These questions cover stuff you learned in school at some point, as well as things you pick up from modern pop culture, making it hipper than Jeopardy and less obscure than Trivial Pursuit.  For instance:

(Marky Mark’s got a what?)

(Answer: #sharp)

In addition to the standard multiple choice question format, there’s “Dis or Dat”, where you distinguish a Tweet from Taylor Swift from one by the Dalai Lama (“Others have the right to happiness, just like yourself”; “Japan is amazing”), or the title of a film by the Three Stooges from one by porn star Jenna Jameson (“Rockin’ in the Rockies”; “4 for Texas”).  Is the Crypts of Lieberkuhn a body part–or a Harry Potter location?

(Answer: body part.)

The game’s available for the major home gaming consoles, as well as in a scaled-down iOS version.  Try the free lite version for your iPhone and try not to burst out laughing in public.

And if you’re feeling generous, YDKJ would appreciate your rating it in the App Store:

To hold you over to the next SNL Japan episode, here are some funny and bizarre clips from Japanese television.

Human Tetris:

Binocular Soccer:

Kittens in Bowls:

Human Art, “The Reason She Got Mad At Me:”

I love Japan.

(via MTV News)

Buy the book

THE WORLD CHAMPION gives out his phone number so that he can teach people karate.

Sacha Baron Cohen, of Ali G/Borat/Bruno fame, has reportedly signed on to play Queen frontman Freddie Mercury in an upcoming biopic (via the Laugh Button). Rarely has there been such a perfect match of actor and subject. Casting directors must have a term for this these sort of slam-dunk lookalike casting jobs, but alas, I don’t know any casting directors. Apparently it’s still up in the air whether Cohen will actually sing on camera (the Reese Witherspoon) or lip-sync (the Jamie Foxx), but having heard Borat’s rendition of “Throw the Jew down the well,” I’m hoping for the latter.

In honor of this flawless casting, we bring you a few more pairings that are ripe for the picking:

Michael Sheen and Tony Hayward

This one is almost too easy. The second the BP oil spill scandal broke, it was clear who would play villainous CEO Tony Hayward when the eventual film version hits theaters: British actor Michael Sheen. If he’s too busy, or expensive, maybe Tony Blair–whom Sheen played in The Queen–could step in.

Jeffrey Tambor and Dr. Phil

It’s quite unlikely that they’ll ever make a Dr. Phil “The Movie,” (I pray), but when they announce the Oprah Winfrey story, I imagine casting directors will be lining up on George Bluth, Sr.’s doorstep.

Middle-aged Adam Sandler and Middle-aged Bob Dylan

This one doesn’t sound like a slam dunk at first first, but I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Of course, Sandler’s pretty much the only person who didn’t play Dylan in Todd Haynes’ post-modern biopic I’M NOT THERE.  It would also be the first time in musician biopic history that the actor has to sing worse in order to bring authenticity to the role.

Jaffee’s inventive work has enlivened the pages of MAD since 1955. To date he has pickled three generations of American kids in the brine of satire, and continues to bring millions of childhoods to untimely ends with the knowledge that parents are hypocrites, teachers are dummies, politicians are liars, and life isn’t fair.

Jaffee’s work for MAD has made him a cultural icon, but the compelling and at times bizarre story of his life has yet to be told. A synopsis of Jaffee’s formative years alone reads like a comic strip of traumatic cliff-hangers with cartoons by Jaffee and captions by Freud. Six-year-old Jaffee was separated from his father, uprooted from his home in Savannah, Georgia, and transplanted by his mother to a shtetl in Lithuania, a nineteenth-century world of kerosene lamps, outhouses, physical abuse, and near starvation. He would be rescued by his father, returned to America, taken yet again by his mother back to the shtetl, and once again rescued by his father, even as Hitler was on the march.

When he finally settled back in America as a twelve-year-old wearing cobbled shoes and speaking his native English with a Yiddish accent, schoolmates called him “greenhorn.” He struggled with challenges at least as great as those he had met in Europe. His luck changed, however, when he was chosen to be a member of the first class to attend New York City’s High School of Music and Art. There his artistic ability saved him.

He would go on to forge relationships with Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, and Will Elder, launching a career that would bring him to MAD magazine. There he found himself at the forefront of a movement that would change the face of humor and cartooning in America.

A cliff-hanger of a life deserves a page-turner of a biography, and that is what Mary-Lou Weisman and Al Jaffee have delivered.

Friend of Your It List, and all-around great guy, Jeff Newelt (aka Jah Furry), participates in a meta-interview with the protagonist of web comic Red Light Properties over at Comics Alliance.

