Daniel O'Brien's Blog, page 4

ohmygodwaytoolong:Grab a ticket here.I haven’t done stand up in...

ohmygodwaytoolong:

Grab a ticket here.

I haven’t done stand up in quite a while and I never repeat sets because I like to just talk about whatever I’m thinking about/dealing with at the moment, guaranteeing there will literally never be a show like this ever again. I will be flanked on all sides by polished comedians who know what they’re doing and won’t be using the space and time as an opportunity to do the weird, self-indulgent experiential bullshit that I’ll be doing. You should come!

Hey cool!

justtwothings:

Hit a 2,000 follower milestone! That’s pretty neat, thanks for sticking around for all this garbage

This blog is one of the only reasons I still check Tumblr. 

Too Many Words Devoted to Paranoia, a Movie that Allegedly Exists

I was in my apartment’s gym and a movie was on and it first caught my attention because it had Liam Hemsworth and Lucas Till and I thought “Weird I didn’t know they were in a movie together” and that made me remember that I always thought it was unfair that Liam Hemsworth got to be a Hemsworth and Lucas Till didn’t even though he deserved it more but that’s how it goes I guess.

Anyway, I had my headphones in but the TV had captions on and I could tell that they were discussing hacking of some kind, and then Liam Hemsworth went to go talk to Gary Oldman and I was like “What the fuck, how is there a movie with Gary Oldman in the last 20 years that I didn’t know about, I always know what Gary Oldman is doing.” This is true of me. I almost always know what Gary Oldman is doing and I also am never surprised when I see a movie, because even if I didn’t see it before, I’m generally pretty aware of all movies that are being made because I’m constantly watching trailers.

Anyway, they were talking about a character named Jock which seemed insane and then they went to go meet with Jock and Jock is guess who Harrison Fucking Ford, who doesn’t even make movies anymore and he was in this playing a character named Jock (!!!) who is bald (!!!). He makes Gary Oldman and Liam Hemsworth take out their phones and then he has this device that goes off and he’s like “My device says you have another phone in his pocket” and so Liam takes his phone out and Jock puts the phone in some water. Liam’s mad because he had a scheme involving that phone and now he’s been foiled.

[A brief but necessary aside about the channel. In the lower right hand corner of the television is the logo for the channel, which is Showcase, and the font is almost identical to Showtime, and it is at this point that I’m warming up to the idea that I’ve slipped into a subtly alternate reality where Showtime is Showcase and this movie is the alternate reality version of Black Hat, which is also an action movie about hacking that stars a Hemsworth, only the difference is I have heard of that movie.]

Then he signs a contract that makes Gary Oldman furious and I’m like what the fuck is this movie, and then one of the phones (or a different phone) lights up and Lucas Till is calling Harrison Ford and it’s really shocking for some reason, and Liam’s like “I got you, I did it with phones and hacking” and I’m sort of putting it together that this is a movie about a guy who is good at making phones but is also a spy. Then the FBI comes to arrest Jock and the FBI is run by Sawyer from Lost and why do I not know what this movie is.

Then Liam goes to a kid’s baseball game to join his dad who is actual Legend Richard fucking Dreyfuss and they chat and it’s nice but like neither of them have kids in this game so what the fuck. Now he has a new job and it looks like he’s trying to win back his girlfriend Amber Heard and also get her a job which seems like a conflict. He’s like “Take the job” and she’s like “I’ll think about it,” “Okay, then let me take you on a date” and she says “No” and he says “At least let me thank you for thinking about the offer” and then he kisses her and the movie’s over. Her name is Emma Jennings which is the kind of name they only make in movies, the FBI agent’s name is Agent Gamble, Jock’s name it should be stressed is Jock, except I went to the Wikipedia page and it turns out his full name is “Augustine ‘Jock’ Goddard” and like how a teenage boy named Augustine got a bunch of his buddies to call him Jock is just about the coup of the century. Variety calls this movie, which is Paranoia, one of the biggest box office bombs of 2013 and further that “Nobody seems paranoid enough” in the movie, Paranoia.

starline:tyleroakley:fullmoonspotlight:a13xmorgs:How many...

starline:

tyleroakley:

fullmoonspotlight:

a13xmorgs:

How many souls did she steal?

fuck me up

holy FUCK

How do I learn to dance like this? :O 

I have wanted to be a good dancer my entire life and it just isn’t in the cards so I watch people like this, who are magic as far as I’m concerned.

cracked:How 9/11 Changed 90s Sitcoms ForeverWatch this show...

cracked:

How 9/11 Changed 90s Sitcoms Forever

Watch this show and tell your friends to do the same or else I won’t have a job.

ohmygodwaytoolong:Hey folks! The above live version of The...

ohmygodwaytoolong:

Hey folks! The above live version of The Cracked Podcast is happening this Saturday. And it’s coming on the heels of a whirlwind couple of weeks, in which Jack O’Brien departed Cracked (!). 

My long thoughts on Jack’s departure are here, my short thoughts on it are here. tl;dnr: I am so damn grateful to Jack for everything he’s built, and done, and meant to us.

Anyway, I’ve come out of that whirlwind as the new host of The Cracked Podcast. And on Saturday, the LA-based chunk of an audience that’s followed Jack through 180+ Cracked Podcast episodes will gather to inspect my first real attempt at hosting the show. And remember: this will happen LIVE.

I have never met a mean Cracked fan. This Saturday, they will likely show me generosity of spirit. That said, I’d love it if you’d get a cheap ticket and come out to the show. Maybe you can hoot and holler at appropriate moments. That would be heartening to me. I’d feel less sea-leggy.

OR MAYBE you hold me in contempt, and hate-follow this blog. Fine. But check out this stacked panel joining me Saturday:

Daniel O’Brien (Cracked, the US Presidency, immense prowess)


Tom Reimann (Cracked, and a government lab that implanted citizens with microchips containing complete knowledge of all movies (probably))


Jamie Loftus (every place that recognizes excellent blowing-up comedians)


Dave Schilling (Birth Movies Death, The Ringer, The Guardian, Bleacher Report, Roundball Rock, more high quality places but my fingers are weary now)

Those great folks are gonna do, like, at least 75% of the talking. You haters can focus on them. And you…non-haters (lovers?) will get a great show in every way.

Again, that’s a live edition of The Cracked Podcast, happening this Saturday at 7pm at UCB Sunset. Tickets available here. Let’s hang out and laugh about movies like everything’s normal.

Come and see us talk about stuff tomorrow! Alex is a sweet man. Jamie Loftus is going to run the planet one day. Long Tom Reimann is a joke sniper. Dave Schilling and I have not met but I love his writing. And by longstanding refusal to ever prepare for one of these live podcasts guarantees that we’ll have someone in the always important “wildcard” slot.

Only a few tickets left!

thisiscracked:Agents of Cracked: Homeland Scarecurity Listen,...

thisiscracked:

Agents of Cracked:  Homeland Scarecurity 

Listen, if anyone in this company is a threat to national security, it is Michael, and we all know it.

Been thinking about AoC a lot lately. Really fun time in my life.

Hi Daniel, I have two questions: 1. You're pretty open about your anxiety regarding unusual social situations. Do you have any strategies for dealing with events where you know you'll be meeting a lot of people, like conventions or meetups? 2. Is there an

Hey!

1. There’s really no completely bulletproof way to prepare for meeting a lot of people at conventions; even if you DON’T suffer from anxiety at all, it can be an exhausting and draining experience. You just do whatever you can to reduce stress in anticipation of the event. I did two panels at C2E2 which necessitated meeting a bunch of strangers after, shaking their hands, and trying to engage with them in as meaningful a way as possible in the limited amount of time we had together. In anticipation of the first panel, I took a Lyft to the event and sat in the back seat listening to musicals in my headphones. I do the same thing whenever I go to one of our live podcasts; I never drive, because I don’t want to be stressed about traffic or get frustrated by someone I think is a bad driver (literally anyone on the road who isn’t me). I put headphones in and say verbatim to every Lyft driver “Hey I’m going to be listening to a podcast back here, so if I don’t respond or anything, that’s why. Feel free to play whatever music you want, it won’t bother me.” This ensures that I won’t have to make small-talk with a stranger while on the drive to make small talk with lots of strangers. Even if the driver doesn’t believe that I’m listening to a podcast (I’m not), the message is still clear and delivered fairly inoffensively: I’m not available to chat right now, and it’s me, not you. I listen to musicals specifically because I like them and because they conjure up so many visuals in my imagination that it’s really easy to tune out the rest of the world and get lost in them, whether I’m imagining what the show looks like or imagining being one of the characters, singing and dancing like an asshole. Some people mediate, probably, but this is one of the things I choose to do. In the twenty minutes to an hour before I have to do a convention or live podcast or stand up, I’m free of responsibility and locked into a world that has nothing to do with any of those things.

For the other panel, I took a bike instead of a Lyft to the event. This is also helpful and common for me. Physical activity always makes my brain feel good and always helps me shut down my anxiety for a while. Immediately before any live event in front of people, you can probably see me jumping up and down or doing some high kicks or lunges or just generally pacing around. All of these things calm me down.

The MOST anxiety-reducing tool when it comes to these live events, though, is having my friends there. At this point I have a psychic link with my buddies, so if I’m feeling trapped in an uncomfortable conversation with a well-meaning stranger with questionable ideas on boundaries, all I need to do is make eye contact with Soren or Cody and if they’re free, they’ll come grab me and say some variation of “I’m so sorry to interrupt but I really need to take him away right now” (and I do the same for them). We don’t have a specific code word or hand signal or anything, we’ve just been doing this long enough that we can recognize an uncomfortable situation when we see one. So the short version is, if you know you’re walking into a situation that will be riddled with potentially uncomfortable moments, make sure you OD on things that make you comfortable in advance, and in my case that’s musicals, physical activity and supportive friends.

2. That’s very kind of you to ask! 99 percent of the people we meet at conventions or out in the world are very kind and polite and don’t cause tremendous amounts of anxiety. Chiefly I would just say, like, don’t just grab me? Or any of us? Whenever someone asks to take a picture with me, I will 9 out of 10 times say “I’m going to put my arm right on you now, okay?” I do this because it usually gets a slight laugh (the phrasing is intentionally awkward) and also to put it out there for anyone within earshot that it doesn’t take a lot of time or creativity to a) get consent and b) prepare someone for physical contact.

At C2E2, some giant fucking asshole wordlessly rushed Cody, wrapped an arm around him and took a picture with him and then stomped off like the dumb fucking goon sasquatch that he was. After Comikaze last year, someone grabbed my arm while walking down the street, blocks from the convention, to ask for a picture. Support is always great, and I understand excitement, but it still sucks to be suddenly grabbed. (By the way, I’m totally aware that this experience of sudden, unexpected physical contact that I and my coworkers experience once maybe every 7 months is a near constant occurrence for, like, all women everywhere in all circumstances. If you’re a person who sometimes gets excited and grabs internet comedy writers, stop doing that, but if you’re a man who sometimes gets excited and puts your hand on cute women in the street and at bars and parties and work and parks and stuff, that is a much BIGGER problem. If you’re the kind of person who grabs internet comedy writers AND women strangers out in the world, it would be great if you could stop BOTH of those things, but if you could only stop doing one, definitely make it be the “grabbing women I don’t know” one. That is a way more pressing concern.)

Regardless of all that though, if you meet me or one of us at a convention or whatever, you don’t need to focus TOO much on reducing our discomfort. You’re not walking into my home or climbing into our office; we came to this event because we wanted to perform for you, and part of that involves meeting you to thank you for reading our articles and watching our videos, because we don’t have jobs if you don’t do that. We know what we’re walking into, and we’re doing it on purpose.

liartownusa:I’d like to officially announce the upcoming book...

liartownusa:

I’d like to officially announce the upcoming book LiarTown: The First Four Years.

First, a new, brief Q&A with illustrious designlord Steven Heller can be found here:http://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/...

Next, as you may have noticed, things have been quiet here the past few months. The book is the reason. I’ve devoted all my time and effort to getting it ready, making it the best it can be. I’m in the final stretch right now, writing the Introduction and Acknowledgements.

SOME FACTS:

8.5″ x 11″
Soft cover
248 pages
Full color

I can see you still have questions.

