Comedian, podcaster, and co-founder of SF SketchFest, Cole Stratton, spent a lot of quality time with HBO in the 1980s. Discover how such classic films as the one about the manure lawsuit, a unicorn played by Mia Farrow, and Ferris Bueller blue balls, shaped the psyche of Mr. Stratton. PLUS thrill to Cole’s a cappella rendition of the HBO Feature Presentation theme!
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Game designer and Table Top producer, Boyan Radakovich, is obsessed with maps and infographics. Learn what Hunger Games district you live in! How to kill Hitler with a map! How to lie to people about the geography of Los Angeles! PLUS: Joseph and Boyan update you on which Hunger Game districts are best for upcoming live comedy!
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I’ve been obsessed with Star Wars for a long time. Every few months, specific lines from the films will lodge themselves in my brain. Recently, while waiting in line at the DMV, this line popped into my head:
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
Cranky, truth-bending Jedi Knight, hermit, and professional asshole, Obi-Wan Kenobi, said this to Luke Skywalker. He was describing Mos Eisley and its Cantina.
It only recently occurred to me how harsh it is. The Cantina really isn’t that bad. It looks pretty clean, Luke gets his drink quickly, the music is GREAT, and not so loud you can’t have a conversation over it.
“Wretched hive of scum and villainy” is a pretty shitty Yelp review for a place where you can openly slice people’s arms off, everyone just shrugs it off then goes back to smoking their space hookahs and shit.
It made me think Obi-Wan Kenobi would be an absolute menace if he wrote reviews online. So here are some of that crazy old hermit’s pithy zero star reviews.
For maximum enjoyment, read them out loud in your best Obi-Wan Kenobi voice.
Now, for even MORE enjoyment go back and read them in your worst Obi-Wan Kenobi voice and compare!
Also, if you’d like to know how Obi-Wan might review your favorite restaurant, social media site, album, day of the week, etc. leave it in the comments and I’ll reply with a review! A cranky, crappy review.
If you enjoyed the post, check out the Patreon page that made it possible! Backing as little as $1 or $2 a month helps tremendously! Thank you!
Filed under Comedy Story
For more than a year I’ve been doing a series of daily tweets. First tacos, then monkeys, then daily affirmations, then daily etiquette tips, then incorrect quotes, then fake TV shows, horoscopes, horror, writing tips, holiday tweets, resolution tweets, Hey Girl tweets, Urban Myth tweets, and now Pastry tweets! Enjoy!
You can also follow me on Twitter to enjoy May’s series of tweets!
Day One – The collective noun for pastries is shame. Today I ate a shame of donut holes.
Day Two – Things you can inject into pastries: jelly, jam, custard, your dreams, smaller pastries, cocaine.
Day Three – If you eat a cupcake every day for seven years, you will turn into a pony. Try it.
Day Four – I ATE A CRONUT. IT WAS FULL OF SUGAR. I CAN SEE ETERNITY. DONUTS ARE A FAT RAISED CIRCLE. I AM ONE WITH LARD. GOOD TIMES.
Day Five – I predict the next pastry craze will be an entire turkey dinner gently drizzled on top of a danish.
Day Six – The world would be a better place if Girl Scouts made donuts with whatever drug they put in their cookies.
Day Seven – These are all real pastry names: Bacon Maple Death Log, French Surprise Roll, The Widowmaker, Trendy Trendy Dough Hole.
Day Eight – Plain Cake Donuts are the Charlie Brown of the pastry world.
Day Nine – If you eat donuts for the entire time you listen to Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd, you probably shouldn’t.
Day Ten – Movie idea: Baker’s Dozen. Aging action stars join forces to eat donuts for 2 hours. Sometimes they punch stuff. Rated R.
Day Eleven – Long Johns are my least favorite pastry because I don’t want to eat something named after underwear worn by lumberjacks.
Day Twelve – My next band will be called “…And You Will Know Me By The Trail of Donut Hole Crumbs.”
