Here. I photoshopped this while watching the election coverage. I didn’t take the photos. Well, I did for this. But I didn’t take take them. Of course you understand.
Click for bigger.
This is a meme, right? I don’t really know what a meme is. I think this is one. That’s a weird word, meme.
Anyway, bunch of bullshit this whole American election thing is, huh?
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It’s a scary world if you’re a rat near my house.
My friend, Mike Joyce, felt otherwise and decided to warn them.
Fortunately, rats can’t read.
I also killed a squirrel. No photo. Just imagine a dead squirrel.
Happy Autumn!
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Click for the full-size image. Then scroll.
The gods of Westeros couldn’t create a day like this. Whitecaps winking on the surface of the water, warm sunlight bathing the land in life-giving radiation, a firm breeze to excite the ends of skirts, and a soothing air temperature crisp enough to maintain not impolite nipple firmness.
From this vantage I wouldn’t be shocked to spot a gaggle of mermaids frolicking amongst the waves, their hair glowing in the bright sun, giggling while splashing cool water upon one another’s shameless nude breasts, lapping at each other’s swollen egg orifice in an ancient ritualistic aquatic 69 making their tails shudder in rapturous ichthyorgasm.
We live in a pretty cool world, don’t we?
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My favorite news and politics show is The Young Turks. If you haven’t heard of them by now it’s time you did. Their YouTube channel has close to 700 million hits. That’s not a typo. That’s more grains of sand than in a jar of sand! For a show of substance and not one based on cleavage or auto-tuned bullshit it’s an astonishing feat.
They posted an image of the host, Cenk Uygur, on their Facebook page and asked for captions. I had a different idea:
Not bad. A proper graphic designer could pick it apart, I’m sure, but I’m self-taught at this kind of thing. Kind of a pain in the ass, if I’m to be honest. I should have been asleep well over an hour ago. But the machinery started so here we are.
I’m a huge fan of The Young Turks. They’re a vital part of my daily podcasting rotation.
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Last night I had the honor of being the special out-of-town guest introducer of the 1-Year Anniversary Birthday show of SpeakEasy Comedy at Stanley’s Kitchen & Tap (Mondays, 8pm, $5). That means I was the guy who brought up the host, and without my pitch-perfect introduction the night might not have been the rousing success it was. Also, they had these cupcakes. Man, so round and delicious! Nom Nom Nom LOLz haha dawg.
Here are a couple pictures I took using an app on my phone called Pano. What it does should be obvious. Click on the picture, zoom in to full size and scroll side to side. It’s like you’re there!
That’s the night’s headliner, Adam Burke, on stage in the first one. And you might recognize the three people on the left who acted in my short film, as well as that fella on the right. In the second picture you get a decent angle on an uncanny painting of Adam, which the producers found collecting dust the first time they investigated the basement as a potential performance space. It’s not actually him. Yet it is.
It’s no small feat to keep a comedy show alive past the first three months, let alone the first year. The comedy highway is littered with the crumbling forgotten corpses of failed showcases, each a husk of wasted effort and unrealized dreams tearfully abandoned by its creator, the project and its attendant posters, handouts, unfilled raffles, tealight candles, booking schedules and facebook invites dumped roadside to rot in the shallow cold puddle which slowly dissolves the humiliating failure after explaining to an annoyed bar manager why no one showed up and that next week we’ll put even MORE fliers on the wall above the urinals. All too often, there is no next week, there are no more urinals. Flush.
But that isn’t the case here.
Due to the tireful work of producers Kenny DeForest, Jeff Steinbrunner, Jeannie Doogan, Saurin Choksi, John McBride, Derek Smith and John Ming, SpeakEasy Comedy is one of the best showcases in the city. They bust ass and the world is a laughier place. Performing on the show is a feather in the cap* of any local performer.
As one of these tortured chuckle-hunters it’s comforting to know audiences still turn out to support live comedy. We need their laughs more than they do and rooms like SpeakEasy provide a venue for it to be sought and found. An audience’s patronage is both earned and rewarded with quality and consistency, week after week, flush after flush.
Congratulations, SpeakEasy.
*I wear my feathers in my hair, as is the trend.
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Here are some photos from the drive across the country I took with my brother. The drive isn’t actually over yet. We’re in a hotel north of Phoenix. It’s been an uneventful trip so far, which is exactly how you want these trips to go. Driving a 17 foot moving truck with a vehicle trailer was daunting at first but we’re both getting the hang of it and are considering changing our careers to truck guys.
This pretty much sums up how what we are and how we felt for much of the trip.
It was nice to see so many wind turbines. These ones run off domestic wind.
That’s this huge eight-story cross in Missouri. Thank god Jesus wasn’t that large or He would have been a lot harder to take down.
That’s me driving the truck past the giant cross. I’m a believer now.
It seems that they’re really holding on to some old traditions in Missouri.
