I’d love it if you bought one or several of my earthly belongings that I have to get rid of! (If you read this carefully, it’s the story of a girl so fed up with her boss’ piggish ways that she sold all her stuff and moved to New York.)
If interested, message me at rluippold [at] gmail dot com. I’m leaving this weekend so I’d like to get rid of all this ASAP so I’ll have money to spend on rent in a rat-hole, a literal rat-hole, in Brooklyn.
NOT PICTURED (yet): My ‘99 Toyota Camry LE. 160,000 miles. Good condition. Around $3000 is ideal.
This is a great recliner! $50!
Bookshelf! $80! (This is really a great bookshelf.)(Of course you don’t get the books on them, silly!)
Can you believe I have to sell this futon ($80)? I sure can’t!
This is my nightstand. As you can see, it’s covered in garbage. Would YOU like to be the person to save it from the grasps of my neglect for only, like, $30?
NOT PICTURED ITEMS FOR $40:
-I have three small computer desks for some reason. I’ll sell any of them for about $30 each. They’re all in good condition. I also have a small desk chair that I’ll throw in for another $15.
-A 13” rear-projection TV. Built-in DVD player. Nothing’s wrong with it. $40?
-A toaster oven. I actually am in love with this toaster oven. It’s yours for $40.
Stan Eastley is a movie critic I made up who has spent twenty years describing every single movie he sees as “a rootin’ tootin’ good time” in hopes of getting quoted on a movie poster. He finally did, and then died.
Oh, no: Woody Allen’s Annual New Trailer Disappointment
It’s that time of year again: The new Woody Allen movie trailer comes out and it looks like any number of interchangeable “indie comedies” that (almost aggressively) lets you know that its script, detailing a madcap love maze between upper-middle class urbanites undergoing various identity crises, is front and center. And then the title that teases “Directed By Woody Allen” flashes (in this case, en espanol, as this is the leaked Spanish trailer), and the old familiar feelings of “maybe this will be a return to form!” kick in. And then a few months later, the reviews come out, and it’s not a return to form, and we weep for what could’ve been.
There was a time when I would have said that Woody Allen was my favorite filmmaker. The go-to Woody Allen texture, displayed most prominently by, I guess, Annie Halland Manhattan(not to mention my favorite, Crimes & Misdemeanors), reflects my perspective of reality closer than any other director’s standard aesthetic. Allen has strayed away from this with other styles throughout his career: the heavily Fellini-inspired Stardust Memories(which, to me, draws just as much on Charlie Chaplin as it does 8½), the Bergman-y Interiors, and the …something-that-isn’t-Hollywoodness of Husbands & Wives,but they’re all film experiments through the basic lens of Woody Allen—even in his more straight-forward comedies, he addresses the same themes of isolation, societal suffocation, and man’s absurdity that he explores in his non-funny movies. Then, around 1997, he stopped doing that and exclusively stuck to safe, simple comedies of error and brooding murder dramas that lack the wit of his earlier work. (These films are exclusively released at Blockbuster, if that tells you anything.) Which brings us to this movie, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger.
I certainly hope it’s good, but it sure looks like another trailer that’ll play at a Landmark Theater after a Stella Artois ad that will make me want to blow my brains out. (The movies for which they elect to show trailers at Landmark are just so, so awful. Most of the trailers seem like parodies of foreign/independent films that show why Republicans stay away from foreign/independent films. Between these trailers and the well-intended-but-condescending-and-misguided Jezebel/Daily Show thing from last week, dammit if I haven’t felt like a regular Sharron Angle lately.)
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dexys Midnight Runners were on top of the world. The Bohemian-inspired British pop group, featuring an eclectic mix of pop, rock, folk, and soul, rocketed to superstardom on both sides of the Atlantic with the inescapable 1982 hit “Come On Eileen.”
In a year when Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the best-selling album in the world, radio listeners found “Come On Eileen” to be a welcome alternative to the synth-heavy pop records dominating the charts. While Duran Duran and Eurythmics were pumping out multi-tracked, electronic singles, Dexys Midnight Runners offered jangly banjos, harmonic accordions, and even a full strings section. The group’s distinctive look, with a wardrobe that looked somewhere between Opie Taylor and Crocodile Dundee, made them a welcome and memorable part of music history.
So what happened to Dexys Midnight Runners? “Come On Eileen” remains a radio staple some thirty years later. How did Dexys Midnight Runners go from the top of the charts to complete obscurity?
Here’s an interview I did for the Texas Travesty last summer with one of my favorite comedians, Jimmy Pardo. I had the pleasure of working in the same place as Jimmy when I interned at Conan’s Tonight Show, where Jimmy was the opening act. He was also a highlight of the recent TBS special, the awkwardly-titled but incredibly hilarious “Team Coco Presents: The Conan Writers Live.”
It occurred to me that my tumblr page could be my ultimate undoing. Twitter’s limitation of 140 characters is a blessing: Often I want to tell the WHOLE INTERNET why someone/something annoys me, but I realize that the depth of my annoyance can’t be contained in Twitter’s character limit. So, if I post something on here that seems directed at you, I promise it isn’t to be taken personally.
Needless to say, self-control is simply not an option.
I really just want to figure out how Tumblr works so I don’t have to experiment on The Scalawag, a comedy blog I’m working on with my friends that I’d actually like to make work. I really just want to make it work, y’all.
Mr. Luippold comes from the humble but proud town of Carrollton, Texas, which is actually quite prideful but lacking in humility. In college, he studied TV/Film and edited the Texas Travesty, the country's largest student humor magazine. He then moved to Los Angeles to intern at "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" and later contributed to The Onion. He currently works at Huffington Post Comedy in New York City, where he scours the Internet for Zach Galifianakis news and clowns who can juggle geese.
Mr. Luippold also directed 'Gladiator.'
*Internet commenter, 6/09, re: the morality of fake Twitter accounts impersonating university presidents.
