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Archive | Michael Showalter

ARIYNBF 221 with Michael Showalter

Michael Showalter stopped by this episode of Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend to talk about all sorts of things including his rich and varied history with Alison, Lou Reed, being too attached to his cell phone, moving to LA from New York, his feelings about the East Coast, things Alison was wrong about, The State, cats, his book Guys Can Be Cat Ladies Too, meeting his wife, being a certified cat trapper, They Came Together, semiotics and so much more. We also did a round of Just Me Or Everyone (click here to see the JMOEs from the episode.)

And guess what? The HGFY ringtone is now available!! Hooray! Search HEY GO FUCK YOURSELF in the itunes store!

Wondering how to contact the show and submit your Just Me Or Everyone?

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Executive producer: Alison Rosen

Producer: Gary Smith

Music: Trapp Dog Tom Rapp

Logo: Kezilla

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And  read this review of ARIYNBFand read this article about ARIYNBF and download the Alison guitar solo ringtoneand buy the live episode from podfest and watch this video too.

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Dammit, stoners!

Naturally I  have a google alert set to my name. Usually I just receive news of my own blog posts and occasional bikini contests however today I learned my video with Michael Showalter about a ton of stuff but not including pot smoking has been included on a site called How To Smoke Weed. See the above alert. You can imagine the pride with which I am beaming.

Talk of pot seems to be sticking to me like resin ever since I jokingly mentioned the phrase “dank nugs” on my show on Sunday. You guys, I was joking. I’m far too boring to smoke pot these days, though I’m in favor of people being free to do what they wish, so long as I don’t have to try to converse with them after they’ve done it.

But my oeuvre is not without the occasional pot story. Here, love this. But keep in mind it’s from 2000 and not that great.

Also, took me like six tries to type oeuvre.

P.S. I can’t remember what’s actually in the video with Showalter. For all I know we did talk about pot but I don’t think so. But now I’m suddenly remembering that we did talk about drugs in a radio interview. But still.

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Last week's show, do I take thee Brussels sprouts?

So I’m backlogged, blogpost-wise, and don’t know whether to tell you first about the Ustream show last week or about News Distillery which is the live show I was a part of or about other stuff. Hm. Hmmmmmmmm.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Still undecided.

I’ll just tell you first about last week’s Ustream show. It was super duper fun and super duper is kind of of one of those phrases you need to watch out for because you start saying “super duper” as a joke and then before long you’re saying it in earnest and possibly adding “pooper scooper” on the end of it. A similar thing happened to both my sister and me with “okey dokey” (followed by either “smokey” or “salmanokey”). Luckily we each caught it early. My friend Bret once took pains to strike “easy peasy Japanesey” from his speech. So what I’m saying is this: be careful with super duper because a little goes a long way. That said, the show was super duper fun and here’s the first part and I’m not quite sure the best way to make the episodes available to you guys. I could put them right here or I could link them or I could just tweet that they’re available on the Ustream page itself. So many options.

And then there are the highlight videos too, which I could post here, like when Showalter did the wavey pencil dance or Dustin arrived dressed as “the future of TV” which is funny because my first thought when I saw him was that he’d come from some sort of Wizard of Oz costume party. Or the second fan phone call with Trapp, which was super duper (see, there it is again) awesome. Ugh, options!

Basically I feel like all these amazing moments and clips are coming from the shows and yet I’m not utilizing them correctly or pasting them to my sandwich board and ringing a bell while asking people if they have a moment to spare for being my best friend. Can we talk about that for a second? I pass by people in the street who want to know if I have a moment to spare for various causes which I actually do care about or sympathize with however I’m often in a rush or don’t want to talk to a 12 year old with a clipboard so I just keep walking and yet worry that because I’ve effectively said no, I do not having a moment to protect children from predators or protect animals from abuse or protect passersby from street solicitation it’s as if I disagree with these causes. And yet I don’t. I just don’t have time to talk to YOU about them. You know? Also, I’m very selfish and a world-class asshole. Seriously, you could travel the world meeting the finest assholes the world has to offer and you would come back to me and be like, You, you are a total asshole unlike any other and I would just smile, because it’s what I’ve been trying to tell you this whole time.

