Happy Morning!

When I was getting dressed this morning, I thought I put on my pants that don't need a belt but I actually put on my pants that do need a belt. Now I have to keep pulling my pants up every few minutes.
Ugh! My life is so hard!

In other news: Bombers and Ethnic Clashes Kill 61 in Iraq.

The Power Patriots in "The Right (Invisible) Hand of Doom!"

A few weeks ago I wrote about the video sketch we filmed as a trailer for America 20XX (which opens in a week and a day, motherfuckers!) and now you're all lucky enough to be able to see it!
Even better, it looks fucking awesome (special props to Dave on the editing). So enjoy!



Of course, I didn't even need to post this video since you've all already bought your tickets online at Ticket Web, right? And you've all been checking the website religiously, right? And you all know that the show dates are as follows, right?

Friday 8/8 @ 7:30
Sunday 8/10 @ 3:00
Thursday 8/14 @ 9:45
Friday 8/15 @ 11:45
Monday 8/18 @ 6:00
(All shows are PM)

Good. Just making sure.

Random Comic Fun!

This is yesterday's Mary Worth. Read it:

Recognise those lyrics? It took me a minute. Here's a hint:

That's right, Mary Worth, the Sunday's snooty sepuagenarian is at a Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova concert. Sure, it's some kind of bizarro Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova who dress like late 50s folk singers instead of the mid 00s folk singers they are, but still.

Weird.

Hey, My Friend's a Good Person

Zach and the rest of the Good Works Tour appeared on NBC 29 tonight. You can watch the video here. I was going to embed the thing but it's set on this horrible auto launch function which would have made my blog like a bad Myspace page.



If watching this makes you feel lazy, selfish, or lame, you're in good company. It made me feel all of the above! Here is one of my good friends being championed on network news for his selfless actions; being pointed to as a shining example of something good and pure amidst all the detritus that is our modern society.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting in my pyjamas, watching it on an internet video, and thinking about how the reporter's kind of cute (even though she seems to struggle with the teleprompter).
Sigh.

Lets All Buy Our Tickets Now!

How awesome is this picture?



Anywho, that was done by a guy named Dan Pillis and it seems like the best way to get your attention for these: THE AMERICA 20XX SHOW DATES (with added commentary from writer/director Cyriaque!


Friday 8/8 @ 7:30 - The opening night of the festival!
Sunday 8/10 @ 3:00 - The Sunday matinee!
Thursday 8/14 @ 9:45 - Thursday is the new Friday!
Friday 8/15 @ 11:45 - Barhoppers delight!
Monday 8/18 @ 6:00 - The worst time! Thank God it's last!


Now, if we all remember the last few updates, the show will be held at The Players Theatre @ 115 MacDougal Street in NYC and you can buy your tickets at the Fringe website.


Anyway, if that drawing was a good way to bring you into this post, here's a good way to bring you out: our awesome poster!


ps. I can't believe I typed up that dream post last night? I think the fact that transcribing a nightmare for the internet comforted me says more about my generation than a thousand thesis papers combined.

Waking Up Screaming

I just had this terrible dream and now I can't get back to sleep. The thing was incredibly vivid. It was like a fucking Stephen King short story.
Here's what I remember:

I was a little child in about middle school. Every day I would get held after for detention. However, the kids at detention all looked up to me. And Sam was there. And she and I and all the other kids would hang out every day and tell ghost stories about these kids who got stuck at this horrible run down train station.

But I wasn't happy. All the kids there were younger than me and my parents kept yelling at me to grow up and get a job. So one day I made sure I didn't have to go to detention. But when I found my parents, they said they still weren't happy with me. I had taken too long and now they had to do the job I was supposed to do forever and it was humiliating.

So I went back to the school and peeked in on the kids. However, when I looked in, I saw Sam there with another boy. They were walking around smiling and holding hands. They and all the other children started walking towards the door I was at but I ran away before they could see me.

I wandered through the town until I found a big fountain. I went to sit by it. I reached my hand in when suddenly a fish jumped out at me. At the same time, a religious man was walking by. He told me he was very sorry but the fish was a bad omen and something very bad was going to happen to me. However, he asked if I liked movies and, when I said yes, he told me he had an old fashioned video store and it would make up for it.

