I got you this book about how you’re dooomed. Hope ya like it!

Love,
Yer citizens!

from:    Lindsey <warrantyhq@gmail.com>
to:    thevggs(at)vgg.com
date:    Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 7:50 PM
subject:    Link Exchange

Dear Webmaster,

I visited your site http://www.vgg.com and liked it a lot. I have a related website and I would like to know if you would be interested in exchanging links with my site. This will help both your site and mine to gain search engine popularity…Would you be interested? If so, please consider listing us here: http://www.vgg.com/links/ Our text link details are:

Title: Extended Warranties
Description: Protect your car with a comprehensive extended warranty from Warranty Headquarters.
URL: http://www.warrantyheadquarters.com

Then let me know where our link is located on your site and send me your information if you would like a link back.

Thanks,
Lindsey
WarrantyHeadquarters.com
16443 N. 91st St. C103
Scottsdale, AZ 85260

Note: If you would like not to receive any further communications from me, please paste this link into your browser: ?id=c9QAnVrQq2a
Or simply respond to this email with Remove as the subject.

Jason Torchinsky <jason(at)vgg.com>
to    Lindsey <warrantyhq(at)gmail.com>
cc    thevggs(at)vgg.com
date    Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:01 PM
subject    Re: Link Exchange

ABSOLUTELY.

We can’t think of a better synergy than our comedy website and your borderline-scam auto extended warranty site! This is truly a match made in heaven, and I for one am thankful, profoundly, that the fates and technology conspired to bring us together. The mind races with the possibilities of what we can achieve together– our site providing mild entertainment, a brief, furtive distraction from the day, while your endeavor swoops in and gives them that nearly useless extended warranty to all the shut-ins and half-wits that don’t know any better and comprise our readership.

It’s really amazing. Is there any way I could get you guys to call my cellphone more? I have 30+ year old cars I think the factory warranties may just have run out, so I’d love to know about it more, and possibly constantly. Do you offer a program where, instead of the constant phone calls, you can send someone to sleep on my lawn and remind me about your extended warranties?

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to seek us out and partner with us. To complete this, please send your link on acid-free archival paper along with an link-exchange fee payment of $1500.

Thanks again!

Gus Levy
VGG Web Outreach and Synergy Admin

MP3 Monday! Every “Monday,” (that we feel like it) there will be a new MP3 file from our large, large collection of deservedly obscure vinyl, lovingly hand-ripped to the convenient MP3 format by our hardworking staff of Chinese prisoners! Our grandkids told us that the MP3 is “the shizzle” all the schoolies are giddy for and that’s good enough for us!

This week starts us off with a bang- literally! The title track of the 1966 album The Crazy Horse Saloon of Paris by Albert Van Dam & Orchestra kicks off with a champagne cork a-popping! The back cover helpfully informs us The Crazy Horse Saloon is “the most sophisticated strip-tease club in the world.” However, the album cover leads one more to believe it’s the most batshit loony strip-tease club in the world. So does the galloping pace and the circus – freak – meets – speed – freak instrumentation of the title track. Try to listen to it and imagine women stripping to it. It’s extremely difficult.

Another reason they’re off their rocker is exemplified by another liner note quote: “…the audience is unfailingly captivated by the ‘plot’ as well as the girl.” Um, sure. That’s why guys go to strip clubs: the overpowering hunger for narrative!

Enjoy the whole album- courtesy of… um… us!

The Crazy Horse Saloon of Paris – Albert Van Dam & Orchestra (25Mb)

This has been a long time coming, folks. I’m sorry  to say, but as of April first, 2009, the Van Gogh-Goghs  are no more. We’re calling it quits and breaking up. We’ve milked this cow for all she’s worth, and all our yanking won’t squeeze another drop out. We don’t perform, we don’t write, and we don’t update our site (as you may have noticed). We’ve drifted apart as colleagues, collaborators, and even friends. We have newer, bigger, more important things on our plates these days. Adult things: raising our new babies, attending graduate school, running businesses- where are we supposed to find the time for this nonsense anymore? It used to be fun, and now it’s a chore: and that is a sign to stop we can no longer ignore. All good things come to an end, that’s just how  it goes. It was fun, we loved ya, now beat it, amscray.

Don’t weep, my friends, we’ll always have Paris. Also, it makes you look like a total wuss.

