Showtime

We all agree that the only things funnier than penises and vaginas are the weird, misused penises and vaginas of sad people, right? That said, come by the Magnet Theater on W. 29th St. this Sunday, where Shira Danan and I will be premiering our new sketch comedy show, Sadistic Terrific. Shira and I wrote last year’s supernatural dick-joke epic, Ghost Toast, and ST looks to pick up where GT left off in terms of expressing our collective discomfort. Show starts at 6:30 and is what they call a Test Drive, meaning if Sunday’s show goes well we will get the opportunity for a run at the theater. Come by and laugh at the fruits of my crippling insecurities. $5 at the door.

Cordial Invitation

Loyal Readers,

If you live in the NY area (and are not black or Jewish), stop by Cherry Tree Bar in Brooklyn on Thursday night (11/12) for the launch party and screening of the film, Ghost Toast, and its accompanying website. I wrote the film along with Shira Danan and it was shot by Will Trebach and Pete Saia. If I do say so myself, which I do, it is an excellent movie. Come by the bar, meet the geniuses behind the masterpiece and laugh your tight little asses off.

NY Times Catches Up To Rake Blog

Rake Blog, May 18, 2009:

…As the allegedly tainted sluggers of the Steroid Era begin to trickle into Hall of Fame eligibility, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), the self-regulating collective of beat writers who vote on Hall of Fame candidates as well as player awards including the Cy Young, MVP, and Rookie of the Year trophies, is seeing to it that the question will not be, “How should the Hall of Fame react to players whose performance was enhanced by illegal chemical stimulation?” But instead, “Does the Hall of Fame even matter?”…

The New York Times, June 19, 2009:

The Baseball Hall of Fame, which started as a local tourist attraction and a major-league publicity stunt, has since become a national field of dreams — and now, a battlefield. If it surrenders to the moralists who want to turn back the clock to some imagined golden era, and excommunicates the greatest stars anyone has ever seen, it will suffer the fate of all battlefields located on the wrong side of history. Obscurity.

Note: Great Op-ed by Zev Chafets

Ball of Fame

“I just want attention.”
—Abraham J. Simpson

For better or for worse, it is currently easier to become famous than at any point in human history. (Save for the days of Adam & Eve, during which it was impossible not to be famous. For either one, literally 100% of Earth’s population was aware of them—a thought which Bono, sitting in a air-conditioned tent in some impoverished African nation—is surely salivating over). For most of history, however, fame has been the exclusive province of those:

a) Very good at something (Isaac Newton, Benjamin Banneker, Hildegard De Bingen)
b) Very bad at something (Montezuma, Sir Walter Raleigh)
c) Very wealthy (Various Di Medicis, Antoinettes, and Hapsburgs)

See where I go with this in Gelf Magazine…

Jake Rake: Christian (UPDATED)

The response to last Friday’s article about the godless Detroit Tigers and their decision to hold their 2009 home opener on Good Friday has been nothing short of excellent, with the following comments well-deserving of a posting of their own. Between this site and Bleacher Report, a sports website that cross-posts Rake Blog’s sports articles:

Jake Rake in 12 Angry Mascots Video

Heebs Scott Rogowsky and Neil Janowitz host the monthly sports-themed live sketch comedy show, 12 Angry Mascots, at clubs around New York City. March’s installment featured a video parody of the bizarrely somber Gatorade “G” commercials, in which famous athletes equate drinking the sports beverage to performance-enhancing metaphysical and spiritual awakenings. Along with a ragtag collective of New York comedians, I made an appearance in the 12 Angry Mascots video, bringing some distinct Jake Rake flavor in my first-ever formal improv performance. Enjoy!

Welcome, Brother

In your daily web surfing today, be sure to pay a visit to Jake’s Rake’s, where the content is a absent as the apostrophes are superfluous.

Rake Blog Tutorial: Making It Rain

As one of the last people on Earth to discover the actions signified by the expression “Making it Rain,” I have taken it upon myself to enlighten the remaining few who are unfamiliar with this most wonderful of strip club behaviors.

That most reputable of online references, the Urban Dictionary, offers the following:

When you’re in da club with a stack, and you throw the money up in the air at the strippers. The effect is that it seems to be raining money.

I generally shy away from the brusque vernacular of the open-source Urban Dictionary, but in this instance they hit the nail on the head, as any attempt to define “Making it Rain” clearly needs to refer to the venue in which the deed goes down as “Da club.”

