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THE LISTENER: A Tale of Modern Terror

I really love strange stories that mix comedy, horror, weirdness, and hopefully something relatable. I love that intersection between pulp/genre/b-movie adventure and ancient myths. Old stories that get passed down and reinvented as different generations try to figure out who they are and who they want to be. So here’s a story working through some of the weird horror and comedy of right now. I hope you enjoy this modern myth called…THE LISTENER!

It was a strange time. A plague swirled through the land. So for a while everyone lived mostly in their homes–determined, stressed, and pantsless.

They interacted through computers. Their fingers shouting opinions into the keyboard. Smiling into computer cameras for business meetings, movie watchalongs, funerals, and extra awkward first dates.

Everyone lived life torso and up.

One night, a woman named Doris was chatting with her torso friends through her computer. It was fun. She had a cocktail and everything. Two hours earlier, she’d been sitting in the exact same spot, staring into the exact same camera, wearing a business casual dress shirt, assuring her boss the revisions would be done by tomorrow.

It was good to catch up with her torso friends. But she was tired. Tired of everyone talking at the same time, then everyone pausing so they didn’t interrupt again. Tired of deciding whether to look into her friends’ eyes or the camera’s.

The party ended. One by one her torso friends disappeared. And once again Doris felt drunk on a strange cocktail of bliss and shame.

She sighed and walked away. But this night, she forgot to turn off her camera. The glow of the computer stared into her empty living room.

Doris climbed into bed, picked up her phone, and stared at that smaller glowing box instead. She read a long article about not reading things on your phone in bed. She laughed herself into a fitful sleep.

Doris did not see what happened next. The glow of the computer pulsed and quaked. Slowly and silently, the light poured out of the screen. It forked out in thick, quivering bolts. The bolts formed into the shape of a human hand. It clawed at the air, pulling itself out of the computer.

The next morning, Doris woke up and shuffle-stumbled into the living room and directly toward the coffee maker. Something flickered and caught her eye. She looked over her shoulder and noticed the pulsing blue human shape sitting on her couch.

She looked back at the coffeemaker.

Then she looked back at the blue thing on her couch and she screamed and screamed.

She picked up her least favorite coffee mug and whirled it across the room at the figure. The mug flew directly into the shimmering thing’s featureless blue face.

The mug didn’t hit the face. It didn’t hit the wall behind the face. It was just gone. Gone inside the blue thing on her couch.

Before Doris could decide what else to throw, the blue thing moved. It stood on two legs. Its arms jangled at its side. Its body had no real definition. No gender, no body type. The edges of it kept soundlessly dancing and sparking. It shifted ever so slightly in height and width all the time.

It calmly walked toward her, limbs pulsing away. Doris decided screaming again seemed like a sensible way to process this. She screamed directly at the thing but her screams seemed to fly into the thing’s face and disappear just like her least favorite coffee mug.

Finally, the pulsing blue thing stopped right beside her. It slowly turned its head toward the coffeemaker and stared. It didn’t have eyes, but the coffeemaker is where the eyes would be looking, Doris guessed.

She reached out to touch the thing. She knew it was stupid. She braced herself for impact. For heat, for pain, for her fingers to turn into long columns of ash like an old cartoon character’s cigarette and fall to the floor in a pathetic heap.

But nothing. She saw her fingers enter the pulsing blue torso of the thing, but she felt nothing. Not even numb. She just felt the same old stale air of her apartment. That was almost worse.

She pulled her hand out and stared at the thing’s face. It turned its face up and looked back. Even without eyes, she knew. Doris knew it was looking right at her.

It was extremely awkward.

Doris decided she needed coffee to figure out what to do next. Almost in a trance, she went through the insufferably familiar motions of opening the grounds, putting in the filter, and…and the thing just watched. It stared at every dumb little thing she was doing like it was the most important thing in the world.

So Doris went through her day. She made her coffee. She drank it and watched the news on TV. It sat on the couch with her. It seemed to have no preference between cable news or the local news.

Doris desperately had to use the bathroom but she was afraid to discover the boundaries of the blue thing. She leapt into the bathroom and slammed the door shut, but the blue thing sauntered straight through the door.

It stared at her as she brushed her teeth, fixed her hair, and finally, dammit, even as she used the toilet. It kept staring directly at her face. It was almost as if it was waiting for her to say something.

“Have you ever heard of privacy?” she shouted. The words disappeared into the thing.

No. It wasn’t that they disappeared. It was more like the words were…absorbed.

It heard her. It just had no response.

She finished her bathroom routine, including an extra thorough hand washing. She didn’t want this thing thinking she didn’t wash her hands for the full length of the Happy Birthday song. Screw it, she decided, and sang the Happy Birthday song at it.

It appeared to hear that, too.

Doris had a little time before her first meeting on her computer that day. She went to the bedroom and got dressed. It followed. She picked out a business casual blouse and the same sweat pants she’d been wearing for a week. After she got dressed, she sat on the edge of her bed. It sat down next to her. Staring and pulsing.

The answer came to Doris. This must be happening to everyone. Some group delusion. Some side effect of the plague.

She decided she’d do what she always did with any important thought: Put it on the internet.

Doris picked up her phone. Her fingers flew across the digital keyboard. She knew exactly the tone to strike. She would declare the truth, but she would couch it in a post-modern, self-aware veneer of comedy to distance herself from her own statement just in case anyone disagreed.

She typed out the perfect post. It read: “Got one of those weird pulsing light people in my apartment! Everyone’s got one of those right? Not just plague mind fatigue, right? YOU’RE THE WEIRDO IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE! Ha ha!!

“Good,” Doris thought, “this is good.”

But a photo would make it perfect. She opened the camera app. She could see the thing pulsing away. She snapped a photo.

She looked at the photo. The thing did not appear in the photo.

“Fine,” Doris said out loud to both no one and the thing. “It will be just as funny if I attach a picture where there’s clearly nothing there.”

Doris attached the photo, hit send, and waited. A few likes trickled in. A couple of joking comments. A couple of obnoxious and unasked for opinions about the décor of her bedroom and the composition of the photo.

“Dammit,” she said to the thing. “Why do people need to find some damn little thing to criticize about every dumb post?!”

She waited and waited. She scrolled and she scrolled. But she saw nothing that made her think anyone else had a pulsing new light friend.

She sighed and looked at the blue thing. “I’ve got to go to work. I have a business meeting with someone named Ted. Ted is an asshole who I swear to god, adjusts his camera from a downward angle because he WANTS us to see up his damn nostrils.”

Doris talked and the blue thing listened as they walked to her computer. She sat down. The blue thing stood by her side. She stared into the camera. It was immediately clear no one could see her pulsing blue light friend. And so Doris went through her day, torso and up.

That night as she got ready for bed, chatting at the blue thing about the bars she missed going to the most, she suddenly realized the blue thing no longer terrified her. It was…nice. Nice to have someone who just wanted to listen.

She climbed into bed and waited to see where it would go. It sat itself gently on the end of bed, looking down at her like some kind of glowing guardian angel.

It was the most peaceful night’s sleep Doris had in months.

The next day, Doris tested a theory. She ordered pizza for delivery. As the masked delivery guy walked toward her apartment, she stepped fully out into the hallway. The blue thing stepped out with her. Doris kept her eyes locked on the pizza guy. He had no reaction. She looked over at the blue thing. The pizza guy stared quizzically, unsure what Doris was looking at. Doris just smiled and took her pizza and her blue thing back into the apartment.

The days turned to weeks and the weeks turned into months. Some days, Doris’ throat hurt from talking this much. She told it jokes. She told it secrets. She downloaded a karaoke game to her PlayStation and she sang it some hits of the 90s. She shifted keys inappropriately seven times during her performance of “Zombie” by The Cranberries.

Her blue friend did not care. Her blue friend just listened. No criticisms. No comments. No awkward, selfish attempts to make the conversation all about it.

No matter what she threw at her blue friend, they absorbed it.

Sometimes, it even seemed like they really liked what Doris said. The way their energy pulsed or quaked looked like they were laughing or nodding or leaning forward for more. Doris was sure of it. It wasn’t just random fluctuations. They really appreciated her.

Doris felt very lucky.

Then one day, things changed again. She was standing at the window of her apartment. Her blue friend by her side. She was pointing at a cloud and asking her friend if they also thought that one looked like a duck riding a motorcycle.

Then she heard it. Coming from the apartment in the building across the street. The one she could see right into most days.

A loud bellowing scream from the guy who lived there and did crossfit shirtless in his living room every day. He was staring at something Doris couldn’t see. His screams started strong and then melted away into a whisper.

Doris had no doubt. Shirtless guy just got a blue friend, too.

There were more screams every day. Doris wasn’t mad that other people were getting blue friends. She was happy for them.

She started posting more on social media. Telling people about the coffee mug she threw into her friend that first day. She got a lot of likes. People responded, “OMG! I threw my coffee mug into my blue friend on the first day, too!”

Others replied, “Holy crap! I didn’t know you could throw things in them! Best recycling plan ever!”

Still others responded, “Wait! Wait! Yours is blue? Mine is red!”

