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Archive for the ‘Funny (ha ha)’ Category

Five Dials Number 31: Tricks of the Light (12 March 2014)

Posted in Ann Arbor, Art, Beach Slang, Becky Barnicoat, Books about writers, Chad Harbach, Chris Garrecht-Williams, Clarence Brown, Dave Eggers, David Foster Wallace, Eric Reinhardt, Essays, Evgeny Zamyatin, Food, Funny (ha ha), George Simenon, Goo Goo Dolls, Interviews, Jay Barnett, Joe Moran, John Updike, Julia Dinan, Laurence Howarth, Leanne Shapton, Lydia Davis, Paul Ewen, Philip Oltermann, Psychedelic Furs, Rachael Allen, Russia, Simon Wroe, The Notwist, Tiny Desk Concert, Trevor Quirk, Zadie Smith on April 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

5dials31SOUNDTRACK: BEACH SLANG-Tiny Desk Concert #431 (April 10, 2015)

beachslangI had never heard of Beach Slang before watching this Tiny Desk Concert.  Evidently they are a new band with only a couple EPs out.  The write up says they are a punk band.  But in this Tiny Desk show, it’s just lead dude James Snyder and his guitar.

He plays four songs.  They are all sort of jaunty acoustic songs.  They are almost anthemic, but not quite.  The strangest thing is Snyder’s super-raspy singing voice, especially since his speaking voice is gentle and his laugh is kind of high-pitched. He is very funny and nervous when he talks, which I enjoyed quite a bit.

Exploring a little their bandcamp site, I see that they do a cover of the Psychedelic Furs’ Love My Way, and that sound is pretty apt.

Their recorded versions are heavier and actually sound a bit like the Goo Goo Dolls.

This is a brief but enjoyable set.  I find him so charming that I like it more than I might normally.

[READ: April 1, 2015] Five Dials 31

It has been quite a while since I’ve read a Five Dials.  And that’s no fault of the magazine–its all on me.  I always think, I’ll just put it off till I have time, and then I realize that I can always find something to read…so I just need to actually make time for Five Dials because it is totally worth it.

So this issue came out about a year ago.  Maybe that’s not too bad?

It begins with the contributors page and is followed by the Unable to Contribute page which lists five journalists who are currently in prison (find out more at the Committee to Protect Journalists).  Page 5 is a Table of Contents which I feel they haven’t done before.  It has a cool drawing on the bottom.  All drawings from this issue came from The Public Domain Collection of the British Library.

Then there’s a Frequently Asked Questions page.  Many pertain to corresponding with Five Dials, but others, well: (more…)

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Amy Poehler–Yes Please (2014) [audiobook 2014–Amy Poehler]

Posted in Amy Poehler, Audiobooks, Funny (ha ha), Parenting, Parks and Recreation, Patrick Stewart, Saturday Night Live, Seth Meyers, Upright Citizens Brigade on April 11, 2015| 1 Comment »

[LISTENED TO: March 29, 2015] Yes Please

amyI typically don’t read memoirs.  I don’t really care that much about celebrities to bother with most of them. I do like author and comedian memoirs, however, because they’re usually well written and/or funny accordingly.  I have recently been on a big Amy Poehler kick because of the end of Parks and Recreation, so I was really exited when this (finally) came in at the library.

If you have read the book, note that the audio book is chock full of things that are not in the book.  She talks a lot about the “studio” she is recording in (she says she built it).  She and Seth Meyers seem to have a fun improv banter going on (which I assume is not in the book).  And the final chapter was read live in front of a UCB audience.  To my ear this chapter is the funniest thing in the book, probably because it is the least formal sounding and the audience really enjoys it.  On the other hand, after having looked through the book in the store the other day, I see that the book is chock full of things (mostly pictures) that are not in the audiobook.  So choose wisely.

