Everybody Should Be Allowed One Stabbing Per Day

Everybody should be allowed one stabbing per day. This would be great for our culture as a whole for a number of reasons. But before we get into those, I though I would lay down some ground rules and a little clarification. Just because you are allowed to stab somebody once a day doesn’t mean you are required to. There might be many days when you don’t stab anybody at all. In fact, most people might go weeks at a time without stabbing anybody. But there are times when stabbing somebody is the appropriate response to a given situation and this is what the new rule is for.

The stabbings do not “roll over” like phone minutes. If you don’t stab anybody one day, you don’t get two stabbings the next. It’s definitely a “use it or lose it” type deal. But if you stab somebody at exactly 11:59:59 pm, you can stab that person again one second later.

Also, children still aren’t allowed to stab anybody. Nor are they allowed to be stabbed. As far as this stabbing thing goes, children are off-limits, unless they’re really shitty kids.

Finally, you can’t stab anybody who’s sleeping or unconscious. Because that’s not sportsmanlike. Obviously there might be a fine line here because I imagine a lot of married people will be in bed next to their spouses with a knife. They’ll go “wake up!” and then as soon as their husband or wife opens their eyes – BAM! Is it fair? No. So don’t be an asshole to your spouse. 

Those are pretty much the only rules. You can stab whoever you want anytime you want, in any part of the body you want, however severely you want, with whatever kind of knife you want, as long as that person is awake and it’s only once a day. But keep in mind, whoever you stab also has the same stabbing rights as you. This will hopefully prevent people from stabbing each other willy-nilly, or too early in the day.

What’s good about stabbings is that they are not usually fatal. Sure, getting knifed can kill you. So can slipping on ice. The point is not to necessarily eviscerate people, but just to let them know that if they piss you off, they could find a knife in their eye. I think everybody would be a lot nicer to each other that way, particularly the people who have already lost one eye.

Will there be some hotheads who abuse the privilege? Sure. But guess what will happen to those people? They’ll get fucking stabbed. All the assholes will weed themselves out, leaving behind only the people who mostly do not want to stab each other.

Yes, there will be times when we will stab people for questionable reasons – maybe they screwed up our coffee order, maybe they took our parking space. Some of those people will probably die. Hey that sucks, but I think it’s a small price to pay for the right to stab somebody once a day.

Think about how prompt the guys who fix the cable TV will become. Waiters and waitresses will be much friendlier. Doctors will be more sensitive. Your boss.

In the end, this new rule comes down to a basic truth: everybody wants to stab somebody once in a while. So why not let them? Sure the beginning might be a little rough as people stab each other just for the hell of it. But after a few months, I think everybody will settle down and stab each other in moderation. It’s a good rule and if you disagree with me, guess what I will do? If you guessed “stab me” you’re wrong. I will shoot you.

 

 

                             (Good for society)

 

 

World's Most Popular Male Australian? Me.

Now that Mel Gibson has imploded and Heath Ledger isn’t around to take the crown, I would like to throw my hat in the ring for new “World’s Most Popular Male Australian.” I first floated this idea on the “Late, Late Show” a couple nights ago and since then it has really taken hold in my mind. Do I think I have a legitimate shot? I do.

 

Yes, I have a few things working against me. The first and most obvious is the fact that I am not Australian. But I think this can probably be overcome with a little vocal training and the occasional reference to Canberra, which Wikipedia informs me is the capital of Australia. (Until this moment, I thought the capital was either Sydney or Ottawa.)

 

The second is that I am not (currently) popular. This need not be an impediment. After all, lots of people aren’t currently popular, and one of them will eventually become the world’s most popular male Australian. I have an advantage over all of those guys in that I have already begun pursuing this goal with the single-minded intensity of Gary Ablett. (Who? Former Australian rugby player, who I know about because I am Australian.)

