Portman

Mullet Over: A Real American Love Story

2007-10-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

John Buckhalt Jr. clanked his hand-me-down pick up truck up the gravel roadway and eased it into its usual spot next to his cousin Jed’s El Camino. When his father bought the truck it was a deep red, but now the years had worn away most of the paint and huge bites of rust had been taken out of the side. As John Jr. made his way into the trailer the long end of his curly, golden mullet brushed against his sweaty neck. He took off his John Deere cap, ran his fingers through the business part of his hair and wiped his forehead clean.

“J.J.! That you?” his father bellowed from the couch as the screen door slammed shut.

“Yeah paw,” he responded.

“Where the hell you been?” belched John Sr. between sips of his breakfast beer.

John Jr. plopped down on the lazy-boy next to his father and took a deep breath. “I was at Joellen’s paw. I spent the night,” he said with a slouch.

“Well what’s so bad about that boy? You should feel lucky to have such pretty young thang to shack up with every night.”

“I do paw. It’s just…aw nevermind.” J.J. got up and started to walk to the kitchen/bathroom.

“Now hold it right there boy. Grab me another beer and come sit down for a chat with your old man.” John Buckhalt Sr. was as much of a low down drunk as the next piece of unemployed trailer trash that lived in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. But at least he was there for his son, something few men in that area could say for themselves. He snapped open the fresh brew, sipped the foam and put a firm hand on his son’s shoulder. “Tell me what’s wrong boy.”

“Well paw, I was with Joellen last night, and we was…well, you know…we was…”

“You was fuckin’?” interrupted John Sr. trying to speed things along.

“Yeah, we was fuckin’.”

“You been wearing some o’ them condoms?”

“Nah paw, you know they be makin’ my dick all kinds o’ itchy.”

“Now boy, if I told you once I’ve told you a thousand times,” said John Sr. sternly as he leaned towards his son and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t want you raw doggin’ it because it makes yo’ dick itch, I want you raw doggin’ it because them condoms is the devil’s work.”

“Well, anyways, we was fuckin’ an right in the middle she turns ‘round and says she loves me.”

“Well what did you say to her?” asked John Sr. with a sip of his beer.

“I didn’t say nothin’, I just turned her over an’ smacked her fun bags an’ then kept fuckin’.”

“That’s my boy!”

“Well, anyhows paw, I was just wonderin’ how ya know when yer in love? When did you know you loved maw?”

“Hmm…that’s a good question boy. I s’pose that fer me, I didn’t really know it until our wedding day. I was standing up there on the alter an the minister asked me, ‘Do you take this here woman to be yer lofty, dredded wife?’ and I felt this little cold feelin right in the middle of my back.”

“Like chills down yer spine?”

“Naw, it was just yer gran-pappy holdin his ol’ 12 gauge ‘gainst my back.”

“Oh.”

“That doesn’t help to much does it J.J.?”

John Jr. just shook his head in disappointment.

“Hmm…perhaps you should talk to yer momma ‘bout these sorts o’ things.”

John Jr. called for his mother but she was over at the neighbors watching her “stories” and sharing a box of wine and couldn’t be disturbed. So instead he got back in his rusted pickup and drove down the road to Pig Pie’s.

Carl “Pig Pie” Johnson had been best friends with J.J. Buckhalt ever since the third grade when they were on the same Pop Warner football team together. J.J. was quarterback and Pig Pie was his right guard. They kept those roles all the way through grade school including 6 years of high school each. Neither graduated.

“Pig Pie you fat fuck, git yer big, jiggly ass out here! We’re goin to the strip club,” yelled J.J. with his head out his window.

All 350 pounds of Pig Pie came rolling out of his trailer, which bounced upwards a few feet with a relief of pressure.

“Man, I told you to lay off the fat jokes, I’m losin’ weight. I’m doin some ‘er that Atkins diet,” retorted Pig Pie.

“Pig Pie, you ain’t gonna lose any weight when you eat a eight big mac’s every day fer lunch whether yer eatin’ the buns er not.” And with that the two were mostly quiet for the rest of the drive to Bubba’s Big Boob Bonanza. Until, that is about halfway through the drive.

“J.J. why we goin to the strip club?” Pig Pie questioned curiously.

“I dunno Pig Pie, I just gotta blow off some steam.”

“Whatsa matter J.J.?”

J.J. took a deep sigh, contemplating whether or not his overweight friend could really help. Pig Pie had always been his best friend, but he had never been a particularly deep individual. “Pig Pie, you ever been in love?”

“In love?” Pig Pie contemplated. “I love bacon.”

“No, Pig Pie…”

“I love my momma…and football…Oh! And Beer! I loooove Beer!” he continued with a jiggle of his many chins.

“Pig Pie! That’s not what I meant! Just…forget it! We’re here anyways.”

The southern companions made their way through the strip club and straight to the bar where each ordered up a beer. Pig Pie found a seat in the front row. His chair buckled as he collapsed into it startling the bearded old drunk next to him who had been there, asleep from the night before. J.J. meanwhile hovered in the back sipping his beer alone until one stripper, one of the more fit strippers walked up to him.

