Showing posts with label weird. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weird. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Colbert/ Krampus/ The League - WTF?

So, this is @#$%ing BIZARRE.

A week ago, co-worker Dan Z. started telling me all about Krampus, and we all had a good laugh about terrorizing his children. I actually wrote my Krampus post while watching Glee on my DVR, starting around 9:30. So... yeah.

Now Colbert, in my final two weeks here at The League, is making me look like I'm copying stuff off TV and passing it off as my own.

Anyway, seems last night around 10:30 central time, Stephen Colbert and the Colbert Report aired this (skip to 2:34):

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude - Hallmark & Krampus
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorU.S. Speedskating


I'm kind of freaking out.

Obviously Colbert Report tapes well before airing.

I... just don't know what to make of this. Is it possible it is, in fact, time for Krampus in America?

Friday, November 06, 2009

If this Existed, I Would Read It (update: It is real, I will read it)



fun with Photoshop at Postmodernbarney.com

Editor's Note: Dorian (author at Postmodernbarney) has written in to inform me that this is an actual book, not Photoshop at all! I am... amazed. And now will be seeking my very own copy. A trip to Half-Price before I buy from Amazon.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Snake Grows Foot, Terrifies League


Shoemaker just posted this elsewhere
.



I am going to go to bed and hide beneath the covers now.

Added Shoemaker found item bonus!!!


Collinsworth on his Romantic Life

I don't know Cris Collinsworth from his actual NFL days, but I've sort of loathed the man as first the host of Fox TV's "Guinness Book of World Records" freak show, and then as an NFL commentator and host.

Leaguers, I present to you: Collinsworth, the man in his own words:

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Meth & Comics, Admiral in Africa, Desertification of Austin



Superman would punch you in the face for that

It appears that some losers in Denver were using a collectible comic business as a front for trafficking drugs and laundering the dough. I don't know. It's all shady, and the fact that these guys were most likely using comics about costumed do-gooders to do bad is upsetting, but not quite as upsetting as the rest of what they were up to.

Here's a blog post from the Denver paper.

I don't expect drug dealers to be classy folks, but what is it with meth? Everyone involved with meth always looks like 20 miles of bad road and they do such weird stuff.

Leaguers, Superman would not approve.

The thing is, these guys could have legally been trafficking in iffy merchandise with the whole vintage comics business and done just fine. The fuzz seized hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of comics in this deal. Why not just take advantage of the nerds on eBay and live the good life with the comic business you've got?

Now all these great comics are off the market and entered as evidence. And that's just wrong...

The Admiral in Africa

Got my first e-mail from The Old Man, as he globe trots once again. He's apparently shaking down folks in Nigeria this week.

Sounds like he's got plenty of folks around him that know how to use a gun, which is kind of kooky. Mostly he's freaked out by the lack of discipline when it comes to traffic, which sounds exactly like him.

The Admiral in African urban sprawl doesn't equate in my head, but I guess he's doing okay.

Monsoon Season?

It's hot in Austin this summer, and has been since June 1. We've had record breaking temperatures both in how high the mercury is rising and the sheer duration of the period of 100+ days.

I had beers last week with some folks I don't know, but they work in environmentally friendly landscaping. They mentioned that Austin is being re-zoned as being more "deserty", and one of these folks wasn't a transplant but a lifelong Austinite. She's seeing the changes, too.

Anyway, two days in a row isn't a pattern, exactly. But the past two days, in the hour before sunset, we've had rain. In Arizona (which I think we can all agree is a hot desert) in late summer, they have something called Monsoon season. Right around sunset, rain would blow in from the east. I guess it was some mix of wet air from that gulf east of the Baja Peninsula and the hot, still air that had been hanging around all day.

Again, its just been two days of similar weather, but its starting to freak me out a little...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

HSN is really, really ready for the Yuletide

The Home Shopping Network is selling Christmas decorations. It is 07/14. Only 5.3 months until CHRISTMAS.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

It was a dark and stormy night...

If you've never heard of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, its a competition wherein folks submit a single sentence. The sentence is intended to be the start of a novel. A particularly bad novel that does not exist (yet).

I only remember this contest every few years, but I suggest perusing .

Here.

If the contest does not give an aspiring writer a moment of pause when they look upon their own prose, they either lack the self-awareness and insight into their own work enough to be a writer or they have an unhealthy level of self-confidence.

Two of my favorites:

Darnell knew he was getting hung out to dry when the D.A. made him come clean by airing other people's dirty laundry; the plea deal was a new wrinkle and there were still issues to iron out, but he hoped it would all come out in the wash - otherwise he had folded like a cheap suit for nothing.

Lynn Lamousin
Baton Rouge, LA


No man is an island, so they say, although the small crustaceans and the bird which sat impassively on Dirk Manhope's chest as he floated lazily in the pool would probably disagree.

Glen Robins
Brighton, East Sussex, U.K.


That second one sounds terribly likely in modern fiction.

Tip o' the hat to Unloveable.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

High School Musical

Here's an interesting bit.

Apparently, Amanda Palmer of Dresden Dolls and solo fame, teamed with her old high school drama teacher to put on a musical based on a Neutral Milk Hotel album, which was inspired by the story of Anne Frank. Or something.

Here.

Reading about it and watching a few minutes online did, indeed, make me miss the brief period of footlights and greasepaint from my own youth. I would have loved to have been involved in anything this interesting for a production in high school, and while we didn't stick to kiddie-stuff, I was often disappointed we weren't tackling material I might have had more interest in actually performing.

It is true that I, myself, tried my hand at acting in high school. Nothing as elaborate as bringing in a popular indie rock star, but we did several shows a year. We had auditions and rehearsals before school ever started, and usually ran two shows before the winter break, tucked a musical in there, had a spring show and maybe another. Its hard to recall exactly how it all went down, but we ran a lot of plays.

Admittedly, I wasn't much of an actor. I had a hard enough time getting "off book" (I plead made-up learning disability), and was never comfortable with the pantomime that has to occur in stage acting so that every facial movie, every line delivered, etc... reaches the person in the last row. And inhabiting other people's skins wasn't something, I suppose, I was terribly good at.

Also, my assumption is that my line delivery was akin to the sing-songy line delivery which marks most high school and community theater.

I still recall the look of horror on the basketball coach's face when I informed him I was (a) quitting the basketball team, and (b) that I recognized I needed an activity to keep me off the drugs, so I was going to try out for a play.

Amazingly, I landed an understudy role in a 40-minute version of "Midsummer Night's Dream", which actually had The Big Bang Theory's Jim Parsons in it as "Flute" and Broadway actor Charlie Pollock as "Bottom". And, come to think of it, Jeff Miller of Christian rock band Caedmon's Call.

Huh. never thought of it that way before.

Anyway, it was for a UIL competition, and we had an honest-to-god scandal and were booted out of state competition for a minor rule infraction. All very dramatic.

Its probably important to note that I was not quite of the proportions then that I am now, so people were not looking for me to play "Thug #2" or "Man-Child #7", as I have no doubt I'd be cast now (and did, in fact, get cast a a man-child in a friend's scene in college). We did "Rimers of Eldritch", "Rumors", "The Crucible", "You Can't Take it With You", "All My Sons", "Watch on the Rhine", and, I am sure, one or two others.

We had a few musicals. I sort of preferred backstage work. (A) It was less likely I'd screw up while standing in front of however many people came to the play. (B) Building sets, hanging lights, messing with all that stuff, was a lot more fun than running over the same lines, over and over. There's a lot less in the way of access to power tools when all you're doing is acting.

I don't know how or why, but I wound up in the "fly booth" when we did "Bye, Bye Birdie". This meant I did only two or three things during the duration of the play, but I couldn't leave the actual booth as I couldn't turn on the lights needed to make it from point A to Point B. So for about three hours I had to just sit in this box, and on cue, move signs up and down on a few cranks.

Its a job that is supposed to go unnoticed, but a few pals came to the show, and when I dropped the first sign onto the set, I heard a chorus of "Steeeeaaaaannns" erupt from the audience, just as they'd done when I was shooting free throws on the basketball team. It was sort of gratifying.

What I'd say to our younger readers: I've only seen small bits of the Disney hit, "High School Musical", but... the movie doesn't really reflect much of what happened during any of our plays. There was less dancing, singing about our love, and a lot more snarkiness and sitting around backstage chatting and missing our cues. I don't if the fiction of Disney's musical is particularly helpful, and I'm sure its led to all kinds of confusion for eager-faced kids ready to sing and dance, and finding out that its mostly standing around and occasionally getting yelled at by a tired drama teacher who doesn't want to wrangle any more kids.

I also worked backstage at a bizarre cash grab by the Performing Arts teachers at our school. Someone cooked up the idea to do a revue. Which meant a large cast, lots of set changes, and getting practically any kid who auditioned into the show. And then $8 a head for their parents and friends. And with a cast, band, crew, etc... of around 100 students doing 4 shows, we went SRO all four shows and did okay. Apparently it helped fund our next show or two.

We had a complete set change between every number or two, which was interesting. We had to recruit a bunch of freshman who'd never worked a play before, but we got our act together, and our little unit never missed a beat. I'm still proud of those kids.

