This blog has moved.

Please go to JeffRubinJeffRubin.com instead.

So long, Blogger! Your posting tools are annoying and desperately in need of an update that doesn't appear to be coming. I'm moving over to Tumblr.

JeffRubinJeffRubin.com should be redirecting you to the new blog (jeffrubinjeffrubin.tumblr.com) soon. You'll have to click that link if you want a list of bad movies I've seen in theaters.

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I get a pretty steady trickle of Facebook friend requests from CollegeHumor fans. I'm no Jake Hurwitz, but I get maybe 5-10 every week.

However, in the 24 hours since that NBA Jam video went on the main page of the site, I've received an unprecedented NINETEEN friend requests. Two of them explicitly mention how much I suck at NBA Jam and how badly they would beat me, given the chance. To me, that's really stretching the definition of friend request.

Someone mentioned in the comments beneath the video that they've shut out the opposing team, a feat I never would have even dreamed possible until I saw it set to Beastie Boys on YouTube. I love when people play games harder than they were intended to be played. The "about this video" notes that, "we have broken The Matrix."

Susanna Wolf, a very funny CH intern, started a blog.

I did another video game video for CollegeHumor. Jake and I played Amir and Pat in NBA Jam (original, not TE).

To produce and edit a video of you and your friends playing video games for work is about as much fun as it sounds like. I think this one may be my favorite yet. It will be living in CH's new video games channel for a few days, before moving over to the main site. I'd embed, but it's widescreen so I think it's worth watching on CH. Link.

This week also saw the release of the first new Play Value in a while.This one is about the Commodore 64. I didn't really live through the era (the Commodore bridged the gap between Atari and my beloved NES), but I still managed to sneak a few lines in. I'll be filming more of these soon. Link.

Note that "what the fuck? (WTF?)" and "what the hell? (WTH?)" moments are not necessarily mindfucks. A mindfuck occurs when the writers go to a lot of trouble to create a certain perception in the minds of the audience, and then right when the audience is comfortable with that perception, the perception is dramatically changed in a single moment. Most WTF? and WTH? moments are simply plot twists, and should be collected in the plot twist article.

- The Lostpedia.com article for "Mindfuck."

For my birthday, my coworkers got a one-man band from the Subway to come to the office. I probably don't have to say this, but it was amazing. Footage below, and fun fact even further down.


Banjo Man for Jeff from Blake Whitman on Vimeo.

FUN FACT - I don't know how, but everyone has figured out I appreciate a good subway performer. On my birthday last year, friends from high school got this Mariachi band to come to my apartment.

"Pundits who thought the strike would cripple Leno misunderstood something fundamental about his art: His act is already essentially crippled. Real stand-up comedy is famously time-intensive; it converts months of solid work into minutes of material, and its tiniest successes depend on superhumanly precise calibrations of tone, pace, and gesture—a discipline antithetical to the relentless, workaday schedule of a talk show. A monologue is, by definition, wounded comedy. We should assess late-night hosts, then, not by their rare bursts of excellence but by how they cope with mediocrity. Leno and Letterman both, at this point, deal mainly in terrible jokes. The question for viewers is what attitude—what existential garnish—do you want on top of them?"

- Why The Writer's Strike Couldn't Cripple Jay Leno

Conan, though I love him, could be on that list too.