September 8th 5:52PM
Burgeoning comedian Theo Von is no stranger to real life.
After formative stints on MTV's Road
Rules and America's Prom Queen he competed on (and blogged
about) Reality Bites Back. His
latest creative venture, Atom.com's "Street Games"
is a series of competitions designed to showcase "totally useless (yet
delightful) human skills."
The other day, we
e-mailed Theo a bunch of questions about his life and he wrote us back…
CC Insider: Reality Bites Back
wasn't your first foray into reality TV. Can you talk about some of your
earlier experiences?
Theo Von: I was a castmember in
2000 on MTV Road Rules, which was a blast. I made some great friends and got to
ride around America in a camper. Who doesn't want to take a crap at 75 mph everyday? HOORAY AMERICA!
As
well, i was on Last Comic Standing Season 4 (Fan Favorite). Don't mean to too
my own horn, but BEEP BEEP.
CCI: Did you enjoy Road Rules more or
less than deciding who should be America's Prom Queen?
TV: Road Rules is more fun, because
you get to hook up with underage girls, and not just judge them, like i did on
APQ.
Read more »
July 21st 2:29PM
Hold on to your 10 gallon hats and mesquite-grilled limbs, Texas folk. Lewis is going to be in San Antonio today, followed by Austin tomorrow and the admittedly not exactly in Texas–but what the hell, the joke was easy–city of Richmond next Thursday, July 31.
Get your tickets today. We hear they're printed on poster board down by you.
July 1st 5:16PM
Pleaseeasaur, the "an astonishing two-man entertainment
strike-force comprised of performer/musician JP Hasson and
projectionist/costume designer/multimedia extraordinaire Thomas Hurley II,"
renowned for their absurdist commercial parodies and surreal stage shows
recently signed a seven year, lots of albums contract with Comedy Central
Records under which their most recent album, "The Amazing Adventures of Pleaseeasaur" recently debuted. On July 11th, they will be performing with Brian Posehn at the 7th
Annual Lebowski Fest in Louisville, Kentucky. To exploit this
extraordinary coincidence, we sent frontman Hasson eight questions over e-mail,
and he replied to all of them:
What brings you to Lebowski Fest?
An Airbus A320.
We are excited to play the 7th Annual Lebowski Fest this
year with Brian Posehn. We were asked to play at last year‚Äôs festival in Los Angeles…but we were
on tour at the time and couldn‚Äôt do it. But this year…the magic could not be
stopped…so we are Kentucky
bound. Louisville is a radical city…we are
planning excursions to the Louisville Slugger Factory and the Slint Museum on our day off.
Who do you draw your musical influence from?
If Ron Popeil (inventor of the RonCo family of products) made albums…then he
would be number one on my list.
But he never did…so fuck him.
Mike Post
The Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra
Frank De Vol
Ennio Morricone
Lalo Schifrin
And of course The Dead Milkmen…because they were my
favorite band growing up and later I was lucky enough to be in a couple bands
with their guitarist Joe Jack Talcum.
Read more »
June 16th 5:39PM
As thousands of David Schwartz…enkoff…owitzes ship off to the Adirondacks to eat soggy blintzes and consume pornography for eight weeks, The A.V. Club has decided to re-invigorate and re-cool Wet Hot American Summer.
Wet Hot American Summer was dismally received by
the majority of critics at the time (EW's Owen Gleiberman, Newsweek's David Ansen, and um, us
excepted), with many balking at its loose-to-nonexistent structure, its curious
fetish for the most trivial of cinematic subgenres, and, well, a failure to
make them laugh. If you don't find the film funny, you don't find it
funny—comedy is subjective, after all. (And hey, there's no accounting
for taste.) But those other supposed liabilities are probably the film's
greatest assets, and they complement each other nicely: Having a loose
structure gives Wain, Showalter, and the rest of the cast a lot of freedom to scribble
around in the margins, yet the whole enterprise is anchored by its obsessive
fetishization of the period. There's something oddly satisfying about the sheer
volume of '80s bric-a-brac on display here—the Trapper Keeper folders, the
Pepsi Light cans with the peel-back can tops, the vintage soundtrack
contributions from the likes of Loverboy, Rick Springfield, and Jefferson
Starship. Or even the silly ways "cool" manifested itself at the time, like
Paul Rudd's hilariously petulant lothario, or Ken Marino's preening, swaggering, secretly virginal skirt-chaser.
You can read the full re-review here.
June 11th 6:01PM
By now, you've all heard from your local crypto-Commie news purveyor
that John McCain doesn't think it's important how long our troops stay
in Iraq. Leave it to the terrorist media, of course, to interpret his
comments in a way that grossly distorts the point. Here's what McCain actually said on the Today Show:
Matt Lauer: If [the surge] is working, senator, do you
now have a better estimtate of when American forces can come home from
Iraq?
John McCain: No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq.
It's pretty clear from the full transcript that what McCain was
trying to say was that, while he is willing to continue the war until
the end of time, he's only willing to continue the war until the end of
time if its casualties aren't incurred in Iraq. I think we can all
agree that it doesn't matter how long we let our troops stay in Baghdad
suffering under 40 pounds of armor in 105 degree heat and shooting
insurgents off of rooftops, as long as we transport them to Sweden to
be disfigured by IEDs.
