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PARTYTIME! Bring on Crysby and the Pens!

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Happy Monday, all. It was a great weekend of shows in Upstate NY. We'd like to thank everyone who came out to the Westcott on Friday Night, especially the very funny and talented current class of Penguins Without Pants who opened for us. Saturday's show at RIT was a whole 'nuther class of ridiculous, and I should have video clips here soon to prove it.



I also watched through highlight reels the Caps stomping the Rangers the fk out in games 5 and 6. Game 7 is tomorrow night, and no matter who wins and goes onto the Eastern Conference Semi-finals, the Caps do have something to celebrate. No one expects the Rangers to win tomorrow night, but no one expected them to take the first two games of the series, either. Granted, if the Caps had started Simeon Varlamov in Game one, then this whole mess would probably be over with already. I think those of us who pushed for Simmy weeks ago need to gather outside of George McPhee's house and unleash a massive "WE TOLD YOU SO!!" Also, if the Caps lose then my life returns to normal and I can go back to actually conversing with people at bars. I don't want to gloat, especially before game 7 drops, but I feel like my friends and family will be neglected for a while longer this spring...

Okay, here's something I feel confident about putting on here, even if the Rangers had won on Sunday (for those not keeping track, they did the polar opposite of that).

Do you believe that Alex Ovechkin is the best professional athlete alive today?

If your answer is YES, then good for you!

If your answer is NO, then do the following:

1. Watch the following clip from Friday night's 4-0 annihilation:


2. Apologize for being a stupidhead.
3. Admit that your answer is now YES.

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There's something off with the youtube quality, but I didn't want to delay this any further, so here's the official 2009 Gtown Cabaret Teaser, featuring Pat Lenihan and Richard Trent.



A couple more banners:




What a gorgeous weekend. What an "awful regression into 50 degrees and pouring" Monday. Seriously, DC weather makes me wonder why I still live here. To help fight it, here's a great piece of music built for the springtime, via Dan: The Music. The guy's got a really nasal voice, and the girl's got a low voice so they sound like the same person. Crazy. Anyway, it's outstanding, and midwestern. They're playing with STZA (of Choking Victim, Leftover Crack, etc.), Bomb the Music Industry!, and the Max Levine Ensemble at GWU's Mitchell Hall Theatre this Friday night for a nice price, if you're anywhere near DC.

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Happy Friday, everyone! Here are a couple of things I found noteworthy and/or interesting this week.

THING Tomorrow is RECORD STORE DAY. Check out the website, and pay a visit to your local independent record shop if you live near one! Even if you're not a huge music fan you'll probably find something neat and it'll be a good random thing to do on a lazy Saturday. There's going to be a Pavement LIVE 12", apparently, and they're pressing the previously digital-only Black Kids' "Wizard of Ahhs" demo EP for it, too. If you don't think that's cool then don't talk to me, ever, please.

THING I hate how we've turned into this society of apologists. No one says anything without reason. People on the right are assaulting Janet Napolitano for implying that veterans may be susceptible to "right-wing extremism." She apologized immediately for saying that, as if she'd actually insulted the heroic members of our armed services who do a great job for our country. I don't know about you, but no matter where you stand politically, if some nutjob with a stockpile of artillery goes beserk and starts killing people, your love of 'Murka isn't going to block the bullets. You need to meet someone named Timothy McVeigh. On an even more controversial note (because we live in the USofA) Hulk Hogan sympathized with OJ recently in a Rolling Stone interview. CNN, in all of their brilliance, slobbered over this. I found this hilarious for several reasons.

ONE: Hulkamania is probably just protecting himself since his ex-wife's lawyer may be calling Terry out for threatening to kill Linda.
TWO: Chris Rock already made a (brilliant) joke about this on 'Bring the Pain.'
THREE: Hulk Hogan's entire life has been based around threatening to hurt people! Why should he stop now despite one soggy reality show?
FOUR: Like Chris Rock implied, if you can't go into that house that you bought, and have to watch some 19-year-old kid who's sleeping with your wife driving around in your car in your hometown, you kinda want to kill someone! Your life is no longer not sucking. He wouldn't actually do it. C'mon.
FIVE: Really? CNN? This is news? Really?

