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

Mike:

Most of the time, I couldn’t care less about sitting outside of pop culture obsessions. I have no more desire to understand the appeal of Twilight or Lady Gaga or “American Idol” or sports than I care to understand the appeal of sticking a chopstick in ones peehole. But there are a few beloved pop items that really irk me because I don’t get them. One is Some Like It Hot, which has so much going for it—Billy Wilder and Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe and a reputation as the greatest comedy ever made—but never fails to bore me. Another is The Big Lebowski.

The Big Lebowski (1998) stars Jeff Bridges as Jeff Lebowski, aka: The Dude, a middle-aged hippie stoner who wants nothing more than to bowl with his crazy Vietnam Vet buddy Walter (John Goodman) but gets caught up in a scheme to deliver ransom money to the kidnappers of the wife (Tara Reid) of a millionaire (David Huddleston), also named Jeffrey Lebowski. Being that this is a movie by Joel and Ethan Coen, greed inevitably fouls the plan when Walter decides that he and The Dude should keep the ransom money for themselves. Read the rest of this entry →

This is beautiful. Double Rainbow, you just got SCHOOLED. These dudes make you look like a liquid fart.

(Via Videogum!)

I sure don’t get the excitement about this whole Comic-Con thing. It sounds like Sundance, only instead of seeing movies, you watch trailers. And then you get to see celebrities talk about the trailers, but in that promotional way, like how they might talk about the film in a DVD extra you’d never watch.

I mean, I like comics as much as the next guy. I’m not rushing out every Wednesday to get the new Justice League, but I like seeing what Garfield’s up to in the morning. But are there even any comics at this thing? All I ever hear about is Jon Favreau. If I was the dude who was there to check out some new comics, I’d be pretty annoyed that I had to shove my way through a bunch of Jon Favreaus to get to them. At an event that is ostensibly all about those comics.

Final analysis: Comic-Con, which I have never been to, is a terrible thing that no one should ever experience. That is all.

Our friends over at R & R Gallery recently put together a show of art inspired by the movie Labyrinth. Full disclosure: I was not a Labyrinth fanatic as a child. That movie and The Goonies sort of washed over me. I liked them both when I saw them, but they were not movies that we owned and watched on repeat, and therefore, I am not one of those many people my age for whom these movies bring up wonderful memories of staring at a television. (The movies we owned and watched on repeat, FYI, were My Bodyguard, Fame, Flashdance, Purple Rain, Airplane!, and Caddyshack. Please note that none of these, with the exception of My Bodyguard and maybe Airplane!, are really kids’ movies. I don’t know what lesson can be gleaned from this information, but I do know it’s very interesting and you are glad I told you.)

Regardless of my connection with the movie Labyrinth, R & R’s show looked 100% dope and fresh. You can check out the goods here. And buy a piece of your very own here. Artastical!

Inspired by their mutual love of the INXS record Kick, Matt and Jeff have decided to take another listen to their favorite classic and forgotten records from the 80s. This is the Faith Project, and it is 100% guaranteed to contain absolutely no analysis of George Michael’s Faith.

Jeffrey:

About a month ago, I learned that Beck’s record club was doing a song-by-song cover album of INXS’s nearly forgotten classic Kick. I immediately sent the link to Matt, knowing him to be a Kick fan from way back. The covers got us motivated to dust off the original, and we spent the next 2 weeks on a serious Kick bender. When talk came around about the next old favorite we should put into rotation, I brought up George Michael’s Faith. Matt came up with the idea of calling our newly-formed record club The Faith Project. Then he suggested that it would be better if we called it the Faith Project and never actually listened to Faith. Thus, the Faith Project was born. This week, we take a listen to the record that got the whole thing started, Kick.

I don’t have memories of listening to Kick the way I do some of my other early favorites, like R.E.M.’s Document or U2′s The Joshua Tree. The main thing I remember about INXS is that my friend Jon Harmon’s sister Libby was super into them, and I thought she was cool because she was older than us and dressed like Molly Ringwald’s wacky friend in Pretty in Pink and knew what KROQ was even though we lived in Michigan. I know I listened to this record over and over again, I just can’t recall how old I was, or where, or with who. I have repressed all memories of listening to this record. I have also repressed all pictures of me trying to grow my hair out to look more like Michael Hutchence, because yowch.

Any discussion of INXS has to begin by acknowledging that Michael Hutchence died by choking while wanking himself off. In my opinion, the less said about that, the better. Autoerotic asphyxiation is one of those things that should theoretically be funny, but really is just a reminder that even the coolest guys in the world are nothing more than dick-spanking apes desperately groping for a few seconds of happiness in an otherwise miserable existence. I’m sure there isn’t a man among us who doesn’t have at least one adventure in his long history of self-cultivation that maybe wasn’t such a great idea in retrospect. Michael Hutchence didn’t just look like a rock n’ roll Jesus: he died for our sins. Read the rest of this entry →

Do you want to know what the new issue of Awkward looks like? It looks like this!

