Category Archives: random

beef jerky, champagne, and discussions about the effects existentialism had on art and literature during and after World War II.

a few words from MCA

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I’m cutting and pasting an email I got the other day, because I do everything the Beastie Boys tell me to do. It took me a couple days to get to a computer because I’ve been riden cross the land, kickin up sand (I travel around the globe, it’s keeping girlies dizzy).

From: Beastie Boys
Date: April 20, 2010 1:41:33 PM CDT
Subject: meditation

hello,

wanted to send this out to you guys in case you were into  it, or wanted to give it to anyone who you think might be.

a few friends and i are meditating at the same time twice a day. 9:30am and 6:30pm eastern standard time, for about an hour and half.

we are picturing smashing apart all of the cancer cells in the world.

we are visualizing taking the energy away from the cancer, and then sending it back at the cancer as lightening bolts that will break apart the DNA and RNA of the cells. if you have the time, please join us in whipping up this lightening storm.  mind over matter……

if you prefer to sit then sit, but if you are not used to meditating, or sitting quietly doesn’t sound like fun, put on some music and dance while you do the visualization, and if you want to do it at some other time, or picture curing some other illness that’s fine too. yoko will be joining the meditation by visualizing all of us dancing with joy to celebrate the world without cancer. all variations are welcome. this is really just being done with a wish for all beings to be cured of all illnesses and to find true lasting happiness.

i’ll also be saying prayers for the earthquake victims in tibet, so join in on that if you can too.

please feel free to pass this onto anyone who you think may find it interesting.

with all my love,

adam yauch

I’m doing something a little different. I’m imagining MCA and AdRock dumping cans of beer onto Yoko Ono while Mike D shoots a cancer cell with a shotgun. It’s my way of HELPING OUT. Now it’s time for you to do your part, whether that means sloppy half-assed Photoshop pictures or Jedi mind tricks.

Callia Lee Riden for President in 2040

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Callia Lee Riden would like to announce her intention to run for President of The United States Of America in 2040. This is all we have for her platform so far, but we’ll keep you updated.

A brainstorming flow-chart from school: "If I were a president.. I would gife free pupys.. I would make big bildings.. I would shutdown ware.. I would make free ice crem." Me, too.

Chad as Tiny Tim in George C. Scott’s “A Christmas Carol”

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Merry Holiday Times Or Whatever!

Here’s my annual Holiday Times posting of the clip of me starring as Tiny Tim in George C. Scott’s “A Christmas Carol.” Enjoy:

I produced this for the WBXX-TV Christmas video in 1998. Everybody thought I was a weirdo. Not much has changed since then.

Endorsement: Dr. Bamford’s No-Soap™

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Dr. Joel Bamford of Duluth, MN has a revolutionary break thru product that I just can’t stop talking about.

For years I suffered from dry, cracked skin. I’ve grown accustomed to molting my damaged epidermis annually, and along with it shedding any hope of one day not looking freakishly insane. Thanks to Dr. Bamford’s No Soap™, I’ve changed my skin and changed my life! I still look crazy, but at least I have healthy skin.

chad_riden-no_soap

From SoapAlternatives.com:

Over the years major breakthroughs have improved the mildness of soaps, so that in the year 2000 products like Dove, Lever 2000 and Syndet bar can claim to be the mildest of soaps.

Even the mildest soaps made earlier cause mild to severe rashes, particularly in the winter months anywhere north of Miami, Florida. Only the naturally pure, smooth, block of NO SOAP™, first produced by Thomas Edwin Bamford, Sr., MD for his suffering patients back in 1866, can protect you from real soap damage.

Tom had a general practice which he carried out in his home office at 418 North Delaware Street, Syracuse, New York, North America. An orphan himself, he could not afford much soap in England where he was born and, later, in Wales where is father worked in the mines. He continued growing up in the tenements of New York City. After his mother died, he and his brother had to go to Remsen, New York, as a farm hand. The supportive Welch community there must have recognized his potential and helped him complete his formal education.

nosoap-frontThough the air could be rough, wet and cold there, it was not until he began practice in upstate New York that he saw patients who, every winter, developed painfully dry, cracking skin. Over time he recognized the importance of avoiding too much soap, then the harsh soaps (Ivory is still fine for those who live in Florida), then the milder soaps (Cashmere Bouquet). He then had the sudden insight, NO SOAP™ would be best way to promote healthy skin.

nosoap-backThis novelty product was quick to clear the damaged skin of his General Practice patients in Syracuse, New York, where he had in home office at 418 North Delaware Street. He also served as the Medical Director of a large psychiatric hospital, where it is likely NO SOAP™ was also a blessing to patients.

