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Chris Morris and Alan Partridge discuss Princess Di & JFK’s deaths
03.11.2011
07:46 am
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Finally!  This audio sketch originally appeared as a hidden bonus on the DVD release of The Day Today in 2004, and I have been waiting ever since for someone to upload it to the internet. Now you can hear two titans of British comedy riffing on conspiracy theories, assassinations, Russian spies and trade unions in their own particular love/hate (mostly hate) style. This sounds totally unscripted, which makes it even better. And this Partridge guy really knows his stuff, Alex Jones should get him on as a guest.
 
Chris Morris & Alan Partridge talk conspiracies:
 

 
Bonus!
 
This is the other Easter egg from The Day Today DVD - Chris Morris speaking to Peter O’Hanrahanrahan live from the World Trade Center on September 11th 2001.
 
The Day Today - 9/11
 

 
You can buy the complete The Day Today on DVD here.
 
Previously on DM: Nupticution: death row lovers to be married while strapped in electric chair and then exececuted

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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03.11.2011
07:46 am
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Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason
03.01.2011
10:44 pm
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Vanity Fair’s Mike Sacks (who authored And Here’s the Kicker: Conversations with 21 Top Humor Writers on their Craft, a favorite of mine, in 2009) has a new collection of well-crafted comic essays, out today, called Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason.

Originally published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and McSweeney’s, there is no over-arching theme to these short pieces other than the fact that they are all “laugh-out-loud/piss-yourself-funny.”  Covering topics as wide-ranging as the tell-tale signs your college isn’t very prestigious (“Your mascot is a tiger in a wheelchair”), conversational ice-breakers to avoid (“Lemme guess. Korean?”) and how teenagers aren’t keen on touching his bald spot with their bare feet, it’s one of my favorite books of its kind since Woody Allen’s Without Feathers or Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes. I hope Sacks won’t mind me saying that it’s a great book to keep in the toilet, but it is, especially keeping in mind the above-mentioned laughter/peeing connection.

Sacks exhibits a most unique talent for channeling idiots, particularly needy or desperate dorks like the guy who hires a plane to drop leaflets on his ex’s house to show her how “new & improved” he is, a groom who tweets his own wedding or delusional “author” Rhon Penny (silent h) who offers to blurb Thomas Pynchon’s next novel (even if he hates it!) in exchange for a reciprocal blurb from the reclusive author for his own unpublished book, “Cream of America Soup”:

You have to be wondering: What is this novel I’ve agreed to blurb actually about? And why is Rhon no longer married? Excellent queries both. I will not tell you why I’m no longer married, but my book’s subject matter is very much like Gravity’s Rainbow in a way, and in other ways not at all. It’s also very much a post 9/11 book, but not overtly. I’m not saying you need to know a lot about the medieval feudal system, Lady Bird Johnson, bats, my ex-wife’s fear of conjoined Siamese cats, democracy or linguini… but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if you did.

Sacks is quite an accomplished word-smith (I genuflect to any writer who can compose a sentence like “Happiness isn’t… what you once did to my sandwich”) but even so, he’s capable of silently making readers laugh out loud with cartoon “Ikea Instructions” that just about every married couple can relate to, even if their own experiences assembling pressboard furniture do not end in suicide.

Buy Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.01.2011
10:44 pm
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Tim and Eric in film school: VHS vs film, lobsters & the future
03.01.2011
04:43 pm
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Not that this is meant to be bust-a-gut funny or anything (just to get that out of the way), here’s an early look at Tim and Eric’s budding comedic partnership from back when they were in film school at Temple University. Includes video montages, bird chasing, love and… more.
 

 
Via Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Blog!/Epic Ponyz

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.01.2011
04:43 pm
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The Orb & Alan Parker: Grey Clouds
02.24.2011
06:42 pm
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A reworking of The Orb’s “Little Fluffy Clouds” by Alan Parker, Urban Warrior (aka Simon Munnery).

Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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02.24.2011
06:42 pm
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Little known footage of “Vamp” era Grace Jones
02.10.2011
07:46 pm
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Here’s some great, candid footage of Grace Jones on the set of the 1986 film Vamp. First there’s an interview in some amazing Egyptian headgear, and then a strangely intimate video of her rehearsing for the role as the two thousand year old vampire Katrina with the film’s director Robert Wenk. I’ve been a huge fan of Ms Jones for a long time, but have to admit I have never seen this film, even though the whole thing is up on YouTube. I will someday, even if it is just for her amazing outfits, and the Keith Haring body art.  Although I get the feeling that you could dress her in random items pulled from a garbage truck and she would still look breathtaking, it’s funny how different Grace comes off in her interviews to her public image - articulate, funny, warm, even slightly goofy. I’d definitely hang with her.
 

 
After the jump, Grace rehearses for a scene in Vamp, plus the scene itself.

Previously on DM:
Keith Haring & Grace Jones: Flesh graffiti and the Queen of the Vampires.

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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02.10.2011
07:46 pm
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Charlie Brooker: How TV Ruined Your Life
01.26.2011
08:01 pm
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You gotta love Charlie Brooker. He’s on a one man mission to tear television apart from the inside. Nowhere is that more clear than in the title of his new show, the first episode of which looks at how and why fear dominates the airwaves. His new series How TV Ruined Your Life debuted on the BBC on Tuesday, and some helpful person has gone and uploaded it to YouTube, in two parts. If you live in the UK you can see the full show, unbroken, on the BBC iPlayer for the next week.

In an age where dwindling ratings are forcing channels and shows to become more extreme, we need voices like Brooker’s more than ever.  He seems like the only one left trying to fill a Chris Morris-shaped hole on mainstream UK TV (he and Morris worked together on 2005’s Nathan Barley series), speaking what seems a glaringly obvious truth to power. Most of the televisual references here are British, but it doesn’t really matter as it’s the same fundamental principles all over the globe. People are biologically trained to be alert to warnings, we find it hard to look away - fear sells, and Charlie helps us laugh at it.

On another level, this also gives non-British viewers a chance to see some of the terrible crap that has come out of the goggle box in the UK over the years. It’s not all as good as Fawlty Towers. .
 

 
Part Two of How TV Ruined Your Life after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Niall O'Conghaile
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01.26.2011
08:01 pm
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Birthday boy Lenny Bruce on Playboy’s Penthouse, 1959
10.13.2010
05:17 pm
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Speculating on how an 85-year-old Lenny Bruce would be celebrating his birthday today is as fun as it is pointless.

But it’s pretty easy to guess that edgy comedy’s patron saint would not have been able to stretch out casually on TV for 25 minutes in conversation with a legendary publisher and lifestyle creator like the Hef.

That’s what happened in 1959 on the first episode of Playboy’s Penthouse, Hugh Hefner’s first foray into TV, which broadcast from WBKB in his Chicago hometown. This was the first mass-market exposure of the erstwhile club-bound Bruce, and its high-end hepness set the tone for the show’s two-season run, which featured a ton of figures in the jazz culture scene.

Of course, the dynamic between the eloquent snapping-and-riffing Long Islander Bruce and the perennially modest Midwestern Hefner is classic as the comedian covers topics like “sick” comedy, nose-blowing, Steve Allen, network censorship, tattoos & Jews, decency wackos, Lou Costello, integration, stereotypes, medicine and more.
 

 
Part II | Part III | Part IV

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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10.13.2010
05:17 pm
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And now, a bit of celebratory Prop. 8 satire…

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Now that this country’s judicial system has again inched a bit closer to its enlightened ideals, why not enjoy a bewildered chuckle courtesy of Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg via wakingupnow.com?

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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08.04.2010
07:27 pm
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How Africans view white culture in Austria
06.14.2010
12:32 am
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Clip from a mockumentary about how Africans view white culture in Austria, a land where “no black man has ever stepped foot.” Does anyone know what this is from? It reminds me of the brilliant retro comedy series, Look Around You created by Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz. I’d love to see the entire thing, this clip is but a cruel tease! (Reminds me of Martin Mull’s mid-80s HBO series, The History of White People in America. I will never forget the scene with Fred Willard as a clueless white man (his forte, obviously) barbecuing in his backyard wearing an apron with a cartoon hot dog asking “What Do You Want on Yours?”)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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06.14.2010
12:32 am
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