Japanese Street Magic

Two things I really like are Japan and magic, and I recently stumbled across a video that combines the two. Apparently, the fellow in this video is a famous Japanese magician, and one day he decided to wander around the streets and seriously freak people out. He must be a flexible fellow; I wonder if Kit Fitzsimons can learn to do this?

PCQOTD : 12-30-05

Plebian:
"You keep samin' when you oughta be changin', and you keep losin' when you oughta not bet."

Erudite:
"We gonna get funky like a monkey!"

PCQOTD : 12-29-05

Plebian:
"High on a hill sits the lonely goatherd."

Erudite:
"I swear to god!"
"SWEAR TO ME!"

Best Spam EVER!

Okay, I get lots of spam. And for the most part, it gets deleted immediately without reading it. But this one was not only funny enough to read, it was funny enough to put on the blog. Here's the subject line of the spam:

"With Ultra Allure Pheromones women will chase you like Tom chases Jerry."

Excellent. So I decided to open it up (my email program hides pictures and attachments, so that I won't be infected by evil spam). Here's the body of the email:

"With Ultra AIlure Pherom0nes you won’t h@ve enough room 1n your organizer for the phone numbers of the beautiful women. Instead of smelling like dirty socks, try smelling good and attracting women at the same time with Ultra Allure Pheromones."

All I have to say is, sign me up!

PCQOTD : 12-28-05

Plebian:
"And now for something completely different."

Erudite:
"We used to dream of living in a corridor."

Holiday Wrapup

Well that was a good vacation. We got Thursday, Friday, and Monday off for the holidays, and I relaxed. Did the ComedySportz show on Friday, which was okay. Had some audio troubles at the top of the show. (Here's a ip: don't fire up WinAmp before firing up Mr. Voice, or chaos will ensue.) Afterwards, watched the first half of Mr. Diplomat and then took off with Mr. Kaye to hang out at his house. Actually, I practically moved in with Ethan, as we hung out before and after the show on Friday, then watched MST3K at Ethan's on Saturday with Bly and Kit, and then headed back to Ethan's on Christmas to watch Andy Kaufmann and kill things with EK and PT.

Had a decent Christmas day; went over early to spend time with mom and open oodles of presents (which were appreciated by both sides). My sister didn't show up on time, so we said "fuck it" and just ate without them. (They had just had breakfast right before they came over. Eh.) I got lots of books and dvds, and fake barbed wire from mom. And I also got "The Nature Boy" Ric Bear, as pictured above. Too, too funny.

I spent Monday watching selections from the third volume of the Warner Brothers Golden Collection cartoon dvds and eating a turkey sandwich which made me sleepy.

PCQOTD : 12-27-05

Back to work, and back with the Popular Culture Quote of the Day.

Plebian:
"With faded feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there."

Erudite:
"What a ta-rah-rah-GOON-dee-ay!"

Hulk DESTROY Christmas!

So the Hulk now has his own Christmas tree. Which you can buy. It's green, just like Christmas itself. And while it isn't Gamma-irradiated, it is apparently dangerous.
Go on over to I-Mockery and visit the folks who bought and documented this fine holiday product.

This caught my eye, because I almost bought this Hulk telephone for the DSI White Elephant gift exchange. Hulk funny, make puny humans giggle.

Japanese Weirdness

I felt like doing a post today other than the PCQOTD, but couldn't find anything particularly original or thrilling on today's blogs. So instead, I bring you an old favourite of mine: Save Tobby. In this nutty little game from the Toshiba Company of Japan, you are a dog. Operating a crane. Your lovely girlfriend (who looks just like you, but has a bow in her hair) has been captured by that most evil of scoundrels, a bulldog. Your mission: to drop bones, hearts, diamonds, and other knickknacks into the sewer pipes. Why? Well, just complete the game for the explanation. The crane will slide back and forth, carrying the item. Just click nywhere in the window to make it let go. Carom off the walls if you want to. Just don't let the bulldog catch the item! (Or do let him; that's funny sometimes. His facial expressions are hilarious.) Have fun, and for chrissake, SAVE TOBBY!!!

PCQOTD : 12-21-05

Plebian:
"You put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking out the door."

Erudite:
"Laugh now, monkey-boy!"

