Blog | Liam McEneaney: Comedian, Writer, Producer

0 Country, Radio, Me

November 14, 2017
by Liam
· Blog · Liam's Notebook · Uncategorized

Talking to a friend this week who works at Sirius/XM, and he told me that for the next couple weeks, they’re going to have a free two weeks for anyone who used to have the service. So, if you have a unit in your car or whatever, you can just turn it on and you’ll be able to listen to a bunch of channels.

I say this for two reasons. First of all, I get played on their comedy channels quite a bit, and I’ve gained some new fans as a result, and so it behooves me to not only do them a favor, but to spread the word a little bit and remind people that they can listen to me. And some other great comedians, but mostly me! Me! Me!

legends of country ladies

Secondly, I was a little skeptical of the service for a long time. Not just before they started playing me (listen to my comedy on Sirius! let them know you want to hear more!) but I grew up, and spent most of my life, in New York City, which was always a terrible radio town. But we had the luxury of being a terrible radio town, because, unless you commuted in from the suburbs, listening to the radio was never really a regular part of your life. Maybe if you lived alone and wanted to play some music and you were tired of your records and tapes you might turn on the radio long enough to remember why you didn’t turn on the radio.

Or you might listen to Top 40 at work so you wouldn’t have to hear the sound of your coworkers sniffing, scratching, and chewing all day every day. Of course office shootings were going to happen in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. before workplaces became so headphone-friendly, you had nothing to do but listen to the 45 minutes your coworker spent discussing where she and her boyfriend were headed for dinner that night. Right?

In any case, New York City when I grew up was all about the morning show. If you drove, it was generally in the morning to work, and if you didn’t listen to Howard, maybe you listened to Imus. Or maybe you listened to R&B or rock or something. But you didn’t listen to the radio for long stretches, and certainly not for pleasure.

The other thing you have to know about the New York City I grew up in was, there were genres for music that people were fans of, and they were fiercely devoted and partisan, and looked down on all other genres of music.

That sounds ridiculous now, someone who is a heavy metal devotee who also doesn’t listen to some rap, or even Morrissey. There are a lot of people like myself, who listen to everything. But this was back before file sharing tore down all the financial barriers to musical fandom. Once upon a time, young people, being a fan of a musical act was a serious financial investment.

legends of country men

If you were sixteens years old, and you were making seven dollars an hour at some horrible fast-food job, and a CD cost $16.98, you bet your ass you thought twice or three times before taking a chance on a band who maybe had a single you heard on the radio (a lot of times, that was the band’s only good song), or a band that you heard from your one glue-sniffing friend might be good.

Or a band whose name you just enjoyed saying over and over (my favorite part of any Husker Dü record is saying Husker Dü and giggling).

I mean sure, Rolling Stone liked Primus enough to write an article about it, you remember that they describe it as a band that “mixes thrash, funk, and progressive rock,” and that that was written by someone who gets free records and concert tickets, and that if you’re going to drop three hours of your life after taxes working for the man, you bet your ass it’s going to be for something that doesn’t sound quite so terrible. (Then you’ll go to college and have that one friend who studies Primus like the monks of the fifth century pored over and illuminated copies of the Bible. Drugs.)

So I never got into country music. New York City in general has always been a Rhythm & Blues town—the reason hip hop was invented up in the Bronx was that it started at parties up in the Bronx, where R&B and disco were the dominant musical styles, MCs, literal masters of ceremony talking over a good groove – and then where I grew up in the middle of Queens was dominated by hard rock and classic rock. Sure, the parents liked a little Motown, but it was all about the long-hair rebel rock.

first ladies of country

So if you listened to country, you kept quiet about it. Sure, there was the odd artist who crossed over into the mainstream, your Willie Nelsons and your Dolly Partons, whose greatness could be denied by no man. But generally, country music was for making fun of on Hee Haw, or jokes about how I done broke up with my sister and lost my pickup truck and now I sleep with my good ol’ tick hound named Beau.

I began to change my mind the day I found the Sunday morning country-western show on WKCR, the Columbia University radio station that plays normally endless hours of old jazz. Sundays are the day the students are able to wrestle the station’s programming out of the hands of decades-dead hipsterism and play a broader array of music. And I began to really appreciate country.

george jones tammy wynette

Now, of course, I pay $9.99 a month to Spotify, and if I think of a band or a song or a genre, I’m able to call it up and decide I don’t like it in two minutes. And so the passion dissipates, and the tribalism fades.

The point is, my dad and I went down to Tampa last year to watch spring training baseball. To watch the Yankees just trounce the Mets. And my eyes were really opened to how much time the ordinary American spends in their car, and of course you’re going to listen to whatever you can get. Want to know why Evangelical Christians have such a grip on such a large swath of the country? They’re on the radio all day every day, talking and talking and talking.

Want to know why Americans are ready to believe absolutely insane things about Bill and Hillary Clinton? Because conservative talk radio just goes and goes and goes, and has been going for the past 20 years. This is big business. And people spend hours every day, driving to work, driving to the store, driving the kids to soccer, driving driving driving.

So this Sirius/XM was a godsend, because I would have paid a million dollars to not listen to more than two minutes of local Tampa radio (the service came free with the rental car) and we listened to a lot of a station called Willie’s Roadhouse. Willie Nelson and his family program and host 24 hours of old country music, and it is glorious. All these old voices that are household names in households far from where I grew up. I know that a part of it is that it is a culture that is still exotic to me. And it’s partly because so much of this music is so universal, as Ray Charles famously discovered. So turn on your Sirius device and give it a listen. Or start below, i’ve provided a few examples of my favorites:

The great outlaw country singer/songwriter Stonewall Jackson:

The immortal George Jones:

Before Conway Twitty became a Family Guy punchline, he out-Elvised Elvis:

And more Conway Twitty:

THE classic Merle Haggard song:

Loretta Lynn was a gangster before gangster was gangster:

And here’s Dolly, Tammy, and Loretta:

0 25 People You Will Meet In Heaven

October 23, 2017
by Liam
· Blog · Liam's Notebook

I saw there was a book called Five People You Will Meet In Heaven, that was one of the biggest bestsellers of all time. The author made a buttload of money. And I thought to myself, “I’d like to write one of the biggest bestsellers of all time, too.” So I figured, if people bought that book, they’ll buy five times as many books if I wrote a book about the 25 people you’ll meet in heaven. And here it is below:

25. Your grandparents
And despite the fact that money holds no value up there, you can rest assured that every year you will find that they have sent you a slightly-humorous card with a check for five dollars inside.

24. Your first dog
In Heaven, he will be given an intelligence 1000 times greater than that which he possessed on Earth. Not that he’ll be a genius, but he’ll about as smart as your average human being, or twice as smart as your average Flavor of Love contestant. However, your reunion will be bittersweet; he’ll be so embarrassed by his behaviour as your pet – running when you call, chasing sticks, allowing you to cut off his testicles – that he’ll spend a great deal of time avoiding you. He’ll let your emails go unanswered, send your calls to voice mail, and when you ring his bell one evening, he’ll turn off his lights, duck behind the furniture, and pretend not to be home. When you finally run into each other at a party, it will be awkward.

23. Christopher Hitchens
And man, he does not want to talk about it.

22. That preacher you saw screaming in Times Square in ’87
He will be the single smuggest man in Heaven, and will spend a lot of time saying things like, “I bet those tourists didn’t think it was so funny to take my picture now.” Or “Who’s laughing now, pimp and prostitutes and dealers?” Problem is, just because he’s right doesn’t mean he isn’t completely nuts – the nicest thing you can do is smile, nod, and leave as quickly as possible.

21. William Shakespeare
And despite being heralded as one of the greatest playwrights in the history of the English language, he’s still a professional writer, and so he’ll spend an hour complaining to you about how death has really cut down on the amount of ork he’s being offered, and then will ask if you know anyone in the lit department at CAA.

20. God
And you will find that He is one of those bosses that likes to think of Himself as a “nice guy” who creates a “fun atmosphere” and likes to rope himself into the kind of team-building exercises that gets the occasional angel like Lucifer seeking employment with the competition. And even if He isn’t technically everywhere, it will feel like it, especially since He seems to always be walking up behind you right when you’re about to say something snarky about Him.

19. A surprising amount of personal injury attorneys
But they’re only there to scrub toilets as part of a work-release program from an increasingly-overcrowded Hell.

