steve martin abe lincoln

i think steve martin should play abe lincoln in a movie. a movie called Abraham Lincoln: Russian Spy. but the title is kind of misleading. the movie is actually about abe lincoln killing a rebel army of slave-owning robots and single-handedly winning the SECRET second civil war. it's not until the very end of the movie that he fakes his own death and becomes a russian spy.

who is that man?

can you guess who this person is supposed to look like?

i love cake

always have, always will.

pity's my only hope

when i was 2 years old, i went shopping with my mom. i found a smurfs balloon that i really wanted. i asked my mom to buy it, but she said no. i didn't put up a fight. i didn't complain. i just pulled the balloon down, kissed it, and said, "goodbye smurf balloon."
my mom was so touched by the gesture that she bought me the balloon.
and at that extremely young age, i learned that the only way i would get anything in this life, was to make people feel sorry for me.
that lesson has gotten me jobs, a masters degree, and countless free beers. a girl even dated me for upwards of three years, solely out of pity. yessir, i do believe i have that smurf balloon to thank for the sad man that i've become today.

i've been writing for over 20 years

this was a vanity plate i made for my bicycle when i was in kindergarten. i wrote all the words i could think of that i knew how to spell. that short list included the words: rad, radical, cool, you, and pie.
i'm proud to say that since kindergarten, the list of words i know how to spell has more than doubled!
i am disappointed, however, that my license plates have gotten severely less rad. my current plate seems to be nothing more than a sequence of random numbers and letters.

a portrait of the blogger as a young man

i found this in the house i grew up in. it's a picture i drew (a self-portrait?) on the back of a brown paper bag. it depicts a deranged man shooting a gun. near the man, is what appears to be a flaming corpse. maybe it's a dead bat. that could be. i'm guestimating that this picture was drawn when i was around 5 or 6. i was a big fan of zelda around that time. and killing bats was a really difficult aspect of that game for me.
i'm also really proud of my bold decision to sign my name, not at the bottom, but at the top of the picture. and i feel that signing it backwards was extremely symbolic.
i'm not sure why there were so many guns in my drawings when i was a kid. maybe it was because my parents encouraged gun violence in my playtime activities.

george washington: the first black president?

my friend at work has the surname "washington." she pointed out to me once that george washington is the only white person with the last name washington. i think she might be right. i honestly can't think of a single white person named washington. and i know that george didn't have any children of his own. well, he didn't claim any of them, at least. i think george was one of those dudes who had a secret love affair with one of his slaves. oooooooor, maybe george, himself, was secretly black. he wasn't using all that powder to make his hair look white. it was to make his SKIN white.

indy 500

on my flight into Indy, i sat next to a dude who was drinking a light beer and reading a folder full of documents. i glanced at one. it was info about racers who were competing in the upcoming indy 500. then i remembered, that was going to happen a few days later.
i've never gone to the indy 500. or any car race, for that matter. i went to the kentucky derby once. but they race horses at that one. it was pretty crazy. just a bunch of drunks standing around in the mud, occassionally showing each other their breasts. i was in the infield. apparently, up in the seats, it's a bunch of old rich southerners with big hats and funny suits. i've been told the 500 is similar. but up in the seats, at the 500, are a bunch of racing enthusiasts.
i used to be confused by car racing. but now i think i get it. i'm not a fan. but i get it. there's a lot that goes into it. and it's really fun to drive fast. i drove really fast once. when i was moving out to california, there was a stretch of road in arizona that was SO boring. it was a really flat and straight stretch of highway. and no one was around, so i decided to see how fast i could drive. my high score was 110 miles per hour.

back west

aaaaaaand we're back. california welcomed me home last night. now i can get back to work.
that's not to say i didn't enjoy my trip. i did. but getting back is always nice too.

i'm shrinking

my new fear is that i will keep getting smaller and hairier until, eventually, i turn into a hairball the size of my fist.
and then someone will sweep me up in a dustpan and throw me outside.
and then a bird will use me to build a nest.
and then some mean kid will throw stones at the bird and kill it.
and the little newborn baby bird inside me (the nest) will go hungry and die.
and then, there i am, useless, in a tree, with a dead baby bird in my lap.