Dreidel/Droidel

Fandom knows no limits.

Use the Force.

PCQOTD : 12-20-05

Plebian:
"You don’t need Deck The Halls or Jingle Bell Rock, ‘cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock—both Jewish!"

Erudite:
"He spoke French! He's dead!"

Beyond The Dreams Of Avarice

I found this interesting. In this article from Forbes magazine, they rank the fifteen richest fictional characters. A fun if useless concept to muse over. (And by the way, there is NO way Daddy Warbucks has more wealth than Richie Rich. Please! His mansion is so big, you needed camping gear and supplies to reach halfway down one wing!)

Battle Beyond The Stars

Alien Loves Predator is one of my favourite webcomics. The guy just takes his Alien and Predator action figures and photographs them along with various New York City backgrounds and does a hilariously entertaining comic about the very annoying Alien and Predator characters sharing an apartment in the Big Apple. For some reason, today's episode really amused me. Enjoy.

PCQOTD : 12-19-05

Plebian:
"If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself; just send money. How about tens and twenties?"

Erudite:
"By your command."

Content Like Bessie

I'm having a good day.

I haven't even left the house yet (it's 4:45 pm now), but it's been a good day. I got up at a decent hour even after staying up late hanging out with Jackson (who introduced me to the fabulous show "My Name Is Earl"), and spent the bulk of the day working on secret presents for two friends of mine. They're finished now, and I'm quite proud. I've been creative, productive, positive, and inhaled hot gluegun fumes. Now I'm going to take a break and relax a bit before a full night of comedy.

Thanking Time Again

Well, this post was supposed to go up yesterday, but yesterday got away from me.

I'd like to thank some people again, because I don't think there's enough thanking in the world, and I want to encourage it, as well as encourage people to continue being nice folks.

We had a *great* ComedySportz practice on Wednesday, helmed by the inimitable Ross White. ("What do you want, Ross White?") I was in a good state of mind that night, and Ross gave the practice a really comforting, encouraging atmosphere that I really appreciated. Dave Siegel hosted an equally supporting practice last week, but I was in no state to enjoy it. This week, I had loads of fun and learned a lot. We focussed on Five Things, and specifically, our gibberish. We had an amusing time doing a monologue in English, then switch to gibberish foreign language when Ross called "switch." I got gibberish Japanese, and Ross asked me to do my Macho Man voice for the monologue, which seemed to be very fun for both me and the people in the audience. It's very hard to switch from Japanese back into Macho Man, I've discovered.

Then Dave Siegel and I did a gibberish opera while Jason Quinn introduced each act in English. I think we did quite well, and I'd like to thank Dave for working so nicely with me on stage. I enjoy working with him, and we seem to mesh well. This is the kind of improv situation I really enjoy doing: working with people I feel comfortable with, that are friendly and supporting and open. It was a joy to work with Dave.

At this point, Rogers showed up. I was really hoping he wouldn't make it to this practice, for the simple reason that I enjoy Rogers current state of gibberish, and wouldn't change it for the world. No, his gibberish isn't polished; no, he doesn't do a lot of variation in it; no, his gibberish does not have syntax like a real language. He has Fleeba Flabba. And Fleeba Flabba RULES! I love Rogers; he's a lot of fun and really funny and a great person to be around. I wouldn't change Rogers' Fleeba Flabba for anything. It's fabulously entertaining. Thanks for being you, Rogers. You rock.

Then we started running Five Things games, and I actually participated, believe it or not. In the first game, I was sent out to be the guesser. I would've been more comfortable being the giver the first time 'round, but for this very resaon, I accepted the role and trotted out into the cold. Richie Efird and Jason Curtis were my teammates in this round, and they were great. Jason was particularly clever when he had to communicate "diamond earrings" to me, miming a wedding proposal first, to get the "diamond" part over, and then yanking out the diamond and jamming it in my ears to get over the "earring" portion. Clevah!