18. The guy who wrote the Bible
You’ll meet him at a party where he will explain that a lot has been lost in translation from the original Hebrew; for instance the story of Noah was originally about an increasingly-exasperated everyman whose family vacation is cut short by a series of crazy misadventures, culminating in a cruise through the worst storm ever seen. Then he will tell you that he originally envisioned Jack Lemmon in the role, but is now in talks with Steve Martin’s people. Then you will buy him a drink to go away.

17. Jimi Hendrix
He runs a Guitar Center up there, and he will kick you out if you start playing “Stairway.”

16. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge
He’s a little nuts, really, and very hard to talk to. But you’ll hang with him for the same reason everyone else does; he knows all the good dealers.

15. Galileo
Nice guy, but maybe enjoys a little too much wondering aloud how all his critics are doing “down there.”

14. The Rolling Stones
FOR THREE NIGHTS ONLY! Seriously, those guys will tour anywhere they can get paid.

13. The sculptor Michaelangelo
In one of those ironic twists of fate, he met the actual Biblical David in line in a Starbucks (and yes, there’s a Starbucks up there. There’s a Starbucks everywhere; in Heaven, though, the coffee doesn’t taste burnt). David was going through a breakup, and one thing led to another, and now they live together, even though the real David is a bit hairier and paunchier than Michaelangelo imagined he’d be.

12. A Large Number of Gay People
And if that makes you uncomfortable, don’t worry; odds are good you won’t be able to afford to live or shop in their neighborhood, anyway.

11. Martin Luther King
He’ll tell you that he has a brand-new dream; one that involves waiting for James Earl Ray with a sock full of batteries. Then, when he sees the look on your face, he’ll tell you to relax; it’s just a joke. But you can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s kinda not kidding.

10. Marco Polo
For a world-famous explorer and conqueror of new lands, you’ll find him surprisingly approachable. He’s also surprisingly easy to talk to. Not that you’ll know, because as you begin your first and last conversation with him, a friend of his will approach and addresses him as “Marco!” You will, without even thinking, instinctively reply, “POLO!” It will be worth it.

09. Dr. Jack Kevorkian
In a case of true celestial irony, none of his patients will be there, as suicide is still considered by Heavenly authorities to be a mortal sin.

08. Friedrich Nietszche
The famous German philosopher. Be warned that shortly after his arrival, his friends found him to be “too intense,” and so to “mellow him out a bit” they got him to start smoking weed. You’ll be disappointed to find that now he spends a lot of time sitting on his couch, eating Captain Crunch straight from the box, and lecturing to anyone who will listen that the secret of life can be found in old Bruce Lee movies.

07. Lou Gehrig
Who will be the first to admit that perhaps, on the day when he was forced to retire from baseball because he was dying young of a disease so rare they named it after him, perhaps he was not “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

06. Ernesto “Ché” Guevera
You’ll know him; he’s the guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of an NYU Freshman on the front.

05. You Remember That Guy from Your Office, the “Funny” One Who Always Busted Out Those “Hilarious” Catch Phrases From His Favorite Movies Like “Yeah Baby!” and “Niiice!” and “My wife!”?
Not him, he was sent directly to Hell. But you will probably get to meet that guy’s wife, because the woman had to have either been deaf or a saint.

04. Graaargh, The Guy Who Invented the Wheel
He’s really bitter; he apparently met a patent attorney (up from Hell for the day on work release) who told him how much money he could have made in royalties if he’d had adequate representation. However, he’s easier to talk to than Raaaaarrrgh, the guy who went down in history as the guy who discovered fire, and then immediately went down in history as the first guy to discover how easily people catch on fire, and then went down in history as the first person who discovered that Saber Tooth Tigers will come running when they smell delicious burning meat. Ironically, Raaaaaarrrrgh is not only his name, but also the noise he made when he made all his discoveries.

03. Bill Gates
Oh, he isn’t dead. He’s just rich enough that he can afford a summer home there.

02. Jesus
But he’ll be kinda stand-offish until he sees you’re not one of “those” fans.

01. You
Surprised? Quite a few people who knew you would be as well. You’ll spend the first few hundred years up there keeping a low profile, just in case it turns out there was some kind of mistake and you weren’t supposed to get in. In time, you’ll be able to relax, make some friends. Eventually, you will find yourself in a post-existential crisis as you find yourself hanging out all day, drinking beer and playing video games, and you’ll realize that you are wasting your afterlife in exactly the same way you wasted your actual life.

