Comedy Terrorism

I almost forgot my backpack on the subway. It would have been pretty bad if I left it there.

Ernie Anastos: Welcome to Fox 5 News at 10. Our top story tonight: A possible terrorist threat shuts down subways near midtown. Ti-Hua Chang has the story.

Ti-Hua Chang: Thanks Ernie. The NYPD bomb squad was called in earlier today after passengers noticed an unattended red backpack on an uptown N train. They expected to find an explosive device, but what they discovered was much worse.

Anastos: What was that?

Chang: The first draft of a Modern Family spec script.

Anastos: Horrifying.

Chang: Indeed. Is there anything more dangerous and lacking in social value than a spec script for a network television situation comedy?

Anastos: Absolutely not. And to just leave it there in a public place where innocent women and children could read it and rot their brains?

Chang: Scary stuff. And to make matters worse, the script was terrible. Three police officers were injured while reading the flawed C storyline involving Mitchell helping Jay buy a present for Gloria. Not to mention the hours of police work wasted trying to punch up the uninspired Phil one-liners.

Anastos: Have police caught the person responsible for this drivel?

Chang: Not yet. The writer’s name is Adam Sacks and he is currently missing. The FBI raided Sacks’s apartment and found a huge stockpile of comedy sketches and lists with ideas for new projects.

Anastos: So he planned to strike again?

Chang: It appears so. Here’s just a small sampling of his sick, underdeveloped ideas. “Ninja dressed in corduroy can’t be stealthy,” “Literary critic stuck in cliche dream with flat characters,” and “CSI: CSNY” which appears to be a one act musical parody of police procedurals.

Anastos: Do authorities have any idea where Sacks might be hiding?

Chang: According to his roommate and parents, Sacks has been spending a lot of time with like-minded misguided youths in training centers and theaters hidden underground or behind bars.

Anastos: You mean to say there are training camps right in our midst?

Chang: It appears so. The CIA just released this composite photo of what they think Sacks looks like now.

Chang: Anyone with a lead on his whereabouts is asked to call Homeland Security immediately.

Of Mosque and Men

In case you haven’t read the news in the past month, there are plans to build an Islamic community center a few blocks from New York City’s Ground Zero. This has angered a lot of people who think the terrorists win if a moderate Muslim center is built nearby the site of of an Islamic-extremist terrorist attack.

Or to put it another way

Excellent point. If a Muslim country like Saudi Arabia forbids building churches and synagogues, we must do the same and ban mosques. We cannot afford a religious-intolerance gap!

And if we’re going to keep up with Saudi Arabia, there are a lot of other changes we need to make.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow public demonstrations. These anti-mosque protesters are actually hurting America by exercising a right Saudi Arabia doesn’t allow. That guy’s sign should really say

And when conservatives call for the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment because it gives citizenship to babies of illegal immigrants born in America, they are missing a much bigger problem. What we really need to repeal is the Twenty-First Amendment, which repeals the Eighteenth Amendment which bans alcohol. Saudi Arabia has been beating us on the prohibition front for too long.

Also, Sarah Palin, I know you’re trying to help America, but you’re holding us back. Please consider my redesign of your book cover.

Because the only way to beat the terrorists is to become equally intolerant.

Politics of sports

G. Gordon Liddy recently attacked soccer as a sport, saying

[Soccer] comes from Latin America, uhh and first we have to get into this term, the Hispanics. Uhh that would indicate uhh Spanish language, and yes, these people uhh in Latin America speak Spanish. That is because conquistadores…tall uhh Caucasians, not very many of them, uhh conquered the Indians, and uhh the Indians adopted the language of their conquerors. But what we call Hispanics now really are South American Indians. And uhh uhh this game, I think, originated uhh with South American Indians, and instead of a ball they used to use the head, the decapitated head, of an enemy warrior.

Sure it seems xenophobic to dislike a sport because it wasn’t invented in America, uninformed to say it was invented in Latin America and racist to assume they played it with a decapitated head, but I have to give Liddy credit for staying consistent. Here are some criticisms he leveled at other sports.

On baseball

Baseball is the perfect example of what is wrong with America today. Baseball, like America, was invented by white Americans, and baseball, like America, is overrun by the decedents of Latin American savages who cross our porous boarders and take our jobs cleaning up at bat, mopping up on the mound and working the fields. Just look at any MLB roster; there’s enough Vazquezes, Martinezes and Rodriquezes that you’d think you’re reading a list of Wal-Mart janitors. And I don’t have to tell you, with enough of those type on a team, it’s just a matter of time before bases end up stolen. It’s time the MLB took a page from Arizona lawmaker’s playbook and made baseball for Americans once and for all.

