As Far As You Know

My 2� worth: you won't find better political commentary than Tom Tomorrow's weekly offering, This Modern World, which can be read online here. It's topical, scathing, and extraordinarily witty. New cartoons appear each Monday on the Salon.com web site.

(Thanks to defectiveyeti.com)

(Thanks to defectiveyeti.com)

Read this. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

The funniest man on television returns to HBO tomorrow, Sunday, at 10:30 p.m.

I saw the ads for the Brit comedian's season on HBO when it first aired but was not impressed enough to tune in. Big mistake. In the winter my friend Julie Goodyear loaned me a DVD of Ali's six U.S. episodes; it took me a couple months to finally drop the disc in the player, but after fifteen minutes of trying to figure out what was going on, I was HOWLING with laughter and wishing it wouldn't end.

Don't miss it. Booyakasha!

A few folks sent me this link, which is well worth checking out: www.jibjab.com/

This is VERY funny and skillfully assembled.

Jon Stewart and his ensemble have been bloody brilliant in their take on the Boston sonvention scene this past week. No cows are sacred. Just damned funny stuff. I hope they are equally on form in New York in a month's time, too.

Check this out if you want to watch Will Ferrell as "W" on the set of his most recent campaign commercial. This parody was assembled by America Coming Together.

Go to Google.com and type in "miserable failure" and see what pops up first.

This is pretty clever. I saw it on a guy in the mall about a month ago. You can order the above logo on a T-shirt of your very own by clicking here.

Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" today is very funny, though the humor is not of Trudeau's creation this time. Check it out here.

Okaaaay, about time to get back to regular posting . . .

I was watching the series premiere of "Lost" (which was pretty good, by the way) when the latest T-Mobile commercial popped up, the one where the guy jumps into the gorilla pen after he drops his cell phone and the gorilla starts making a call during peak hours. There is actually a little text on the bottom of the screen when he does this that says, "DO NOT ATTEMPT." Is there really a lawyer out there who thinks this is a feat likely to be replicated because of the commercial?

This is too rich! From the AP wire:

Readers of a British magazine have rated President Bush the year's top screen villain, for his appearance in Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11.

Readers voted Bush top film villain over those from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man 2, and Kill Bill: Vol. 2.

[snip]

Almost 10,000 people voted in the poll, conducted by Total Film magazine. Results were announced Wednesday.

I had posted this last year, and it's so funny, I am presenting it again:

(Thanks to defectiveyeti.com)

This application called Comic Life makes it easy to make a comic strip from photos in your iPhoto collection or from images captured on an iSight camera.

Here is my first such effort, installment #1 of Mem Common Room Funnies:

(Yeah, I concede the bathroom humor is sophomoric, but I tried to capture the characters as well as I could!)

Q: What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?

A: George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.

Person 1: Knock knock.

Person 2: Who's there?

Person 1: Control freak.

Person 1: Now you say "control freak who?"

This is priceless:

U.K. broadcaster Sky seems to have a good handle on things; check out the banner across the bottom of the screen:

The following arrived via email last night from a colleague. It's priceless!

The first ten days of the school year have been typically frenetic, so this blog has suffered from a bit of neglect. I resolve to get back to a regular schedule of posting now, however.

Here, for your amusement, is the joke du jour:

Q: What is George W. Bush's position on Roe v. Wade?
A: He doesn't care how people get out of New Orleans.

From political philosopher John Stuart Mill:

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

The Sunday funnies on a Friday:

In addition to grading exams, writing end-of-term comments, preparing my winter syllabi, and coaching runners, I also have time for leisure pursuits this weekend, as evidenced by the creation of the following:

Here's one more:

This struck me as very funny (from McSweeney's.net):

7 Habits of Highly Successful People
by Brendon Lloyd

1. Skiing
2. Yachting
3. Snorkeling
4. Golf
5. Polo
6. Dinner parties
7. Shopping

Our leader:

. . . here is a pretty funny video spoof that popped up on the 'Net.

This one is even better than the one I linked to the other day. Click here.

This foreign TV commercial spoofs John McEnroe's famous rant at 1981 Wimbledon.

There are 10 different types of people in the world: those who understand binary numbers and those who don't.

Episode 2:

Here is the latest installment:

Thank you, Tom Toles, for this one:

Okay, this is kind of sophomoric, bit it IS pretty funny: click here.

Some choice excerpts from the interview with "Comic Book Guy" (from The Simpsons, of course), courtesy of TVGuide.com:

TVGuide.com: Numerous reviews of Superman Returns cited homoerotic undertones in the film. Did you get a sense of that?

Comic Book Guy: No, and neither did the eight guys I saw it with.

TVGuide.com: Heath Ledger has signed on to play The Joker in the next Batman film. What are your thoughts on that casting choice?

Comic Book Guy: To me there is only one true Batman villain: King Tut. A true hero to all us full-figured fans.

TVGuide.com: Currently, Joss Whedon is working on a script for a Wonder Woman film. If you could give him one piece of advice, what would it be?

Comic Book Guy: Make sure Wonder Woman wears a Wonderbra. Oh, baby.

You can view the entire interview here.

From the dependably on-target Tom Tomorrow:

Check out the funny new Mac ad here.

I am told that Chris Borgstrom wants to see more controversy in this blog. Okay--this is admittedly sophomoric, but it's a great example of unintentional humor from mid-1960s pop culture:

In the vein of the last post, this is taken from a 1940s Batman comic book:

Brilliant. The photo is real, of course: Rummy and Saddam in happier days! Credit to this site.

This book--Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman--is an entertaining series of entries on all manner of low culture in American over the past thirty years or so: a perfect read for someone of my age and sensibility. The fact that the book is a collection of short, unconnected essays makes it perfect bathroom reading. (Thanks, Max Alpert, for showing me this.)

If Battlestar Galactica were produced by the makers of The Simpsons, this is what you might see. More here.

Hitting the nail on the head again:

This is an amusing mash-up of Dr. Seuss lyrics presented in the style of a mid-'60s Bob Dylan album: click here.

This was just sent to me. Check it out.

A amusing new Spinal Tap mini-film has been posted. Check it out here.

Smodcast is an entertaining podcast by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, the directing/producing team behind such flims as Clerks, Chasing Amy, and Dogma. You can access it here.

I didn't know President Bush performed U2 covers: check it out.

This short film on YouTube is pretty amusing.

I peppered the drive down to DC with Wizard of Oz references in antipation of showing the K.I. kids the Mormon temple looming over the Washington beltway illuminated in an eerie green, as in past years. The temple appeared right on schedule, bathed in light, but it wasn't as green as it was in the past, which made it a tougher sell as "the Emerald City." In fact, it looked much whiter, as it would in daylight (see the photo above).

A priceless video piece on the chickenhawk phenomenon among College Republicans has been posted. Click here to view it.

I went to matinee to check out the cinematic version of The Simpsons, rather than finish my teacher reports. It was well done and consistently amusing, like one of the better episodes of the television series.

The reliably brilliant Tom Toles on Karl Rove's "retirement" from the Bush Administration:

There's this magazine:

and then there's this one:

So I am thinking about starting up a new publication: New Yorkest.

Cartoonist Chris Ware provided this terrific Thanksgiving cover for The New Yorker last year:

Fortunately the hotel here in Windsor Locks has HBO, so I got to see the wrap-up of the Ricky Gervais series Extras--an extended "Christmas special" episode following two seasons, just like what he did for the Brit version of The Office--without waiting until Tuesday night to see it on my DVR (or I guess it would be available on Comcast On Demand, too). It's cool how he and Stephen Merchant get English celebrities to appear in totally self-deprecating roles. The show was typical Gervais humor: painful, awful hilarious, embarrassing moments of awkwardness punctuated in the end by deep-down-inside sweetness.

A clever little film about the end of the world, which you can access here.

If you've been following the format wars in high-definition DVDs, you will enjoy this:

Whoever put this together is brilliant!

Super Bowl commercial update #1: Beautiful Godfather homage in the Audi R8 commercial!

Super Bowl commercial update #2: FedEx scored with its ad featuring humungous pigeons.

Spotted on Route 22 in Pawling, NY this afternoon!

I subscribe to the TEDTalks podcasts. Here is one I missed on iTunes, but it was posted on Steffan Antonas' blog and I found it very interesting; it's J.J. Abrams, the guy behind Alias and Lost and Mission: Impossible 3, as well as the forthcoming Star Trek reboot:

This cover to week's issue of The New Yorker struck me as particularly amusing, as it perfectly captures the contradictions inherent in my own book buying: I have a romantic attachment to good neighborhood bookstores, but the reality is I buy virtually everything I read online from Amazon.

Saw the above on a shelf in a grocery store in Palo Alto and had to snap a photo with the iPhone. Priceless!

