Back in January of 2011, the reliably hilarious satirical web site The Onion branched out into broadcast TV. Onion News Network was renewed for a second season and can be seen on IFC. A second show, Onion SportsDome, appeared on Comedy Central but was cancelled in June. SportsDome can’t be called a total loss, however, because it produced at least one terrific segment which has continued as a weekly feature on the web.

“Get Out of My Face” (often referred to by the delightful acronym “GOOMF”) is a brilliant parody of the dick-swinging, rapid fire sports pundit barking match shows which have become a staple for ESPN — ones like Around the Horn and Pardon the Interruption.¹ The Onion’s first installment of GOOMF appeared in the summer of 2011, and it laid me out laughing:

[rated NSFW]

One of the things I love about GOOMF is the deliberate graphic overload, which is barely an exaggeration of the number of shiny bells and whistles that often clutter up the screen on SportsCenter. It’s impossible to catch all of the silly headlines that scroll by on the bottom-margin news ticker and pay full attention to the characters’ dialogue in a single viewing; if you don’t have time for multiple viewings of the clip, I transcribed them all here for your quick reading convenience.

For the slightly more serious-minded, the style being parodied in this video was recently the subject of a trenchant article in The Atlantic by Patrick Hruby, entitled “The SportsCenter-ization of Political Journalism.” The jist:

Turn on ESPN. There are score tickers and headline crawls, slick graphics and constant teases for upcoming stories, everything creating a sense of urgent immediacy. Now switch to Fox News. Visually speaking, it’s the same eyeball-grabbing formula. (Well, replace scores with stock prices, and garrulous sportscaster Chris Berman with a frosted blonde news babe). This is the SportsCenter-ization of the news, in which coverage of Washington — and the world, really — apes a glossy entertainment product dedicated to spectacular touchdowns, gee-whiz statistics, prefabricated drama, insta-debates waged by a nattering, revolving-door athletic punditocracy and the very latest updates on Brett Favre’s various bodily appendages.

If the Broncos beat the Patriots later today, watch tomorrow for Fox News to start ginning up a Tim Tebow write-in campaign for the remaining GOP primary states.

Kevin Pollak has an online chat show, helpfully called Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show. The show regularly includes a bit called “The Larry King Game” in which the guest is asked to do a bad impression of Larry King making an unlikely personal revelation, and then throwing to a phone call from a city with a funny name.

Even for naturally funny comics and actors, it’s a daunting enough task that the bit usually lasts for under thirty seconds. Comedian and former Simpsons writer Dana Gould, however, is no usual guest:

[Mildly NSFW]

For more Dana Gould, I guess his web site would be a logical place to start. He did a great episode of WTF with Marc Maron, although he did it long enough ago that it’s no longer available for free.¹ I also find him to be well worth following on Twitter, where he is @DanaJGould.

I clicked through some of the other Larry King Game clips on the KPCS YouTube channel. None of them approached Dana Gould level, but a few I can recommend for a quick giggle are comedian Paul F. Tompkins, musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic, poker champion Annie Duke, and comedian Greg Proops. To watch all four as a playlist (2:18), click here.

To be completely honest, I haven’t yet watched a full episode of The Kevin Pollak Chat Show. But I definitely plan to, because among the show’s extensive archives are chats with some people of whom I am a big fan. Apart from the full Dana Gould interview and the four mentioned in the preceding paragraph, I am psyched for the ones with Christopher Guest, Garfunkel & Oates, and Bryan Cranston.

Sex advice sage and blogroll mainstay Dan Savage devoted the first ten minutes of his latest podcast episode to a passionate and astute rant about the Anthony Weiner kerfuffle. I should clarify that Dan’s commentary was recorded and released two days ago, on June 14; in it he refers specifically to Weiner’s confessional press conference, which had taken place a week earlier. Weiner’s resignation from congress didn’t occur until this morning, but it doesn’t make Dan’s argument any less relevant.

Dan Savage (photo: Flickr/mattoly)

Of course, the full effect is only available by hearing Dan speak his words. Nevertheless, here are some highlights for the benefit of those unable to listen (or who simply prefer to read):

My favorite question [at the press conference] was this: “Why would you do this after you were married?” Because Lord knows, nobody goes online and flirts — or masturbates, looks at [or] downloads porn, or creates through the interactive-ness of the web their own porn moments — no married person does that. The worldwide web is just this big jack-off-a-thon for single people.

You know what? Members of congress, like members of the press, get horny sometimes. And sometimes male members of congress, like male members of the press, think with their dicks. And sometimes married men rub one out with an assist from the worldwide web, my media colleagues! Film at fucking 11!

Weiner was horny and went online and flirted and beat it a few times, like millions of Americans have done and will continue to do, every damn day, forever.

Another reporter asked Weiner if he had a drinking problem. Because you know, only a man who was drunk or on drugs could get caught up in something like this. Do reporters know what men are like? And lots of women too? This desire to pathologize behavior that isn’t sick — that is really common, and human, and completely and instantly understandable — that itself is pathological.

Weiner does not have a “problem.” Weiner has a computer. It is the same problem that all Americans these days have: we have computers, and sometimes we make fools of ourselves on them. Think of your own life: think of the shit you’ve done online. If all of it was dragged out into the public eye, as this has been dragged out into the public eye, would your relationship survive? Would your professional life survive? No.

