Category: Jared Stern

August in the Wind

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, fantasy football, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, shoes, wedding

Hey there ‘Redheads… So, hey… Been awhile. Sorry for the anemic August, but things have been a little hectic on my end. I wanted to make sure I shoehorned one last blog, so we can hit September in full stride…or with a slight limp. I’ve been busy the last couple weeks. Last weekend I had the pleasure of celebrating the nuptials of two of my best friends, Allyson and Chris. I was lucky enough to be the officiant of the ceremony. They repeated after me and everything. I don’t have access to any of the pictures right now, but there was much rejoicing, and the open bar overfloweth. You can read all about it in an upcoming Washington Post Sunday Style section. They sent a photographer to cover the affair.

After an extended amount of time in dress shoes, I have to say, I gained a new respect for the ladies and the uncomfortable footwear they put up with. I wasn’t wearing five inch pumps, but my dress shoes put a hurtin‘ on my tootsies. Over the course of the evening, they turned into bear traps on my feet. Luckily, my best girlfriend in the whole wide world had her first aid kit of a purse with her, and she had gel band-aids at the ready. My shoes gnawed a dime-sized notch out of the back of both of my heels. It’s a hindrance on the dance floor when every step you take feels like you’re taking a cheese grater to your Achilles tendon.

Luckily, my injuries won’t keep me from participating in this year’s fantasy football season. I have my first of three drafts tomorrow night and I am PUMPED. I can’t wait for the stats to start flyin‘. All I need is a team flag to unfurl. How’s Mediocri3-D for a team name? I may re-use last year’s Minnesota Vicarious. I’m also thinking about breaking out this as a team name…I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie, but that’s pretty funny… So, I have my 3 beer mug ready to fuel my draft of a rag tag bunch to lead me to hypothetical glory. I’ll give you a full breakdown after the draft. Or I’ll have a breakdown during the draft. Either way, brace yourselves.

More to come…

Bookish

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in books, comedy, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern

Hey there ‘Redheads… I’ll go ahead and admit it, this installment is a bit of a cop out. I’m not quite feeling the usual blog vibe, so here’s a list of fake book titles instead. I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled random ramblings next time. Enjoy…

Eugenics For Dummies

Everything You Wanted To Know About Rhetorical Questions, But Were Afraid To Ask Yourself

Investment Sperm Banking

A Song in My Heart, A Hand Up My Ass: The Autobiography of Kermit the Frog

12 Steps Back: A Guide to Relapse

Facebook As An Alibi

Even You Can Be Condescending

13 Ways To Conquer Triskaidekaphobia

Happiness Through Better Hatred

Proactive Apathy

Cough Your Way To Six-Pack Abs

Lose Weight While You Eat

Men Are From Mars, Gay Men Are From Uranus

Sell Your Roommate’s Organs

Why The Voices Make A Good Point

Green: Make Money Recycling Mucous

Sell Your Identity For Fun and Profit

Dead Pet Recipes

How To Be Constructively Awful

Your Ass As Ad Space

Live Life Vicariously

Act Tough, Sue Big

Goldschlager: Turn Your Pee Into Riches

How To Take Credit For Really Good Ideas

Treasure Maps In The Bible

The Nerf Cookbook

Ransom As a Second Income

No Brain, No Headache

Do-it-yourself Blood Transfusions

Living Will Mad-Libs

Dyslexics For Book The

Annexing Your Neighbor’s House

The Nutritional Value of Dandruff

Off-Color Hand Gestures

The Ipecac Diet

Make Your Own Breast Implants From Pudding

Office Depot Surgery: From Stomach Stapling to Testicle Paper-clipping

Instant Sleep Over: Fun With Narcolepsy

Sign Language For Double Amputees

The Scratch n’ Sniff Nipple Book

The Where’s Waldo Code

Radiation: The Thin Line Between Super Hero and Cancer Patient

Better Luck Next Time: Why Jesus Has Already Returned and We Probably Killed Him Again

Settling Disputes With Russian Roulette

Ethiopia On 85 Cents A Day

Teaching Your Dog To Pick Up Your Poop

Beatboxing For Stutterers

To be continued…

Storm of Brain

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in Baltimore Comedy Factory, Blogust, comedy, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, power, weather

Hey there ‘Redheads… Welcome back to Blogust… And welcome to any new readers who found me through DCBlogs.com. Apparently, the last installment got picked up on their feed because they deemed mini-golf, dinosaurs, and large blocks of styrofoam to be awesome. I won’t argue with good taste.

