Will Hines Dot Net

Here’s Ask Bobby — a Rob Lathan sketch from the Osgood-Schlatter days. I had the pleasure of shooting and editing these. Greg Tuculescu and Violet Krumbein are the callers.

Spoiler Alert: If you’ve watched it already, you’re probably trying to put the pieces together. Ok, a few pieces of advice: watch what Bobby does with his hands right in the opening credits of the show, then compare that with the record sleeve that comes into view towards the end. Remember that FDR had a cat named “Ben.” If you watch the timer at the bottom, you’ll see that a significant confession always seems to arrive when the clock [...]

My previous post, upon reflection, was weirdly sexist.

I do get annoyed at either men or women discussing reality shows, and I don’t really know why. But that is a separate point and probably something to do with my desire to be at the center of attention and maybe 65 years old.

I’m basing this on people at my office only. The woman who sits across from me gets really excited to talk about television; and the three guys who sit near me don’t. A small sample set, but I’m ready to extrapolate that poorly-founded hunch onto the entire American population.

So: do women like television more than men?

We were playing trivia here at work. And I said a “fun” trivia challenge is to name the vice-presidential candidate on the losing side of the last 10 elections. So we tried that and got to Dan Quayle and laughed about the millions of amazingly dumb things he would say. Then we remembered that our current president also famously says dumb things. So now: I want a video of our current President playing Dan Quayle in Simon.

Is that really that funny, my co-worker asked? It’s worth a blog, I replied.

Is there a food shortage? Or am I letting Drudge get to me? I remember as a kid hearing my Dad say “Brazil will someday be a superpower, because they can grow the most food” or something like that. It made sense even to my seven-year-old brain.

For Earth Day, my company gave out compact flourescent light bulbs to everyone. A fine idea, though since they were each wrapped in generous amouns of non-bio-degradable plastic — are we breaking even on helping the Earth?

I’m reading It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis, a 1936 book which describes how America might elect its own version of Hitler. A weird fact: it was pitched as a TV series in the early [...]

I had to dig through some archives at AOL today and stumbled on this clip of Amy Winehouse singing “Valerie” at AOL. It is, technically speaking, Amy Winehouse’ U.S. debut — last January 2007. She was performing a concert somewhere in NYC and stopped at AOL for an interview and to record some songs. I was told “Someone named Amy Winehouse is recording some tracks here; we might as well videotape it. Grab a camera, set it to auto-everything and get it.” I was also told “She’s supposed to be a handful so get ready.”

But in the audio engineer’s office, she walked in and was [...]

Maggie: Thin, frightened, dumb.

Hopey: Fat, mean, smart.

My brothers and my recreation of us in Superman underoos has made it on to the hallowed pages of neatorama.com, a site I just discovered when Jon Gabrus sent me this link.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/04/17/young-me-now-me-photographs/

I forgot to post this weeks ago. On our last night in Orlando, Andy and I and the director and his wife and some folks stopped by The Red Fox Lounge (in the back of a Mount Vernon Inn) to see Mark and Lorna — a husband-and-wife lounge act that may or may not be the inspiration for the Will Ferrel / Ana Gasteyer sketch. Well, they introduce themselves that way and I believe it.

[youtube Xye0caa1Rb8 Mark and Lorna]

Except the sketch does not come close to capturing how weirdly awesome going to see them live is. I guess it’s campy, but it’s also just plain fun. You amble through a hotel to the back, and they’re singing to a room [...]

I am only just now watching 30 Rock, at Tabitha’s insistence. Working my way through season 1 — the show is so good, it hurts me.

I’ve been asked to put together a series of ideas for news-based comedy. News-based comedy! Not only is it all people (with money) seem to want, it’s what people assume I’m good at. I may radiate “newsiness” but I’m as topical as Wacky Packs.

DeCoster and I did Oxygen Destroyer for Michelle’s Gilda’s Club benefit. Fun. People laughed.

The second (of this era of) Maude Night happened. I direct the team Mix Tape ’98. It’s terrific fun. There were no Rick Roll parodies, which made me feel better about the world.

Cat update: Hopey is now enormously fat. [...]