sleeeeep

man, whenever i come home, i'm sooo tired. yesterday i had a lot of caffeine, took like two naps and still was in bed before midnight. then, in bed, i was worried i wouldn't fall asleep because i had just gotten up from my second nap.
i was going to read in bed but my mom had rearranged stuff and now i don't have a reading lamp next to my bed, which is annoying. so i just lied in the dark and thought of funny stuff. i thought of this crazy story that i planned to put on my blog (schoolpants.blogspot.com) but i didn't have a pen and paper next to my bed either! annoying!
anyway, i thought of all this crazy stuff which i now don't remember and then i was a little afraid to fall asleep because when i'm at home, i tend to get weird nightmares. not really nightmares, it's sleep paralysis. it's when your body is still in R.E.M. mode, which makes you paralyzed, but you kind of wake up and you can see stuff and sometimes you halluicinate. it used to happen to me a lot when i was in my bed at home. i was pretty convinced there was a ghost that was just messing with me. one time there was a girl standing at the foot of my bed and she looked like she was waiting for a train or something. a few weeks ago, my roommate had one of these dreams where michael douglas was gnawing on his hands. they're pretty terrifying dreams. but also kind of awesome. so i was half-worried i would have one last night, and half-excited. turns out i didn't have one. but i did have this crazy dream about getting into a huge argument with my dad. i don't remember what the argument was about.
one time, when my niece was 3, she was telling me about this nightmare she had where all these mosquitoes kept biting her. i thought it was really cool because it sounded like such a vivid dream. but it also made me really sad because kids should only have good dreams.

the american midwest

that's where i am right now. the american midwest. land of fast food and heavy drink. where hateful and judgmental people pride themselves on being friendly and down-to-earth. yessir. these are MY people.
i'm only kidding, of course. the truth is: i like the american midwest. some of my favorite people on the planet are from this region. and let's be honest, the west, south, and northeast (the only other 3 regions, according to Jigital Corvette [sic]) have their negative stereotypes as well. and like most stereotypes, they're not completely unfounded.
that's the thing about PLACES, they're all pretty lousy. everywhere you go, you're going to bump into a discouragingly large population of awful people. but the flip side of that is you can find terrific people everywhere you go as well. you just have to be willing to look.

Day in pictures

man, if i had a green screen and a proper camera and some lights and some people who knew how to shoot good videos, my videos would be less funny.

world news

i remember when we got new cabinets in our kitchen when i was a kid. my parents hired amish people to build them. because, allegedly, amish people are awesome cabinet makers. and cheap. you can pay them in heaven points. heaven points are these little circles my dad cut out of cardboard and then wrapped in tin foil. then he used a magic marker to write "1 heaven pt." on them. the amish were bewildered by the tin foil, or "god paper," as they called it.

just kidding about the heaven points. they were actually called "jesus pennies."

just kidding. but also, we'd have this amish lady come to our house sometimes to clean our house. her name was emma. or eva. or something. i don't remember. she was nice. sometimes her sister rebecca would come too. just for fun. they would speak only in dutch to each other, which i found really annoying as a kid. but i shouldn't've been annoyed. because dutch was their first language. and first languages are like first kisses. they're wetter and warmer than you expected.
wait, what? anyway, my mom thought those amish sisters were the coolest. my mom would drive them home and she'd take me and my little brother along so we could see where they lived and what their lives were like. one time we even ate dinner over there. they had homemade bread and homemade butter. it was awesome. they had other food too. but i just remember eating like a million pieces of bread because it was so good. i love bread.
in conclusion, all the amish people i've ever met were very kind and hardworking and smart and bilingual. don't make fun of amish people.

i got in trouble at work

so at work, i have to wear an apron and a nametag. it's demeaning, but i do it. a few months ago, they had these buttons that we could wear for fun. they had coffee related things and bad puns. i decided to wear a button, but modify it. i covered it in tape and wrote COFFEE! on it. it made me happy. every few days, i'd change it again. after about a month, i landed on "I LIKE YOUR HAIRDO." i found that to be a very funny thing for a button to say. i particularly like the word hairdo. it is funny to me.
and customers seemed to like it too. several even laughed out loud. most would say things like "thanks, i like your hairdo too." bald men especially got a kick out of it. it was a "feel-good" button. everyone was on board. everyone, that is, except my boss. i came in to work one day to find my apron missing. inside my locker was my button (along with a price tag i had made for myself and attached to my nametag) and a note saying that i was not allowed to wear my custom-made button that everyone loved so dearly.

