What's he building in there?
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens can’t have a desk because Ray Stevens has managed to accidentally burn down every house he’s owned since 1964 because he keeps trying to light a grill in a carpeted rumpus room.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
False. Ray Stevens lives in a modest hovel below America’s biggest ball of mud off Highway 66 en route to San Antone.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is still trying to buy back his childhood shed after accidentally losing all his money to a man claiming to be a genie during the Jordanian leg of his Ahab the Arab tour.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is the embodiment of the ancient evil that loomed across America before Columbus even brought cholera and genocide from the Old World. Every 27 years Ray Stevens appears in the form of fear incarnate and lures a child into a sewer where he devours their innocence, leaving only their velcro shoes outside a storm grate as evidence.
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is wearing a rice hat, pulling another instance of himself across the Great Wall of China on a rickshaw, as the two of him rhyme “wang” with “mang.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just confused having an idea with rhyming “Guantanamo” with “yo-ho-ho” and then that with his digitally-modified baritone singing “da-dope-do-do.”
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is currently wearing a referee’s uniform, standing next to a “Illegal Immigrant Olympic Long Jump Event” sand pit he set up that starts on the US side of the border and ends on the Mexican side, firing a starter pistol wildly into the air, then dejectedly rhyming “hopeless” with “George Lopez.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is reticulating the final splines on his “Americasville” in Sim City 3000.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is filming his Krautrock single Trans(nationals), which is a static shot of him playing a Mexican homebrew of Dig Dug. He is shrugging playfully as he loses on purpose.
Lee Tipton to me
Blog post: “Ray Stevens: What is He Doing?”?
John Semley to Lee
Ray Stevens is trying to Google his name into significance and happens upon a blog post that he doesn’t get is making fun of him. In the adjacent room, a breakfast steak sizzles knowingly in a flat iron pan.
Edward Petrenko to Lee, me
Ray Stevens is pointing to a chart that shows one large taco at the top with arrows pointing to dozens of smaller tacos below it, then pointing to another chart that is just an American flag with tiny tacos instead of stars. He then folds his arms, looks at the camera, shakes his head, purses his lips, and shrugs his shoulders.
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is superimposing his own head over every instance of Wile E Coyote riding a rocket.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is on ancestry.com, trying to trace back his lineage to an oak tree that predates the Iroquois.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is shamelessly asking an Asian friend of his if it would be possible to “reprogram” Pac Man to make him look like Carlos Slim, and to “reprogram” the dots to look like American jobs. His Asian friend then reveals himself to be Ray Stevens. Their magic carpet then takes them far, far away, to a land without race, where all Ray Stevenses can live in honky-tonk harmony.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is in his Texarkana ranch house, reinforced athletic socks kicked up on a coffee table book of compiled Elvis Sightings; drifting into a mid-afternoon siesta he not only doesn’t deserve but resents the name of.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is taking all 13 of his flat-faced, softball-playing daughters to Olive Garden, to steal fake grapes as pre-emptive props for when Sarkozy loses an election.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is regaling a total stranger with an anecdote about drinking Barbisol on a dare.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is watching Airplane! on a TV with spoilers.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is trying to twist all the yellow and green blocks off a rubicks cube.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is having it out with the 3rd generation Latino contractor who is trying to rationally explain why putting Maserati doors on Ray Stevens’ bedroom is going to be tricky.
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just keeps on driving south down the I-90, knowing this string of Waffle Houses will give way to an IHOP eventually.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens’ fourth marriage has fallen apart, upon his discovery that Jo-Anne was two transsexual Democrats in a trenchcoat.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is ceremonially burning his Culpepper flag comforter, because its laundry day at the Stevens Compound.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
I’m supposed to do my TL post tomorrow and have nothing. Can I use these? Credit all around obviously.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Yeah man that’s what I’m feeling.
Ray Stevens is branding his name into the federal building
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
that federal thing was a half finished thought. let me think on it
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Go nuts – stealin’ our jokes, like a regular Carlos Mencia, or generic sillygal Jimmy Grant!
Lee Tipton to Edward, me
Ray Stevens is distributing the last 32 minutes of Bad Boys 2 on so many CD-Rs
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is alive and well and living inside anyone who has ever purchased a hot dog at a ballpark. Ray Stevens got Johnsonville Brauts.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
I’m actually really quite pleased with us
Edward Petrenko to Lee, me
Ray Stevens is writing his fifth frantic complaint to the makers of Wooly Willy, demanding they send him enough iron filings to be sculpted into both a beard and a turban on the same Willy.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just signed a multi-hundred dollar endorsement deal with Spitz and Ray Stevens is regretting not grabbing another handful of Spitz from the loose bag on the CEO’s desk.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just figured out a way to absorb smokeless tobacco through his eye by plopping two Skoal Bandits under each lid and making himself cry a little bit.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just remembered that his jail sentence ended two years ago, and he doesn’t need to hide cigarettes in his butt anymore.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is wondering if he can make himself disappear by tucking his denim shirt into his blue jeans and leaning against his Ford F450.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just used a Gator to tow his golf cart to a lawn mower repair shop to have a kegerator installed in the trunk.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is watching “wrasslin’” on the tee vee and don’t you goddamn dare bother telling him to pronounce it any different.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is hosing Ozzie’s piss off the Alamo with a shaken up tall boy of Billy Beer
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens is drinking a 2 litre of Mountain Dew: Code Red out of the bottle, sitting in a lawn chair at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is the first and only Jungian Archetype discovered by the Butthole Surfers
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just accidentally signed his anonymous petition for a Ray Stevens U.S. postal stamp “Ray Stevens.”
