<![CDATA[This series brings me joy in that the people that I write about bring me joy through laughter, music or film. Sometimes all three. Sometimes a fool can luck his way into being at the right place at the right time in history and will find his/herself surrounded and/or knowing a lot of awesome people. That fool is me. I am an aware fool, though. That makes a difference. I am aware enough to know the luck I have had and the good fortune I seemingly continue to stumble upon.
The more I sit and reflect, the more I realize that most everything that is of import in my life has come to my attention through comedy. Save for my family and friends before I started. Someway, somehow, directly or indirectly all the things I surround my ear hole devices and and eye capturing mechanisms with have come from comedy. For example, I now know someone with a Chaucer tattoo. You read that correctly and I defy you to not want to drop everything and be that person’s best friend for life. Go ahead, I will wait as you try to resist that urge.
This next group of talented artists come to us from the city of Cincinnati. They are to the best of my knowledge not from here originally, but all have convened upon the Queen City for school at Xavier University. They are The Beards of Industry.
The Beards consist of Andrew Short, Reid Faylor and LaMar Ford (if you see him in public you should just yell at the top of your lungs dramatically, “Reggie! Reggie!”). They are technically three people, but one super group of awesome film-making badass-ness. Here is the link to their youtube page.  You can lose yourself on this page and successfully procrastinate from doing tons of work by watching the ridiculousness they birth into this world that needs so much more it. These young and brilliant bastards will be making enjoyable and hilarious things for many years if we’re lucky. I’m sure you’ll hear of them soon enough!
I could list their credits, like winner of the best short film award at the Rooftop Comedy Festival in Aspen this past year from submissions from college students all across the country, a finalist again for the 2010 Festival, and the ability to use a green screen.  The last one is more of a skill, but shit, I do not have any idea of how to even begin to do that – so its impressive to me!  Here are some more of their videos and there is also standup clips online of Reid Faylor and Andrew Short.  Some of my favorites:
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