Apparently, they came in all colors. Red, blue, green, purple, orange. A visual art friend of Doris’ swore up and down their friend was EXACTLY the acrylic paint color, Burnt Umber.

Soon, talk of the shimmering pulsing mystery figures was everywhere. Late night talk show hosts had theirs on as guests. No one could see them or hear them, but the hosts had a good time talking to them.

The next time the pizza delivery guy came to Doris’ apartment, he asked, “What color is yours?”

“Blue, but a real—“

“That’s great!” the Pizza Guy interrupted. “Mine is EMERALD. Not green, but like, emerald. Because people don’t understand, there is technically a diff—“

Doris nodded, took her pizza, and her blue friend inside.

She didn’t need to be interrupted ever again. She had a listener. The whole world did. Everyone had a Listener.

Time passed. It was hard to tell how much. People didn’t really do awkward computer calls anymore. No one was really going to work. A few texts here and there. People still posted on social media but only to talk about how great their Listener was. No one really bothered to respond. If they had a strong opinion they wanted to share, they could throw it at their Listener.

Soon, Doris had no contact with anyone but her Listener. Their name was now Quakey. Quakey, the Listener. Doris was sure Quakey liked the name.

Things started to change even more. Sometimes it was scary, but Doris could handle it because she could pour all her thoughts and fears into Quakey.

Sometimes, during Karaoke, the power would go out. The third time it happened, Doris decided to check social media to see if other people were experiencing an outage. No one had updated their profiles in a week.

Doris sat in the darkness. She didn’t even need candles. Quakey’s pulsing body gave off plenty of light. She read an old book by the light of her friend. She read him passages she liked. Quakey might have nodded in appreciation.

The days wore on. Doris stared out of the window. She didn’t see her neighbor in his apartment. She didn’t see anyone out on the streets.

“That’s weird,” Doris said into Quakey. Then she saw movement. In the apartment across the street.

Topless guy screamed at the empty air where Doris knew his Listener was. “Something! Anything!” he screamed. “I can’t take it! I can’t take it anymore!”

He picked up a dumbbell and threw it. It disappeared into thin air. Topless guy stared. He backed up to get a running start.

He threw himself toward his listener. And he disappeared.

Doris stumbled back in shock. That…that had never occurred to her. She turned to Quakey.

“What exactly happens when you absorb things? Where did my neighbor go? Is he gone? Is he dead?”

Doris clenched her fists and stared hard at Quakey, analyzing every pulse and gyration of their dancing body for meaning. But Doris heard nothing.

Her relationship with Quakey soured quickly. They still followed her everywhere. They still stared. But what had felt warm and reassuring now felt cold and distant.

Quakey’s constant, maddening silence became a low, irritating electric buzz. It grew into an endless piercing scream.

Doris couldn’t take it anymore. Plague be damned, she marched out of her apartment and down into the streets. She and Quakey encountered a few people. Windows were shattered and stores were abandoned. Cars were stopped in the middle of the street. Drivers screaming at the empty space in the passengers’ seat.

Doris shouted at the other humans, waved them down. But they were all distracted. They shouted at their Listeners. Others wept. Others threw everything they could find into their Listeners.

Doris pleaded with them, begging them to talk to her. “We need to figure out what’s happening! Where do people go? How does this end? How did this happen? What should we do?”

But no one listened. Most ignored her. A few others shouted her down, raving about their own Listener.

By the time Doris had seen three people throw themselves into their Listeners, she couldn’t take anymore.

Dejected, she marched home with Quakey in pulsating lockstep.

That night, she became determined. She could do this. She could get a reaction. A real, tangible reaction.

She sat down on the couch and stared into Quakey’s throbbing blue face. She asked calmly and politely for Quakey to say something back to her. She pleaded and cajoled. She threatened and bellowed. She made every noise she could think of.

Doris thought of every outrageous offensive opinion she could. Her most controversial movie rankings. Disgusting pizza toppings. Outrageous revisionist history of her own relationship with Quakey. She raged that blue was the stupidest color ever to appear in a spectrum.

She screamed and screamed until she couldn’t even tell if she was making sound anymore.

“Please, please,” she croaked. “Say anything, do anything, BE anything.”

But the Listener did nothing but listen.

Doris fell silent. She slumped back on her couch, next to the blue thing.

She stayed there for a long time, listening to the endless scream of their mutual silence. And she hoped that someday, there would be something more to hear.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post, you can find me on Twitter or check out my Patreon here!

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EXPLAINING HALLOWEEN CEREAL TO ALIENS

I love Halloween. One of the many reasons I love it is because it’s a chance to take a step back and realize the deep, deep complexity of human society.

I was at a store and I saw a box of spooky Halloween cereal. Yay! Fun! But then I stopped and really looked at it.

It was a box of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes featuring Tony the Tiger dressed as Count Dracula and the cereal itself contained marshmallows shaped like a ghost, a bat, and the head of Frankenstein’s Monster.

When I saw this box of cereal, I imagined the effort it would take to explain this to an alien. So I tried writing it out.

So, first, let’s just define the basic building block of this: Frosted Flakes.

In order to start our day with a healthy breakfast, we took corn–a thing that is already food we could just eat–and we smashed it into flakes.

But we still don’t want to eat that so we put a bunch of sugar on top of it. Then we pour milk on it so we can lie to ourselves and claim it’s healthy.

Now there are many different companies making these denial corn flakes and they are all basically the same product. So to make them seem different from one another, we invented a thing called branding.

We want to create a bond between the cereal makers and the cereal eaters so we created a mascot. Someone fun and friendly that people could relate to. Like a giant tiger.

A tiger is a large animal which, under the right circumstances, would happily kill and eat us. They require no branding to do this. Just hunger.

But this is not a normal tiger. This one walks on two legs and has a name. His name is Tony and he exists only to sell us things. He sells us things with the catchphrase, “They’re great!” Normally, shouting a biased subjective opinion about the quality of corn flakes is enough to make them fly off the shelves.

But not now. Not at Halloween. So Tony, a predator salesperson pretending to be our friend, needs to dress up as something scary. Normally, Tony the Tiger is nude with just a handkerchief around his neck. Like a bib for eating humans. But that’s not scary enough during Halloween.

So Tony is dressed up as another character named Count Dracula. Dracula is an undead rich person who wears a cape because he’s from Europe. Dracula is a vampire and he wants to hurt us. But not by eating us. He wants to suck our blood in a psycho-sexual ritual designed to steal our life essence so he can go on living for all eternity.

This is only barely a metaphor for what actual rich people do to us everyday. But during Halloween it’s fun because he has a cape.

Now, let’s move on to the Marshmallows. Marshmallows are pieces of sugar that don’t bother lying to us about what they are.

And these particular marshmallows are shaped like a bat, a ghost, and the head of Frankenstein’s Monster. Let’s break those down.

First, a bat. In reality, a bat is a small animal that mostly means us no harm whatsoever and couldn’t eat a human if it tried. But somehow we have become more afraid of bats than a tiger. A bat is basically an animal that suffers from extremely inaccurate branding.

Next up, a ghost. A ghost is what happens when a human dies but their soul is trapped on the mortal plane. When that happens the soul wears a white sheet with eyeholes so the soul can watch Netflix, I guess. I don’t know. That one’s a mystery. The point is: this marshmallow is an opportunity to eat the undead souls of other humans.

And finally, Frankenstein’s Monster’s head. Oh, boy. This one would take a very long time to fully articulate. So real short version. A woman named Mary Shelly invented the concept of science fiction by writing a novel about a dude who could not accept death so he made a fake man using body parts and lightning and since then we’ve told hundreds of stories about this monster being lonely and having a hard time making friends. We’ve told so many stories about this large lonely man that as a culture we can instantly recognize JUST HIS HEAD rendered in crude marshmallow form.

So that’s basically it. If you encounter an alien wanting to understand the spooky limited edition Halloween Kellogg’s Chocolate Frosted Flakes you know what to tell them:

It’s a tiger but it acts like a human to sell us things but it’s Halloween, a time we embrace darkness, so it’s dressed as a blood-sucking monster and the sugar blobs are all death imagery so we can eat our own fear. With milk.

And if that isn’t fun I don’t know what the hell is.

If you enjoyed this post, you can check out my comedy albums on bandcamp here!

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Burn in Hell: A Ghostbusters Movie Review

GhostbustersReview

Movies! I like them! I spend a lot of time thinking about them! Sometimes I talk to friends about them without recording it for a podcast and it seems like a WASTE. So I’m going to make an effort to post more reviews like this one of Captain America Civil War. The reviews will be broken down into SEVEN categories: My Twitter Review, Why I Saw This Movie, Big Theme, Favorite Things, Questionable Things, Favorite Lines, and What This Film Inspires Me To Do. SPOILER LEVEL: There are only mild spoilers! Let’s do this!

MY TWITTER REVIEW:

WHY I SAW THIS MOVIE:

Like a lot of people, I’m a fan of the original Ghostbusters. I remember next to nothing about the sequel, and I really like the episode of the cartoon where they just straight-up fight CTHULHU. Or as they call the unspeakable monster, Cathulhu.

