A top five from the Pineapple Express star, Mr. Oswalt addresses his alma mater, and Baby’s First Internet.

Based on an unscientific method — gauging my own friends’ reactions to the trailer and ads — feelings seem mixed on the next Apatow outing, Pineapple Express. It would be nice to believe he and his crew can continue the charmed run of quality comedy they’ve put out each of the last few summers, but whether reducing the ratio of dick jokes and smack talk for guns and car chases will work, we’ll have to wait and see. Part of the problem may be that the stereotypical ‘buddy film’ formula has been so well-worn and driven into the ground by this point, we’ve learned to tune them out. I dare you to try to sit all the way through Rush Hour 3 or Harold and Kumar the next time you flip past them replaying on cable.

Proving my point, WSJ has Seth Rogen’s 5 picks for great buddy films.

If you’re too absorbed here to click through, I’ll run down the list for you: The Last Detail, 48 Hours, Withnail and I, Lethal Weapon, and Midnight Run. Noticeably absent is any movie made in the last twenty years. Rogen’s a year younger than I am, as hard as that is for me to swallow, and that means he was around six years old when the last of these were released. To be honest, I’ve seen less than half of these. One, because my netflix queue is backed up, but two, because they were before my time; excuse me, make that before our time.

As co-writer of Pineapple Express, he must have realized he was naming a bunch of classics and essentially illustrating that maybe it’s a sub-genre best left alone. Or, after their run of successes, he and his cohorts think they’re the new kings of comedy and can do anything they put their minds to.

Frankly, I hope they’re right. I’ll continue to hold out hope — I remain a fan of both Rogen and Franco going all the way back to Freaks & Geeks – but expectations may have to be set accordingly on this one.

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Apparently this has been around a bit already, but I just found it recently while catching up on kathryn yu dot com, and had to profess some love.

Patton Oswalt’s commencement speech to this year’s class at his old high school.

All of you have been given a harsh gift.  It’s the same gift the graduating class of 1917, and 1938, and 1968 and now you guys got – the chance to enter adulthood when the world teeters on the rim of the sphincter of oblivion.    You’re jumping into the deep end.   You have no choice but to be exceptional.

But please don’t mistake miles traveled, and money earned, and fame accumulated for who you are.    

Because now I understand how the miraculous, horrifying and memorable lurk everywhere.    But they’re hidden to the kind of person I was when I graduated high school.   And now – and it’s because of my traveling and living and some pretty profound mistakes along the way – they’re all laid open to me.   They’re mine for the feasting.    In the Sistine Chapel and in a Taco Bell.   In Bach’s Goldberg Variations and in the half-heard brain dead chatter of a woman on her cell phone behind me on an airplane. In Baghdad, Berlin and Sterling, Virginia.

Not only is it a great speech, but how lucky are those kids? 20 bucks says that if you poll 100 people on their high school commencement speaker — or even their university one, for that matter — less than half will remember who that person was, less than a quarter will have found that person insightful and/or funny, and maybe two or three, tops, will actually remember something they said. Some lucky kids in Virginia got all of the above.

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Lastly, a bit of fun. Long-time internet writer Kevin Fanning and comic artist Kean Soo teamed up over at the Morning News to create a delightful guide-slash-takedown of Web 2.0 culture.

The result is a delightful illustrated poem called Baby’s First Internet. Here’s a taste:

Of course, it must all be taken with a grain of salt, as they conveniently left out the necessary jab at internet writers’ tendency to take jabs at internet writing. Nonetheless, the jokes are true and the drawings are adorable, so enjoy.