0 From the archives: Sorry, America, Your New President Is A New York City Landlord

October 16, 2017
by Liam
· Blog · Jokes About The News · Liam's Notebook

At the beginning of 2017, I submitted this as an op-ed to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a couple of other places. Although it was rejected by all those, I liked it, and frankly, it has become more prescient with every passing day.

On January 19th, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. To some, he’s seen as a toxic misogynist, or a Russian stooge, or the public face of a resurgent White Nationalist movement. But to those of us from the five boroughs, we know Donald Trump as something far more sinister: a New York City landlord.

Much of the country has no idea what this means, to live under the rule of a New York landlord. And, judging by the number of stories in the real estate section about NYU students whose parents buy their apartments, neither do many New York Times readers. So allow me, as a proud product of The Big Apple, born and raised in the buildings of President Trump’s home borough of Queens, to let you know what to expect from life under a New York City real estate speculator.

To start, for the New York landlord, our health and well-being is of little or no concern. In fact, in some cases, your death is a fantastic business opportunity. The passing of an elderly tenant can turn an $800-a-month rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment into a $3500 three-bedroom (“Yes, that used to be a crawlspace, but it’s been converted into an intimate loft area”) to be shared by five recently graduated liberal arts majors.

Not that he will actively try to kill you. For the most part, the landlord is cheap enough to know that there’s no point in paying someone fifteen grand to kill an old lady when you can just let a broken boiler in mid-February go unfixed for days or even weeks. Dark? Yes, and cold-hearted, too. But that’s New York City real estate. And so, your President will reason, why spend money on accessible health care or Social Security when the free market will do the dirty work for you?

Trump’s campaign promised to fix America’s infrastructure. As someone who spent most of his life trying to get a landlord to effect basic repairs, I am here to tell you that our Property Manager-in-Chief will do the bare minimum, and attempt to spend even less, on upkeep and repairs.

As can any New Yorker who has waited in their living room for days, knowing that the minute they leave, a handyman who is alleged to have been sent to fix their toilet will allege to have been at their door, ringing their bell. This handyman doesn’t exist. Like Santa Claus, he is a fairy tale character designed to soothe and placate a credulous mind.

Any repairs that do get done will be made only after a harassment campaign of weeks or months, each phone call or letter seeing your new landlord get more short-tempered and angry. He knows that if he bullies you long enough, you’ll find that living with a problem is easier than getting him to fix it. When repairs do come, they will be cheap, shoddy, and break again within weeks. If our government can spend the next four years patching together our country’s broken bridges and roads with pieces of other bridges and roads, it will.

As far as national security goes, don’t get your hopes up. Yes, we will see a mass expulsion of immigrants. What New York landlord hasn’t prefaced the making of a quick buck with the eviction of most or all his tenants? Just ask any former resident of the Brooklyn neighborhood where now stands an ugly arena, home to the tumbleweeds that blow through the stands during basketball and hockey games.

And your average New York landlord doesn’t care about building security, especially if he doesn’t live on the property. Especially if he lives in a big gold tower with his name on it that New York City pays half a million dollars a day to protect. Your safety and well-being is going to be the furthest thing from his mind.

Expect your new President to constantly war with his citizens, because any New York landlord’s true enemy is his tenants. He sees every resident of every building as a walking, talking, endlessly-complaining dollar sign. And the more they whine, demanding a livable environment, or clean water, or the right to live like a human being, the lower that dollar value gets.

Remember, our new President is a New York City landlord. And the New York City landlord’s ideal tenant is a $5,000 check that, once a month, appears magically in the middle of an empty, unused living room.

0 From one of my first comedy notebooks

October 9, 2017
by Liam
· Blog · Liam's Notebook · Uncategorized

When I was a young man of 20, I was already a veteran comedian, having traveled the “road” and performing at college shows where the audiences ranged from “somewhat positive” (shoutout to Towson University!) to “indifferent, on their way to lunch” (Bristol Community College!) or “openly hostile” (Youngstown State “University!”).

Looking back on my notebooks from that young age is a source of alternating amusement and embarrassment. But occasionally I will unearth something from the pages that make me kind of proud of my post-pubescent self, and this is one of those. It was a parody of the famous poem “Casey At The Bat,” and as you can see, I got two pages in and got interrupted by something. I wish I’d finished it and actually made something of it.

