New rule.

Listen up Hollywood,

From now on if you're going to make a movie about the Holocaust in which the characters are German and repeatedly talk about being German....

THE ACTORS HAVE TO AT LEAST BE TRYING TO DO A GERMAN ACCENT!!





I'm for serious Hollywood, if I hear another character say "I'm German" in an American or British accent...Ich schlage Ihre Gesichter!!!

-nicholas

p.s. MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

animation stuff

So, Brian showed me this site where you can make your own little animated movies.

It will be the sole reason I don't get anything done in 2009. Here's the first one I just did.



Here's my favorite one that Brian's done.



Turns out, Donald Glover (of Derrick Comedy) has gone even crazier with these things. Here's my favorite of his, you can see more here.




Expect more.

-nicholas

Stuck in an airport

Me, losing my mind.

So thanks to an unnecessary amount of snow, my flight from New York to Atlanta got delayed and I missed my connecting flight to Colorado.

I was told there would be a 7 hour wait until the next flight.

At first, I was somewhat excited and viewed the situation as an adventure.

Now, at about hour 4 of the layover, I'm amazed at how many things I can find to HATE about an overweight, whiny child and a leather-clad Hispanic guy whispering dirty talk into his cellphone.

It's getting ridiculous.
The Hispanic guy said "I'll be like Maximus Decimus Meridius in bed."
Apparently the lucky girl didn't hear him though, because he just repeated it three times, each time growing louder and sterner in delivery.

Some woman a few seats away from me just burst into loud, grief-filled sobbing.

I'm done. I'm done for today.

Today has cashed its check with me.

-nicholas

Congratulations!

Huge congrats to CollegeHumor who just got themselves a TV show on MTV!!

Let us now pray that other networks start thinking it's a good idea to hand out TV shows to people who make short, silly, internet videos.

-nicholas

We're number 4!

Cracked.com just published an article ranking and profiling the top 8 internet sketch troupes.

We come in at number 4!!! (even though it's clearly stated that the specific rankings are arbitrary)

You can read the article here

Michael Swaim, the fella who wrote the article, is going to receive a hearty handshake from me should we ever meet.
Promptly after this, he will receive a stern lecture for not including 'Barats and Bereta', 'Joey and David', "Elephant Larry', and 'Picnicface' in this list.

-nicholas

Movie-ness

So early this summer both Brian and I acted in a short film our friends Jeff and Andrew wrote, produced and directed.

It's called 'Suckerpunch'

Now I will gush.

We filmed it over possibly the funnest 14 days of my life.
Jeff was a great director, Andrew was an awesome producer, and the script they wrote was truly hilarious.
They ran a professional set with a great crew that made me laugh almost constantly.
The rest of the cast was a combination of my current best friends and awesome new people that very quickly became my chums.

Enough gushing, here's the trailer
(which they did a fuck-off awesome job with)



Let's everybody cross our fingers and pray that wealthy people give Jeff and Andrew the means to produce a feature length version of this story.

• Also, it turns out Brian McElhaney is really fuck-off terrific at stand-up. Seriously, I was blown away by this person I thought I knew everything about.

-nicholas

p.s. I can't believe I'm awake this early. I'm going back to bed.

Cool beans

If you're gonna be in New York on Monday, December 8th you should head over to The Broadway Comedy Club at 8pm to check out the 'Bri' part of BriTANicK doing his first ever stand-up set.

I'm psyched Brian is doing this for a couple of reasons. 

Ready for a list? 

Good, because here comes a motherfucker of one.

1) I think he's going to be really good at it. I don't know any of his specific bits but I've talked to him about it some and he seems to have a very good attitude and philosophy about it heading in. Also, I've know some of the stories he's going to tell and they have yet to not make me chuckle.

2)He's doing this during a time when I am started to get excited about stand-up again. Stand-up used to be my dream job. I spent many years of my life imagining what it would be like to spend many years of my life performing stand-up. This love of stand-up got weakened by two things.

a) Stumbling across sketch comedy
b) Seeing a lot of really piss-poor stand-up over a short period of time.

• Recently though, I have started to break out of this stand-up love slump because of mainly one reason.
  

A)I've seen a trunkful of really really good stand-up lately. Here are highlights.

i)Robin Ince - I caught his show at UCB this week and he's great. He's got this crazy conversational style that's like a bi-polar person with a.d.d. being really smart and hilarious.

ii)The Derrick Comedy Boys - These guys have yet to tackle a genre and not quickly master it. Their sketch videos are hilarious. Their improv is fucking terrific (I think I saw and enjoyed almost every show they did last year). Their movie is great (it's premiering at Sundance in January, I saw a test screening last month and loved it). Their latest venture is stand-up. I saw it for the first time a couple weeks ago and greatly enjoyed it. It's very original, hilarious and overall just really really fun to watch. The way I often measure how much I like something is by how much it energizes and inspires me. I'm pretty sure I started doing that after becoming aware of Derrick Comedy.

