The Lost Nomads

The Making of Gigi - Pt. 5 - "We Need a Hooker"

2011-04-21T13:22:00.000-07:00

When we looked into casting the hooker for this episode, we thought about several types - large ones, ethnic ones, disgusting ones - but in the weeks leading up to the shoot Josh had been on location with an actress who he thought would work perfectly. Her name was Brit Morgan, and damn was he right.

She had all the elements we needed for this character. She was gorgeous, yes, but after we got her through wardrobe and hair & makeup she was the perfect definition of hot mess. Disheveled and grubby, yet you still might pony up some change to "scare all over her tits."

Brit and I sat down to discuss her character and I could tell right away she was the right woman for the job. We thought up three distinct voices for the hooker - one was her "selling voice," the breathy, sexy tone she uses to lure in her johns; second was her "normal voice," the voice she falls back on when Gigi's antics catch her off-guard; and third was her "coked-up voice," the amped up, crazy bitch she turns into after blowing lines of coke in the bathroom to get ready to do her duty. Brit moved between these voices flawlessly and brought new things to the table that we had never dreamed of, including the "strange rubber ducky" Gigi finds in her purse…

Approaching the element of drug use for Gigi has always been fascinating for us. He's already so confused without the drugs that putting any in his system just ramps up the ridiculous. And ecstasy is a tricky one, because we didn't want Gigi to start petting the hooker and actually enjoy the experience. So we went with the bad trip. And although I'm still waiting for the first YouTube comment to declare, "Ecstasy doesn't give you those type of visuals," I'm happy with how the double exposure came out and feel it accurately portrays what must be going through that poor foreigner's mind.

It was our last day of shooting so we had to hurry through much of the pickup shots of Gigi stepping on the ketchup. I kept muttering to myself, "Goddamn these writers giving me more f*cking fake blood to work with." It was the only episode where re-shoots were genuinely needed after the fact and luckily our prop master Jason came through for us weeks later with matching carpet to recreate the motel room floor in my garage.

Oh I almost forgot - Gigi throwing the vase at the wall almost took out our co-star. Watch the take that made it into the final cut. Kudos to Josh for doing his best Tim Lincecum impression...

The Making of Gigi - Pt. 4 - "Pocket Aces!!"

2011-04-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've realized that I said this would be a 6-part series, but really its going to be around 12 parts. I wanted to describe each episode as its own part. I have the power to do that through the blog-master license I received at the BMV a while back.

After the first half of the pilot shoot day was spent at Rosa's in her bathroom (you see? I'm even jumping back in time. Blog-master license) we high-tailed it over to a garage where my brothers and I lived at the time on Abbot Kinney in Venice. The beauty part about shooting in this garage was that we didn't need to dress it up at all. It was packed full of shit we just moved aside to make space for a poker table and plopped in our actors.

Luckily the area of action was all centered around the poker table so it made our shotlist fairly simple. But the continuity issue with the playing cards was a whole other unforeseen issue. Our props master Aaron was racing around picking up discarded, tequila-soaked cards while Tyler and Marcus did their best to remember which cards they had in their hands each round. It was madness. Speaking of Marcus, what an amazing find.

Kevin knew Marcus Nel-Jamal Hamm from work and brought him to audition for the part of Lonnie. We needed someone imposing but who wouldn't over play the comedy of the role, we needed someone to be REAL. He won us over in the audition and proved to be the right choice on the day, playing Lonnie flawlessly.

Our props master Aaron had procured some fake pot that is supposedly safe to smoke for actors, but holy shit it felt like inhaling a burning broom that just had a witch's ass riding on it. Kudos to Kevin and Josh for taking it down take after take. Well done fellas.

By the end of the day we had two episodes in the can. Marcus, who was the only non-Nomad in the shoot, performed so well that we knew that if this pilot went to series, it wouldn't be the last time we saw his character Lonnie...

The Making of Gigi - Pt. 3 - "Donate Good God"

2011-04-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

When we delivered the pilot to BBC Worldwide in July 2010 they wasted no time in finding MyDamnChannel.com as a partner to launch an entire season. Rob Barnett, owner of MyDamnChannel, proved to be an amazing visionary in the online world and saw great potential in this character. So a 10-episode season was ordered up, and we got to work scripting.

We'd been brainstorming several situations for Gigi to find himself in, so we each choose our favorite and split off in order to pen them individually. We found that the more extravagant the situation (ie. Gigi joins a cult, Gigi goes to jail) the least we felt it showed Gigi in the proper light. The simpler the situation was, the easier is it was for Gigi to slip up. We wanted the people he encountered to be normal and real, only to have their buttons pushed by the ignorance of Gigi and do something they might not normally do.

Episode 2, "Donate Good Cause" was the first that we felt hit the right tone. As the rest of us grappled to get inside Gigi's head, Josh turned in a spectacular script that would highlight the physicality of the character. Only problem - it involved spraying blood all over the hospital set.

I balked. Here we were, working with a decent amount of money to get through two episodes a day and he goes and does this to me. Let's get some fake blood that may or may not come off your skin between takes and spray it all over a set that we may have to paint over afterwards. He assured me that whatever we had to go through it would be worth it. And although I kept trying to put it in the "Let's save this for season two" pile, Josh's constant encouragement that it was doable won me over.

