March Madness

First, a brief disclaimer. This post isn't about basketball.

Disappointed?

I'm willing to bet that you are not half as disappointed as I was when I found out "March Madness" didn't refer to the perennial return of the Laughing Sickness brought about by the thawing of stagnant marsh waters in the spring.

Before I get into it, I should warn you: I'm about to plug myself. Wanna watch? I knew you would.

I may have mentioned this once or a million times, but this month, adultswim.com is revamping the original content on its site. This will include a number of original humor pieces by yours truly. I've also mentioned that these articles come with a complete money-back guarantee! I personally promise to reimburse everyone the cost of visiting the website if they don't find my articles funny.

But only if you can find me.

So, keep an eye on adultswim.com this month! And hopefully months to follow! To whet your appetites a little, here are some of the names of the pieces you can look forward to:

Footballcalypse
A Misanthrope's Survival Guide: Getting By For People Who Hate People
A History of the Hipster (this one might be a little too academic for most)

Plus more! You'll just have to wait for the rest.

Let's shift gears for a minute. I want to give a shout out to my Bulgar crew. Today (or yesterday for Bulgaria since it's like a million hours ahead of me) is the day that the Bulgarians celebrate the end of winter. You can read a bit more about the tradition here, but I've heard rumors that the Balkan peninsula has endured an epic, Song of Ice and Fire-style winter this year.

That's not an exaggeration. The school where I used to work was cancelled for at least two weeks in the winter due to heavy snows and reanimated corpses roaming the bleak winterscape, seeking blood of the living.

Just your standard Eastern Europe stuff.

The undead hordes are shuffling in the distance. Can't you
hear them? More pictures of winter in Bulgaria here.

I'll take this opportunity to wish all those in Bulgaria a happy March 1st! And I hope the thaws come soon.

Fatty Fat Fat Tuesday

Those of you who are hep cats know that today is the day before the beginning of Lent, also known as Fat Tuesday. In French, "Fat Tuesday" is "Mardi Gras." Does that ring a bell? If it doesn't, I don't think I'm able to talk to you.

Stop reading now. Please.

In Catholic theology, Lent is the 40 days before Easter. It is considered one of the most solemn periods in the Catholic calendar, when believers are supposed to reflect on their lives and their sins, the meaning of sacrifice and selflessness. Also, believers are supposed to think about how they may have failed to live up to those ideals in the past year. It's a time of penance, which is why there is Mardi Gras, a time to get as much sinning in as you can before you have to think about how your actions affect other people and all that bullshit.

That's why we show our boobs to people who give us beads on this holy day.

Here's a little something I wrote last Fat Tuesday. As you can see, not much has changed in the course of a year. And always remember that it's traditions like Fat Tuesday that are responsible for the rise of Protestantism.

Enjoy!


It's Fat Tuesday and I hope that you are using it as an excuse to over indulge in something, whatever your vice may be.


Tomorrow, it's time to feel guilty about it again. And by "it," I mean everything. Your overeating; your underappreciating; your overspending and your underachieving. 


Don't forget about the fact that you drink too much, you talk too much and you give too little. Your performance in life is underwhelming because you've overpromised and you're overbearing because you feel underloved. You feel like an outsider because you live inside your head. You're stretched too thin because you've lived beyond your means and certainly not up to your potential. You've disappointed your dad, your mom, your wife, your kids, your priest, your president and your God. And most of all, you know all of this and you're not doing a damn thing about it, except give up meat for 40 days.


Happy Lent!

President's Day

I don't know about you, but I'm celebrating Presidents' Day in the traditional fashion: dressing up like Millard Fillmore and watching Encore's marathon of president-themed movies.


Air Force One is up next!

Nothing beats watching Harrison Ford beat up Gary Oldman playing a fanatical Communist bent on returning to the glory days of Stalin's Soviet Union. Nothing beats that. Unless of course, you watch the movie while wearing a dapper top hat, cummerbund and bow tie.

Now that's a president! Look at those come-hither eyes and that devil-may-care hair. This is basically what I've looked like all day today, ladies.

Sorry for the long silence. I've been keeping pretty busy these days with writing. At the end of the day, I haven't got enough creative juice left in my brain to wring out onto these blank Internet pages. But, I had a few minutes and thought I'd drop in and let you all know that there's some fun stuff coming up. As you might know, I've been writing a bunch of stuff for Adult Swim's website (the "Not a Blog" section). Since they are relaunching the site in March, none of the stuff I've written is up yet, but it will be soon enough... Soon enough, my pretties.

