Jon's Ego (in print form!)

Meet the New Year, Same as the Old Year or So Many Wacky Funeral

2010-01-02T01:42:00.004-05:00

Hey, I'm coming out of blog retirement to share the awesomest thing ever!

Well, it's 2010 now. Doesn't the last decade already seem so far away? To some people it does. On a totally unrelated note, here's the new trailer for the awesome new Chris Rock movie! Watch and enjoy! It's directed by Neil Labute! Yeah, I loved The Shape of Things too!

Oh man, wasn't that absolutely hilarious? However, it seems weirdly familiar to me. Wait...I know. It's because I saw the movie two and a half years ago when Frank Oz directed it. That's right, they remade a movie from 2007. Now watch this trailer and enjoy all the same scenes only much Britishier (quieter).

Whoo! So much fun! And it totally isn't depressing that one of the best actors around has to play the same demeaning role twice because there are no good parts for short people!
Alright, so that was weird enough but now prepare to have your mind blown. Did you know that the Christ Rock version isn't the first time someone's remade Yoda's only recently released on DVD masterpiece?
I now present to you...the Bollywood version.

Sure it's the same exact scenes in a different language (man, those Bollywood actors know how to react to gay pictures, right?) but this one has hot girls in musical numbers! For the win!

So, enjoy 2010, everyone. Judging by these trailers, it'll be just like every other year. And remember, join the fun-eral.

Hey, Remember that Blog that Used to Be Here? AKA A New Article from the Rutgers Review

2009-04-11T20:42:00.003-04:00

People keep asking me to continue my Blog which I quit last fall when I got busy with all that Colbert Report interning nonsense. The weirdest thing is, for all the people who have asked me to continue it (an amount nearing the double digits), I'm not sure any of them were actual readers back when I wrote in here (an amount nearing the zero digits). Oh well, maybe I will get back to doing this thing regularly. Nothing's impossible.

In the mean time, please enjoy this article I wrote for the Rutgers Review (which I am now the Humor Editor for).
Before I post it, here's a little backstory. About a month ago, The Medium, the satire magazine at Rutgers, wrote an article attacking our little alternative rag. Never being one to back down from a fight, our fearless Editor-in-Chief, Dave, asked me to write a response. The following is said response and was printed in our April issue:

A couple of weeks ago, Rutgers’ satirical mainstay The Medium wrote a blistering critique of our little rag in an article entitled “The Rutgers Review Will Make Your Eyes Bleed” written by one of their top writers, Holden Kox. For those of you who missed it, it begins with the lines “Am I the only one who realizes how much of an utter piece of shit the rutgers review [sic] is? I can’t even come close to describing how much fuckin [sic] dick this shit sucks…” and continues for nine brilliantly worded sentences of harsh (but fair) denigration.
What makes the article so funny (besides the obvious wit and ingenious turns of phrase) is the fact that I, a humble writer for the Rutgers Review, was in the room as it was being written. For you see, dear reader, I spent an entire week amongst these stalwarts of satire, these wizards of wit, these visionaries of the written voice. This is my story. This is…

Medium Like Me
By Jon Borshadt

It all started about a month ago when we, as an editorial staff, realized that we had gradually fallen behind the cultural milieu set by our peers at other publications on campus. Our quality was slipping while that of our rivals was marching ever upward. To paraphrase the esteemed Mr. Kox, our shit was very much beginning to suck dick.
We were most envious of the brilliance that was coming out of The Medium. Week in and week out they produced cutting edge material that we could only dream about. We felt like they were using the words that were on the tips of our tongues before we could even taste them. Once we flipped through the February 11th issue and caught sight of the amazing article, “Salmonella’s True Victim: Ball-Licking Dogs”, we knew something must be done.
The plan was simple: one of our writers would infiltrate the staff room of The Medium for a week and learn their secrets. It took an entire meeting to choose which of us would be the lucky one. Fortunately for me, I hadn’t showered in a few days so it was decided that I would fit in the best.
I was more excited than I had ever been in my entire life.
The day of my first meeting, I spent hours choosing what to wear. I had to look like I was one of them, but not like I was trying too hard. My choices were down to a shirt featuring a picture of Peter Griffin from Family Guy dressed like Han Solo and another one sporting a choice quote from the latest Dane Cook album. In the end, I just went with a dark red T-shirt with black text asking, simply, “Who farted?” It must have been the right choice because they accepted me into their group almost immediately.
Although their staff occupies the same meeting room as ours, it felt transformed by their presence. The keyboards seemed to sparkle with the glitter of infinite possibilities and the air was filled with the intoxicating mist of their jovial merriment. Plus, one dude had brought his Wii over so everyone could play “Brawl”.
They seemed thrilled by my presence. One editor remarked that I was their first new writer in over four months. This surprised me. With material so fresh and different in every issue, you’d think that they had a constant rotation of varied contributors vying for print space. Knowing that it was the same people every week just heightened my respect for the group.
After the initiation ceremony was over and I had washed the blood and orange Cheeto dust from my hands, we were ready to begin work on the latest issue. Or so I thought. You see, I quickly discovered that The Medium doesn’t write their paper like most normal publications. While they do meet routinely during the week to hang out and watch BSG, they don’t get around to the actual writing process until mere hours before the papers are sent to the printer.
How foolish I felt at that moment. Here I was, having already spent two whole days preparing for this article, and they were churning out masterworks like Jeremy Sam’s piece “WTF Poker? On TV? This Sucks!” in under five minutes. I was a sap in the presence of geniuses.
Finally the day came for us to actually begin work on what was to be the February 25th edition of the paper. I had a few article ideas in my notebook but I was too intimidated to share them with the staff. What if my meager suggestions like “Make the paper look more like a newspaper since it’s supposed to be a parody of newspapers” were deemed insufficient or “gay” by the veterans? I chose to keep my mouth shut.
For a while, everyone sat around in silence, until someone blurted out an article headline. His idea, “Shut Up, Lesbian Dyke in My Econ Class!” was classic Medium. Everyone had a good laugh although, in the end, the idea-man couldn’t come up with anything other than the title and the article was scrapped.
I realized quickly that I needed to say something if I wanted to be truly accepted by my peers. So I took a deep breath, raised my hand, and spoke.
“Isn’t the phrase ‘lesbian dyke’ redundant?”
Suddenly the room went silent. I could feel all the eyes in the room on me. All six of them. Was my mistake irreparable? Had I been found out already?
Luckily, the gods must have been with me that day because one of the writers stole the attention from my faux pas with an idea for an “Arts” section drawing. The image (which can be seen in the finished issue, directly facing the Rutgers Review critique) was to feature Phil and Lil, the adorable twins from the children’s series, Rugrats, engaging in incestuous sex while their friend Chuckie watches.
The mere premise stopped me cold. It was so wrong yet, in its very wrongness, so right. The brilliant cultural reference. The character expectations turned on their head. Everything about it was comedy at its very best.
After the group had congratulated the artist, who goes by Russian Mail Order Bride (in this article, I will respect the anonymity he uses for his work by referring to him only by his pen name), the conversation turned to whether or not Lil should be drawn with pubic hair. The worry was that, without it, the character might look too young which would go against the large breasts she was to have. In the end, however, the hair remained off the final drawing as none of the staff had ever seen a real woman’s vagina up close and could therefore not authentically capture the look.
After the drawing was done, I thought about pointing out that the artist had placed the word bubbles out of order (the one to be read first was on the right of the drawing) so that only a reader versed in Hebrew would get the joke. However, I didn’t want a repeat of the “lesbian dyke” debacle and kept silent.
Once the rest of the articles were written, the material still fell way short of the space requirements. I began to panic but the rest of the staff knew exactly what they were doing. They jumped on their computer and began to read the Medium e-mail account so as to fill the last quarter (two of the usual eight pages) of the issue with another great “reader shout out” section.
A lesser man would criticize the paper for doing this, citing the section as “lazy” or “unreadable”, but I know better. There’s a lot of hard work that goes into putting together the “Personals” part of each issue. For instance, one e-mailed comment used the word “nigger” three times, which made a few members of the staff uncomfortable. They all looked to the editor-in-chief for guidance, and he sat in silence, stroking his beard and sipping his Red Bull for a solid minute before imparting his decree.
“Edit it so that they only say ‘nigger’…twice,” he said. Everyone nodded solemnly at his sage advice.
After the reader comments were added in and the rest of the blank space was filled with multiple notes yelling at people to come to writer’s meetings, the entire work was handed to the design team. The design team consisted of a guy in a diaper named Randy who, up until this point, had been sitting in the corner, furiously masturbating.
Randy was like a master at a loom. With a few quick keystrokes on the computer, he had woven all of our crazy ideas into a beautiful tapestry, like the ones you see every Wednesday in your student centers.
You can’t imagine the pride I felt at that moment and throughout the rest of the week. I had contributed to something beautiful. Those wonderful creatures on The Medium editorial staff had accepted me as one of their own and allowed me to partake in a magical ritual that few people will ever be able to witness. And I will never forget my experience and the things I learned there.
However, the joy I felt while looking at those glorious stacks of papers, was matched by an equally great sense of sadness. For I knew that once that issue was printed, I would have to leave behind my new friends and also my new pen name, Holden Penis. I would have to return to the dank and depressing world of the Rutgers Review, complete with its rules and regulations and spell check.
I was still depressed a week later, when I sat down in class and flipped open The Medium’s next issue. I couldn’t help but smile. There, in the “Arts” section, Russian Mail Order Bride had completed another masterpiece. This one featured Scooby Doo and Shaggy having bestial sex while their friend Velma watched. Those guys still knew how to bring the comedy!
A few minutes later, as my professor droned on, I began to absentmindedly doodle in my notebook. Without even realizing it, I drew a drawing of Doug Funnie getting a blow job from his love interest, Patti Mayonnaise. The girl sitting next to me in class looked over and saw it.
“Eww!” she shrieked. “That’s disgusting!”
“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s funny.”
It’s funny.

Fun article, huh?
A lot of people seemed to like it. The staff of The Medium liked it so much they wrote an article in their 4/8 issue congratulating "Jon Borshadt" in an article about a play that the real me was in. To be honest, it's one of the funnier things they've written in years. Of course, only about three people will get the joke. One of them is me.
Their article reads as follows:

The Medium would like to congratulate it’s own Jon Borshadt, aka “Holden Penis,” on the recent DVD release of “Dog Sees God,” where hegave enthralling performance in both of the production’s male on male scenes. “It’s really just a passion I have, you know,” he remarked during an exclusive interview. “I don’t even care about the critical acclaim, or how much it turns guys on when I charmingly smile while getting facefucked by a nine inch long black dick. Social norms? So what. I’m far too indie for those kind of riff-raff generalizations. Just because I have sex with men doesn’t make me gay, right?” He plans to advance his career in the industry after he graduates and is slated to be included in the cumshot scene of the $10,000 upcoming production of “Cock-hungry Cowboys III: No Cunt for Old Men.”

They even went as far as following through on my Doug Funnie idea. You can see the full issue (including their charming Doug drawing) on their website.

Taking a Breather

2008-09-05T12:58:00.003-04:00

What the fuck happened to my blog?
I go to work for two weeks and everything just stops moving. It's almost like I'm the only one doing anything around here.

Anyway, I haven't gotten to sleep in forever and it's starting to take its toll (I have no idea what happened in my class this morning. I think it had something to do with theater though), so now, I'm gonna take my only chance and run with it. And by "run" I mean "lie down motionless for at least three hours".

Sometime this weekend I plan on actually writing some stuff on here (maybe even getting up this month's playlist since the one currently on here is two months old). Until then, enjoy this great clip from the late night Comedy Central show I don't currently work for:

Assimilation Complete

2008-08-24T13:24:00.003-04:00

I haven't posted in a while but I'll make up for it with this: it's a video for the psychedelic band Zombie Zombie that uses stop motion to remake John Carpenter's great The Thing (which I just happened to rewatch two days ago) with GI Joe figures.
As a lover of The Thing, stop motion, and action figures, I can say it's pretty rocking.

Today is Your Last Chance to See America 20XX

2008-08-18T02:57:00.004-04:00

This is it, ladies and gentlemen. There is only one more performance of America 20XX before it vanishes into the ether. If you're not sitting in the Players Theatre today (Monday the 18th) at 6 PM, you'll have missed it, brother.

To entice you further, I can post a link to another review we got which described Greg and my performances as "straight-faced and fantastic". It's for Theater Talks and is by a critic named Ellen Wernecke who went so far as listing our show as her "Biggest Surprise" of the first week of the festival on her Tumblr. She gets extra points because she's a book critic for the The A.V. Club.
Yeah, that's right, people from my favorite site liked our play.
Read her review here.

And, to keep this blog even-handed I'll link to a mediocre review we got as well. They described the performances as "energetic and well-intentioned but lackluster". Thanks.
Enjoy that review here.

Anyway, get the fuck out and see America 20XX!

Only a Few More Chances!

2008-08-14T17:55:00.003-04:00

For all those people out there who have yet to see America 20XX, your chances are running out!

There are only three more performances to see myself and others in Cyriaque's deranged dose of Poli-Sci-Fi (I stole that phrase from the Time Out review...).

The three performances are tonight, tomorrow night (crazy late night show!), and Monday. All the information can be found on the show's website here.

In the mean time, check out this interview Cyriaque did for the official FringeNYC podcast. It's pretty funny and you'll learn a lot about the show. You can listen to it here. Cyriaque comes on around the 23 minute mark.

So get your ass to the city because I'm starring in a Goddamned Off-Broadway show and you need to see it!

New Sorrow Hill Trailer!

2008-08-12T14:33:00.003-04:00

I haven't had a chance to talk about Sorrow Hill, which I wrapped on a week and a half ago because I've been so busy with America 20XX (only three more performances! Go see it! Go see it!). I plan on doing a big write-up of the experience eventually but, until then, I'll just point you to the Grindhouse Pictures website, where Ron has posted a brand new trailer!
There's a great shot of me in there but, since I know that that's not getting anyone to click any links, I will also say that there are quite a few shots of our female lead (former Hijinks member, Nicole) in her underwear!

Enjoy!

ps. Holy shit, this is my 100th post on this blog! Yay me!

Two Shows and Two Wildly Different Reviews In...

2008-08-12T13:58:00.003-04:00

Well, as that picture proves, I have starred in an Off-Broadway play that went all the way through. That's right, we have now completed our first weekend of America 20XX and it was some of the most fun I ever had.

Right after I wrote the last post here I took a shower to get ready for opening night and I realized something: I was genuinely terrified about this. I think it all has to do with the fact that this was entirely different than everything I've ever done. We performed this in an actual theater in New York in the middle of Greenwich Village and that meant that the audience wasn't just gonna be our friends this time. No, we were going to be performing for impossible to please NY Hipsters and Bitchy Theater Queers.

And let me tell you, that shit it scary.

But we did it. We performed for paying customers. How crazy is that?

The Reviews

One thing that makes this show different from all the shows I've done in the past is the fact that there are actually people in the audience there to review us. So far we've had four critics come, two of them have posted their reviews and man, are these reviews wild. One is too good to be true and the other is quite possibly the worst review I've ever read for anything. To show you how different they are, I will post two quotes back to back.

From Time Out New York and Talkin' Broadway:

"The beginning of the show made me laugh until I cried"

"America 20XX isn’t inspiring - just embarrassing."

Yep, that's some difference of opinion. Fortunately the good review came from a much more reputable site (Time Out) but unfortunately, the bad review is jut insanely bad. I have no problem linking to it here because the guy clearly just didn't get the show. And I'm not saying there really is anything to get. And I think that's the point. The guy just seems to hate us personally and especially the fact that we're college students (something he brings up multiple times for some reason which is especially weird considering only three out of seven of us are).

Anyway, you should read both reviews because the bad one is hilarious (I personally will be using the phrase "and the posing, prancing, and declaiming that pass for acting" all the time!) and because the good one will hopefully get you in the seats.

Remember, there are only three more shows left before America 20XX is over and I hate you forever!

If that doesn't get you to come, maybe this picture will:

PS. I haven't gotten around to posting my August playlist yet so I might just wait till next month. Sorry.
PPS. Support America 20XX cast members in their other endeavors! Dave's got a new video on Heavy.com. This one lists the Top 10 Gayest Action Movies. His bosses really give him some interesting assignments, don't they?

America 20XX is TODAY!

2008-08-08T01:11:00.006-04:00

The date is finally here, everyone! In just a few short hours America 20XX, the play written and directed by Cyriaque Lamar and starring members of Wacky Hijinks will premiere.

Is it good? Well, we got the primetime 7:30 pm slot on opening night of the 2008 New York Fringe Festival, so it damn well better be good.

The whole thing's really exciting. Not only do we get to be a part of this amazing festival and meet all the cool people involved (and hit up the parties...), we also get to perform in an honest to God Off-Broadway theater! Come tomorrow, I can say without fear or repercussion that I have starred in an Off-Broadway play. That's just bad ass.

We finally got to go to the actual venue last Monday and it really is perfect. It's one of the best venues in the entire festival (out of the 18 involved). It's literally right on the edge of Washington Square Park in this real trendy area so we're sure to get a lot of walk-in audience members. And we may get even more with some of the publicity we've got coming up.

Cyriaque did an interview today which will go on the Fringe Podcast (I'll link to it when it's up) and they told him that some of the Media Passes have already been reserved for our show which is absolutely terrifying. I've never before been reviewed by anyone except my parents.

I've gotta keep my mind off that stuff though or I'll freak myself out. So, instead, I'll think about this awesome sketch. Here it is with the picture it was based on:

The drawing was done by Dan Pillis for the show's program. He's the guy who did the great drawing of the publicity photo which I posted a while back. He made sketches of all us and you can see them at the site or, even better, when you get your program at the door.

So yeah, get the fuck out and see America 20XX at some point over the next couple of weeks. You can buy your tickets online for added ease and if you're extra nice, you might even get to come out for drinks with us afterwards!

Anywho, I'll leave you with this tantalizing teaser: if you come to America 20XX, you'll get all the extreme political science fiction you crave, and you'll even get to find out what scene this song is in:

God, why don't today's music videos have as many nipples as that one?

Deplorable Bathroom Habits

2008-08-07T15:53:00.005-04:00

A while ago at work I got up from my desk to go to the bathroom (which is, of course, the single most promising way to start a story).
When I got down the hall, I saw the door closing in front of me and instantly let out a long sigh of anguish when I realized someone had just entered.
As anyone who has ever worked a day in their life knows, one needs a kind of getaway spot where you can go and just do...nothing. Everyone also knows, I'm sure, that the bathroom is the most obvious example of said oasis.
For me, it's perfect. I can just sit in there for 10 minutes staring blankly at the wall. It's much more relaxing than the other seven hours and 50 minutes of the day which I spend doing the exhausting task of staring blankly at a computer screen. However, all of this is ruined if there's someone else in the room as well. When I'm alone, the bathroom is an idyllic escape consisting of pristine white marble and flowing water. When there's someone else, it's just a room where I have to listen to other people urinate.
This is why I sighed in anguish.
So, I already had some feelings of animosity towards the intruder but this guy just went out of his way to ruin my prescious bathroom paradise.

First off, the guy was in the middle of three stalls. That's unnecessary off the bat.
The other two were empty, dude. I don't want to be right next to you if I don't have to.

Second, he was peeing in the stall. Like just peeing. Like standing up peeing.
Whoa, what's with that, man? The only dudes who pee in the stall are weirdos and guys with freak dicks.

And finally, the biggest dick move of all, this slimy skunk was peeing, standing up, with his legs spread akimbo so that his feet stuck into both of the other stalls. And he was wearing motherfucking flip flops!
Okay, buddy, that's too far. Now, not only was I stuck next to this douchebag, but I had to stare at his dirty fucking toes.

Some of you are probably wondering why I care so much. Some of you are probably wondering why I wrote a whole post about this. And some of you are probably angry that I put the image of a dirty men's toilet in your minds. Well, the thing is, I want to change the world for the better and my hope is that this bathroom misuser, whoever he is (he was new and I didn't know him) will someday read this blog.
So, to the future iteration of that jackass, I say to you this:
FOR SHAME. FOR SHAME.

Poor, Poor Porn Star

2008-08-05T16:42:00.004-04:00

For those of you who don't know, I live in a house with 11 other guys and, I'm sorry to say, it is a veritable den of inequity. I say this because I don't want you gentle readers to be too shocked when I tell you that we once had a house subscription to an online porn site. It's a painful admission but it's one I must make for you to enjoy this e-mail I'm about to post.
You see, we let our subscription lapse and apparently that made Naughty America really sad. They let their sense of betrayal known with this heartfelt message:

Samuel, I know you let your membership lapse recently, and, don't worry there's no hard feelings. But things will get hard if you renew. And I mean hard in a good way.

Audrey Bitoni, who is one of the most beautiful women to ever grace a Naughty America shoot, has just made a riviting scene for I Have A Wife. That's our newest site and features hot young hussies like Audrey attempting to get in the pants of married men (with great success, I might add).

She says she put in an extra special sexy surprise just for you, and was very sad when I told her you let the membership expire.

It wasn't a pretty sight (even though Audrey is very pretty -- and very hot), and she insisted I do whatever it takes to get you to re-up the membership pronto.

So help a brother out and sign up again to watch Audrey's scene. You'll get access to all the hot sites, including I Have A Wife, our new threesome site, 2 Chicks Same Time, and Naughty America Live, which gives fans the chance to ask probing questions
to actresses who are busy probing themselves.

It works out three ways: Audrey will be so happy you've returned, you'll get the joys that come with being a Naughty America member, and I avoid being slapped silly by a heartbroken celebrity.

Oh, that poor girl. We're still not going to resubscribe. Hopefully that doesn't mean that we can expect our in-boxes to soon be filled with sad porn star poetry.

Notes from My Morning Commute

2008-08-01T10:26:00.000-04:00

Drove by the movie theater on the way to work this morning and they were advertising a bunch of screenings on their big LCD screen. One of them was last night's Mummy 3 midnight show.
Man, that must have been the loneliest sceening ever. Seriously, was there anyone out there thinking, "Oh my God! I just can't wait a few more hours! The mummies are Asian in this one!"

Happy Morning!

2008-07-31T10:24:00.004-04:00

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.

Angst In My Pants - Sparks

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

2008-07-30T10:36:00.002-04:00

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!

2008-07-28T11:24:00.005-04:00

This is yesterday's Mary Worth. Read it:

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

Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

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

2008-07-24T22:50:00.005-04:00

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!

2008-07-24T09:23:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-24T04:39:00.005-04:00

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

2008-07-21T17:21:00.004-04:00

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

2008-07-17T12:15:00.004-04:00

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.

Way Down In The Hole - Tom Waits

Snakes on the Plate!

2008-07-13T18:08:00.004-04:00

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":
The Worlds Greatest - R Kelly

And the theme song for the Andy Griffith show:
andy griffith - Theme Songs

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!)

2008-07-13T01:43:00.003-04:00

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.

Mothers Little Helper - The Rolling Stones

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

2008-07-08T14:22:00.006-04:00

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!

2008-07-05T14:38:00.006-04:00

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):

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.
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?"
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

2008-07-05T14:08:00.004-04:00

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:

God Bless The USA - Lee Greenwood

4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) - Bruce Springsteen

* 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

2008-07-04T13:18:00.005-04:00

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.

Sealed With A Kiss - Bobby Vinton

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

2008-07-02T13:22:00.003-04:00

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.

Jons July Playlist

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")

2008-07-01T22:18:00.008-04:00

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!"

2008-07-01T15:06:00.004-04:00

Today's Curtis:
Uh...

I Have Seen the Future and It is Adorable

2008-06-30T00:29:00.004-04:00

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.

Down to Earth - Peter Gabriel

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

2008-06-26T12:00:00.003-04:00

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

I go to Rutgers.
A family friend was a food science major at Rutgers.
I did community service at the soup kitchen.
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

2008-06-24T22:30:00.004-04:00

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!

Inní mér syngur vitleysingur - Sigur Rós

Sorrow Hill Filming Diary #1

2008-06-24T21:03:00.004-04:00

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!

2008-06-22T13:40:00.005-04:00

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:

Waving Flags - 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:

Play Your Part (Pt. 1) - Girl Talk

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

2008-06-16T12:11:00.010-04:00

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:

Zipperface - 01 - Musical Intro - Zipperface
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:

Zipperface - 09 - Terry, Cop #2, Loves Lisa Rider - Zipperface
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:

Zipperface - 20 - Cuban Robot Wars - Zipperface
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:
Zipperface - 25 - Finale Song - Zipperface
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:

Zipperface - 23 - Soundbite - Moral of the Story - Zipperface

God, I love this show.

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

I'd Like to Get My Hanes On

2008-06-16T00:32:00.002-04:00

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!!!

2008-06-14T20:48:00.004-04:00

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!

2008-06-14T13:07:00.002-04:00

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!

2008-06-10T12:56:00.003-04:00

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)

2008-06-10T12:14:00.008-04:00

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

2008-06-09T03:04:00.004-04:00

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:

Jons June Playlist

I don't have time to go into any real specifics about it but I will say that it's a real crazy one this time. It jumps around from street corner doowop to dance floor electronica to honest to goodness Christian rock (don't worry, you probably won't even be able to tell which song it is).
Enjoy!

Even a Lowly Intern Knows This is Moronic

2008-06-06T13:39:00.003-04:00

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

2008-06-05T00:13:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-04T02:13:00.003-04:00

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?

2008-06-04T01:35:00.004-04:00

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'."

2008-06-03T13:28:00.003-04:00

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.

Racing Towards the Finish Line

2008-05-31T20:11:00.003-04:00

I was trying to watch the premiere of the new Venture Brothers season (it's amazing by the way) on Adult Swim's website, and I had to sit through a Navy commercial first. It was kind of like this one:

I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out (YouTube tells me this commercial was posted a year ago), but is it really wise for any armed service to advertise under the slogan "Accelerate Your Life"? Especially in war time?
They might as well just say "Navy: die earlier than most people!"

ps. Go Team Venture!

Sigur Rós Steals Public's Thunder by Pre-Emptively Naming New Single "Gobbledigook" (also nudity!)

2008-05-27T18:57:00.005-04:00

File this one in the "Everyone who cares already knows but I'm writing about it anyway" category.

Anyone who knows me that well knows that I love Sigur Rós. If the concert poster in my room didn't tip you off (maybe you should come up to my bedroom more often, wink wink), then my three SR t-shirts should have done the trick. So I was thrilled when I got a mailing list e-mail from them today announcing that their new album will be available on June 23rd and that their first single from it and the accompanying video were now on their website.

I had known the album was coming up but I was really excited about the video. Every Sigur Rós video so far (including the documentary) has been absolutely amazing. The clip for Glosoli is one of my favorite videos of all time. Here it is:

Anyway, the new track is fantastic but the video is really intriguing. While the band has been releasing pictures of naked people in trees for a couple weeks now, I was still surprised by the video which features non-stop full frontal nudity as a bunch of people dance around a forest naked as if the cast of a production of Hair did a musical version of Lord of the Flies.

It's pretty crazy and I give them points for upping my boobie and giney count for the day (which was currently at zero so don't worry, Sam). However, I do take umbridge with the one dude who is skinny and has long hair like a chick. It's like watching the end of The Crying Game whenever he turns around.

Anywho, check out the video and song here. I love this band.

"Gobbledigook" - Sigur Ros

"Babies Don't Need a Vacation but I Still See Them at the Beach"

2008-05-27T01:33:00.004-04:00

I was watching a TV show today and it had a baby in it and I started wondering: whose job is it to make the babies cry when filming movies? Because, y'know, babies don't read scripts.

Do you think they use poking sticks or something?

The Last Man on Earth - HunchBack

"I Have Seen the Future and It Does Not Work"

2008-05-25T13:56:00.003-04:00

So this is the movie I saw last night:

It features Sean Connery in a red diaper saving a civilization by raping and murdering its inhabitants and has an entire sequence where women in bandannas (including Charlotte Rampling) do experiments to find out what gives him a boner.

It opens with a guy with a drawn on goatee talking about magic. It then segues to a giant, floating rock head who says this, "The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life, and poisons the earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the gun shoots death, and purifies the earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth and kill!"

And the craziest part: it was actually kind of good.

Zardoz is pleased.

The Fantastic Career of Shia LaBeouf

2008-05-22T19:25:00.010-04:00

So I went to see the new Indiana Jones last night at midnight. I mean, of course I did. Does anyone remember my Halloween costume a couple of years ago?

Anywho, the movie was a lot of fun. My basic view was that it was a "great" movie downgraded to a "very good" movie because of one element. Call me an Indy purist, but the maguffin is supposed to be religious in an Indiana Jones movie, not...what it was. The stuff at the end just didn't fit the series and frankly was disappointing.
Other than those 10 minutes in the climax however, I had an absolute time. Then again, take my opinion with a grain of salt. I wore a damn official Indiana Jones fedora to the screening. I'm a fan.

After the movie we all started discussing the filmography of Shia LaBeouf and soon enough one thing became clear: Shia is making his career decisions based on the fantasies of a 14 year old boy circa 1986.
So, with that in mind, I have now begun work on the next Shia LeBeouf vehicle entitled Shia's Excellent Adventure. The movie opens on Shia hooking up with his incredibly hot girlfriend when suddenly Doc Brown, Luke Skywalker, and Chunk fly down in the Delorean and tell him he's the chosen one who has to come to the future to save John Connor's rec center from being closed by evil robotic real estate developers and Freddy Kreuger. It ends with a climactic break dance sequence/laser shoot-out. And, since it takes place in a fantasy, everyone can pronounce the name "LeBeouf".

It's gonna be mega awesome.

P.S. Here's the full size version of the poster.
P.S. If anyone wants to write, draw, or photoshop some more scenes from this masterpiece, go ahead and send them bitches in.

Indiana Jones Theme - John Williams

Sorrow in Atlantic City (and on the way there)

2008-05-17T22:42:00.006-04:00

Today was the official table read for Sorrow Hill, the horror movie I got a supporting role in (as an insane asylum patient who threatens to rape not one, but two of the female leads!). It was a whole lot of fun since everyone involved is great, I'm a horror junkie, and, while I don't have that many lines, all of them are fucking awesome! There's just something so much fun about put on a "crazy" voice and saying things like "You're the one that killed mama!" and "Is she gonna be the new breeder?"

God, I can't wait to start this movie.

There were a couple of problems however. First off, I got the third degree for cutting my hair. The script called specifically for my character to have "long, ratty hair" and that was something I completely forgot about when I shaved it all off. For some perspective, this is what I looked like at my audition:

And here's what I look like now:

Oops.
Fortunately the director, Ron, got over his intitial displeasure fairly quickly and we began discussing alternative plans (guess who's probably going wig shopping!)

Anyway, the other problem I had was during my treks to and from the read. It was held at the filming location which, if you've been reading this blog, you'll remember being the extremely creepy abandoned half of the Atlantic City Race Track. This is about an hour and 45 minute drive from my house in Hopewell and the best part is I get to drive through Main Street Hammonton!

Hammonton is some small town right by the entrance to the Expressway I needed and every year they hold this little awesome thing called "Cruisin' Main Street"! Now what this is is a day where the whole town pretends that they're the set of American Grafitti 2 and everyone with an old fashioned car drives up and down this mile long stretch called Main Street. Sound fun? Well, the real fun is had by the people who don't have old fashioned cars. They get to sit there and watch the people drive up and down this mile long stretch called Main Street. Whoopee!
To give you an idea, here are some super cool pictures from the Hammonton Cruisin' Classics Auto Club website of the 2006 celebration:

Anyway, this awesome, awesome event was being held today and when I was on my way to the table read (and running late of course) I got stuck for 10 minutes driving that one mile stretch because people were setting up. Then, on my way home, I stupidly drove back there and ended up right in the middle of things.
Here's how it went down: I was driving along, enjoying the new Frightened Rabbit CD, when, all of a sudden, I looked around and noticed that all the cars around me had slowed down. Not only had they slowed down, but they were all at least five decades old. That was weird enough, but when I looked outside, I saw that there were people lining the streets, staring at me. And some of them were wearing poodle skirts.
Man, I hope my 2001 Honda Accord really impressed them.
It's too bad I wasn't a few hours earlier, because the Hammonton News informs me that I missed a Hula Hoop contest and a "Dancexplosion performance," whatever the fuck that is.

And y'know, here I thought that sitting in a circle and threatening to cut a girl's tongue out in a southern accent would be the weirdest part of my day.

Anywho, as we break in the swing of the things with the Sorrow Hill shooting, I'll keep y'all informed of how it's going via this blog thing. Until then, enjoy this little nugget that Ron passed on to me today. The pair of eyes in the banner at the top of his Grindhouse Pictures site are actually mine from a still photograph we took during the trailer shoot.
How about that?

Senior Citizen

2008-05-16T12:26:00.016-04:00

So the school year ended. I am now a senior in college. I am forced to confront the fact that the utter terror that is the real world is a very concrete and nearby future. And I don't even get a prom to soften the blow this time!

However, to take my mind off that, both theater groups I'm involved with at Rutgers had their annual awards ceremonies!

For those of you that don't know, the Cappies (College Avenue Players) and the Cabaret Ball (Cabaret Theatre) are the annual back-pat-a-thon/circle-jerks that we in the theater community throw to help celebrate how awesome we are by giving out awards. And by drinking and wearing goofy costumes.

And now a run down (with pictures!):

The Cappies

Last year's CAP awards ceremony was kind of lame. The theme sucked ("Mythological creatures"? What the fuck?) and we were stuck in the tiny basement of Tumultis on George Street. This year, however was much better. We were at the local elk's lodge and the theme was "Classy 80s Coke and Whore Party" which was a shit-load more fun. Plus I was 21 this time!

In the end, Wacky Hijinks won Best Show which was pretty damn exciting. It would have been even more exciting had 7/8 of the cast all been on the voting committee. But whatever, we won! Whoo!

The Cast of Hijinks (minus Dave)

Next came the after party which was at Jamie and Holly's house and was a Rubics Cube Party. For those of you that don't know, a RCP is when everyone comes wearing all different colors and keep trading until they are wearing only one. I ended up completing seven damn colors (all of a rubics cube plus black) and I only ruined two girls' shirts in the process.

Halfway through, someone asked me why I was getting so into the game. I told them it was because I had a girlfriend now so there really wasn't anything else to do at a party.

By the end of the night, things devolved into a pantsless dance party both inside and out. This may have been based on my suggestion and campaigning. At least that's what people tell me. I don't remember.

All in all, a fun night.

The Cabaret Ball

My freshmen year, the Cabaret Ball was absolutely amazing. Then last year, it sucked. I blame that mostly on the fact that the theme was "Dress as a drink". What on earth does that mean? I ended up throwing bunny ears on and carrying a hammer. I was a Harvey Wallbanger.

This year the theme was a little bit more interesting. It was "Guilty Pleasures". It took me forever to come up with something and then finally I had the perfect costume. I went as the movie Love Actually. See:

Basically, I didn't know how to dress up as lesbian porn.
Ha! You think that's gross, try this:

Anyway, my costume was simple and also a big hit with the ladies. I was making hearts melt left and right with my actual love. Here are the pictures:

One with Sam
One with Rachel
One with Maddie
One with Jade

One with Ali

And one with...uh...Bassem
In the end, Hair won Best Show which was pretty damn exciting. It would have been even more exciting had we not had the biggest cast and therefore the biggest voting block. But whatever, we won! Whoo!
Then the after party where, I don't know, we all drank more.

Wrap-Up

Anywho, junior year was a really great year for me. I became much closer with a really great group of people and we worked hard and created some great stuff. And now I have a cute girl whose butt I can grab at any time without getting in trouble. Much love, Sam!

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't want to leave college. Oh God, I don't want to leave college.

Random Comic Fun!

2008-05-16T02:04:00.008-04:00

Like many fans of the mediocrity museum that is the newspaper comics page, I was very confused to see a Vampire Weekend reference in today's "Sally Forth".

You see, I had always imagined that SF was drawn by some woman in her forties and I really didn't expect the characters to start mentioning popular indie rock bands.

I got even more confused when I headed over to the A.V. Club and was informed that "Sally Forth" had previously made a reference to ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of the Dead.

A bit of investigating led me to the blog of SF writer Francesco Marciulano and a quick perusal of it leads me to believe that he's a much hipper guy than I would have ever believed from actually reading "Sally Forth".

Anyway, the real reason I'm writing this is to post this pretty cool video he made for his other strip Medium Large.

Back Home Again

2008-05-16T01:18:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm back at the old homestead for a bit. So, to celebrate, here's a clip from some trashy show profiling a murder that happened less than a mile from my house!

Ah, the fun. My favorite part is how they made my town sound like some Desperate Housewives bullshit. "Hopewell; a town full of hope and, well, lots of money." Jesus Christ. I guess they can't bother with good writers on a network that changed its name from Court TV to TruTV so they could get away with airing nothing but reality shows.
They do realize that the rich areas of Hopewell are only one part, right? For instance, I was in a local bar this evening called Hillbilly Hall. I really don't think the average patrons of said bar are driving home in S Classes.

Anywho, I was going through my blog posts the other day and I noticed that I haven't posted a song to download recently, so here's a little overdue treat.

Song I'm Currently Obsessed With: Frightened Rabbit - Keep Yourself Warm

And here's another song too. This one is in this month's playlist and Holly's been begging me to get her an mp3 so here we go: Calvin Harris - Colours

"I Am the Wackiest of the Hijink."

2008-05-12T15:20:00.013-04:00

"Live from Scott Hall, it's Wacky Hijinks...night!"

Thus began Wacky Hijinks 2008, some of the most fun I've ever had in college theater.

Well, ok, that's not exactly how it began. The show actually begins with 10 seconds of Andy drinking coffee followed by a sketch about Bear Fights, a secret organization of people who go out into the wilderness to regain their primal instincts (and fight bears), but this video was, I suppose, the official opening. It was edited by Adam and was one of the first signs I had that this show would be pretty darn good.

While I contributed a sketch freelance-style to Wacky Hijinks 2006, last year's show was my first as an official member of CAP's exclusive 8-member sketch troupe. It was a tumultous year with a lot of people butting heads but we came together in the end and ended up with an amazing show (those YouTube videos really don't do it justice).

When it came time to start working on this year's show, I was really worried about failing to live up to Hijinks 2007. We had lost our most senior member (Mena) and most prolific writer (Adam N.) and even our most aesthetically pleasing members (Mike and Nicole), yet people kept telling us that they were more excited for this year's show than they had been in a while. A voice in the back of my mind kept telling me we were gonna blow it. However, I told that voice to shut up and got ready to work.

Then the writer's block hit.

For almost a month, right in the prime writing season, I was incapable of coming up with anything funny. Well, that's not exactly accurate. It was more like I was incapable of finding anything funny. Any idea I came up with I would instantly shoot down. Any idea anyone else came up with I would shoot down. Even ideas I had written down and loved two weeks earlier I now hated. It was as if I had lost my entire sense of humor.

I remember the peak of it, where I was at this writing meeting with Zach, Greg, and Adam and I was just acting like a black hole of comedy, absolutely ripping apart anyone's material including my own. The worst part was that it was Adam's first real writing meeting and I was sure that, because of me, he would quit within the week.

Finally this period ended and I was able to start churning out sketches again and enjoy other people's. And enjoy them I did! We quickly amassed some of my favorite scenes and bits I've ever been involved in. I was sure the show would be great. And I remained sure until tech week where I again developed the same sense of dread that I gotten before every show this year (especially the other one I co-wrote, Zipperface!!?!).

And, just like Zipperface!!?! before it, all my fears turned out to be completely unfounded. The audiences loved the show and it was an absolutely amazing time. But even better than that, I really got close to the people involved. We hung out every day for the past couple of months at rehearsal and then spent hours together every night up in my attic. When we had problems during tech, we never fought or argued. Everything was nice and smooth and I have to say it was one of the best creative experiences I've ever had. It was the pinnacle of this mounting feeling I've had all year that I've surrounded myself with people who are really talented and who really make each other better through proximity.

This is something that will be put to the test soon enough when we try to start our own website. But, more on that when the time comes...

Anyway, back to Hijinks. Here are some more pictures of the show, most of which were taken by Darya on closing night. Once video becomes available, I'll post that here as well.

Cooking More Than Just the Food

2008-05-12T14:55:00.003-04:00

Last night I went to the local Houlihan's with my family for Mother's Day.

I've never been to a Houlihan's before, although I've gone to the same restaurant under its other names of Fridays, Chili's, and Applebees. While my food was ok (my steak was a bit burnt) I have a few complaints about my experience.

First, the place was pitch black inside. This is done at all restaurants so you can't get a good look at the food, but it was especially bad here. I half expected are waitress to be an aging Hollywood actress trying to look sexy the way that place was lit.

Secondly, they gave us this little survey sheet to write about our experience. That's nice enough, but the choices for each category ("Food Quality and Presentation", "Service and Hospitality", etc.) were simply "Good", "Very Good", "Excellent", and "Other".

