News
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April 5, 2009
Gaming-Fallout 3 - April 6, 2009
Okay. So I’ve christened my PS3 by starting Fallout 3 and immediately I’ve been overwhelmed by giddy, silly, drooling infatuation. Turn off the phone, lock the doors, set my socials to “auto-away.” I am in love.
I want to say first off that my Xbox is my first love – like my 8th grade boyfriend, I will always gaze upon it fondly, and all that it taught me: curbstomping, roadie running, how to flashbang a bunch of terrorists into blinking, weeping toddlers, how to eviscerate Covenant and Locust with chainsaws and plasma swords alike. And I will always return to my X to get me a little bit more o’ that sweet, sweet action.
But I am loving my 3 and loving F3, especially the V.A.T.S.-aided kill movies. Spinning down into slomo to watch your own character unleash some post-apocalyptic whoop-ass on an irradiated mutant is, to say the least, a girlie-wood inducing feature. (Yes, I said girlie-wood. If you’re confused, get out a pencil and paper and muse on it for a while). The V.A.T.S films make me wish I could slow down my own life on occasion like that, say, when someone walks through a door I’m nicely holding open without thanking me (likelihood of a Torso Hit = 76%); cuts me off on the freeway (likelihood of a double finger out the window = 64%); or jumps in front of me in line at the Whole Foods (likelihood I’m going to rip you a new a**hole; well, verbally, anyway = 98%). -
April 5, 2009
Indio, CA - April 6, 2009
Just did two nights of very fun shows in Indio, CA, out in the Coachella Valley, which in the local native American language means “Holy F**k is it hot!” Indio is in the desert, so of course it was 105 during the day, but at night, subzero temperatures made hoary frost form on my eyeballs. Very confusing weather (I just really wanted to use the word “hoary.”).
Indio in and of itself is not particularly a tourist mecca. Unless by mecca you mean Indian casino, and then of course it’s like a porch-mounted zaplight to a bunch of Merit Light-smoking, peach-schnapps-drinking, just-got-their-pension-check geriatric mosquitos. The shows were killer though – awesome crowds, enthusiastic and stoked to laugh, and we had a great time. I even had a fan get engaged and make the drive out from Orange County that night to celebrate. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!
The one local attraction they have here is dates (the semi-dried fruit, not the socially awkward thing you drink to forget on a Sunday morning). You can go to a place called Shield’s Date Garden (where they have a “Guardian of Quality” outside, apparently guarding the dates against attack from other giant medieval wooden cutouts) and a film called “The Romance and Sex Life of the Date.” I did not watch this film, because I would rather spend my few free hours clipping my toenails and watching Law and Order episodes I have already seen than focusing on two date palms having sex. Call me crazy. -
March 9, 2009
Celebrity Jeopardy-March 10, 2009
“I’ll take ‘deeply humbling experiences’ for $200, Alex.”
Everyone is a world champ at home.
Face it. You watch the TV during dinner, and you yell at the screen. We’ve all done it. Food halfway to our mouths; ramen or Lean Cuisine or Stouffer’s “noodles n’ something sauce” falling from the fork back onto the plate, or our face, or our baby’s face. And we scream.
“Lisbon!” “What is geometry!” “Anne of Green Gables! Fer Chrissakes, how did these people get on this show? I should totally go on Jeopardy. I would kill this if I was there!”
That’s what I thought too, when they called on the phone. I’m the winningest Jeopardy champ of all time, in my living room. Why not be champ in the studio? I like to read. I’m internet savvy. I check out wikipedia occasionally. How hard can it be? -
March 1, 2009
Top Chef Finale: Season 5-March 2, 2009
Top Chef Finale: Season 5 is over, and I am nursing my food porn hangover and crying into my glass of Pinot Gris. And while I am as in love with Top Chef as ever (Tom Colicchio’s undauntable fairness! Padma Laksmi’s undimmable hotness! Gail Simmons’ irrepressible stackedness!) I have to say this was the most disappointing finale in the show’s history.
Having been a guest on the show during Season 4, I could tell from the very beginning that this was an extraordinary group of cooks. As always, there were a few hotshots who established themselves as contenders early in the competition (cocksure Stefan, charming Fabio, “my contempt for you is palpable” Jamie). But what was most exciting was that as the season progressed, the sleepers started to emerge — Hosea, Jeff and Carla, all of whom seemed only fair-to-middling cooks early on — and they made the show a real horse race. As a result, this season was, for the most part, a real nail-biter, with each challenge anybody’s game to win, and upsets at most every turn. -
February 5, 2009
Aisha Tyler World Tour Kick Off-February 6, 2009
It’s snowing outside. I’m three days into a run at the Improv at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, and finally, after a week that was dry as wheat bread and gravel, the white stuff is finally dumping down. This is the best part of my job; I get to go to a cool city, tell jokes to cool people, sleep until noon, and then go snowboard. Well, not every city. I won’t get to snowboard in Dallas. But I’ll make up for it by eating enough barbecued ribs to bring on an infarction. When in Rome, baby!
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February 5, 2009
The Anatomy of a Joke
Comedy is hard work. I know it looks like comedians have it easy; it seems like we’re all riding around on golden chariots, surrounded by Kardashian sisters, eating diamonds dipped in honey and chasing them with flagons of warm babies’ tears, cackling like toddlers on Lithium and giving everyone the superfinger (all credit to Mr. Cook), but nothing could be further from the truth. In order to make it look like we’re making it all up when we’re up on stage, we do an incredible amount of grinding down in the trenches. And some bits can take months, even years, to take shape. Comedy is dirty, dirty work. Thankless, miserable, underpaid, urine-smelling work. Am I overselling it?
www.myspace.com/aishatyler