I went there and the video store was great and they had this amazing horror section with all these classic movies. He asked me if I liked scary movies and I said yes and we began to talk about all my favorites. Then I started to get a little creeped out. I was getting the feeling that this man was...testing me. As if he didn't really like these movies and was just seeing if I was "bad" enough or something. He then said he had a special movie if I was interested. It had a really creepy title and it gradually became clear that it was actually a snuff film. I said politely that I wasn't interested and ran out.

I tried to run back to the school but I went back a different way through the town so I wouldn't see the man again. I decided to call Sam and warn her about him even though I was still mad at her. She didn't answer though. Suddenly I realized I was lost. I was in a creepy old train station and there was grafitti on the walls of the names of all the children from our ghost stories.
Then I heard something. Something coming down the tracks.

Man, that was a fucked up dream.

I've been having weird dreams all week. Sam said she is too. Unfortunately, the past two nights they've been weird/terrifying. I preferred the ones at the beginning of the week when they were weird and involved me being propositioned by Amy Adams.

Yikes, for all you Freud fans out there, I think this post may say more about me than any other in my purposely impersonal blog. I probably shouldn't be telling everyone that I have nightmares about video stores and non-nightmares about Amy Adams...

Heavy Video Fun

Yesterday, half of the cast of America 20XX got together and did some filming. First we made a video sketch in which I play a crazed plumber fighting a killer toilet plant (There's an explanation. I'll give it when the thing's finished) and then we filmed a trailer for the play. Both were a ton of fun (except when I had to get back in my crazy plumber costume to re-film scenes we accidentally taped over) and made us kick ourselves that we'd been too lazy to ever really make us before.
As Dave reversed the shot of a plastic bag being pulled off my head so that it looked like the bag was both sentient and vicious, Greg looked back and said, "Man, this is much more fun than putting these damn things on stage."

The best part about it is people are actually going to see them. With Dave's plum job at Heavy.com, these videos could be seen by tens of thousands of people in a day. Dave's first video (the one I posted a few days ago) did and that can't all be the famous Rothstadt marketing (see: Zipperface).

One video that I worked on is already up. This thing was already in rough cut form in about an hour (from conception to .avi). It was after rehearsal and we were all getting drunk at Dave and Greg's and Dave and I sat down during everyone else's smoke break and popped this out.

More videos from the "Contagious" channel at Heavy.com

Cheap joke? Very much so. But again: made in an hour (just look at that ultra quick photoshopping!)
Anyway, like it or not, you all better vote five stars on this shit and link it to you friends. Give us a lot of comments too! Or I'll hate you.

Same goes for Dave's second video list on the site (with a cameo by Greg!):

More videos from the "Contagious" channel at Heavy.com

Some Random Thoughts

• I have an air conditioner now! Last night, Sam and I slept with a cover. A cover!!!
• At work yesterday, I was passed along this article about Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequel to his "classic" Phantom of the Opera. Not only will it feature the ridiculous title "Phantom: Once Upon Another Place" it will also have 100% more robot fucking.
  My guess is he's just ripping off Zipperface...
• The Emmy nominations are up and The Wire, y'know, the greatest American drama in the history of television, got one nomination in its final year. One! That means that it will have only recieved two nominations in its entire run. I'm used to shows I love not getting respect from the retarded Academy (Kristen Bell, if only they had a category for Most Adorable...) but The Wire is different. To not nominate a show that good, is to ruin the relevence of the entire awards. Oh, but thank God they remembered to nominate Entourage, a show that hasn't featured a decent episode in three years.
  As TV critic Alan Sepinwal noted, According to Jim got its third nomination this year. According to Jim is officially "better" than The Wire.

Snakes on the Plate!

Went to the Phillies game today with Rusty and Erica. A fun time was had by all and not just because it ended up being a win for the Phillies over the Arizona Diamondbacks.
We covered ourselves in suntan lotion, drank $7 beers and had long conversations about which player had chosen the best song to be played before his at bat. Soon we were talking about which song we would choose were we somehow talented, lucky, and (in Erica's case) man enough to be a professional baseball player. I decided that I would definitely choose a song that was incredibly inappropriate, either for my personality or for the context.
I ended up choosing the combination of R Kelly's "World's Greatest":


And the theme song for the Andy Griffith show:


Eventually Rusty pointed out that the mere fact that we had spent so much effort thinking about this is proof positive that we will never ever be professional athletes.