Oddly, I blame this play for my recurring nightmare. Its not dissimilar to the standard "I'm back in school, and I need to take a test" dream that, reportedly, you never shake. About 3 or 4 times a year, I still wake up in a cold sweat having dreamed that I showed up to work backstage at a play, but I was supposed to be in a musical, singing and dancing. I have neither skill, so I feel frustrated that someone put me in the position of being in the play in the first place, and I am not clear on how it got to be opening night and I never knew I was in the show.

Backstage, its very much like the "Bit O' Broadway" musical revue. But on stage, I have no idea what's happening. Its something else entirely.

To my credit, I refuse to give up in this dream, declare that the show must go on, and always sort of wander out on stage, waving my arms around and sort of shuffling to the music. I will be happy to demonstrate sometime.

Not wanting to draw attention to my lack of rehearsal, I always kind of hang around the back of the chorus, just try my best to lip synch to the rest of the kids, and get off stage as quickly as possible. Sometimes I have to improvise a solo, but most times, not.

What's weirdest is that some mental sub-routine always actually has songs going to some made up dream musical that some part of my brain is writing. There are sets and costumes and the whole nine-yards that my conscious brain is incapable of putting together. I'd really love to know what this musical is, sometime. Which reminds of the library in the Sandman comics, of the books that people had dreamed but which had never existed.

Anyhow, it always has a sad lack of Amanda Palmer.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Now I can get drunk like a Russian at breakfast

Bakon Vodka.

It's, apparently, bacon-flavored vodka. As if someone reached into my brain and said "what sort of evil scheme can we concoct to get this near-tee-totaler to drink? Oh. My. Weird and sad."




But there it is. Bakon Vodka.

tip o' the hat to Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Not really doing it for me...

Am I the only one creeped out by the sexualization of the Green M&M in the animated M&M ads?

Aside from the obvious (it's an M&M), does the female gender assignment automatically equate to sexiness? And, for the love of mike, wasn't there another way to pitch these fancy-type "premium" M&M's?

And if I'm this creeped out, doesn't it really mean there's someone out there who likes Ms. Green a little too much?

Friday, August 29, 2008

From the Cabela's Catalog



Simon will be confused by this post as these sorts of hats are, as I understand it, common headwear in Canada.

This item retails at Cabela's for $250, and in no way will make you look completely insane.

In case you're wondering: Yeah, that's a real, dead coyote. You can tell, because the only color they offer? COYOTE.

From the reviews:

"I have purchased a number of fur hats in my day but this is by far the warmest and most comfortable. Not only does it keep the back of my head warm but you can wrap the legs around your face to block the wind. The only reason this hat did not receive 5 stars is due to the fact that I was attacked by a bird thinking it was wounded prey while I was out for a walk. A rare but unfortunate occurrence when wearing an animal pelt on your head. Also great in the rain. Didn't smell at all after it was wet and it makes a great present. I'm getting one for my wife."

That lady is going to feel so @#$%ing lucky.

I just like how their model could be The League with a beard. It's like seeing a parallel Earth where The League has finally snapped.

Special thanks to Denby for the link

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Yahoos Claim to Have Corpse of Sasquatch

Hat tip to Occasional Superheroine for locating this story on CryptoMundo (what I assume is the New York Times for all your cryptozoological needs).

I've updated my link to a story where there are photos of the alleged creature.

Jason will surely freak out about all of this, but here we go...

Apparently some guys claim they have the body of a Bigfoot, found in Georgia. They're keeping the body in a freezer somewhere under armed guard until it can be released to the scientific community tomorrow. I, personally, think that this picture could be something, or it could be a latex mask and a costume shoved into a freezer with some deer innards. But I do find it interesting that they're taking it this far if its a hoax.

"But League," you say, "The Bigfoot lives in the Pacific Northwest!"
Oh, my friends... Bigfoots live all over the US. From our friends of the piney woods of Washington to the Bigfoot of Eastern Oklahoma to the Skunk Ape of Florida. Heck, if you turn and look around fast enough right now, there's probably a Bigfoot standing behind you.


The League streaks Zilker Park

Now, The League tends to be a bit cynical when it comes to cryptozoology. We're hopeful, but we mostly think that an undocumented species of 8 foot ape living in the US at this point is as likely as me learning Emmanuel Lewis is secretly living in Jamie's walk in closet.

I say that, but they DID just find several 10's of thousands more gorillas in Africa, so...

Anyway, mostly I'm deeply cynical of hoaxes and peoples' natural inclination to perpetrate hoaxes.

It will be interesting to see what these guys came up with. But it raises a good question.

INTERACTIVITY TIME:
Let us suppose these fellows in Georgia really have the body of a Bigfoot, and their find is confirmed and welcomed by the scientific community.

