Comedy Corner

I have had it with the commercials for “clearer skin” that advertise anti-acne creams and medicines. Every single one of them is the same, and every single one of them sucks. All I want to do is watch “The Gauntlet III” in peace when every 10 minutes my show is interrupted by someone reminding me how many pimples are on my face. They then tell me that they have an acne treatment that no one has ever thought of before and that they could possibly be fired for revealing the company’s deep secret to clearer skin. The worst part is that even though every company is preaching the same crap to force kids into self-consciousness, they all do it through different—yet equally annoying—advertising strategies.

First, we have the commercials that trick you into believing they’re the best because before they even say anything they feed you with easily-obtained facts.

“Eating chocolate makes you break out . . . FALSE!!”

“Washing your skin every day prevents break outs . . . FALSE!!”

This advertising strategy is the same approach “Bill Nye the Science Guy” took in his television show. The first ten minutes would be him listing facts like “Mercury is 43 million miles from the sun!” in order to gain the parent’s approval, and then the kids were forced to watch him promote Nazi genocide through, for example, chemical reactions. Similarly, these acne commercials think that if you hear reassuring facts about your skin, you’ll trust them enough to buy their face cream.

Another, funnier approach is taken by Clearasil, who uses comedy in their commercial but at the cost of legitimate information about their product. Clearasil knows that they’re dealing with teenagers who hate to be bombarded with inane things like “statistics” and “hard work,” which is why they directed their commercials in a more comedic direction. This company insisted that their face cream “may cause confidence,” a side effect that few would distrust. There are many things that cause confidence, but few that cause confidence and clear skin. To most insecure teenagers, a face cream that results in self-assurance is worth their life savings alone, and the clear skin that results with it is just an added bonus!

This advertisement approach reminds me of every single beer commercial there is. Advertisers blind alcoholic men with pictures of bikini-wearing women and unrealistic situations to the point where consumers buy the beer hoping to get laid. They think that if they drink it, their beer belly will turn into a six pack, their receding hairline will turn into a full head of hair, and they will instantly get a job. Oh yeah, and they’ll have a beer.

The last acne commercials are those of the famous Proactive Solution. Besides being the biggest buzzword in any company’s innovative meeting, “Proactive Solution” is the number one selling acne medicine in America. No, I swear, they really are, even Jessica Simpson said. Yeah she did! She was in the commercial! Remember her in “The Dukes of Hazzard”? She was so hot in that. I bet Proactive is what made her so hot.

The fact that Proactive has enough money to buy out celebrities doesn’t make them the best, it makes them the richest. And the reason they have all this money is because people think exactly what I just made fun of. They think that because P. Diddy and Jessica Simpson use it, it must be the most trusted acne medicine of its time. As proof, I have here a Proactive commercial staring Lindsey Lohan. Try to keep your eyes off her chest enough to notice the bullshit she feeds you throughout the entire commercial.

Besides Lindsey sounding like she has an entire frog colony stuck in her throat, this commercial was good. It had the upbeat, catchy music that teenagers love to listen to; it had a famous person that everyone idolizes; and it had Lohan pretending to adlib blatantly scripted lines (“I even think I keep some in my car HAHAHAHAHA!!”).My favorite part, however, was ten seconds into the commercial when Lindsey describes herself as “a normal person.” Oh yeah Lindsey, someone who has multi-million dollar movie contracts, hit albums, and an eating disorder, and a drug problem is undoubtedly a normal person. Also, it seems that the only skin problem Lohan had was one pathetic pimple on her chin. Try saying you’re a “normal person who gets zits” to a kid whose face would put a pepperoni pizza to shame. But lastly, this commercial had what every acne medicine commercial has: the universal How-We-Clean-Your-Pores diagram:

This familiar clip is put into every skin treatment commercial in America, and clearly shows everyone something that they don’t care about. Teenagers wouldn’t care if your face cream contained tiny soldiers with flame-throwers who torched the acne from your pores like the beaches of Iwo Jima. We get it: your product goes inside the pores, grabs the crap, and then magically dances out.

Another thing that all skin advertisements have is a display of “Before and After” pictures that flash across the screen. The sight of seeing a hideous pimple-faced monster transform into a decent-looking student builds the hopes of teenagers and makes them want to buy the product. Little do people know that while these pictures are being quickly thrown across the screen, a small note at the bottom reads “results will vary.” This scumbag move is all the advertisers need, and now they can fill their containers with water.