Here are some candles we saw at a grocery store in Tucumcari, New Mexico. These are for St. Lazaro, who from available evidence is the Saint of Dying Old Men Who Can’t Get Away From The Street Dogs That Will Eat Him When He Dies.
This is a zoomed out shot of all the available candles at this grocery store. That’s my buddy Laz on the second shelf up. I couldn’t make up my mind so I bought a six pack of beer instead.
That’s some dude walking across New Mexico. He wasn’t even hitchhiking so it’s safe to say he’s really given up on the concept of hope. Either that or he just really likes walking. To each his own.
Such a g’boy!
That’s my brother standing in front of a bunch of rocks and shit. I think he’s a little bit taller than me but that might just be the hair. He’s the reason we’re headed for San Diego cause he got a job there doing smart people stuff. We saw a lot of trains.
That’s me standing next to a sign. I couldn’t afford the fee so I didn’t defecate any rocks.
The Sun was setting on the mountains south of Flagstaff, Arizona. My brother took this picture while I was swearing at the giant stupid fucking truck I was driving because I wasn’t sure how to handle steep downhill mountain grades and it does this weird engine breaking thing which revs up the RPMs and slows it down somehow and then we had to go up a mountain which was worse and made me swear more because we couldn’t go more than 40 miles an hour but then I put the blinkers on and told myself, “Hank, it’s okay. They’ll go around you. Relax. You’ll get there when you get there. Breathe and be at peace, okay big guy?” Eventually we got there. Still waiting for fucking peace.
Here are some cactuseses silhouetted against the sky. Almost as realistic as in the cartoons.
That’s an up close shot of a cactus by the hotel. We confirmed the rumors that cactuseses have spikes and that Midwestern people are impressed by cactuseses.
That’s me biting the tag off a new pair of shorts.
I graduated from there. (I went to Low Cool High.)
Here’s the view from my bed. This hotel has free HBO and free Internet. The future is now and later.
So far it’s been a great trip. We’ve listened to a lot of great music and some podcasts and we’ve talked about things that brothers talk about such as food and women and other edibles. Tomorrow we’ll make it to the ocean where my brother and his family will be starting a new chapter of their lives. Well, not ON the ocean but near enough to make an afternoon of it. At the end of the week I’ll fly back to Chicago to resume my life. I will live-tweet the flight home. It will go like this: “Eye contact with the stewardess. Gave me a full soda. She wants me. #MileEyeClub”.
I’m tired. My face feels red. There’s something wrong with my elbow. I’m going to sleep good tonight. These shorts sure are comfortable. Good sleepin’ shorts.
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Planet of the Apes, released in 1968, starring Charleton Heston and his warm living hands, was an instant classic. The film was remade [read: worsened] for modern audiences and released in 2001, this time starring Marky Mark and the Banana Bunch. The universe of “Apes” tells the story of a distant future in which humans are no longer Earth’s dominant species, instead replaced by — you guessed it: apricots. Man, you’re a terrible guesser. No, the answer is apes, of course. Apes, idiot. Apes that walk upright, wear clothes, and speak perfect Midwestern English. Like us, they’re power hungry and they can be total dicks. But they also exhibit their own unique ape traits, such as being apes.
The latest film, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is a reboot of the franchise. I saw it with a friend and I enjoyed watching it, although I think they could have named it something less cumbersome. Roll your mouse over the image to see what I had in mind.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes – Mouse Over
Most, if not all, of the apes in the original(s) were humans dressed up in ape, chimp and orangutan costumes. They looked like the intended species, sure, but you couldn’t look at them and not think “That’s just a dude in a suit. A really good suit, yeah, but still. Will anyone notice if I eat this twizzler off the floor?”
Rise of the Planet of the Apes, features many ape costumes but not a single one touched by a seamstress’s hand. Indeed, all the simians loping about on screens big and small were digitally rendered, stitched together by graphic and animation designers, and with the help of the one and only Andy Serkis, the guy who played Gollum in Lord of the Rings. It’s called motion capture or something. Actors in Rise of the Planet of the Apes got to act and react with a living human face instead of a tennis ball on a string, which goes a long way toward integrating the actors with the ape “actors.” It works. Nothing snaps suspension of disbelief faster than watching an actor do a scene with a tennis ball he was told is upset with him.
There were moments during the film where I knew I wasn’t looking at a drug-induced gentically-modified chimp experiencing the sudden onset of intelligence and sentience but there were even more moments when I bought the premise hook, banana and sinker.
In twenty years there will be entire films made of actors that only exist in computers and on billboards and talking to Regis (or the robot version of him) and no difference short of a pulse will be detectable. Photo-realism is already here, but video-realism is still some years off. Some. Not many.
Anyway, here are the tweets (@Hank_Thompson)I wrote about the movie, in order of appearance by date:
July 22nd, 2011
What I can tell so far about Rise of the Planet of the Apes is that humans are powerless against spears and that apes hate helicopters.
The head ape is named Caeser. The lesson here? Never give your drug experiment ape a powerful name. Wilbur or Harold would suffice.