it was the worst day of my life.

how CRAZY was that?

remember when tyson bit holyfield's ear off??? HOW CRAZY WAS THAT? i just thought of that for the first time in awhile.
when i was a kid, i really liked mike tyson. i remember feeling really confused when buster douglas beat him. also, the summer between 7th and 8th grade, i was kind of obsessed with Rocky movies. my little brother and i watched all of them about a dozen times.

robot teachers ... FINALLY

my friend dave is a teacher in korea and he's currently looking for jobs in other asian countries. there's just one problem: THE ROBOTS TOOK ALL THE JOBS!
i remember being a kid and at some point having a really weird realization that teachers are just PEOPLE and people are just grown up KIDS and kids are really stupid. i was a stupid kid. and the idea that teachers were just grown up stupid kids blew my mind. i immediately lost all respect for them. my grades suffered significantly.
but having robot teachers solves that problem. as we all know, robots are infallible. and it's not illegal for robots to use corporal punishment. so look out kids.
also, these robots are designed to express SIX different emotions! i didn't even know there WERE six different emotions. up until now, i thought the three human emotions were sad, sleepy, and crying. but apparently, these robots have just invented six of their own. they are surprise, fear, disgust, anger, happiness and sadness. i can imagine teachers needing to express all of those emotions towards students ... except for happiness and sadness.

one-line-discovery

it looks cooler if the line is skinnier.
that is the discovery i made today.
skinnier lines are better.

pleasant park

Pleasant Park from Pete Ohs on Vimeo.

my friend pete made this movie. it is awesome for about a dozen reasons.

i love this movie.

i personally love one-line-drawings

one time i was watching this thing on the history channel. it was about ice cream. it was funny. they interviewed all these people about the history of ice cream. and one dude, all he said was "i personally love ice cream."

man, that cracked me up.

boney m - my new favorite dancer/human

my roommate, adam, had a dream that he was deejaying a party and he put on boney m's Rasputin and no one danced to it. i informed him i was unfamiliar with the song. he was surprised. i demanded to hear it. he played it for me. i liked it instantly. i fake-russian-danced. adam said the video is great. i demanded to see the video. the video IS great. THE END.

who is jeffrey_katz???

my gmail freaked out earlier and when it started working again, the name "jeffrey_katz" popped up like a million times in the chat list. it only stayed for like 30sec but i was able to get a screengrab. the really weird thing is ... i don't know anyone named jeffrey katz and i typed the name into my gmail search and nothing turned up, which means i've never received an email from him or sent an email to him. the name has never even been mentioned in an email sent to me or from me. ... so why would he pop up in my chat list? and why so many times? and why never before? and why never since?

strange things are afoot in my gmailbox.

whistle with fingers in your mouth

sometime before i'm dead, i'd like to learn how to whistle really loudly with my fingers in my mouth. it seems like back in the day, every dude on the planet knew how to do that. now it seems like only a few really old guys know how to do it. actually, it's been so long since i've seen someone do it, i'm beginning to think it was never a real thing at all. am i just making this method of whistling up? is it just my imagination?

no, it's a real thing, right? it has to be. you know what i'm talking about, right? like i feel like in the 70s, men would use this method of whistling to stop taxi cabs.

why aren't old men passing along this knowledge? why hasn't someone taught me to whistle like that? i don't want this whistle to die out with "the greatest generation."

cool shoes, cory

i have a friend named cory. he usually wears pretty cool shoes. everybody calls him "kool shewz kor-E." they spell it that way because he's from the streets. which is a place where everything's kind of spelled phonetically. and with as many z's as possible.

it's 2:30am and i can't sleep. i've been eating a lot of hard-boiled eggs lately (four today). i don't know if egg consumption is in any way related to insomnia. but i'm willing to do a study.

one thing i know for sure: insomnia causes silly blog posts.

