So I just got an email from someone over at UCB and they told me that last month the State did a reunion show at UCB Theater in LA. If anyone is not aware of who the State are, please get educated. The State was a sketch comedy show in MTV in the early 90’s. It was probably the best show on TV at the time. Many of the State have gone on to amazing things. David Wain directed Wet Hot American Summer which was co written my Michael Showalter. The movie also starred Michael Ian Black who is that dude from the Sierra Mist commercials (not to mention many other things). The three of them also make up Stella which is a stand up comedy trio who also do amazing sketch videos and then had their own show on Comedy Central that was far too weird for any mass audience to enjoy. I don’t know who gave them a show in the first place, but I appreciate it. The other very successful branch off the State was Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant who along with Mr. Ian Black and the extremely sexxy Kerri Kenney started a variety show on Comedy Central called Viva Variety which while short lived was one of the most brilliant things I have ever seen on TV. The same group, minus Michael Ian Black then went on to do Reno 911 which has been the most successful State alumni project to date. Lennon and Garant also write and do touch ups for consistently horrible comedies such as Balls Of Fury, The Pacifier, Herbie Fully Loaded and Taxi! The other members of the State show up in things, mostly other State related projects from time to time, with Joe Lo Truglio getting the most work. He starred in the amazing web TV show Horrible People which just ended its first season today. Every member of the State was also in Wain’s film “The Ten” which came out last year.

Anyway, the first section from their LA reunion is below, and they will be releasing a new sketch here every Monday for the next few weeks.

State reunion better come to NYC… and MTV better finally release the State on DVD. The wait is killing me. You can see some episodes on iTunes in the meanwhile.

So anyone who knows anything knows that this commercial is the greatest ever made. I have blogged about it at least twice, and now we can make it thrice. So my friend Sarah 2.0 IMed me today telling me how much she hates this commercial, so much that she blogged about it in a NEGATIVE way. This is completely contrary to what she should be doing. Luckily it was only a myspace blog so it doesn’t count… but I am going to still take the time to attack her arguments. Start out by reading her blog and watching the video.

She breaks the video down by seconds. I have posted said video below so you can compare. Hit the play button on the control panel and not on the video because it is fucked up for some reason and will try to tell you that it is no longer available.

Her comments in italics.

.05: The cannon shoots through the wall and the wall falls towards the blast
The thing is, the cannon knocks over the wall when it hits the front wall of the house. You see it has already gone through the back wall and at this point it does not have enough speed to rip through the front wall, but it does have enough to push the wall over, knocking all the walls down in the process. Duh.

.14: GROSS pirate teeth!
Just because they are gross doesn’t make them any less piratey and if I have learned anything from the internets is that pirates are cool.

.22: Ok the mermaid costumes are kinda cool, but I wish they flipped their tails only on the 4’s
That is just bullshit. The costumes are amazing of course, but you need that extra flip. It ties the whole scene together. That is like having the Godfather baptism scene without the baptism.

.24: She’s watching the ocean via her digital cable internet? Is that whats going on? I’m sure they didn’t do that on Bay Watch.
Um.. Bay Watch was FICTIONAL. It was a made up TV show. Real life guards use the extreme value that is the Optimum Triple Play so they can both watch their swimmers with greater efficiency AND watch Bay Watch AND use the telephone if they so desire. Each for just one flat rate of $29.95.

.36: Pelvic thrust…and in those outfits. Who choreographed this shit?
It is clearly an homage to one of Bob Fosse’s most famous numbers, “Steam Heat” from The Pajama Game. And you’d think a dance major on a full scholarship would know that…

.40: Who lays out NOT facing the beach? and the conk shell has a cord coming from under a beach towel, obviously not connected to some digital cables.
Sarah clearly does not know shit about the way conch phones work. And also, while it might be confusing from the commercial anyone who knows anything knows that they are filming at the famous Optimum Beach which has a isthmus that jets out between the ocean where there is beach on both sides. So while they are facing away from the beach in the shot, they are facing towards the beach that the camera is shooting from. According the the productions notes which I was lent for the purpose of this article, the camera was actually positioned from a sand bar.

.43 Ship-less pirates on the run.
Seriously… are you fucking mental? A HUGE pirate ship can not pull up to the beach. They set anchor and are now doing their best raping and pillaging on foot. They also happen to be running away from the sea monster who capsized their attack row boats.

.47: Sweet Christ what is that dragon doing? My friend Daniel Feld thinks he’s kinda hot, but what the hell is going on with the pirate in the background? He’s just holding the tail and swinging a sword around. WTF?!
Um… it’s called rapping. Look it up. And the pirate in the background is dealing with the force of the tail that is nearly whipping him about. That “dragon” is clearly a sea monster and he has amazing tail strength and if that pirate wasn’t holding on for dear life he would be certainly bashed against something with it. Either that or he is dancing.

Its pretty down hill from here.
And by down hill do you mean informative? How else would you know that the savings are for real? And that the triple play is the deal? Also.. we needed to see the logo once more in order to gain brand recognition. It’s called marketing dumb ass.

So, in conclusion: best commercial ever. And Sarah is fired from my life. And Reggaeton should be used to sell EVERYTHING. Case dismissed.

