Alabama, wow… Listen and despair. But then listen to act 2. Unrelated, but very funny.

Ricky Gervais’ Opening Monologue at the 2012 Golden Globes. Love Ricky Gervais.

The Man Who Loves to Hate Himself: Good profile of Louis C.K. by Jonah Weiner. The interview is even better.

Couple things on comedian-for-our-times Louis CK. First, a theory as to why he holds that title: shame. Second, he recently skipped all middlemen and sold his recent comedy special directly on the Internet. Five dollars, no DRM, do with it what you will. Worked out really well, and he’s being quite awesome about it all:

hi. So it’s been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That’s a lot of money. Really too much money. I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.

The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet In The Comments Sections Of Year-End Lists:

11. The Person Who Thinks You Were So Close. “I like all these picks, but you ranked The Descendants as your #4 and Martha Marcy May Marlene as your #5, and they should be the other way around. FAIL.”

My favorite Bloggess posts are are almost always the ones that involve Victor: It Kind of Feels Like a Hollow Victory.

Made me smile: God’s Blog. (thx christine)

Don’t miss Louis CK’s act on Letterman.

Great, hilarious Bloggess post: And that’s why you should learn to pick your battles.

Greatest pairing of book and reader ever: Go the F**k to Sleep, read by Samuel L. Jackson.

This may be the first time I’ve laughed out loud at a contraption. Check out the box that really wants to be off. Make sure you watch to the end. (via kottke)

It is worth clicking through to Amazon’s listing for English Grammar For Dummies just so you can read the top review. Or here, you can jump right to it.

Apt dismantlement of a certain self-help guru: 4-Hour Dentist.

Onion awesomeness: Gap Between Rich And Poor Named 8th Wonder Of The World.

I’m a few days late with this, but that doesn’t make it any less hysterical: The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas. Starts slow, but hang in there until Kenny Loggins shows up.

Ha!

Made me laugh: What Your E-mail Address Says About You.

This might be my favorite Hyperbole and a Half so far: Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving. Just plain flat out hilarious.

Love this bit from The Trip, with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, This Is How Michael Caine Speaks. That show’s going into the queue.

One of my favorite Shouts & Murmurs in quite awhile, E-Mail Auto-Response. Excerpt of reasons for not hearing back:

— Thinking about the matter gives me a headache.
— Thinking about the matter takes longer than forty-five (45) seconds.
— Thinking about the matter is simple enough, and takes less than forty-five (45) seconds, but, when combined with all the other e-mails in my in-box, it creates a synergy of matterdom, exacerbating the headaches mentioned at the beginning of this list.

Hyperbole and a Half, The God of Cake. I could link to just about any post of hers and random and they’d be equally great. A couple favorites (which I’ve probably linked to before):

• This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult
• Dog
• The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

Could any other monster spoof the Old Spice guy better than Grover? I think not.

It’s a couple years old and has eight million views, so you’ve almost certainly seen it, but it was new to me and I laughed so check out the action on this single-minded cat.

(thx David)

Hyperbole and a Half: This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult.

A new McSweeney’s short imagined monologue: I’m Comic Sans, Asshole.

Impossible to pick a favorite Louis CK standup routine, but his bit on turning 40 is way, way up there.

Remember those awesome outtakes from Ricky Gervais’s appearance on Sesame Street? Well, here’s a clip from the show, Celebrity Lullabies (hang in there for the chorus):

Too damn funny: The Alot is Better Than You at Everything. I would buy a plush Alot.

Great comic: The Science News Cycle. (thx avital)

This video of a fellow doing piano improv for random strangers on Chat Roulette made me happy. (via waxy)

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer is deservedly making the rounds, but just in case you haven’t seen it yet:

Darkly, darkly awesome: The Skull of Regret. The description of the drive-thru window. The deep-fat fryer as potential suicide implement. The pause before “ex-girlfriend.” All genius.

The Onion: Gay Teen Worried He Might Be Christian.

Jon Stewart: Unusually Large Snowstorm. Love that guy.

Old Spice wins the award for best Super Bowl commercial this year, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like:

Harvey Weinstein tells Errol Morris he’s boring. I’d excerpt it, but I think that would detract from a full read-through. I guess there’s no harm in putting up the opening paragraph: “Dear Errol: Heard your NPR interview and you were boring. You couldn’t have dragged me to see THE THIN BLUE LINE if my life depended on it.”

So far my two favorite charts from FlowingData’s Data Underload category are Little Things and Bed Head.

