My boys are doing so well. I couldn’t be prouder!

Simon Pegg’s new movie Paul has a great blog with behind-the-scenes photos, video blogs and fun. It’s so sweet that they love and respect their fans so much that they take the time to do this stuff. Most movie stars would not bother. Highlight: Simon and Kristen Wiig (girlcrush) learning how to drive a motorhome.

www.whatispaul.com

From the website: “Paul is a comedy about two sci-fi geeks who embark upon a pilgrimage in a RV to the center of America’s UFO heartland: Nevada’s infamous Area 51. While in the middle of that desert, the two friends encounter a fugitive alien by the name of Paul. Somewhat reluctantly, they embark upon an adventure that will change not just their lives forever, but also the lives of the friends and enemies they encounter along the way.”

June 2009 British GQ! Yay!

Plus, Simon’s book will be released in October. On my birthday. It’s fate, you guys.

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Chris Hardwick has just started hosting Web Soup on the G4TV Network (an off-shoot of the hilarious and trashy The Soup, hosted by the equally dreamy Joel McHale). Don’t get G4? Subscribe to the the iTunes Podcasts!

And now you can get him on your chest!

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Chris Leavins is taking a hiatus from Cute With Chris. Boo. But he’s uploading stories like crazy to The Chris Leavins Story Hour! Yay! I highly reccommend his podcast. The premise is simple – he records live readings of his short stories and essays and uploads them to iTunes for the people not lucky enough to see the show. His stories are funny, personal, touching, dark, sarcastic and just terrific. Chris + iPod + walking to work along the seawall = BLISS.

Click photo for link to L.A. Weekly's great article about Chris

Also, he’s publishing a book of his stories soon on this new self-publishing platform called Lulu.com. You just pay a fee, upload your content and cover art, choose your own price, then promote your book on the site. You print as many as you want, and readers buy the book right there. Genius. And geeky!

Chris Leavins is “working 24 hours a day, pioneering the internet,” or so he says. I know he means that facetiously, but he’s not far off the mark. Chris is a writer, actor, comedian and video blogger who is blurring the line between performance and the internet.

He started his career as an actor in Canada, and and found some success on shows like Slings and Arrows and The Eleventh Hour. He did run into some struggles, and he became frustrated with show cancellations and empty theatres. He moved to Los Angeles to make a go of it a few years ago and continued to work, and in his spare time he started a hilarious web show and blog called Cute with Chris. On it, he asks his viewers to vote on the cutest pet photo posted on his blog, rants, tells stories and makes fun of his Crazy Cat Lady and teen fans. It’s rife with inside jokes, dark humour and a rotating cast of characters: Colty the Christian plastic horse, Pervy the perverted plastic horse, and his sidekick Peanuts, a bag of styrofoam packaging peanuts. It’s kind of like Cuteoverload.com and The Jon Stewart Show had a baby.

Noticing the global reach his web show had as opposed to the empty theatres and canceled tv series of his past, he wanted to see what would happen if he used this new-found popularity to subsequently produce live shows. Guess what? It worked. His first experimental Cute with Chris Live show in L.A. sold out in 81 minutes. Here, he can explain it better than I can:

Since then, he’s sold out a bunch more CWC Live shows in L.A. and Toronto. His live show is just like how you’d imagine it. Audience members email him photos of their cute pets ahead of time, then he shows the photos on the big screen, makes fun of them and includes them in all the indside jokes that the fans know and love so well from the web show. The Crazy Cat Ladies, Teens and Big Gay Bears in the audience LOSE THEIR MINDS. He then takes a quick video update from right up on the stage and posts it on the blog the next day. Some of the t-shirts and buttons he sells at the show are designed by fans. It’s so interactive it’s interacting with itself. He’s about to make a stop at the Uno Fest in Victoria next month. Guess who’s got tickets! MEEEEE!!!! YAAAAYYYYY!

You guys, do you have any idea how much this concept floats my boat? A live blog. And not “live blogging,” where someone is just typing and you’re watching on another computer. It’s a blog brought to life. Le sigh. Internet geekery + live theatre = is this what heaven looks like?

(\_/)
(O.o)
( ><)

p.s. Maybe I should call this topic Cute Chris Alert, because I’ve talked about a few of them.

Have you ever wondered who has cuter kittens, Canada or America? Well, wonder no more!

That adorable video comes from Cute with Chris, a video show/website/thing of awesomeness. As Chris says,

“Here’s the way CWC works–Every third Monday, I post a new episode of the show; usually a three minute video about homeless puppies and deformed kittens. By the end of the day, thousands of misfit teen girls, crazy cat ladies, and hairy gay bears will have watched the program. By the end of the week, that number may grow to 100,000, and by the end of the month, on some occasions, a million. On the remaining six days of the week, I post some of the hundreds of kitten pictures, and fan photos that my viewers send me.”

So if I’m not a misfit teen girl or a hairy gay bear, does that make me a crazy cat lady? Don’t answer that . . .

As Chris Leavins mentioned in his performance tonight, I’m sure the world is just dying to see what we’re going to write about his show when we get home.

Chris Leavins live at the Theatre Centre at Queen and Dovercourt. This was the second of two dates scheduled. I was lucky that a second show was added, otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to go. Thanks to Meaghan Orlinski for reserving me tickets!

To all of those teenage girls who didn’t get to go – all your dreams are dead.

Mr. Leavins puts on a great performance. His inflection is absolutely fantastic and his timing is impeccable. Well scripted, but not overperformed. It still felt pretty casual. Pretty much what I had anticipated, having watched the show for some time now. I do miss his covers of the classics, such as Fergie’s Glamorous though. Mr. Leavins was nice enough to stick around to meet each and every one of his fans and take pictures with them. I managed to squeeze in one clear picture of Chris’ backside with my horrible iPhone camera.

It’s kind of bizarre how an internet show about cute animals can garner the attention of so many people. Don’t get me wrong, I myself adore Cute with Chris and I watch the show regularly, but when people meet someone from the internet and find themselves speechless for a period of five minutes, I just have to wonder. Quite possibly one of the oddest fan bases I think I’ve ever encountered. I kind of felt like I was in the movie Trekkies.

Meg, Taz and I spoke with Chris briefly. Meg and Taz take the serious approach and make observations from psychoanalytical and consumer behavioural perspectives. I, however, decide to take the opposite approach, show him a picture of Tyson, and ask, “in your professional opinion, do you think this dog is gay?”

Impressive.

Well come on, look at that homosexual appendage. It always just hangs there.

The Hanging Garden, 1997, Canada/Storbritannien

En fet kille kommer tillbaka till sin födelseort efter 10 år. Förra gången han var där var han bara ett barn, en fet smygbög-unge som blev kär i sin vän. Nu när han kommer tillbaka är han skitsnygg och han och barndomsvännen blir värsta heta paret igen, men tyvärr är nog den rödhåriga gamla vännen rätt ful. /Imdb/