“Hey fella, what’s a handsome boy like you doin’ all by yer lonesome back here?” asked the stripper. She was wearing a jet-black thong that matched her dark skin and nothing else. “Interest you in a lap dance?”

J.J. didn’t have a lot of cash on him and knew that a lap dance would wipe him out. Yet, something about the Nubian queen standing before him, her nipples exposed and her white smile gleaming intrigued him. She ran her fingers through the long curls hanging off the back of his head and walked towards a back room motioning for him to follow her.
J.J. grew up in a world where the term African-American, let alone black, was seldom used when referring to people like this stripper. He never felt too much animosity towards black people himself. In fact, all of his best and favorite receivers on the high school football team were black. His bus driver in 4th grade Mr. Carter was black and he was always friendly and even would remember everyone’s birthdays, bringing them blow pops and having the whole bus sing to them. The color of this woman’s skin only made her exotic to J.J. and so he followed.

“Have a seat,” she beckoned as J.J. poked his head into the room.

“What’s your name?”

“Cocoa Bidet.”

“No I mean, what’s your real name?” he asked into her ass, not really enjoying the seductive dance she was giving him.

“Whatsa mattah sugah?” she asked, stopping the lap dance and looking him in the eyes.

“Cocoa, have you ever been in love?” inquired J.J. looking up from the ground and staring into her eyes.

Cocoa wasn’t used to having customers stare into her eyes. This young hillbilly intrigued her. “Yeah sugah, I’ve been in love before,” she said putting her top back on.

“How did you know?” His blue eyes still fixed on hers.

“Gee sugah, that’s a tough question. I guess…you just know.”

“Oh,” he said with a sigh and a drop of his shoulders.

“Hmm…close yer eyes sugah,” she said putting her hand on J.J.’s as he reluctantly listened, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “Now picture yerself twenty years from now.” He paused for a second, thinking, then nodded silently. “Is she there with ya?”

“Yeah, she is. We’ve got our own trailer and seven little kids with their own little mullets. Business in the front,” he continued, getting a little choked up, “party in the back. And-”

“Sugah. If you care ‘bout this girl enough to want to spend your life with her and have kids with her, then I think that means yer in love.”

“You really think so?”
“I know so sugah.”

“Thanks, Cocoa! Thanks so much!” he exclaimed jumping out of his seat. He reached into his pocket to pay Cocoa but before he could pull out the cash her hand met his.

“Keep it sugah. Buy her some flowers with it.”

“Cocoa, yer the best!” he exclaimed, and with that he was off to proclaim his love for Joellen in such a hurry that he left Pig Pie drooling over a particularly chunky stripper with her crotch in his face.

B.S. Detectives Promo

2007-10-29T14:13:00.001-07:00

Here is the first promo for the show Zach, Sean and I are producing this semester, The B.S. Detectives. Enjoy:

A Summer Project of Mine

2007-10-23T23:56:00.001-07:00

The Best Kung Fu Movie Ever: A Revenge Story

Written, Produced and Directed by your's truly. Edited by me as well with great help from Goya Von Johannson in the Graphics Department. Starring some friends I worked for this summer.

A Tale As Old As Old People

2007-10-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

That morning started like any other morning in Gordon Biederbaum’s life. His eyelids quivered and then popped open at the exact moment that the glow of the sunrise passed onto them just like they had for each of his 2 years fighting in Korea, just like they had for each of his 47 years as a businessman and just like they had for each of his 8 years of retirement.

His weathered, green eyes still shot to life at the start of each and every day, even though the rest of his body could no longer keep up with them. With his days as a scrappy, young businessman behind him, Gordon found that now even the most mundane daily tasks where enough to keep him occupied for hours. Five minutes to slowly and carefully sit up in his bed and drag his tired bones into an upright position. Another few minutes to walk the 5 feet to the bathroom. From there, it usually took a good hour for him to safely and properly get in and out of the shower, wash his leathery, wrinkled skin, pop in his dentures, take his pills, and dress himself all without causing a dangerous fall and have to use his life-alert bracelet. Not to mention at least an extra half an hour for Gordon’s other morning bathroom duties.

Gordon was especially perky on this morning because it was Saturday. Saturday mornings in Boca were when all of the retired women who were still young and spunky enough to walk, strolled across the beaches in their skimpiest, mid-thigh-length skirts.

Gordon liked all mornings. But Gordon loved Saturday mornings.

It was after Gordon took close to two hours to slowly, but carefully, prepare himself for his favorite weekly ritual that he set out on the hardest part of his morning. He went to wake up Herman.

Herman Hurstly first met Gordon Biederbaum in Korea. They were in the same platoon together. Herman was more of a night owl and never did well waking up early, so since their first day of active duty for the army Gordon had been waking Herman up. Gordon was Herman’s alarm clock for 2 full years during the war. Then, after the war when they started their own business together, Gordon woke Herman up every morning for 47 very successful years. Nowadays, Gordon would let Herman sleep most mornings, only waking him up long enough to make sure his oldest friend hadn’t died during the night. Except on Saturdays.