Day Thirteen – A donut is a deep-fried hug you can eat with your mouth. I hope the donut overlords will hire me to write copy now.
Day Fourteen – If I had donut for every donut I ate, I would know the unfathomable joy of recursive donut eating.
Day Fifteen – You are what you eat. I am seven donut holes. Fear me.
Day Sixteen – I would try a donut that has hot coffee in the center at least once.
Day Seventeen – A donut is a donut by any other name. Unless you spell it doughnut, then you are a horrible monster.
Day Eighteen – There should be more meet cute scenes where beautiful young people accidentally start eating the same cruller.
Day Nineteen – Sometimes an eclair is just an eclair. Other times, it’s a French pastry shaped like a human penis.
Day Twenty – “Give me liberty or give me death or, third option, I would also take a maple bacon log.” -Patrick Henry’s actual quote
Day Twenty-One – Not all social media posts need to be relevant. I ate two bags of mini-donuts in August of 2003.
Day Twenty-Two – Pastries would get more respect if they had serious names like Maturity Treat, Somber Holes, Edmund, Adult Buns, etc.
Day Twenty-Three – Sometimes when I’m sad I picture a shirtless Benedict Cumberbatch slowly eating an apple fritter. Try it!
Day Twenty-Four – A donut hole a day keeps the doctor away ha ha ha this is funny because eventually I will die of donut hole abuse
Day Twenty-Five – Most pastries have names that sound like strippers which is why there are so many pastries called Tracy or Stephen.
Day Twenty-Six – I want a hip, trendy pastry called “my feelings” so I could be more honest about what I’m eating in the morning.
Day Twenty-Seven – Top sins of the modern world. 1) Murder. 2) Game of Thrones spoilers. 3) Putting raisins in caramel rolls, you monsters.
Day Twenty-Eight – Today I invented the Waffle Burger. It’s 2 waffles with a 3rd waffle in the middle. It is an excuse to eat 3 waffles.
Day Twenty-Nine – We can put a human on the moon, but we can’t create a donut that makes your pants fall off when you bite it? Bullshit.
Day Thirty – My recipe for the ULTIMATE pastry: Lard, Sugar, Repressed Feelings, Lemon Curd, Tears of a French Chef, Bacon, Hubris.
Your pastry devouring friend,
Joseph
If you enjoy my work, you can check out all the comedy words and things I’m making via Patreon.
Filed under Daily Tweet Collection
Singer, songwriter,and comedian Allie Goertz is an expert on The Simpsons–a show that has been on the air for her entire life. Thrill to such discussions as: What is “the original trilogy” of The Simpsons? Can you communicate with another human using only Simpsons gifs? Is everything really coming up Milhouse? Would Krusty the Clown be a good guest on @midnight? PLUS: A Simpsons character comments on Joseph’s Patreon!
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This comedy blog post was made possible by Patreon. One of the rewards for becoming a Patreon backer is suggesting a topic for the blog. Two different patrons, Jen Manna and Jim Crider, suggested discussing the Midwestern perspective of Los Angeles. Jim wondered about how I would adjust as a Minnesotan. Would I be treated as a “fish out of water?” Jen expressed valid concerns about “Asshole Weather Updates” bragging about the sun and lack of snow. This is a frequent problem when a midwestern person moves to my new home, Los Angeles. Here’s a story that sums up a deep misunderstanding of both my old and new homes! Enjoy!
My wife and I moved to Los Angeles primarily for career reasons. But on top of that, I was personally incredibly done with winter and the snow.
Here are the some of the jokes I posted on twitter to try to cope with the winter:
I had to move, if no other reason, because I was running out of ways to express my personally being done with the winter.
When I posted that I was moving to Los Angeles, I was lucky enough to receive mostly positive, supportive feedback. Although there were some nasty things said about both the Midwest and Los Angeles.
But a couple of people said something that struck me as very odd. I’m paraphrasing, but they said, “Okay. You might be escaping the snow by moving to Los Angeles, but you’re just trading it…FOR FIRE.”
