Hey, I don't know if there are any teenage-type folks who read this blog, but if you're out there, listen: When I was in high school, we didn't have YouTube! If I wanted to download a grainy, eight-megabyte video of the Foo Fighters’ "Everlong," I had to be connected to the internet for four hours! And if I wanted to watch They Might Be Giants' TV appearances, I had to send cash to a strange man who would send me a bootleg VHS tape! Now, you might be thinking that only a strange man would deal in VHS in the first place, but that's still how things were done back then! We had morals! We had low gas prices! We had to go to more effort than typing "TMBG" into a search bar to get our video content!

Yes, I loved They Might Be Giants, so I ordered not one, but two of these bootleg tapes. And on one of them there was a video of They Might Be Giants performing on the show Viva Variety. At the time, however, I had no idea that Viva Variety was a comedy show, or that it was comprised of members of the fantastic comedy troupe The State. Although I was a budding comedy fan, as far as I was concerned, the only good comedy shows that existed were Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Kids in the Hall. I didn’t bother looking for anything else; I thought that most comedy out there was tripe. Worse off, the people who made other comedy shows just didn't get it. They didn’t understand.

Recently, however, I was listening to the Sound of Young America's interview with Kerry Kinney-Silver, Ben Garant, and Thomas Lennon, who were members of The State and creators of both Reno 911! and Viva Variety. During the interview the folks started discussing Viva Variety, and I quickly realized that I missed a gem in high school. Not only did the show seem fantastically hilarious, it sounded like what I would make if I was given a show. From Wikipedia:

Viva Variety was a television show on Comedy Central satirizing European variety shows with characters from the Eastern Bloc. The show starred Thomas Lennon as Meredith Laupin, Kerri Kenney as the former Mrs. Laupin, and Michael Ian Black as "your cool-ass pal" Johnny Blue Jeans.

Fakey accents? Check. Ability to make up fake history and products? Check. Not surprisingly, I've been watching a lot of clips of the show on YouTube recently, and a couple of days ago, I found the one that was on my They Might Be Giants bootleg VHS. I'm not much for unnecessary nostalgia (seriously: please shut up about the 80's), but watching this video gave me a warm, full-circle sort of feeling:

Ladies and gentlemen, your day is about to get much more ridiculous. Here is a man reciting poetry while playing an amplified cactus.

Recently I've taken quite a liking to jokes that are just lies about totally harmless stuff. This doesn't make much sense to me since I personally hate being lied to, whether it's harmless or not, but I suppose The Comedy does what it wants to do.

Anyway, one of my favorites of these jokes to tell people that Enya is six feet tall. I love this because a) it's very possible and b) people act really surprised when they hear it. Like: "OMG! Are you serious? All this time I've been listening to Enya's music when I've been in those stores at the mall that sell tiny fountains, and I've NEVER known that 'Sail Away' was written and performed by a six-foot-tall woman? Holy shit! Modern science! Explosions!"

Well, I always assumed Enya's height would be one of those things that I never would actually know the answer to, like how people still think it's okay to start wars or why Mind of Mencia got renewed. However, the fine people at Enya.com apparently thought that Enya's height was one of those facts that The People Deserve to Know. And so, in the interest of truth about Irish New Age musicians, I share with you now, good people: Enya is five feet, two inches tall.

Go forth and spread the gospel.

When I woke up this morning, I had an email from an address I didn't recognize. This is nothing peculiar; any joker who is reading this right now can just look to the right and see how to send me an electronic message. What was strange was that the guy acted like he knew me. He's playing a show in Philly soon, and the (very short) email included the lines "You should come. We'll talk old times."

We'll talk old times, eh? So I started thinking: did I know this guy? I mean, the name he used was obviously a pseudonym. He could maybe be someone I knew in high school or who was on the periphery of my friends in college. Maybe hard times had led him to writing terse, cryptic emails instead of mmm…explaining our relationship. But then I went to his website, and I looked at his picture. And I'll tell you, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen this man before.

No big deal, right? Well, except for the fact that he's finding people who live in cities he's touring to and apparently sending them emails pretending he knows them in an effort to get people to his shows. Seriously? That's how he expects to get fans? By telling not-quite-truths? (I didn't say lies, because he could easily claim that by "talk old times" he meant discussing the plights of feudal societies in England.)

Dude, listen here: it's not great to send people random emails inviting them to your show just because they live where you're touring to. It's downright silly to pretend you already know them.