I’m also a big fan of horror comedy in general. Both horror and comedy function on tension and sudden surprise–but with the different goals of screaming or laughing. It’s fun to see them mashed-up in an attempt to create the perfect audience noise of a laugh-scream. I’m also delighted by the contrast of truly terrifying malevolent creatures going up against nature’s idiots: comedians.

The original Ghostbusters took the old “monsters plus idiots” formula of Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein and pushed it in a new direction by making the comedy idiots pro-actively chase the monsters.

The new Ghostbusters movie felt like another step in the evolution of the genre: horrible monsters versus comedian idiots who are (gasp) LADIES!

Sadly, the monsters they faced were not just in the movie, but lurking on YouTube and Twitter and the subbiest of sub-reddits across the internet.

I was (and am) thrilled with the casting of the new movie. I think equality is important for the sake of equality, but I also think new voices and perspectives make our art and entertainment fresher and more interesting. I think breaking down gender barriers is good for everyone. I personally don’t want to be defined solely by a stereotypical masculine archetype any more than I think women should be confined to specific, outdated feminine stereotypes. I don’t think anyone anywhere on the gender spectrum should be limited in what roles they can play in the story of our culture. More on that below.

I genuinely enjoyed the movie as a movie. (Even though I thought there were a lot of plot issues and missed opportunities, I laughed the entire time and walked out of the theater very happy.) But I also think Ghostbusters is an important step forward culturally, artistically, and I hope, financially. If this review can sway even one person to go see the movie, it will be worth my time. Ghostbusters had a great opening weekend, but since it got locked out of China, its ultimate undebatable financial success still depends on its second and third weekends in theaters. There’s a lot of distraction between Star Trek and San Diego Comic-Con and whatever the hell is happening at the Republican National Convention, but if you want to see a variety of people and voices in the theater I hope you go bust some sexists’ predictions and see the movie in theaters.

BIG THEME:

I thought the movie had two strangely complimentary themes: Friendship and F**k the haters.

I enjoyed that the movie built its foundation on the bonds of friendship between the Ghostbusters. Initially, between Erin Gilbert and Abby Yates but building between all of the central characters–Jillian Holtzmann, Patty Tolan, and even big, dumb, beautiful, and beloved (by me) Kevin. The emphasis on friendship and shared experience made you care about the characters instead of just making them puzzle pieces to act out a plot or what passes for a plot in a lot of modern comedies i.e. getting diarrhea. Mostly importantly to me, it allowed a lot more of the comedy to come from character moments.

A lot of that friendship was forged by facing down haters. The haters took many forms: Bosses, the government, ghosts, pale guys, YouTube commenters, etc. Outside of a few specific and pointed lines (“ain’t no bitches gonna bust no ghosts” was a great line), it felt very universal. I think the best storytelling is reaching the universal through the very specific. Most of us are not brilliant, well educated, hilarious women who fight ghosts professionally, but life is challenging for all of us. We all have days where we feel like the forward movement in our lives is blocked by a different asshole with each step. For every step, a new asshole. (It’s not a saying, but it should be.) For me, the movie was an incredibly cathartic experience of seeing four very specific characters overcoming that very universal feeling.

FAVORITE THINGS:

Actual jokes:
I feel like a lot of modern comedies just point the camera at a funny person and let them make faces, weird noises, and generally improvise. It’s very broad comedy because it’s not grounded in the character or the moment. It’s just throwing potential trailer moments at a demographic and hoping they stick. I think a huge part of Deadpool‘s surprise success was that it was full of specific, structured, well delivered JOKES. From the initial trailers, I was terrified that Ghostbusters would just point the camera at Melissa McCarthy and make her do “bits.” Instead, there were a ton of specific thoughtful combinations of words and ideas that formed actual humor jokes based on the characters and the situations. I’m sad that that feels novel, but thrilled about how much I laughed because this comedy movie had actual jokes.

Kristen Wiig:
Kate McKinnon and her character Holtzmann deserve every syllable of praise typed or spoken and a million more. Leslie Jones and Melissa McCarthy were both great, but for my personal comedy taste, I thought Kristen Wiig was amazing. I’m a big fan of what I’ll call “leading person comedy.” The kind of character who is not intrinsically the zany one, but a character who does the heavy lifting on holding up the plot and the heart of the thing but still manages to be super funny. Wiig’s performance might not be as memorable when you first walk out of the theater, but she walked a fine line of being vulnerable, relatable, tough, and consistently hilarious.

Chris Hemsworth:
Nowhere near as important as four women in lead comedy roles in a reboot of a beloved previously all-male man all the time men film BUT it was great to see Chris Hemsworth who is normally a great, big stud play a great, big idiot. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s great to see stereotypes of all kinds played with and I want to live in a world where our biggest action heroes can also be beloved comedy idiots.

Everything at the metal concert:
I have always loved the inherent weirdness of heavy metal and this scene mocked and celebrated the weirdness of worshipping demons and being super precious about your chord progression at the same time. Also, for me, one of the most successful mash-ups of horror and comedy in the movie.

It wasn’t just a movie, it was an EVENT.
I was lucky to see the movie on Friday the 15th, opening night, 8 pm in the Dome at the Arclight Theater in Hollywood with several hundred people. Granted, this is an ideal time and place to see a movie if you want to get a super excited, communal experience. There were many lines I didn’t hear because there was too much laughter, there were cheers for the main characters and all the cameos of the classic actors, screams of delight in moments of the heroes’ victory, there were other noises that might have been moans of sexual awakening, there were honest quiet moments where a few jokes didn’t land. I think I moaned in comedy joy at Kevin’s glasses. But it was more than just an audience enjoying a movie. It felt like an explosion of joy at experiencing something truly DIFFERENT. I’m thrilled that I got to have that experience and I think it makes seeing the movie in theaters rather than waiting for Blu Ray or streaming worth it.

QUESTIONABLE THINGS:

Bill Murray’s role:
I was bummed by Bill Murray’s role in the movie. Not really the role, but the execution. I like the idea of Bill Murray playing the pompous, establishment character who exists to shake his head disapprovingly and doubt the “inferiors” around him. It’s the kind of character Bill Murray usually attacked with comedy in his younger days. So it’s a neat idea that Bill Murray basically plays his own anti-archetype. But unlike most of the movie, he didn’t have many jokes to work with. The character wasn’t fun to hate. He just bummed me out. Which might have worked if he was used as a foil to get some great comedy out of our new heroes, but the whole scene felt flat. I think it would’ve been an amazing feat to use Bill Murray as the ultimate asshole and even make the audience FURIOUS but he was just a truly unlikeable character and then he was gone. All the other cameos felt like celebrations and this was literally and figuratively throwing Bill Murray out the window.

Villain’s Scheme and Ghost Rules
I’m glad that the plot was new and not the very Lovecraftian summoning of a great old one from the 1984 Ghostbusters. I liked the idea that the villain was a “pale, sad one” who wanted to get power for himself but I thought that idea was underdeveloped. The movie had great moments celebrating how much our heroes value knowledge. I would’ve loved a scene where the heroes laid out the rules of the ghostly realm and its interaction with the mortal plane a little bit more clearly. I think that would have upped our investment in the story even more. The fact that his plan stopped and started a bit too much in the second act also undermined the huge amount of forward energy the audience seemed to feel every time our heroes had a victory.

Mysterious Editing
Without going into too many details, I felt like there were some weird choices in the editing. It felt like bits of logic were maybe left on the cutting room floor. And one big scene that seemed to have moved from the movie itself into the credits for time. It’s rare that I look forward to the extended version of a movie on Blu Ray, but I think and hope there’s a longer cut of the movie which flows better in the second half and doesn’t skip any beats in the relationship of the awesome characters.

So those are some fairly major critiques, but they didn’t really impact my enjoyment of the movie. To me, it’s so successful as a comedy and as a vehicle for new voices that those thrills far outweigh some of the typical big budget summer movie and reboot problems.

FAVORITE LINES:

“Face bidet”- Garret

Why: This was the first joke-joke in the movie and I was thrilled to hear an actual joke (and a funny one) right off the bat. Also, my wife and I have both worked in historic mansions and museums over the years and this joke nailed that vibe. Talk to me about Humphrey Man-Lifts someday.

“One? Two? Is it one?” – Holtzmann

Why: I love the subversion of escalation. It’s also the kind of almost Marx Brothers-esque word play you don’t hear in comedies as often.

“Okay, room full of nightmares” -Patty

Why: This line is the perfect mash-up of horror and comedy. It comes from that character’s voice but represents a relatable human reaction to confronting something horrific.

“Burn in hell.” -Erin

Why: I loved Kristen Wiig’s delivery. It felt like these weren’t the words she meant to say in reaction to being quoted a monthly rent, but she couldn’t stop herself from letting the sub-text become text.

“Mike Hat.” -Kevin

Why: I loved Kevin’s whole interview scene. All of his absurd jokes were delivered dead pan and made even funnier by the Ghostbusters reaction. It was particularly fun to see Melissa McCarthy stare at big, dumb Kevin like he’s an idiot.

Holtzmann licking the weapon she designed – Holtzmann

Why: It’s not a line, but it sums up a lot of her weirdness, her energy, her forward momentum. It’s strange and specific and makes sense for her character. It also feels iconic. Twenty or thirty years from now when there’s a reboot of this Ghostbusters movie, it’s going to be the thing the new heroes do to nod to the classic 2016 Ghostbusters.

