This Stoned Kid and I Are Done Professionally

D'oh Draper

"The Simpsons" may be a shell of its former self, but every once in a while, they can still nail it:

The Best Video You Will See Today

My brother Jonathan doing stand-up comedy at the Unurban Coffee Shop in Santa Monica. Face.

I Need My Sarcasm...That's My Security Blanket, Innit?

Got linked to this article about the science of humor via Andrew Sullivan. It's a terrifying glimpse of things to come:

The real news is that the investigation of humour is belatedly becoming a science. After millennia of untested speculation by armchair thinkers, moves are afoot to bring the study of laughter into the mainstream of experimental psychology. As Rod Martin, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, notes in his textbook "The Psychology of Humor", which was published last year, humour is found in all human cultures and is ubiquitous in everyday life. His own studies suggest that on average people laugh 17.5 times per day.

Let's think this through, people...Nothing ruins a joke more than having to explain it to someone. Why, just today, I attempted to explain a visual pun to a co-worker. The image was a military carrier with a bunch of cats lined up on it. In other words, a cat carrier. Ho ho. Anyway, nothing will make you feel like a dingus faster than explaining a visual pun to someone.

"So, you see, there's this carrier..."
"I thought that was a telephone pole."
"Yeah, it does kind of...Oh, forget it."

These researchers don't just want to explain one joke. They want to explain everything that makes jokes work. This will clearly result in the creation of a "humor black hole," in which, by trying to figure out why funny things are funny, scientists will, in a split-second, render everything unfunny forever. And that, my friends, would suck for all of us, except the members of Broken Lizard, whose unfunny movies would now have significantly diminished box office competition.

Just imagine it. I tell you a really terrific dirty joke, and you respond, "Oh, well, that is exactly the sort of unexpected anecdotal denouement that I once found ribaldly amusing, because while we assume initially that the black and the white men's penises are the same size, in fact, once we arrive at the close of the discourse, we come to realize that the black man's is, truthfully, far more expansive. What a legendary wit you would have been before the great Clown-Out of '09!"

[Also, 17.5 laughs a day? Really? Canadians are some goofy motherfuckers. If you get in a solid chuckle during a workday at a typical American office, you're ahead of the game!]

RIP George Carlin

I know he was pretty old, and lived an amazing, full life, so this isn't really a tragedy, per se, but I'm seriously bummed about the loss of George Carlin today to heart failure. I think you could pretty easily make the case that Carlin's the greatest single stand-up comedian of all time.

No point in trying to sum up this guy's career and impact in a single blog post, so I'm just going to leave you with one of my favorite of his routines...The "stupid, full of shit, nuts" routine:



I had the pleasure of seeing Carlin perform a few times in person, including a classic "Tonight Show" performance back during my UCLA days. The man was a genius. He'll be missed.

From the Files of Police Mod

Brilliant mash-up of "Naked Gun" and "Grand Theft Auto IV." There's really nothing textual I could add that would enhance this.

The Muppets Take "Manhattan"

Wow...this is brilliant. Thanks to 1938 Media for pointing me to this fantastic mash-up via the magic of Twitter.

Between No Ferns with Thomas Lennon

I interviewed actor/screenwriter/intense Dune fan Thomas Lennon ("Reno 911," "The State") the other day. He's an intensely awesome guy, and gave our little Mahalo Daily podcast a full hour of his valuable time. I think it's definitely among the best Mahalo Daily episodes with which I've been involved...Let's watch!

Gervais Drinks Ramsay's Spunk

I'm not sure what the context of this clip could possibly be, and I don't care. Gervais + Ramsay = Good.



[Hat tip, Ezra]

Clash of the Titans

Two giants of podcasting - the Shel Israel puppet and Jason Calacanis - together at last.

Mahalo Hot Stunnaz

The Mahalo Hot Stunnaz are in da houze:



Take that, people who don't think we make enough!

Fred Armisen: Professional Sketch Ruiner

Seriously, does anyone really like this guy? The worst is when he tries to do impressions - his Barack Obama is so bad, people wouldn't have been able to tell who he was trying to do without Amy Poehler playing Hillary right next to him. He sounds more like Kermit than Obama.

Last night (I didn't see the show, but caught up with some of it via Hulu), he ruins a perfectly reasonable sketch, in which the entire cast (pretty much) gets a chance to show off their Christopher Walken impressions:



Seriously...maybe this guy is a funny stand-up or something. But he's truly terrible on this show.

Too Amazing To Be Real

Anyone need a movie?

No Country for Old Milkshakes...With, Um, Juno

This SNL skit from this weekend is getting pretty viral. Daniel Plainview and his son, H.W., host a Food Network Show about milkshakes...Guess what it's called???!??!?!?



We thought of the idea for a possible Mahalo Daily a few weeks ago, and I had actually argued against it. Seriously, a podcast in which Daniel Plainview travels around the neighborhood drinking people's milkshakes. "It's just repeating the line he says over and over again in the movie!" I protested, and I guess I won the day because we didn't end up filming the episode...or maybe they just never got around to it.

Seeing it done by television professionals with decent impressionists...I still don't really think it's the funny. He's still stuck repeating Daniel Day-Lewis' dialogue from There Will Be Blood and drinking milkshakes, which actually has very little to do with the character or the movie. It seems to me that Daniel Plainview could be placed in many situations that would be far more amusing than an ice cream shop, but then you couldn't use the catchphrase.

But, it's There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men themed, so I put it on the blog. And on Mahalo's "I Drink Your Milkshake" page.

The Best Part of Oscar Night

It wasn't on the Oscar telecast. It was Jimmy Kimmel's star-studded response to Sarah Silverman's "I'm Fucking Matt Damon" song. I give you..."I'm Fucking Ben Affleck":

There's Only One Man Who Would Dare Give Me the Raspberry...

The Golden Raspberry Awards honor the worst Hollywood films of the year, as judged by a bunch of weirdos who intentionally watch a lot of mainstream pap for no good reason. (This year's big winner was I Know Who Killed Me). It's interesting that they tend to focus on infamous flops (like Showgirls) or obviously terrible films for pre-adolescents (like one of this year's big nominees, Bratz). The Razzies aren't so much about films that are surprisingly terrible, where you actually go see it thinking it will be good. They basically poke fun at the shit that everyone already knows is shit, like Epic Movie and anything starring Paris Hilton. (Look for The Hottie and the Nottie to make a big splash at next year's show.)

I attended the festivities this morning in Santa Monica for Mahalo Daily, and let me tell you...I felt right at home in this crowd. There's a certain type of comedy event that draws exclusively dudes who look like me: overweight, balding bearded guys. When I went to see Tenacious D with my brother at the Wiltern, it was like getting lost in a sea of Lons. I felt like I had crawled inside my own John Malkovich portal. And again at the Razzies, I felt right at home. (A woman from Hong Kong TV actually came up and interviewed me, probably because I looked so much like I belonged there. She didn't even seem to care that I had a microphone and was hosting my own podcast at the time.) In Los Angeles, I'm so rarely able to disappear into a crowd. I saw a photo of me at a party not long ago, and it looked like some idiot had cast Dave Attel in a remake of The Breakfast Club. It's like attractive-fresh-faced-youngster, attractive-fresh-faced-youngster, attractive-fresh-faced-younger, middle-aged-methadone-addict-with-an-eating-disorder. One of these things is not like the other.

Anyway, back to the Razzies.

It's about an hour-long "ceremony" in which Razzie cast members (pretty much an improv comedy group) dramatically read reviews of shit-terrible movies and run clips from them, then announce random winners chosen by some online poll or something.

This year's Worst Picture nominees were Daddy Day Camp, I Know Who Killed Me, Norbit, Bratz: The Movie and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. I think the biggest problem with the show from an entertainment standpoint is that these same movies are nominated in pretty much every category. (I Know Who Killed Me won an all-time record 7 Razzies, including Worst Picture). I mean, it makes sense in a way...If you think Daddy Day Camp is the worst movie of the year (and I haven't seen it, but you're most likely on the right track), it's probably because you think it had the worst screenplay and the worst performances.

But still...it starts to seem like a pile-on after a while. A full hour of grown adults complaining about Norbit feels like overkill. I'm sure it's bad, but what the hell did you expect? Why did you see Norbit in the first place? I see a lot of bad movies, but I knew enough to avoid Norbit.

After the actual ceremony, I did a brief interview with the creator of the Razzies (the HeadBerry, as he's called) John Wilson. He's a very nice guy who looks a lot like Roger Ebert with a beard, and because I get a bit brave and kind of stupid when there's a camera on, I made sure to mention that observation right of the bat, just to make sure I offended him immediately, in case he was going to give me an interesting interview or something. (He was actually very cool and took my abuse in stride).

I asked him about Halle Berry coming to accept her award personally for Catwoman a few years back, and I wish we could put the entire answer into the podcast. (There won't be time). The awards themselves may be about taking cheap shots at the same starlets Perez and TMZ pick on every day, but this guy obviously has a deep affection for schlock cinema, and I can of course respect that. I've seen Can't Stop the Music on more than one occasion. Projected theatrically. Once as part of a double feature with The Apple. And let me tell you, Lindsay Lohan's got nothin' on The Village People.


I'll post the Razziecast whenever we release it this week.

Artie Lange Death Watch

Wow...Artie Lange does not seem to being doing well. Check out his reaction when Conan asks him about his recent sick days from the "Howard Stern Show."



The best part of this clip is not even Artie's drug jokes, which only go over half the time. It's Conan's barely-concealed terror at having a guest who only wants to tell "the last time I did crystal meth" anecdotes. Somehow, I'm thinking this wasn't brought up at his pre-interview.

[Hat tip: Defamer]

It Could Have Been Me...

Michael Bay Demonstrates Signs of Possessing Sense of Humor...Scientists Baffled...

If Michael Bay is funny, why is all the comedy in all his films so completely tone-deaf? Perhaps some assistant whom he trusts just informed him this was funny, much as a translator might discreetly inform his boss that the Premier of Slovakia has issued another one of his trademark bon mots and a twitter of amusement might be an appropriate reaction.

Either way, it made me laugh:



[Found via Best Week Ever]

Fear and Loathing in Hyrule

Maybe I need to start watching Boing Boing's podcast more often. This edition of 8-bit cinema combines Legend of Zelda, Rad Racer and Hunter S. Thompson. It's brilliant: