Sunday, February 27, 2011

Something You Don't Have To Read!

Hello, lovelies!

We're taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming so I can share some videos I've been working on the past few days.

And no, not those kinds of videos.  I don't give that shit away for free.

Here's my stand up reel, give it a watch, let me know what you think:

And here's a skit illustrating how useful yoga is when getting mugged:


Enjoy!

Saturday, February 26, 2011

When Its All That's On Tv And You Feel Like Crap . . .

Forgive the lack of posts, business, a sinus headache from the bowels of hell and not being able to breathe through my face have made staring at a computer screen less than desireable.

On the upside, I have learned to absorb oxygen through my skin.

I was lying in bed yesterday with a hot wash cloth pressed against my face to try and alleviate the pain of my skull slowly working it's way through my skin, and I came to a realization.

I hate chick flicks.

I know there are many people out who really enjoy these movies, but I really have a huge problem with these films.  

There are two main categories when it comes to chick flicks.  The Comedy Chick Flick and the Tragedy Chick Flick.  Neither have any redeeming qualities.

The Comedy Chick Flick
This category includes movies like 'Couples Retreat', 'Made of Honor' and '27 Dresses'.  One of the main qualities all these films have in common (other than the fact that they don't really have a cohesive story line) is that they work extraordinarily hard to make the comedy clean and accessible for women, which usually means they completely ruin any chance they have of actually getting any laughs.  For my money, go for the bold, unexpected joke, not the safe, neutral joke about what your boyfriend/husband sounds like when he snores or how he ALWAYS leaves the toilet seat up.  The jokes are recycled and re-recycled.  Not to mention that there is never any doubt as to the ending of these films.  The main girl will end up with the main guy.  We know.  Its been done.  

Here's my idea for the end of one of these movies.

The Main Chick (MC) and Main Dude (MD) are standing together, their arms flung around each other.  They laugh, delighted to end up together after all they've been through.  MD leans down to plant that long awaited kiss on the lips of MC.  

Then a fucking raptor comes up from behind them and eats MD, leaving the MC covered in guts and viscera and weeping, knowing that she would never know true love again.

That shit would make me laugh.

The Tragedy Chick Flick

This includes movies like 'Nights in Rodanthe', 'The Secret Life of Bees', and 'My Sister's Keeper'.  With these movies, they don't necessarily have to have a love story as the main theme.  These can deal with racism, life threatening diseases, far away lovers yearning to be together and other such heart-string pulling motifs.  These movies actually piss me off more than the comedies.  I know exactly how these piece of shit movies are made.  There are a bunch of assholes who sit around a table and think about the worst most terrible things they could do in a  movie that would make people (especially women) cry.  These people are sadists.  They do things like bring two people together who are perfect for each other, then separate them, have them write longing love letters to each other and then kill one of them.  They make us invest in a family story about a child fighting a disease and then kill the child.  They hurt animals, beat children and rip dream to shreds all in name of making some bored housewife feel something other than monotony.

Ok, that was harsh.  

The housewife probably feels resentment too. 

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Old People Are Still People, I Guess

I was on the subway today during rush hour when I saw two middle aged cubicle dwellers in front of me.  They were talking about something, I wasn't really paying attention to what, but what caught my attention was at one point, these two spongy fellows celebrated some work related victory with a fist bump.

There was just something about these two men doing a fist bump that made me stop and go, "Huh".  It was just so out of character.  These were two bespectacled, unshaven, slightly slovenly gentleman who had allowed themselves to go past their prime employing a gesture that belonged to a group of people many generations beneath them.  It was so odd, so out of place, it made the whole train stiffen and look out of the corner of their eyes, trying to figure out just what had happened to ruffle the fabric of space and time.

This is supportive of my theory as to why Betty White is popular.

Yes, Ms. White is funny.  She is that slightly sweet, slightly dirty grandmother everyone wishes they had.  However, I don't find myself as completely enamored with her as the general population.  She is fine in some situations, but only because she says things that octogenarians "shouldn't" say.  

I am the last person who should be complaining about this, as I rely on this in my stand up on occasion to get a reaction out of my audience, but she is just so aware that she is saying these things.  Carol Burnett is the only person who could really look at the camera and wink, but I see Betty White constantly attempting that very thing, without actually winking.