WHAT THE MOVIE INSPIRED ME TO DO:

Write more comedy and horror mash-ups myself, keep supporting different voices in art and entertainment to the best of my ability, and look into purchasing a face bidet.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy this article, feel free to share it on the social medias. If you want to help make more articles like this possible, you can support me on Patreon.

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Stuff I Did and Stuff I’m Doing May 2016

Hello, kind humans who are reading this!

I’m trying to post the occasional update on creative stuff I’ve been doing and upcoming shows!

Creative stuffs I’ve been up to!

I’m having a lot of fun being a contributing writer for RiffTrax. Basically, I get assigned a chunk of the movie and write the jokes for that chunk. In the past few months, I worked on a short starring a pedantic talking dog called The Value of Teamwork and an obscure little indie film called The Force Awakens.

I also made a new comedy video called Adult Storytime, featuring artwork by Alex Robinson, the co-host of the great podcast Star Wars Minute. If it goes well, I might make more. You can watch it right here!

I’ve been doing a lot of Star Wars talking! I was thrilled to be a guest on Collider Jedi Council, a very popular YouTube show and podcast covering all things Star Wars.

My own Star Wars podcast feed that I run with Screen Junkies’ producer Ken Napzok and awesome indie artist Jennifer Landa is going strong. We’re putting on a minimum of two episodes a week. You can check out our latest episode involving Ewoks and fire right here!

Finally, Obsessed is continuing to grow thanks to all the listeners and the kind support of my Patreon backers!  We’re just wrapping up our fourth month of weekly episodes. Your support is great, Feral Audio (the podcast network Obsessed is on) has a lot of big plans, but I still want to grow the podcast more. If you enjoy an episode, please SHOUT IT TO TO THE DIGITAL ROOFTOPS! A personal tweet or post with a link to a specific episode helps us out massively! This month’s topics were Your Mom, Hamilton, Snapchat, and the X-Men. You can catch up on them all here!

I’ve also got some exciting writing projects brewing in Hollywoodland. Hopefully, there will be more to report there soon!

Shows!

This Monday, May 30th I’m doing a live recording of Obsessed podast about selfies with Angela Webber of the The Doubleclicks and Molly Lewis. Full info is here.

Then, back in LA on Friday June 3rd, it’s my new monthly comedy game show with Hal Lublin called HEADCAN(N)ON! This month’s guests are J. Elvis Weinstein, Allegra Ringo, Allie Goertz, and Wil Wheaton. You can get tickets here!

Stand-up in LA! I’ve been doing more sets here in Los Angeles. In March, I did my first set on The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail and on June 7th, I’ll be on Put Your Hands Together with Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. Tickets for that show will be available soon here!

On June 22nd, I’m visiting San Francisco for a double-bill of a new stand-up show I’m working on (called Joseph Scrimshaw Versus Reality) and another live Obsessed podcast. This one’s about NETFLIX with special guests Rebecca Watson and Bonnie Burton. Sadly, you can’t stream the show from your home, but you can get tickets here!

Then over the Fourth of July weekend, I’ll be back home in Minnesota to be a Guest of Honor at the great convention CONvergence. They’re always on top of their game so my whole schedule is already available here.

That’s it for now! Thank you so much for your time and your support!

Obsessively,

Joseph

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I Can Do This All Day (A Captain America: Civil War Review)

CapReview

Movies! I like them! I spend a lot of time thinking about them! Sometimes I talk to friends about them without recording it for a podcast and it seems like a WASTE. So I’m going to make an effort to post more reviews. The reviews will be broken down into SEVEN categories: My Twitter Review, Why I Saw This Movie, Big Theme, Favorite Things, Questionable Things, Favorite Lines, and What This Film Inspires Me To Do. SPOILER WARNING:This is full of spoilers. Let’s do this!

TWITTER REVIEW:

WHY I SAW THIS MOVIE:

I’ll see just about any superhero movie. I will definitely see all Marvel movies. I WOULD RUN SEVEN MARATHONS AND FIGHT A BEAR TO SEE A CAPTAIN AMERICA MOVIE.

I’m #TeamCap. I’ve always been a big fan of the character in the comics and I think Chris Evans’ portrayal and the team’s take on Cap is one of the best superhero characters ever committed to celluloid digital film stuff.

If anyone ever tells you characters can’t be interesting if they’re fundamentally good, shake your head, hold up a copy of your Captain America: The Winter Soldier Blu-Ray, stand up tall, and say, “No. You’re wrong.”

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers has retained his consistent motivation: he just wants to do what he believes is right. He doesn’t feel comfortable unless he’s actively working toward a greater good. But he’s never been boring because he’s always had conflicts both external and internal. He’s struggled to know who to trust. He’s struggled to keep his individuality within organizations. He’s struggled to translate his values to different time periods and different conflicts. He’s questioned the morality of not wanting a family life, but instead wanting to be a soldier.

The movies have told that story extremely well through the exterior conflicts of the plots and through Chris Evans’ amazing performance. There’s always something going on in his eyes. There’s always a weight on his shoulders. Cap doesn’t blindly believe he’s right. He gives every decision a lot of thought. Not a lot of BROODING. A lot of thought. He’s not perfect. He just truly wants to be his best and is always striving for it. He’s a great role model.

Also, his shield is awesome and I cheer when he hits people with it in cool ways. I’m not a good person, but I’m STRIVING.

Also, there’s this:

BIG THEME:

There are a lot of ideas floating around in Captain America: Civil War about vengeance, leadership, hidden agendas, loyalty, fear, guilt, sarcasm as a viable tool of self-expression, but the big idea that wove everything together for me was borrowed from young Spider-Man himself:

With great power, comes great responsibility.

One of my favorite scenes in the movie was Tony Stark (who is also great and Robert Downey, Jr. deserves a lifetime achievement award for kickstarting the MCU) recruiting young, impressionable Spider-Man. When Tony asks Peter Parker why he does it, he gives a little speech that is a concerted rephrasing of his catchphrase. I think we probably would have just heard that phrase if it hadn’t been pummeled into the ground by the previous 872 Spider-Man films released in the last decade or so.

I’m paraphrasing because I can’t find the quote online, but young Spidey basically says it seems irresponsible to have these powers and not try to use them for the good of others. There’s a great response from Tony Stark. A little flinch. As if it pains him to hear this young, relatively innocent person basically reiterate Cap’s fundamental argument even as Tony is recruiting him away from Cap’s side.

The other reason “with great power comes great responsibility” stood out to me as the central theme is that every character in the movie would vehemently agree with the statement. They just disagree about how best to take responsibility. The film might ultimately be weighted toward Cap’s perspective, but everyone, even down to the “bad guy”, Zemo, is trying to take responsibility.

FAVORITE THINGS:

There are plenty of other reviews that do a great job of marching straight through the plot and (so far) I’ve only seen the film once so I’m just going to share the big things that popped for me on the first viewing.

Layers of motivation:
The movie built on everything the MCU has done so far. Every character was well motivated AND they were motivated based on who they fundamentally are, the events we as an audience have witnessed them going through, and their devotion to more ephemeral ideologies. Cap has consistently been let down by organizations he trusts. Those organizations have often told him specifically NOT TO ACT. Going back to his first film, when the government and the army wanted him to just dress up and sell war bonds. He never would have become the Cap we know and love if he hadn’t disobeyed the institution, rescued Bucky, and exposed the full threat of the Red Skull.

Tony is driven mostly by guilt. But just as Cap has the personal motivation of protecting Bucky, Tony has not only Rhodey’s injuries, but the elegantly constructed simmering jealousy and sense of competition with Steve Rogers spurred on by his late father.

Black Widow’s loyalties are divided. She’s also fundamentally motivated by guilt, but she’s also a spy who adapts to the situation. When it becomes clear that the fight is no longer about the Sokovia Accords specifically she helps Cap get away and continue on his mission.

Ant-Man hero worships Cap and we’re even reminded that he’s got no problem working on the wrong side of the law.

I could go on and on. I’m a little bummed that characters being well-motivated is so rare that it’s this exciting to me, but there you go.

Plot scale:
Even though this was one of the biggest, punchiest superhero movies ever made, the world was only at stake on a rhetorical level. I loved that there was a traditional antagonist in Zemo, but I loved that no one was trying to blow up the world or even Cleveland. It created variety and was a good reminder that HIGH STAKES can just be something that’s very, very important to the characters personally.

So few misunderstandings:
I also really liked that while Zemo manipulated events he never really “tricked” our heroes. Apologies to people who loved Batman v Superman, but one of the reasons I didn’t like the movie is that–even though the characters did have some ideological differences–by the time they were punching each other it was a misunderstanding. As soon as Batman knew the Martha-truth everything changed.

Zemo manipulated events, he stoked the fire, but the fundamental personal and ideological differences between Cap and Iron Man were already boiling under the surface.