The audio book is read by Poehler, which is pretty cool.  She has help from Carol Burnett and Kathleen Turner (although I don’t think either one says more than a few lines) and Patrick Stewart who recites her poetry and epigrams.  Seth Meyers gets a chapter and Amy’s parents chime in a few times.  But here’s the thing, evidently her Leslie Knope character is almost Poehler’s talking voice, but not quite.  There is something disconcerting about listening to her sound not exactly as you are familiar with her sounding.  I think she talks a little more slowly and deliberately (which makes sense for an audio book) than Leslie does.  So that actually took some getting used to.

Here’s the other thing.  This book is not all that funny.  And it is not really meant to be all funny.  I mean, there are funny parts sure, but it’s not a laugh a minute story.  Poehler gets into some serious issues (a lengthy chapter about apologizing to a disabled girl whom she inadvertently offended on national TV, visiting a third world country, and various other dangers of growing up and being a parent).  Poehler sprinkles these humor but they are quite serious. (more…)

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Miriam Toews–All My Puny Sorrows (2014)

Posted in Canadian Content, Depression, Funny (ha ha), Hospitals, Matthew Zapruder, McSweeney's, Mennonites, Miriam Toews, Missy Mazzoli, Music, Parenting, Roomful of Teeth, Sex, Suicide, Victoire, Wilco on April 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »

ampsSOUNDTRACK: MISSY MAZZOLI-Vespers For A New Dark Age (2015).

missymazzoli_sq-80d1109aad30ab9a4bfe1a45d5c82d99354bc079-s400-c85Missy Mazzoli’s Vespers for a New Dark Age, is a 30-minute suite for singers, chamber ensemble and electronics. The piece was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for the 2014 Ecstatic Music Festival.

It’s a fascinating mix of traditional and contemporary instruments.  And there’s a surprise musician as well: Martha Cluver and Virginia Warnken Kelsey from Roomful of Teeth, provide operatic soprano voices.  Mazzoli’s own ensemble Victoire, provides the music while Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche adds percussion and thunderous pounding.

As the suite opens, electronic chimes sound before the beautifully soaring voices come in (I don’t know who is who).  The instrumentation is complex and the vocals are often in English (but operatic and not always obvious to hear). There’s some great rising and falling notes from various instruments.

The first piece is called “Wayward Free Radical Dreams” and I like the surprise of the simple English phrase “Come on, come on come on” A bell ringing is the segue into part 2, “Hello Lord.”  Over a lonely flute and some synths, the vocalist sings a poem by Matthew Zapruder for lines like: “hello lord / sorry I woke you / because my plans / are important to me / and I need things / no one can buy / and don’t even know / what they are / I know I belong / in this new dark age.”

I love the rising and falling notes of “Interlude 1″ over the fast violin moments.  “Come On All You” opens with some ticking hi-hats and squeaky violins.  There’s a lot of drums in this song—some punctuate the melody until the soprano voice takes over and then around 4 minutes into the section, the drums burst to life.  “New Dark Age” has some moody synths under the soaring voices and “Interlude 2” opens with the sound of big deep bells.

“Machine” has a mechanical staccato feel in both strings and voices.  When it returns to “Come on Come on” refrain (this time with two voices), it’s very cool.  The “Postlude” ends the piece with moody strings and distorted mechanical sounds that overwhelm the voices at times.   The piece ends on an up note but not in an overwhelmingly happy feeling.

The final piece on the disc is not part of the suite, although it fits in sonically.  It is called “A Thousand Tongues (Lorna Dune Remix)” and it has echoing pianos and overlapping synths.  While this piece is pretty it is probably the least interesting of the disc.  Perhaps because there are fewer voices and more synth melodies.  Perhaps because it is a remix.  The song feels fine, but not as compelling as the suite.

I was happy to discover his disc, which really explores different classical motifs.

[READ: March 15, 2015] All My Puny Sorrows

As with many books, but especially those published by McSweeney’s, which I always read, I didn’t really know what this was about.  I can pretty much guarantee it would not have been high on my list had anyone told me it was about dealing with a suicidal sibling.

But what’s great about the McSweeney’s imprint is that they gather such a wide variety of books and most of them are of such good quality that I know I won’t be disappointed.  And this book not only didn’t disappoint, I found it really fantastic.

