Lift the June Gloom with jokes from R.J. Johnson

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June Gloom Be Gone

by R.J. Johnson

– There are now dating sites for Star Trek fans. Their favorite pick-up line? “Your parent’s basement or mine?”

– On the news, they said prisoners ask O.J. Simpson to negotiate problems between the prison gangs. And if there’s one guy who knows how to talk to a bunch of cut throats, it’s O.J. Simpson.

– Pres. Obama warned Americans that materials on the Internet can influence people to commit terrorist acts. And people on Craig’s List were shocked. “All the STDs aren’t bad enough? Now this?”

– ABC has a new series called “Mistresses.” I like the original title better: “Hawaii Five-Ho.”

And…

– Scientists say they’ve found the plant disease that caused the great potato famine in Ireland in 1845. And just in time.

Those people have got to be really hungry.

 

 

 

Gravity Wins Over Little Dozer

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Little Dozer Gets Stuck in a Hole and……

hey, the fence is supposed to stay!  Watch the little dozer take out about 20 feet of wooden fencing before flipping and crashing on it’s side.  The driver was a lucky guy.  And since it landed in someone else’s parking lot, the boys had to flip it back right-side up.  Building a swimming pool is sure a lot of fun!

Gilbert Hernandez – “How I Got Started In Comics”

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Gilbert Hernandez Discusses the Comics and Artists Who Influenced Him

Love and Rockets Brothers At Skylight Book Shop in Hollywood!

 

DSC_1035 Gil and Marble bookBeloved cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez (LOVE & ROCKETS) launched his new D+Q graphic novel MARBLE SEASON, at Skylight Bookshop in Hollywood to a packed room of his fans and comic readers. Hernandez presented a fascinating slide show “From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels” featuring the comics of his childhood.  In addition, there was a question and answer session with fans and a book signing. (Some signed copies may still be available at Skylight).  The silver age comics he read as a child not only influenced MARBLE SEASON, but also set the course for Gilbert, as well as his brothers Jaime and Mario, to become the legendary comics creators they are today.

Marble Season is his first graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly

MARBLE SEASON is the first ever semi-autobiographical novel by acclaimed cartoonist 200px-LoveAndRockets31Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets, and is also his first graphic novel for Drawn & Quarterly. Meet Huey. He’s the middle child of a big family, growing up in a California suburb in the 1960s. He stages Captain America plays in the backyard and treasures his older brother’s comic-book collection almost as much as his approval. Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, MARBLE SEASON is a subtle and deft rumination on the redemptive and timeless power of storytelling and world-building in childhood.

“Perhaps no other current creators of comics recognize (or vividly remember) the ways actual kids think, talk, or even stand and walk as accurately as the Hernandez brothers, and no other comics artists so delicately intertwine moments of childhood trauma with the goofy logic that otherwise sustains kids when they begin to sense that they live in an irrational world.”—from the afterword by Corey Creekmur

“Gilbert Hernandez is one of the great craftsmen of modern comics.”—New York Times

Praise for Palomar: “These deeply influential tales, a sort of Archie-comics-meets-Marquez melange of complicated pan-American inter-relationships, are a comix epic.”—Time

Praise for Gilbert Hernandez: “He…[should]…be considered one of the greatest American storytellers. It’s so hard to do funny, tragic, local and epic, and he does all simultaneously, and with great aplomb.”—Junot Diaz, Los Angeles TIMES

Click here to see video on youtube.

Click here to go to Skylight Books to get a signed copy.

Or watch the embedded video below:

 

Mandela Was Late – Laugh Therapy

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Book Review by Five

MANDELA-WAS-LATE-front-coverEver wonder what it would be like to take an exploratory peek into the mind of a former Seinfeld writer, if nothing more, than just for the hell of it? Ever imagine what it would be like to casually traverse the experiential terrain and clustered thought forms inside such a mind? Geez, ever just wish you could curl up with a quick read and LOL repeatedly (which some studies have shown can possibly combat cancer as well as various emotional maladies, i.e. Laugh Therapy)?

Well, scream out Hallelujah because you’re in luck! Feel free to count this as a blessing or, at the very least, a gift from the gods of publishing. Mandela Was Late is former Seinfeld scribe Peter Mehlman’s new book of odd things, wit-filled essays, and multi-colored doodle art… And it’s guaranteed to make you pee your pants should you have a full bladder and be miles away from a restroom and have to go! All joking aside, there are a great number of downright hilarious moments and obliquely satirical insights which jump out at the reader like Big League, spring-loaded, funny business.

