I have just been made aware of unhappyhipsters.com. Go. Now.

(Thanks, Brendan!)

Now I’m doing research on pranks. My days are filled with fascinating work. I did a Google search for “best pranks” and the third page that came up was one of those pages on the Internet that have been around since 1991, just sitting there waiting to lure hapless Googlers like me into their suckery. Here’s one of their suggestions:

Prank Party!

One day get together with a couple of your friends for a sleep-over. Choose one friend before the party and tell everyone you’re going to pull a prank on them. Tell your friends to bring ANY prank stuff that they have. When your friend falls asleep, pull a series of pranks such as:
# Sleep-makeovers,
# face fart spray,
# gum in hair,
# and fingers in cold water.

When you run out of pranks, get a CD and put it in your CD player. Turn the volume all the way up. Tell one person to turn on the light when the music goes off. Tell 2 people to dance on the bed, tell some people to blow whistles and scream. Turn on the music and watch your friend go nuts.

Clever! I am especially a fan of the “face fart spray” prank.

I’m doing some research on popular viral ads for a client, and I came across some good ones that I’ve never seen before. Let me just say that I’m not 100% comfortable with the idea of advertising as entertainment. But then on the other hand, I am getting paid to write those entertaining advertisements. So, I guess I actually feel okay about it. On the other other hand, t would be awesome if we lived in a world where no one had to make money and we all had trust funds.

Read the rest of this entry →

So. New episode of Lost last night, right? I have not been waiting as long as most of you people because I just finished the first 5 seasons about 2 months ago. It was a long, hard slog. I had never seen an episode before last year. I’m glad I did it, though, because last night I got to watch the writers fumbling around to make sense of their bloated monstrosity of a series in REAL TIME.

Just kidding. It’s not a bloated monstrosity. It’s fun and smart and everything good about TV, and also sometimes silly and totally convoluted. And I do believe that the writers know exactly where they’re taking us. I am just getting somewhat impatient at having to wait. But such is life. Sometimes we just have to wait.

Last night’s episode was okay. I mean, at this point, there’s really no such thing as good or bad. It will be bad if the series ends badly, and it will be good if the series ends goodly. But the point is, about twenty minutes before the end, this comes up on the screen:

Hmm. I can’t quite read that. ENHANCE.

Finally! Thanks for keeping on top of it, Eyewitness News!

Let me just be straight about one thing: I do not regret moving away from New York. Los Angeles is the best. I mean, it’s not the best. There are other places all over the place that are better. But it’s almost always warm, the people are nice, and you’re never ever jammed up against a bunch of sweaty-smelling jerks on the subway trying to pretend like you don’t notice each other. For those reasons and others, I have a nicer way of life out here than I did when I lived in New York.

But so then why does New York have to be such a dick and keep doing cool things without me? The Debate Society, my favorite group of play-making people ever, have a new show coming out. And it sounds amazing. Just look:

You’re Welcome. from The Debate Society on Vimeo.

Before the Debate Society was the Debate Society, one of the founders, Oliver, directed and produced my Christmas spectacular, Christmas with the Flamingos. It was a miserable financial failure because I thought I could bring in way more people to see it than I actually did. My first draft of the play was unspeakably bad. I was supposed to have a co-writer but I didn’t want to relinquish control so I tossed out everything he wrote and he probably still hates my guts. I became obsessed with explaining tiny inconsistencies that no one in the audience would ever notice and one night I got stoned and came up with an incredibly complex explanation of something meaningless that I was baked-excited about and I called Oliver up to tell him about it and he patiently listened to my ramblings and explained, “I don’t think any of this matters to anyone.” Read the rest of this entry →

A party is happening in New York this Saturday. The party is a celebration of One Year Lease’s 10th Anniversary. You know them, of course, because they produced your favorite play of this year and forever, Teaser Cow. That play was written by Awkward co-founder Clay McLeod Chapman. This party is going to be super sweet, because Super Mirage will also be playing. They are your favorite band that you ever heard because they feature the vocal and keyboard-playing chops of another Awkward co-founder, Kyle Jarrow. I think it is clear that this is going to be the best party that ever was and if you aren’t there you’re going to spend the rest of your life feeling like a failure.

Here are the details:

Party with One Year Lease as we celebrate our 10th Birthday!
Saturday, February 6th
8pm–Midnight
Teatro Circulo (64 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery)

Special performance by Super Mirage and DJ Vainglory.
Hors d’oeuvres will be served.
Unlimited beer and wine.

Help us dance the night away and raise some money to keep bringing new
plays to the stage. This is one party you don’t want to miss!

Tickets are $25 in advance and $30 at the door.
To purchase, go to https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7633585
All proceeds go to One Year Lease and tickets are tax deductible.

According to Netflix, Mike and Jeffrey agree with each other on movies 84% of the time. In their weekly feature, The Awkward Movie Challenge, they search valiantly for that sweet 16% that results in big arguments and big laughs.

Jeffrey:
The first two “adult” books I read when I was a kid were Judy Blume’s Wifey and Stephen King’s short-story collection Night Shift. I’m probably not the only child of the 70’s whose life was permanently changed in an icky way by Wifey. My parents should really have been locked up for keeping that book in the living room instead of hiding it away in their bedroom bookshelf with their Anaïs Nin books. Although I guess it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, since I read the Anaïs Nin books, too. Many, many times.

Night Shift didn’t make me feel icky in the same way that Wifey did, but it did introduce me to the thrill of being terrified. I would read my favorite stories over and over again, astounded that one writer could create so many goose-pimple-inducing scenarios. I’m sure much of it would come across as silly today—I haven’t read it since I was a kid—but at the time, Night Shift was as scary as scary could get. Read the rest of this entry →

My good friend Matt recently started a blog to discuss practical street biking. I realize this has nothing to do with publishing, but it’s a pretty fascinating topic for those who like the idea of making bikes your primary mode of transportation. I recently picked up a used bike from a friend for $50 and I’ve been trying to use it as much as a I can. It’s kind of scary careening around the streets of Los Angeles on a bike, ’cause suckas sure don’t like sharing the road. I haven’t had any real problems so far, though, and it sure is an easy way to get free exercise.

That is all. Now get back to work on your story, please.

That’s right, we want your words. 1,500 of them or less, to be exact. We are now looking for stories for our second anthology, Awkward Two. The theme of this issue is Brevity. In honor of the theme, we will keep it brief. You can investigate further by clicking here.

Awkward’s very own Kyle Jarrow was featured yesterday in a big article in the LA Times! He has created a new musical called Whisper House with Duncan Sheik that will be opening in San Diego soon. Duncan Sheik is the composer of the gazillion-Tony-award winning musical Spring Awakening. Also, according to Wikipedia, he broke a Billboard record when his song “Barely Breathing” stayed in the top 100 for 55 weeks. That makes sense, because if you could program a music-creating machine to perfectly distill America’s tastes into a 3 minute pop song, it would sound exactly like “Barely Breathing.”

Anyway, good job Duncan Sheik, but this isn’t really about you. According to Kyle, this is what the play is about:

I first started writing this in the heat of the Iraq war — that fear is something that guides a lot of life, that there is all this stuff telling us to be afraid,” said Jarrow, whose playwriting credits include “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant” and “Armless.” “How do you process fear and not let it control your life? That’s one of the biggest questions of modern living.”

That sounds awesome! I will go see that play. We should all go see that play. If you don’t live in Southern California, don’t worry, you’ll get your opportunity. Because it’s going to Broadway! Probably. We don’t know yet. But of course it will, because all signs point to it being the pinnacle of human theatrical achievement. Suck it, Aristophanes!

Congratulations, Kyle!