On the day we were getting along pretty good, knocked out everything we could from every angle before we let any blood fly. Then our VFX guy Paul hooked Josh up to a compression tank via a clear tube that would feed from under his shirt and out his rolled up sleeve. We made sure our blocking was such that he could pull the tube from the blood bag and stay seated while the blood flowed. Our first take was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Everyone executed perfectly and I yelped out a sigh of relief rather than "cut." The second take, however, would not go over so well.

We only had one take per lens, so we moved from the medium to the close and did the wide shot last so he could really let loose on the wide take. Except during the close up Josh got blood all over his face, so we had to stop the take right in the middle, wait to clean him up, and then start over with a second take - schedule be damned!! We ended up getting three great blood flowing takes, although the closeup had an immense amount of blood in it - continuity be damned!!

For the exterior we had precious little minutes as the sun went down, and unfortunately I couldn't give Josh and Kevin enough time as I wanted to for them to play around with the Bum and Gigi interaction. All in, for the amount of production headache it could have been, I was really happy with the result. And if it wasn't for Josh's passion for this episode, this tremendous lead-off to our season would have never happened.

The Making of Gigi - Part 2

2011-03-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Since the bathtub we shot the original Gigi sketch in was no longer available, we had to find another one equally dilapidated. We found our friend Rosa's bathtub was perfect, not to say that her bathroom is shabby (our amazing art dept took care of that) but it had the type of layout we needed - open bathtub with a window for Gigi to crawl out of.

In the original sketch, Gigi finished "speak learning english" and danced his way out of the room. For the remake we wanted to add a level of escape for Gigi. Begging the question, who's bathroom is he in? And why did he think it was a good place for an English lesson? That sense of confusion would become a staple of who Gigi was for us and how he would interact with the world around him - misinterpreting his way across this great nation of ours.

And in my own little film school dreamy design I saw the action of him crawling out of the window as representing the birth of Gigi onto our lands. From whence the bathroom egg emerges an innocent babe upon our urban shoreline!!!!

The shoot was fairly painless since we were emulating the original. By now Dan Tischler had joined us alongside Ian at BBC Worldwide. They proved to be excellent partners on the day. Tyler Moore brought the golden voiced Hank "the Rock" Goldberg back to life. We tried some new things out but found we didn't want to shake the tree. Don't fix what ain't broke.

But getting Gigi from the bathtub to the window, now there was some new territory for us to tread. He can't just get up and walk to the window. No, we needed to scare his ass out that window.

The original sketch had an anonymous voice outside the door chime in at one point, so we expanded that to an anonymous couple banging on the door from the outside, wondering aloud to each other who the hell is in their bathroom. This gave us the opportunity for Gigi to make a break for it, frantically tearing the bathroom apart as he made his way to the window. Josh, ever the dedicated thespian, threw himself all over Rosa's poor bathroom. I wanted to give him a helmet or something for god sakes. We had ice packs at the ready in between takes for his knees, elbows, head, you name it he had a bruise on it by the end of the day.

In the final cut we couldn't use most of it since we had to get Gigi out of the bathroom quickly, but kudos to you Josh for sacrificing the body for the sport. And it wouldn't be the last time we'd need ice packs at the ready. And a special thank you to Rosa Graziano for supplying the location!! Rosa and her new Italian Deli on wheels Rosa's Bella Cucina would go on to cater our series shoot. Check em out - https://twitter.com/#!/rosabellacucina

The Making of Gigi - Part 1

2011-03-22T20:25:00.000-07:00

by Ty Clancey

The Lost Nomads' new digital series Gigi: Almost American, about a lovable foreigner trying to make it in America, stars Josh Gad and premieres this Wednesday, March 23rd on MyDamn Channel.com. Part of an amazing collaboration between the Nomads, BBC Worldwide and MyDamnChannel.com, Gigi has been quite a journey from an early sketch of ours, shot in a bathtub, to the 10-episode series that is about to be unleashed on the public at large. This six-part blog series is dedicated to that journey.

Before we rolled a single frame of footage on any Nomads sketch, I shot an audition tape of Josh Gad performing different characters he had dreamt up on a stage in Theater Row in Hollywood. Halfway through the performance Josh took on a hunched, eager posture, raised a tape recorder up to his ear and suddenly a booming voice materialized in the front row of the theater. It was Tyler Moore, voicing a radio DJ named Hank "the Rock" Goldberg. Josh had by now fully morphed into Gigi, a guileless foreigner yearning to learn the English language from this pompous shock jock. I watched in awe as Josh and Tyler played this linguistic fun-house mirror game - Hank repeating crass morning DJ lines over and over as Gigi summarily butchered them. I was mesmerized.

When Josh, Tyler, Ida and Kevin, who at that time in 2005 were operating as a stage troupe named Option C, approached me to shoot some of their sketches I was elated to see that Gigi would be among the characters we'd be re-imagining for the screen. So we stuffed Josh into a bathtub over at our friend Michael Sontag's house and rolled on what would become one of our most popular sketches.

Cut to a few years later the Nomads were introduced to Ian Moffitt at BBC Worldwide. We hit it off instantly. Our initial meeting, scheduled for about an hour meet and greet, turned into a multi-hour love-fest. And over the next few years we continued to exchange ideas, mostly over some pints at his birthday every year. In 2009 we began pitching BBC Worldwide concepts for digital series, but the one idea they kept coming back to was Gigi. The sketch practically sold itself.

