Month: April 2013

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2013 White House Correspondents’ Dinner

This was a solid set. President Obama’s obviously not a comic, but his delivery is pretty sharp. And this performance was remarkably different from years before. A lot of Obama’s jokes were risky; you can hear a lot of people groaning after them. It’s admirable that he just didn’t give a shit and powered through. “2nd TERM, BITCHES. I DON’T CARE WHAT YOU THINK!”

Regarding Stephen Spielbergs’s Obama, I’ll watch it as long as it’s not 3 hours long.

The President’s a tough act to follow, and it’s always an uphill battle for the guest comic (unless you’re Leno, then you can just coast). But Conan killed it. I expected nothing less. Came straight out of the gate and did what he does best. (Note to self: jokes about FOX News always work.

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Up all night to get lucky

I never really got into Daft Punk. But all the well-deserved hype over Random Access Memories made me dive into their catalogue. I got the Discovery album, which is amazing. And this song, “Get Lucky” made my voice immediately drop down an octave and say “DAYUM, that’s funky!” Pharrell Williams on the sweet vocals, who’s a smart and interesting guy despite his music being less so, and f-ing Niles Rodgers on guitar. Shamefully, I had no knowledge who Niles Rodgers was when I first heard this track. But as soon as I found out he played guitar on “Le Freak,” I was completely on board.

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I have a class at 10am on Tuesdays

I have a class at 10am on Tuesdays and Fridays. It’s an English class* which involves a lot of reading, so I don’t sleep much on Monday and Thursday nights. Right now, I’m writing this to avoid watching a film for class called My Architect. I recommend it if you have any appreciation for architecture, specifically the ways in which it relates to the architect (in this case Louis Kahn) on a personal level.

Tuesday nights are reserved for my class in Screenwriting, so much of the day portion revolves around stressing over my screenplay. I hate it, but I also love it. I love it more than I hate it. Aside from the stress of turning in pages of drafts, it’s a really fun class. I’m writing a comedy. Comedy’s all I know how to do. It’ll be terrible. It’ll be great.

Once this post goes up, I’m going back to watching this documentary while simultaneously psyching myself up for my breakfast. Scrambled eggs! It’ll be the bomb-diggity. Then I’ll be writing jokes for the rest of the day, so I can tell them in front of people at a 5pm open mic. Unless my itinerary changes, breakfast and stand-up comedy will be the two peaks of my day. I guess I can throw watching last night’s Community in there. So three peaks – I can live with that.

*20th Century American Essay & Memoir, or something like that. I’ve called it “Autobiography” for most of the semester.

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Are you okay?

Today was …  today. I’ll let Patton handle the next part.

Boston. Fucking horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, “Well, I’ve had it with humanity.”

But I was wrong. I don’t know what’s going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here’s what I DO know. If it’s one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

– Patton Oswalt

People are great. Assholes are the exception, not the rule. Everyday, I see someone acting like a turd and think, “What an asshole!” But at the end of the day, I can never fathom any of those people committing what was done this afternoon. Whoever’s responsible for the tragedy in Boston is truly the lowest thing the we, the human race, can ever produce. But the rest of us are pretty cool.

“The reason I don’t worry about society is, nineteen people knocked down two buildings and killed thousands. Hundreds of people ran into those buildings to save them. I’ll take those odds every fucking day.”

– Jon Stewart

 

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Host: “Would you like to buy a vowel?”

Activist Contestant: “What?! And participate in the illegal vowel trade?! I’ve been to Africa! I’ve been with those vowels!”