 

When I first brought up this idea, Craig Ferguson, the host of “The Late, Late Show” (who may or may not be Australian himself) mentioned that he believes Hugh Jackman is now poised to capture the title. If actual popularity and actual nationality are to be the only factors taken into consideration, then it’s hard to disagree with his assessment. But here’s the thing: I want this more than he does. So here’s my proposal to Hugh. Rather than have us fight it out, I will take the title of “World’s Most Popular Male Australian,” and you can be “World’s Most Beloved Male Australian.” That way we both win, and we can high five each other when we’re tag teaming Nicole Kidman.

 

Think about it world. I’m here, I’m available, and I’m ready to be popular. So, until next time, as we say in Australia: good day, friend. 

(Me on Ferguson - not sure where I talk about being Australian, but you can watch if you want.Also, I know the shirt is too tight. It wasn't the shirt I wanted to wear, but the wardrobe guy told me the other shirt would be bad for TV. So I wore this one instead. I had no idea it would look so awful. Please stop yelling at me about it. I will never wear that shirt again or at least until I lose thirty pounds or two stone, as we say in Australia)

 

 

My Super Fun Summer Vay-Cay!

My family summer vacation is rapidly coming to an end. Today we met our friends for breakfast (they paid), then went on a little daytrip (only cost was some smoothies and parking), and ended the day with some different friends at a mid-priced Cuban restaurant (they paid). Afterwards, I ended up shelling out some money for ritzy cupcakes at a hoity-toity bakery (almost TWENTY BUCKS!!!) All in all, I feel like I ended the day up about a hundred bucks.

Normally I don’t worry about money,* but this vacation was really expensive. We didn’t even go that far! Just across the country to a terrible city called Los Angeles. Why go to a terrible city for a vacation? Because we have terrible friends who live here and the only way to see them is to visit their terrible city. (I was kidding about my friends being terrible. Most of them are not terrible at all. One exception: Ken Marino.)

My wife wanted to come out here to see people and I wanted to stay home and not see people, so we compromised and came out here to see people. Man oh man, by the time you add the cost of the airline tickets, the car, the house we rented, groceries, restaurants, the Thai boy (extra for hairless), tickets to the La Brea tar pits, and everything else, we ended up spending a Jew’s fortune!

(I recognize that throwing the word “Jew” in there was gratuitous and I apologize.**)

There was a time, not so long ago, when I used to have so much money I couldn’t spend it fast enough. “You want the twelve pack of Bounty paper towels, honey? Go ahead and buy it. Don’t even worry about the coupon!” That used to be my attitude regarding paper towels back when I had a job. These days, though, it’s a different story. The paper towels are generic and the coupons all get used. (For toilet paper, not for shopping because I still have my pride.)

Maybe some of you are wondering how I can afford to take my family on any vacation at all when I claim I cannot even afford name brand paper towels. It’s a good question and one whose answer will be revealed when my lawyer says it’s okay. But for now, content yourself with knowing that when it came time to order the large English Breakfast latte over ice at the Coffee Bean, I told them I would take a medium because “all that caffeine gives me the jitters.” Friends, caffeine doesn’t give me the jitters, but the extra thirty-five cents did.

So I leave Los Angeles a poorer man. But a man rich with the knowledge that I gave my family a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, whose memories they will cling to long after I am dead. Because I am now worth far more dead than alive.***

 

 

 

* Not true. I constantly worry about money.

** I further recognize that if I really felt like I shouldn’t gratuitously throw the word “Jew” in there I would have simply omitted it rather than apologizing for it after the fact.

*** Not true unless my song catalog becomes a lot more valuable after my death. I probably do not need to add the fact that I do not have a song catalog but I will anyway just in case there is any confusion.

 

 

My Vacation

Feeling kind of lousy today, my first day of vacation with the family. Do I blame the intercontinental travel or the amount of time spent with my loved ones? I am not going to speculate. I would tell you where I am, but it’s kind of a cheesy place and I don’t want you to think I’m cheesy. Alright I’ll tell you if you won’t think I’m cheesy. I rented out Jon Bon Jovi’s house. IT’S NOT AS CHEESY AS IT SOUNDS!!!