Now, I haven't taken a Statistics class since high school, but something tells me that those choices are going to kinda skew your results. Just a bit.

I Oughta be in Pictures

2008-05-09T17:11:00.005-04:00

I still haven't gotten to my Hijinks post (it's gonna take me forever to go through all the pictures that were saved) but here's something cool in the mean time:

Does anyone remember those photo mosaics that used to be everywhere in the 90s? You know, the big picture made up of a ton of little pictures that they used for movie ads and stuff (The Truman Show poster is a good example). Well, for a while now I've been wondering if anyone would put up a program to download and do it yourself and, at some point (I don't know how long it's been around) someone did.

It's a freeware program called AndreaMosaic and it works pretty darn well. I haven't had much time to mess around with it, but here are a couple I made:

Here's Greg and I in Hijinks made from all the pictures I have from CAP shows. The clothes came out well but there wasn't enough pictures or detail to make the faces. A nice first attempt though.

I then tried to test out the program's abilities and just loaded in every picture I had on my computer and made this. The details are much clearer but the colors are kind of diluted.

When I have more time, I'll try to perfect my photo mosaic-ing talents. Until then, and in honor of the new movie which was flawed but still more entertaining than it had any right to be, here's an awesome cover of Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" by The Cardigans. I know, remember them?

My May Playlist

2008-05-04T14:33:00.004-04:00

Many apologies for not posting for a while. I got ridiculously busy with Hijinks (write-up forthcoming) and was kept away from my indulgent online writing. Anyway, to get back into the swing of things, I've created my May playlist which you can listen to below or on the right of this page.

Some of you (ie. Holly) have noticed and complained about my lack of a new playlist last month. What happened was that, what with my Europe trip, I wasn't able to buy or download enough new music to fill up a whole list (my refusal to have more than one song by a given artist also hurt me). However, that means this time I had two months to amass this music which means a lot of varying styles and moods. It's a good one.
The first track is a cool band I saw over the summer with TV on the Radio called Celebration. Then we go into Frightened Rabbit, a band that sounds like a Scottish Long Winters. And next we have a great song by my friend's band, Glad Hearts. The Rutgers Review put out this fantastic CD of New Brunswick bands a couple of weeks ago and I added a few tracks from that including one from Dave (as Half Brother at track 8).
It's a cool list. Enjoy this and then maybe I'll get back to writing actualy entries with words instead of videos and music some time soon.

Wacky Hijinks Countdown 5

2008-04-24T20:03:00.003-04:00

Folks, we are only one day away from the opening of Wacky Hijinks 2008. Can you feel that? Yeah, that. That's palpable tension.
And so, here's another sketch. This one's a damn good one called Gun Man. It was written by Greg (with a couple of lines thrown in by me) and features all eight members of last year's show: myself, Mena, Andy, Zach, Greg, Nicole, Mike, and Adam. It's a pretty long sketch, but that thing really does fly by. It just works.
Behind the scenes trivia: there were some members who didn't want to have Nicole's character "end" the way she does because they thought it was too unpleasant. It was a long topic of conversation if I remember correctly. I'm so glad it made it in.

Wacky Hijinks 2008
Scott Hall 8pm
April 25 & 26, May 2 & 3
$5 for students, $8 for others

Wacky Hijinks Countdown 4

2008-04-23T18:23:00.004-04:00

Only two days to go till the opening of this year's Wacky Hijinks, so the countdown continues!
This next sketch is another that I wrote and stars Mena, Mike, Greg, Nicole, Adam, and myself. It's called The Bet.

Wacky Hijinks 2008
Scott Hall 8pm
April 25 & 26, May 2 & 3
$5 for students, $8 for others

Wacky Hijinks Countdown 3

2008-04-22T12:46:00.003-04:00

Another day goes by and we're another day closer to the opening of Wacky Hijinks and thusly I'm posting another sketch from last year's show to whet your Wacky appetite.
Today's sketch is featured and was written by Greg and Andy (I bet y'all thought I was just going to do my sketches, didn't ya?). It's a sketch that genuinely gets funnier every time I watch it. It's now one of my favorites. Hope you enjoy!

Wacky Hijinks 2008
Scott Hall 8pm
April 25 & 26, May 2 & 3
$5 for students, $8 for others

Final Ask Jon Article for the Rutgers Review

2008-04-21T20:55:00.004-04:00

I'll take a break from the Hijinks Countdown to post the article I wrote for the last Rutgers Review of the year. I even got a mention on the cover this time! It says, "ASK JON! Season Finale" which I absolutely love. Cheers to whoever wrote that.
The article itself may be a series finale actually. While I still plan on writing for the Review next year, I might want to branch out and write something else. I initially thought of killing off Jon in the article, but that was hard to do while writing in the first person and besides, you never know, I might bring him back next year.
Anyway, here's the article. I feel like it's a fitting (maybe) end to the series and character.

ASK JON!

Dear Jon,
Where does an advice columnist go for advice?
Ben, SAS ‘11

I received this question a few months ago and put it in the back of the proverbial pile because, to be honest, I thought it was a stupid question. I thought that I didn’t need advice; that I had all the answers. Then, recently, I realized how wrong I was. I didn’t have all the answers. In fact, I was lost. And Ben’s question wasn’t stupid because, like the old saying says, there are no stupid questions. “Stupidity” is an extreme and we all must stay away from extremes.
What am I talking about? Well, I’m glad you asked. A couple of weeks ago, I was in the city when a kind woman introduced me to the truth; the truth of Researchanism.
The Church of Researchanism is a group founded by the great prophet Bradley S. Altford, who was able to discover the path to true spiritual freedom. He learned that human beings are trapped in their obsession with the extremes of black and white. Only when we follow the path to the gray will we be able to reach the pinnacle we were always meant to be at.
I now must tell you, gentle reader, some bad news. Because of my newfound journey to the Even Keel, I must step down as the advice columnist for the Rutgers Review. I can not help people with their problems. Only the church can help them and, as of yet, I am only a Level Two Researchanist.
If, over the course of the summer, you need to ask a question of me, you will be able to find me at my new job, giving color exams at the Researchanist kiosk at local malls on weekends. However, for real help, please visit the Researchanist website where you can order many wonderful books and DVDs.
Goodbye to you, my beautiful readers. I have greatly enjoyed reading your questions and offering my humble advice. May you follow the Rites of the Great Kazuul and live a life of Gray.

Sincerely,
Jonathan Starshine

Wacky Hijinks Countdown 2

2008-04-21T16:12:00.004-04:00

And now the next segment of my week-long countdown to this year's Wacky Hijinks. Today's features another teaser trailer, this time starring Sam and Greg and again edited by Adam. Enjoy!

Wacky Hijinks 2008
Scott Hall 8pm
April 25 & 26, May 2 & 3
$5 for students, $8 for others

Wacky Hijinks Countdown 1

2008-04-19T23:12:00.004-04:00

With the opening of Wacky Hijinks 2008 (this year's iteration of CAP's original sketch comedy group) only days away, I've decided to spend this week counting down by posting sketches from last year's show.

The first sketch is Tony Tiddlywinks, a delightfully crass little number starring myself, Mena, Adam, Andy, Nicole, and Zach. Like all the sketches I will be posting, it was taped by Dave.

Wacky Hijinks 2008
Scott Hall 8pm
April 25 & 26, May 2 & 3
$5 for students, $8 for others

Looking Forward...With a Dildo

2008-04-17T18:46:00.004-04:00

With Zipperface in the past (for now) it's time to look forward to Wacky Hijinks 2008.

For those of you that don't know, Wacky Hijinks is the seven person sketch comedy group affiliated with the College Avenue Players that performs an original show at the end of the school year. This is my second year in the group (although I wrote a sketch for the show my freshmen year) and the show opens a week from tomorrow.

Here's a little trailer featuring most of the group and edited by group-member Adam Holsten.

Well, I Guess That Wraps Everything Up

2008-04-17T14:55:00.012-04:00

Or does it...?

A couple of weeks ago when I wrote my Zipperface!!?! promo piece, I sounded pretty cheery and optimistic, didn't I? The truth of it is, I wasn't. I was absolutely terrified.

From the instant Dave first told me about the project, I was a little hesitant. I thought it was funny, but I just wasn't confident that any of us could pull off an original musical with the limited time and resources at our disposal. It was when Dave did his presentation to the CAP Executive Board that I started to turn. Everyone (especially Dave) was so excited about this that I began to see that it might work. But I still wasn't sure that I really wanted to be involved.

I was auditioning for Hair and considering directing Pillowman and I had so much else on my plate that writing a full length play seemed way too daunting. I initially planned on just being a consultant type. I typed up a version of an early scene (more on this later) and I sent it to Dave. It wasn't until the morning after Dave, Andy, and I had had our first writing session that I began to really fall in love with Zipperface. I remember sitting in the diner reading over what we had so far and just repeating, "Damn, this is actually good. This might really work." After that, all of my thoughts for the rest of the break revolved around that script.

Cut to a couple of months later and I saw the poster and my excitement just dropped. I'm not saying that Andy's poster design wasn't good (on the contrary, I absolutely love it and think the logo at the top should be the set design for the title in any future iterations). It was just that I saw my name up there in the credits and I started to get really, really nervous.

When I act in a play, I really don't get nervous (unless I'm singing or something). I can tell if the play's good or not by the time we open and I know how my performance personally looks. However, when I write something and it comes close to opening, I go absolutely insane worrying about it. With each further rehearsal and as the actual performance draws near, I start to hate everything I wrote more and more.

I would sit there in tech rehearsals waiting for the my one scene and have miniature panic attacks over the most miniscule things going wrong. If a joke fell flat or a scene change took too long, I would barely be able to stop myself from running from the theater, changing my name, and moving to Canada. Sure, I only wrote a third of this play, but I was that invested in it being good.

Sam probably got the worst of it. She spent plenty of time over those few weeks trying to comfort me and keep me from going insane. I feel really bad about it. I feel even worse because once Zipperface closed, she had to deal with me stressing over my stand-up routine for tonight and Hijinks opening in a week. God, I need to stop writing stuff. It's giving me a hernia.

So, what happened?

Well, Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical opened two weeks ago and the instant the band began to play, I finally started to watch it like an audience member and not a co-writer. And I loved it. And the audience loved it. And it was amazing.

Seriously, I have to apologise to everyone in the cast and crew for being so stressed out. They were all absolutely amazing. The show went better than I could have possibly imagined and it's all thanks to them.

In fact, the show went so well that it might not be completely over. Dave, Andy, and I need to talk about it (especially Dave as it is his baby) but the idea right now is that this might not be the last we see of good ol' Zipperface.

Not too bad for a musical narrated by hobos.

Special Zipperface Treats!
For all you fans out there, here are some special gifts. First, here are the lyrics for a song I wrote for the show that didn't make it in. It was in my initial submission I gave to Dave for how I thought the play should sound (the rest of the submission, the first scene with the mayor, ended up in the final script fairly close to how I initially wrote it). The song was a way to set up Lisa but was cut because Dave thought it was too musical-y.
Here it is with a little dialogue that sets it up:

REPORTER #1
Lisa Rider! Lisa Rider! How’d you do it?

REPORTER #2
How do you feel?

REPORTER #3
How do you spell “Rider”?

LISA RIDER
(nervously)
I...uh...I...

MAYOR HARRIS
Don’t worry, honey. Just be strong and show them that a woman can do anything if she sets her mind to it.

LISA RIDER
Oh, I will, Mayor! I will!

REPORTER #1
Tell us where you came from!

REPORTER #2
Tell us where you’re going!

REPORTER #3
Tell us in song!

SONG: “LISA RIDER”

LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

REPORTER #1
Where are ya’ from?

LISA RIDER
I CAME FROM CLEVELAND, OHIO
GREW UP READY AND REARING TO GO
I WANTED TO GO OUT AND MAKE MY WAY IN THE WORLD
SHOW THEM ALL I’M NOT JUST A LITTLE GIRL

I’M LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

REPORTER #2
What got ya’ going?

LISA RIDER
IN SCHOOL I WANTED TO PLAY FOOTBALL AND ALL THE REST
BUT THEY SAID I COULDN’T ‘CAUSE I HAD BREASTS
AND THEY WOULDN’T FIT IN THE SHOULDER PADS
BUT I’LL SHOW THEM ALL, ALL THOSE CADS

SCALIA
WHO DOES THAT BITCH THINK SHE IS?
COPPIN’ IS A MAN’S BUSINESS

HARRY
CALM DOWN, SCALIA. YOU’LL HAVE YOUR DAY

SCALIA
SHUT UP, HARRY. I’M GONNA MAKE HER PAY
FUCK THAT-

LISA RIDER AND THE REPORTERS
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER

LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

I’M GONNA SHOW YOU THAT WOMEN CAN DO IT ALL
SOLVE A CRIME, RUN A TOWN, OR CATCH A BALL
GIRLS ARE MUCH BETTER THAN BOYS WITH GUNS
‘CAUSE THE BOYS ARE PLAYING WITH THEIR OTHER ONE

LISA RIDER AND THE REPORTERS
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER

LISA RIDER
ALL THE ADAMS BETTER STEP ASIDE TODAY
‘CAUSE EVE’S GOT A GUN AND SHE’S ON HER WAY
YOU SAY YOU WANT THE BEST MAN FOR THE JOB
AND NOT JUST SOME DIRTY, HAIRY, SLOB
THEN LISA RIDER, HELL, IS YOUR GUY

Fun stuff. Now, here's a video compilation of stuff filmed by Josh Kane during the dress rehearsals. It was edited by Erika Basedow, Dave's co-director. Just like the play, I have a small cameo at the end.

And now, for even more fun, here's a collection of absolutely amazing pictures that Kyle Barker took during one of the performances. He took the ones throughout this blog as well. You can see all his pictures at his website.

A Funny Story About Sex

2008-04-16T17:59:00.004-04:00

With the surfacing of some absolutely amazing Zipperface pictures, my wrap-up piece for the show will be surfacing here soon as well. Like today soon.

But first, before I forget, here's a charming little story:

A couple of weeks ago, Rachel Fee (director of Hair) asked me to appear in "The Panel of Shameless Guys" at the 2nd annual Waiting to Sexhale shindig. Of course, these words meant nothing to me, so I asked her to explain.
Turns out, Waiting to Sexhale is a little program they do at the all-female Henderson dorm on Douglass that's all about getting honest, non-biased or judgemental sex information to the girls who reside there. One of the centerpieces of the night is a panel of guys (a "manel") who have to ask any question the girls ask as candidly and truthfully as they can.

Rachel, assuming that since I'd done full frontal for a musical, I'd probably answer personal questions for a sex panel. She was right. I was sold from the instant I saw the Facebook ad and I was sold again the instant she mentioned free pizza and t-shirts.
However, I didn't want to do it alone, so I told Greg Bing and Matt Herron to get involved as well and the three of us made up three fifths of the panel (the other two being a fourth guy and a female sex expert).

Sam wanted to come but Rachel said it would probably be best if she didn't. Being the honest boyfriend that I am, I relayed this message as Rachel saying she had banned all girlfriends from the premises. Sure, I wasn't telling the whole truth, but I'm pretty sure Sam agrees that neither of us want her to be around while I'm in the position to be discussing intimate details of my sex life both past and present. I did feel kind of bad when Matt brought Emma, however.

Anyway, the panel was hilarious. They gave us the rules while the girls were waiting outside reading sex facts (Does anyone really believe that "guys think about sex every six seconds" bullshit? It sounds like a bad stand-up joke that's been around so long it's begun being passed off as fact). Once we were in there, the questions were a lot less embarrassing than I'd imagined. After the first one ("How often do you masturbate?" courtesy of Crystal), the questions seemed much more about the girls than about us (IE. "Do you mind when a girl...? "Is it a turn off if...? etc.).

I should have expected that. It was a typical male expectation on my part that this thing would be some kind of brag-a-thon for the four of us.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing about all of this is to preserve one fantastic one-liner. The whole time we were all joking around, but the best joke belongs entirely to Matt.

Midway, some girl raises her hands and asks, "Can a guy tell if a girl fakes an orgasm?"

Suddenly all the girls started positively bubbling with pride over their climax conning abilities. It was the nearest the panel got to being some kind of verbal battle of the sexes (like a Neil LaBute play). Fortunately, Matt was able to shut them all up.

He looked the girl in the eye and says, "Can you tell when a guy fakes liking you?"

Brilliant.

PS. Oh, in other news, I'm going to appear in the CAP Stand-Up show tomorrow night at the Red Lion Cafe at 10 pm. It'll be my second time doing stand-up ever and again I'm fairly nervous. Feel free to check it out.

New Rutgers Review Article

2008-04-13T18:40:00.003-04:00

Hey, blog readers out there. Zipperface!!?! went absolutely wonderfully the past two weekends. I can't begin to say how happy I am with it. So happy that, even though the show closed, it might not be the end of the good ol' Zip. I'll do a write up of the performances and everything sometime soon (probably around the same time I finally write my Europe entries...) but, until then, here's my most recent article in the Review. Not my best but whatever.

Dear Jon,
The summer’s coming up and I’ve gotten a really great internship. Unfortunately they’re not paying me anything and I need to get a real job as well. I’ve had a lot of crappy jobs in the past and I was looking for something more fulfilling this year. Any ideas?
Samantha, RC ‘10

Ah, the summer job; they’re the perfect way to spend your break working hard to pay for the thing you’re breaking from.
Last year, I had an incredibly fulfilling summer job. I worked at an old folks home and there was just something really special about helping out these senior citizens and listening to all the wisdom they had tom impart. Unfortunately, I got that job more by court order than by application, so it’s really not going to help you.
All of my other jobs were absolutely terrible and soul crushing but I’ll tell you about them anyway. Because that’s how healing happens.
You could always be a camp counselor. Guiding children through their formative years can be fulfilling. Persuading the counselor of girl’s bunk 3 to give you a hand job in a canoe can be even more fulfilling. However, camp counselors get paid absolute jack. I know when I worked at a Jewish day camp, my bosses paid me nothing. And you know why that was…
Because the economy was bad.
Working in a restaurant will get you paid more but it will also lead to you working horrible hours and getting yelled at nonstop by douche bags. NOTE TO RESTAURANT-GOERS OF THE WORLD: someone is bringing you your food does not make you royalty of some kind. It just makes you a fat asshole at a Macaroni Grill who feels the need to make my life a living hell just because the wait took five fucking minutes longer than we said and who needs to choke to death while eating his stupid fucking Create-Your-Own Pasta.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but the only way you can make money and help an appreciative clientele, is to become a drug dealer. Aside from the legal qualms, it’s the most fulfilling job around. And all the cash is under the table!
On that note, if anyone’s looking for an eighth of a “product” that “lasts” about four to six hours and rhymes with “push brooms”, give me a call.

Hey, reader! Has life gotten you down? Is there some little thing eating at the back of your mind in the middle of the night? Would you like to publish your problems in a public forum so that you can get advice from a complete stranger? Then write to Ask Jon at advicejon@gmail.com
He’ll fix your shit!

Sorrow Hill Trailer

2008-04-07T15:02:00.004-04:00

Grindhouse Pictures has put the trailer for Sorrow Hill up on their website. Unfortunately, they didn't use the shot I wrote about with me grabbing the girl, but they did use the other one of me running down the hall (looking like a complete ass in my hospital gown).

All in all, it's pretty fucking slick looking and I'm excited to get to work on the real deal.

Check it out here.

He's Got a Big Ass Machete and Baby, He's Readyyyyy!

2008-04-04T14:52:00.007-04:00

Tonight marks an absolutely momentous occasion. Tonight is the night that Zipperface finally arrives!

Rutgers students might have noticed those ubiquitous "Who is Zipperface?" slogans written all over College Avenue. Well, in only a few short hours, that immortal question will be answered. You see, they actually refer to Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical, an original play written by Dave Rothstadt, Andy Wolf, and myself and being put on the next two weekends by the College Avenue Players.

The story of Zipperface (the musical, at least) began in 2006, when Dave found a DVD in the CAP prop room. It was one of those dollar DVDs that they sell at the discount store on George Street and it was called Zipperface. The plot involved a man in a gimp costume killing hookers. Or at least part of the plot did. To be honest, most of the movie is actually some fairly boring nonsense about a woman trying to make her way in a police department filled with hostile men.

After watching the movie (I'm not sure how, I've never been able to sit through the whole thing) Dave decided it would be hilarious to turn the movie into a musical and it soon became clear that this would be a great way to comment on the current state of musical theater where every single popular movie gets plopped on stage with songs shoved in whether it makes sense or not. What would happen if you made a musical of a terrible movie that no one's even seen?

Zipperface would happen.

Dave's original plan was to literally transcribe the entire movie (which Julia Hebner did while bored at work, God bless her) and then just insert songs into random scenes. This would have made a clear satirical point, yes, but it also would have been nigh unwatchable and I, as CAP's Artistic Director, told Dave I couldn't in good conscience put that on stage. So Dave went back and wrote a first draft of Act One and it became clear that he was really on to something.

So, during Winter Break, Andy and I came on board to help Dave structure his play and write the second half. After a few grueling writing sessions, we had a script. Now, a few months later, thanks to Dave and Erika Basedow's direction and a fantastic cast, we have a play.

And it opens tonight.

To whet your theatrical whistle, I'll leave you with the chorus to the opening song:

So lets put on a terrible play

Based on a terrible movie

It'll be the best show ever made

And it's called

Zipperface!

Zipperface?

Zipperface!

Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical

April 4th, 5th, 11th & 12th

Scott 135

8:00PM

$5 with Student ID

$8 General Admittance

Riding the Pantsless Bus

2008-04-02T19:17:00.006-04:00

So, it's my second post-vacation blog entry so I'm going to do the most logical thing and write about events that took place a week before I even left.

Because I'm cool like that. And also because I hinted at them in an earlier post so I feel kind of obligated. Plus they're cool. Like me.

Anywho, about a month ago I spent basically an entire day wearing no pants. And no, I'm not talking about Hair (I promised no more Hair entries).

It started when I went down to South Jersey to film the teaser trailer for Sorrow Hill. For those of you that don't know (I mentioned it briefly in a post a long time ago) Sorrow Hill is an indie horror movie I have a supporting role in.

It's so great. If you know me well enough, you know that I have a small list of things that I need to do before I die and that "Appearing in a low-budget horror movie" is at the top of the list (other entries include learning French and playing Hugh Hefner in a bio-pic about his life). Back in high school, one of my favorite things to do would be to get some friends together, get a little messed up, and watch the trashiest slasher film we could find at the video store. And every time I saw some young actor get ripped up by some masked assailant, a little piece of me always wished I was the one covered in karo syrup.

Anyway, a few months ago, Mike asked me to join he and Nicole down to Vineland for an audition and I jumped at the chance once I heard it was a horror flick. Miraculously, we all got roles and I knew once I read the script and talked to the director that I was in bloody heaven. The premise is basically this: four female journalism students (including Nicole) and their gay cameraman (Mike. Ha!) travel to an abandoned insane asylum to film a documentary. Only...get this...the place isn't actually abandoned!

The best part is I get to play one of the killers, a raving lunatic named Charlie! Whoo. I was up for two roles and apparently the director and producers liked me so they just ended up combining them to give me more to do. So great.

We filmed the trailer a month ago (a lot of times in independent films, you film a trailer or a couple of scenes first to drum up more funding). We shot it at the Atlantic City Race Track which is soon to be demolished and so is half abandoned and run down. I can't begin to tell you how creepy that place is inside. No pictures can do it justice but maybe some from the production company's blog will help.

So why was I pantsless? Well, my character is a mental patient, so I spent all of my scenes in a dirty hospital gown covered in mud and fake blood (the lead stabs me in the leg with a glass shard during our big fight scene).

Here's a fuzzy picture Mike took on my phone:

It's a shitty picture, but you get the idea. Too bad it's too fuzzy to really see the fucked up make up I had. The make up girl was great. The girl behind me in that picture gets all her piercings ripped out in the movie and the fake rips they put in her ears were really fucking good looking. Gross, gross stuff.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I was having the time of my life. However, filming my first shot was a little awkward. In it I had to grab the girl playing the lead and pull her head up close and snarl the line "I'm gonna make you scream!" at her. That's all well and good (seriously, that's one of the most fun lines I've ever gotten to deliver) but I had literally met the actress 30 seconds earlier on the way up the stairs. A little bit uncomfortable at first, but she was very nice and didn't seem to mind when the director kept telling me to be more and more vicious.

I can't wait to see the trailer. It premieres this Saturday at the Garden State Film Festival. Of course, I'll be doing Zipperface that night so I won't be able to see it but I'm sure it'll be up on the Grindhouse Pictures website before long. Anyone interested should keep checking that site and the blog on it for upcoming news on the movie.

By the by, anyone curious as to what Zipperface is should look forward to my next blog entry some time in the next couple of days. If you can't wait that long, feel free to check out either of these sites for info.

Anyway, back to being pantsless.

A few blog posts (and three weeks) ago, I mentioned buying a whole bunch of loaves of Wonder Bread and said I'd explain why eventually. Well, after the filming, I headed back to New Brunswick and went to an Anything But Clothes Party at Jamie and Holly's house. For the uninitiated, an ABC party is one where everyone has to make their outfit out of things that aren't clothing. After much soul searching, I decided to make some pants out of Wonder Bread bags. It was a pretty rocking idea, although I decided it would be a little too cold to just wear what looked like a plastic diaper so I got out some garbage bags and set to work on something to wear over it.

Now, usually I'm a fairly humble guy (shut up, I am!) but I'll readily admit that my costume was awesome. I made an entire tuxedo out of garbage bags, complete with a napkin hankerchief coming out of a pocket I taped on. Half way through the party, I went out on the dance floor and said "It's really hot in here. I'm gonna make it hotter." and ripped off my pants, revealing my Wonder Underwear. I'm rarely very cool, but that a bad ass moment. I even snagged a girlfriend out of it.

It was a great night. Here are some pictures. I apologize for looking like a drunken asshole in them. I was a drunken asshole.

I'm Back!

2008-04-02T18:33:00.006-04:00

I'm back! I'm back, I'm back, I'm back!

One day shy of three weeks after my last entry, I have finally returned here, to my little blog thing. I apologize for my extended absence. I'm sure the two people that read this thing have been very sad. Of course, they probably don't read it any more since I haven't posted in nearly a month, so they'll never know how sorry I am. But that's ok. I'm starting up again and hopefully my (admittedly small) readership will return to me.

So, what's new? Well, to be honest, three weeks and one trip to Europe later, quite a bit is new. I feel like a new person. I've got a new girlfriend, a shaved head, an internship for the summer, and I now spend a lot of time doing laundry for college credit.

Allow me to explain. The girlfriend's name is Sam and she (along with Maddie) helped me shave my head after I fucked up cutting my hair myself. I was cutting it because I was freaking out that I looked too hobo-ish for a job interview I had for an internship which I needed for credit which is the same reason I'm doing costume maintenance for a Mason Gross show.

Make sense now?

Ah, costume maintenance. Good lord, does it suck. It's for Theater Practice which is a requirement for Theater majors and is quite possibly the biggest shit class ever. It's nothing but free labor for Mason Gross. I spend three hours a day for two weeks doing laundry. I'm clearly not learning anything except for which Mason Gross actresses perspire the most (the lady in charge likes to conspiratorially tell me who the "sweaters" are).
It's really weird. I swear, half of the costume pieces for my show are lingerie. I've developed this huge fear that one of the actresses is going to show up early one day and walk into the dressing room and I'll be sitting there folding her thong or clipping the sweat pads into her costume's arm pits. Then we'll have to try to have a conversation.
Ugh.
I've never been less excited to see women's underwear.

