Things I Sorta Half-Ass Know How to Do that I Learned to Impress Girls…
…none of whom were impressed enough, as it turned out
- a Banker’s Dozen (like 5 or so) billiards trick shots
- play 1 and a half Beatles, 2 Eagles, 1 Garth Brooks, 1 Pink Floyd and 2 Led Zepplin songs on guitar, as well as the themes to the Godfather, The Simpsons, and M*A*S*H
- recite Jabberwocky with no sense of meter or rhythm
- juggle any three ball shaped objects of various sizes with my hands
- juggle a soccer ball with everything but my hands
- pretend I used to study any number of languages that I gave up because they weren’t syntactically interesting enough
- act like I might help build your website if I have time
It’s easy to see how Facebook’s stock is worth so much. Their engineers are on the cutting edge of smart recommendation technology.
someone got paid to craft this sentence
Follow Your Dreams, Asshat.: Porn in Space
Remember that time you got a masters in Advanced Molecular Sciences and Physics, and NASA hired you to be a shuttle engineer and Mission Specialist?
And then you were like,” WAIT. My weenie has to stay IN my pants?! WELL. EFF THIS S!” So you quit NASA to do porn?
No? Then you’re not Scott…
Source: followyourdreamsasshat
Dan Harmon Poops: HEY, DID I MISS ANYTHING?
Kids:
A few hours ago, I landed in Los Angeles, turned on my phone, and confirmed what you already know. Sony Pictures Television is replacing me as showrunner on Community, with two seasoned fellows that I’m sure are quite nice - actually, I have it on good authority they’re quite nice, because…
Source: danharmon
HOW DO YOU SAVE A TV SHOW?
Ugh. There was a time when TV shows really got a long run to prove themselves before the networks decided whether to yank them off the air. When I was a little kid, I was aware of shows that were deemed complete failures, like the Dukes Of Hazzard spin-off Enos and the Three’s Company spin-off The Ropers. (Yes, I am old. But still well within the coveted 18-49 demographic, so there.) At the time, I remember hearing about those shows being total ratings disasters, and yet they were allowed to make it to 22 episodes and 28 episodes, respectively.
Likewise, the big hits of the 80s and 90s, Cheers and Seinfeld, were both low-rated in their early seasons, but were given time to find an audience.
We live in a different reality now, obviously.
Everybody’s heard the news about Best Friends Forever being yanked from the NBC schedule until perhaps this summer. And It’s easy to assume the worst— anyone who is a fan of quality television shows has had their heart broken more than a few times over the years, and we’ve all seen a lot of “save our show” campaigns end in disappointment.
Petitions and twitter campaigns are one modern tool at our disposal. You can also send “scoops” to NBC, certainly. I’d imagine that fans are developing all sorts of ways of getting NBC’s attention to let them know that there is a passionate audience out there that wants to see more of this show.
I have one suggestion, for anyone who’s interested. First, two examples of shows that met very different fates:
CASE #1: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
I was one of the frantic ones while this show was in peril, and I was practically apoplectic at what I perceived to be FOX’s non-existent efforts to grow the show’s audience. (Before anyone tries the knee-jerk “FOX gave it three seasons” argument, it has been documented by NYTimes TV writer Bill Carter that Rupert Murdoch personally hated the show, and it was therefore not in the best interest of anyone at FOX to help the show do better. It was too critically beloved to cancel it quickly, so they let it die on the vine instead. Case closed.)
One of the specific things that most frustrated me was that Arrested Development was not available to purchase on iTunes. The fans were begging for ways to show their support, and for ways to demonstrate that the Nielsen ratings didn’t tell the full story. Meanwhile, the #1 show on iTunes was…
CASE #2: THE OFFICE (U.S.A. version)
The Office was not a hit at first, not by a long shot. The ratings weren’t that good for the brief first season, and a big part of the reason that they finally got a full order for a second season was that NBC put the show on iTunes, where it did great. It was easily the most popular show, almost instantly, occupying 17 slots of the iTunes Top 100 downloads. Now, years later, it’s one of NBC’s top rated shows.
This is a long rambling way of saying: one thing you can do to help save Best Friends Forever, if you are so inclined, is to buy a season pass on iTunes. It’s like 13 bucks for the whole first season, which is basically the same price as if you were to individually buy the 4 episodes they have for sale individually.