Who else do you know marks time by the amount of moving violation tickets received? Believe or not, being pulled over six times is how the former New Yorker encapsulates his twenty two years and roughly 350,000 miles of L.A. living… And each time is a hoot! In another segment, he shares his innermost feelings about being nominated for an Emmy and the ensuing eight weeks leading up to losing to Ellen DeGeneres in front of a worldwide TV audience of 600 million people (… I envision friends at my memorial service saying: “He was never the same after losing that Emmy.”)

Also extremely hilarious is the escapist story called BLANK—about a guy named Eugene Brusca, a man who literally has no opinions on anything, who eventually lands a job as an op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, in which his fourteen column inches of blank space published several times a week leads to a soaring readership and a Pulitzer Prize.

In case you were wondering, the book’s title, Mandela Was Late is a piece that was MANDELA-WAS-LATE-front-cover originally published in Esquire magazine in August,Peter Mehlman 2003. It also serves as the book’s final chapter—An irreverently funny invention which is written from the point of view of Nelson Mandela’s parole officer, a screwball, hare-brained character who is pissed off that the formerly jailed civil rights leader is three minutes late for his final parole meeting. Like I said lots and lots of Big League funny business… So there! Take that, cancer!

Click here to buy “Mandela Was Late” from Book Soup

Click here to see Peter Mehlman video

Jokes To Take Your Mind Off The IRS

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by R.J. Johnson

 

This is true. There’s a plan to open a restaurant in Somerville, Massachusetts where the meat, fish and all the other ingredients come from the nearby dumpsters.

1) We’ve had this cooking process for years. They’re called Hot Dogs, right?

2) It’s like day 6 on a Carnival Cruise ship.

3) It’s for those who think Home Town Buffet is way too ritzy

4) Instead of a doggy bag, you get a barf bag.

******************

A guy in Pennsylvania was arrested for shooting a deer with a rifle in a Walmart parking lot. But he had a good excuse. He was broke and he needed a little dough so he could eat.

The Associated Press will no longer use the phrase, “illegal immigrants.” Their new phrase? Walmart employees.

And finally….

 It was 40 years ago this week when a person made the first cell phone call. And you know the callers first words on the cell phone, don’t you? “Hi, I’m in a movie theatre! The other people won’t mind! Let’s chat.”

 

 

 

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Where The Funnymen Performed in Old Hollywood

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The-Three-Stooges-Hollywood-Filming-Locations-Cover-1024x792

TUESDAY, APRIL 23rd @ 7:30 pm @ the Larry Edmunds Bookshop-STOOGES!

A few years back I attended an evening at Hollywood Heritage w/ a Stoogephile from Philly named Jim Pauley doing a presentation on the film locations of the 3 Stooges. It was fantastic, and I began to bug Jim about why all his research and photos were not a book. Now they are! Behold, “The Three Stooges-Hollywood Film Locations”, a beautiful coffee book to take you to from the Columbia Ranch to the “Stooges steps” and all points in between. If that is not enough to entice you, we’ll have special guest Beverly Warren, who appears in the short, “Three Loan Wolves” which we’ll show and she’ll talk about working w/ the boys and she’ll be signing photos too! Slowly you should turn, step by step, and make your way to Larry Edmunds Bookshop next Tuesday for a night of Stooges.

Jeff, Larry Edmunds Bookshop

Watch “Three Loan Wolves” on youtube, click here.

 

 

Swami Anaconda Answers the Question “Who Are We?”

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Q: Who are we?

IMGP0037_2A: Spirits—a.k.a. infinite consciousness–having a human experience.

Q: Why?

A: Why not?

Q: Please explain?

A: Explain what?

Q: The purpose of the experience?

A: Simple. The purpose of the experience is to experience.

Q: Then what?

A: Nothing. Everything. Whatever you choose.

Q: What is spirit?

A: That which is not your “meat suit” self.IMGP0001_2

Q: What is self?

A: The child of spirit. That which is egoic, in the learning phase with diapers on.

Q: What is their relationship to one another?

A: The spirit or soul self is who we are at our deepest, purest essence. It is the wise elder who gives birth to the baby self with smelly diapers, the 3D representation of who we are in order to learn through experiential devices.

Q: When does the learning phase take place?

A: When the child begins to question its experience. The soul is careful not to jump the gun and is in a constant state of patient availability.

Q: How do we learn?

A: Mainly through experiences put before us by spirit to enhance our awareness.

Q: What is real?

