diogenes club

This is the first movie I've ever directed that I'm not in

Go figure.

Also three posts in as many days. Double go figure.

My mustache finally came in handy, I got to play a police captain

Don't start a poke war with me because I'll win.

I'm assuming that most of you have at the very least heard of facebook, but there are probably a few people who are unfamiliar with the concept of poking, so I'm going to explain it. You facebook pros can skip ahead to the next paragraph. When you're on facebook, looking at someone else's profile, you have the option of poking them. If you poke them, next time they log in, they'll have a little message saying that you poked them. They then have the option of poking you back or removing the poke. What is poking for? It's basically a way of getting someone's attention without having to go to the trouble of stringing a few words together. I was going to do a post about how poking is possibly the lowest form of human communication, one rung below grunting and pointing, but I'll save that for another day.

I myself, have been poked by four people. One was an old friend looking to get back in touch. Another was a woman I didn't know who I'm fairly certain thought I was cute. (I'm relatively sure that this is its main use, but what do I know.) The third was someone who I think just didn't know what poking was. And the fourth was my poke war rival.

The concept of a poke war had never occurred to me when all this started. When my rival poked me for the first time, I poked him back and thought that would be the end of it. He quickly poked me right back again and I did the same back to him. I soon realized that this was going to be an ongoing thing and was pretty sure I was going to win. I pride myself on being able to do things I don't enjoy for long periods of time. There was no way I'd get tired of this before he did.

The thing about poking is you can't just flood somebody with pokes over and over again. You have to wait for them to remove your poke or to poke you back before you can send them another one. So the real trick of a poke war is trying to poke someone back as quickly as you can after they poke you.

A month or two went by and my rival showed no sign of stopping and I was at the end of my rope. There's only so much poking a guy can take. There was almost no point in poking him, because his return poke would appear seemingly instantly. I wasn't going to win this through sheer force of will. I was going to have to cheat.

Through a little googling, I found a script that automatically pokes people by pretending to be a web browser, logging into your account, and then poking whoever's poked you. It didn't actually work in its current state, but with a little bit of tweaking, I got it to run and changed it to fit my specific needs. Then, I set up a separate mail address to receive all my facebook email. Every time the account got an email telling me my rival had poked me, it would poke him right back. Every time it got an email from facebook unrelated to pokes, it forwarded it on to me. I was able to wage a poke war without even having to think about it.

A few days ago I checked in to see how it was all going. It had been ten days since I had last received a poke from my rival. The war was over. But it was such an empty victory. And not because I had cheated, although that was part of it. I expected some fanfare. A formal surrender. Something. But really, all I ended up with was a facebook account that wasn't even worth logging into. What's the point now that it's all over? I haven't told him it was a computer poking him all those times and not me. I don't think I will. It seems mean somehow. Poke war is hell.

You probably read the same sites I read, but I'm going to repost some links from them anyway

This turtle is just too much

There's a guy who draws one picture of Wolverine every day and he's outdone himself this time. Arguably not safe for work, but I'm sure none of you would never waste your employers' money and read diogenes club during work hours.

And two, count em two, who's on first videos:
One by Yoda and Jar Jar and
one by people who are apparently unfamiliar with it.

This is a screenshot from Amtrak's website

Really, Amtrak? You can predict when your trains are going to arrive within two minutes?

A dull list of all the exciting things I did for ign

In 2006, I applied to be a reporter/critic for ign.com's film section. Much to my surprise, I got the job. And kept it for about two months. I was told that they had hired a new editor and he was bringing in a new staff. That's probably true, but I'll never be entirely sure of whether or not it was because I did a lousy job. Now you can judge for yourself. Here is the entirety of everything I did for them in my two month tenure in chronological order.

