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Morgan is also in it.

Tags: Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Cruise

What do you do when you have a huge multi-million dollar R-rated action comedy packed with some of Hollywood's biggest stars that is opening in mid August a week after another R-rated comedy of high (pun intended) anticipation? Market the shit out of it via the internet and within media staples of pop culture.

After the appearances of Tropic Thunder's three leading men (Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, and Jack Black) on American Idol and the MTV Movie Awards, one could make the argument that Dreamworks covered their viral bases for this movie by hitting a few key demographics within some very large tv audiences. But that wasn't enough.

Rain Of Madness - a Mockumentary on the making of the fake movie of which Tropic Thunder, the real movie, shares its name. Still with me?

Tugg Speedman - Ben Stiller's character's name in Tropic Thunder

Simple Jack - a movie referenced within Tropic Thunder starring Tugg Speedman

Scorcher VI - a movie referenced within Tropic Thunder starring Tugg Speedman

Panda Relocation Foundation - Tugg Speedman's favorite charity

The Peck Agency - Tugg Speedman's talent agency

Kirk Lazarus - Robert Downey Jr.'s character's name in Tropic Thunder

Satan's Alley - a movie referenced within Tropic Thunder starring Kirk Lazarus

Make Pretty Skin Clinic - the clinic where Kirk Lazarus underwent skin pigment surgery (aka black face)

Jeff Portnoy - Jack Black's character's name in Tropic Thunder

Fatties: Fart 2 - a movie referenced within Tropic Thunder

Cody Keith Underwood - Danny McBride's Character's name in Tropic Thunder

Booty Sweat - the official energy drink of Brandon T. Jackson's character, Alpa Chino. It has been mentioned on several blogs that the actual drink is for sale if one were interested in buying it. I believe you can get them at Hot Topics. There is a reference to it on Tropic Thunder's official site but it lists it as coming soon.

UPDATE:

Alpa Chino's Website

Simple Jack Site down

Tags: Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr.

A free app from the iTunes App Store was just released to help mobile blogging for those using wordpress. Just search for wordpress in the app store. My opinion so far? It works and it’s easy. Maybe it will get me to blog more often than I do.

The official trailer for Tropic Thunder was released yesterday. This is the movie that Morgan worked on for half a year in Hawaii and LA. I guess I can’t really say much about the movie without getting in trouble, so you’ll just have to watch the trailer and wait for it to come out. The picture above is from one minute and ten seconds into the 1080p HD download version of the trailer. If you look closely at the cardboard movie display behind Jack Black’s character, you can see that a certain “Morgan Ahiborn” was a producer on the movie within the movie. Ahiborn? Or was it AHlBORN? Either way, Morgan, you better have a talk with your agent, cause that shit ain’t right.

13 Years, 10 hours, and $10 later, I can finally die in peace: MTV’s CBS’s UCB’s The State, live on stage for one night only in the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles. Some time last week I found out about this once in a lifetime opportunity to see the original and only members of The State perform new sketches live on stage. When I went online to see if I could get tickets, my heart was smashed into a thousand little pieces. Sold Out. The only glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel was that they were going to be selling stand by tickets at the door on the night of the show. This would be my only chance. So I decided to wait, and that’s exactly what I did.

Morgan, Colter, and I waited in front of the UCB Theatre off Franklin for 10 hours, not even knowing whether or not we would enter the building. There was a 10pm show and an 11:30 show, and we were first in line for stand-bys, so we figured our chances were good. 10 o’clock rolled around and there wasn’t a single open seat in the theatre that seats approximately 100-200 people (I’m terrible with estimates). The show went on with out us. In an hour and a half, we would find out just how crazy we were to wait that long.

As the crowd slowly spilled out from the doors, I looked down the line of ticket holders that had been growing down the street since the first group went in. It wasn’t looking good. All I could think of was visions of Ken Marino holding up two small unassuming balls above his head as he repeated his catch phrase over and over again. Thomas Lennon and Micheal Ian Black slowly lowering their asses into $240 worth of pudding. Michael Showalter ensuring the other cast members as well as the audience that he was not sticking around any longer. I envisioned all of this happening and knew I had to get in.

11:30ish, and the line of ticket holders had all been let into the theatre. The girl who was running the front door approached us and directed us to the ticket booth. We were getting in. And like all UCB shows, this one was cheap as well: $10, which can actually be considered on the higher end of the UCB ticket scale. I was ready and willing to pay $50. As we walked back through the hallway that led to the small black box theatre, we could see that it was packed. The nice dude that had been talking to us all day who worked at the theatre directed us to the stage and told us to sit at the end of it. We were literally on the stage. It was amazing.

Once the show started, the audience was treated to about 75 minutes of new material that was loosely focused around the history of the United States. From my understanding, it was sort of a rehearsal for a Comedy Central special that The State is doing soon. I also overheard one of The State members saying that the DVD that was supposed to come out last Fall but was put on hold for whatever reason, might now be released when the Comedy Central special airs as a cross promotion.