 

First of all, JBJ has really good taste. The house is decorated in late 19^th century English and French antiques. The carpets are all Persian (pre-revolution), and the football jerseys on display are all from REALLY GOOD players (John Elway, LaDamian Somebody). If there is one cheesy element, it is the swimming pool shaped like a giant guitar. But it’s a Gibson guitar and everybody knows they make the best guitars in the world. Also, I’m not really renting Jon Bon Jovi’s house. I don’t have that kind of money and I doubt JBJ needs rental income. But if I were going to rent it, I bet it would look like that. (If anybody has photos of Jon Bon Jovi’s house, please email them to me.)

 

I am not somebody who spends a lot of time pining for vacations. They stress me out. Mostly when I am on holliday what I want to do is the same thing I do at home, just someplace else. Those things include: bicker with my family, surf the internet, and try to convince myself that I look good despite growing evidence to the contrary. I think my physical looks peaked in 1997 and since then it’s been a long slow slide to decrepitude. I know this because now when I refer to myself as a “middle-aged man” nobody laughs or even smiles. Their silence is their agreement. I am middle-aged and finally developing the paunch I’ve read so much about. It’s not nearly as satisfying as I thought it would be when I was twenty-one.

 

But of course all of that gets set aside when I am on vacation. When I am on vacation, my main concern is where am I going to eat and how much am I going to sleep and do I have enough books? That’s pretty much it. The rest of it: the socializing, the catching up with old friends, the sniffing of various cheeses and sampling of various soft drinks, none of that stuff matters. When I am looking for in a vacation is a lull from my normally frenetic life. I define “frenetic” as not having a job and sitting home every day doing nothing.

 

So yes, I am on vacation in a sunny clime with people I love and eating foods that, to this point, have produced a mild headache and severe shakes. This is because all I’ve eaten is sugar and caffeine. Because I am vacationing at Starbucks. Because it’s all I can afford. And because that’s where I’m working now. If Jon Bon Jovi comes in, I am going to be so stoked.

 

 

In Defense of Twittertising

A couple weeks ago, I was approached about adding the occasional advertisement to my Twitter feed. My response: an immediate yes.

Many of you probably read that and think, “I would never sell out like that,” but I thought to myself, “What took you so long?”

Those of you familiar with my television work are probably aware that I sometimes take work doing commercials. The reason I do this is because I enjoy money. Moreover, I need money to maintain my opulent (middle-class) lifestyle. Selling products for cash allows me the freedom to take less well-playing jobs like making soon-to-be-canceled television shows.

The situation with Twitter is no different. I provide a valuable service (a constant stream of dick jokes) to Twitter for free. As of today, I’ve written 2,655 tweets. That’s a lot of free material, all of it contributing to the entertainment of the 1.5 million people who follow me, as well as the multi-billion dollar capitalization of Twitter itself. When presented with an opportunity to get some return on my investment of time and energy, why not take it?

There will always be a group who become upset with their favorite actor/musician/writer/racecar driver/whatever when that person accepts money instead of remaining “pure.” I get that. I was probably like that too when I was sixteen. But the real world has a way of intruding on people’s ideals, and my mortgage doesn’t care that much about my indie cred.

Moreover, I suspect the people who scream the loudest about “selling out” would be very happy to accept the same money themselves. That’s not a knock on them – it’s just reality. People got bills, yo.

So yes, I will be throwing in the occasional advertisement into my Twitter feed. Just like a disc jockey reads ads and a television show airs commercials and blogs accept sponsorship. I’m sorry if it pisses anybody off, but if you are upset, I know what will make you feel better: a delicious Klondike bar washed down with an icy cold Sierra Mist.

