jimpatrickmurtagh

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

hiking through the Tetons

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

Tranquillity ♡

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

My Friend Michael

The first time I met Michael was when I went back to Fordham for a night to coach a practice for my old improv team, Stranded in Pittsburgh. I was nervous and felt weird about returning to my old campus and old team to run different exercises with them for two hours and offer advice as if I had any more reason to coach than they did. At that point Michael was the only person on the team that I had never performed with. He was gigantic, confident, and so immediately funny. The first thing I ever heard him say was a long winded half sarcastic speech about how he didn’t understand the point of condoms. As most of Michael’s soapbox speeches ended this one ended with an exhausted, “I mean whatever, dude”. The next time I saw Michael was in my apartment in Harlem. I had just been asked to a produce my first show out of college a club in the East Village. I barely knew any comedians in the city yet and so went to my friend Stephen at Fordham to have him recommend some people. Michael was the top of his list. That night in my apartment all the comics I had booked for the show were going over material and pitching ideas. Most of the comics were old friends who hadn’t performed in a couple years. Michael was quick to offer feedback and punch up jokes. He encouraged everyone in the room. When it got to Michael’s turn to pitch his jokes he took out his phone and said loudly and confidently as if he were on stage, “I tell ya I love livin in New York City cause everybody’s got somethin to say!” It decimated. The whole group of us started cracking up through both confusion and genuine love for the joke. Michael told that joke about 3 times at the show the following week and at least once at every following show for a solid 8 months. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=errDGLQaKQ8 After that first show we did together he and I hung out a bit outside. He smoked a cigarette, asked me about other shows I do and what other stuff I do around the city. It came up that we were both musicians but neither of us had been in bands for a while and were trying to get back into it. On my way home he texted me asking if I wanted to come to Brooklyn that following Sunday to his buddy’s studio to play some songs. He recruited my friend Troy who had attended the stand up show and also hit it off with Mike and our friend Sam from Fordham. That was the first time we played together as Skinny Blonde.  It was clear that Michael had a vision for that band and was driven towards a specific goal and specific sound. He wanted it to be noisy and fun for us and the crowd alike. While he had a clear idea of what he wanted he never was one to shut down input. He wanted us to be a band, to all have a say. Playing in that band on and off for the better part of a year will forever be some of my favorite memories. Whether it was the show we played in a public park where Michael shouted defiantly into the microphone, “Dude, like, no one needs guns. It’s so ridiculous.” or our Christmas show at the now defunct Shea Stadium (a dream venue for weirdo New York musicians like us) playing in that band was our real outlet for a long time. Lugging amps from Connecticut to Brooklyn, taking smoke and beer breaks in the studio backyard and talking conspiracy theories, and driving over the Kosciuszko Bridge yelling in thick Brooklyn accents “NOT GONNA HAPPEN! THEY AINT TEARIN THIS BRIDGE DOWN! NOT IF MY FUCKIN UNION GETS A WORD IN EDGE WISE!” The days with Skinny Blonde were some of the greatest ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWFz9eG2-Vc As the band dwindled Mike and I’s friendship only seemed to grow stronger. The last few months of the band were right on the tails of Michael trying to get clean again. He had been using for a few months in Fall 2016 and was finally getting some help. Just as Michael was struggling with sobriety I was struggling with the worst case of anxiety and depression that I had had in years. Though working on himself and getting better Michael was more supportive of me in those months than anyone could have been. I would constantly text him when I was struggling to leave my apartment, if I was afraid I was going to hurt myself, or if I hadn’t eaten or showered in days. He wasn’t judgmental, neurotic, or dramatic. He listened and offered advice and would often end conversations with “But honestly dude, you’re just being a pussy so whatever.” I laughed every time. Michael was the one who finally pushed me to get the help I needed. If I ever texted him a joke during that time he’d respond with a second beat followed quickly by “Also call that doctor”. I don’t know where I’d be right now were it not for his support those few months.  In Spring 2017 we started out sketch team Best Good Boys with our friends Connor and Dayton. While short lived Michael contributed some of the funniest sketches I’ve ever read to that group. Michael wrote the first sketch we ever did and when I first got the script had to take a break three lines in because of how much it made me laugh. This was the opening page: 

