comedy

Ever wander into one of those Verizon or AT&T stores, attempt to have a conversation with one of the smartly dressed salespeople, and whisper to yourself, "What kind of emotionally awkward humans end up working in a place like this?"

Well, I have good news for you.

Ricky Gervais, who made David Brent perhaps the most painfully sympathetic character in modern television in the original BBC version of "The Office," has been asking himself the very same question. "Phone Shop" a new British sitcom, enjoys Gervais as its script editor (he reportedly … Read more

About a week ago I was watching "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, and all of a sudden Stephen Colbert starts talking about an extravagant SUV made by the Russian-based Dartz brand that costs roughly 1.5 million dollars and is so luxurious that its upholstery is made of genuine whale penis leather (no, I'm not making this up). While I have yet to locate video of the exact model vehicle that Stephen was talking about, I did find a clip of a similar model SUV made by Dartz in action, and since it's kinda timely, … Read more

Zappos has been acquired by Amazon, meaning Amazon will have even more shoes to sell, but also a new corporate culture to integrate with. Windows 7 gets released to manufacturing, meaning it's on its way to you. And Microsoft and UBIsoft are getting into the movie business. Is that a good thing?

Windows 7 Has Been Released to Manufacturing http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/07/22/windows-7-has-been-released-to-manufacturing.aspx

Fiber to the home deployments will grow 30% CAGR to 130M installed by 2013 http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/fiber-to-the-home-deployments-to-grow-more,902195.shtml

Open Source gets it's own lobbying organization http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/new-advocacy-group-pushes-oss-for-the-usa.ars

ATandT activates 2.4 million iPhones; Second quarter tops estimates http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=21579

Microsoft and Ubisoft get into the film business http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-videogames23-2009jul23,0,5232624.story

Instant search comes to Splashtop http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10293479-1.html

Major League Baseball Beans Jon Stewart, and Obama's Pitch Vanishes http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20090722/major-league-baseball-beans-jon-stewart-and-obamas-pitch-vanishes/

Artificial brain '10 years away' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8164060.stm

Camaro Transformers Edition http://www.autoweek.com/article/20090722/CARNEWS/907229993

… Read more

From the creators of "Drawn Together" comes "DJ & The Fro," a new daily, animated show on MTV. The 404 speaks to the creators, Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, about the show and talk about how Michael Jackson's death almost ruined the shows' first few episodes.

The show creators call it a rip-off of "Beavis and Butthead" for the viral video generation. DJ and the Fro are two twenty-somethings, who spend most of their day watching viral videos and commenting on them. Sounds eerily similar to what The 404 guys do all day long. Anyway, the guys tell us about how the show came into being and let us know that a "Drawn Together" straight-to-DVD movie is coming out as well!

"DJ & The Fro" reminds us a bit of "Tosh.0" on Comedy Central, which premiered just a few weeks ago. The 404 guys think we should have jumped on to this bandwagon a long time. This is what we do already for the show every day!

Anyway, hope you all enjoy the abbreviated show along with our Michael Jackson commentary. He will be missed. Spend your weekend listening to your favorite MJ jam and reminisce about the fond memories you had while karaoking to "Billie Jean."

Our favorite comedian Alison Rosen joins us on today's show to talk about her new daily video show, TheDailyAlison.com. Also, be sure to listen in to hear why Wilson Tang left the premiere of "Transformers 2" scowling and cursing the name of Michael Bay.

Every show with Alison Rosen is knee-slappingly hilarious, but today's is so crazy that Alison has to wear The 404 army helmet to protect herself...from Wilson. Alison is on today's show to pimp out her brand new daily Web show, The Daily Alison. The show features Alison just being her own funny self, but she also brings on big name guests for quick 10 minute interviews, folks like Will Forte, Doug Benson, and Mr. Rosen himself. Like our own Sweet Lou and Baby Bakalar, Alison's humor is derivative and influenced heavily by her father, which all leads to a conversation about the horrifyingly embarrassing things our parents did when we were younger. We also discover that Alison hasn't yet been swept off her feet by that perfect gentleman, so we swear a solemn oath to be the Goose to her Maverick and find her a nice waiter at TGI Fridays to feed her coconut chicken shrimp skewers and Volcano shots.

The first half of the show, though, is mostly Wilson complaining about the new "Transformers 2" movie. I'll let you all know right now that he doesn't spoil anything about the movie, other than the fact that Shia Lebeauf turns out to be a ghost at the end. In reality, though, Wilson tells us there are two characters named "Skids" and "Mudflaps" that make Jar Jar Binks look like Martin Luther King. The back story is that those two robots picked up the English language by watching American television, but did they really have to have gold teeth!? I think that was the part that set Wilson over the edge. I haven't heard the guy rant in awhile, but this one is definitely worth checking out.

This won't be the last time you see Alison Rosen on our show. She'll be back, but in the meantime you can catch her every day on The Daily Alison, the Alison Rosen blog, and, of course, Twitter. See you next time!

You can't make this stuff up: Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a Republican from Michigan, set off a political-blog firestorm when he posted to his Twitter account on Wednesday that "Iranian twitter activity (is) similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Presumably he was talking about rallying in the face of adversity. But, um, really? The U.S. congressional elections might be rife with mildly nefarious characters on both sides of the party line, but the current upheaval in Iran deals with a totalitarian regime, media blackouts, and mass … Read more

Geek humor abounds.

Parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic poked fun at Segway riders three years ago with his rap song "White and Nerdy."

His latest single "Craigslist" skewers the people who can be found swapping wares and scoring dates on the classifieds ads site. (While there's a verse about the popular "missed connections" feature on Craigslist, there isn't otherwise mention of the current prostitution controversy that the site's been dealing with.)

The video and song are a professed homage to The Doors. Ray Manzarek, the former band's keyboardist, … Read more

They say that many people now get much of their news from satire. Which might make you wonder where they get their satire from.

However, researchers at the Ohio State University wanted to get into the bowels of the political satire phenomenon and were perhaps a little surprised at how it is all being digested.

They subjected 332 people of varying political bents to a three-minute clip of "The Colbert Report." They then produced their own report, fetchingly entitled "Political Ideology and The Motivation to See What You Want to See in the Colbert Report."

The … Read more

Viacom's MTV Networks has brought some of its television content to Netflix's library of streaming online video, the companies announced Monday.

The offering consists primarily of kids' shows from the Nickelodeon network, with select seasons from the shows "iCarly," "Blue's Clues," "Dora the Explorer," "SpongeBob SquarePants," and a handful of others, as well as the first nine seasons of "South Park," the Comedy Central animated series that you probably don't want your kids watching.

Netflix's streaming-video service still very much takes the back burner to … Read more