Owner: Utility Comedian Dave Burdick URL:http://daveburdick.com Join Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 20:19:40 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: Several types of jokes: fake news, news and a joke, videos, reviews of world events and inanimate objects alike. If you want smart and funny, try this guy. Also links to hilarious up-and-coming comic talent. Site statistics:Click here
Hillary's blockbuster? 2007-01-21 22:43:07 Hillary Clinton got our attention by posting a video on her Web site. Today, her campaign posted a press release on her site titled “24 Hours Later, the Reviews Are In.” Then they’ve got blurbs from all of these media outlets, just like the quotes used on movie trailers:
Top pundits on Hillary’s announcement: ‘brilliant,’ ‘bold,’ ‘I’m blown away’ … Clinton announcement hailed in blogs as ‘handled perfectly,’ ‘profoundly moving,’ ‘news of a generation’
It’s kind of adorable how excited these candidates are about this new technology. I wouldn’t be surprised if a candidate announced his or her intentions by going on Oprah, bringing a laptop, logging on to YouTube and playing a video of him or herself in the model of the Obama and Clinton videos and asking the camera operators to just zoom in on the laptop.
That would be fun, but do we really have to get the movie critics Read more:Hillary
Iraqi cleric ends boycott: "Mission Accomplished" 2007-01-21 22:17:26 BAGHDAD, Iraq — Anti-American Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr and his political allies announced on Sunday the end of a two-month boycott on Iraqi
politics. Al-Sadr, Iraq’s parliamentary speaker, made the announcement in front of a large banner reading “Mission
Accomplished” after other members of the country’s parliament agreed to consider the al-Sadr bloc’s political demands.
The cleric “found the banner on eBay,” according to an aide speaking on condition of anonymity. “It was so cheap we couldn’t pass it up. I mean we would have paid more for it, but whoever owned it really wanted to get rid of it, I guess. What we’ve accomplished here isn’t exactly, totally done, but Mr. al-Sadr was so excited about the banner he just had us put it up anyway.”
The banner was not made available for comment.
Read more:Mission Accomplished
Hillary launches Vilsack, Gravel back into obscurity 2007-01-20 19:47:16 WASHINGTON — Today, Sen. Hillary
Clinton (D-NY) announced her intention to make former Gov. Tom Vilsack
of Iowa, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and former Sen. Mike Gravel
of Alaska completely irrelevant.
"I'm in," declared Clinton's Web site, "And I'm in to trivialize Dennis Kucinich to the point that his Wikipedia entry is actually, wholly deleted. Again"
A New Beginning 2007-01-19 18:20:11 Here we go.
New practices, new look, new everything. Find out more here.
Read more:New Beginning
Super Bowl XLI: Bears and Colts 2007-01-22 06:00:23 So the Super
Bowl is set. It’ll be the Chicago Bears
and the Indianapolis Colts
, which is significant for a few reasons, but we’ll let the real media cover that.
I just thought it’d be nice to take a look back at where we were just a year ago, getting geared up for Super Bowl
XL between the Seattle Seahawks and the eventual champions, the Pittburgh Steelers.
Read more:Super Bowl XLI
The Chicago Bear Baby 2007-01-22 21:31:02 CHICAGO — A Chicago
couple gained notoriety this week for having induced labor early in order to ensure they’d be free to watch the Chicago Bears play the New Orleans Saints in last night’s NFC Championship game. Here are some other couples who got their 15 minutes of fame in similar ways:
2000 - Steve and Alisha Jackson, who induced early so they could have a milennium baby and instead got never-ending arguments about when the milennium really began.
1986 - Pat and Maggie Dolan, the Boston couple that induced early in order to watch the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets play the ‘86 World Series and could never look their son in the face without seeing Bill Buckner.
1937 - Aloisius and Madeline White, the New Jersey couple that induced early in order to watch the Hindenburg crash.
The Politics of Big Brother 2007-01-23 18:14:37 I don’t know if you’ve been following the “Big Brother
” flap across the pond, so here’s a quick recap:
“Big Brother
” is a wildly popular reality show in the UK (and damn near everywhere else) in which several strangers live in a house together under constant surveillance. What separates it from the other 800 shows that fit that description? Nothing worth mentioning, which means it’s built on a precarious balance of the following:
Profitable (good-looking) idiots
Competitions designed to help the audience pick favorites
The hatred that everyone has for his fellow man
Voting to eliminate certain participants
Boobs (which separate reality television from politics, except in California)
All along, racial tension has been one of the story lines that fits into reality TV to make it “interesting.” Now it’s bubbled over in the UK’s version to full-on controversy. As I’ve read it, a couple of lower-class Brits made
Cheney to Beat Crap Out of Bush 2007-01-24 17:00:27 WASHINGTON — After delivering the State of the Union address, President George W. Bush returned to the Oval Office to find a mysterious note on the Resolute desk. The note read “Mural Room. 3:00,” but lacked any information on the meeting’s topic. Bush wondered if it could have been about something in his speech — the troop escalation in Iraq, his health plan or perhaps even that little bone he threw to the environmental wackos who point to all this “evidence” that the planet is getting hotter, the part where he said the U.S. should cut gas usage by 20 percent in 10 years.
