If Vladimir Putin didn't convince you that good pecs and hair do not qualify you to govern, I give you Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime ministerial princeling whose years in office have proven that there is no policy so progressive that he will not back it -- provided he never has to do anything to make it happen. Read the rest
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it cross it.
Watch as first-time riders, Tyler and Ariel, get bucked off by an uncooperative horse.
You can see the punchline coming a mile off, but it's a good one. Read the rest
Volume One of Man-Eaters, Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk's scathing, hilarious, brilliant comic about girls who turn into man-eating werepanthers when they get their periods, is the best comic I read in 2019, and Volume Two, just published by Image comics, continues the brilliance with a set of design-fiction-y fake ads and other collateral that straddle the line between a serious piece of science fictional world-building and Switfian satire. Read the rest
I was already a Terry Pratchett fan and a Neil Gaiman fan in 1990, when their comedic novel Good Omens showed up in the bookstore I worked at, and I dibsed it, took it home over the weekend, read it in huge gulps, and wrote an enthusiastic review on a 3x5 card that I tacked to the bookshelf next to it on the new release rack at the front of the store; I hand-sold hundreds of copies, and have read it dozens of times since. Read the rest
Level two, "Amateur", sounded so good that I suspected a joke was afoot. It was, but only the sort of joke a virtuoso like Rob Landes could pull off. Read the rest
Randall "XKCD" Munroe's next book has been announced: How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems, a sequel of sorts to his 2014 book What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions, spun out of his wonderful XKCD spinout site. It's out on Sept 3, and the publisher's description makes it (as Kottke says) an instant pre-order: "For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally bad that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole." Read the rest
Mark Marino is following up on his previous course on "how to write and read fake news" with an unaccredited Masters Class in Dad Jokes: "In this classy class, we’ll explore the ins and outs of jokes only dads would tell. Patronize the patriarchy with us as we explore a form of humor so painful to hear they’re endEARing. You don’t have to be a dad, have a dad, or have bagged a dad (ahem) to be in this course. All it takes is a shameless love a puns and a sense that no joke is too corny. Learn to make young people groan or maybe just to appreciate the punning paters in your life!" (apply here) Read the rest
Emergency rooms at for-profit hospitals are notorious price-gougers, where an ice-pack and a bandage can cost $5,000, and where no one will tell you how much your care is costing until months after the fact. Read the rest
Internet funnyperson Choire "Awl" Sicha (previously) has a new gig: New York Times advice columnist; Sicha is not fucking around either: "The only circumstance in which you can ask this woman out is if she sends you a literal ink-on-paper invitation to do so, like, in calligraphy and maybe with a seal stamped in wax, which would be awesome. (Also might mean she’s a vampire?) But, sure, you can totally ask her out if you don’t care about (1) her security about working with men in any capacity forever or (2) your career! Then have a blast, cannonball as many lives as possible on your way down the trash chute." (via Kottke) Read the rest
Some of the funniest products to come down the pipeline in years are Archie McPhee's line of squirrel feeders. By putting some food inside a tiny head (like a horse or a unicorn), a squirrel will unwittingly become part of a hilarious show.
Now folks are making their own versions. We first saw the Donald Trump head squirrel feeder back in July and now, thanks to comic book artist Sean Chan, there's one that has the squirrel donning the spooky Ghostface mask from the movie Scream.
It's never not funny:
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The Groundlings — the comedy troupe that boasts top-notch alumni like Paul Reubens, Cassandra Peterson, Phil Hartman, and many more — are now producing original sketch comedy shorts on YouTube.
Here is a look at what they've got so far:
If you're in the Los Angeles area, check out their live sketch comedy Halloween show this Friday or Saturday. Read the rest
Have bad type choices got you bummed out?
Don't despair, type foundry Hoefler&Co. has got you covered. Their 50-page novelty Typographic Ticket Book makes it easy to play the enforcer of design infractions like "improper kerning" and "unironic use of Helvetica."
...let us praise Hoefler & Co.’s attention to detail. The Ticket Book nails all the design conventions of municipal meter-maid gear: “things set in ALL CAPS that would be easier to read in lowercase, searing colors that dazzle the eyes, and confounding administrative indicia like bar codes and form numbers,” says Jonathan Hoefler. “And Helvetica. If the state is dressing you down, it’s always in Helvetica. Helvetica means you’re in trouble.”
The delights don’t stop there. Individual citation codes run the gamut from dad-jokey (“poor typeface choice: 72-60-HUH”) to so-inside-baseball-it-hurts (“improper hyphenation/justification: 72-436-RVR“), with a few dashes of guffaw-inducing surrealism thrown in for kicks (“improper word spacing: 72-428-C/WLKN”… get it?). The ticket book includes 32 “common design infractions,” which Hoefler admits he had to edit down. “Space permitting, [it] could probably have run to at least 60,” he says.
The Typographic Ticket Book is available from Hoefler&Co. for $10.
FACIET MAIOR LOGO = "Make the logo bigger." Read the rest
Did you know that he once "smoked a jay" with Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Robert Altman on a mountaintop at a Cannes film festival after-party? Or that he was cast by Lee Majors himself to appear in The Fall Guy?
In this uncensored video, Jack Black shares honest and often hilarious moments from his career in show business by looking at his own IMDB page.
It's all great, but be sure to watch it at least to the part where he talks about Johnny Skidmarks. I was in stitches.
Solderer writes, "Old-school humor Magazine The American Bystander was dropped by its printer, citing prurient content (i.e. humor). Publisher Michael Gerber describes the ongoing situation in terms that would doubtless please Benjamin 'Fart Proudly' Franklin." Read the rest
These aren't the stories I'd expect to hear from Hillary Clinton... they're a bit more revealing than she's ever shared before. Read the rest
