Beauty is Imperfection

We love our fans, and we hope our fans still love us after waiting much too long for this, the latest installment of “The Retributioners.”

This is also the long-awaited follow-up to “Facebook Friend Purge,” in which Stephanie finally confronts her erstwhile friend Jessica about a spat they had on somewhat well-known social networking site.

Here we find out that sometimes it’s not good to look past the profile page into the seamy underside of someone’s real life.

This episode guest stars the incredibly funny leading lady and Web star Allison Lane, who worked with Stephanie on The Video Guys.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (API) Facing a massive swine flu pandemic and fears that have raised the World Health Organization’s flu alert to phase “5,” Joe Biden told Americans today that they should avoid getting on airplanes and buses, avoid sneezing, coughing or being around anyone, even family members, and in fact, that Americans should isolate themselves completely from all human contact.

Then he ran away.

“My advice to you in the face of the swine flu epidemic is ‘Run!’” said Biden, “Run like hell,” right before turning heel and bolting away from the group of assembled reporters in the White House Rose Garden.

Veteran reporter Helen Thomas was just about to ask Biden a follow-up question about whether Biden’s “run” strategy contradicted President Obama’s more circumspect “wait and see” approach to the flu pandemic that originated in Mexico, a virus that in the last couple of weeks has spread to major U.S. cities and infected 257 people around the world.

“Mr. Biden could you … wait a minute, where’s he going?” asked Thomas.

CNN reporter Rob Gates specifically wanted to know from Biden whether it was true the pandemic in Mexico had stabilized.

“I figured Biden, with his impeccable international affairs credentials, would give a great answer to that one,” said Gates. “But he just took off faster than a greased pig, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

“That was a good pun,” said CBS News correspondent Laura Winters. “I’m sorry, I’m at a loss here. Biden left. We’re just kind of gawping at each other.”

It wasn’t clear where Biden would run to or what his advice for other Americans was rather than to simply panic and to go wherever the inspiration of pure, cold animal fear took them.

“We all know he hails from Delaware and Pennsylvania and usually takes the train home with his good friend Arlen Specter,” said Winters. “Perhaps Arlen knows where he is. Maybe they are on the train together.”

Specter, who shocked American politics earlier in the week by switching political parties to become a Democrat, said that he indeed often rode home on the Amtrak train with his friend Biden, but not today.

“I asked Joe if he was getting on the train with me, and he said, ‘So long, sucker.’ Then he ran up the apron and jumped down into the tracks, over the switchyards and through a stand of paper birch trees in a straight line headed north. I have no idea where he’s going unless he’s running all the way back to Delaware.”

President Obama tried to throw Biden’s remarks in some relief.

“Look,” said Obama. “We’re not sure exactly what Joe is thinking. Joe is Joe. He says what he says. And he … thinks what he thinks. Obviously, he thinks … we should run. That we all … should run. Run like hell. That is his position. It doesn’t happen to be mine.

“What we know is that the situation in Mexico has stabilized. There is no reason for countries like Egypt to slaughter their pigs. The CDC have so far done their job and found the locus of outbreak. People do not need to curtail their plans or overburden their health care system.”

And Biden?

“Joe will be back,” promised Obama. “He will smile with that big smile. And he will show in that smile the embarrassment and chagrin that we have come to expect as sure as the clock strikes 6 twice a day. We will, all of us, prevail.”

Biden’s wife was asked whether she had heard from her husband yet.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s somewhere, probably in a parking lot, feeling pretty stupid right about now. I’m going to go ahead and make him dinner.

“Is it too cruel to make him sausage?” she cackled. “How about chicken? Or maybe a nice plate of spine.”

What words of wisdom will longtime Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash likely have as American Idol‘s guest mentor next week for rock ‘n’ roll night?

–*”Adam, sing this last note from the diaphragm like you’re dying from an overdose of China White.”

–*”Danny, make sure during your number to jump down off the stage and tackle a member of the audience who’s taking unauthorized pictures, and then thank the promoters for the suck-ass security.”

–*”Danny, if you throw your mic down the right way, it sounds like a gunshot, spooking the audience into fleeing the gunfire, and causing either a riot or multiple trampling deaths. I don’t know if that’s a warning or not.”

–*”Allison, when you’re singing ‘Crazy On You’ by Heart, make sure to stop the song in the middle and say ‘I’m out of here. Fuck you, St. Louis.'”