It might sound like a dumb idea— after all, if you like the show, you’ve presumably seen the 4 episodes that are already up, and they’re available for free on the NBC website or hulu. The idea of paying money for TV shows that are available for free already is ridiculous. I feel dumb typing this.
BUT: it is one way of showing support for the show, and it’s basically like paying for a movie ticket (if you live in a big city where movies are crazy expensive) or a pizza or some other thing that costs as much as a pizza. And if the goal is to convince NBC that there is a devoted audience that wants this show on the air, then maybe BFF selling a lot of iTunes downloads is one way to get their attention. It’s like voting with your dollars to say “keep making more of these, please. Here is some of my money!”
I know if FOX had put Arrested Development episodes for sale on iTunes back when it was on the bubble, I would have happily bought them all if I though it had even a small chance of saving the show. It worked for The Office. Maybe it can in some small way contribute to keeping BFF on the air long enough for more people to discover it…
AGAIN: GO HERE IF YOU WANNA BUY A SEASON PASS OF “BEST FRIENDS FOREVER” ON iTUNES!
(via melindataub)
Source: connorratliff
Rob Delaney: I love Levon Helm and America
So much this.
Levon Helm, drummer and singer of The Band, passed away from throat cancer last week. The outpouring of love directed his way over the last week, from every corner of the world, was remarkable. His family did an interesting thing too; they told the world before he died that he was in his final stages of battling cancer. About twenty-four hours after I’d heard the announcement of his declining health, reports came in that he’d passed away.
We were sad, but not surprised. Then the eulogies began. One remembrance I heard read on the radio, from Elton John, moved me to tears. It had never occurred to me that his song, “Levon,” was inspired by Levon Helm. Well it was, and not only that; Elton John’s son’s middle name is Levon too. So it’s fair to say he revered the guy. And with reason; Levon Helm made music that made you move and made you feel. It made you wince.
It made you say “Turn that shit up.” And to think that the nasty, brilliant drums AND that gutsy, forlorn voice that sounded like it bubbled up out of the Mississippi mud was coming out of ONE dude - Mr. Levon Helm - is something that inspires and depresses musicians forty-plus years after he showed up on the scene.
I don’t need an excuse to listen to The Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down;” I listen to it all the time anyway. But the thought that the man who brought that song to me, and to you, would be joining its narrator, Virgil Caine, in the Great Beyond, made me crank it many times, good and loud, by myself and with my family in the days before and after Helm passed. I might have been listening to it when he died.
It felt good to hold my one year old son and move to that song and see him smile. At the same time, it made me sad, as always, to hear Virgil sing about his brother who was killed at age eighteen in the Civil War. One thing that always struck me about that song (which, it must be stated, was written by one of The Band’s other geniuses, Robbie Robertson) is that it immediately puts you in the shoes of a Southerner at the close of the Civil War, and you are extremely sad when you learn that Virgil’s brother, a confederate soldier, is dead. He was killed in a war that nearly destroyed our nation; in a war that killed more soldiers than every other war the United States has fought before and since, combined. The lyrics of the song are few and they’re quite simple and they put you right there in the barren Tennessee dirt with hungry Virgil and his wife and they make you care about what Virgil cared about.
I was born in Boston in 1977, a century and a quarter after Virgil, and a thousand miles north of him. About as far above the Mason-Dixon line as you can get, geographically and ideologically. But I love Virgil. I mourn his brother. His brother didn’t own slaves and neither did he. They didn’t own them because they were poor. But Virgil’s brother fought for the Confederate Army because he was a healthy eighteen year old who didn’t have a choice. Then, as the song tells us, “a Yankee laid him in his grave.”
This song is so useful to me because, in addition to its empiric beauty, it’s one of the more effective works of art I’ve ever encountered at putting its listener in a pair of shoes he’s not used to wearing. When I put on “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” it turns me immediately into a bereft young Tennessee farmer who’d fill a company of Union soldiers full of lead to bring my big brother back to help me out on my farm and be my friend.
Back here in 2012, I have a sister I love dearly and it would be a delight to wade into hail of gunfire to protect her. You probably have a sister or a brother you’d do the same for. It’s what siblings do, or would do, for each other.
