl strapped to a gurney. That's just too strange. And from the excited way Ron talks about it on the radio show, it sounds like the footage turned out pretty creepy. This is great for the movie, obviously, but I think I'm gonna be hitting the fast forward button when this thing gets finished.

One scene that I'm really excited to watch is the fight scene between myself and Nicole.

It was the last thing we shot in the day so we were all exhausted. I kept telling Sarah (one of the leads in the movie who was pulling double duty and acting as script supervisor) to either play my part for a scene or switch the script around so my character got to take a nap on the gurney instead of Leah's. However, I knew I wanted to make the scene good since it's probably my best scene in the script so I did my best to snap out of it and Nicole and I rocked the thing out. I hope it went well. It sure felt like it did. In the scene, Nicole swings a pipe at me, I throw her to the ground, she bites my nose, and then she stabs me in the foot with a sharp wooden stake. Also, this is the scene where I get to say my big "I'm gonna make you scream!" line.

Damn, it was fun to do! It's stuff like this that makes me actually want to try to be an actor when I'm out of school as well. It's the stuff like money and food that make me not want to do that.

Here's a picture of my impaled foot in the middle of make-up. Nicki busted this thing out so fast, it's incredible.

Well, it was a long, long day. I was at the set for 13 hours total and that doesn't include the hour and 45 minute rides there and back. When I got home, I pretty much passed out on Sam. I would have stayed that way had she not pointed out that I was still covered in make-up. However, the movie's shaping up great and should be a hell of a lot of fun when it's finished.

I don't have any filming this week, but when I do, I'll make sure to post about it here.

Another Random Appearance on the Internet!

I've got a lot to write about (blogs about Sorrow Hill filming and strip clubs are forthcoming) but I'm in New Brunswick right now and I don't think the girlfriend wants to watch me type for half an hour. However, I can put a fun link in here because it's time once again for one of my Random Appearances on the Internet!


The A.V. Club (the nonfictional entertainment section of The Onion) is probably my favorite website. I'm there everyday and I've linked to articles from it here on the blog a few times. So I was excited to see my name on the site.
A few weeks ago, I was incredibly bored and sent a question in to the Ask the A.V. Club feature and was happily surprised to have it answered on Friday's article. It's a really stupid question but one of those things that always bugged me. you can read it here.
I enjoy the fact that, since I wrote in with my school e-mail, my name appears in full instead of the simple "Jon" I signed with.

In other A.V. Club news, all the music reviewers on the site wrote a great article listing their favorite new songs of this year. The best part is, you can listen to all of them. I have to admit, I'm not cool enough to have heard of 75% of these bands but that meant it was realy great to check in on music that flies way under my music radar. Plus, they threw in a shout out to that amazing Frightened Rabbit song I've posted here a few times.
Here's another cool song from the list by British Sea Power:



A few of the songs they posted videos for instead of just the track. I loved seeing that great Kate Nash video again because potty mouthed British girls singing cute pop songs are adorable. Even better though, this video for Flight of the Conchords:



It's funny that they're making videos for the album since their TV show was mostly videos for the same songs.


And finally, another music tidbit. I've never been as huge a Girl Talk fan as a bunch of my friends. It's mostly because I'm a little hot and cold on the whole sampling thing. However, he released his new album with the same "pay whatever you want to download" thing as Radiohead and I think it's a fascinating idea. You can pay (or not) here.
Also, the first track is rocking:

Putting the "Music" in "Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical" (plus a rather exciting announcement)

A month or so ago I went to New York to interview for an internship with the Colbert Report in the fall. It's was an absolutely massive long shot. Like Eugene O'Neill stage directions long. So I decided not to write anything about it here since I didn't want to jinx myself and I also didn't want to spend months telling everyone who had read the post that I eventually didn't get it.
But I got it.

Yay, hooray for me. I'm awesome, I know. But, yeah, this fall I will be spending three days a week trying to bring Stephen Colbert coffee without accidentally making direct eye contact. It's easily the coolest thing that's happened to me in years. However, I'm going to my best not to get too excited about it since the amount of joy and excitement I feel about something is directly related to the amount of ways it will fall apart right in front of my eyes.

So, to keep from thinking about it, I've been thinking about other cool things Like the fact that the music from Zipperface, the musical I co-wrote, is online! That's right, Brent, resident CAP documenter has uploaded a bunch of songs and soundbites from the show and they're absolutely great.
Of course, let me do my paranoid creater thing and point out the deficiencies right off the bat. Unfortunately, these were taken from the worst performance so I can hear all kinds of problems. Most obviously, this was the night that the guitar was knocked over back stage and was then out of tune for Terry's song (one of my favorites in the show, dammit) so that Dave had to stop playing. Also, you can hear people stumble over lyrics and pacing a few times and somehow we lost the recording of the title song.

