Comedy Blog

I'm blogging news stories for Suicide Girls using the alias of TheCoolerKing.

Feel free to check them out.

http://suicidegirls.com/members/TheCoolerKing/news/

You like to laugh, right? Well then put yourself in a situation where that may happen.

May.

9:58 AM - 2 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Eating

The drive thru at McDonald's today was so unbearably slow that I'm convinced I stumbled upon one of those situations where robbers broke in, bound and gagged the staff, then stashed them under the counters. Only, in this case, they then decided to actually give it a go and try serving food to the public.

I realize it's obnoxious to criticize people with minimum wage jobs, but, again, I don't think this was them. This was the work of violent robbers.

Violent, incredibly slow moving, robbers...

8:46 PM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

An Interview

The earlier referenced interview with Seth Rogen that I did for Tokion magazine. Cut and pasted from Tokion.com.


At the ripe old age of 24 Seth Rogen has already acted, written and been a producer on the box office smash films The 40 Year Old Virgin and Anchorman, as well as for beloved television shows such as Freaks and Geeks, Undeclared and Da Ali G Show. So for the sake of the rest of us, let's hope he's a crappy dancer. Having recently wrapped production on Knocked Up, another collaboration with (Freaks and Geeks and 40 Year Old Virgin director) Judd Apatow, Rogen took some time to chill on his couch and share insights on why even an incredibly successful funny guy doesn't always get the girl.

I know you started out as a stand-up comic.
SR… I started when I was 13 years old.

I didn't make my own bed at the age of 13.
I didn't make my own bed, but I could write really stupid jokes about my grandparents and about getting boners for the first time. I was very naïve. I probably didn't even understand the ramifications of what I was doing. But I was a big fan of comedy, and I was not good at anything else at all. I very quickly realized that I should focus on it if I didn't want to live at my parents' house all my life.

Sticking with the established John Hughes stereotypes, what type of kid were you in high school? Were you popular?
I wasn't popular by any means. I was one of those guys that was friends with everybody. I went to parties, but didn't get any girls whatsoever.

And did that change drastically with the addition of stand-up to your repertoire?
Not at all. Stand-up does not help you get chicks, for anyone that wants to know. Funny is not sexy. Everyone throws that out there. 'Every beautiful girl goes for the funny guy.' But they mean someone who's funny for a handsome guy.

Like, John Stamos funny…
Exactly. They don't want actual funny guys. I don't think Fatty Arbuckle got really hot chicks.

I love the timeliness of that reference. Ripped from the headlines… So you auditioned for Freaks and Geeks? How did that come about?
I got an agent through doing standup comedy. I was approaching the end of high school, and it was clear I wasn't getting into any real college or anything. I had to start making money somehow. I guess my plan was to do a sitcom. So I auditioned, and I remember the first audition I went on was for Freaks and Geeks.

That is unbelievable.
And I had no concept of how good it was. I didn't even want to do anything that good. I just wanted to make some cash.

Do you have any vivid memories of that audition?
I 100% remember it. Judd Apatow was there. And I remember thinking I did pretty good. They wrote pretty naturally – him and Paul Feig – and they said you could be open with the lines and improvise a bit, and I remember they laughed a lot.

And from that, I discovered recently, you wrote briefly for Da Ali G Show?
That happened more recently, like two years ago. It was just one of those weird rare things… The perfect storm of comedic opportunity. I was a huge fan of his. I was obsessed with the first season—I wrote for the second season—and remember watching it, feeling like this was new comedy, a new type of way to be funny. And it just so happened that Judd Apatow and him have the same manager, and word went through the grapevine that (Sacha Baron Cohen) was looking for new writers. And me and my writing partner Evan Goldberg got to go in and meet with him. It was the craziest, awesomest job ever.

Were you nervous going in, knowing you were so close to a dream job?
I actually said no at first. My first instinct was, 'That's not going to happen. I'm not smart enough to write that show.' And it was really hard. I remember thinking, 'We really have to think harder on this one than we normally do. We can't just coast through this. We have to trick people that are actually smart.'

Watching (Da Ali G Show), at times you get a feeling of awkwardness. Is there anything you wrote or witnessed on the show that got too intense, and you thought, 'This is going to explode?'
Yeah, we wrote this spring break bit, where they get frat boys to take their pants off, and then they tell them they're on Gay TV. That was the pitch we actually got the job with. And that got pretty intense. It gets physical. But God bless Sacha Baron Cohen. He's the funniest man I've ever met, and he's got the biggest balls in comedy.

