Jealous?
Boring Old Raphael.TUMBLR
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Katie Crown gave us some weird-ass audio so we made her a cartoon!
Designs by me, animation by PUNY.
This video really speaks to me, like in a major way.
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For the past six months, I’ve been writing a comedy pilot for NBC called DIPLOMACY. Sometimes I would get up early in the morning to work on it and I would grab a coffee from the Starbucks on the corner. Sometimes I would work on it late into the night and I would get a Red Bull from the drugstore down the block. There have been times when I thought I should probably clean off my desk, but that always landed on my to-do list somewhere below “Keep working on script.”
This project has been mostly what I’ve been thinking about for the last six months. I’ve either been working on a draft, or waiting to get notes back on a draft, or feeling anxious that I wasn’t at that exact moment doing something involving a draft. I’ve gone on long walks late at night, talking to myself, like a crazy person. I’ve let emails and voicemails pile up, unacknowledged. I’ve had to unplug my internet and lock my phone in the trunk of my car and park it two blocks away from my apartment so I wouldn’t get distracted. There have been days when I felt like a total complete irredeemable failure and then other days when I’ve felt like a ninja rock star.
Last night I got the call that NBC was passing on the project, and just like that, I’m done.
I’m not too too bummed out left-brain-wise, because honestly I knew it was a long shot, that just being hired to write the script was a tremendous opportunity, and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up ever really because most things in general don’t work out. My manager called me today and he said not getting picked up is “the second best thing that could have possibly happened,” and I think he’s right. I’m not sure what’s next, but I feel good about the work I did and the connections I made.
All the same, it feels very strange to work very hard on something for a while and then all of a sudden not.
But I guess that’s how most things go.
I haven’t talked at all about the whole me writing a network pilot thing in this blog because I don’t know, I guess it felt braggy? Or I didn’t want to jinx it? (All the good you get from not jinxing things, right?) But this has been a wonderful experience that I don’t take for granted. All along the way, I’ve been guided through the process by smart and talented people, generous with their praise and specific with their feedback. I’ve grown as a writer and learned things about myself, and this business, that I look forward to applying to whatever the next thing is.
And that’s what’s really exciting: there will be next things.
As tempting as it is to nurse a wounded ego, there are so many other exciting avenues to explore. There’s something thrilling about cleaning all the empty coffee cups and Red Bull cans off my desk and starting from scratch. It’s the wonder of potential, the joy of not knowing, the beauty and promise of a clean white piece of paper.
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If I had to pick one Bible verse that students of American history should know, it is Acts 16:9: ‘And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us.’ In the middle of his second missionary journey, the apostle Paul had a dream or a hallucination in which a Macedonian stranger pleaded for his preaching. Paul dropped what he was doing in Asia Minor and ‘immediately’ sailed across the Aegean.
Theologians refer to this as the ‘Macedonian call.’ For example, in his ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ Martin Luther King, Jr., writes: ‘Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.’
For Americans, Acts 16:9 is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses — an all-purpose ingredient we’ll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.
tagged: [LITERATURE!]
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LADY GAGA CONSISTENTLY MISUSES SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE FIRST PERSON PRONOUNS
“You and me could write a bad romance.” - Bad Romance
“There ain’t no reason you and me should be alone.” - Edge of Glory
“You and me are gonna win it, baby.” - Take You Out
“Something about, baby, you and I.” - You and I
“I’d rather die without you and I.” - You and I
ARE YOU KIDDING? EVERY TIME? This is a poor use of poetic license. Honestly, it’s like she’s TRYING to annoy I.
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I know some people are NEVER going to stop saying that “women aren’t funny” and I know that some people are NEVER going to stop wanting to write pro-women articles in response to the people who say that “women aren’t funny.” But I am one “female comic” who is fucking tired of talking about it. It’s the first question people ask me when I do press. “What’s it like being a female comedian?” I don’t know. I can tell you what it’s like being a comedian though.
So, I’m asking you journalist and radio show hosts – talk to THE DUDES about women in comedy. Let’s change the conversation. The articles have already been written anyway and they’re all fucking boring. I’m asking you dudes in comedy, my friends, to please be like Nirvana and don’t just silently agree with us but keep bringing us girlfriends of yours on the road with you, keep casting us in things – not just as a romantic interest. Keep helping CHANGE the culture – don’t just make us women comment on it constantly. I want to hear the male comics talk about how funny women are – or just talk about how funny certain comedians are and I pray they have a healthy heaping of girls on that list. Let’s NORMALIZE women in comedy so we can stop talking about it . I’m done talking about it. I need the men to start challenging this shit too – I need them to Cobain Up because the future of comedy belongs to men AND women.
tagged: [uh oh here comes feminism!!!!]
