Feb
Posted on 27th February 2008
I posted this video here before a while back. Still, it is so incredible I feel like I need to do it again. This is the music video for Norwegian Black Metal band Satyricon’s song “Mother North.” It pretty much has everything. Blood, fog, naked chicks- these guys have really got things dialed in over there. And it doesn’t get old either. I notice something new and incredible every time I watch it. And- more importantly- it really puts life in perspective. I’m not sure how, but I am still inclined to think it does.
Feb
Posted on 26th February 2008
Here is a sign I saw plastered onto the outside of a deli on 8th Avenue near Madison Square Garden a few days ago. Somehow I think Osama Bin Laden isn’t relying on your chicken cutlet money all that much though. But I still think it’s cute how some guy with a magic marker and a piece of cardboard is trying to stop terrorism in its tracks. I think it would be great if one day he had a crisis of hunger and had to abandon his principles in favor of handing over his money for a delicious sandwich. “Damn you, Osama!,” the mystery sign maker will scream while shaking his fist in the air. Then he will take a big bite of the most delicious pastrami he has ever tasted and he will forget his one-man War on Terror for at least the next few bites. As for the website he mentions on the sign, I am hoping it’s one of those Geocities pages with lots of late ’90’s html graphics.
Feb
Posted on 26th February 2008
Hi there. I am doing a show tonight that you should totally come to. It is explained on the flyer above. All the info is there. You just read it and then your questions are answered. The flyer is effective in that way. Also, there is a picture of me on the flyer, which is pretty much how most flyers should be. Except for flyers in the post office and stuff. I don’t want to be on those. Get it? That is a joke about how often flyers at the post office include information about criminals. I am not a criminal. Wait, no, I am a criminal- and soon I shall steal your heart. See how I did that? That is just a taste of the professionalism I will bringing to the stage tonight. Brace yourself.
Feb
Posted on 24th February 2008
Hi there. Last week, I went to Tavern On Jane (or Jane Street Tavern as I like to call it as I am a man who lives without rules) here in the scenic West Village of New York City to film a video for the popular Superdeluxe.com blog type thing that they do. Joining me were my comedic friends Nick, Sean, Andrew, and Carl. The chicken wings were originally ordered as an elaborate and delicious prop, but we ended up eating a ton of them anyway. Someday I hope to be on a restricted diet, a restricted diet that restricts me to eating just chicken wings. Wouldn’t that be something? Everyone would want to be my friend. And I could probably bet on all the games from my stool in the corner of the bar that everyone would know not to sit in because it’s mine. Then I would ask someone to ask me on what days I eat chicken wings. And once they did I would answer back, “I only eat chicken wings on the days that end in ‘y’.” It would be funny every time. That’s how I imagine it all to be anyway. I am a man with dreams.
Feb
Posted on 23rd February 2008
My Dave Hill Explosion show this past Thursday at the UCB Theatre was lots of fun. My guests were Amy Sedaris and Bob Mould and they were both awesome. Amy showed everybody how to make an eye compress out of a pair of pantyhose and some beans (pinto or navy I think) and taught me how to pretend that somebody just punched my teeth out, which is a pretty great trick. Bob Mould played “Again and Again” from his awesome new album “District Line,” which you should totally go out and by, and then sat down for a fun interview with me and Amy. My buddies Phil and Alex (aka Little Michael Jackson) were there to make the magic happen too. There’s a nice review of the show here. Video of the show should be up on the UCBcomedy.com site soon. I’ll keep your ass posted.
Feb
Posted on 21st February 2008
My friend Fred, a really white guy, sent me a link to this blog and I think it is really funny and frighteningly accurate. I am starting over…with the man in the mirror.
Feb
Posted on 20th February 2008
Attention People of New York City:
Hello. This is your man Dave Hill. I have to type really fast because I have a serious amount of halfway-dry paper maché going here in my apartment and I have to get back to it before things really go south in here. And what’s worse- I am not even sure how much this thing even looks like Washington crossing the Potomac anyway. To be honest, I just feel kind of stupid about the whole thing right now. Anyway, I just wanted to remind you one last time that TOMORROW, Thursday, February 21 at 9:30pm at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre over there in Chelsea, I will once again be exploding all over the place in the form of my futuristic one-man chat/variety/donkey show known to me and several others as the Dave Hill Explosion. As incredible as my Explosions usually tend to be, this one should prove to be even incredibler. Aside from all the incredible stuff I cannot even get into right now (HINT: hornets!), I am having two seriously incredible guests on the program tomorrow- the lovely and talented Amy Sedaris, whom you no doubt know from the hit TV series-turned-movie “Strangers with Candy” and a ton of other stuff besides that stuff; and also the lovely and talented Bob Mould, whom you no doubt know as the former frontman for Hüsker Dü and Sugar and also as a great solo artist. And, of course, my trusty-yet-volatile sidekick Phil will be there. Between Amy, Bob, Phil, and the hornets, I am having trouble even typing right now. Also, my fingers are caked in newspaper and wet flour, which isn’t helping either. Anyway, advance tickets for tomorrow’s show are sold out, but there will be limited standby tickets available to those who don’t mind hanging out in front of Gristede’s for a little while. Or you could just rush the theatre not unlike the football hooligans of Europe. Wait- don’t do that. That is negative. Then again, I do like their hair. It’s usually so nice and short, like from the ’50s or something. You’d think drunkards who pick fights at soccer games would have crazier hair but it’s just not the case. Life- will we ever really understand it? Okay, hope to see you tomorrow.
