Well, Apple ended its long relationship to MacWorld with a series of announcements that can only be described in long-term relationship terminology as “a courtesy screw.” Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic additions to iPhoto, iMovie and iWork (though I don’t know anyone who uses iWork) plus DRM-free music whose only downside is more Katy Perry in the world. Also, look out for a 17″ MacBook Pro, which I find interesting considering the current computing trend is leaning toward Japanamation-grade adorable Netbooks. I think one of two things may have happened with the keynote(and this is based on nothing more than my own brain’s questionable thought ejaculate):
1) The big thing they were going to announce has some massive failure so they scrapped it last minute, or
2) Apple is trying to prove that it doesn’t need MacWorld by dropping the big stuff at a (hopefully soon) later date.
I (and I assume many other geeks) am have been kind of underwhelmed by their last few fanfare-based announcements. Oh well. Sooner or later they’ll drop something rad that will excite nerds to the point of stress-farts. You never know with Apple. They pretty much do whatever Steve Jobs wants whenever he feels like it. I always say that Apple has “Hot Cheerleader Syndrome”: she treats you like crap but you carry her books for her anyway.
Below is the coverage I did for G4. If for some reason you feel like sanding the edges off a surplus of pizazz in your life you can sit through the entire keynote speech delivered by Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller in glorious HD here.
Recently I took on a side project that resulted in utter failure. I was brought in to lay down guide vocals for a film so that the actors would have tracks to choreograph their scenes to. I was given six days to learn ten songs which they wanted to record all in one day. That should have been my first *abort* clue, but sometimes I see red flags more as pretty decorations than as signs that should be heeded. I was really busy working on a few other things but I reasoned that I could learn the tracks in the car, grouted in between the tiles of my life. That was a fat stack of wrong. The day came where I stood in a recording studio and proceeded to waste both hard drive space and tape (they were recording analog as well for some reason). Eight hours later, I left the studio with a kind of grime on my body that you almost convince yourself can only be scraped off with tree bark peeling off your skin after you run your car into a tree. It’s hard to admit to failing at something–failing people, their time and yourself. But that’s exactly what happened. [click to continue…]
The absolute best comedy festival in the country is upon us again. SF Sketchfest kicks off January 15th and runs through the 31st in the cultural fog bank with excellent public transportation known as San Francisco. This is the festival’s 8th year and the line-ups blow me away more and more each year. This year I’ll be a part of two shows:
January 30th, 10:30p Comedy Death-Ray
Cobb’s Comedy Club
line-up:
Me, Zach Galifianakis, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Bob Odenkirk, Paul F. Tompkins, Andy Kindler, The Fun Bunch
January 31st, 8p Game Show Explosion! - A celebrity matching game show hosted by Jimmy Pardo
Cobb’s Comedy Club
panelists: Me, Jon Hamm, Andy Richter, Paul F. Tompkins, Matt Walsh and Scott Aukerman
I happened to be up in San Francisco a few weeks ago and strolled into the Wired offices to have a sit-down chat with my editor Adam Rogers, an hilarious chap that I wish I had a podcast with because our conversations typically go so far down the nerd hole that their content screams “niche podcast.” In the opening of the vid, I’m reading some salty “letters to the editor” from the front of the current issue that were written in response to “Technology’s Gutterball,” a piece I wrote two months agoabout the infiltration of tech into bowling. The first letter starts with an unironic use of the word “hogwash,” so you know that guy’s easily in his early hundreds. The second is a finger wagging at my contentiouness toward the advancements of bowling science. I think both gentlemen failed to grasp the tongue-in-cheekity of it all. This is why there should be a font for sarcasm. Oh well. Better for these guys to get their complaints out in magazines than by shooting strangers in the park. Gripes Not Snipes, I always say.
The rest of the video is me arrogantly blabbing about writing the piece, which is NEVER not fun.
I have the nerdly pleasure of writing for Wired about every other month. This piece chronicles 6 weeks of my life trying to implement time management programs as a freelancer. It was super fun to write and I ACTUALLY LEARNED STUFF IN THE PROCESS. I sincerely hope you enjoy it. If you have a need for instant gratification or a bizarre magazine phobia then start reading it here:
Diary of a Self-Help Dropout: Flirting With the 4-Hour Workweek
Time-management books command huge swaths of bookstore shelf space and sell tens of thousands of copies a year, but I always figured they applied more to stapler-stealing cubicle jockeys than someone like me. I am a freelancer. My services are available to anyone at any time. In a former life I was probably a whore. In this one, I am responsible for two cartoon voice-overs, three writing jobs, a movie soundtrack, my stand-up comedy act, TV hosting gigs, and half of a musical-comedy duo. Don’t get me wrong; in this economy, I’m grateful for the work. But without any kind of 9-to-5 structure, it’s a lot to keep track of.
So how do I handle it? Poorly. My days are like eBay shipments: a few tangible things and a whole lot of packing peanuts. I obviously need help being the boss of me. So I decided to try an experiment: I’d spend two weeks absorbing, in succession, three well-known productivity systems and see if I could find one that worked for those of us who count income in 1099s instead of W-2s. I already owned David Allen’s Getting Things Done; Gina Trapani, editor of the blog Lifehacker, further recommended Julie Morgenstern’s Never Check E-Mail in the Morning and Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek. That made three, and three examples is all you need for a magazine article.
I’ve gotten emails from people asking me if the “Chelsea Lately” appearance from 12/12 was available. Leave it to the Webs to assimilate all media–it popped up on youtube, natch. It never fails to amaze me that Earthlings take such care in placing things on their Internet pile. I don’t think the guy who posted the clip works for the show, but nevertheless his todo list on December 15th probably looked something like this:
wake up
shower in sink
buy Cheetos
Tivo and upload “Chelsea Lately” as unrequested service to Mankind
poop
quit hitting yourself
sleep a lot
That being said, I thank him for his efforts. The show was a blast and it looks like I’ll be going on again in January. Take that, famous people!!!
I had the pleasure of chatting with Louis Lombardi yesterday on AOTS about The Spirit, in which he plays Phobos, among other -oses. He was super-nice, funny and would like you to visit his MySpace page. At some point in your lives, I hope you are lucky enough to interview this guy because he is good people.
What happens when Kevin Pereira discovers Kanye, expired milk and unnecessary pitchbending all at the same time? WONDERFULNESS. Big ups, Kevye!
*HISTORICAL SIDE NOTE: Remember when Cher introduced the pitchbend that would later become pop music’s ubiquitous douche badge with her song, “Believe”? It turns out that it was an accident! The sound engineer was trying to auto-correct her voice so much that the waveform jumped to the next note. Because they hate Mankind, they left it in. Now that’s what you call a “crappy accident!”Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
LIKE NOW!!! There will still be a bit of tinkering here and there but welcome to the new site! If you had previously subscribed to RSS, you may want to ditch the old feed and re-subscribe by clicking up top. Heaps of thanks go to my genius art pal Chris Glass, who not only redesigned the thing you’re looking at but is also responsible for my favorite t-shirts at Wire&Twine.
