Elevator pitch: What’s the idea for your new series?
Comedians. In cars. Getting coffee.
Simple idea and three things I love. Count me in. (…although this show isn’t as simple as The Nothing Pitch)
Check out this one of Jerry Seinfeld riding with Ricky Gervais. I love when Jerry picks up Ricky in his 1967 Austin Healey 3000 and Gervais has no clue what type of car it is, let alone an English one.
via Laughing Squid

Over at Grantland, Andy Greenwald gives his review of Mad Men’s “bleak” fifth season:

All told, it was a dreamy, dispiriting season of Mad Men, one that muddied everything that crossed its path, from lecherous Jaguar executives to the previously squeaky fan fiction of Ken “Dave Algonquin” Cosgrove. Unlike years past, there were no fleeting splashes of California sunshine. The dominant sensation was one of menace: murderers on the loose, bodies under the bed, a car crash — or a driver as bad as Pete Campbell — lurking around every corner. Even sex got sticky, with chewing gum on the pubis evidence of the high price of bad business.

I agree with Greenwald. While this season had some moments, overall I was disappointed.
Everyone has their favorite characters and settings of the show. For me all they need to to is have more scenes with Roger and Don and focus less on the home life drama no one cares about. Pete’s affair? Megan’s auditions? No thanks. More agency life, more pitches. More creative struggle and creative success. There was a lot of angst and frustration and not much got accomplished.

Great NYTimes piece on Johnny DeVincenzo, a 77-year-old ex-convict:

The logo on the back of his warm-up jacket — “Johnny Knuckles, the Italian Steel Puncher” — suggested that this was not his first time doing this. So did the two discolored spots on the pole where the man’s fists were pounding, as well as the man’s taut physique and his toughened fists, enlarged with calluses.

His punches started out as firm rhythmic thuds, each blow causing a dull clang that resonated up the steel column. But they got quicker and harder until this featherweight was grimacing as his roundhouse rights slammed into the steel. Passers-by shook their heads, the skies darkened, but the man only shed his jacket and kept slamming the steel in the rain.

*Be sure to watch the video of DeVincenzo doing his punching as well as his declining push-ups on his knuckles. Remember, he’s 77.
Johnny Knuckles. Right out of a Scorsese movie.

Drugs and children’s television. A winning combination since at least 1969.

First man to jump out of a plane without a parachute and lived to tell the tale.
You might say, “Sure, but he was wearing one of those flying squirrel suits and he landed on foam blocks, that’s why he survived.”
I say he survived because his enormous balls cushioned the fall.
You go try it, pansy.
via kottke

via vbrunetti

I saw Sleep No More last summer on the recommendation from a coworker and my wife and I loved it.
Looks like something new is brewing, they just sent me a invite:

via TED

via Suicide Cat

Over at McSweeney’s, Joshua Tyree on the Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor:

5. And what of the creature that lives in the trash compactor? Presumably, the creature survives because the moving walls do not extend all the way to the floor of the room, where the liquid is. After all, if the walls reached the floor, the creature would be killed each time trash is compacted. The design employed on the Death Star must allow the organic trash to filter down to the bottom, where the parasitic worm-creature devours it. But what happens when heavier pieces of non-organic trash fall down there? Would such trash not get wedged under the doors, causing them to malfunction? Do stormtroopers have to confront the creature each time they retrieve pieces of un-compacted trash?

All valid questions.

Watched this about 20 times. Kept laughing. Had to share.

via Alex Rainert