I really want to see Rise of the Planet of the Grapes. I’m a big fan of testicle-shaped fruit.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes has one too many ‘of the’s. It should be Rise of the Ape Planet. Or perhaps: Look Out! Apes!
If my butt hole were a car wash I would get a lot of complaints because it takes several passes to get clean.
I goofed up a previous Apes tweet. What I meant to say was: Oog oog oog hoo hoo ha ha oog. Oh wait, they haven’t risen yet…
An ape planet would be fun. They’d go to the zoo and marvel at how the humans poop and then refrain from throwing or eating it.
As promotional material for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the studio is sending out free poop to be hurled at the screen on opening night.
Google image the phrase ‘uncanny valley.’ It’s a real creep fest. Just like all those apes in Rise of the Planet of the Creeps.
August 6th
Bout to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes. As I told the cashier, there better be lots of apes or I’m gonna want my money back.
As a man who also rises sometimes I feel like I can relate to this whole apes rising thing. But as always, it goes away eventually.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes was good. I don’t want to give away the ending but let’s just say that the apes rise on a planet.
August 7th
Once the apes ruin things the next species to take over will be grapes. Movie poster: “Rise of the Planet of the Grapes: Who’s Wining Now?”
FOLLOW me on TWITTER @Hank_Thompson
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I was down below Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago at a loading dock when I looked up and saw this massive black obelisk looming over me.
You can 'Sears' all the way to the top of the Willis Tower
Long holding the title of World’s Tallest Building, the Willis Tower is a hundred or whatever stories tall. While it may not be the tallest building in the world any more it’s the tallest building in my heart. I have fond memories of looking up at it from the ground.
The massive structure has dominated the Chicago skyline since it appeared. As the legend goes, the city went to sleep and awoke one chilly morning to find the mysterious black tower towering above all like a basketball player anywhere else other than with his team. You know how weird basketball players look when they’re out of their element, like at a breakfast buffet or something, or the airport, or sleeping. It emitted an eerie noise, not unlike what bugs would sound like if they could make noise while being bug-sprayed. And it vibrated at frequencies science later discovered induced people to not put ketchup on their hot dogs.
The sudden appearance of the building caused more questions (124) than it answered (0). Questions such as: “Where did that building come from?” and “Can someone explain why those weird orange and black candies still exist?” and “THAT’S what Mccauley Culkin looks like now!?”
Religious kooks took it as a sign that the end was near. Other religious kooks took it as a sign that the end was far. Their differences could not be reconciled and the tension eventually erupted in a violent clash in which one person pulled a groin muscle and a panicked ostrich got run over by a train while fleeing the commotion. The incident was reported by the media as ‘Kooky Crisp,’ which is weird because no one got burnt, sadly. Lamestream, indeed.
General reaction amongst the public was much more staid. Most gave it an approving glance while waiting for that chick they like to text back, which she eventually did, thank fucking god.
Many speculated that the obelisk was delivered by superior beings to imbue our fledgling species with the ability to reason, thereby setting us on a path toward cultural and technological advancement that will one day enable us to visit the distant corners of space eventually seeding the Universe with giant embryonic space babies.
A pile of bones that appeared alongside it was swept up before they could be smashed at with other bones. Seems like we missed a real opportunity there.
Within a few hours of its presence, after moments of collective fear and wonder the bravest of our Tribe, a man known as “The Mayor,” approached and tentatively reached out to press his hand against the smooth cold black surface, not knowing if doing so might kill him or suck him into the surface of the otherworldly body or cause him to dip an entire italian beef into the meat juice, which is a crazy thing to do. Unfortunately he got his hand caught in the mail slot and we had to wait a few hours for some fire department guys to show up to free him. It was discovered that he’d grabbed a handful of jelly beans and refused to let them go, preventing him from withdrawing his hand, which he tried fiercely to do, jumping and howling with wide-eyed terror while straining his bleeding wrist near to the breaking point. Wrapped in a victim blanket he was led off into a waiting ambulance, clutching the handful of jelly beans to his chest. He was never heard from again. Rumor has it that the sound of jelly beans can be heard near the door on quiet days.
Once the building was deemed safe for human assumption it was populated by workers and bosses and visits to its uppermost floor were organized and waited for. It quickly became the blackest thing in Chicago that white people didn’t mind visiting. A comfortable air temperature was decided upon. Postcards went from landscape to portrait. Snacks were sold and shot glasses were printed. A red light was placed on top of it so that planes were careful to stop and look both ways before proceeding.
Luckily I was able to get a shot of it before it ups and leaves. That’s about it.
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I came across this headline on Huffington post. The photo tells the story of a triumphant women’s soccer team. Mouse over the photo to see a different tale.
US Women Crush Columbia – Mouse Over
Really changes things, doesn’t it?
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My name is Hank Thompson. I'm a comedian based out of Chicago. I do a podcast. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Facebook. I do Tumblr. I made a short film. Please have a look around and enjoy your stay.
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