TREMENDOUS RABBIT!

I've linked the radio appearance from The Brian Lehrer Show on the Tremendous Rabbit Productions Press page. Also, Mcsweeney's is again featuring "Confessions of a New Coffee Drinker" on their main page today. Happy New Year!

Good times on the radio. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for listening and thanks to Chris Bannon and Brian Lehrer. You can listen to it here, eventually Jon Friedman and Matt Diffee and The Brian Lehrer Show

I'm very happy to announce that I will be directing a wonderfully talented, sparky, beautiful, zany, lovely, creative, intelligent, sassy bunch known as "The Wiener Philharmonic." Their show will debut in February '05 at Juvie Hall every Wednesday at 9:30pm. Until then, we'll be working to make the show great fun. Check 'em out here www.wienerphilharmonic.com and read their hilarious blog The Wiener Philharmonic Blog

P.S. They've already given me cookies.

I updated the Tremendous Rabbit Productions press page a bit over the weekend. It's here www.tremendousrabbit.com/press

Thanks to everyone who came out to The Rejection Show last night. You all warmed my heart a few degrees. More Tremendous Rabbit updates soon....

Sometimes I wish:

my name was, Jon Friedman (partially milled)

This is my impression of

Tom Hanks:

"You are a toyyyyyyyyy!"

Robert Deniro:

"I heard things."

Lindsay Lohan:

"Life can be so randomly beautiful."

Hurry up.

CBS Sunday Morning shifted their New Yorker cartoonist story to a future episode. Television is a crazy business and stories get edited, shifted, cut, enlarged, zapped, and zoomed at any given moment. I'll keep you posted to when it will be on, hopefully The Rejection Show gets represented nicely. Cripes.

Clearly it has to be the chicken. There were not hats in the days before chickens.

I know I'm getting older when I'm truly excited about getting a non stick frying pan for a present. This is not a bad thing.

Mr. Friedman,

Thank you for registering your record attempt with Guinness World Records.

One of our representatives will contact you within the next 4-6 weeks with
a decision on your record request.

If your suggested record is approved, we will get back to you with rules
and regulations so that you may attempt your proposed record. If you have
already attempted a record, and we are interested in your submission, we
may ask for the documentation needed to verify the record.

Should your record proposal/attempt be unsuccessful, we will send you a
detailed reason outlining our decision and we will often suggest a
similar, existing record.

Our online tracking service enables you to track the progress of your
record claim through the Guinness World Records website. You will need
your membership number and password to access this service - these will be
sent to you once your claim has been assigned to a researcher.

Thank you for contacting Guinness World Records. Good luck!

Record Research Services,
Guinness World Records

From the Chicagoist Gift Guide

Hipsters are hard to clothe. It's a sad fact—everything you like we liked like, two years ago, snore, you fucking conformist lame-o. Go back to the Gap! But we can't live on cigarettes and PBR alone. No, we too need a new shirt now and then, and the more ironic, the better. Threadless still has some awesome shirts in stock (you snooze, you lose, biatch). Our pick is clearly the unicorns bumping uglies. That's priceless.

Don't forget the 80s movie shirt. Real Genius, Revenge of the Nerds, UHF, Strange Brew--these are all essential viewing for cool kids. There is nothing more hardcore than an Elsinore Beer shirt.

Still too obvious? Really go the distance with Elamenotees, so you can wear a joke that no one, even you, really gets. THAT is what coolness is, friends. Actually, we think these shirts are hiiilarious.

Fine, fine, fine, you want a more DIY approach without actually having to, you know, do it yourself. You can head over to the T-shirt Deli at 1739 North Damen to have your idea slapped on a shirt for all to see. It's not particularly cheap, but then, neither are you.

--ML

Tonight at 7pm at Juvie Hall.

New slides added to Swollen Head!

If you haven't seen the show you have no idea what I'm talking about. Well, you probably have some idea, like, you probably assume that the show has some sort of slides in it and now there are some new ones.

Penguin & Swollen Head for more info

ANDY FRIEDMAN WITH BAND AT BOWERY POETRY CLUB MONDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 20 @ 7PM

Andy Friedman brings his new slideshow-poetry performance to THE BOWERY POETRY CLUB on MONDAY, DECEMBER 20 at 7PM.

Special guest, NY magazine “Mating” columnist and all-around superstar Amy Sohn will open the evening with a reading from her new novel “My Old Man” (Simon & Schuster). If you haven’t experienced an Amy Sohn reading this is a great time and place to do it. (www.amysohn.com)

After a successful tour of the Pacific Northwest and inland through Idaho and Montana with a seven-piece bluegrass band, Andy’s experiments with jazz accompaniment have given way to a rootsier, more countrified sound. The “Other Failures” lineup will include upright bass, resonator guitar, mandolin, fiddle and drum.

More info at City Salvage Records

Dialing phone......

ME: Hi, is this Ken Watanabe?

ME: Wow, it's so great to speak to you.

ME: Yeah, yeah.

ME: Well, I just wanted to say that I thought you did a bag 'em up job in The Last Samurai.

ME: Yeah well, check this out, Ken....I never even actually saw it....sucker!

Hang up phone.

When I was a kid I wrote song about my sneakers called "My Adidas!" It went something like this...

walk through concert doors
and roam all over coliseum floors
I stepped on stage, at Live Aid
All the people gave an applause that paid
And out of speakers I did speak
I wore my sneakers but I'm not a sneak...

Oh wait, that was Run DMC that wrote that, my bad.

Every once in a while I force myself to write. I usually preach against it because the day I realized I am a better writer when I don't force it was the day I became better or at least it was more fun. Because of this I can sometimes go through very long stretches without writing anything new or I'll find myself in a stretch where I'm on a "hot streak" of writing tiny stand-up jokes and not anything of a longer substance and or vice versa. I've been busy lately playing the producing game and have not had much time to write. I have some new stuff that I haven't put on my site yet because I want to read them at some upcoming readings first --but other than that it's been pretty dry over the past month. So, I forced myself to write something. I forced myself to write a new letter. I've been having trouble writing new letters. When I first wrote them no one else had seen them. Now when I try to write them I can't shake the feeling that I'm imitating myself....anyhoo, with all that in mind I tried to write a new one with both forcing myself and this bad feeling of trying to "please" and it came out like this....(Oh yeah, my rule for writing these letters is that I can't go back and edit)

Dear Lost and Found,

I lost a brown leather coat. It is brown and made out of leather. I wear jeans a lot. Do you know who I am? I’m usually wearing jeans. You may have seen me in jeans and a brown leather coat when I came in but not in that when I left. I have to admit something to you. I didn’t lose a brown leather coat. I lost a blue nylon coaches jacket. I figured that since I lost my jacket I might as well try to upgrade to another type of jacket. One that is more expensive and that could make me look both cooler and more jovial. Is jovial used correctly there? It’s not. I looked it up and the definition had a word in it that I didn’t know the meaning of. That word was "conviviality," which means full of feasting, drinking, good company and sociable. That’s what I am. I’m that already without the brown leather coat. Jovial means full of joy. When I used the word jovial I was trying to express that it would make me look more successful in a business sense. What I’ve learned from this is that I don’t need a brown leather coat to make me happy. I’m already happy with the kind of coat I have and it took losing it and trying to swindle my way into getting a better one to realize this. I didn’t even lose my coaches jacket. I just left it at home and didn’t realize I walked out without it. Is there even a lost and found at the post office? How’s your father?

Sincerely,
Jon

So what does that mean? Why did that come out? Sometimes I go back and read and I can see parallels to more serious events in my life. Who knew? Oh wait, I did.

I'll post more about this as it gets closer but I found out last night that the story on New Yorker cartoonists for CBS Sunday Morning will air on the 12th of December. They were at The October Rejection Show shooting for the story. We'll see...

Rejection Show favorite David Sipress will be at the next Rejection Show on December 15th with newly rejected cartoons in hand.

There are a bunch of new Elameno Tees waiting to be unleashed on the new site. I'm keeping the same logo. Me likes it.

Send in your FAQS to www.tremendousrabbit.com/faq