You Dropped Food on the Floor. Do You Eat It? A taste:

(via swissmiss)

Genius, 12-section comic, Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable, with each of the 12 sections being both hysterical and the gospel truth.

I loved Avatar, but this Pocahontas comparison is perfectly done, so apt.

Jon Stewart on the self-dumb-downing of Gretchen Carlson:

I will try not to link to every new thing he writes, but David Thorne is too damn funny to resist.

David Thorne’s correspondence with Blockbuster over late fees is a riot. I’m probably the last person to have heard of this guy though, as apparently he hit it pretty big a year ago with the seven-legged spider exchange (see news stories here and here).

I can’t remember how this came up recently, but Terry Tate Office Linebacker is still the best series of sneaker commercials not made by Nike.

Nick Paumgarten has a short, funny piece on inattentional blindness in the 11/9 issue of The New Yorker.

Report: Majority Of Newspapers Now Purchased By Kidnappers To Prove Date.

After a brilliant first season, Mr. Deity seemed to spin its wheels a bit, but the two most recent episodes — Mr. Deity and the Skeptic and Mr. Deity and Da Man — have recaptured the glory.

Ze Frank has been posting videos again, after a long, long break from The Show (which I still miss). Of the new videos, Five People is the first one where he really rediscovers his groove, I think. Very funny, it’s been too long.

Instant classic from The Onion: 90% Of Waking Hours Spent Staring At Glowing Rectangles.

Ricky Jay manages to squeeze a ton into his op-ed on Susan Boyle. He draws comparisons with Mathew Buchinger:

Buchinger demonstrated his skill on more than a half-dozen musical instruments (some of his own invention), danced a hornpipe and performed conjuring tricks with cups and balls, cards and dice. In front of the lord provost he fashioned a pen and with it produced a fine calligraphic document of the coat of arms of the city. The year was 1726. Buchinger was 52 years old, 29 inches tall — and, he had neither legs nor arms.

… in how appearance influences expectations. He also touches on Thomas Quasthoff,
Thomas Britton, Joshua Bell’s subway stint, a Joni Mitchell song, Cardini, and Steve Martin (as The Great Flydini, a routine Jay helped create).

I just finished The Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs, in which he attempts to follow the Bible as literally as possible for a full year, and really enjoyed it. I was expecting humorous mockery of some of the absurd rules a la that Jeb Bartlett lambasting of the Dr. Laura character on The West Wing—and it is indeed very funny—but instead I was quite impressed by how hard Jacobs works to get at what the real meaning behind these rules are, his delving into many different sects, practices, and interpretations, and in general how even-handed he is about the whole thing.

That said, his long-suffering wife’s response to his following Leviticus 15:20, “everything upon which she leis during her impurity [menstruation] shall be unclean; everything also upon which she sits shall be unclean,” is a riot:

I came home this afternoon and was about to plop down on my official seat, the gray pleather armchair in our living room.

“I wouldn’t do that,” says Julie.

“Why?”

“It’s unclean. I sat on it.” She doesn’t even look up from her TiVo’d episode of Lost.

OK. Fine. Point taken. She still doesn’t appreciate these impurity laws. I move to another chair, a black plastic one.

“Sat in that one, too, “ says Julie. “And the ones in the kitchen. And the couch in the office.”

In preparation for my homecoming, she sat in every chair in the apartment, which I found annoying but also impressive. It seeming in the biblical tradition of enterprising women—like Judith, who seduced the evil general Holofernes, only to behead him when he was drunk.

I finally settle on Jasper’s six-inch-high wooden bench, which she had overlooked, where I tap out emails on my PowerBook with my knees up to my chin.

ONN: Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport. I love the backdrops, especially the madly spinning clock. (via waxy)

Patricia Marx’s Memo from the C.E.O starts strong…

It is with deep regret that we inform you of certain cost-cutting measures that will be taken in the coming days so that we can remain competitive. But first some good news. We are happy to report that Bring Your Child to Work Day has been renamed Bring Your Child to Do Work Day. We hope you will contribute unstintingly to the Gummy Bears Overtime Fund.

Now for the harsh realities. We will no longer be serving complimentary cold cuts and soda on Cold Cuts and Soda Day. Stairs will go up, but not down. Please do not use the fire extinguisher unless there is no water in the toilets.

… and just keeps building.

Best Sesame Street outtakes ever: Ricky Gervais and Elmo. Also, from Gervais’s blog:

Did Sesame Street which is possibly the most fun show I’ve ever done. There were loads of outtakes but the producers are worried about releasing them as they may get the show taken off air.

and…

The next day I did my appearance on Sesame Street which I am honestly considering declaring a career high light.

