So supporting gay rights tramples on freedom of religion, eh?

nytimes.com

How about this as a general rule, just to make things easy for everybody:

When religious liberty (e.g., the right to believe that homosexuality is a sin) conflicts with personal liberty (e.g., the right to adopt), personal liberty always takes priority.

Why? Because your right not to have your sensibilities offended is less important than everyone else's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Period.

(Oh...and in cases like this one, where what "religious liberty" really boils down to is whether or not you're being funded by the government, I'm just going to suggest that you go right ahead and fuck yourselves. OK? Thanks for reading!)

destroying the almanac

[of potential interest only to people who already know and enjoy this blog; all others please click here]

(via)

So here's the thing. I know there's a small group of people who like this blog, and that means a lot to me—I'm grateful to you, seriously. In fact I'm grateful to Alt85 itself, which I think played a big role in my getting where I am today as a writer.* But maybe the two most important things about this blog, to me, were that it was (1) a place for an unpublished, unproduced writer to have a voice and (2) an anonymous outlet for me to speak without censoring myself—and now I (1) no longer need that place (am no longer combating George McFly syndrome) and (2) seem to be on my way to no longer being quite so anonymous. Relatedly (and unrelatedly) I no longer feel so comfortable shitting on other people's work. I feel totally comfortable shitting on things that are evil, but if I see a TV show or a movie that I think is merely stupid?† Especially now that I know plenty of people who work on shows and write movies, it just seems sort of uncool to make a point of publicly criticizing someone's writing (yes, even Michael Chabon's).

And it's not so much that Alt85 is all about shitting on other people's work as it is that Alt85 is all about speaking my mind without censoring it. Somehow continuing it with limits on what I'm allowing myself to discuss seems to run against the original spirit of the thing—not to mention that, to be honest, there are certain explosive (or at least provocative and unpopular) things I've said on here that I don't especially need linked to my name. Part of me wants to take some of that stuff down, in fact, but I think at least I'd better say, "Good while it lasted," and move on.

Will Alt85 return? Not unlikely. Will it find new life in another form elsewhere? Un-unlikelier still. In the meantime, read a goddamned book—or at least watch some good television.

Of course, if any of you should like to beg for more Alt85, the great Short Round will now hear your pleas.

xoxo
C3PO

The source of all our problems.

* I've gone pro, y'all!
† NOTE: Possibly an invalid distinction. I've just started thinking, vaguely Arendt-style, that maybe most evil is a kind of stupidity...?

You shut the hell up! I'm a professional comedy writer!

"Why no Alt85," you ask? Because I got a job. You want me to get fired? I'm surprised at you. After all these years together!

(I will say this: I love my job, which I guess makes me one of the luckiest human beings...who's ever lived?? [Cue meteor and/or loathing of reader. Cut to me having just gotten laid off after 1½ weeks at work, then me drinking Listerine and crying in my bathtub. At least you like me again!] I do keep sort of waiting to wake up in a gel pod and realize I'm just being used for electricity by malevolent robots.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Movies I Don't Remember, @atrubens [see also], and my innumerable porn blogs should continue apace.* And here's a picture of a sign I thought was funny:

"towed a vehicles owner expense"—sounds like some throwaway
line in a Shakespeare play that you're like, "Ehhh...I don't really
have to bother unpacking that one, I don't think. Moving on..."

* apace: wrong word?

QUICK PSA: Comma placement matters, kids!

From I forget where—Cynopsis or something: "Star is writing the script starring Goldie Hawn as a woman, who after her husband has a mid-life crisis at the age of 65 and leaves her, struggles with being single again for the first time in 35 years."

There should almost certainly be a comma after script, and I'm not sure you can really say of a script that it stars anyone—but that, I'll acknowledge, is really just nitpicking.

What goes beyond nitpicking* is the comma after woman. What they want is a comma after who: Goldie Hawn is "a woman who struggles with being single again," and she does so "after her husband has a mid-life crisis at the age of 65 and leaves her." The problem with putting the comma after woman is not only that the sentence becomes nonsense when it hits the word struggles, but also that the thrust of its meaning now appears to be that Goldie Hawn plays a woman: "Star is writing the script starring Goldie Hawn as a woman." OK, I'm hooked! Go on!

When Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry plays a woman, that may be remarkable. Goldie Hawn, not so much. (The difference, if you're wondering, is that she's white.)

This fall, watch this talented young man in
his most challenging role yet: a woman?!?!

* It is still nitpicking.

Appreciation Fest / Review Sliders™

A smash hit on Broadway!

The Book of Mormon [SPOILER ALERT, I suppose]
There's only so much I can not love a major Broadway musical (Tony Award-winning, even!) featuring a "Hakuna Matata"–style song about fucking God "in His cunt."* Hasa Diga Eebowai, everybody!

Who would do such a thing to Tom Hanks?!

Punching Tom Hanks
Although the writer, Kevin Seccia, "is an improbable mix of the blandest aspects of at least two lamentable cultures" (Andy Richter), this book is just crammed full of brilliant comedy writing the way you cram a goose full of— OK, I'm just going to stop myself right there because I'm not going to stop eating foie gras and I need to compartmentalize.

the great Jon Benjamin

Jon Benjamin Has a Van
I've watched to the first commercial break of the first episode of Jon Benjamin Has a Van, and I have decided that this is my favorite television show. I am not entirely serious, but much less so joking.