The story is fairly simple, although from my perspective it was also fairly exotic.  The main action of the book takes place in present day Winnipeg.  But there are flashbacks to the main characters’ childhood in 1979.  And the way it opens–with the family watching as the house that their father built is put on the back of a truck and driven away is one of the more memorable opening passages of a book that I’ve read.

The family consists of the narrator  Yolandi, her older sister Elfrieda and their parents.  And, perhaps most exotic to me they are Mennonites.  Their family is not entirely pious in the tradition in their town–they are seen as somewhat less than observant.  Things were made even worse by the deliberately provocative nature of Elf.  She was creative, she loved to read and she had a real sense of outrage.  The church pastor once accused her of “luxuriating in the afflictions of he own wanton emotions.”  She embraced poetry, particularly the line “all my puny sorrows” and decided it would be her slogan.  So she began spray paining AMPS all over the town. (more…)

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Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (McCarter Theatre, Princeton NJ, March 13, 2015)

Posted in Baskerville, Funny (ha ha), Gregory Wooddell, Jane Pfitsch, Ken Ludwig, Lucas Hall, McCarter Theatre, Meta, Michael Glenn, Princeton, NJ, Set in New Jersey!, Sherlock Holmes, Stanley Bahorek on March 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

bask[ATTENDED: March 13, 2015] Baskerville

We saw ads for this show some time last year during a Princeton street festival.  The folks at the McCarter booth really talked up the show and said our kids would love it.  In recent days the play has been getting rave reviews.  Needless to say we were pretty excited to go.

Well, the play was awesome.  I’m not sure that the kids loved it. Clark said he liked parts of it but found the mystery a bit hard to follow. And Tabby was kind of scared by the dark scenes and loud noises.  But everyone seemed to have a good time–even if it did end at 10PM.

And the play it self was really fantastic.  Going in we knew literally nothing about the play except that it had something to do with Sherlock Holmes.  I assumed it was the Hound of the Baskervilles story but I wasn’t sure if there was a twist on it at all.

And I certainly didn’t know anything about the way the play was structured.  In the brief write up in the booklet it seemed like the story might have a meta- component. And it did, but not in the way I expected.  For the meta component was that they really played up the constraints of the theater and wound up making jokes about the stage and how actors often play multiple roles.  For example, they said things like “that rabbit” and then a stuffed and mounted rabbit would wheel across the stage.  Or that he needed his hat and a trap door would open and a hat would be thrown to him.  And the hilarious way the flowers arrived was outstanding–I’m still not exactly sure how they did it. (more…)

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Terry Pratchett (April 28, 1948 – March 12, 2015)

Posted in Death, Discworld, Eulogy, Funny (ha ha), History, Military, Neil Gaiman, Political Humor, Religion, Terry Pratchett on March 13, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Terry Pratchett [1948-2015]

tpI have been reading Terry Pratchett since I lived in Boston (circa 1993).  I “discovered” him from the book Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman (who I had also recently discovered).  I recently learned that even though I purchased Good Omens, I had never actually read it.  Duh.  Perhaps I was planning to read it in order after reading his Discworld books.

My fondest memory of reading Discworld is that when I first bought the Discworld books (not easy to get in the States back in 1993), the only versions I could find were these tiny editions (which now I can’t even find evidence of online–perhaps I am the only one who owns them).  I have no idea why they were printed in this preposterous format (the couldn’t have been more than 5 inches square with stupid tiny print).  And I remember diligently reading them at lunch at work.  Which must have looked absurd.  I have these books at home and will have to look up the ISBNs to see their virtual existence.

At any rate, those first four books in the Discworld series all came in that format and I read them all.  And then I proceeded to read through the rest of the series (which would have been up to about book number 17  or so).  At the time of his death there were some 41 books in the Discworld series, including YA books and, geez well so many other things.