“What’s in there?”
The book contains almost all LiarTown material from early 2013 to January 2017. It includes an introduction by me, Sean Tejaratchi, a foreword by former Onion editor Scott Dikkers, a section with notes on selected pieces, and an exhaustive index. The back cover will feature brief explanatory text (written especially for the back cover and not previously read by the public), as well as a laudatory comments from cultural notables, a barcode, and cover price. Every inch of this lavishly designed book has been designed to perfection. Even the spine, normally known only as the narrow, bound left edge of a volume, will be emblazoned with the title, subtitle, author, and publisher logo. 

Speaking of the publisher, beloved Feral House Books has honored my desire to keep all the bad words and bird dicks and lunchbox tits and other improprieties. I was not asked to change a single thing.

“You said ‘almost all.’ Is everything in there or not?”
I left out some of the more topical, dated or political posts, and I didn’t bother with few of the lightweight pieces or more direct movie parodies (like the Fifty Shades Darker Batman poster). I’d say 99% of the website is in the book, though.

“So how else have you fucked me on this deal?”
Oh god, I knew you’d be like this. This is why I didn’t even want to mention it. Because of what you’re doing, right now.

“I’m sorry. I overreacted, as I always do. Do I get anything that’s NOT on the website?”
Yes! I made full use of space. For example, when a square image on a tall page left room at the bottom, I made new things to fit. There are new stamps, VHS spines (commercial and home-recorded), book spines, buttons, business cards, a shitload of CD covers, a tube of falcon ointment, a cassette, a card from a guy named Todd, and miscellaneous other bits and pieces. I’ve made additional books and albums in a few cases, things I’d wanted to make but had never got around to. Some new business signage, TV commercial screenshots, little bits here and there. There’s a nice spread of collected product logos. Saying “IT’S PACKED WITH NEW STUFF!” would feel dishonest because the vast majority of the book is material you’ve seen, but the additions are a tender bonus that shows how much I care for you and your family. A few pieces have been given extra material, cosmetic enhancements, and general improvement when possible. You probably won’t notice, but mentioning it here bolsters the narrative I’m pushing, namely: You’re receiving EXTRA VALUE unavailable on the website!

“Will there be pages?”
Oh, so many pages! Countless pages, 248 of them, one after another, in order, from start to finish. What’s more, each page will be trimmed to the same exacting specifications as its neighbor. That means a page at the front of the book is going to match the size of a page at the back of the book. Don’t believe it? Pre-order the book and then apologize to me when it arrives and teaches you a lesson in humility.

“What shape will the pages be?”
Rectangular, taller than wide. What’s more, every book, and every page within it, will conform to the same series of four perfect right angles. If a corner isn’t precisely 90°, the book won’t be sent to a customer. It’s that simple. Please note some customers might receive books with angles that are not precisely 90° because glitches sometimes happen at the bindery and now and then you get a weird-shaped one. It can’t be helped.

“I am accustomed to colors. Will this book have colors?”
Every page will be full, glorious color. I think there’s one page that’s almost entirely black, but that’s still technically a color, as you know.

“Will the colors be any good?”
Close your eyes and imagine yourself stumbling out of a darkened forest onto a dazzling beach. You spy a rainbow, bathing nude in a lagoon of equal parts motor oil and distilled water. (If you want to imagine yourself naked, too, go ahead.) Swirling, hypnotic eddies of reflective iridescence trail in the rainbow’s seductive wake, decorating the surface with over forty million billion trillion unique colors. You walk downstream, still naked if that’s how you’ve decided to picture yourself, watching the colors flow into a single torrent, churning over discarded displays of semi-gloss paint samples until at last tumbling down mossy, shadowed chines, verdant and overgrown. The pigments plunge down, down, into a chocolate church, the hallowed walls of which hold towering windows of intricate stained glass, forged aeons ago by master craftsmen who swore blood oaths to faithfully capture the ruddy pinks, the sun-kissed tans, the rich, dusky hues of every member of the human race on earth or below the sea. The sky outside this otherworldly cathedral is lit by over thirty to forty different suns, one green, one red, one blue, and then plenty of other kinds (inc. brown). These ancient orbs, locked in a cosmic dance as old as time itself, send their rays to find you inside. Multi-hued beams burst effortlessly through the fragile glass to reach, at long last, the rods and cones at the backs of your eyes that have waited for this fleeting moment, so patiently, since your birth. 