Thus far four generations of North American Drs Bamford have promoted this skin saving alternative to traditional, lye based, defatting skin products (any soap, body wash or shampoo).

More information about this incredible product and instructions for obtaining your own bar of NO SOAP™ is available at SoapAlternatives.com. Honestly, no home should be without at least one bar of NO SOAP™, but I’d recommend getting three or four, just in case. Don’t forget, they make great stocking stuffers! My sincere gratitude goes out to Maria Bamford for the referral.

Thanksgiving 2: Electric Boogaloo 2: Electric Boogaloo’er – Dec. 1, 2009

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thanksgiving2_20091201

Turkeys are cheap if you buy em the day after Thanksgiving. The bird is in the oven! The kegerator is full of Paulaner Hefe-Weizen!

AND after the meal, we’ll be gathering around the tv to watch the break dancing cinematic classics Breakin’ and Breakin’ 2. (I hate sports, so this is what we do instead of watching football or whatever it is people do.) We’re calling it “Thanksgiving 2: Electric Boogaloo.” I KNOW we did the exact same thing on February 25, 2009, but “Electric Boogaloo” is too fun to say and “Thanksgiving 3: Electric Boogaloo” sounds stupid. Technically, this could be “Thanksgiving 4: The Quest For Peace” – but I don’t want to over think this.

If you know where we live, you’re invited to stop in and eat and drink and whatnots. If you don’t know where we live, just put “chad riden’s address” into your GPS thing and you’ll find it.

Here’s the Facebook event page for Thanksgiving 2: Electric Boogaloo 2: Electric Boogaloo’er.. I’ve invited 200+ people over for dinner. I hope nobody lets me down. I know it’s late notice, but “planning” is for ass-hats. If you can’t make it for any reason, we’ll take that to mean you don’t love us.

Front page news in Athens, TN this weekend: Funky punkin’

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The following is the front page story for The Daily Post-Athenian this weekend. This is just mind-blowing. FRONT PAGE NEWS IN ATHENS, TENNESSEE! Enjoy:

20091029-pumpkin

Friday, October 30, 2009
CLAXTON – You haven’t seen eerie or spooky until you’ve seen a 16-year-old jack-o’-lantern. Or, rather, the dried husk of a jack-o’-lantern with five faces carved in its surface.

Perry Riden said of the three “Riden Boys,” youngest son Eric was the pumpkin carver.

“Eric carved it when he was in eighth grade in 1993,” Riden said. “His Grandma Riden – whom they called Mammy – set it on cardboard over a floor register and dried it.”

Riden said her son got the idea to carve five faces in a large pumpkin from a character in “Transformers.” The design was patterned after the Quintessons, fictional aliens/space monsters that were both organic and robotic.

“If I understand it correctly, the Quintessons were creators of the Transformers in the 1980s cartoons,” Riden said. “This race of beings had squid-like arms and five faces on a robotic head.”

Riden has kept the dried pumpkin – complete with stem “cap” – for 16 years.

This is hilarious to me. Front page news! “Look! It’s an old pumpkin!”

The explanation of who the Quintessons are and what their role was in the original Transformers cartoons is all straight from me. I Twittered about being on the phone with my mom, explaining that to her. I spent 20 minutes giving her all of the glorious back-story details I have had crammed away in my brain since, what, 1985? That stuff is important! Everything else, forgotten. I took three Calculus classes in college. THREE! (Well, let’s be honest. I took the same Calculus class three times before I passed it. Still..) I remember NOTHING. I DO know the origin story of the Transformers inside and out. So suck on that, complete lack of marketable skills!

They referred to Grace Riden as “Mammy” – we started calling my dad’s parents “Mammy and Pappy” because they lived in Maryville, TN (read: “Muurrrrrrrrrviilllle” – not kidding, that’s how you say it) and those were the most country sounding names we could think up. They thought it was funny, too, and totally went along with it. I love how it makes us sound even more country bumpkin now. “Funky punkin’ bumpkin!”