To summarize,

• Go see Brian perform Monday, December 8th at 8pm at Broadway Comedy Club
• Stand-up is good.

-nicholas

BriTANicK review

An online magazine/blog thing wrote some very nice things about BriTANicK recently.
It's pretty much our first official review, not counting the one Treborf69 wrote of our video 'Brainteasers'

"...it's not that abominably terrible all the way through."

You can read the more official review here

-nicholas

A secret

There is absolutely no rhyme or reason as to how often I update this blog.

That being said, I will now make 3 posts.

Brace yourself.

Commercial

I was in my living room awhile ago talking to my ridiculous roommate Grant (who is ridiculous).
The TV was on in the background playing a DVR'd episode of E.R.
We were talking the nonsense we normally talk (namely me chastising Grant for wearing nothing but a bathrobe, and sandwich crumbs).
Suddenly this commercial came on



Hallmark had me from (baby squeal sound).
I had no idea what was being sold, only that I would purchase it.

I'd love to be able to say that I'm not the type to be suckered in by cutesy commercials, but that would absolutely be a lie.
I am Joe "Everday American" Lohman. If it's got a catchy jingle, a baby, or a puppy involved in it then I am on board.

This presents a problem as I move through life trying to have a career in comedy.
Oftentimes comedy is used as a tool to pick apart disagreeable aspects of society.
In the past, famous satirists have become the main voices of revolution, leading their fellow citizens to greener pastures.

What the hell am I going to be the voice of?


Sears?

-nicholas

Beyonce Knowles

So, I just heard Beyonce's new song 'If I Were A Boy.' I then went back and listened to 'Irreplaceable' and 'Ring the Alarm'.

For the love of good god, will somebody please start treating this woman well?

Who the hell keeps cheating on her?!

-nicholas

Dancers

Dancers absolutely 100 percent do it for me.

This has always been true and, barring a dancer stealing from me, this will always be true.
Ever hug a puppy and find yourself wanting to squeeze it much harder than you should?
That's not the way I feel about dancers.
It's similar but not quite right. It's not necessarily a romantic or sexual impulse either.
I would still be wondering what exactly I wanted to do to dancers were it not for this video.



I am forever in debt to this routine because it has helped me clarify exactly what my impulse is towards dancers.

I want to be strapped to them while they dance.

'What?' I hear you say. 'That's weird.'

Fuck you. Think about it.
Really give it a good think.
I'm absolutely right about this.

Watch the video again and imagine you are attached (with duct tape, rope or glue) to the back of the cute blonde girl while she rocks out.

I'm absolutely right.

-nicholas

Peggy Noonan needs to calm the hell down.

A few weeks ago, I saw Peggy Noonan on 'The Daily Show' promoting her new book Patriotic Grace.

She spoke very well on the show and that, combined with the fact that she was a huge contributor to 'The West Wing', led me to pick up Patriotic Grace and give it the ol' read through.

I will start by saying that Peggy Noonan can write, and write incredibly well. I got the same feeling reading the introduction and first chapter as I did twelve years ago when I first watched President Thomas J. Whitmore deliver his goose-bump inducing speech against aliens.

After that first chapter though, things took a hard right turn. From that point on, Peggy would not shut up about how sure she is that there will be another terrorist attack on American soil. She goes on to write that it will be ten times bigger than 9/11 and that it's going to happen in either Washington D.C. or New York.

Goddammit Peggy, I live in New York.

Going in, I thought that the book would be about how we need to unite as a nation and help out our fellow Americans. And it is, she very much encourages us to put aside partisanship and unite, however she implies that this will be most needed right after New York is wiped off the map with a suitcase nuke.

I imagine if I lived anywhere else in the country, aside from D.C. which is also toast, I would have greatly enjoyed this book and viewed it as a beacon of hope. However I don't live anywhere else and because Peggy Noonan couldn't calm the hell down I now am forced to come to terms with my own mortality.

Goddammit.