On basketball

Want to know why Obama loves basketball? Because Obama loves European socialist programs, and it seems now like every NBA team has at least one European player who helps his team with with an unselfish playing style. And if that’s not bad enough, these European guys always look really goofy, like they don’t have full control over their gangly limbs, even when they’re moving the ball well or scoring a basket. They’re a disgrace to a game that used to celebrate the American ideals of showboating and flashiness.

On football

We’ve got the same problem in the GOP as we do in the NFL. It used to be we had a preferential system in place, starting all the way in high school, that fast tracked white guys to the important decision making positions. Now, we have to look diverse, so we end up with leaders like Michael Vick or Michael Steele, who keep messing up by killing dogs or making boneheaded public statements like calling Afghanistan “a war of Obama’s choosing.”

On hockey

Did you know that over half of NHL players are Canadian? That means when you buy a ticket, some of that money goes to a Canadian, which then gets taxed by Canada, which then supports their socialized medicine, and I’ll be damned if I let even one cent of my hard earned money help save a Canadian life.

On golf

Golf is elitist, wasteful and expensive. Only wealthy neighborhoods can afford courses and only wealthy people can afford access and equipment. As a game that clearly favors the rich over the poor, it is everything that makes America exceptional.

A senator vetoes Glee

When I was elected, I swore to serve the American people, and I’m sorry honey, but the American people do not want us to watch Glee tonight. I’m all for bipartisanship, but I’m not doing my job by voting for a soulless work of lowest-common denominator pandering with cringe inducing musical numbers.

That’s not me talking, honey, that’s the American people. Sure the Nielsen-Gallup polls show a strong support for your Glee bill, but if they actually sat down and read the 44 page script, they’d realize how disingenuous it is for a show that is supposedly about social outcasts to revolve mostly around football players and cheerleaders.

And I don’t listen to polls anyway. I listen to the people. People like Betsy Roderick, a single mother of three struggling to make ends meet, who wrote to me pleading, “Anytime the glee teacher Will Schuester performs a musical number, it’s like watching my uncle dance to Lady Gaga at a wedding party.”

And I’ll never forget Paul Henderson, a lanky 15-year-old, who came up to me with tears in his eyes asking, “Wouldn’t Glee have been more interesting if they came up with good characters instead of a caricature of what middle-aged white guys think Diablo Cody thinks high school students are like?”

Also, honey, your Glee proposal is too expensive. I ran it by the congressional budget office and they said there’s no way a high school could afford the number of costumes and set designs seen in just one episode of Glee, let alone the entire season. They also raised some troubling questions as to how all the students could perform synchronized dance routines without ever practicing.

Oh honey, don’t look so cross at me. I have to act in the best interests of the American people, my hands are tied. We can still come to a compromise. The Jane Lynch section of your Glee bill is quite good, so why don’t you bring a new proposal to the floor that maintains the Lynch clause? I would suggest season one of Party Down.

Now that was a good show. Too bad it didn’t gain traction with the voters.

BP and Over-Regulation

It’s been 66 days since BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded, killing 11 workers and causing an oil spill that’s leaking anywhere between 25,000 and 160,000 barrels of oil per day.

It’s a huge disaster, everyone is angry and pointing fingers, but I think we can all agree on one thing:

We need less offshore drilling regulation.

The BP leak has been going for two months, and we can’t stop it because we don’t know how. And we don’t know how because we’ve never dealt with a leak this severe before. And we’ve never dealt with a leak this severe because of too much regulation. We will eventually figure out how to plug this leak, but it will be too late because we would have already known how to if it wasn’t for those pelican loving regulations.

How ironic that the majestic sea birds we hoped to protect with regulations are the ones we hurt the most. And it’s not just the pelicans that are paying the price. Let’s say the leak is spewing 50,000 barrels of oil a day. Over 66 days that’s 3,300,000 barrels of oil. One barrel of crude oil produces 19.5 gallons of gas, which means we’ve wasted 64,350,000 gallons of unleaded. The current average national price for gasoline is $2.74, so we’ve lost $176,319,000.00. That’s a lot of money.

But if we got this oil spill over in 1999, when gas cost $0.99 per gallon, we’d have only lost $63,706,500.00. That’s a savings of $112,612,500.00, and in this economy every 112,612,500 dollars can help.

When you think about it, the only real tragedy is that no one messed up earlier. So instead of being mad at BP, we should be thankful they made up for lost time before gas prices rose even higher.

Humane Executions

Earlier today Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner for killing a man while trying to escape from a courthouse in 1985. His execution caused a bit of controversy because he choose to die by firing squad and some people found it distasteful to use guns in an execution.

I could not agree more.

Guns are loud and scary, and bullet wounds are gross. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for bloodlust and deadly retribution, but we shouldn’t debase ourselves with the same unsightly violence we seek to punish.

To put it another way, our executions need to be less icky.