But here it is:

20170928_160930 20170928_160941 (1)

0 Ten Years Ago, Someone Stole My Doormat

December 13, 2016
by Liam
· Blog · Liam's Notebook · Uncategorized

From a piece I wrote, called Three Different Memos To Three Different Neighbors (2006):

MEMO #1 – TO: The Neighbor Who Stole My Doormat

RE: What the Fuck?

Okay, I know it’s been two-and-a-half years, but I honestly still can’t believe it. And so I have to ask; come on guy, you really needed to steal my doormat? My doormat?

And we’re not even talking about an ornamental, expensive doormat – the kind embroidered by a young child in a dark factory in the heart of Taiwan; the kind with the word “WELCOME” woven in over an irresistibly crude caricature of puppies playfully squirming under a doormat of their own, their big eyes staring straight through your soul; the kind that you can only find in an elegant, out-of-the-way specialty store like K-Mart or Target. And I understand that not everyone has the rare combination of both ten seconds and six dollars that it takes to go out and buy one of their own. And if I had owned this kind of extravagantly decorative doormat, I would understand a working man’s need to steal it, to give his family a small taste of the same lavish, luxurious lifestyle that Doukhobors like myself enjoy in our rent-controlled apartments in the heart of Queens.

But that’s not the kind of doormat we’re talking about, is it? The kind of doormat we’re talking about, the kind that you stole under the dark cover of night, is dirty and beige; it’s the kind of doormat that I got not from Wal-Mart, nor even from Kiki’s 99-Cent Emporium, but rather from the relatives of an elderly neighbor who had recently died, shuffling off this mortal coil in housedress and slippers, plastic bags clutched in her hand, a faded babushka on her head and a complaint about the heat left unspoken on her tongue. That’s right; you stole a free, dead woman’s doormat.

To be honest, I’m not even angry so much as I am completely baffled; what, exactly, did you think you were going to do? Just put it down outside of your apartment, the only place you could logically use it, and hope that I wouldn’t go door-to-door through the building hallway looking for it?

In the annals of crime, stealing a neighbor’s doormat falls somewhere between mugging your boss in the elevator on the way up to the office and bursting into a police precinct, waving your shotgun in the air, and declaring that the next person who moves gets it. Which is to say that it falls exactly halfway between being “poorly thought out” and “fucking retarded.”

And if you can’t use a doormat for its intended purpose, what exactly would you do with it? Sell it on eBay? Not that I would put it past you; after all, the person who would steal a used dime-store doormat is the exact same person who has undoubtedly, at several points in their life, had a small, swarthy man named Chico calmly inform them that “you ain’t can’t have the weed if you ain’t don’t gots the cash.”

And so I scoured Craig’s List, searching for the tell-tale ad: “FOR SALE,” I imagined it would say, “Doormat, gently used – NO QUESTIONS ASKED! Serial numbers have been filed off. Am looking for best reasonable offer – cash, food, or even MetroCard swipe into subway.”

Or perhaps this doormat was of some value to you, a value that I myself did not ascertain and could only truly appreciate once it was gone from my life. In my mind’s eye I can see you running through the building, clad in an Indiana Jones leather jacket and fedora, clutching your bleeding, gunshot arm as dark-suited thugs from the Russian mob close in fast. Trapped in a corner, desperate, you wheel around, revealing a Luger held to the head of a dirty beige doormat trembling in the crook of your arm.

“Don’t do anything we’ll both regret,” says a large man who steps from the shadows, a deep scar running down the side of his face, a gloved hand removing a pair of $500 Ray Bans, revealing one eye made of milky-white glass, the other filled with a mixture of hatred and respect.

You shake your head once: “No.” You pant for breath, swallow, then add, “Tell your men to step back and give us safe conduct, Vladimir. Now. Or the only place this doormat lies is inside the entrance of a mausoleum.”

He gives you the once-over; he knows that after what went down in Morocco, where he watched a small, frayed bathroom rug die in his arms, that you’d be just crazy enough to do it. He signals to his men, and they step back, warily placing their guns halfway into their holsters.

“You’ve won this round,” he says. “But I’ll return. Even you can’t watch forever. One day you’ll be napping, or drunk, or out of your house for ten minutes to get some milk from the store. And you’ll leave that doormat alone and unguarded. And when you do, I’ll be there. And I can tell you now, I won’t have to steal it away; it will come with me, and willingly.”

And you know in your heart that he’s right. You may have that doormat for now; hell, you may even love it as much as once I did, but you’ll never own it. The tread-worn beauty that makes it a treasure is also its biggest curse. This doormat was born to roam free, my friend, and no matter what kind of care you take of it, there’s going to be a morning when you awake to find it gone, and with only the memories to sustain you.

0 12/05/2016 Jokes I Wrote For Television

December 5, 2016
by Liam
· Blog · Jokes About The News · Liam's Notebook

I write jokes about the news and submit them freelance to television. You can read more about it in an article the Wall Street Journal wrote about me right here. Most of these jokes don’t get accepted and never see the light of day. Until now. Below are my favorites from last week.

According to reports, President Obama is going to finalize regulations making it illegal to ask job applicants if they have a criminal record. And just in time for Trump to finish hiring his cabinet.

California’s bar association is considering new rules that would ban attorneys from having sex with clients. When asked why, the President of the bar explained, “It would be unethical to screw our clients until they get their bill.”

A Syrian social worker who dressed as a clown to help ease children in war-torn Aleppo is presumed dead following a Russian missile attack. And once again, life tragically imitates my ending for a Patch Adams remake.

The Federal Highway Administration has determined that more than five hundred “I (HEART) NY” signs on the state’s highways are a dangerous distraction and has ordered them removed. They also said that they plan to replace them with the more appropriate, “¯\_(ツ)_/¯ WHERE YOU GONNA GO? JERSEY?”

New studies show that hallucinogenic mushrooms might help relieve anxiety and depression in cancer patients. And in related news, a four-year study I conducted in college shows that ‘shrooms also relieve anxiety and depression in me.

A group in Australia has set a new world record for the highest basketball shot when they made a basket off of a 593 foot tall dam. Look, I’m not saying racial stereotypes are necessarily real, and I’m not saying stereotypes ar right. I’m just saying, a group of white guys needed a 600-foot advantage to set a record in basketball.

A record number 154 million people went shopping on Black Friday, but spent an average of 10 dollars less than they did last year. Which means that once again, the only clear winners of the weekend were fans of World Star Hip Hop Fight Videos.

Dictionary.com has selected “xenophobia” as its 2016 Word of the Year. In response, Donald Trump immediately named Dictionary.com Secretary of Liking Foreigners.

A woman on a flight that landed in Texas and had to wait for a gate, opened an emergency exit on the plane and left. Although, in the woman’s defense, the in-flight movie was Suicide Squad.

Archaeologists in England have discovered a 3000 year-old gold “belt.” While they’re not 100% sure, they think it might date all the way back to Hulk Hogan’s very first Wrestlemania.

Jim Delligatti, a McDonald’s franchise owner who created the Big Mac, died this week at the age of 98. And today, the heart of every McDonald’s customer would be full of grief. I’m sorry, I meant their hearts will be filled with grease. Years and years of Big Mac grease.

A hacker broke into the San Francisco transit system computers and gave people free rides. Good news for New York commuters, though; the MTA has promised its computer security is as state-of-the-art and likely to work as the rest of the subway system.

Bob Dylan skipped a meeting this week of Nobel Prize winners with President Obama. Although Fred Durst has promised in 2017 he will meet with President Trump and also anyone else who will buy him a hot dinner.

0 11/07/2016 Jokes I Wrote For Television

November 7, 2016
by Liam
· Blog · Liam's Notebook · Uncategorized

New Jersey got a gas tax increase for the first time since 1988, raising the price of petroleum products across the board, from gas to oil. Experts say that the most affected by a gas hike will be the state’s commuters, while the most affected by an oil hike will be the state’s hairstyles.

This Thanksgiving, Butterball’s help line will also field turkey cooking questions via text. And while they expect that most of the texts are going to be normal turkey-related questions, they do expect that some creeps will also send them duck pics.

A man was arrested at the Metropolitan Opera in New York after he scattered his mentor’s ashes on the orchestra during a performance. Audience members were reported to be so alarmed by the man’s actions, they could barely get back to sleep.

New research shows that a broccoli, avocado, and cabbage diet has strong anti-aging effect in mice. Or at the very least, makes their lives seem ten times longer.

Scientists have discovered a species of millipede that has over 400 legs and 4 penises. They say they haven’t seen anything like it since the 2016 Russian Women’s Olympic Team.