The Khan Academy continues to pump out excellent, free videos in their effort to educate the masses. I assume that you, like I, remember everything there is to know about the Calvin Cycle, but what can you recall about Napoleon’s peninsular campaigns?:

Lastly, if you haven’t watched the following video, you haven’t really lived. As the Huffington Post reports, “Councilman Phil Davison of Minerva, Ohio made a fiery speech at Wednesday evening’s Stark County Republican Party’s executive committee meeting to select a nominee to run for Stark County treasurer.” As I report, Phil Davison somehow managed to channel the late Chris Farley’s Matt “Van Down by the River” Foley character, as interpreted by Bill Murray. Prepare to have your world rocked.

]]> http://youritlist.com/2010/09/6629/feed/ 0 http://youritlist.com/2010/09/writing-with-a-real-clown/ http://youritlist.com/2010/09/writing-with-a-real-clown/#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:28:41 +0000 Jeremy http://youritlist.com/?p=6512

We asked Thomas Scott McKenzie, co-author of the just-released THE MAN BEHIND THE NOSE by Larry “Bozo” Harmon, what it was like to work side-by-side with the legendary entertainer. McKenzie, unsurprisingly, had some amusing tales from his collaboration with the late Harmon.

I got a call from a writer friend.

“I’ve just heard the most amazing, most outrageous story ever,” he said. “This tops anything an interview subject has told me.”

My buddy built a career on writing about notorious rock stars and porn performers. All of his subjects were self-admitted drug abusers of legendary proportions. And this tale topped them all? What kind of degenerate, axe-wielding, master of mayhem was he going to tell me about?

“I have three words for you: Bozo. The. Clown.”

And with that began my time in the big top universe of the world’s most famous clown and Larry Harmon, the driving force behind the icon.

At first, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. As a country boy who grew up in the boonies, I was lucky to see any television at all, and that was if the weather was just right and you delicately grasped the antennae at a precarious angle. So I didn’t watch The Bozo Show during my childhood years. I remember seeing the WGN version of the show broadcast on their nationwide superstation when I would visit relatives lucky enough to have cable television. But I didn’t know much more about him than the obvious characteristics of a big red wig, big floppy shoes, and so forth.

In spite of my ignorance of the character, there was never any doubt in my mind that I wanted to co-author Larry Harmon’s book. Bozo is as pure a piece of Americana as baseball or apple pie or hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Any writer would be thrilled at such an opportunity.

In real life, Larry was as you might expect the world’s most famous clown to be: funny, amusing, and full of energy. But there were surprises. For example, he was intensely detail-oriented. On one version of the manuscript, I formatted some text to appear in red font.

“That’s the wrong shade of red,” he said. “It needs to be deeper, and yet more bright.”

“It doesn’t matter, Larry. It’s just to bring attention to the phrase during the editing process. It’s not going to be in the finished book.”

“Yeah, but if you marked it red for whatever reason, then it needs to be the right red.”

And so we devoted the next hour to discussing shades of red.

Larry’s focus on the minutiae was understandable when you consider the massive empire of Bozo merchandise that he oversaw. He was determined that every single Bozo bank, lunch box, or bop bag be perfect. And that determination is partly why we have such a pristine cultural icon today. In spite of more than 200 men portraying the character over five decades, in spite of countless television shows, cartoons, and products sold, Bozo remains exactly as people remember him from childhood. Unsullied, untouched, unadulterated. And that’s a result of Larry Harmon’s focus on detail.

Some celebrities barely spend a couple of hours with a co-author or ghostwriter. And you end up with situations like the time that basketball legend Charles Barkley said he was misquoted in his own book. My experience working with Larry Harmon on The Man Behind the Nose: Assassins, Astronauts, Cannibals, and Other Stupendous Tales was exactly the opposite. I encountered a man who was as funny as I assumed he would be, but who was also driven, determined, and focused on every aspect of the project. I was immersed in a big top universe that was held together over the decades by the sheer strength of Larry Harmon’s work ethic and willpower.

Thomas Scott McKenzie was raised on a thoroughbred horse farm in Bourbon County, Kentucky. His nonfiction has appeared in Tin House, Paste, Premier Guitar, Stuff, InSync, Columbus Monthly, Kentucky Monthly, Pen World International and many others. He runs the litblog Slushpile.net.

After sending the video to a few friends, it didn’t really cross my mind again until I opened the newest issue of Wired magazine. There, in substantial detail, was the story of Jimmy Lai–the tabloid king of China–and his newest venture: Next Media. The studio’s mission is to give us the thrill of video re-enactment when no live tape exists. Apparently I missed one of the studio’s first international hits, an unpolished rendering of the Tiger Woods car-crash incident. Since that rudimentary effort, however, Next Media has refined their skills, and the more recent offerings are quite sleek considering their less-than-24-hour turnaround time.

Here’s the video that launched Next Media onto the world stage: Tiger’s trials and tribulations:

Visit their official YouTube page for the full collection. May I recommend the hilarious Snookie vid, featuring a fantasy sequence of our favorite Jersey Shore cast member assaulting the the President over the tanning tax?