Armand Van Helden, Still The Funk Phenomena

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I did a little email interview for LAist with an old house music favorite of mine, Armand Van Helden. While his discography is full of classic after classic after classic… he’s gone hipster. I didn’t give him a hard time about it, but I would like if he would take some cues from his older work.

Meet Jimmy Pardo: Never Not Having Fun

Pardo’s Monday-through-Friday gig is “The Tonight Show”’s warm-up comedian, where he cracks up the studio audience before Conan O’Brien does more of the same.

He’s also one of the few financially successful podcasters, hosting the award-winning weekly show, “Never Not Funny” (”The Pardcast,”) alongside co-host Matt Belknap.

“I’m the luckiest man alive, as far as both of those things go,” said Pardo.

Read the full article on LAist. Published on LAist: 11/24/09.

Originally Posted By gentlemensclubpodcast

The Gentlemen’s Rule: Dropped Call Etiquette

gentlemensclubpodcast:

This article was originally published on Just A Guy Thing.

By Caleb Bacon

Your parents didn’t teach you cell phone etiquette. Otherwise, the following conversation wouldn’t chill your bones with deja vu.

“Hey, we just lost each other,” you say into your Blackberry. “I had four bars. How many bars did you have?”

Your cell phone conversation had been prematurely cut short courtesy of some technological shortcoming known as the Dropped Call.

“Three bars, maybe four,” your friend replies, unsure. “I have Sprint, but I had AT&T for six years. But that was two years ago.”

“I was talking to Julie the other day and this same thing happened,” he says into his new iPhone. “I think it was from those sunspots. You hear about those?”

You recall, “There was this great article…” And it continues.

For some bizarre, addicting reason, people love talking about Dropped Calls. It’s as though your pseudo-tech-talk confirms your genius.

When actually, talking about talking — or not talking — isn’t really talking at all. It’s not the behavior of Gentlemen.

The Rule

Do not spend more than one sentence addressing the Dropped Call. If you can’t come up with a sentence (talkers-block,) try this on:

“Our call was dropped.”

Then talk about something amazing, or something mundane — just not the Dropped Call.

For fans of brevity, “So, anyway,” is great because it mutually, and silently, expresses that the call was dropped, and that bastard by-product of cellular progress earns no respect.

Fight the urge. Squash Dropped Call curiosity. Do not ask questions. Do not answer them. Instead, Pass Go. Collect $200. You earned it.

You’ll be amazed at how much this Gentlemen’s Rule frees up.

Since adopting it, I have an extra 35 minutes each day. I’ve been looking both ways before crossing the street, paying my taxes, and tutoring young women (Freshman only) at my local junior college.

A Gentlemen’s Theory: XXX Edition

Here’s the full text of something I wrote that’s kind of dirty.

gentlemensclubpodcast:

A Gentlemen’s Theory: Keep Your Favorite Pornstar A Secret

By Caleb Bacon

This article was originally published on Just a Guy Thing and also pleasantly discussed here.

“She’s hotter than hot! She’s amazing. She’s my dream,” revealed my friend, who we’ll call “Mellow Yellow.”

I’m not sure what compelled Mellow Yellow to tell me about his favorite pornstar, but I thanked him for this new information. I had never heard of her, and she sounded like pure, delicious fantasy. (We’ll call her “The Golden Girl” — though she’s no senior citizen.)

It was as if Mellow Yellow was saying “this is my favorite pornstar, and she will become your favorite too.”

I go home. Use The Google. Turns out The Golden Girl is pretty popular.

She certainly wasn’t unattractive. Her cosmetic surgeries seemed minimal enough to maintain the morally-ambiguous girl-next-door-thing that works so well in adult cinema. And whether via personal trainer or a hearty powdered-stimulant appetite, she was quite slender. She was tramp-stamped, but not over-tatted like those pornstarlets whose side-of-neck tattoo screams, “I could never work at an insurance agency so don’t even try to hire me.”

Forty-two seconds into her scene with another similarly attractive barely-legal, I deduced she must’ve downed a gallon of Gatorade before heading to the set (or G2 if she wanted half the calories but all of the fluid.)

The Golden Girl was urinating all over her co-star.

She wasn’t just a pornstar but a star of Golden Shower Porn, and these watersports were not sexy.

“Who buys this stuff?” I questioned my Macbook, aghast.

Oh. Right.

Did Mellow Yellow assume I was also into Golden Showerpower? Or did he think that I would judge The Golden Girl’s masturbatory merit on her (dry) looks alone?

I never bothered to find out. Just like he had never bothered to find out if I liked Golden Shower Porn before offering such a glowing, revealing recommendation.

Guys, Guys, Guys

America boasts about 150 million men. That’s 150 million flavors of American pervert. As men, we’re like pervy snowflakes, each featuring a dirty pornographic desire with which to scratch a unique itch of orgasm.

Like one snowflake to the next, we don’t realize how truly different we are. While we all have some affinity for the Jenna Jameson-type (big fake-jugged, bleached blonde,) we need to realize how truly special our tastes are.

A trip to YouPorn reveals category after category of sinful variety, suggesting no way we’re all alike. In this era of porn-specialization, revealing your favorite pornstar is revealing your favorite genre. Revealing your favorite genre may be way way way way too much information.

I’ve changed my friend’s name to Mellow Yellow for the purpose of this piece, but also it’s what our group of friends have nicknamed him.

Guys, if you want to be Gentlemen, keep your favorite pornstars a secret! That is, unless you want to unknowingly reveal that you get jiggy with yourself to leather-clad Middle Eastern midgets on tricycles.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.