“Herman, it’s Saturday! Now wake up or we’ll miss all the broads,” said Gordon as he ripped off Herman’s sheets revealing not one, but two feeble, tarnished old bodies, four ancient legs intertwined,, four saggy breasts and one proud morning erection. Herman was probably the only man in all of the Pinecrest Place retirement community who hadn’t been using Viagra of some sort for years. The other body belonged to Dotty Binderman, a woman known for her strong, non-arthritic hands that made her one of the best quilters in the community as well as one of the few women that could still give a decent hand job.

Outraged and embarrassed, Dotty screamed, waking Herman and nearly causing him to tumble out of bed; it could have been a significantly life threatening fall when you’re 78 and an even more threatening fall when you consider Herman probably would have had only his glorious morning wood to break to land on. Still repulsed by the intrusion, Dotty made the two men help her up out of bed, had them help her get her clothes back on and then had them call a nurse to escort her to her room since she always forgot which room was hers and had had enough embarrassment for one morning.

“So you’re fucking Dotty Binderman now?” Gordon asked.

“Well I’m not fucking her now, right now I’m trying to get my stiffy to go down so I can get my pants on and go on your stupid walk,” Herman retorted sarcastically from within his closet.

“It’s not a stupid walk. I like the fresh air and lord knows we both need the exercise, not to mention the view,” reasoned Gordon.

“Trust me, I’m all exercised out after last night. I tell you, I’m sick of these women using their hip surgeries and knee replacements as an excuse to make me do all the work between the sheets,” exclaimed Herman as he finally just grabbed a pair of sweatpants and started eyeing his socks.

“You know what, just spare me Herman. I’m old too and I don’t even want to hear about that.”

“I’m happy to go on your walk with you Gordon, but for Christ’s sake why must you insist on just looking at these women. Can’t you ever make a move? We’re outnumbered 3 to 1 at this place. These women are hungry for it. Not to mention, they treat each time like it could be their last. As you’re friend, I’m telling you to move on. It’s what Betty would have wanted.”

Gordon didn’t respond. Herman knew full well that even though the one woman Gordon had ever loved died 7 years ago; Gordon would probably never be unfaithful to her. Through 2 years in Korea and 47 years as a businessman, Gordon was always loyal to his high school sweetheart Betty. Herman on the other hand had never had a relationship last more than 6 weeks and he liked things that way. He was the indomitable bachelor, even now in his twilight years.

It was only just within the last few years that Gordon had even started to look at other women, let alone talk to them with romantic intentions. He convinced himself that his old friend was thinking with his little head and not his big head ignoring the brotherly advice.

“Come on, we’ve got to get going,” said Gordon, rushing Herman along rather than continuing the conversation.

As they walked down the beach ogling the women of the community they reminisced, discussing things they missed about “their day” and all the things that today’s young people were screwing up. They paused occasionally to notice how Alice Burbush still had a nice ass even at 83 or to discuss whether or not Barbra Feinstein’s boobs were real.

“All I’m saying is if they’re real, they’re fantastic!” exclaimed Herman.

“And I understand that but I still believe that–” Gordon stopped mid sentence, staring off ahead of them, leaving Herman to momentarily ponder whether or not his best friend was having a stroke. But Gordon was fine and, as soon as Herman’s eyes gravitated to what Gordon’s eyes had fixated on, they were both silent.

Her name was Ethel Manningham. She was the widow to an old oil billionaire and had used her days as a billionaire’s wife to stay young, healthy and buxom. Though gravity and a long life had worn away her once perfect figure, she was still a fine specimen.

“I heard she had some of the male nurses hitting on her the other day,” gossiped Herman. “In fact, I’m pretty sure her last boyfriend was a Vietnam vet.”

“She’s…perfect,” muttered an entranced Gordon. “Why she’s probably still on the free 6-month trial of her AARP magazine. She’s so–“ Gordon stopped his daydreaming abruptly when he realized that Herman was no longer by his side but approaching Ethel. He panicked as he saw the one man he’d always known to be able to get any woman on the planet go after only the second woman Gordon had ever desired in his life. He knew that the second the man who he’d woken up every day since they were army buddies turned on the charm Ethel would be tainted by his lustful, unstoppable inhibitions.

Gordon bolted, literally ran for the first time since before he qualified for social security and dove through the air, grabbing his oldest and dearest friend around the ankles and dragging him down to the ground.

Herman landed with a thud, nothing broken but in total shock and confusion.

“WHAT THE-” but before the obscenity could reach his lips, he was silenced as Gordon had scrambled to his feet and socked Herman right in the jaw.