Jason is joining another sketch comedy group, Actual Size, under the excellent direction of Corey, a former star on the Buffy spinoff Angel. He’s hoping to introduce them to the joys of the Second-City/Del Close brand of Improv comedy. He will also be playing trombone with Ronnie James Dio on his comeback album and forthcoming tour.  Charles is going on a long overdue speaking tour for Toastmasters International and will release his long awaited nonfiction books: Double Down: Power Poker for Profit, Double Down II: Perfect Pai-Gow for Playaz, Building the Perfect Resume, and E-xtra E-ffective E-mails.

Deeply concerned about the dangers of cyberspace and the corrosive effect of modern technology on family life, Rob and his family will be moving to Intercourse, Pennsylvania to join the Amish community where Rob will make wooden cabinets for kerosene space heaters. Alan is opening a drug counseling clinic whose profits will go to the Homes for Feral, Ugly Kittens foundation (HFUK).  T. Mike is running for state senate under the new Conservative Christian Coalition Party (CCCP) on a platform of eliminating burdensome child safety regulations. Galen is splitting his time between Kill Your Television and the Euthanize Feral, Ugly Kittens foundation (EFUK).

Also,

April Fool.

As our new president, Tiger Woods, takes the oath of office, ends racism, and catches bullets with his teeth, we find our minds wandering to the past, about twelve minutes ago, and whether we just finished off the Zantac or the Zanax, and as we stagger to the trash can to fish out the bottle to check, we slip, whang our heads on the countertop, and slip back in time to George W. Bush’s first inauguration in 2001, a famous film director’s boast, and a little essay we call:

Why Did I Agree To Help Robert Altman Move?

So either the schmuck who has to lay out the grocery store ads got real bored, or billionaires who consider themselves above the law, have created a secret, hidden estate, where they flaunt all propriety and decency and indulge their sick fantasies and decadent tastes: The Cola Rape Range.

Where innocent women, kidnapped fresh out of Nancy Grace/CNN stories are released, dazed and drugged, and then hunted down and their tender womanhoods ruthlessly violated by horrible mutant colas. Whether these colas, whose very existence are an affront to God, are cans or bottles, we can’t know. We just can’t know.

All we can do is pray.

Testing, one two… okay it’s working. Standby everyone! Sound department- check. Wardrobe – get ready! Someone get the HTML coder a fresh inkwell! Places everyone, places! Bring the electrons to full power… now! We’re on!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Van Gogh-Gogh Radio Company of the Web is now… on the Web! Here, in the holiday spirit, our modest group is proud to present a charming little spy-oriented playlet

So click here to download the MP3 file and start the fun! (2.3 Mb)

 

Oh look honey, it’s another Christmas card in the mail, I’ll just open it, aw, it has kittens on … OH GOD NO THE KITTENS ARE ON FIRE! AAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAHHH!!! AHH! AH!

 (click to enlarge)

 

Wait a minute- the kittens aren’t on fire- look how peacefully they stare at my skull as they emanate from the flames– Oh Sweet Santa- they aren’t on fire, they ARE fire!!! ARGH! DEVIL MUTANT FIRE CATS!!! KILL IT! KILL IT WITH FIRE… oh wait, that won’t work. KILL IT WITH…, what, water? Sure, water… I guess. Hmmm. What else can you kill things with that sounds cool when you yell it out?   A stick? Maybe. A gun? No. Knife? No. Aha! SCIENCE! KILL IT WITH SCIENCE! KILL IT WITH SCIENCE!!!

If you enjoy crack you might want to try America’s best crack: Escobar’s Pride.

Taped live near the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California.

Since two Van Gogh-Goghs have new babies, and since babies suck up free time like black holes, AND since Van Gogh-Goghs are spectacularly lazy to start with, here’s some public domain comedy! (At least, it’s still public domain as of this writing, nobody tell Disney that Twain is the public domain, ok?)

Speech On The Babies
by Mark Twain

(AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879)

The fifteenth regular toast was “The Babies–as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities.”

I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be Ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute –if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first baby–you will remember that he amounted to a great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when the little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his mere body servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word. You could face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war were sounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered his pap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right–three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin–simply wind on the stomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual hour, two o’clock in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly and remark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much, that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!–“Rock-a-by baby in the treetop,” for instance. What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for the neighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do? [“Go on!”] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn’t amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please, you can’t make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don’t you ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain’t any real difference between triplets and an insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of the babies.