So yeah, I’d say the colors are gonna be pretty good.

“When will the book be shipped? When will I receive it?”
The stupid thing has to be printed in China, of all places, so it’ll be ready in late Fall, in time for the stupid holidays.

“Why should I order now? Why not later, when I’m well rested?”
Pre-ordering early helps the publisher know ahead of time roughly how many to order in the first run. Since printing costs drop as the print run goes up, a larger print run eventually results in a lower book price.

There’s also this inescapable truth: Pre-ordering means you are assured a copy. There’s no worry about delays when a store or distributor is out of stock. Your book is mailed to you the day it’s released. You stay safe and silent in your home, frozen in place like a terrified rabbit while the postman makes noise outside your door. Once his footsteps fade and you’re sure he’s gone, the book is all yours.

Right now it’s listed at $22.10 on amazon.com. I’ve been told the price will likely drop. If you’ve pre-ordered at a previous, higher price, don’t worry, you’ll automatically get the lower price, too.

“Where can I pre-order this book?”
Right here:
https://www.amazon.com/Liartown-First-Four-Years-2013-2017/dp/1627310541/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1492812361&sr=1-4

I’ll show more of the book closer to the actual release date. In a world where there are trailers for movie trailers, I’m trying to avoid preview fatigue. If you have any questions, you can reach me via tumblr message or LiartTownUSA@gmail.com.

Thank you, and your family.

Sean T.

Finally!

cracked:Vote for us! (Please!)I’m so sick of asking people to...

[image error]

cracked:

Vote for us! (Please!)

I’m so sick of asking people to vote for us for Webby Awards. I hate hustling for votes especially when there are other things we need to hustle for (Check out our live UCB podcast, subscribe to our channel, come to Chicago to see the After Hours crew in two weeks), and ESPECIALLY because I’m a manager of nine employees and my full-time job gives me enough work to do before adding all of the additional hustling to my plate. Because in my heart I don’t want anyone to vote for us, I do not give a shit. You all already did the only thing I wanted, which was read our articles and watch our videos. That’s the only thing I cared about since I started writing and printing out free short stories in college and anonymously leaving them around campus. “I hope somebody reads this.”

You guys already did that! You already read the things and watched the things and fulfilled the dream of this desperate, aging comedy dork. I don’t want you to do anything else. Absolutely no one got into this business because they thought “Gee I hope my writing gets good enough that I get to use my social media reach to bug a bunch of nice strangers to take time out of their day to sign up for a thing [I fucking hate signing up for literally anything] and click a button! Woo, Hollywood!” 

Not to mention that, God almighty, there are SO MANY OTHER IMPORTANT THINGS a person can do right now. If you’re a person who has never been motivated to do anything and take action and let’s say you have, like, one “unit” of out-of-character action in you, please DO NOT waste that unit on voting for us for anything. Please call your fucking Congressperson and make sure they’re working for your best interests, or like volunteer or donate or call your parents (don’t text) and ask how they’re doing and what their day was like. Voting for Cracked to win a Webby should not be anyone’s top or main priority.

I’m older now, and most of the shine of winning an award has faded in my eyes because the work is the reward, the pride in the quality is the reward. But I’m not so old that I forgot how it felt to win our first, which is the weird distinction of awards. A Webby award is an utterly meaningless distraction that makes a lot of people who work at Cracked feel very, very good. An actual Webby award is meaningless in that it will change nothing about the job or the value that I as a manager see in my employees, but the feeling of winning one is meaningful in that it’s nice to feel validation from a third party entity that has been (arbitrarily) imbued with something approaching “authority.” It makes our hardworking people feel good. Once a year there’s a chance for some fancy people in a ballroom to say the words “Cracked Dot Com!” out loud in a room with air in it, and it makes our people who mostly work alone in front of their computers feel good. If that’s a good enough motivator for you to vote for us, please do it (after you’ve done other important stuff). We have a great team here and I like to see their work get recognized in tangible, outside-of-our-bubble ways, but I also know they’re going to work just as hard no matter what happens with this dumb fucking award. Which is both a testament to the strength of this team and the reaffirmation of the meaninglessness of awards.