John Semley to Lee, Edward
Ray Stevens just yelled “yee-haw” as he drunkenly dove out of the way of a Conestoga wagon barreling down on him at speeds of seven furlongs/fortnight.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just woke up from a bender in a silo that had been welded shut from the outside, and had to carefully talk himself out of panicking by reminding himself that, in spite of it all, this is still America.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has ruined his last eight meals because he has refused to admit to his live-in stepdaughter that the leafblower has no place in the kitchen.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is mixing sugar into the gas tank of his riding mower with a wooden serving spoon, prepping a few Oklahoma juleps for the greyhound racetrack tailgate party.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens puts on a Washingtonian powdered wig before he addresses a Tea Party rally, while he grudgingly plunks down eighty-five cents in full view of a toll road’s security camera, and in the afterglow of times he believes himself to have sired another child.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is…WASHTUB BASS SOLO!!!!
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens just threw up on the front yard, in full view of the neighbours, then proceeded to clean it up by lighting a trash fire on top of it.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens is inconsolably incapable of making love to his wife in the wake of Jimmy Dean’s passing.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens just got red in the face for the first time since 1974 after trying to chip a golf ball over the roof of his bungalow and driving it right through the bay windows.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is lying to the Associated Press about how close he was with Jimmy Dean.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens, despite countless attempts to remind him not to, still responds out loud to any question a radio commercial asks him.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is trying real hard not to think about the outboard motor he found sitting in his sunroom when he snapped into consciousness this afternoon.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has returned to touring after spending fifteen months recovering from eating fried baloney straight out of the pan, as all his plates had been destroyed shortly after his discovery of skeet shooting.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is writing the dictionary people to try and get a cross-hatched illustration of his 3/4 profile next to the phrase “Fuck A Duck,” which he may have known wasn’t in the dictionary, had he ever read or seen a dictionary.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens’ back pain has reached a new all-time high and his comedic confidence an all-time low after alienating every masseuse in the phone book with excessive “towelhead” jokes, deliberate farting, and using a slide whistle to draw attention to his gathering erections.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is wiping his tears with instructions for setting off a Roman Candle after sleeping through the annual 9/11 Memorial Fish Fry at the local firehall.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens gives ninety percent of all his income to his local Methodist church in a frantic attempt to atone for walking into a synagogue one time, after mistaking it for the trampoline store he was looking for.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is standing by the microwave, watching the 7-11 ham & cheese log warm from the inside out, ‘cos baby, that’s America to Ray Stevens.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Had to leave on account of work, but this is my favourite email chain ever.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is responding to the nacho sombrero by joylessly eating 65 sliders off the brim of a Stetson.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is slated to play every role in a pop-up book about the Federal Reserve.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is more conflicted about Israel than anyone else in America.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens is shocked to find out there’s 15,000 battered housewives in America and he’s still eating his plain.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is dabbing at the brownface makeup on his collar with a denim serviette
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens has flushed all his elastic bands down the toilet, now that he’s realized you can castrate a bull with a bolo tie.
Lee Tipton to me, Edward
Ray Stevens is gunning a Dodge Charger through the screen of a drive-in playing Frida in slow motion.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
Ray Stevens isn’t engaged in any sort of high-speed pursuit, but he still smirks every time he crosses county lines.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens doesn’t need no police constable telling him that wife surfing isn’t a sport, godgummit.
Edward Petrenko to me, Lee
Ray Stevens doesn’t believe in global warming, but he still blames it when his stills burn down.
John Semley to Edward, Lee
I am putting these on terminal laughter now.
-Carlos Mencia
In this whirlywoo world of social networking, blogging, vlogging, Facebooking, Googly mapping, tweeting, twittering, twitting, twatting, and twanging, the role of the critic has been thrown into question. Why, the argument goes, should one bother reading 400 whole words from a film critic like Roger Ebert when that same one can get a nifty 140-character review in literally seconds? As media outlets continue to downsize, those few writers who can eke out a living as critics are asked to do twice as much work for half the money. But against all odds, one critic has managed to harness the possibilities of Internet to serve his critical impulses.