I meant to squeeze another installment into July, but the power outage from that apocalyptic storm we had tear through here last week threw a flying monkey wrench into my plans. It’s tough to blog from Amish country. At one point, I removed the buttons from my remote control because they were too proud. Not only did I lose power for the better part of three days, but the jolt that knocked out the power also blew out the motor on my refrigerator. When the lights finally did come back on, I was greeted by a stench that could’ve knocked a buzzard off a shit wagon. All the food I had in there was more spoiled than Paris Hilton’s chihuahua. So, in order to prevent a hazmat team from quarantining my condo, I double bagged a hefty, put on some gloves, and dug a mass grave for all of my perished perishables. I’m pretty sure I heard a voice say, “Zuul”. By the way, a great name for a band: Hot Dairy. They’d be a funk band, of course. I realize that all this was a minor inconvenience compared to some of the actual catastrophe that was wrought by this swift but powerful storm. I could’ve lived here…Luckily, the family that lived here was on vacation at the time. Good thing they’re used to hotel living. Yeesh. What is up with the weather around here? It’s calmed down in the last couple of days, but we went through a stretch where it was 112 in the shade, then there was an earthquake, then a storm that’s like a tornado fucked a hurricane hits from out of nowhere. Would you be surprised by locusts at this point? Because I wouldn’t be. God must’ve gotten a parking ticket in Bethesda or something.

After dealing with all of that mess, I welcomed a weekend performing at one of my favorite clubs, the Baltimore Comedy Factory. Charm City is always good to me and this slate of shows was no exception. Big thanks to Cara and the crackerjack staff for they do to make a shlub like me feel at home. I got a chance to work with the very funny Drew Fraser. It was fun to watch him work because our vocal styles are so different. Stand-up comedy is alot like surfing. Instead of water, we ride waves of laughter that ripple out from the main joke with tag lines and vocal cues. With each wave, you try to add something that’ll keep the ripples flowing. Drew creates a tsunami with screaming. I’ve not heard a comic that loud since Sam Kinison. He conducted a cacophonous symphony that was fun to watch, if a little painful to listen to. The audience was gasping for breath at one point. Another fun side note to the weekend was that Otakon, the anime convention, was in town, so I got to see socially awkward types with patchy facial hair dressed like Link from Legend of Zelda mingle with the usual freaks that roam Baltimore’s streets. It was an odd cross section of humanity.

I’ll leave you with this fun little ditty…

If you’re not giggling, you’re not human.

To be continued…

Loose Ends

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, competition, Dinosaur Kingdom, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, mini-golf, Natural Bridge

Hey there, ‘Redheads… In the last blog or two, I’ve had to stop short due to brainlock or I’ve left out some odds and ends that didn’t fit with whatever I fooled myself into thinking was the theme of that particular installment. So, this one is devoted to cleaning out all of the extra crap that’s currently cluttering my cranium (alliteration, baby). Onward and backward…

Over the weekend, 15 intrepid friends and I braved the intense heat and pushed ourselves to the limits of human endurance and athletic competition. We played three mini-golf courses in one day, in the Second Annual Grand Slam of Mini-Golf…