Making it Rain:

1. Enter strip club
2. Throw bills of any increment at the naked women

While Making it Rain is obviously awesome, there are also some drawbacks that may result. For example, Pacman “Adam” Jones famously made it rain, and now he is not allowed to play football anymore. Please learn from Mr. Jones’ mistakes and use discretion when bringing a trash bag with $81,000 in it into a strip club with the intent of throwing the money at naked women.

Note: Pelting strippers with nickels does not count as Making it Rain.

Quantifying Popularity

How much more popular is bestiality than necrophilia? Try about the same rate at which information about Guitar Hero has outpaced the search for actual guitars over the past year or so. For more on Google Trends and sex with things that you’re told you’re not supposed to have sex with, check out my most recent article in Gelf Magazine…

Rick Astley: Never Gonna Give You Up

Go With God [To Japan], Dan Johnson

It appears that the reigning AL Champion Tampa Bay Rays have decided to cut ties with celebrated pinch hitter Dan Johnson. Johnson, who famously arrived late to the Rays’ September 9th game against the Red Sox after being called up from Triple-A that afternoon and hit a game-tying home run off Jonathon Papelbon, is apparently headed to Japan, where he will likely find himself in the best possible situation outside of playing in the major leagues.

Johnson was once a promising young hitter in the A’s organization, posting a line of .275/.355/.451 as a rookie in 2005. Struggling through a series of injuries, positional logjams, small sample sizes and inconsistent performances, however, Johnson has relegated himself to a “Quad-A Slugger” role over the past four years, joining a fraternity of misfits that has in the past included Jack Cust, Roberto Petagine, Tuffy Rhodes, Josh Willingham and Alex Cabrera. Outside of Cust and Willingham, who finally caught on with major league teams in their age 28 and 27 seasons, respectively, the aforementioned Quad-A boppers have all gone on to massive success in the Land of the Rising Sun, and all of them profile similarly to Johnson, now 29 years old.

Continue reading at Bleacher Report…

Fjorn Progs Out All Over Your Face

Seeing as how you are currently reading Rake Blog, I am going to assume that you enjoy layers upon layers of guitars, odd-numbered time signatures, and references to bizarre sexual acts, covert and otherwise. In deference to my audience, I reccommend that during your weekend web surfing, you make your way over Fjorn’s website for a free download of the new instrumental track, ‘Did You Mean “Business?”‘

For those audacious enough to look for context behind the track’s title (or plow deeper, if you would), “Did you mean “Business?”" was discovered during a routine Google search for the now-legendary hardcore porno movie Nutsinass. Sadly, Google has since caught on that those trolling the Internet for videos of large black men shoving their testicles into some drugged-out woman’s anus while their friends watch and masturbate are well aware of what they are searching for, and hence, no longer suggest that by “Nutsinass,” we mean “business.”

Thanks to veteran Fjorn bandmember Eban Singer, the obvious source for videos called “Nutsinass.”

Andrew Dice-K

If I can espouse the kind of passion from fans of the Washington Nationals that led to last week’s craziness, I honestly can’t even imagine what horrors await as I take on the self-christened “Red Sox Nation” with a breakdown of why Daisuke Matsuzaka may have been the luckiest pitcher in baseball in 2008, and is probably in for a rude awakening in future campaigns.

Read the article at Bleacher Reports…

Jake Rake Solved

I recently started contributing to a sports website called Bleacher Report, where a user named Dave had this to say about an article I wrote about the Washington Nationals’ hilarious futility:

You could replace “the team” with just about anything and “Bleacher Report” with anyone who employs or interacts with me and you’ve pretty much summed up my entire operation. Well played, Dave. Well played.

=====UPDATE!!!=====

One of the other people who hated what I had to say about the Nationals started an entire message board thread dedicated exclusively to hating on me, complete with pictures and links to my site and Facebook profile. This may be the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. I suggest visiting immediately, I’ll also put a link in the Shameless Self-Promotion Menu in the upper right. Enjoy!

Mets Land Easiest Joke Ever From Mariners

As Sam Elliott’s character imparted in The Big Lebowski, “Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.” In a similar vein, sometimes a guy surfaces with the unfortunate name of “J.J. Putz” and sometimes J.J. Putz gets traded to the city with a larger Jewish population than Jerusalem.

Continue reading at The Nooner…