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#sarah jessica parker #autograph #thrift store #lancaster

“I think the reason we agree to be spied on, basically, is that, on some level, we do want to be known,” she says. “There is that unsettling parallel with religion and the way technology works now. At some level, as human beings, we have this deep need, this deep desire to be understood, to be seen, to have the sense that someone knows everything we do.

"Then there’s the question of what that entity does with that knowledge. In religion, the message is that God loves you and embraces you while holding you accountable for being your best self. Whether Axciom databases do that is much more questionable.” X

seanland-blog

Here’s a video of a drum and bugle corps singing this song.

#bluecoats #they finished 2nd this year #their highest finish in history #dci

Free Your Mind 2015

#vimeo #2nd most important crop circle ever #jesus the magician?#not here to make friends

48th & girard

#corned beef #special #obama

hat tip: @lukerobot

oneterabyteofkilobyteage

original url http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Lobby/2841/

last modified 2000-04-05 20:12:59

seanland-blog

SAY NO TO country music

improvnonsense

LGBTQ characters in improv

I was on Matt Besser’s Improv4Humans podcast and Besser read a question from a gay improviser asking why there weren’t more gay characters in improv scenes. It was an interesting and thoughtful question, but no one on that episode of I4H was gay. We answered it. Then afterwards Besser suggested I write about it on my improv blog.

So I wanted to print answers on my improv blog from queer/bi improvisers.

The full question is here on reddit. Here’s an excerpt:

“I can’t help but notice a surprising lack of improvised gay characters on your show. What I mean by this, is that when you and the performers are in a scene, and the characters are in a relationship they are almost always in a heterosexual relationship. This is particularly noticeable when you have LGBTQ improvisers on your show and when they are in a scene they are almost always put into heterosexual relationships as well.”

Answers from queer/bi improvisers after the jump!

Keep reading

seanland-blog

Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg makes a relevant point related to one type of response that the Improv4Humans guys gave (Bob-Waksberg’s point is about defaulting to male characters, but it generalizes):

“The thinking comes from a place that the cleanest version of a joke has as few pieces as possible. For the dog joke, you have the thing where the tongue slobbers all over the businessperson, but if you also have a thing where both of them ladies, then that’s an additional thing and it muddies up the joke. The audience will think, ‘Why are those characters female? Is that part of the joke?’ The underlying assumption there is that the default mode for any character is male, so to make the characters female is an additional detail on top of that. In case I’m not being a hundred percent clear, this thinking is stupid and wrong and self-perpetuating unless you actively work against it, and I’m proud to say I mostly don’t think this way anymore. Sometimes I still do, because this kind of stuff is baked into us by years of consuming media, but usually I’m able (with some help) to take a step back and not think this way, and one of the things I love about working with [collaborator] Lisa [Hanawalt] is she challenges these instincts in me.”

I remember a similar conversation in a Michael Delaney workshop. Sketch typically demands efficiency, and defaulting to archetypes--the most common, recognizable, and easily-digestible tropes--in setting up our base reality helps in both efficiency and in allowing the unusual thing to stand out. That makes sketch even more likely to traffic in reinforcing these default norms; ”normal” characters are white, and guys, and straight, etc. unless given a reason otherwise.

I think Bob-Waskberg (via Lisa Hanawalt) offers an important rebuttal: one small move creators like us can do to widen what is considered default and normal is to vary the demographics of characters’ base reality, especially when doing so makes no comedic difference.

caitlinsweigel

“The Milk & Cookies Show”

November 2015 Produced and Edited by Caitlin Weigel and Daniel Corkery Written by Caitlin Weigel, Daniel Corkery, Corin Wells, Frank Farrell, and Jamie Glasheen

americanbfast

American breakfast is having technical difficulties

williebhines

Kevin and I saw this, a huge “model train” layout which is really a “model world” layout with trains, planes, boats, cities, concerts, oceans, mountains, concerts, sports arenas, apartment complexes, illuminati headquarters, faeries, space shuttles, sharks, etc — when we were in Hamburg last month and it is amazing.

This promotional video is also amazing for the very particular cadence of the English translation and also that it chooses to show three separate incidences of sex happening within the model world!

seanland-blog

@unlikeableprotagonist

ucbcomedy

An otherworldly discovery is both repellent…and enticing.

connorratliff

UCB Comedy presents

a GOLDWATER film

UNABLE ARE THE LOVED TO DIE

I wrote this. Adam Sacks directed it. Brian Faas stars in it. Many other talented people helped to bring this weird short film to life, check out their names in the end credits!

I remember pitching this idea to Goldwater and thinking, “I don’t know how to make this film, but I’ll BET that Adam Sacks can figure it out.” I think I deliberately wrote it as a challenge for Adam, knowing that he is a perfectionist and he would break his own back trying to make it just right. I was correct about this, and I feel sort of guilty for half-ruining his 2015 with this, but my hope is that so many people will watch this and love it that he will get hired to direct a super big movie and he will forgive me.

By the way, it’s NSFW, unless you work someplace really cool.