010 - ChatGPTease
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords lololol The Simpsons remember??
On Tuesday I received an email from Kurt Manlang. THE KURT MANLANG!!!!!
Kurt couldn’t stop laughing at my recent set at The Comedy Store.
To quote Alec Baldwin, “here’s the thing…” I don’t have a recent set at The Comedy Store. I don’t have any sets at The Comedy Store. In fact, I don’t have any recent sets anywhere. I’m practically retired from the stage…
Despite his misinformation, Kurt came with an interesting proposition. He wasted little time in explaining the purpose for his inbox intrusion, saying “we” specialize in helping comedians like “you” grow their online presence and connect with more fans.
For example… who?
Blessings & Love,
Kurt
Well I like being blessed and loved, so I wrote him back to ask more about who “he” is and who “we” is and if he could share the link to my recent set at The Comedy Store.
Two days pass and I receive another piece of electronic mail from Kurt Manlang. He wanted to follow up on “my” previous email (because “I’ve” been thinking about how we can help grow “your” audience).
For example… who?
Well that’s when it occurred to me: this may not actually be THE KURT MANLANG.
Hark! Who goes there? No punctuation? all lower case letters? “dude”? “lmao”?
Has the veil dropped? Has truth been set free? Could it be… is this really…
THEEEEEEEEE KUUUUUUURT MAAAAAAAANLAAAAAANG!!!!!???????
Just tryna help “you.”
I appreciate the offer Kurt, I really do.
But I will point out…
Let the sunshine in, for this is the dawning of the Age of Artificial Intelligence. It’s going to be to be bleak. It’s going to be soulless. It’s going to be deflating and disheartening and above all else, annoying.
But we can still have our fun.
Say hello to my little friend, Sweden-based actor, writer and all-around fantastic human being Dan Andersson. Dan and I met at the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto 2011. I was there with this silly thing I made with Neil Janowitz for our live, late-night sports-comedy talk show 12 Angry Mascots.
For the past decade plus we’ve stayed in touch over Facebook and WhatsApp (shoutout Meta we love you!!!!!!), sending each other Tim & Eric clips and tipping each other off to new podcasts or funny creators, arranging one in-person reunion in Stockholm when I happened to be traveling out that way in the summer of 2016.
Recently we decided that it had been too long, that we had each grown so much wiser and more spiritual on our respective paths these past 8-9 years, and that it was time to meet IRL again to tangibly experience our friendship. We chose Barcelona as our locus of camaraderie, both arriving last Wednesday and sharing an AirBnb in the Eixample, a central neighborhood that offers more peace and quiet than the more well-known El Born or Barri Gòtic.
We walked, we talked, we ate, we talked, we ate, we walked, we talked, we ate, we talked, we walked, we ate…
Bryan Adams, I hear you and fully respect all that standin’ on your mama’s porch, but those were the best days of MY life.
Over the course of the week together, Dan introduced me to his little friend, ChatGPT. He says he talks with this bot all the time, training it in specific areas of his interest and inputting creative, provocative prompts, and he claims the conversations often grow profound and elucidating. I told him he should bestow the bot a better name if he’s going to get so close to it, even something like “ChatGTPeter” would be cute. But Dan is a man of dignity, and he hated that idea.
We did agree to create a series called “ChatGPTease with Dan Andersson.” Dan did the chatting, I did the recording and editing. I find them hysterical, and I encouraged Dan to make more of these on his own. If you like them, please tell us and share with friends (they have already been posted to TikTok, so hurry up will supplies last).
“ChatGPTease with Dan Andersson” - Ep. 1 :: Pt.1
“ChatGPTease with Dan Andersson” - Ep. 1 :: Pt. 2
“ChatGPTease with Dan Andersson” - Ep. 1 :: Pt. 3