April 2nd

And all I can think is, “Thank god April Fool’s Day online is over.”

Seriously, Internet, you all fucking did it horrifically wrong.

That Google autopilot thing? Made me want to kill my Gmail and go back to Microsoft Outlook. Yes, I’d have to deal with terrible search functionality, but the downside of living in the cloud is that you have to be ready for the rain of crappy whenever Google decides to drop it on you.

Sarah and I listened to a Radio Lab episode this weekend that convinced me that Darwinism is over, due to the fact that we can now control biological engineering (to a point) and so competition as it had existed for a few billion years is no longer necessary. I would like to add to that argument that April Fool’s Day is no longer necessary, because the Internet has completely murdered the entire idea of being clever.

From here on out, the greatest prank I’ll ever see are people pulling the wool over the April Fool’s True Believers’ eyes and making them all realize that pulling an AF joke is the same as being the hugest band/theater/whatever-lame-thing-you-were-into-back-then geek in high school ever.

At any rate, new rule – if you’re thinking about pulling an April Fool’s joke next year, think back and take a second to ask yourself, “Does this make me look like Edward Norton in the beginning of Fight Club?”

If it takes you more than two seconds to answer, “No! I figured out the one new original thing!” kill yourself and put it in your will to have your head delivered to me. I’m starting a collection of deterrence on my balcony.

Hosting OFFICE SPACE

So this past Sunday we had the opportunity to co-present the OFFICE SPACE 1o year anniversary and reunion. There were a lot of fun moments, from getting drunk with Samir at Club Deville, to Sarah and I  riding in the limo with Samir and Michael Bolton before they got out to smash the fax machine, to watching Brian the happy waiter do all sorts of karaoke at the Alligator Grill where all the Chotchkie’s scenes were filmed.

But the highlight for me personally was definitely the thrill of being able to be up on stage with all of the stars, moderating one of the most fun Q&A’s of my career so far. Part of that fun was the straight up thrill of hosting in the Paramount, of course, but even more fun was the way we all ended up positioned on the stage:

It’s a little hard to see us all the way off in the left of the frame in this shot, but that’s John C. McGinley standing to my right. He’s one of the Bobs in OFFICE SPACE, but to SCRUBS viewers, he’s all Dr. Cox. And as SCRUBS viewers know, Dr. Cox is an awesome control freak who likes to tell the ex-intern J.D. what to do all the time. J.D., meanwhile, just wants to earn Cox’s approval.

Well, during the Q&A, I basically became J.D. Whenever there was a question that was kinda off the point, or when someone did the, “I’ve got a two-part question” kind of bullshit, McGinley would lean over in my ear and say things like, “Cut that guy off. He doesn’t get two questions,” or, “Wow. That question was horrible. Don’t pick people like that again.” He was right every time, of course, but it still made me all sorts of nervous.

Fortunately, after the whole thing ended he actually pulled me aside to say that he thought I’d done a really good job. J.D. wins!

And friends of the theater from TexasGeek.TV took video of the whole Q&A, if this stirring account wasn’t enough for you, you can check that out here.

Meet Me In the Clouds

A lot of Austin is in pretty thick fog today, but waking up this morning on the 21st floor was more surreal than it’s been in a long time. Instead of just being in fog, my place was pretty much inside the cloud.

Either that, or it was about to be swallowed by The Nothing.

There used to be buildings there! God damn, The Nothing terrified me as a kid.

Some Christians Are Awesome

I mean, they’re still crazy, but this website about Christian wives who want to make sure they experience every aspect of God’s love through as much depravity as the Bible will allow is pretty great.

Some highlights, courtesy of Holy Taco, which “turned me on” to this site in the first place:

“Since the Bible doesn’t give us a ‘Thou shalt not participate in anal sex with your spouse’ commandment, we take it as to mean that God wants us to use our own judgment on it.”

“There are two different articles on our blog that I want to refer you to. One was written by my sister in Christ, Cumingirl who wrote Anal Sex: What Does the Bible Say and also another perspective from my sister in Christ, Cinnamonsticks, who wrote Anal Sex: Weighing Your Options.”

“Of course I love making love to my husband. But there are occasionally those times where it’s just not convenient. So what happens if, during one of these scenarios, your husband is still in need? Maybe it’s been a while since he last came. Maybe he needs a release to help reduce stress. “

“From what you wrote, it sounds like you and your future husband may be masturbating together and that you are experiencing an orgasm with him in some matter. I may have misunderstood, but if that is the case I would encourage you to consider whether you have overstepped an appropriate line in purity.”

“You asked about men shaving because you say you are interested in giving oral attentions to his testicles. What a wonderful thing to do!”

“Some couples are into another practice known as Snowballing. This is when the wife gives oral sex and saves the semen in her mouth. Then she kisses her husband and shares the semen with him. Although some couples may see this practice as unappealing or unusual, it certainly isn’t sinful.”

Snowballing = Jesus approved!

Drunk Cowboy at a Wedding

So over the weekend, Sarah and I went to a Rodeo Wedding. She has a fairly complete and incredibly sweet depiction of the event up on her blog, but due to the high traffic she gets over there, sometimes she has to be a little more gentle with things that she posts. And because she’s a good person, she doesn’t point her video camera at unfortunate people being caught in their most hilariously embarrassing moments.

Fortunately, I’m not a good person, and I revel in pointing my camera at people looking their worst. I think it’s funny.

So first off, take a look at the lead singer for the cover band at the event. This picture shows him at his most unflattering, except that you can’t hear him sing, which would make you think he was even sadder:

But the real reason for this post is that I found the video I took of an old cowboy who fell on the floor when he got too excited by the awesomeness of the band, and then decided to stay on the floor, because the dancing turned out to be just as good down there.

more about “Drunk Cowboy at Wedding on Vimeo”, posted with vodpod
The best part is the other young guy who’s just sitting there filming him, not offering to help at all. Yeah for generation Facebook!

And I promise that one day I’ll figure out why I’m the only one who can’t get Vimeo to embed in my WordPress pages.

Most Christians Are Retarded, part 8

Back in my MySpace blogging days, I had this ongoing series where I was trying to collect all the things that crossed my desktop featuring Christians being insanely stupid online. The standard Kirk Cameron videos were there, along with some amazing skits off of GodTube, and things like that.

For a while, J. and I were talking about starting a full Most Christians Are Retarded blog (so we could really face the fury and backlash of the Palin voters in this country), but then life kept moving fast, J. moved to Brazil, and just last week that domain name expired.

J., we might need to get that going again, because this latest find, THE RENEWED MIND IS THE KEY, needs to be seen by as many people as humanly possible. Nonsensical lyrics, choreography based on synchronized swimming, and then at around the two minute mark, absolute gold.

The Way International didn’t want to let bloggers embed their videos and spread their own version of god’s word too virally, so you have to actually click on this link to watch the video. Do it. Now.

The Highest Point in Austin

Tonight should have been a disaster.

First of all, it was September 11. Disasters happen then, right?

So because of that historic date, we at the Alamo decided to have some fun with it by throwing a TEAM AMERICA Sing and Quote-Along. After the show, we went out onto Sixth Street and sang, “America, Fuck Yeah” to the cops, and my tight racing outfit made my balls hurt but allowed for lots of photo ops.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any of those yet.

After the TEAM AMERICA show, Caitlin and I had a DISCO INFERNO Sing-Along to throw. This was the first time we’d done any mixed up disco videos, and we weren’t sure that it was going to work at all, but it ended up being one of the most fun nights we’ve ever had at a Sing-Along. There was a point where the oldest man in the room (and he was at least 65) was dancing on the stage and he leaned over to tell me, “Please, don’t stop the party.” FUCKING AWESOME.

So I didn’t stop the party then, and we kept it going with some freshly installed disco balls, and everything was awesome.