I understand it gets very dry and fires are a real concern in Southern California. But comparing fire to SNOW to a person from MINNESOTA made something break in my brain.
Having now lived in both the Midwest and Southern California, I’ve noticed there are several CRUCIAL differences between fire and snow.
I’m pretty sure that here in LA, the sky is not going to RAIN FIRE ON ME FROM ABOVE for six to seven months of the year.
I’m probably not going to make plans with friends and then be unable to get there because my car got stuck in the fire. Sorry, guys! I tried to push it out but the tires exploded.
Since I moved to Los Angeles, I have spent exactly ZERO MINUTES of my life scraping an inferno off of my car’s windshield.
I don’t have to put on layers and layers of flame retardant hats, coats, scarves, boots, and mittens every time I step out of my home.
You don’t hear people in Los Angeles say, “You know the fire is so beautiful when it first comes. You know, right around Christmas, you look outside and your neighbor’s house is just engulfed in flames? So beautiful! And the kids are outside throwing fireballs like they’re Super Mario? And the little ones are inside singing that great Disney power ballad LET IT BURN over and over again! It’s all so romantic! But then around March, you’re just like GO AWAY FIRE! YOU’VE BURNED EVERYTHING I’VE EVER KNOWN AND LOVED AND I WANT TO GO TO TRADER JOE’S WITHOUT IMMOLATING MYSELF!”
In fact, did you know that native Angelenos have over 72 different words for fire?
Fire, flames, heat curtain, infernonado, super hot juice cleanse, the REAL burning man. The list goes on and on.
Anyway, I have not yet burst into flames in Los Angeles. I’ve enjoyed the weather, but I’ve enjoyed it in the spirit of the Midwest–quietly, calmly, and without posting asshole comments to my friends back in Minnesota.
And so far, all the Angelenos I’ve met have been welcoming and kind to a newbie from the Midwest. Even the guy who decided to hit on me at 11 pm on Sunset Boulevard.
A man who like me was wearing a jacket (thus being grossly overdressed for LA) approached me. I thought maybe he was a fellow Midwestern human. Before he could reach me, the wave of alcohol hit me like advance troops storming the beach. He started to say something and I said, “I’m sorry. I’m not interested.”
I turned to walk away and he yelled something else. I thought there was no way I could have heard it right so I turned back and asked, “What?”
He repeated himself. He yelled, “It’s okay! You can trust me! I’m a presidential candidate!”
This was funny to me on a minimum of two levels.
I laughed to myself and continued down Sunset to walk back to my new home in Los Angeles. A home that I knew was not buried in eight feet of fire.
The man yelled one more thing.
“I REALLY LIKE YOUR JACKET.”
Maybe he was from the Midwest after all.
If you enjoyed the post, check out my Patreon page! Thank you!
Filed under Comedy Real Life, Comedy Trip
Writer and theater professional Kayla Cagan loves Grease 2. A movie featuring songs about sex in nuclear bunkers and a guy named Brad! Learn how the movie taught Kayla to laugh at sex, eat french fries aggressively, and just be yourself. Thrill to discussions of subjective versus objective and the pitch meeting for The Human Centipede! PLUS: A brief song about Joseph’s Patreon!
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There are a lot of posts about Game of Thrones. Some of them are by people who’ve read the book. Some of them are by people watching the HBO show. Regardless, they’re all very dangerous to read depending on how much you know. It’s like that one Game of Thrones lady always says, “The internet is dark and full of spoilers.” So if you can’t decide whether or not you want to know what’s happening, here’s a post you can read with ZERO RISK OF SPOILERS because it is utterly full of shit.
Game of Thrones is a series of novels and a TV show by world-renowned fantasy author Gerald J.J. Martian. One day someone asked Gerald J.J. Martian to play a game of “Fuck, Marry, or Kill” with the characters of Lord of the Rings and he went absolutely crazy with it.