With the possibility of the new skits airing on Comedy Central or even being added to the DVD as a special feature, I won’t go into detail about any of the bits. But I will say that it seems as if they had never missed a beat. The skits were like 1995 Vintage State and would fit very well into their old show, aside from the fact that maybe only one or two would make it past the sensors unscathed. And although Black and Showalter weren’t able to make an appearance live, they did get a chance to record a video which ended up being one of the funniest skits of the night.

Tags: MTV’s The State, The State, Upright Citizens Brigade, UCB, UCB Theatre, UCBT LA, Comedy Central, Stand up, skits, sketches

If I ever ended up on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, I know that I would want one of two people to be my phone-a-friend. Jesse Collier or Matt Lundstrom. They’re my go-to guys when I have a question about damn near anything. Both are well-versed in computers and technology, while Jesse seems to have a slight lead with pop culture. Having them as friends is like having my own custom wikipedia.

The other day at work I was asked to design a graphic that was to be printed and affixed to a small trashcan. The prop was going to be used as an over-sized cup of soda for a shoot that we had coming up. After measuring the circumference of the base and rim of the trashcan as well as the height, I thought I had figured out everything I needed to know. I created a design in photoshop that was 36″ on top, 30″ on bottom and connected the ends of the two lines that were separated at the right distance forming a trapezoid. After printing up a small scale model I found the one major flaw in my design; it needed to be designed in an arc in order for it to wrap around the trashcan neatly.

After scratching my head for a few minutes I decided I wasn’t clever enough to figure out how to calculate the angle of the arc. I saw that Matt was online so I asked him if he could help. I gave him the dimensions of the can and a description of what I needed to accomplish. In about 5 minutes, he came back and IM’d me this file. Ridiculous.

My work has one of those stand-up arcade cabinets with mulitple games in our front lobby. Recently we have been getting more competitive with the high scores for the games. I’m not sure what started it, but after almost a year of very light activity, it now seems like a day doesn’t go by without one of the high scores being topped by someone else in the office.

In the spirit of friendly competition, I decided to make some sort of trophy or medal to award the person who holds the current high score for the various games we have in the office: Donkey Kong, Frogger, Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, and Full Court Frenzy II (mini basketball game). I ended up making some pixel art medallions out of Perler Beads and lanyard string that was inspired from this.

Today I set the new record for Donkey Kong at 45000, nothing compared to what Billy Mitchell or Steve Wiebe were able to do, but it’s enough to take the top prize at my office. We’ve also decided that if someone overtakes the high score for the game that you currently have the high score for, you have to place the “medal” around the neck of the new champion to add insult to injury.

Post Script: I also hold the basketball record with 132 points. Booyah.

Tags: multicade, video games, donkey kong, frogger, Ms. Pac Man, Galaga, Perler Beads, Mario, Billy Mitchell, Steve Wiebe, King of Kong

A few months back, I went to the Snake Pit off Melrose with a friend of mine who was meeting up with some of her friends. She introduced me to a bunch of them, one of whom was Michael Johns who happens to be one of the final 24 contestants of American Idol this season.

I won’t pretend to know him more than I do, but he was a super cool guy and since I don’t know any of the other contestants I feel completely ok saying, “Fuck those talentless hacks and vote for Michael Johns. But you can also vote for Brooke White up until the very end because she is hot and it doesn’t hurt to see her on the show.”

I’ve never voted on any of these shows, but I’m pretty sure you send a text message to a machine that dispenses gold bars into Simon Cowell’s pockets. I believe Michael will be on tomorrow’s show, February 19th 2008, so get your cells ready.

Tags: Michael Johns, American Idol, Brooke White

Holy shit. It has been over a third of a year since I have last blogged. What have I been doing? Working and hanging out basically, but nothing that would have prevented me from keeping up with this blog. I’m not making any promises on keeping up with the entries, we all know how that turned out last time, but I hope for the few remaining readers I have left that I am able to entertain you whenever possible.

The WGA strike is over and I figured if their 30-Rock-stinting-asses got back to writing, then maybe I should too. It was a strange coincidence that my haiatus came at the same time the writer’s strike started, and ended right after theirs did. Let me set the record straight: I was not striking, I didn’t have any sense of solidarity with the WGA, and I don’t consider myself to be a writer. I’m just a dude that bought a domain some years back and eventually decided to start a blog.

Thank you to the people who continued to check back day after day only to find that hideous pink graphic at the top of the page. With any luck, that shit will be buried ten posts deep in the next couple of weeks.

I’ve always despised food that required more work than what it was worth. Crab legs, bbq ribs, shrimp in the shell; it’s all delicious and practical in theory, but is it really worth the struggle? Sunflower seeds walk a thin line but get a free pass due to the fact that it is more of a male competitive event to see how many seeds you can put in your mouth at one time and separate with your teeth and tongue without using your fingers.

Tonight I found myself eating the juicy seeds of a pomegranate and enjoying every finger-staining minute that it took to get through just half of the fruit. For some reason, picking the seeds from the pomagranate felt therapeutic.

Tags: pomagranate