I think that since I’m sitting in front of my computer complaining against commercials, I would join the group of people (SNL, The Onion, MadTV, every other kid with a blog, etc.) who are getting angry at razor companies. For Christmas my parents got me the second season of SNL from 1976. The cast included massive names like Chevy Chase, Dan Akroid, and even John Belushi. One of my favorite skits was a spoof-razor commercial in which they advertised a razor with three blades, mocking the needlessness. To my father this was hilarious because he remembers a time when he had a single-bladed razor and was stunned by two blades, but to me it wasn’t funny. I shave with a razor with three blades, and I didn’t think it was that strange. But then the next year I hear about the Schick Quattro Razor with four blades! And recently we’ve seen the release of the Gillette Fusion razor with five blades. And what’s this? It needs batteries!? WHY THE HELL DO I NEED BATTERIES TO SHAVE?!

I’m not even going to make the joke about “a razor with 15 blades” because everyone has done it. Just know that you only need one blade to shave, and you no not need batteries. Advertisers for razors also need to calm down. Shaving is a very basic process, and the last thing people need is for you to complicate the procedure by bringing in irrelevant jargon like “Vitamin E” and “hydrating formula.” Just let me deal with my patches of awkward peach fuzz without perplexity.

And finally, since I yelled at the skin commercials for all using the same diagram, I feel obligated to warn the shaving commercials that if they don’t stop using the same “close shave” illustration I’m going to scream. I think you guys know what I’m talking about:

Each commercial has an added comment like “This fifth blade picks up missed hair follicles that the fourth one missed!!” I have an idea: How about instead of adding blades to “catch” the left over hair, we manufacture a razor that catches the entire hair on one blade. Instead, they endanger us more by forcing sharp pointy razors near the arteries in our throats.

Half of America isn’t smarter than a fifth grader, I don’t think people should need a PHD in Anatomy to cleanse their skin or shave their beards. I don’t care if you advertise the occasional face cream or razor, just lay off the clichéd illustrations and scientific terminology. I don’t know what it means when something is “hydrocronically adhesive.” I must have missed that episode of Bill Nye.

I was reading one of my favorite comedy sites the other day when I stumbled across an article about ideas a writer had but never really completed for whatever reason. One of them that caught my eye was “Building The Perfect Woman,” and I liked the idea. I figured if he wasn’t going to write it, I’d give it a shot. In a past post I gave you my list of the three hottest women, but that was where it stopped. I never considered which celebrity had the hottest kneecaps or finest eyelids, or what combining them would look like. Also, I figure that the girl world already has John Cena and Orlando Bloom, so constructing the perfect woman would only level the playing field.

I guess we’ll start from the bottom:

To being we’ll select feet, which I believe are obsolete because only podiatrists and men with weird fetishes like feet. Also, most women take such good care of their feet that it doesn’t matter whose you pick, but for the point of argument I’m going to take Missy Elliot’s because any feet that was withstand that much weight without exploding must have super powers.

Next are the legs. For those I chose Paris Hilton. No, I didn’t choose her legs just because they’re easily open-able (swing and a miss), but because it was the only part of her I could choose. When selecting legs, you don’t want thunder thighs that will take up an entire seat, but you also don’t want scrawny little twigs that snap if you rest too heavy a purse on them. Paris Hilton has no attractive qualities besides her legs, but only if you give them a thorough cleaning before-hand—maybe it’s just me but I think everything on Paris appears sticky.

I chose the waist of Victoria Beckham, not only because she was the 5th hottest spice girl but because I wanted to go European. In a country of fake tits and nose-jobs, Posh Spice has continued to amaze us with her slim body. Granted, the rest of her appearance is butt-ugly, which is why we’re only stealing her waist.

For the butt I didn’t think twice about Shakira. If you’ve watched any of her music videos and seen her spin her ass around like she was winning a pillow-fight you’d agree with me. Shakira appears attractive until she opens her mouth and her Columbian vocal chords punch you in the face. Nothing against the Latin-American culture, but I think a woman rolling her R’s and talking to me in the same language my Spanish teacher cursed at me for six years is unattractive. Also, Shakira is 31 years old, so I thought we should include her on the list before all that beauty starts sagging.