The story is about about a bunch of people who all want to be the leader and sit on the Idiot Throne. It’s called the Idiot Throne because they all know they’re going to get killed because of it, but they’re still optimistic that things will work out.
Who are these idiots?
Well, there are a lot of characters, but these are the MAIN characters.
Thaddeus Grumblebutts
Jameson Ladyhands
Shandy Diggerydug
Gregory Picklefiddle
Lady One-Name
Sir Tiberion Teedlewood Taddlewonker
Susan of Nachos
Ampersand Shuttlefuk
Lord Gaggleberry Bighat
Steve
Quinton Littleprick
Kayla, Kyla, and Kaylee MacJeggings
Wagglechops Studlybrook
Dildor
Lady Vowels Consonants
Peon Shithead
and
Anderson Cooper
These characters all have titles that let you know how they relate to one another and places and stuff. Here are their titles:
King of the Upper Middle Northwest
Regent of the Southparts
Teaser of the Corn District
Master Plumber of Seaworld
The Queen’s Fanny Pack
Grand Maester Coachella
Mother of Discounts
The Guy Who Holds The Swords
Friend of the Diresquirrels
The Spleen of the King
The Broslayer
Lord of Crapplethorn Rock
Vice President of Social Media Integration
Keeper of the Hentai
Chancellor of Edible Floral Arrangements
Shambling Mass of Fear and Regret
and
Admin of the Webring
Even if you haven’t read or watched Game of Thrones you’ve probably picked up on some of the phrases and family mottos that get used a lot. Here are some of the famous ones.
Foreshadowing is coming.
All Men Must Chill the Fuck Out.
The King is Dead! So is this one! Son of a bitch! What are we going to do?
A Ladyhands always pays with credit.
You know nothing, Mister Asshole!
I am the one who knocks.
Valuable Savings, Margolis.
Say “verily” one more time, motherfucker!
Please don’t cut off my penis.
I am the guardian of the shield of the wall of the connecting words
Keep Calm and Die Quietly
Girls Just Want To Have Fun.
and
When you play the Game of Thrones, could you please wait until I’m done talking to stab me?
As you’ve probably heard, a lot of the characters die. Actually, at this point in the story all the characters have died. The rest of the TV shows are just really long IN MEMORIAM videos. Here are all the different ways the characters die.
Disemboweled with a rake
Ate a poisoned Hot Pocket
Literally hoisted on an actual petard
Accidentally cut their own head off
Throat ripped out by Diresquirrels
Strangled with their own intestines
Shot through the head with seventeen arrows
Trampled by turtles
Burnt alive by exotic bath salts
Strangled with their best friend’s intestines
Legs eaten by a horse, arms by dragon, head by a goat
Mixed 7-Up with Pop Rocks
Pushed off a very tall bed
Said “verily” one more time
Torn apart by a shaky cam
Strangled by another character whose name is Intestines
and
Dysentery
And that’s it! Now you know LITERALLY EVERYTHING about Gerald J.J. Martian’s epic fantasy series Game of Thrones! So the next time someone walks up to you and says “You know nothing, Mister Asshole!” you can laugh and wink and say, “I also have cultural knowledge, you insufferable prick!”
Or just murder them with a Hot Pocket!
Whatever happens, go with the flow, because if there’s one central idea to Game of Thrones, it’s this:
Actions never have consequences!
Thanks and enjoy Game of Thrones!
If you enjoyed this comedy blog post, you can help make more comedy posts, albums, podcasts, and more happen by supporting Joseph on Patreon!
Filed under Comedy Review
Joseph and his martinis decided to do some fast dirty interviews onboard Jonathan Coulton’sfourth annual music-comedy-nerd cruise. A plethora of cruise-goers including Grant Imahara, John Scalzi, The Doubleclicks, and more answer questions about the cruise, community, alcohol, Angry Clown Island, Beyonce, Lord of the Flies, and more. PLUS: A very special version of the Obsessed theme song by Molly Lewis.
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