Rouse yourselves from your codeine induced stupor! The 71st Rock TV has arrived!

Blowhard political host Saxony Beauregard hosts his program live from the Superhero Convention where Awesome Man prepares to accept the Superhero nomination for President of the Galaxies to face the heavily-favored Evil Party Candidate Admiral Death!

Everybody got that?

The admittedly confounding, convoluted concept aside, this was a chance to have a lot of fun with the coverage of this year’s election while making some goofy superhero jokes. The real challenge in this video was trying to match the pacing and overload of a cable news show while keeping our video coherent. We spent a ton of time in the editing stage with this one, deciding which gags to keep and trying to work out the right graphic look – cluttered but smooth.

Lots of credit to Kevin, who knew exactly what he was going for with this character (could we really have cast anybody else for the role?), and I think Ted did a nice job as the menacing (but specific) Admiral Death.

Favorite moments:
-Awesome Man’s commercial is a definite highlight, especially his “Noooo!” moment.

-Saxony’s interview with Admiral Death really hits on a number of satirical issues we were going after – I think there’s a lot of good writing there.
-Professor Tickles!

Enjoy!

Last night, on my way home from work, I got a call on my cell phone from “UNKNOWN”. My curiosity was piqued as I wondered if it was a pollster calling to allow me to register my complaints about Minneapolis’s sidewalk-replacement division that chose to arbitrarily gut my sidewalks and leave me with a $250 bill.

Alas, while the call was indeed from a pollster, they were curiously unreceptive regarding my complaints. Instead, they seemed to be conducting a push poll for the Minnesota DFL. Without asking for any sort of demographic data, they asked if I agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “Senator Norm Coleman could have done done more to stop metheaphetamine use in Minnesota.”

I laughed out loud and said “Strongly disagree. You’re conducting a push poll here, are you?” The woman abruptly concluded the phone call at that point.

Later that night, Bridgette and I sat down to watch ABC’s broadcast of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” To my increasing amusement, every time this warm-hearted family broadcast faded out, we were treated to an entire break’s worth of belligerantly negative campaign ads. I wondered if these campaigns had bothered to consider what the tone of those ads would feel like against the grain of the Charlie Brown special.

Folks, I like politics. Among other things, I teach a class on politics and current affairs for a living. I read the A section of the newspaper with great interest and enthusiasm. Having said that, next Tuesday can’t come fast enough…

Beware! This blog post is haunted!

Right now, as you read this, ghouls are racing through the internet to torment you! There they go, slipping out your computer’s USB port, through the folds of your clothing, and into your clenched anus!

It is too late now to stop them!

By now, the banshees that ravaged your anal pore have entered your stomach and are gulping down warm stomach acids like it was Dr. Pepper. Feeding off your body’s juices, they soon will creep onward to suck the life-giving oxygen out of your lungs and replace it with pure, toxic radon. Your body will soon belong to the phantoms and will be processed into a canned feast for their hell-beasts.

This is all part of the fun of the witching season that we celebrate as November nears each year. The leaves have fallen from the trees, the sun is slipping further away, and Satan’s shadow-trolls have emerged to terrify your children into a lifetime of brittle emotional detachment.

That’s what you get for visiting the John Larroquette Project. Now, go back to your precious baby-blogs, never to return!

I recently spent a couple hours in my yard on a crisp October morning raking up the autumn leaves and doing a final mowing of my lawn. The air was cool and the skies were a bright blue as I worked outside in my favorite sweatshirt and favored work gloves, raking feverishly like Yosemite Sam on crack. I stuffed my giant black lawn bags to the brim with the colorful leaves, and then sealed them in tight for all eternity. I then brought the heaping bags down into my basement to be catalogued and stored for future study, as I am wont to do.

Then, that very afternoon, the unraked leaves from the Catholic church across the street blew onto my lawn, rendering useless the entireity of my life’s efforts to that point. I have suspicions that this was ordained by the Blessed Virgin herself, since she apparently has magical powers.

Thanks for nothing, wind.

Hey, you ever heard of cats?

I have. I’ve got two of them, and they each crap in a box next to my damn washing machine.

One of my cats is named Ben Franklin. That sick bastard likes to sniff my jello. That ain’t no figure of speech, either. He literally does sniff my jello.

Now Ben Franklin’s got a new idea. At 5:15 in the morning, he enters our bedroom and begins yowling for no reason whatsoever. Trust me, this is exactly as amusing as it sounds.

We try to ignore him so he doesn’t think he runs the house, but let’s face it, cats are arrogant pricks. They think they’re superior to the good Lord himself. (They’re in for a rude awakening when judgement day comes and they find themselves suffering for all eternity in the searing flames of cat hell.)

So there we are, trying to sleep through the piercing cries of our cat in the early morning hours, but he keeps pushing it. He jumps up onto the bed, and reaches over to my wife’s nightstand and starts batting at the lamp, trying to knock it over. Now something must be done, so she smacks him. Unfazed, he bats at the lamp again.

The best part of the story? He’s doing it for no particular reason. When we do wake up, he casually lopes out of the room and retires to his corner of the house to go to sleep for the next 13 hours. Ben Franklin is an ungrateful pig of a cat.

So anyway, long story short, we’ve got a free cat if anybody wants one.

This weekend, the wife and I travelled to Minnesota’s North Shore to attend the wedding of our friends Tami and Allen. While there, we eat food, slept, and went to the restroom in accordance with our bodies’ natural functions.

This image shows my wife and I posed lovingly before the soulless industrial backdrop of Duluth, MN. Founded by French fur traders in the 17th century, Duluth is a mausoleum of smokestacks, lift bridges, and bedraggled college students on shrooms.

Nice town, though.

Here’s a photo from their wedding. You will note that it took place outdoors on the windy shores of Lake Superior on October 18th. If you look closely, you can see the pain across Bridgette’s face as her internal organs shut down one by one until she was finally wheeled off on a dolly by a helpful resort custodian.

These last two photographs show several of the items I found discarded in the parks of Duluth. In the photos, I helpfully point to the refuse to direct your eye. Clearly, some classy individual left a trail of Busch Light and Pall Malls in order for his eager followers to find their way to his lair of rural Midwestern iniquity, undoubtedly located in a nearby American Legion.