scary dream

Last night I had a dream that I was in the cafeteria at the top floor of an office building (much like the one where I actually work), and while I tried to choose between chocolate custard and key lime pie, an emergency would erupt wherein one of the employees suddenly became hysterical; the exact same situation kept playing itself out over and over, except each time he would do something more berserk than the time before, with the last round involving him cutting off his own finger, spraying the terrified patrons with his blood and screaming "You have it too, now, you have it too." Every time something like this happened, the same mousey woman would try to control the crowd by telling us to calmly head toward the exits--and every time we would throw her in the way of the mad man, trampling her as we fled for our lives.

download this album

Astro Club Blonde finally released their EP, New As Tomorrow, to the interwebs for the downloadz of a lifetime! Key trax: all of them.

TOTES DOWNLOAD HERE

Nathan probably hates me for how I went about doing this.

a few of my favorite performances by people who are dead now.

See title for explanation.


Cab Calloway - "Minnie the Moocher"


Frank Sinatra & Louis Armstrong - "The Birth of the Blues"


Fred Astaire - "Puttin' On the Ritz"

new job

So I've finally secured myself a fulltime job. I'm a production coordinator for College Humor in their orignal videos department. Basically, I sit at a computer and email people and wait for them to email me back. I cast actors and acquire permits. I order large quantities of food for the crew, which has been working out pretty well, and which I attribute to my previous experiences working in fast food. Sometimes I attend meetings and carry a little briefcase thing.

We work in this gigantic building by the Chelsea Piers called IAC. It contains many other companies, including Vimeo and Busted Tees. Here's what it looks like:


Our building is the little brown one.

Just kidding! The windows are $100,000 apiece.

People seem to think that College Humor is a great place to work. Why:
-It's run mostly by dudes
-There's almost no one employed here older than 29
-No one takes themselves seriously, and almost the entire staff performs in the vidoes, often as exagerrated forms of themselves
-The interns are treated as equals to the employees
-Nerf guns are everywhere and most of our days are filled by watching viral videos on Youtube.

Everyone has a Tumblr. Here are some of them:

Scam Machine: My own, which I've been updating more regularly than this blog lately (though I still prefer Blogger).

Oh Yeah! Bennett Wilson: Dedicated to our eccentric production manager Bennett Wilson, who's recently taken on the hobby of building the world's largest things.

A Different Thing is My Dick: Adam Newman features different things as his dick.

I'd admittedly never watched a CH video before getting hired, but now that I'm paid to be here, I've gotta say their shit is kind of great--and not just because I'm paid to be here. (Only partially.) Here are some recent sketches I've especially liked:











That last one was just critiqued by political savant Bill O'Reilly:

Find more videos like this on The Activity Pit

In summation: I've worked for free. I've worked for psychologically abusive tyrants. I've worked with cynics who hate the meaningless content they must produce day in and day out. Now I'm working in a place that has the talking statue from Legends of the Hidden Temple.

moments of vindication: chapter five

I was romping around my backwoods backyard in Bangor, Maine when I happened upon a large, wild turtle in our creek. It was a hot day and he was covered in mud, piled about 4 inches high on his back. I thought, "This poor guy is gonna drown! Here he is sitting in the water, covered in mud, barely able to move. I better clean him off."

So I spent a little while scraping it all off, taking care of him. I wondered what he liked to eat. I plucked some grass and held it out for him.

In an instant he snapped down on it so hard that he took a tiny chunk of my tiny finger with him. I bled all over him, screaming. In just as much of an instant, it occurred to me:

Sitting in the water: it's hot out.
Covered in mud: it's hot out.
Barely able to move: he's a fucking turtle.

I ran inside and he slowly crawled away, presumably smug about it all. I still have a small lump on my finger to remind me of his betrayal. Years later, I'm blogging about this. And he? Dead.

bitches on my dick so they call me tom hanks

All apologies: a lot has happened lately and so this blog has suffered. For now, I'll just mention that I finally moved my broke ass to Brooklyn where dreams become reality. Working hard, partying harder. Here are some things I've liked this week.

Photo by Shelly Sarah Kamiel

BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE: featuring original members Anton Newcombe, Joel Gion and Matt Hollywood. My review: Webster Hall is run by douchebags. Their beer choices suck, are mad overpriced, and they won't give you free water? Awesome. Also, the opening act was like shockingly mediocre. But BJM went beyond my expectations, which were admittedly low going into it. I assumed it would be Anton and a bunch of soul-less musicians testing out some half-baked shit they wrote a half hour before, but no. It was the band I wanted to see and they played for 2 and a half hours, did every song I could've hoped for and then some. It got better and better as the night wore on, until Anton ended it with a 20 minute sound experiment, playing with feedback distortion (which INFURIATED the audience because they thought it was building into an encore, and it totally didn't). I loved every minute of it.

Photo by Shelly Sarah Kamiel

THE BILL MURRAY EXPERIENCE: featuring banjo player Blind Boy Paxton. I was with my friends Jason and Anders waiting for the L train when they called out to a colorfully-dressed trio walking by on the other platform: "HEYYY BLIND BOY!" Blind Boy, a large black man in overalls and a top hat, yelled back, "WHO THEM HONKIES?!" Long story short, we were invited to see them play a bluegrass show the next night at Rose Live Music. My review: nice venue and no cover, but HOT as FUCK. The scene: surreal. "Authentic" doesn't come close to describing it, so allow me to lay heavy on the southern synonyms. I didn't realize that bluegrass-americana was such a thing in Brooklyn, but there were girls dancing like they were straight out of a barn on fire. The Dust Brothers were the only opening act I saw and they played as fast as an Oklahoma whirlwind. As for the Bill Murray Experience? I was feeling miserable, suffering through both a work-related catastrophe and a break-up, but when the singer sang the blues it was like she ripped it straight from my soul, which was laying dormant at the bottom of a shot glass. She looked like Betty Boop and sang like Cab Calloway. Fell for her instantly.


DJ POWER & ASSOCIATES: THE WORLD: IT'S NOT A MIXTAPE VOLUME III: featuring Alan Lapointe, who does a piss poor job of hyping himself and then raps about it. Just listened to it twice in a row. This is not a mixtape. This is THE WORLD. And it's great. Fucking download it. Millennium Blonde and Wario beats, lyrics that are both politically aware and slyly absurd... and the best part? Inadvertently funded by the US government. Favorite tracks: Goliath, Melonade, Tuna Melt, Warioworld


tom hanks tom homie tom hanks

blog mascot

by Kate Beaton

Marine disaster.

Saw that 2 days after sketching a tattoo I've been wanting to get:

Harpoon

I'm saying I relate to Aquaman.