From the Less Than Normal Mind of Jon Hess

The character names I submitted for this coming Wednesday’s The Chris Gethard Show are very...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:25:25 -0400

The character names I submitted for this coming Wednesday’s The Chris Gethard Show are very punny and very silly. The last Crowd Sourced Character Contest was so much fun, and arguably one of the best TCGS episodes—I cannot wait for this one. I laughed so hard last time—super pumped to see it return.

Check it out THIS WEDNESDAY AT 11:00PM

This is a drawing I drew today. It started as a doodle, then a...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:08:44 -0400

This is a drawing I drew today. It started as a doodle, then a friend of a friend taught me how to improve it over and over again and it turned into something I never would have thought I could draw.

Which says something about my drawing abilities and my confidence because this isn’t THAT good.

"JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will..."

Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:11:49 -0400

““JK Rowling created seven Horcruxes. She put a part of her soul in every book and now her books will live forever””

- -Stephen King (via howtedmethiswife)

#this was really sweet until i thought about the fact that if that were true she would have had to kill a person to create each one -Skyedestiny

How else do you explain Dumbledore, Snape, Fred, Lupid, Tonks, Hedwig, and Dobby?

(via vikingplumb)

I just fucking lost my shit.

(via connor-sexonlegswithahat-temple)

Are we just going to ignore the fact that somebody thought the name was spelled Lupid? I mean, d and n aren’t even close to each other on a keyboard…

mulanies: elysedc: mulanies: an anon asked me about podcasts...

Sun, 09 Jun 2013 18:48:54 -0400

mulanies:

elysedc:

mulanies:

an anon asked me about podcasts so instead of giving them a simple answer i created a power point presentation

comedy podcasts: a comprehensive guide by me

addition by elysedc because sister wives support each other

omg love the additions

They forgot The Chris Gethard Show.

More Specific?

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:45:08 -0400

improvnonsense:

What if you did a set and all you tried to do was make existing things more specific?

Someone says “nice day out”
And you go “Yep, bright blue sky.”

Just that much more. A notch more specific. Every line.

“Pass me that basketball.”
“The Spalding?”

I bet that’d be fun.

Much like The Chairmen, I bet this would be a great DCM bit show. I want to do this for DCM 16.

Photo

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:31:46 -0400

communitynbc: A personal favorite scene. What about you? WOULD...

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 22:31:32 -0400

communitynbc:

A personal favorite scene. What about you?

WOULD THAT THIS HOODIE WERE A TIME HOODIE!!!

#Shabbat: Just Jew It

Fri, 31 May 2013 20:24:50 -0400

#Shabbat: Just Jew It

connorratliff: ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: SOME SEASON FOUR...

Tue, 28 May 2013 20:44:52 -0400

connorratliff:

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: SOME SEASON FOUR THOUGHTS*

(*not particularly spoiler-ish, but maybe steer clear just in case if you’re still really wanting to be totally unspoiled?)

Mitch Hurwitz: “If the first series aspired to be The Godfather in terms of the family, this thing aspires to be a Godfather II. I’m sure a lot of people went to see The Godfather: Part II and said, ‘What happened to the machine guns? What are we doing in Cuba? Meetings? Who cares about meetings?’ But The Godfather II was more substantial and rewatchable. It was more complex. I aspire to do that kind of evolution with this. I don’t mean to compare it to The Godfather II — I just mean that, well, it’s not exactly what the audience expects, but I think it’ll scratch the itch.”

I used to watch Arrested Development— every episodes since S01E01— live on television, as it originally aired. I would frequently watch it first without laughing at all, believe it or not. I would always laugh more “on the re-watch.”

The re-watch usually happened immediately after the episode finished. At the time, only 3 percent of the viewing audience had DVRs. It was new to me, but I guess this was an instance where I was an early adopter. I’m shocked to learn that I was at one point “part of the 3%” because I was DVR-ing AD from the pilot onward.

So on Sunday, May 26th at 3:01am, I was watching new episodes of Arrested Development once again, as close to “live” as the Netflix streaming experience can be.

I made it through all 15 episodes by 12:20pm the next day.

I thought it was funny during the first go-round, but I’m already laughing more “on the re-watch.” And yet the main thing that everybody is reacting to— both positively and negatively— is that this new series is an entirely different creature from Seasons 1 through 3.

While the first 53 episodes of AD would each strain mightily to include an ensemble of 9 main characters and dozens (dozens!) of recurring ones into each 21-minute episode, scheduling and contractual issues meant that this new series would be more of an “anthology” series, which would focus mostly on one main character in any given episode, with sporadic instances of unpredictable crossover appearances by the other characters.

