Shannon Cottrell

The writers and cast of Effin with Tonight

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Patrick Warburton is no doubt a familiar name for TV viewers. The deep-voiced actor, who currently appears on CBS's Rules of Engagement, played David Puddy on Seinfeld, The Tick in the short-lived live action show of the same name and voices two beloved animated characters, Joe Swanson on Family Guy and Brock Samson on The Venture Bros. This September, Warburton will be heading to the web with Effin with Tonight, a new animated take on the late night talk show genre created by former Tonight Show writer Jim Shaughnessy, where he'll play host Ray Effin.

Effin with Tonight, which debuts on Sony's Crackle.com on September 2, differs from late night shows for more than the fact that it's a cartoon. It's a show without the niceties of of pre-recorded chit-chat, a show that aims to take down the culture that enables oftentimes absurd celebrity behavior.

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See more photos in Dianne Garcia's gallery "Long Beach Comic Expo 2011."

Nathaniel Osollo collects @ replies on Twitter. Every two or three months since last September, he has taken these short phrases that may or may not be connected to anything else and turns them into a comic book. 140 is Osollo's self-published, action-filled tribute to the social media platform where statements should never exceed 140 characters.

Dianne Garcia

Nathaniel Osollo at Long Beach Comic Expo with a copy of 140

​"The tweets are more often than not unrelated, unless someone has been reading the comic and knows what's going on," said Osollo when we spoke with him at Long Beach Comic Expo. "Other times i have to try to work it in somehow."

Sometimes people send Osollo contributions via Facebook and email, but Twitter is the preferred submission method due to the size constraints of the medium.

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It's official -- dreams do come true on the Internet. This whole time we thought online shopping store Etsy.com was mostly for stay at home moms pimping handmade oven mitts or for hippies slinging animal cruelty-free soaps. Turns out we were wrong. So, so wrong. Exhibit A: Vintage Nintendo video games like Star Wars, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda and Mega Man 2 re-purposed into your choice of 500GB, 750GB or 1TB external hard drives, created by an Etsy user named 8Bit Memory.

8Bit Memory

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awkwardstockphotos.com

​Nothing beats a good laugh over a truly ridiculous photo. You know the ones. Family portraits gone horribly awry. An epic photo bomb. Those photos you never, ever want tagged of yourself on Facebook. They're those happy mistakes that have enlivened and shaped viral Internet culture (and that make passing time in your cubicle a hell of a lot more enjoyable).

Mark Hauge, a graphic designer from Chicago-land, Illinois, is the man behind AwkwardStockPhotos.com, a photo blog started in January 2010 that delivers a daily dose of WTF gems handpicked from various stock photography sites around the world. We caught up with Mark to chat about the blog, what truly defines an awkward stock photograph, and why there's always some girl in a bikini who pops up no matter what you're trying to research on the Internet.

Below is our interview and Mark's picks for his top ten awkward stock photographs of all time (including an Evil Conan O'Brien sabotaging Jay Leno's favorite ride with a maniacal, yet gentle, placement of a banana into the exhaust pipe). Enjoy. And try not to spit out your coffee in front of your boss.

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Alex Pardee's Zerofriends booth inside the Comic-Con exhibit hall at the San Diego Convention Center isn't easy to find. We spent a good while walking around looking for it. Quite possibly, the only reason we did find it is because Pardee posted a handy map on his blog.

Shannon Cottrell

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Embarrassing photographs are another example of how one man's trash is another blogger's treasure. Mike Bender and Doug Chernack, both local screenwriters -- Bender's worked on the MTV Movie Awards and wrote 2001's Not Another Teen Movie, while Chernack has produced reality TV shows, including 2002's Star Dates -- created Awkwardfamilyphotos.com last year after Bender himself found one such photograph of a family ski trip, giving birth to the online gold mine, which gets approximately 200 submissions a day. No doubt you've spent precious work hours scrolling through the images of bad hair, bad fashion, bad poses and, speaking of birth, way too many expectant couples who clearly find a pregnant belly an erotic turn on. (Our personal favorites are the family photographs with the lone Goth kid. Goths in any normal setting are funny.) Bender and Chernack have now launched a companion book, Awkward Family Photos (Three Rivers Press), which includes nearly 200 new pictures. We caught up with the two before their book signing at Barnes and Noble at The Grove Thursday, May 6, 7-8 p.m.