Oh, I'm gonna shut up. The songs sound great and it's fantastic to finally get to hear them again. Dave, Andy, and I (and I hope Zach, as well) will be giving them and the eventual video (when it's edited) our undying attention as we try to rewrite the script and bring Zipperface to the next stage. Until then, you can enjoy these as they are and you people who missed the show can kind of see what I've been talking about for the past few months (and be really fucking confused by the references to robots and dinosaurs).

So, here are a few samples.


First off, is the opening tune by a couple members of the Hobo Band:

I can't say enough about how much these guys added to the show. They were made up by members of the New Brunswick band, the Seal Club and were led by Zach Wiseley. Zach is an absolute genius. He also arranged the songs and was able to make them sound like actual musical tunes. I would ask him to do ridiculous stuff like, "Hey, Zach, could you arrange a mixture of all the songs in the first act into one tune to play at the beginning of the second act?" and he'd just do it. Absolutely amazing.

Next we have Morese singing one of the best songs in the show:

Again, this is the night with the shitty guitar. You can hear it right at the beginning. It's so depressing because I absolutely love this song. Fortunately, Morese sells the rest of it and the band sounds great otherwise so it still works. Brent included some dialogue at the end with the punchline of the song. It's a visual joke, so you people who missed the show are gonna be lost, but the rest of us can have fun reminiscing.

Unsurprisingly, I also am posting the Cuban Robot Wars medley, which Brent kept in its entirety. It may be seven and a half minutes long and utterly nonsensical to anyone who didn't see the show (and some who did) but it includes my cameo so, whatever. Plus, it's pretty damn rocking:

For you people who are really confused, here's a brief explanation. I'll try my best to make it simple. The play Zipperface is narrated by a hobo. In the beginning he states that the reason he is able to create the show is because he has software implanted in his head from something he calls "the Cuban Robot Wars". The audience usually shrugs this off as just silly dialogue from a crazy character, however, in act two, the play is interrupted by the narrator having a seizure. Another hobo takes over, however, he doesn't actually know the plot of Zipperface so, when the show starts up again, the audience gets treated to an entirely different musical set during the fabled wars and starring all robots. I played the lead robot.
Understand? Eh. I tried.
In the things that go wrong category, this was the night that I started to laugh and then said "robat" instead of "robot" during my first line. Pretty embarassing to fuck up one of lines when you only have about eight. Especially if you wrote it.

And finally, the best song in the show, the Finale Song:

Nothing went wrong here. This song rules and it will always rule. Plus, this was the night Izzy came to see the show and she was nice enough to hoot when I came onstage to deliver my line. This makes it sound to the untrained ears like I'm some kind of super stud. If only.

If you want to listen to the rest of the songs, you can download them here:
Download: Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical - Music and Soundbites
Again, it's missing the title song but there are a few well-chosen soundbites to make up for it. Like this one:


God, I love this show.

And, hey, I'm interning at the Colbert Report!

I'd Like to Get My Hanes On

Watching TV today, I saw this commercial for bras starring Jennifer Love Hewitt.



I don't really have anything to say about it. I just wanted to point out its existance.

Satirical Political Commentary...TO THE MAX!!!

For the past few weeks, this has been my Facebook photo:



I have given no explanation for this picture. Until now. You see, I may have a job and I may be heading down to Atlantic City to film a horror movie. But what do I do with the other 0.037% of my time. Well, I go to New Bunswick to rehearse America 20XX, an original comedic one-act appearing in this year's New York International Fringe Festival!


The play was written and is being directed by Cyriaque Lamar who currently writes damn funny articles for Cracked.com, a couple of which have been linked to all over the fucking place. Hell, you mit have even read one by now. More importantly, however, Cyriaque is a former member of Wacky Hijinks sketch comedy group at Rutgers. And, not being one to forget his roots, when his play got accepted to the festival, he casted it entirely with current and former Hijinks people (plus Matt Herron for the hell of it). I'm lucky enough to be one of those people and my profile picture is an outtake from our publicity photo session where we took bad ass pictures like this one:


You can see more pictures and lots of other cool stuff at the play's official website, America20xx.com.