People watch her because they are excited to see what she'll say next.  What crazy, inappropriate thing will she come up with next.  In that sense, I am worried about good ol' Betty.  I mean, come on, one of these days she's going to be saying those inappropriate things, people will be laughing and suddenly someone is going to realize that she is actually senile and her brain is slowly rotting in her head.  Maybe that's happening now!  Maybe she's not funny, she's just really fucking old.  She is just a couple months away from shitting her granny panties, hitting children with her cane and giving out meatloaf for Halloween.

Some people may read this and think, "Hey, you heartless bitch, why so much hate towards Betty White?"  

Erroneous, my friends.  Erroneous.

I have nothing but love for America's favorite grandma, I am just looking out for her.  I just don't want her to become some freak sideshow type character, where people put her in some cage and give kids those little cups filled with pellets to give her to try and get her to do something cute.  Then when her keeper isn't paying attention someone will throw something at her to try and get a reaction from her.  There's just some straw on the floor and a dirty water bowl in the corner.  

 . . . . 

Ok, basically what this post was supposed to encapsulate was that when people do things that is out of their generation gap, people stare.  

Yeah, I guess I kinda got away from that.

On a completely unrelated not, that song Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root.  Um, does the lead singer have a really serious speech impediment combined with learning English really late in life?  Cause I was just listening to the song while following along with the lyrics and what he said sounded nothing like what was written.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

I Am A Completely Straight Female, By The Way

I hate it when spammers don't take who they are spamming into consideration.  I know I am not the only female to be inundated with emails proclaiming some miracle that will enlarge my penis.

Let me tell you something, spammers.  I am perfectly fine with my penis exactly the way it is.

And even if I wasn't, I did some embarrassing research on the internet today and I am pleased to say that there is such thing as penis enlargement surgery.  I don't know why I was initially surprised about this.  Just about any kind of cosmetic surgery is done for the benefit of men anyway.  Any woman who tells you that the double D's she spent a fortune on were for her own self esteem is a liar.  Just getting those planets on her chest didn't give her self esteem.  It was the leers and catcalls and men she was able to lure into the valleys of those mountainous peaks that gave her "self esteem".

Regardless, any tuck, suck, nip or augmentation is done for the male population.

Because of this, I would love to know how often penis enlargements get done.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I haven't heard of it - I mean, would you tell someone if you had your penis "done"?  You would want to make everyone think you were born so well hung.

I wonder what they look like.

Now I know that the actual reveal of what they would look like is only a short internet search away, but when I was looking up the cosmetic places that do the penis enlargement surgeries and I clicked on one link for more info and there was this big ol' dong there I got all flustered.

I would imagine that they look far from perfect.  But then again, how could you screw up a penis?  Its not like they're master pieces of biological engineering.  Its basically a balloon straw.  And no one expects a penis to be great to look at, or anything.  

Cause, ok, boobs people want to look at.  Even women want to see other women's boobs, and not out of a latent lesbian tendency, just cause boobs have a pleasing symmetrical shape about them.  You don't want those babies scarred up or otherwise marred by surgery.  You'd want a doctor who would make your breasts look like they were just out of the box, brand new and smooth and perky and ready for an adventure!  

But penises just make people uncomfortable.  For example, if you are in a movie theater and the director decided to be a jerk and have a fully naked dude swinging his junk all over, everyone in the theater will find a way to look at something else.  They are just so unpredictable.  They give you the feeling that it could just jump out at ya, without warning.  Men themselves claim that they have little to no control over their genitalia.  How is that supposed to  be reassuring in any way?  That doesn't fill me with confidence.

Who looks at penises for recreational pleasure?  Not me.  They are a strange combination of being silly looking and menacing.  Like clowns.  I feel like Mother Nature got lazy when she/he created the penis.  I mean, the female form is so well thought out.  Clean lines, everything functional and attempting to be useful - its like Apple designed it.  The male form kinda looks like someone set up a Ken doll-like frame and just threw handfuls of creation-mud at it and anything that stuck was in.  

File this one under "Odd Subway Thoughts."

Monday, February 7, 2011

Kung Fu Panda 2 Will Also Be Awesome

Ok, guys, let's review the best and the worst of the Super Bowl ads.

Most of the forgettable/repeated/car commercials I am going to ignore, cause I don't really remember them anyway.