THING I just found an amazing blog dedicated solely to SST records. I am officially in kid-in-candy-store status.


THING You guys remember the band Unsane? Well, neither did I really, at least outside of their iconically video'd single "Scrape." Thanks to an excellent (not exclusively SST) music blog, I've had the chance to rediscover the noisy NYC power trio, and they were (and still are... haven't gotten to the newer albums yet) pretty damn good. Here's one of my favorite music videos of all time, and another warm cup of 90's nostalgia tea for your Friday afternoon.

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A couple of things to ponder for Caps Nation.

1. Calm the fuck down. It's only one loss. Plus, the Caps dominated the Rags for the most part, and 'Sloppy' Sean Avery got away with a pair of complete bullshit non-calls (which abound against the Caps in the Verizon Center, still), so it wasn't like it was a blowout or a statement victory. The expectations we (and the NHL at large) are placing on this team are titanic compared to last year, when they drove the (favorite) Filly Phlyurzlol to seven games and lots of soiled orange underwear among their cro-magnon fans. Good teams find a way to win.
2. Take a chance on Simmy Varlamov. I don't care how little NHL experience he has, or how much of an X factor that experience may be in the playoffs, Theodore is taking way too much heat and if you don't give Varlamov a chance then we'll never know if he can be the next Cam Ward and come out of nowhere to lead the Caps to the Cup. I've been a huge proponent of his from day one, and the Management kept optioning him down to Hershey. Seriously, you need to take a chance on someone as talented as he is, sooner or later. The Caps didn't give anyone the CHANCE to have a proper rookie season this year (ALZNERcough), which was something I'm not going to deny bugged me. It's bad enough that the organization has kept deadweight defensemen playing key shifts and being made to look like idiots out there (coughSCHULTZ coughERSKINE coughSERIOUSLYSCHULTZWHATTHEHELL). So, I'm not going to jump on the "Jose Theodore is a goat" bandwagon (unless Boudreau refuses to bench him and the Caps manage to lose the series, in which case I'll be on that bandwagon, throwing tomatoes at him, while it crashes into his house. And I'm taking all of his punk records.) So, yeah, go Simmy.
3. The Caps did score twice against the best penalty-kill in the league, with one of the most highly hyped goaltenders in Henrik LOONDKVEEST. Granted, I would have been disappointed if the second-best power play in the league didn't convert, but it showed that not all of the cogs are broken. Plus, Ovechkin played well, Vozlov is finally shedding his playoff skin, and Matt "The Professor" Bradley showed his true physical talents.
4. Let's just take a breath, hope that Boudreau does what he knows is right (wink), and saddle up for game two. This series is going to be interesting, clearly.

"What's that? ... You want me to play and give me an opportunity to show my potential and talent, and possibly lead a team to a Cup at age 20? That kind of thing hasn't happened in more than two whole years!... Yes I know this makes no sense since I don't speak English. You can suck it, person on phone!!... No, I don't know who this guy standing next to me is, either."

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Here is a 3-part sketch series I produced (written by the illustrious Jake Young) featuring Skip Maraney, for the Hexagon 2009: What So Proudly We Bailed show. Get your DVD now, the info is here.

There are a great couple of shows coming up next weekend in Syracuse and Rochester if you're in that area of the country! Read about them over there ---------------->

Anyway, I give you all "P. BARNES JOHNSON: THE COMMERCIALS."

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The other night the topic of Kojak came up for no reason among from friends and I. So, I mentally revisited Jim Carrey playing Telly Savalis on In Living Color. When I first saw it, I had no idea what the Players Club really was, never saw any of the commercials, or who the hell this creepy bald guy Carrey was playing was supposed to be. It was just really, really stupidly funny. Now I understand the context, but it's still funniest for all of the reasons I originally found it funny. Check out the basis and the satire below.