Today is my birthday. It is also Harry Potter's birthday. I spent some time earlier trying to write something funny about sharing a birthday with Harry Potter, but everything I tried to create humor out of ended up making me sound jealous of a fictional wizard character.

For example:

• Harry Potter is older than me. He was born in 1980, and thus can rent a car without having to worry about an under-25 surcharge.
• More people will be celebrating Harry Potter's birthday than my birthday. Maybe if my high school years were spent fighting he-who-must-not-be-named instead of crying in the bathroom, that would be different.
• Harry Potter's birthday cards come by owl. My birthday cards don't come at all, since no one sends them to me. (Ha! That’s just a joke. My birthday cards also come by owl.)

So I figured that since all those things make me sound like I'm jealous of Harry, I would make a list of things that Mr. Potter could be jealous of me for:

• Christians will not picket my birthday party because they think I am promoting paganism (subject to change).
• Harry Potter will never experience the incredible character-building activity of marking each year older as another year that he is still in student loan debt.
• There is no chance my birthday cake will turn into a frog. (Also, I hope that nobody reads this and tries to put a frog in my cake.)

Okay. I think no matter how hard I try, Harry comes out on top here. He just deserves the birthday more than I do. I'll have to find another day to have been born. How does August 15th sound to everyone?

Fantastic.

I'd said I post something else about Kids in the Hall this week. Here's a PSA written by Bruce which a) is the only place I am currently aware of to see Bruce and Anthony Michael Hall acting together and b) remains a pertinent message for the times.

...I might as well come up with two more Kids in the Hall posts to round out the week, right?

Here's a clip I found on YouTube of Kevin, Dave, and Mark in a music video for The Odds. It's not very good, but it's a little bit hilarious in that.

I swear I didn't intend on making this Kids in the Hall week, but here's a preview clip of Kevin McDonald's new one-man show, Hammy and the Kids, from the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal (he's in the second half):

And now we move from my least favorite Kid in the Hall to my most favorite: Bruce McCulloch. I love this man so much that I would sit in his dirty bathwater if it'd help me absorb some of his comedic genius. He's writing a new sitcom this fall, Carpoolers, about four men who, well, carpool together. And to add the icing to this televised cake, the show is being directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, the same guys who directed Arrested Development. Yay!

Unfortunately, the clips that ABC has up on their website promoting the show are not funny. When I watch them, some nerve center in my brain shoots off a signal that says, "Yes, this is indeed comedy," but none of the jokes make me laugh. I'm hoping that's just because ABC is trying to attract the broadest audience possible to the show. Because man-oh-man, I'm really not sure how a show written by Bruce and directed by the Russos can not be funny.

Scott Thompson is my least favorite member of the Kids in the Hall. He always has been. In a troupe I fiercely love and admire for madcap, often-nonsensical sketches, Scott was always ready with the stereotypical gay jokes, the drug jokes, the self-obsessed jokes. His stuff was good sometimes, but would I watch a show that was just Scott Thompson? No. I mean: hell no.

This was confirmed when, while on vacation this week, I caught a bit of a Pulp Comics special he did for Comedy Central. It was bad. It was really, really bad. I wanted to like it, but almost all of his stand-up jokes I saw were comparing Canadians to black people, complete with the phrase "snow n*****" (the special was filmed before the Michael Richards debacle; I wonder if Scott would still make the same joke now). One joke, okay. But making that your entire comedic platform? No thanks.

Anyway, these awkward bits of stand-up were cut with sketches he filmed about the supposed writing of the special, including a freak-out where he ran around the house screaming that he was a Kid in the Hall! He invented comedy! Even though he meant that as a joke, it seemed so painfully true: I was watching him because he was a Kid in the Hall, not because I thought he was a good comedian in his own right. Because hoo-boy, I certainly don't think that.

Recently, due to financial constraints and the fact that I just didn't need her anymore, I sold my car, the Sweet Lady LeBaron. She was a beauty: a 1986 dream machine with under 30,000 miles when she came into my hands. I loved her dearly. In her memory, I present to you a post culled from my old blog, explaining our love.

Godspeed, Sweet Lady.

August 10, 2006

Not many people are fortunate enough to drive a highly-calibrated driving machine. Not many people drive a 1986 Chrysler LeBaron.

I'm going to tell you right now: stop looking at my keys. I'm not going to let you drive her. But you can ride in the passenger seat, in smooth luxury comfort. Careful now, I need to get closer to the gas pedal and, yeah, the whole front seat is coming with me. Why? Because Sweet Lady LeBaron and I are going to take you on a ride, my friend. We're going to take you for a ride.

