Where’s the F-ing Music, Jerks?

An excellent question, aggressive blog viewer! Our album “Horses and Grasses” was taken off iTunes last month in preparation for it’s ceremonious return to iTunes on the Comedy Central Records label mid-December. This is exciting because it means that the accidental rarity “Funkhauser” will be downloadable. It’s a boring story, but a big famous director wanted to use it in a movie and asked us to keep it off the Internet—the film ended up not getting made, as so many films do not in this town. Fortunately, Baby Geniuses 3 made it through the pipeline, though.

The hard copy will still be available on CD Baby, which just sold out and will have more in their warehouse by next week.

Blog Blog Bloggin on… Comedy Central

Hey, did we mention that we’ve been writing entries for Comedy Central’s blog: the CC Insider?  We’ve done three (of four) already; the fourth will be later this week.  Click here to read them all, or, to make it more of a process (and thereby possibly more rewarding), go to ccinsider.com and click the tag on the right that says “Hard ‘N Phirm”.

Note:  domain name “ccoutsider.com” still available.

Brought to You by You™

People are always asking me: “Mike, years from now, do you think advertisers will engineer a gene that’ll make people involuntarily pick up writing utensils at random and draw, for example, perfect renderings of the Burger King logo?”

I say, No. That’s ridiculous. The way it will happen is this: advertisers will alter the gene that’s responsible for Tourette’s Syndrome so that people uncontrollably shout out product names at random. For example, “No, Carol, that’s not what I mean. I do want to be with you, it’s just that I– CRISPITY! CRUNCHETY! F*CKIN… PEANUT-BUTTERY MOTHER-F*CKIN BUTTERFINGER!!” *

* Note: this is not Tourette’s swearing slipping through—this will be Butterfinger’s actual slogan.

HnP Asks a Ninja

It seems that the Ninja has been asked so many questions that he, himself, needed to be the inquisitor for a change. The question: “Hard ‘n Phirm, would you like to participate in Ninja Day 2007 at the El Rey Theater on December 5th?” The answer was a resounding and respectful, “Hai!” Please join us, a Ninja and Patton Oswalt for a night of music, comedy and supreme killing techniques.

Click here to exchange money for tickets.

Preflections

Hi there, reader. Hope you feel like reading about popular photography, because that’s what I’m writing.

It occurred to me, as someone was taking a picture at a party, how, at some point, it became normal to smile for pictures. In the earliest days of photography, nobody smiled. This was for one of three reasons:

1. They’d never seen a camera and didn’t know what was a-goin’ on
2. They were suffering from chronic “dignity”
3. Life was horrible and they had either just witnessed a murder or were being stopped on their way to a murder

Same with paintings: I’ve seen very few historic portraits that feature full-toothed smiles, and those that do are titled something like “Bacchus’ Triumph” or “The Idiot”. Until recently, it just wasn’t cool to be immortalized as looking happier than cool.

Then I got to thinking about how technology is affecting our sense of identity, which led me to writing:

Thanks, Ben!

I would like to thank our good friend, Ben Kharakh, whose name is not only ALMOST a palindrome, but who also was kind enough to do a Q & A type interview with me about Wired Science and the future of HnP.

Read the story here.