The truly amazing bit of the night, however, didn’t come until later, and had nothing to do with the shows. It instead had to do with sky scrapers, which is this whole other side of 9/11…

John Harney came back to my building with me, and we were thinking that we’d have a beer or two, watch some TV, and call it a night. When we got to the 360, however, we saw the worst thing you can ever possibly see when you live in a high rise – a sign telling you that the elevators are out. And so they are.

Until tomorrow morning, the only way to access my floor – the 21^st floor – is via the staicase.

So at first, I was upset. “What the fuck?” I thought. “Should I try to sell my condo to some unsuspecting Californian?” John was still game for walking up to my floor, though, so we went for it. And it was during that 21 story climb that I realized something:

Most of the time, the security in my building has this weird thing where the stairwells only empty out into the bottom, the ground floor. So I could get to the stairs from my floor in an emergency, but if I had a friend who lived two floors up or down, I would have to wait for the elevator, because the stairwell wouldn’t open up onto their floor. Tonight, however, the stairs had to open up on every floor, so that people who were coming home and unable to get on the elevator could still get to their condo.

“Every floor?” I thought – and John and I instantly decided to see how high we could get.

And oh my god, you guys – we could get high. Not just high in the building, either, but onto the roof!!! So we of course got out there, and then from the roof realized that we could actually climb up into the point of the hypodermic needle on top of this building. It was beautiful, and crazy, and we took lots of videos and pictures.

I keep trying to embed my YouTube video from the very tip top of the building, but WordPress is made of poop. If someone reading this can help me turn a shitstorm into shitstormonade, please let me know. In the meantime, WATCH THIS VIDEO:

I miss this little guy

Music Video of the Day: STROKE MY DICK

Ooohhh, man. I haven’t posted much lately, but taking a lunch break from laying out the Alamo Guide this afternoon, I read Slate’s round up of commercials that suck. At one point, they’re talking about the salad dressing that uses Spank Rock’s Bump as the theme and how odd that is. Then Seth Stevenson linked to some Filthy Sex Toy, I fell into a YouTube hole, and I came back out with this, the reason that I had to post today no matter what.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present STROKE MY DICK live:

You’re welcome.

YouTube Battle of the Internet

In our programming meeting yesterday, we were talking about bringing a YouTube Battle show to the theater in our next calendar, where the idea would be sort of like Open Screen Night, but instead of playing whatever videos people brought with them to the theater, we’d play whatever videos on YouTube people clicked to. We’re going to set up the whole thing like an Air Guitar contest, with people fighting to win the audience’s approval in order to go home with fantastic prizes, and we thought it’d be super fun to bring out an actual Internet star to have them participate in the battle and find their own versions of the craziest shit they can find online. The trouble is, everyone else is already getting the Internet stars to go all over the place.

A couple of weeks ago, South Park aired their brilliant episode where Butters becomes famous online in an attempt to settle the WGA (World Canadian Bureau) strike, and Stan and the boys have to get in line behind all the other famous Internet stars who are waiting for all of their money to come in. Things get out of hand, and it’s awesome:

Then today, Weezer released their new awesome video, featuring… Internet stars doing the things they do in the videos that made them famous. There’re the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, and of course the now smug Numa Numa kid. I hate that kid, but this video is awesome:

But it makes me wonder. The South Park scene is funny because it’s all about how you can’t make money online. And sure, you can’t expect to sing-along to a song from Germany on your webcam and then automatically have advertisers come knocking on your web site’s door. But if millions of people have seen your video, you can still make your Internet fame pay off the same way indie bands make money after the music bloglines pick up on them – you go on tour and play every single music fest in the world, so that more bloggers write about you and more and more people start coming to your shows, even though most of them don’t understand what that whole Glass Candy thing is supposed to be about.

And now I’m nervous and thinking that I won’t be able to afford any of the couch humpers to come judge an Air Sex show after all. They’ve totally stopped writing Brad back when he leaves them MySpace messages. Boo!