Well, that's it for now. Expect the posts to start up again with stories from before, during, and after my trip.

Now, here are some pictures:
The Shaved Head

The Shaved Head and the Girlfriend

Yeah, I'm pretty drunk in that second picture. Sam looks nice though.

I'm Leaving Now

2008-03-13T18:08:00.003-04:00

See you all in a couple weeks. Have a great break, all you student types. Try to take a break, all you non-student types.

This is not what my trip will be like:

With my luck, this is probably what my trip will be like:

One Last Hair Piece (I promise)

2008-03-12T03:29:00.004-04:00

I Google myself. Get over it.

Anyway, I do it whenever I am scraping the bottom of the barrel procrastination-wise. And, with an as-of-yet paper due a few hours from now, tonight was a perfect time for such a distraction.

Usually I just get the same responses I've always gotten, but tonight I was rewarded with something special. Apparently The Observer, a student newspaper from our sister campus Rutgers-Newark, had some pages to fill last week and ran a very nice review of Hair (after the show had closed, but whatever).

Here's a link, but I don't know how long their archive stays up so I'll just post the whole thing here:

Sex and Drugs Alive and Well at Rutgers
New Brunswick delivers an amazing production of "Hair"
ZACHARY HUFF, LIFE & LEISURE EDITOR
Issue date: 3/4/08 Section: Observations
The Cabaret Theatre is a pretty non-descript building on the Livingston campus in New Brunswick. Nothing really stuck out about it aside from some live music (heavy on the drums) filtering out of the windows and a huge sign on the lawn that read "Hair."
Needless to say, I really had no idea what I was getting into. Even as I was sitting in a folding chair, watching as the cast stumbled out of the curtains and into the giant open space inches from me, my thoughts were racing, struggling to try to take it all in.
Maybe it was the fact that it was 11:54 on a Saturday night.
Maybe it was the thick smell of pot that seemed to dance about the air.
Whatever the case was, it was 1968 and I was about to go on a trip. And as I sat there, contemplating my hands and my fingers and why the fuck we were in Vietnam, the performance took off.
Berger (played by Jon Bershad) set the mood of this "American tribal rock musical" rather quickly; his pants were off and he was thrusting at a few lucky ladies in the audience within ten minutes.
The audience was welcomed into their tribe, and we were basically told to sit back and hold on as our minds were about to be blown.
What followed was a collective of thoughts and songs pieced together by themes of love and the Vietnam War. Every cast member had their chance to shine, and boy did they shine.
Several of the players stood out in my humble eyes. Anthony Preuster as Woof was captivating, constantly demanding my attention and making me feel as though his obsession with Mick Jagger could be a matter of life or death.
Dina Graziano (playing Chrissy) persevered through a bit of technical difficulties to deliver "Frank Mills," a heartfelt song of unrequited love. Madeline Orton's portrayal of Sheila eloquently captured the spirit of protesters with shouts and stomps one minute, and the pain of a lover scorned the next.
The entire cast made the performance feel a little more than real to me. They weaved through the audience at all times, touching and feeling (and blowing) whoever they wanted.
I've never felt more involved in a performance; it was a refreshing guerrilla-style show that pretty much raped me of my preconceptions of musicals.After an hour and a half of getting to know the tribe, the first act ended with considerably less clothing and the second act began. The plot line of the second act was much more focused and driven, following Claude (played brilliantly by Ben Regan) as he examined Vietnam and the draft through drug-induced fantasies. While it wasn't as flighty and easy going as the beginning, it really grounded the musical. The resolution was heavy, and I was more than a bit sad to have to leave the tribe.
Unfortunately, by the time you read this, the production run of "Hair" at the Cabaret Theatre will have already wrapped up. Check out www.cabarettheatre.org for other upcoming productions as well as more information on the theatre.

You'd think that I'd be upset that I did not warrant a mention in his "actors that stood out section" however, I'm just glad that now, whenever I Google my name, the phrase "Sex and Drugs Alive and Well at Rutgers" appears prominently.

PS. A longer post of stuff I myself actually wrote is coming soon (I had a fairly exciting weekend filled with sex, violence, and duct tape). Soon after that the entries will slow down for a while while I am in Europe. So, sad for you and yay for me.

Random Video Fun!

2008-03-11T02:43:00.003-04:00

Mena posted this on the CAP message board and I feel the need to pass it along.

Super Secret Career Opportunities

2008-03-07T15:41:00.005-05:00

So I was going to the grocery store to buy three loaves of Wonder Bread today (there's a reason, although I suppose it's a story for another entry) and I decided to stop by McDonalds, an establishment I frequent because I love the taste and I hate my body.

As I'm sitting there, munching on my fries, I hear Don Henley's classic "The Boys of Summer" come on the radio. I'm enjoying it and it's about to come to the first chorus when, all of a sudden, the music cuts out. Apparently, McDonalds does this thing in their restaurants where they break into the music playing with recorded advertisements for new specials and stuff. They do this about once a song and it's incredibly annoying if it's music you like and, besides, it's kind of stupid because, if you're relaxing and listening to the McDonalds radio, chances are you've already bought your meal anyway.

However, they played this ad that has to be one of the most bat-shit crazy things I've ever heard. I swear to God this is what it said (in a ridiculously cheesey voice, of course):

"You'd be surprised how many famous and successful people have started out working at McDonalds. Actors, athletes, politicians, businessmen, they all started their careers here. Is there a coincidence? We'd tell you, but half the fun is disovering it for yourself!"

Oh my God.

Can we just think about what this is implying? They are basically saying that there may be some kind of secret organization (probably something along the lines of The Skulls at Yale) that creates amazing opportunities for McDonalds employees in literally any career path they choose.
Want to star in the new Indiana Jones movie? No problem, Dave the manager will send word to Spielberg. Want to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Just ask and we'll get Ronald McDonald himself to personally call Donald Trump on your behalf. Just make sure you mop up the crapper first. Someone puked up a McFish.

That is just so deranged, I absolutely love it!

Anyway, to make a long story short, the ad ended and the song came back on and it turned out not to be Don Henley but just some shitty cover and I was disappointed.
Then I went and bought Wonder Bread.

The end.

P.S. I googled Steven Spielberg to make sure I had his name spelled right up above because I'm an idiot and I noticed that the first entry says "Books by Steven Spielberg" and then just lists all the books he has made movies based on, thus implying that he actually wrote them. I think it would be great if I lived in a world where Steven Spielberg wrote The Color Purple.

Random Video Fun!

2008-03-05T18:42:00.001-05:00

Oh my Christ, is this disturbing and hilarious.

My March Playlist

2008-03-05T16:15:00.009-05:00

I posted my monthly playlist. It's a tad late, I know, but give me a break. Like always, I will put it in the corner of the page, but here it is for people who, I don't know, are at the edge of their mouse pad and can't scroll to the right.

Some Highlights

First things first, Track 4 is not by Dylan Bob. As far as I know there is no Dylan Bob. By posting the song under a fake name, you get to go around the record labels and post the whole thing as opposed to just a sample and, since the song is 11 minutes long, a 30 second piece really wouldn't cut it. It's a wonderful song from the 1975 album Desire. I'd never heard it until I bought the CD last week and it's quickly become my favorite track, even surpassing "Hurricane" although that song's convicted felon hero actually deserved the hero treatment that Dylan gave him. Oh well.
Track 10, the Okkervil River song, is off Black Sheep Boy, they're last album before The Stage Names, the CD that found a nice place in my top 5 of 2007. Black Sheep Boy is less poppy than Stage Names and thus takes a few more listens to get into. In the end, however, I think it's a more rewarding album (although that could just be because I can listen to the last minute of the epic track "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" over and over again).
Track 14 is off the soundtrack to The Assassination of Jesse James. It's a great score that comes from an absolutely amazing movie. Check it out if you haven't seen it yet which, judging by the size of its release, is more than likely.
And the M.I.A. song at Track 1? Maybe the most fun song ever.

Jon's Hastily Hatched Plan for the Future

2008-03-04T23:44:00.006-05:00

That's it. I've figured it all out. When I go to Europe in a couple of weeks, I'm just going to stay there.

I feel like I've exhausted the possibilities of Jon Bershad, Rutgers student and drama enthusiast of a generally pleasant disposition and decent nature. I need something new; a new beginning filled with choices and opportunities. So I will discard my past, change my name, and create an entirely different identity for myself.

I will be a new man! A debonair man! A mysterious man! A man younger men would be envious of and older men would try to keep their daughters away from. But they will fail. Oh, how they will fail.

I'll sell the plane ticket for my return flight and, with the money, I will buy one suit. It will be a glorious suit of clothes; one that seems both bursting from the present and echoing the past at the same time. I will wear this suit and ingratiate myself into a friendly family. I will tell them that I come from America, where I was a rich and powerful man until my evil uncle stole my inheritance and stranded me alone in Paris...or London...or Venice...or wherever.

I will give my name as Edward Worthing, or Jack Bannister, or Duke Alexander Bedswallow. When they ask me about my past, I will get a hazy, far-away look in my eyes and say it's all too painful and I can not allow myself to relive it. I will give only one hint: a name, a woman's name, that I mutter to myself while staring into the horizon. It will be a classical name. Something like, I don't know, Victoria. When they ask me who she is, I will mumble something vague about a fire and quickly divert my eyes and change the subject to wine or Rennaisance art.

I will become the toast of high society, living off the money of lonely, old, rich women who pay handsomely merely for me to appear at their gala parties. At one of these parties I will meet a woman. Maybe she'll be a duchess, maybe she'll be a princess, maybe she'll simply be an especially beautiful chamber maid. We will have a wild night of passion during which she will fall madly in love with me.

In the early hours of the morning, she will awaken to find me standing on the veranda, looking out to the sea. She will join me and ask about the large scar on my back. I will have a large scar on my back.

When she asks this, I will suddenly become very cold and, telling her that this could never be, I will rush down the stairs and out the house, walking quickly down the damp cobblestone road and out of view. She will call after me, her voice choked with sobs of despair, but I will be gone.

I will become an adventurer. Perhaps I will join the secret service and become embroiled in high stakes political intrigue. My life will be filled with action and my charming exterior will hide an interior that is half stone cold assassin and half red hot lover.

Or maybe I will be a globe-trotting explorer. I will climb snowy peaks and descend into thick, green jungles. Isolated tribes who have never seen a white man before will come to know me as their friend, and the artifacts from my explorations will be seen in museums around the world.

Eventually I will return to that first European city where my new life began. There, will be the setting of my final adventure. At the end of it I will be killed. I will die heroically of course, saving a princess, or two princesses, or five. Each of them will love me more than the last but none will love me as much as that one girl, the one from the party all those years earlier. She will be there at the end, cradling me in my last moments. She will ask me to finally reveal to her my true name and, with my last breath, I will almost eke out the name, "Jon" before I succumb to my wounds. My spilled blood will puddle around me. It will be the darkest red imaginable, dilluted only in the places where it mixes with her salty tears.

I will be succeded by a child, her child, a beautiful daughter who will know her father only as the man of legends which will be repeated, in hushed whispers, for years and years to come.

That will be my new life.

...

Sigh. I've had a lame week.

God Bless America (but only my God)

2008-03-04T16:22:00.001-05:00

The Eve of Aquarius: Hair Cut-Off and Wrap-Up

2008-03-03T18:49:00.004-05:00

"Like it or not, they got me."

Well, I finally did it. Today after class I drove to some random Super Cuts in a desolate strip mall on Route 1 and got my hair cut.

While I flipped through the latest issue of Vibe (it was that or a tabloid) waiting for my turn in the chair, a small tinge of doubt began to form in the back of my mind. And then, while Shaggy's imortal song "Boombastic" blasted out of the radio and a woman with an impenetrable Jamaican accent (I simply nodded to everything she said which resulted in my purchase of an expensive hair "relaxing balm") began bringing out her scissors, the doubt turned into a full-fledged panic. Could I do it? Could I have the chapter in my life that was Hair the musical so clearly cut short? Of course, in an instant, it was too late and George Berger had been forcibly severed from me and had fallen to the ground, where he would be left until someone swept him up into a plastic garbage bag.

Hair was over.

Obviously, part of me is relieved. I no longer have to drive to Douglass every day. I get hours upon hours of free time back. And I never again (thank God) have to sing the song "Donna" for the rest of my entire fucking life.

But still, as my hair fell down just like the Hair set came down a day earlier, I was genuinely sad. And I was even more sad then I always am at the end of a play. I think a large part of that has to do with the fact that, unlike the last few plays I've worked on, the people I did Hair with weren't the people I hang out with anyway. I'm not going to see them every day now that the final curtains fallen. And let me say, I've loved working with these people.

Seriously, this was one of the best groups of people I've ever worked with. They were just so much fun and so diverse. I genuinely feel like, had we not been working on an incredibly stressful play the whole time, I'd probably have actually enjoyed spending time with them.

If any of you are reading this, I love you all and I hope to see you sometime soon.

The other reason I was so sad, was that doing this play was so different for me and that was really exciting. I did a lead a musical with pretty much no singing or dancing talent (which is kind of like going to a shooting range with no bullets...or hands) and you know what? I survived. And hell, I even did full frontal nudity. I did everything on stage in this show that I've ever been afraid of doing on stage. And I got through it! It was truly exciting (although it's a little worrying that there's nothing left to do that really scares me except perhaps for sacrificing a Christian virgin on stage).

So, let me give a big thank you to everyone involved. Both to the wonderful cast and crew and to all of the people I knew who came out to see us. I had a wonderful time.