 

Work Out

I started exercising again after a long layoff, which made me think I should do some other things again that I haven’t being doing – like writing blog posts. As I’ve said before the reason I haven’t been blogging is because I’m trying to get my stupid book finished, and I don’t want to post what I’ve been writing in my book on the internet for free, although here are a couple lines from today’s work:

Thank God the drive home is uneventful, except that the radio station I am listening to plays “Melt With You,” by Modern English, which I have not heard in a while. Irrelevant but noteworthy. But I feel fine. No symptoms, no aftereffects, nothing. While driving I have some time to think about possible causes:

• There was something weird in my Chinese food. Most likely drugs or that poisonous blowfish they eat in Asia which kills people. Possibly what I thought was chicken was actually blowfish. For the purposes of my theory, I will ignore the fact that they only eat that stuff in Japan, not China.

• Mini-stroke. Perhaps I have a leaky brain vein. If that’s the case, I could die at any minute. And if I could die at any minute, I should probably go ahead and buy that Xbox I’ve been thinking about getting.

• A one-time synaptic misfire. I don’t know whether this sort of thing happens or not, but maybe it was just one of those inexplicable cognitive events that happens after brain trauma. Like when people wake up from a coma and they can speak Flemish. I don’t recall having any brain trauma but maybe as a result of the brain trauma, I am also suffering from amnesia.

• It was psychosomatic. Possible, but unlikely. If I am going to have some sort of psychological breakdown, I expect it to be the kind where I run around screaming because I think I am on fire. Anything less would be a letdown.

That was a freebie. You can read the rest of it in my book, which WILL NEVER BE DONE. I don’t know why writing this second book is so hard, except that I’m writing true tales from my life, which for some reason are far more difficult for me to write than made-up shit. Maybe because I have to figure out a way to make my life seem more interesting than it actually is.

Today, for example, all I’ve done is get my daughter ready for school, go to the gym, and try to think of funny to write for Twitter. And get a mani/pedi (not true). And wave to the mailman, who did not wave back (true).

I’m not sure what the mailman’s problem is but he really needs to straighten out his attitude, especially now when people are so mad at the government. I don’t think this is a situation where he’s going to shoot anybody or anything. I just think maybe he’s having a bad day. Or else he didn’t see when I waved to him. Which is more likely because I was inside at the time, and he was outside in his mail truck. Even so, would it have killed him to toss a little wave in my direction on the off-chance that I was standing naked in my bathroom looking out the window after checking to see if my single workout had made any difference in my body?

Anyway, back to work. Stupid book.

From Yesterday's McSweeney's

Please, Can We Not
Go To the Party?

BY MICHAEL IAN BLACK

- - - -

Please can we not go to the party? The reason I ask is because I am not feeling very well. There's something wrong with my head. Or my stomach. Or my arm. It's kind of an all over body ache, the sort of thing that probably would not show up on any sort of medical exam, but which I am confident is quite contagious. To be safe, I think we should probably just stay home.

I know you are excited to go to the party. You enjoy getting dressed up and drinking good wine and making conversation with all of our friends, many of whom we have not seen for a long time. They are great people one and all. They are without exception terrific, and I am proud to consider them my friends. At the same time, I do not need to see any of them ever again.

I find that a lot of socializing is simply a way of communicating that we like each other. When we stand around the party sloshing our wine around and catching up with each other, essentially we are just saying "I like you" over and over again. All social conversation can be reduced in this way. You say, "I like you." I respond, "I like you, too." Then, after that person is out of earshot, we talk to other people about how much we dislike the first person.

Think about how good staying home will be for the environment.

Another problem with going to the party tonight is that you and I both know the only thing to eat will be olives. At every party we attend the hostess sets out a small dish of puckered olives. I don't want any more olives. I know I don't have to eat them, but they give me something to do with my hands while I am standing around saying "I like you" over and over again. But then I do not know where to put the olive pits. Sometimes the hostess puts out little bowls for the pits, but usually the bowls are nowhere near where I am standing and I feel stupid excusing myself to dispose of my olive pits so instead I just end up putting them into my pocket. A couple olive pits in my pocket is fine but soon they grow into a mound, with the result being that my thighs end up looking bumpy. No matter how much time and effort I put into my appearance, all of that work goes right out the window with the addition of bumpy thighs.

