Monthly Archives: July 2010

10 Laugh Out Loud Stand-Up Moments with Louis CK

Louis isn’t exactly new on the comedy scene; he’s been around for a while. I just always seem to be late to the ballgame when it comes to appreciating really good comedians. (Hell, I’m still working through George Carlin’s archives right now…probably a future top 10 post.)

louis-ck-videos-stand-up I first caught Louis’ raw, unpretentious comedic genius when someone sent me a link to the first video below, which is Louis’ riff from an appearance on Conan regarding technology and how little people appreciate what we have. Then when I saw that Louis had a new show on FX (Tuesday nights, 10:00 PM CT), which just premiered about a month ago, I decided I had to tune in.

I’ve really enjoyed the show. It doesn’t feel like it has hit it’s stride yet – and it is only four episodes in – but the stand-up interludes would make the show worth watching even if the scripted parts sucked (which they don’t).

And that brilliant stand-up is what I’ve highlighted below, with my 10 favorite Louis CK stand-up bits, plus links to a few others that didn’t make the cut.

You may have your own personal favorites that didn’t make the list – and if so, please provide links in the comment section – but these are the ones that make me literally laugh out loud every time I see them.

Enjoy.

Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy

I’ve embedded this on MSF before, and you’ve probably seen it. But it’s worth watching again.

Louis CK on Being White [NSFW]

I’m fairly certain that both the white boys and the brothers among us will enjoy this one. Louis’ brilliance at its best.

Louis CK on Turning 40 [NSFW]

Damn…I’ve got 11 years left until this is my reality.

Louis CK on Getting Fat [NSFW]

And speaking of things I’ll soon be able to unfortunately relate to…

Louis CK on Single People [NSFW]

“If you’re single, your life has no consequence on the Earth, even if you’re helping people aggressively…which you’re not. You can die and it actually doesn’t matter.”

Louis CK on Married Men [NSFW]

Now that we’ve heard Louis’ views on single people, how about what it’s like to be a married man. I’m not married, but can I anticipate agreeing wholeheartedly.

Louis CK on Fun with a Girl [NSFW]

Louis CK on Being Broke [NSFW]

If you’re a blogger, or a drunk and/or high college student (and really, who else reads MSF?), you’ll be able to appreciate this one. The audio is not good on this one, but it’s worth it.

Louis CK on Kids Names and Their Questions [NSFW]

Louis opens with a riff at the beginning about names, ending with his ultimate name for a kid: “LadiesandGentlemen.” He also talks about the parenting, including the idiocy of playing Hide and Seek with his kids, who run the house and compel Louis and his wife to do all kinds of ridiculous things. This video ends with a discussion of the impossibility of answering kids’ questions. Why? Why? Why?

And we’ll end it with this one…

Louis CK on The Difference Between Girls and Women [NSFW]

The way this one opens sums it up: “When girls go wild, they show their tits. When women go wild, they kill men.”

If you still want more, here are a few others that didn’t quite make the cut:

10 Under-Appreciated Sci-Fi Movies

Written by jeremyz

Sci-fi is a genre that you either love or hate, and since it’s a niche market movie studios often release sci-fi films with less fanfare than they deserve. Even if you’re a sci-fi fan, it can be easy to miss some solid films in the category. To right this wrong, here’s a list of great sci-fi flicks that you might have missed. Of course, if we missed any, please let us know in the comments!

10. Equilibrium

(2002)

Christian Bale stars in this sci-fi action flick about a future where all forms of emotion have been outlawed. There are a couple points where some of the supporting cast seems to forget that they’re not supposed to feel, but even so Equilibrium has some great ideas and cool scenes. It’s best known for its “gun-kata,” a martial art based entirely on the science of gunfights.

9. eXistenZ

(1999)

A creepy, gloppy film from David Cronenberg about the testing of a new virtual reality game, eXistenZ is certainly not a film for everyone. It’s twisty and filled with lots of shifts between different planes of reality and has several moments of Cronenberg’s trademark “body horror,” including a pretty disturbing biological gun. But there’s an even bigger reason many people haven’t seen it. It was released less than one month after another virtual reality movie you may have heard of: The Matrix.

8. Sunshine

(2007)

Sunshine isn’t a perfect film, but it’s got some great ideas and an interesting visual style that make it worth checking out. On a voyage into space to reignite the dying Sun, a team of scientists encounter disaster that could spell death for them and, in turn, the rest of humanity. You’ll never think about sunlight the same way again.

7. Pitch Black

(2000)

Forget the junky sequel The Chronicles of Riddick. Pitch Black transcends its Aliens rip-off roots, thanks to great characters, especially the magnetic murderer Riddick, played by Vin Diesel. He’s a bad guy who’s called up to protect a group of stranded space travelers from killer aliens, if only because they increase his own chances for survival. The spin-off video game is also great, but seriously, the sequel is crap.

6. The Hidden

(1987)

There’s an FBI agent on the trail of a brutal criminal, and each one has a secret: they’re both aliens in human bodies. The Hidden is a little dated by today’s standards, but it’s still got some great ideas and great performances, especially professional weirdo Kyle Maclachlan as the FBI agent/intergalactic hunter.

5. A Boy and his Dog

(1975)

Based on a novella by sci-fi master Harlan Ellison, A Boy and his Dog stars Don Johnson as a kid in a post-apocalyptic world who has a telepathic link with his dog. Together they stumble into an underground society that has sexy and sinister ideas in mind for the Boy. Why aren’t you watching it right now?

4. Primer

(2004)

Created by a small team of filmmakers with a budget of around $7000, Primer is one of the most intelligent, mind-bending sci-fi movies in decades and one of the most complex time-travel films ever. Writer/director/producer Shane Carruth is a former mathematician and engineer, so to say that Primer is a thinking man’s sci-fi film is probably underselling it. It’s a tough film to follow, but you can’t have a list of vital sci-fi movies without Primer.

3. Moon

(2009)

A sad, smart film from David Bowie’s son Duncan Jones, Moon is a film that works entirely because of the performance of Sam Rockwell. As someone about to end a three-year stint working on the moon, the main character Sam discovers a secret that changes everything about his job and his life, but to say more would be to do a disservice to the movie.

2. Silent Running

(1972)

In the future, all of Earth’s plant life has died. The only remaining flora is stored in a fleet of greenhouse ships in space. But when protagonist Freeman Lowell is ordered to destroy the forests he’s so passionate about protecting, his disobedience puts him in direct conflict with the rest of his crew. Check it out and discover why it’s considered one of the all-time gems of the sci-fi genre.

1. Gattaca

(1997)

One of the most respected sci-fi films of the last couple decades, Gattaca paints an all-too believable portrait of a permanent underclass of humans based on their “inferior” genetic material. Faking genetic tests with borrowed DNA, protagonist Vincent is days away from his dream of traveling to space. But can he maintain his charade long enough to make it to the launch? Watch it and find out.
Bonus: A Tesla mocks others

This was written on a toilet wall of Maths Faculty

Click here to enlarge image

This HAS to work

Antivirus Programs

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Bonus: I need new batteries

The 25 Best Opening Lines in Western Literature

Collected by shmoop

Introducing a story to a reader is a lot like dropping a pickup line on someone: do it the wrong way and they’ll wind up under the covers with a different… book.

Here to show you how it’s done are the top twenty-five cold openings in Western literature. For some additional insight, we’ve included speculations as to the thought process that might have influenced each author’s writing. Enjoy!

1. Ice, Ice Ba—Whaaat?

Opener: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author: Gabriel García Márquez

Creative Thought Process: Before getting into that whole “ice” thing, unceremoniously mention that Buendía eventually has to stare down a firing squad. That’ll buy at least a hundred pages of curiosity.

2. A Real Page-Burner

Opener: “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Book: Fahrenheit 451

Author: Ray Bradbury

Creative Thought Process: Juxtapose the anarchic verb “to burn” with an alluring noun like “pleasure.” Hope a major cigarette company doesn’t steal the phrase some forty years down the road.

3. April Cowers

Opener: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Book: 1984

Author: George Orwell

Creative Thought Process: To properly set the mood for a futuristic dystopia, combine the elements of springtime, coldness, an unlucky number, and bells tolling. Then, watch people fight over the feasibility of a clock that can strike thirteen.

4. Post-Partum Possession

Opener: “124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom.”

Book: Beloved

Author: Toni Morrison

Creative Thought Process: Make the subject of the sentence an obscure sequence of numbers to get the reader’s attention. In case that doesn’t work, follow up with a terrifying, baby-related metaphor.

5. F. M. L.

Opener: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

Book: Metamorphosis

Author: Franz Kafka

Creative Thought Process: Ease the reader into Gregor Samsa’s misfortunes by describing his nightsweats about… Meh, skip to the giant cockroach.

6. Ve Believe In Nah-sing, Lebowski!

Opener: “Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”

Book: The Stranger

Author: Albert Camus

Creative Thought Process: In order to sell the whole involuntary-manslaughter thing, start by making the guy seem detached. Okay, more detached. Just a little more. PERFECT!

7. Hole-y Middle-earth, Batman!

Opener: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

Book: The Hobbit

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Creative Thought Process: In the interest of thoroughness, approach the most epic alternate universe in all of literature by starting with a hole in the ground.

8. Gray-Per-View

Opener: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

Book: Neuromancer

Author: William Gibson

Creative Thought Process: Methinks I shall write the greatest opening line ever. Donesies.

9. Out There

Opener: “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

Book: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Author: Ken Kesey

Creative Thought Process: First, open with something that conveys paranoia. Mentioning the ambiguous ol’ “they” is a good start, but driving it home will require something more specific. Hmm…

10. Fragile: Do Not Stack

Opener: “When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tags on our wrists which instructed – ‘To Whom It May Concern’ – that we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr., from Long Beach, California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.”

Book: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author: Maya Angelou

Creative Thought Process: Casually inform the reader that these children might not be in the best hands. Start by Fed-Ex-ing them 1,600 miles.

11. Hi, My Name Is (WHAT?!)

Opener: “Call me Ishmael.”

Book: Moby-Dick

Author: Herman Melville

Creative Thought Process: Well, you should probably include at least one short sentence.

12. …Goes To-gether Like a Horse and Car-riage!

Opener: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Book: Anna Karenina

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Creative Thought Process: Give the readers an impossibly oversimplified statement about mankind, then sit back and watch them realize that it’s actually true.

13. The Reckonin’

Opener: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”

Book: A dventures of Huckleberry Finn

Author: Mark Twain

Creative Thought Process: Write a 43-chapter novel entirely in rural slang. From the perspective of a 13-year-old boy. Who’s uneducated. While you’re at it, make it the greatest novel in American history.

14. Universal Spoof

Opener: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Book: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austen

Creative Thought Process: Write sarcastically during an era so prudish that future generations will actually mistake you as being serious.

15. Whatever, Nevermind

Opener: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Book: The Catcher in the Rye

Author: J.D. Salinger

Creative Thought Process: Offhandedly trash-talk the classics, gloss over any specifics, and leave everyone wanting more. Make sure Holden, the narrator, is one hundred percent unable to repeat this technique on women.

16. Great Balls of Fire

Opener: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”

Book: Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Creative Thought Process: Subtly allude to the fact that the love interest is only thirteen by writing her name in the diminutive, “-ita” form. Throwing the word “sin” in there probably isn’t a bad idea either.

17. Bombs Over Bag-Lady

Opener: “It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

Book: The Crow Road

Author: Iain Banks

Creative Thought Process: Open with a bang. Scratch that – open with a violent human combustion. See where it takes you…

18. Old Man Liver

Opener: “I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I think my liver is diseased.”

Book: Notes from the Underground

Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Creative Thought Process: Start with some creepy character building. Sick? Check. Spiteful? Check. Unattractive? Check. TMI? Double check.

19. Prose In Different Area Codes

Opener: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”

Book: A Tale of Two Cities

Author: Charles Dickens

Creative Thought Process: It was earth, it was sky, it was sun, it was moon, it was salt, it was pepper… Um…

20. That Peaceful, Queasy Feeling

Opener: “My mother is standing in front of the bathroom mirror smelling polished and ready; like Jean Naté, Dippity Do and the waxy sweetness of lipstick. Her white, handgun-shaped blow-dryer is lying on top of the wicker clothes hamper, ticking as it cools. She stands back and smoothes her hands down the front of her swirling, psychedelic Pucci dress, biting the inside of her cheek. ’Damn it,’ she says, ’something isn’t right.’”

Book: Running with Scissors

Author: Augusten Burroughs

Creative Thought Process: Throw the reader into the body of an innocent young kid. Drop some hints that mom may be a lot of work. Buckle up; this ain’t The Brady Bunch.

21. Nowhere Man

Opener: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

Creative Thought Process: Put the readers in their place. You know, light-eons away from anything of significance.

22. A Nicens Little Title

Opener: “Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.”

Book: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Author: James Joyce

Creative Thought Process: What haven’t you tried yet ah yes baby talk that will be new.

23. Road Trippin’

Opener: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”

Book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Author: Hunter S. Thompson

Creative Thought Process: Dropkick the readers into chaos. Right after dropping some… ahem.

24. Shark Bait Hoo-Ha-Ha!

Opener: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

Book: The Old Man and the Sea

Author: Ernest Hemingway

Creative Thought Process: Write about an old, grizzled man’s man who takes on an entire ocean. To distract everyone from the fact that mother used to dress you as a girl.

25. Scottish Rogue

Opener: “The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling.”

Book: Trainspotting

Author: Irvine Welsh

Creative Thought Process: If readin aboot heroin junkies disnae make ya sweat, readin throo mah brogue will.

1925’s vision of 1950’s America

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Star Wars: 19 Things You Didn’t Know

Sure, “Star Wars” is the most obsessed-over movie of all time. There are, however, still some fascinating bits of trivia that have escaped the attention of all but the most hardcore fans.

Here are 19 fascinating facts about the Star Wars universe that aren’t all that well known.

[Source: Online PhD]