The most fun part of the day, however, was the fact that we were sitting behind one of the only groups of Arizona fans in the stadium. It was a cute family complete with three very young children, but that didn't stop the Philadelphia fans from giving them their due punishment (although they didn't get it nearly as bad as some Yankees fan who wandered in).
It probably didn't help that the Diamondbackers (I don't care enough to look up what Arizona fans actually call themselves) had brought along this incredibly annoying noisemaker that they shook after every play. It was some official Diamondback merchandise and was shaped like a giant rattlesnake's rattle and made the sound when shook that said snake makes when startled.
It made me wonder: if lots of Arizona fans have those and one day an actual rattlesnake got loose in the stadium, how many people would die before anyone noticed?

Contemplating My Mortality (Yay!)

Is it part of the human condition that once you hit a certain age, no matter how young you actually are, you feel really old? Or is it just me?
The other day we were wandering the bars celebrating Dave's 21st and, as everyone shouted their "happy birthdays", I felt like saying,"Hooray, we're all gonna die soon". Granted I'd had a few at that point, but it is how I feel. I have absolutely no business being 21. I definitely shouldn't be about to graduate from college. However, if that's really how old I am, then who's to say I'm not going to drop off tomorrow? That's how it feels at least.
A lot of this thinking definitely comes from the fact that my body has already started giving up on me. I think I spent 20 years growing up only to skip over my physical peak and head straight into gradual deterioration. My complete lack of muscle mass and receding hairline stare at me every morning forcing me to admit the truth. Sure, I'm not a kid any more, but now I'm a fucking adult.

Tonight I went to a party in my hometown which is always the worst idea if you're having existential crises about your age. First person to talk to me was a girl I went to high school with.
"Hi, Jon," she said.
"Oh, hey, Katie," I replied.
She looked at me for a second. Then she took a sip of her beer and corrected me. "Katie's my older sister."

God, I'm old.

You Can Plug for Your Friends, They Can Plug for You, But You Can't Plug Your Friends

Hey, a bunch of my friends have done cool things on the interweb recently. Let's check in!

1. Good Works Tour - My friend Zach (you may know him from all the posts I wrote about how ridiculously talented Zach is) is going on a road trip with some friends. Cool enough but they decided to go one step cooler. In their words:

Three childhood friends, James Introcaso, Zach Wiseley and Tim Urian, are setting out to make a documentary – a documentary about people who help people. Fresh out of college, these three idealistic young men want to see who volunteers in America and why, while getting a chance to experience what our country is like first hand. From Habitat for Humanity to intercity soup kitchens, they will interview the dedicated souls who donate their time to help in their communities, and will provide vignettes of extraordinary unsung heroes. However, they don’t want to just observe. At every site they visit, they will get their hands dirty volunteering, as well as actively pursuing random acts of kindness while on the road.

Right on. The site I linked to above is their homepage which is mostly for donations. All video clips and updates can be found at their blog here.

2. Getting Super - This has been in my Blog Roll forever but I don't think I've ever officially mentioned it, so here goes. A bunch of my friends created this site as an exercise blog. However, since exercising is inherently boring, they spiced it up by making it a superhero themed challenge. Each month they will try to fix their college-addled bodies through exercises focussed around a certain superhero. The first month's hero was Captain America and the month's winner on the blog was Matt (who goes by Captain Dangerous). If you head over there now you can see my cameo as I help Matt reenact Cap's first cover.

Why'd they choose me? Because I was the only one willing to put on a Hitler moustache, of course.

3. Dave got himself a plum job over at humor site Heavy.com editing together videos of a humorous variety. For his first job, his boss had two words for him: Chuck Norris. In return, Dave gave him the following video. Now I'm giving it to you and in return, you can pass it to your friends and you can vote 5 Stars like 3000 times.

So, that's some fun stuff. Click away and make my friends (and by default, me) very happy!

War at its Absolute Funnest!

My friends and I are mega cool.

A couple weeks ago, Greg decided he wanted to play laser tag. You know, laser tag, that thing that ruled for like three birthday parties in elementary school? Yeah, laser tag.
So, he went to Toys R Us and picked up a $50 pack of two guns. He then other people to do the same.