The reaction to the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker has been one of outrage, from both the Obama and McCain campaigns, and around the blogosphere as well. Maybe because I've subscribed to the magazine for over twenty years now, I've gotten used to such snarkily provocative cover images. But it seems to me the satirical statement has caused far too big a deal. As comedian Bill Maher said in this morning's New York Times, “If you can’t do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you do it?”

Here is Vanity Fair taking a friendly swipe at the controversial cover on its sister publication, The New Yorker:

Director and raconteur Kevin Smith entertained the Comic-Con faithful in a pair of back-to-back presentations today. The first, a "visionaries" panel featuring directors Judd Apatow (The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up), Frank Miller (The Spirit), and Zach Snyder (300, Watchmen) along with Smith preceded a session on the forthcoming Zach and Miri Make A Porno, directed by Smith and starring Seth Rogen. Most of the cast of Zach and Miri was in attendance, too. The clip from the film was very funny, but Kevin Smith stole the show at both panels with his razor-sharp wit and self-deprecating humor. For a taste of the hilarity, check out his Q&A sessions on this DVD combo: An Evening with Kevin Smith/An Evening With Kevin Smith 2: Evening Harder.

Wow! Not only is this week the Democratic National Convention in Denver and the start of the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York City, but it's also Imperial Fleet Week in San Francisco. Check out the details here.

Check out this clip from Jon Stewart's show with some prominent political and media figures caught in some, um, rhetorical gymnastics. This is priceless!

Here is Mad magazine's take on the GOP ticket:

For this week's cover of Entertainment Weekly, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart brilliantly send up the controversial cover of The New Yorker published earlier this year.

It's a bit scary when the Saturday Night Live writers get their material word-for-word from the news shows. This sketch was less a parody than a replay of the Couric/Palin interview!

This is too funny: Gail Collins in her New York Times column on Thursday's presidential debate:

Remember how we used to joke about John McCain looking like an old guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn? It’s only in retrospect that we can see that the keep-off-the-grass period was the McCain campaign’s golden era. Now, he’s beginning to act like one of those movie characters who steals the wrong ring and turns into a troll.

During that last debate, while he was wandering around the stage, you almost expected to hear him start muttering: “We wants it. We needs it. Must have the precious.”

Hard to believe this is the nineteenth "Treehouse Of Horror" episode of The Simpsons! This is often one of the best shows of the year for this series.

Oh, the things one comes across on the Internet! Here is Obaman and Robiden, suited up to take on their foes:

. . . I am still trying to figure out what this moment at the third presidential debate was all about:

I was in New Haven earlier tonight and came across an interesting looking book while browsing in one of the Broadway shops: Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide To The Unique Taste Of Millions. Turns out the book is basically a packaged version of blog entries by this guy Christian Lander. His work is amusing; here are some choice excerpts from entry #40 about Apple products:

Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

. . .

It is also important that white people are reminded of their creativity, and remember you need a Mac to creatively check email, creatively check websites, and creatively watch DVDs on planes.

White people also need iPods, iPhones, Apple TV, AirPort Express stations, and anything else that Apple will produce. Because you need to express your uniqueness by purchasing everything that a publicly traded company produces.

This is just too funny. It's the complete e-mail conversation that Adelaide man David Thorne claims he had with a utility company chasing payment of an overdue bill:

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.19pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Overdue account

Dear David,
Our records indicate that your account is overdue by the amount of $233.95. If you have already made this payment please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Wednesday 8 Oct 2008 12.37pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,
I do not have any money so am sending you this drawing I did of a spider instead. I value the drawing at $233.95 so trust that this settles the matter.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Thursday 9 Oct 2008 10.07am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Overdue account

Dear David,
Thankyou for contacting us. Unfortunately we are unable to accept drawings as payment and your account remains in arrears of $233.95. Please contact us within the next 7 days to confirm payment has been applied to your account and is no longer outstanding.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 9 Oct 2008 10.32am
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,
Can I have my drawing of a spider back then please.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Thursday 9 Oct 2008 11.42am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Overdue account

Dear David,
You emailed the drawing to me. Do you want me to email it back to you?

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Thursday 9 Oct 2008 11.56am
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Overdue account

Dear Jane,

Yes please.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Thursday 9 Oct 2008 12.14pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Overdue account

Attached

From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 10 Oct 2008 09.22am
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Whose spider is that?

