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This Column Has Nothing to Do With Thanksgiving
Sorry, but it’s lean times nowadays, especially in the world of comedy. The world is experiencing a laughter famine. Silly is in short supply. Mile-long lines are forming outside of comedy clubs across America with people waiting days and days for their tiny government-assigned rations of goofiness. It’s so pathetic, it’s almost hilarious. The other day, I saw a grown man deck a 5-year-old child for stealing his Laffy Taffy wrapper before he could read the joke’s punch line. That’s how starved for ha-ha’s people are right now. Abusing a child like that isn’t funny, unless the kid you're hitting isn’t yours. Then it’s a sitcom. Lately I've come to think that I might be comedically sterile, which is bad because I’m knee-deep in a new script and it’s a comedy and it needs to be funny in at least one place. Really, I don’t feel like I’ve birthed any good jokes in a while. I've had several pregnancy scares, maybe one or two miscarriages, but any puny thing that’s managed to survive the joke gestation period has been so pitiful, I just smoosh it beneath my heel right away. Maybe it’s not me, though. Maybe my eggs aren't being fertilized. Maybe I’ve been fucking the wrong people. Or not enough people. Either way, since I can’t make you laugh like I want to make you laugh, I’ve pulled together a list of depressing news items that are sure to make you an ounce or two more thankful this Thanksgiving season:
Apparently, because of global warming, and because it is mostly composed of ice, which is composed of water, the entire island of Greenland will have completely dissolved by the year 2056. The most distressing effect of Greenland’s inevitable demise is, of course, the questionable future of the 2056 Summer Olympics, which are currently scheduled to take place in Greenland. This means that an entire generation of Olympic performers who have yet to be born, trained, and psychologically abused won’t have any arena to perform in during the 2056 Olympics. What will these poor people do to earn a living? Get boring clerical jobs? Compete in normal team sports? Also, it’s sort of disheartening to think that I won’t be able to conquer and fortify Greenland anymore when I play RISK after 2056, (if my old folks’ home lets me play RISK at that point in time). 2. That new Harry Potter movie made almost $200 million in its opening weekend. There’s
a big machine that sort of runs the world and it feeds off the
energy of stupid people by sucking it out of their eye sockets when
they watch big-budget, over-hyped movies. This machine is scary.
This machine is unstoppable. It’s a million times more bad-ass and
dangerous than the Terminator and Robocop combined. This machine
likes Harry Potter, too. When the bad-ass, world-dominating machine
likes Harry Potter, that’s when we’re in real trouble as a 3. George Bush Jr.’s goofy face is still our president. The only reason anybody should have voted Bush into a second term is to have four more years of pictures like this, this, and this. You have to wonder, do his publicity people not show him these photographs? Does he gather these pictures into an album and take it into the Oval Bathroom and laugh at himself every night? Or does he practice different funny faces in the mirror, amusing himself while crafting the perfect distraction for his presidential ineptitude? I don’t care. As long as he keeps doing this, I'm happy for another 3 years. 4. Someone killed a bird. Imagine that you really like setting up dominoes and watching them fall down. Better yet, imagine that you're so good at doing it (and you have so much free time on your hands), that Mr. Guinness and his famous Book of World Records approaches you to engineer the setting up and knocking down of over 4.1 million dominoes. Then, right at the height of your glory, during the 4 hours it takes for all those damn dominoes to work their magic, imagine something unimaginable happening. That's right, a stupid bird swoops in from nowhere (the sky) and starts quacking and flapping around, knocking over hundreds upon hundreds of your meticulously arranged dominoes. The bird is eating some of the dominoes and shitting on some and destroying miniature train bridges and such. For some reason, you are powerless to stop this bird, especially with your family and friends and hundreds of other losers in attendance for your big day. So you call a guy, maybe a cousin or somebody who owes you a dirty favor, to come take care of the bird. He does so, with a pellet gun. Next thing you know, you've got a petition with a few thousand angry bird-lovers' signatures on it staring you in the face. Your life is over, pal. You're done. One meddling bird overshadows your life's accomplishments. You were the master of all domino-related activities, but you forgot to honor the one important rule in life: Don't kill birds! 5. Everybody in Hollywood is either pregnant, getting married, or getting a divorce. OK, I
don't know if this is an actual fact-laden news story pulled from
today's headlines. But I do know that people really really care
about how Tom Cruise just bought a
baby-tracking device for Katie
Holmes. And people also really really care about whether or not
those crazy kids Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey
have what it takes to stay
married long enough to make another network TV Christmas Special.
And absolutely no one in the entire universe can wait to see the
chubby puddle face of Britney
Spears' new baby. I propose that from now on, everyone just assumes
that literally every famous person in the entertainment industry is
married, divorcing, or having one or more babies.
6. 2-Pac is dead. Holy shit, 2-Pac died! It happened a few years ago, too. Someone shot him! Did you guys know about this? I mean...fuck! 2-Pac was my boy... 7. FEMA is running out of money. All the people who haven't found permanent places to live after Hurricane Katrina destroyed their homes will have to find something to do within the next month or so because FEMA can't afford to pay for their exorbitant hotel bills anymore. FEMA people wrote this on little notes and slipped them under hotel doors a couple of days ago. Just in time for the holidays. People like it when good things come along "just in time for the holidays." You know, like egg nog or a new Tim Allen family-oriented comedy. But when bad things (like a pink slip from the factory or needy relatives) arrive "just in time for the holidays," people get all bent out of shape. But that's what the holidays are really about anyway - extreme bouts of suffering and misery while being surrounded by family members and loved ones. I want FEMA to buy me a turkey, cook and carve it for me, and then sit down and eat it with me. They're doing all they can, but they can do more, and they've done enough. That's all the depressing news I have for you now. I'll dig up some more in the coming weeks, though, and then I'll share it with you. I like sharing with you. It's like some kind of therapy that secretly hurts the both of us while making us feel better at the same time. Before I go, I want to fart out a quick Studio 8 update: Half the boys are flying home and beyond for the holiday season. The other half are staying in town to work on some projects we have coming up - some video shorts, a multi-episode little comedy show thing for Channel101.com, and some music. It's a busy holiday schedule, though, and I hope we can pull off all we want to do. Oh! There will be some further treats around Christmas time for this very website and you're going to like them. We went through a bit of trouble to produce these treats, so they should be worth something. "But Brock," you say in a rather annoying voice. "What about you? Don't leave us before giving us a tiny scrap of a crumb about your personal life!!!" You want to know what I'll be doing this beautiful Thanksgiving day in semi-sunny LA? Working. No home-cooked turkey dinner. No family members within elbowing distance. Several families and individuals have invited me into their homes to partake in the typical festivities, but I feel like not having a Thanksgiving this Thanksgiving. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I'm far away from my old home. Maybe it's because I'm so fucking happy in this new home that I can let a few things slide. Maybe it's because I think the turkeys of the world deserve a break. See you next time and enjoy your Day of Much Pointless Turkey-Slaughtering!
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1.
Greenland is shrinking at an alarming rate.
people, people.
And
then drop it. Give a fuck about something else. Stop reading and
writing news stories about it. Then maybe,
finally, you can start caring about more important things in your
life, like how you’re going to snag one of those new pre-sold-out