Kevin Clash is amazing. He totally holds his own, and stays in character. Can’t wait for the episode to air!

Two links ripped from Lone Gunman’s review of his first year: Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently and Conversations My Parents Must Have Had While Planning to Raise a Child.

This Midas spot cracked me up.

The Onion wraps up their grisly series:

• Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase
• Crocodile Bites Off Bush’s Arm
• Bush Passes Three-Pound Kidney Stone
• Bush Dragged Behind Presidential Motorcade For 26 Blocks
• Bush’s Eyelid Accidentally Nailed To Wall
• Single-Engine Cessna Crashes Into Bush

Finally, mercifully, Bush Dies Peacefully In His Sleep.

Dear Eli Manning Era Giants Fans:

First off, thank you for supporting my favorite team in sports for the past eleven months. It’s been a pleasure having your company since last year’s NFC Championship game – which, coincidentally, is when you first realized that “your” team actually had a chance to play in the Super Bowl.

Just the first two sentences as a teaser. Some harsh language, understandably.

A buddy of mine just turned me on to Abstruse Goose. My favorites of the last 20:

• Lie of Omission
• ask a silly question…
• Young George
• Gift Horse
• The Purposeful Life

I feel like I’m cheating on xkcd. Ahh, that’s better.

Despite its obvious quality, I wasn’t going to link up The Onion’s Macbook Wheel report because EVERYBODY already did, but it makes for a nice two-fer with this xkcd strip.

Todd Levin on wine:

Drinking wine is like reading. There are only a select few of us who know how to do it; those of us who do find it boring and disgusting but continue because we think it might impress pretty girls. Many of us even need to do it in order to fall asleep, wake up in the morning, or escape from our loveless marriages, but most of us wouldn’t be able to recognize a good bottle of wine or book even if it was being smashed repeatedly against our faces to extort an unpaid gambling debt.

Nice usage of “you miserable cur,” too. I need to work “cur” back into my arsenal (although I think it pairs slightly better with “contemptible”).

Go Fug Yourself is funniest when doing fake conversations. Evidence:

• Jennifer Lopez and Angelina Jolie
• Kate Winslet and Leonardo Decaprio
• Will Smith and Rosario Dawson

For example, J.Lo on Brad Pitt’s mustache:

He looks like an outrageous French pastry chef who solves crime. Which is STUPID, because everyone knows good pastry chefs have no time to detect things! My pastry chef works 23 hours a DAY to make me things I can sniff and then throw away!

My Great Fake Bake Experiment by Daniel Nester:

After the session, I spend the rest of the day meeting with students. They compliment my darkening tan. Later, while lunching at a nearby bar, I notice that every waitress and prepster’s skin glows from lamp-born UV radiation. I sing along to Steve Miller Band’s “Jet Airliner,” a song I can usually only tolerate in the summer. Perhaps it’s because my face is emitting its own sultry heat.

If Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi could see me now, he’d compliment me on my tan, just as he did our president-elect shortly after the election.

Bonus, I learned a bit of new(ish) slang: tanorexia.

Darth Vader Feels Blue (hang in there for it, trust me). Not to be confused with the other classic Vader bit, Darth Vader being a smartass.

• Lewis Black on candy corn.
• MAKE: Gum Sculpture
• I don't know which struck me more, that the writer's of St. Elsewhere royally screwed their fans in the season finale (wow, now I'm REALLY glad I didn't watch that show), or that, by extension, 282 TV shows take place inside the imagination of an autistic child.

YouTube: Charlie Bit my Finger! I love the play of emotions across big brother's face. Probably a little bit of rebellion against our masters coming into play.

YouTube: King Kong Singing.

I read this—could a morbidly obese goalie shut out an NHL team?—and immediately ordered the book it came from, Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan.

I've said it before, I'll say it again... It doesn't matter if you care about video games, you still need to catch Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's game reviews. I can't possibly do them justice. They're videos, but more like PowerPoint presentations. I could easily picture him (if I knew what he looked like) doing one of these live with PowerPoint playing on an LCD projector. His commentary is fast, non-stop, and hysterical. The guy could call an auction, do stand-up, or both. His latest two are great, Medal of Honor Airborne and Zelda Phantom Hourglass. You'll want to watch them all.

I don't play or even much care about either of the games reviewed, and yet I must recommend the reviews of Yahtzee Croshaw. That should give you some idea of how much fun they are. Here's his BioShock review and his Psychonauts review.