-nicholas

Fireplaces

So I currently live in my grandparent's old home in Queens. They've both passed and I live there with my two friends, Grant and Craig. It's a thirty minute train ride from Manhattan, which can be rough on late nights but the upside is that I get to live there for free.
Hence why I am still unemployed.
The house is friggin' huge and filled to the brim with all of my grandparents' old things. I'm constantly finding old letters, photographs, and strategically hidden liquor bottles throughout the house.
This is both cool and weird at the same time.
Tonight, as New York is beginning to get a wee bit chilly in the evenings, I decided to make a fire in the fireplace, snuggle up with a frozen pizza, and watch 'The West Wing.'
While arranging logs and doing my best to remember boyscout training, I happened across a trapdoor buried under about an inch or two of ash.
That's right...a motherfucking trapdoor...beneath the fireplace.
There's treasure behind trapdoors. Immediately I thought of how much chocolate milk could be bought with treasure.
I flipped it open with the poker and peered inside but I couldn't see anything due to an awkward angle. I moved to fetch a mirror and a flashlight, but before I did, I thought about other things that lie behind trapdoors.
Secrets. There are horrible horrible secrets behind trapdoors.
People can react in two different ways when faced with these situations. They can put on their courage cap, crack their courage whip, and plunge into the unknown with a thirst for the truth.
Or they can shut the trapdoor, cover it back up with ash, and snuggle up with a warm blanket of ignorance.
I chose the latter.
"But Nick", you cry. "There might be treasure!"
Sure there could be treasure.
There could also be a hidden snuff film.
I've seen '8 mm', I know how things go down once a snuff tape is found.
No thank you.
Also, it's worth all the treasure in the world not to have to see my grandparents' freaky-deaky death porn.

-nicholas

p.s. Grant just read this and explained that the trapdoor is there to dispose of ashes. I'm still not going to look down it, because that doesn't mean there won't be decomposing bodies.

Random good news!

I woke up this morning to an email informing me that my and Brian's sketch 'Herpex' won the Seattle Sketchfest's Video contest. 

I had completely forgotten that we'd entered. 

My wallet is now 75 dollars heavier.

My refrigerator should prepare itself for 75 dollars worth of chocolate milk.

-nicholas

p.s. you can find out more info and see an incredibly goofy still frame of me here

well, Amsterdam is just flat out awesome

For about 36 reasons...

Reasons 1 - 25 have to do with how many awesome things are legal there.

Reason 26 is how friggin' beautiful the place is.

Reason 27 is Stroop Waffles.

Reason 28 is that you can bike everywhere.

Reasons 29-35 concern how hilarious the Dutch language is.

And finally, reason 36, easily the most important reason behind Amsterdam's awesome-ness is as follows...

Reason 36.  ASIAN NIGHT

I have absolutely no idea what 'Asian Night' is, but seeing the signs advertising all over Amsterdam gave me more joy than words can describe.

Amsterdam = Awesome

love,

nicholas

Goddamn I Wish I Was Famous Right Now

So that I could destroy the company CheapoAir.com

I'm not going to go into the specific details of how they screwed me over, all that matters right now is that they did and I'm livid.

 

I have never written a complaint letter before in my life. Tonight I spent an hour and a half writing one. Multiple drafts were revised, edited and filled to the brim with exclamation points and capital letters until I was satisfied that it would fully convey my rage. 

I'm sure that they will respond with a standard form letter.

I'm also sure that I will respond to that form letter with curse words and an attached photo of poop. The only reason I didn't do that this time was in the hopes that they might actually un-screw me over. 

I'm in Brian's apartment right now talking loudly about my new movie script that is essentially a 90 minute long shot of me screaming at the camera horrible things about Cheapoair.com and how nobody should ever do business with them. 

Brian's telling me to calm down.

I probably will, but part of me hopes that I won't. 

Part of me hopes that I never ever calm down about this, get famous, and can actually put How Dare You CheapoAir.com? up on the silver screen.

I'm also giving thought to recording an album.

-nicholas

P.S. read about a much funnier blog writer's encounter with airline bullshit here

Holy Hell!

Have you ever, while intoxicated, done ridiculous things solely to entertain your sober self the next morning?

I have.

I have left myself 15 minute long voicemails.

I have written made up words on the inside of my thigh.

I have hidden my wallet in a popsicle box inside my refrigerator.

Last night though, DrunkNick really outdid himself.

DrunkNick, at approximately 3:15am, purchased a non-refundable roundtrip airline ticket to Amsterdam. 

I woke up this morning to an email receipt informing me of this. 

Apparently, my flight leaves Thursday.

More on this to come.

love,

a frighteningly sober nicholas

a fucking prick.

KlonDICK

We found out a little while ago that we didn't make it to the final round of the Klondike Bar Video Contest. I'm not gonna lie, that sucked a bit.

What sucks even worse is that I'm traveling around the Yukon right now and every third word I see is 'Klondike'. Seriously, they need to start naming stuff something else. For example, how about instead of 'The Klondike Hotel' they name it 'The Don't-Worry-About-It-Nick-You'll-Get-'em-Next-Time Hotel". Already that makes me feel better.

 

-nicholas

Into the Wild: The Journey

I had to take a series of flights to eventually arrive in Haines, Alaska (my father's new home).

First, I took a 6 hour flight from New York to Seattle. 

