∞
the heat threatening to split the sky open, the humidity threatening to curdle into rain. Last night I witnessed a downpour, heavy, specific, over a single Brooklyn intersection.
On one side of the street it was dry, on the other, dry, but walk across the crosswalk and you’d be soaking wet. I looked up cautiously, afraid the storm would spread, and saw that in fact the water was all spilling out of a top story of an under-construction high rise.
As I walked away, I passed a woman in a sundress filming the downpour with her phone. “Can you believe this?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it.
I told her what I had discovered, that if you looked closely, you could see that the water was coming out of the building, not the sky.
“I wish you hadn’t told me that,” she said, putting her phone back in her purse. “I wanted to believe that it was rain. I wanted to live in a New York where that could happen.”
∞
“
Don’t sue the studio.
And don’t distribute yourself. That’s two.
And don’t start talking about how much you love somebody. Yeah, just shut up about it.
That’s three rules that I could come up with from my vast experience.
— Lessons learned by Peter Bogdanovich
∞
![popculturebrain:
russmarshalek:
Nope
Of course this exists.
I have nothing to say about the content of this sign, BUT GUYS.
YOU GUYS.
Can we PLEASE put a moratorium on using the phrase “no pun intended!” solely to draw attention to puns that were definitely intended? “[M]artinis after the last shot of the day” is the most intended pun I have ever seen in my life. (For those who don’t know, the final shot set-up of the day is often colloquially referred to as a… well, you can probably guess using context clues.)
Can you IMAGINE the person writing this sign just organically deciding that “martinis after the last shot of the day” was a more elegant turn of phrase than “drinks when they’re done shooting,” and then the embarrassment when that person realized that he had COMPLETELY ACCIDENTALLY MADE A PUN?
“How foolish of me, and yet also smart of me because I know esoteric filmmaking lingo! Now everyone who reads this sign (who is as well-versed as I in production terminology) will think I intentionally made light sport of language!”
Imagine this person’s deep chagrin!
“Is it too late to take the pun out and replace it with a synonymous yet less hilarious turn of phrase? Alas, it is, for some reason! Yet still I can alert the masses that the pun was not an intentional one, but merely an incidental bit of wordplay that resulted from the best possible way of describing a bar where people drink alcohol. Verily, a small amendment shall suffice. Bless heaven I’m not paying by the letter!”
No, that didn’t happen. What happened is someone made a pun, ON PURPOSE, then thought “Uh oh, this joke is a little on the inside, I’d better alert everyone that there is an incredibly funny joke here, because otherwise people might not get it. HEY! EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS PUN THAT ACCIDENTALLY FELL HERE.”
Bragging about your amazing pun by saying, “no pun intended,” is like when you take a picture of yourself from arm’s length, but you look away like it’s a candid shot. I KNOW YOU TOOK THE PICTURE. I KNOW YOU KNOW YOU’RE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/e0b21ec3d0aaac5415f376aa807023e7/tumblr_mn7q46KMHn1qc9bpto1_500.jpg)
popculturebrain:
russmarshalek:
Nope
Of course this exists.
I have nothing to say about the content of this sign, BUT GUYS.
YOU GUYS.
Can we PLEASE put a moratorium on using the phrase “no pun intended!” solely to draw attention to puns that were definitely intended? “[M]artinis after the last shot of the day” is the most intended pun I have ever seen in my life. (For those who don’t know, the final shot set-up of the day is often colloquially referred to as a… well, you can probably guess using context clues.)
Can you IMAGINE the person writing this sign just organically deciding that “martinis after the last shot of the day” was a more elegant turn of phrase than “drinks when they’re done shooting,” and then the embarrassment when that person realized that he had COMPLETELY ACCIDENTALLY MADE A PUN?
“How foolish of me, and yet also smart of me because I know esoteric filmmaking lingo! Now everyone who reads this sign (who is as well-versed as I in production terminology) will think I intentionally made light sport of language!”
Imagine this person’s deep chagrin!
“Is it too late to take the pun out and replace it with a synonymous yet less hilarious turn of phrase? Alas, it is, for some reason! Yet still I can alert the masses that the pun was not an intentional one, but merely an incidental bit of wordplay that resulted from the best possible way of describing a bar where people drink alcohol. Verily, a small amendment shall suffice. Bless heaven I’m not paying by the letter!”