For the stomach I took Briana Evigan, also known as the girl from Step Up 2: The Streets. Although the movie was lacking (it’s unbelievable how producers think they can make a movie sequel successful by putting “The Streets” at the end of it and making it more “hood”) the six pack of Briana was amazing. My girlfriend and I joke about how if she works hard enough, she could get a stomach as hot as Briana’s but we all know that’s not true because Briana doesn’t order four sides of french fries every time she goes out to eat.

Continuing up we reach the controversial part of the woman: the breasts. A woman’s boobs are very personal and private, which is why talking about them is so fun. Chesticals play a major part in a woman’s appearance, and selecting from the array of celebrities seems like searching for a needle in a haystack. Luckily, I was a kid brought up on music videos and the internet, so it didn’t take me long to decide that Maria Carey’s “display” was good enough for our lady. They’re big enough to be seen without needing to be pushed and smashed and Wonder-Braed, but not too big as to scare young and timid men. Other substitutable chests include Halle Berry in Swordfish and Courtney Cox in The Longest Yard.

The face of this perfect woman (who, while writing, I have decided to name “Christina Harmony White”) I went with Jennifer Love Hewitt, but I substituted her eyes for those of Megan Fox. I’m still waiting for the day when Megan Fox gets really angry and lasers shoot from her eye sockets and burn a hole in the wall. Jennifer Love Hewitt, on the other hand, has the puffy, rosy cheeks and quaint nose to tickle any man into a good mood.

Next: hair. In a girl I either like my hair straight as a board or unpredictably wavy, but for the benefit of all men I went with Lindsey Lohan’s old hair. In movies like Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded most guys couldn’t follow the plot due to the distracting attraction of Lohan’s luscious hair. Unfortunately, she then cut it, dyed it, and became lesbian, making her the only celebrity in American history to become less attractive when seen kissing another girl.

Lastly we must select Christina Harmony White’s personality. Anyone who is my close friend knows how much I hate girl’s personalities, and at first I was considering choosing the die-hard, freedom-fighting, baby-stomping mentality of Chuck Norris to fit our Perfect Woman, but the decided against it because even though a woman who could kick my ass is attractive, a woman who could shove a telephone pole through my appendix isn’t. So I went one step down from a combative man: a lesbian. These women don’t care about what guy likes them or if they’re being used for sex, they just want to have short hair and drive SUVs. So I chose our Perfect Lady to have the funny and peppy personality of Ellen Degeneres. Not only is Ellen funny and positive, but she has her own TV show.

So, after sampling a little bit off of every hot woman, let’s see what Christina Harmony White would really look like:

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

Today’s post is about a man who epitomizes greatness. He characterizes masculinity and is untouchable in the man world. If men on this earth were a fraction of his manliness, wars would infinitely continue in a test to out-strength the other. Sadly, all of men’s chances to prove their power would fall short to this man. But out of all the ways to describe this man, nothing paints the picture of his might better than his own name:

Magnus Ver Magnússon.

Magnus Ver Magnusson is a strongman from Iceland, and has won the World’s Strongest Man competition four times. His strength is unmatched of any man, along with his name, which is really what tops his whole persona off. I feel Magnus needed a tribute post to him because strongmen are usually categorized in the same class and none of them really stand out. Because people don’t know much about strongmen competitions, they just refer to all body builders as the same people, resulting in a man with the badass man Magnus Ver Magnússon being categorized with body builders named John Smith.

But putting the fact that Magnus is a body builder, let’s just focus on his name. In fact, I’m not going to even call it a name. Names are “Bob” and “Elleanor”; Magnus Ver Magnússon is a fucking title. According to Cheap Seats, this strongman’s title could only get better if it was changed to “Magnus Ver Magnússon the Magnificent,” whereas Cracked.com says that his name couldn’t possibly get maniler. I think “The Mighty Magnus Ver Magnússon” would be nice, but there’s really no way to out-do the Double Magnus that his name represents. And with forearms that could make a cow shit steaks, I’m willing to bet no one ever called this guy “Mag the Fag.”

There’s really no point to this article, I just wanted people to know that there is a man out there with a name cooler than yours and he’s the epitome of manliness. Oh sure “Ryan Thrillshed” might sound kind of cool, but you’re certainly not a body builder and your name definitely doesn’t rhyme. And as an official tribute to Magnus Ver Magnússon, I have decided to make one of my kid’s middle names Magnus and surrender his life to weightlifting. We will move to Iceland and live among the greats. Maybe Magnus will even sign me an autograph.

With this biceps.

It seems that every time I talk about how awesome movies are becoming, something happens and they improve tenfold. My latest post about badass movies was the Steps To Creating A Kickass Action Movie in which I informed upcoming directors how to guarantee the success of their action movie. When it comes to violent movies, I have stopped caring about what actors are in it, who directed it, or what the plot it. All I look at now is when the movie was made.

Normally, I won’t watch a movie made before 2003. This isn’t because I think that past movies aren’t original or worth watching, it’s just that back in 2003 movies couldn’t be as violent as they’re allowed nowadays. A decade ago, showing a man get his face blown off was unthought-of, and any movie that dared to include such a scene would get horrible reviews. It was only until 2004/2005 when movies like Saw and Hostage came out when America finally accepted that there is nothing more entertaining than unorganized violence soaked in blood.

Today, every action movie has, on average, 32,498,728,324,987,109 people killed. Half of those people are viciously be-headed, and the other half are ferociously torn to shreds. It’s become a belief in modern movie-making that the amount of blood splattered is directly proportional with your positive reviews. I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years there’s a movie released consisting of two-and-a-half hours of non-stop headshots.

Unfortunately, the increase in blood has blinded directors from doing their jobs to tie in a plot. Too often movies dedicate too much time to properly detonating a Bowing 707 and forget that there has to be a reason to blow up the things they do. In order to fix this problem, movie writers have turned to irrational, far-fetched ideas as to why the main character needs to jump out of an airplane and simultaneously shoot 16,000 enemies. My favorite thing movie writers have done is try to belittle the audience by turning the end-of-the-movie twist into a complicated medical catastrophe that resulted in the death of thousands to save one man. A perfect example is Shoot Em Up, an amazing movie with Clive Owen as a relaxed sharp-shooter who uses carrots as his deadliest weapon. The movie is the personification of badass, but the end twist is the worst in movie. I’m not going to tell you what it is partly because I don’t want to give it away but mostly because I didn’t understand it past all the medical mumbo-jumbo. Basically, it has to do with a man forcing children/clones to be born so that he’ll have enough blood donors for a risky operation that will allow him to live longer. It doesn’t matter because at the point in the movie where they reveal the secret plot twist, you’re too dumbstruck by the fight scenes to realize how mediocre it is.

You can really tell that a movie has dedicated its entire budget to explosions and cut down on paying the people who think up story lines whenever a movie’s twist has to do with plastic surgery. With today’s modern technology, plastic surgery can literally make you a different person, and movie producers use that to their advantage while creating a surprise ending. Did the main character die? No he didn’t, they killed the wrong person and the main character got reconstructive surgery to hide his wanted face. Is this guy dead? No, he’s been alive for 30 years, he just looks different. My two examples for this are the movies War with Jet Lee, and Smokin’ Aces with Ryan Reynolds. These two movies (which my brother described as “lacking”) are jam packaged with violence, and when the producers realized that they were two hours and fifteen minutes into the film without any plot change, they turned to the one thing they could think of: plastic surgery. Watch the movie to understand what I mean, because describing it here is making me angry.

I still offer my services to anyone who wants to make a substantial action film, seeing as how I know everything and everyone agrees with what I say. You might not be able to recognize me though, I’m having facial reconstruction surgery.

1. Continue to joke that “big feet means big socks.”

2. Openly sing the chorus to “Living On A Prayer” whenever you’re halfway through anything

3. Start every sentence with “when I rule the world . . .”

4. Insist that playing “Stairway to Heaven” backwards has hidden anti-Semitic messages.

5. Ask to go “halvsies” on something insignificantly small, like a bag of chips or a cookie, stating that you’re “watching your figure.”