Now no longer trying to make sense of what was going on but rather realizing that he was engaged in a dire battle Herman looked to his left and saw a crowd growing. Two older women, one in a wheelchair and the other with a walker stopped in their tracks, staring at the two old men who were fighting like schoolboys. Gordon let out a near-inhuman cry and began to charge at his old friend. Herman, without hesitation stepped to his left and yanked the woman’s walker from beneath her swinging it through the air and striking his former business partner in the side of the head with it. Gordon and the woman each hit the ground.

The woman screamed, mostly out of fear and confusion.

Gordon turned on his side and brought a hand to his left cheek. He used two fingers to swab up a bit of the warm liquid that was running down the side of his face and onto his favorite Hawaiian shirt. The same shirt he saved to wear every Saturday morning. He brought his bloody fingers to his mouth and licked them, tasting the warm scarlet that his friend had caused him to spill.

“Gordon, what the FUCK are you doing?! Stop this and let me help you up,” as Herman reached out his hand as an olive branch of peace he quickly found himself on the same level as his old army buddy. Gordon’s leg sweep was too swift for Herman to even see coming. Using this opportunity to gain the advantage, Gordon leapt to his feet, grabbed the cane of a 95 year-old man who had joined the growing crowd of onlookers and raised it as if he was a Ronin warrior and it was his samurai sword.

Herman slowly arose, grabbing his hip as if it was injured. Meanwhile, Herman used his other hand to grasp a large amount of sand.

As Gordon lunged at Herman with the cane his eyes filled with a dry, stinging and he dropped the cane staggering backwards and nearly tumbling over a bench. He cleared his vision just in time to see his oldest friend winding up for a knock out punch. He ducked out of the way just in time allowing Herman’s own forward momentum to propel him into the bench causing him to flip over it and land on his back.

Gordon was out of breath and still partially blinded from the sand. Herman was lying still on his back with a look of sheer pain on his face. Gordon gathered himself and went over to his old friend who laid squirming and moaning slightly.

“Herman. Not this one. This one is mine. I call dibs on this one.”

“That’s fine Gordon,” responded Herman with a pained chuckle, “just tell that to Ronnie Schneider.”

Gordon turned around to see Ethel Manningham walking off next to Ronnie Schneider, her hand around his arm. The new pair was laughing and talking, no doubt, about the strange events that had just unfolded. With a thud, Gordon collapsed next to his beaten and battered friend and the two lay there for a while and enjoyed a laugh together as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

Smurfberry Kool-Aid

2007-09-03T19:10:00.000-07:00

So we were in White Hen, Sean was talking, he said something that made me think an idea and I had our friend Joey Abisso who was with us at the time and happens to be a whiz at flash make us this little animation:

This is a short little commercial from the 90s, quickly banned from the airwaves after its initial airing and stolen just recently from the Kraft vault by the members of Cannibal Potluck. Here's hoping that it will reawaken some childhood/prenatal memories.

Home Sweet Home

2007-08-22T23:57:00.000-07:00

I have descended upon Ithaca and let me just say, it feels GREAT to be here!!! This semester will be absolutely HUGE!!! And I am so excited to have officially kicked it off by arriving here in ITHACA!!!

To the Best Lay a Guy's Ever Gotten

2007-07-11T21:42:00.000-07:00

Former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson passed away today. Let us all brandish our erections and take a moment of silence to remember the stone cold fox that she was.

Old Blog

2007-06-29T17:38:00.001-07:00

Here's a link to my old blog that I kept up for about a month last summer.

http://portmanposts.blogspot.com/

Sweet Home Chicago

2007-06-18T14:38:00.001-07:00

Attention CP Nation,

This weekend I traveled to my birthplace to witness the conclusion of my older brother Benjamin's academic career as well as to celebrate the third sunday in may with my father and grandfather. I spent quality time with aunts and with my cousin Kevin, seen here displaying his unbelievable drumming and acting skills in the feature film School of Rock:

I also enjoyed cigars with my grandfather Seymour "Butch" Portman who everyone has informed me is a spitting image of what I will look like in about 65 years or so. (As seen above),

That's all for now, I have returned to the greater Boston area.

Inspiring

2007-06-15T14:09:00.003-07:00

The Port Authority

2007-06-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Check out my new personal store, The Port Authority. It is now linked up with the CP Shop and open for business with it's first product the Two-Sided Labeled Thong.

Go to www.cafepress.com/portauthority1 for ordering info and keep an eye out for more Port-Man-Made Gear.

CP + CP = Super Cool Merchandise

2007-06-02T23:22:00.000-07:00

I know you've all been anxiously awaiting your chance to spend you money in order to prove your love for Cannibal Potluck, and now's your chance!!! Thanks to some brilliant internet research and photoshopping by CP's own Sean Frankfurt Brogan we now have our own shop (sort of). Just got to www.cafepress.com/cannibalpotluck and you can shop for all kinds of things to wear, drink out of, take off, cook in, and tell time with all while supporting your six favorite rising comedians.

