[transmission from... Tyler Sonnichsen]

Thursday seems as good a time as any to throw in a random sequence of words to this site and hope they make sense. After all, I've established a publication schedule for this journal, at the very least. I may have no clue when or where the projects I have in the woodwork now are going to premiere, but nobody can say I didn't warn them. I don't have a ton of time to write today, so I'll just dedicate this to filling you all in on stuff that you should know about if you didn't already.

First off, I don't want to turn this into a portal for YouTube fodder, but my friend Jim made reference to what could be the funniest commercial I've ever seen. This one's timeless for a variety of reasons, even if you never played Pole Position (I don't remember it, but I started with the NES myself).



There, I think you're sufficiently warmed up for this entry. Which is good, because it's basically a state-of-the-union type thing. And by "union," I mean things in general with TDC, comedy in DC, and maybe another cool YouTube item if I come across it in my ADD-riddled quest to type this whole thing out.

PROJECTS

After plugging away across a series of nights and a stockpile of sleep deprivation, I arrived at a rough cut of the video that I was finally able to show Wes today. Despite my assertions of how rough it was along the edges and that a lot of it was going to be rearranged, he really liked it. The actual video will hopefully be done within a week or two and all over the web by then (YouTube, Google, MySpace, downloadable from here possibly, you name it).

For about a month now, [INSERT CONTEXT HERE]: A TDC COMPILATION has been available on DVD. I just haven't "publicized" it. Mostly because none of my standup is on there (wouldn't subject anyone to that, anyway). It does feature, among other things, the highly acclaimed "Great American Trashure Hunt," sketches I produced as part of Penguins without Pants like "Too Many Arnolds." These things will be readily available once I get my act together and coordinate ordering information and such.

As for the radio show, we've been having a lot of fun with it. If you haven't had a chance to tune in yet, you can catch some highlights in Mp3 form over on the radio page. People tell me they enjoy it. Hopefully I'll post a clip of my friend calling in to sing some Merle Haggard.

Rant

I figure I owe the world a rant after that letdown last week. I know mullets are an important foundation upon which the ironic facets of our culture rest, but it was a bit light in terms of what I try to publish here.

As I've alluded to in the past, I have to read a variety of magazines for my job. It delivers as many positives as it does negatives. For every issue of Discover or National Geographic, I have to wade through the pages of Diabetes Forecast, Analog, or Ebony. But nothing tears at my flesh like proverbial Weasels in a Frank Zappa song like Teen People. This magazine is the worst fucking piece of periodical I've ever seen in my life. I know there are teen magazines even fluffier than this, but I think that Teen People is more degenerative for a few particular reasons:

1. It's riding on the 'People' association. People Magazine is a pile of celebrity-worship, ass-kissing, mediocrity-perpetuating, firebombing-low-self-esteem horseshit, too, but that's, for all intensive purposes, the function it knowingly serves. It's not literature. It says everything pertinent about our society, but not remotely in any way that it intends to. It's existence is enough of a veritable minstrel show of our culture. Now... take that aesthetic, and shove it down ten million preteens' throats. (That sounds REALLY awful out of context, but I digress...) This means that the upper-middle and upper class young adolescents, who have completely dictated the target of pop culture marketing since Kurt Cobain died, are imbued with the sense of depravity that Teen People throws at them. Case in point:
2. The Angle of Subject Matter. In the last issue of Teen People, there were articles on how to gain internet celebrity through YouTube, how far out of the loop anyone not on MySpace is (and, apparently, deserves to be), how much "better" all of our lives are than our parents' now that we have iPods and Cell Phones, and about twenty-five references to...
3. Paris fucking Hilton. "I think that we as a culture need to just admit, as one whole, that Paris Hilton is not attractive! She's got the body of a ten year old boy, she's a gigantic bitch! She just has the best publicist in the world! It's like we're forced to eat shit, and they're telling us that the shit tastes good until we actually settle for admitting that it's not bad!" - Leo Goodman, putting it best.
4. It's about as condescending as any magazine I've ever read. It seems like half of the articles were written by the People people who drew the shortest straws at the staff happy hour (which is a moot point, since they must have to drink contstantly to quell the internal pain of what they do for a living). Even the obligatory human interest story buried toward the back of each issue is normally pure pandering. It almost hurts me physically to read this thing, mostly because I can't shake the idea of having a daughter of my own and her buying into whatever their leading sponsors are trying to sell them in article form. I almost wish I had a daughter now so I could forbid her from reading it. At least she would still have Teen Vogue (which, shockingly, is not a bad magazine at all that I would almost encourage her to read).

Alright, that should hold me until next month, when I include a massive diatribe about how esoteric science fiction magazines are driving away fairweather nerds like myself. That, and they're poorly written. Yeah, I said it.

New Open Mics

I don't normally write about gigs and open mics on here, but I just wanted to include a plug for a couple of new open mics that are springing up in and around Washington. The inimitable John McBride and Jeff Adrian are kicking off a new weekly open mic this Wednesday (July 26th) at Rendezvous (2226 18th St. NW) in Adams-Morgan at 8pm. The district proper's been aching for an open mic on Wednesdays, and hopefully we'll all get out and support this new one.

Also, my friend Diana is kicking off monthly shows at Aroma in Cleveland Park . The first one is August 20th, which is a month away, I know. But start getting excited about it and that excitement will manifest itself in getting your ass out there.

And while I'm going crazy with the plugs to make up for my own lack of content this week, Team Goldie aka MC Goldie Wilson aka my SU friend Matt is this intense one-man electro-pop-punk-decontructed band with some seriously catchy and seriously good songs, two of which he just posted (amid 5 MySpace bulletins a day) new. "Hairodynamics" is still probably my favorite. Help him out: