Best Show FUN-draising Marathon

Oh, hi there! It’s Tom Scharpling! The host of The Best Show On WFMU! You know me, right?

We are into Week Two of the WFMU fundraising marathon. If you are not aware of it, this is how the station raises money to stay on the air. The station is 100 percent listener sponsored. We don’t run ads and we don’t take corporate funding or government grants. And that’s what keeps the station 100 percent freeform, letting me do something as willfully stupid as The Best Show On WFMU every Tuesday, letting me and Jon Wurster do our thirty-five minute calls without commercial interruption or editorial feedback from anyone at any point.

My second and final Best Show for the 2010 marathon is this Tuesday March 9th between 8-11 PM EST. And if you’re a fan of Scharpling and Wurster or me or the people who call or the guests I have on or the podcast or freeform radio or stations that shouldn’t exist in the face of all the corporate creepiness, it’s a cause worth supporting. If we don’t reach our goal of 1.2 million dollars by the end of the marathon, we are In Trouble.

If you want to throw some support, please call 800-989-9368 or pledge online at www.wfmu.org BETWEEN 8-11 PM EST ON MARCH 9th! In addition to your money going to a worthy cause, you get a lot of stuff back.

Everybody who pledges 75 bucks or more automatically gets The Best Show On WFMU’s 2010 CHUMP STEAMROLLER FUN PACK. I’ve been cranking on this thing for awhile and it’s going to be AWESOME. But first let me tell you about the show on Tuesday March 9th between 8-11 PM EST.

We are going to have two awesome guys in the studio helping to raise money. The one and only PATTON OSWALT is going to be on hand with the hilarity. And if that’s not enough, the comedic force of nature that is JOHN HODGMAN also be LIVE IN THE STUDIO! There are going to be surprises galore and it is a guaranteed night of non-stop fun.

Now the details about The Best Show On WFMU 2010 CHUMP STEAMROLLER FUN PACK.

The first item in the Fun Pack is the first ever BEST SHOW ON WFMU DVD! It’s a full-length DVD called FANTASIA IN BEST SHOW MINOR, and it’s going to be amazing. It features stuff you’re never going to believe. Here are some of the people who are going to be involved in the DVD:

PATTON OSWALT  ?  TED LEO  ?  PAUL F. TOMPKINS  ?  ZACH GALIFIANAKIS  ?  FUCKED UP  ?  TIM AND ERIC  ?  JOHN HODGMAN  ?  AIMEE MANN  ?  SCHARPLING AND WURSTER  ?  YO LA TENGO  ?  KURT VILE  ?  MATT FRACTION  ?  TODD BARRY  ?  JASON WOLINER

And SO MANY MORE. There’s going to be puppets. Animation. Scharpling and Wurster stuff like you’ve never seen before. Travelogues from callers like Fredericks from New Port Richie, Julie from Cincinnati, AP Mike and more! Seriously – there are so many people working so hard on this thing. It’s gonna be legendary. And when the marathon is over, this thing is COMPLETELY UNVAILABLE.

The second part of the Chump Steamroller Fun Pack is a set of BEST SHOW TRADING CARDS depicting your favorite callers and characters from the show. They are being designed by Chris Moses and Joe Allen – two guys who have done amazing jobs with previous Best Show projects – and they are outdoing themselves on this! We’re lining up artists – for starters Michael Kupperman, Danny Hellman, Evan Dorkin and Brian Musikoff are on board – and they gonna be jaw droppingly great. And again, these cards will be GONE FOREVER if you don’t pledge DURING MY MARATHON SHOWS!

Last but not least, the first ever BEST SHOW BUMPER STICKER. Also awesome and also available ONLY BY PLEDGING DURING MY MARATHON SHOWS.

Once the marathon is over, THEY ARE GONE FOREVER.

There are pledge levels at $150, $365, $500, $1000 and $3000, and the station takes care of you big-time with a TON of awesome prizes and shirts and CDs that you can’t get anywhere else. And unlike that PBS or NPR crap, WFMU’s premiums are all top-notch and well made -€“ who hasn’t seen a cool WFMU t-shirt in their travels? And everything is 100 percent TAX DEDUCTABLE!

And as an added bonus, anyone who pledges $1000 gets something special just from me. It’s a secret. Seriously – I know I’m being vague here but trust me on this one. I’ve got something JUST FOR YOU. I’ll make you happy with it – I PROMISE.

We will also be drawing for three AMAZING GRAND PRIZES at the end of the show. Grand Prize #1 is a COMPLETE MONTY PYTHON DVD set AUTOGRAPHED BY TERRY GILLIAM! Grand Prize #2 is the MISFITS BOX SET – one of the greatest bands ever, with all their stuff in an amazing coffin-shaped box! Grand Prize #3 is a ROBERT POLLARD/BOSTON SPACESHIPS super set! If you win this, you will get a ton of Boston Spaceships vinyl, a limited BS block print that is as yet unavailable and a 7″ test pressing of an upcoming single with a printed sleeve – there are only FIVE OF THESE IN EXISTENCE! Everyone who pledges 75 bucks or more will be in the running for these prizes, but you can only be in the running by pledging DURING MY SHOW!

And if you want to support the station but don’t have the money right now, YOU DON’€™T HAVE TO PAY YOUR PLEDGE RIGHT AWAY! The station sends you a bill in the mail and you can take care of it later. You can structure your payments in EASY MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS! But the important thing is pledging and being a part of something Good in a world that is filled with Too Much Bad, especially in These Troubling Times.

IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO CALL OR PLEDGE ONLINE DURING MY SHOW, I will gladly write the pledge up myself. You can email me your information – name, address and pledge amount – and I will fill it out myself. All addresses and information is completely confidential and is not sold or distributed in any way shape or form, so don’t worry about your privacy. Write me at toms@wfmu.org and I’€™ll take care of it.

And PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT THIS! Put it on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and maybe even Friendster if you can still remember your password. Post it on like-minded message boards! Tell co-workers and friends and family members and whoever! The station has a huge mountain to climb this time, but we can do it if enough people step up to the plate and pitch in.

THE FACTS:
?…Tuesday March 9th between 8-11 PM EST
?˜…PATTON OSWALT and JOHN HODGMAN both LIVE IN STUDIO
?˜…THREE GRAND PRIZES – Misfits box, Terry Gilliam-signed Monty Python DVD set, Boston Spaceships mega-pack including rare test pressing!
?CALL 1-800-989-9368 or PLEDGE ONLINE at www.wfmu.org on TUESDAY MARCH 9th between 8-11 PM EST and be counted!

Thank you!
Tom Scharpling.

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Man-children of Men

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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]

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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.

RANDOM ROLES: Dave Foley | A.V. Club

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FREE At The Purple Onion

FREE Zach Galifianakis: Live At The Purple Onion | YouTube from Shout! Factory.

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My Old Geocities Vanity URL

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/4313

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The Comedic & Cartoon Minority

Muhammad Ali in Esquire (1968)

Muhammad Ali in Esquire (1968)


Ricky Gervais in Esquire (2009)

Ricky Gervais in Esquire (2009)


Darine Stern in Playboy (1971)

Darine Stern in Playboy (1971)


Marge Simpson in Playboy (2009)

Marge Simpson in Playboy (2009)

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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”

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Windom Earle to the Max

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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

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The Twisted Song by RoMoMac

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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

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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.

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links for 2009-08-21

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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

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Clifford (1994) featuring Where the Wild Things Are




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Helmet the Helmet

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