I like stupid fun, so last week Greg, Jeff, Emma, Sam, and myself went laser tagging as a trial run. Even with just four people playing at a time, it was more awesome than I could have ever imagined. So, yesterday (the Fourth of July no less) we went all out. The group was me, Greg, Dave, Beth, Matt, Jeff, Emma, Amanda, Brent, and Megan and we went all out. Greg's roommate Dave is in the military and he gave Greg all his old stuff when they became outdated, so we were all decked out in hard core camo when we arrived on Douglass Campus to start rocking out. It was ultra-bad ass. I would say it was kind of like this:



It was so much fun that I bought Greg's extra gun from him. I mean, look how awesome it is:































I mean, sure that sight on the top is completely unusable and only makes things blurry, but that's not the point. The point is that it's there and that it looks amazing. Hell, this thing doesn't just have one unusable sight. It has three!

There are a few especially awesome moments that I want to share (not including the parts where Greg, Matt, and my team won like every match we were in):

1. The time during the first excursion where I thought I saw Greg and Sam only to discover it was a nice couple out on a date (we were playing by Passion Puddle, the lake on Douglass). I quickly stopped shooting and snuck away before they saw me. I could only imagine how they would react if they had. Picture it: you're chilling on a bench outside at night and suddenly you see a dark figure crawling towards you on the ground aiming a gun at you. That would have been bad. The entire time our worst fear was that the cops would come, see us, and just open fire.
2. The time the cops did come. Yes, at the end of our game yesterday night, a cop car pulled up and shined his light on us, revealing a group of camo wearing idiots with guns looking like so much Al Queda training camp. We quickly showed him that our "guns" were plastic and neon colors. "Ah, laser tag. Is that what we're playing tonight?" is what his mouth said. His eyes said, "Fuck you all. Why am I driving around on the Fourth of July dealing with douche bags playing laser tag when I should be drunk?"
3. However, my favorite part of it all came during our trial game when I found myself lying in the mud, covered in sweat, wearing camoflage pants, and shooting invisible lasers like my life depended on it. It was at this moment that a realization struck me: I am a 21 year old grown man lying in the mud, covered in sweat, wearing camoflage pants, and shooting invisible lasers like my life depended on it.

My friends and I are mega cool.

America 20XX Preview on NYTheatre.com

Just what the title says. The website, dedicated to all things, well, involving theater in New York, has posted previews of all the shows from this year's Fringe Festival including our very own America 20XX!
Check it out here and remember, you know the site is prestigious because they spell it "theatre".*

And now, because we have the word "America" in the title, here are some one-day-late Fourth of July multimedia goodies:







* In my first week of working at McCarter, I asked if there was a rule for when they use "theater" and "theatre" since they had literature using both. I was told that the general McCarter rule involved using the "re" whenever dealing with a proper noun like the name of a specific building. So, in theory, I could have a sentence saying, "I went to the Jon Bershad Theatre and performed some theater."
Fascinating? I thought so.

"Love" is a Bit Strong, But I Definitely "Like Like" Mandy Lane

So I watched All the Boys Love Mandy Lane just now. Having said that, half of the people reading this are wondering "How the hell'd you see it?!" while the other half are wondering "What the hell is All the Boys Love Mandy Lane". Both are appropriate answers.

First off, Happy Fourth of July! Now back to the movie.

The backstory is this: back in the glory days of 2006, this little indie horror movie popped up at film festivals and started getting a bunch of good reviews and all of us horror fans with internet connections were very excited. The Weinstein's picked it up and were gonna release it more than a year ago, going as far as creating that truly awful poster above and this truly awesome trailer below.




However, something happened and the movie never got released. The Weinstein Company eventually sold it to a smaller company who, as of yet, still haven't released it in America.
So, how did I see it? Note that I just said "America". The movie's been out forever in Germany which means the internet is littered with torrents of itof both mediocre and horrible qualities.

That's right. I stole the bitch.

I did. I downloaded it illegally and now I'm admitting it online. I'm very, very sorry. How ever am I going to make amends? How about this: Everyone go see the director, Jonathan Levine's new movie The Wackness which is supposed to be very good and just opened this weekend in limited release. There. We even? Ok, moving on.

So, having seen Mandy Lane, is it worth the hype? Well, yes, but not just for the reasons I expected. The movie is absolutely beautifully shot. It basically looks like an Ambercrombie and Fitch commercial if, after all the gorgeous models stopped reclining in a field, someone came in and killed them all. And the acting is really good too. And the best part is, the script gave me a vision of high school and high school kids that I could really believe.

