Will Hines Dot Net

Salinger was a truly brilliant author. If Catcher In The Rye is too cliche for you mofos, then read Nine Stories and be the cool Salinger kid on the block. At least read A Perfect Day for Bananafish.

OR enjoy this sketch that Rob Lathan and I did in 2004 or 2003 or something for our one-time-only Spank “Rob and Will Fix America.” – J.D. Salinger Changes His Voice Mail

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

This thing was the hit of the pre-YouTube Internet! Well, not really.
My Salinger voice sounds more than vaguely Indian.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

First of all, it’s nobody’s fault but my own that Tabitha and I went to Bermuda at the worst possible time of year. Jet Blue had a one day sale on airline tickets in November and I thought to myself “Hey Will, you never take vacations — you need to just kinda make that happen.” That I still listen to my frontal lobe is evidence of my eventual destruction. Here’s things I honestly did not know about Bermuda until we landed at the airport:

• It is not the Bahamas.
• It is not that far south! It’s even with like North Carolina. NORTH Carolina!
• It’s super-British! Everyone drives on the left and there’s pictures of the Queen like nobody’s business.
• Meals [...]

Two videos for you folks today. Macbook Pro Unboxing, the debut offering from The Brig, a Beta Team I have the privilege of coaching. (Sample coaching: “That’s funny. Do that one. See you next week!”).

And then this from Bobby Chicago – Corporate Sponsored Senate. My favorite part is Brandon’s extensive monologue in the middle.

Over the past 2 years, filesize limits for uploading videos has really jumped up! Here’s the settings From Final Cut, I pick “MPEG-4″ for file type to export. Used to do the default QuickTime Movie with H.264 but MPEG-4 gives smaller file sizes that still look great (Nate Dern figured this out while he interned for ucbcomedy.com). All my stuff is widescreen, hence the custom height and width.

Here’s video settings.

For College Humor, which still restricts file sizes to 80mb, I’ll set the data rate to 1500 kbs. Or sometimes make the dimensions 400×225.

Here’s audio settings.

YouTube [...]

Lanny reads from Get Psyched! Step 5: Enjoy. In this excerpt, Lanny severely overestimates the lifestyle of his readership.

You guys know Lanny’s 7 steps, right? One of the best parts of writing this book was coming up for a chapter to defend each of these steps.
1. Get Psyched
2. Have Fun
3. Pump It Up
4. Go For It
5. Enjoy
6. Drink Plenty of Fluids
7. Get Psyched

Bad First Dates with Gavin Speiller! This series is hilarious. And I dare you to not be charmed by Gavin Speiller! Before anyone in this improv world knew who Gavin was, my brother once had an indie group called “I Love Gavin Speiller” because my brother is smart.

So what is this book about anyway? Hey, why don’t you hear a short excerpt? Here’s Lanny reading from Step 7: Get Psyched.

Look at that: it’s a real book!

Answer any or all:

• I want a better profile pic for my twitter. What should I do?
• In the book version of Let The Right One In, the vampire Eli describes once meeting an older vampire and asking why there weren’t more of them? The older vampire answers, and then points at Eli’s chest and coyly suggests something I do not understand. Explain that.
• Is it harder and harder to feel like one knows the current music scene, or is it just something all aging hipsters like myself feel?
• Is it okay if I describe myself as an aging hipster?
• I have eight unspoken for ISBNs and I’m going to use them to publish books by me and my friends. No question here, but if [...]

Big Dog! I got to see this and it’s great! Funny and ambitious and smart. Hooray Eric and Charlie!

I kid the Pitchfork top 100 of 2009! I give Pitchfork top 100 of 2009 a hard time with all its meandering electronic crap blankets! But it introduced me to the hilarious/awesome song “Rockin’ That Shit” so we’re even! We’re even Pitchfork top 100 of 2009! EVEN!