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Wayne White buys cheap mass-produced landscapes at secondhand thrift stores and scribbles all over them to create beautiful and hilarious pieces of art. White won an Emmy for designing the sets and puppets for Pee Wee’s Playhouse. He also worked on Beekman’s World, Shining Time Station, and The Weird Al Show.
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MY FRIENDS ARE SOOO TALENTED!!!
I have so many talented friends and they make me so proud. EXCUSE ME WHILE I KVELL.
MY FRIEND ELOISE MUMFORD IS SOOO TALENTED!
Eloise is a phenomenally good actress who you might recognize from the 2010 Fox drama Lone Star if you watched one of the two episodes before it got cancelled, or, more likely, from a reading of a play I did back in 2007 if you are my friend. Starting February 7th, she’s starring on ABC’s new thriller The River, and everybody should watch it and make it a big hit. Also, Eloise spent the summer between shooting the pilot and the series volunteering for the local soup kitchen and Habitat for Humanity. WHAT A MENSCH!
MY FRIEND PETER ATENCIO IS SOOO TALENTED!
Peter directed every sketch of every episode of the upcoming Key & Peele on Comedy Central. I went to a taping of two episodes last week and I had a blast. Key and Peele have a fantastic chemistry, the show is written by a stable of wonderful writers (including Charlie Sanders who is also my friend and who is also SOOO TALENTED), and Peter’s artful direction gives many of the pieces a short film feel that transcends typical sketch comedy. Key & Peele premieres January 31st on Comedy Central.
MY FRIEND ADAM CONOVER IS SOOO TALENTED!
I used to live with Adam in Brooklyn and it was more or less like this. Now, Adam’s in LA for three months writing for a sketch show on Vh1 called Stevie TV. I have no idea when it premieres — March, I think? But everyone should watch it and talk about it and post screen caps on tumblr, even if it’s bad, because if there’s a second season, maybe they’ll fly Adam back out to LA next year so I can spend more time with one of my best friends.
MY FRIEND EMILY HARPER IS SOOO TALENTED!
Emily produces award shows. Most recently she was a coordinating producer for the Critics Choice Movie Awards, and right now she’s starting to put together the MTV Movie Awards. Emily is also one of the people who inspired me to go vegan, although now she’s a raw foodist and that is too weird for me. She also has a small job on the Oscars this year! She has to visit the sets of the parody video shoots and make sure they match the movies they’re parodying. So if you’re watching the Academy Awards this year and you think, wow, this stupid bit really looks like the scene from that movie, remember that’s my friend Emily and she is SOOO TALENTED.
MY FRIEND DAN GREGOR IS SOOO TALENTED!
Dan is a writer for How I Met Your Mother, and last year he and his writing partner wrote the episode where Neil Patrick Harris gets to know his dad Jon Lithgow and it was the best episode of the season. They also wrote the episode that aired last night with Alyson Hannigan’s dad Chris Elliott. I guess dads is their thing? Anyway, it was hilarious because Dan Gregor is hilarious.
MY FRIEND DAVE SEGAL IS SOOO TALENTED!
Every once in a while, Dave starts a new blog, and they’re all fantastic. Most recently, he’s been keeping shop at davesegal.com, writing about whatever strikes his fancy. Dave’s writing is precise, persuasive, hilarious, and quietly moving when he wants to be, such as in this great essay about the incredible power of one sad song, and I can’t wait to see where this new blog goes.
MY FRIEND NATASHA VARGAS-COOPER IS SOOO TALENTED!
Natasha is a writer! But not like a bullshit TV writer like all my other friends; she is a journalist! She’s most famous for writing this great book about Mad Men, but she also does work for important periodicals like The Atlantic. Just today, GQ published the latest in her ongoing column about movies: a reevaluation of American Beauty, which she hilariously describes as “a pitifully pre-9/11 movie: We were prosperous! There’s no war! We have a good economy! Yet we are still sad!” Astute observation, Natasha! You are SOOO TALENTED.
tagged: [MY FRIENDS ARE SOOO TALENTED]
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My mom used to say, “This household is not a democracy.”
