Nighty Night

Sarah and I just burned through the whole first season of this twisted comedy last night and can't stop feeling awful/delighted about it. It stars Julia Davis (also the writer) as the "narcissistic sociopath" Jill Tyrell. Here's the first episode:


Fun fact: Julia Davis is married to the Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt (Howard Moon), thus usurping Amy Poehler and Will Arnett as my all time favorite comedy couple.

Bachelorette Party

Pissing off Samir

Mind Hacks and the 4th Dimension

I just finished reading H. P. Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House about a brilliant mathematics student who stumbles upon (by way of the occult) a means of bending and traveling through time and space. In the story the student, Walter Gilman, develops this ability unwittingly, coming up with the idea "in theory" while simultaneously denying that his nightly journeys through an infinite abyss populated by monsters to alien worlds as nightmares rather than the hyperspace journeys they are. When he finally accepts that he has stumbled upon this ability and that the horrible creatures he has encountered are real he is brought to the brink of sanity. It reminded me of a documentary much like this one where Buddhist monks are able to shrug off the effects of potentially lethal cold by raising their body temperatures to counteract the effects:




Lovecraft's story reminded me of this because, like the protagonist of his story, I feared stumbling upon an ability I too could not control. That if by sheer chance I managed to raise my body temperature I wouldn't be able to get it back down again and would effectively kill myself with my own mind. That is why when the day after finishing this story I was so affected by seeing this Tim and Eric sketch:



And finally this on SNL:



All this manipulating of time and space was messing me up and then I read this piece by Stephen Hawking. You should read the whole thing but here's my abridged snippet:

Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking . . . Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I'm not so cautious . . . Physicists . . . wonder if portals to the past or the future could ever be possible within the laws of nature. As it turns out, we think they are. What's more, we've even given them a name: wormholes. The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me. Nothing is flat or solid. If you look closely enough at anything you'll find holes and wrinkles in it. It's a basic physical principle, and it even applies to time. Even something as smooth as a pool ball has tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids. Now it's easy to show that this is true in the first three dimensions. But trust me, it's also true of the fourth dimension. There are tiny crevices, wrinkles and voids in time. Down at the smallest of scales, smaller even than molecules, smaller than atoms, we get to a place called the quantum foam. This is where wormholes exist. Tiny tunnels or shortcuts through space and time constantly form, disappear, and reform within this quantum world. And they actually link two separate places and two different times. Unfortunately, these real-life time tunnels are just a billion-trillion-trillionths of a centimetre across. Way too small for a human to pass through - but here's where the notion of wormhole time machines is leading. Some scientists think it may be possible to capture a wormhole and enlarge it many trillions of times to make it big enough for a human or even a spaceship to enter. Given enough power and advanced technology, perhaps a giant wormhole could even be constructed in space. I'm not saying it can be done, but if it could be, it would be a truly remarkable device. One end could be here near Earth, and the other far, far away, near some distant planet . . . In the end, I think a wormhole like this one [into the past] can't exist. And the reason for that is feedback. If you've ever been to a rock gig, you'll probably recognise this screeching noise. It's feedback. What causes it is simple. Sound enters the microphone. It's transmitted along the wires, made louder by the amplifier, and comes out at the speakers. But if too much of the sound from the speakers goes back into the mic it goes around and around in a loop getting louder each time. If no one stops it, feedback can destroy the sound system. The same thing will happen with a wormhole, only with radiation instead of sound. As soon as the wormhole expands, natural radiation will enter it, and end up in a loop. The feedback will become so strong it destroys the wormhole. So although tiny wormholes do exist, and it may be possible to inflate one some day, it won't last long enough to be of use as a time machine . . . Any kind of time travel to the past through wormholes or any other method is probably impossible, otherwise paradoxes would occur. So sadly, it looks like time travel to the past is never going to happen . . . This doesn't make all time travel impossible. I do believe in time travel. Time travel to the future. Time flows like a river and it seems as if each of us is carried relentlessly along by time's current. But time is like a river in another way. It flows at diff erent speeds in diff erent places and that is the key to travelling into the future. This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein over 100 years ago. He realised that there should be places where time slows down, and others where time speeds up. He was absolutely right. And the proof is right above our heads. Up in space. This is the Global Positioning System, or GPS. A network of satellites is in orbit around Earth. The satellites make satellite navigation possible. But they also reveal that time runs faster in space than it does down on Earth. Inside each spacecraft is a very precise clock. But despite being so accurate, they all gain around a third of a billionth of a second every day. The system has to correct for the drift, otherwise that tiny di fference would upset the whole system, causing every GPS device on Earth to go out by about six miles a day. You can just imagine the mayhem that that would cause. The problem doesn't lie with the clocks. They run fast because time itself runs faster in space than it does down below. And the reason for this extraordinary e ffect is the mass of the Earth. Einstein realised that matter drags on time and slows it down like the slow part of a river. The heavier the object, the more it drags on time. And this startling reality is what opens the door to the possibility of time travel to the future . . .