Before Bush could ask an aide to elaborate, Vice President Dick Cheney
appeared in the doorway.
“Twenty percent in 10 years huh, pal?” he said, smacking one fist into an open palm. “Yeah, I’ll show you 20 percent. Mural room. Be there. Don’t be a pussy.”
Quarterly freak-out 2007-01-26 00:59:27 Priorities are the worst
Note: Usually, I’ll post a couple of sentences from my weekly column and link over. This time, for whatever reason, the column didn’t make it in its entirety to the Daily Camera’s Web site. So today’s full column will be available here until such time that the Camera gets it fully posted:
My little yellow canaries are wobbling on their perches. They’re drunk with methane poisoning and they’re losing their balance and they’re dying. (more…) Read more:Quarterly
Bush-flop! 2007-01-26 18:01:39 Less than a year after telling America “I’m the decider,” President Bush has changed his position. Today, he told the press, “I’m the decision-maker.”
Well, Mr. President, which is it?
More later, but for now, how ’bout you read this post on the term “flip-flop” from Dilbert scribe Scott Adams? It’s something a lot of us have been saying for a while, but somehow it has more credibility coming from the man who gave us Dilbert, Dogbert and, yes, Catbert.
SUN: Excuses, excuses 2007-01-30 18:09:48 Well, I blame my bloggin’ absence on the frantic preparations for this Friday’s Secret Circus. If you’re in Boulder, get to CU’s Old Main at 8 p.m. on Friday for the best free comedy show in the world. Juice and cookies provided. Keep your eyes on this site for a sneak preview of one of our brand-new videos. On to the regularly-scheduled post (from a few days ago).
Every Sunday morning (or late Saturday night) I hope to provide you with a couple of links to some leisurely and interesting reading, typically on the topics of comedy and politics, which is where this blog seems to be going. This week’s Sunday morning reading comes on a Tuesday. How do you like that? Links below the fold.
(more…)
Baby, you can be my veep 2007-02-01 16:32:56 This week’s column is up at the Daily Camera and it’s about my possible bid for the White House:
Homeland security: It took me a little over a week to catch a mouse that was in my apartment. Longer than I’d like, for sure — especially with my friend Rachael constantly telling me I was going to die of hantavirus because the mouse was making doots in my food — but I got the job done on a pretty low budget. Plus, nobody was able to sneak in and get cellphone video of the mouse’s demise.
Some of my friends are a little weaker on this issue, including my buddy Drinkin’ Boots, who recently saw that part of his screen door needed repair, ripped it off, threw it in a bush and went inside to eat bacon. Is that how you want this country run? Didn’t think so. Basically, that’s a strike against me and my friends for president.
(Veep veep, mm, veep veep, yeah!)
Also, tomorrow night is the Secret Circus at CU-Boulder’s Old Main. 8 p.m. Free. Juice
Happy Groundhog Day (yesterday) 2007-02-03 16:29:53 Secret Circus went quite well last night, despite really unfriendly weather. It was windy and blowing enough snow that if you were near buildings or awnings — which had collected a lot of snow over the course of the last, say,two months — you could swear it was snowing again. And I did. I did swear.
Anyhow, here’s our Groundhog
Day video! Read more:Happy
Prince's national exposure? 2007-02-07 17:56:04 MIAMI–Now that the Super Bowl is over, the game was won and lost and the commercials were aired, the United States can go back to talking about wieners and boobs.
Some observers are questioning whether Prince
’s guitar solo, in which he was silhouetted behind a sheet, was just a guitar solo. Bloggers have said that the guitar, shaped like the singer’s famous insignia, may have appeared phallic. Some believe the guitar may have actually been Prince’s giant wang.
The issue is particularly sensitive after the last time CBS aired the Super Bowl in 2004, when Janet Jackson exposed her wang. Worse, officials believe there may have been in excess of 80,000 wangs in the area at the time.
“We are looking into the situation, we are choosing our steps carefully and we are looking into preventative measures to keep wieners and boobs off of future Super Bowls on CBS,” said CBS spokesman Greg Aiello.
See: Totally pathetic AP story, “Was Prince’s Super
Joketivism season 2007-02-08 19:10:49 This week’s column is up.
I’m sure it has been just as wild for you as it has for the folks I know. Our old pal Drinkin’ Boots, for example, called me with this message over the weekend: “Dave, I just walked past a bus full of pirates, and in the context of this week it wasn’t even weird.” Totally unfazed! Take that, world!