But actually, that wasn’t quite true, because it was a democracy, it was just a flawed two-party system with a vastly unfair distribution of electoral votes. Oftentimes the general public was pressured to settle for the least objectionable of a series of unpalatable options. There were also powerful special interests that could obfuscate proper voting procedure and push pieces of legislation through without the electorate even noticing. Additionally it was incredibly hard to keep money out of politics and it seemed like all the major decisions were made by those with the most income. In fact, sometimes it hardly felt like a democracy at all. So I guess in a strange way it was the best democracy we could possibly hope for.
tagged: [This Is My Youth]
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![Via Natasha, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Evander Berry Wall, KING OF THE DUDES!
From Wikipedia (for maximum enjoyment, read aloud):
Evander Berry Wall (1860 – May 13, 1940), was a New York dude who became famous in the 1880s for his extravagantly refined look. […]
He is credited for having been the first person in the United States to have worn during a ball, at a time when the tailcoat was still the rule, a white dinner jacket, sent to him by the London tailor Henry Poole & Co. “to be worn for a quiet dinner at home or at an evening’s entertainment at a summer resort”. He was immediately ordered off the floor.
A journalist of the New York American, Blakely Hall, made Wall famous, proclaiming him in 1888, “King of the Dudes,” for having won the “Battle of the Dudes” against Robert “Bob” Hilliard, another sartorial dude when, during the blizzard of 1888, he strode into a bar clad in gleaming boots of patent leather that went to his hips. Nevertheless, some historians still consider it was Hilliard who won that dude battle.
Wall won another contest in Saratoga Springs, New York against John “Bet a Million” Gates, for having changed clothes 40 times between breakfast and dinner, appearing on the race track “in one flashy ensemble after the other until, exhausted but victorious he at last entered the ballroom of the United States Hotel in faultless evening attire”
After an ill-conceived stock-broking career and additional failures as a stable owner which ended in a 1899 bankruptcy, Wall decided that “New York had become fit only for businessmen” and left for Paris in 1912.
Wall and his wife […] lived with their chow dog Chi-Chi in the Hotel Meurice, near Charvet, where he had his signature “spread eagle” collar shirts and cravats custom-made for himself and his dog: Wall always dined at the Ritz with his dog, whose collars and ties were made by Charvet in the same style and fabric as his master’s.
Wall ascribed his longevity to the fact he never saw physicians and never drank water, claiming: “There are more old drunkards than there are old doctors”. […]
When he died, he left only $12,608, having “squandered nearly every cent on pleasure”.
ALL HAIL KING OF THE DUDES.
PARTY ON, KING OF THE DUDES.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxohfdjEN11qzt0gko1_250.jpg)
Via Natasha, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Evander Berry Wall, KING OF THE DUDES!
From Wikipedia (for maximum enjoyment, read aloud):
Evander Berry Wall (1860 – May 13, 1940), was a New York dude who became famous in the 1880s for his extravagantly refined look. […]
He is credited for having been the first person in the United States to have worn during a ball, at a time when the tailcoat was still the rule, a white dinner jacket, sent to him by the London tailor Henry Poole & Co. “to be worn for a quiet dinner at home or at an evening’s entertainment at a summer resort”. He was immediately ordered off the floor.
A journalist of the New York American, Blakely Hall, made Wall famous, proclaiming him in 1888, “King of the Dudes,” for having won the “Battle of the Dudes” against Robert “Bob” Hilliard, another sartorial dude when, during the blizzard of 1888, he strode into a bar clad in gleaming boots of patent leather that went to his hips. Nevertheless, some historians still consider it was Hilliard who won that dude battle.
Wall won another contest in Saratoga Springs, New York against John “Bet a Million” Gates, for having changed clothes 40 times between breakfast and dinner, appearing on the race track “in one flashy ensemble after the other until, exhausted but victorious he at last entered the ballroom of the United States Hotel in faultless evening attire”
After an ill-conceived stock-broking career and additional failures as a stable owner which ended in a 1899 bankruptcy, Wall decided that “New York had become fit only for businessmen” and left for Paris in 1912.