I also like that Zemo didn’t just lure our heroes to fight in a cool bunker without any logic behind it. Part of his plot was to get to Siberia and MURDER THE OTHER SUPER SOLDIERS. (Which made for a great subversion of normal superhero movie third acts: They have to fight FIVE SUPER SOLDIERS–Whoops, no. There’s an upsetting home video.) Like everyone in the movie, Zemo’s trying to take responsibility and use his power to make sure there aren’t more Winter Soldiers running around. Yes, it’s an awfully MURDERY, VENGEANCE-TINGED responsibility, but he believes he’s making the world safer.

Big-ass location titles:
I loved the big location titles. It was a great stylistic break from the location typing out in the bottom corner of the screen like a spy dossier. It also reinforced that this was a global story. It stretches the superhero genre to be like James Bond or Indiana Jones. Superhero movies can be about zipping across earth. Not everyone needs to be locked in their one visually appropriate city they need to save.

Iron Man 3 clean-up:
I enjoyed Iron Man 3 but I’ve always been bothered by the disconnect between Tony blowing it all up (literally and figuratively) and then being right back in the mix and even wanting to create more weapons in Age of Ultron. Tony’s simple elegant line about not being able to give up the superhero game clarified his ideology and made a connecting point between Tony and Steve Rogers: They want to do good, but it’s not just altruistic, it’s a little selfish. At this point, they don’t know how to not be superheroes.

Secret identities are back, baby!
I loved Peter Parker’s intense concern about Aunt May not finding out about his Spider-Shenanigans. Also, the concern about his mask riding up at the end of the airport fight. The MCU has handled the lack of secret identities well, from the kick-ass ending of the very first Iron Man movie all the way to Black Widow emailing everyone all the secrets in The Winter Soldier. But as a comic book fan I’ve missed some of the nuance and conflicts of secret identities. The fact that Spidey really cares makes me feel like this is going to be reintroduced and maybe become a norm for heroes going forward in reaction to the Sokovia Accords.

And finally, fuck it, let’s go crazy:
It felt like this was the movie where the MCU felt truly comfortable in the reality they’ve built within their universe that they can take the risk of truly being COMIC BOOK MOVIES. Specifically, Black Panther and Spider-Man’s costumes being much closer to their comic book origins and not worrying about BUT IT HAS TO BE CHUNKY ARMOR OR SUPER-TEXTURED OR WE’LL LOSE OUR GRITTY, REAL WORLD CRED. Also, Giant-Man.

QUESTIONABLE THINGS:

Young Tony:
I loved seeing the technology–both in the world of the movie and our real, human world–that made Robert Downey, Jr. young. But there was still a little bit of the uncanny valley to it. It’s cool to see the technology, but it weirds me out a little in a “with great power, comes great responsibility” way.

What are you doing, Vision?
I’m going to push my geek glasses way up my nose and say I was distracted by Vision not having more of an impact in the big fight at the airport. He’s definitely one of the most powerful members of #TeamIronMan so he could have turned the tide of the battle more. I appreciate that he took a few specific actions at the end of the fight, but I think a few shots of him just hanging back and observing during the early part of the fight would have gone a long way.

FAVORITE LINES:

“Tell me, Captain, do you know where Thor and Banner are right now? ‘Cause you can bet if I misplaced a couple of 30 megaton warheads, there’d be consequences.” – General Thaddeus Thunderbolt Ross

Why: I love that it sounds like a strong argument until you realize he’s taking all humanity and agency away from Thor and the Hulk by comparing them to non-sentient weapons.

“Protection? Is that how you see this? This is protection? It’s internment, Tony. Come on, she’s A KID!” – Captain America

Why: With the one word “internment” we’re reminded that Cap has the perspective of multiple generations and that his reasons to distrust humans within organizations goes way back. Tony was playing on old patriotism with those FDR pens. The word “internment” was a nice f you to that tact.

“I don’t know how many fights you’ve been in, but there’s not usually this much talking.” – The Falcon

Why: I want Spider-Man to never stop talking during fights so I took this as a great promise of things to come.

“Manchurian Candidate, you’re killing me. We’re on a truce. Put the gun down.” -Iron Man

Why: I love the movie Manchurian Candidate and I love the snark of Stark.

“I can do this all day.” -Captain America

Why: See the #TeamCap paragraph above.

“Uggghhhhaaa.” -Captain America preventing a fucking HELICOPTER from taking off.

Why: Come on.

WHAT THE MOVIE INSPIRED ME TO DO:

I try to do a few exercises every day. Just a few push-ups. I don’t expect to ever be ripped, I just want to be healthy enough to live a long time and see every Captain America movie.

It’s hard to stay motivated. But Cap does a great job of cutting through the noise and the BS to what is right.

“Come on, son,” I hear Cap say. “Just do your push-ups.”

Thanks, Cap.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy this article, feel free to share it on the social medias. If you want to help make more articles like this possible, you can support me on Patreon.

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A Certain Point of View

ACertainPointOfView

Today is May, 4th. Also known as Star Wars Day because of the dumb pun “may the fourth be with you.” I hate puns. But I love Star Wars more so I’m thrilled to embrace the celebration. And, clearly, I’m not alone in my love of that brilliant, weird, dark, goofy galaxy far, far away.

But, of course, when something makes a lot of people happy on the internet, it pisses other people off. During the build-up to The Force Awakens, I read a Telegraph article with the clickbaity title “Star Wars fans: for God’s sake, get a grip, it’s only a movie.” The article was the typical vitriol arguing that liking Star Wars was fine, but why would grown adults cry about it?

I understand the perspective. I have always loved Star Wars both sincerely and ironically. On my Star Wars themed comedy album Rebel Scum (recorded before the release of The Force Awakens) I defined Star Wars like this:

“It’s a series of movies, books, video games, etc. that tells the story of a bunch of space wizards who keep cutting each other’s hands off with laser swords. It’s been a dominant force in our culture for almost forty years even though we all pretty much agree only one of the movies is actually good.”

That sounds dismissive, but I mean that as a compliment. From the day of its release, Star Wars has been more than a movie. It’s a phenomenon. Star Wars is like a huge plate of nachos. Ultimately, the movies themselves are like the chips. They’re solid and delicious but they are a delivery system for cheese, guacamole, salsa, memories, relationships, old friends long gone, etc.

Last year, right after the trailer was released for The Force Awakens, I went to the Star Wars Celebration convention in Anaheim, California. I’ve attended a lot of conventions. When I first approached the convention center, I was uneasy. I was concerned it would feel like San Diego Comic-Con. I was afraid it would be hot and packed, filled with people who are having fun, but are also desperate to get the next thing: an autograph, an exclusive action figure, a spot in a panel, a toilet stall to themselves so they can figure out how to urinate through their Steampunk Boba Fett costume.

My concerns were almost immediately assuaged.

Seconds after I walked into the convention center I saw my favorite cosplay I’ve ever seen. I immediately asked the person if I could take their picture. I’ve never done that before.

The cosplay was this: a person dressed as the action figure version of a character known as Hammerhead.

Here’s a little background on Hammerhead. He was one of the most bizarre and truly alien aliens featured in the Cantina scene of A New Hope.

He was one of the four “cantina creatures” made into action figures by Kenner. Because this was the wild halcyon days of movie tie-in merchandise, Kenner just used the film’s loose production names for characters as the names of the action figures.

As a result, a lot of the original Star Wars action figures have names that now sound like horrible slurs: Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Prune Face, etc.

Of course, the character once known as Hammerhead has been fleshed out a bit in all the expanded fiction since then. He’s an Ithorian named Momaw Nadon. He was actually the High Priest of Tafanda Bay on his home planet of Ithor, but he was banished after revealing agricultural secrets to the Empire in a desperate attempt to save his planet’s jungle from being decimated by turbolasers. So, he ended up on Tatooine, day-drinking in Chalmun’s Cantina while listening to Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes play some good old jizz-wailing music. (All of this can be verified on Wookieepedia.)

But we didn’t know or care about any of that back in the day. He was just a super freakish, super cool brown alien with long fingers and big feet wearing a blue onesie that looked strangely similar to James Bond’s terrycloth bathrobe from Goldfinger.

And we loved him. He was technically my brother’s action figure so while I got to play with him, I never truly owned Hammerhead. I just coveted him.

I still remember the day my brother bought him. We were moving across the country from Minnesota to Oregon. We stopped at a Children’s Palace toy store along the way. Our parents said we were behaving well on the cross country trip so we could each buy an action figure. We decided to both get cantina creatures. My brother picked out Hammerhead and I got Walrus Man.

We played with those action figures for years. One day, we decided to simulate an action packed battle between all the bounty hunters and day-drinking Cantina scum. We set up our figures all across our room and took turns firing at one another’s characters by shooting rubber bands to blast them off their perch.

My brother had knocked over most of my figures, but Bossk was still standing. The reptilian bounty hunter aimed his laser rifle carefully and took a shot at Hammerhead who was perched high on the top post of our bunk beds.

The rubber band blaster bolt grazed Hammerhead’s arm. He spun around and he teetered for a moment then suddenly toppled over, his weird alien legs kicking in the air.

As a comedian and a fan of comedy, I can say, in that moment, Hammerhead performed one of the best pratfalls I’ve ever seen.

