Taking a Breather

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

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.

New Sorrow Hill Trailer!

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!

America 20XX is TODAY!

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?

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

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



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

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

Good. Just making sure.

Hey, My Friend's a Good Person

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



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

Heavy Video Fun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

War at its Absolute Funnest!

My friends and I are mega cool.

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

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



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































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

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

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

My friends and I are mega cool.

America 20XX Preview on NYTheatre.com

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

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







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

I'd Like to Get My Hanes On

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



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

Even a Lowly Intern Knows This is Moronic

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

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



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

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

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

Racing Towards the Finish Line

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!)

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.

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

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.

Random Comic Fun!

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

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'm Leaving Now

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:

Random Video Fun!

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

Random Video Fun!

Oh my Christ, is this disturbing and hilarious.