Break a Leg

Happy Jenday, everybody.

Wow...it took me three tries to type that line correctly...

Yep, I"m back from my week-long sojourn into the Land of Doing Nothing Very Much At All, which is technically a misnomer.  Normally, when I think of vacation I associate the word with relaxing and doing things that require very little effort or at least very little motivation.  Of course, one can get into a whole complexity of activities without needing much motivation.

Our vacation started around 3am on the 17th when we headed down to San Diego: four guys and three cars all loaded down with stuff (the cars, not the guys: we didn't get loaded until later).  We arrived noonish, said our hellos, and started the afternoon off with a dip in the pool.  The itinerary was simple: go to the firing range and play with guns, then come back and have a bachelor party.  I find that the simplest plans are the ones least likely to fail.  So about twelve of us piled up into cars and headed for the range.

Now, I have never really fired a handgun before.  Sure I fired rifles in the Army, and grew up with plastic pellet shooters and even paint ball guns, but never a real, honest to God, fits-in-one-hand bullet-spitter.  It's a little daunting at first.  That is: until you start hitting your targets.  Then some ancient human instinct arises from the depths of wherever it is stored and says "Yes. Hunt. Live."  It tried several different kinds of guns that day, from 22s to 45s, even a big ol' .357 like Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry.  And no, I did not ask the target if it felt lucky.  It's an inanimate object.  It has no consciousness and one job: to be shot at.  Even if it did have feelings, I doubt one of them would be luck.  I'd say my favorite for the day, though, was the Rueger.  I'm not talk about the old German style they used in WWII, when they would line up several Jews and see how many they could kill with one bullet.  No, this is a newer sleeker Rueger with a nice smooth action that allowed me to hit the same place time and again.  It was sweet.  But as fun as all that was, it was hot and we were getting thirsty.  So back to Mikey's for celebration.

The rest of the night went as you would pretty much expect.  There were strippers and they were totally uninteresting, which is my experience with strippers.  Not that I have a lot of experience with strippers!  Not at all!  No sirreebob.  No strippers here.  In fact...I was practically forced to watch this atrocious display of female objectification.  It's horrible what those poor girls will due for a few measly one-dollar bills.  Especially when you can only get 20s out of the ATM.

Anyway, the rest of the week was much better.  We rebuilt a fence.  We swam in the pool.  We bought pirate floating devices with squirt guns built in and spent hours just laughing and spraying each other with water from a range of about ten feet. We went to a bar in our kilts (those of us who own kilts).  One day when we were out for lunch in Coronado we saw a hotel across the bay explode because of a natural gas leak. It didn't fall down, but it pretty much took out four floors.  The added bonus here was that the pizza place we were sitting in at the time had really cute waitresses wearing tight black shirts that had written on them, emblazoned across their chests in white lettering, the words "Hot Pie".  It became a catch phrase for the rest of our vacation.  And last Jenday we went out in my friend's 25ft boat to do a little fishing.  We didn't really catch anything, but that's why they call it "fishing" and not "catching".  All in all: a good week; a manly week.  In fact...looking back over all of this: guns, construction, beer, strippers, fishing...I don't think I've ever had a more masculine week.

But hey!  We still weren't done!  We still had War to attend to!  This is usually four days of non-stop fun-filled chaos.  But then it started to rain.  Fortunately, I had purchased an 8'x12' awning along with my new canvas tent, but of which were supposedly water resistant.  Whether or not that was true I was about to find out real quick.  Turned out it was true. Yay!  I didn't really doubt that it was, but I just wanted to build some suspense for you there.  Also, we were camping with some friends that have a huge canvas pavillion which we all ended up hanging out under, either playing games or, as on the last night: gathering around the fire and raising our voices in song.  All in all it was largely devoid of crazy, though there was a few ample samplings of debauchery to be had by all.

This War did seem less eventful than Wars past, and I'd like to say it was because of the rain.  But I fear that part of it comes from the fact that I'm getting older, which means I'm less likey to do stupid things ( the emphasis being on the less).  It could also be that the people I usually cause chaos with either weren't there or were occupied by other things.  Fun is always easier to be had when you have somebody to help share the blame.

Hey guys,

Justin here.  So better late then never, but the latest conversation titled "C#&k Challenge" is up and ready for your sweet viewing pleasure.  With a touch of forgiveness, a tad of betrayal and a hint of insanity, this conversation has it all.  And not to mention a David Penn fighting desperately to hold on to his sanity.  So please, enjoy "C#&k Challenge"!.

Oh and for those of you wondering, it's not Cook Challenge. (I would make a pie, a sweet, sweet sour cream, chicken pie) 

And don't forget to rate and comment us on the YouTubes.

Thanks guys!

-Justin

P.S. You guys see the new Weezer video, Pork and Beans? It fracken rocks! Check it out if you're so inclined. 

So there's this dude at NYU named Clay Shirky, who's talking all about this idea he calls cognitive surplus. It involves us all being underachieving morons because we watch TV and play video games all the time. I'm totally on board with it.

You should read the whole article, it's pretty interesting; I mean not now, you're reading this, and it's guaranteed to be marginally interesting just by lightly brushing concepts with the original article. The basic concept is that we all have untapped cognitive capability (surplus, get it?)  that could be put to use collectively, sort of a human version of SETI@Home or something.

Shirky thinks we should be making 2,000 more Wikipedias every year while we watch TV or whatever, which I can't really make sense out of what we'd do with… well, with all 2000 of them. We just need one. I may need to go back and read the article.

The other point he makes is how he wasn't blogging back in the 60s when he was watching Gilligan's Island, then it's like he's crazy or something because he remembers that blogging didn't exist back then. He really needs an editor to go through and fix that stuff before it gets printed, unless it's sort of a stream-of-consciousness writing style that isn't quite hitting on all cylinders.

He has some valid points though, and some truly dangerous ideas. He mentions "It's better to do something than to do nothing," then says how doing lolcats is doing something! We don't need to encourage these people, lolcats are just done, I mean just... done. Doing It Wrong is where we really need to be pushing the kids these days, it's more intelligent and less annoying.

Here's where I think it really hit home for me though: he says in order to really make a difference, we don't even have to really change much of anything at all. How's that for an easy sell? If 100% of the population watched just 1% less TV (or smoked 1% less dope or whatever) and did something even remotely contributory to society (yes, even lolcats), then we would have enough surplus back in the system to produce 100 more Wikipedias. Again, not on board with that, but maybe we could all turn that energy towards something not 100% redundant?

Like this blog posting here: it probably ranks somewhere below lolcats in usefulness to your life right now, but I have kept the TV off while typing it, then posted it on the web for all the world to see. Fairly often recently Yuri drags me out of my house and makes me perform like a (poorly) trained monkey and then forces Dashiell and Justin to piece it all together into something consumable by the world at large. Even the occasional random Twitter update I do is somehow contributing to at least getting me used to having more cognitive surplus, and keeping my ass off the couch and my eyes off the TV.

Well, I write these columns sitting on the couch, but you know what I mean.

And then the video gets posted and the fans watch, and comment, and rate, and share, and favorite, and playlist, and the whole wheel keeps turning around. We’re not making Wikipedias yet, but we're at least acclimatizing ourselves to a new attention paradigm: one that involves not just media consumption, but media consumption followed by contribution and participation. Media regurgitation.

I think Shirky's right when he says that this is a shift "more analogous to the industrial revolution than to flagpole-sitting." I don't think anyone could have predicted this Information Revolution when the internet first lit up. Even if we at Break A Leg aren't writing a new Wikipedia just yet, we have at least as much to be proud of as lolcats. We don't quite have a critical mass of people who agree with that though, so keep telling your friends to watch the show.

Hey, all!

So, we've been getting a large amount of, "WHERE ARE THE NEXT EPISODES" comments on YouTube and on our site, so I wanted to write a quick blog telling you what's going on.

The next episode of Break a Leg is roughly a little more than a month away. We're going to reveal the official date in a teaser we're making for it that should be out not next week but the week after that.

Why, you ask, why is it taking so long?

Because this is the grandest episode of Break a Leg ever. Seriously. It's damn near epic. For all intents and purposes, we should be billing this as Break a Leg: The Movie. But we aren't, because it isn't, but it should be. Our sets are amazing, the scale of things is far bigger than it has been before, a huge plot point is revealed, there's action, there's drama, there's death, there's love -- it has everything you've ever wanted from Break a Leg. It's going to be amazing.

Did I sufficiently hype it? I hope so. Because I'm excited to see it myself.

Also, while shooting it, we've: almost gotten arrested, went with almost no sleep, had to deal with dozens of children dressed very strangely, came into contact with American relics like the wagon from Gone with the Wind or a signed picture of Ronald Reagan, almost impaled Dashiell on a sword (well, that was while shooting Jen-Avenged, but so worth re-mentioning), and drank, cumulatively, around 17,000 energy drinks.

We also put someone in a black trash bag.

And smuggled footage passed park rangers.

And were asked, "Is that a real body in that body bag?"

So, what I'm saying is, please be patient -- this will be the coolest episode you guys have seen and it will be very, very worth it. This I swear. This we all swear. And we'll have the official date out next, next monday along with some footage of the episode.

Excited? I hope so. So, start coming back, everyone! Talk on the boards, talk in the blogs, it's just a few weeks away!

Oh, also, the Mint thank you video really is coming. I swear. We're making it.

Oh, and one last thing -- I'm still the Head Writer for that network show, MOJO's The Circuit. It's fun and I've gotten comments like, "I can totally tell it's your style of writing." So, go see my style of writing on a network website and if you do, leave a comment and mention you're a Break a Leg fan! You gots to represent!

Thanks, guys!

-Yuri 

Hey all,

The new conversation is out --

Francesca Scala tells Jimmy Scotch about her very strange past and Jimmy tells her about his own plans -- plans to free the children from the cruel rule of Adult Sized Gary Coleman.

See another very strange conversation from Break a Leg on either YouTube (where, as per usual we ask you to rate, comment, subscribe and favorite) or right here on the site, by clicking Episodes.

Aside from that, I wanted to apologize for being a little out of the ball game lately -- the guys and I are desperately working on finishing the most epic, coolest episode of Break a Leg we've ever shot. So many fun things happen, so many great locations -- it's almost turning out to be like Break a Leg, The Movie.  

In fact, tomorrow, I'm going to try and officially announce the release date for Episodes 10-15, so, stay tuned!

Thanks, guys!

-Yuri