That is weird, that is bi-Sklar

(Photo source: The Sklar Brothers)

On one of my favorite podcasts, the Sklar Brothers' Sklarbro Country from the incredibly prolific Earwolf comedy podcast production company, the sports-loving twin brothers poke fun at the batty behavior of sports celebrities and their often equally deranged fans with the same biting and wonderfully rapid-fire delivery they brought to their much-missed ESPN Classic sports clip show Cheap Seats. Randy and Jason Sklar are also huge boosters of indie bands like The Morning Benders and The Henry Clay People, so the beds and mid-show musical interludes in between the Sklarbitrations, Quick Hits, visits from Racist Vin Scully and Sklarson impressions (a.k.a. the Sklars' Johnny Carson impressions) are often indie rock tracks. An occasional hip-hop joint gets thrown into the mix because fortunately, the brothers' musical tastes aren't limited to the "flaccid, smarmy, girl-pant, bearded, fixie bike rock" that one Sklarbro Country fan amusingly complained about in the Earwolf site's comments section (he's right about the stupidity of guys wearing girl pants though).

You know how TV shows like The Sopranos, Grey's Anatomy and more recently, Breaking Bad have replaced terrestrial radio and MTV as a place to discover sounds by new artists whenever the shows utilize existing songs as either source music or "needle drops" for montages or action sequences (which led to several newspaper and music magazine articles declaring that "scripted TV is the new radio")? The beds and musical interludes on comedy podcasts are turning into another great place to unearth new sounds. Sklarbro Country was where I was first exposed to terrific tunes like The Morning Benders' "Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)" and Those Darlins' "Screws Get Loose."





When an ill track I've never heard before like Ana Tijoux's "1977" gets airplay on a series like Breaking Bad, I have to play detective and hunt for it online (that is if Alan Sepinwall doesn't ID the track on his blog, but he usually does so). Fortunately, the Sklar Brothers ID each tune for the listeners (and the guest comedians who are sometimes curious about a tune's title) as it's being played by their sound engineer, so I don't have to play detective, although I wish the brothers posted the track titles on the Earwolf site. Many Sklarbro Country listeners like myself have wondered where they could find playlist information. A few days ago, I discovered the Sklars have been posting playlist info, but on their WhoSay site (and in Twitpic form instead of as text for some bi-Sklar reason).

In addition to being a standout installment (I love the Sklars' takedown of Japan-bashing WNBA guard Cappie Poindexter, as well as special guest Kumail Nanjiani's takedown of "Crappy Henderson... what's her name?," whom he'd take more seriously "if the WNBA used regular-colored basketballs"), Sklarbro Country episode 34 is a good example of the show's inspired choices for existing songs. What other show goes from J Mascis to Warren G and the late Nate Dogg?

Asians not playing violin

(Photo source: SFGate)

I recently gave a peek at some of the music I've been bumping while completing the artwork for my upcoming self-published book I Suck at Math: A Trio of 10 Articles About Pop Culture (and that post itself will be included in the book). It's time for another peek. Because it's Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, here are five recordings from my laptop's various I Suck at Math artwork playlists that are all by Asian American musicians who don't play the Tiger Mom-enforced violin.

1. The Morning Benders, "Cold War (Nice Clean Fight)"
I first took notice of this terrific little timpani-driven cut about relationship disagreements during Sklarbro Country, of all shows. Good lookin' out, St. Louis Sklardinals. My only beef with "Cold War" is that it's way too short.



2. The Morning Benders, "Cold War (Star Slinger Remix)"
This dope remix Kanye-ifies Morning Benders frontman Christopher Chu's voice and is part of the Bay Area band's Japan Echo EP release to aid Japanese disaster relief.

The Morning Benders - Cold War (Star Slinger Remix) buy & support japan by Star Slinger

3. The CounterParts, Appetizer EP
It's cool to see T-Know's hip-hop career take off. I knew T-Know briefly when we were UCSC students.

4. The Skyflakes, "sci-fi as lit."
This is a pretty clever Star Trek-inspired song. The Fil-Am indie rock band's "sci-fi as lit." refers to events from the Next Generation episode "Tapestry," in which Q grants Picard his wish to go back in time and change a pivotal moment from his days as a vert-around-the-gills Starfleet Academy cadet. You don't have to be a Trekkie to dig "sci-fi as lit." because unlike the music of Trek-inspired novelty bands like No Kill I and Warp 11, the track never mentions any Trek characters by name, so it could refer to anyone who's ever wanted to redo a key moment in their past--something everyone can identify with.

5. Blue Scholars, "John DeLorean"
Another Pinoy musician expresses an obsession with time travel. This track, which contains Back to the Future references (hence the title "John DeLorean"), arose from a discussion Blue Scholars beatmaker Sabzi once had with Scholars MC Geo in which they wondered, "If you could have just one super power, what would it be?" Geo picked time travel because with that ability, "you actually have the capacity to secure any other super power you wanted. For example, if you wanted to fly, you could just travel to a future time where personal flying technology was developed and bring it back."

Has Geo ever considered writing sci-fi or superhero comics as a second career? What Geo said about powers in the "John DeLorean" single download's liner notes had 10 times more clarity and sense than the writing in last Friday's Smallville series finally.

An old Cheap Seats segment features Chesty McWooden from Twilight

On a recent episode of Sklarbro Country with special guest Amy Poehler (whose laughter I always enjoy hearing, and she does a lot of it during this standout ep, mostly because of James Adomian's hysterical Jesse "The Body" Ventura impression), the Sklar Brothers briefly discussed with Poehler an installment of their ESPN Classic cult favorite Cheap Seats where the brothers snarked on footage of a karate demonstration by a then-unknown Taylor Lautner, a few years before they and the rest of the world became familiar with Lautner and his impression of a wooden washboard in the Twilight movies.

After listening to Randy and Jason mention that 2006 Cheap Seats segment, I had to go YouTube that segment, which I hadn't seen in a long time. Hearing the Sklar Brothers slap around a blue-haired, pre-movie set trailer tantrum-having, 11-year-old version of Lautner made my day. God, I miss Cheap Seats (even though it's finally dropping on DVD!).



The sponsor of that junior karate tournament was Paul Mitchell. Because the first thing I think when I watch martial arts is "Gee, these roundhouse kicks would look more impressive if the kid had frosted tips."

Stuff White People Like But This Brown Man Can't Stand #4: Unfunny jokes about former enemies of the U.S. when they experience national tragedies

Joan Rivers defended Gilbert Gottfried's controversial Twitter jokes about the disaster-stricken Japanese by saying comedians cope with tragedy through humor and then using her plastic-and-adamantium-coated face as a shield to protect Gottfried from the bullets from his angriest critics. I'm all for using humor to cope with tragedy, but when someone uses it to slam the victims of a terrible situation like Gottfried, Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin, several conservatards and countless others on Twitter did, it's not funny at all.

I appreciate how The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and my favorite new podcast Sklarbro Country handled the disaster in Japan and managed to find humor in the situation without veering into anti-Asian racism. Stephen Colbert came up with the funniest bit of disaster-related humor when he described the earthquake/tsunami/radiation crisis as a "disaster-ducken."

Meanwhile, the Sklar Brothers, whose hilarious podcast pokes fun at the often odd and insane behavior of sports celebrities, elbowed New York Liberty guard Cappie Poindexter in the face for her moronic tweets about the disaster being God's payback for Pearl Harbor and the way Japan treats their own people in "there" country.

"That's who we want commenting on this disaster. A guard from the WNBA. Yeah, we don't wanna hear from the head of the Red Cross or anybody from the State Department. We wanna hear from a women's professional basketball player," joked Randy and Jason, who were so appalled by Poindexter's tweets that they resurrected their discontinued "Douchebag of the Week" segment and picked "the Alexandra Wallace of the WNBA" as the segment's first-ever female douchebag, or "Douchebaguette of the Week."

"Now is not the time to blame Japan for anything, even Sudoku," said the twin brothers. "Leave them alone!"

Now is the time to help Japan, so I've taken part in the SIUniverse for Japan online auction to support GlobalGiving's Japan relief fund. For the next few weeks, fans of the 2009 graphic novel Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology can bid on artwork and other items donated by Secret Identities artists and writers like myself.

I've donated a couple of pieces of artwork that will be up for bid. One of the items is a poster of an illustration of Hideaki Akaiwa, an ordinary office worker in Miyagi prefecture who was named "Badass of the Week" for refusing to wait around for rescue workers and venturing out on his own with scuba gear and duct-taped-together plastic wrapped around his legs to rescue tsunami survivors like his wife.

When I first heard about this badass, I kept thinking, "Damn, this is like a real-life Sea Hunt," as in that old TV show I've never watched but I'm familiar with from the "By this time, my lungs were aching for air" running gag during Mystery Science Theater 3000's Lloyd Bridges/Rocketship X-M episode and Bridges' own spoof of his old show during Hot Shots! Part Deux. I Googled Sea Hunt, stumbled into old covers from the comic book version of Sea Hunt and drew for the auction a sketch of Akaiwa that I modeled after those covers.

Like Akaiwa has done for his family members and neighbors, go lend a hand to the disaster victims now.

APRIL 9, 2011 UPDATE: Here's my illustration of Akaiwa, entitled "Hideaki Akaiwa: A Real Life Superhero," which is now up for bid. It's a 20" x 24" poster that's printed on heavyweight coated paper.

APRIL 17, 2011 UPDATE: Sold! To Gary in Arlington, VA!

APRIL 21, 2011 UPDATE: The other item I donated to the auction is an illustration of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle that I did for my upcoming self-published print compilation of the most responded-to posts from this blog. The title of the book--and this is the first time I've posted the title here--is I Suck at Math: A Trio of 10 Articles About Pop Culture.

My Harold & Kumar drawing is a 14" x 23" poster that's printed on heavyweight coated paper. It's now up for bid.

MAY 10, 2011 UPDATE: Sold! To Quentin in Concord, NH!

Shows I Miss: Cheap Seats

In some ways, the Sklar Brothers' hilarious Cheap Seats, in which Randy and Jason snarked MST3K-style on old footage from both the ESPN and ABC Sports vaults, was more watchable than the classic Minneapolis-based comedy show that influenced them. It was faster-paced than MST3K and only a half-hour long. At two hours, MST3K could occasionally be tedious viewing--especially when the B-movie was so unwatchable not even Mike and the Bots' jokes could make it watchable.

I particularly liked it when Randy and Jason would make music references even the MST3K writers probably wouldn't have understood (like their observation that a mustached, helmet-haired Scrabble tournament champ looks like he stepped out of the "Sabotage" video). It's too bad the show, which ran from 2004 to 2006 on ESPN Classic (a channel that at one point, attempted to ruin its best show by stupidly adding a studio audience to the Cheap Seats set), will never see the light of day on DVD. I assume that's due to footage and music rights issues. There are so many Cheap Seats gems like the "Sabotage" running gag during the Scrabble tournament footage, the Cheap Seats/MST3K crossover and the "Pam Poetry" odes to a blond '80s ESPN rodeo commentator named Pam Minick that I want to revisit without having to hunt for them on YouTube.

"I bring the juice! You bring the gin-ick, Pam Minick!"