Did you have a crack security staff on hand? How did you keep it from escalating?
Yeah, we had security. But you can't have too much security or it would look fake. No one's really going to beat you up on camera.

Hopefully.
I guess that's the hope. You'd be surprised by how close people get to beating you up on camera. You could see that was what excited him – and us – when we started thinking, someone might kill us for doing something like this. That's when we knew it was truly a very funny idea. I mean…he did it. I did nothing. So it was easy for us to come up with things. But we'd be sitting there saying, 'You're going to get fucking killed, man.'

Have you worked at all on the new Borat film?
I did work on it, actually, just for a few weeks. It's the funniest movie I've ever seen in my life. I'm not building it up to any false degree. It's the funniest movie ever made.

Wow, that's high praise.
Sacha may actually get killed doing this stuff one day. You got to give it to him. There's no competition whatsoever.

It does seem like a new form of comedy. I'm almost surprised at the lack of copycat efforts.
It's really hard. I don't think people understand how much of it is scripted. You can't just talk to people and subtly make fun of them and hope it's funny. A huge amount of thought goes into the structure, and exactly what it is you're commenting on. And not everyone's as funny as Sacha. It's way harder to do than it looks. I was shocked at how much you can lead people into saying what you want them to say, in order for a written joke to work. If you do it properly and the person's the right type of person, you can pretty much write their half of the conversation leading up to the desired punch line. That's what was most shocking.

With 40 Year Old Virgin I hear you took advantage of knowing it had an R-rating to improvise ridiculously vulgar stuff. Any gems that didn't even make the DVD that you'd like to share?
There was that Tijuana bit about the woman fucking the horse, where I described a woman drinking a bottle of Jack Daniel's with her vagina. I thought that was very funny as well.

What was the rationale for cutting that?
I honestly think I couldn't get through it without making myself laugh. What I thought was funny was, I said, 'One gulp!' And the big line was, 'And she didn't even seem drunk afterwards.'

So what's it like going from being a funny supporting guy in a show that gets acclaim to one of the stars of a legit blockbuster movie?
Good. The tangible thing I saw from it was this movie Super Bad that Evan and I wrote in high school. We tried to sell it eight years ago, and no one wanted it. And now, in four weeks, we're going into production with Sony producing it for way more money than you would ever need to make a movie. I'm very confident it wouldn't have happened if 40 Year Old Virgin hadn't been commercially successful.

What about just dealing with people on the street?
Well… A) I don't leave my apartment very much. That takes away 90% of what it would be. B) I look very different than I do in The 40 Year Old Virgin. I don't have tattoos, and I wear glasses. And I generally have a very unfriendly demeanor.

I imagine that would help.
Every once in awhile, though, it's nice when people come up to you and tell you you're good at your job.

You have Knocked Up coming up?
We just finished shooting it like two weeks ago.

A young guy finds out he impregnated a one-night-stand. How did that come about? Is that something that came from experience? That's a generally terrifying prospect…
Everyone's had that close call. I mean, I'm not the most responsible guy, and I probably imbibe more intoxicants than I should. I'm just not in any position to impregnate anybody. I think Judd saw my interactions with his own kids, and noticed how funny and awkward they were. Because I'm just the type of person that doesn't like kids very much. They don't like me, and it's very awkward. And part of the joke is, 'What if he had kids?' And I think part of it is from his own experience too.

Do you find—being more high profile—that you do better with the ladies now?
I have a girlfriend. Maybe if I tried to talk to other girls…

Speaking of Apatow, he's been very supportive of you. At some point, do you feel pressure, being his chosen one?
I don't know. It's always nice working with your friends. I see no pressure. If we fail, we fail together. We've failed before. We know we can survive that. No, I think it's great. I just have more fun working with him than with anyone else I've worked with as a director. It's the most free experience you can possibly have. You can say whatever the hell you want, and he'll only give you more good ideas of what to say. We just know each other really well, so it just makes for a very honest rapport when it comes to our work, and I think that's what makes the best product, ultimately.

Besides Knocked Up, is there anything else coming up that you want to talk about?
I don't know. I feel I need to pump Super Bad.

So tell us some more…
It's about guys in high school. The main character is named Seth, which is the most ridiculously self-indulgent thing for a 24 year old ever to do. We actually started writing this in high school, and it was originally meant for me to be in. But it's taken so long to get made that I've gotten way too old to play the part that I wrote for myself. I play a cop. I'm going to have a moustache.