Wall and his wife […] lived with their chow dog Chi-Chi in the Hotel Meurice, near Charvet, where he had his signature “spread eagle” collar shirts and cravats custom-made for himself and his dog: Wall always dined at the Ritz with his dog, whose collars and ties were made by Charvet in the same style and fabric as his master’s.
Wall ascribed his longevity to the fact he never saw physicians and never drank water, claiming: “There are more old drunkards than there are old doctors”. […]
When he died, he left only $12,608, having “squandered nearly every cent on pleasure”.
ALL HAIL KING OF THE DUDES.
PARTY ON, KING OF THE DUDES.
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
“It’s one thing that’s always like, uh, been a major difference between like the performing arts to me and being a painter, you know? Like a painter does a painting, and he does a painting, that’s it. You know, he’s had the joy of creating it, he hangs it on some wall, somebody buys it, somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere till he dies. But he’s never— nobody ever says to him, you know, nobody ever said to Van Gogh: ‘Paint us Starry Night again, man!’ You know? He painted it, that was it.
Let’s sing this song together, okay? This song doesn’t sound good with one lonely voice. It sounds good with— the more voices on it the better, and the more out-of-tune voices on it the better. You know, it was really— it was made for out-of-tune singing, this song.”
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Maya and I threw ourselves a Female Singer-Songwriters From When We Were In High School Youtube Party, and Dave indulged us. I played the above Fiona Apple video directed by Apple’s then-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson.
I said, “It’s weird that this song’s in Bridesmaids, a movie featuring P.T. Anderson’s new girlfriend.” I remembered how when Garden State came out Zach Braff said that he tried to get Paper Bag on the soundtrack (a detail I remember mainly for how annoyed I was that so much of his musical taste overlapped with mine), but Fiona Apple’s people said no. I wondered why she’d say no to that and yes to Bridesmaids (questions of quality aside), and I wondered what Maya Rudolph had to do with it.
Dave said, “Do you think P.T. Anderson got Jon Brion in the break-up?” We talked about the Extraordinary Machine album, how its release kept getting delayed, how Fiona’s fans protested the record label, made “Free Fiona” t-shirts and buttons, shared the leaked Brion-produced tracks, until Apple herself said she was the one unhappy with the record, and when it was released a year later, most of Brion’s contributions were scrapped. (Since then, Apple and Brion have in fact collaborated several times, and it’s tempting to invent an elaborate email correspondance detailing their reconciliation— “Look, man… Things got weird.”)
Maya said, “I feel like this is more a Paul Thomas Anderson video than a Fiona Apple video. It’s so glamorous. Look how uncomfortable she looks.” I said, “No, I think that’s just what she looks like,” but the observation reminded me of a photograph taken of me in a past life. It’s a picture of ______ and me the weekend we first met. We’re in a subway car. My arm is around her and I’m smiling broadly. She’s looking down into her purse. In this past life I always liked the photo because I thought it spoke to how happy ______ made me, and how quickly she meant so much to me. She hated the picture. “We hardly knew each other then. You were so presumptuous, to put your arm around me. I remember thinking, what is he doing?”
I knew what she was saying, but I couldn’t help loving the photo. The picture was taken before I knew she hated getting photographed and in fact it was one of the few pictures I had of her, of us together. I couldn’t help how grateful I was to have met her and how much the picture filled me with warmth. It’s funny how instinctively we attribute meaning to things— pictures, songs, relationships, lives. We like to create narratives, control things somehow, make the stories our own.
After ______ and I broke up, years after, in another life, I pulled out the old picture once when I was feeling nostalgic, but somehow, suddenly — and irreparably — I couldn’t help seeing what she saw.
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(click thumbnails to see full size)
If I just started commenting on everything my mom posted on Facebook, would that be a good use of my time?
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REAL TALK: PRETTY LITTLE LIARS SEASON 2 MID-SEASON CHECK-IN
We’re in the thick of it now! Can’t wait for tonight!
About
Hi. My name is Raphael and this is where I write about my feelings. I am in the comedy group Olde English and I used to write the webcomic Tip Me Over, Pour Me Out. I also write plays and things. Not to toot my own horn, but I have been called a "future Oscar-winner" by both my manager and my grandmother and "a really great friend" by girls I wanted to be my girlfriend but was too shy to tell but I think secretly they knew all along. I currently live in Los Angeles where I spend the majority of my time trying to find a parking space.This theme was designed by pixelspread.