Afraid you'll miss it?

Rest assured that I will be shamefully promoting myself every place the Internet allows me to, so watch my Twitter feed, my Facebook page, my Tumblr, even my Google+ page!

Also, do yourselves a favor and watch Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, speaking of Gary Oldman being brilliant.

America

I have returned from the land of whimsy and marshmallows and post-industrial dilapidation and snow!

In case you were wondering, my trip was full of winter and booze and all the things that make things more thingy.

Please enjoy my favorite pictures from my trip.

Here are some stray observations I made on my visit:

- Some towns in the Midwest are plagued by a post-industrial economic malaise that has created an environment full of unemployment, desperation and, for some inexplicable reason, the lingering scent of delicious, delicious bacon.

- Snow is very cold. And it can kill you.

- To survive an attack by evil, murderous snow, wear as many layers of clothes as humanly possible. Also, never leave the house without a flask full of uncle Jim's "mean juice."

- If you spend the entire winter in an abandoned house, you get to keep the house. But only if the snow doesn't kill you.

- There are not nearly as many tauntauns as I expected, but large dogs are almost as cute and are big enough to kill and sleep in if you need to avoid the evil snow.

- Uncle Jim's "mean juice" is delicious and makes it OK for me to feel again.

New Year

Islas, party of one. Your new year is ready.

Hey guys!

It's a new year, which means... well, alright. Let's admit it. It basically means nothing, except that now we have to remember to write the new year on your checks.

Just kidding! I'm pretty sure the only places where they still use checks are also places where they still don't have women's rights. Or electricity.

Last year, I used the opportunity to admit to myself that I was basically going to give up on everything, which has really relieved a lot of pressure. And so far, I've been pretty successful at not being successful. I'm still living at home. I'm single by choice (though it's not really my choice). I will have been working at the comedy thing for what'll be a year in a few months, which is about fourteen years shy of what it usually takes to possibly make it. We'll see if I don't give up before then.

Or, if all goes according to plan, I won't have to since the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. If society starts falling apart, it may very well be my year! I can put my plans of comedy on hold and get work as a ruthless warlord. It may just be the fire under my ass I need to move on with my life.

Alright. It's time for me to get back to watching Greenberg for the third time and indulging my vanity by comparing myself to Ben Stiller's character, while still wearing my pajamas at 11:00 AM in my parents' living room.

But tomorrow, I'm going to start running again for sure.

PS Here are some pictures from my actual New Year celebration. No, I didn't actually spend it alone with a bottle of vodka... what do you think I am? Some sort of loser? Jeez.

A Christmas Carol

This is the only version of A Christmas Carol that won an Oscar. It's pretty good, considering it's less than 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Shopping

It is rare in this country that the thin veneer of civilization, that precious and frail illusion that keeps us from acting on our more brutal and baser impulses, falls away.

During times of war, necessity dictates that we draw on the violent nature that society requires we repress during times of peace. Our survival depends our ability to summon up the dark, vicious feelings that lay dormant in the heart of every person, but in this country, war has not broken down that precarious border between order and chaos since the Civil War.

On occasion though, our superegos need minimal provocation to burst like some poorly constructed damn, loosing the rapids of aggression and indiscriminate animal rage. When that happens, the mass of rioting humans must be treated like an out-of-control fire that only begins to die down once it has consumed all things that can fuel it.

But there are few places that you can so consistently see humanity's true, animalistic nature as a shopping mall on Christmas Eve.

Shopping on the day before Christmas is as close as you can get to training for the chaos that will come with the apocalypse: men, women and children clamoring over each other, avoiding eye-contact as they scramble for scarce resources, trying to beat one another to the last Nook or portable wine bag set in the store, their eyes glazed over like feeding sharks (and with the same moral compunctions as feeding sharks).

Though, honestly, I'd probably stab someone for this.
You know, if I had to.

When society falls apart, there will be no lines, no order and the only authority will be brute force. And mark my words, the seasoned last minute Christmas shoppers will have an edge on the rest of us who have grown soft with years of planning ahead and not having to scratch out someone's eyes in order to get what they need to make sure their children have the perfect Christmas.

Yes, they will have the advantage -- them and the hardened inmates of maximum security prisons.