And what were they about?  Everything.  Literally. He talked about religion and science.  He talked about metaphysics and witches, he talked about working and police.  He eventually started using popular culture as the basis for a lot of his books–riffing on something or other but never simply parodying them.  His later books advanced the civilizations on Discworld from a more medieval setting to a more contemporary one with newspapers, telephones, money and steam engines.  And of course, there was always Death.  Amazingly he managed to make all of this funny–usually a good laugh every page or two. (more…)

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Mallory Ortberg–Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with Your Favorite Literary Characters (2014)

Posted in Ayn Rand, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Funny (ha ha), Henry James, Herman Melville, J. M. Barrie, Jane Austen, Mallory Ortberg, Manatee Commune, Tiny Desk Concert, Tiny Desk Contest, William Shakespeare on March 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

textsSOUNDTRACK: MANATEE COMMUNE-“Wake” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).

manateeLast week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked.  And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.

I know very little about these bands, so I assume that Manatee Commune is just this one guy doing some pretty electronic music (with some live flourishes on top–but not looped apparently).

When there’s a cheesy black curtain, you know that it is either hiding something or covering something up.

Manatee Commune’s setting looks like he’s trying to hide something.  He plays it up by having furniture in front of the curtain which is slowly removed.  And then we learn what he is hiding—it’s a pretty magnificent reveal

The song is pretty cool too. It’s electronic (I’m not sure how it’s all playing–I don’t know much about electronic equipment these days). But the drums sure seem live when he bangs on them.  (And I enjoyed the way he discards the sticks when he is done). The live violin at the end is also a nice touch.

The song is interesting, although it’s not my favorite.  This is one where the video really sells the song.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qdtVdqbenw]

[READ: January 3, 2015] Texts from Jane Eyre

Sarah brought this book home from the library.  When I first heard about it a while back I thought it was a re imagining of Jane Eyre as text messages.  And I thought that was a really lame idea (and honestly isn’t the Jane Eyre trend over yet?).

That’s not quite what this book is though (note the subtitle).

Rather, it is a collection of imagined text messages between two (or more) characters from famous classics (and some non classics) of literature.  Knowing the originals helps tremendously, although sometimes even just knowing what the originals are about will do enough to make the jokes funny.

But the thing I found was that even though I fancy myself a well-read person who has read many of the stories, I didn’t always “get” what the joke was about.  I mean, I could tell obviously from the conversation what they were talking about, but I couldn’t always connect it to the story.  So basically this book made me feel really dumb. (more…)

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Brendan Connell–The Metanatural Adventures of Dr. Black (2014)

Posted in Artists, Bartolomeo Suardi, Bramantino, Brendan Connell, Food, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Gambling, Guns, Jeff VanderMeer, Jens Lekman, Kodagain, Saša Zorić Čombe, Sex, Smarty Pants, Violence on February 26, 2015| 1 Comment »

Connell Dr.Black jacketSOUNDTRACK: KODAGAIN-“King of Curls” (2014).

supernaturalWhen I looked for a picture of this book cover, I was connected to Connell’s blog which has links to many songs by Kodagain. After some more work, I learned that Kodagain features music by Saša Zorić Čombe and lyrics by Brendan Connell!

It was hard to find any real details about Kodagain (they have a media presence, but it is rather abbreviated), until I saw their soundcloud page which gives these nuggets of information

  • Kodagain formed in 1985 in Knjazevac, SE Serbia, where it’s hard to be alternative but easy to be alone.
  • Kodagain writes and records songs with English lyrics because English is more musical than Serbian.
  • Kodagain has a miniaturist approach to pop music, channelling influences from Henry Purcell, through Dean Martin, to Roxy Music, into short compositions combining a bubblegum-pop concern for melody with lo-fi experimentalism, resulting in songs as soulful as they are playful.
  • Many of the lyrics have been provided by the existing poetry of famous poets such as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Chu-I Po (Bai Juyi), Lord Byron, Ogden Nash, Sara Teasdale, Louisa Stuart Costello and Robert Creely.
  • Since 2007, Kodagain has also been using … original lyrics from the writer Quentin S. Crisp; since 2012, Kodagain has similarly collaborated with the writer Brendan Connell.  Brendan Connell says: “My ultimate goal is to write a vast number of lyrics about natural wonders, public parks, lost watches, Indian villages, hidden love, birds, trees, mountain passes, fake Taoists, imperceptible colors, rhetorical mysteries, and flowers. Ideally these would be compounded into a ‘Guide for Modern Life’ which could be used to build better relations between workers and their bosses, the various sexes, and those whose religious beliefs differ.”
  • Their songs and videos can be found in generous supply on YouTube and SoundCloud. Albums include: Speed Up, The Nowhere Land’s Echoes, A Drink With Something In It, 000, Vranje, Letters From Quentin, Time to Get Ready for Love, My Fear of His Fear of Death, and Supernatural.

