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Did you know that George Clooney has a history of pulling “hilarious” pranks? I put together a comprehensive timeline of his goofs, gags, and gotchas for the the fine people at Slacktory.
Hey folks, it’s great to be here. Or not here, am I right? I’m just kidding ya, but honestly – some days I don’t know if I’m coming or going. Mostly the days on which I’m trapped inside a box containing poison that may or may not be released depending upon the possible emission of a radioactive particle.
Does anybody else feel like they have to have someone looking at them in order to feel alive? Because the act of observation collapses the wave function and converts two potential realities into one definite circumstance?
Speaking of observation, how about some observational humor? What is the deal with Geiger counters? And why can’t they be rigged to definitely not detect any radiation so that the poison isn’t released and you don’t have to die? Am I right? I’m right.
You know, I took my car to the shop the other day, and the guy was like “why don’t you have ol’ Schrödinger take a look at this thing? He’s a mechanic, right?” Yeah, sure - a quantum mechanic! Those guys kill me! Or not!
You guy’s aren’t big fans of my material, huh? What are you gonna do - put me in a box and turn me into an existentially tortured being who’s trapped in a superposition? Been there, done that!
Jeez, if you guys hate me, you really shouldn’t meet my friend Niels That guy is totally Bohr-ing.
Okay, folks, that’s my time. At least according to current interpretations of the speed of light relative to universal entropy.
Another weird video. I had to freeze water in a rubber glove for this.
Okay, guys. You know how you keep going to the nurse’s office with all those bites on your faces and arms, and how some of you are getting squeezed so much you can’t breathe, and how we lost Dora Washland last week when she was swallowed whole by that python? Yeah, this stuff is happening because you all keep bringing snakes to school. And I feel confident in saying it’s time to stop.
I don’t know who told you that snakes are cool, but they’re not. Not cool enough to lose your life over, anyway. And while there isn’t any official rule in the school charter about carrying around reptiles on the premises, I feel like that’s because that kind of rule shouldn’t be necessary. It should be common sense you guys.
Bottom line: no more snakes. This goes for crocodiles and alligators, too, so don’t think you all can just switch to a new trend, or something.
I see hands raised, so I’m going to rule out amphibians, too. I don’t want to ban all animals from school grounds, but I’ll do it.
Don’t make me.
Hi there.
You look so good right now. Juice cleanse? Oh, yeah it definitely shows. Keep it up!
Anyway, normally I don’t talk about Twitter online, but over the years a few people have taken issue with how I’ve been conducting myself. So here goes:
I don’t reply to people. And apparently that makes me a huge asshole…
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My schedule puts me to bed at midnight, and that’s something I have to stick to because messing around with sleep is not a good idea when you have bipolar disorder. Unfortunately, my girlfriend finishes work at two, and usually comes home hungry. Since she’s the one with an actual job (and I’m just an idiot that stays home and spends all day writing/pretending to write) we both feel like it falls to me to make sure there’s food ready for her.
So lately I’ve been making dinner for her at around 11:30 and sticking it in the oven, covered in foil. I try to stick to things that the oven won’t ruin (make soggy or bake hard). She says I’ve been doing okay.
I like to make these little notes for her, letting her know what’s in the oven, and that I love her, that sort of thing. It’s a fun creative challenge, because I can’t really draw and yet the most interesting/fun ones so far have been ones I’ve drawn on (see above - a note from a night when we didn’t have any groceries and I recommended she have some delicious LIFE cereal ugh I am the worst).
I guess the whole point of this is that I’ve found someone who I like so much that I’m prepared to be this cutesy little housewife, making dinner and leaving notes and rolling over and wrapping my arms around my husband/girlfriend (yay for sticking to lesbian clichés, right? “Which one of you is the dude hur hur hur”) without waking up when she finally gets into bed.
Congratulations on your upcoming inter-species nuptials. I’m sure you’re over-joyed, and yet also terrified that the Xorblaxian mate that has been assigned to you may soon to inseminate you and fill your thorax with a thousand gleaming hivelings that will burst forth and devour our “wretched planet”.
I’m also sure you have a lot of questions! Let’s take a look at some of them and see if we can’t put your mind at ease.
My fiancée has assigned me a Xorblaxian nickname. I’m glad it feels affection for me, but I’m wondering just what my new name translates to. Is there an English-Xorblaxian dictionary I can purchase?