Are you going to have the tight outfit, the doughnut, the moustache, the mirror glasses?
That's the thing: cops are such iconic movie figures. Can you have two cops and not have one with a moustache?

I don't know. Maybe a Van Dyke?
Ah! A Chester A. Arthur, perhaps?

With a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what either of those looks like. Last question. I know you're a big comic book fan. So what's the best superhero movie of all time? Or top three?
The Crow. That's one of the best superhero movies ever made. They make so few good superhero movies. I think the Blade movie is a very good adaptation of the comic book. It's the only R-rated superhero movie made to date.

And the third?
I'm going to say the original Dolph Lundgren Punisher. Not the Thomas Jane, John Travolta one. Someone actually made a film worse than the Dolph Lundgren 1987 Punisher movie.

8:02 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

A Materialistic List

The best presents I received for Christmas.

- cowboy shirt

- kickass, newly re-issued yet classically cool, Ray-Ban Wayfarers

- Chuck Klosterman IV

- a fake book with a flask hidden in it.

- an autographed photo of Ken Norton jabbing Larry Holmes during their memorable 15 round war for the heavyweight title.

- Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters 1917 - 1961

- The Absolute Sandman - Volume 1

- an external hard drive

- a frosted glass from the long dead North Jersey amusement atttraction, The Gingerbread Castle. Humpty Dumpty is on it, on the wall, with no idea of what's about to befall him.

- a wind-up pocket watch that, apparently, I will not be winding.

6:06 PM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

You show me a televison series better than The Wire...

And I'll show you an idiot who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Not you, just some guy I know.

The two events are actually unrelated.

I just figured that if you took the time to search for this fictional "holy grail" of a TV show and were somehow successful, the least I could do is introduce you to a friend of mine.

10:05 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

TOKION magazine

The new issue features my interview with Seth Rogen the writer/actor/bigshot from such things as 40 Year Old Virgin and... other things.

My friend Ruben Fleischer did the photos.

Go get it.

I'm not sure the issue number, but you'll know it cause it's the one on newsstands now with my interview in it.

I don't use Myspace's CURRENTLY READING feature but if I did I'd most likely mention a certain magazine on newsstands now...





...that's right, Soap Opera Digest!

8:29 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Starface

How to Tell You're a Tabloid Junkie

Do you spend your time late-night Web surfing? Trivia spewing? "What if" theorizing? If you're worried, check this list.

Writer and comedian Kevin Seccia lets you know if you've gone too far.

1. "You not only wonder where Suri Cruise is, or if she is, you wonder what she's like and if she'd like you! What brand of strained peas she might enjoy and whether you'd enjoy them too! Then you probably go back to wondering if she exists."

2. "In anticipation of the next TomKat or Brangelina, you devote countless hours to the construction of obnoxious nicknames for possible future celebrity couplings. ShyLohanMalan (Lindsay and M. Night), RatShatner (Brett and Captain Kirk), Deaderline (K-Fed and the front of a truck going 90)."

3. "You still have a hard time talking about exactly what went wrong with Brad and Jen. I mean...what happened! Am I right? What hope do any of us have if those two can't keep it together?"

4. "You heard about Mel Gibson's latest meltdown...on your police scanner...while driving five cars behind him, snapping high-res photos of him for your blog, which, I'm guessing is a little about Mel and a lot about bad writing."

5. "After perusing her latest antics (ignorance, idiocy, sloth-like mutterings, hit and runs, etc.), you wonder aloud about whether Paris Hilton is worse than cancer. Anyone can wonder, but the 'wonderin' aloud' is what sets you apart. Sure, cancer's a stretch, but, she's certainly worse than everyday illnesses...flus, colds and their ilk. What about common aches and pains? She's totally worse than them. I'd say she's worse than paper cuts, most STDs, a gunshot blast to a fleshy body part and worse than minor cancers that people eventually end up besting."

6. "You've shot heroin into every part of your body, twice...once during your estranged son's little league game...that you were 'sorta' coaching, although, you claim you don't actually remember agreeing to do it. Wait-

That last one might be for an actual junkie. Sorry."


Kevin Seccia is a standup comedian currently writing for the comedy/game show "Starface" which can be seen Tuesday-Saturday, 6:30 p.m. PT/9:30 p.m. ET on GSN.

As told to Deborah Netburn, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

1:06 AM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

If I had to pinpoint it...

I realized the guy on line in front of me at the dry cleaners and I never would've been best friends, under any circumstances, when he amended his answer to the question "What color is the jacket?" from his original "beige" to a hurried utterance of "camel."

I mean, that jacket was CLEARLY "butter-cream."

