June 16, 2006
Why I hate heat.
1. Let’s be more specific. I hate the sun.
Why?
2. It’s hot.
3. It melts shit. (eg; ice cream cones)
4. You can’t look at it. You can look at the moon. The moon is fucking great! I love the moon. The sun is terrible. The sun has no place here.
5. It burns things. (eg; skin)
6. It’s orange. Orange is a stupid color. Cat puke is orange.
7. It’s a star but not a cool star. Stars that are cool are visible at night. Only shitty stars are visible during the day. The sun is a shitty star.
8. It makes people wear visors. Visors are bogus. Visors are bogus but people have to wear them because the sun is so hot and bright.
9. The sun wakes you up in the morning and that sucks because sleeping is great. I love sleeping way more than waking up in the morning. And I blame the sun. Fuck you sun.
10. It’s too hot to touch. The moon you can touch. The moon is cool to the touch. The sun is way too scorching hot to touch.
In closing, “Fuck you the sun.”
June 15, 2006
So, usually I have a bit of a scruff cause I’m too lazy to shave everyday but then after a few weeks of not shaving it starts to feel like I”ve got mud mixed with grass smeared on my chin and all I can think about is how badly I wanna shave so last night I was shaving and I came across a new look. Because the thing is that I’ve never had a goatee so I fashioned one and I threw on a little necklace (taken on a loan from roommate Andrea) and I put on my “fancy shirt” and I sort of teased my hair forward and then bam! New summer look for me! What do you think?
Goatee; Necklace; “Fancy Shirt”; Scumbag Facial Expression=New Look!
June 15, 2006
The show went really well. I didn’t think we’d pull it off because it involved modern technology
people arriving at rifififi.
and I’m the least technologically proficient person ever in the whole world, but thanks to eugene and demetri who are technically proficient we figured it out. it was slide show week. yes, slide show week. not slide show day. “so was there an entire week of slide show events?” you ask. Yes.
Last Car. The band Last Car. Amy Miles. Chris Anderson. Robin Goldwasser.
Demetri Martin. Cartoons.
The opening day banquet was monday night and we had Gregory Crewdson a Professor of Photography at Yale University MFA program. It sucked because I paid crewdson a $7,500 honorarium to be my speaker but no one showed up because they thought that the show on tuesday was the only night. Oh well. Tonight there’s a slide show contest as part of Slide show week at Arlene’s Grocery at Pete’s Candy Store. The show went off without a hitch. It was a crowded affair. The show started with music with the amazing acoustic set by band Last Car with Amy Miles and Robin Goldwasser and Chris Anderson. Then I did an Intro and showed a slide of myself from high school with a big schnoz and a stupid swoop haircut “half tom cruise from “risky business’ half the crossdressing lead singer of Human League.)
Andrea and Chelsea
then Andrea Rosen told a story about shooting a Fig Newtons commercial and flirting with her older co-star (the guy from “Whos’ Line is it Anyway?”)
sort of like a “Lost IN Translation” story. Then Chelsea Peretti talked about how frustrating it is to get apartments off Craig’s List cause everyone says “Must Love Cats”
and so chelsea thought it would be funny if she met one of her prospective landlords dressed as a cat woman, then Demetri Martin told many funny jokes against the back drop of his cartoons. Then Last Car played again and everyone hung out and danced to the tunes of dj seankate.
One part Tom Cruise from Risky Business and one part the cross dressing lead singer from Human League.
Ps. The part about Gregory Crewdson not true. PPs. Zak ORth took photos! The Photos that is.
June 7, 2006
The show went great. I, in particular, was amazing. I basically was the best comedian ever to grace a stage (Sinbad not included.) I didn’t realize until yesterday morning that it was June, 6th. (6/6/6) Oh fuck! The mark of the beast. Not a good omen for a comedy show. The last time there was a comedy show on that date, was in 1906. It was a vaudeville performance and the performers, a clown team called, “Silly Willy and Goofy Ben”, were struck by lightning in the middle of their juggling bit and the whole town caught on fire and died. That’s not true. I just made it up. But thankfully, nothing terrible happened last night at least not that I know of. In other words, Everything went off without a hitch.
That’s a saying. It means everything went off without a hitch.
B. The evening started with some fantastic music courtesy of the band
King Of France .
