art is the new religion

Dschinghis Khan & Diamond Dave

On a lighter note from yesterday, here are two things that have amused me over the past 24 hours.

Will the Real Diamond Dave Please Stand Up?
Every once in a while after I write something here I'll be contacted by someone who's related to what I wrote about.  I wrote about Wainy Days and someone from My Damn Channel commented, I wrote about the CBC and someone affiliated with the station commented, Ottmar Liebert commented, and so forth.  I find this really fun and gratifying, and I'm always curious who I might hear from next.

You might recall I wrote about Diamond Dave, aka David Lee Roth, last week.  I also happened to update my Twitter page with the following:

"Discussing the differences of DLR-era Van Halen vs. the Hagar years via IM with my friend Chris in Ann Arbor."

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it's a super simple application that lets you send very short updates to your friends telling them what you're doing.  The updates can be as mundane as "I just got back from dance class - yay!" and therefore usually not very interesting to people who don't know you.

Which is why I was delighted and amused to get this email notification in my inbox yesterday:

Clearly this is one of my friends or acquaintances having some fun with a fake account, but the Twitter notification still made me smile. 

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha - Hey!
The other thing that made me laugh was something I ran across while working this morning.  Did you know there's such a genre as historical-themed disco?

Dschinghis Khan's Wikipedia entry says the German pop group disbanded in the 80's but "has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity on the Internet due to the discovery of a video of them performing their hit song 'Moskau.'"  Thanks, Wikipedia, for pointing out that pretty much everyone with an internet connection has already seen this video besides me.  Well, I saw the video for the first time this morning, and it totally brightened my day and inspired an impromptu dance party here.

Ha ha ha ha ha - hey!

Tonight's Showalter

Tonight's show is of the comedy variety, as I will be seeing Michaels Showalter and Ian Black at Mohawk.  It's going to be on the outdoor stage which would be a lot of fun if it weren't 36 degrees and raining in Austin right now.

Michael Showalter has his own show, The Michael Showalter Showalter, on College Humor.  Here's the episode with Zach Galifianakis (I would have linked to the episode with David Wain but half of it was really gross):

Bonus:  Michael Ian Black has a TypePad blog.

Wainy Days

Wet Hot American Summer is one of my favorite movies of all time, and it's one of the rare ones I could watch over and over.  So when I discovered that David Wain, the film's writer and alumnus of The State, had a new online comedy series, I had to check it out.

I ended up watching every single episode of "Wainy Days" in one sitting. 

Do I need to get out more?  Perhaps.  Or maybe the show is just. that. good.

The premise is that David Wain's looking for love and we join him on his dating misadventures with a series of women.  The comedy is absurd, ridiculous and sometimes horrifying and/or unbelievable, and the shows feature cameos and writing turns from other members of The State.  Of course I also love that the theme song was written by my friend Craig Wedren.  Many of the episodes have different writers, so even though there is a narrative that links them all together, the tone can vary from episode to episode (and some of them get a little risque so beware if you're watching at work).  Here's the first one, to get you started.

I don't know the story behind why Wain chose to release this series online, but I love that he's doing it this way.  Releasing it online means the show will have more artistic freedom, a quicker turnaround time, and as long as they can get the word out about it, anyone who is interested can watch it.  So here I am, doing my part to spread the good word and support creative comedy.

David Wain's blog just told me that a new episode is out, so I'm off to watch it.  Enjoy!

• Buy Wet Hot American Summer from Amazon because it's genius and you love to laugh.