Also, the ambiguous “Riden has kept the dried pumpkin.. for 16 years.” sounds like this is a wacky family keepsake my mom has held on to. She is a packrat, and it has to stop.. but I should clarify.. Eric Riden has kept the dried pumpkin for 16 years. Granted, it’s been sitting in his old bedroom back at the Riden Hascienda where he has not lived in the last 10 years.. but yeah it’s there. And it’s not the strangest thing there, by a long shot.. so send a photog and a reporter, news hounds, ’cause the story is much deeper than a dried gourd.

The paper, inexplicably, posted a 53-second video of the thing being rotated again and again.

Some people ask, “Hey Chad, what was high school like for you?” Imagine being in a town where the most exciting news for the weekend is a dried out pumpkin. This morning, there were a dozen elderly people sitting in a Hardees in Athens, TN drinking coffee and talking about the Quintessons.

Never made this: “Pull My Finger”

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mangydog_logoBack before there was YouTube or FunnyOrDie, there was a rag tag site called “MangyDog.com“. Starting around the fall of 2000, Jesse Perry and I filmed a couple dozen sketches or skits or skitches and put them online in the incredibly shitty RealPlayer & Windows Media formats. People liked ‘em and stuff, but trying to put video on the internet at that time was kinda like squeezing a fat man into a tiny jacket. Some of those old clips are still online at MangyDog and/or at YouTube.. some are sitting on a hard drive somewhere still waiting to be edited.. and some never got made.

What follows here is an IM conversation Jesse and I had years ago that exemplifies our creative process: both on the clock, at work, collaborating on a script/concept. After work, we’d either shoot it, or go do a show or drink and rip on each other in my back yard and forget the whole thing. This is one of those forgotten things. I’d emailed this conversation to myself with the subject line “Pull My Finger” (the email was dated January 29, 2003 4:22:25 PM CST) – I think we were hashing out a script for a “Vaudeville In The Village” show we were about to put on at the Belcourt Theatre in Nashville:

chadriden: we could come out and start some scene and have one of us flub a line or do something that causes the other to get pissed off and start a fight. we could declare that the live performance was ruined and ask somebody in the booth to just play a tape instead.. then they could play our clip.
MangyK9: Yes, and the clip is of us on the Belcourt stage doing our skit, with crappy sound so you can’t hear it
chadriden: ha
MangyK9: so then we come back out and ask Matt and Clay to perform the skit for us
MangyK9: or, the clip could be of us screwing up the skit and getting to a fight again, so then it’s a clip of a clip of a clip
chadriden: then come back and interrupt it all, saying “dammit. that’s gotta be the wrong tape.. that’s the tape of us screwing it up. play that other tape.. the one that has the last time when we were really funny.” and it’s a tape of a couple little kids starting a skit and then fighting.
MangyK9: HA!
MangyK9: Then the kids go, “wait, wait, wait, put in the tape from last week,” and then we film the tv
chadriden: film the tv?
MangyK9: of their clip from the week before
chadriden: oh oh..
MangyK9: they get up, grab a tape, and put it in the VCR
MangyK9: and one of the kids has a bald spot
chadriden: the other.. a beard
chadriden: and glasses
MangyK9: and they’re black
chadriden: ha
MangyK9: come out and just do a stupid, non-sequitur sketch, called “The Handyman and the Peanut,” or something . . .
MangyK9: We’ll be performing “our best-known and most beloved sketch, a timeless piece of American Comedy”
chadriden: “Pull My Finger”
MangyK9: “The Farting Penis”
MangyK9: Yes, “Pull My Finger” . . . you get made when I can’t squeeze one out
MangyK9: mad, not made
chadriden: that’s kinda funny
MangyK9: Either that, or film Those Wacky Brits
chadriden: maybe when the pull my finger thing totally is over, we can just “give up” and tell them to play whatever they find laying around.. then that’s Those Wacky Brits
chadriden: or whatever
MangyK9: We could talk about where we get our distinct brand of comedy . . . from that classy cult known as the British
MangyK9: Now, a special presentation of our favorite British comedy program
chadriden: “like most American Television shows, we get all of our ideas from the British. They’re much funnier than we are. ”
MangyK9: “That’s why they’re the Master Race, Chad.”
MangyK9: Of course they’re brilliant.  That’s why they’re so snooty!”