12:34 PM - 2 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Let the record show...

I hesitated not a single second in declaring the Nick Cave penned film, "The Proposition" to be the greatest movie of all time. Yes, I know "all time" isn't over yet. Doesn't matter. It is phenomenal.



The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is up there as well.

4:34 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Obnoxious commentary inserted into a partial transcript of the trailer for the film The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift.

Fast cars race by.

Song Lyrics: Too fast Too furious

Guy 1: Its called drifting.

Guy 2: What do you mean, drifting?

Guy 1: The cars are lighter, the tires are slick. When you drift, if you aint out of control, you aint in control.

So Im in control, right, then I lose control, to get all "out of control" and according to your theory I will have regained control? Or Is this, like, one of those things where you just like the way it sounded but its not meant to be taken literally? For example, when someone says something along the lines of Youre stupid and then you answer back with Oh, Ill show you stupid! Is that what this is?

Fast cars race by.

Guy 1: Still need a dictionary?

Whoa! Was that necessary? Werent we just having a conversation? Big deal, I didnt know what drifting was. Excuse me! And I thought enough of you, and our friendship, to put myself out there and ask you about it, to try to educate myself, and thats how you respond? While were talking about it, by all means, show me this dictionary that has a listing for the word drifting!

Oh man, Im so embarrassed, Im sorry... I just remembered our earlier conversation. I totally blanked on how you mentioned you were considering selling memberships to an online dictionary, to supplement your income, and would I be interested in purchasing one. Yes, of course I still need that dictionary, you know Ill always support you. Im so sorry I snapped like that I just thought you were being a tool for no reason. Lets put this behind us.

VO: On the other side of the world, on the wrong side of the law, a new style of racing rules the Tokyo underground.

I bet he means drifting. I bet thats the new style of racing. Also, I bet by wrong side of the law he means the illegal side. Too hard to say where exactly the other side of the world refers to. Possibly Tokyo, but Im only guessing that because of the title.

Guy 2: How do you guys get away with this?

How? We play buy our own rules, thats how. Oh yeah, and those rules? Well, theres only one: there are no rules. But before you commit that to memory, remember Rules are meant to be broken.

VO: All the best drivers want in.

Even Dale Earnhardt Jr.? Cause without including him Im not sure you can truly, and with any validity, call a group of drivers the best.

VO: But when you live on the edge Anything can happen.

That seems, sort of, not true. I mean, Ill acknowledge the fact that its dangerous, living on the edge, Im assuming the number one risk would be falling off the edge, that would be terrible But, anything? I just dont see it. Why would anything be able to happen? Are the laws of physics suspended near this proverbial edge? Is, up, down, and down something other than down? I doubt it very much Anyway, again Ill stress this, DO NOT FALL OVER THE EDGE. Other than that, you should be cool. No real danger of demons or golems attacking or fire raining down from above or anything like that, the rumor of anything happening is just not true.

Tough guy: You came to the wrong race.

This was the race I was told to go to. Were drifting, right? This is where we do the sliding, drifting, car race thing? Am I seriously at the wrong venue or are you just being tough?

VO: Now, in a place where life moves this fast, the bigger the risk, the greater the rush.

In this movie, life AND cars move fast, I guess

Guy 2: All my life people have told me that I dont fit in

Thats so weird, I bet youll totally fit in here cause you look exactly like Paul Walker, star of the first two Fast and Furious movies, only slightly less expensive. How can one look less expensive? Good point. I guess I just meant that you looked very similar to, but not quite as handsome as, Paul Walker, and that because Ive never heard of you I assumed youd be making far less money. Like if its true they broke the mold when they made Paul Walker (I hope its not true) well then they probably took that broken mold and used it to make you.

Guy 2: Maybe Ive just been in the wrong place.

That seems possible. I mean, that other guy seemed to think so. At this point, we should probably discuss specifics, like the address of the place youre looking for. Just to be safe.

Fast cars race by.

Graphics: This summer Speed needs

Speed needs To succeed! Or, to feed? Maybe, speed needs to breed, creating more and faster speed!

Graphics: No translation.

Its probably for the best. Honestly, with what a decent translator costs these days, you guys really lucked out. Im glad that speed needs no translation. Especially considering, since the Japanese guys are so into speed, they might have several words for it. Similar to the Eskimos and their 100 words for snow thing. And youre paying on a per word basis? That stuff will add up fast, trust me. You do not want to get into a situation where youre paying money to get speed translated.

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift - June 2006

1:28 AM - 4 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment