A Message From Kurt Vonnegut

“I’m thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind finally comes to its senses. Would you support it?”

“Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police of the firemen walking out.”

“Or the college professors.”

“Or the college professors,” I agreed. I shook my head. “No, I don’t think my conscience would let me support a strike like that. When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.”

“I just can’t help thinking what a real shaking up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems…”

44 years ago Mr. Vonnegut essentially predicted the future and agreed that the world is a shitty place without new episodes of The Office. Quoted from Cat's Cradle:

“And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?” I demanded.

“They’d die more like mad dogs, I think – snarling and snapping at each other and biting their own tails.”

I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolations of literature?”

“In one of two ways,” he said, “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”

“Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested.

“No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”

More Mega

Two more videos. The first one is the Follow Me Reprise. It has one of my favorite gags towards the end.



The second one is The Sermon on the Mount.



Next time they'll be blow-up dolls and Dan will be playing the part of an ass.

Jesus Christ MegaStar - The Video (Parts 1 and 2)

Well...I haven't done any original content for this site in some time and figured I should get on that. I will be uploading a series of 19 videos that make-up Jesus Christ MegaStar...with commentary. Those of you that have been coming to this site for a while are likely familiar with Jesus Christ MegaStar. I've blogged about it several times, even mentioning it in one of my first posts. I talked about the famous blow-up doll prop here and gave a bigger picture of the show here.

Well...Guam sent me a DVD of the show and I decided I needed to share it, despite how bad it is now. The idea is still fantastic, and we're talking about rewriting it now that we're, you know, good writers, but, man...there was some sloppy parts in the original show. Which is fine, because we went from concept to final product in one semester; not bad for a couple of college kids.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure this recording took place during our test performance. The show is incredibly insulting but it has an overall message of redemption and salvation (although we need to bring that out more in the rewrite). For the first show, we essentially invited all of our Christian and Jewish friends to see how many of them walked out. Ironically, the only person that left was PJ, our cameraman, as you can tell by the fact that the camera eventually stops moving. Everyone else had a good time.

From what I understand this show could be performed twice this year, once at Improv Boston and once at some college somewhere.

Well, at any rate, here's the opening:

As I describe in the commentary we advertised the show as this huge event. Then we informed the audience that I'd be playing all parts, the orchestra was replaced with a keyboardist, and we started ten minutes late.

And here's the opening number:

When I finished that song there was a sea of shocked faces in the audience. Pat's line was crucial to let people know that, yes, we meant to make it offensive and, no, we don't support those views.

Enjoy! More coming! Should I also post the versions without commentary?