Dear Jane, Are you sure this drawing of a spider is the one I sent you? This spider only has seven legs and I do not feel I would have made such an elementary mistake when I drew it.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Friday 10 Oct 2008 11.03am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Whose spider is that?

Dear David, Yes it is the same drawing. I copied and pasted it from the email you sent me on the 8th. David your account is still overdue by the amount of $233.95. Please make this payment as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 10 Oct 2008 11.05am
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Automated Out of Office Response

Thankyou for contacting me. I am currently away on leave, traveling through time and will be returning last week.

Regards, David.

From: David Thorne
Date: Friday 10 Oct 2008 11.08am
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Re: Whose spider is that?

Hello, I am back and have read through your emails and accept that despite missing a leg, that drawing of a spider may indeed be the one I sent you. I realise with hindsight that it is possible you rejected the drawing of a spider due to this obvious limb ommission but did not point it out in an effort to avoid hurting my feelings. As such, I am sending you a revised drawing with the correct number of legs as full payment for any amount outstanding. I trust this will bring the matter to a conclusion.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Monday 13 Oct 2008 2.51pm
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Whose spider is that?

Dear David, As I have stated, we do not accept drawings in lei of money for accounts outstanding. We accept cheque, bank cheque, money order or cash. Please make a payment this week to avoid incurring any additional fees.

Yours sincerely, Jane Gilles

From: David Thorne
Date: Monday 13 Oct 2008 3.17pm
To: Jane Gilles
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Whose spider is that?

I understand and will definately make a payment this week if I remember. As you have not accepted my second drawing as payment, please return the drawing to me as soon as possible. It was silly of me to assume I could provide you with something of completely no value whatsoever, waste your time and then attach such a large amount to it.

Regards, David.

From: Jane Gilles
Date: Tuesday 14 Oct 2008 11.18am
To: David Thorne
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Whose spider is that?

Attached

As we look back on the exciting political developments of past year, let's remember 2008 as the dawn of A New Hope.

D'oh!

Check out more humor from The Simpsons here.

Thanks to Cason for passing this one along.

When I returned to campus from an away match across the New York border, the Choate campus was covered by a couple of inches of slush. No real problem in that, except that when I walked from my car to my door, I wiped out and landed flat on my back on a gentle slushy slope. The real damage would have been if someone else had witnessed this, but fortunately I was spared the embarassment.

This is sort of an in joke for those on the 2005 U.K. squash tour, when one of the boys at Marlborough College referred to me as "a f___ing legend" . . . a reference I still don't fully understand, but it was certainly amusing.

After cranking through work on this weekend's tournaments, I unwound with the latest episode of the new show on HBO, Eastbound & Down, which stars Danny McBride as a crass, shallow, and vulgar washed up baseball star who returns to his hometown to crash with his brother's family and teach gym at the local middle school. I'm not familiar with McBride's earlier work, but this show is growing on my with its bizarrely funny take on life.

On the eve of our trip to Britain, a couple of squash players and I were enjoying YouTube clips from the Extras series starring Ricky Gervais. VERY funny stuff!

My "under the weather" prediliction to rent movies via AppleTV continued today as I watched Pineapple Express, which was sort of--wait for it--dopey but generally inoffensive.

I saw Religulous tonight while recuperating from this damned cold. It's comedian Bill Maher traveling around the world to religious sites to expose what he regards the inanity of belief. It is a provocative little piece.

I was wearing this black hoodie while having lunch outdoors last week with a couple of team members when one of the asked me how the Clone Wars were going. Pretty good quip, that!

A friend of mine--the biggest Rush fan I know (a fan of the band, that is, not the windbag)--sent me this design from a T-shirt, which is brilliant.

While relaxing with my folks here at my cousin's house in East Hampton, I caught up on the president's remarks last night at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, when it's traditional for the leader of the free world to cut loose with some comedy. Obama did not disappoint. And Wanda Skyes was very funny too. It's all over YouTube, so check it out.

In response to the last post . . . let's just call this "The Federation Strikes Back."

Spotted on Broadway in New Haven today: R2D2 apparently now working as a mailbox. I knew times were tough, but sheesh!

No, but look carefully at the photo above and you will see two left shoes! A certain former Choate Tennis captain--who will remain nameless--showed up for a tournament match at the Hunt Tennis Center courts today with two perfectly matched adidas Barricades--perfectly matched for his left foot, that is! Fortunately I was there and I happened to have a whole pile of size 11 adidas Barricades nearby for the loaning.