Pug Love Doritos:
  • This is honestly the first commercial I clearly remember for a couple of reasons.  It was adorable, first off, and I called the ending as it was happening.  What really stood out about it was that I knew the dog was not going to be hurt by the door and the evil boyfriend was going to get his due for trying to hurt him, but I didn't know exactly how.  At first I thought he was just going to break through the glass, but I was very pleased and even laughed at the result.  It was exactly what a Super Bowl commercial should have been, light and funny, not too challenging, but clever at the same time.  
Doritos Heal All
  • I was super pleased with this commercial, too.  Again, clever, told a good story in a short amount of time, and the ending had a nice twist to it bring the dead grandfather back to life.  Again, you could see it happening, but the pay off was great, and when the two hugged I had to giggle that granddad was still dusty from being cremated.
Homeaway.Com: Vacation Homes
  • This commercial was just an excuse to throw a baby at a pane of glass.  The rest of the commercial was highly forgettable, but the fake baby hitting the glass while an insistent British man labeled it "TEST BABY!" was wonderful.
Either Eminen commercials
  • Both of these bothered me because in the first he was all, "I hate commercials, I never do them."  But dude, you are in a commercial, and then he was in another!  You are not a man of your word, Mr Slim Shady.  Sit down.
Snickers: Lumberjacks
  • This just terrified me to see Roseanne making money doing anything again.  That woman has to be one of the most frightening, awful creatures.  Honestly, that's the only thing I remember about the commercial.  Fear seared it into my brain.
Budweiser: Wild West
  • This could have been really great.  But Tiny Dancer as the song?  No good.  It was too weird.  It should have been Sweet Caroline or something like that.  A song that everyone would have instinctively known.  People only remember the chorus of Tiny Dancer, and only then if they've seen Almost Famous a bunch of times.
Stella Artois: Crooner
  • Very odd, because Adrian Brody's nose is too big for anyone to honestly look past to see an attractive man.  Just saying, let's be honest here.  It's as plain as the nose on his face.
Chevy Silverado: Rescue
  • This is an example of a Super Bowl commercial that was trying to be clever.  Man, it was trying so hard to be clever.  And it just fell flat.  It gave away the twist in the very beginning, so even though they continually upped the ante, it never really changed cause we got the joke already.

Volkswagen Passat: Young Vader

  •  This was a really cute commercial, even though there could have been a midget in that outfit and not a adorable kid, as we were all led to believe.  But yeah, cute.
Groupon: Fuck Tibet
  • Apparently, Timothy Hutton says let the Tibetan people continue to lead an awful existence, allow their culture and their people be oppressed - as long as we fat Americans can eat their food cheaply.  Really low class, Groupon.  And I was just thinking of joining but fuck that now. 
 Chevy Cruze: More Useless Shit For Your Useless Life
  • So, yeah, now with this car we can check facebook while driving and have a computer read it outloud to us.  Cause more distractions while driving is acceptable.  In fact, let's put a small kitchenette in there, voice activated of course, so we can make breakfast on the way to work.  That actually strikes me as more useful than checking your fucking FACEBOOK.  People who want to check their facebooks that much can't afford cars cause they don't have jobs cause they stay at home all day on FACEBOOK.
Audi A8: Prison Break
  • Any commercial that makes fun of old rich white people, Kenny G and uses the word 'hoodwinked' makes me happy.
Bridgestone: Reply All
  • Screaming guy goes on a rampage destroying electronics.  Unfortunately, I didn't really remember it was for tires, but I did remember him running up the steps of a building slapping phones out of people's hands.  I kinda want to run around New York doing that tomorrow.
Pepsi: Love Hurts
  • This was just an excuse to show a black couple harassing a blond white girl.  And it was HILARIOUS.  I want to run around New York throwing Pepsi at annoying white girls who aren't me.
Those are the ones that really stick out to me.  Most of the commercials this year really suffered from trying very hard to be clever and failing, mostly because they were trying so hard.  The best Super Bowl commercials have always been the ones that flow effortlessly forward, that have a simple, relate-able story that then have a clever twist at the end.  Like the way we all wish M. Night Shyamalan's movies would be, but always fail to achieve.     

And for the record, Cowboys vs. Aliens is going to fucking ROCK.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

They Need To Change Those Commercials On Hulu

When I write these posts or clean or cook or change litter boxes or do dishes or any of the myriad of super exciting things that I do when I am home, I have to have some noise going on behind it all, to distract me a little bit.  Kinda like, when I'm getting home from a long night (catering, not stripping, come on, guys!) and my feet hurt and I have the sleepies, I have a tendency to count my steps to get my mind off how I am feeling.  