At this point, your probably wondering what the plays about. Well, it's set in an apocalyptic future where the country's last super heroes, the Power Patriots, have to use horrible secrets from their past to destroy an evil mp3 player because a Clint Eastwood look-a-like told them to. Now, at this point, you're probably looking at me like I'm crazy and slowly backing towards the door. I don't blame you. However, trust me when I say it will all make sense when you see it. And if it doesn't, it will still be bad-ass awesome and damned funny!


The publicity materials describe the play as "star-spangled satre" and "extreme political science fiction!". I describe it as "a comedy so gay it took a bunch of straight people to produce it".


The pictures were taken a few weeks ago in my basement (it has the feel of some place war-torn) by Cyriaque's girlfriend, Annie. They needed to be in to Fringe in the next few days so we had to get something together soon. While we only had one costume finished (the eagle mask which has Cyriaque inside it and is basically the whole costume for Super Eagle, who Cyriaque describes as "the Chewbacca of the play") we had to just gather together whatever we could find from the CAP prop room. So, while Greg and I make up the other two members of the Power Patriots in the play, those costumes have nothing to do with our actual characters. Unfortunately, the other membrs of the cast couldn't make it, including the girlfriend, Sam, who was horribly sick and was curled up in a ball in my room upstairs. Sorry you missed out, sweetheart!


Anywho, we'll be performing in this summer's Fringe Festival in New York. We will be in one of the off-Broadway theaters involved (the first time I've ever been in a play produced somewhere not affiliated with a school of some kind!) for five performances in mid-August. We'll know the exact where's and when's on July 5th when Fringe releases the final schedule.


Keep posted, America!*



*"America" being the eight people who read this blog.

My Incredibly Auspicious Radio Debut!

Hey all,

For those of you that don't know (you motherfucking should by now) you can find all the information about Sorrow Hill, the horror movie I'm making with Grindhouse Pictures this summer, over at the director, Ron DiPrimio's blog. What I may have forgotten to mention, is that he and comedien and fellow SH actor, Rick Cahall do a weekly radio show on Cruisin' 92.1 in South Jersey (people like me can listen to is here). It's on every Friday at midnight after Rick's own show at 11.

Some of you may be thinking, "oh well, fuck, I just missed it." Well, worry not! You can head over to the site and check it out in podcast form. And you should totally check out last night (June 13th)'s show because, hey, I call in!

Mike P. was in the studio and he told me to so at about 40 minutes into the procedings I pop up.

At first, Ron (who has the hidden motivation of trying to make the people involved in his movie sound both professional and impressive) starts claiming I'm a talented actor. As anyone who's caught my stand-up act knows, I prefer to work under low expectations so I quickly change the discussion to focussing on something I'm more comfortable with: how ugly and lame I am.

It's a fun time with highpoints like me being described as "a thin Jonah Hill". Check it out and check the show out every week for more Sorrow Hill news!

ps. I'm gonna start calling myself "a thin Jonah Hill for now on".

pps. A bunch of other crazy shit happened in the past few days so expect some fun blog posts coming up.

Holy One-Liners, Batman!

So they call Batman "The World's Greatest Detective" but I don't think he's that great. I mean, I could be a pretty good detective too if all the mysteries of the city were committed by like one of five people.
And it's not like the mysteries are even that hard.
"Hmmm, somebody released all the penguins from the zoo. I wonder..."

Yay for Lupus! (and other internship fun)

I've mentioned my job a few times in recent blogs, so I suppose it's about time that I actually write about what it is. I mean, I guess I could just leave it vague allowing all my readers who haven't spoken to me recently to just imagine what it is I could be doing. Or hell, I could lie and pretend that my position as intern actually involves fighting crime. But...meh. I don't feel like having to come up with new theater-themed supervillains every week. I mean, God, this isn't some offshoot of Getting Super.

Anywho, I am an intern in the marketing department at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. I originally applied to intern in the artistic department but I fucked up my interview. How did I do this? Well, they asked me what I had been working on recently and I attempted to describe the plot of the musical I had co-written. For those of you that don't know, that musical was entitled Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical and is absolutely impossible to describe without sounding like you've just dropped a couple tabs. Here's a paraphrase of the conversation:

Woman: So what's it about?
Me: Well, it's actually based on this really bad horror movie called Zipperface about a serial killer in a leather gimp costume who kills hookers with a machete.
Woman: Uh huh...
Me: But you see, it's a parody of all these musicals based on movies because we decided to make a musical based on a movie no one's seen.
Woman: Right...
Me: So really it's about these hobos that find the script for the musical and decide to perform it using technology that has been implanted in their brains by the Soviets. Which is something they discuss in the beginning of the musical.
Woman: Ok...so did you perform in it?
Me: Yeah. I played a robot.
Woman: ...