Maybe there will be some hummus there too, but hummus has always struck me as more of an experiment in texture than an actual food. I might end up going hungry, which will no doubt make my sickly condition worse. I know you do not think I am actually sick, even though I have been issuing subtle coughing noises for the last several hours in the hopes that you will ask me if I am feeling well enough to go to the party, a question to which I can respond, "I hope so," which I am hoping will lead to you saying, "If you're feeling sick, we shouldn't go," followed by me saying, "Maybe you're right. Darn it, I was really looking forward to that party," and then you saying, "Let's just stay home," and me reluctantly going, "So be it, woman. So be it." But no matter how subtly I cough, you do not say any of those things, leading me to believe you do not actually think I am sick at all.

Please, can we not go to the party?

If we stay I promise to clean the bathroom. And fix that thing I told you I would fix three years ago. And maybe I will even get off the computer, although I am not making any promises about that.

Let us stay home and sit by the fire and I will rub your back and play Spanish lullabies on the guitar. I will make the oatmeal raisin cookies that you like and feed them to you while rubbing your feet. The combination of feet and cookies may not sound so appealing right now, but when accompanied by Spanish lullabies it is wonderful. And if we stay home tonight, I promise the next time there is a party I will go without complaint. I will be the perfect date, charming and vivacious and fun. Unless I am not feeling well, in which case I may stay home.

"My Custom Van" Is Now A Play: Elle Talks To Its Creator (Not Me)

Joe Jung on My Custom Van

  

Joe Jung, artistic director of New York’s Project: Theater, says bluntly, “Women are fascinated by men” by way of offering a reason for us to come see his adaptation of My Custom Van and 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face, the 2008 book of dude-centric essays by comic actor Michael Ian Black (Stella, The State, Wet Hot American Summer). The show, currently running through April 24 at the Upper West Side’s Drilling Company Theatre, digs down deep into the thirtysomething-guy mind, where ’80s nostalgia mixes with latent fantasies about building robots and throwing the ultimate taco party. “Women see men acting like boys every day,” Jung says. “I think [the play] is a very honest look at the strange world of modern men.” Jung talked to ELLE.com about adapting Black’s book for the stage and the modern-day-cool factor of Dungeons and Dragons.—Rachel Rosenblit

ELLE: Why did you decide to adapt My Custom Van?

Joe Jung: A friend came to my house to hang out and brought a copy of the book. We read it out loud and were just hysterically laughing. Afterward, we just looked at each other and were like, “Why don’t we do this for a show?” I just turned 32. I got married last year. I work at Citigroup doing International Franchise Management. But at night, I get to dress up in a silk robe and hang out with my friends and do this show.

ELLE: How would you describe the 30-year-old man of today?

JJ: We’re done with school and there are pressures—you’re expected to buckle down and grow up. There are a lot of people who do that and are miserable and don’t have an outlet. Look at the video game industry! Guys in their 30s are advancing to this weird level of sophistication in their video games and demanding that [the games] grow with them. It’s still this idea that it’s fun to shoot things and play football online and pretend that you’re in a rock band. Some guys go back to the frat reunion and get stuck hanging out with a bunch of 18-year-olds, telling stories about how awesome the frat was. You still want to dwell on how awesome things were.

ELLE: There’s a lot of rehashing the glory days in this show, and a ton of early ’90s nostalgia. Did it feel personal for you, having been a teenager then?

JJ: Well, I was a big nerd and not very popular, and a lot of what you see in the show is my own neurosis about how I grew up. Our cast has a lot of talks about that—none of us were really that cool. I spent a lot of time in my basement, playing with Legos and Transformers and creating weird fantasy worlds. I’m in that weird stage of looking at everything through the filter of the early ’90s. I’ll listen to music and subconsciously—or partly consciously—think, Man, Pearl Jam’s Ten is such a better album! We tried to find some of that childish nostalgia that all of us 30-year-old guys in the show have. In the ’80s I was definitely not cool. I liked building robots out of Legos and reading Dungeons and Dragons books.