Rob Braub: week 4

Rob Braub is at it again. please take a look. if you're into that sort of thing.

more "celeb" portraits

i set out to draw a crazy picture of Daniel Kroyd, co-writer of one of my favorite sci-fi comedy adventures, Ghostsbustin! he came out way creepier than i intended. i was planning on making the eyes and mouth way out of proportion. but it just made him look like an ex-KGB assassin. that's when i realized i have no control over the craziness of my drarings. this was an exciting realization. after that, i decided to draw a CRAZIER version of my already-crazy draring of Steven Buscemice. i had a secret desire to make the eyes even bigger and creepier. but other than that, i just let the craziness happen. click on the foto for a closer view of the zanniness.

cinco de mayo

today is cinco de mayo. for those of you who don't speak español (which is the spanish word for "spanish") cinco de mayo means "5 of mayo." i believe this day has something to do with getting five squirts of mayonaise on a sandwich. which i think is gross. i hate mayonaise. we shouldn't have a day celebrating that.

mayo is also the name of a clinic in rochester, minnesota where scientists and robots work together to figure out what makes people sick. so maybe today is about five robot-scientists who are making the world a healthier place. but a lot of times, robots turn evil and then kill people. which is bad for their health. which defeats the purpose of the mayo clinic. so we shouldn't celebrate that either.

mayo is also the name of a county in ireland where my mom's family comes from. so, in a way, i am "de mayo" and i am my mother's fifth child. so that makes me numero cinco. so i guess, technically, i am cinco de mayo. today is my day. hooray for me.

the kids show (for kids!)

a long while back, i get the idear (idea) in my noodle (brain) that i should make a children's show. because i like children. and i like shows. and i PARTICULARLY like children's shows. and because my nephews (and niece) like to watch my videos. so i set out to make a kids show for kids. i videotaped myself talking to this robot i built. but i wasn't very happy with the result. so i reshot it. but i still wasn't happy with it. then, about three months later (today), i looked at the footage again and decided it wasn't so bad. so i edited it this morning. here's the finished show.

if you're a grownup and this video doesn't appeal to you, don't feel bad. it's a kids show. it's for kids.

rainman's blow pop

a few days ago at work, an elderly man stormed into the coffee shop and hurried inside, bypassing the line. he came directly to me, and set a blow pop on the counter. i chuckled and said "thank you." he didn't chuckle. he was serious. deadly serious. we shared a moment of eye contact but there wasn't a lot of life in his eyes. i realized he hadn't given me the blow pop out of generosity. it was some sort of compulsion. i stopped chuckling. he turned around and scuttled out the door.

it was amazing. and it brightened my day tenfold. but wait, there's more: my friend/co-worker, rob, informed me that the man is a local legend. rumor has it he was the inspiration for the title character in Rain Man. apparently, he used to come into our coffee shop and lock himself in the restroom for upwards of forty-five minutes. people claim he would be in there cleaning the restroom.

this information brightened my day one-hundredfold. i felt special. i don't understand the significance of the blow pop but i like to imagine that Rain man specifically chose me to be the new carrier of this mystical bubblegum-filled lollipop.

jorge cloomney

Probably one of my favorite things right now is drawing crummy drarings of close-up photographs of people ... by candlelight ... sitting on the floor ... with music playing. last night, my roommate, ad-rock, and i tackled this super-close-up foto of gorge clumly, star of Facts of Life, ER, and the Men in Black trilogy.
we used two candles. we listened to animal collective's "merriweather post pavillion." i drew in dark blue ink. adam drew in pencil but he promised to never erase. last night, i thought the man adam drew looked british. but now i think maybe turkish. adam started to draw the "q" from "esquire." but he didn't want to write the rest. so he just shaded it in. i laughed really hard. so did he. he wanted to erase but stuck to his promise. he also drew the bar-code and the sticker on the bottom of the picture. i thought that was cool. so i did the same. sort of.
at one point, i stopped drawing and adam and i simultaneously noticed that i was drawing paul newman, somehow, instead of george clooney. we laughed for a long time at that. then i continued working on the drawing. then he started looking less like paul newman. aaaaaand less like george clooney. but i really wish i had taken a picture of it back when it looked like paul newman because it looked SO MUCH like him and it didn't make sense. it was hilarious. also, in one of the eyes, i shaded in the wrong part by accident. so i just stuck with it. and made it like a marble eye. george clooney has a glass eye. you didn't know that? that rumor started HERE.