Since encountering Kodagain, I have become totally transfixed by them.  The melodies are simple and lovely and Zorić Čombe’s voice is gentle but wise.  Lyrically the songs are certainly all over the place, and most of the songs are under 2 minutes long.  The instrumentation is simple–usually a gentle guitar, steady drums and multi-tracked voices.

It was really hard to pick a song to talk about because there are so many.  But I decided to pick “King of Curls,” in part because the video is fantastic, and so are the lyrics

If I ruled the world
I’d call myself
The King of Curls

If I were king
I’d change damn near
Everything

If I ruled the world
My army wouldn’t fight wars
But rather eat chocolate bars
And move to the beat
In shorts
While my advisors wise
Would do jazzercise

(and that’s just the first part!)

Zorić Čombe’s voice sounds a bit to me like a smoother Jens Lekman (although that could just be the enunciation style).  I find his songs utterly enchanting.

And if you look on YouTube, you’ll find dozens of videos–most of which are masterpieces of found footage.

[READ: February 20, 2015] The Metanatural Adventures of Dr Black

About 7 years ago, I read a novella called Dr Black and the Guerrillia and I liked it quite a lot.  I liked that Connell created this character, with no apparent context (at least none given in the story) and that it was so amazingly detailed and “real” and yet so seemingly unreal–an unsatisfying word which Connell has corrected for me with the title of this collection–Metanatural.

This book is something of a collection of short stories about Dr. Black, but it is far more than that.  It collects some of the adventures that Dr. Black has been on as well as some of the patents and other ephemera and fashions a kind of narrative (although a very sketchy narrative) about the life he leads.

Before I even get to the “plot” of the book, I need to say just how much I enjoyed reading this book. I was absolutely captivated by Connell’s voice.  Over the years I have known that Connell was an accomplished writer with an unparalleled attention to detail and to choosing the precise word.  But somehow in the Dr. Black stories Connell’s details and specifics push the narrative to real heights.  Perhaps it is because Dr Black seems so real that when anything “metanatural” happens to him, it is entirely believable–drawing you into his exploits even further.  I really wanted to read more and more.

Having said all that, while this book is certainly his most accessible, it is still not light reading.  Connell challenges the reader with his extensive vocabulary, his lack of compunction about throwing in some obscure sections of text (that I won’t pretend I understood, but which didn’t bother me at all) and his willingness to defy reality, which may lose some readers.  But the rewards of the stories are worth it. (more…)

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Randall Munroe–What If? : Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions (2014)

Posted in Death, Funny (ha ha), NASA, Randall Munroe, Science, Scientists, Smarty Pants, Son Little, WXPN 88.5 FM--Philadelphia, PA on February 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »

whatifSOUNDTRACK: SON LITTLE-“The River” (2014).

sonlittleI don’t like the blues.  I find it dull and repetitive.  I also don’t really like singers who are described as “soulful.”  And yet here is Son Little with a soulful blues stomper that I really like a lot.  WXPN has been playing this song pretty often, and I like it more with each play.

It’s a fairly simple set up with handclapping and a two note guitar riff.  Even Son Little’s voice doesn’t seem all that special at first.  But there’s some way that all of the elements combine that makes it so much more than the sum of its parts.

And with each verse, more elements are added, a synth sound, some guitar lines, even some bass riffs, building the song’s intensity.

But it’s that chorus–so catchy and ominous at the same time with interesting harmonies that just sound like he is echoing himself.  I really can’t get enough of it.

[READ: January 31, 2015] What if?