6. Yo Mamma Jokes.

7. Begin every story with “When I was watching Family Guy . . .”

8. When someone says that they’re getting a hair cut, yell “WHICH ONE?!” and then aggressively laugh.

9. Whenever someone starts a story “One time . . .” interrupt them by saying “at band camp . . .”

10. Suggest a Backstreet Boys of Nsync song during a school dance and then act cool mouthing all the words.

11. Inform everyone you see that you have “the skillz that killz”

12. Continue to type “ur,” “idc,” and “idk” online even though you’re in high school

13. Make unnecessarily racist comments while at a formal place like, for example, church.

14. Obsessively use South Park jokes in real life situations.

15. Refer to Hanukkah as “Jew Day.”

16. Argue that you coined an already publicized catchphrase like “Boo-Yah” or “Ching-A-Ling.”

17. Warn everyone that their faces are “about to get rocked off” before playing guitar.

18. Ask people if they’d like “ice for that burn” after making fun of them.

19. Remind everyone that you’re going to heaven because you legally download music.

20. Point to someone’s outfit and say “nice shirt, does it come in hetero?”

21. Try to convince everyone that you’re internationally cultured because you went to Hawaii.

22. Insist that you can pull off a pink tie.

23. Never let your friends forget that one time you loaned them a dollar.

24. Ask to see someone’s phone and then secretly read their text messages.  Snicker obnoxiously and glance at them.

25. Pretend to shoot someone in the chest when they’re wearing a Superman shirt and then tediously explain to them the Dane Cook skit. Call them a fag when they don’t laugh.

Likewise, here are a few things you could to that will automatically neutralize all your weaknesses and make you the coolest person ever.

1. Anytime you see a guy holding a purse for his girlfriend, ask him if that’s where he keeps his testicles.
2. Whenever a girl is being bitchy, call her the “Queen of Mean” and then sarcastically respond “yes your highness” to everything she says.
3. Chuck Norris Jokes. But not lame ones like “Chuck Norris’ tears cure cancer,” you need quality ones like these.

I love random facts. One of my favorite things is when you and your friends end up all sitting around and sharing all the random facts that you’ve heard in your life; each fact leading to a goofy anecdote. But what I don’t like are the lame kids that always spew the same lame-ass facts that everyone knows. No one wants to be reminded of a fact they learned from their 3rd grade babysitter. Facts are supposed to be stirring and stimulating, which is why it’s retarded when kids try to impress you with these boring “revelations”:

-It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

-Proportionally, the strongest muscle in your body is your tongue.

-There are more plastic lawn flamingos in the US than real ones.

-The average human eats 8 spiders in their lifetime at night.

When you hear these facts, you’re not inspired, nor are you excited to hear another. All you can think is “wow, this person just became as smart as my 8-year-old cousin.”

I think what I love the most about “facts” is that you can really never tell which ones are made up and which ones are true. In fact (no pun intended), you could make up whatever “fact” you wanted, and no one would call you on it—provided it’s believable. For example, for the past 5 years, during every fact-exchange me and my peers have had, I’ve told everyone that all polar bears are left-handed. Are all polar bears left handed? Who knows! The best part is that nobody can call me on it because no one has seen a polar bear throw a baseball with their right hand. Even better, facts spread like wild-fire, especially the fake ones.

Before you I have put together some very interesting facts that—to my knowledge—are completely true. But there’s no real way to tell, all you can do is believe them and tell them to everyone you know.

-On average, 100 people choke to death on ball-point pens every year.

-The first non-human to win an Oscar was Mickey Mouse.

-In every episode of Seinfeld there is a Superman somewhere… usually in Jerry’s living room.

-More than 2,500 left-handed people are killed each year from using products that are made for right-handed people.

-Pain is measured in units of “dols”. The instrument used to measure pain is a “dolorimeter”.

-David Alan Grier, Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle and John Travolta all turned down the offer to play the role of Bubba from Forrest Gump. Chevy Chase also turned down the role of playing Forrest.

-The name Vanilla comes from the Spanish word “vainilla”, diminutive form of “vaina,” which is in turn derived from Latin word “vagina”.

-The modern bikini was invented by a French designer in 1946. It was named after Bikini Atoll, the site of US nuclear weapon tests a few days earlier in the Marshall Islands, on the reasoning that the burst of excitement it would cause would be like the nuclear device.

-’Fjord’ is the only word in the English language to start with the letters ‘fj’. A fjord is a long, narrow arm of the sea bordered by steep cliffs.

-Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to slow the film down so you could see his moves

I would love to share more with you people, but I have to go play catch with a polar bear. Does anyone have a lefty glove?