We ventured deep into the clown’s mouth to test our wills and prove we had some semblance of athletic skill. I was the clubhouse leader after the first 18 holes at Rocky Gorge, my hometown course when I was a lad, with an impressive 6 under par. From there, we traveled to Herndon, VA, for the second round at Woody’s Golf, home of Perils of the Lost Jungle, one of the top 5 mini-golf courses in the U.S. What the course lacked in difficulty, it more than made up for in production values…It was a cheeky mix of Robert Trent Jones and Indiana Jones. Despite some sloppy play on the front nine, I was able to extend my lead to seven shots heading into the final round at Hain’s Point in DC. I should mention, if you couldn’t tell already, that I get super competitive and overconfident in games of any kind where I get even a sliver of a lead. I gloat. I bluster. I’m a bit of a dick, which makes it all the more satisfying to everyone else when I eventually crumble under the weight of my own hubris. I tried to remain calm this time around, but I was being egged on by those breathing down my neck on the leader board, rooting for the inevitable. That brings us to the last leg of the day. This was the most difficult of the courses we’d faced all day. The sun had been beating down on us for hours and this was a no-frills course that required the kind of pinpoint short game that we quickly realized none of us had. The strokes piled up as seemingly easy putts lazily rolled past the hole without even saying hello. As prophesied, my lead eroded and I lost my bid for miniature glory by two strokes…well, three if you count the heat stroke.

The weekend before last, my friends and I found another fun way to enjoy heat exhaustion. We hopped in the car and headed down to Natural Bridge, VA. On the way, we saw a couple oddities on the road that I was able to snap some pictures of…Yes, that’s a DeLorean. I guess he was looking to save some time on his commute. I’m pretty sure where he was going, he still needed roads. We also spotted this…She got her hair did and she wanted to keep those curls tight for later on at the bingo hall. We took bets on whether she had a rolling pin in the passenger seat. Ok, enough of this penny ante stuff. I’ve got some pictures of true craziness for you. We checked out three roadside attractions and a natural wonder all in one day. You get a taste of each. First up is the majesty of the Natural Bridge…I’d been pretty jaded about nature since my trip to the Grand Canyon, but this was pretty impressive. We went from being awed by nature to being completely weirded out by the opposite of nature. An installation artist named Mark Cline built a couple roadside attractions to hold tourists’ sway once they got bored with beauty. Behold the twisted history lesson that is Dinosaur Kingdom…Allow me to answer some burning questions. Yes, that is a Union soldier being eaten by a T-Rex and yes, that is a velociraptor snacking on The Gettysburg Address. Basically, this was built around the conceit that an archaeological dig during the Civil War unearthed living dinosaurs that the North planned to use against the South, but things went horribly wrong. It’s Glory meets Jurassic Park. All that was missing was a fiberglass Jeff Goldblum telling Lincoln that using dinosaurs as a weapon was the worst idea in the long sad history of bad ideas (love that line). Mr. Cline also created another awesome spectacle just up the road…FOAMHENGE! Where the demons dwell. Where the banshees live and they do live well. Yep, he created a full scale replica of Stonehenge out of styrofoam…

Well crap. I was hoping to wrap this all up in a neat little package, but it’s getting late, and I’m running out of steam.

To be continued…

Don’t Have a Title… I Should Join The Heat…

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in AA-12, comedy, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, Larry Hagman, LeBron James, Miami Heat, NWO, Predators, solar

Hey there ‘Redheads… Welcome back to your nearly weekly dose of flim-flammery. I bring you reheated news that’s been piling up whilst I twiddle my thumbs and wait for the other eight fingers to muster up the energy to get typing. For example, did you guys hear that LeBron is joining D-Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami? I know! Why do they keep these things from us? A lot of clever names are being bandied about as the sports world tries to figure out what to call this new power trio: The 3 My-Egos, Miami Thrice, The Yankees. All of them are good tries, but I know what I’ll be calling them. The N.W.O. Check out this video from WCW’s 1996 Bash At The Beach. As my comedy buddy, Ryan Conner, pointed out, it completely parallels the Lebron situation, right down to the fan outrage…

Even if you’re not a fan of wrestling, the similarities are eerie. I’m hoping this new storyline will make next year’s NBA season halfway interesting. And LeBron better smack Kobe upside the head with a steel chair.

