Overpriced two-drink minimums and potato skins; bad Clinton jokes on late night—these used to be the hallmarks of comedy, an art relegated to the controlled environs of comedy clubs and network TV. Fortunately, in the late ’90s, a daring breed of comedians began rejecting the status quo altogether and, by taking cues from the indie-music world, started reviving comedy as a savvy and groundbreaking art form. Mock Stars delves headfirst into this revolutionary scene, tracing the evolution of indie comedy as part of the underground music circuit and into mainstream America. Through candid interviews with the major players, including David Cross, Patton Oswalt, Neil Hamburger, Maria Bamford, Fred Armisen, Aziz Ansari, Jon Wurster, Aimee Mann, and dozens of others, Wenzel reveals how comedy is becoming relevant—and dangerously funny—again.

You can find more of Mr. Wenzel’s work in the Denver Post’s music section.

And here’s the second cut of the video, done by Mat:

You can get more information on the Obama Bacon Man song — credits, the story behind it, etc. on sizzology.com here. If you’d like to help spread the Bacon Word, here’s a list I typed up of stuff you can do to help.

Sportsify aggregates what the major sports sites (CNN, ESPN etc.) are saying about upcoming games / races / mathces (NCAA Football, NBA, MLB, NASCAR, NFL), and turns that aggregation into a consensus pick on who’s going to win. According to the blurb on the site: “Sportsify combines the picks and power rankings from dozens of sports sites to build more accurate consensus picks and rankings.”

According to the blurb Adam wrote up on his personal site, “You can think of Sportsify like a Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic for sports picks and power rankings, aggregating all the #1’s and weekend favorites from around the web into one site.”

I like it.

It happens tomorrow, starting at 10 a.m. and going ’til 6 p.m. … the speakers go on at noon, and it’s on the grass by the tall skinny bendy white-people statues by the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Bill Ritter’s going to speak, Mayor Hickenlooper, some fancy green guy Van Jones, and Daryl Hannah. Also, from the web site:

• Sustainable Wine and Beer Tastings
• Freshly Baked Goods from Solar Ovens
• Organic and Local Foods and Market
• Kid Powered Train Rides and Play Area
• Take Home Tips to Save Money and Live Green
• Experience the Xcel Energy Smart Grid Trailer
• Explore Exhibits and Booths from Local and Green Businesses

Two days later a reporter (Brian Malnes) and a photog (Karl Gehring) were among the few dozen at the monthly tetris match, and today there’s an article about Tetris League in the Denver Post.

I felt a little nervous about it, what with me working for the Post and all. My co-workers on the online team knew I play competitive tetris, and some of them knew I was pretty good at it (according to the Tetris League site I’m the best player to never have won it all). But if there’s any video game out there that’s a contender for an Olympic sport, it’s tetris. And if any ship is going to sail into Olympic-land, it’s going to be flying the Tetris League flag. Tetris League. Last Wednesday of every month. Check it out.

1. This is an adorable interview (three questions) with Alexey Pajitnov, who invented Tetris … I’ve been putting together a “Philosophy of Tetris” article, and Alexey talks some Tetris philosophy here. Order out of chaos. Yeah.

2. Last night I won second place in the Tetris tournament … again. Third time I’ve finished second. This time I came in from the winner’s bracket, which means Vinnie had to beat me twice to take the championship. Twice. I put up a fight — this is the championship game:

3. This is the fifth in my Faces of Tetris series of interviews with people who play Tetris. I interview Vinnie, April’s champ, who talks Tetris, Colorado Springs, Steve Nash, and puts together a darn good metaphor about Tetris at the end:

By Roger Scruton, Philosopher
Pleasures go stale, but happiness is always fresh and fulfilling. Even if you are only interested in yourself, therefore, you should ask how happiness is obtained and how, once obtained, it can be kept. The most important ingredient in happiness is self-esteem: the knowledge that it is good to be what you are. This knowledge requires the distinction between good and bad. And this is not learned from judging, yourself, but from judging others and being judged by them. To be happy, therefore, you must see yourself as others might, and find no obstacle to approbation. What you admire in others, you should string to imitate in yourself.