In late spring 2010 we reached a deal with BBC Worldwide to write and shoot a pilot for Gigi. At this time in our Nomadic journey we had recently finished shooting two webseries pilots with another studio and found that the conventional wisdom of shooting "trailer pilots," meaning shoot more of a 2-3 minute movie preview then a typical episode, wouldn't work in the case of Gigi. This character couldn't really be summed up in a flashy music video type edit. You needed to see this character breathe and unfold before your eyes as the wonderful naive stranger in a strange land that he is.

So we took the budget we were allotted and decided to shoot two full episodes - we'd reshoot the bathtub scene and write a new scene that would require a simple location and revolve around a central area of action so as not to add too many shots on the day. What if Gigi was pulled into an underground poker game? we asked ourselves. Simple enough - interpersonal communication fraught with plenty of pitfalls for Gigi to encounter. We'd find that neither would be as simple as we'd hoped...

The Confused Writer

2011-03-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Larsen

Early one October morning Jack awoke to the sound of church bells. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stretched with a yawn; I’m pretty sure the young boy exclaimed, “Wow, what a beautiful day.” The leaves were falling and I think the sky was grey. His mother cried to him,” Jack, it’s time for breakfast!” She had prepared something for him, I just can’t remember exactly what it was. Without hesitation Jack ran down stairs… no wait, I forgot, he did hesitate a little because he was still tired. And I think he might have changed his clothes first. Anyways, Jack went down the stairs to eat his breakfast… or was it lunch? No, it was morning time, so it had to be breakfast. Jack inhaled his food. He was eating so quickly that his mom stopped him and said, “Jack slow down!” So the boy began to pace himself. No wait… I’m sorry. She said, “Jack chew your food. You are going to choke.” not,” Jack slow down.” … or was it, “Jack, where are your manners?” It’s so hard for me to remember all the details. Let’s see… what happened next? Oh yeah! No wait, that’s not it. Man I feel stupid……………………………………Hey!!! Have you guys heard that new song by SPOON? They just did it on Saturday Night Live. Those guys have been around for a long time. I’ve never really listened to them, but that new song is awesome. I wish I could remember what it’s called. I know you guys know it. I think its crazy that a group can be around for like ten years and have nothing but an underground following, then out of nowhere release a hit song that everyone loves. AFI did that too. It must be frustrating for the loyal fans though, you know the ones who have supported them from the beginning. Because now when they go to the concerts there are all these other people there. I just think it would kind of kill the atmosphere… let’s see, what were we talking about before? I swear it’s on the tip of my tongue. I remember something about stairs… OH YEAH! Did I tell you guys about Jack coming down the stairs yet? Okay. So he did that, then he….. I just had a brain fart, you guys ever had a brain fart? I cannot remember what happens next. I’m really sorry, this is so embarrassing. I do know that Jack favorite color is blue though, if that helps. Um, so, I guess that’s the end of the story. I tell you what, give me a minute to try and remember and I’ll get back to you.

The Astronaut Farmer

2011-03-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

By Tyler Moore

Once upon a time in a quiet little town there lived a rather curious old farmer. He was so curious in fact that every night after eating dinner and doing his chores he would sit out on his porch with his trusty dog Blue and stare inquisitively up into the night sky. One night after a particularly large supper of turkey dumplings, mash potatoes and double helpings of apple pie, he looked up at the moon and wondered. He wondered what life was really like on the moon. What kind of people lived there, what they looked like, and what crops they grew. He even wondered if they liked chocolate ice cream and butterscotch candies as much as he did.
“I know what I’ll do.” The farmer exclaimed to his four legged companion. “I’ll build us a rocketship so we can fly to the moon and see for ourselves.” Blue licked the farmer and wagged his tail excitedly.
Early the next day, before the rooster even began to crow, the farmer set out to build a rocketship that would take them both to the moon.
“We’re gonna need some money, Blue ole boy. Getting to the moon isn’t going to be cheap.” So the farmer and his pooch jumped into the back of their pick up and headed to the bank.
“I’d like to take out all of my money, Mr. Chambers.” The farmer said to the bank manager.
“Sure. But what are you going to do with your life savings, might I ask?”
“Blue and I are going to build a rocketship and fly ourselves to the moon.”
“It’ll never work,” the bank manager said, “you’re nothing but a dreamer. You should save some money just in case it doesn’t work out”
But the farmer didn’t listen and went on his way.
Next they went to the hardware store where he bought a hammer, some nails and as much wood as he could fit in the back of his pick-up truck.
“Whatcha planning on building with all that wood?” The hardware clerk said.
“Blue and I are going to build a rocketship and fly ourselves to the moon.”
“It’ll never work,” the clerk said, “Wood is flammable you are going to need to use metal if you want to do that.”
But the farmer didn’t listen and went on his way.
Back at home the farmer got to work. He worked tirelessly all day long. Hammering BANG BANG BANG, sawing RIRAH RIRAH RIRAH and painting SPLOOSHA SPLOOSHA SPLASHA. Stopping only, of course, to eat some honey soaked peanut butter sandwiches and feed Blue some kibble. After hours and hours of hard work it was finally finished. The farmer sat back and admired his work. It was truly a site to behold.
“Now to make our space suits.” The farmer said as he went about wrapping blue and himself in what seemed like miles of tinfoil. “There. That ought to do it.”
Just then the farmer’s neighbor, an astrophysicist from MIT and his live-in same sex partner, an aeronautical engineer from Cal Tech showed up.
“What’s with the Tinfoil, farmer?” They asked holding back their laughter.
“Blue and I built a rocketship to go to the moon and these are our space suits.”
“It’ll never work.” The two men said as they gently massaged each others upper thighs. “Even if you do get out of the Earth’s atmosphere you need a space suit designed by NASA, not tinfoil. You will surely die.”
But the farmer didn’t listen and went on his way.
The farmer and Blue entered the space ship, made sure they had packed a lunch of rye bread and sweet cream, fired the rocket boosters and away they went.
Up…up…up they went. Faster and faster they flew. They passed the tree tops. They passed the old church steeple on Cragbury Hill. They passed the clouds and the news channel helicopters. And then do you know what happened?