Speaking of fan outrage, I’d like to express a little of my own about Predators. I had fooled myself into thinking that my expectations were lower than Verne Troyer looking for a missing contact lens, but in my heart of hearts, I wanted this movie to be good. The Predator franchise deserved a decent sequel. And they got us fanboys all in a lather because the called it Predators, so it’ll be like Aliens was to Alien, right? And they lied to us in the previews by giving us WTF shots like this…Turns out, that bad ass shot isn’t even in the movie. It was just shot for the preview. And all of the action scenes in the last half of the movie are shot in the dark, so you can’t make out what the hell is going on. What should have been a great fight between a Yakuza killer with a samurai sword and a Predator, ended up being so muddled it wouldn’tve made it past the cutting room for Power Rangers. For those of you who haven’t seen it, the premise is basically that the best killers from our world (and Topher Grace) are air dropped onto an alien planet that serves as a Predator hunting ground. My big complaint for the movie as a whole was that the filmmakers took it for granted that we know how the Predators operate and do nothing to establish their tactics or technology. In the first Predator, you got to see Ahnold noodle things through, adapt to his dire situation, and match wits with the Predator. In this one, they just shoehorned in a final confrontation with Adrien Brody spouting lines from the first movie out of context, just to get a rise out of us. There were so many forced call backs, you might as well have just had the cast of this film reminisce about the first one. Also, and this was a major missed opportunity, they did NOTHING to acknowledge the firepower that Adrien Brody was packing. His character had an AA-12. Just watch…

It makes the mini-gun Jesse Ventura was toting look like a super soaker. There are a host of other things wrong with the flick but, long story short, save your money. If you want to see a great character-driven monster movie, go watch Aliens or Pitch Black.

Here’s an item that caught my eye…

Larry Hagman of ‘Dallas’ fame becomes the new face of SolarWorld – Actor Larry Hagman was all about petroleum when he played oil magnate J.R. Ewing in television’s long running “Dallas” series. These days, he’s pitching solar energy with a new slogan — “Shine, baby, shine,” — soon to air on a television near you. Hagman is the face of a new ad campaign for SolarWorld.

This story struck me because… Larry Hagman is still alive? Forget pushing solar energy, I thought he was pushing daisies five years ago. He’s probably advocating solar energy out of self-preservation, since he could be used as fossil fuel. Also, I think this is the face I’d want selling my product…Use solar energy or Larry Hagman will swallow your soul.

Wow, I haven’t even gotten to my fever dream of a trip to Natural Bridge, VA. It deserves it’s own blog, but I can tease you with this in the meantime…

To be continued…

Independent Thought

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, Conan O'Brien, funny, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, jokes, LeBron James

Hey there ‘Redheads… I hope everyone got through the 4th of July weekend with all of their extremities intact. Nothing says American freedom like setting off enough Chinese fireworks to have won the goddamn Revolutionary War in the first place. I think it’s kinda poetic, because in 100 years, we’ll declare financial independence from the Chinese by dumping a payload of sparklers into the Yangtze. Oh, the sense that could make. Speaking of the future of our American history textbooks, I hope everyone has set aside the time to watch the big LeBron James one-hour television extravaganza on ESPN tomorrow night. I know I can’t wait to find out where a 25 year-old will be making $100 million. Unless he chooses the winning city by throwing darts at a map, or he says that his Nike puppet will play his away games, or he reveals that he’s signing with the Washington Redskins, there isn’t a pie chart in the world that could accurately display just how little I care. Go where you will, win something, and shut the fuck up. I’m also glad the World Cup is just about done. It’s the wooden shoes and tulips versus empanadas and rain that stays mainly on the plain. Whoever wins, you can be assured their celebrations will be drowned out by the locust mating call of the vuvuzelas…

Over the weekend, I had to settle a small matter of comedy unpleasantness that came to my attention when I was driving home from the show in Maine. That Sunday was the night of the big TBS comedy special that featured the writers of the new Conan O’Brien Show. As it turns out, one of the writers, a comic named Josh Comers, does a joke about removing the analogies from the SATs that is identical to my joke about removing the analogies from the SATs. I went through my old VHS tapes of my early open mic sets and found an instance of me telling the joke from October of 2002…

Obviously, it’s more polished now and I was telling it to a grand total of about 7 people in that clip, but there it is. Unfortunately, the TBS video isn’t embeddable, but here’s the link to the special (skip to part 5, the joke is at the 2:40 mark…sorry about all the Twix commercials). I wanted to get in touch with him, so I did what anyone does these days, I looked him up on Facebook. This was our correspondence…

Hey there Josh…

I’m a comic out of DC who’s been performing about 8 years now in clubs around the country. On my way home from a gig last Sunday night, I get a call from a comedy buddy of mine who tells me to “turn on TBS right now.” I wasn’t able to then, but I’ve looked at the video online and you tell a joke that’s identical to one I’ve been telling since 2003. It’s the joke about taking the analogies out of the SATs. Same delivery. Same punch. I’m not accusing you of anything. I hope it’s just a case of parallel thinking and a good sign I could write for Conan someday. It was just a kick in the teeth hearing one of my favorite jokes being told on TV by someone who isn’t me.

–Jared Stern

Hey Jared. I absolutely cringed reading your message. As a comic, there’s nothing worse than feeling like one of your favorite jokes may have been ripped off.

Jared, I can assure you that this is a case of parallel thinking. I can’t pinpoint the exactly how long I’ve been doing the joke without going back and listening to cassettes, but I’ve been doing it for many years myself. No one has ever come up to me and said, “I heard someone else doing that joke”. If they did, I probably would have kicked the wall then stopped doing the joke, unless I could be certain I came up with it first.

I pride myself on my joke writing and being original. Good jokes are precious. I would never lift a joke one from another comic and have zero respect for anyone that does.

I appreciate your very reasoned tone about this. I hope what I’ve written here allays any suspicions and we can agree that this is one of those cases of parallel thinking.

Okay. So, where do we go from here?

Josh

That is a fine question, Josh… I guess I’ll be the one to give it up. You did it on TV, so anyone who sees me tell it from now on will think I cribbed it from the TBS special. It is on my CD, by the way, which isn’t exactly burning up the charts, but I sell it on the road.

It stinks, but it just confirms that I need to write more. Sorry to bug you about it. Good luck with the show.

–Jared

Jared, this may be ridiculous, but what if we both continued to do it from time to time? The fact is, for now, I’m pretty much anchored here in LA, and you’re on the road. I bet there’s likely a very small cross section of people who will see us both do that joke.

I’d understand if you’re resigned to dropping it, but I don’t know if it’s totally necessary right now. Hell, if we both drop it we may be motivated to write a joke of equal quality. Either way, I’m thinking I probably won’t do it as much given the situation.

I had totally forgotten that a similar thing happened to me once years ago. I was watching an old friend do a set on Letterman and he did a bit I’d been doing for a while. I had to stop doing the bit. While I’m guessing he’d seen me do it at some point, I never confronted him on it because he was a good guy who I didn’t think would never lift anything intentionally. Maybe he just absorbed it? Anyway, it still sucked.

In the mean time, let’s both write more stand up jokes. Just not the same ones.

Happy 4th.

Josh

Long story short, I’m probably going to drop it. Hopefully, the next time I manage to parallel a late night comedy writer, it can be in career trajectory.

To be continued…

Maine Lining

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, funny, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, PortCon

Hey there, ‘Redheads… From time to time I bring you news from the far away lands that I’m paid to bring mirth to. Well, last weekend I hitched the Mild Amusement Express to the tauntaun of the Geek Comedy Tour to trek up to Maine to play PortCon 2010 with geek jesters, Jake Young and Chris Barylick. The GCT specializes in turning the tables on society’s natural instinct to give wedgies to the uber-nerds among us and instead relates to them with professional grade inside jokes. PortCon is an Anime/Sci-fi convention that gives all of the kids that spent most of high school inside their lockers a safe haven to let their geek flags fly with impunity. These are the kind of people who know that Newton’s 1st Law of Motion is, “Do not talk about Newton’s Laws of Motion.” The inside of that hotel looked like a Hot Topic (and in many cases, a Torrid) exploded. It was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas if Hunter S. Thompson played Dungeons & Dragons and Dr. Gonzo watched Pokemon…
You may be saying to yourself, “Jared, you’re not a geek. How ever did you manage to blend in?” Surprisingly well…
When it comes to geek world, I’m a daywalker of sorts (which is enough of a dork reference to give me away). It wasn’t so long ago that I attended a convention like this, with my bag of dice and my tattered character sheets. Actually, it pains me just how long ago it was. Back in my day, we flocked to the room full of 386’s to gawk at Castle Wolfenstein. These kids have networked PS3’s for Super Street Fighter 4 tournaments. I entered one of these tourneys to test the myth of my skillz. I was promptly bounced like Mel Gibson at Jay-Z’s BET Awards after-party. I button mashed valiantly, but I was no match for these whippersnappers who could pull off unblockable super combos like you or I check our email. I have a pretty good base knowledge of the geek world, but I was further out of touch than my ironic Star Wars t-shirt let on.