A new study suggests that a wearable skin patch that delivers small doses of peanut protein may help children who are allergic to peanuts. Which is weird, because that’s what helped me quit.

Glamour magazine has selected Bono as the first Man of the Year. And apparently, that year is 1987.

Sony Music apologized after a popular Japanese all-girl band performed in outfits resembling Nazi uniforms. “Don’t worry about it, in fact we’d like to see a lot more,” responded the entire Internet in unison.

A man on a Halloween flight from Boston to San Francisco took his daughter trick-or-treating on the plane so she wouldn’t miss out. The two were dressed in costume, her as an adorable little donut, and him as That Guy Who is Oblivious to the Fact That People on an Overnight Flight Want to Be Left the Hell Alone.

The FBI background check system for gun sales in October processed more than 2 million checks, setting an all-time record for the month. Of course, the NRA says all of these guns will be used in self-defense. Because you’re going to need to defend yourself against the two million other wackos who also just bought a gun.

A new report estimates that by the year 2040, the population of New York City will grow to over 9 million people. Which means you should start standing in line for brunch around, oh, 2037.

Experts say that this year will see a record number of people traveling by plane for Thanksgiving. Which means, once again, good news for the tiny inflatable vest industry.

Starbucks has introduced a new “Green Cup” that is meant to symbolize unity ahead of the election. Because all Americans, regardless of race, religion, or political party, are equal when they’re waiting an hour in line while a homeless guy bathes in the bathroom.

According to a new report that company where most job seekers want to work is Amazon, followed by American Airlines and Apple. Which just goes to show; most unemployed people are too lazy to look past the “A” section of the Help Wanted ads.

The AA minor league baseball team the Jacksonville Suns announced that they are changing their names to the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. The change was made partly because ownership wanted a creative name that tied in to the local community, but mostly because they wanted their archrivals, the Tampa Bay Jews, to forfeit every game.

The city of Tupelo, Mississippi, installed twenty-four guitar-shaped statues to commemorate the place where Elvis Presley was born. While Memphis, Tennessee, installed twenty-four guitar-shaped toilets to commemorate the place where he died.

A new bar in Brooklyn is opening called The House of Wax, that will feature celebrity death masks, anatomical horrors, and embalmed freaks of nature. Or as the rest of us call it, “Tinder.”

A New York State lawmaker has launched a new app called ParentPatrol that allows parents to quickly report suspicious behavior at parks and playgrounds. Replacing the old app that used to be popular for the phone: “Calling The Police.”

A high school teacher in New Jersey, who was often described as “cool,” will be forced to forfeit 120 days pay for discussing stripping and prostitution with female students. And that kind of behavior makes him unfit to be a New Jersey high school teacher. And perfect to be a New Jersey high school guidance counselor.

Apple introduced a series of new emojis, including a creepy clown and a gorilla that many say looks like Harambe. Great. Now all my female friends are going to think I’m a creep when I get drunk and attach clowns and gorillas to my “You Up?” texts at three in the morning.

A new survey finds that the number of Americans supporting legalizing marijuana has reached an all time high of 57 percent. While the number of Americans who support legalizing meth has also reached a record high of “WHO GAVE YOU MY PHONE NUMBER? CALL ME BACK LATER I’M BUSY PULLING ALL MY OWN TEETH OUT!DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE DANCE”

0 How To Be A Pathetic Single Guy: A short film I wrote and directed 15 years ago

November 2, 2016
by Liam
· Blog · Uncategorized

Fifteen years ago, I wrote and directed and shot a short film. Done in the educational slide show style that was popular in the New York City public schools of my childhood, it’s called “How To Be A Pathetic Single Guy.” I thought it was going to waste away on VHS, but luckily I screened it at Jay Stern and Victor Varnado’s Iron Mule Film Festival (which is still going), and Jay had converted it to digital video. Below, then, check out a much younger me:

Fun trivia note: This was edited by my buddy Steve Rosenthal, whom a decade later I would hire to edit Tell Your Friends! The Concert Film!

0 10/17/2016 Jokes I Wrote For Television

October 24, 2016
by Liam
· Blog · Jokes About The News · Liam's Notebook

Researchers have scientifically proven that keeping tomatoes in the refrigerator “greatly reduces” their flavor. The biggest surprise of this study is that this discovery was made in a real study conducted at an actual research lab staffed by adult professional scientists, and not by a lazy high school student in his mom’s car on their way to the science fair.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told members of the press that they are being spied on by American intelligence. He then added: “Except for C-SPAN. Nobody’s watching that.”

