I’m The #1 Football Dad Who Wants To Cheer For His Son During Art Class

I have a new piece on Medium, “I’m The #1 Football Dad Who Wants To Cheer For His Son During Art Class.” Here’s a preview:

I’m feeling all artful, surrounded by these easels and messy bowls of cloudy water, wooden pallets or whatever you call them smeared with so many kinds of paint that the combined color actually reminds me of the pig skin. I thought about tossing the pallet thing across the room, but I figured it wouldn’t go over too well, am I right? CORY GO LONG! Just kidding. He can’t really catch anyway.

Go long and read the full piece here.

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The Mindy Projects

Talib Kweli chats with Steve Martin on Conversations with a Twitter Feed

Amenities Offered On the MacKenzie Bros. Trash Pickup Tour

I submit a lot of lists to McSweeney’s that get rejected. Instead of hiding these lists in my attic, I like to make my small failures public.

Here’s my most recent rejected McSweeney’s list:

AMENITIES OFFERED ON THE MACKENZIE BROS. TRASH PICKUP TOUR

Spacious common area for sitting/lying down on a soft bed of trash

Views into the city’s back-alleys, building crevices, junk yards, and other “secret locations”

Exclusive insight into how locals live, eat, dispose

Hop-on, hop-off wherever you see a trash can and/or dumpster

Convenient trash throwaway anywhere inside the truck

“Take what you can grab” souvenirs/antiques

Snacks/leftovers of all varieties (sanitation not guaranteed)

Major landmarks and attractions pointed to if a Mackenzie Bro feels like it

Hang off the back of the truck and wave to locals (18 years and older)

Dumpster diving (helmet not provided)

Unlimited trash juice, if you want

$75,000 pension

Slam Pig Podcast with Josh Accardo

My good friend, the talented comic Josh Accardo, had me on his podcast. We talk comedy, writing, accidental racism, standup, Wall Street, bootleg CDs, hookers, hazing, and much more.

Listen to it here. Download it on iTunes here.

Stuck Inside a Flash Mob

I have a new post on Medium about getting stuck inside a flash mob and the experience lessening your anxieties about dancing.

The fiance was giving me a hard time about this little dance number she wanted to do at the wedding. The thing is, and she knows this, is that I wasn’t born to dance. So, the fiance suggested we take dance lessons, and I suggested “no.” I’m was too insecure about making any sort of body movement outside the realms of walking, talking and eating since the incident.

Read the whole thing here.

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I’m managing Medium’s “Comedy, Humor & Satire” collection where this was published. If you want to contribute, email me or tweet at me.

"Go on in confidence, don’t think, and above all things, study human nature; For “the proper study of mankind is man,” and you will find that while expanding the intellect and the muscles, your enlarged experience will enable you every day to more consistently and authentically depict the human condition and, in turn, enable you to consistently find the game in your scenes. You are now an associate member of the Upright Citizens Brigade, and will be expected to uphold our beliefs, and assist in accomplishing our ongoing mission. Commit the following to memory: From the dawn of civilization, we have existed in order to undermine it. Our only enemy is the status quo. Our only friend is chaos. We have no government ties and unlimited resources. If something goes wrong, we are the cause. Every corner of the Earth is under our surveillance. If you do it, we see it. Always. We believe the powerful should be made less powerful. We have heard the voice of society, begging us to destabilize it. We are the Upright Citizens Brigade."

My UCB Diploma. I’ve yet to commit that last part to memory.

Your Television Watching Responsibilities

If you’re overwhelmed by all of the television you’re supposed to be watching, read my new piece on Medium for some surefire strategies for keeping up. Here’s a sample:

I mean, how does one even greet someone if they’re not caught up on Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game of Thrones, Girls, Homeland, Mad Men, Louie, the entire 11-year span of Frasier, etc. et al.? The standard “Hi, how are you?” doesn’t cut it. No one cares if you care how they are! A poignant reference to television at the top of a conversation is what matters. “Hi, you know Don Draper’s pants size is 36?”

Read it in full here.

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I’m managing Medium’s “Comedy, Humor & Satire” collection where this was published. If you want to contribute, email or tweet at me.

Offstage with Christian Polanco Podcast

Check me out on Offstage with Christian Polanco podcast (iTunes link) talking about relationships, evolutionary psychology, and how Beyonce ruined one of my pickup attempts. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

Splitsider Covers “Conversations with a Twitter Feed”

Splitsider wrote about and interviewed me about my web series. Here’s a snippet:

Conversations is more than an Internet series, it’s a mini-movement with which top comedians all over New York are familiar. The kind of thing that’s great now but will be monumental (and meta) in 5 years when all of the people on Mann’s show have Twitter feeds so large and influential that a new crop of young talent is having conversations with those Twitter feeds and the show is produced by someone other than Mann (he’ll be too famous), and so on and so on, until we live in a post-Twitter society and the show just consists of a hologram of the Grand Canyon projected by a lonely robot ironically named A. Mann.

I think it turned out okay. Read the whole thing here.

Best Guesses at Prince’s Email Address

I have a new piece in The Awl, “Best Guesses at Prince’s Email Address.” The truth is that I think about this stuff all the time.

Read the piece here.

Andy Kaufman’s Sister Wrote Me An Email

All name-dropping aside, I thought this email from Carol, Andy’s sister, served as a nice follow-up, or as potential closure, to the piece I wrote on Andy Kaufman for The Morning News. Carol, who agreed for me to publish this, wrote me the following:

Hi Alex,

Wow! How cool that you crafted a story from the exhibit and our meeting! I really appreciate your inclusion of how Andy visited the hospital and the letters that flesh out Andy’s character.

Your analysis of  Mighty Mouse is funny and very interesting…my favorite part of Mighty Mouse is when he drinks the water since he hasn’t uttered a word that would make his throat dry!

The end of the article is great. I happen to think he is still alive…Gosh, there was just an article written about him in today’s The Morning News! Thanks for keeping him alive!

I’m working on a story about Andy and me and what it’s like to have a famous brother.  I also want to write a child’s book with some family stories about the little Andy that was misunderstood.

Thanks again for turning your visit into art!

Best, 
Carol

I believe it, too. Andy is alive.