Our show was on Sunday afternoon in the giant outdoor tent that held the techno dance party the night before. What does a techno dance party at a geek convention look like, you ask? A little like this…

We got a huge crowd in there to see us, thanks in part to the impromptu flyers that Jake made up…
Roughly 200 eager geeks poured into the tent to check us out. My one big regret was not taking pictures during the show, but trust me, we were goddamn rock stars. I’ve done one other geek event with these guys, and I can honestly say that geek crowds are my favorite. They’re smart and they like to fill silences with applause. God (or whoever has their back) bless ’em every one.

I’ve got more from this trip, but it’s getting late, so I’ll get back to this soon.

To be continued…

Vu Vu, Zela…

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, funny, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, soccer, vuvuzela

Hey there, ‘Redheads… I hope you’ve got better things to do with yourself on a Friday night than I do. Here I sit, slaving over a lukewarm keyboard, so I can deliver a reheated batch of cobbled together Facebook status updates. The evening hasn’t been a complete waste. I was inexplicably possessed with the urge to take a roughly three mile stroll. I think I sprained a sweat. What cured me of my case of Restful Leg Syndrome? Maybe I’m just pumped up about the Wild World of Cup…

Have you caught World Cup fever? I’m not sure what I’ve caught just yet. Maybe it’s World Cup whooping cough. All I know is, now that the NBA has finished up, I’m ready for some futbol. Cue Hank Williams Jr. All my rowdy friends are here for…Friday morning. I was a little torn about today’s game between USA and Slovenia. Of course I was rooting for the home squad, but I felt a certain kinship with the Slovenians. I’ve often been called “slovenly”. And WOOHOO! A 2-2 tie! Yeah! Go team! Way to…finish the way you started. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned so far watching these games it’s, “Take the under.” I’ve seen more scoring at the Amish Star Trek convention after party. I suppose I’m like most Americans. We want action. Our eyes are trained to enjoy stuff like this (WARNING: If you’re epileptic, grab a spoon)…

Whatever your opinion of the action, you have to respect what these athletes are able to do on the pitch, especially when they’re surrounded on all sides by a giant swarm of bees. What’s that? Oh, right. That incessant buzzing is the South African ricola horn, the vuvuzela. Is it just me or does “vuvuzela” sound like the name of Jerry’s girlfriend in the Telemundo Seinfeld episode where her name rhymed with a female body part? It actually reminds me of being on the floor of the World Series of Poker a couple years ago. All you could hear was 800 players continuously shuffling chips. It sounded like it was raining. So, a lone vuvuzela probably isn’t so bad. A couple thousand of them and it sounds like you’ve got a blown speaker on your TV for the whole game.

Speaking of unbridled noisy patriotism, remove your hat and check out this ode to the American spirit…

If that doesn’t get you juiced up to watch our boys leave their cleat marks in another nation’s behind, then move to Russia.

That’s all for now. To be continued…

Double Double…

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, funny, Helen Thomas, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, Strasburg, The Goonies

Hey there ‘Redheads… I just got done watching Stephen Strasburg’s debut for the Washington Nationals. The kid’s got a cannon for an arm. One thing I don’t get about baseball tradition. Why in the hell would you smear a shaving cream pie in the face of your new stud pitcher after the game? “Great game, rookie.” “GAH! MY EYES!” Why don’t you give him a celebratory cleated stomp on the hand while you’re at it. I’m not saying a pie in the face isn’t a great way to welcome a rookie, but why not use an actual cream pie? Embarrassing AND delicious.