This conversation went on for about 10 minutes. I felt like George Lucas trying to tell movie executives that he wanted his sci-fi action film to open with 30 minute of two gay androids wandering a desert.

So, the people I had my interview with clearly thought I was crazy. I could tell as they led me out that they had no intention of ever hiring me. Fortunately, one of the heads of the marketing department (Who does, in fact, read this blog occasionally. Hi, John!) was an old friend of mine and offered me the internship there when his dropped out.

What do I do? Well, most of the time I just stuff envelopes. You see, McCarter gets tons of requests to donate tickets to charity auctions and it is my job to go through these and file and fill them. This would seem boring but I entertain myself by laughing at the people I'm mailing that have funny names. Or the organizations that do. My favorite was this one:


That's right, there is a charity event called the Fun Day for Lupus. It's organized by the New Jersey chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America and you can read about it on their website here.

I'm sorry, but does anyone else think "Fun Day for Lupus" sounds more like a children's book than a charity event for a terrible, terrible disease. Instead of thinking about "thick, red scaly patches on the skin" or "vaginal ulcers" that title makes me think of a happy dog named Lupus who goes to the carnival and, I dunno, learns about sharing. Probably something like this:


So, that's what I do for a large part of my day. Now you know. I do other stuff too, but those things don't lend itself as easily to snarky discussions of possibly fatal diseases.


PS. Hello to anyone who linked over here from the Grindhouse Blog. Once filming gets under way, you can come here to read a discussion from the point of view of one of the dudes in a muddy hospital gown chasing down pretty ladies as opposed to the director who gets to wear actual clothes the whole time.

PPS. Here's the entire new Sigur Ros album, streaming from their website. It's just as good as one would expect. I love this band.

My June Playlist

Hey all, it was a little late coming but I've finally taken the time to set up my June playlist. You can listen to it on the sidebar all month or down below in this post:

Even a Lowly Intern Knows This is Moronic

I mentioned in my last post that I've started working at McCarter Theatre. What I didn't mention was that my internship was in the marketing department. I'm mentioning this now because it's a perfectly good segue into quit possibly the most retarded advertising ideas in the history of television. Ever.

So imagine you're watching Family Guy (I know, I know. Just pretend.) on TBS (I know, I know. Just pretend.) and you're having a perfectly good time. Then this happens:



That is absolutely insane.
Now we all know that television advertising is in a huge bind as of recently. Tivo, DVR, and illegal downloads have irreparably hurt the entire market. The whole game has changed. This has led to desperate networks having to come up with crazy new ways to do something that hasn't really differed since Farnsworth invented the damn television. There have been good ideas (streaming entire seasons of shows online with one or two commercials stuck in instead of full blocks) and bad ideas (obnoxious pop-up ads that block half the screen). But this is something else.

Do they really think that there's anyone alive who is going to see Bill Engvall, blue collar comic, appear on screen and PAUSE THEIR FUCKING SHOW IN THE MIDDLE OF IT to shill his crap and then think, "Gee, that's pretty wacky. Maybe I'll check out that fun looking family sitcom". NO! NO NO NO! Even if there's anyone on this planet who actually cators the idea of watching The Bill Engvall Show, this is going to instantly make them hate him, it, and the entire network at large.
What were they thinking?

Anywho, this video was taped by a dude named Jason Kottke who wrote about the experience on his blog here.

Ivy League Degrees are for Pussies

Today at work (I have an internship at McCarter Theatre blah blah blah I'll write about it at some point) some of us went Dumpster Diving on the Princeton University campus.
Y'know, it's when you go through all the furniture that the college kids left lying on the lawn when they moved out and see if there's anything worth keeping. We have the same thing at Rutgers only it goes by a slightly more...racist name.

Anyway, I was looking for a love seat to put in my room so people don't have to all cram onto my bed like some kind of orgy just to watch an episode of 12 Oz. Mouse. However, as we made our way around the school, I started to feel really pathetic about the whole idea. I kept imagining running into someone I used to know and what the conversation would go like.

Them: Hey, Jon!
Me: Oh. Hey, Person I Used To Know. What have you been up to?
Them: Me? I go to Princeton University now. How about you?
Me: I went to Rutgers. Now I'm going through your trash.