They sang the song “What’s A Body” from the closing end credits of The Baxter. I highly recommend checking them out. Steve Salett the lead singer is also the brother of Peter Salett who did music for Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter. So, back to the show, Here’s a transcript of my opening remarks:
Hello everyone and welcome to the first installment of this four part series here at Rififi: “Michael Showalter’s Bogus Journey Into Night.” Now before we begin I’d like to first pay tribute to the two men who inspired the title of this show. They are, in no particular order, Eugene O’Neill and Keanu (which I pronounced Kah-noo) Reeves. That’s right, Eugene O’Neill and Kanu Reeves. One, Eugene O’Neill, a great playwright and Pulitzer prize winning dramatist of such works of art as, “Desire Under The Elms”; “Morning Becomes Elektra” and “The Ice Man Cometh.” The other, Kanu Reeves, a shitty actor in some pretty good movies, such as “The Matrix”, “Sweet November”, “The Devil’s Advocate” and “Johnny Mneumonic.” Tonight’s installment concerns itself with that most elusive and sometimes painful phenomenon of creative inspiration, the failed experiment. Now there have been many failed experiments throughout history certainly the Holocaust ranks high among them: New Coke: The current war in Iraq: David Bowie’s rock band Tin Machine. We have a common saying in the comedy world: “Kill Ratio.” What does this mean, kill ratio? Well, it refers to the number of jokes that a comic writes against the number of jokes that he or she actually performs. Commonly a comedian might write 5, 6, or 7 jokes for every one joke that actually makes it onto the stage. I myself have a one-to-one joke written, joke performed ratio but that’s because I”m lazy and not very imaginative. Tonight, I have asked some very special guests to dig into their own personal joke graveyards and retrieve some of that discarded material, comedic b-sides if you will.
Leo Allen performed some earlier work. He told a joke he’d written about how he had advice for crazy people, “Stop it with all the faces.” That was my favorite. Eugene read aloud from the journal of a hook-handed murderer. It had lines in it like, “Went to store today and bought long trench coat. Hung out in woods for 3 hours alone. Saw teenagers making out. They’re playing with fire.” Janeane Garofalo ranted about how fucked up our country is.
House DJs SEANKATE.
Sean is wearing a headdress and Kate is not. They are the best new djs sweeping the nation spinning all your favorite songs from past and present.
Next week’s show: Andrea Rosen, Chelsea Peretti, Demetri Martin. It’s SLIDE SHOW WEEK. Other things too…
June 3, 2006
Running really sucks. I’d much rather walk. I don’t mind jogging very very slowly. So slowly that I’m actually walking. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t like exercise. I enjoy walking at a certain clip. I enjoy that very much. Some might even call that speed walking. Call it what you will. I really don’t like running though. I find it very distasteful. I don’t like it all. Why? That’s the obvious question. Why? Why Michael do you not like running? Well, let’s start with the superficialities:
1) It’s look stupid. No, let me correct myself: I look stupid. I look like a zucchini with legs. No, worse, zucchini bread with legs. Have you ever seen zucchini bread running? Of course not. Because it’s stupid.
2) It’s fucked up. It’s fucked up because lots of times marathon runners lose control of their bowl movements near the end of the race and then they start wobbling and then they poo down their legs and that’s fucked up. Wobbling/running while pooing on your own leg is nothing short of very fucked up and totally stupid.
3) It feels wierd. Very wierd. It feels very wierd to have my skin and muscle tissue moving up and down on my frame. It’s like pulled pork. I’m afraid that I might at any moment turn a corner the wrong way and my carcass go flying off its hinges. That would suck. It would also be very disgusting. It would suck, be disgusting, fucked up and stupid.
4) It’s bad for you. I already mentioned the part about the pooing on the leg but it also gets your heart pumping and that could make you have a heart attack. Who wants that to happen? Not me. The last thing I want is to be running the last few miles of marathon, with crud streaming down my leg, then suddenly I have a heart attack all because I decide to run instead of walk at a clip. Running causes heart attacks. There’s no documentation to prove that but it’s true.
5) If you’re a guy your weiner flaps around like a wind sock. I can’t speak for the ladies but I’m assuming that the same could be said for your boobs.
In conclusion, running is bad for you; it makes you poo on your own leg; zucchini bread, wind-sock. It’s much better if you walk at certain clip.
