Guilty of all of these:
Steak and a Knife, Steak and a Knife
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Category Archives: Funny Stuff
Comedic Carolina
In a Slate piece written by Evan Smith Rackoff, a product of UNCG, we learn why North Carolina seems to be a breeding ground for comics, and the role that the School of the Arts plays in that development:
The Andy Griffith Show is not the only product of the early ’60s that has proven essential to the new wave of North Carolina comedy. In that same era, a Winston-Salem-born novelist, John Ehle, accepted a position on the staff of North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford. The two men devised a plan to create a new, publicly funded school, an arts conservatory, rooted in performance, rather than the academy, and taught by working artists. In 1963, the North Carolina School of the Arts was chartered. It’s a high school as well as an arts college, and it’s part of the 16 colleges in the UNC system. It’s one of the reasons that more North Carolina comedians have found their way out of the state in recent years, venturing away from small foothill towns and broadcasting their particular sensibilities to the wider world.
Among its graduates is the entire creative team behind Eastbound & Down, a show that, in Scott Jacobson’s words, is “North Carolina to the core.” Jody Hill would be pleased at the description, I think; he told me that when he and his fellow creators looked to the movies and television, “We really didn’t see the South we knew represented.” Kenny Powers, the central character of Eastbound & Down, is a modern-day Jack, of the Appalachian Jack Tales—which people have been retelling in North Carolina for centuries. Jack is a weak and shiftless character but clever and quick-witted. In the end he’s often taught an instructive lesson, though it doesn’t necessarily stick. This is part of the mystique of Kenny Powers. And like Griffith, Danny McBride knows not to play his character for laughs. He plays him with utter sincerity, and the laughs follow.
Hat tip to John Robinson, former editor of the Greensboro News & Record, who shared this on his excellent blog Media, Disrupted.
An Event Planner’s Recurring Nightmare
**Update** Apparently this was a hoax, but I think the point's still valid.
This is the kind of thing that keeps event planners up at night. It's also the kind of thing that reminds me why boring is sometimes better.
Crunchy Dads
You all have friends who did the "crunchy" thing, so don't judge.
The Importance of Copy Editors
Copy editors are important. Don't believe it? The folks at Groupon and Mitt Romney's campaign would probably disagree with you right about now.
Groupon's daily email today featured the subject line, "Father's Day deals for the man who gave birth to you" and linked to a page with the header, "Celebrate the Man Who Gave Birth to You." Your mother would likely be shocked to learn that your father gave birth to you. She'd also likely wonder what caused her so much pain those many years ago. Sure these headlines are better than "Celebrate your sperm donor" but they're still woefully inaccurate.
Then there's the Romney campaign's photo application that lets you take pictures of various things and then overlay a pro-Romney message on them. One problem: the message that was supposed to read "A Better America" instead reads "A Better Amercia." Granted it's not really a scandalous development for the campaign, but when you're fronting the party that's become known for being led by anti-intellectuals (Sarah Palin anyone) it's not the kind of message you want to send.
There are plenty of good copy editors out there, and given what's happened to the publishing industry of late they probably come pretty cheap. Maybe Groupon and Romney's communication team should look them up.
Side note: If you read more than one sentence of the thousands written for this blog it will become painfully obvious that this is a highly ironic post. A copy editor's "red pen" has never graced these pages and it shows.
Bull Enema and a Drawbridge
I think I might have stumbled onto the ultimate time-waster website – Old Jews Telling Jokes. If this is indicative of what the rest of the jokes I'm going to be spending a lot of time there.
Early Promotional Piece for The Hobbit?
Peter Jackson, the dude who brought you the Lord of the Rings movies, is working on bringing The Hobbit to theaters in December, 2012. I wonder if he's considering this Leonard Nimoy video for an early promo piece? (h/t to Ed for the link)
Fart Psych
Starting with a question – Why do people feel less of a need to fart when they're in public? (I'm paraphrasing a bit) – this writer tracks down the only study he can find on the psychology of farts. He then interviews the genius who conducted the study and is a bit disappointed to discover that no real farts were involved:
The basic question behind this paper is: how does a fart in social context affect a person's views of the farter? In order to study this, Lippman took a bunch of college students, and gave them a series of hypothetical situations in which someone farted. He asked them to rate their opinions of that person.
It's really sad to me that the situations were all hypothetical. This was part of Dr. Lippman's caricature of many social psychology studies being performed at the time, which tended to rely on pen and paper rankings while college students considered hypothetical situations. While it makes for a good caricature, I'm sad to know that my idealized vision of little knots of people with someone letting loose a silent'n'deadly never actually happened. And really, you have to think this would be a hard thing to plan. After all, how many people do you know can release a silent, deadly fart ON COMMAND?
So Lippman had students fill out surveys. In another poke at social psychology (which often involves 3 factorial designs), this one involved a FIVE-dimensional design. Just to go over the top. The variables were the following:
1) Whether you were in a group of strangers or a group of acquaintances.
2) Whether the fart was loud or silent.
3) Whether the fart was scentless or rank (the word used was in fact "rank").
4) Whether the fart was deliberate.
5) Whether the person taking the questionnaire and hypothetically "experiencing" the fart (the fart-ee?) was male or female.
The rest of the read is equally enlightening.
The Wheel Goes Round and Round
So your wife says some really stupid stuff while your driving through Utah and Idaho. What do you do? If you're this guy you record it while your driving (not the brightest thing to do in and of itself), then post the video online so the world can revel in your wife's dingbattedness. My first thought was, "I wonder if this guy's still married" but then it occurred to me that given the intellect she displayed his wife may not be aware that he'd punk'd her. Enjoy.
State and Local is Where It’s At
For those of you who think all the political action is in Washington, DC I have to tell you that the real action, at least in terms of entertainment value, is in the state and local arenas. A perfect example:
- In Wyoming a couple of state representatives have introduced Wyoming House Bill 85 which establishes a "state continuity task force" to help determine what the state will do when/if the United States collapses. Among the many considerations detailed in the bill? Buying an aircraft carrier…despite the fact that Wyoming is landlocked.
Befuddled 