Vooza's intelligent pokes

Article at solidsmack with some good words about our Vooza show:

Silicon Valley is definitely worth a watch…If HBO isn’t your thing however and you still want to have some laughs at the expense of start up culture, the collection of shorts over at Vooza intelligently pokes fun at everything from crowdfunding concepts to product pitches and business card exchanges to product launch videos.

See the videos at Vooza.com.

I don't like musical comedy

A reader writes: "I think you should do a blog post on musical comedy. Even if it's about how you think it sucks. I want to hear your opinion. Because I respect it."

I did think Flight of the Concords were pretty great. But mostly, I don't like musical comedy. The dickish way to say why: I think it's mostly done by people who are not good enough at comedy to succeed as comedians and not good enough at music to succeed as musicians. But they mix the two and deliver an inferior version of both things as a sort of magic trick that audiences like in the same way audiences like prop comedy and guys dressed in drag.

Look, I love music and I love comedy. I just don't get off on them being mixed. Probably because I'm very binary and take a purist approach to things. (Overall, this is an unnecessary and unhelpful way to live life but c'est la vie.)

Also, I think music hits people on some sort of reptilian wavelength and then makes anything that goes along with it easier to swallow. Think about how stupid most song lyrics are. Or the painful in-between song stage banter of most musicians. People let it go because, hey, music!

But, y'know, do your thing. It takes a village and all that. And anything can be done artfully and worth watching.

Sam Mendes: 25 Ways to Be a Better Director

Closet businessman

"I’m really a closet businessman. I think the happiest artists generally are." From Who Are The Happiest Artists?

How Stephen Colbert defined his character slowly

I’m Happy for Colbert, But Let’s Be Clear: We’re Losing One of TV’s Greatest Characters:

The formation of a sitcom character is like a sculptor laboriously chipping away at marble; what Colbert did was more akin to a rock slowly being smoothed by the motions of the tide. 150 nights a year, Colbert defined the character slowly but surely, segment by segment.

What Colbert did on his show is/was amazing. To carry the entire show every night (Stewart has others that help out on-camera, Colbert does it all on his own) and to do it in character is something else. I understand why he wants to shift into being himself. But I'm gonna miss how vicious and mean "Stephen Colbert" could be. Like here...



"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." I got a feeling the real Stephen Colbert will be nice and uplifting and the kind of guy we can root for. But we've got plenty of those already. The truthiness of "Stephen Colbert" was a special thing in the ocean of Upworthiness and it's gonna be missed. See this related tweet.

Sontag and Hedberg on photography and time

Susan Sontag in "On Photography":

All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

Or, as Mitch Hedberg put it:

One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said,"Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture is of you when you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older." "You son-of-a-bitch! How'd you pull that off? Lemme see that camera...what's it look like?"

Btw, Buzzfeed posted A Complete Ranking Of (Almost) Every Single Mitch Hedberg Joke.

Vooza tackles Kickstarter and projectors

Some recent Vooza fun...

The Honest Kickstarter Campaign
This video shows what’d happen if people told the truth about their Kickstarter campaigns.



Hooking Up The Projector
No one ever seems to know how to hook up the projector. Maybe it’s a missing dongle. Or maybe it’s haunted by evil spirits.



More at Vooza.com.

Spinal Tap's "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare"

This 1979 short, spoofing The Midnight Special, was the seed that turned into This Is Spinal Tap. Love the beer bottle!