So what do we do now? We take the time to tackle those totally bizarre projects we’ve been swearing we’ll get around to. You know the ones. The ones you say out loud once and then feel weird about and try to forget:
“I’m going to laminate my degree for use as a placemat.”
“I’m going to get certified as something. I don’t care what.”
“I’m going to learn to play ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’ on my harmonica so I can impress a girl on Valentine’s Day.”
Time to get to work…
Review: parallel parking 2007-02-12 08:14:09 Dave Burdick provides weekly reviews of things that happen. This is one of them.
PRO:
Allows for wider driving lanes
Prohibits bad drivers from visiting areas near me
Alliterative
While parking, you’re allowed to hit other cars.
While parking, you’re allowed to hit whatever.
After hitting things, you can leave a note with an apology and Elisha’s phone number.
This works especially well if you borrow Elisha’s car first.
CON:
Sometimes difficult
That cute girl at the coffee shop saw me take about a half hour to park the other day
Now my girlfriend is mad at me for talking about the cute girl at the coffee shop.
Now NOW is mad at me for saying “girl.”
Thing is, she wasn’t a woman, she was a girl. She was 9. And cute.
Where was her mother, anyway?
Now NOW is mad at me for perpetuating a thing by assuming it was the mother who should have been caring for the girl.
And a few people are concerned about which way I meant the word “cute.”
Space potatoes are real. 2007-02-13 07:25:16 Via friend Juanothan, I have discovered that space potatoes–featured recently in a Secret Circus video–actually exist. Chinese space potatoes. See the AP story:
SHANGHAI, China (AP) — Having boldly gone where no spud has before, Chinese space potatoes are now the latest culinary fad to hit the country’s ultra-trendy commercial hub of Shanghai.
Slightly sweet and purple in color, the potatoes, named Purple Orchid Three, are bred from seeds that mutated while being carried aboard a Chinese spacecraft, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported Monday.
Awesome. Read more:Space
Man lost in mall questions intelligent design 2007-02-13 05:32:58 BROOMFIELD, Colo. — Wandering through the food court for the fourth time in an hour, Matt Hawkins, 31, wanted to know just who the hell design
ed this place, anyway.
“You’d think there would be a clear map or some decent signage,” he said. “It makes you wonder if all this stuff was intelligently designed by the Lord, Our God, after all.”
Hawkins went on to wonder about the intelligence of design in other corners of life, like why God would put church and football on the same day, and why light beer tastes like piss.
“God can put a man on the moon, but he can’t make a tasty light brew? Come on!” Read more:questions
Column: V-Day vs. P-Day 2007-02-15 17:57:16 The column’s up at the Daily Camera today. This week, we explore the idea of anti-Valentine’s Day parties and why I think they’re crappy and why we should really be able to move on instead of dwelling on how anti-Valentine’s Day or anti-anything else we are.
All of this is a manifestation of a little problem I have. My mother really put it succinctly today. She said, “Dave, you’ve never been very good at limbo.” True. And we’re not talking about the Lincoln Limbo, though it’s true that I’m also awkward and inflexible and prone to falling down in front of crowds of happy, inebriated people.
Oh, well. Read more:Column
Cupid detained, romantic comedies written 2007-02-15 07:37:47 NEWARK–After suspicious materials showed up in luggage x-rays, American Airlines passenger Cupid
was detained for investigation. The cherubic cherub claims that the bow and arrow in question weren’t meant for killing or maiming, rather for causing adorable couples to fall in love. Air marshals say that’s not a possible thing.
Meanwhile, Hugh Grant, Tom Hanks and John Cusack were unable to woo Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan and Ione Skye for the entire first and second acts.
“It’s just not fair,” said Grant. “Here I am, being foppish, and the damned leading lady won’t stare into my eyes at the end of any of the Peter Gabriel montages. I can only hope that in the sequel or perhaps the third iteration of ‘The Girl With a Thing for All Foppish Guys But Me’ she’ll come around. I’ve been trying to say adorable British things around her. Mayonnaise. Bastard. Adequate healthcare systems. That sort of thing.” Read more:romantic
, written
Nonbinding… 2007-02-16 18:57:56 The U.S. House of Representatives is going to vote on whether or not to issue a nonbinding resolution criticizing President George W. Bush for his handling of the war in Iraq.
It’s been the main headline in political news for a bit. Sort of a weird idea that after the new Democratic Congress accomplished a laundry list of tasks in its first “100 hours,” the central point of business would be to pass a bill that explicitly does nothing. There’s a small chance, though, that it’d clear the way for some anti-war legislation with teeth.
At any rate, it’s inspired me to come up with some of my own nonbinding resolutions. Here we are (and of course, vote with me if you’re in):
Nonbinding resolution against really long voicemail messages. They’re never important and you always know that when you’re leaving them, which I know because you say over and over again, “sorry for the long message,” which is really counterproductive.