But while Hurwitz & Company could have easily knocked out 9 stand-alone episodes with funny jokes and a handful of callbacks, the series that they have delivered here is instead mind-bogglingly ambitious and audacious. I’m not sure I can think of another example in Comedy of any show doing something like this. When I think of what they are doing here, it brings to mind more things like Memento or LOST or Gosford Park or The Killing than any comedies. (Tarantino’s use of non-linear storytelling is probably the closest thing in terms of Comedy, maybe, though his films aren’t purely comedies.)

This makes me think of the previous examples of audacious long-form ambitious things Hurwitz has done with AD.

SEASON ONE: H. MADDAS

The first one was a total surprise. No one was expecting a sitcom to plant clues and have a big reveal that George Bluth, Sr., had been building houses in Iraq. All those jokes about “light treason” and “hey, Saddam’s houses looks a lot like the Bluth model home” just seemed like funny jokes. This was the kind of mind-bending thing that no one was prepared for as the first season came to a close.

SEASON TWO: LOOSE SEAL

All those references to “missing a hand” and seal attacks were there for a reason, but it was still a total shock and surprise when it happened. It was also a big, risky move that would have a huge impact on one of its main characters. It was a total shocker, and yet they still managed to use it to make the show even funnier. Score two for AD.

SEASON THREE: MR F

This one was more complicated and more divisive. A lot of people hate the “Rita Leeds” story arc, even though episodes like “Forget-Me-Now” and “Mr F” feature some of the shows funniest jokes. They introduced Charlize Theron as a character who Michael had to think was a gorgeous British pre-school teacher, while the show tried to imply that she was a British spy working for SCTV’s Dave Thomas, only to reveal to both Michael and the viewers that she was really the mysterious “MR F” and that those letters stood for “Mentally Retarded Female.”

It’s been pointed out that AD was essentially satirizing the “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” trope with this storyline, way before anybody else was making fun of that. It’s inarguable that this attempt at surprising the audience was less effective than previous efforts by AD, in part because by now the viewers were on the lookout. But it was also, I’d argue, a much bigger and bolder effort, because it was a deliberate gambit to get attention. Snagging a glamorous actor who had just won an Oscar to play the main role in this storyline and basically announcing the arc as if it was a big puzzle to be cracked was AD’s final effort to draw in some new viewers. Unfortunately, FOX didn’t run any commercials for it and pre-empted several episodes in the middle of it.

There are also, of course, several smaller arcs with reveals and surprises over the course of the show’s run on FOX, but I feel like those three are the big ones in terms of ambition.

SEASON FOUR: YEAR OF GLAD/TASTE THE HAPPY

I was trying to think of what would be a good point of comparison for the new series of AD on Netflix, and I keep coming back to Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace’s epic, sprawling novel about addiction, tennis, a dysfunctional family and a video called “The Entertainment” that people can’t stop watching over and over until they die.

Arrested Development Season Four is the sitcom equivalent of Infinite Jest.

Infinite Jest is huge, it’s non-linear, it’s clever and funny, and it isn’t afraid to go to some very dark and sad places. It requires an investment of time and attention before it will give up its pleasures. And most people either love it and read it repeatedly or they hate it and think it’s pretentious and overhyped or they “respect” what Wallace is trying to do but don’t enjoy it as a novel.

Fans of Infinite Jest are proud and obsessive and kind of annoying to the people who Just Don’t Get It. Sound familiar?

I mean, in Season Four of AD there are some stand-alone elements that are funny in every episode. I’d say that the “voting” sequence in the first episode, “Flight Of The Phoenix” is as funny as anything in the entirety of Seasons One through Three. Honestly, I’d put it up against anything: Michael Bluth obliviously attempting to strategize a way of voting out George Michael’s roommate, totally unaware that HE’S the one everyone wants to vote out, is cringeworthy, heartbreaking and hilarious all at once.

But sequences like this fall within a grand structure that makes the entire season a kind of puzzle box. We don’t know what has happened since 2006, and Hurwitz has created a dizzyingly complex and interconnected series of answers to those questions that lead us right up to a place where things are actually much more complicated than where he left the show in its final airing on FOX.

The New York Times published an idiotic review yesterday based on the first 8 episodes of ADS04 where the reviewer claimed to be a HUGE fan of the original series but then went on to describe the characters as “one-dimensional,” tipping his hand that whatever enjoyment he got from the old show, he didn’t REALLY get it. He opened his review by claiming that “The Internet” had “killed” Arrested Development, which is just the kind of hyperbolic thing I’d expect The Grey Lady to say about something new it didn’t fully understand. (It’s worth remembering that AD figured out that the Iraq War was a bad idea long before The NYTimes did.)