Thanks millions to illustrator Aaron Newman a/k/a Baarbarian for the kick-ass cover illustration and designers Holly & Andy at Rumors for the amazing layout! Pre-orders will be accepted soon … get your credit card ready!

This is a big day for us. We’re starting to gear up for the release of Awkward Two, which will be available on Amazon right out of the gate. But first, I had to test the system to make sure Amazon would accept our merch. And what do you know? They did!

From this moment forth, Awkward One will be available at Amazon for $9. Here’s the thing about selling merch through Amazon: they only take a limited number of copies before they have proof that they could make a profit. 1, to be exact. I just sent them one copy, and I’d love for it to be out of their hands before they even receive it. So if you haven’t bought your copy yet and need one more item to get the super saver shipping, toss this bad boy onto your order. If we sell the only copy immediately, they will know that Awkward Press is a force to be reckoned with and hopefully order up a buttload of the next edition. The future of indie-publishing rests in your hands! Order your copy right now!

Optionally, if you’ve already read Awkward One and loved it, please click on over to Amazon and give us a review. The more the merrier!

Next stop, the Kindle! Awkward Press is taking the Internet by storm!

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 summer before my junior year at the University of Michigan, I got a job at Record Town in the Briarwood Mall. As record stores go, it was not one. We didn’t sell records. CDs and cassettes only. And cassingles, of course. Hahaha. Cassingles!

I recognized that it was a terrible store for anyone who liked music, but nonetheless, I felt like I’d finally hit the big time. Who wouldn’t want to work in a record store? I mean, working in a cool record store that was not in a mall would have been better, let’s face it. But it was still a bit of a dream come true. There weren’t a lot of real record fans shopping at the mall, though. The Jock Jams compilations did not leave our top 20 bestseller wall in the entire two years I worked there, and that is not hyperbole.

I’m not trying to make you feel bad about your crappy college job. So you worked in the caf, no big deal. Someone had to refill the soft serve machines. But there is a tie-in between Showgirls and Record Town. A few months before the film came out, we received a promotional video at the store featuring 20 minutes of unrated footage from the movie. Like an extended preview kind of thing. I took it home with me because no one else in the store gave a shit about Showgirls. Because no one in America gave a shit about Showgirls. Contrary to what you may have heard in Bible class, the country did not spend 1995 in the grips of Showgirls fever. Read the rest of this entry →

The Awkward Press film project got underway this past Saturday with the shoot of The Vanishing Point, based on my story of the same name from the upcoming Awkward Two anthology. It’s fitting that this story was the first to be shot, as it was really the catalyst for the entire project. A few months ago, my friend Eric Kissack told me he was looking for a project to direct while he was between editing gigs. “What a coincidence!” I said, “I happen to have written a story that I believe would make an excellent film!” Because that is how I roll.

Remarkably, Eric dug the story. I went home and busted out a screenplay in a few hours. This is not as impressive as it may seem – the screenplay was only 7 pages long. It is a very short story.

We sent the script back and forth for a few weeks until we finally came up with something we thought would work. I kept waiting for the moment when Eric said, “Hey, I’ve changed my mind, this is a terrible story,” but that never happened. Before too long, he’d signed on two excellent producers (my wife, Sarah, and Eric’s friend Lisa) and the ball was rolling. Read the rest of this entry →

It’s been almost one year since we put out our first publication, Awkward One. A lot has happened in that time. Kyle had a movie at the Sundance film festival and wrote a well-received musical with Duncan Sheik. Clay had several plays open, had a story selected for Akashic’s Richmond Noir anthology, and wrote the book for a musical with Bruce Hornsby. I made two YouTube videos and a baby. A successful year for the founders of Awkward Press, all the way around.

When we first came up with the idea of printing a bookazine called Awkward, we decided to do 26 issues from A to Z, each of which would feature 5 short stories based around a unifying theme. The theme of the first issue was “Awkwardness,” natch. “Hey!” we said, after the first issue came out and became an international bestseller and the focus of several investigative reports by 60 Minutes, “Let’s shake things up for the second issue!” We determined that the theme of the second issue would be “Brevity,” and that it would feature short, short stories by 25 different authors. After all, rules are meant to be broken, right? Even when they’re rules that have never really been properly established and are of concern to absolutely no one except the poor book designers (Holly and Andy at Rumors! Holla!) who had to reconceptualize the entire publication.

And then along came the iPad, and suddenly, Everything Changed. Those paper-filled things we once called “books” are now confined to the trash heaps of our imaginations, and also the trash heaps that are not imaginary. People no longer want to waste their time painstakingly leafing through burdensome collections of dead trees to ingest the printed word. Now, we can all simply fire up our hip-screens and dive into words in a far-more engrossing and efficient manner. No longer do we have to struggle with the physically demanding act of turning a page. Even hands have become obsolete; a single finger is all most people need to get through their days. Read the rest of this entry →