Underpants On The Outside

I’m only going to come up with a few, but please feel free to think of other uncomfortably-offensive international border sports after you read this article on Mexico-US border volleyball. (Thanks to Deadspin)

Here are mine:

• Korean (North-South) Capture the Flag
• Chechyn Paintball
• Cuban Water Polo

As some of you may know, Friday was the Jewish New Year.  I don’t have any family in New York, so I usually spend the holidays hanging around my much more observant friend Sarah and trying to look like I know what everyone is talking about.  I nod a lot, make a couple jokes, and do my best to maintain my cover; Sarah helps by reaching over and turning the page so that I can pretend to read from the correct Hebrew.

Friday she took me to a Jewish community center where her mom was hosting a dinner.  I don’t know if anyone else under the age of 120 was invited, but from the looks of things all the youthful octogenarians had other plans.  I was afraid that the Jewish people had collectively stopped reproducing in 1903 until I remembered that I am actual evidence to the contrary. 

For the record, I like the elderly.  I can make jokes under my breath so they don’t hear them.   I can charm their women with flattery and the Foxtrot.  They like their chicken bland, their vegetables mushy, and sometime around the age of sixty they just stop giving a fuck. 

After any blessing, there’s usually a couple seconds of serenity while a few last “Amens” are muttered and we eat whatever it was we just blessed.  (It’s a particularly long and silent pause after the blessing of the wine.)  It’s like the silence right before the orchestra kicks in, so I can only imagine that, “fuck it, I’m old” was the last thing to pass through one particular guy’s mind before he punctuated that silence by ripping off one of the loudest sternum-rattling burps I’ve ever heard.  I’m no doctor, but there’s no way that was a safe thing for him to do at his age.  But I’m only twenty-seven, so I found it so hilarious that Sarah’s mom asked me if I needed to be excused.   While I wasn’t the only person in that room who needed to excuse himself, apparently my sputtering and giggling was interfering with the next blessing.

So that’s how I welcomed the New Year: laughing inappropriately because some old guy belched.  Don’t worry ladies, I may have a girlfriend but I’m not married yet.  Act now, while there’s still time.

If you do, check out my latest article over at Cracked.com: a preview of the new Fall season.

If you don’t, you’re a goddamned communist, but you should check it out anyway.

To get you through the weekend, here’s a little photo, presented without context:

(That’s Big Brother, rocking the back hair)

I got an article to the front page of College Humor (which has become more difficult lately.) 

Check it out here.

About a month ago, astronomers asked themselves whether Pluto deserved to be a planet.  Eventually they decided that it didn’t, but in that limbo period I saw a comedic opportunity.  If Pluto had a marketing department, how would they try to persuade the astronomers?

I spent several days working on it and asked several friends to ignore their work reading draft after draft.  Eventually I thought I had something decent.  I’ve been trying to get published in McSweeney’s, but I thought the article might have been good enough to go for the top: The New Yorker.  I sent it off; a week later they told me it was amusing, but they weren’t going to publish it.  By then Pluto had already lost its planet status, and I sent it to McSweeney’s with just a hint of desperation.  Unfortunately, they correctly saw that the opportunity for Pluto humor had passed.

That was over a week ago, and with no other options, I’ve decided to publish it on the most disgraceful site on the internet: Underpants on the Outside, or as I now think of it, “where comedy goes to die.”  Enjoy.

The Last Status Meeting of Pluto’s Marketing Department

(Written August 17, 2006)

Good morning everybody; we’ve got a lot to do, so grab a bagel and take a seat.

If you didn’t get my memo earlier, I just read a very troubling article in the Times.  As we speak there are a couple thousand astronomers gathering in Prague to decide how to define what a planet is.   If things don’t go well for us, Pluto could lose its “planet” status and be nothing more than a chunk of orbital ice by next week.  We need to nip this one in the bud, people, so no one is leaving this room until we have an aggressive, multi-media campaign to remind America that Pluto is everybody’s favorite little planet.

I’ll be honest: this isn’t going to be easy.  As I’ve said from the beginning, the first thing they teach you in Branding 101 is, “don’t name your product after the god of the underworld,” but we have to work with what we got.  Luckily, most Americans believe we named the planet after a cartoon dog, so let’s take advantage of that.  Someone call up Disney; maybe they want to co-sponsor something.

Kate, I want you and Simon to set Pluto up with one of those Myspace pages that the kids are into.  Just because we’re six billion kilometers from the Sun with an approximate temperature of minus four hundred degrees doesn’t mean we’re not ‘hip’.  Ooh, that just gave me an idea: I don’t know if it’s in the budget, but let’s find out what it would cost to host the Winter X-games.  

While you’re brainstorming, try and come up with some viral schemes.  Maybe we can give out free snow cones in Central Park.   

