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Stephen Colbert is a Huge Neutral Milk Hotel Fan!

What are three of our favorite things?

Stephen Colbert
Neutral Milk Hotel
My Friend Stephanie aka "Stiff" (if you know her)

Last week, Stephanie went to see The Colbert Report live. What follows is an instant-message re-enactment of our real-life conversation after the show:

Me: How was Colbert?
Stephanie: AMAZING!!! OH MY GOD STEPHEN SANG NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL TO ME!
Me: What?? (Beatlemania screaming face, actual screaming, etc)

Here are the facts as we know them. Between segments, the Neutral Milk Hotel song "Holland 1945" came on (as, apparently, it often does) and Stephanie began absentmindedly lip-synching along to it. A few seconds into the song, she realized Stephen was pointing at her and singing along. According to witnesses, Stephen and Stephanie continued to sing along to the song while making eye contact for over a minute until their reverie was interrupted by the end of the commercial break. During this time, Stephen:

- Appeared to know all of the words to the song.
- Moved his head to look around a producer when his eye contact with Stephanie was briefly blocked.
- Acknowledged his and Stephanie's mutual understanding of the sad nature of the song, which is about Anne Frank, by making a "sad face" and tracing the motion of an invisible tear down his cheek. Stephanie, in kind, mimicked this motion back to Stephen.

In Stephanie's words: "I can die now."

Geoff, a sketch comedian who attended the show with Stephanie and witnessed the event, had this to say:

"It was magical. Neutral Milk Hotel was playing, Stephanie was singing, I was singing. Then I looked up and noticed Stephen was singing. Then I saw that he was singing in my general direction, so I looked to my right and realized that he and Stephanie were singing to each other. So I told Stephanie, "Hey, Stephen Colbert is singing to you!" and she did her best job of shushing me while continuing to sing Neutral Milk Hotel with Stephen. I was about 15 seconds behind on all fronts. But still, pretty awesome."

Here is our very most favorite picture of Stephen:

And here is the song: Download 06_holland_1945.m4a by Neutral Milk Hotel.

The world just screams and falls apart!!

Michael Showalter's Eclectic Music Taste

This part of this long, good A/V Club interview with Michael Showalter made me laugh out loud on the subway this morning:

MS:...Do I like The Shins? Yeah. Do I like Bright Eyes? No, I don't. At all.

AVC: Why not?

MS: He takes himself too seriously. Do I like PJ Harvey? Yeah, I love PJ Harvey. Do I like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah? No, I don't. Do I like Cat Power? I love Cat Power.

AVC: In your act, you say all of your Cat Power tracks are actually Sheryl Crow songs.

MS: That's fiction. That's the lie. I also said that I have Journey stored under Sufjan Stevens, which is also a lie. Do I like John Mayer? I love John Mayer. Love John Mayer. John Mayer is someone whose entire body of work I like.

AVC: He's also an aspiring comedian. Would you ever want to tour with him?

MS: Absolutely. 100 percent. His phone number is on my phone, and he's waiting for me to call him to do something together. Why haven't I called him? I'm too intimidated. I'm star-struck. He's like a huge, giant rock star, and I've listened his albums thousands of times. Why wouldn't I be intimidated by him? It's very random who I would meet that would intimidate me, but he's definitely one of them. If I met Sean Penn, would I be intimidated?

AVC: Yes?

MS: No, I wouldn't be. He's too obvious. If I met Steve Martin, would I be intimidated?

AVC: I'll say "No."

MS: Very. I would be very intimidated.

'Trinkle Down' And Other Theories

This is hilarious: Dan Allen (awesome comedian and guy) has been using, of all words, the word "scatological" incorrectly. His entire life. And he thought it had something to do with jazz.

Gabe and Max's Internet Thing

Last night's I Like Attention was hilarious as always. Here's the video Gabe and Max made for it (featuring, among other things, Gabe with a moustache, Patrick Borelli, and Gabe and Jenny.)

Max Silvestri: The Interview, The Awesome T Shirt

My friend Max Silvestri did an interview with Gridskipper about his favorite NYC places to consume things. Today, they have a map of those places.

A good place to see Max perform comedy would be at his monthly show, "I Like Attention", the next of which is this Sunday, October 14 at 8pm. His co-host this month is none other than Gabe Delahaye. I can't wait!

Incidentally, I'm 99% sure that Max's tshirt in the (above) Gridskipper picture is an illustration from a 70's-era "Where do Babies Come From?" book I checked out from the library when I was in elementary school. (In retrospect, I checked out that entire section. I guess I probably wasn't fooling anyone, huh?)

Comedy Stuff

* We posted the August Ritalin Reading lineup. Also there is now a widget type deal right there to your right that will have the upcoming lineup as soon as it's posted. I was very busy this weekend.

* Speaking of, the aforementioned I Like Attention show last night was SO AWESOME. Every second of it was hysterical - I highly recommend going next month.

I'm Going To This: Max Silvestri's I Like Attention

Max's show has so much ridiculous friend-buzz ("funniest show I've seen in years" type stuff) that I'm breaking my totally set-in-stone personal rule of *NEVER* going out on Sunday nights to be at this month's  I LIKE ATTENTION tomorrow. Just look at this lineup! Flyer:

The Ten and a Nitpicky PSA

I was really good about managing my expectations on this one, so I'll just say: I recommend it.  I laughed many times and so did the other people in my theater. But that said, I have friends who hated it. I kind of chalk that up to context (see: category tag) and difference in sense of humor (I love a good in-joke, others like broader comedy. Actually, I kind of love both, but the former is so rare in movies.)

I guess I didn't just say "I recommend it" but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who is as unfortunately very susceptible to the whole high expectations/low expectations phenomenon as I am. One thing is certain though: Paul Rudd is totally not sexy in it.

Pretty much completely unrelated: maybe this bothers me because I worked at a movie theater in college, but why is it that people who would never dream of allowing a straw wrapper to fall from their grasp without immediately picking it up off the dirtiest of city sidewalks think it's perfectly okay to leave a movie theater aisle totally destroyed by their garbage? I'm not even talking about strangers, I'm talking about the friend I saw the movie with yesterday! Totally not okay. And I am willing to passive-aggressively call out my friend in a public forum in the hopes that just one person will have an epiphany.      

Why Everyone Should See "The Ten" This Weekend

Because it's important to support artists who are attempting to make good things in a culture where good things are so rarely monetarily rewarded. So this weekend, if you're a fan of The State/Wet Hot American Summer/Good comedy, etc, go see The Ten. Don't wait. You know how important opening weekends are for a movie and these people who have given us so much good comedy deserve to make more in the future!
So, either see The Ten or see something else where The Ten is playing but buy your ticket for The Ten. But, preferably, see The Ten. With a large group! Here's where.

Sorry about the lecture, but it's important! Also, how can you resist Paul Rudd's olive green eyes? Randomly, here's a coloring page I made. Print and color. Click to enlarge:

High Horses Not High Heels

* Vulture: Only 5.9% of today's Emmy-nominated late night comedy writers are women.

* (Possibly) Related:  Women think Sex and the City is funny. (Personally, I think the dearth of women in comedy is less "women aren't funny" and more "women are perceived as not being funny", but nobody's helping the situation by making up words like "shoegasm.")

* Totally Unrelated: Holy $%*, a guy shot himself in the head while being caught on "To Catch a Predator" a year and a half ago.

* Idea: an RSS feed feature that automatically eliminates posts with certain tags from your feed. Inspiration: Harry Potter.