COMING SOON ::Keep an eye out for links to the new CP Store as well as our new sketch JEWOPOLY:: COMING SOON

The Race 2 Premiere

2007-05-17T09:03:00.000-07:00

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, The Race 2's premiere episode (Starring Cannibal Potluck's own Dave Newberg and Matt Portman [That's me]) is now available on ictv.org.

http://ictv.org/sections/video_on_demand/The_Race_201.mov

The other episode should be up by the end of the month.

-Portman Out!

B.S. Sneak Peak

2007-05-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

Last winter break, Zach Capp called me late one night and told me an idea he had inspired partially by his man-crush on Tony Shaloub's character Monk and partially on an article in the Ithacan last year about on-campus spies. We stayed up late that night throwing ideas around across the coasts and by dawn the B.S. Detectives were born! Soon thereafter we got Sean on board, wrote a script and got greenlit by ICTV for next semester. We're looking for the best to work on our show, so if that's you then we better see you on rush night (if that's not you then I don't even wanna see you near my table, just go straight to the Fake Out table). Anyways, here's a sneak peak at our rush night video.

CP News Package

2007-05-06T21:22:00.000-07:00

This just in from some of our favorite parkies, a little news story done for a journalism class on Cannibal Potluck.

More Publicity

2007-05-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a little recent press coverage for an article in the Ithacan about chalking on campus. I got interviewed for all the chalking I did on campus recently.

http://theithacan.org/am/publish/news/200705_Chalking_policy_reviewed.shtml

Race Technical Difficulties

2007-05-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, so there were some technical difficulties and the second episode of the race did not air. BUT the first two episodes should be put up online at ictv.org sometime this weekend. For now, here's another writing by yours truly, a short story for my creative writing class:

The Sandwich

It didn’t start like this at all. It started beautifully. A voluptuous woman, a caring mother of three, pieced me together for her youngest son’s lunch. Like Parvathi, wife of Shiva, she molded me out of the most delicious morsels available in her refrigerator. She carefully folded each slice of turkey and ham placing them gently on the first slice of bread. She spread the mustard delicately, giving me some moist, yet tangy sweetness. She evenly sprinkled the onions and lettuce and then she elegantly placed a cold slice of provolone on top. She pressed the two pieces of bread together, and sliced me in half diagonally, making a perfect and painless cut with the precision of a brain surgeon.

I couldn’t have been tastier. She wrapped me in a sandwich bag with her motherly grace and then placed me in the brown paper bag, right between the Cooler Ranch Doritos, a fresh apple, and a chilled Wild Berry Capri Sun. There I sat, waiting.
Understand that, as a sandwich, my life span must be considered relatively. Most sandwiches are made and eaten immediately and have no time to contemplate life before achieving the joy of pleasing someone’s taste buds. Some sandwiches, like me, are made and brown-bagged. Others are made and may live for days without being eaten. The sandwiches I empathize with most are the ones who never get eaten. They never get to know the pure joy a sandwich feels when someone bites into them, squeezing condiments to the side, chewing, enjoying, making that most beautiful sound that leads to pure ecstasy, that “Mmmmm” sound that means one has truly served a purposeful life.

Thus, a sandwich spending six hours in a brown paper bag is probably most equivocal to a human being spending sixty years on a cold, dark, boat, below deck, unable to see out of the ship; only accompanied by a group of complete strangers of totally different species on the long journey towards destiny. Sometimes we hit some rough waters, getting crushed in backpacks, getting tossed into a large plastic bag with dozens of other lunches to be refrigerated in suspended animation until lunchtime. Those in brown paper bags were susceptible to having there hulls breeched and being thrown overboard either to be brutally crushed or to be lost forever. Other lunches are fortunate safely kept in the cold but strong embrace of a lunch box. It’s the difference between getting in a car accident while driving a Pinto and getting in one while driving a Hummer. The brown paper bag doesn’t stand a chance in there.

I made it though. I sat there in a long dormant, meditative state, focusing on my destiny and blocking out the fear of not making it. I admit my chances were pretty good going in because I was near the top of the bag. I felt a quick rush of relief as the bag was thudded onto a table and the mad scramble amongst the children, like a pack of starving, flesh-eating piranhas, ensued. Pushing, shoving, grabbing—it’s a necessary chaos. The child for whom I was created was big and fat, which told me two very good things. First, he’d reach me pretty quickly, dominating his meeker classmates. Second, I would definitely get eaten.

I felt the sharp tug as his sausage-like fingers squeezed around the top of the bag and jerked it airborne. His chubby little legs shuffled as fast as they could to a seat. He plopped down, threw the bag down somewhat roughly, and began to tear in. The bag had been stapled shut at the top so he literally ripped it open.

Let me just take a moment to say how honored I felt to be the sandwich in all of this. As I look back on it, all of my other colleagues from my days in the brown paper bag will never know the rush I know to be the first course in a lunch. Whenever a young child rips open his lunch, the first item he grabs, every time, without fail, is his sandwich. Some kids are a little OCD and lay everything out first and using their brown paper bag as a plate. They neatly lay out their fruit and other snacks, opening their chips and their drink, having everything prepared.

My child was not this cautious. His porcine hands found me and yanked me out. He barely got me all the way out of the plastic bag before he chomped into me not once, but three times quickly. Chomp. Chomp. Chomp! I was already a quarter of the way gone.

Can I rightfully complain? Sure I was being enjoyed, but I felt cheap, like a five-dollar hooker doing pro-bono work. I wasn’t being savored properly. He wasn’t taking the time to taste the delicious organic vegetables his mother put in with an attempt to keep him healthy. With another large bite I was half eaten. It all happened too fast. If he took no time to enjoy me, then how could I take time to enjoy him enjoying me? This little brat was literally ruining my life and all my simplistic goals.

He grabbed at his drink and sucked half of it down. Then he started at the chips. Munching them down, handful at a time, like someone was going to come up and take his food from him if he didn’t eat it all before the criminal arrived. I wished he would trade the other half of me for something, even if it were an unfair trade. As long as someone else, someone other than him would eat and enjoy me. I’d have been traded for a kid’s fruit at this point and not have felt as insignificant as he was making me feel. I could be made of anything, as long as it was edible, and he’d have devoured me just the same. This kid was a garbage disposal, sucking in and annihilating anything within reach of his pudgy arms.

As he yanked me up and started the quick process of inhaling the last of my earthly remains I remember thinking, “If this kid doesn’t slow down he’s going to vomit.”

It’s funny how we foreshadow our own lives sometimes.

The reaction was the norm; he was led to the nurse’s office with dribbles of vomit hanging from his chin. Everyone screamed as soon as it happened and then they all kept an immediate fifteen-foot radius from me. So here I lie, causing anyone who looks at me to become sickened. Everyone who dares take a peak at me gives a look of utter repulsion. I want to cry, but sandwiches don’t have tear ducts, especially not after they’ve been chewed, swallowed, and regurgitated.

Just look at me, a once gorgeous specimen, beautifully conceived by a goddess, now literally chewed up and spit back out by reality. Awaiting the janitor’s arrival, at which point he will humiliate me further, throwing that damn yellow sawdust on me, mopping me up. At least then, it would all be over. I don’t know if I have mentioned it already, but I am a Hindu. I’m not totally sure if being a sandwich was a step up or step back from my last incarnation, but I think I’ve suffered enough to come back as God’s greatest creature, a cow. Then again, knowing my luck, I’ll end up in the slaughterhouse.

From THE MAN Himself, Mr. Peter Berg!

2007-05-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

Hey cast and crew,

I hope you got a chance to catch the premiere of The Race 2 on
Tuesday, but if you missed it, you're in luck. The first episode will
be re-airing tonight at 9:00PM on ICTV!

But that's not all, because Episode 2 will also be airing tonight, at
10:00PM, right afterward.

Pete Berg

So yeah, watch Dave and I on the race, first two episodes, it is GREAT TELEVISION!!! And if you miss it I'm confident that Pete will be putting it up on ICTV.org very soon. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Publicity

2007-05-02T09:18:00.000-07:00

Until the news page is up I'm going to keep doing news here in my blog:

I'm getting interviewed by the Ithacan today (mostly about the chalk drawings I did all over the IC campus) so look for that article as well as a full page interview with CP in the next issue of the Buzzsaw Haircut.

More Brilliant Writings

2007-05-02T00:39:00.000-07:00

Here is a poem I wrote for my creative writing class. It is an ode to Pippi Longstocking:

Blow Job Handlebars

Oh Pippi Longstocking, we were children together,
I’d read about you on days with rainy weather,
Read about the horse on your front porch,
Read about your hair, red enough to scorch,
Your freckles, your pigtails, your piles of gold,
I want you to hold me and keep me warm, not cold,

Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Longstocking
I wish I could marry you and spend our whole wedding night focking,
And we’d live together in Ville Villekulla,
Having no parents, not going to school-a,
And we’d spend days with Mr. Nilsson and Old Man,
Can’t you see Pippilotta, I’m your number one fan.

Oh Pippilotta, you make my blood hotta,
So come on baby, in a bed, a couch or a cot-a,
It don’t matter where, but we must make love a lot-a,

So call up your father Efraim the seafarer,
Tell him we need a flower girl and a ring bearer,
And that he must come ashore for his daughter’s wedding,
For we will get married and defile your bedding

I yearn for you and those sexy pigtails,
I’d do it all for you, I’d fly, run or sail,
I’d travel round the globe or even to mars,
Just to use your pig tails as blowjob handle bars.

I'm going to ask Sean to draw Pippi giving me a blowjob and then I'll scan it and put it up with this poem.

CP + CH = KICK ASS!