UPDATE: Read Sarah’s dimly worded response here.  I do have to thank her for catching some typos like the Fosse misspelling and the correct price.  That being said, “internets” is not a typo, it is a way of life.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EVxI0uGzeY[/youtube]

My fiend Christian launched a new website for his art yesterday. My friend Teddy helped him design it. I am sure I cannot possibly understand his art or what it all means, but I find this pretty brilliant and anyone who can justify honking their horn and screaming “CNN MOTHERFUCKERS!” at people as art has my vote. Plus we used to be in a fake ’79 style rap group called the Party Rock 3 so I had to represent. Check that shit out.

Fox 5 from Christian Schultz on Vimeo.

I am probably way behind the times on posting this, but I am sort of in love with this site.  I have received several of these from a past roommate, and wish I saved them so I could send them into this site…  My current roommate is slightly less passive of his complaints.  I also had a roommate who kept leaving his underwear in the bathroom, so I just started throwing them away.  One day he completely lost his shit about it and threw the trash can across the room.  I also once lived with a guy who had Dawsons Creek posters in our doorm, was obsessed with adult contemporary music and had never heard of the Beastie Boys. “I haven’t heard them, but I am familiar with the genre.”  “You mean rap?” “I hear people playing it in their cars down town.”  The best part was he was a music major.  You should tell your friends about drivenbyboredom and hten maybe enough people will come that I can get some real ads and maybe I can live alone again one day…

This post is probably a bit premature. There is this game/social networking thing called vLES or Virtual Lower East Side. It is only in Alpha mode so there are not many people on it, and many of the features don’t really function. I think the point of it is to promote bands and stuff. Anyway, it is a sim world that takes place from Houston to Delancy, from Allen to Essex. The game has Darkroom and the Annex and 205 and Max Fish and several other bars. It also has Katz Deli, American Apparel and my favorite restaurant on earth, the Creperie. It is so fucking weird. I had this idea that I would just do a virtual photo gallery in one of the bars… like Annex or something, but there aren’t really enough people in the game to do it in just one venue. I was told once they do their Beta launch you will be able to buy stuff and have apartments and things like that. It is all very frightening. Anyway, I did a virtual gallery anyway, but I will probably do another one once the game really opens for business. I think you need to check it out now though.

Here are the pictures from the crazy party last night on the vLES.

Update: My profile is drivenbyboredom.  Add me.

Now that I uploaded a bunch of my photos to Wikimedia Commons people have taken it upon themselves add my photos to Wikipedia pages.  I had blogged about how I had taken the official photos for Agyness Deyn and Takeru Kobayashi.  But now, in a matter of two days I have taken the official Wikipedia photo for the following:

• Tracy Morgan
• Simon Rex
• Richie Rich
• Brodie Dalle Of The Distillers
• Pauly Shore!!
• Moby
• The Gaskets
• Lisa D’Amato
• Lady Sovereign
  
• Faune A. Chambers
• Delaney Williams
• David Blue
• Cisco Adler
• Anwan Glover

I also even have photos on the pages of Lance Bass and Ron Jeremy though not the main ones…  I think it is just a matter of time before I get someone to write a Wikipedia entry for Driven By Boredom.  I am now Wikifamous. Ph33r m3.

My friend Robin is one of my favorite photographers.  I got to hang out with her and her extremely weird and entertaining friends when I was in LA.  Robin was an old school fan of Driven By Boredom and when she was 16 she told me that I was her favorite writer.  Now she pretty much thinks I am a douche bag.  I have known her for the last 6 years and I have watched her photography get from good, to fucking amazing.  She consistently blows my mind.  Personally I think she abuses photoshop and that her images are strong enough that she doesn’t need much touch up.  She recently redid her website and I got to see a bunch of new images that I had never seen before.  She has two portfolios, one for her creepy horror stuff and naked chicks and one for her commercial work.  The thing is, surprisingly, I am almost more impressed by her commercial work.  Her editorial portraiture is mind blowing.  When I was in LA she was talking to me about the Salton Sea and how nothing but crazy meth heads live there.  She recently sent me a link to her Flickr set of it, and it blew my mind.  I am posting two images below.  The first is from the Salton Sea shoot and the second is an editorial portrait of two redneck comedians and liberal presidential hopeful Senator Mike Gravel.

I uploaded my favorite pictures from January to my Flickr account. I spent the last 4 hours or so working on it, plus several hours going through 30 days of photos last week. So this update took me some time. So you only get two updates today. Then it is the weekend, and I only post twice a day on the weekend, then I am probably going to Rhode Island on Monday and Tuesday to campaign for Obama so I would imagine updates are going to be slacking for the next bit of time.

Anyway, check out the best of January on Flickr.

Due to horrible economic conditions in Zimbabwe their currency is completely worthless.  Just the other week my mom was telling me about a book she read about Zimbabwe and how the government kicked out all of the white land owners who were farming and gave them to the natives of Zimbabwe, but these people did not continue to farm the land properly and it lead to starvation and a dying economy.  I am sure I am completely simplifying the situation, but the Zimbabwe government just kept printing too much money and now things are completely fucked. Anyway, to either draw attention to, or make light of, someone came up with the Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage. Remember that site Million Dollar Homepage?  Well it is a parody of that site, except each pixel costs one Zimbabwean dollar, which according to his site is worth 1/90,000 of a US dollar.  So for one cent, you can own a part of history.  I bought 8,100 pixels for Driven By Boredom for 9 cents (plus like $3 in pay pal fees).  It is pretty exciting.  I think I am going to buy some pixels for The Gaskets too.  Dig the site, buy some space.