Ha, we wish! Our best linguists have been unable to establish more than a basic understanding of the Xorblaxian tongue, so the meaning of their strange utterances are lost to us. However, we do know that the most common nickname for Xorblaxian consorts decodes as “the Vessel”. Vessel for what exactly? We’re not certain. Maybe those hivelings we’re all so scared of!
My Xorblaxian mate spends most of its day cleaning his mandibles and milking its fore-glands. Am I marrying a jobless layabout?
Don’t worry - you husbride is simply preparing for the busy nights it spends with those very mandibles plunged into your temples, better to pump you full of a potent pleasure-giving neuro-toxin.
My Xorblaxian used to ask me questions about my personal life, but lately its inquiries have taken a turn. “Where did you grow up?” “How far away was your home from the nearest pulse generator?” “Do you know any of the access codes to the pulse generator?” I feel like I’m on a strange quiz show. How can I get my future partner to cool it with the questions?
Xorblaxians are a very curious species, especially when it comes to matters of Earth’s defenses. Anthropologists have found that the best thing to do is simply answer every single query, in the hopes that you’ll overload your Xorblaxian with information and cause it to become bored. It hasn’t worked yet, but we have faith. These days, we have to have faith.
My fiancée is paying a lot of attention to the cycles of the moon, and has begun painting odd sigils on my body with the ink that secretes from its exo-pores. Is this normal?
Xorblaxian wedding traditions are different from ours in many ways. Your betrothed is just preparing for the magical day when you and it will genetically bond together and become one with the overmind. Try to think of all the lunar worship and rune art as the Xorblaxian equivalent of a bachelor party or wedding shower. It just means that the future master of your psychic terrain is getting excited!
I am a normal human looking for other normal humans that would like to discuss our suspicions about a possible Xorblaxian takeover of the planet. Where can I find other normal, non-alien humans like myself to meet with and not dissolve with my enzyme tentacles as a warning to other rebels?
Nice try, Xorblaxian! If I wasn’t so sure that relations between Xorblax and Earth were peaceful, I’d almost be worried! Luckily, I know you guys are a big bunch of kidders. Quit pulling my leg (the things at at the bottom of my abdomen, where you would have your horrifying spike-limbs)!
I made this weird little video for you.
Wake up and go straight to the mirror. Move your head from side to side and blink rapidly, making everything seem like it’s from an old-timey movie. Quote some Citizen Kane and Casablanca. Wait until you get dizzy from the blinking, and then go lay down. You are not a Hollywood actor.
Grab a pen and paper and write down a list of your biggest fears. Next to those, write down a list of things that could destroy those fears. Notice how that second list just says “Father” over and over. Start crying, and then go lay down. You are not your father.
The next time you feel the urge to obsessively wash your hands to get rid of the foul infestation of bacteria that is crawling, always crawling, crawling all over your skin, try to picture the bacteria with a smiley face, or something. Perhaps a jaunty hat?
Repeat to yourself “I am worthy of love and attention”. If the words sound hollow, carve them into your arm with a protractor, and show them to everybody you meet. You will have their attention!
Whenever you encounter anxiety over a problem or situation, use the R.A.I.L. system! Rationalize your fears by Accelerating them to their logical extreme, then Internalize the knowledge that every chain of events will undoubtedly contribute to entropy, and Lament the inevitable heat death of the universe. Does your anxiety really makes sense anymore? No, not if the Earth is going to grow cold and dark no matter what you do!
![The Importance of a Single Joke in Community’s “Basic Geneology”.
These two sentences sum up everything Community is. I’ve tried to break down everything this line accomplishes.
It grounds the reality of the show. Prior to this exchange, Chang and Pierce engaged in a fistfight after Pierce attempted to draw a windmill during a game of Pictionary and ended up obliviously scribbling a swastika on the board instead, offending Chang’s Jewish brother. There’s no denying that that’s a ridiculous scenario, and the fact that it ends with both Change and Pierce bloodied and beaten is absurd.
But our suspension of disbelief isn’t broken, in part because of the deadpan reaction of the policeman[1]. He’s seen this before - so much so that he has an opinion about how to prevent it from happening. When we as viewers see an authority figure treat the goings-on as realistic, we further invest in the show’s overall realism.
It illustrates that the show doesn’t indulge in easy caricatures. Typically, if you see an officer of the law in sitcom, he or she is either going to be dumb and incompetent or mean and unreasonable. In Community, we instead get a perfectly calm, logical cop accepts the problems he encounters and deals with them efficiently and kindly, even offering gentle -but clever- advice for the future. Although he’s in the episode for less than thirty seconds, this guy is already a fleshed-out human being. I know this dude.
It provides one of the biggest laughs of the episode, despite essentially repeating a joke we’ve already seen. The seed of the joke -the recontextualization of windmill as swastika- has, by now in the episode, already been planted, watered, and allowed to bloom into a flower. Most sitcoms would have had the fight be the endpoint of the joke, and any dealings with the aftermath quickly dealt with to allow the plot to progress.
In Community, though, the joke is allowed to live on past that endpoint, and the writers are clever enough to re-word the gag in a way that not only doesn’t bore us, but makes us laugh out loud. “One character misinterprets a windmill as a swastika” becomes “one character explains that windmills are commonly misinterpreted as swastikas” and it seems both entirely fresh and like a perfect button to the first iteration of the joke. That’s hard to do.
It gives us a glimpse of the larger world of the show, while not taking us out of the inner world we’re paying attention to. With this simple line, the writers convey that this classic comedy mis-understanding isn’t unique to Greendale Community College. The fact that the cop has an opinion at all illustrates, as mentioned above, that these kind of incidents happen often in the surrounding world. We learn that the rest of the Community universe is just as crazy as the college itself, that Greendale is the rule, not the exception.
The fact that this one line is so efficient, does so much heavy-lifting, is astounding. And it’s hardly an anomaly - most Community lines are crammed with levels of humor and insights into the world of the show. Community is often called one of the smartest shows on television, and it’s not just because the dialogue is fast-paced and pop-culture laden or the high-concept episodes are so striking and original. It’s because the people behind the show care so much about every single word that comes out of these characters’s mouths that they make each one of those words count.
Much credit, of course, should go to Craig Cackowski, who played the officer in question, and Ken Whittingham, who directed the episode. The standard sitcom reading of “…until Pictionary bans the word ‘windmill’” would be wacky and over-the-top, and these guys clearly made an active choice to go the other way. ↩](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4hdiyyqAu1qzpcyco1_1280.jpg)
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The Importance of a Single Joke in Community’s “Basic Geneology”.
These two sentences sum up everything Community is. I’ve tried to break down everything this line accomplishes.
But our suspension of disbelief isn’t broken, in part because of the deadpan reaction of the policeman[1]. He’s seen this before - so much so that he has an opinion about how to prevent it from happening. When we as viewers see an authority figure treat the goings-on as realistic, we further invest in the show’s overall realism.
It illustrates that the show doesn’t indulge in easy caricatures. Typically, if you see an officer of the law in sitcom, he or she is either going to be dumb and incompetent or mean and unreasonable. In Community, we instead get a perfectly calm, logical cop accepts the problems he encounters and deals with them efficiently and kindly, even offering gentle -but clever- advice for the future. Although he’s in the episode for less than thirty seconds, this guy is already a fleshed-out human being. I know this dude.
It provides one of the biggest laughs of the episode, despite essentially repeating a joke we’ve already seen. The seed of the joke -the recontextualization of windmill as swastika- has, by now in the episode, already been planted, watered, and allowed to bloom into a flower. Most sitcoms would have had the fight be the endpoint of the joke, and any dealings with the aftermath quickly dealt with to allow the plot to progress.
In Community, though, the joke is allowed to live on past that endpoint, and the writers are clever enough to re-word the gag in a way that not only doesn’t bore us, but makes us laugh out loud. “One character misinterprets a windmill as a swastika” becomes “one character explains that windmills are commonly misinterpreted as swastikas” and it seems both entirely fresh and like a perfect button to the first iteration of the joke. That’s hard to do.
The fact that this one line is so efficient, does so much heavy-lifting, is astounding. And it’s hardly an anomaly - most Community lines are crammed with levels of humor and insights into the world of the show. Community is often called one of the smartest shows on television, and it’s not just because the dialogue is fast-paced and pop-culture laden or the high-concept episodes are so striking and original. It’s because the people behind the show care so much about every single word that comes out of these characters’s mouths that they make each one of those words count.
Much credit, of course, should go to Craig Cackowski, who played the officer in question, and Ken Whittingham, who directed the episode. The standard sitcom reading of “…until Pictionary bans the word ‘windmill’” would be wacky and over-the-top, and these guys clearly made an active choice to go the other way. ↩