A) When you learn of the Bigfoot's authenticity, who is the first person you would tell?

B) If Bigfoot is real, what else might be real?

C) How would knowing Bigfoot is real change your outlook on life?

D) A Texas Oil Tycoon has offered a 300 million dollar bounty for finding and bringing back a corpse from another Bigfoot so he can stuff it and put it over his fireplace. A DotCom billionaire has offered 100 million for the first living Sasquatch brought into captivity. He's built a majestic habitat for the Bigfoot in Redmond, Washington. You think you know where a Bigfoot might be.

What do you do?

E) Any other thoughts on the possible reality of a Bigfoot?

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Your daily recommended allowance of awesome

Isabella Rossellini, who is certainly a DITMTLOD, has created a series of short films describing the mating rituals of various insects.

Leaguers, I link you to: Green Porno

I forewarn you, the language is a little crass, and Isabella is at the peak of her powers as she portrays each insect going about their, ahem, business. All while wearing outfits that look like they came from the drama department of a state university putting on some sort of buggy summer stock production.


Isabella wants you to "bee" yourself.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

The Billy Letters

To try to explain this does it an injustice, but I know that you won't click over unless I give it a sentence or two.

Ap[parently this guy from Radar magazine has been sending letters to notorious criminals and political figures, posing as a 10 year old boy seeking advice.

Asde from Charles Manson, people seem mostly helpful.

To read the letters, go here.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Skills

I highly suggest reviewing this video. yeah, it's one of those optical illusion tests, but you know The League wouldn't post it unless it wasn't worth your time.

It helps to have audio, I might add.




Thanks to Jim for the link.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Concert I wish I'd attended

Well, pretty clearly this is the best thing I've ever seen.



For an explanation, read here.

Thanks to Jeff Shoemaker for the link!

Monday, March 17, 2008

Monday, January 28, 2008

The League ain't afraid of no ghost

You know which show I can't quit watching, but which is some oddly irresponsible television? A&E's new program Paranormal State features a team of college undergraduates who are true believers in the paranormal. Not UFO's, mind you, but they fancy themselves to be ghost hunters, but without any pesky skepticism.

Their goal is, ostensibly, "investigations" into the paranormal, but that's not really what seems to happen. Somehow the show has teamed up the undergrads with several other charlatans of the supernatural, and these folks are brought in to (a) assist in the investigations and (b) enjoy something of the limelight which they seem to be seeking.

The "director" of the Penn State Paranormal club is probably just a shade or two away from the sort of conviction in utter nonsense you really only find in con-men and people building compounds who don't let their flock speak to their families any more (for their own good). He leads the team with the charmless charisma that will one day make for low-level cult leader status as he rambles on about the presence of ghosts and demonic spirits, and plays the expert in mystical matters to not just his band of followers, but the people whose houses he invariably exorcises by the end of each episode. As an undergrad, I'm not sure exactly what his credentials are supposed to be (I've ruled out critical thinking as one of his strong suits), but his followers seem oddly devoted and willing to defer to him in all of the decisions for the group. No doubt, this guy is going to be asking them to sign over their worldly possessions in five years and buy matching purple jumpsuits.

What's really sort of out of whack is that the folks who the group comes to "help", are in fact, in need of real help. Generally these folks seem distraught by whatever it is they believe is living with them in their house. I admit that, in some twisted way, this means that the group of undergrads is helping the people in question. I just am not sure a seance and having some 20-year old kid semi-politely asking the "spirit" to leave is what these folks actually need. But, according to the show, whatever magic they work gets rid of what's ailing the subjects of each episode. Or, you know, the people just really don't want the nerds coming back.

Now, let me qualify this somewhat: I watch Ghost Hunters on Sci-Fi all the time. It's the only one of the basic-cable paranormal shows that I think applies basic logic to... uh... ghosts. At least there's some half-assed investigation put into it and not just "psychics" wandering about sensing angry feelings. And I give the show kudos for trying first and foremost to try to explain away the bumps and creaks in the night, and for understanding that sometimes people leap to bizarre conclusions. And sometimes people have really bad pipes and wiring in their homes.

In short, unlike most of these shows, I don't think Jay and Grant, of Ghost Hunters are crazy. Well, I do think spending your evenings running around some stranger's house with a video camera is a bit... odd. But their first inclination is not to believe every hiss in a tape is an attempt by the dead to communicate. But I also don't think they're outright fibbing in order to get exposure and money.

Sadly, I don't really believe in ghosts. But, I would like to make a buck off of other people's paranoid fears. Jason and I have often spoken of what we might charge for capturing and containing one of the departed in true Ghostbusters fashion.

"We're ready to believe you!"