Where'd the muse go / askphilhartmansballs.com

I usually write about funny things I cooked, but I am on a boring-ass streak of just cooking good food that is not that unusual.

I usually draw a shitty comic strip during the class I TA, but classes have ended for the season.

I usually write about new names I've come up with for my balls, but lately they haven't changed in character enough to warrant it.

I guess instead I will tell you about the idea for a website I got way back around 1996 or so, in the precipitous uprise of the world wide web. It was a time when people still used Gopher to get on those weird not-quite-internet internets, and when I would type my emails through Telnet on a completely text-based system called Pine. It was a time when if you wanted to download a porn video, it would take about a half hour and be like ten seconds long. It was a time when people used a lot of flashing text, when horrible fanfic sex stories (smurfs, brady bunch, etc.) were forwarded in wide circles, it was before much advertising, before Flash, before firefox, it was the era of Netscape Navigator and every other person having an aol account. It was in this environment that I conceived of askphilhartmansballs.com. The idea was simple: a blank page with a crudely drawn picture of Phil Hartman's balls, which you would click as you thought of a question. Then the balls would reply in the style of a magic eight-ball, probably using the exact same set of responses: Yes, No, Outlook foggy, Ask again later, etc. That's it. No other features, no explanation.

Twelve or so years later, I think I have the skills to make that site. But now I don't want to. Isn't it a conundrum about wanting and time? About wanting what you get and getting what you want? About wanting what you want, even?

Signs point to yes.

Dear American Apparel website,

Just a quick line to say thanks. Thanks for the good times we had when I was lonely and the baseball game was getting kinda boring, and I had somehow got sick of the more explicit websites I so often turn to in times like these. It feels good to know that nobody had to work in a sweatshop to make those clothes which in turn made it so nobody had to get quite all the way naked to show me a good time on your internets. Thanks for having a weird and creepy guy who runs your company and makes this all so... probable (in the words of Alex Chilton).

Sincerely,
Matty Lite

Vindication; Scopitones

First, vindication from Siskel and Ebert, who loved one of my favorite movies, Revenge of the Nerds:



I found this review on accident when, starting from a recommendation for this one, I was clicking around a site full of scopitones and discovered that the cheerleaders' portion of the talent show at the end of Revenge of the Nerds is a direct adaptation of an old, kinda pornographic scopitone (NSFW, but just barely, if you really crane your neck and get close to the screen). But that scopitone, awesome as it is, is just one of many. And most have cool pop songs from France or America and scantily clad 60s-lookin' chicks. My favorite might just be this one, or wait, maybe this one, or really it might just be this one. Hell, the thing to do is probably just go waste half a day watchin'em all yourself.

Figure 12: A Scopitone machine (they were like video jukeboxes, see)

I'm sorry but this is just so funny

NSFW

1. A sandwich with Nori, Salami, Fish (tilapia most likely), and Wheat germ, often served at internet cafes which have hired me to name their sandwiches.

2. The status, vis-à-vis workplace decency, of my new favorite comedy porno site.