This all makes me think of the civil war taking place in our country today. To be accurate, it’s a civil cold war or sorts, though I believe it exacts a toll on our nation’s soul that is far steeper than the more famous and studied cold war that took place between the United States and the Soviet Union. I’m talking about the acrimony that our government and media, and the corporations that support them, stir up between regular folks like you and me. It’s there every day, but it reaches a fever pitch during our poisonous and ever-lengthening election seasons. We’re told by CNN or FOX News that you can either be a Democrat or a Republican; half of us need to be one and half of us need to be the other and we must define ourselves by our desire to crush, subvert or absorb the other one. An “us and them” mentality is foisted upon us. It doesn’t matter what side you’re one, as long as you pick one. It is critical to the success of this illusion that we remain trapped in that struggle, actually hating each other, while our highways and railroads fall apart, health care costs skyrocket, the national average body mass index balloons, and schools shuffle toward bankruptcy.
It is INSANITY to believe that what FIFTY PERCENT of Americans want is bad, wrong, or destructive to the country and its citizens at large. If that were true, the country wouldn’t be here anymore, or it would resemble a Cormac McCarthy novel, and it wouldn’t be All the Pretty Horses.
I have the wonderful good fortune to be a dyed in the wool Yankee married to a beautiful hillbilly woman from the South. I am doubly blessed to have a career that involves traveling around the country, meeting people from every walk of life. And God damn it if this place isn’t exploding with wonderful people. I know because I’ve spoken to them, touched them, and when they’re not looking, sniffed their hair. Am I supposed to have a meal, or a conversation, or share pictures of our kids with someone in Greenville, Mississippi or Portland, Oregon, have a great time and some laughs, and then “unlike” them and designate them a mortal enemy after they reveal who they voted for in 2008? According to political strategists or news producers, literally yes. But, as luck would have it, I’m a human being, and that’s impossible. The Republican candidate for President isn’t a human being. Neither is the Democratic candidate. Neither is your Senator or Congressman and neither is the chairman of the board of the company that made your cellphone. There might be a real person in there somewhere, but we’ll never know them. High, high up near the top of their job description is the responsibility to their handlers and donors to keep you and me suspicious of each other, envious of each other, and angry at each other.The more they can get us to sign on to the lie that the plumber in Sacramento has different wants, needs and desires from the opthamologist in Lexington, Kentucky, the more secure their position is and the more money and power that will come their way. And baby —> it’s a Lie. That plumber in California wants food on the table, a bed to sleep in, and safety and security for their kids. After that’s taken care of, a job to report to in the morning and a little dough in the bank come next. After that, it’s all gravy. And that eye doctor in Kentucky wants the same things, to the letter. And the color of the necktie on the guy they voted for, or the radio station they listen to in the morning has right around nothing to do with whether or how they get those things. Introduce that plumber to that doctor at an airport or in the stands at a baseball game and they’re going to like each other and have things to talk about. They’re different, but they’re the same. The pernicious illusion that what is bad for one of them could be good for the other one needs to be destroyed. Or it’ll destroy us.
I can’t speak for Levon Helm or Robbie Robertson (or Sammy Davis, Jr., in whose Los Angeles home they converted into a studio to record “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,”) but those gentlemen made a work of art that reached out across the decades to me and made me feel love and empathy and kinship with someone who I would’ve thought was different than me in the past, but that I now know isn’t. And if I’m like Virgil, than you are too, and you and I are even closer to each other. And whether you like it or not, (and you better get to liking it) you depend on me and your neighbor more than you do a pundit or a lobbyist or the CEO of BizKorp. And we depends on you. So let’s get some Golden Rule going up in this bitch.
Source: robdelaney
Replace bus with subway
Delusional love-life ftw.
Source: andspidersandbears
Did you know that, prior to creating Louie, Louis CK made well over a dozen short films of his own? Yes, from as early as 1992 Louis has been making the kind of brilliant shorts that made you fall in love with his FX series, often starring such folks as Amy Poehler, Todd Barry, JB Smoove and Robert Smigel. Just one of them, “Louis CK Learns About the Catholic Church,” is above, while we have all the rest gathered right here.
Oh Christ, that letter in the middle.
Source: splitsider