The farmer and Blue died a horrible agonizing death. Upon reaching the Earth’s atmosphere they were burnt to a crisp only moments before suffocating to death. And do you know why?

Because the farmer never listened to people that knew what they were talking about.

THE END

Tommy the Cruise Ship Dancer

2011-03-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

by Ty Clancey

Tommy was a cruise ship dancer. He taught cha-cha aboard the Mona Lisa- an ocean liner who ferried super-rich ex-pats between Hong Kong and Naples. And although every night scores of patrons followed Tommy back to his cabin for extracurricular mambo lessons, none of them could satisfy what he so longs for~

You see, Tommy was also a raging masochist.

But tonight is a lucky night for Tommy. The other guests aboard the ship might not count themselves so lucky, because Somali pirates had boarded the ship an hour earlier and taken control of the bridge.

Still, Tommy was in good hands as far as he was concerned. His cheeks bled sweetly between the vice-like claws of a female pirate, known as Lalun. Her dark braided locks flew wildly in the ocean breeze, lightly whipping Tommy's face and giving off a coconut scent. Her deep-set mocha eyes bore into Tommy's with a contempt so odious that Tommy knew she was capable of giving him serious damage. His heart skipped beats, his erection became more prominent. So prominent in fact, that it brushed against her leg, and she swiftly brought her knee up into his testicles. Tommy immediately started salivating.

A gamy pirate behind Lalun was cock-blocking Tommy, though. "Leave him, he is but an entertainer," he growled at Lalun, "he has nothing for us." Lalun considered this. She eyeballed Tommy's frilly, silky shirt, his shiny white tap shoes. She withdrew her grip and back-handed him across the face. Blood rushed quickly to Tommy's temple and escaped through the gash created by her massive ring. He fell to the deck.

"Wait!" Tommy called out. Lalun and the gamy pirate turned, half-way up the stairs. Tommy wiped the blood from his eyes, "I know where the richest man on the boat is staying..." Lalun and the gamy pirate considered this. She descended the stairs and strode up to Tommy kicking him in the side. "If this is not so," she asserted, "you will pay dearly." Tommy smiled as she huffed away.

Tommy led them to the forward upper deck where other pirates had begun ransacking rooms. Further through the labyrinth of luxury suites, they came to a door adorned with many gold-leaf anchors. "Here," Tommy motioned to the door, "you'll find a safe in here, filled with every jewel imaginable."

The gamy pirate kicked open the door. Lalun punched Tommy in the mouth and threw him through the doorway by his lapel. Inside, Sir Attenburough and his wife huddled in the corner. They looked wildly from the pirates to Tommy and back. "They would like the jewels Sir Attenborough," Tommy smiled through bleeding gums.

"But Tommy!" Sir Attenburough exclaimed, "I lost everything last night in the casino, you were with me! You told me to double-down!"

"Ah, yes," Tommy lied, "now I remember. That was...mighty foolish of me." Lalun marched over to Tommy, withdrew her machete and sliced off Tommy's ring finger at the second knuckle. Blood raged from the open wound.

The room lurched to the side, sending everyone against the port-side wall. Tommy scurried across the carpet, found his severed ring finger rolling toward the head and popped it in his mouth, savoring the sweet, silvery taste of his own meat and blood.

"What is going on?!" exclaimed the gamy pirate.

"Jalepo is in charge of manning the wheel tonight," Lalun explained, "he is blind as shit."

The boat lurched once more, sending the gamy pirate head-first into the wall. He regained himself, rubbing his head and steaming from his ears. He looked down and saw Tommy still savoring the last taste of his own finger and lunged with his machete. But suddenly the ship lurched again crashing against an immovable object, sending the gamy pirate into the forward wall, lampooning himself on his own machete.

The boat started sinking. Tommy grabbed Lalun and made way for the aft deck. On the way he snatched a raft from the pool and flung it overboard. Tommy whisked Lalun up into his arms, and just as he dropped her into the ocean below she slapped him viciously. Tommy leapt over the railing and fell into the dark sea just as the ship sunk beneath it.

That night, on the pool raft, Tommy and Lalun made sweet dangerous love beneath the moonlight. She stabbed him repeatedly in the shoulder with her machete, and severed three of his toes when he climaxed.

As the sun came up the next morning, a ragged dingy motored up to the raft. It was the getaway boat driver, and he motioned for Lalun to get into the boat. Tommy tried to follow, but she kicked him back onto the raft. The dingy sped away toward the horizon.

Tommy lay back and finally confronted a pain he found little pleasure in - the pain of a broken heart.

