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The Lonely Dead-End of the Internet
Congratulate me. I will go down in history as the person who finally located THE most indisputably pointless and trivial Thing on the Internet: it’s a lengthy Wikipedia article keeping meticulous track of every single woman who has ever stood next to one of those numbered-cases on the TV game show “DEAL or NO DEAL.” (I’m not making this up, as the saying goes when you’re not making something up; here’s the link, check it out yourself.)
Can you imagine a more useless “body of knowledge”? Even the people involved — the “Deal or No Deal”-models themselves, their agents, their families — couldn’t possibly care which of the numbered cases they’ve stood by, on what date, or whether they were the “regular case stander-byer” that week or a “substitute” (?!). Yet, here are people with access to modern computers who do care — in fact, according to the Revision History of this article, at least 10 people who have cared enough to actually edit or update previous versions of it. (Because, God forbid the world should have inaccurate information about who Marisa Petroro was substituting for when she stood next to Case #5 on the Oct. 10, 2007 episode! [If you're curious about the answer to that, it's in there!])
What sort of people care that much about…nothing? Well, thanks to President Bush’s expanded FISA legislation, I was able to intercept one of their emails, with just a simple call to the NSA, claiming that they’re an Al Qaeda sleeper cell:
TO: Stacey Gardner@Case#2.deal-or-no-deal.nbc.com
FROM: deal-nut1990@yahoo.com
Dear Stacey -
It’s me again! Things going smoothly here at the “Wikipedia ‘Deal or No Deal’ Models”-page Updater Collective. Don’t worry: last night’s episode is now fully cataloged. (Although I must say, the substitution of Laura for Jenelle at Case #19 threw us all for quite a loop! They do look so much alike, don’t they? Luckily, our recording secretary, Geoff, figured it out, or we’d be pulling another all-nighter re-playing the video over and over to make sure we get things right! Whew.)
Let me say that I think your performance last night standing next to Case #2 was truly inspired! Never before have I seen such a masterful look of “mock-surprise” when Howie and the contestant called on you! I actually believed, for a moment, that you really weren’t going to open the case! That, Stacey, is a testament to your supreme skills as an actress/model!
Say, how is Leyla doing? When we tuned in 2 weeks ago, only to find her missing…we were, quite naturally, concerned - since, as you know, the last time she had been been absent from an episode was 9/26/07! Tell her we say, “Get well soon! Case #13 won’t be the same without you, girl!”
BTW: We were all out in L.A. this past week, but owing to a bureacratic foul-up and a studio guard with an attitude, we were unable to make contact with you backstage at the taping, as we told you we would. (Once again, security never got our names for their list! For the third time.)
George Carlin, 1937 - 2008
George Carlin died yesterday. Pay tribute to him by remembering your favorite joke or routine of his, and laughing at it all over again. You know you have one; George was the Bob Hope of the last few generations of Americans, he was always there. My favorite bit of his was “Baseball and Football” - which, thanks to the miracle of YouTube, is yours for the clicking right here:
I saw George perform live 4 times over the years; he “killed” at all 4 of them.
I got to meet him, one-on-one, when I was a freshman in college. I had written a short comedy routine (which slavishly, even painfully, aped the style of the late comedian Lenny Bruce…but had some good jokes in it); and I decided that, since George would be performing at a local nightclub anyway, he would be the perfect person to: a) read my routine; b) swoon; and c) recommend me to all his big comedian buddies who didn’t already have material of their own (?!!). Anyway, George couldn’t have been nicer: after the show, he invited me in the dressing room, chatted with me at length about comedy, and read my entire routine — really reading it, not just politely scanning, because the first thing he said was, “Hmm. Kind of like Lenny Bruce’s stuff.“
GET RICH scamming Nigerian email scammers!
Instructions: Upon receipt of Nigerian scam email, click on “REPLY”; copy & paste the entire letter below into top of email field; then click “SEND.”
Dear Friend and Fellow Nigerian:
Allow me to introduce myself: I am attorney & special consultant for the late Internet-Scam billionaire, the Honorable Mr. J. Goedaddi Ngadget III. As you no doubt know, Mr. Ngadget became fabulously wealthy over the past two decades by originating, developing, and employing the very same so-called “419″-scams that you yourself may be using right now (whilst keeping an extremely low profile — his name being known, even today, by only the most knowledgeable insiders of the Internet-Scam sector, such as myself and, of course, you!)
Since Mr. Ngadget was childless, his fondest dying wish was only to “give back” to the industry that made him stupendously rich. As per the terms of his Last Will and Testament, I have been scouring the entire Internet - posing as a gullible American email user - looking for talented, unrecognized future Superstars of the Online Scam to reward and encourage. When I received your extremely clever “bait letter” below, I knew I had found my FIRST deserving beneficiary!
Therefore, I am pleased to inform you that at my behest, the Estate of Mr. Ngadget has prepared a cashier’s check in the amount of 750,000,000 Nigerian Naira (or US $6,408,777.46) — which will be sent to you by certified armed courier immediately upon our receipt of the shipping and handling fee in the amount of $5,000.00 — which Mr. Ngadget insisted we assess on every beneficiary, not only as the customary show of “good faith” but, more importantly, so we may ascertain and verify your true identity as the 419 Genius who sent the email below, and know what name to write on the check.
Please remit your $5,000.00 as soon as possible, pay to the order of the same Alias-Name I was using when your brilliant scam-email was received by me - and addressed to “General Delivery” at the same U.S. city and state as my Alias-Name. (I apologize for the secrecy, but Mr. Ngadget gave strict orders to keep things quiet, out of fear that general knowledge of his immense giveaway would wreak havoc upon the day-to-day operation of our vital industry. After all: how many people would continue the daily grind of trying to con foreigners out of their money over the Internet…if they thought there was a huge pile of cash out there, waiting just for them?
Lastly, should you decide to decline Mr. Ngadget’s generous bequeath, for whatever reason, rest assured that your share of his Estate will be equally distributed among the other handful of recipients. So, don’t even worry about that.
Let me personally welcome you to The Good Life!
Sincerely,
Joseph Q. Mwahtetubu, Esq.
Real Attorney
Annals of Big, Weird Movie Laughs
One of my all-time favorite big, weird movie laughs - I mean audience reactions, not just the jokes themselves - is from the 1983 comedy “National Lampoon’s Vacation” (the first one, where they travel cross-country to the “Walleyworld” theme park). The
scene I’m referring to is when the Griswolds stop off to visit long-lost relative Randy Quaid and his trailer-trash family in Kansas. While the adults are drinking & shmoozing, a very young Jane Krakowski is out back on the seesaw with her same-age cousin Audrey when she suddenly announces proudly that she knows how to French Kiss. Audrey shoots back, “So! Everybody does that!”
Then Jane delivers the Line that Launched a Thousand Squirms:
“Yeah, but Daddy says I’m the best at it!”
Half of the audience gets the joke immediately — the male half. As the females gradually catch on, each at her own speed, a rolling cascade of disgusted “EEWWW“s punctuates the uproarious laughter. Soon, a second wave of male laughter erupts in response to the general female reaction to the joke — followed by yelps of pain from the men as feminine elbows jab into their rib cages. And so on, until it subsides enough to let us move on to the important business of strapping dead Aunt Edna to the roof of the Griswold’s “Family Truckster” and driving to Phoenix to dump her body in a lawn chair.
Some versions of the film, like the one I just saw showing on the Country Music Television channel, replace the word “Daddy” with “my science teacher.” (Not dubbed in, mind you - a separately shot version of the scene in which you can plainly see her lips sync to “my science teacher”). I’d like to have been a fly on the wall for the studio meeting back in the 1980s where that decision was made:
Studio Exec: She can’t say she’s French-kissing her own Dad, for Christ sake! Not in the Bible Belt anyway — they’ll lynch the theater owners!
Filmmaker: Well…what if we made it someone else?
Studio Exec: Like her boyfriend?
Filmmaker: (in disgust): NO, not her boyfriend!!!
Studio Exec: Why not?
Filmmaker: Because it’s not funny!
Studio Exec: Oh. Right.
Filmmaker (with sneaky glint in his eye): I’ll tell you what: We’ll shoot a second version of the scene and have her say it’s…her SCIENCE TEACHER who said she’s the best at it!
Studio Exec: Huh?
Filmmaker: Sure! It’s perfect! Look, she’s a kid in a movie, who’s learning something from her teachers. People will love it because it’s a PRO-Education message!
Studio Exec: (liking it) Hmm. (then) But, waitaminute: a 13-year old girl Frenching with her science teacher isn’t much better than doing it with her Dad!
Filmmaker: (thinking fast) Who said she’s Frenching the science teacher? Could be, uhh, a lab assignment…like, boy and girls French-kissing there in the classroom…and the science teacher is going around, y’know, grading them on it! And, what do you know: she gets the best grade!
Studio Exec (who greenlighted “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” earlier that day): That sounds plausible!
Real life: faster than the Speed of Satire!
One of the odd little problems faced by not just MAD but anyone doing comedy in modern America is: keeping your humorous exaggerations far enough “ahead of” or “beyond” real life that audiences will, in fact, be able to recognize them as exaggerations. It’s not as easy as it sounds: every so often, reality will take that outrageous thing you dreamt up to make a satiric point and regurgitate it shortly thereafter as an actual, non-ironic product, TV show, trend, etc. It’s happened so much with MAD that they’ve coined a name for it, “MAD E.S.P.”
My new favorite example, sort of: Take the only-on-DVD 2006 Mike Judge movie, “Idiocracy”; it’s about an America 500 years in the future that’s been dumbed down by 50+ IQ points via the process of “un-natural selection” (stupid people having more kids than smart people; plus reckless morons saved by modern safety devices, only to spread their moron genes). And what’s the most popular TV show of this really-stupid future-America? A show called “OW! My Balls!” - a distillation of “America’s Funniest Home Video”-style groin-punching and gonad-smashing — and nothing else!
“OW! My Balls!” WAY too stupid a type of concept to ever be anything but a joke, right? That’s
what I thought, until I got my latest issue of Entertainment Weekly bringing word of an actual upcoming reality show called…”HURL!” That’s right, I said “HURL!” — a half-hour show of people vomiting on camera! (Must be aimed at those “Fear Factor”-viewers who are too impatient to sit through all that people NOT-vomiting in between!)
“HURL!” I’m convinced this is a sign…a “Now Boarding”-sign for the express handbasket to Hell. (And to those people who believe the world ends in 2012, I’ve got a new name for you since I heard of “HURL!” — “Pollyanna!“)
[BTW: on a semi-related note -- why the heck haven't we seen a real-life version of the "Orgasmatron" -- Woody Allen's completely self-contained self-gratification device from his 1973 film "Sleepers"? Oh! Silly me, I forgot: you're using it right now! (Be sure and wipe down your keyboard before you come back to my site, y'hear?)]