The Brunch Table » funny

Breach of Etiquette

Nick — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:41:56 +0000

I happened across two procedurally-generated social gaffes today.

Borat Rashomon

Nick — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:08:07 +0000

No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center…

In the course of trying to prove that the rodeo scene in Borat takes place in Virginia, not Texas, I found this–an apparently authentic report on “Boraq’s” appearance by the Roanoke Times. You’ve got to respect the integrity of the folks who left this up on the website long after the truth came out.

Blame the Juice

Nick — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:54:37 +0000

Precious.

Marlies’ new comic strip

Nick — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:20:48 +0000

(Klootzak = jerk, asshole; lit. scrotum)

A rational explanation for the bucket thing.

Nick — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:31:47 +0000

[ This was left in "drafts" too long, and got scooped. ]

Now you can learn the grim truth about everybody’s favorite bucket-loving seal. Non-fiction, I swear.

Minazo was forced to perform various stunts before audience at each mealtime, such as holding a bucket with one flipper, bending back like a prawn, and standing still while a keeper jumped and clung on him. The hard work made him exhausted and might have caused his early death.

Burrito doin’s, on a grand scale

Nick — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 17:00:39 +0000

The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel sounds like a cheap joke, but it’s really a brilliant short story.

Celeste says there is, in fact, a tasty place called Mission Burrito somewhere in Alphabet City. Unfortunately, it seems to be what around here they call ongooglebare.

Does Mittens have free will?

Nick — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:03:32 +0000

It starts off gently, but stick with this Dora the Explorer parody for about a minute. Things get weird fast after she starts speaking in garbled German.

( direct link)

My benchmark for spam-based poetry…

Nick — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 08:26:03 +0000

…remains Cosmic Star’s “Honest and Hard.”

The cutest photo I have ever taken

Nick — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 23:32:19 +0000

Seriously, take a look.

(The caption was Celeste’s idea.)

RiffTrax: MST3K Lives!

Joe — Mon, 25 Dec 2006 08:34:04 +0000

A few Mystery Science Theater 3000 alums have finally figured out the perfect way to capitalize on the skills that they honed in their years on the show. They’ve launched RiffTrax, a site that sells MST3K-style audio commentary tracks to modern movies for three bucks a pop. Justina and I tried their commentary for The Matrix tonight, and I’m happy to report that it was fully up to snuff. In fact, it was good enough to make me willing to rent some of the other movies that they’ve riffed on. (Fortunately, they’ve provided a sample video clip for each movie that they’ve covered.)

The strength of their approach is that you’re buying a vanilla MP3, which means it works with everything, and which allows them to lampoon any movie they want without rights hassles. The downside is that you have to sync up the movie and the soundtrack yourself, Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon style. Fortunately, they’ve worked hard to make this easy—they tell you exactly when to start playing the commentary track. They also have a “robot” that exactly mimics the on-screen dialogue every once in a while, so that you can verify that you’re still in sync. Finally, the commentary track (at least the one we bought) comes with text file telling you where in the commentary each DVD chapter starts, in case you want to pick up from the middle.

All in all, I’m overjoyed to be able to hear the guys back doing what they do best, for movies that we know and love (to hate), without having to wade through any of the skits that were getting increasingly grating in MST3K’s final days. Here’s hoping that it proves to be a rewarding business model for them!

Incidentally, the guys will be performing a live riff of a movie during the San Francisco Sketchfest next month—and we’ll be there!