And now, here's a little summary of some of my favorite parts of closing weekend:

While Thursday night's was definitely our worst performance, the last three were all fantastic (although we did really miss Shannon during the last two)
The ad libs got stranger and stranger throughout the run. This maaaaaaaaaaaaay have had something to do with the rapidly descending sobriety of the cast.
I accidentally kneed Danielle in the chin during the "Sodomy" blow job scene on closing night. She was very nice about it.
Cabaret people filmed a lot of the performances and back stage stuff. I would love to see all of it. One moment I'm especially excited to see is a clip of us during Set Strike performing scenes with all the roles switched around. I'm really glad we hadn't done this until after the show was done because the directors would have definitely fired me and had Ayesha play Berger had they seen the realism and intensity she brought to the role.
We had a big cast party at my house after Saturday's show. We christened the bong from the set which I had to name the Agora Bong and we even ate some fantastic brownies that Danielle, Ayesha, and I made before the show. Of course, I ended the night a complete mess and had to be helped to my bed in an epic quest that Rachel likened to the end of Return of the King starring me as Frodo and Danielle as Sam, boldly carrying me the last stretch of the way.

I can't believe it's over.

Today, on the way home from my hair cut, I was listening to some music (a Bob Dylan CD no less) and went to bob my head and was surprised to find thatI couldn't feel my hair bob with me.

Sigh. Ka-lookah-koo.

Random Video Fun!

2008-03-02T21:06:00.003-05:00

Star Wars credits if they had been done by Saul Bass:

Absolutely brilliant. Or, at the very least, definitely more entertaining than the prequels.

The Coolest Thing I Ever Got Outbid On

2008-03-01T13:18:00.006-05:00

Ok, who wants to loan me money?

Check it out, who remembers Lou Pearlman? No one. Right, that's what I though.
Pearlman was that big, fat "To Catch a Predator" looking motherfucker who used to manage all those boybands in the late 90s. Ah, now you remember.

Anyway, as it turns out, Pearlman was ripping all those bands off and is now facing huge fraud charges. To pay for his legal fees, he had to auction off all the memorabilia from his glory days. Some guy ended up buying it all and now he's auctioning it himself on eBay.
So what does this have to do with me? This:

A 1997 MTV Europe Music Award.

Can you imagine how awesome it would be if I had that beauty sitting on my coffee table?

"Hey, Jon, what's that?"
"Oh, that's just my MTV Europe Music Award."
"What, is that a replica?"
"No, it's real."
"Uh..."
"I'm big in Sweden."

Yeah, man. I would get so much pussy with that thing.
If only I had money. Sigh.
I first read about this on the AV Club, by the by.

P.S. I'm ridiculously exhausted and I've got closing night of Hair (come see Hair come see Hair come see Hair) in a few hours. Fortunately, I know the best way to wake a person up. That's right, the The Harder They Come soundtrack!

I'm Gonna Keep Writing About This Fucking Show Until Every Single One of You Comes and Sees It

2008-02-28T23:50:00.009-05:00

Well, tonight was not exactly our best performance. I mean, Act Two had some great stuff in it, but Act One had really low energy and some other problems (some shithead forgot an entire verse of "Donna"...). What are you gonna do, though? First shows after a week long break always have those problems.

On the upside, I got my favorite piece of praise ever. From Maddie's mother: "You were wonderful. You're my absolute nightmare of a son in law, but you were wonderful."

Here are some more Onilx pictures to beat the point home. I'm in Hair. Come see it. I'm in Hair.

P.S. Sometimes I hate that my name sounds so much like the word "job". On the way out, some girl said, "Good job!" to me and I thought she said, "Hey Jon!" or something like that. Naturally (since this happens to me all the time) I assumed I knew her and had just forgotten her name. So I tried to play it off like I remembered exactly who she was and got real excited and said, "Hey! How have you been?". Of course I had never met her before in my life. So she was real confused. And I was real confused. And it was real bad.

Almost as bad as Act One...

P.P.S. I was pretty much just writing this thing for myself but apparently there are a few people reading it. So why don't any of you comment ever instead of just mentioning it to me (you know who you are people at dinner, play director, former ice cream clerk girl who messaged me on Facebook, and currently-European friend who told the ice cream clerk girl to read it)?

The Countdown to a Haircut Begins

2008-02-28T17:39:00.005-05:00

Well, the closing weekend of Hair begins in a couple hours. We have four shows this weekend (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 plus a bonus midnight show on Friday night) so don't miss your last chance to see the show. Or your last chance to see it again if you're really crazy. Show and reservation information can be found at the Cabaret website.

ps. Cabaret had this local photographer who goes by the handle Onilx come and take photos last week and they look great. You can find them on his website. That picture above is from there and here are a few more.

How to Make "I Hate Mondays" Jokes Funny!

2008-02-27T18:08:00.006-05:00

Garfield the comic strip is not funny. The fact that it has run for three decades (this year is its 30th anniversary!) using only four repeated jokes is mildly funny, but the strip itself is not. It has an endearingly cartoony art style and I've always enjoyed that I share a name (spelling and all) and a hairstyle with the main human character but...yeah...that's all it's got going for it.

Recently though, the absolutely wonderful Comics Curmudgeon blog, which brings me so much joy every day, has posted links to a few sites that attempt to mine real humor out of Garfield's bloated, cavernous, lasagna-reeking gut.

The first is this message board where people have taken all of Garfield's thought balloons out of the strips to create a vague surrealist comic. My favorite is definitely this one:

Even better is the blog Garfield Minus Garfield where the creater uses a similar idea but takes Garfield himself wholly out of the comic to make it just a strip about Jon Arbuckle, lonely (and possibly mentally disturbed) young man. Here's a taste:

My favorite of the group, however, has to be the absolutely brilliant Lasagna Cat. This one's kind of hard to explain and you either love it or hate it, but I'll try. Lasagna Cat films Garfield comic strips starring people in creepy costumes and set in a tone which is like a mixture of a bad sitcom and a nightmare. Then every video follows with an intrepretive music video with a song that may or may not relate in some strange way with the topic of the comic. Oh, and each video somehow incorporates a picture of Jim Davis (actual Garfield creator) at the end.
You really have to watch a couple to get the hang of it (drugs help to) but they begin to take on a deranged genius after a while. They're very existence is just so absurd. Here's a couple:

Goddamn, it's about time someone made comic strips entertaining again. Now, if only someone did the same for Mary Worth...

Random Cartoon Fun!

2008-02-26T01:28:00.002-05:00

A Jumble of Thoughts

2008-02-25T15:46:00.003-05:00

With a couple of days off from Hair, I feel like I'm swimming in free time. It's not true, but it feels like I am. That being the case and, having written mostly posts about other things recently, here's a random list of things going on with me:

At Cabaret Theatre, Word of Mouth is Our Best Advertisement and Use of Mouth is Our Best Entertainment: a Hair opening weekend round-up

The shows went really well. The midnight show was actually the best, which is weird considering it was the performance we were the least sober at.
Saturday afternoon I got a call asking if one of my housemates was a drummer. This is not something you want to hear a couple of hours before a musical. Fortunately, we got someone to fill in last minute for the one show we were missing a drummer and she was excellent.
I spilled bong water on my lap onstage during the second performance. Very unfortunate.
Text message from my brother during intermission opening night: "U made bershads everywhere proud in that nude scene" Touching.
And my favorite story of the weekend: During the course of the play, there are two scenes where I get simulated blow jobs (a number I will spend the rest of my theatrical career attempting to surpass). The first one takes place during the song "Sodomy" and involves Danielle, an actress in the show, literally pushing me into the lap of an audience member in the first row and then pretending to go down on me. At the end of the song, the music reaches a climax and I, ahem, pretend to follow suit. To make this clearer (and basically to fuck with the audience even more) I usually grab someone in the first row's knee and squeeze. During the intermission of the first performance I asked Danielle if she saw whose knee I grabbed. She said yes. It was her boyfriend.

Things I'm Doing Post-Haircut
I agreed to take a small role in Zipperface??!?, the musical I wrote over winter break with Dave and Andy. Also I've got Hijinks right after that and once school ends I'm heading to South Jersey to film an independent horror movie called Sorrow Hill. All of these things things deserve their own blog entries, so basically I'm just writing this to remind myself that my current free time will be short lived even after Hair's over.

I'm Almost a Good Student
I had a very nice conversation with one of my professor's today after class where she asked about my future plans and told me I made large contributions to the class. You're all probably thinking that that's not very interesting, but it was really cool for me. The last time a teacher seemed genuinely pleases with my in-class performance was in first grade when I was the only student in Mrs. Powell's class who wrote a Season poem that rhymed.

Grown Up Food
Since I'm partly writing this blog to be read by a hypothetical future Me, I think it's important to note that I made big steps to becoming an adult type person today. I went to the grocery store (all by myself) and got some real meals for myself. Sure there was nothing that required anything more complicated than a microwave, however, any night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese is still a whole night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese.

Grown Up Food for Thought
Last week, during tech for Hair, I had next to no time to sleep. And when I did sleep, it was fitful and brief. During times like that, I tend to have really strange dreams (or perhaps I'm just able to remember them more). One night in particular, I had a whole string of absolute whoppers. It began with me being a mafia hit man and later developed into a look at some extremely dramatic Bizarro World cast party for Hair. However, the most interesting part of the dream (and the part I remember the clearest) came later.
It was incredibly vivid and took place at some kind of seaside resort town (think LBI). It was the future and I was sitting in a lawn chair, having a conversation with my parents. After a couple minutes, three young children ran up, one of whom was my son. He had bright blond hair, which I suppose he got from his mother's side (she didn't appear in the dream. He was really happy and asked me if he could go play with his two friends whom I remember quite clearly being a young Asian boy and a cute, little girl. I said yes and they all ran off. As they were leaving, I pointed to the little girl and joked to my parents that in a few more years, my son would start spending all his time trying to bang her.
Then we all laughed.
It was very odd.

And They Won Too!

2008-02-25T11:18:00.003-05:00

I'm so happy they won. Although it doesn't change the fact that I still really want to see Enchanted. Yes, I said it. I really, really want to see Enchanted.

Random Movie Fun!

2008-02-24T20:41:00.004-05:00

Well, we finished the first weekend of Hair. How about that? It actually went really well and a lot of funny things happened. But, you know what? I really don't feel like writing about it. Today is officially the first day in a month I haven't had to think about Hair and I'm not going to start now.

I spent the whole day trying to do as little as possible and I think I succeeded admirably. The only real activity I engaged myself with was watching The Graduate with my housemates. Sure, it was the same time period as Hair (1967 vs. 1968) but it was the opposite side of the counter culture, so I felt safe (only one afro in the entire film!).

God, I love that movie. I have to say, it was a little disturbing to discover that I am now the same age as Ben Braddock is supposed to be (the scuba suit scene takes place on his 21st birthday).
It's interesting, I remember reading an article by Roger Ebert where he talked about his changing views on the film. As the years have passed, he wrote, it became clear to him that Mrs. Robinson is really the most interesting character of the film. In the few years since I first watched the movie I've come to the same realization. Anne Bancroft gets so much backstory across in just a couple of lines during that bedroom scene where she discusses Elaine's accidental conception. It's amazing.

However, I still love the Ben role (and Hoffman's performance). It was always my dream role to play. Back in high school, I always used to push for our Performing Arts classes to perform the play adaptation as our spring show. It never happened because there aren't enough roles (Mrs. Robinson's scripted full frontal scene didn't help). It was probably for the best though. As much as it tries, the play really is just a pale imitation of the movie and the CharlesWebb novel that inspired it (which, I'm sad to admit, I've been stuck in the middle of for an eternity. God, I wish I had more time to read for fun). I still used to use the seduction scene as an audition monologue back when I thought I wanted to be an actor.

I really love that movie.

ps. I used to love to watch the Oscars when I was little. I'd tape it and then make my parents promise not to tell me who won. Now I can't even sit through a couple minutes of it. It was a sad day when I realized the Best Picture was very rarely the best picture of the year. Right up there with the whole Santa Claus thing.

Questionable Life Decisions: How I Came to Star in an American Tribal Love Rock Musical

2008-02-22T13:39:00.007-05:00

Did I really write a full post about a stupid celebrity scandal the other day? Wow. Good to know that when I'm exhausted I develop the writing style of a bitchy gay man.

So, why am I so exhausted? Well, Hair, of course!

You see, there are times in a young man's life when he comes to question the life choices he made that led him to where he is. Sitting under a parachute naked with a bunch of other naked people wearing fake afros while you hope your genitals look good to the paying audience is one of those times.
The first thing naked me thinks about is the fact that I was never supposed to be in this play to begin with and that's because I was never going to audition.

I'm not really a big musical guy. And I don't mean that I'm one of those theater people that feels he's somehow above plays where people sing their feelings instead of discussing them. I love watching musicals. I think they're a lot of fun and I think that sometimes, if done right, a simple song can tell infinitely more about a character than a thousand perfectly phased soliloquies. I'm just not a big musical guy because I'm not very good at them. I've never really been able to sing and when it comes to dancing, I got my rhythm from the same side of the family that gave me my curly hair and frugal financial sense. And since I'm a fragile, fragile soul, I tend to stay away from things I'm not good at.
Except baseball. For some reason I played that for years.

Anyway, out of all the plays I'd done my first two years of college, not a one had been a musical. Then last semester, I decided to go out for Reefer Madness. Sure, I was worried, but I loved the play and a bunch of my friends were doing it so I decided what the hell. A few weeks into the rehearsal process I decided I was never going to do another musical as long as I lived.
Not that Reefer Madness was a horrible experience at all. I mean, aside from some offstage drama (one of those stories that doesn't belong on a public blog) I had a lot of fun. It just wasn't my thing.

So then, when people started asking me if I was auditioning for Hair, I practically laughed in their face. The question then is, what happened? Well, it's simple.

Pretty girls asked me.

