Radical Transparency

I wonder what it'd be like to watch the video below without having seen the video to which it's responding.  Still funny?  And what it'd be like to watch it without having seen Star Wars?  Completely nonsensical?  And still funny?

Spoof and context.  Hmmm.

Anyway, think, then watch, then think again.  Or something like that.



And, if you want the Chad Vader backstory, here's his Wikipedia page, and here's where his creators keep an archive of his work.

Just watched Wayne's World.

Noticed that it included a that's what she said joke:

Garth: I'm getting tired of holding it.
Wayne: That's what she said.

Wondering if that's the original that's what she said joke.

And wondering, if it is, if Steve Carell and The Office* give Wayne and Garth the credit they deserve.

*Note: That's a link to a blog post I made a few months ago involving John Lennon, Dr. Jekyll, and Ricky Gervais.  It would have been a link to one of my favorite scenes from the The (American) Office, but NBC doesn't want me to do that.

Barry Schwartz made a presentation at the TED conference a few weeks ago about wise janitors.

Rules and incentives and virtue and dignity and wise janitors.

Made me think of Willie.

The Invention of Basketball is track 1 on Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby.

Click here to download:

The Invention Of Basketball.mp3 (5227 KB)

Cue cards, rehearsed and memorized, or improvised?



Rehearsed and memorized, partly anyway, right?

And note the hand motions during the credits.  The guest's last one is hilarious.

After spending the past two weeks surrounded by our cousins and overflowing with the goofiness we inspire in each other, my sister and I decided last night that we need to keep heavy doses of uncontrollable laughter in our lives forever. 

No adult seriousness.  Never.

There is tragedy everywhere.  Tragedy in the mundane.  Tragedy in comedy.  And we should feel it and acknowledge it.  That's compassion. 

But there is comedy everywhere too.  Comedy in tragedy.  Comedy in pain and fear and death and anger.  And feeling that and acknowledging it is not taking things too seriously, remembering that, whether or not you take it as deep as Bill Hicks did, it really is just a ride.

We figure all we need are the right people around to help us find the funny.  And the occasional return to Step Brothers for inspiration.

My lead developer told me in an email this afternoon that he is a ninja.  Which is exciting.  For him.  And for The Carrot Project.  I think.

I read the email again a few minutes ago, and I thought of realultimatepower.net.  Most people have seen Real Ultimate Power, right?  In college, drunk and/or stoned, late at night?  If you missed it or forget, get drunk and/or stoned some time, and have a look.  It's a classic.

I think someone first showed it to me in 2002.  I wish I could remember who.  I do remember that I coudn't get enough.  And I definitely remember when the movie scripts first came out.  They absolutely knocked me over.  Tears.  Screams.  Pains in the stomach.  Exhaustion.  Wailing guitar in the background.

And I still think it's brilliant.  That facts section on the first page gets me every time:

1.    Ninjas are mammals.
2.    Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3.    The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

There's something about that grammar that I absolutely love.  And I also love that when I copied that text over from Real Ultimate Power and pasted here, both instances of the word Ninjas disappeared.  White font.  Attention to detail.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is that I'm curious about the historical significance of Real Ultimate Power. Significance in terms of the disproportionate prominence of ninja conversation in our lives.  And significance in the development or direction of whatever it is we call internet humor.

Did Real Ultimate Power change the world, albeit ever so slightly?  I think it did.  And I 100% totally seriously predict that someone will write a PhD thesis on it someday.

But, today, we woke to find ourselves in a world where a child might grow up not fearing the unknown.  I don't know about you, but that scares the shit out of me.



It's not every day that sarcasm leaves you teary eyed.

And it'll be fun to see where comedy takes Barack Obama.

Just got word from Iago in Shenzhen that some radio comedians in Montreal prank called Sarah Palin the other day.

The internets confirm the story .  Even Big Media Canada is writing about it.



A bit silly to share a radio spot in video form, but the YouTube link is all the Les Justiciers Masques website offered me.

I thought about binary code a little bit today.  And by a little bit I mean for about 30 seconds.  That's about all the binary code I can handle.  I have no idea how it works.  But I do know that every time I have one of these binary code moments, I think of robots and world domination...