But he did have the pleasure of roasting away beneath the white hot ocean sun.

February, Please Come Now

2008-01-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

2008 has started on a bit of a rough note. With the economy up in the
air, a very divisive political campaign getting bloodier and bloodier
every day, and the chronic demise of the American dream for many in
this great country, I can't help but wonder, WHY THE F**K DID HEATH LEDGER NEED TO DIE?!!! It is very sad to see an actor with the talent
and range of Heath Ledger die so young and unexpectedly. He was an
inspiration to me and many others out there and he will be dearly
missed. But beyond that, it is just one more reminder that a dark
cloud has spread its shadow over the early days of this turbulent
month. And to you January, I say eat my shit, I am done with your
nonsense. In the next month, here is what is going to happen.

One: The N.E. Patriots are going to have their cheating asses handed
to them on a silver platter by a team that wasn't even expected to
make the playoffs.

Two: Bush is going to wake up on the 1st of February, look in the
mirror, grimace and call an emergency press conference. During that
conference he is going to say, "you know what, I'm an absolute asshole
and I have realized that the best way for history not to paint me in a
pile of rotten cow shit is to step down from this office and take
Cheney with me. I will then move to Texas where I vow never to be
heard from again. Here's to a better tomorrow!"

Three: Barak and Hillary will run on the same ticket with John
Edwards becoming their chief adviser. The ticket of the century is
written and the deep South cedes from the union when they realize
their precious country is now being run by a black man and a woman.

Four: The economy explodes as thousands of jobs open up to middle and lower class Americans when Chinese and Indian labor workers say, "I'm tired of getting paid pennies to make you bastards billions."
Furthermore home mortgage lenders are all forced to individually take
lie detector tests on the new Fox reality show "The Moment of Truth."
When it is determined that they lie to home owners about the subprime
loans, they have to then and there write a check to the victim and get
their house out of hoc.

Five:
Kenya signs a peace treaty and celebrate love day once a week, hugging
a kissing each other; Asian whalers are fed to great white sharks when caught whaling;
Global warming is completely reversed and ice needs to be plowed out
of Dubai, as it is interfering with their indoor ski resort
Gas prices drop to sixty cents a gallon, because everyone has an electric car;
And finally, all of us are given the same treatment that Jim Carrey
was given in "Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind," whereby one
memory, one terrible memory, one dark and unholy memory is erased
forever and with it the pain that is has caused...that
memory...JANUARY 2008. May you rot in hell you bitch!

A Studio Head's Response to the Strike

2007-11-16T22:04:00.000-08:00

By Josh Gad

I am a Studio Head. I head one of the major motion picture studios that make motion pictures…“movie magic” as it’s often referred to. It is my understanding that the public perspective is that the Writers are the heroes and the Studio Heads the villains. But, I would like to tell you a story.
I was once in a market in Cairo with my family and our servant, Tabitha. From the inside of my luxury 12 seat Ferrari Hovercraft, (there are only three in the universe), I looked out and saw the back of a boy, between the age of 2 and 14 who was screaming. So I threw a wad of cash (ten thousand dollars in ones) at the back of his head, to get his attention of course. When he turned around, I saw it for the first time. Shock corralled through my inner being. I immediately withdrew my index and middle finger from Samantha, (my wife’s), vagina and held my head out the window to ensure that what I was seeing was but a lie. It could not, however, have been any more real. The chilling image sent me into a nausiatic rage. I had my driver cup his hands to allow my vomit to fill his fists. My three kids, (three of which are illegitimate), were immediately told to go to their room and wait for further instructions…(there are three rooms in this car…there are only three of these cars in the universe.)
Next, my wife, me, and fifteen bodyguards exited the car and approached the savage. What I am about to tell you has not been exaggerated, nor has it been embellished, nor flowered with any demonstrative words to make it grander than it is. This small little boy was holding in his hand a knife. On the edges of this sharp knife was a stream of blood, red and thick, like blood. In his other hand was the victim of some petty crime, no doubt. I will never forget the image of its lifeless body hanging there like it was dead, which indeed it was. For no reason that I can discern seeing that every town has a McDonald’s; every small village, a Palm’s restaurant; and every alleyway a nifty themed diner owned by Wolfgang Puck; this sick rageful thing had slaughtered a CHICKEN!
With a “Hunt for Red October” sort of vengeance boiling inside of me, I withdrew from my pocket a pistol once used in battle by the French dilettante, Napoleon Bonaparte, and I held it up to the boy’s temple. Before I could pull the trigger, however, my translator, translated the boy’s English back to me. He said, “Sir, if I have offended you, I apologize, but here we do not have the luxury of dining out. Here if my family is to eat, I must bring them their food. This is our way of life.” And for the first time in my life, I understood desperation. This poor boy and his family lived like dogs. I would rather eat caviar left out for twenty-two minutes then live for one day in this boy’s skin. So, I took Damir back to his home and after touring his small modest two floor shack, I had my men put the beautiful boy and his family out of their misery. To see their dead bodies laid out, finally at peace, brought such joy to my heart that that very night, I bought the rights to “Sahara” and attached Matthew McConaughey.

So when the writers of the WGA, with their food and their homes, tell me that they don’t have enough money, I want to rape their mothers. I want to cave in and let my demons allow me to blow up their cars and hire assassins to kill them. I have seen desperation. These men are not desperate. The dirtiest word that I can think of is “Fucking Cunt Snatch Piggy Dick deathbed.” Yet, three little letters are worse than any words I could possibly utter: WGA.