As you know, many jokes come at another person’s expense. Some have smaller accounts to draw from and some can pay for years of ridicule. This installment of the blog is going to be making a withdrawal from the bank of Helen Thomas. Don’t know who that is? Well, here’s a picture to help you out…No, wait, that’s not her. Here ya go…No, that’s still not right. Here it is…She recently retired over some controversial comments she made about the Israelis and Palestine and mentioning that they should go back to Germany and Poland…on camera…to a Rabbi. Any time you tell a race of people to go back where they came from or make a vague reference to the Holocaust, it’s not going to end well. Helen was a fixture in the White House press room, and by “fixture”, I mean she had taken root over the 50 years she’d been there. It’s not clear whether she’ll be returned to Jim Henson’s Creature Shop or if she’ll look into a lucrative career spinning straw into gold. Is she even retiring or did someone finally just say her name backwards three times? She makes an English bulldog look like Joan Rivers. At this point, I figured the White House spokespeople were only answering her questions because they thought she would allow them to cross her bridge. After such a long stretch, she’ll probably just return home and spend more time gardening and frightening the crap out of her grandchildren. Or she may sublet your nightmares. Surreal estate, I guess. Anyway, Helen, I hear Poland or Germany are nice this time of year.

Also, a belated happy 25th anniversary to one of my favorite movies, The Goonies. Have a Baby Ruth and go exploring. Or do the Truffle Shuffle. Unfortunately, I’m much better equipped to do that dance now than when I was 10. Check this out. Apparently, there’s a deleted scene from the end of the flick where the gang fend off a giant octopus…

Finally, a very happy birthday to my impossibly cute niece, Riva…She’s the big 0-2 today. I look forward to sharing a Fudgy the Whale with her this weekend. There’s a nice visual lime wedge to bite into after the bitter tequila shot of Helen Thomas, eh?

To be continued…

Remember

by jaredsterncomedy, posted in comedy, Dennis Hopper, Gary Coleman, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Jared Stern, memorial day, Rue McClanahan

Hey there ‘Redheads… I hope everyone had a memorable Memorial Day weekend. I managed to get three bbqs under my belt. Good food + good friends = good times. It was not a good weekend for the world of pop culture iconography, as we lost another pair, Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper. Both were disappointing, but not shocking. Hopper had been battling cancer and Coleman just seemed to be cursed.

When I heard that Gary Coleman passed, I did two things. First, I braced for the tidal wave of incessant parroting of his catch phrase, “What’choo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” Second, I hopped on IMDB to check out what else, besides Diff’rent Strokes, he’d been in. When I clicked on his page, there were a couple related articles regarding the fall that led to his critical condition. One of the headlines caught my eye. It read, “Coleman’s Diff’rent Strokes Dad ‘Praying’ For Star.” I didn’t know what was more shocking, that Gary Coleman was dead or that Conrad Bain was alive. Then I found out that Charlotte Rae was also on the right side of the dirt. Somebody check on Danny Cooksey…Turns out, Danny Cooksey was John Connor’s redhead delinquent pal in Terminator 2. Nice to see he found work. But I digress.

Next to go was movie legend, Dennis Hopper. My first introduction to Hopper was as the nutty hippie science teacher in the sci-fi classic, My Science Project. Do yourself a favor and rent it, if you can even find it on DVD. I never saw Easy Rider, but I loved him in Blue Velvet and Speed. I’ll do the man a favor and not sully his memory by mentioning Waterworld or Super Mario Brothers. As a tribute to Mr. Hopper, please to enjoy one of the greatest scenes on film, between he and Christopher Walken, in True Romance…

And now, because the rule of three must be satisfied (though technically it’s four, because Dio started the new cycle), we lost yet another Golden Girl, Rue McClanahan. I picture Betty White holding a sword aloft as lightning coarses through the blade… There can be only one! We need to be mindful of this precious natural resource that is slowly fading away. Without the beloved celebrities from our youth, what will we ironically reference? So, treasure the Betty Whites and the Abe Vigodas while they’re still here to be in Snickers commercials because pretty soon, that’s all we’ll have to remember them by…

Arnold Jackson, Clifford Worley, and Blanche Devereaux, you will be missed.

To be continued…