When we're cruising down the highway at a top speed of 65 miles per hour, you might need to roll down the window to whistle at some chicks. It's okay, I understand. They'll already be staring at us anyway, at our glistening pearl-blue exterior, at our original hubcabs, at our finely designed Chrysler mudflaps. So go on, roll the window down. Yeah, that's right. It's got power windows. Power locks, too, all forged out of metal by Thor himself, before he was a god and he worked tirelessly with his great hammer at a plant in Detroit. Feel how easy the window slides down. That's the LeBaron touch.

Something catch your eye? It must be the crystal in the steering wheel refracting light over the ceiling. Or maybe it’s the matching crystal hood ornament shining in the sun. These crystals are where the LeBaron gets her power from. She’s supercharged on crystal power, and she’s going all the way. All the way to the bank, which is as far as my grandmother ever drove her.

So I say you can take your BMWs and Audis, your cars with airbags and tape players. I've got the love of the Sweet Lady LeBaron in my heart, and it's all the love I need.

I'm always amazed at how many ineffectual business cards I pick up at crafty events. It's not like the cards are ugly – most of them are beautifully designed – but they don't tell me enough about what the person makes for me to connect the card with what I loved about their work. For example, I have a stack of five or ten cards on my desk right now that just have basic patterns, like flowers or paisley, and say something like "jewelry" or "journals." When I go to an event with 100 crafters, how am I supposed to remember someone's work from that? I can't.

Some people do a great job though. Here are four business cards I picked up at the Art Star Craft Bazaar a while back that were successful in reminding me what the artist’s work was:

From the top left:

1. Ray-Min Shoulderware. This card is one of my favorites because it does a nice job of representing Ray-Min's work – handbags decorated with simple, bold shapes – without actually showing the bags.
2. Deadbird. Cat Campbell makes mixed media art with photos of taxidermied animals, and the bit of big cat on the front is a nice reminder. Also, save for the white name on white in the upper-right corner (which is barely visible in this image), I love the design of this card.
3. Bright Lights Little City. Heather makes handmade lamps out of paper parasols. The front of the card is illuminated parasols. Easy.
4. TADworks. Cute little felted critters show up (beautifully photographed) right on the front of the card. No mistaking what this is.

As some of you may know, one of my embroidered shirts was recently featured in Philadelphia Style magazine. In the article, they lovingly refer to me as a "Philly native." But since this three-inch-long feature is surely going to shoot me straight into stardom, I would like to take this opportunity to address a possible scandal:

I, Meg Favreau, am not a Philadelphia native.

I'm sorry. But in my defense, I never told them as I was. I merely seized this city as my own after moving here and somehow conned my way into two jobs where I write as a "Philadelphia insider." But no, I am not a Philly native.

I originally hail from northern New Hampshire. It's a rough-and-tumble land, a land that’s easy to lie about because most people haven't visited there. I was born in an abandoned hunting camp. The first meal I was fed post-womb was not breast milk, but a traditional deer jerky known as "Infant’s Lesson," designed to separate the strong babies from the weak. I was riding moose by the time I was three. Oh, it sounds fun, but it was a hard life. We didn’t get the internet until I was thirteen-years-old, and to this day my parents only have dial-up. Yes, northern New Hampshire is a vast Luddite wilderness, a wilderness that creates stubborn pride and snowmobilers. But I knew I wanted something more than a Ski-Doo. I wanted to live somewhere where I could get DSL. I wanted to live somewhere where "going out for the evening" didn't mean taking a 30-pack of Coors to the spot in the woods where a guy was scalped in the 1700's. I wanted to live somewhere where no one knew about the grave error I made in the 1996 Moose-Riding Pageant for Eligible Girls, turning my moose right into the audience instead of left into the show ring.

So I came to Philadelphia. And even though I didn't intend to, I planted roots in its glass-littered soil.

Am I a Philly native by birth? No. Am I a Philly native by blood? No, I still have the New Hampshire and its Lyme disease running through my blood. But am I a Philly Native when magazines want to claim a young, new designer as their own before anyone else does? Yes I am. And in the end, isn't that what matters?

I like writing about what I deem to be hilarious drinks. Thus I introduce to you the "authentic Floridian" shots we prepared to celebrate the Fourth of July.

Ingredients:

• 1 part baked bean juice
• 1 part tequila
• 1 bean
• Small squeeze of lime

Pour bean juice in shot glass. Using a spoon with the tip just barely in the bean juice, float tequila on top. Drop bean in, add sqeueze of lime. Drink.

Now, since I am not an authentic Floridian, I can only guess the meaning of these drinks, but I think it's something like this: the bean juice stands for the dark, muddy everglades, and also for Americana. The tequila stands for the Spanish speaking population in Florida, although I am not entirely sure whether it should be rum instead for the Cuban population. The bean stands for the elderly, and the lime juice stands for Sea World.

I'm on Boing Boing!