It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the recommended page on my site, and I figured now is as good a time as any.

Some of these may be so incredibly obvious that you’ll want to take one hand, slap it against your chest, and shout a defiant “no duh!” at your monitor, but hopefully there will be a few recommendations among the lot that you haven’t heard of. So, in no particular order:

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace: This is my new favorite TV show. It’s brilliant on so many different levels and I’ve been telling everyone I know about it. Here’s what Michael Cera had to say about it, “That show is so good I can’t stand it. Thank you for it, in a major way.” Check out my previous posts for more information. And because this video is great, I’m going to post it again.

The Ricky Gervais Show: The Ricky Gervais Show should really be called The Karl Pilkington Show, as the whole thing is pretty much Ricky and Stephen, who co-wrote and co-directed “The Office” and “Extras,” talking to Karl and getting Karl’s incredibly weird take on things. Karl is amazing. Never has one man been so stupid and so brilliant at the same time. Or so entertaining. You can download the whole first season for free right here.

fourfour: fourfour is my new favorite blog (and the banner had me at hello). It’s the wittiest and best written blog I’ve come across in a long time. If you watch Project Runway and haven’t read fourfour’s recaps, you’re missing out on one of life’s great pleasures. But you don’t have to be a fan of Project Runway to appreciate fourfour, check out his fat camp post, Basic Instinct 2 review, Beyonce/The Beyond, or any of his film reviews. Really, the whole site is genius.

David Grann’s New Yorker pieces: David Grann is currently my favorite writer because of The Squid Hunter and Mysterious Circumstances (part 1, part 2). If you have some free time, sit back and read these amazing works of literary journalism.

ASSSSCAT: If you live in or near Los Angeles or New York, you really owe it to yourself to check out this show. According to the website, Asssscat “starts with a group of improv comedians taking the stage accompanied by a special guest monologist. Some guest monologists are talented celebrities, others are screwed up weirdos. Either way, they usually have great stories to tell. We take a suggestion from the audience, then the show begins. The special guest shares off-the-cuff thoughts, feelings, and personal remembrances inspired by the suggestion. The improvisers in turn use this impromptu monologue as fodder for a series of high octane, balls-to-the-wall improvised sketches that have made this show one of the longest running improv shows in the history of the world.” It’s also the most consistently entertaining live comedy show I’ve been to, and I try to attend every Sunday. It’s also free.

Charlie Kafuman’s Human Nature interview: This is actually a note for note parody of a Paul Thomas Anderson interview about Magnolia, and it’s fucking brilliant. It’s got all of the swearing, all of the enthusiasm, and in place of Fiona Apple, Mercedes Reuhl.

The Office (US): Like I wrote previously, I saw the pilot way back when and hated it, and as a result didn’t give the show much of a chance. I decided to give it another shot and boy am I glad I did. I could watch Jenna Fischer smile all day long. They’ve used a lot of the best elements of the bbc version, but have also branched out in entirely new directions, which makes for a very entertaining show.

Achewood: I consider this to be the best comic ever. And I own every Calvin and Hobbes book. Start at the beginning and be amazed at the hilarity and brilliance of the story lines and characters. This is one of the things I look forward to reading every day and it never disappoints. The Great Outdoor Fight storyline will go down as one of my favorite things in any medium, ever.

Smoky Tempeh Strips: This product has completely changed my eating habits. I now make at least 3 BLT sandwiches a week. Highly recommended for vegans and those who like food that tastes good.

Battlestar Galactica: I’m not the biggest sci-fi fan, but this show is so much more than that. It deals with politics, religion, unrequited love, and human-robot love, just to name a few themes. If you like Philip K. Dick at all, or quality dramas, I recommend this show.

The Wire: Speaking of quality dramas, this show is at the top of the heap. I can’t think of another show on television that respects the intelligence of the viewer more than this program. It’s an angry show that rewards the viewer. Payoffs don’t come at the end of every episode, but at the end of the season. And as the seasons progress, the show just keeps getting richer and deeper.

Take the Money and Run: Woody Allen’s first film is a mockumentary about an incompetent criminal, with Woody in the starring role. I was shocked at how hilarious this film is and how well it ages. This started me up on a serious Woody Allen kick.

For the most part, my experiences with finding a living situation via craigslist.org have been positive. About a week in to almost every stay, one, or sometimes all, of my roommates will offer me the chance to smoke marijuana like a cigarette. In fact, at two of the places they were even growing it. While I enjoy imbibing every once in awhile (it leads me to come to conclusions like “Jason Biggs should have a warning on himself that says ‘dude sucks’”), I rarely spend any money on the stuff, and find it most enjoyable in small doses while watching really bad movies. Anyway, if they weren’t offering to smoke me out, we were normally watching TV together or carrying on some form of peaceful coexistence.

My most recent craigslist roommates provided no pot, nor any sort of peer bonding. Ali’s gift giving manifested itself in a different way. He left cigarette butts in the shower:

This particular butt stayed parked in its perch for close to three weeks, and, after a heavy soaking, gave off an aromatic mixture of tobacco, swarthy Pakistani, and Axe body spray.
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About six years ago I discovered author David Sedaris, and that’s when everything changed for me. I became instantly hooked. I look at everything pre-Sedaris as being the dark time. I quickly devoured “Naked” and “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” and then went back to “Barrel Fever.” His attention to detail and abosolute mastery of maximizing the hilarity in every description was, and still is, completely mind-blowing. If you haven’t read “Naked” or “Me Talk Pretty One Day,” do yourself a favor and get them immediately. He is by far the funniest writer I have come across. Sadly his current writing is not as good as it once was, but there’s still some worthwhile material in “Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim,” which came out two years ago.

Around that time he went on a book tour, and I had the occasion to see him in San Francisco. He spent about ten minutes with each person in line talking to them, asking them questions. While it was a pain to wait through, it was a pleasure to be the focus of his attention. When I got to the front of the line he began asking me about my job, and we started talking about his brother, the rooster. David was convinced the rooster’s new child’s first word was going to be “nigger.” We had some good laughs, and as we talked David signed my book. I thanked him shortly thereafter and opened my book to find this:

I did some digging around online and I found a video of him reading a great story on Letterman, as well as a short story that I’ve only seen on the Esquire website, and is now stored on keepmedia.com. With the help of bugmenot.com, I was able to access the full text of the story, which I will post in its entirety after the jump.

Enjoy the video, but stay for the story. They’re both something special.

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Eliot kills it again with an incredible post about Nick Nolte and his quest for youth. It includes so many mind-blowing photos that it was hard to choose a favorite, but if forced to, I’d go with this one:

My friend Eliot just put up his website, honeyipunchedthebaby.com today. He kicks things off with a great post about his appearance on Wheel of Fortune as a bespectacled 11-year-old. Eliot is one of the best writers I’ve come across on the information superhighway, and I’m pleased that I’ll be able to read him more often now.

I just looked at Patton Oswalt’s blog and found out that he weighed in on Ann Coulter already. Yet another reason to like the man. Here’s his take on Ann Coulter (which also gives me another chance to post my favorite photo of her):

GOD BLESS ANN COULTER

I remember, post 9/11, those treasonous widows getting together like a witches’ coven, with the gall to ask if steps could have been taken to prevent what had happened. Like losing a husband and father gives you the right to say anything bad about the president. And I remember asking God, “God, could you please send an unmarried, childless coke whore down to denounce these cunts?”

Thanks, God!

I tried to read “The Da Vinci Code.” I couldn’t do it. I gave it 60 pages and put it down, took it back to Barnes and Noble and got my money back. I asked the cashier if anyone else had returned the book and he said that he didn’t know in a fairly snooty tone.

I have no plans on watching the film, but I did very much enjoy Anthony Lane’s review of it in The New Yorker. Anthony Lane is my favorite movie reviewer because of paragraphs like, “The film is directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman, the master wordsmith who brought us “Batman & Robin.” I assumed that such an achievement would result in Goldsman’s being legally banned from any of the verbal professions, but, no, here he is yet again.”

To say that Lane is witty is a serious understatement. The guy has been writing some of the most amazing and entertaining reviews now for the last 12 years.

I’m going to have to quote his review again.

“There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound mind begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03″

“Should we mind that forty million readers—or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”—have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style; otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit, and, worse still, the pride that the author seems to take in his theological presumption.”

I don’t think it can be summed up much better than that.

tinyvices.com, a cool photo/art site, recently put up a collection of found photos that’s got some sweet shots.

I liked these two:

Awhile back wonkette, a political blog that I read ocassionally, came across a major find on the ATF website. It seems the head office decided to solicit artwork to adorn the walls of their new office in Washington. Employees were asked to ask their children to make some drawings depicting what they thought their parents did. The results are amazing. You can view all of them here. Also be sure to check out the sweet web design on the .gov site. Note to the webmater, you can change the name from “untitled document” to whatever you’d like on a web page. Anyway, here are some of my favorites:

As the age of the artist increases, so too does their perception of reality. I found these two to be a depressingly accurate portrayal of office life.

I’m tempted to write an entry like this every day, but damn if Achewood hasn’t been killing it lately. Today’s strip is no exception. I don’t want to spoil any of the jokes, but this one deals with Robert Smith and how goths only take baths. It even includes a visual representation: