29 December 2009

Why we don't understand Gallagher

I never thought I'd spend a half hour of my life reading an interview with Gallagher, but I have. And it is quite funny. Who knew that the guy who makes asinine observational jokes (the kind that make Jerry Seinfeld's observational humor seem absolutely profound) and then smashes fruit is such a social commentator. I mean, when he makes the point - and makes it and makes it - that the reason he doesn't get love and admiration is because Americans just champion mediocrity, and that's why people just don't really "get" his humor, well, he's obviously right. Prop comics like Gallagher and Carrot Top rise above mediocrity but go unloved because we are just too mediocre and bland to get these profound purveyors of high comedy and performance. (To be fair, he does make, buried in the ranting, a few points which I think are good and that I agree with.)

This interview made my day (though my God that's a sad statement, isn't it). The guy is like the Harlan Ellison of gimmicky fuck fruit smashing prop comedy.

28 December 2009

Hey you kids...

I've noticed a troubling trend in my life lately. Whenever I'm listening to some new band/artist, or (rarely) watching something new with some actor/actress or interview subject and I think enough to do a Wikipedia check to see perhaps what else they've been in or what other albums they've released, and then I see what year they were born in and it is later than my year of birth...my heart sinks. Looking up some musician earlier I saw they were born in 1985. 1985?!?!? Am I too old to like them then? This must be a symptom of being ten months away from turning thirty. Even worse would be seeing some cute musician or something and then seeing that she was born in like 1988...being not only a bit younger than me but yet not actually technically "too" young. It used to be people 8 and 10 years younger than me were, like, way young. What the hell?!?!?

One(Last)Stop-Shop

I work next to a crematorium, and ever so often out the office window I see black smoke. I know this to mean that someone is being cremated. Nothing like a reminder of mortality while I'm at work playing online poker bored out of my mind (I am currently looking for another job). But when it is at last my time to go, my family can take comfort in planning my final resting arrangements - Wal-Mart now sells caskets. In a new section on their website called, appropriately, "Funeral" (it is, oddly, a subsection under the heading "For The Home").

12 December 2009

If your hands were metal that would mean something

This is really great. A minimal design project of TV show prints that I guess is distilling an idea of each of these shows into a most minimal design. I don't like just about any of these shows (and I can't figure out what a few of them even mean as a result) but the design project is awesome. The ones for MacGiver and Monk I'm especially fond of.

25 March 2009

Not Jesus, Hey Zeus

For a while now I've decried the decaying power of television and movies, and one of my very top 2009 priorities was to watch less of that glowing box in my living room and to limit myself to seeing only as many movies in the theater as I can count on one hand, and really, I have been far happier, more alert and much more productive than ever since I made that resolution. I'll go on all day (ask my girlfriend) about how television and, increasingly these days, movies do more harm than anything else, and I do actually wholeheartedly believe that. But I'll tell you something:

One of my students doing a project in my lab today needed to know real quick who the 21st president was. And I immediately told him: Chester A. Arthur. And I knew that piece of trivia because I learned it from Die Hard 3.

12 March 2009

Glenn Sings "Nerd Rock"



Glenn demonstrates nerd rock for me. This is an angle that we should've pursued back then, really.

23 February 2009

Dead at 81

Dead At 81

From Heart Attack


Remember that show, Dead At 21? I mean, I never watched it (I swear), but I remember it. Dead At 81...doesn't have quite the same ring to it.