Tina Fey Brings Bossypants Tour to Google

in Books, Comedy | April 26th, 2011

A day after Pres­i­dent Oba­ma con­duct­ed his much pub­li­cized town hall meet­ing at Face­book, Tina Fey, the star of 30 Rock and the author of the new book Bossy­pants, head­ed to Google, just a few miles down the road.

Last May, Googlers had their riotous romp with Conan O’Brien. Now they get their 60 min­utes with anoth­er come­di­an who came of age on NBC. The con­ver­sa­tion led by Eric Schmidt teach­es you the secrets of improv, how to take pic­tures like a mod­el, the pros & cons of goof­ing on Sarah Palin, and why male and female com­e­dy writ­ers dif­fer in fun­da­men­tal­ly odd ways. Tina Fey is fun­ny. But some­times fun­nier is watch­ing Schmidt try­ing to keep the con­ver­sa­tion from going off the rails. Scroll to the 8:20 mark, and you’ll see what I mean.

Just an fyi: Tina Fey actu­al­ly nar­rates the audio­book ver­sion of Bossy­pants, and you can snag it for free through this Audible.com deal. Details here.

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Updated Book Titles: Less Pretentious, More Accurate

in Comedy, Literature | April 11th, 2011

Over at OhNoThey­Did­n’t, you can find some alter­na­tive titles for some of the most famous books ever writ­ten — or, in ONDT’s own words, titles that are “more accu­rate and less pre­ten­tious” than the orig­i­nals.

Before click­ing over to the (slight­ly NFSW) whole col­lec­tion, test your high/low cul­tur­al agili­ty by try­ing to guess a few orig­i­nals from their updates:

1. My Dad is Cool­er Than Your Dad

2. Emo­tions Are For Poor Peo­ple

3. Shake­speare Minus the Good Writ­ing

4. Lik­able Rapists

5. White Peo­ple Ruin Every­thing

If you got all five right, nay, if you got any right, we’re count­ing on you for the Clue­less sequel.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

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Rachmaninov Had Big Hands

in Comedy, Music | March 15th, 2011

Igudes­man & Joo are a musical/comedy duo per­form­ing in the US and Cana­da this spring. This clip, “Rach­mani­noff Had Big Hands,” starts out a lit­tle slow­ly but gets enter­tain­ing fair­ly quick­ly. If you like com­bin­ing com­e­dy and clas­si­cal music, then don’t miss anoth­er pro­gram recent­ly high­light­ed on Open Cul­ture: Bill Bai­ley’s Remark­able Guide to the Orches­tra.

Thanks to Sara for send­ing this our way…

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Jon Stewart: Teachers Have it Too Good (Wink)

in Comedy, Current Affairs, Economics | March 4th, 2011

Jon Stew­art had to do it. He had to con­nect the dots. We’re going after the pub­lic ser­vants try­ing to do some good. But how about the non-con­tribut­ing bankers who kept their per­son­al gravy train rolling at tax­pay­er expense? Or the hedge fund man­agers who pay dra­mat­i­cal­ly low­er tax­es than almost any­one read­ing this site? 15%?? And let’s not for­get that some of our our largest cor­po­ra­tions – includ­ing GE and Exxon — have recent­ly paid no US income tax? Ulti­mate­ly, this all gets down to who funds your next elec­tion. Banks and cor­po­ra­tions do. Kids and pub­lic ser­vants don’t. David Brooks makes that point rather well. I’m all for sac­ri­fice, but let’s make it fair and shared. Or is that idea too “social­ist” (or what we quaint­ly used to call “demo­c­ra­t­ic”)?

Relat­ed Note:

Michael Moore Tells Wis­con­sin Teach­ers “Amer­i­ca is NOT Broke”

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Spelling Counts…

in Comedy, English Language | March 4th, 2011

Today is Nation­al Gram­mar Day, and maybe it’s a stretch to lump spelling under gram­mar, but it’s casu­al Fri­day here on OC. So we leave you with this. Have a great week­end..

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Alan Davies: How Long is a Piece of String?

in Comedy, Math, Video - Science | February 28th, 2011

Yes­ter­day’s lack­lus­ter Acad­e­my Awards cer­e­mo­ny may have afford­ed you some unex­pect­ed time for con­tem­plat­ing life’s more urgent ques­tions, such as the one British come­di­an Alan Davies pur­sues above:  How long is a piece of string? Watch Davies, who is also a fre­quent pan­elist on the pop­u­lar Stephen Fry-host­ed quiz show Quite Inter­est­ing, explore the rid­dle’s philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions and inevitable con­nec­tion to string the­o­ry with the help of physics, quan­tum mechan­ics, and final­ly a vis­it with math­e­mati­cian Mar­cus de Sautoy. Fans of the Davies/du Sautoy inter­ac­tion may also want to check out Du Sautoy’s TED talk on Sym­me­try, as well as the debates in that video’s com­ments sec­tion. More docs can be found in our col­lec­tion of 200+ Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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Watch Ducked and Covered: A Survival Guide to the Post Apocalypse (A Little NSFW)

in Comedy | February 4th, 2011

What to do after the Apoc­a­lypse? This lit­tle pub­lic infor­ma­tion film was made (wink, wink) by the “Aus­tralian Board of Civ­il Defence” dur­ing the ear­ly 1980s. Found some­where in an old uni­ver­si­ty archive, the film, now new­ly dust­ed off, is being shown for the first time. Note: It’s a tad unsafe for work…

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duck and Cov­er: The 1950s Film That Taught Mil­lions of School­child­ren How to Sur­vive a Nuclear Bomb

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

Hiroshi­ma After the Atom­ic Bomb in 360 Degrees

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Don’t You Eva Interrupt Me While I’m Reading a Book!

in Books, Comedy, Random | January 26th, 2011

This is for every read­er out there who gets the basic sen­ti­ment. A bit of ran­dom silli­ness, cour­tesy of YouTu­ber Julian Smith.

via The New York­er

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