Two things happened recently:
1. This:
People have been saying to me in face-to-face situations stuff like “I see we’re no longer Facebook friends” and it’s probably true and the reason for it is that I’m no longer on Facebook, not that I’ve had one of those annual private cullings people seem to perform there. This decision wasn’t made hastily. I just stopped liking Facebook, and, if you listen to the folks over at Gizmodo, it’s only going to get worse now that it’s a publicly traded company.
2. I taught last weekend at the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference, which was my first-ever such teaching gig and totally enjoyable and great. Now I’m up in South Dakota, preparing for my standup research trip to Los Angeles, which starts Saturday. My first celebrity interview is happening in less than a week. Also, The Cupboard is launching a new Web redesign any day now.
All of which is to say I may be in poor touch for a while. In the meantime, let’s all bookmark Fred Armisen’s Be Serious for 30 Seconds video project on YouTube, which asks folks to submit their own videos following 7 constraints:
- It has to be serious.
- It has to be 30 seconds or less [sic?].
- No more than 2 people in it.
- At least one 5-second dramatic pause.
- At least 1 cutaway to an object.
- Do your best acting.
- It needs to have a door slamming
That a comedian is starting a new web series with a pointed lack of comedy in it in 2012 is like maybe a whole chapter of my standup book right there.