Rest tonight, for tomorrow you die.

The Complexes of Mr. Hide

2007-10-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

By Ida Darvish

Mr. Hide has complexes… lots of them… all of them… the way he walks, the way he eats, his voice, his fingernails, his hair, cheeks, profile, the shape of his head and face, his height, his smell, his breath, his complexion, his hairy chest, his hairy back, his hairy butt, his feet, and of course, last but not least, the size of his penis.

There are no mirrors in his bathroom. That way HE can’t even see himself naked when he gets out of the shower, and he always has his clothes ready in there so that he doesn’t have to go to his closet where there’s a full-length mirror that would reflect to him the mounds of hair on his body.

He leaves his house to go meet his friend, Mr. Bold, and of course he wears his oversized sombrero to hide the shape of his head, a scarf around his face to hide how square his face is, and as he realizes he lost one of his gloves, he clutches the gloveless hand to hide his fingernails. Even though it’s 100 degrees outside he made sure to wear his boots in order to cover his toes, which help him walk very quickly so as to hopefully hide how he normally walks. It takes him a while to get to the restaurant where he’s meeting Mr. Bold because as others walk by he stops and lets them pass so that they will surely not notice his strange manner of walking, all the while checking his armpits to make sure they don’t smell.

As he walks into the restaurant, he whispers hello, that way no one, not even Mr. Bold, will have the opportunity to make fun of his actual voice, and he whispers to the waiter to seat them at a table for 6 so that he can sit far enough away from Mr. Bold, so that his friend won’t notice his complexion or the smell of his breath. He also made sure to have a table that sits in a nook where there will be no guests sitting at a table next to them, that way nobody will be looking at his profile. As they order their food Mr. Bold jokes with the waiter and laughs loudly at his own jokes, he then takes his shirt off because it’s too hot, and slides out of his sandals in order to make himself comfortable. Mr. Hide admires how easy it is for Mr. Bold to talk to people and how confident he is with his body. When the food arrives Mr. Bold eats everything on his plate while telling his stories, as Mr. Hide takes small bites when no one is looking, that way they won’t talk about his strange way of chewing.

In the midst of their meal, a mutual friend of theirs walks up to their table and asks them if they would like to have a gay threesome… well wouldn’t you know it, Mr. Hide whispers excitedly, “Of course, I’d love to,” while Mr. Bold shakes his head and says, “No way, I’m not that bold." Ten hours later Mr. Bold found himself in a sick motel room in Yugoslavia, with nothing on but an earring and a hickey. In the shadows, laughing softly, are Mr. Hide and the raunchy friend. The moral of this morose tale…BOLD as you may be, you can never HIDE from raunchy forceful gay sex. Later that night Bold died.

Love On The Rocks

2007-10-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

By Tyler Moore

There comes a time in some relationships when you realize that you should have just moved on a long time ago. Dangling from a rock face thirty feet above a jagged reef in nothing but your boxer shorts, I believe is one of those. But, hey, that’s just me. At this point somebody else might still hang onto the idea of true love and the idea that forgiveness is the corner stone of any loving relationship, but right now I kind of have my hands full, literally.

There were so many red flags. I should have seen it coming. She ate in bed, she left wet towels on the floor, she drugged me and left me for dead in the middle of the jungle. Minor things, really. But they all add up. It’s funny how running for your life half naked through dense foliage can bring about clarity. Personally, I would rather have just seen a shrink or read a self-help book, but hey, better to find out now than ten years from now. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? I’ll have to thank her for that once I get off this cliff and wring her neck.

In all fairness, we did have some good times. I mean, before the whole drugging thing, and being dragged behind a jeep at a high rate of speed and being left sans pants in an abandoned guerilla detention center. So it wasn’t a complete loss. I guess I’m maturing. Before, I would have blamed her for everything, cut all of my ties with her, and bad-mouthed her in front of our mutual friends. Basically I would not have taken any responsibility for my actions and deflected all of the issues that I had onto her. But now I feel that I can truly own my faults. I know where I have gone wrong. I know where I could have been a better friend and companion. I still don’t think that having my passport torn up and drugs planted on me before attempting to cross the border into Panama was a fair response to me forgetting to pack her hair dryer, but some people just handle things differently. Who am I to judge? In her defense she did take the bullets out of the gun so that when they found me, and I had to make a run for it, I couldn’t hurt anybody. I still don’t know how she got a gun, we were only in Colombia a week, but hey, she always was resourceful.

What am I thinking? I need to start thinking about the bad stuff, like the leeches she planted in our hotel bathtub, or the glaring fact that my forearms are getting tired and I have the police hunting me for supposedly robbing a church for the blind.

Still, I think back to when we first met. She was beautiful. We were at a cocktail party, a political fundraiser for The Tundric Newt. I bought her a Mojito and as I handed it to her I intentionally pronounced it Mo-gy-to. That was the extent of my ability to be clever at that point. Apparently it had worked. During the senator’s speech we snuck away and made sweet romantic love in the handicaped stall of the men’s room at the Biltmore. Later that night she went home with one of the busboys, but she called me a week later. I remember the phone call. She thought I was the “guy from the elevator.” She had been cleaning out her purse and found my phone number. I set up a date for coffee and the rest is history.

