Shit that Pissed me off – 4/4
Idiot Climbs a Rock, Injures Himself and Sues the City for Creating Unsafe Conditions
This moron is probably going to win, too.
He saw a rock sculpture and thought it looked like a lot of fun to climb around on it. I don’t blame him. I would have thought the same thing. I would need a taser and some bungee cords to stop my kids from climbing on something like that.
Here’s a picture of one of my kids on a rock at Yosemite National Park. There are a lot of rocks at Yosemite National Park and he’s climbed on damn near every one of them.
There were no signs telling him he couldn’t so he jumped on the thing, landed awkwardly and tore his Achilles tendon. Ouch!
Now he’s suing the city. Because he did a reckless thing and hurt himself. Also because he probably has crappy health insurance.
Look dude, if you are going to jump on a rock because it looks like fun, you need to recognize the risks. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t jump on the fucking rock.
The only unsafe condition the city created was they one they created when they allowed you to leave your house every morning.
I Don’t Know If I Can Make Anyone Die Laughing But I May Just Die Trying!
This weekend, Fearless Comedy will be putting on Die Laughing, a fifty hour comedy marathon. Right now, it looks like we might get hammered with a massive snow storm as the event starts but that doesn’t matter. We’re going to make this show happen.
The good news is that the entire event will be streaming so you can watch it even if you decide to cower in your home. And I’ll be doing a lot of performing that weekend. Here’s a schedule if you are just going nuts wondering when I’ll be on stage again.
Friday, April 4th, 7:00 PM – Big Fun Radio Funtime
We’ll be doing encore presentations of two of our favorite scripts and then Geoffrey Brown and I will perform 30 minutes of original Citizens’ Band tunes! We’ll also introduce our weekend long songwriting challenge.
Friday, April 4th – 10:00 PM – Vilification Tennis
There will be insults a-plenty and Duck Washington will debut as our newest cast member! Also, Kelvin Hatle will present his brilliant “News from Lake Vilbegone.”
Friday, April 4th – 11:00 PM – Geeks Without God
We’ll be recording a live podcast featuring comedian Patrick Bauer. The topic will be Tarantino movies. Pop culture reference!
Saturday, April 5th – 4:00 PM – PowerPoint Karaoke
I’ll be sitting in judgement on comedians who are making up a presentation from scratch! Is it far that I judge them? Yes it is fair! For I am ME and I SHALL wield petty power!
Saturday, April 5th – 8:00 PM – 12:00 AM – Hosting
I won’t be the star of the show but I’ll be introducing them!
Sunday, April 6th – 1:00 AM – Geeks Without God
Our second live podcast will feature Elizabeth Ess! We are going to talk about Hobby Lobby and birth control. Should be totally filled with comedy about knitting. There is also a decent chance I’ll be bald at this point.
Sunday, April 6th – 2:00 PM – Judging a Book By It’s Cover
I’ll be hosting this silly game in which contestants must describe the plot of a book based only on the cover illustration.
Sunday, April 6th – 6:00 PM – The Dregs
The Dregs will be doing our music and comedy thing with a special challenge to help raise money. Song choices go to the highest bidder!
Sunday, April 6th – 8:00 PM – Fearless Lab
A completely random hour of Fearless Comedy! And I’m the host! If Geoffrey and I get paid to write any songs, we’ll be performing them during this final hour of the marathon! It’ll be awesome! I’m using all exclamation points because I’ll probably be hopped up on Five Hour Energy Drink at this point in the weekend!
Alphabetical Movie – Magnolia
I don’t really care when a critic savages a movie I love. Critics are paid to write about film and be interesting. As Anton Ego says in Ratatouille, negative reviews are fun to write. Magnolia, however, is the source of the worst negative review I’ve ever read.
My issue with the review (which you can read here) is not that City Pages critic Rob Nelson hated the movie. That’s totally fine. He has the right to hate the movie and it is his job to tell people what the thought.
My biggest issue was that the review, at least in its reference to the character played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, is completely misleading. He refers to Hoffman’s character as nurse who “who nervously orders porno mags for home delivery.”
While this statement is true, the statement’s implication of why he is doing this is far different from his actual motivation. We read that line and we conclude that he is probably ordering these magazines for his own personal use. We are given the impression he is some sort of pervert who is reading porn and jerking off while a man lies dying nearby. He clearly doesn’t give a shit about his patient and cares only about his own sexual gratification. Maybe he’s a closeted gay necrophiliac or something.
In fact, Hoffman’s character is the kindest and most compassionate person in the entire film. He treats his dying patient with care and respect and when he is asked to do that patient a favor, he goes far beyond his charge as a nurse.
He orders those magazines as a way to help him search for a man’s estranged son. That is what the review carefully doesn’t tell you.
Geeks Without God Talks About Puppets
This week’s guest on Geeks Without God is Gordon Smuder. I’ve known Gordon for years as we were both teenagers at the Renaissance Festival together. More recently, he has gained notoriety as a puppeteer as well as a puppet maker. Many local friends will know Gordon from Transylvania Television but he has a lot of new projects going on right now and we got to talk about them all.
Not only did Gordon talk to us about puppets, he gave us puppets! That makes him only the second guest who has bribed us with individual swag!
I’m head writer on a new project Gordon is working on and we talked about it a lot on the podcast. There isn’t a website or anything for it but there will be something fairly soon. At least I hope so because the whole project is pretty cool.
