sheridap's Blog
For a while i've felt I could take the best caps and use them to run a 20 minute open mic night standup routine. And that's exactly what I'm going to challenge you guys and gals to do.
The idea is simple. I'm going to frame out the basics for the bit and you all can weigh in, and then we're going to spend a couple of days commenting out each piece to perfection.
Once the bit is complete, we're each going to PERFORM IT in our respective home towns during an open mic night and UPLOAD THE VIDEO as proof.
Then we'll vote on who delivered it the best and REPEAT.
Are you with me assholes?
I hope so!
/Pat
First, some background.
My older brother graduated from college in the mid 90's and more to Barcelona. After college he had been working for the local cable company installing cable. He managed to save up about $10k and decided to move to Barcelona where, after much desperation he got a job telemarketing for, you guessed it, a cable company.
He repeated this racket in London and eventually ended up in Sidney Australia, where our story begins.
At the time I was living in downtown DC, just off of Thomas circle. I received a call around 3AM that woke me up. It was my older brother calling from Sidney, recovering from a drunken stupor on the other end of the line and he recounted to me the following.
My brother was living in a group house in the suburbs of Sidney working in customer service for Australia's largest cable operator. The house was run by a single woman in her mid 40's who enjoyed cooking horrible meals for her younger housemates.
It was the end of the work week and my brother returned to the house to grab some food with his roommates before heading out on the town. The offering for the night was pancakes, which seemed odd for dinner but a fitting foundation for a night of heavy drinking.
After dinner my brother an crew head out the Kings Cross bar district and take a few rounds of billiards and many rounds of beers. Close to 10pm they decided to head out to some clubs where the drinks of choice turned from beers to liquor.
After several rounds of mixed drinks, my brother began to feel nauseous and stepped outside to get some air. As the nausea began to subside the pressure and pain began to move lower and build.
He knew now that he only had minutes to find a bathroom. Across the street from the club was a KFC, and caddy-corner to that was a McDonalds.
As he crossed the street to the KFC his ass was whistling like a teapot. He was like Charlie Chaplain baby-stepping it across the street with all his mental facilities trained on keeping his ass knot in locked position. It was a battle he was losing.
He entered the KFC and asked where the mens room was and met with a manager's kurt reply, "Customers Only!" Out of cash and out of options his only hope rested on themen's room in McDonalds across the street.
Again he crossed the busy street and stumbled into the McDonald's ahead of a group of girls who had just parked a minivan near the back of the McDonald's parking lot. He enter and asked about the restroom only to be told, "We don't have a public rest room."
That was the moment of truth. Internally his body was taking over to release the poison.
He ran out of the McDonalds and spied the only remnant of privacy available. A dark shadow between a minivan and the dumpster. He dropped trough and before he could get his pants fully off his ass exploded fast and heavy with hot liquid shit. An unholy mixture of pancakes, pilsners, and mixed drinks began to fill the asphalt between the vehicle and the dumpster. it was horribly wrong, and yet delicious relief.
And then he heard the sound of his impending death. The door to the McDonald's opened and out came the group of girls he had rushed past on his way in. They were headed towards the minivan. Towards him. There was no way he could stop the torrent of fury that was pouring out of his ass. As they rounded the corner all he could do was scream, "No, No, Please No!"
Of course they too could scream. And scream they did. In absolute horror. At this point all he could do was begin to run. Run and try to pull up his pants. But run where? The only target he could fix on was a cab parked on the street. As he ran he heard someone screaming 'Stop! Rapist!"
The screams of the girls moments earlier had caught the ear of a local resident of the apartments that backed up to the McDonald's parking lot. The unknowing good Samaritan awoke to screams, looked out his window, saw the girls standing by their minivan, and saw my brother running away from the car pulling up his pants. The good Samaritan, assuming the worst, got up, and ran out his back door into the parking lot to defend the girls and kill my brother.
As my brother entered the cab he was screaming for the cabbie to drive. He peered over the backseat to see the good Samaritan rounding the corner to ground zero between the car and the dumpster. At this magical moment the good Samaritan, screaming his head off, wiped out in my brother's pile of shit. With his good intentions properly coated in my brother's feces and the shocked coeds still frozen in horror, my brother made his inglorious getaway in a $5 cab!
Thanks for contributing to my caption win and free t-shirt with you votes!
I don't know if this is an achievement or indicator that I spend way too much time on the computer. Nonetheless thanks to the user contests no doubt I was able to work the right mojo out of the old funny bone.
cheers,
Pat
Beloved FOD staff,please take the follow as some constructive criticism on the way the caption contests are being run.
FOD is a social networking website based on premium and user-created comedic content, as such, the voting mechanism for caption contests allows 'Die Bombers' to take the joy out of participating.
To better handle this, I suggest the following:
1. weight votes based on a user's community involvement or 'credibility points'; more posts on the site or fan subscriptions, more weight in voting.
2. change the caption scoring algorithm so that 'Funny' votes outweigh 'Die' votes or at least the main win metric is total number of Funny votes. A 1/0 caption should never outrank a 18/19 rank in other words.
3. take a lesson from Dave's Caption Contests. in that environment there is no voting, just a benevolent dictator. The atmosphere is funny and positive and discourages a-holes without anyone having to lift a finger. When the FOD junkies feel like newbie die-bombers will prevent them from ever winning that god-forsaken t-shirt or that the moderator is just picking favorites, then interest will be lost.
4. This is web 2.0, don't be afraid of total community ownership. This is really just another extension of my first point: let the community establish its own rotating or guest moderators for the contests. This, of-course depends on some kind of credibility rating for user profiles. I nominate Dave ('phukuhp') for starters
I'm sure you never intended this much thought to go into the contest design. It's just part of the sad reality of my day-job: I build web apps and social networking websites for a living and need this to keep my sanity!
Plus i'm dying for a free t-shirt!!!
cheers,
Pat Sheridan
