unbibium

Monty Python has an official YouTube channel, following the lead of the Royal Family. Both of them have better-designed themes than Rick Astley's.

So I give you the opportunity to take a break and watch the superhero adventure, Bicycle Repair Man.

And for those of you who have already seen that one a few dozen times, here's a slightly rarer one, from their Hollywood Bowl appearance in 1980: Michelangelo and the Pope.

Someone finally cobbled together a Michael Palin for President video. It's only, what, a week after VPILF.com went live? But OK then.

What we need now is a counter-Michael Palin attack ad. That'll be easy to do, since one of Palin's strengths as a character actor was his ability to lie in an over-the-top transparent fashion. Off the top of my head, he played...

• A barber that was clearly disturbed by the idea of cutting hair,
• A pet shop owner that clearly sold John Cleese a dead parrot,
• A smuggler that was clearly nowhere near Spain,
• A legitimate businessman that clearly was not delivering a Chinese "watch" to a client around midnight.
• A boarder at a bed and breakfast who was clearly Heinrich Himmler.
• At least two characters, not named above, who let the wrong word slip out, only to punctuate it by covering his mouth and shouting "OH, WHAT A GIVEAWAY!"

I'm going to have to comb through a lot of DVD's to find all that.

This Wednesday and Thursday, HBO will run all fourteen of George Carlin's HBO specials.

THe reason I call this to your attention, is because of the disclaimers you will see at the beginning of the first two specials, from 1977 and 1978, respectively. In the 90's, Carlin could do ten minutes on rape, with nary but a sticket on his album cover, which he voluntarily made larger. And yet, in the 1970's, he did much lighter, more whimsical material, and they thought it merited serious warning.

America can, will must, and should blow up the moon. (Edit: that's Sarah Silverman int he thumbnail, though her part is minor.)

Last night I saw Doug Stanhope perform live. And once again I sat near one of the most annoying hecklers.

Well, most of his heckling happened during the second opening act, some music act from Tennessee where one of them was from Finland. The rest of the time, he was just screaming.

And he was also on the phone the whole time. He might have been trying to bootleg the show, but whether his friend was recording it or not, I don't see why he would have the phone up to his ear the whole time, and saying "listen to this!" a lot, and continuing to scream. Some people around me thought he had Tourette's.

When I could concentrate, the show was pretty good. The first opening act was funny, the second opening act was OK, and Doug's set was long and dynamic. While he's prone to tangents and occasional trip-ups, his control over the audience never waned.

This morning, I'm having trouble getting out of bed. Too much to do this weekend.

I went to see Mitch Hedberg in concert with fenchurch last night. It was my first time at the Improv. I didn't know comedy clubs had previews just like the movies! This show was unique in that the opening act didn't suck. Greg Behrendt was excellent, and had actually done the Tonight Show the previous night.

But the emcee did suck. He led into both of these comedians with graphic and dirty jokes that didn't quite fit with what Greg and Mitch were up to. Mitch opened his set with a complaint that you can't follow a joke about eating pussy on acid with a joke about a banana. Were it not for the emcee, the evening would probably have been completely free of graphic sexual humor. Not that I'm against that kind of humor, but it's just not what I paid to see that night.

Mitch has a routine reminiscent of Steven Wright, but more observational in nature. His delivery is well-tuned, and the cadence of his voice is as recognizable as Jerry Seinfeld's, and he has a humble, laid-back demeanor that is very endearing to the audience. Other comedians make fun of people who, when you ask them if you have to dial 9, tell you "if it's in the number." Mitch is one of the people who says "if it's in the number." A lot of his jokes play off the syntactic sugar that makes English the sweet language it is, but not in the angry, pedantic sort of way George Carlin does. He likes to set up phrases we've never heard before, like "cutest infestation ever", and "sponge ruiner," and "emergency make-the-car-smell-funny lever". His jokes tend to be short, which is good for those of us with ADD.

I went and bought the CD from Mitch outside, after about fifteen minutes of searching for him outside the building. We finally found him outside the haircut place. He did a joke in his set where he said he wished he had a phone number that was all 2's, so I told him that I saw a guy on TV who had a phone number that was all 8's. I didn't tell him that it was Steve Wozniak, on the April Fools Day episode of The Screen Savers. See for yourself.

He's doing one more show tonight at 8:00, so go if you have time. Also, if you're reading this between 3:00pm and 3:30pm MST, Mitch is on Comedy Central right now.