• John Hackleman puts Chuck Liddel through some great workouts.
• Two running links: Art De Vany on sprinting, and an interesting piece on Clyde Hart (Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner's coach).
• Yet another good video attached to the CrossFit WOD. This one is Greg Amundson's warm-up. As a bonus, at the end they show you the Samson Stretch, which is a fantastic stretch. If you put your front foot far enough forward you get a great hamstring stretch on one leg, and a great hip flexor stretch on the other leg. And you feel it in a bunch of other places as well.
• A ballboy's story. Don Mattingly: "Great to meet you, Matt. I have a very big job to ask of you. I just unpacked all my bats from spring training and I don't know if it was the altitude of the flight from Florida or the humidity down there, or what, but all my bats came up short. The game starts in about two hours and I need you to find me a bat stretcher."

Random joke from the inbox, "Two Newfoundlanders". Why Newfoundlanders? No idea.

Two Newfoundlanders went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine they lay down in their tent for the night and went to sleep. Some hours later, Lloyd awoke and nudged his faithful friend awake.

"Bryce, look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

Bryce replied, "I see millions and millions of stars."

"What does that tell you?" Lloyd questioned.

Bryce pondered for a minute: "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe Saturn is in Leo. Logically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three. Theologically, I can see that God is all-powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow".

"Is that all?" Lloyd asked.

"Yes." Bryce replied. "Why, am I missing something?"

Lloyd was quiet for a moment, and then spoke softly: "Bryce, you dickhead, someone has stolen the tent!"

My Inbox has been very fun over the last 24 hours. It all started with a recommendation from a coworker of this Weird Al video ("not for the crappy song but for the amazing Flash animation"). I had to reply with another Flash video with the word "Creep" in the title: the Radiohead acoustic video that made the rounds awhile ago. Worth a rewatch if you caught it then, and if you've never seen it, click through now. The same coworker then kicked in this sketch by Rowan Atkinson doing the naughtiest roll call ever (NSFW). How he pulled that off with a straight face I'll never know.

Okay, new coworker, new paragraph. His contribution was this unique juggling routine, Conic. YouTube then recommended other routines by the same guy: Orthogonal is fantastic, the Hemisphere preview is enticing, and may lead you to the full award-winning routine. Finally, a little playful bit: Nestled Boxes.

All reminiscent of Michael Moschen's work (certified genius). In particular check out Triangle, Threeball, and Light (yes, he was David Bowie's arms in Labyrinth).

Last, from an entirely separate quarter, a friend passed along this link: Lords of the Logistic. I've seen a few things like that in person, and it stopped me in my tracks every time.

I've seen various folks adopting this as their forum avatar:

I like it, probably because I've had days like that.

Two women were out for a Saturday stroll. One had a Doberman and the other, a Chihuahua.

As they walked down the street, the one with the Doberman said to her friend, "Let's go over to that bar for a drink."

The lady with the Chihuahua said, "We can't go in there. We've got dogs with us."

The one with the Doberman said, "Just watch, and do as I do."

They walked over to the bar and the one with the Doberman put on a pair of dark glasses and started to walk in. The bouncer at the door said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman with the Doberman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Doberman?"

The woman said, "Yes, they're using them now. They're very good."

The bouncer said, "OK, come on in."

The lady with the Chihuahua thought that convincing him that a Chihuahua was a seeing-eye dog may be a bit more difficult, but thought, "What the heck," so she put on her dark glasses and started to walk in.

Once again the bouncer said, "Sorry, lady, no pets allowed."

The woman said, "You don't understand. This is my seeing-eye dog."

The bouncer said, "A Chihuahua?"

The woman with the Chihuahua said, "A Chihuahua? They gave me a f------ Chihuahua?!"

Wow, you can make Garfield funny! Scientists still doubt it's possible to make Opus funny though. God, how I hate that strip. It's not so much that it sucks, it's that Breathed has the stature that it is allowed to suck over an entire half-page of the comics. Every weekend my Sunday morning mood gets dented because there's no way to avoid the damn thing. Even though I studiously don't read it, it's still there in my periphery, all bloated and gassy. Sure, the guy can draw, but come on!

I did used to like Bloom County though.

Best Sign of the Year. It could only be funnier if the sign itself were metal and covered with spikes.

Man throws mouse on fire, mouse strikes back.

Gotta get me a set of these: Seven Deadly Sins wristbands.« via bookofjoe »

Poor beast. I dub this a Lloodle.