TWITTER | Straight-up Donald Trump parody accounts are a dime a dozen. But the Twitter account of Owen Ellickson (@ONXLN) takes the more noble, hilarious path. Ellickson, a writer for the decent NBC comedy Superstore, scripts imagined conversations from the GOP nominee, mostly between Trump and an increasingly exasperated and disillusioned Speaker of the House, Rep. Paul Ryan. Typically, Ryan is left speechless.
"TRUMP: My white campaign manager's moved by my blacks' comments!
RYAN:
TRUMP: When you address blacks and a white likes it: as good as it gets!"
Like any good sitcom writer, Ellickson has a mastery of the essence of his "characters," while developing his own series of inside jokes.
VIDEO GAME | In the past few years, indie video-game developers have been busy churning out dungeon crawlers that kick you back to the very beginning whenever you die. The top-down shoot-em-up ENTER THE GUNGEON is among the hardest, and most fun, of the bunch, swapping swords and arrows for hundreds of guns forged with varying degrees of zaniness. A typical moment in Enter the Gungeon has you diving across a table in a library, then shooting an explosive banana, then kicking the table onto its side in order to block the hail of bullets fired by a muscular raven wielding a Gatling gun.
YOUTUBE | I first stumbled upon Jon and Al Kaplan's LEGOLAMBS channel through their epic 24: Season 2: The Musical, which includes such near-Broadway quality hits as "Dammit! The Longest Day of My Life," "I Will Torture You," and "Three Countries in the Middle East." Turns out they've written dozens of similar songs, mostly for hypermasculine action movies. So Predator gets a "If it bleeds we can kill it" refrain, while The Expendables musical gets spot-on impressions of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jason Statham. ♦