A Wonderful Film: An roundtable interview with the director and some of the cast of The Great New Wonderful. I want to note that I didn't come up with the title.
Lady in the Water video interviews: The Paul Giamatti one is the favorite out of all of the video interviews. It was my first one ever, and probably the best.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend roundtable interview: I remember this roundtable as one of the one of the most inane I had the pleasure of attending.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend Review: My first review, and the most positive one I'd give, which ain't saying much.
Trust the Man video interviews: I've actually never watched these, because I didn't think they went that well. I did a roundtable interview for this movie too, but I'm not sure if it was ever published.
Trust the Man review: I hated this movie so much, I had to tone down my review so people would believe how much I hated it.
10th & Wolf Review: I didn't go to the press screening for this, I just bought a ticket. I got to expense it though.
Crossover roundtable interview: This roundtable was me, a room full of black people, and another white guy who would not stop saying "the n word." Not the word that the phrase refers to, I mean literally "the n word." It was embarrassing.

I hear you like funny videos

So check out my friend Ted's Funny or Die page:

Co_Champions

I haven't watched all of them, but my favorite so far is The Joke.

A few pictures I've taken and brief commentary on them

$2 or $2.00. Make up your mind.

Really, Chase? Is it really? You need to take over the entire city so I don't have to walk an extra block to avoid a two dollar charge ATM charge?

I imagine there aren't too many of them, but there are probably real people named Sarah Marshall. I'm sure they realize it's just an ad for a movie, but it still must be a downer seeing these every where you go. If my name were Sarah Marshall, I'd stop wearing jeans for the duration of this campaign.

Update: Looks like The Daily News beat me to the punch on this one and found a real life Sarah Marshall.

Hey look, it's me on Comedy Central's website promoting Lewis Black's new show, Root of All Evil

I was eating some Sour Patch Kids and using my mouse and I think one of the bits of sourness got in it and now I can't scroll up on the scroll wheel

But it was worth it.

Update: Amazing. Next time I see Trevor, I'm buying him a bag of Sour Patch Kids, because believe it or not, his comment fixed the problem.

Paraphrase Theater: Hamlet!

I wrote a bunch of intros for this and didn't like any of them, so I'll just present this without comment:

Sonic the Hedgehog gives you some important advice

about not climbing into a dryer and then somehow turning it on

My favorite part of this is that Sonic is a stickler for correct spelling.

There's a somewhat 8-bit album that my former coworker's brother made and I want you to know about it

His band is called 3-2-1 Blast and his album's called Choose Your Own Adventure and you can download the whole thing for free from last.fm here.

George Lucas is a racist and marcwitt2003@yahoo.com is all for it

Remember when I made a post about how racist Phantom Menace was, some five or six years after it came out? Well, marcwitt2003@yahoo.com came to the same conclusion some three or so years after that. After googling "george lucas is a racist", Marc (I'm guessing that's his name from his email address) found my post on Lucas' racism and had this to say:

Episode 6
George decided to put the required Chinese and the required black character
into the script.
Comically they lasted as long as it takes to say "she's gona blow" and "I'm
hit" THERE's equal oportunity at work! The funny thing is I think it was
the right thing to do. DID THE BLACKS OR THE CHINESE INVENT THE TECHNIQUES
OF ILM OR LUCAS FILMS....NO WHITE PEOPLE DID> So quit your whining! White
people rule cuz we have more to offer.

Wow, Marc. Congrats on being white. And congrats on inventing on those special effects techniques. Oh wait, I forgot, you didn't invent that stuff, or anything of note, and you never will. You're just some inbred hick that can't spell. I'll admit, you have more familiarity with Return of the Jedi minutia than I'd expect from the average racist, but you had nothing to do with anything any other white person or any other human being has ever accomplished, so quit trying to take credit for it.

Spammers, if you missed his email address the first couple times, it's marcwitt2003@yahoo.com. Have at it.

Someone has found a new way to improve Garfield

You may have already seen someone take out Garfield's thought bubbles, miraculously improving the strips tenfold. You may have already seen Garfield strips reenacted in live action and then turned into short music videos.

But have you seen garfield minus garfield?

And if you have, well, what can I say, you love the internet more than I do.