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?"