Archer!

Archer just posted it's final episode of the season on Hulu! Why aren't you watching it right now?! It's the tits! Here's the first episode:

Hey Dummies!

For all you losers who dont't live on the internet or stay up past midnight:

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

OMG! I just rented the HBO 1983 recording of Pee-Wee Herman's stage show at the Roxy on a whim and was shocked (shocked!) at how funny it was. What more can I say besides Phil Hartman and a Sly Stone medley? No? Then think of it as a proto-Boosh? Still no? Then we're not friends. Rent it on Netflix immediately (move to position #1) or you can watch it here (but you need to install some junk so just netflix it):


Watch Pee Wee herman show 1981 in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I Want a Dog So Bad

Saw one of these at a bar and thought I was losing my shit, then was delighted (it's the 1930s version of the Puppy Bowl!):

You can hit the streets or hit the sheets, don't make no nevermind to me, you dig?

Fucking yes! I've been waiting for this movie to come out for months and finally got to see it and it was everything I wanted and more. The acting, cinematography, soundtrack, and kung-fu were all perfect. I'm going to watch this movie again and again until I've memorized it line for line. My only regret is that I wasn't stoned in the theater.

Here's the soundtrack sampler:

2 Albums You've Never Heard

Someone couldn't wait for another Wes Anderson soundtrack so went ahead and made one themselves. Fortunately for us it's a pretty decent knock-off. Even better is that that someone was Nicholas Gurewitch, creator of the Perry Bible Fellowship, the most consistently funny comic strip I've ever seen online. Oh to be multitalented...

You can download it here.

Here's the tracklist:

1. Cumulus
2. Donovan - Hi It’s Been a Long Time
3. Andrew’s Waltz
4. The Kinks - So Long
5. Les Boréades - Piggies
6. Paul Simon - The Obvious Child
7. Artur Rubenstein - Rhapsody On A Theme of Paganini - Var. #7
8. Belle and Sebastian - Fox in the Snow
9. With a Chance of Rain
10. Mike Berry and The Outlaws - Don’t You Think it’s Time
11. Hindi Beatles medley
12. The London Double Bass Sound - Moses Fantasy (paganini)
13. Ion Laceanu - Briu
14. The Rolling Stones - Mother’s Little Helper
15. The Flight of the Bumblebee* (Sinfonia Lahti Cello and Bass Ensemble) (Rimsky-Korsakov)
16. The Zombies - Beechwood Park
17. John Cale - Paris 1919
18. The Who - Can’t Explain
19. English Chamber Orchestra - Water Music Suite No. 2 in D
20. Sparks - Whipping and Apologies
21. Itzhak Perlman - Caprice #2 in B Minor by Paganini
22. The Damned - Jet Boy Jet Girl
23. The String Quartet - Sunday Morning (Velvet Underground)
24. Sigur Ros - Olsen Olsen




Listening to the State being interviewed on the Sound of Young America I learned they made an album that was declared unsuitable for release by Warner Brothers. Judge for yourself by downloading it here (although it's really only for State completists).

The Maria Bamford Show!

I just watched every one of these and wish there were more. Another person on my list of people I wish I was friends with (new tag!). I think this is the best web series I've ever seen. I'm going to rip each one off youtube before they disappear!

Season One

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Season Two

 [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]

"I believe in the human mind's power to create 

fantasies that reassure itself in times of trouble."

Happy May the Fourth!

Cereal of the Gods

I hate breakfast. Anything other than coffee in my stomach before 11 AM fills me with loathing. If ever there was a breakfast food that could have changed my mind, I just learned that it was in the works but never made:

Paul Reubens: The cereal was going to be Pee-wee Chow. I had Ralston Purina give me permission to let the checkerboard be on human food. It was going to be called Pee-wee Chow, just like Dog Chow, and had the checkerboard on it. The commercial was going to be a mom pouring a bowl of it and putting it on the floor and kids crawling up like dogs and eating it on all fours.

Gary Panter: That could have changed history.

PR: I thought that was going to be so great. And the cereal was really delicious, I thought. It tasted just like Trix. It was sweetened with fruit juice, no added sugar, had all these vitamins and minerals and was really good for you. Everything was going fantastic until, right at the last minute, they had to do a blind taste test with kids, and kids hated it.

GP: Stupid jerks!

[from a new interview in Swindle magazine]

Alas, Pee-wee chow now enters the hallowed, never-realized cereal Valhalla along with Little Chocolate Donuts.

Tracy Morgan's Penis is Sporting a Legwarmer

I pray to baby Jesus that after 30 Rock ends Tracy Morgan is given a radio show. The Sound of Young America dug up this tape of his seemingly random appearance on a sports talk radio show. The hosts make a valiant effort to steer him into sports related comments but there's no stopping a force of nature. I'm pretty positive Tracy Morgan knows exactly what he's doing at all times but as my friend Neil (who passed this on to me) observed, it really seems possible that he doesn't know anything about the show he's on or its hosts and couldn't care less.