A: Whatever we perceive to be real. But at the same time we can choose not to accept anything as real. We can choose to live in truth and accept all things as pure illusion. Regardless, it is always impermanent, transitory.

Q: Is there a purpose to all of this?

A: Only if we choose to need a purpose.

Q: Are we all one?

A: It depends.IMGP0099

Q: On what?

A: Our perspective.

Q: Please explain?

A: We can look at the ocean and see one gigantic body of water. Or we can separate the droplets one by one.

Q: Is there a heaven and hell?

A: Yes and no. They are ephemeral constructs to subjugate the mind. You create your own reality. Therefore it is your choice whether or not they truly exist.

Q: Do we choose our experiences?

A: Absolutely!

Q: Then why do so many choose to focus on negative experiences?

A: Because.

Q: Because what?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Why don’t you know?

A: Because I choose not to.IMGP0001_2

And there you have it, Q & A with Swami Anaconda. Okay, time to go take an illusory pee…

 

 

Peter Mehlman Reads From “Mandela Was Late”

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Book Soup Hosts Author Peter Mehlman

Mandela Was Late

MANDELA-WAS-LATE-front-coverFrankly, as a parole officer, you root for your thugs to come late or, better yet, not show at all. They get kicked back in the can where they belong, and you have time for a sandwich. But somehow, I felt different about Nelson Mandela. Maybe I was losing my edge, but he seemed somehow more respectable than most of the ex-cons who pollute my schedule.

This is the opening paragraph from his famous article in Esquire Magazine and the title of his new book of memories of “odd things” in his “odd life”.  (click here to read the entire article at Esquire’s web site.)

“I’d rather be a travel agent on the Gaza Strip.”

Mehlman has knocked around the sitcom business for a long time.  For all you wannabes check out his sort of sitcom bio he wrote for Entertainment Weekly.  It’s called “Notes From The Sitcom’s Deathbed.”  It’s a screamer, so funny, yet so full of lessons learned in dealing with the Networks.  It’s good that every once in a while someone like Mehlman comes along to remind us of the kind of savage, kinky, aberrant currs that inhabit the upper echelons of the biz.  This article should be required reading, along with Merle Miller’s “Only You Dick Daring” to anyone who is venturing into the dark abyss called “Hollywood”. Click here to go to EW to read Notes From The Sitcom’s Deathbed.

Odd Thing.  After a hilarious reading from his book, Mehlman asked for questions.  There were none.  A packed house, silence.  Sometimes it’s like that, until one person asks a question and unleashes the tidal wave. I thought, “This guy has a million stories, how can there be no questions?”  But I’m just the video guy, hiding behind the camera and keeping a low profile. Maybe the conspiracy theorists are right, the flouride in our water is actually dumbing us down.  Maybe they dumped a double load in that day down at the water company.  Without stomach-pumping he entire Book Soup audience, we’ll never know.   Or come to think of it, maybe I was in a weird time warp of some kind, re-filming a scene from Mehlman’s film “Blank,” in which another audience had no questions, but applauded wildly for Mehlman’s crack-pot character Eugene Brusca, a man who never had an opinion on anything. Deja vu?  Naw, just another Odd Thing.

Click here to watch Peter Mehlman’s reading at Book Soup, or click the embedded version below.

Click here to go to Peter Mehlman’s web site

Click here to go to The Sager Group web site, Mehlman’s Publishers.

Click here to go to the Book Soup web site to get a copy of the book.

And finally, check out www.petermehlman.com.  It’s for sale.

Zingers

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By R.J. Johnson

A doctor in Brazil has been charged with killing hundreds of patients to free up beds at a hospital. It’s so bad, even our HMOs were yelling, “Stop it. Fifty maybe. But not hundreds.”

– The first airplane in over 30 years flew passengers from Egypt to Iran. Call me crazy but I’m betting the in-flight movie was not, “Schindler’s List.” Or “Diary of Anne Frank.”

– A man in Blairsville, Pennsylvania was arrested for allegedly shooting a deer in a Walmart parking lot. His fine? A buck.

– Scientists have invented an implant that calls your smart phone when you’re about to have a heart attack. The reaction from Dick Cheney? “Finally!”

– Sean Penn’s son shoved a photographer. Where did he learn this wild behavior? I for one am shocked.

– In Kansas City, someone at a Conoco service station found a box with two eyeballs in it. Experts on the price of gas said it’s a sign that things are looking up.

And Finally…

– Did you see all the snow back East? It was so white in Washington, Republicans thought they’d gone back to the Reagan Years.