Star Wars: Retold (By Someone Who Hasn’t Seen It)

Thanks to my friends at Schadenfreude for introducing me to this gem. So funny!

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

Scotty Got an Office Job, I Did Voiceover

My amazing friend Scotty Iseri, who is a musician, sound designer, filmmaker, and all-around hilarious and magical human being, has just completed Episode 26 of his inventive and awesome DIY "Scotty Got an Office Job" video project. And the cranky supervisor warning him at the end of this episode? Me.

Scotty Got an Office Job: The Season Finale from Scotty Iseri on Vimeo.

Evil League of Evil Application: Final Straw by Scotty Iseri

I met Scotty in the weirdest, coolest way possible. He is an incredibly creative musician, writer, and performer. Check out this little project!


Evil League of Evil Application: Final Straw from Scotty Iseri on Vimeo.

Nerd Yourself

Just a gentle reminder that things are cooking over at the Bucket of Nerds blog, where we're all getting crazy excited about tomorrow's photo shoot and the beginning of our comedy film making project.

Sloan is the person most to blame for the Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up" shot-by-shot remake that we did for our Christmas party invite. (Photos at left of Sloan as Rick -- with bright orange construction paper hair, of course -- and me as the slutty blonde dancer.) But apparently that foray into bad '80's music wasn't enough, and last night she cut this sexy little montage of gerbil antics.


And one more picture, just so you will remember that Sloan is, in fact, a very cute girl, and not a faded '80's icon of limp-wristed blue-eyed soul.

And on to the video! Don't be ashamed to shake your booty with the beat. I certainly couldn't help myself.

Halloween Post #3

However many bajillions of dollars my loving parents may have sunk into my pristinely Catholic, classics (and classical)-laden education, this video still reminds me more of The Simpsons more than classic American literature. Eh. Whatever. Poe still rocks.

Quoth the raven:

Halloween Post #1

Jim Fath, who has performed at my show as part of Hey You Millionaires, is going crazy with videos on Phat Phree. Here's his "Ultimate 11 Halloween Houses," featuring "The house where the guy jumps out and scares the sh*t out of you":



Among the other eleven is this one, featuring my Underground co-producer Dan "Creepyface" Telfer:



Oh, and speaking of Dan, who's doing an entire upcoming set as a zombie, there's this: the Emergency Zombie Defense Station.

Critical Mass Chicago - Friday Night

Friday night was the 10th anniversary of Critical Mass in Chicago. 3000 of us rode for about 5 hours. It was such great fun, I'm doing it again next month. It'll be Halloween, too, so weird costumes are in order.

There were some flaring tempers (bikers, motorists, and pedestrians included) and a cop bumped into my bike at one point (he was splitting to make an emergency run). Me, I just like to bike ride. The longer, the better. 5 hours hit the spot very nicely. Plus, with all that caloric output - two dinners!!

Highlights of the ride: the happy baby (captured clapping on film), the pissed off pedestrian who stood on the street corner yelling "F*cking attention-needing motherf*kers!", the cheers and honks and thumbs up, little kids in Cabrini Green giving us high-fives, the rich dude in the Jaguar smoking a cigarette in a very "yeah, okay, I'll just chill here for awhile" sort of way, the cop who bumped into my tire while speeding off to a call (I hurt my knee trying to get out of his way), the random bumping into friends, and yes, two dinners. Vietnamese food AND greasy diner grilled cheese and fries. Mmmm.

EDIT: My video got posted in Metroblogging Chicago. Also, here are some Critical Mass events in other cities.

San Francisco:



Gandia, Spain:



Budapest:

Compression Rate High: 3 Years of Chicago Underground Comedy Awesomeness in 64 Seconds

A prototype of a promotional ChUC video. Do you have 64 seconds? Click here and get a glimpse of what's so damn cool about Chicago Underground Comedy. Photos by the greatest fangirls in the world. Editing and weird music by me.

Three Guinea Pigs Eating a Cucumber

The last 13 seconds of this video are BLISS.

I'll bet if you did a brain scan on someone as they watched this video, it would show that watching a red, white, and black guinea pig jockeying for position around a giant vegetable has the same positive effect on the brain as meditating. Or eating cupcakes. Or eating cupcakes while meditating.



Watching this reminds me of the dinnertable dynamics at play in my family growing up. Seven people fighting over ten dinner rolls can make something of a blood sport of the evening meal. As the youngest kid in this scenario, is it any wonder that I identify with the little white guinea pig? They don't even let him have a bite until halfway through, when he has to grab the whole cucumber and run off with it. Poor little Elizabeth -- I mean, white hamster!

Rough Edit - ChUC Teaser Clip

A prototype of a promotional ChUC video. Do you have 66 seconds? Click here and get a glimpse of what's so damn cool about Chicago Underground Comedy. Photos by the greatest fangirls in the world. Editing and weird music by me.

(EDIT: this is version THREE. As my co-producer Dan pointed out, I had the address wrong. Duh. And then there were some issues with the credits. Whatevs.)




(EDIT AGAIN: I deleted the earlier versions. Check out the final video here.)

Sloan's Chicago Botanic Garden Excursion

More from Sloan. This was her trip to the Chicago Botanic Garden, and you can see her real grandma in this one, not some random adorable tiny Asian grandma stand-in. I was just at her house and she showed me the "real," non-YouTube version of this, and it's much much sharper, in fact, this one is disappointingly blocky, but it's still pretty great, and the grandma message at the end made me cry three times in a row. Whatever. I'm a sap. Enjoy.

Sloan's Chicago Architecture Tour

Sloan's been getting her creative mojo back in high gear. Today she put this up:

50 Redheads On The Same Subway Car

...and they all want to buy sunscreen. It's an Improv Everywhere gag, and I think it's awesome.

For our latest mission, over 50 redheads rode the subway together and protested a Manhattan Wendy’s for their “racist logo.”...Agent McCarthy...proposed, “What would it be like if you got onto a subway car and slowly realized that everyone on the car but you had red hair?” Redheads only make up 1% of the world’s population, and with the racial diversity of the New York subway system, it’s probably an even smaller percentage.

One of the commenters on the original YouTube posting said "That's the most freckles I've seen in one place since Conan went high def."