Like so many critics, Craig Whinerose’s beat is poo. A graduate of the journalism program at New York University, Whinerose quickly established a name for himself as one of the top poo critics in America, soon netting bylines in The Village Voice, Spin, Turd Aficionado, Better Bowls and Bowels, Shit! Magazine, American Defecator, Poop Scoop, and Harper’s.
“It was a pretty wild ride to the top,” waxes Whinerose. “The craziest parties, the wildest perks, some of the best bathrooms in the country.” But in 2005, when the Internet got around to do doing that thing that it does where it makes it so writers can’t write anymore, Whinerose was thrown into a crisis.
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Renowned poo blogger Craig Whinerose shoots the shit with other critics at a New York City Internet party.
“I was devastated, broke, barely working at all,” he says. “And worst, I was taking some of the great dumps of my adult life. Creamy poos, corny poos, those great iceberg poos where the poo emerges out of the water: real beautes. A poo critic’s dream.” Then, in 2006, Whinerose heard about the emerging microblogging network Twitter. And then the idea hit him, with the pong of a warm poo to the face.
But despite Twitter’s 140-character constriction, Whinerose was far from constipated. “I was used to penning longer form criticism,” he says. “When I’d freelance for the Voice or some of the nation’s more prestigious shit rags, I’d be writing 2000, sometimes 4000 word essays. On poop, I mean. Odes to poop, poop commentary, careful indexes on the current climate of poop and pooping in American culture. If it came out of your ass and smelled like shit, I was all over it.”
Twitter forced Whinerose to recalibrate many of the inclinations he’d learned at J-school. But great writing, as ever, won out in the long run. Take this delightful little turd from January of 2008: “A solid, tightly-coiled evacuation. Unhurried. Clean break. Wiping like a whisper in the wind.=7.5”
Whinerose’s wit, diligence, and unembarrassed love of poo have paid off. He recently signed a six-figure book deal with Random House, who will republish all of his tweets this fall as Wipe With This Book: Four Years of Da Poo Project. Besides years of Whinerose’s Twitter backlogs, the book will also contain some of his longer-form poo writing, including “Poo or Poop: You Decide” from Rolling Stone (February 2001) and the alarmingly not at all politically-charged Why the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center is a Piece of Shit, originally published in Harper’s (July 2003). It will also contain an appendix of poo pun wisdom which Whinerose has assembled over the years, such as “A turd in the hand is worth poo in the tush,” and other enlightening nuggets.
“Things have really come together, poo-wise,” smiles Whinerose as we walk in stride to the NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute auditorium where he is delivering a commencement address to his alma mater’s graduating class. “But what I’m proudest of, besides all the poo, is that I’ve been able to maintain my critical integrity.”
He’s also been able to beat the odds. In the epoch where the Internet is forcing lesser talents onto the breadline, Whinerose has emerged as one of criticism’s rising stars—a sterling example for anyone looking for a lesson in how to adapt to the climate of the blogosphere. And at the risk of sycophantic fawning, that’s something to shit your pants about.
The trailer for Michael Cera’s new movie, Youth in Revolt, is finally up online. It looks good. Based on a novel by C.D. Payne, that kind of reads like Confederacy of Dunces meets Gordon Korman’s I Want to Go Home, Youth in Revolt is the story of an awkward precocious pre-teen who meets a girl and tries to keep her. The film also stars hilarious dudes Zach Galifianakis, Fred Willard, Steve Buscemi, Ray Liotta, Jean Smart and Justin Long.
Terminal Laughter recently interviewed the actor about the film for one of our other, more paying projects. That shit will be up here in a couple of weeks, once portions of it have already been published elsewhere.
Trailer after the bump:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=109DbfWQvf4]
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Variety.com has reported that the Louis C.K.’s new TV show, “Louie” has been picked up by FX, and that a 13 episode series will begin airing in early 2010. The show has been talked about for a couple of years now, and is finally going to see the light of day after much speculation. The show, which stars Louis as a stand up comic living single in New York City, is a mix between sit com and actual stand up bits, making it vaguely reminiscent of some old NBC show that nobody ever watched and was never really popular.
The show is to be written and manned by Louis C.K., who is also the executive producer, alongside longtime collaborator Dave Becky. Details about casting have not yet been announced.
The network, which first dipped its balls in the mouth of comedy with the successful show “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”, has also ordered another comedy for the 2010 season, called “League”, which Variety described as a “suburban-set ‘Sex and the City’ for men”. The show stars Paul Scheer, Nick Kroll and Montreal native Jon Lajoie, best known for wearing aviators and rapping about how average he is. With these two new shows, FX will have the highest number of original comedy of any basic cable network.
