Reggie Watts is a New York-based comedian and musician.
Watts’ shows are mostly improvised and consist of stream of consciousness stand-up in various shifting personae, mixed with loop pedal-based a cappella compositions.
February 23, 2011
Reggie Watts
February 22, 2011
Wonder Showzen
Wonder Showzen is an American sketch comedy television series that aired between 2005 and 2006 on MTV2. It was created by John Lee and Vernon Chatman of PFFR, a Brooklyn based art collective. The show’s format is that of educational PBS children’s television shows such as Sesame Street and The Electric Company (e.g. use of stock footage, puppetry, and clips of children being interviewed). However, Wonder Showzen parodies the format in a very adult-oriented manner. In addition to general controversial comedy, it satirizes politics, religion, war, sex, and culture with black comedy.
February 21, 2011
Shoefiti
Shoefiti is the practice of throwing shoes whose shoelaces have been tied together so that they hang from overhead wires such as power lines or telephone cables or onto trees or fences. This practice plays a widespread, though mysterious, role in adolescent folklore in the United States. Soldiers leaving the military often paint a pair of combat boots yellow or orange and toss them over a power line or telephone wire near the barracks or unit to which they were assigned.
February 21, 2011
Matthew Lillard
Matthew Lillard (b. 1970) is an American actor known for his roles as Stu Macher in ‘Scream,’ Stevo in ‘SLC Punk,’ and Shaggy Rogers in the ‘Scooby-Doo’ film series – he has taken over the providing the voice of Shaggy in the cartoon series since the reboot ‘Mystery Incorporated.’ Lillard made a dramatic turn in Alexander Payne’s critically acclaimed comedy-drama ‘The Descendants.’
Lillard attended Foothill High school in Santa Ana, California and later the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Pasadena, California, with fellow actor Paul Rudd, and later, the theater school Circle in the Square in New York City. While still in high school, he was co-host of a short-lived TV show titled ‘SK8 TV.’ After high school, he was hired as an extra for ‘Ghoulies 3: Ghoulies Go to College’ (1991).
February 17, 2011
Satire
Satire is a literary genre where vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.
A common feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm, but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing as well. Satire is not possible under dictatorships. It was not allowed, for example, in the Soviet Union. Anyone trying to make fun of Stalin would have been put to death immediately.
February 17, 2011
The Ugly Duchess
‘The Ugly Duchess‘ (also known as ‘A Grotesque Old Woman’) is a satirical portrait painted by the Flemish artist Quentin Matsys around 1513. It shows an old woman with wrinkled skin and shriveled breasts which are partially visible from her low-cut dress. She holds a red flower in her right hand, at the time a symbol of engagement, indicating that she is trying to attract a suitor. However, it is a bud that will likely never blossom. The work is likely drawn from two sources. One is Erasmus’s ‘In Praise of Folly,’ which satirises women who ‘still play the coquette,’ ‘cannot tear themselves away from their mirrors’ and ‘do not hesitate to exhibit their repulsive withered breasts.’
It also bears a resemblance to a caricature head drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci. It was originally half of a diptych, with a ‘Portrait of an Old Man.’ The portrait is held to be the inspiration for John Tenniel’s 1869 drawing of the Duchess in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In 2008 it was claimed that the sitter, possibly Margaret, Countess of Tyrol, was suffering from a rare form of Paget’s disease, in which the victim’s bones enlarge and become deformed.
February 17, 2011
Castell
A castell is a human tower built traditionally in festivals at many locations within Catalonia, Spain. At these festivals, several ‘colles castelleres’ or teams often succeed in building and dismantling a tower’s structure.
The tradition of building castells originated in Valls, near the city of Tarragona, in the southern part of Catalonia towards the end of the 18th century. Later it developed a following in other regions of Catalonia and, since 1981, when the first castell of 9 levels of the 20th century was built.
February 16, 2011
Zombie Walk
A zombie walk is an organized public gathering of people who dress up in zombie costumes. Usually taking place in an urban centre, the participants make their way around the city streets and through shopping malls to a public space (or a series of taverns in the case of a zombie pub crawl) in a somewhat orderly fashion.
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February 16, 2011
Comic Strip Switcheroo
The Comic strip switcheroo was a series of jokes played out between comic strip writers and artists, without the foreknowledge of their editors, on April Fool’s Day 1997. The Switcheroo was masterminded by comic strip creators Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott, creators of the Baby Blues daily newspaper comic strip.
February 16, 2011
Spaßguerilla
The Spassguerilla (fun guerrilla) was a grouping within the student protest movement of the 1960s in Germany that agitated for social change, in particular for a more libertarian, less authoritarian, and less materialistic society, using tactics characterized by disrespectful humor and provocative and disruptive actions of a minimally violent nature. Events organized by the groups included such actions as attacking politicians or the police with custard pies. One of the main proponents was Fritz Teufel, sometimes referred to as the political clown of the Extraparliamentary Opposition.
The lack of respect for traditional, ‘bourgeois,’ ‘repressive’ forms of authority and ritual, countered by irony and humour, was typified by Fritz Teufel’s reply when told to stand for the judge at a trial: ‘If it helps the search for the truth’ (Wenn’s der Wahrheitsfindung dient). The forms of provocative and disruptive protest invented by the Spassguerilla were later adopted by the peace movement of the 1980s[4] and later by youth protest movements in the reunified Germany. Similar forms of disruption have also been adopted by Cyberspace activists (‘hacktivists’).
February 16, 2011
Buy Nothing Day
Buy Nothing Day (BND) is an international day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. Typically celebrated the Friday after American Thanksgiving in North America and the following day internationally. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by ‘Adbusters’ magazine in Canada. The first Buy Nothing Day was organized in Vancouver in September 1992. In 1997, it was moved to the Friday after American Thanksgiving, also called ‘Black Friday,’ which is one of the 10 busiest shopping days in the United States.
Outside North America and Israel, Buy Nothing Day is the following Saturday. Adbusters was denied advertising time by almost all major television networks except for CNN, which was the only one to air their ads. Soon, campaigns started appearing in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Germany, New Zealand, Japan, the Netherlands, France, and Norway. Participation now includes more than 65 nations.
February 12, 2011
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s. The name comes from borscht, a beet soup that is popular in many Central and Eastern European countries and was brought from these regions by Ashkenazi Jewish and Slavic immigrants to the United States, where it remains a popular dish in these ethnic communities as well.
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The Daily Omnivore 