Everyone’s talking about “what Weiner did.” You know what? Something was done to Weiner.

I realize I’m shouting now… I just get upset when I see everyone pretend to not know what they do know about human sexuality and the way it works. And this sort of willful obtuseness on the part of the media, that plays into American sex-phobia and hypocrisy about sex. And this posturing.

Everyone is talking now about Weiner like, “He’s a congressman, and he had to know that this could happen — that these pictures could surface and be made public — and that was reckless, and displayed a kind of bad judgment that we can’t have in congress.” We wouldn’t want bad judgment in congress, not now, not after 200+ years of a bad-judgment-free congress.

Congress 20 years from now, 30 years from now, is going to be solely comprised of people who have taken pictures of their junk and put them online. Every teenager in America is online, is flirting, dating, putting up internet profiles, looking for love… is sending pictures of their junk! Sexting!

Soon, we will have a congress that is entirely Anthony Weiners. What are we going to do then? Are we really saying that the only people who are fit to serve in the U.S. Congress are the people who have never gone online and done anything inappropriate? Because what we’re really asking for, then, is to be ruled by the Amish.

Today is the day after the day that was supposed to be The Day. Reviewing the coverage of what didn’t happen, the following things came to mind.

NPR/Associated Press:

The hour of the apocalypse came quietly and went the same way — leaving those who believed that Saturday evening would mark the world’s end confused, or more faithful, or just philosophical.

Some had given away earthly belongings, [and] others drained their savings accounts.

“I had some skepticism but I was trying to push the skepticism away because I believe in God,” said Keith Bauer — who hopped in his minivan in Maryland and drove his family 3,000 miles to California for the Rapture.

“I was hoping for it because I think heaven would be a lot better than this earth,” said Bauer…

Richard Dawkins (from Fresh Air, March 28 2007):

…said Bauer, a tractor-trailer driver who began the voyage west last week, figuring that if he “worked last week, I wouldn’t have gotten paid anyway, if the Rapture did happen.”

I hear a little buyer’s remorse in there, but who hasn’t felt some of that before? Of course, walking away from your job and piling the family in the minivan for a cross-country “Rapture-or-bust” road trip doesn’t sound like the behavior of a skeptic. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt, since I’m not inside his head. Maybe he really was “trying to push skepticism away,” and if so, he sure gave it a hell of a push.

Now our buddy Keith needs a job, and I fear for him at his next job interview: “So, Mr. Bauer, why did you decide to leave your previous job?”

[They had responded to the] May 21 doomsday message by Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicizes his prediction [of the world's end].

The Onion’s “American Voices”:
According to Harold Camping, the founder of Family Radio, the world will come to an end on Saturday. What do you think?

That’s funny because it might even be true — as of this posting, Camping still has not been seen since big non-event.

Camping had been projecting the apocalyptic prediction for years far and wide via broadcasts and websites. He has said that his earlier apocalyptic prediction in 1994 didn’t come true because of a mathematical error.

“I’m not embarrassed about it,” he told The Associated Press last month. This time, he said, “there is …no possibility that it will not happen.”

Well, “no possibility” could be interpreted in a lot of ways… if you happen to think one is a lot. He could always take a play from this week’s Newt Gingrich playbook and say that anyone who quotes his earlier statements is a liar.

Many followers said the delay was a further test from God to persevere in their faith.

“It’s still May 21 and God’s going to bring it,” said Family Radio’s special projects coordinator Michael Garcia, who spent Saturday morning praying and drinking two last cups of coffee with his wife at home in Alameda.

If Christianity were baseball these guys would be Cubs fans. Fortunately, Christianity is not baseball. I can understand being a Cubs fan and having faith that the Cubs will eventually win a championship, because it could happen.

As Saturday drew nearer, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

The end of “Interview with Jesus” from George Carlin’s A Place for My Stuff!, 1980:

Members of a local church, concerned [Camping's] followers could slip into a deep depression come Sunday were part of the crowd outside Family Radio International. They held signs declaring Camping a false prophet as motorists drove by.

Nothing says compassion and concern like a big “YOU FOLLOWED A FALSE PROPHET” sign.

“The cold, hard reality is going to hit them that they did this, and it was false and they basically emptied out everything to follow a false teacher,” the Rev. Jacob Denys, of the Milpitas-based Calvary Bible Church, said earlier. “We’re not all about doom and gloom. Our message is a message of salvation and of hope.”

Salvation and hope, and marketing!

The best-laid plans of mice and men: it would have been easy to have compiled a 2010 top ten videos list of which five or more were from The Onion. Going out of my way to avoid this, I ended up with three out of ten from Funny or Die. So much for my little diversity initiative.

Of the bounty of 2010′s Onion-based hilarity, this one is the clear winner:

[click here to watch the video]

Close, but no cigar: “Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere”, “Thousands of Girls Match Description of Missing Sorority Sister” and “O-SPAN Classic: CIA Accidentally Overthrows Costa Rica”.

Wow… just by virtue of these videos’ titles this may be the most profane post in the history of C&B. Might as well make it official. Or rather, fuck it — might as well make this shit official. Shit fuck piss. Goddamned cunt. Cocksucker motherfucker sis-boom-bah. There, that oughta do it.