Love,
Dave Hill
Feb
Posted on 16th February 2008
Maybe you’ve seen this before but as news reports about exploding whales go, this one is pretty much as good as it gets. I would love to live in a world where the chances of having my car demolished by falling whale blubber were reasonably high all things considered. It’s not that I have a thing for having my car demolished (I don’t even own one at the moment) or even for whale blubber for that matter, but you know if your car is getting crushed by a flying chunk of rotting seafood, there’s got to be all sorts of other excitement going on. Bring it on I say. I’ll gladly play for the extra insurance.
Feb
Posted on 15th February 2008
Yesterday, I took part in a 24-hour Valentine’s Day marathon in Las Vegas sponsored by the futuristic Yahoo Internet portal and Dr. Pepper, makers of several Dr. Pepper-related beverages. The video above features some of the highlights of my chunk of time hosting and whatnot. I didn’t have a chance to shower or shave but other than that I think we can all agree I look pretty incredible.
I was originally supposed to host the 12am-6am block of mayhem but my plane from Los Angeles got all messed up because of crazy wind and stuff and next thing I knew they were sending a car to pick me up and drive me from the Burbank airport all the way to scenic Las Vegas. The car that showed up ended up being a fancy black SUV that one might rent for a bachelor party or to drive somewhere that Jay-Z was also going to be or something. There were a bunch of TVs in it and a mini-bar complete with Courvoisier snifters and everything. My driver was a nice guy whose voice sounded exactly like Andre 3000’s, which struck me as slightly strange since the driver was a white guy. It was fun to close my eyes and pretend Andre 3000 was driving me through the night just so I could get to Vegas and host a Dr. Pepper-related event. For the record, however, if Andre 3000 and I had to jump into an SUV and drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in the middle of the night, I would be perfectly happy to do the driving. I love Andre 3000 and would never expect him to do all the driving unless he really wanted to or something. Here’s to finding out for real one day! It would be pretty great to go for a long drive with Andre 3000. I wonder what we would talk about- some pretty cool stuff probably.
Before we set sail for Vegas, I asked the driver if he could go through a drive-through or something since I had been sitting at the airport for seven hours and refused to eat anything there since I figured a real classy meal was waiting for me in Vegas and I didn’t want to ruin it by going to Cinnabon. But then- faced with a four-hour drive through the desert- I figured I should fuel-up in case something terrible happened and we were forced to fend off snakes and vultures in the middle of the desert until help arrived for me and the driver who sounded exactly like the popular rapper-turned-actor Andre 3000. The driver said there was an In-N-Out Burger nearby and I got all excited because I really like that place and hadn’t been in a while even though I had spent most of the past ten days in Los Angeles, a place where In-N-Out Burger places are not that hard to come by. As it turned out though, the In-N-Out Burger was nowhere to be found (at least not by us anyway) and my options were McDonald’s and Wendy’s. At first I thought I’d eat nothing as some form of protest to myself and the driver, but then I was all like “Fuck it” and told the driver to pull into McDonald’s because I hate myself. I ended up getting the Big Mac value meal with a Diet Coke (because I am really healthy), a decision I came to regret in the miles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas as I started to feel like I was being punched in the stomach by an imaginary welterweight from the Golden Age of pugilism.
The drive itself ended up being not so bad after all. There was a DVD of the Dean Martin Friars Club roasts in the DVD player, which is never a bad thing as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t get the sound to work but somehow bathing in the silent showbiz glow of Dean Martin, Don Rickles, Flip Wilson, Foster Brooks, Howard Cosell, and the rest of their tuxedoed friends as we made our way through the desert was still pretty magical. I put on my iPod to fill in any sensory holes and four hours or so later we were pulling up to the popular Hard Rock Casino right there in Vegas.