My brother and I laughed and laughed and then retrieved Hammerhead from the pillow we’d placed beneath the bed to break his fall.

Many years later, I walked into the Anaheim Convention Center, and saw that action figure walking around.

Within five seconds of seeing the Hammerhead Action Figure cosplayer, all of those memories flooded into my head. All of the ridiculously detailed Star Wars factoids, the smell of the plastic, the details on his blaster, the image of those brown alien legs flailing in comedic majesty and falling off my bunk bed.

All of it.

So while I understand how absolutely ridiculous Star Wars is, the one thing I can never agree with is that it’s just a movie.

So, thanks, wonderful weird human who decided to dress up as an action figure of a character with two seconds of screen time in a decades-old movie and walk around a convention center spreading joy.

You made me very happy and I’m sure you made Momaw Nadon proud.

May the Force be with you, Hammerhead.

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A version of this article was originally published on the great Alice Lee’s essay site The Yearbook Office. Thanks, Alice! If you’d like to hear more of Joseph’s thoughts on Star Wars, you can check out his podcast Force Center and follow him on twitter.

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To Done List March 2016

Hello, kind people who are reading this!

I’m going to try to update my blog every month with the creative stuff I’ve been doing so it’s all in one place.

Last month, I started to release my comedy podcast, Obsessed, once a week, every Thursday. Recent episodes include Jordan Morris on NOFX, Matt Belknap, Riley Silverman, & Clarke Wolfe on THE FORCE AWAKENS, Allie Goertz & Will Weldon on TINDER, and Mike Black on ACTION FIGURES. You can catch up on past episodes and subscribe to the podcast here!

I’m also releasing a once-a-month-bonus, patrons only episode. The first episode is a lively discussion of SPOILERS with screenwriter, Josh A. Cagan. You can get access to that episode and help Obsessed continue to grow by pledging a buck or two a month on Patreon.

I wrote another episode of James Urbaniak’s great comedy podcast, Getting On With James Urbaniak and it got a great review on The AV Club’s podmass. You can listen to the episode here and read the review here.

I also wrote an essay about the comedy theory behind Munchkin for this book celebrating the popular card game. There’s even a new Munchkin card based on my essay. It’s available now on Amazon!

I’ve been doing some writing for RiffTrax, too. Two of the shorts I co-wrote are available now. Tremble before the might of The Litter Monster and learn more than you would ever want to know about The Shapes We Live With.

I was recently a guest at the big Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles, Gallifrey One. I got the chance to be on my friend comic book writer, novelist, and Doctor Who TV show scribe, Paul Cornell’s great podcast, The Cornell Collective. Hear me say funny, weird, and deeply emotional things about Doctor Who here.

I’ve also been hosting a series of Star Wars podcast with my friend and Screen Junkies’ producer, Ken Napzok. It’s multiple shows all under the umbrella of Force Center. You can check out the podcast feed here.

Ken and I have also been nominated as hosts for the Star Wars podcast awards so you can vote for us here!

Finally, I’ve got a bunch of shows coming up in Los Angeles and I’ll be at Wizard World in Las Vegas in March. PLUS, my pal, Hal Lublin and I are putting together a new comedy game show that will debut at Nerdist Showroom on Friday, April 1st. More info soon. You can always find show info right here on my live shows page!

Thanks for your reading time!

Obsessively,
Joseph

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What did you do in 2015, Joseph, what did you do?

Thngs I Did in 2015

Every year I post a bunch of stuff I did that year. I do this because no matter how much work I do, I beat myself up that I haven’t accomplished enough.

At the beginning of 2015, I made a list of 9 concrete goals. I only accomplished 2 of them. My instinct is to feel real, real bad about that and beat myself up. But then I look at this list of all the cool things I’ve been lucky enough to do and all the amazing humans I get to be around.

For 2016, I think I’ll make another list of goals. One of them will be TREAT YOURSELF NICE, ASSHOLE.

Anyway, here’s some fun stuff I did in 2015. WARNING: Includes deep gazes at my navel and a multitude of links to podcasts, albums, videos, blogs, and more!

RIFFTRAX!

I was thrilled to become an official contributing writer for RiffTrax! If you’re not familiar with RiffTrax, check out one of the movies I wrote jokes for: The truly bizarre Nintendo commerical/trainwreck that is The Wizard!

TABLETOP!

I appeared on Geek & Sundry’s awesome tabletop gaming show playing the game CONCEPT with my friend Wil Wheaton and YouTube superstars, Rhett and Link. It was a super fun collaborative game where I mostly had to battle my own SHAME.

OBSESSED ON FERAL AUDIO!

My comedy podcast Obsessed got picked up by the awesome podcast collective, Feral Audio! Feral is run by Dustin Marshall who works tirelessly at making Feral great and also has a very impressive Instagram account. Some of my favorite episodes since joining Feral include Matt Gourley on Quicksand, James Urbaniak on Actors, and a live episode about Game of Thrones with Tim Wick and Rebecca Watson. I’ve got a lot of plans for Obsessed in 2016, so follow us on Feral or you can subscribe on iTunes here!

JEDI ALLIANCE and FORCE CENTER!

I started a totally unplanned new part of my career: Star Wars Talking Guy. My friend Ken Napzok invited me to be a guest on his YouTube show/podcast Jedi Alliance. It was great fun so I kept doing guest appearances, then Ken left the show due to his new job as a producer for Screen Junkies so I started co-hosting Jedi Alliance with Mark Donica. BUT THAT WASN’T ENOUGH TALKING ABOUT STAR WARS. Ken and I missed working together so we started The Force Center podcast. Last week, the TFA review/discussion episodes of both shows were in the top 50 of iTunes TV & Film category. You can check out Jedi Alliance here and Force Center here. A huge thanks to Ken for introducing me to a ton of new friends, fans, opportunities, and giving me an excuse to buy Star Wars toys and write them off on my taxes.

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OTHER COOL PODCASTS!

I got to be a guest on a bunch of cool podcasts including, but not limited to, Maximum Fun’s Jordan Jesse Go, Bryan Cook and Nerdist’s Competitive Erotic Fan Fiction (performing a filthy story about Harry Potter), I had strong Doctor Who opinions with Geek Girl Authority and Dave Foley, I fought on Screen Junkies Plus’ TV Fights (you can watch with a free trial subscription), and I did five episodes of deep Return of the Jedi analysis with my friends at Star Wars Minute.

TOURING WITH THE DOUBLECLICKS and MOLLY LEWIS!

I did two #NerdNightOut tours with The Doubleclicks. We did one on the West Coast in the Spring and one on the East Coast in the Fall. Molly Lewis was a guest for some of the West Coast shows and with us the whole time for the East Coast tour. We all worked together creatively on putting together a weird, geek comedy/music/variety show, but The Doubleclicks did the lion’s share of making the tours happen and I’m extremely grateful. The shows couldn’t have possibly been more rewarding and Angela, Aubrey, and Molly are all awesome humans that I’m thrilled to be friends with.

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COMEDY DREAM TIME!

I’ve done a bunch of guest bits in various stand-up and comedy shows in LA, but I spent most of my energy on my own monthly show called Comedy Dream Time. The idea of the show is I ask people to give me a character they’ve always wanted to play and I write a sketch for them. Phil LaMarr played an 80s super cop, Matthew Mercer played a He-Man knockoff, Superego’s Jeremy Carter played Indiana Jones (you can read that sketch here), and a ton more. We also had lots of great comedians and special thanks to Allie Goertz and Ariana Lenarsky who both closed the shows with improvised songs based on audience suggestions.

BIG OL’ POP CULTURE CONVENTIONS!

I did a bunch of performing at conventions this year. I was a guest or performer at CONvergence in Minnesota, Dragon Con in Atlanta, Comikaze in Los Angeles, Wizard World in Las Vegas, the BAMF festival at San Diego Comic-Con, and more. I was also thrilled to perform at a Doctor Who convention called CONsole Room and get a chance to interview the 6th Doctor, Colin Baker.

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REBEL SCUM and IT’S A VERY HOLIDAY THING!

I recorded and released two comedy albums. The first, Rebel Scum, is about Star Wars and social justice. It was recorded live at CONvergence in July and then we got it all edited, mixed, mastered, and produced in time for me to bring on tour in September. The second album is a short collection of holiday bits featuring music by Tony Thaxton and Marc Doty. It’s called A Very Holiday Thing. Both albums are available on bandcamp here. I put “releasing two albums” in the category of things I need to remind myself about when I feel like I’m being too lazy.

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PAID OFF MY STUDENT LOANS!

On my birthday, August 17th, I paid off my student loans. I paid a lot of money (and interest) to get my liberal arts degree so allow me to say I enjoyed this crepuscular moment of my loans, however it was a Pyrrhic victory as I still have copious sundry debts. That said, I asked my wife to take this celebratory and symbolic photo right after I hit send on the last payment.

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PATREON and BLOGS!

I continue to be extremely lucky to have fans and friends supporting me on Patreon. As an independent creative type, it’s amazing to have a steady, monthly source of income. My Patreon makes it possible for me to keep putting out episodes of Obsessed and writing a monthly comedy blog post. One of my favorite blog posts this year was Underwear That’s Fun To Wear in which I modeled some adult underwear.

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WTFark – RIP!

I haven’t even been in LA for two full years and already my favorite bar is gone and a couple of awesome shows have gone on to that great internet in the sky. My friend Mike Rylander hosted this awesome weird news show, WTFark, for OraTV. When Mike was away, I got to write and host some episodes. Here’s one of my favorites about a shipping company that made a billboard that was just a giant cat head you can pet. Thanks and, sadly, goodbye, WTFark!

SOCIAL MEDIA!

As always, I spent an insane amount of time on social media. On twitter, I passed 10K followers largely because of this one insanely popular tweet.

I also spent a bunch of time on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, five seconds on Periscope, and on tour Molly Lewis taught me to use Snapchat. Look upon my snaps ye mighty and despair.

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You can find me on any social media by searching my clever username: Joseph Scrimshaw.

TV AND MOVIES!

While I did not write or star in any, I sure watched the hell out of them. To name a few, I enjoyed the hell out of Peter Capaldi on Doctor Who, Arrow, The Flash, Don Draper doing yoga, Jessica Jones, and I binge watched all of The Walking Dead in two weeks and spent the next week thinking about the best place in Los Angeles to survive a zombie apocalypse. (Hint: It’s the Dunkin’ Donuts that just opened by my home.) Most importantly, I saw The Force Awakens four times and I have tickets for another showing in the new year. If you have some concerns about the movie, I even wrote a blog post to try to help you out.

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THE FUTURE!

I haven’t done the future yet, but I’m going to. As I write this, I’m working on my final hurrah of 2015–a big New Year’s Eve show with my pal, Hal Lublin. I’ve got a lot of fun stuff coming up in 2016 including being a guest of honor at CONvergence, doing an hour long stand-up show about Doctor Who at Gallifrey One, more stand-up shows in Los Angeles, more podcasts, recording another comedy album, and of course, lots of selfies of me drinking something.

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Thanks again–
Joseph

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How To Talk To Your Family About The Force Awakens

HowToTalkToYourFamilyAboutTheForceAwakens

WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE THAT HAS BROKEN EVERY BOX OFFICE RECORD KNOWN TO HUMANITY SO IF YOU’RE READING THIS AND HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE, THAT’S REALLY WEIRD. LIKE, ALMOST, STATISTICALLY WEIRD, THAT YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE BUT MADE THE CHOICE TO CLICK THE LINK. ANYWAY, THERE ARE SPOILERS.

In these tense holiday times, many sensitive subjects come up when we gather with our families. For example, someone you know–a loved family member even–might say something stupid about Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

Here’s a list of 7 common complaints and how to handle them using your choice of the dark side or the light.

1) “I don’t even get the whole Star Wars thing.”

The Dark Side:
I’m sorry you hate joy. I bet you also dislike music and laughter. Those are both totally overrated, too. Why don’t you write a think piece about how much ice cream doesn’t even really taste that good, jump on your hoverboard, and roll the fuck out?

The Light Side:
I understand Star Wars isn’t for everyone and everyone’s entitled to their subjective opinion. That said, there are reasons it’s hugely popular with millions of people and has been for multiple decades. On its surface, it’s fun. It’s an epic saga about space wizards who cut each other’s arms off with laser swords. That’s just fun. But it’s constructed on deep themes of isolation, longing, free will versus destiny, individual agency in the face of institutionalized oppression, and lots of bad parenting. It speaks to essential challenges of humanity but also the aliens look cool. Go ahead and critique it or dislike it, but, at this point, what is there to not get?

2) “There were too many action scenes in it.”

The Dark Side:
It’s called Star Wars, you dumb moof-milker, not Star Talk About Our Feelings.

The Light Side:
Star Wars was inspired by old Saturday Morning Serials. The movies are designed to be thrilling by having lots of different action scenes. That said, they usually do a great job of not only advancing the plot through the action scenes, but also advancing individual characters’ journeys and relationships. For example, in The Force Awakens, when the rathtars are released, the action serves to strengthen the bond between Finn and Rey. During the First Order’s attack on Maz Kanata’s castle, Finn isn’t just using Luke’s old lightsaber to fight a cool Riot Stormtrooper; he’s making the choice not to run away from his fears. Also, saying there were too many action scenes in a Star Wars movie is like saying there are too many repressed emotions in a Jane Austen movie.

3) “It seemed like a reboot of that first Star Wars movie.”

The Dark Side:
*push glasses up the bridge of your nose with the power of the force*
The first movie is called A New Hope, asshole.

The Light Side:
Yes, it uses similar thematic elements, but it should. The goal of this film was to honor the old characters and stories while introducing us to new ones. The idea of mashing-up the very old and the very new is at the core of the franchise. It’s ancient hero myths but now there are aliens who look like big stressed-out fish. That’s Star Wars in a nutshell. While The Force Awakens played with our familiarity, it also introduced plenty of new things to the Star Wars galaxy. We’ve never had characters like Rey, Finn, Poe, and BB-8. They are not carbon copies of Luke, Han, Leia, and R2-D2. They are unique, new creations. Besides, Star Wars has always had a deep sense of nostalgia. From the very beginning, Luke wants to be a Jedi to follow in the steps of his father. There’s always been a generational theme. The movies have always been about adventures that happened “a long time ago.” And at this point, that deep connection to the past that was introduced in A New Hope is now an actual connection to our shared cultural experience in real life. We share Finn and Rey’s amazement because Han Solo is a legend we met a long time ago both in the story AND in reality. There’s no way to tell this story that isn’t deeply, deeply nostalgic.

4) “Okay, but why did there have to be another Death Star thing?”

The Dark Side:
It’s called Starkiller Base. Also, come up with a better plot device under the same amount of pressure, then make it the bestselling movie ever. I’ll wait.

The Light Side:
The movie is a big tentpole blockbuster with multiple plates to spin. By all means, say you don’t like those kind of movies, but get used to saying that a lot because those are the movies that exist now and their storytelling needs are different than It’s A Wonderful Life. The Force Awakens is trying to tell a big story about the state of the galaxy, but they couldn’t have too many political scenes or everyone would have yelled at them for doing “that prequel shit.” They also wanted to keep the focus on the interpersonal relationships. The Starkiller Base served a bunch of narrative functions: it wiped out the Senate and the Republic’s fleet by destroying the Hosnian System, created a ticking clock, a specific point of rivalry between Hux and Kylo Ren, and the opportunity for multiple characters to have heroic moments. When you’re already spinning that many plates, why not use something the audience is familiar with and makes sense in universe?

5) “Kylo Ren was too whiny.”

The Dark Side:
Your brain is very small. It’s worth one quarter portion.

The Light Side:
Kylo Ren is a great new Star Wars character–he’s petulant, insecure, and desperate. This is so much more interesting than a confident, monologuing mad man. And yet, we know by how much maintenance his hair must take, that deep inside there is still patience. He still cares. There is still a possibility for redemption.

6) “Han died for no reason.”

The Dark Side:
You didn’t actually watch the movie, did you?

The Light Side:
The movie resets Han’s hero’s journey. We meet him as a washed-up smuggler who is running away from his responsibilities. By the end of the movie, he makes the choice to go back and plant the explosives on the thermal oscillator because, as he says, “the galaxy is depending on us.” That decision opens the hole that Poe Dameron flies through. On top of that, Han has no desire to face his son. He’d rather write him off as gone, having too much Vader in him. But Han makes the brave choice of facing his fears and trying to get through to his son. He could have walked away–instead, Han talks first.

7) “Rey learns to use the Force too fast. She’s kind of a Mary Sue.”

The Dark Side:
If someone says this at dinner, just force throw a plate of ham into this guy’s face. Because it’s probably a guy who said this.

The Light Side:
First, google Mary Sue because you’re probably using it incorrectly. Then, take a good hard look in the mirror and make sure you’re not just upset about a female protagonist. If you haven’t rage quit this blog then we can move on to super nerdy force power discussion. Strap yourselves in.

Yes, Rey develops her abilities in a different way than we’ve seen other Jedi–which is cool–because see above about the mix of the old and the new.

Rey discovers her power step-by-step. Her abilities first “awaken” when she’s piloting the Falcon off of Jakku. She explicitly says to Finn she’s flown before, but she didn’t know how she did it so well.

Next, she fires a blaster. She has a slight look of surprise like she’s aware of her own increased accuracy.

Next, she’s captured by Kylo Ren and his beautiful hair. She discovers she can not only resist his attempts to use the force to read/invade her mind, she can do it back to him. At this point, we know Rey has heard tales of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi. It’s not surprising that she would’ve heard of the old Jedi Mind Trick. Also, Kylo Ren just tried to invade her mind. Then she does what we’ve seen many Jedi do, she concentrates, believes in her ability, and successfully mind tricks Daniel Craig dressed as a stormtrooper thus fulfilling someone’s slash fic bingo card somewhere.

Finally, the big lightsaber battle. It’s not a shock that Rey would be able to call the lightsaber to her, since the lightsaber itself was calling to her at Maz Kanata’s castle. She has a connection to it that Ren apparently doesn’t. Even with that, for the first half of her battle with Ren, Rey is just keeping alive. She’s slashing and running. We know she’s good at that because we’ve seen her do it with her staff back on Jakku. But then Kylo Ren mentions the force and she does exactly what Maz Kanata had told her to do: Close her eyes, let the light in, and it will guide you.