Saw an afternoon showing of Bruno with a couple of 2009 Choate grads. My review: meh. Some very funny moments and some painfully awkward ones as well. The humor at times was a little over the top, and I am not particularly prudish about this sort of thing. I guess the movie was supposed to push buttons, and it will clearly do that!

This week's weekly dose of wisdom from Tom Tomorrow is brilliant:

Seen on the street on my way to lunch today:

Seen on the Internet tonight--about as accurate a statistical graph as I can imagine:

The most recent GQ published a feature on "America's 25 Douchiest Colleges." Here is one choice entry:

Click in the slideshow on this site to see the whole thing.

I am in transit from Ashland to San Diego, stopping at the San Francisco Airport for a layover. I just picked up the new Entertainment Weekly, mostly because of the enticing cover. I remember being in Melbourne, Australia in January 1998 when it was announced Seinfeld would end its run. Glad to see the gang in being reunited on the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Tonight's new installment of Curb Your Enthusiasm kicked off the arc involving the reunion of the Seinfeld cast. It's a casting stunt, sure, but a brilliant one that can only make an already enjoyable show even better.

When I got home after 1 in the morning after my trip to Williamstown last night, I dumped by pants into the washing machine, since part of my dinner wound up on my thigh while driving; I figured the pants would get clean while I slept. As I took the pants out this morning to put them in the dryer, I noticed I had not removed my wallet from the back pocket, so now I have a very soggy leather enclosure containing some waterlogged bills. Fortunately my driver's license and credit and ATM cards were unaffected; as I have a flight to Texas this evening, missing those would have been a big problem!

I loved Blue Harvest, the Family Guy take on the original Star Wars movie (which today's youth call Episode IV: A New Hope). So I was pretty pleased to get today's shipment from Amazon.com with the Something, Something, Something, Dark Side DVD: a similar send up of The Empire Strikes Back. Unfortunately, this one does not come with a digital copy included, as the last one did.

Mr. Trudeau's take on the Jobs announcement yesterday [click to enlarge]:

Super-heroes say the darnedest things (and so do their pets). [Click to enlarge.]

(Thanks to Boing Boing.)

The unedited footage of Jon Stewart's appearance on The O'Reilly Factor is a must-see. Stewart brilliantly dissects Fox News as an organization and scores some good laughs along the way.

(click to enlarge)

Someone posted this on my Facebook page today in the wake of last night's U.S. defeat of Canada in Olympic men's hockey. Pretty amusing.

click to enlarge:

(no Flash . . . get it?)

See this and many other, um, interesting signs collected from Tea Party rallies and other such focal points of reactionary enlightenment here.

Oh, the things you can order online: ThinkGeek.com is selling canned unicorn meat, with real sparkles!

I don't have a TomTom GPS navigation system, but if I did, I might get have get these Star Wars voices just because this promo is so entertaining:

This promo clip from 30 Rock is just too funny. Check it out right here.

Pretty interesting celebrity-filled mash-up of adidas and Star Wars posted here.

I am a Mary Carillo fan--I once ran a clinic for Special Olympians with her when I worked for the ATP event in New Haven years ago and discovered she is basically a good egg all the way around--and I stumbled across a clip of Mary in rare form during NBC's 2004 Olympic coverage. Enjoy:

Click to enlarge:

This brought a smile to my face:

The stars have aligned. Ricky Gervais is making an appearance in the next season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Should be priceless to see him and Larry David sharing the small screen.

Amazon delivered my copy of 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective today. This heavy slipcased book celebrates four decades of Garry Trudeau's landmark strip. Looking forward to digesting its contents over the next few days.

The ending of 1980's Superman II has always bothered me: how Clark Kent erases Lois Lane's knowledge of his secret identity simply by kissing her--with NO explanation as to how this was accomplished!

Here is an alternative ending to the film that resolves the problem a bit differently:

Bet the GOP didn't see that coming! President Obama upstages his predecessor by ordering the operation that resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Got a text from a 2005 Choate alum tonight that brought a smile to my face. Here is the exchange:

The Hangover Part II is not a great movie. But there are a few moments of sheer comic bliss, mostly from Zach Galifianakis. My advice? See it on Tuesday, which is $5 movie night at the local cinema here in Wallingford. It's worth that much for a few good laughs, I guess.

Looks like London may have fallen into the hands of the Empire . . . and I don't mean the British Empire!