Awkward Family Photos

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View the photo gallery here.

Ah, the new Facebook and what your "likes" say about you. As you've (hopefully) read by now, Facebook's new API turns the social networking site into a bargain bin of users' tastes to sift through, store and sell to companies like Microsoft, Yelp and Pandora. Facebook assigns marketing information to your stats, photos and any update you and your friends "like," and then shares that info with other companies so they can target you elsewhere on the Web. One giant step for Facebook world domination, one small step for personal privacy. You are being watched. Read more in Alexia Tsotsis' "What Privacy Settings?" and scroll through for examples of what Facebook sees when you "like" something.

Facebook says: "Likes" Young Republicans

Mark "The Cobrasnake" Hunter

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Facebook says: "Likes" Hooked on Phonics

Mark "The Cobrasnake" Hunter

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"When I die of embarrassment, please don't bury me in this."

​Duncan Birmingham is the author of the blog turned book Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. He lives in Los Angeles, where it's happy and sunshiny every single day and yet cats and dogs and guinea pigs live in silent agony.

What is the leading cause of suicide among pets?

Without opposable thumbs to use a gun or tie a hangman's knot, pets don't have an easy time offing themselves. The lucky ones have owners into hard drugs or senile enough to not see them dart under their wheels. Research shows more and more suicidal pets are choosing obesity as a slow--but not completely joyless--way to end it all. I'm not saying that if your dog or cat loves to pig-out that means they hate your guts and are miserable... no, actually I am saying that.

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Of all the pets you've seen, which was the most tortured or suicidal?

There's a fluffy white cat in a rainbow vest that sits forlornly on a windowsill somewhere in the West Village. I've posted various photos of "Rainbow Kitty" emailed to me from passersby on the street. This cat haunts my dreams. To stare into that fluffy puss is to see the face of unbearable ennui.

"I can't pick my nose or my owner, at least I can pick my owner's nose." (All photos courtesy of Pets Who Want to Kill Themselves. Captions by Duncan Birmingham.)

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Martin Grondin, a 25-year-old software installation support engineer living in Dracut, MA, thought it would be a nice idea to translate the entire holy Bible into cat language. So a few years ago, he created the online LOLCat Bible Translation Project. The Bible is now due out in book form courtesy of Ulysses Press. After first exclaiming "Oh, hai!" Grondin talked with me about catspeak, cat god, and how not to wind up in cat hell.

Are there cat apostles? Like in the real bible?



The cat apostles were there when the apostles of the Bible were there,
 writing their version of things. It's a mystery of where they truly 
ended up, so they emulate very strongly with the Bible's apostles.



Is there an LOL cat devil? What is LOL cat hell like?



There is Basement Cat. The road to the Basement is full of catnip and lose. Basement Cat hates all things good and does not like Ceiling 
Cat, even though they used to be best buds way back in the day before Ceiling Cat pwned Basement Cat.

 The Basement is everything cats hate. It's dirty, it's wet, and it's
 ull of things that go bump and squirt bottles. Can you imagine a cat
 trying to go through eternity of getting squirt by a squirt bottle? 
All the more reason to follow Ceiling Cat faithfully!



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Real vampire hunting kit....or fake?

​Every now and then, a reader comment just blows my mind. Do you remember my vampire hunting kits roundup from a few weeks ago? Someone claiming to be an honest to god, "real" vampire hunter emailed me to explain that "the only creature who is lonelier than the vampire, it the one who hunts it." Here is his (or her) excellent advice on the Seven Rules of Vampire Hunting:

Rule #1- You can not kill a vampire. It is already dead. You can only destroy it.
Rule #2- An annoyed vampire is a dangerous vampire.
Rule #3- Guns tend to annoy vampires. See rule #2.
Rule #4- Real vampires are evil.
Rule #5- If you are seduced by a vampire, you will become one, or become dead. See rule #4.
Rule #6- (And this is the one that really counts.) Kill them all!
Rule #7- When in doubt, and all other times, execute rule #6.

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