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Though remakes of good movies tend to be shitty, the latest addition to the cast of Dinner for Schmucks suggests that the Anglofied version of the 1998 Francis Veber dark comedy has some serious potential. Hollywood’s new unlikely darling Zach Galifianakis is in talks to be in the film, alongside Terminal favourites Steve Carrell and Paul Rudd. Directed by Jay Roach, the guy who brought us all Meet the Parents/Fawkers, Dinner for Schmucks is schedueled to shoot in the fall and to be released to the big screen in summer 2k10.
Assuming that the remake will follow the same plot as the original, Dinner for Schmucks centers around a rich asshole who gets his kicks by organizing regular dinner parties where he invites random idiots he meets and humiliates them. It’s a pretty hilarious and heart-tugging slapstick, and might be the only decent thing to ever come out of a country that habitually serves up nothing but amoral philosophy and unpopular opinions.
Zach Galifianakis is also appearing in the upcoming film Youth in Revolt, alongside Michael Cera, who Terminal Laughter recently interviewed (it’ll be up soonish).
Here is a scene from Diner de Cons, (couldnt find one with subtitles, sorry):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYYwaFy05-U]
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In case you haven’t heard the bad news, the amazing American comedy writer and director John Hughes died of a heart attack in Manhattan yesterday. He was 59. Hughes was an exceptionally gifted writer, and as the guy who gave us Vacation, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, The Great Outdoors and is pretty much responsible for Yello’s “Oh Yeah” being synonymous with the very concept of desire, he defined the comedic sensibilities of a generation of fans and filmmakers alike. He also helped make Bill Paxton a star. It’s a huge loss.
Terminal Laughter’s John Semley wrote a last-minute memorial for the Maisonneuve Magazine blog. Check it out here. Or read Variety’s obit here. In the meantime, let’s remember the laughs.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia has started post brief clips of their upcoming fifth season up on youtube, which hopefully will hold you over until September 17th, when the season airs. Also, following in the tradition of The Office, Extras and Rudolph, the gang is releasing a Christmas special. There isn’t too much information online yet, but it’s probably a safe bet to assume it will involve at least one mention of the the holiday of Christmas, some manner of sticky situation, and a reference to Scrooge. Only time will tell.
Here is a promo for the new season:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQzQSwu_t0c]
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Today, two awesome DVDs are unleashed upon the world: Tim and Eric, Season 3, and Flight of the Conchords, Season 2.
Tim and Eric, Season 3 includes guest appearances from Rainn Wilson, Zach Galifianakis, Bill Hader, Maria Bamford, Will Forte, Pixies frontman Frank Black, She-Devil star Ed Begley, Jr and MTV-2 alter-egos Jim and Derrick. There don’t appear to be too many special features: just some deleted scenes, a blooper reel and an extended version of the “Muscles for Bones” telethon.
Flight of the Conchords, Season 2 is notable for upping the ante, Murray-wise, and features hilarious cameos from Whose Line is it Anyway? improv geek Greg Proops, Jim Gaffigan, Kirsten Wiig, Patton Oswalt and Art Garfunkel. Special features include 23 minutes of deleted scenes, a blooper reel, some fake commercials and a half hour making of featurette. Conchords fans should also take note that the second album is coming out October 20th on Sub Pop.
It has only been two and a half years since the publication of Pynchon’s last output, the monolithic Against the Day, but as of today the writer has a new novel on the shelves. Inherent Vice, the story of a stoner private eye investigating the disappearance of a rich Nazi sympathizer, clocks in at just over 400 pages and appears to be a little more accessible than some of his more celebrated works. Which is great news for us, who like to laugh but sometimes aren’t smart or focused enough to keep a mental tally of hundreds of characters popping up across thousands of pages.
Here is the synposis, probably written by Pynchon himself:
It’s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It’s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that “love” is another of those words going around at the moment, like “trip” or “groovy,” except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.
Apparently there are already discussions underway about turning the novel into a movie, which would be a first , and judging by the synopsis, probably end up pretty similar to The Big Lebowski. And, in a super bizarre move for a writer who has shunned publicity for his entire career, a promo video was released today with Pynchon himself narrating.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjWKPdDk0_U]
You can order the novel here. Also, Pynchon fans might take interest in this map published in the latest issue of Wired.
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It's a reunion! It's a reunion! Look everybody, it's a reunion!
There’s been talk about this for awhile now, but finally we’ve got some info straight from Larry David’s mouth.
Looks like the Seinfeld cast will be appearing on the upcoming season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, and not only that, but the season will focus on Larry putting together a Seinfeld reunion show.
“We’ll see writing, see aspects of the read-through, parts of rehearsal, see the show being filmed, and see it on TV,” says David.
I am plotzing over here, Jerry. Terminal Laughter will be holding a few live screenings of the episodes at my parent’s house! They have cable! We can even watch Mad Money or Hannity and Colmes afterwards. Plus my Dad has plenty of Lakeports.
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