As hinted at in the name, the Hard Rock Casino is rock-n-roll themed in nature. There are guitars and leather jackets purportedly worn by prominent rockers housed in glass cases everywhere you look. It’s weird though how every outfit appears to be the same size and somehow they all fit onto the same mannequin just right. I guess all rockers are the same size or something. It’s hard to tell from the crowd sometimes. Particularly interesting was the jacket above, which supposedly belonged at one time to the popular actor Tommy Lee Jones according to the gold paint on the glass. I’m guessing it was really Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee’s jacket but somehow in the excitement the guy who painted the glass attributed the jacket to the star of such films as Volcano, Men In Black, and Men In Black 2 instead. I thought to say something to the concierge about this in hopes that they might right the situation at some point during my stay, but after driving through the night I didn’t really have the energy and decided to just let everyone think that the actor Tommy Lee Jones has a wild side that no one really finds out about until they come stay at the Hard Rock Casino. Then again, maybe this was the jacket he wore for his “Wild Hogs” screen test or something. “Sorry, Tommy, they decided to go with Tim Allen for this one,” his agent might have said delicately over the phone, “We’ll get ‘em next time. You’ve got a lot of heat on you right now. You’re just gonna have to trust me on this one.”
After a quick nap in my weirdly-large-for-one-person hotel room at the Hard Rock Casino, I pulled myself together and went downstairs to make the magic you see in the video above happen. It was roughly five hours of mayhem and when it was all over, I felt I had really earned the Toblerone they had in the mini-bar in my hotel room. I headed upstairs, dug right in, and then stripped myself down for another nap.
A few hours later, I headed downstairs to eat dinner alone in a restaurant called the Pink Taco. I’ve typed sadder sentences than that last one in my lifetime, but not many. Fortunately, just as I was finishing my first pass at the Pink Taco Appetizer Sampler, my friend Billy Merritt- also in town for the Dr. Pepper/Yahoo Valentine’s Day extravaganza- walked into the restaurant and we were able to get through the whole thing together.
Now it is February 15 and all of the above seems like some distant memory. I’m tired, groggy, and- were it not for the all the free lotions they had in my hotel room- even a little bit lonely. And if I didn’t have the Toblerone wrapper to prove it, I’m not even sure I would have believed it all really happened. I wonder if Tommy Lee Jones ever gets that way.
Feb
Posted on 13th February 2008
Attention Citizens Of The Internet:
Hello. This is your man Dave Hill writing to let you know that on Thursday, February 21 at 9:30pm, I will be further cementing my place in the history books with yet another public display of the one-man nutkicking machine I have consistently been calling the Dave Hill Explosion for roughly two years and three months now (and with no signs of stopping myself from calling it that anytime soon either). As hinted at in my font choice for this letter (Geneva to the untrained eye, but- upon closer inspection- so much more), I am pretty excited about it too. Not only is this my first Explosion of 2008 (besides the one I recently performed for Sheltie Now!, which I am not counting for tax reasons), but it will also mark my first public appearance since my full and dramatic recovery from the highly invasive microdermabrasion procedure I am planning on having just days before the show assuming my coupon will still be honored (consider this your heads up, Spa Belles). More importantly, however, my show on February 21 will easily be the greatest thing that has ever happened outside of Mexico City (a town not to be messed with). I’ve really got this one dialed in- there will be lights, magic, gunplay, and Crunk Energy Drink (F#@k you, Red Bull! I thought my offer was perfectly reasonable. But I guess it’s Crunktinis for everyone from now on! See you in the clearance aisle, f@#kers!) specials throughout the first fifteen minutes of the show. As if all of that is not enough, I will also be having the lovely and talented Amy Sedaris as a guest on my show that night and then maybe even another guest besides her. All of this and more for just five dollars. I know- I cannot believe it either. I would swear this must be 1942 or something but then I would not be typing on this computer or wearing this tight silver jumpsuit. Also, I would probably have a mustache and one of those leather visors (sorry, that is just how I see the 1942 me). And let’s not forget that on or around this very day in 1942, a flotilla (look it up) of Kriegsmarine (look that up too. I mean, you’re already looking up flotilla, so just keep going! The answer is just pages away!) ships dashed from Brest (I had to look this up) through the English Channel to northern ports and the British failed to sink a single one of them. Just days later Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces in a move that many still refer to as that one time Singapore surrendered to Japanese forces in 1942. Now why don’t you just think about all of that for a second and then start living in the now!? Crocs aside, we’ve really got it pretty good. Anyway, I really hope you can come to my show. I have been working really hard on it. I made a flyer and everything. You can reserve tickets at no advance cost to you or anyone you love at ucbt.net.
Love,
Dave Hill
