Mark Wahlberg told Mens Journal that he was scheduled to be on one of the hijacked planes on September 11th, adding
“If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did — there would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry,’”
Wahlberg also revealed that he has “probably had over 50 dreams about it” (being on the plane).
I, like Wahlberg, like to think about possible universes, including the one where he stepped on that plane. …and, as though that day couldn’t be anymore surreal…
“Hey man, did you hear- we’re under attack!”
“What?”
“Yeah, terrorists took over planes! They crashed one into the Pentagon and another into the World Trade Center”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.. they would have crashed a second plane into the other tower, but Mark Wahlberg was on it and killed each terrorist with his bare hands”
“WHAT?!!”
IMPORTANT: in this alternate universe –as I picture it– Wahlberg never became the successful actor we presently know. He hasn’t been heard from since The Funky Bunch.
“The dude from the 90s?”
“Yeah, the guy who sang ‘Good Vibrations’. He just killed 10 terrorists and landed a plane… You’ll never forget where you were, when you heard this news, aye pal?”
Never Been to Paris”, my one man show about the last 10 times I nearly killed myself by accident, is coming back. Every Thursday, starting next week, at the Comedy Bar (8:30 PM / $10 / ends mid March).
The Visitors Locker Room returns from its break this Thursday at 4 PM!
As long time listeners know, we always go on holiday during the short, 15 week college bowl season. But, now, we are back, and we have all the bowl results!
Do you know you hate Tebow, but can’t figure out why?- The VLR is back, to help you understand your feelings. Are you unsure if hockey has started?- we don’t know either, but plan to have an answer by Thursday. Have you been spending the last few months wondering which of the world’s bears you could beat in a fight?- The VLR is back to answer these kind of questions!
New time (Mondays and Thursdays at 4 PM CST), new segments, new mikes, new studio; new everything!
Pay special attention to our new contact info on the website, so you can message us during the show.
Fearless Listeners: do not worry, we are still part of the Fearless family and our podcast and blogs will still be available at the traditional URLs. We just happened to locate a studio that is 1) closer to us and 2) across the street from a liquor store, thus we record it there, for broadcast at Fearless.
Guys, I think comedy’s really starting to pay off. I think I’m finally reaching people; that I’m being myself on stage and it’s resonating.
This comment was left on my blog last night:
I’m continue learning from you, and I’m bettering myself. I actually love reading everything that’s written on your blog. Keep the articles coming. Really enjoy it!
It was left by a user called Medical Office Furniture, on a post about SlammableDickCaves.com, a gag domain I registered for a friend, with the wrong process (which created a yearly, $15 bill for SlammableDickCaves.com on my wife’s credit card).
Sometimes, doing comedy on top of a job and family- it’s a lot. And you wonder if it’s all worth it… But, then some one like Mr Furniture comes along with a great, genuine piece of encouragement and you realize: I can’t stop.
Always follow your dreams people. Your Mr Furniture is out there too!
full article on slammable dick caves, with the gracious Mr Furniture’s comment:
If you like actors that play great assholes (as I do) than “Die Hard” is your “Ben Hur”.
To start with, they have the Lennon and McCartney of assholes:
Paul Gleason
as
Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson
previous work as an asshole: The Breakfast Club
best asshole line: “Christ, Powell, he could be a fucking bartender for all we know!”
question: how was this guy NOT the villain in every Adam Sandler movie? Those shitboats would have won oscars.
William Atherton
as
Richard Thornburg
previous work as an asshole: Ghost Busters
best asshole line: “Eat it Harvey”
fact: this guy is so great at playing assholes, each of his movies is re-written so it ends with a woman punching him in the face.
Then, as though that wasn’t worth the price of admission alone, they throw in a couple of tangential assholes:
Robert Davi
as Special Agent Johnson
previous work as an asshole: jerk hitman in most bad mob movies
best asshole line: “You want authority, how about the United States Fucking Government!”
tragedy: a victim of his own success. Could walk on screen and be hated so quickly, they quit using him in ‘real’ mob movies (that require layered villains). Now plays mobsters in bad comedies.