The first three seasons of AD on FOX were not as daunting as many of the show’s champions constantly said they were. They are easier to dip into than almost any reviewer ever claimed— you might miss some callbacks and some references, but each episode is packed with very clear narration to bring a viewer up to speed and there are still tons of great jokes that would be funny to a person watching for the first time.

Season Four, however, is not for the uninitiated, or for people looking for a fast-paced 21 minute sitcom. It’s a big, single work that is divided into chapters but it builds as it goes along. I’d argue that Season One is not so different— AD has a great pilot, but it still takes several episodes to truly find its footing, even though it’s enjoyable from the start.

It will be interesting to see how people think about it a year from now, or when the story is (hopefully) continued in a feature film.

It’s worth noting that during the second half of Season One, a sizable contingent of viewers were complaining that AD wasn’t as good as it had been in the first half of the season.

During Season Two, many were bemoaning how much the show had deteriorated since Season One.

Season Three was met with howls of complaint that the show had dropped in quality since the glory days of Season Two.

And now, 7 years later, many are convinced that the new show just can’t compare to the perfection that was Seasons One Through Three.

Who’s to say who is right? I dunno. You probably can’t trust anything I say! I think the show is really great, and I’m glad that they decided to be bold instead of just phoning it in.

But that’s just me. To each his/her(?) own.

I don’t think Connor could be MORE right in this intelligent, fair and interesting review. Read it.

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:17:59 -0400

"The Egg" By: Andy Weir

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:15:49 -0400

This is one of the coolest things I’ve ever read. Enjoy—and have a nice think when it’s over.

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

laughterkey: Come take a ride

Thu, 23 May 2013 04:39:53 -0400

laughterkey:

Come take a ride

Sitting out at a little #café in #Paris drinking a glass of...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:09:46 -0400

Sitting out at a little #café in #Paris drinking a glass of Bordeaux and doing a little #writing and thinking, watching the world go by. A really nice afternoon.

jonslondonexperiment: Paris photo set #3 And a third set. I...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:09:16 -0400

jonslondonexperiment:

Paris photo set #3

And a third set. I love Paris so much.

jonslondonexperiment: Paris photo set #2 Second set of photos...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:08:51 -0400

jonslondonexperiment:

Paris photo set #2

Second set of photos from Paris

jonslondonexperiment: Paris photo set #1. I love this city and...

Tue, 14 May 2013 12:08:29 -0400

jonslondonexperiment:

Paris photo set #1. I love this city and I will return one day!

First photos from a great trip to Paris!

The Chris Gethard Show: A Special Thing User "Jkwall" writes a guide for new people to get into TCGS!

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:23:17 -0400

The Chris Gethard Show: A Special Thing User "Jkwall" writes a guide for new people to get into TCGS!:

I watched the show from the beginning a while ago, after I started watching live one week (twice actually, first with the Bonnaroo stuff, then came back to it a bit later). I’ve become really obsessed with it since then. I think the show seems a bit daunting at first (it already has more…

Watch the best late night show on television. It’s daunting, but this makes The Chris Gethard Show easier to ease into!

thechrisgethardshow: Word on the street is, you kids don’t...

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:20:35 -0400

thechrisgethardshow:

Word on the street is, you kids don’t think we can top Zach Galifianakis giving strangers haircuts. We’ll give it to you, that was a pretty damn good episode.

But how about Amy Poehler predicting your future this week?

We know what your future holds.

This week, the TCGS gang is very happy to predict your future for you. When the show goes live on Wednesday, call us up at 212-757-1393. Tell us some facts about your past. Tell us some perceptions about your present. We will take that information, discuss it, and predict your future.

I promise that we will be right 100% of the time. History will prove us correct.

MORE INFO

IMPORTANT NOTE: This show is already sold out. Please do not e-mail for tickets, and please do not show up to our studio without a reservation - we will be forced to turn you away. Fire codes!

I hate shit like that: “you have a nice camera, take our...

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:20:18 -0400

I hate shit like that: “you have a nice camera, take our picture!” Or if I say, “hey nice picture,” and the person responds, “yeah but it would have been better with your camera.” Don’t blame the tools, blame the carpenter.

thechrisgethardshow: andreastreeter: Zach Galifianakis on The...

Wed, 08 May 2013 04:06:18 -0400

thechrisgethardshow:

andreastreeter:

Zach Galifianakis on The Chris Gethard Show! LIVE! Wednesday at 11pm - thechrisgethardshow.com

(Like, I really want people to watch this episode. Please pass it on.)

Andrea Streeter, everybody.