We were told way back in A New Hope by Obi-Wan Kenobi that the force obeys your commands, but it can also guide your actions.

What Rey lacks in training, she makes up in her connection with the force. Also, Kylo Ren is massively wounded, tormented about killing his father, insecure about this new force user, and probably still worried about his hair.

From a certain point of view

So those are a few thoughts you can share with your grumpy aunt, sexist uncle, or hipster cousin over the dinner table about the true power of The Force Awakens.

Just memorize all of this and repeat it verbatim to your family. They will ask you where you read that and then they’ll worry for my sanity.

Because, as Qui-Gon Jinn taught us, our focus determines our reality. So maybe this is a light, funny blog about a space movie. Or a thoughtful analysis of a film with deep themes and emotional resonance. Or the ravings of a crazy guy who saw the same movie four times opening weekend and can’t wait for a Rey action figure that comes with a lightsaber to be released.

All of those things are true from a certain point of view.

Happy holidays and may the force be with you.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoy you can help make more blog posts possible by supporting me on Patreon. You can also check out Ken Napzok and I discussing some of these same issues on our podcast Force Center. Finally, I made a whole album of Star Wars comedy called Rebel Scum that you can listen to with your ears should you choose.

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Indiana Jones and The Death of Mystery

TheDeathofMystery

It is November 2015. As I write this sentence, Disney has released 18 more sneak peek shots of The Force Awakens. The Captain America: Civil War trailer is being analyzed frame by frame. Obsessive editors are busily scrubbing the Wikipedia entry for John Stamos to be deadly accurate. We live in a culture where KNOWING everything is the goal. I found myself thinking about how that affects us as a culture. And, specifically, how it affects something that leans toward the mysterious. How would it affect the rumored Indiana Jones reboot? I didn’t want to wonder. I WANTED TO KNOW. So I wrote this trailer for a new Indiana Jones movie, a movie called Indiana Jones and The Curse of the Reboot! Enjoy!

DEEP VOICE GUY
This summer, a legend is reborn. A beloved hero from the past returns. A hero who previously said cool lines like–

INDIANA JONES:
Nazis. I hate those guys.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And—

INDIANA JONES:
It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And of course—

INDIANA JONES:
Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And since we own the rights to this one, why not throw it in, too?

INDIANA JONES:
Never tell me the odds!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Yes, Indiana Jones is back to say all the same cool things for a new generation in a brand new adventure set in our crazy modern times. You’ll hear him says things like–

INDIANA JONES:
YouTube Commenters. I hate those guys.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And—

INDIANA JONES:
It’s not the years, honey, it’s my Klout score.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And of course–

INDIANA JONES:
Emojis of snakes. Why’d it have to be emojis of snakes?

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And let’s not forget–

INDIANA JONES:
Never tell me the full text of the iTunes User Agreement!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Yes, it’s Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Reboot! Thrill to the exploits of this daring hero as he easily looks up the location of mysterious artifacts on Google Maps!

INDIANA JONES:
You want me to go after the Rod of Methuselah? You mean the ancient staff that gives the holder eternal life and a four hour erection? Well, according to my Samsung Galaxy, it’s in Canada.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Yes, it’s a globe-trotting thrill ride of exotic locations recreated with CGI and greenscreen! All of which have been filmed in Canada!

INDIANA JONES:
Vancouver. Why’d it have to be Vancouver?

DEEP VOICE GUY:
But Indy isn’t on this Canadian rollercoaster ride alone! He’s got a young sidekick who’s going to scream his name throughout the entire film!

KID:
Indy!

INDIANA JONES:
What?

KID:
Indy!

INDIANA JONES:
What?

KID:
Indy!

INDIANA JONES:
What?

KID:
Why haven’t you accepted my invitation to connect on LinkedIn?

DEEP VOICE GUY:
BAM! Right in the four quadrant demographics! But that’s not all! Indiana Jones also has a love interest. She’s smart, tough, and at the very least a decade younger than Indiana Jones. And yes, that is despicable gender and age politics, but you keep coming to these movies so why should we stop making them like this? Anyway, she says–

KRISTEN:
So, Mr. Jones, is this all you ever do? Run around attacking people with a whip? Don’t you ever relax? Just sit back and watch Scandal on Netflix?

INDIANA JONES:
The only thing I got time to binge is adventure.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Ohhhh! Did you hear that last thing Indiana Jones said? It’s the best line in the movie. We know because we’ve screen tested the shit out of it. That line is the one projected to become iconic to males with an emotional age of 12 to 16. Here it is again:

INDIANA JONES:
The only thing I got time to binge is adventure.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
But it’s not all fun and games! Indiana Jones must also have a lot of cool fistfights with a big henchman played by Dave Bautista whose character is also named Dave Bautista.

DAVE BAUTISTA:
I’m Dave Bautista! Time to die, Indiana Jones!

INDIANA JONES:
This looks like a job for punching!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Wow! What a fight that will be! But don’t worry! Indiana Jones will win. Here’s a slight spoiler. He drives over Dave Bautista’s legs with a Prius, then throws him off the Golden Gate Bridge! And, yes, when that happens, there is a Wilhelm Scream:

DAVE BAUTISTA:
Awwwwuuuuaaagghhhaaa!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
But Indiana Jones’ troubles aren’t over yet! Because he still needs to face the big villain: Baron Cruel Von Ambiguously European!

BARON:
You know, Mr. Jones, we’re not so different, you and I.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
YES, WE ARE! YOU’RE A NAZI!

BARON:
Observant as ever, Mr. Jones! Release the angry birds!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Yes, Indy and his friends are attacked by a literal pack of angry birds! Like actual pissed off animals with wings! But our heroes escape in a ludicrous, scientifically impossible way!

INDIANA JONES:
Quickly! Everyone use the pressurized oxygen inside your vape pens to propel your segways faster! It’s the only way to escape the angry birds!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
Yes, that’s sure to piss off Neil DeGrasse Tyson! Hopefully, he’ll write a blog about it and give us a bunch of free publicity. But of course, the beating heart of any good Indiana Jones movie is the thing he’s after.

INDIANA JONES:
Baron! Don’t touch the Rod of Methuselah with your bare hands, you fool!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
But of course he totally does! And then this happens–

INDIANA JONES:
Everyone! Close your eyes! A thousand vengeful bible ghosts just shot out of the tip of the staff and now they’re biting the nazis’ dicks off and lecturing them about family values!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
It’s social commentary but funny and irreverent because he said dicks! What more could you want? HOW ABOUT A BIG THIRD ACT TWIST? Turns out, the Nazi wasn’t the real villain after all. It was a giant, sentient boulder. It goes rolling after Indiana Jones while he yells this cool line–

INDIANA JONES:
It’s not a repetition, honey, it’s an homage!

DEEP VOICE GUY:
And then off course, Indiana Jones outsmarts the boulder by, well, just jumping out of its way. But there are STILL more surprises, like in the final shot of the movie, where you see a close-up of the Rod of Methuselah and a spider crawls out of it and you realize, holy crap, this whole thing was a set-up for the next Spider-Man movie!

INDIANA JONES:
My god…it’s all one big shared universe.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
That’s right, we just showed you the actual very last shot and line of the movie. I bet you think there’s nothing else to reveal? WRONG AGAIN, DUMB AUDIENCE! Here’s the surprise post-credits scene where Indiana Jones loses his shit, turns directly to the camera, and goes on an angry, post-modern rant about the quality of his own movie.

INDIANA JONES:
This is horrible! It’s all horrible! Not only is the movie awful, but you saw every beat of it in the goddamn trailer!

Look, I love knowledge. I’m an archeologist who has dedicated his life to the pursuit of the unknown. But that’s the point–the pursuit!

I used to go spelunking in volcanoes to discover hidden societies! Now the most exciting thing I do is try to drive to Santa Monica without using Waze!

Look, every waking moment is mapped, planned, previewed, reviewed, and post-mortemed. Well, here’s a hot take for you, sweetheart: if you buy a new iPhone, you don’t need to watch an unboxing video first. Thrill to the adventure of opening the damn box yourself!

You know that scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark where I have to close my eyes to avoid the horrific power of the Ark? That’s the way you should treat the fucking internet sometimes!

Yes, pursue knowledge and truth, but every once in a while, for God’s sake, just close your eyes and revel in the beautiful mystery of the UNKNOWN.

It’s like nothing you’ve ever gone after before.

DEEP VOICE GUY:
OH YEAH! Classic line said by a different character! Yes, it’s Indiana Jones and the Death of Mystery. That’s right, we just changed the title based on some polls conducted during this trailer. So get out your phones and plan your EXACT route, because Indiana Jones and the Death of Mystery is coming soon to a theater near you whether you like it or not.

INDIANA JONES:
The 21st Century. Why’d it have to be the 21st Century?

*whip crack*
*massive explosion*

Thanks for reading. If you enjoy these comedy posts, you can make more happen by supporting me on Patreon!

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