the action section

So, we haven’t written a blog post in a while (in a year, to be exact). To be honest, nothing happened last year.

Well, there was one thing.

Back in January, me Bill and Justin were in a BBQ Ribs phase. The following e-mail exchange happened before lunch on Monday, January 24, 2008. I found it last week in an e-mail folder at work, and decided it was the best way to represent the last year of our lives. For your enjoyment:

First e-mail: Grib 8:04am

“yo,

So I came into work on Monday singing the praises of that BBQ place on Ridge Ave. And this guy I work with was like, no way man, you need to go to the RIB CRIB.

It’s a dive BBQ place on Germantown pike, near Manayunk, in a pretty tough neighborhood. All I know about it is that there’s an old guy there who has a bucket full of BBQ sauce and a mop, and his only job is to literally mop BBQ sauce on whatever’s in the oven every five minutes or so.

If you guys are around this weekend, we should go to the Rib Crib, and I’ll drive. So put on a bib, drink some Mr. Pibb, read “A Doll’s House” by Ib, and call dibs on Rib Crib with Grib. This Saturdib.

Grib”

Second e-mail: Bill 9:15am

“You know what Grib, I know you think im pretty glib, but I like the cut of your jib, so I say Dibs on Ribs at the Rib Crib with J.Gribs, and thats no Fib.”

Third e-mail: Justin 10:05am

“I dont mean to ad-lib but it’ll be hard for me cuz i broke my tib at a rally for womens lib but it makes me that much hungrier for a rib in a crib with grib wearing my bib, drinking my pib, I already read my Ib and I don’t think it makes bill glib to acknowlege gribs great jib so I too call dibbs for ribs, I called my sib to see if he wants to contrib, and maybe attrib some to the rib but I think he is in the carib which will probably inhib. See you saturdib.”

Fourth e-mail: Grib 11:04am

“Cool, no need to seek retrib against your sib. I’ll just distrib some Pabst Blue Ribb while we listen to my trib to Barry Gibb.

Looking forward to our rib exhib,

Grib”

Sooo, apparently the powerful gods that rule myspace decided to give lil ol’ action section a shot at being on the myspace homepage….and we believe the section rose to the challenge. The day started pretty much like any other day until I got a text from bill saying “Holy Crap Tree Surgeon is on Myspace Homepage” and that a Giant Stadium’s worth of people had already checked it out. It was especially cool because it let us know how our fans feel about us with feedback such as “gay,”  and “Ya’ll bastads need to kill yourself,” which is great because constuctive criticism is the only way to get better. Even more exciting is that we are now internet-famous enough that we get to hang out with other important and pivitol videos such as….”dry ice bomb helmet,” “urinating in night vision,” “volkwagen jump” and “miricle beer diet”…which are all actually surprisingly funny. Besides the crazy world of myspace, we are happy to see some new smiling IP adresses stopping by the website, which might help us get to our goal of an audience that is more than just our parents and my mom five times a day, but there should be some new stuff up soon if grib ever gives up on this fantasy of being a chemical engineer lawyer hybrid with 54 miles to the gallon and concentrates completely on writing puns about arborists and poop.

JD

Well, it’s been almost a month since my last post.  A couple things have happened in the meantime.  I bought a couch, Michael Vick got indicted for dogfighting, and I got married.

After the wedding I spent a week in Jamaica with Meggie, drank on a beach all week, and tried to climb a surprisingly-badass rock climbing wall at the resort.  The top of the wall got a little tricky and I poured my entire soul into one Marines-commercial moment of believe-in-yourself dream-achieving.

I’m pretty sure I heard nearby restaurant of people gasp as I began my spectacular backwards swan-dive.  Luckily, I had a harness wrapped around my crotch and a Jamaican man lowered me in 20 ft free-fall invervals, each pull shaving about 10 points off of my future children’s SAT scores.  Upon landing I had to be told that my hands were bleeding pretty badly, which they were.  I thought I could hide from calamity after I was married but it follows me, even to Sandals.

But enough about that stuff.  We’re filming some new sketches the weekend.  We should have another one up this week, although I can’t promise it’ll be Wednesday.  Probably Thursday?

We’re holding off on publicizing until we get two more up, and we need some professionalish pictures up as well.  The videos we have up now are quick lil’ things (except the rollercoaster one), which is okay, but we need a little variety before we send it out to every human we know.

So, let’s say, official site launch to non-friends-and-family:  Sunday, Aug 5th.  Exciting!

Joe

Hey everybody,

We have another new video up this week. It’s called “Marble Madness Cruelty.” Hope you like it.

I’m getting married on Friday, not sure if I mentioned that amidst my past 9 posts about Lost. Its been a crazy week of tux-picking-up and card-writing and generally not getting in the way. My tux looks hot. If anybody takes pictures at the wedding, I’ll put some choice ones up. The only request I gave the DJ was to play “September” by Earth Wind and Fire, which is probably the only request I’ll give God’s Choir of Angels for eternity as well.

Sometime in college, me and Bill had a conversation that basically involved “if you had a billion dollars, what’s the first thing you would do with it.” And I’m not sure if me or Bill said this, but we both agreed: the first thing we’d do is hire Earth Wind and Fire as a live in-house alarm clock. Which is to say, every night before I’d go to bed, I’d tell Philip Bailey and the rest of EWF what time I’d like to wake up. Say, “8:15.” And then Philip would nod and he’d tell the rest of the guys “hey guys, 8:15″ and they’d nod and say, “cool, cool.” And then I’d go to sleep, and EWF would be sitting at the base of my bed, hanging out silently until 8:15 AM when they’d start playing one of their hit tunes. I’d slowly wake up, feel the groove, and then walk over to Philip and be like, “cool, thanks guys, I’m up.” And they’d pack up their equipment and go home. Everyday.

How much would that cost? A couple million for each member? I don’t even know anymore, we barely did the math.

Anyway. In other news, two of my co-workers and I are embarking on a four-day four-burrito lunch tour this week to celebrate three things: 1) my buddy Chajon leaving the company, 2) me leaving 3.2 million women who aren’t Meggie, and 3) huge, delicious burritos. My other buddy Tim is starting a food blog where “Burritour 2007″ is the main event so far (click to read my first food review ever), and I’m trying to get Chajon to draw a picture of The Burritaur, the official mascot of the Burritour which I imagine as some kind of half-bull half-burrito being a total badass in a labyrinth. Should be awesome. Chajon, get on that.

I’ll be on my honeymoon next week, and then on Wednesday, July 11th, we’ll put up another video. I’m thinking that’s when we’ll really start publicizing this Action Section stuff. We kind of haven’t done any real publicity yet since we’ve only had two or three videos, but I’m thinking once we get five or six up there, we should be good to go.

Let us know what you think of the new video. That would be fantastic.

And thanks for watching our stuff, we appreciate it.

Hey everybody,

What’s goin on. This is a big week for me.  I’m getting married on Friday. Then, I’ll spend Saturday watching Lost. Then, on Sunday, I’m going on my honeymoon for a week. Then I’ll get back and continue watching Lost.

I know I’m three years behind but this show has got me all messed up. I finished up Season 1 last week and I have so many unanswered questions I want to cry. But I’m pretty hooked, so onward with season 2. Look out, Earth circa 2005, I’m hot on your heels.

It’s a shame because there’s so many funny parody things you could do with Lost and I’m sure absolutely every one of them has been done by now. Even when I make passing jokes about it, people kinda nod and smile nervously, like I’m some kind of ghostly man from the past who got frozen in time and doesn’t know it yet.  Even this blog post, you’re probably reading it thinking, “you poor thing, you don’t have any idea about [      ]  and [     ] and the time when [    ] [     ] with [    ], you are from a simpler time.”

Whatever, don’t tell me anything, I’ll be caught up by the end of the summer.  And then I’ll have to watch the next three seasons one week at a time with commercials, and then I can be frustrated slowly over several years rather than just one concentrated week.  But I’ll be happy watching it up-to-date with Earth circa Now, all its peoples united in slow frustration and reaching no conclusions together.

Hi everybody,

We have two new videos up today!

One is called “Send Error Report” and the other is called “Shit Hits the Fan.” I’d give a brief description here but they’re both super short and a brief description would explain everything in detail.

We’ll have a new video up every two weeks until Halloween. 13 videos in all? Maybe 12, not sure. 12 or 13 videos. It’s taking a lot of restraint to not just put everything up now, but I guess that’s how they feel when they finish filming and editing a whole season of Lost.

Speaking of Lost, I finally caught up to Earth circa 2004 and watched the first couple episodes of Season 1. Man, it is great stuff. That island is a kooky place. It’s got me all messed up now. I hear it gets much crazier. I’m totally down with that.

Well, we entered “The Emotional Rollercoaster” into a YouTube video contest this week (“The Sketchies”) and we didn’t make the cut. Which is a shame, because I really did think we had somewhat of a chance. Oh well, the internet’s a pretty big place. We’ll keep an eye out.

But on the plus side: almost 200 people have watched our video! That’s more people than could fit in a moderate-sized comedy theater. So that’s pretty great. We’ve sent the link to our family and friends, but I don’t think there were 200 of them. So a few of those views must be people we don’t know, which is pretty exciting.

I’m not sure why it’s so much more gratifying to make a complete stranger laugh. I guess it’s a challenge? It’s kind of weird, actually. Especially on stage. There’s nothing like hearing strangers laughing at something you did on purpose to make them laugh. Especially when it’s a two-part punchline, and the first part gets a big laugh, and then you just stand there, letting the other part of the line dangle, holding, breathing in the laughter and then waiting for it to slow a little bit before hitting it again, like flicking a quarter on a tabletop.

Which is also why this whole internet thing is weird to me. Even if only half of the 200 people liked our video, then 100 people laughed and I’ll never hear it. Which I find kind of sad.

I guess it’s like you spend all this time writing this big symphony and you don’t know what it sounds like, and then randomly there’s this internet thing that makes your orchestra gigantic but puts every musician in a different sound-proof room all over the world. So what you get is this little counter that says “you have 200 musicians in your orchestra.” But what if no one’s playing? And, even worse, what if they’re playing the greatest song ever?

I’m not one for heaven and religion and all that, but I imagine if there is something heavenesque, it would have two things: 1) the ability to relive any moment of your life with a superpower of your choosing, and 2) a gigantic concert hall filled with everyone you’ve ever made laugh all laughing at the same time. I mean specific laughs, from specific moments you’ve created, all at once. I’m not sure what it’d sound like, but I’m thinking it’d be cacophonous at first and then almost a white noise, and then a melody would appear like a 3-D shark appearing in a magic-eye picture. Not sure what the melody would be but I’m thinking it would be pretty wonderful. Or it might be repetitive and drive me crazy, like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Ok I need to go to bed.

Hi everybody!

We have our first video ready to roll.  It’s called “The Emotional Rollercoaster.”  It involves two guys at an amusement park.

Hope you enjoy.  We’ll have another new one two weeks from now.   We’ll keep making one new video every two weeks for the next six months or so before reevaluating our lives.  Stay tuned!

i’m just sayin

theactionsection.com now redirects you to theactionsection.wordpress.com, but there is a way to get the .wordpress out of there. I think it should work tomorrow, it takes a bit for the DNS to be redirected. I don’t know what DNS means.