Later on, I got to be one of the "givers" for Five Things, along with my compatriot in Zack Bly. Earlier in the evening, Zack was kind enough to give me a book on British fables, and we had fun singing Elvish songs and listening to Zack's recitation of Dwarvish poetry. He also requested that I do a reading from Lord of the Rings in my wrestling announcer voic, so that was a lot of fun. Good companionship was shared. ANYWAY, we did the Five Things thing with Zack and me presenting to Battlin' Ben Moser. I was nervous, but I do love Five Things, and Zack was very helpful and supportive, getting me through it all. We ended up having a blast, and traded off back and forth on verious items, really helping each other out and working as a team. It felt great. Ben, of course, is a master of ComedySportz, and was always energetic and attentive. The high point of the game was when I had to convey "otter" to Ben. I tried over and over, acting out the otter, doing typical "otter" moves, and he let me know he had no idea what I was trying to do. I then mimed a beaver with the teeth and the tree and all, and said "un-unh" and then "well, maybe", and went back to the otter action, swimming about as Zack mimed the water for me. Ben looked like he had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, but signalled for us to go back and sit down and he'd go ahead and guess the rest of the stuff. So back on the chairs, Zack and I are muttering to each other: "How are we going to do otter?" "We've got to sound it out." Suddenly, we hear Ben say "...and my cleats have been replaced with otters." Zack and I just stared at each other, wide-eyed--HOW DID HE GET THAT?!?! It was hilarious; Ben really surprised us. Later on, as we were leaving, we asked him: "How did you get otters?" He said, absolutely straight-faced, "Well, it wasn't a beaver, so it was an otter."

I also learned a lot from listening to Corey doing sound effects while I wasn't in the booth. His sense of when to do effects to help out the people on stage is fabulous. Mad props there.

Great fun. A fine night. Many thanks to Ross, Dave Siegel, Richie, Curtis, Bly, and Corey. An extra thanks to Jason Curtis for being so kind to take the time to say goodbye and give me a high-five while I had to be up in the booth at the end of the night to turn off all the tech. It felt nice to be remembered. Thel ittle things count.

PCQOTD : 12-16-05

Plebian:
"Pa rum pum pum pum."

Erudite:
"It is a hunger that never...dies."

DJ Vader in the House!!!

This has been around a while, but I re-stumbled on it, and it still amuses the heck out of me. Go dark side! Go dark side! It's your birthday! It's your birthday!

Kick it over here, baby pop.

PCQOTD : 12-15-05

Plebian:
"Snowing and blowing up bushels of fun, now the jingle hop has begun."

Erudite:
"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?"

HAVE AT YOU, VARLET!

So this cracks me up to no end. This London designer came up with an idea for a bedside table that transforms into a club and shield in case people break into your flat. Yes, a table that becomes a club and shield. Should you wake up in the middle of the night, and you hear a strange sound coming from the garden window, just sweep your copy of the Times crossword puzzle and that half-empty glass of Orange Quosh off the table next to your bed, and quickly don your trusty shield and wield your mighty truncheon. Defend your castle like the knight you always dreamt you might one day be, if the rigid class system didn't continually remind you that you were dead common.

No mention was made whether or not you need to make a 1d20 saving throw against a toff with a revolver.

Get the full scoop here.

PCQOTD : 12-14-05

Plebian:
"You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel."

Erudite:
"You like us better, yes?"
"Not better, just different."

Geektastic Postscript

I humbly suggest that everybody go to the comments section of yesterday's "Geektastic" post, and read Mr. Kit Fitzsimons' fabulous Donkey Kong poem.

PCQOTD : 12-13-05

Plebian:
"Walk right in, it's around the back; just a half a mile from the railroad track."

Erudite:
"Once upon a time there was an engineer, Choo-Choo Charlie was his name, we hear."

Geektastic

I think this is hilarious. Poetry so easily falls into the realm of the pretentious, and combining it with old-school videogames makes it fabulously pretentious.

So iFilm has a clip of what purports to be a "Video Game Poetry Slam", where geeky fellows wax on in dulcet tones about their favourite retro games. Feast your ocular organs on this sample text, about the game "Joust":

"the clicking hooves of the black knight’s
demon ostrich bang like gavels on your guts
as he canters slowly towards you,
with those fucked up white eyes,
like something totally alien lives behind the shell of his human form,
his blue silhouette"

Article about the Game Poetry.

The iFilm page of the movies.

PCQOTD : 12-12-05

Plebian:
"He just smiled and gave me a Vegemite sandwich."