At New York's JFK airport I underwent about an hour-long security check. I had to present my driver's license several times, I removed my laptop from my backpack and placed it separate from my shoes, belt, and jacket; all of which I had to run through the x-ray machine. I was also randomly selected for a complimentary weapons pat-down from an airport security officer.

Second, I took a 2 hour flight from Seattle, WA to Juneau, Alaska.

At the Seattle airport, the security check was much less lenient. I didn't have to remove my shoes, belt or jacket. I did have to separate my laptop from my backpack, though. I still don't know what that separation is supposed to accomplish.

Third, I took a thirty minute flight from Juneau, Alaska to Haines, Alaska. 

The security check at the Juneau Airport consisted of an elderly woman asking me if I was carrying bear mace. After a stunned moment of silence I replied that I was not and she ushered me onboard a plane roughly the size of a riding lawnmower. 

If I ever decide to give up acting in favor of terrorism I've got a pretty good idea which airport I'm going to infiltrate first.

-nicholas

Into the Wild: The Prequel

My father lives in Haines, Alaska. 

This was not always true.

My family used to live in Atlanta, Georgia. We lived there for my entire pre-collegiate life. Except for six months (right after I finished third grade) when my father quit his law firm and moved our entire family to Franklin, North Carolina. His goal was to start a career in canoeing and live there for eternity. He ended up painting for a little while and then taking us back home. 

Fast forward to about three years ago. I had a phone conversation with my father that went something like this....

Dad

So, I'm not working at the law offices anymore.

Me

What? Why? What happened?

Dad

I retired. I'm an ambulance driver now.

Me

What the hell?

So then he was an ambulance driver. A year later there was another conversation that went something like this.

My Brother

So, dad bought a house in Alaska.

Me

What?! Why?! What?! What's going on??

My Brother

I'm not sure.

A few months later, my father was living in Alaska almost full time. Did he quit his job as an ambulance driver in Atlanta, you ask? Certainly not. Did he take on several other, even more ridiculous jobs? Naturally. 

When he's not making the two day commute to Atlanta to drive ambulances; my father works in Alaska as a river raft guide, a EMT for a bobsled race, and a radio DJ. 

'Insane', you scream?

'Par for the course' I soothingly whisper. 

My father has been having a mid-life crisis since before I was born. He's an expert at it.

I will be visiting him in Alaska until August 20th. More updates to come.

-nicholas

Clean as a whistle

What the hell does this phrase even mean?

-nicholas

One of my roomates

This is one of my roomates who just came into my room talking some bullshit. His name is Grant. He is exactly as ridiculous as this photo would lead you to expect.
Need clarification?
He just tried to convince me that he could scale the Empire State Building without any climbing equipment. Also he thinks that vampires don't exist.
Ha! Ridiculous.

Klondike Contest

Alright,

So Klondike is having a contest to see who can make the best Klondike themed video. Brian and I made one a few weeks ago. Huge thanks to the help of our talented friends Jessy Hodges, Noah Lagin, Daniel Platzman, and Pete Scalzetti.

You can watch and rate the video here

Give it a high ranking and get yourself a guarantee that I will like you a lot!

-nicholas

My music career.

Recently, I took a trip to San Antonio for my cousin Lauren's wedding. I spent a few days at my grandfather's lakehouse. It was awesome and it led me to the decision that I need to get off my ass and start a solo music career. How did I reach this decision you ask? Well, my good man, because I now have the perfect album cover.



I'm MAJESTIC!

-nicholas

A nice photo.

This is an old photo but I like it a lot. It was taken using 'Photo Booth' (I had just purchased a Macbook) in the middle of a flight to San Francisco. Five days from when the photo was taken, we, Brian and I and the rest of our cast, would be performing live for the first time under the name BriTANicK. It would also be my 22nd birthday, and we would meet Robin Williams. Not a bad January at all.

-nicholas

1st post

Alright,

So after being pretty against blogging for a while, I've decided to try my hand at it.

I initially was against the idea of blogging mainly due to the pressure (possibly irrational) that I, myself should start a blog. I worried that I would lack the motivation to update it daily. I have the same fear when it comes to journals. I love the idea of journals. Of, many years from now, being able to read anecdotes and observations from my youth. I also love the idea of being one of those cool people that others see writing god knows what in their trendy moleskine booklets. I've always been jealous of those people. They're so cool. What the hell are they writing?? About something more interesting than my life? Probably. Cool.

I've tried keeping a journal, believe you me I have tried. I have ultimately failed each and every time because (a) I lack the motivation to update it daily and (b) I assume that eventually it will be read by others. Because I assume that other people will read it, I feel the need to make sure that every thought in it is well-written, not mean to anyone, and does not reveal any personal secrets. This completely removes any of the possible therapeutic benefits I've heard that keeping a journal has.

To sum things up, journals are not for me. Maybe blogging is. Let's find out.

-nicholas