ELLE: But don’t you think that stuff has become sort of subversively cool? Like part of a hipster subculture?

JJ: Yeah—it’s very hip to do that now. There are coffee houses that have Dungeons and Dragons nights. People my age are like, Let’s do this out in the open! Let’s do this in the coffee shop! We’re old enough and successful enough in our jobs to have the confidence to do that.

ELLE: You also have the confidence to rock a pretty ridiculous-looking fake mustache in the play. What did your wife say?

JJ: Oh, she’s been laughing from the start. She asked me to put it on at home a couple times to remind her what I would look like if she’d let me grow a mustache.

ELLE: She won’t?

JJ: Absolutely not. But I’ll always have the fake.

For more information on My Custom Van, visit http://www.projecttheater.org/calendar.html

  

Joe Jung, artistic director of New York’s Project: Theater, says bluntly, “Women are fascinated by men” by way of offering a reason for us to come see his adaptation of My Custom Van and 50 Other Mind-Blowing Essays That Will Blow Your Mind All Over Your Face, the 2008 book of dude-centric essays by comic actor Michael Ian Black (Stella, The State, Wet Hot American Summer). The show, currently running through April 24 at the Upper West Side’s Drilling Company Theatre, digs down deep into the thirtysomething-guy mind, where ’80s nostalgia mixes with latent fantasies about building robots and throwing the ultimate taco party. “Women see men acting like boys every day,” Jung says. “I think [the play] is a very honest look at the strange world of modern men.” Jung talked to ELLE.com about adapting Black’s book for the stage and the modern-day-cool factor of Dungeons and Dragons.—Rachel Rosenblit

ELLE: Why did you decide to adapt My Custom Van?

Joe Jung: A friend came to my house to hang out and brought a copy of the book. We read it out loud and were just hysterically laughing. Afterward, we just looked at each other and were like, “Why don’t we do this for a show?” I just turned 32. I got married last year. I work at Citigroup doing International Franchise Management. But at night, I get to dress up in a silk robe and hang out with my friends and do this show.

Some Strategies for Making New Friends Once You Are 100

One of the downfalls of living to a hundred and beyond is that the older you get, the less people you know. That’s because all your friends die. Your family dies. Their kids die. Everybody dies, and soon your closest friend becomes Drew Carrey or whoever is hosting “The Price is Right.” Now, I am not disparaging Drew Carrey because I have met him and he seems like a very nice man, but he is not going to be the guy to come over and help you scrape your bunions. You will most likely have to pay a health care provider for that service and even then that person will probably not scrape with any real sense of love.

Another pitfall is that when you finally succumb to your old age, there will be nobody left to attend your funeral. Most likely not even Drew Carrey will come because he lives in Hollywood and because although he is your best friend, he does not know that you ever existed. A bummer? You bet. Because, like many of you, I plan on living well into my hundreds, I have started thinking about strategies for making new friends once I reach the centenarian mark.

One of the big knocks against extremely old people is that they get kind of dumb. They can’t hear and a lot of the time they don’t know what you’re talking about. For example, if I tell any 100+ year old about kicking my kid’s ass on the new Super Mario Bros for Wii, they will most likely have no idea what I’m talking about. So my first strategy is to stay current on everything. Everything. When I am a hundred, I will not only be conversant, but fluent, in the areas of pop culture, science, metallurgy, Asian cooking, tree pruning, pornographic anime, gourds, etc. In this way, I will hope to establish myself as something of a guru. People will come to me and ask my opinion of the future equivalent of Lady Gaga and I will offer highly informed and crankily funny opinions. Which leads me to my second strategy: become a crank.

Everybody likes cranky old people. (See: Andy Rooney) Cranky middle-aged people are annoying. Nobody likes the guy screaming at you to find somebody else to throw up. But cranky old people are adorable. I don’t know why this is, but it’s true. The older you get, the crankier you socially be. Even racism is acceptable when you get to be a certain age. Therefore I plan on saying horrible things on a nearly constant basis. I will curse and belittle and denigrate everybody who crosses my path. Instead of calling me a hateful bastard, they will call me “feisty,” and they will attribute my long life to said feistiness. Bullshit. The thing that will keep me is modern science and ground-up rhino horn.

Third, be visible. The older you get, the more feeble you become. The more feeble you become, the less mobility you have. Therefore, you’ve got to figure out a way to remain visible. Scooters are a great option. But so are riding mowers. A few years ago David Lynch directed a movie called “The Straight Story” about an older, cranky man who drove his rider mower across Iowa to visit his brother. I plan on employing this same strategy to visit the grocery store, local tavern, library, and for general getting around. The difference? I will wear a cape and a Batman cowl. Because in addition to feistiness, people appreciate eccentricity in their old people.

Another tip: tell every lady you come across beautiful she looks, and then hand her a carnation. Carnations are cheap and don’t have the same cheesy connotation as roses. A woman receiving a carnation from a hundred year old man in a Batman cape and cowl is less apt to think “perv” and more likely to think “sexy.” This keeps the libido active, which can only be a good thing.

Finally, lie about your age. Add fifteen to twenty years to your actual age. Therefore once you reach a hundred, start telling folks (always refer to other people as “folks”) that you are a hundred and fifteen. Nobody will believe you but it will add an element of mystery. Soon people will be hunting for your birth records, the local paper might do a story and the reanimated corpse of Willard Scott might even give you a shout-out on “The Today Show.”

Living to a hundred is great, but you’ve got to make it work for you. Maybe you can think of your strategies for enjoying these “golden years.” If you do, pass them along. If enough of us live long enough we can all hang out together and have ourselves a good laugh when one of our members dies.

 

 

What I've Been Doing

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Joshua Malina talks 'Backwash,' his surreal celeb-filled summer web series

Image Credit: Sony Pictures Television / Jordin Althaus What do Jon Hamm, John Stamos, Sarah Silverman, John Cho, Allison Janney, Hank Azaria, Fred Willard, Michael Vartan, Dulé Hill, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Jeffrey Ross, Ken Marino and David Wain have in common? They all cameo as themselves in Backwash, a 13-episode web series written by and starring Joshua Malina (Sports Night, The West Wing) debuting on Sony’s Crackle.com this summer. The series, directed by Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle’s Danny Leiner, follows three eccentric losers (pictured, from left to right, Malina, Michael Ian Black, and Michael Panes) who hit the road in an ice cream truck pursued by the police after one of them inadvertently robs $100,000 from a local bank. With production wrapped as of last week, Malina phoned PopWatch to answer a few of our burning questions:

Question No. 1: How exactly does one inadvertently rob a bank? To fully understand, we need to back up. The plot grew out of characters Malina and Panes created for themselves years ago. Malina toyed with them on-and-off for various mediums (film, stage, TV), but it wasn’t until he sent a rewrite of a pilot script to old friend Marino that he was given the idea to take them to the Internet. Marino (The State) got the humor — and that it wasn’t something you’d sell to NBC. Malina’s and Panes’ characters have what Malina describes as “a very weird, almost Beckett-like master/slave relationship.” Perhaps you’ve seen Malina’s self-portrait twitpic of himself preparing for “the big Jacuzzi scene” while wearing a fanny pack? His character always wears a fanny pack. “I treat Michael Panes’ character a little bit like a trained seal, giving him positive reinforcement with treats that I carry in my fanny pack when he does a good thing,” he explains. Right. Now, we can answer the question.