No
SUN: Ginny the Cable Guy? 2007-02-17 18:51:33 Mm. Sunday. A day for rest. And big breakfasts. And gluing your eyes to the computer screen for a little casual Web browsing. What’s even better? Getting your Sunday morning reading on a Saturday! Today we’ve got stuff on blogging humor and etiquette, Congress’ Ginny
the Cable
Guy and a treat for improv nerds! Onward!
If you’re trying, like I am, to figure out just how to make a blog work, how to make it funny and addictive while perhaps maintaining some semblance of respectability, check out Jon Swift. He’s so calmly funny, not desperate like a lot of humor writing. I’m guilty of that desperation sometimes (a lot of times) and I blame stand-up comedy for that. (more…)
Some kinda meta comedy stuff 2007-02-18 17:45:10 …where “meta” is Internet code for “inside baseball.”
Friend Reid Levin and company over at Better Than the Machine made a video that spoofs a Bud Light video that appears to have pretty liberally borrowed from a sketch by another comedy troupe, The Whitest Kids U’Know.
I won’t go too much further into it, mostly because I’m underqualified (and a little because I need to get a hold of some breakfast in a bad way), but here is the very funny BTTM video and below the fold you can find the also very funny Whitest Kids video and the actual commercial in question.
(more…) Read more:stuff
Using education to melt right-wing witches 2007-02-20 18:41:38 Right-wing nutjob Neal Boortz claims that teachers unions are “much more dangerous than al Qaeda.” This is encouraging because, typically, teachers have been on my side in most matters, and I’d like to band together with the educators to find Boortz and kick his ass.
Just me and a bunch of science teachers with books and fossils. And maybe some of those stick-and-ball atomic models and we could use atoms that spell something funny, like, I don’t know… BeOTcH (beryllium, oxygen, technetium, helium — I need a scientist like Aaron Gabow to tell me how to make that sound like an actual compound, feasible or not). (more…) Read more:witches
Gloves come off in Libertarian primary race 2007-02-23 16:07:26 HOLLYWOOD — In the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, two of the heavy-hitters of one of the United States’ top-four-ish political parties appear to have removed the gloves. Steve Kubby, a Californian seeking the Libertarian
Party nomination, has asked Christine Smith, a candidate from Colorado, to issue an apology.
Smith got actress Goldie Hawn super drunk, after which Hawn eventually paid Smith $45 to go away. In 1998, when Kubby ran for governor of California on the Libertarian ticket, he had annoyed Hawn out of $45.
“That’s Steve-o’s territory, man,” said a Libertarian insider who wished to remain anonymous because the last time Kubby ran for office his family home was raided for marijuana and a little peyote. (more…) Read more:Gloves
These lights taste like Lucky Charms 2007-02-22 18:29:37 Weekly column is up.
A couple of weeks ago, holiday lights and decorations disappeared from the trees in Boulder. They’re still up in the apartment. Some of them aren’t seasonal — I have to use two strings of lights as extension cords for speakers in order to ensure that funk reaches all corners of my home.
The two seasonal strings, though, are still up in the windows. The Lady and I still turn them on with some frequency, too. It’s adorable denial, but as much as I like the lights, I don’t want to feel like I’m letting things get stale. That’s how out-of-season decorations always feel. Just looking at them, you can almost taste
the gone-crunchy Christmas-tree-shaped Peeps. Read more:Charms
, Lucky Charms
SUN: Bulbs, ideas and a big payoff 2007-02-25 05:44:12 Ah, Saturday night. What better time to prepare the Sunday morning reading? The pimps and hos are out in force; evidence of theme parties abounds here in beautiful Boulder, Colo.! And here we are, ensuring a pleasant and informational (and if you’re very good and read the whole thing, hilarious) tomorrow. In we go!
Looks like Australia will ban incadescent bulbs. This is fantastic news for anyone who wants good things to happen ever. Here’s the part that blows me away — the part where we get from John Howard’s country to Hugo Chavez’s country in a very short span of time: (more…) Read more:Bulbs
, ideas
Check out the Sterns 2007-02-28 05:28:26 Today’s Spin.com artist of the day, the Sterns, are a Boston-based band that has:
been a featured band at the Secret Circus — we gave away two copies of their album “Say Goodbye to the Camera” to two attendees who are now hooked
a bass player named Emeen Zarookian (far left; lookin’ good, Emeen) with whom I went to school (and whose solo stuff is also cool)
a cool Web site
four shows at SXSW, in case you’re going or are just generally into that kind of information
Check
‘em out.
And as long as we’re plugging bands that I like that have friends of mine in them… please, please listen to Elizabeth and the Catapult. I can’t stop listening to “Waiting For The Kill.”
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