But back to options, vis a vis options to put videos on this blog. The funny thing is that I love options however too many of them paralyze me. Options are my hamartia. Or my Achilles heel. Or my siren. Could someone please figure out what the best metaphor is and just write it for me? I’m lazy and kind of hot. Seriously, why is it hot all of a sudden? I don’t mean to be so cranky but do you have to sit there? No, I’m not sitting there RIGHT NOW but I was planning on possibly sitting there later and… okay you know what… I can’t do this right now. Not with you sitting there. Not with a belly full of Brussels sprouts.

If I were to marry a cruciferous vegetable it’d probably be the Brussels sprout, at least that’s how I feel today and how I’ve been feeling lately, however I’m not ready to stand before God and make that kind of promise. Frankly I kind of like things the way they are right now and don’t see why I have to have some silly piece of paper to make the love between me and Brussels sprouts official. Just because my last name is Rosen, not Sprouts, does that mean I love them any less? Just because my half human, half sprout children will have the hyphenated name Rosen-Sprouts, does that make their existence any less legitimate? Just because we aren’t registered at Crate & Barrel and we aren’t marching/rolling down the aisle, does that mean our union is any less real? I’m so Goddamn sick of the nonstop message that unless you’re married to a Brussels Sprout you you aren’t truly standing shoulder to leaf with your partner. And if I have to see another movie where Julia Roberts runs from a Brussels Sprout or Renee Zellweger meets-cute a Brussels Sprout and or oh look, it’s Mark Ruffalo as an underdog who’s also a Brussels Sprout or hey, is that Amy Adams or Isla Fisher acting coquettish opposite a Brussels sprout well I just might puke. You know what, Hollywood, and Belgium, I’m not playing. And neither are my vegetables.

Phew. Felt good to get that off my chest.

And you might find the following hard to believe, but I wasn’t intending to hold forth on my forbidden love in this post. I was going to instead tell you all about the nutty twists and turns, most of them inside my brain, that happened before last week’s show. But now I’m too tired. Basically it boils down to this: because I wear all the hats on my show, sometimes literally, I have trouble sometimes figuring out how to block out the show in terms of when to put guests and when to just talk to you guys alone and when to have Dustin there and when to do the phone interview versus the guest interview and how long each thing should last and whether I should have the guest arrive before I start the show and if so should he/she be sitting off camera or in the background or should I just let the guest in while the show is already going? And let’s say I know that Ustream is going to be putting the show on their front page for a period of time and so I know new sets of eyeballs (preferably in their sockets) will be on the show and I know when that period of time is, should I be getting naked right when they put me on the front page or near the end of the allotted time? Just kidding. There’s no nakedness, you guys! But you get what I’m saying. So basically all this crap is sitting in my already filled-to-the-brim-with-whatnot-and-bric-a-brac-and-Hummels-and-homemade-jam head and add fatigue to it, as was the case last week and I’m unable to figure anything out, resulting in my asking what the drummer of my band used to refer to as “Jesus questions” as in “only Jesus knows the answer to them.” Somehow I doubt even Jesus knows what time my guests should be arriving. If you really want to watch me spin in place, catch me in the midst of a colossal indecision surfeit and send me a text asking me if I want to go to dinner the next day. My inability to figure things out in the present coupled with my inability to figure things out in the future will cause me to be unable to do anything other than stare at my phone. Sometimes I drool.

What was my point though? I don’t really know. I feel like I need some kind of brain enema or brain emetic which is ironic since many people would think this blog and my twitter stream serves that purpose but it doesn’t and my brain feels filled with residue that’s preventing me from expressing myself in any sort of linear fashion.

See what I  mean?

In other news, my parents joined Twitter! Except I think it’s really my dad, not my mom, tweeting as @Alisonsparents. Just like it’s more my mom than my dad typing as Alisonsdad on Ustream. Though often it’s the two of them sitting there at the computer together. It’s all very confusing.

Oh and also, also, I’ll be on The 404 on Friday. And Red Eye on Thursday night. And my Ustream show featuring Myq Kaplan and more is Wednesday night. Please watch and RSVP and tell your friends or I’ll be forced to talk more about vegetables and no one wants that.

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On the next Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

Oh hi there. Perhaps you saw me on Red Eye tonight and thought, “Who is this mesmerizing vixen and what is she all about?” I SO wish I could tell you over cheese doodles and white wine spritzer but instead I was thinking that you should watch my USTREAM show tomorrow night (or tonight, really) because it’s a ton of fun and I know that you take your fun by the tons.

You can RSVP here and then I’ll know how many bean bag chairs to put out.

On the next show my guest will be comedian Michael Showalter. Here’s a video of me interviewing him last year. Might I inform you that I just watched it and it’s as charming as ever? Because I just did. Inform you of that, that is.

You may know him from The State and Stella and Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter and Michael & Michael Have Issues and a zillion more things including the episode of Sex & The City where Carrie was dumped via a post-it. He was supposed to be on the show last week but because of the insane weather he had to reschedule. (We chatted with him on the phone last week.) I’ve interviewed him a handful of times and each time is like the first time: sort of awkward. But also amazing and afterward I’m a woman. And I never forget it. And I cry.

Yeah, like that.

Also Dustin will be on the show and there will be more surprises and whatnot. So please watch and join in the chatroom and get your friends to watch too and have them get their friends to watch because I’m hoping we’ll have enough people to play sardines. A giant game of sardines with thousands upon thousands of people.

And I’ve booked some awesome upcoming guests. Some names? Well only because you’re begging: Jim Norton, A.J. Jacobs, Andrew WK, Myq Kaplan. And that’s not all!

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Last night's episode with Andrew K Thompson, Tom O'Connor and Michael Showalter

Here are the links to the episode. Watch them more than once!

Part 1: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4629920

Part 2 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4631460

Part 3 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4632920

Part 4: http://www.ustream.tv/myvideos/1/4633921

And here’s some info about last night’s show.

And go check out Andrew Thompson, Tom O’Connor and Michael Showalter.

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On tonight's Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

Alright my precious peaches. I have good news and bad news about tonight’s show. Because of the snowpocalysemageddon, which I do have to say is pretty phenomenal, Michael Showalter will not be on tonight’s show though we’ll be phoning him to make sure he isn’t trapped under or inside of a giant snowball. He is scheduled to appear on next week’s show which I will be sure to remind him forty five times on the phone tonight. The good news is tonight’s guest is Andrew Thompson who not only is a neato guy in his own right, having invented Punk Rock Pillowfight and being a member of Incredibly Strange Wrestling and an artist and a photographer and a musician and a glovemaker, but he’s instrumental in my moving to New York. I will explain more when he’s here, but if you miss the show, you will be so sorry it’s not even funny, it’s just sorry.

And today he reminded me about the time he and I saw Jimmy Fallon and Chris Kattan in a bar and I took this as a sign I should move to New York. It almost embarrasses me to mention this. Had I lost faith in the Magic 8 ball?

Anyway, don’t miss tonight’s show because it will be stupendous. Watch here at 10pm ET/7pm PT. RSVP for updates.

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The Daily Alison (Where I'm back in NY)

I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to pull off an episode today but look, I did! Just barely!

Also, there are some photos of me on a boat with a bike which are on a friend’s phone and I’m waiting for him to send them to me because the fact that I did that is beginning to get surreal and urban legendesque.

Also, on the plane I watched Locked Up Abroad: Barbados. Have you seen this? It was so engrossing I could barely change the channel to watch Michael and Michael Have Issues!

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