Erudite:
"Whether you like it or you don't like it, learn to love it, because it's the best thing going today."

Posting Makes Me Feel Good

Oh, and I would also like to thank one Kit Fitzsimons for introducing me to the wonderfulness that is Beaver and Steve. I had forgotten about it for a while, having bookmarked it in the wrong folder, but after rediscovering it this afternoon and giggling my way through the Dinosaur-vs-Moth storyline, the day has become brighter. Thank you, Kit.

I am terribly amused by the drawing of Steve getting scared by the moth in the latest episode.

Recognition

A few weeks ago, I was muttering about and decided to make an effort to openly recognize and reward other people's kindnesses and achievements. Since I enjoy a pat on the back now and again, I thought it only right to do the same for others, hopefully spreading good feelings about. I've done so on the boards when I've really enjoyed someone's performances or skills, and thought I'd add a few here in the blog for more personal things.

I'd like to thank Ross for trying to help me out Wednesday night, even though I was being a curmudgeon. He was very understanding and encouraging, as always.

I'd like to thank Corey for complimenting me on my blog. I'm sure it just seemed like an everyday act to him, but it really meant a lot to me to hear that from someone with his talents, who I don't really get to talk to that often.

I'd like to thank Jackson for generally being a good friend, and for having fun reading my blog and participating therein.

I alluded to this in an earlier post, but I'd like to thank Dave Siegel here for being a very positive figure in Wednesday's ComedySportz practice, and encouraging me to participate (even if I didn't take him up on his kind and giving offer). Dave's just a really nice guy, and I appreciate his style.

I'll try and keep up this recognition of good deeds done and talents exhibited, both in person and in here. Everybody deserves to be given a smile when they do nice things or shine in their performance, and I hope to encourage that practice with my own actions.

PCQOTD : 12-9-05

Plebian:
"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Erudite:
"I'm as happy as a Frenchman who's invented a pair of self-removing trousers!"

Doom, Despair, Agony, etc, etc, blah-blah-blah

So I'm not sure why I'm typing this, but I guess a blog is supposed to be what's on your mind at the time, and this is what's on my mind.

I've been really down lately, and I just can't seem to shake it. It's a lot of things, really, the same old stuff from the past year, but I think this one got triggered by my poor performance in Scott's Level Three class on Tuesday. I had to miss classes two weeks in a row, and I came back this week not really knowing what was going on. I felt like I was dragging the class back, and that's one of my biggest dislikes; I HATE having to inconvenience other people for my own individual shortcomings. Anyway, I felt out of place, and since I felt out of place I couldn't participate well in the scenes, and didn't come away feeling very bright or positive. This led into the next night with ComedySportz rehearsals, where I never really feel like I fit in anyway, and the lack of confidence from the previous night's affair didn't help at all. After begging off participating in a few games (even though Dave Siegel was being very kind and supportive), I finally got roped into being part of one of the three practice teams of the night. I was in with three people I was very comfortable with (Ross, Zack Bly, and Kit), and thought I'd do okay. Alas, in my attempts to try and be energetic and amusing, I ventured outside the framework of the exercise and got called for doing a bit. So, being the already selfconscious and oversensitive fool that I am, I shut down even more. At this point, I'm not looking forward to doing much of anything performance-wise this weekend. I'm really not sure I'm cut out for this sort of thing.

My first impulse is to just slink away and hide for a while, because I know nobody wants to hear me whine about crap. I really want to just raise my chin up, say "fuck it!" and leap in with both feet and have fun, but can't seem to do it. I'm hoping that tonight's ComedySportz show goes well, and jolts me out of my funk.

Anyway, my apologies to anybody who's had to be around me the past few days and felt uncomfortable in the presence of my crappy attitude.

PCQOTD : 12-8-05

Plebian:
"Can we build it? Yes we can!"

Erudite:
"Gone, gone the form of man, release the might from fleshy mire, boil the blood in heart of fire."

Turn left, fool!

"What are you, high? How do you know I'm not just bullshitting you, man? You think I know where you're going? C'mon!"