“For various reasons that will be revealed, I’m very focused on getting a free toaster from a bank promotion that is going on,” Malina says. “[Panes] plays kind of a hypochondriacal, agoraphobic, OCD, terribly neurotic character that doesn’t even like to leave the house, so, of course, I insist that he goes to the bank to get our free toaster. I send him off with a salami and a sock, à la the movie Alive, where they go off with meat in a sock, and his salami is mistaken to be a shotgun in the bank, and basically, they’re like, ‘Just take the money!’ and he doesn’t even know what’s going on. Very quickly, these two guys implicate a third friend of theirs, and then all three of them end up on the run with a lot of money…. I know. Every time I describe it to someone, I go, ‘Can you believe Sony paid to have us make this?’”

Question No. 2: How are the celebs playing themselves? In addition to animated sequences, miniatures, and the anarchic spirit of the things he grew up on (Abbott and Costello and the Marx Brothers), Malina also wanted to incorporate old friends and actors with whom he’s always desired to work. “The conceit of the entire thing is that a long-lost novella by William Makepeace Thackeray has been unearthed in London and a Masterpiece Theatre-type production has been made based on it,” Malina says. Therefore, each episode begins with a person of note introducing a new chapter in the story. ”So it’s, ‘Good evening. I’m Jon Hamm. Welcome to Backwash this evening.’ It’s all taken very, very seriously, and then the material is completely lunatic.” Hamm, sporting a thick professorial beard, opens and closes the entire series. Most of the celebs serve in this host capacity, including Malina’s Big Shots costar Vartan, who had to be talked into performing his introduction, “Good evening. I’m handsomeness’ Michael Vartan.” (“I had to take him aside and say, ‘Michael, you’re handsome. Accept it. Nobody will hold it against you. It’s fine for you to admit that even you know that you’re handsome. The whole world knows. Now say it,’” Malina recalls.) Others, like Stamos, have internal cameos. He appears as himself in an ’80s flashback that reveals our lead characters used to have jobs in advertising, “which went disastrously badly, as demonstrated by the commercial, which we show,” Malina says. “It was John Stamos for adult diapers. He is rather game coming in as himself: ‘I’m John Stamos. You may know me as Blackie from General Hospital or from my darkly comic turn as Uncle Jesse on Full House.’”

Other recognizable faces will include Steven Weber and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who do a musical theater number representing the fantasy of what Michael Ian Black’s character — an extremely odd, free-spirited ice cream truck driver who’s in a battle with Malina for Panes’ soul — would like to do with his money. “He’s long wanted to produce a musical he wrote [Sticky Wicket — the Nougat Musical!]. Now he has the money to do it with his dream cast, which is of course Steven Weber and Jamie-Lynn Sigler,” Malina says. How did they work that out? “I was like, ‘Steven Weber would be brilliant. Let me call Steven Weber.’ I shot him an email, within an hour, he was like, ‘Yeah, sure. I can’t do it Saturday. My kid has baseball tryouts. But how ’bout Sunday?’ ‘Okay, great.’ And then Lindsey Kraft, who plays our female lead, said, ‘I went to high school with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, incredible voice.’ We’re like, ‘Ohmygod, they’d be brilliant together.’” (The music, by the way, doesn’t stop there: The State’s Joe Lo Truglio and Little Children’s Noah Emmerich play the cops chasing the trio. Emmerich’s is a musical theater-obsessed officer who, after a car wreck and brain trauma, thinks he’s in a musical. “He’s played a lot of cops in his career, but not a lot of crazy singing cops,” Malina says proudly.”)

Question No. 3: Are those sequined pants the worst thing we’ll see Michael Ian Black wear? “I realized in writing this I should probably have years of therapy ahead of me because I really put my friends through the ringer, including multiple, multiple absurd outfits for Michael Ian Black,” Malina says. “I share a hot tub with Michael Black at one point, and as we were shooting it, I said, ‘I’m living the fantasy today.’”

For more on Backwash, follow Joshua Malina on Twitter. He’ll also be blogging about the making of the series on Crackle.

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