Alan Rickman
as Hans Gruber
disclaimer: doesn’t really play an asshole in this movie so much as a villain. In fact, he plays the slimy European so well (“Die Hard”, “Robin Hood”), his attempts to break character accidentally back-fired (“Galaxy Quest”, “Love Actually”, “Bottle Shock”) and he turned those parts into assholes.
Then, as a final bonus, they have the best cocaine performance of all time:
Hart Bochner
as Harry Ellis
The great tragedy of Hart Bochner’s career is, “Die Hard” came out in 1989, the final year of our decade-long coke binge. If it had come out a few years earlier, this guy would have gotten more work than Robert Downey Jr.
Before Bochner, Hollywood portrayed cocaine as a drug that young people do once, then it ruins their lives. But it took a Canadian actor to come down here and say, “actually, it’s used by asshole business men so they can feel like they are the life of the party”.
The way he says “Hans, Buubby” just drips cocaine.
That would have been my review, at the time, and I’m fairly certain they would have used it in ads. Of course, I was 12 when it was released so perhaps not.
Lastly, some lessons I’ve learned on how to play a great asshole:
It helps if your name is Richard, so angry protagonists can loudly call you “Dick!”.
related to the above point, “Robocop” is the second most well acted movie for fans of assholes
an asshole always includes his job title when introducing himself
comb your hair often when you feel people aren’t looking
chew gum loudly while giving instructions
regularly threaten to sue
make women leave the room for no logical reason whatsoever before speaking
wildly underestimate and overestimate other people’s ages
call people “pal” when you’re talking down to them.
I’ve found myself doodling a bit recently. Maybe I’ll start posting some of the drawings to my website, with a short explanation… If they prove to be funny. We’ll see.
I used to work along a busy retail strip in Ohio. Just a few years prior, it was all farmland, but, suddenly, it was fast food, car dealerships and outlet stores. The roads still had country speed limits (45 – 50 MPH) and the drivers were terrible.
I worked next door to the Wendy’s, which we called “The Double Grief” because there were 10 car accidents a day from people dumb enough to try and make a left out of their parking lot. The turn was so dangerous, Wendy’s eventually built a second road –a kind of jughandle– that lead from the back of their lot, to a traffic light where you received an arrow to turn left. It was –maybe– five or six extra seconds to use this jughandle and turn safely.
And that was too much for most drivers. They still turned left out of the lot and you heard tires screech all day long as they nearly died.
What I found most hilarious was NOT that they were unwilling to wait an extra five seconds for a safe turn, but that they were equally unwilling to wait on their fries. Their mouths were all stuffed with fries, each falling to the ground, as they shrieked in terror at the SUV that was about to collide with them.
I always thought that would be the most American death: hit by a minivan, with a mouth full of fries; your last thoughts being, “I hope they bring back The Bacon-ator… Christ he’s moving fast”.
“What do you think’s the scariest movie of the year so far?”
ME:
“Easy. Cars“
FRIEND:
“What?!”
ME:
“Oh yeah. See, cars can only evolve as a machine for people, but there are no people in that movie, which means clearly it takes place in a post apocalyptic world where cars and computers have eliminated humans.
ME:
“See, in most movies where speechless things talk, like “Toy Story” or “Dr Doolittle”, the characters speak a silent language that humans don’t understand or notice. But, in Cars, we were just eliminated. It’s scarier than “The Matrix”.
I’m excited to announce that I’ll be performing in this year’s Laugh Fest, this March in Grand Rapids Michigan. Laugh Fest is “the nation’s first-ever community-wide festival of laughter and has quickly earned a reputation for being one of the nation’s marquee comedy events. Performers this year include Jim Gaffigan, Marc Maron, Martin Short and more.
I’ll be performing in “Best of the Midwest” on Wed March 14th and, more importantly, “Never Been to Paris” has been accepted for Tuesday March 15th. Most importantly, Sinbad will also be performing, so I’ll get a chance to reconnect with him.
(In 2008, I ran into Sinbad and his family on an airport shuttle. I was leaving Houston after a wedding, with one of the worst hang overs of my life. I could barely fit into the shuttle, until a man announced “we’ll make some room for ya”. It was Sinbad and his family, all dressed in matching purple-and-black zebra jump suits.
It was a defining moment for me: the first time my hangover was so bad, I started to question if I lost my mind. If my brain –so tired of the booze and dumb bar conversations– was now inventing realities and images, to entertain itself. Everyone is Sinbad’s family is at least 9 feet tall, which further adds to the believe that you might be hallucinating)
Colin: Dad, these vitamins are working. My penis is getting huge.
Me: That’s good, but we don’t talk about penises at the dinner table.
Colin: Dad, your penis… it’s just old.
(he was shaking his head ‘no’, as if he felt sorry for me, when said that last part).
INCIDENTAL DISCOVERY:
You could likely automate being a dad of two young boys, much the way they automated call centers, as you really only need to record a single sentence with slight variations:
“We don’t talk about SUBJECT at PLACE.“.
Where SUBJECT is “poop”, “penises” or “buts” and PLACE is “dinner table”, “church” or “grandma’s”.
That sentence accounts for 90% of my utterances to Colin.
In highschool, when ever a student got a speeding ticket, everyone would unsolicitedly yell, “fight it! Go to court and, if the cop doesn’t show up, you win!”. It always struck me funny: that they thought you could beat the system so easily.
Since moving to Chicago, I feel like I’m having the exact same conversation every time I talk to a Bears fan about their chances against a much superior team (like, say, the Packers):
Like every person who is unambiguously not young anymore, I feel America was cooler in my youth. I’ve discovered what is perhaps the most telling proof of that: children’s TV. The modern ones are androgynous; developed by video-game-obsessed wallflowers- everything beeps and hugs, and nothing makes sense.
I rewatched The Flinstones for the first time in 30 years the other day: Fred is so confident he is going to win at the track, he quits his job by punching his boss in the face. But he loses…. because Barney’s bookey is arrested before the bets can be placed.
I’m not saying America’s a worse place. …I’m just saying: you can’t show a kids show with the main character punching his boss in the face because of a gambling problem anymore (and then sell vitamins off that guy!), and that makes it awfully tough to be a better place, no?
I recently read the New York Times review of “Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star”, which said (in slamming the movie):
“Let me put the matter another way: this may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that.”
It reminded me…. Several years ago, I was trying to find a movie for the holidays and walked past a DVD of “In the Army Now” (with Pauly Shore). The press quote on the front cover was
“genuinely funny“. I always thought it was hilarious that the reporter felt he had to add the word “genuinely“, as though he felt people would never believe him; that he might be lying:
Creationists have answered the dinosaur question well enough: they were too big to fit on Noah's boat. The real question is: skunks and termites. A pair skunks would have caused a full scale, zoo-riot on that boat. And termites- I mean, it was made out of wood, right?
“Never Been to Paris“, my one man show about the last 10 times I nearly killed myself (by accident), is coming to New York. If you’re in the area and have not seen it, consider checking it out; or, if you know people in the area who might enjoy it, please pass along the details:
I’m in a free show tomorrow night. Should be fun. It’s an audition for Comedy Central’s “Comics To Watch”, which is part of the
New York Comedy Festival (yes, I used the word “comedy” 15 times in that sentence). Stop by if you have no plans.
This Thursday, I’m performing Never Been to Paris at the Wilmette Theater. If you’re in the Wilmette area, this will be a
very fun venue to see the show, as we are projecting the multimedia on a fullsize theater screen, behind the stage.
And if you’re not able to attend but know some people who might be interested, please forward along the details. We are recording the show in HD so the bigger the crowd, the better.
The Blackout Diaries was featured in the Chicago Red Eye this week. The online version (with longer
inteviews) is here, or you can read the print edition:
Friday’s show has sold out, but tickets still remain for next Friday (Aug 5th). Get your tickets at blackoutdiaries.info