A company is working to make laxatives used for colonoscopies in flavors such as lemon, strawberry and vanilla. When asked about a chocolate flavor, a company rep explained that that was handled around the corner where fudge is made.

A New York man, who was arrested for stealing 600 dollars in cash from a 93 year-old woman’s bra, said he did it to buy himself a nice pair of shoes. Which makes sense, since the money was already being used to support a leathery pair

An Oregon man was arrested after he answered an ad on Craigslist for a snow mobile being sold by a state trooper and offered to pay for it with marijuana. Which raises an important question: “How can you place an ad selling a ‘snowmobile’ on Craigslist and be surprised when it turns into a drug deal?”

Researchers believe that extracting milk from Tasmanian devils may help kill drug-resistant bacteria and save lives. While working at a job milking Tasmanian devils will make you pray for the sweet release of death.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced that his country is “separating” from America as an ally and has found a new, better partnership with China. He then also announced that the Philippines had joined a gym, bought a 2011 Mustang convertible, and wants you to refer to China as “new mommy” when you get home from visiting the Philippines for Christmas.

According to a new report, there were more cases of sexually transmitted diseases than ever before. So congratulations to Brad Pitt for getting back out there so quickly.

A Russian man was arrested in Prague in connection to the theft of 117 million LinkedIn Passwords. Which should serve as a reminder to all of us that LinkedIn exists.

0 10/17/2016 Jokes I Wrote for Television

October 17, 2016
by Liam
· Blog

I write jokes about the news and submit them freelance to television. You can read more about it in an article the Wall Street Journal wrote about me right here. Most of these jokes don’t get accepted and go nowhere. Until now. Below are my favorites from last week.

A group of Girl Scouts in New York City are trying to raise money for the first statues ever in Central Park that would honor women. Although for safety reasons, none of the statues will have their backs to Trump Tower.

A new report shows that nearly 30 percent of New Yorkers binge drink. While the other 70 percent also smoke weed.

A new report estimates that 100,000 animals, including pigs and turkeys, now ride in airline cabins each year with their owners. Flight attendants say you can tell the difference because pigs and turkeys don’t press the call button every two minutes.

President Obama wrote an op-ed for CNN, in which he announced his hope to land humans on Mars by 2030. Time Warner then announced that they can’t get a guy out to hook up the cable until 2033.

A pendant stolen from Kim Kardashian was found in Paris near the scene of last week’s robbery. If you don’t know what a pendant is, it’s kind of an ornamental jewelry worn around the neck of a woman with a lot of money. And if you don’t know what a Kardashian is, it’s kind of an ornamental celebrity worn around the neck of a man with a lot of money.

A new Guinness world record was set in Michigan when more than 1200 couple were married in the same ceremony. Unfortunately, that record was for “number of fights at a wedding between drunk Juggalo cousins.”

It was reported that the Russian government’s cyber-espionage has not only targeted Democrats, but Republicans as well. And in related news, Gary Johnson just changed his AOL password so that it’s no longer “garyjohnson123.”

A new report shows that the best place in the world for young girls to live is Sweden. While the worst continues to be Woody Allen’s Upper East Side apartment.

Tuesday was the United Nation’s International Day of the Girl. To celebrate, they got 70 percent of the minutes every other day gets.

A woman in Utah gave birth to her baby while in a Walmart check out line. Where the father immediately tried to exchange it for a Craftsman 6 riding mower.

It was revealed that during the reign of Saddam Hussein the Iraqi Mission in New York City once had a secret torture chamber in the basement. Or as the rest of us call it, ‘The Times Square Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.’

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, who faced criticism for the banks’ phony account scam, retired from the company effective immediately. And closing their accounts with the bank immediately were his close friends Ston Jumpf, Don Rumpf, Bon Blumpf, and Forrest Gumpf.

Parents complained after Indian airline IndiGo announced a new “quiet zone” on their planes that bans children under 12 from sitting there. Making this the most controversial “quiet zone” for kids under 12 since Neverland Ranch.

A father and his daughter, who were visiting Arkansas’ Crater of Diamonds State Park, found a 2.03 carat white diamond. And in accordance with Arkansas custom, he immediately slipped it on her finger and asked her to make him the happiest man on Earth.

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