This is a fruitful thought experiment. Take all the things that you want to do, and ask yourself, Would it endear another to me, to know that he did them? Consider infidelity. Why is it that, in all the great literature of love, the reader finds himself instinctively on the side of the faithful, and unable to take the betrayer to heart? If you are moved to sympathy for the adulterer, say, it is almost invariably because the writer or artist has portrayed him or her as pursuing an extramarital but faithful love against the background of a marriage imposed by force, convention, or habit. This is what Tolstoy does in Anna Karenina, or Wagner in Tristan and Isolde. The problematic cases are problematic for this very reason. Does our heart, in the end, really go out to Emma Bovary in Flaubert’s novel, or to Don Giovanni in Mozart’s opera?

Consider all your character traits in this light and you will soon learn which ones should be amended; violent temper, injustice, cowardice, and gross self-indulgence all place an insuperable obstacle before our affections. So let them place an obstacle before the affection that you naturally feel for yourself.

Once you begin to think in this moralized way about your life, you will recognize an important distinction not only between the good and the bad, but between the good and the nice. Nice people may be good, but in many cases niceness is a mask behind which self-interest negotiates an easy passage to its target. Nice people may charm us, do their best to get us on their side, encumber us with easily offered and cost-free expressions of affection. But it does not follow that we can trust them to help us in the real emergency, or to make sacrifices on our behalf or on behalf of anyone. For this something deeper is required — the thing that we know as virtue.

Aristotle argues that true friendship requires virtue in those who are joined by it. He meant that friendship is not just a good and a part of happiness; it is also laden with duties and obligations and cannot be sustained without cost. The cost is worthwhile, but it may not be pleasant. Virtue is the disposition to meet that cost from your own resources: to take risks on your friend’s behalf, to stand up for him in difficulties, to expose yourself to obloquy when justice requires. Without courage, wisdom, and justice, therefore, friendship is only a ghost.

To retain happiness is not so hard, if our faithful companions are beside us. They are our comfort in adversity and the partners of our joys. All promiscuous affection tends to sever these lasting relationships of love and trust, and although this may bring regards in terms of instant pleasure, it erodes the foundations of esteem. But lasting loves and friendships imply that grief will one day afflict us. And grief is a mourning, not only for the other, but for the self. We die with those whom we love, and this rehearsal for our final exit is one that many find hard to bear.

Here is another thought experiment. Imagine your own death, in a world where no one loves you or regrets your passing, but in which you have had your fair share of instant pleasures. Now imagine your death in a world where you are mourned and regretted, and where images of your character and deeds are treasured by those whom you leave behind. Soon you will come to prefer this second world, not only in the future when you have left it, but in the present, when death is only approaching at its accustomed pace. And you will come to see that there are worse things than death, and that, in the end, death is not the most grievous of your losses. Far worse is to live too long, clinging to a life that has lost its enchantment. (Janacek’s opera the Makropulos Case, based on a play by Karel Capek, makes this point beautifully.) This is part of what Nietzsche meant in recommending “timely death.” And beware of the health fanatics and the cult of youth, which tell you to keep the pristine shell of a human being while the inner soul goes rotten. Grow mature with confidence and old with dignity, and accept your death as the price. It is well worth it.

I didn’t pick up Springsteen again until 2004, when I put Nebraska on repeat for two or three months. Last Christmas my sister gave me Born in the USA on vinyl. JJ got me the BitheUSA book. It’s been a Bruce kind of year. And, this week, the keyboarder for the E Street Band, Danny Federici died. I never knew the guy. But — and this is what I came here to tell you about — I do want to share a little about what I learned about Federici and the Born in the USA song.

Springsteen had written a bunch of songs as demos — lots of those songs went on (in the “demo” version) to be an album (Nebraska). Born in the USA was one of those songs, but it didn’t make the cut. The demo version sounded different, a lot more desolate. When Springsteen still thought the demos he recorded were just demos, and when he got his band together to turn them into something more, he pulled out the Born in the USA song. The band played it through once, they played it through twice, and the second take of that song is the version you hear on the album.