We had come to Colombia to celebrate our six-month anniversary. I had wanted to go to Hawaii or Fiji, but she had insisted on Bogota. Another red flag. I think that when it comes to compatibility in relationships where you want to spend your vacations should say a lot. For example, do you want to go someplace where you can scuba dive and drink Mai Tai’s? Or would you rather go someplace where kidnapping is a government sanctioned sport? On the same token, would you rather buy papayas and coconuts from flower laden street vendors, or dodge rocks and beer bottles from ether sniffing street urchins? To me it just makes sense. But hey, she is strong willed and I respect her for that. I want you to know I have nothing against Bogota or the people of Colombia. Colombia is a beautiful country, as I can attest from running through it all night, and it may seem like a relatively safe place to a guy from, let’s say, Calcutta, India. It’s just not the safest place for a guy from Calcutta, Ohio. But I have to say that Bogota and my hometown do share some similarities that have made it a little easier to adjust. For example, Colombia has over 400 different species of poisonous snakes. Ohio has three. Colombia exports about 550 metric tons of cocaine to the US a year. I’ve seen cocaine. Colombia is the home of FARC-EP, the Revolutionary Armed forces of Colombia, a Marxist-Leninist guerilla organization which employees such tactics as bombings, assassination, extortion, and hijacking to intimidate the Colombian government. Last year our volunteer fire department beat the chamber of commerce in a charity softball tournament. So as you can see, we are not all that different.

It’s funny, one time she drove a bus for the Special Olympics, and I thought, “wow” this girl is perfect. But then I found out she had been drinking Robitussin and popping Quaaludes for the past four days and had kicked the blind shot-puter off the bus and made him hitchhike to the venue. Not appropriate, right? That’s what I thought, but…in her defense it was St. Patrick’s Day. Who doesn’t get a little rowdy on the “Mighty 17th?” I mean she is Ukrainian, but everybody is Irish on that day. I know I’m Mexican on Cinco de Mayo.

Anyway, she had left me in a Papillion-esque cell in the middle of the jungle. So, meanwhile, I had made friends with a tarantula named “Action” and a pack of noncommittal roaches, “The Sharks,” who seemed to respond whenever I whistled or snapped. I messed with my duct tapped wrists and I got free. I was hungry but my plate of Medellin dung beetles made me puke on my feet. I didn’t think about the cushy sensation between my toes as I jumped for the bars overhead that offered the only light into my cell. They gave way like a guilt ridden Hassid against a blond haired Shiksa. I used my anti-posturepedic bed to launch myself up into the windowsill and worm my way out.

Jungle. Love it! Wet, open, free…snake, to my left. I held still. It passed. I made a mental note to jot this moment down in my journal so I could be cool for my kids if I had them. Then gun shots. As if I hadn’t had enough. I thought about my love. I thought about blankets on sandy beaches close to civilization, I thought about ice cream cones and late night movies. Then I thought about Garl Tannon, the tight end, and my girlfriend, (well not technically, because at the time we had only been seeing each other for four months) running “plays” in the back seat of her father’s Peugeot. So I ran.

A one-eyed jeep fixed it’s high beam on me, so I dove into a patch of mud. That’s when I thought about ditching the undies. The rain came down in wet brail. I Shawshanked it. I ran where the path lead me, like Jack T. Colton, without a machete. That’s when I slipped, grabbed with my left arm and simultaneously saved my life.

Now, I wish I had gone with Cindy Lausdenburg, the girl from middle school that had braces and a lame hip, but who ended up a reality television supermodel. I’ll bet her boyfriend hasn’t ended up on a cliff in a third world country.

The last blood that I have in my body is being diverted to my forearms and fingertips. I’m thinking right now that I might be able to pull a Greg Lougains/cliff diver maneuver and miss the rocks. I wish I had love. Love could save me. That or Pink Floyd’s flying pig.

A rope drops down next to me. I can’t look up, but I recognize the voice that comes with it. It’s the leach dropping, jeep dragging, in front of the family emasculating, Colombian sympathizing, “Goonies” hating, looks good in a dress, kisses me like I’m her king, cooks me dinner, massages my feet, does my taxes, searches out movie nights, and has the plane tickets girl.

I test the rope. It holds. I wrap it around my elbows and wrists and find footholds. I get to the top. We kiss. We embrace as if we were the only two people in the world. I take her hand in mine. We look deeply into each other’s eyes… and then I throw her off the cliff. I'll find my own way home.

Boy, Interrupted

2007-10-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

By Tyler Moore

There once was a senator named Larry
Who didn’t believe gays should marry
One day in St. Paul
In a bathroom stall
He proved himself quite a fairy.

