How can we all survive the apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar and make it to the other side of December 21? John Hodgman (you know him from The Daily Show and Apple TV ads) has it all figured out. Hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler to say load up on mayo and urine while you still have time.… h/t Devour
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It used to be that you couldn’t go into a bookstore this time of year without being literally surrounded by Gary Larson’s The Far Side. His calendars and books were massive best sellers and his single-panel comics seemed to be everywhere, taped to cubicle walls and pinned to bulletin boards. Larson’s hilariously subversive sense of empathy–his way of rendering people with the detachment of an entomologist while investing his animal characters with the most sympathetic of human traits–endeared him to millions.
But in 1995, after 15 years of struggle against grinding deadlines, Larson called it quits. Since then he’s been about as reclusive as Greta Garbo or J.D. Salinger. And while Larson’s calendars and books continued to appear for some years after his retirement, The Far Side is not much in evidence these days. Which is sad. You can’t buy your friends a 2013 Far Side desk calendar this holiday season, but perhaps you can share this: a few twisted scenes from Larson’s 1994 animated film, Tales From the Far Side. The film was originally aired as a Halloween special on CBS. The clip above begins on a fittingly nostalgic note.
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Like the number of feminists needed to screw in a light bulb, gender-based assumptions are NOT FUNNY!
Gender-based sound effects prove to be the exception in Bleep Blap Bloop, a very funny short film featuring real people attempting to impersonate various machines, primarily vehicles and weapons of the sort one rarely encounters in every day use. They’re not the most diverse bunch with regard to age or ethnicity, but as far as white people in their 20’s go, Bleep Blap Bloop’s findings are pretty airtight. The Y chromosomes are the clear winners.
“Couldn’t you have done, like, a duck?” one of the female contestants asks as the credits roll.
What about you? Is this a case where you fit the mold? Please share your most triumphal (or least humilating) sound effect below. Transpeople heartily encouraged to expand the conversation!
- Ayun Halliday is a proud feminist who changes lightbulbs solo and couldn’t make a machine gun noise even if she had an actual machine gun.
Quentin Tarantino sat down this week for an interview that covered a lot of terrain — his strained his relationship with his father, his ninth-grade education and how it shapes his filmmaking, his path from working in a video rental store to writing scripts and eventually directing films, his approach to filming violence, his new Western film Django Unchained, his plans to retire before he gets old and lots more. The interviewer? Yup, it’s Howard Stern on Sirius and the hearty chuckles you hear in the background belong to the Star Trek icon George Takei. Needless to say the interview enters some Not-Safe-for-Work territory.
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Offscreen, Rainn Wilson—Dwight from The Office—has become a kind of pop-guru for the Web 2.0 set. In 2009, Wilson and friends Joshua Homnick and Devon Gundry created SoulPancake, a media company designed to provide an interactive experience for people to “Chew on Life’s Big Questions” (says the tagline): religion, philosophy, art, culture, science, humor, life, death, you name it. And the refreshing thing about it is, while Wilson is of the Bahai faith himself, his organization is unaffiliated with any particular religion. So it’s a safely ecumenical space for atheists, agnostics, and the growing number of “Nones” to interact without any danger of proselytizing or religious inside baseball.
SoulPancake has produced a best-selling book and scored a content deal with Oprah’s OWN network, but it all grew out of a rather simple idea—a video series called Metaphysical Milkshake. Billed as a “travelling talk show,” Metaphysical Milkshake is as low-concept, high-appeal as Jerry Seinfeld’s web series “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”: Basically, Wilson drives around in a beat-up seventies stoner van and picks up celebrities like Joseph Gordon-Levitt or lesser-known internet stars like blogger and “twitter funny girl” Kelly Oxford, (who calls his ride “a sweaty rape van”). Then he dishes with them about some deep and some not-so-deep stuff. And thanks to some cheap special effects, the van magically transports them wherever the guest wants to go.
A couple days ago, Wilson picked up conceptual prop-comic Demetri Martin (or the other way around). They gabbed about comedy archaeology, getting mugged for beliefs, and drawing the state of their souls. Watch the short episode above and subscribe to the SoulPancake YouTube channel to see them all and more.
Josh Jones is a doctoral candidate in English at Fordham University and a co-founder and former managing editor of Guernica / A Magazine of Arts and Politics.
Woody Allen hates personal publicity. He doesn’t appear on talk shows or attend the Oscars. He rarely gives interviews, even when he has a new film to promote. But a few years back Allen opened up to filmmaker Robert B. Weide for the making of Woody Allen: A Documentary, which aired last year in the American Masters series on PBS. “He never refused a request,” Weide told PBS, “and he never declined to answer a question.” At one point Weide asked Allen a series of twelve questions that he was reasonably sure Allen had never been asked before. The resulting interview, shown above, is included as an extra in the DVD version of the film and offers a fascinating little portal into the reclusive filmmaker’s personality.
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When famous movie directors shoot television spots, they usually focus on the merits of a particular product: Wim Wenders and Stella Artois, Wes Anderson and the Hyundai Azera, Jean-Luc Godard and Schick aftershave. Above, you’ll see one by Joel and Ethan Coen meant not to endorse but to oppose. Premised on the notion that the name “clean coal” masks a not-especially-clean technology, “Clean Coal Clean” dishes it out against the coal industry — “the most trusted name in coal” — with a satirical pastiche of household cleaning spray commercials. I’ll say this: if any pair of filmmakers can get me to watch a video about the politics of coal, the guys behind Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, and A Serious Man can. The clip just below offers a look into the production of another “Clean Coal Clean” parody commercial, and a rare chance to see the Coen brothers at work.
Marla Dickerson in the Los Angeles Times provides background on this “latest salvo in the media battle between the coal industry and environmentalists over the role that carbon fuels should play in the United States’ energy future.” Dickerson quotes a coal spokesman on how the “the industry spent more than $50 billion since the 1970s installing pollution-control equipment and designing plants that are more efficient.” She also lays out the environmentalists’ argument: “the coal industry’s marketing campaign has left Americans with the impression that such ‘clean coal” technology already exists. Such a breakthrough has yet to be developed,” she quotes the Sierra Cub’s coal campaign director as saying, “and may never be at a cost that makes economic sense.” Of course, not even a genius auteur — not even two of them — can make up your mind on this issue. But with these spots, the Coen brothers and the Alliance for Climate Protection reiterate an invaluable point: whether about household cleaners or energy sources, never believe the hype.
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Colin Marshall hosts and produces Notebook on Cities and Culture. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall.
As the Ramones so memorably didn’t sing, “Twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go…I want a piece of bacon.” Substitute ham, and you’ve got yourself Collective Cadenza’s History of Misheard Lyrics, Opus No. 13. The classically trained performers are nothing if not game. The visual aids are ridiculously on message. The goal? A one-take musical compendium of pop’s most commonly misapprehended phrases. (Prior projects include subjecting “What a Wonderful World” to sixteen musical genres and a lovely History of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics.)
With all the current debate over the real world worthiness of expensive college educations, it’s reassuring to see recent Julliard grads helping themselves to the crown once sported by Mr. Jaws and Dr. Demento.
And now, readers, it’s your turn to shake it like a polar bear ninja. Was your favorite aural fail acknowledged above? Or will you be using the space below to demand its inclusion in a follow up?
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