That's normal, right?

Anyway, so I scour Hulu looking for a semi-amusing/interesting/not nausea inducing shows that I can put on in the background.  Its a great website, I highly recommend it, but there is one thing that gets to me a little.  There are only a couple of commercials per episode, but they are always the same!  I gotta tell you, Geico needs to change up their Hulu commercials, they drive me nuts.

But it was one of the repeat commercials on Hulu that always serves to remind me what a terrible person I am.  

There is one of those "give money to the children" commercials on there.  It starts out with that one white-bearded guy asking the viewer about their change (money) at the end of the day.  "That change that you just throw on the dresser and forget about.  And won't you invest that change in something worth while.  Invest in it her."  And then they show a shot of a little Hispanic girl in a dirty dress walking down a squalid street, all muddy and fly infested.  They are attempting to garner your sympathy.

Well, that's not how I react.

When he says "Why don't you invest in her," my first thought is, "Well, because she's probably not going to amount to anything and I want a return on my investment."

I mean, come on, it would be one thing if you had some kind of guarantee.  If she was absolutely going to become a doctor so that if I was sick I could go to her and be all, "Hey, I gave you the change from my dresser that got all this going, this should be on the house!" and she'd smile and be all, "Oh, of course, you invested in me, and you should get a return!" and I'd be all, "What can I say, I'm savvy that way." 

Am I being completely out of line?  If you just want me to help, then yeah, just say, these people don't have anything but trash and malaria and they need your help for trash cans and mosquito nets.  Then I'd be all, fine, yes, have the $0.78 that's in between the cushions on my couch.  But don't try and make me think like I'm gonna get anything out of it!

I'm a terrible person.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

It's A Pheromone I Give Off - They Find Me

Don't you love that feeling of bullet dodging?  When something awful was so close to your life but was able to deliciously whizz by without really affecting you negatively?

A couple years ago I was helping to run a raffle for The New York Musical Festival (NYMF) and at that event I met the most curious man.  He introduced himself as Priyantha DeSilva, he appeared to be a Middle Eastern or Indian man.  He told me that he was a producer and very important and that he wanted to help me with my acting career.  

Now, the problem that this gentleman had when approaching me in such a way is that I am not an idiot.  However, I was curious about what he was going to procure, so I told him about a show I was in, and said that I wasn't comfortable going into any kind of business with him until he saw me perform.  Well, he actually came to the show, and then invited me to go to the premiere of Doubt with him.  Again, fatal mistake.  I am acquainted with a someone who was integral to the production of that movie, so I got in touch with him to make sure all the information was good and this guy wasn't just trying to get me somewhere and rape me.  It was all good, so I was all, hey, get to meet some famous people and free food and see an awesome movie.  

Going with this man to this party was an education - no, a master class - in and of itself.  I had to tell him to shut up more than once during the film and when we got to the after party he immediately ingratiated himself upon people who wanted nothing to do with him.  Somehow, in about half an hour, he was also drunker than Jesus at Easter.

Hey, wouldn't you get massively drunk if you had just been brought back to life?  I don't even drink and I'd be soused to the gills.

I quickly met other people and went around to enjoy the party with my new friends.  I lost track of Mr Desilva for a while, until he texted me about half way through the evening.  In that text and the subsequent ones he sent he informed me that he had never been so insulted in his whole life and that he wasn't going to help me with my career and other veiled threats.  I sent him a message back, telling him not to overreact and that we should talk face to face.  

When I found him, he was even drunker than when I had left him.  He went on about being insulted for a while, and then said he wanted to be my manager and get 50% of everything I made.  In the nicest way possible I told him I wasn't a fucking child and that he couldn't take advantage of me like that.  I informed him that if he wanted to have anything to do with my career we could talk when he was sober.  

I never saw him again, although he would text me once and awhile to try and get me to go to events with him.  I had learned my lesson, so that never happened.

Turns out, its good that I cut that tie at the right moment.

Let me share some things with you good people.

Apparently this man:   
Priyantha DeSilva

Is a notorious party crasher, and has been for years.  He has been arrested for public urination, posing as a female fashion editor, film director/producer, paying for auction items with fake credit cards, and stealing a $1,500 Prada bag.  He was most recently arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court with bail set at $7,500.

So if you see him, point and laugh. 

I know, I know.  I am like the Psycho Whisperer - these people are just drawn to me.