When I was 13 I loved Wolverine.
Twenty years later, I love Magneto.
(When I'm 43 I'll probably love Forge or something.†)

X-Men: First Class
Best X-Men movie ever? Certainly the best-ever fifth movie in a series. [I said as much to Lauren Donner, and she said thanks! So FUCK YOU!] I loved the X-Men between the ages of 11 and 14, let's say, and I think this movie captured what was great about the comics better than any of the other movies did. The only rival is the second one. (Magneto's escape scene in that one is about as good as anything ever.‡)

In conclusion, here's a picture of Los Angeles:

* As a friend pointed out recently, there's something wonderfully liberating about writing God's personal pronouns with lowercase Hs. Just as calling Jesus "Jesus Christ" is not a neutral thing but in fact an endorsement of Christian theology ("Christ" being not a name but a title, meaning Messiah), capitalizing the H in "His" is a sign of respect, not a grammatical rule. So, for the record, I'd like to note that if I ever capitalize that H, nine times out of ten it's for the comedic effect (the comedy of acting respectful when you're not being: e.g.).

† 43-year-old me is an idiot.

‡ Including the Beatles and fellatio.

Follow me, whether or not you want to live.

fav/RT/print for your fridge

Let's imagine for a second that you wanted to know what my best "tweets" were—keeping in mind that my Twitter "feed" comprises nothing but jokes.* (Who would want to know that, you ask? Let me ask you a different question: Who wouldn't want to know? The answer to that question is Nazis.†)

Here are a few ways you could try:

1. A democratically determined "best of"!
2. A democratically determined "best lately"!
3. What I hand-picked back in January!
4. What I hand-picked todayish, steering clear or clearish of the above! [No clicking required—thank God, am I right??—just see just below. I mean, merely see directly below. Man, you're tough.]

How soon after saving the Goon Docks do you think the Goonies were like, "Fuck this town, I hate it here"? A month? A week? Couple of days?
-3/4/11

Live every day like it's a rambling story you're telling, decades later, to a bored and unhappy grandchild.
-3/24/11

"Ephphatha!" -Jesus (and I'm pretty sure also one of the creatures in the Mos Eisley cantina?)
-5/25/11

I liked the Velvet Underground Babies because you never saw Andy Warhol, only his stockinged feet.
-4/19/11

Lots of funny things can happen, but the funniest is when someone gets his head stuck in something & says, "Hey, who turned out the lights?"
-4/4/11

What's the movie where Schwarzenegger looks in his window & sees another Schwarzenegger having dinner with his wife & he's like "AUURRRGH"?
-3/10/11

Even if something really valuable is learned, a high-school basketball team winning a game is still less interesting than a werewolf. Sorry.
-2/3/11

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Cereal #awfulcereal (a bunch of letters, probably, with marshmallow blinking eyes)
1/26/11

Who would win in a fight, God or Mike Tyson? Because God is omnipotent, but Mike Tyson exists.
12/21/10

"Hey! You kids knock it off!" -possible campaign to end gang violence
5/13/11

I bet Prince was pretty pissed off when he first heard the name "The Fresh Prince."
4/14/11

It's like 55°F here in L.A., and I just saw a girl dressed like she was on the ice planet of Hoth.
3/21/11

"Ask child why jaw fall off...child say, 'I don't know.' BRAINS!!!!" (zombie Bill Cosby)
3/9/11

God-shaped hole. Holland Tunnel. Super Mario warp pipe. Undertow. Happy parentheses. Endnotes. Muppetmouth. Moggy. Lurve. #newslangforvagina
2/23/11

Every once in a while I get all super-objective and breasts just look ridiculous to me. (This happens for about two seconds every 10 years.)
2/3/11

"I see...an Owen Wilson-nosed girl with a late-'60s haircut performing cunnilingus in the '69' position." #rorschachblot
1/28/11

This hold music is too sexy.
1/22/11

Spider-Man: You Don't Have to Put on the Red Light
12/23/10

Reads bottom to top (say the bottomwords‡).

* Jokes I'm pretty sure I wrote!

† I defy you to argue that Nazis would in fact want to know. QED, jerks!

‡ "Bottomwords" is an offensive slur for "footnotes." [Dude...I should totally tweet that!]

You ask the impossible.

A restroom at a restaurant or bar (I forget).

OK. It would be very easy for me to get hung up on the suggestion that customers might want to clean the area after using it (if they're talking about wiping your pee off the toilet seat, then yes—although how about not peeing on the toilet seat?—but doesn't it sort of sound like they're suggesting you kind of actually...clean the bathroom for them? I mean, yes, that would be "kind," for sure, to say the least...), but that's not why I called this meeting.

What really caught my attention was the third bullet point, or rather the juxtaposition of the second and third. One: please clean this area after each usage! Two: it is not possible to clean after each usage!

I understand what they're saying. We all probably get what they're saying. But it sure as hell sounds like they're saying something like—

IMPORTANT!

• Please be sure to wash your hands before returning to work!
• Washing your hands before returning to work is impossible!

If I'm not misremembering, my ex-wife's* favorite moment in those redubbed G.I. Joe PSAs that were going around about 10 years ago [seven?] was: "Give him the stick! Don't give him the stick!" A similar thing, really.


* IMPORTANT NOTE: I have never been married.