This book was just entirely too much fun.  Well, actually I thought it would be a bit more fun, but Munroe is so scientific that at times (when he got really factually scientific) I just felt dumb.  Which lessens the fun.  In fact, the first couple of pieces are really heavily sciencey, unlike some of the later ones which are really funny.

But what am I talking about?  This book is a collection of the “what if’ section of the website xkcd. There’s no real guidelines on the site for what kind of question you can ask, and many of them are quite strange (and often hilarious). They are hypothetical (what if?) questions and, depending on the arcane rules that Munroe follows he will answer them to the best of his scientific scrutiny.  And he will take the questions very very seriously–no matter how stupid your question may seem, he will try to answer it scientifically.  It’s fun!

But it’s also serious, and seriously scientific–Munroe is a former NASA roboticist.

So the first one “What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity” almost seems to be put in the front to scare off those who might not want to be too scientific.  And the second question comes more down to Earth (but also destroys the Earth): “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?” (more…)

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The Oatmeal–5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth (and other useful guides) (2011)

Posted in Drinking, Esquivel, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Graphic Novel, Katamari Damacy, Seinfeld, The Oatmeal, Video Games, Violence, Wendy Carlos, Yuck! on February 22, 2015| Leave a Comment »

oatmealSOUNDTRACK: KATAMARI DAMACY SOUNDTRACK (2004).

katamari In the xkcd post from yesterday Munroe made a joke about driving to Katamari Damacy.  I didn’t know what that was (well, I figured it was a video game, of course). It turns out to be a puzzle type game for PS2.  Since we have a Wii, I’ll never get to play it.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the groovy soundtrack.

The soundtrack to this game incorporates real, interesting music instead of an 8-bit-sounding theme (it won awards back in 2004).  And it is really wild and fun.

I’m focusing on the first two tracks, because there’s just too much to deal with here, but the whole things is trippy and interesting (and most songs are over 3 minutes).

“Nanana Katamari” is the opening song.  It’s upbeat and bouncy, with a simple Nanana vocal line (with some mild beatboxing in between).  It introduced the melody that runs throughout the disc (in various permutations).  After the first few lines, an 8-bit synth line comes in, making it seem like it’s a typical video game soundtrack.  But this is just the intro–and it lasts for just under 90 seconds.  But when “Katamari on the Rock” opens, with some weird glitchy sounds and drums, you have no idea what you’re in for.  Soon, the music turns The music is jazzy and boppy with a kind of Esquivelish “wha??” feeling.  There’s singing, there’s big flourishes and little comments (yea!) and it just sounds fantastic.  I can’t even imagine how this works in the game.

“The Moon and the Prince” is also glitchy sounding, but with some fun spoken (Japanese?) words and a fun beat.  There’s also tracks called “Katamari Mambo” and “Last Samba” showing a vast diversity in musical styles.  And, this being a (Japanese) video game, there’s also some really weird things like the 3 minute “You Are Smart” which is just a synthetic robot saying the title words over and over on top of an electronic riff.  Or “Katamari March Damacy” which sounds like a Wendy Carlos synth song with electronic voices.  Or “Wanda Wanda” which is mostly people saying Wandubadubaduba over and over with some really weird and cool synth music accompanying it.  And yet “A Crimson Rose and a Gin Tonic” opens with the drums of a classic jazz song (the one that Woody Allen uses all the time) and even seems to reference “It Don’t Mean a Thing.”  The Japanese female singer could be singing in Japanese or just scatting, but it doesn’t matter because it sounds great.

There’s even a pretty love song (sung in English) called “Que Sera Sera (not that song, no).  I saw someone on a forum say that he wanted to play it at his upcoming wedding (wonder how that worked out).  It opens with a pretty piano melody and some nonsense syllables before the lyrics come in:

I know you love me
I wanna wad you up into my life
Let’s roll up to be a single star in the sky

I hear you calling me
I wanna wad you up into my life
Let’s lump up to make a single star in the sky
To you, to you

The fact that on different tracks, the singers sing in both Japanese and highly accented English adds an incredible quirkiness to the mix.  As does “Cherry Blossom Color Season” which is sung by children.  The penultimate song “Katamari Love” song is probably a cheesy pop metal song but since it’s sung in Japanese (which means I don’t have to know what the lyrics are) and has a total ROCK STAR feel, I love it.

It’s a fascinating soundtrack, one that was not intended to be listened to with out the game (I assume) and yet one which works quite well on its own.  And opens up some interesting cultural mash ups.

[READ: February 11, 2015] 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth

This weekend is all about old(ish) books of things compiled from the internet which you can already find for free online.

I love The Oatmeal.  Or, as I found out when reading this book, I love the Oatmeal when people send me their favorite jokes.  Because The Oatmeal has some simply outstanding jokes, but there are a lot of jokes in this book that I thought were just okay–not as hilarious as his best stuff.  Which makes me a judgmental jerk, and I acknowledge that.  But the titular joke about punching dolphins is so poor compared to the rest that aside from the shock value, I can’t imagine why it would be chosen for the title.

The best The Oatmeal jokes are linguistic and/or angry.  But there is a whole side category of surprising informative cartoons about various subjects: beer, coffee, cheese (disgusting and true) and many other subjects. (more…)

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Randall Munroe–xkcd: volume 0 (2009)

Posted in Chastity Belt, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Humiliation, Math, NASA, PJ Harvey, Randall Munroe, Scientists, Smarty Pants on February 21, 2015| 1 Comment »

xkcdSOUNDTRACK: CHASTITY BELT-No Regerts (2013).

regertsChastity Belt’s debut full length returns to the lineup of the first EP: Julia Shapiro (guitar, vocals), Lydia Lund (guitar), Annie Truscott (bass), and Gretchen Grimm (drums).  But it retains some of the more full sound of the second EP.  It’s a really interesting album with a lot of diverse styles that are all held together by Shaprio’s voice.

I love the complexity of “Black Sail” which has some jangling guitar and an interesting lead riff at the same time–and which exudes a more psychedelic feel.  “Seattle Party” is up next and between the two songs, they clock in at 8 and a half minutes, which is funny since the next four songs total less than that.

“James Dean” (re-recorded from that first EP) sounds better here–you can make out the lyrics better and it’s less staticky.  It really highlights their great short song writing skills.  “Healthy Punk” has a quick sound, with an almost ska-like rhythm.  “Nip Slip” is a funny song about wanting some chips and dip (with appropriate sound effects–the whispered chorus is really quite funny too).  “Full” is a rather spare song that changes things up a bit.

“Happiness” is a slow song that I don’t love, but it’s followed by the awesome “Giant (Vagina)” which takes PJ Harvey’s “Sheela na Gig” to an even more unexpected place–it’s funny and funnier.  “Pussy Weed Beer” is about well, pussy weed and beer–a fun song for one and all.  “Evil” ends the disc with a bright happy guitar sound–belying the “evilness” of the narrator.

Not every song is great, but there’s plenty to like about this weird album.  And the new single from their soon to be released album sounds even better.

[READ: February 10, 2015] xkcd volume 0

After reading Monroe’s What If? [which, in a cool, utterly intentional time bending way will be posted two days from now], I saw that he had a previous book called xkcd.  This is also the name of his website. I had passing familiarity with xkcd, but didn’t know all that much about it.  I’ve mostly been sent links to it rather than actively going there.  And it turns out it’s not that friendly of a site anyhow.  But there is a lot of funny to be had there.

xkcd is primarily a bunch of stick figure characters getting involved in a few kinds of situations: romantic (or unromantic), mathematical and sci-fiction/sci-reality issues.  Or as he sums it up:

Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).

It helps to know that Munroe used to work for NASA (although not as like an astronaut or anything), and that he has a very scientific/mathematical brain.  So much so that a liberal arts major such as myself found many many of these comics to be waaaaay over my head.  Of course, he also has cartoons about Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, so we can’t all be smug bastards, can we?

I laughed a lot at this book, and of course I scratched my head in confusion a lot too, but that’s okay, the ratio of humor to huh was high (there’s some basic math, right?). (more…)

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