How Hollywood seduces talented people into making crap

Some interesting Joe Rogan podcasts with Neal Brennan: #443, #131, and #114. In that last one, Brennan rants about how Hollywood seduces talented people into making crap.

It's funny. You do good work or personal work and then they'll go – like I always used to say to Chappelle and Mos Def after we'd do a sketch I'd be like, "Fellas, that was a great sketch. Hollywood called and they want you to play cops!" Hollywood calls and then you're upgraded into some shit that you didn't want in the first place but you're so [taken with] awards shows and shit like E! and Entertainment Tonight. It brainwashes you into thinking, "That Hollywood is valuable." And you just walk like a zombie toward Hollywood and go, "Where do I stand? Here?"

More Rogan pods.

How to light your video

Wanna do video stuff? Get your sound/lights right! Lighting on the Fly is "a minimal and flexible philosophy for lighting your video on any budget."

Interview about rock 'n roll, comedy, and Vooza

Podcast interview with me: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Comedy and Native Advertising Models with Matt Ruby.

Today’s episode is an interview with Matt Ruby. Matt is a stand-up comedian who has a successful series on the web at Vooza.com. It’s a sketch comedy show lampooning the tech/startup/business world and I think it’s very funny because I work in a corporate sector of the technology world at my day job. You won’t need to be part of that world to enjoy today’s episode though as Matt and I talk about his starting in a band in the early 2000s and getting his start in stand-up comedy and how that all lead to his current project Vooza and then his latest project taking shots at the club scene.

Was a good chat.

Great interview with Dave Attell

Great interview with Dave Attell by Aisha Tyler. He talks about his first road gig with Sandler, bombing for years, day jobs, etc. Nice deep dive. (via MN)

A lot of new comics who have honed their set they think and they don't lock into the crowd. They don't read the crowd. I look at the crowd. I'll always go, "What's the crowd like?" And all these people are like, "Does it matter? You're just gonna do your set." Well, it matters to me because if I do a Klan joke and there's a guy out there who's a skinhead, I don't think he's gonna like it. Sometimes these jokes might help your set, sometimes they might save your life.

What are we so afraid of?

We live in the safest place in the safest time ever in the history of the planet. No one's ever had it this good. And yet our society is constantly afraid. We want to feel fear so badly that we invent things to be afraid of (see ISIS, Ebola, etc.). And the powers that be know fear is the last/best way to manipulate people.

We should look at who profits from this fear:

-the media ("tell us what to be scared of!")
-the pharmaceutical companies ("give me pills for my anxiety!")
-the military-industrial complex ("make weapons to scare the bad men!")
-the police ("have some of the extra military weapons to scare local bad men!")
-the people who are actually doing evil things and getting away with it ("I don't listen to Elizabeth Warren because hackers/school shootings/whatever!")

Just imagine trying to explain to someone who lived 100 years ago or earlier about how scared we are today. They'd let ya know that when it comes to danger, murder, disease, and the rest of it, modern day Americans have no idea just how good we've got it. We should be celebrating our lucky existence instead of incessantly cocooning ourselves in fear and negativity.

Tu n'es pas Charlie

Today: "‪#‎JeSuisCharlie‬"
Same person last month: "I'm offended by that thing you wrote..."

Actually, the whole raison d'etre of ‪‎Charlie Hebdo‬ was to offend people and show that nothing is sacred. So if you've ever called something offensive, tasteless, obscene, or inappropriate, tu n'es pas Charlie.

Every "that crossed the line" zealot has a Prophet Mohammed. Your Prophet Mohammed may be 9/11, catcalling, AIDS, rape, gay rights, anti-Semitism, Asians, the n-word, the c-word, or the some-other-letter-word. But all that shit deserves to be made fun of too because, y'know, everything deserves that.

If you really want to show #JeSuisCharlie, let someone mock the thing you believe in most – for me, that's pretentious blog posts that hijack a tragedy in order to further one's own personal agenda while also showing off a superficial knowledge of French along the way. C'est la vie!