2007-05-01T15:19:00.000-07:00

So as PR Director I've wrote and have been distributing a press release to various agencies within the professional world. One such organization that I sent the press release to was collegehumor.com. Here's the press release:

Ithaca, NY – www.cannibalpotluck.com a comedy website run by six Ithaca College students is launching tomorrow, May 1st, 2007. The six students – Harrison Flatau, Matt Portman, Zach Capp, Dave Newberg, Sean Brogan, and Jake Alinikoff (all sophomores) – began collaborating in February and are now ready to present their hard work to the public.

The main purpose of the website is to feature videos of comedy sketches, however there will also be bios, blogs, photos, and more. The launch will feature three sketches and more should be released in the coming weeks.

and here's what they wrote back

Hey guys-

I'm an IC alum myself (Steph Belsky '06) - I'll definitely send your
link to our editors and see if I can't get you guys a hotlink in the
next day or two. I would definitely suggest creating a new CH account
solely for cannibalpotluck and uploading your clips through the
console. Your stuff is good though so I'll be happy to forward it
along. Good luck guys and keep me posted on new stuff :)

Best,
Steph

So hopefully you guys will be seeing us up on college humor in no time!

Portman Out!

Here is a personal essay I wrote

2007-05-01T00:46:00.000-07:00

The Delivery

December 16, 1987 was a memorable day for me. They were supposed to induce labor the day before, but a huge blizzard snowed us in. The next day was the single most momentous day of my lifetime up to that point, since the night just nine months prior when my mother asked my father for a neck rub and got more than she bargained for.

My father has always been a workaholic, so I can imagine that he studied and trained extensively prior to the event. He has also always been in tip-top shape. He has worked out just about every day of my life and I imagine most days before it. I’ve always assumed he’s been training just in case one of his children turn on him, however I’ve never been able to tell for certain if none of us has done so because of that or in spite of it. One thing I do know is that he has kept his body at a peak condition because of his inherent perfectionism, a quality that I’m sure also led him to prepare for the events of that evening in excess and master the craft. He has always had the highest demands on himself and everything he does. Which leads me to believe that, despite the fact that they had been married already for about three years at that point, the sex my parents had on that fateful night in March of 1987 was still passionate, erotic, and enjoyable for both parties. For me, the night was probably my greatest success. After all, I did beat over a million others in the swimming race of my life.

In the next nine months I achieved a lot of personal growth. I not only continuously multiplied myself from a single celled organism into the beginnings of the man I am today, I also taught myself to suck my thumb. Mostly, I rested, enjoyed the free food, and prepared myself for the day I would enter into the world.

It was a cold day in Evanston, Illinois. Fortunately I still had my mother’s body heat to keep me warm, but I feared that I would need a winter jacket of some sort as soon as I left her warm embrace. Our trip to the hospital was brief, seeing as we lived about a mile away from it, if not less. My mother and I had spent a lot of time there recently. My birth was not just an ordeal of the day. The problems started about a week prior around December 9th. Originally I had been due on Christmas Eve, which explains a lot of my more messianic qualities. On that day, it was a Thursday, my mother went in for a routine sonogram and the doctor saw that I was perfectly situated upside-down, all ready to come out head first with the exception of the fact that I needed about another week in the oven before I was crisped to that nice golden brown color that lets the doctors know it’s time to take me out. The next day however, I got bored and thought I could use some exercise so I decided to take a little stroll along my mother’s kidney. This gave her some sharp pains (which I apologized for repeatedly in the subsequent years) and so she returned to the doctor. Once there they discovered that I had turned 180 degrees and was now in a position to come out ass first into the world; something I think might have been fitting, but perhaps not medically safe. They brought in an expert to do all kinds of exercises and special poking and prodding with my mother in order to coerce me into either completing the circle I had started to walk or backtrack to the position I had been in twenty four hours earlier. I don’t remember the expert doctor’s name, but I could easily see that he was very Jewish and thus I wasn’t too worried. The other oddity to this part of the story is that it is very rare to have had a situation like mine and Evanston hospital, since it is located so near to Northwestern University, is a teaching hospital. Thus, a lot of people came to observe this event of poking and prodding and hopping around and just generally trying to convince me that it was a good idea to turn back around. The thing was, all that walking I had just done really tired me out. After all, most people don’t learn to walk until over a year after they are born, and there I was literally walking circles around other children (or at least around my mother’s stomach) and they expected more out of me. Despite his best attempts, the Jewish doctor was unable to please his audience and I remained comfortably right side up.

As the week went on I continued to remain in that position. I already mentioned the snowstorm the next Tuesday that kept us home and inside. Following that debacle we (my mother, my father, and I) woke up early and went to the hospital first thing in the morning. Doctor Ronald Miller, my mother’s obstetrician/gynecologist was a handsome man with sandy, brown hair and a beard to match. He had a calming voice and stayed poised throughout the day’s events. He was not Jewish, but he wasn’t some kid fresh out of medical school, so I trusted him.

Dr. Miller did another sonogram and saw that I was still upside down. He then began the process of picking up where his Judaic colleague had left off, poking and prodding. The pokes eventually became sharp and uncomfortable so I moved. Slowly but surely I walked back around, finally ending up headfirst.

I cannot explain why I did what I did next, except to say that it felt like the right thing to do at the time. I put my hand on my head, making it still dangerous to extract me from the womb. Had they tried to remove me with my hand on my head, several of the nerves in my arm and shoulder would have been damaged making it potentially useless for the rest of my life. Some may say that I was being a prima donna, holding up the birth and refusing to come out on anyone else’s terms but my own, however, I’m not a morning person, I’m much more of a late afternoon/early evening kind of guy. Even to this day I’m a total night owl. I have a tough time getting to bed at a reasonable hour and waking up before noon has always been a struggle for me. And at this point in the early afternoon, I just was not quite awake enough to go through something and intensive as being born.

Around three o’clock Dr. Miller first mentioned the C-word and my dad got really worried. After all, no man wants his wife, the woman he loves, to be cut open like a grapefruit at Sunday brunch only to be left with a hideous scar, even if it is for the well being of his soon-to-be-favorite son. As they continued to try and persuade me into taking my hand off my head my dad decided to take action. He kneeled down next to the bed my mother was laying on and put his head as close as they would let him to her still filled belly. He then began to try to channel me mentally.

“Take your hand off of your head. Please, Matthew, just take your hand off of your head. Move your hand! Move. Your. Hand! MATTHEW! TAKE YOUR FUCKING HAND OFF YOUR GODDAMN HEAD!” The last part, he accidentally said out loud. I remember hearing this and getting the first taste of my father’s temper, a quality I would inherit and be plagued by throughout childhood and adolescence. It was scary, however it only made me want to dwell deeper within the warm, cozy den I had known for the past 9 months rather than come out and face my father’s full wrath.

As well intentioned as my father’s attempts at telepathy were, he did not succeed. Instead, it was when Dr. Miller started to give up and started to prepare my mother for the possibility of a cesarean section that I began to soften up, to hear the fear and the quivering in her voice, to realize that if I truly loved this woman who kept me warm and safe and well fed my whole life, then I would get the hell out of her uterus.

So I turned to my hand, and I said, “Hand, you’re gonna hafta come off of my head. I know you’re comfortable there and I know you’re too stubborn to let that guy out there poke you to some place you don’t wanna be. But you gotta do this, for our mother.” My hand graciously obliged and a little after five o’clock I finally left the only home I had ever known.

It wasn’t a smooth delivery. My hip was dislocated in the process and I was forced to wear a tiny little brace the first six weeks of my life. I still have it stored in a closet in my house; it’s still got shit stains all over it. I’m not ashamed to say cried a lot, mostly because of the hip, but it was an emotional ordeal. But I made it. I got out of there in tact and I did it my way, on my terms. Sure I was stubborn and my actions were completely unnecessary and uncalled for, but I’ve always been that way, and I’ll always be that way. Different, original, even if it means the health and happiness of the ones I love, even if it means doing things in the longest, most drawn out, most painful way possible, and yet, everything turns out okay in the end.

2007-04-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Tune in to channel 16 if you'r in Ithaca, or check ictv.org in the coming days for the first of 5 episodes of The Race 2. Starring cannibalpotluck.com's own Dave Newberg and Matt Portman as "The Number One Nice Guys Team."

www.ictv.org

also check out the ondemand section for episodes of Beyond Ramen (starring me) This Week Tonight (Starring Sean Brogan), DP show (Featuring all of us at points) and more to come.

About Me

2007-04-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying just how pumped I am for tomorrow nights launch. Understand that this project is several months in the making. We've been spending a lot of the little free time we've had meeting, writing, filming, editing, and prostituting ourselves just to get this site out to you, the people of the world, and all that's left to do is hope and pray that you'll like it. We're going to keep working throughout the summer and try to meet and film and get some more sketches out as soon as possible.

Now then, for a bit about myself. I am currently about two weeks away from finishing up my second year at Ithaca College as a Journalism major. I currently aspire to work as documentary filmmmaker in some capacity and I am interning at Powderhouse Productions (www.powderhouse.net) in Somerville, MA this summer to work towards that goal. My freshmen year of college I jumped onto the ICTV scene second semester as talent for Quabble and host of the premiere ICTV cooking show, Beyond Ramen. This year I continued my work with Quabble and eventually stepped up as the host of the show late last semester when the old host stepped down. I'm currently in the works of collaborating with my good, CP buddies Zach Capp and Sean Brogan on our ICTV Masterpiece, The B.S. Detectives -- coming Fall 2007.

So far for CP I have co-written Discontinuous and co-starred in it (both with Sean Brogan) and I also co-starred in Fabulosos which was a group writing effort. I'd say I was crew on Sticky Tweet Tweet, but really I just sat around and stayed out of the way for that one. Currently I've got a few other sketches in the works and I'll be within driving range of Sean all summer so expect us to churn some stuff out together. I'd love to stay and write some more, but we're all going to run around town to shoot our next sketch (look for that in the coming weeks). I hope you enjoy the site!