The worst part of it was we weren't even finding anything. Turns out the university, probably in a bid to discourage this kind of thing, had set up tents where students could drop off unwanted items to be sold for charity. Sanctimonious assholes!
So I was just walking around getting more and more depressed until we came across a sign that had been put up to direct crowds during this past weekend's graduation ceremony. It said this:

"NO NOT ENTER"

Suddenly I got all happy again. These Ivy League douche bags weren't so great! They had typos just like the rest of us! And they even printed them out and put them on signs!

This euphoria lasted for a brief moment until I began second-guessing myself. Perhaps Princeton students were in face so smart that they used double negatives in their directions just to fuck with stupid state school students like me. Soon I was all depressed again. And I never even got a love seat.

Fuck Princeton.

A Post About Blow Jobs

One of my favorite expressions that came out of my youth was the incomparable "blow job epidemic".

Does anyone else remember this? Starting when I was in middle school, there was this enormous paranoia amongst the adults that all of us teens were lining up and going down like there was no tomorrow. They all seemed convinced that, having read about the president being fellated, we would all jump at the chance to join in.
Right, like we all ran out to learn the saxophone as well...

Anyway, he whole idea was ridiculous and an article in this week's Newsweek uses survey statistics to show that this "epidemic" never really caught on and kids are getting blown in the same numbers they've always been.

However, that really was a fun time back then. I remember the teahers scheduling an emergency Health Class into the curriculum where we watched an Oprah episode with Dr. Phil discussing teen "blow job parties" that were apparently all the rage. This, of course, creating a mass panic amongst the student body. We were all terrified that these parties were, in fact, happening and that we just weren't invited.

I remember how much I always wanted to get asked to go to one of those parties. Not just for the obvious reasons, but because I really wanted to see what the invitations said. I can just imagine them: on the front page you've got a cartoon clown or something and the phrase "Hooray! It's a party!" in big letters. Then you flip open and it says something like...
What: A Blow Job Party
Where: Kate's house
When: Come at 8 pm. Come by 8:15

That would have been awesome.

Random Comic...Fun?

So, like all of my other comic strip-oriented blog posts, this one must again link to the absolutely amazing Comic Curmudgeon from which I read all comic strips (my daily New York Times is sorely lacking a funnies page).

Anyway, I've never really minded the comic strip Luann. It's not ever all that funny, but none of the daily syndicated strips really are anymore. However, I find the art style appealing and that's more than I can say for most of the trash out there.

However, yesterday's comic is one of the most disturbing things ever. Before I show it, let me set it up for the...everyone...who doesn't read Luann. One of the ongoing storylines in the past few years has involved Luann's goofy brother Brad trying to get with this banging chick, Toni whom he volunteers with as a fireman (he got involved after 9/11, blah blah blah). Anyway, this was Tuesday's strip featuring the two of them:

...what? Seriously...what? There is absolutely no way that can be interpreted as anything but some weird fetishistic sexual come-on involving sexy hair trimming.

Eww. Gee, I only hope there's some weird fetish songs in the Luann musical! I mean, who isn't dying to hear Luann's geeky friend Bernice sing a show-stopping ode to leather?

Then again, at least that strip is attempting to have a joke (I think) unlike this Funky Winkerbean from last week:

Sigh. God, Funky Winkerbean sucks.

And again, all shitty comics come to my attention through the Comics Curmudgeon.

"Put in my mixtape, it's right on the dash! It's the one that says 'Chillin with my peeps and my main man, the Monarch'."

I was checking out the music and movies blog The Playlist and they had a link to a pretty cool site called Mixwit which is home to another playlist application like the one I use on this blog. However, the hook here is that you can make your playlist look like an old-school mixtape which kind of rocks hard.
The appear to just be in their beta stage and the program has a few problems (you can't upload songs, the searching interface kind of sucks, etc.) but I had to try it. So here is my mixtape which I named "CRUISING FOR PUSSY and/or BEER!":

My idea was that it would be a the kind of mixtape that a group of totally rocking dudes would play when they were out looking for action. I open it with the perennial classic of "hanging-out-rock" Big Star's In the Street (just try to forget that a certain piece of shit TV show sullied it) and then I have ten more rocking track, I'm pretty sure none of which were recorded post-80s. And to round it out, I have two songs perfect for backseat loving in case anyone in the joy-ride scored.

PS. The site has a place where you can give them feedback and I sent them a message with a few ideas. I told them it would be cool to be able to see all the songs in the mix without flipping through them and also (I'm really proud of this one) how awesome it would be to have the option to put the sound of a tape being inserted into a tape deck at the beginning when someone loads up your mix.
I'm sorry but that would just plain rule.

PPS. My official June Playlist will be coming shortly.