You guys also need to realize we’re fighting this on two fronts.  Some scientists are trying to kick us out of the Planet Posse, but others want to add more planets, and this is just as bad, if not worse.  Let me put it this way: when was the last time you heard someone talking about Neptune?  A lot of you weren’t working here then, but when Pluto was just an independent start-up Neptune was the toast of the solar system.  Then we went public and all of sudden they were laying people off left and right.  Incidentally, the first department to go was marketing.  You’re fighting for your job, guys. 

This all started because some Cal Tech bookworm found a new, bigger, round orbiting celestia- No, Tom, I will not call it a planet!  That’s the whole fucking point!  Have you been listening to me at all??  Let me reiterate: whatever this guy found, it is a large, round, orbiting celestial body.  Next person to call it a planet is fired.

But we caught a break.  Does anyone know what this Cal Tech trekkie wants to call his new quote-unquote, “planet”?  Xena!  He wants our solar system to be the Earth, The Sun, eight Roman gods and Xena: Warrior Princess.  Might as well name it Nerdatron.

I bet this brainiac never thought of how this will screw up the mnemonics.  Everybody knows that if you want to remember the solar system, it’s “My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pies.”  That’s a great mnemonic.  Everybody loves pie.  What is it going to be if we add Planet Xena…“Purple Xylophones?”  Would you be happy if your mother sent you nine of those?

Goddamn it, Tom, I was being sarcastic when I called it Planet Xena. 

Now consider the other scenario.  If Pluto isn’t a planet anymore, the mnemonic is going to be “My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us… NOTHING.”  She doesn’t sound so excellent now, does she?  We need to play up that Pluto equals pie, and as we all know pie promotes family values.  

What we’re trying to do is tough, but not impossible.  Look at Africa.  Five years ago, no one gave a crap; thanks to Angelina Jolie, Gwenyth Paltrow is wearing beads and face paint while African orphans are fetching twenty five grand on the black market… or so I’ve heard.  We need that kind of celebrity power.   Someone find out if Angelina’s pregnant again.

Pluto has been a planet since 1930; I’ll be damned if some egghead is going to come along and take that away from us.  Look, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are nothing but gas, and if a bunch of orbital farts can be planets, you better believe we can. At least we’re solid. 

Question: Is there anyone who doesn’t like rainbows?

Answer: Yes.  Irish Midgets.

It isn’t just kids who like getting free shit, but for some reason, once you stop buying breakfast cereals made of cookies and marshmallows the only thing at the bottom of the box is ground up cereal. On the other hand, there’re a lot of things I’d like better than those plastic toys I used to get when I was a kid.  They may have been manufactured by underage laborers in sweatshop conditions, but that really doesn’t excuse the fact that they sucked.  That’s why I’ve compiled the following list of things I wish came in today’s cereal boxes:

Razor blades: Those things are expensive and I hate having to buy them.  Who wouldn’t be happy to find some Mach 4s in their breakfast?  I see no reason why this wouldn’t also work with Halloween candy.

Condoms: Also expensive, and I always seem to run out at the wrong time.  Wouldn’t it be great if I could say, “relax, baby, I got a box of Lucky Charms in the kitchen”?  The condoms wouldn’t even need to be wrapped; the crumbs might be uncomfortable at first, but it will be worth it when I can go around telling the ladies that I’m “magically delicious.”

Immodium AD:  I love cereal but I’m lactose intolerant.  Now we’re selling the solution with the problem, like peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

An AOL CD:  They’re nearly impossible to find.  I’ve been looking EVERYWHERE.

Rolling papers:  Uh…no particular reason, but I’m thinking these would come in handy when I’m in the mood for cereal.

Who’s in: NFL Cheerleaders

It’s that time of year again – ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL*??

Answer: HELL YEAH!!! 

*-themed orgy fantasies involving the Philadelphia Eagles cheering squad

Who’s out: Lindsay Lohan

It should go without saying that whenever I think a girl is particularly hot, I’m operating under the assumption that she has a relatively normal and functional vagina – but sweet Sassy Molassy!  This week, potentially Photoshopped pictures were posted online of LL’s honey pot, which looks like a normal vagina that has been hit with a hammer.   I’d put up a link to it, but as soon as I saw the pictures I threw my computer in a tub of bleach. 

It’s like she got it caught in a Parent Trap! HAHAHAHAHA! 

Wait, I meant “Bear Trap.”

You could see it as a series of haiku about the events of yesterday, (a Tuesday).  Or you could see it as me being incredibly bored with nothing to write about. Up to you, really.

Perhaps I am gay…
Larry Johnson – number one
In my fantasy.

With Roast Beef Sandwich
Comes Wisdom, Enlightenment.
Light Mayo: not bad.

Me and Croc Hunter
V. Stingray: he died, I lived.*
Who’s more manly now???

I am really, really bored.

*Considering I was hit in the foot and almost fainted when it happened, I don’t think the Croc Hunter has anything to worry about from me.