Category: Funny Stuff

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Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Uah

Nobody got it! Nobody! Last week’s Bad Visual Pun of the Month (well, probably more like Bad Visual Pun Of The Indeterminate Time Period) went completely unsolved. Here, then, is the answer – although it required some slightly specialized knowledge about one of my stranger creative projects.

UAH!

FIDDY CENT

There’s a pretty good chance you didn’t know how to arrive at that answer. There’s a pretty good chance you don’t know what a fiddygibber is. It’s time to change that. It’s time to tell you all about… Jump Cut City. … Read more

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Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

You’re in black!

Hey bro, you're in blackThere are few incidents worse than a TV station over which you’re supposedly riding herd “going black” – i.e. something, somewhere, has stopped working, and you’re broadcasting an empty signal. In the control room, this is known as “oh shit time.”

So naturally, that’s when people who have no idea what does what in master control begin calling the master control trouble line. … Read more

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Critters Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Meet Explorer Earl

Dork HelmetOkay, I only thought this stuff was buried under a mile of soft peat somewhere.

Sometime in 1994, at the first TV station where I worked, I got shanghaied into being on-air talent during kids’ programming. Our kids’ club talent had just left, and there was a perfect storm brewing:

  1. The Humane Society did pet-of-the-week spots in our kids’ programming, which helped the station to fulfill its “local public service” quota. Those spots now had no host.
  2. The station had just gotten a pith helmet in a National Geographic promo kit.
  3. I was already on the payroll.

With no contract, no additional pay, and no perks, I was suddenly… Explorer Earl. … Read more

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Funny Stuff

Calm the beef min

A long time ago, seemingly in another life, back before I had a kiddo, I spent inordinate amounts of time hanging around the video-game-centric Digital Press forums. One thread pointed toward a pre-release video of some game or other on Youtube – I don’t even remember the game itself – whose comment-section responses were rapturous to say the least. Well, except for one guy. … Read more

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Funny Stuff Gaming

The destruction of the great temple across town from the Sphinx

Whoa... I need a ziggurat.A completely true story. And this time it has nothing to do with broadcasting.

It was the summer of 2003, and I had just flown into Las Vegas for the first time. Wide-eyed, but mainly jet-lagged, I took the complimentary shuttle bus from the airport to the Plaza Hotel and started the whole “trying to check into my room” process. It should be noted that, at this point in the story, I was meeting with very limited success, and by very limited, I mean “none.” … Read more

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Funny Stuff Toiling In The Pixel Mines

Mixed Signals III: tonight’s gguuhhhhh will be… derp…

Dark HelmetSo where were we? Oh yeah – seeing off our former TV weather guy with a bang. He was leaving us anyway, so we gave him a memorable sendoff that no one watching at home would ever have known about.

Now the race was on to replace him. Our typically spendthrift manager and owner had a super spiffy idea: let’s not hire anyone new. Let’s just use the people who are already working here and not pay them any extra for suddenly being on-air talent.

That included me. … Read more