Listen to the episode to hear more about it!
Putting it Together – Podcasting
Putting it Together is my Monday “artist talking about art stuff blog”. The title comes from “Sunday in the Park with George,” the best (and possibly only) musical that is entirely dedicated to an artist talking about his art. Is that pretentious enough?
Two years ago, I knew of Podcasting as a thing other people did. I didn’t see the value. Well, I’ve come a long way to understanding why it is a benefit to me as a performer and as a creator.
A global energy crisis of epic proportions notwithstanding, the internet is here to stay. As a creator, I have to remember that when I produce a play, my audience may be local. However, there are a great many other things I do that can have a global reach. The Internet is the tool I use to reach those people.
Podcasting is a way to get yourself into other people’s lives in a way that no social media outlet can. It reaches back to days when people spent hours of their lives listening to the radio.
Writing is great but you lose so much nuance when you write a blog post. Sure, your grammar is (hopefully) better and there aren’t all sorts of awkward pauses while you figure out what to write next but you also lose inflection, tone, cadence, and so many other qualities that make speech a far more effective way to connect emotionally with an audience.
Podcasting allows you to talk to your audience. It allows them to get to know you in a far more personal way than a bunch of 140 character tweets or thousand word blogs.
Duck Duck Grey Duck
The United States of America is a country divided. Never has there been so bitter a battle than the war over a simple little children’s game.
The civil war was just a skirmish compared to this fight and we, the proud warriors of Minnesota must stand alone.
It is a simple question that divides us. One even more important to our self-worth than the question of whether or not we are drinking “soda” or “pop” or even “soda pop.”
Is it “Duck Duck Goose” or is it “Duck Duck Grey Duck?”
The rest of the country says Goose. They turn up their noses at Minnesotans who have, apparently, failed to recognize that there is no other way to play this game. Conform, Minnesota! Conform!
Minnesota defiantly responds that no! We will not conform! We haven’t ruined “Duck Duck Goose.” We have fixed it.
Shit that Pissed Me Off – 3/28
Mitt Romney Could Have Prevented Russia’s Annexation of Crimea
Turns out Mitt can see the future! He can see it so well, he could have stopped Putin if he’d only been elected President.
I’m sure he was on the phone to Obama several times a week because fixing the problem would have been a lot more important that scoring political points, right?
Look, I know that the Republicans are contractually obligated to say that Obama does a bad job at everything. However, are they so stupid as to think they could have fixed the Ukraine situation?
Wow! The US is, like, right next to the Ukraine! Obviously we could fix this if there was a Republican in the white house!
No, of course they aren’t. They know full well that in the same circumstances, they couldn’t have done anything either. Thing is, they are assuming all the people listening to them are too stupid to figure that out.
And what really pisses me off is they are probably right.
Alphabetical Movie – The Magnificent Seven
Not only did I watch this film for the Alphabetical movie project recently, I watched it again for A Reel Education!
That provides me with a wonderful springboard to talk about A Reel Education, which is by far my favorite podcast to record.
Every couple of weeks I get to sit down with Jena Young and Melissa Kaercher, watch a movie and then talk about it. How is that not the best idea for a podcast ever? I’m not saying that it is the best idea from a “everyone wants to listen to this podcast” standpoint.
Rather, it is the best idea from a “boy do I enjoy spending my time this way” standpoint.
Geeks Without God Tries to Decide if We are Arrogant
A few weeks ago, we had our friend Mark Lazarchic on Geeks Without God to talk about why he doesn’t like to say he’s an atheist. His argument was primarily focused on the fact that atheists sound arrogant when they say they don’t believe in god.
We come back to that assertion in this episode because I genuinely wondered if it was more arrogant to say that there is no god than it was to say that you were positive god existed and further, you knew exactly what god was thinking.
To me, the reason it is considered arrogance is because a lot of people believe in god. If you stand up and say you don’t, you can either be perceived as courageous or arrogant. I think it depends, in a large part on the beliefs of the person to whom you are stating your opinion.
So are atheists any more arrogant than anyone else? I know what I think but you could always listen to this week’s episode and decide for yourself!
Putting it Together – Five Fifths
Putting it Together is my Monday “artist talking about art stuff blog”. The title comes from “Sunday in the Park with George,” the best (and possibly only) musical that is entirely dedicated to an artist talking about his art. Is that pretentious enough?
Sometimes you get exactly what you want and then you realize all the reasons you may not have wanted it.
The Minnesota Fringe Festival does a big fundraiser every year wherein they invite five producers to write one fifth of a familiar pop culture property. When it comes to writing comedy, pop culture parody is kind of my wheelhouse. I have been super hopeful that someday I would be asked to write a fifth because that’s my thing!
So this year, I’ve been asked to write a fifth. And when I got asked I was really excited and happy because, as I said, this is completely my thing!
The movie in question is The Shining and I love The Shining. Not in a crazy Room 237 kind of way, you understand. It is a great film that offers so many exciting possibilities for satire. Some of which haven’t even been featured on “The Simpsons!”
Many of which I can squeeze into the fifteen minutes that shall be mine to bend to my will!
So excited!
What happens after that initial excitement about what I get to do, however, is the realization that I just agreed to actually do it. Then the doubt creeps in.
Grail Diary 