And the downside? Well, the movie really isn't that scary. There are tense scenes (a water moccasin is scarier than 30 dudes with knives put together) but I was never really much fear while watching it. And the reason for that is, the movie really isn't a slasher flick. It's set up like one and the advertising sold it like one (that creepy, deep voiced "I love you" in the trailer is just plain not in the movie), but in the last few minutes of the movie, it reveals itself to be something very different and much more disturbing and I believe the ending is the real reason the movie hasn't been released (even though Wikipedia says it was because of poor box office grosses for other Weinstein released horror movies).

The film begins as a loving ode to 80s horror movies and lead actress Amber Heard's body and ends as something that's gonna have problems flying in America. When the killer said he was leaving a diary at the scene of the crime for the "copycats" I said to myself, "There's your release problems right there". Scream may have pulled that shit off, but Scream was made before "killing all the cool kids" became just the trendiest thing in American schools.

So, yeah, see All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (it's supposedly finally coming out in the US in the next couple of months) because it really is a good movie and because Amber Heard is probably gonna be mega famous in the coming years because (judging by this movie) she's quite talented and more importantly because of, uh, this:


Anyway, I have another thought on the ending but it's spoilerific, so I'll put it after this great Bobby Vinton song they use in the movie.




Spoiler Section:
At the end of the movie, it's revealed that the killer isn't offing the kids because of competition for Mandy, he's actually in cahoots with her. The two of them are cooperating to kill off these popular kids and have some suicide pact. Once this happened, I started to think it was kind of tasteless. Then I stopped myself.
Why did I think it was more tasteless to have two people killing a bunch of kids with a suicide pact than just one crazy guy killing off kids?
It was totally hypocritical of me but it was my gut reaction and I'm sure it would have been the reaction a lot of people would have had had this been released stateside.

My July Playlist

Hey, it's a new month. Look at that. Stupid quickly advancing time. Now I'm stuck contemplating my mortality. Eh...I guess I'll put up a new playlist instead.



Some Highlights

• There are a bunch of great songs here. The freshness of the list has a lot to do with that great A.V. Club list I linked to a while back of the best songs of the year (so far).
• Track 13 is off Sigur Rós' (great) new album. Although everyone's written about how it's all a departure for the band, here's a nine minute track that sounds like their classic stuff from the slow build to the magical climax.
• I did the fun "local band" thing again and added a track from another Rutgers band. This time the band is the Seal Club who, if you've been paying attention, you'll recognise as the guys who made up most of the house band for Zipperface. It's a great song and you can find it at track 7.
• "Smell yo dick"? Hilarious.

Enjoy it everyone. I've gotta run because I'm doing some more Sorrow Hill filming tonight. Expect a write up on that...eventually.

ps. In case anyone hasn't noticed, you can listen to all of the old Playlists of the Month by clicking the "Playlists" link in the label column to the right of this page.

America 20XX Has a Venue and a Date (and no, I'm not referring to "America" or "20XX")

Exciting news for all you cool people getting ready to see me (and probably a few other people you know) in Cyriaque Lamar's original comedy play America 20XX: FringeNYC has given us our venue and our show dates!
You can read all about it here, at the play's totally rocking official site. The short story is that we will be performing at The Players Theatre located in Greenwich Village right by Washington Square Park. Take it away, Google Maps!


View Larger Map

We'll be performing in a 180 seat theater in Greenwich Village. That's a bit of a step up from Scott Hall. Check out this picture:


Hells yeah!
Like I said, we also received showdates but I shouldn't post them until the official announcement on July 5th as they are subject to change. I hope they don't as their pretty plum times (one late night weekend show in perticular).

For those of you who missed my last post on the subject, America 20XX is a comedic post-apocalyptic one-act about the world's last superheroes, The Power Patriots. It's written and directed by CAP alum and current Cracked writer, Cyriaque Lamar and stars many current and former members of Wacky Hijinks, the sketch comedy group I'm in. It also is awesome.

Now that we have all the specifics worked out, I need to start learning these fucking lines. Cyriaque's the best director in that he keeps bringing liquor to rehearsals. And we're the worst cast in that we keep drinking it.

Keep checking america20xx.com for all news regarding the play! And, y'know, this blog.

"I Also Enjoy Making Pee-Pee in Your Coke!"

Today's Curtis:
Uh...