This is why I’m also against the electric chair. I don’t even like seeing someone put a nine volt battery on their tongue, let alone get strapped to a chair and have a metal cap shoot 2000 volts of electricity through their body causing them to throw up, crap themselves, spasm violently enough to break bones and even catch fire before they die.

Most other methods aren’t any better. Hangings feel antiquated, guillotines leave you with an unsightly head, and even lethal injections are a problem because I don’t like needles.

The good news is, I’ve come up with a solution.

From now on, we should only execute prisoners by burying them alive. It’s perfect because if they’re in a coffin we can’t see them die, and if they’re underground we can’t hear them scream. Even better, we never have to deal with the body because it’s already buried! No muss, no fuss!

And best of all, it’s the most humane option, because keeps us from witnessing our inhumane behavior.

My concession speech

While I did not win the election, I don’t view this as a defeat. My opponent and I had a healthy debate on the issues and the majority of voters disagreed with my views. That is democracy at its finest.

I got into politics for one reason: to serve the people. And the people voted against me. Which is why I am making one simple promise.

I will not change.

With this election, the people have spoken, and they have said quite clearly, “We are stupid.” So I will serve the people by fighting against everything they voted for. This will cause political gridlock, halt any real progress and create enough frustration to confuse the people into thinking I can fix it. Then, and only then, will I have served the people by showing them I was right all along. That is democracy at its finest.

See you in two years!

Overly Ambitious Ensemble Drama

Our latest is Overly Ambitious Ensemble Drama, which Zack Phillips wrote, Jason Guerrero shot and I directed and edited.

Starring in no particular order: Tim Martin, Amy Heidt, Ben Rameaka, Dru Johnston, Corey Brown, Emily Axford, Shaun Diston, Alex Charak, Rob Michael Hugel, Matt Fisher, Kim Ferguson, Verónica Osorio, Jason Saenz, Don Fanelli, Will Hines, Jon Gutierrez, Amber Petty, Dan Hodapp, Brandon Gardner, Josh Patten, Molly Lloyd, Keith Bethea, Jordan Hirsch, Matt Starr, Eddie Brawley, Will Storie, Matt Cutler, Amanda Hirsch, Drew Tarvin, Jeff Wisniewski, Scott Yacyshyn, Dave Bluvband, Ben Ragheb, Matt Mayer, Adam Sacks, Morgan Evans, Zack Phillips and Jason Guerrero.

Cookie Diet

Johnson: So our market research shows that people want to lose weight, and that people like to eat cookies. How can we exploit this?

Winford: Let’s make low-fat cookies for people on diets.

Johnson: Snackwells already does that. Let’s think big.

Siegal: How about cookies that make you lose weight?

Johnson: That’s crazy. Sell me on it.

Siegal: We’ll call it Cookie Diet. It’ll just be a box of cookies, but on the front we’ll put a picture of my uncle in a white coat to imply that it’s medically proven to make you lose weight.

Johnson: I love it. But what happens when people realize the cookies don’t work?

Siegal: That’s easy, we just charge an outrageous amount of money, that way we only need to sell one box per person.

Johnson: Yeah, something ridiculously expensive, like 30 bucks a box.

Winford: Actually according to our projections, we’d need to charge 60 dollars a box to make it profitable.

Siegal: 60 dollars?!? Maybe this won’t work.

Johnson: No, it’s perfect! The price point will instill consumer confidence because no company with a shred of decency would charge such an exorbitant amount for diet cookies that don’t work.

Priestly Pedophilia and Jews

The New York Times: A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews.

Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa: Yes, the Catholic Church knew about a few priests and their unfortunate decisions regarding children. And yes, instead of defrocking them, we just moved them to a new church so they could continue to make unfortunate decisions. But what is getting lost here is how very few priests we’re talking about. The vast majority of priests are good people, and by criticizing us for a few bad apples, you’re no better than anti-Semites.

Consider the middle ages. Most Jews at the time were good, decent people. Sure, a few of them were responsible for the black plague, but that doesn’t excuse the destruction of hundreds of Jewish villages throughout medieval Europe anymore than our approach to priestly misconduct excuses all the bad press we’ve been receiving.

And in 18oo’s, some Jewish bad apples were planning a global Zionist takeover, but the Russian pogroms that killed an estimated 300,000 innocent Jews was an over-reaction on par with the strongly worded op-ed pieces that have criticized our systematic cover-up of hundreds of child abuse cases throughout Europe.

And yes, some money grubbing, hook nosed Jews were responsible for Germany losing World War I and its subsequent economic collapse, but I think we can all agree that the Holocaust was as unwarranted as the recent calls for Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.

My point is this: If you criticize us for protecting child rapists, you’re just as bad as the Nazis, about who our pope at the time, Pius XII, remained neutral.

Happy Easter!