Only the good...

Well, if I needed something to take the wind out of my sails today, this headline would pretty much sum it up:

Comedian Mitch Hedberg dead at 37

BY MATT PEIKEN

Pioneer Press

Even family and close friends had a hard time understanding Mitch
Hedberg, a St. Paul native who ran away from home and, despite living
a scattershot life, became a runaway success as a standup comic.

Hedberg, whose space-case persona was as much part of his soul as it
was his act, died early Wednesday morning in a New Jersey hotel room.
He was 37. A medical examiner hasn't issued findings, but Hedberg's
family is told he suffered a heart attack. His wife was with him.

After graduating St. Paul's Harding High School, Hedberg rose through
the ranks at Minneapolis' Acme Comedy Co., and caught his big break
through a Comedy Central special. He made several appearances on David Letterman's and Conan O'Brien's shows, made more Comedy Central appearances and produced two comedy CDs. His big dream, to have an HBO comedy special, was in the works.

Hedberg's one-liners, dished off in a spacy staccato, were based on
absurdist, random observations. His long, dirty blond hair harkened to
the image of a 1970s stoner, and his success occurred in light of, in
spite of and even because of his quarter-century affair with drugs and
alcohol.



"I'd probably be living in Costa Rica, eating oranges on the beach, if
I wasn't doing comedy," he told the Pioneer Press last September.

"There's no two ways about it, having a son in entertainment industry is
challenging," his mother, Mary Hedberg, said Thursday.

She recalls being at work when her oldest daughter called in a panic
to tell her Mitch had packed some brown paper bags and left home. Mary
Hedberg couldn't get home in time to either see him off or talk him
out of it.

"That was heartbreaking for us, but he kept in contact with us. He
called as soon as the car broke down," she said. "You know, it was
like putting him through college, even though he wasn't at college.
But when he got his first break, we were just so thrilled for him,
because we wanted him to know he was O.K., and to have that
self-confidence that he could do what he wanted to do."

Louis Lee, owner of the Acme, said Hedberg not only became the Twin
Cities' first breakout comedian of the 1990s but, along with Lewis
Black, helped shape a national resurgence in standup comedy.

"It's very difficult for one-liner comedians to get an audience going,
but when Mitch worked here, you could see the kids call out the
punchline," Lee said. "Mitch made the whole comedy community realize
how important good writing is. It's a huge loss."

Unlike many comics, Hedberg was demonstrably thankful to his fans. Not long ago, a group of college students in Florida, speaking with Hedberg backstage after a show, mentioned how hot their dorm room was. Hedberg surprised them the next morning by showing up to their dorm with a new air conditioner.

"Mitch presented a lot of challenges, but a lot of opportunities for
traveling that we wouldn't have otherwise had, and he had a heart of
gold," his mother said. "He was a brilliant comic and a wonderful
person."

Dates haven't been set, but eventual visitation and services will be
at Wulff Family Services, Woodlane Mortuary, in Woodbury.

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If you haven't heard Mitch's comedy, I'd highly recommend it. It's pithy wit sort of in the vein of George Carlin with a little bit of Bill Hicks-esque insight to it. Check it out. Mitch would have wanted you to.

Viva Los Retardos!

I had written a post here about Vegas but my fucking computer ate it. Here's some pictures from that trip instead...Oh, and yeah, I lost the beard about halfway through the trip. I'm still hoping the hotel's gonna mail it back to me...

Just warming up the ol' typing fingers...

I know that this is probably well covered territory at this point but, just out of curiosity, when did drinks cease coming in 'small' sizes? I ordered a medium coffee at Dunkin' Donuts (my first mistake...don't trust any place that does the cream and sugar for you. They will fuck it up.) and they brought out this little ass cup. "I thought I asked for a medium, is this a small?" The squat little tank of a woman behind the counter replied, "Yes...is medium" and directed me toward the menu where I discovered that the sizes are now M, L, and XL (shows how often I get fast food.) My question then is, why not just make the medium a small and downgrade the rest of them accordingly? I know it seems like common sense but, well, I think that's in short supply these days...

Sam Fisher just got 0wn3d!!!

Oh hallelujah! The day has come! I now hold the fate of the free world in my hot little hands! Enemies of freedom, beware, for my name is Baby Sea Tuna, and I am a Splinter Cell...

Why I <3 The OC

If you know anything about me, you know that I have a serious love/hate relationship with drama. In real life, I try to avoid drama at all costs while at the same time doing all I can to create more and more of it. I can't help myself, it's just the way I wind my clock.

On TV, drama isn't my genre of choice...but it is an essential part of my balanced diet. The hourlong TV drama is a very crowded genre with few variations in the formula. Once something hits, the networks scramble over eachother to make the quickest, cheapest clone of that show while the network that aired said hit scrambles over themselves to create the quickest, cheapest spinoff. That's how you end up with like 9 Law & Orders and CSI:Bangor, Maine featuring Jimmy Smits (or some equally dumb shit.) Yeah, I keep hearing this stuff is the greatest and, while I'm sure it is, the fact remains that I hate cop and lawyers shows almost as much as I hate cops and lawyers themselves. Hospital shows? Well, I'm not really all that sympathetic a person. I was all excited about Desperate Housewives...until I found out it was a TV show and not a dating service.

Just as my personality dictates, I tend to gravitate toward the odder genre shows. Those tried and true formula dramas are just that. Fucked up interpersonal relationships are a solid basis for any good TV drama (just like in real life) but I'll be damned if a watch another one unfold in a police precinct. If you want me to watch, set it aboard a spaceship like Firefly. Make one (or more) of the characters dead a la Dead Like Me...or undead, like on Buffy or Angel. Give them special powers like Wonderfalls or Joan of Arcadia. Have the show's lead character be an unconscionable monster like The Sopranos. Show it in real time, like 24. What I'm saying is, it needs a hook. Something extra for me to chew on. That je nais c'est quios that so few shows have nowadays. Now, if you've done your homework, you'll have noticed that out of all the shows mentioned in this paragraph, most of them have been cancelled already and one or more will be ending soon. So where does that leave me? I'm too smart to watch most of the garbage out there but not smart enough to come up with my own shows. This is a bothersome place to be. Enter The OC...

Last week, I took a chance and bought the first season of The OC. Let me just say that I was not disappointed. Within the first three episodes, I fell in love with all the main characters. Within five or six more episodes, I fell in love with all the secondary characters (or loathed them, if that's what the writers wanted.) The show is based on a very simple "fish out of water" premise, much like Beverly Hills 90210. If you've never seen it before, The OC centers around Ryan Atwood, a troubled teen with a lot of potential but no direction. He is, much like 90210's Brandon and Brenda Walsh, the obvious outsider and our "in" to this foreign world of money, sex, and power. Through certain circumstances, he is transplanted from Chino, CA (the "wrong side of the tracks" so to speak) to lush Newport Beach in Orange County. As the series progresses the veils are pulled back on the community members and we find out that for all their wealth, they are not unlike the rest of us. They have secrets, desires, and problems just like everyone else...and that's where the real meat of the story lies. Now, without writing a dissertation on the show, I will simply give you my five top reasons for tuning in (as taken from an email where I was asked to defend my position on The OC.)

1. Exec. Produced by Doug Liman (director of Swingers, Go, et al)

2. Razor sharp writing. The OC's writing team has done eps of Buffy, Alias, Firefly, Sex and the City, The Gilmore Girls, and several other highly successful/critically acclaimed shows.

3. Some of the directors have come from such excellent shows as 24, Dead Like Me, Buffy, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, and Oz.

4. Music on the show includes: Spoon, Modest Mouse, Sufjan Stevens,The Walkmen, A.C. Newman, Gomez, Pinback, Death Cab, Mascott, Elliott Smith, The Eels...(believe me, I could go on)

5. Peter Gallagher. Oh, and his eyebrows.



All this coupled with a incredible eye for continuity (where viewers are truly rewarded for keeping up with the show's events;) a wonderful self aware/self effacing humor (the characters are often found watching a show called "The Valley" with a very similar plotline to The OC itself;) an intelligence that rivals that of its Balboa County based comedy counterpart, Arrested Development; and adult characters that are every bit as rich and entertaining as their teenage counterparts.

The bottom line is, after floundering for half a season (post Angel) I think I've found my new nighttime soap opera...and even though the premise is a bit formulaic, the end result is anything but. And who knows...maybe by staying home to watch this show on Thursday nights, I'll avoid all that real world drama I desperately need to steer clear of.

First crack at 'Random Question' proves too much for Blogger

In filling out my profile, I came across the "Random Question" at the bottom and figured I'd give a go at answering it the best I could. Like many things in my life, the answer seems to have gotten a little out of hand. I was informed by my new buddy "Blogger" that must limit my answer to a mere 150 characters. Asking me to edit my answer is akin to asking me to choose which of my children was to be killed by the Nazis (though I guess if you knew me, you'd know that I hate kids so it really wouldn't be much of a choice at all.) What am I saying here? I guess I'm saying that you, Blogger, are worse than Hitler! Now without any further hot air, I present you with the most important question asked since "How many licks does it take to get to the tootsie roll center of a Tootsie Pop?":

Do you believe that forks are evolved from spoons?

My answer:

Of course not! They obviously evolved from the trident. You see:

Back in ancient times the God of the Sea (also known as 'Aquaman' in the secular world) wanted a way to share the delicious fruitas del mar with people of the non-mer variety. Since, unlike Aquaman, the humans could not telepathically command the fish to jump into their mouths (and the culinary wonder known as 'the fish-stick' was still centuries away from invention,) the fork was invented as a way of transporting the delicious fish from the sea directly to the hungry peoples' mouths.

If history has taught us anything, it is that the fork was the not only one of the earliest advancements in seafood technology, but far more significant than many of its successors (including fire and the $9.95 all-you- can-eat shrimp sampler at your participating Red Lobster.)

Hello world...why are you still here?

I've created this blog under silent duress. After numerous pleas from various random intarweb pals, as well as some light prodding from the members of my Gmail "Inner Circle," I've decided to start blogging again for the first time since my Myspace suicide sometime last fall. The chances that this space will end up solely as a dumping ground for my personal beefs, job woes, and financial grumbles are high...just as the chances of my keeping this up with the fanatic fervor of my previous Myspace based web campground, are pretty fucking low. Honestly, if I can manage to pull my head out of my ass long enough to update this on (at least) a weekly basis, I'll consider this experiment a moderate success (and since my standards for excellence seem to run inversely proportionate to my age, moderate success is all I can really ask for these days...)