The truth is, sometimes I'm a weak man. Sometimes I'm not, but on this occasion, all it took was a nice smile and I was sitting in the Cabaret lobby preparing to sing.

But don't think that I instantly went whole hog into this thing just because of a pair of tits. I mean, that is the reason I went into it, but I only went half hog. My whole audition was basically a joke. I answered all the questions on the audition sheet sarcastically and when I had to sing, I sang the only song I could think of. What song was that? "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas".

And I forgot half the lyrics.

This right here, is the point in the story where I need to get punished. I've said it before and I'll say it again; my life is basically a sitcom. And, in many ways, sitcoms are structured like all classical drama and that means that the hero needs to be punished for his hubris. I had auditioned jokingly for a play that really meant something to a lot of people and I had done so purely for the chicks. The Gods were just itching to fuck with me.

So what did they do? The worst thing possible. They got me cast as a lead. In a musical.

So now, here I am, and it's opening night, and in just a few hours I'm gonna be naked under that parachute. And you know what I'm gonna be thinking? I'm gonna be thinking that I couldn't be happier.

I may have made a mistake when I auditioned for this play for the wrong reasons, but now I really feel like I'm a part of something special. Sure, the production has been rocky at best both on-stage (to start, our original director was fired the first day) and off (you can read about that all here) and sure, if we had a couple more weeks the show could be better. But you know what? I really love the people I'm working with and I love what I'm doing and, dammit, I think I'm growing to love being a naked hippie under a parachute as well.

Episodes in the Lows of Humanity

2008-02-20T15:34:00.003-05:00

Apparently Denise Richards is getting a reality show. This news somehow passed me by. Probably because I have no desire to watch anything with Denise Richards where she's not fighting giant space bugs or making out with Neve Campbell. Anyway, she plans on having her two daughters (age two and three) on the show with her, something that Charlie Sheen, her ex-husband and the girls' father, doesn't really want.
Of course, I don't really understand that at all. How anyone could not want their todler daughters to star in a nationally broadcast reality television show during important formative years of their lives is beyond me, but I suppose Sheen has his reasons. So he sued Richards to stop her. And lost.
Here's some quotes from an article on the subject:

...a Los Angeles judge ruled in Richards' favor and gave her the green light to feature the kids in the currently untitled program.

Richards insists her daughters were desperate to be a part of the project.

She says, "I am a single mom and I am very hands-on with my kids so I can't do a show without the kids at all.

"I asked them if they wanted to be on TV and Sam said, 'Yes!' My girls have been around it so much. They love the make-up. They love the hair. They love all of that.

Wow. Congrats, Denise Richards.
I'm not anyone to judge and I've always followed Thumper's mother's advice, so all I'll say is at least you've got nice tits.

Old Cartoon Fun!

2008-02-20T02:38:00.003-05:00

Here's an old cartoon of mine. Just for kicks.

Random Video Fun!

2008-02-20T02:20:00.003-05:00

Because I love this movie so much and not enough people have seen it, here's Don Herzfeldt's brilliant short Lily and Jim. Crystal and I performed it at Cabaret a couple years ago directed by Greg N. Still some of the most fun I've ever had on stage.

Don Hertzfeldt - Lily and Jim

I really shouldn't post it like that since it's basically stealing money from Herzfeldt so, to make myself feel better, I'll tell you all to go to his website (http://bitterfilms.com/) and buy his DVDs.

I personally own a shirt, the DVD with all his old movies, and his newest one, Everything Will Be Ok, which is one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen. It's sad, hilarious, and a little bit enlightening all in the course of 17 minutes. You should all really seek it out or ask me to loan you the DVD.

Getting Tacky on Valentines Day

2008-02-14T00:08:00.007-05:00

I know I already kind of wrote a Valentines Day entry by posting that Review article a couple of days ago, and I know that I personally have a few problems with the holiday (while all those advice columns are written with tongue in cheek I actually do agree with some of what I said this time), and, most importantly, I know I promised that this blog would be both treacle and poetry free, but..........well, I'm a rule breaker. What can I say?

I had to write a poem for class and since this whole blog was started as a way to inspire me to do more writing, I felt I might as well share it. Please forgive the repulsive amount of icky sentiment you're about to wade through.

A Love Story in Verse

Gentle reader, if you’d perchance to stay
And give me a couple minutes of your day
A story I’d love to now relay
Told through pleasant rhyme

A tale of that wonderful horrible sin
Known as ‘love’ to both men and women
And now, if you’ll allow me to begin
I’ll say ‘Once upon a time’

There was a boy of average genes
Not too short, or tall, or fat, or lean
Not really at all special by any means
Just typical like you or me

But there was one thing that set this boy apart
For he had gone and lost his heart
For a girl who was a piece of art
The most beautiful you could ever see

The most striking thing about this girl
Was her smile filled with twinkling pearl
That made you feel like the luckiest in the world
If it ever shone on you

And of this smile there was more
Because it often came before
Her infectious laugh came spilling forth
And sounded as sweet as dew

And her glistening eyes delicately round
Were like her hair a beautiful brown
And more wondrous than ever dreamed or found
By Van Morrison

Her body should never need to be
Described to my reader carefully
For you should care about her personality
But I’ll admit she was a perfect 10

And so this was the goddess of his desire
That filled his stomach with butterflies and heart with fire
That wore a face of which he’d never tire
For his love was true

But here a problem then arose
For, reader, how do you suppose
An average boy like this one goes
To a goddess with hopes to woo?

This would take much more than flowers
He’d need to summon up all his powers
And spend all of his waking hours
And come up with something soon

Suddenly with wondrous luck
A spark shone through his mind’s murky muck
As glorious inspiration struck
And he decided to write her a tune

She deserved a wondrous song
With Shakespeare words and Beowulf long
An orchestra to play along
But he had none of that

For all the things she did to he
Lyrics steeped in hyperbole
Are what he should write for she
But all his words fell flat

And the music was the hardest part
He wanted a piece straight from his heart
Notes that could be timeless art
From God to his fingers sent

But alack, alas, oh woe is he
For this simply would never be
Impossible most decidedly
For he knew no instrument

So he told his music all to hush
Tossed out his composition in a rush
Instead he picked up paper and brush
And tried to paint his muse

But he found to his dismay
As he mixed his colors a whole day
No shade would properly convey
Her skin’s translucent hues

So he eschewed music and paint
To find an other to create
Which he would present when proposing a date
With his most beauteous one

A poem, a statue, a three-course meal
A garden, a quilt, a spinning mobile
No project matched the girl’s natural feel
When they were finally done

So he moved from task to task
Occasionally looking up to God to ask
‘Why can’t I make some art that lasts
And does justice to my love?’

And he fell down in despair
Gnashing his teeth and ripping his hair
It seemed that God just didn’t care
For he received no sign from above

And when things descended to their worst
And he’d screamed every scream and cursed every curse
Drunk a bottle of gin to quench his thirst
A knock at the door he did hear

So our boy managed to gather himself up
And put down his alcohol reeking cup
Went to the door and opened it up
And standing there was his dear

She walked right in and looked and found
His failed love projects scattered around
Discarded, ripped, and tossed to the ground
Or crumpled to a ball

But they all merely made her groan
For his love for her she’d always known
But all she wanted from him was to grab a phone
And finally give her a call

She said, ‘I want no proclamation
No theatrical declaration
Or gesture set to orchestration
All I want is you’

And so our boy learned the fact
There was nothing his wooing lacked
For you need not put on some big act
When your love is true

And so the couple came to be
Together most inseparably
In love for all eternity
I promise you, my friends

So remember our hero’s folly-filled sport
How it proved a useless sort
And know that you need only love to court
And with that I say ‘The end.’

Again, I'm really sorry. I'm a self-aware sentimentalist which is the worst kind. It means I make myself gag.

If that poem didn't make you kill yourself, you get a prize. A slightly less painful look at romance, courtesy of The Jerk.

Happy Valentines Day!

Anyone Want to Go to Europe?

2008-02-12T00:16:00.002-05:00

Hey, I'm going to Europe over spring break to visit some people and just bum around for a week. Some of my housemates are going to be there for part of the time but I wondered if anyone wanted to be my travel buddy(ies) for any of it as well.

I'm (most likely) going March 14th to the23rd.Planned destinations include most of the United Kingdom, France, and Amsterdam (y'know, to pay respects to Anne Frank).

Write back if you're interested.

Special Valentines Day Rutgers Review Article!

2008-02-10T16:48:00.001-05:00

For the past semester, I've been writing a regular advice column for the Rutgers Review along with drawing the occasional cartoon.

Unfortunately, the Review has about the same readership as this blog (basically, I read it and that's it) so I'm going to start posting my articles up here as well in the hope's that someone might actually look at them and because it's an easy way to fill space.

The latest article (to appear in this week's issue) is another installment of Advice by Jon, my advice column. This week, "Jon" (who's opinions usually don't actually connect with the real Jon writing them) helps a poor soul who's alone on Valentines Day. Enjoy!

Advice by Jon

Dear Jon,
It’s Valentines Day again and I’m single…again. How can I fix this?
Glen, RC ‘08

Ah, Valentines Day; the deadly black mark weighing down the calendars of many, many single students. It’s kind of like seasonal allergies. Every year you hope it doesn’t come but, every year, there it is and you’re forced to take a bunch of pills until it goes away.

Most people think Valentines Day is the most romantic holiday of the year. This is wrong. A real romantic holiday is something like New Years or Halloween where people are festive and partying and new romance can bloom. There’s no new romance on Valentines Day. It’s just a day for old couples to lord it over single people so that they can pretend to feel good about only being allowed to screw one person. And thus, everyone else gets to feel depressed.

I, on the other hand, never get depressed. That’s probably because I get with mad ladies (like literally though, angry women). And if I don’t have a special lady at the moment, I just wait for one of my single ex-girlfriends to get depressed about their Valentinelessness and call me up to arrange a time to “talk” and “catch up”*.

But what can you do, Glen, to solve your mid-February depression. Easy! Take those lemons and make some sweet lemonade (preferably pink lemonade to be holiday appropriate). What do I mean? Use the depression to your advantage!

Just think, for every depressed single guy out there this Valentines Day, there’s also a depressed single girl. You just need to get these depressed single people together. And how do you do that? Throw a party! You can call it the “Screw Valentines Day (and Possibly Someone Else As Well) Party”! Sure, the next morning, that house will be filled with more regrets than the post-Super Bowl Patriots locker room, but you’ll be feeling good. Just remember these magic words: “I’ve got an early class” and you’ll be fine. Take that, Cupid!

So there you have it, Glen; the surefire way to have a great Valentines Day while still being single. But, next year, try not to get in this mess again. You know that pretty girl in your Psyche class you’re always talking to. Ask her out. Like really ask her out. Nothing’s gonna happen unless you do. I just don’t think your thinly veiled flirtations over text messages are getting the point across. Sorry.

*In this case, “talk” stands for “sex” and “catch up” stands for “a specific type of sex they probably wouldn’t have done when we were actually dating”.

Hey, reader! Has life gotten you down? Is there some little thing eating at the back of your mind in the middle of the night? Would you like to publish your problems in a public forum so that you can get advice from a complete stranger? Then write to Advice by Jon at advicejon@gmail.com
He’ll fix your shit!

My February Playlist

2008-02-04T17:30:00.001-05:00

I posted my monthly playlist. Like always, I will put it in the corner of the page, but here it is for people who, I don't know, are at the edge of their mouse pad and can't scroll to the right.

At first I was thinking about doing a special Valentines Day playlist (I made a really good one in high school that, I think, perfectly mixed ironic sentiment and honest to goodness real sentiment) but I had gotten too much fun "regular music" this past month to pass over. Maybe I'll do a small one on the day itself although I doubt it, what with all the Hair rehearsals I'll be doing.
In the meantime, please enjoy the fact that I put the most holiday appropriate song up first even though it's a totally weird playlist opener.

I Think My iPod is Sentient

2008-01-31T14:55:00.002-05:00

Remember Furbies? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, one of the things that Furbies were designed to do was to have a built in vocabulary of English words that the Furby would only gradually use as time went on and the child spent more time "talking" to it. This created the illusion that the child was teaching the little creature how to speak.

What does this have to do with anything? Well, I've been thinking, Furbies came out years ago and technology advances at a exponential rate, so wouldn't it stand to reason that by now it would actually be possible for a machine to gradually learn things from and about their user?

I don't know. I'm just a Theater major. It seems plausible to me.

The reason I bring this up is because I'm beginning to think that my iPod has grown accustomed to my personality and habits. Furthermore, I think the iPod is using this knowledge not to entertain or help me, but to mock me like the sly white devil it is.

I used to think it was just always in the opposite mood I was in. When I put it on during a party, it would always make sure to play the dreariest, most depressing music possible. When I put it on during a romantic situation, it would play the least sexy music known to man (I have the full album). However, the other day it did something that led me to believe that it wasn't just a poor judge of mood, it was actually just trying to make fun of me.

I was waiting in line to buy books at the Co-Op (17 separate plays for one class? Jesus.) and this incredibly cute blonde girl comes in and gets in line next to me. As if I were living in a Cameron Crowe movie or something, my iPod instantly begins playing "Somewhere Someone's Falling in Love" by John Prine.

That's fine enough and I was really starting to feel a total serendipitous moment. Hell, the music selection had even emboldened me enough to start talking to this random girl (a very un-me thing to do). I probably would have had my iPod not suddenly switched tracks to Pino Donaggio's score for the Brian DePalma movie "Body Double". Specifically, it played music from the scene where the hero has become obsessed with the mystery girl and has devolved into a creepy stalker. Of course, this instantly shamed me into looking straight ahead and not even thinking about the girl for the rest of my time in the store.

Fuck you, iPod. I wouldn't have been surprised if the next track on its "random" shuffle had just been 3 minutes of derisive laughter.

(I've already posted this song on the blog but what the hell)