Will Hines Dot Net

I enjoy the sketch group Pangea 3000. This video starts a bit slow but is worth it. Inspired use of Cat Power.[youtube COTeAb-ei2w nolink]

My friends Matt and Ben made this anime-style video of nerds turning a nativity scene into a live action role-playing game. The nerd reference ratio here is HIGH.

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And my friend Jeff Blackman at Comedy Central did a pretty funny take on the Chocolate Rain guy to promote and end-of-the year show.

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In the comments on the previous post, Brian implied as he often does that I have never used a french press that he got for me several years ago.

BRIAN: I USE THE FRENCH PRESS. Just not every day because it’s a pain to clean. Here it is (you can see that it has been used):

I needed a new coffee maker so I burst into a chic housewares store on my street and bought the first one I saw. I’m like that with a task in hand. Then I got home and realized that my coffee maker has the ability to both brew and GRIND. So you can put beans right into this thing. That seemed amazingly complicated to me. It was like buying an ironing board and discovering it has lasers.

It’s also evidence that I shop destructively quickly.

Separately: here’s Al Green singing “I Want To Hold Your Hand”

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This is a horrible photo of myself and James Williamson. I know James better as “Brutal” which is the handle he used on the message board of my old webzine Spite Magazine. He’s a smart funny guy and was one of the few we’d let write articles for us. Actually, for a thrown-together, infrequently-updated, vaguely-defined humor magazine, Spite had a fervent message board community. I was part of it from roughly 1997 through 2001, then had to detach myself because I’d feel too guilty about not having updated Spite. Much of that community still converses online, which is cool.

Brutal first started working for his current company Lodestone in something like 1999. He phoned me at that time — since as someone who had started a webzine I was a web expert — to ask if I thought it was a good idea to join a small start-up with little security but big upside. I told him yes, definitely! That’s what I was doing at that time — and it was great! My company went out of business in a few years. But today’s James’ company has offices in Charlotte, Cleveland, Houston, Boston and now NYC. He did better.

James met Dyna and I for dinner, after Dyna and I had completed our fourth and most challenging yoga session. We ate at the Thai place across from UCBT because I know only the UCBT and nothing else in this city. It was fun, though. Odd, of course, to have a conversation with someone in which I was asking about people by the names of smoo, AndyD, JD, KillerQueen, seedorf, dante, LittlePie etc. But there you have it.

It’s hard for me to even look at Spite — I was really into it at the time but now I can see mostly its flaws. But I was glad to be reminded of how big a part of my life it once was. He showed me pictures of his kids and I walked outside and pointed at the awning of the theatre which currently takes up most of my time. Fun. Thank you for looking me up, James.

Check out this photo. Forget the half-thought out vandalism attempt to add some sort of mustache to the woman’s face. What I noticed about this ad was that it does not mention a network or time (EDITED: okay, it mentions a time. And I guess it mentions a network, but only kind of! See the comments: I’m an idiot).

It’s an ad for a news show that also assumes you already know about it. I’ve seen in other places that this is a CNN show — which I suppose I should be able to deduce by this sign’s reference to “Headline News” which I guess is a CNN brand. But I don’t really know that, or at least that did not resonate with me as I stood on the Lorimer St. platform foggy with morningness. I declare this an ineffective ad.

How was everyone’s long Thanksgiving weekend? Mine flew by somehow: Stepfathers show, 3 on 3 tourney, Thanksgiving in CT, multiple bouts of apartment cleaning, multiple bouts of watching Battlestar Galactica and Mitch Magee’s birthday grouping last night in Williamsburg. Everyone complains about “hipster Williamsburg” and that it’s too cool for it’s own good. I think it’s the right amount of cool, the exact amount that its own good deserves. No complaints.

Speaking of complaints, my father complained that my new blog layout leaves out the links of other blogs, which apparently he uses to find my brothers? I don’t know. At any rate, I have placed them back in the right margin. It sort of destroys the minimalist thing I was going for, but I was excited to have a blog request from Pops Hines and found myself eager to accommodate. So there you go, Dad.

Today we edited a piece on Chris Dodd’s enormous head. That’s a bit of a spoiler, but I think you people can keep it a secret. Production of this piece involved making this!

That’s a good time.

Matt DeCoster’s and my sketch show Seven Fights is up tonight at UCBT! Come on out! I predict seating will be available!

How do I know I was hungover on Sunday morning? Because it took me half an hour to make a pot of coffee. I no longer really get sick after drinking a lot — I just can’t THINK for a while.

Awesome collection of YouTube clips documenting old and very old New York City stuff. The films of trips across the bridges circa 1900 fascinate me. Via Kottke.org

My sideburns were reaching a Martin Van Buren level of thickness so I thinned them down to a five-o-clock shadow length. The next day I got three compliments on my “haircut.” Lesson: when you are balding, your sideburns comprise a significant portion of people’s perception of your hair.

Also, as Ben Rodgers and I were walking into UCB Theatre for School Night last night we passed Rob Lathan going the other way with a pair of stilts. I really love that my life is at a place where such things happen so I documented it with a picture. At School Night, DeCoster and I improvised a scene of two guys at Carnegie Hall complaining about the crappiness of various cultural things and also discussing Richie Rich comic books.

Latest media obsession: Battlestar Galactica. I’m almost done with season one.
Latest project: Yoga
Latest I-feel-left-out-of-this: the NFL. I know nothing about football.
Latest song I am Freedying: “Dying Day” by Orange Juice and “This Charming Man” by The Smiths.

This post is just to knock the previous one back a bit.