It was everything a Michael sketch was right up top: simple, insane, silly, and effortless. The sketch only got better from there and maintained to be the favorite of anyone who knew about our channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3VECUyphPg Once we all got busy doing other things and Best Good Boys dwindled Mike stayed determined. He decided that Summer that every week once a week he would come to my house. I would film a sketch for him and he would film one for me. Even if we never used some of those sketches we kept our word. We filmed a lot of insane things this past Summer. Maybe the best one we filmed (or at least the one that makes me laugh hardest) was Mike’s simplest idea yet: What if an asshole tried to rip off “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”. Mike had been playing around with this character Colton Kelly for a long time. A frat guy from Quinnipiac, Colton was determined to become a figurehead at Barstool and work with some of his favorite comedians such as Tosh, Jeselnik, and Bam Margera. Michael and I sat in his car with the engine off and the windows up in deep deep Summer heat for over an hour. As I sat there caked in sweat laughing but begging to stop the video, Mike continually said “No, we have to get this dude.” He was right and we got it.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk7hpTPipoo The Summer ended with Mike’s most ambitious creative pursuit yet. After both being rejected from a fellowship writing position at Clickhole, Michael said to me “We have all these articles we know are funny. I’ll just make my own site and you can send stuff to me if you want.” That website was “Off the Horn”. 

https://www.offthehorn.com/ If there’s one thing to understand about Mike’s drive to be creative it’s this: Mike never wanted to be a writer on the show. He wanted to be the founder of the new network. Mike’s ideas were always bigger, louder, more aggressive, and simply better than anything the rest of us could come up with. Yet with that he used his drive, his talent, and his power to carry his friends along with him. While “Off the Horn” was his baby he regularly gave a spotlight to old friends and new. Anyone that had an idea Mike deemed funny had a place at “Off the Horn”. In the last couple months Mike grew what we all believed would be a fun little project to keep us all writing into an insane instagram account with the most bizarre loyal following any of us had ever seen. He had teenagers across the country taking videos of themselves covered in paint screaming to his song “Spider in My Room (I’m Tryna Fuck It)”. He had kids in the midwest going after Nazi meme accounts in Mike’s name often writing “dont steal shit from off the horn you racist scumbag #pissgang #cumgang” Mike had become the founder and leader of the #Pissgang #Cumgang movement. It was beautiful and insane. 

https://soundcloud.com/eddiebagels/spiderinmyroom It would be unfair and take a decade to try to explain all the ways Michael touched myself and all of those around him. His commitment to his friends was unparalleled. He simply cared. He just fucking cared more than anyone I have ever known in my life. He picked up everyone around him and was quick to silence judgment and negativity of any kind. It’s not hyperbole to say I know that I will never know another person like him. He was the best in every possible way and every day that he’s not with us will be worse for it. With that I will say this. If there’s anything I know about Michael it’s he wouldn’t want for one second to us to put our humor and our joy aside in order to grieve. Keep laughing, keep hugging, keep yelling, keep loving and if there’s one thing to remember it’s this: The only reason the average person eats 6 spiders a week in their sleep is because Michael used to fucking eat thousands of spiders every night before bed.  Rest easy, Mike. I’ll love you forever.

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

I was asked to make a third commercial for the cereal called cheerios

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

I was asked to make a second commercial for the cereal cheerios

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

dont miss new jeff dunham special coming to netflix this 9/11

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

Fabulous meal

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

I was asked to make a commercial for cheerios cereal

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

A Boy Explaining His New Pants to His Class on The First Day of School

Hello everyone it's Liam Sullivan. I am here to tell you that the pants that I am wearing are not my old pants. No no, they are in fact my new pants. They are so new that I just bought them for $17 at the store using money I was given by my mom at home for cleaning out the litter box of my cat, Rainbow, for two weeks. The new pants are blue. The old pants were green. That is one way you can tell the difference. You see, the old pants got filthy. They got covered in dirt and piss and shit. I could not wear them anymore because I kept getting them covered in wet food and hot vomit. Oh the pee and poo that came streaming from my body filled my old pants until they were dirty with mess. I had to get new pants. I just simply had to. The new pants will last me 6 months. I will never take them off and I will run in them, sleep in them, sit in them, piss in them, fart in them, shit in the new pants, use them as a napkin for when I suck on my salty hands, and I will use them to sit flat in the muck and grime in the swamp that I keep in a pit in the backyard of my house on Scarsdale Avenue. I love my new pants. They are better than the old ones already. If you would like to touch the new pants that will cost $1. If you would like to smell the new pants that will cost $3. If you would like to try on the new pants that will cost $5 and one can of strawberry milk from the cafeteria at lunch. 

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

i have shows this week that you should come to if you are around 8/24-Good Night at Muchmore's 8/25-Be Good at Lucky Jack's 8/27-Gray Door at Brooklyn Brewery they are all free!

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

Bin of corn clothes

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

Accidentaly getting horny at marshalls

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

[jimpatrickmurtagh]

It me