That's merely one of the fun and exciting phrases available in the "Dennis Hopper" package now available for your car's onboard navigation system. Yes, you too can have the star of "Easy Rider" and "Blue Velvet" telling you just when to turn on your way to your local heroin dealer's apartment. Or perhaps you prefer your navigator to have a mohawk and wear lots of gold jewelry? Why, I pity da fool who doesn't spin the steering wheel at the grammatically-challenged commands of Mr. T!

Click here for the whole story.

PCQOTD : 12-7-05

Plebian:
"Hailing frequencies open."

Erudite:
"Oh Belvedere! Come here, boy!"

PCQOTD : 12-6-05

Plebian:
"Follow your nose; it always knows."

Erudite:
"There is no land beyond the law where tyrants rule with unshakable power. It is but a dream from which the evil wake, to face their fate, their terrifying hour."

PCQOTD : 12-5-05

Back at work after vacation, so the Popular Culture Quote Of The Day is back in earnest.

Plebian:
"C is for Cookie"

Erudite:
"I can take a noun and bend it; gimme a noun!"

Too Much Information

You might want to pay attention to the title of this entry. It's about naughty bits.

So it truly may be too much information, but what the hell, it's my blog and this is a subject that interests me, so if you don't like talking about naughty girlie bits, then feel free to skip this particular entry.

My ex-girlfriend was terribly ashamed of her large, protruding labia minora. She even went so far as to say she wanted to get surgery to have them made to look "normal, like everybody else's". I pleaded with her to never ever do that, because I thought they were lovely, sexy, unique, and loved to pay a whole lot of attention to them (leading to a whole lot of orgasms for her; yay!) Anyway, I was amused when I found this website devoted to that self-same subject.

This leads me to feel that I need to state how sad it makes me when women feel bad about how they look, even when they have someone who is ravenously appreciative of their appearance. In the aforementioned case with the ex-girlfriend, she was *gorgeous*, *incredible*, and drop-dead *attractive*. She was, as I stated quite often, "my dream girl". She was a 4'10" Korean girl with a really cool tattoo, interesting piercings, kissable lips, gorgeous hair, and the warmest smile I've ever seen. When she let her guard down and let herself be truly happy, her eyes shone and my heart melted; she was that beautiful. But she hated the way she looked. She wanted to be taller, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and *white*. This almost brought me to tears. Why look like everybody else? Why not be proud of being uniquely beautiful?

The mass media sucks, basically. We have Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson and generic cheerleaders shoved down our throats on 127 cable channels twenty-four hours a day. Barbie is in every little girl's home, and even Barbie's "ethnic friends" are basically the same doll with a differently dyed shade of plastic. If you're asian, black, short, or big, you have precious few images to reach out and beam over. I have my Masters in Popular Culture, and while that sounds fairly laughable, it is a serious range of study that encompasses sociology, anthropology, media studies, and a host of other diciplines. Within that framework, we spent some time looking at how the media affected the self-image of people who consumed television shows, magazines, and the like. My friend Wendy focussed in on Barbie dolls and how they twisted little girls' minds to hate their own diverse and unique body types and yearn to be thinner, bustier, blonder, and tanner. This is exactly what happened to my lovely little Leesa, and it pissed me off. I spent a lot of time trying to help her see through my eyes, and recognize how amazingly attractive she was. None of it seemed to help in the end.

Okay, this post started off with the intent of being a proclamation of how I like porn, and it changed into a condemnation of anorexic supermodels and a cry for diversity. Strange how life works. (Or maybe just strange how my twisted mind works.)

Welcome to Tedland. No idea how long we'll remain open.

Lionel Richie's Clay Head

Sometimes I'm amazed at what one can find on the internet.

So I'm watching this BBC2 show I downloaded, "QI", a sort of erudite quiz program hosted by a favourite of mine, Stephen Fry. The show frequently decays into comedic chaos, and this episode was no exception. One of the members of the panel told some long drawn-out story about Barbara Cartland, suggesting that she wore so much makeup that one would have to claw their way through the layers of paint to get to her true face. He then added, as a bit of a coda, "like the clay Lionel Richie." Nobody on the show knew what the hell he was talking about, and it wasn't explained, so I did a quick search for "clay head lionel richie" on Google and came up with, among other things, THIS little gem:

Building Lionel Richie's Clay Head