Fred Armisen, a drummer, tells jokes that pretty much only a drummer would love and then ups the ante by going into guitarist humor. (Late Night with Conan O'Brien)

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InstantSunrise on Twitter embarked upon a Twitter epic: dragging every single U.S. president in chronological order. [via Kottke]

George Washington: Dude was a shit-ass general who owned slaves and when the working class realized that they were getting the same shit ass deal as before under the British and rose up, Washington came down on them like a ton of bricks to secure power.

John Adams: you want somebody who hates freedom of speech. Adams signed a bill saying you couldn’t talk shit about him, and made it harder to become a citizen (though not as hard as it is today). In fairness though, he didn’t own slaves, this is going to be a rarity going forwar.

Thomas Jefferson: Motherfucker owned slaves, and was a rapist, committed forced removal against Native Americans. Started an actual war in North Africa and a trade [war] with with Britain that would eventually escalate into an actual war.

Jimmy Carter: Began a long tradition of democratic candidates moving to the right to appeal to conservatives, only to get spat in the face and appeasing them by moving to the right even more. Stabbed labor in the back with deregulation.

James Mickens (previously) has a well-deserved reputation for being the information security world's funniest speaker, and if that were all he did, he would still be worth listening to. Read the rest

Johnathan Movie is losing his shit and it's all our fault. Read the rest

Those of us who eschew a phone case take a lot of abuse in this cruel world. Finally, a send-up of all the things we endure from case freaks and their misguided fanaticism. Note: some spicy language that reflects what we have to deal with. Read the rest

People want to know all kinds of things about funnyman Will Arnett. For instance, is he related to Michael Keaton? (No, but he does a great impression of him.) So, to promote his new movie Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, he sat down to answer the internet's most pressing questions in Wired's Autocomplete Interview. It's funny. Read the rest

Last Monday, David Sedaris was granted an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Oberlin College in Ohio. Then, he gave the keynote address for the school's 2018 commencement ceremony. It was, of course, perfectly hilarious and full of spot-on, no-holds-barred advice for the new grads.

On May 24, just prior to giving the speech, the humorist and essayist appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (video above) and discussed how he picked the advice he was going to share, "Well, it kind of makes you wonder, 'What do I know? What wisdom do I have?' So I started keeping a list of my wisdom. Part of it is, you have to be really careful about scented candles. There's really only two kinds worth having... Diptyque or Trudon."

That was the first piece of advice he shared with Oberlin's graduating class. There are seven more, all gems, including "Be yourself. Unless 'yourself' is an asshole." Watch.

Also, Sedaris has a new book. It's called Calypso. Read the rest

If you've been to San Francisco lately, no doubt that you've seen the 1,070-foot architectural monstrosity known as the Salesforce Tower. The new skyscraper is hard to miss as it's now the tallest building in the city's skyline and because it looks like a big, shiny phallus.

You can't escape it. It can be spotted from nearly everywhere you go in the city. I can even see it from various points in Alameda.

Married couple Nikki and Stone Melet noticed it too. They were so amused by it that they started the site "Just the Tip SF" as a humorous way to document what I have dubbed, the "TechBro Dick."

Nikki told ABC7News, "I was dropping my daughter off at school and I saw the tower. I was driving down the street and I saw the tower. I'm like, this is crazy, you can see the tip from everywhere."

People are encouraged to send in their own photos of "just the tip" from wherever they may see it.

photo by Rusty Blazenhoff, taken from Pier 39 pedestrian bridge Read the rest

I found John Hodgman's Vacationland to be a genuinely moving and hilarious read; and it has stuck with me in the year since its hardcover release -- now it's out in paperback, and Hodgman is touring with it. Read the rest

I've been patiently awaiting this Bad Lip Reading of the Royal Wedding, and, I have to say, it was worth the wait.

"Let's all try to be the best squirrel in the hole."

Previously: Bad Lip Reading videos on BB Read the rest

A couple of weeks ago, comedian Jim Gaffigan took a stab at writing cartoon captions for The New Yorker. Turns out he's really good at it, almost as good as 9-year-old Alice Kassnove.

Previously: Jim Gaffigan takes over a woman's Tinder, hilarity ensues Read the rest

When I first started watching this "outtakes" video by entertainment site BlendTV, I thought it was real. They took the part of Harry and Meghan's wedding where they exchange their vows and made it better, or at least funnier, by redubbing it.

(reddit) Read the rest

Activate your willing suspension of disbelief because Squirrel Monkey's back with Wonders of the World Wide Web. In this episode, they envision Amazon, "the department store of the future," as a virtual department store in the eighties. It's not historically accurate by any means, but that's part of what makes it so fun to watch.

Previously: If Siri existed in the 1980s Read the rest

Almost nothing riles up a cat like the red dot of a laser pointer mysteriously moving around on a surface. But what would happen if one of them actually caught it?

The latest episode of Los Angeles-based visual effects artist Aaron Benitez's comedic series, "Aaron's Animals," imagines just that. The cat, Prince Michael, gets his day in the sun after nabbing that pesky little red dot.

(Tastefully Offensive) Read the rest

The #BadStockPhotosOfMyJob has had some worthy entries so far, like OB/GYN Dr. Jennifer Gunter's comment on this gem: "I always give a thumbs up after a pelvic exam, it’s so not creepy at all." Read the rest

When I watched the Brady Bunch as a youngster, there was one particular deep guffaw that always caught my attention. I knew the laughs were pre-recorded but always assumed that there was just a laugh track tape and they'd press play at the appropriate times. I liked (and still like) the faux communal experience that laugh tracks provide when watching the Bradys, Bewitched, the Beverly Hillbillies, and other great vintage sitcoms from the 1960s an early 1970s.

Turns out, that the rise of the laugh track was due to Charles Douglass (1910-2003), a Navy-trained electronics engineer/maker who went on to build a custom "Laff Box" of several dozen tape loops triggered by keys and dials. After its initial use on the Jack Benny Program, the machine, officially called the "Audience Reaction Duplicator," took the TV industry by storm. Douglass "played" the Laff Box like a proto-sampler and for years had the monopoly on TV laugh tracks. It was a process that the TV show producers and Douglass himself liked to keep secret.

It wasn't until 1992 that Douglass and his pioneering work at the intersection of media, psychology, and technology was recognized with a lifetime Emmy award for technical achievement.

For the whole story on Douglass and the Laff Box, don't miss this episode of the Decoder Ring podcast.

And here is an Antiques Roadshow segment appraising a Laff Box.

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Not only is Ron Howard the narrator (and an executive producer) on the Arrested Development, he's also the director of the upcoming Solo: A Star Wars Story. So, it was only natural that the two entities got combined somehow, especially since they both have end of the month release dates**.

Enter Star Wars: A New Hope, a clever parody that melds the music, narration, and editing style of the popular sitcom with the story of Star Wars.

It begins, "Now the story of a family that wants to rule the galaxy and the one son who had no choice but to save it." (The original narration began, "Now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together.)

**Season 5 of Arrested Development begins on May 29 on Netflix. Solo: A Star Wars Story opens in theaters on May 25.

(Blame it on the Voices) Read the rest