No, that didn’t happen. What happened is someone made a pun, ON PURPOSE, then thought “Uh oh, this joke is a little on the inside, I’d better alert everyone that there is an incredibly funny joke here, because otherwise people might not get it. HEY! EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS PUN THAT ACCIDENTALLY FELL HERE.”
Bragging about your amazing pun by saying, “no pun intended,” is like when you take a picture of yourself from arm’s length, but you look away like it’s a candid shot. I KNOW YOU TOOK THE PICTURE. I KNOW YOU KNOW YOU’RE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED.
∞
∞ The Exquisite Corpse Project on Last Call with Carson Daly
adamconover:
Our movie was profiled on NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly last week! Incredible.
Ungentle reminder: If you still haven’t seen The Exquisite Corpse Project, it can be yours for just five bucks!
For real, though, what are you waiting for?
∞
“Standing Ovations are now de rigeur in the theater. They used to be rare, awarded only to extraordinary performances. In straight (non-musical) plays, especially, the highest compliment audiences could pay would be to sit pinned in their seats by the power of the experience they’d had. I can remember a number of occasions when not only did I not want to get out of my seat, I didn’t want to talk to anyone until I had shaken off the effect of what I had seen. No longer — you don’t get the chance. The audience is on its feet even before the first bow, no matter how limp or shallow the piece. They are, of course, giving the ovation to themselves for having been part of a participatory experience rather than a passive one, and for having spent their time and money on it. They’re reminding themselves that they’re alive. Which is not a bad thing, but which makes the extraordinary ordinary.
— Stephen Sondheim, not a bad thing
∞
Oh yeah, this looks legitimate.
Discarded early drafts of this sign:
FREE CANDY!
Building at Corner
<—————————
CHEAP MAMMOGRAMS:
Building at Corner
<—————————
SPEED-DATING
Single? Unattached?
No one who will miss you should something terrible happen?
Building at Corner
<—————————
Meeting For The NO KIDNAPPING Club
Are You A Pretty Lady Who Hates Kidnapping And Wants To Discuss It With Other Likeminded Individuals?
Us too!
We Are Definitely Not Kidnappers!
Come To Our Meeting And We Will Totally Not Kidnap You!
(No Cops)
Building at Corner
<—————————
KNOW HOW TO MAKE A PROFESSIONAL-LOOKING NOT CREEPY SIGN?
We could use your services
Please bring a resume and portfolio to the
Building at Corner
<—————————
Auditions:
Female Singers With Nice Feet
Must Have “Cute” “Petite” Feet
Must Not Get Weird About Us Taking Pictures Of Your Feet
Bring Sheet Music (Accompanist Provided)
Building at Corner
<—————————
HEY LADY SINGERS!
Come Into This Dark Mysterious Building, Why Not
Worst-Case Scenario The Endless Cable News Coverage Of Your Almost Certain Grisly Abduction And Gruesome Dismemberment Followed By Lengthy Trial, Interviews With Cops, Friends, Loved Ones, Lifetime Movie, Book Deals For All, Early Home Movies Taken “In Happier Times,” Etc., Etc., May Bring Some Much-Needed Exposure To Your Fledgeling Musical Career
Building at Corner
<—————————
∞
there is a lot to like about the wikipedia entry for the Infinite Monkey Theorem, including the long explanation of the mathematical definition of “almost surely” and the random text generator that, after “2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years,” spat out the partial Henry IV, Part 2 line:
RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r”5j5&?OWTY Z0d
But my favorite part of all has to be this:
In 2003, lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth MediaLab Arts course used a £2,000 grant from the Arts Council to study the literary output of real monkeys. They left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six Celebes Crested Macaques in Paignton Zoo in Devon in England for a month, with a radio link to broadcast the results on a website.
Not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, the lead male began by bashing the keyboard with a stone, and the monkeys continued by urinating and defecating on it. Phillips said that the artist-funded project was primarily performance art, and they had learned “an awful lot” from it.
∞
“I would never say that phrase, but I’d defend to the death someone else’s right to say it.” - me, apparently.
