Archive | Michael Showalter

So I’m backlogged, blogpost-wise, and don’t know whether to tell you first about the Ustream show last week or about News Distillery which is the live show I was a part of or about other stuff. Hm. Hmmmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Still undecided.

I’ll just tell you first about last week’s Ustream show. It was super duper fun and super duper is kind of of one of those phrases you need to watch out for because you start saying “super duper” as a joke and then before long you’re saying it in earnest and possibly adding “pooper scooper” on the end of it. A similar thing happened to both my sister and me with “okey dokey” (followed by either “smokey” or “salmanokey”). Luckily we each caught it early. My friend Bret once took pains to strike “easy peasy Japanesey” from his speech. So what I’m saying is this: be careful with super duper because a little goes a long way. That said, the show was super duper fun and here’s the first part and I’m not quite sure the best way to make the episodes available to you guys. I could put them right here or I could link them or I could just tweet that they’re available on the Ustream page itself. So many options.

And then there are the highlight videos too, which I could post here, like when Showalter did the wavey pencil dance or Dustin arrived dressed as “the future of TV” which is funny because my first thought when I saw him was that he’d come from some sort of Wizard of Oz costume party. Or the second fan phone call with Trapp, which was super duper (see, there it is again) awesome. Ugh, options!

Basically I feel like all these amazing moments and clips are coming from the shows and yet I’m not utilizing them correctly or pasting them to my sandwich board and ringing a bell while asking people if they have a moment to spare for being my best friend. Can we talk about that for a second? I pass by people in the street who want to know if I have a moment to spare for various causes which I actually do care about or sympathize with however I’m often in a rush or don’t want to talk to a 12 year old with a clipboard so I just keep walking and yet worry that because I’ve effectively said no, I do not having a moment to protect children from predators or protect animals from abuse or protect passersby from street solicitation it’s as if I disagree with these causes. And yet I don’t. I just don’t have time to talk to YOU about them. You know? Also, I’m very selfish and a world-class asshole. Seriously, you could travel the world meeting the finest assholes the world has to offer and you would come back to me and be like, You, you are a total asshole unlike any other and I would just smile, because it’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.

But back to options, vis a vis options to put videos on this blog. The funny thing is that I love options however too many of them paralyze me. Options are my hamartia. Or my Achilles heel. Or my siren. Could someone please figure out what the best metaphor is and just write it for me? I’m lazy and kind of hot. Seriously, why is it hot all of a sudden? I don’t mean to be so cranky but do you have to sit there? No, I’m not sitting there RIGHT NOW but I was planning on possibly sitting there later and… okay you know what… I can’t do this right now. Not with you sitting there. Not with a belly full of Brussels sprouts.

If I were to marry a cruciferous vegetable it’d probably be the Brussels sprout, at least that’s how I feel today and how I’ve been feeling lately, however I’m not ready to stand before God and make that kind of promise. Frankly I kind of like things the way they are right now and don’t see why I have to have some silly piece of paper to make the love between me and Brussels sprouts official. Just because my last name is Rosen, not Sprouts, does that mean I love them any less? Just because my half human, half sprout children will have the hyphenated name Rosen-Sprouts, does that make their existence any less legitimate? Just because we aren’t registered at Crate & Barrel and we aren’t marching/rolling down the aisle, does that mean our union is any less real? I’m so Goddamn sick of the nonstop message that unless you’re married to a Brussels Sprout you you aren’t truly standing shoulder to leaf with your partner. And if I have to see another movie where Julia Roberts runs from a Brussels Sprout or Renee Zellweger meets-cute a Brussels Sprout and or oh look, it’s Mark Ruffalo as an underdog who’s also a Brussels Sprout or hey, is that Amy Adams or Isla Fisher acting coquettish opposite a Brussels sprout well I just might puke. You know what, Hollywood, and Belgium, I’m not playing. And neither are my vegetables.

Phew. Felt good to get that off my chest.

And you might find the following hard to believe, but I wasn’t intending to hold forth on my forbidden love in this post. I was going to instead tell you all about the nutty twists and turns, most of them inside my brain, that happened before last week’s show. But now I’m too tired. Basically it boils down to this: because I wear all the hats on my show, sometimes literally, I have trouble sometimes figuring out how to block out the show in terms of when to put guests and when to just talk to you guys alone and when to have Dustin there and when to do the phone interview versus the guest interview and how long each thing should last and whether I should have the guest arrive before I start the show and if so should he/she be sitting off camera or in the background or should I just let the guest in while the show is already going? And let’s say I know that Ustream is going to be putting the show on their front page for a period of time and so I know new sets of eyeballs (preferably in their sockets) will be on the show and I know when that period of time is, should I be getting naked right when they put me on the front page or near the end of the allotted time? Just kidding. There’s no nakedness, you guys! But you get what I’m saying. So basically all this crap is sitting in my already filled-to-the-brim-with-whatnot-and-bric-a-brac-and-Hummels-and-homemade-jam head and add fatigue to it, as was the case last week and I’m unable to figure anything out, resulting in my asking what the drummer of my band used to refer to as “Jesus questions” as in “only Jesus knows the answer to them.” Somehow I doubt even Jesus knows what time my guests should be arriving. If you really want to watch me spin in place, catch me in the midst of a colossal indecision surfeit and send me a text asking me if I want to go to dinner the next day. My inability to figure things out in the present coupled with my inability to figure things out in the future will cause me to be unable to do anything other than stare at my phone. Sometimes I drool.

What was my point though? I don’t really know. I feel like I need some kind of brain enema or brain emetic which is ironic since many people would think this blog and my twitter stream serves that purpose but it doesn’t and my brain feels filled with residue that’s preventing me from expressing myself in any sort of linear fashion.

See what I  mean?

In other news, my parents joined Twitter! Except I think it’s really my dad, not my mom, tweeting as @Alisonsparents. Just like it’s more my mom than my dad typing as Alisonsdad on Ustream. Though often it’s the two of them sitting there at the computer together. It’s all very confusing.

Oh and also, also, I’ll be on The 404 on Friday. And Red Eye on Thursday night. And my Ustream show featuring Myq Kaplan and more is Wednesday night. Please watch and RSVP and tell your friends or I’ll be forced to talk more about vegetables and no one wants that.