Today’s Lesson: Racism Is Really Funny

I’m not very good at keep notes and setting reminders for myself. For example, I keep a general ongoing list of links that amused me and just periodically dump them all out here. And for some reason I threw in this article about a promising Lyme disease vaccine…and for the life of me, I cannot remember why this was so funny to me initially. I mean I’m not saying Lyme disease is unfunny, but I can’t even really say if it’s really all that funny right now either. I feel like there’s some context I’ve forgotten.

Or was it the fact that we are potentially on the verge of finding a Lyme disease cure? Was there a joke in there about skin rashes that I wanted to make? I cannot recall, I just wrote down “Lyme disease” and then the URL…I should really keep better notes.

Or did I mix up my personal research list with my funny links list?

…do I have Lyme disease and just forgot about it?

I should probably stop drinking to the point of blacking out when I’m surfing the internet alone. Anyway if tick-borne diseases aren’t funny, then I’m just going back to the ever dependable well of racism. Here’s the rest of my links.

– Did you know there’s like a black version of Whose Line Is It Anyway? hosted by Nick Cannon that airs on MTV2 called Wild ‘N Out? Like instead of Scenes From A Hat they use hashtags and I guess instead of having Wayne Brady on Song Styles they just freestyle rap battle against each other. I swear to God, I think someone just made this up, this can’t be a real thing. I mean just compare their list of celebrity guests against the list of special guests on Whose Line this season so far (all of which have been terrible, the shoehorned guest star spots make it almost unwatchable)…a white girl from The Walking Dead, the white crippled kid from Glee, a white girl from The Vampire Diaries, one of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, a pair of synchronized swimmers, and a white dude from The Young and the Restless. Wowzers. And on the other side they are divided into Team Black and Team Platinum! You cannot get any blacker and whiter on each respective side, I am just in awe right now.

– Here is the trailer for Her, a Spike Jonze joint starring Joaquin Phoenix that will presumably address the issue on the mind of every iPhone owner regarding their inevitable and undeniable sexual attraction to Siri. Especially if voiced by Scarlett Johansson, seemingly the sexiest disembodied robot voice since Kevin Spacey in Moon. But what if you throw the ever delightful Amy Adams into the mix? And then maybe some stuff about a kid and divorce and phone sex with an actual phone? And then a movie is born. But seriously, if this was anyone other than Spike Jonze it would just sound fucking stupid. But since it’s from Spike Jonze, it will be odd and quaint and charmingly quirky.

– Hey look, Bryan Singer has Tweeted a picture of a Sentinel from X-Men: Days of Future Past, which I guess is a movie about a dystopian alternative future in which Dyson brand vacuum cleaners have achieved sentience and become racist towards mutants. Seriously, I think this is maybe having the opposite of the intended effect on me. I think I would have very much preferred to have this reveal happen within the movie…you know, with lighting and editing and CGI and stuff…versus this crappy picture of this movie prop sitting in a weird warehouse. This does nothing for me.

– This is a new Freddie Wong short called Skyhook, which perfectly illustrates the fantasy we’ve all had in our heads since we watched that scene in The Dark Knight. This is pretty close to what I think about whenever I’m sitting in a meeting room with big windows. Keep fighting the good fight, Freddie.

– Also, now that The Office is over and presumably collected in DVD sets or whatnot, I guess there’s a video going around showing some of the initial auditions they had with various established actors. And one of those actors, auditioning for the role of Jim Halpert…our old favourite John Cho! Yeah, like America was ever going to buy into a series that revolved around the sexual tension between an Asian man and a white woman. I’m pretty sure they were just interviewing him to fulfill a minority quota. But if you want to know what John Cho is going to be in next, look no further than the new upcoming FOX television series Sleepy Hollow! Seriously, read the write up on the Wikipedia page and tell me this isn’t the most ridiculous buddy cop comedy ever. Because…holy shit, what? In 2040, Orlando Jones is a police captain in the town of Sleepy Hollow? This is insane, right?

Oh and apparently word is that John Cho gets like immediately offed in the pilot. Oops, spoiler alert!

– Also coming from FOX this fall…Andy Samberg’s second time at the network as a police detective in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I’m sure at some point someone will explain to me why all the police officers in this department are so young and attractive, like if it’s supposed to be a 21 Jump Street type operation, because it’s really only the lack of realism that’s preventing me from fully enjoying this. I mean why would police captain Andre Braugher put up with such wacky hijinks in his precinct? I don’t know how police captain Orlando Jones runs things, but this ain’t Sleepy Hollow!

– Another upcoming series that you should be aware of is another Netflix series, Derek, which seems to star Ricky Gervais walking that fine line, but more interesting, also features what seems to be Karl Pilkington in an acting role playing the straight man. This whole fucking thing seems like a weird meta joke to me, I don’t buy this at all.

– Hey, Premier League games will apparently be televised on NBC, and so here’s a funny video with good ol’ American Jason Sudeikis making fun of how different soccer and England are and stuff. It’s not ground breaking comedy, but I enjoyed it, mainly because for once I also know absolutely nothing about how this sport or really anything about how professional soccer is set up in the world. Is this how it feels when I talk about baseball all the time? Oh God…what have I been doing?

– So regarding baseball…this was posted on Reddit today, a sign that someone saw at last night’s Cleveland Indians game. Now what’s curious about this particular sign is that there seems to be an overt racist tone here, but I just can’t nail it down…so I guess it’s more of like a non-overt one. Like I feel like I should be offended somehow, but I don’t know at what. I mean, this is a white person holding a sign with a racist Asian phrase that’s targeted (positively) towards Michael Bourn, who is a black American outfielder who plays for the Cleveland Indians. It’s almost like it skirts just below the minimum threshold to be offended across multiple demographics…and yet there is no single demographic that can really claim offense. This is brilliant on so many different racist levels.

Also I want to know what was on the front of the sign, because all I can make out is “BAT MAGIC” and what seems to be circular striped orbs…which I’m guessing represents tigers somehow because the game was against Detroit. But now I’m really curious as to what the front of the sign was like, especially considering the expectations that the visible side of the sign has set.

Also, what the fuck is going on with her watch? Is that a radio or something?

God, so many questions.

“That guy’s beatin’ on the Phrenetic!”
“Is that a hate crime?”
“Nah, it’s not a hate crime.”
“Wanna hammer his ass anyway?”
“Definitely.”