A Liberal Lush's Limerick

2007-10-16T02:27:00.000-07:00

By Ty Clancey

Three cheers for the fears held near
Our might making plight and jeer
But Megalomania
In Mesopotamia
Just makes me piss ano'er beer

The Lost Nomads: Get Lost

2006-11-10T19:40:00.000-08:00

BLOG #1
2/28/06

By: Josh Gad

On the evening of January 31st 2006, the members of a lost tribe of comedians found their way onto the world wide web, where they have since wandered aimlessly, searching for purpose in a world devoid of…what was I saying…I think I just found my iPod…I thought it was stolen by African Americans on the subway two weeks ago, which made me particularly bitter during Black history month, but now that I found it, I think I have some apologizing to do to the black community, so I’m sorry for scape goating, when I, as a Jew, have lived under that kind of scrutiny for my entire life, passing by Christians who think I want their money, or Islamic fundamentalists who think I want to die violently, which I am truly averse to…got sidetracked…sorry…anyways, this is their story: the story of “The Lost Nomads,” and how they lost their way…

In the bitter winter solstice of 2004, my hot little girlfriend Ida, saw that I was growing tired of paying money to comedy collection agencies like “The Groundlings” and “Second City,” which have become industrialized rape centers for out of work actors. So, she suggested that the two of us put together a troupe of performers made up of some of the more talented people we knew and some who were just really sexy that we wanted to threesome down the road. And so, after months of hard work, hours of rehearsal, rewrite upon rewrite, a group of sixteen troupe members, known as “Option C” Comedy put on a show. And in the words of the great sadist Jackson Pollack, “what a f**u*cking mess. Sixteen of the sweatiest, filthiest actors I’ve ever met all up on each other like a ritualistic orgy without the reward of orgasm; a theater meant to accommodate fifty people packed in with something like one hundred and twenty souls, as if to say “fuck you Fire Marshal, today we die for a $10.00 sketch show; and of course the show itself which offered fifty minutes of under reheased, underwritten, and underwhelming comedy sketches, which seemed funny on the page, but died faster than a French coquette with dysentery stabbing herself in an aorta while being hung by King Blah du Blah Blah of the Toga Dynasty.

So, we went back to the drawing board and this time assembled a themed show that featured sketches involving “Traveling Through Time.” Yes, in hindsight it was an atrocious idea, that was better suited for a Bar Mitzvah theme than a sketch show, but we were nevertheless amped up to perform again. This time, the show featured one of Ida and my good friends, Tyler Moore, who brought to the table a more refined sketch writing approach and taught all of us a thing or three about putting a comedy show together. For the first time, “Option C” felt like it had some cohesion to it…a sense of purpose in the sea of pointless sketch groups that litter the streets of LA. And so, in the fall of 2005, we put on our second show, which much to our surprise got rave responses, but left all of us extremely disappointed that for all the work we had put in, the only reward was two back to back shows on a Saturday night.

It was too much for too little. In the course of a year, we had worked something like sixty hours for three full performances. Ida and I were tired of it. The organization, the time commitment, the in-fighting, the creative battles, the one night shows. For all intents and purposes, “Option C,” as far as I was concerned, was dead. We had lost our way.

But like all Nomads, wander far enough and you are bound to bump into something that could knock you on your ass. A friend of Ida’s and mine, (Ty Clancey), asked the two of us to film a short for him that was part of a reel he was putting together to showcase his directorial work. And so we spent 8 hours on a cold night, pouring beer all over ourselves and running around naked while performing choreography set to Tango Music. The two of us left discussing how much fun we had and how incredible the footage we saw was. Then after the throes of passion and heat, I turned to Ida and said, “that is what I want Option C to be,” which threw her off because the sex wasn’t all that great. But, when she realized I was referring to the short we had filmed, she knew that she had found brilliance in the form of a Jew with one of the tiniest cocks you’ve ever seen. And so the next day we contacted Ty Clancey and his creative partner Mac Hedges, and said “hey, we have no money, very few ideas, time restraints, and huge egos,” and they said “let’s do it!”

The next step was finding out what “it” was. We had all of these ideas, but no real purpose or drive. What the hell were we going to do with a bunch of comedy shorts? Play them for each other over and over again and say “remember when we did that?” And then, just like that, everything fell into place. Ida and I received a phone call from Tyler Moore saying that a friend of his was producing a Public Access television show and wanted us to put together 30 minutes of material for it. We now had purpose and drive…and a deadline. So the stage was set for a major transformation. “Option C” was now in the comedy short business. But Public Access Television? We knew it was a great opportunity because it would force us to complete our goals, but public Access really isn’t what you dream of when you want your work to be seen by the masses. But how can we truly reach the audiences that we want to without the resources of a major network/studio behind us? It’s the 21st Century man! That’s how!

The net gives us all of the creative freedom and exposure that we could have ever asked for. Over the next few months/years, this nascent little troupe is, by all expectations, going to explode all over the comedy scene, and for those of you who are just joining us now at the beginning of the journey, we welcome you. The future is very exciting and we look forward to our growing fan base and our expanding content. You will be seeing a lot of new material from “The Lost Nomads” every week, so please continue to check in. We have finally found a temporary home, and we are thrilled to make the most of it, while we’ve got it.

And finally there’s the name: “The Lost Nomads.” I knew “Option C” was too sterile to be memorable, so it was only a matter of time for it to go. But when it came time to picking a new moniker, we had trouble latching onto anything, because we still didn’t know exactly what we were and what we wanted to be. And then we realized, that from the beginning that has been our journey. In the world of comedy identities, ours continues to change and that is what people love about us. We have little direction that guides our choices. We sometimes embrace the charismatic, sometimes the dangerous, often the cheap, and occasionally the obvious. We look to never repeat ourselves unless it is choice and never become tied down to one type of comedy, unless that’s what we decide to do. We are a group defined by its decisive indecisiveness. A troupe that has traveled from place to place, only to happily get lost again. We are “The Lost Nomads.” Welcome to our “home.”