–*”Scott, when do ‘Blue Suede Shoes,’ don’t show up at Axl’s house drunk thinking you’re going to settle a royalties lawsuit and then start pissing all over your current band members, thinking Axl won’t tell them all later. He will. In a press release.”

–*”Allison, if you’re going to set up studio time, remember it’s $300 an hour, so try not to nod out on OxyContin.”

–*”Adam, you’ve got to come out and attack all the blacks and gays.”

–*”Scott, if Simon says you’re not singing too well, threaten to take Paula Abdul to the pavement.”

–*”Danny, you’re working that dead wife thing a little too hard, dude. Hasn’t anyone else died?”

–*”What the fuck are you all doing here? Don’t you know there’s a swine flu pandemic? I’m getting the fuck out of here.”

(Originally posted Friday, March 20, 2009)

I want to apologize for my lack of blogging lately. I know all 20 of my regular readers must be furious with me, and I certainly hope you found some other worthwhile ways to spend your time, like playing Rock Band or killing your enemies in rival Mexican drug gangs.

My posts will likely continue to be infrequent as there are many other projects pulling at my attention right now, some of them having to do with “The Retributioners” and others having to do with long-neglected creative and domestic work. Stephanie and I are looking forward to a challenging but perhaps very exciting year. We will keep you updated on everything that’s happening with us.

In the meantime, I am still slowly transitioning my blog to this WordPress account.

Some of the things I have been remiss in not commenting on are the continuing financial turmoil, the latest spending package in Congress and the flagrant greed and rapacity of companies that are purloining government money and rewarding themselves for not performing well (I’m looking in your direction, AIG).

Because I regard my blog as mainly comic in nature, I’ve been hesitant to start doing political rants again because 1) I don’t want to be shrill and 2) I do enough journalism elsewhere. However, it probably wouldn’t hurt if I did a send-up of that appalling spending bill at some point, blasting all its horrible earmarks. Yet it’s also important to remember that one of the reasons we vote for our Congressmen is that they go to Washington and grab money for us, setting up these same horrible pork-barrel projects in our backyard that get us work and give us nice, gray, ugly WPA-style buildings to stare at in awe. So, are the American people partly to blame for the spending bill? You betcha.

One of the ways I think we fail to understand our role in government is this way: the government shouldn’t be considered some abstract entity completely alienated from us. Our government is a complex expression of the demands we make on it. When a structure based on human demands reaches a point of too much complexity, it starts to take on what scientists call “an emergent property.” That means it starts acting according to its own rules and own logic. A human body, to give you a tidy analogy, is a complex organism whose desires and wants don’t necessarily reflect the immediate activity of its animal cells and tissues. Yet the activity of the cells are obviously a part of being a human.

So rather than bitch about Congress right now, think to yourself: Would you really be willing to call your Congressman and say: “I don’t want that new job-creating federal works project in my state. I don’t want it even though I know that over the river in New Jersey, there’s a pretty good chance someone like me is foaming at the mouth to take that money himself.”

OK, enough ranting. Here’s a top 10 list of the worst earmarks in the spending bill:

1) $10 million for a plant that makes earwax into a homoerotic sculptures like those figures photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe.

2) $20 million to teach beavers in North Carolina the symbols of North American Sign Language

3) $330,000 for a special dye that turns bags of Heparin anti-coagulant in every American emergency room green on St. Patrick’s Day.

4) $2 billion to completely recreate the island of Manhattan to scale in the South Dakota badlands

5) $500,000 to develop a car that changes colors when the driver is angry

6) $1 million to teach kids in south Texas the oft-needed pantomime of crossing their eyes

7) $4 million to get Angelina Jolie back together with her estranged father John Voight and thus sell millions of magazines and create thousands of jobs

8 ) $2 million to remove tattoos from the spouses of American Idol contestants

9) $1 million to promote the “taste” of American “food” to the Chinese.

10) No more money for 10. Sorry.

(Originally posted Saturday, March 07, 2009)

As the Watchmen campaign continues, Stephanie and were delighted to notice that The Retributioners got a small mention in The New York Observer‘s story about the film’s advertising juggernaut.

The campaign still continues and you can check out the Watchmen-related video tie-ins on the Axis of Comedy Network.

Especially check out Kyle Piccolo: Comic Shop Therapist, which has the main Watchmen references with the embedded clues. Stephanie appears in episode 2.

We make references to the campaign in Episode 13 of The Retributioners: Hippie Freeloader, which you can see at Axis of Comedy, or on our main site.