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@PFTompkins -> YHZ
Facebook brings comic to Halifax
Through the magic power of Facebook, L.A.-based comedian Paul F. Tompkins is coming to Halifax March 27 to do two shows at The Company House at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and tickets are now on sale.
Tompkins, known for appearances on the cult HBO series Mr. Show and Tenacious D as well as his wry standup act, promised local fans that he would do a show here if they started a Facebook group that garnered at least 300 members.
Now he’s making good on his promise, and tickets are available online at paulftompkinsinhalifax.eventbrite.com for $25 (plus a $1.77 fee)
You can also e-mail arcadiaresearch@gmail.com to make alternate arrangements to purchase and pick up tickets.
The Company House is a general admission venue. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.
[via @chronicleherald]
Enema Bag Jones
The Wrong Guy (1997)—“Nelson Hibbert”
DF: Yes, I wrote that with Jay Kogen, who I met while doing It’s Pat, and my friend Dave Higgins, who we had all met because we were on Comedy Central together. He used to be part of a troupe called Higgins Boys And Gruber. Kids In The Hall really liked those guys. We had guested on their show years earlier. The three of us wrote The Wrong Guy… I think we wrote it at the same time we were writing Brain Candy, so I was writing both of those at the same time until I actually quit Kids In The Hall. I remember being very excited, because I was suddenly in a position to hire David Steinberg. I actually went to a dinner meeting to interview David Steinberg, who was one of my boyhood comedy heroes. I used to watch The David Steinberg Show on PBS back when it was a replacement series. I used to watch him host The Tonight Show. And then he had a series in Canada called The David Steinberg Show that was the first place people saw John Candy and Joe Flaherty and Marty Short, Dave Thomas. They were all regulars on The David Steinberg Show before SCTV was on the air.
AVC: He was notorious for his appearances on The Smothers Brothers as well.
DF: David Steinberg was the reason the Smothers Brothers got cancelled. He did a sermon about Moses and the burning bush, and CBS said if they didn’t cut it from the show, they were going to cancel ’em, and the Smothers Brothers said, “Well, you better cancel us.” So David Steinberg caused the Smothers Brothers to have their TV show cancelled.
Posted in Film Comments closed
FREE At The Purple Onion
Posted in Film, Totally Random, Viral Video Comments closed
My Old Geocities Vanity URL
Posted in Totally Random Comments closed
The Comedic & Cartoon Minority
Muhammad Ali in Esquire (1968)
Ricky Gervais in Esquire (2009)
Darine Stern in Playboy (1971)
Marge Simpson in Playboy (2009)
Posted in Critique, Images, Media Watch Comments closed
Hollywood Reporter Reviews in Review
Astro Boy: “among the year’s best”
Fantastic Mr. Fox: “too sly for its own good”
Where the Wild Things Are: “uninvolving adaptation”
Posted in Critique, Film, Media Watch, Quotes, Writing Comments closed
So Happy Together
Very often people oddly put books against the internet…I love them. You don’t throw away your books when you buy a computer. You keep both. The beauty of living in the present day is you don’t abandon the past. The past co-exists.
—Stephen Fry, Stephen Fry: The internet and Me | BBC News
Magazines are my happy place…I think print and the Internet complement each other more than people realize.
— Derek Powazek, From Natural Disaster Comes … an Instant Magazine | Time
Posted in Media Watch, Quotes, Word! Comments closed
A Serious Post
02-OCT-09: The Coen Brother’s A Serious Man
Like much of the Coens’ work, the climax is unexpected and thrilling, confounding and infuriating. The lack of high-profile performers lends an authenticity to the project, making it feel lived-in and real, instead of “Here’s a bunch of our famous friends in a vanity project.” Though never as absurd, A Serious Man is a spiritual cousin to Raising Arizona .
—Tara Thorne, The Coast
It is largely about misery and bad luck, and it’s very funny. Its hero’s first two words must have been oy vey. The Coens, who have a way of following their vision with unwavering consistency, do not flinch from the problems of poor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), which include a wife, son and daughter who cause him misery, a deeply flawed brother-in-law who has taken up residence on the sofa, three rabbis who are no help, and an exhibitionist neighbor who goes heavy on the eye liner and smokes during sex. If you aren’t Jewish when you go into this movie, you may be when you come out.
—Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times
Even with its recognizable tropes, there’s an element of ingenuity to “A Serious Man” when situated in the Coen canon. The movie synthesizes their past and present achievements. Recalling the situational comedy of “Burn After Reading” (which itself recalled the situational comedy of “Fargo”), Larry’s problems form a laundry list of insurmountable woes: He grapples with his nagging wife Judith (Sari Lennick) and her patronizing lover Sy (Fred Melamed), desperately tries to communicate with his aimless son (Aaron Wolff) on the brink of his bar mitzvah, dodges threats from a disgruntled student and feebly attempts to help his deadbeat brother (Richard Kind) solve a gambling problem. Though Larry’s troubles are exploited for the sake of the Coens’ prankish tendencies, he perseveres by way of spiritual convictions that play out with unexpected sincerity. Adopting a desperate stare and constant naivete, Larry oozes pathos. As an archaic symbol of the post-World War II nuclear family, he represents a dying breed, recalling Tommy Lee Jones’s resigned stance in “No Country for Old Men.” Thus, “A Serious Man” draws liberally from the Coens’ own work. At once devilishly confounding and mature, it’s unquestionably their most personal movie yet.
—Eric Kohn, IndieWIRE
This movie is utterly assured, personal, serious, sad and very funny.
—Anne Thompson, Thompson on Hollywood
The movie has no stars, few recognizable faces. And unlike so many American films, which cast gentiles in Jewish roles (Imelda Staunton, for example, as the stereotype mother in Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, also about suburban Jews in the ’60s), this one actually has ethnic-appropriate casting. The Jews here are sometimes broadly drawn — Larry’s family slurps soup at a decibel level that even th4e Simpsons would find deafening — but they’re fully assimilated,. Nobody says, “Oy vey!” or talks shtick. If people answer a question with a question, the first would be Larry’s plaintive “Why me?” when he seeks legal, emotional or spiritual help, and the second the world’s “Who cares?”
—Richard Corliss, Time
My God, that’s so cool!
“I’ve never seen more pride at Microsoft. You walk through the campus, and you see people’s laptops that have ‘I’m a PC’ stickers on them. I walk in the company store, and there are these huge banners that say, ‘I’m a PC’ and shirts and ties and mugs. I think I made a difference. My God, that’s so cool!”
—Sean Siler, Microsoft employee and John Hodgman as PC look-a-like via Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back? | New York Times.
Posted in Consumerism, Nerd Alert Comments closed
links for 2009-08-14
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Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI Put Finishing Touches On Selves
One senior record label insider said: “Ours will be a file that you click on, it opens and it would have a totally brand-new look, with a launch page and all the different options. When you click on it you’re not just going to get the ten tracks, you’re going to get the artwork, the video and mobile products.”
Record companies have a trick up their sleeve for downloads | Timesonline
Posted in Music, Nerd Alert Comments closed
links for 2009-08-07
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Best Show FUN-draising Marathon