In fact, Scandinavia, your thatched roofs better be crawling with
snipers and fjords stocked with piranha come inauguration day. You're
either with us, or against us in this endless war.
(Cross-posted at Indecision 2008).
May 15th 2:19PM
Per Darryl's leadership advice to Michael on last week's episode of The Office, Craig Robinson talks to IGN about his gang connections…
GN What's it like being both a Newsie and a Warrior?
Robinson: Well, it's tough man, you know, when you go through
those kinds of different things. I didn't even mention that I was a Jet
and I was a Shark, you know what I'm saying? When you a Jet, you a Jet
all the way, so it's been a tough life.
IGN: I bet. Were you also a T-Bird?
Robinson: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the ladies. What were their names?
IGN: The Pink Ladies.
Robinson: The Pink Ladies! I was in that too.
You can read the rest of the street-bustin', cop-smokin', can-you-tell-I'm-from-Connecticut-yet interview here.
May 13th 2:45PM
On Friday, we reported that Patton Oswalt was spotted wandering around Philadelphia in full mime white face, and I suggested it was all part of a thought control conspiracy (who can really trust the government these days, huh? Am I right, folks?). Well, the man himself laid all those fears to rest on his blog yesterday:
Yes, that was me wandering around Geno's Cheesesteaks (8th and Passyunk) at dusk in Philly yesterday. I wasn't really wearing "mime" makeup, just a half-white, half-green painted face: (www.philebrity.com). I was flattered by the people who called out my name, and tried to shake my hand, but I really did have to stay in character — I hope you didn't think I was ignoring any of you. Me and the camera crew needed to shoot what we needed to shoot, and then pack up and scram before the cops showed up. Come to think of it, the cops DID show up, but they were more interested in getting cheesesteaks than hassling us, so I guess we lucked out. But we booked just the same.
That's all I can say about that. It'll all make sense…later(?)
Hm. All you can say? Could it have something to do with this, perhaps?
Let's face it, Patton. You're a movie star. And movie stars don't "stay in character" when their fans are calling. Seriously, now. When are you going to drop this responsible actor bullshit and embrace your inner Lohan?
(Thanks to Philebrity for the tasteful Oswalt up top).
May 9th 5:10PM
In today's Philebrity — your only source for M. Night Shyamalan baby mama rumors — a reader writes in with this nugget:
Any idea why I just saw Patton Oswalt in full mime white face and an Iggles jersery at the corner of 8th and Passyunk with a camera crew?
Actually, yes. And I'm forbidden to give details. But word has come down from our corporate overlords at Viacom that we are all expected to swear allegiance (you have not experienced exasperation until you have had to fill out all 59 pages of a corporate blood oath) to a highly secret operation called: King of Queens: The Orion Project. Let's just say that you will be seeing Patton Oswalt everywhere before too long.
How's that for furtive denial!
May 6th 5:56PM
Neil Hamburger has never been one of America's most loved comedians. In fact, he may very well be its worst. With a stable of jokes staler than five-week old rye that can only be described by metaphors staler than a six-week old Portuguese roll, Hamburger has cornered the market on pissing off his audience. And pissed off they will be when they discover that his latest album, "Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners," is not comedy at all, but a collection of country music duds written by Hamburger and others. We sat down with Neil today to talk about his music career, self-medicating during the bad times and signing the worst contract ever drawn up.
Comedy Central Insider: What made you decide to throw yourself into country music?
Neil Hamburger: Well, you know, I've done so many albums — so, so many albums — that why not do something a little bit different? A lot of the great personalities have made albums. Telly Savalus made a series of albums, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner — a lot of the singing celebrity albums are very popular. Even Jack Webb made an album of songs. So it wasn't so much that we were going with country per say, it was that we were going with one of these personality type of albums where a bunch of songs are written to cater to the particular fans that I might have.
CCI: As a comedian, was music a big step for you, or was it easy to make the transition?
NH: You know, I'm not Pavarotti here. Definitely, it's a problem. I would not recommend that most comedians make singing albums. But we had had a couple of songs on other albums just as filler, so we decided just to stretch that out just a little bit further with an entire album when these great musicians became available and were interested in taking part in this project.
More after the jump…
Read more »
April 23rd 5:20PM
In anticipation of the release of Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay, The National Post presents a brief history of how the first movie was pitched to the White Castle brass, followed an even briefer history of the scrappy burger chain itself:
"I first got the script, read it and blushed," says Jamie Richardson, White Castle's director of marketing. Richardson had the unenviable job of selling the movie to his boss, the current CEO and grandson of the man who started the business in Wichita, Kan., in 1921.
"I had to check the calendar to see if it was April Fool's," says Richardson, who saw in the movie an uplifting tale of two likable, minority characters who go on a life-changing journey to reach the nirvana of hamburger meals.
"It was in the tradition of Jason and the Argonauts," says Richardson. "I saw it as an epic tale."
Here's the part where I make a pot joke punning off the word "epic," and you giggle, but not very much. So instead, why don't you save us both some trouble just go read the whole article.
