The Remains Of Vaudeville

I've been a fan of oldtime radio for a while now, listening to tapes of Jack Benny and Burns and Allen and whatnot since college. I've also read a lot of their biographies, and am currently making my way through the tales of Fred Allen. Allen has a lot of great stories about his vaudeville days, and it's interesting to think about a time in history when a person or group with a good eight-minute act could make a living for the rest of their life touring the various vaudeville circuits around the country. Of course, when radio came along, your fine polished act would be eaten up in a quick eight minutes, and then they'd say "what else ya got?"

Thanks to the existence of YouTube, we can peek into a little of what vaudeville was like and get aat least a taste of the unique vanished talent of that age. The picture accompanying this post is Mr. Wilbur Hall, who I had never heard of before today. He's performing a novelty violin solo act that is just amazing. You just don't see people doing stuff like this today. (And yes, he really is playing the violin here.)

I discovered that video after watching an incredible performance by Spike Jones and His City Slickers of a piece called "I Like To Sock Myself In The Face", but oddly enough, after being online for a year and viewed by over 45,000 folks, the uploader took it down sometime today. Anyway, here's another look at the weirdness and talent that is Spike Jones. Oh, and if you've never seen their classic short film for the post-prohibition song "Cocktails For Two", well check it out.

Some of y'all know I'm a huge fan of Cab Calloway. Through Cab, I discovered the amazing talent of The Nicholas Brothers, two of the best tapdancers that ever lived. Check out Cab and Fayard and Harold in this clip from Stormy Weather.

W.C. Fields got his start as a juggler, and here is his performing some of his old juggling act within the context of a larger movie. An amazing juggler who everybody knows as a movie comedian.

I was really hoping to find some footage from the movie "College Humor", which had some great vaudeville acts sandwiched in between scenes, but to no avail. Go out and rent it.

CageMatch 10-12-07

Had another CageMatch last night. Crappy attendance (like about eight people. It's hard to get fired up in front of eight people.) The video was well-received though, so I was pleased with that. This was a good one actually. Watch it here first, and then come back and read the spoilers and we'll discuss in the next paragraph.

This is the next paragraph. Have you watched the video already? Good. Can you believe that Thundercats footage? That really made the video; it was a lucky discovery. I dug around on YouTube for some Panthro footage, and found that clip and knew it would be the centerpiece of the video. What Panthro is actually saying is "You're looking at the champion scrounger," but he blends the beginning of "scrounger" in with the end of "champion", so it's pretty much tailor-made for a CageMatch video. You just edit it after he finishes the "s", and you've got him saying "you're looking at the champions." Fabulous. (You can see the original video here, at around 1:10.)

The "tiara crowning picture" is an amalgam. We didn't actually crown them at the same moment.

Joe was confused about the picture of them in suits. Y'see, Kyle had his CageMatch Champion pin in his lapel. Joe chided him at the time, saying "you don't wear buttons in a suit". So he was surprised to see himself wearing a button in his suit. (I, of course, photoshopped it in there.)

I was quite happy with the "floor is lava" effect at the end. It amused me.

We liked the video so much, we stayed after the show as they were putting up chairs and watched it again. That made me feel real good, to have people appreciate it like that.

Oh, and this is my 600th post on The Transmutation Effect. Let the confetti fall.

The Sound Of Violence

My birthday is coming up in two weeks. If anybody wants to get me something, this is a good option.

I'm not the world's biggest football fan (I like it, but I don't go out of my way to watch it) but the NFL Films music is just incredible. I used selections from this album to make all the DUAL DUEL videos this past month. It's just the perfect music to use for upbeat, driving conflict-oriented videos. Some of it is dynamic, some is cheesy, some is amusingly rooted in the 1970s, some is timeless. I love it all.

CageMatch report

Had another CageMatch this weekend. Here's the video and here's the pics.

It's hard to animate in Final Cut.

DUAL DUEL Night Three

Had the finals of DUAL DUEL last night. I sucked, but fortunately Remi picked up my slack and kept the show going, and Tommy Dynamite hit all his cues solid and went to bat when I screwed up the timing. They rocked.

I was out of sorts for some reason. Definitely not my best night. I don't think the audience noticed much (they're there to see the performers anyway, so I guess it doesn't really matter). All the teams put on a great show, and Panthro won the Grand Championship, due in part to their hilarious costume changes. Joe Jones ended up in a skintight kid's Superman outfit, and Kyle stripped down to his pants (I think Erik Martin convinced Zach that Kyle was completely naked.)

Video is here, screens are here.

DUAL DUEL Night Two

Another night of DUAL DUEL has passed. Another six teams have competed, and now we have the final four set for next Thursday's tournament. Whew! This multi-team every-week schedule is wearin' me out!

The show went even better than last week. A number of teams upped the ante and did some wild prepared stuff to make their shows special. Panthro opened up their set wearing hoodies and looking thuggish, then took those off to reveal choir robes and did a preaching segment, then took those off and had ties on underneath to do the rest of their show. Awesome. Exactly the sort of wackiness I love seeing in CageMatch. Then Crush really costumed up for their bit, with amazing makeup and outfits, as well as a hilarious way of editing their scenes that you just had to see. And Banana Breakup rocked the house with their frenetic high-above-the-stage action. (Panthro and B.B. ended up winning the evening.)

All in all, a fun night, and if you can, you should really come out next Thursday at 9:00 for the finals. It's going to be awesome, with great teams and as much ridiculous production value as I can cram into it.

Here's this week's video. (BTW, I defy anybody who reads this blog to figure out the meaning of the initial mystery sound this week.)
Here's the screens for the six teams. Vestigial Brain's art is courtesy of the one and only Remi "Artist To The Stars" Treuer (not to be confused with Troy Sterling, evil billionaire.)

Kinda Patton II: Werewolves and Lollipops

Project X revealed!

A few months ago, Patton Oswalt sent me an advance copy of his new album, Werewolves and Lollipops. Remember the crazy thing I did last Christmas for my buddy Jason? As you may recall, Patton himself really dug it, and even included it prominently on his website. Well, when he sent me the cd, he asked me to do the project again, and since last week was Jason's birthday, I spent the last two months or so assembling all the stuff mentioned on the album. So last Friday I hauled three huge boxes, three big bags, and a case of PBR over to Jason's and we assembled in his kitchen. We played the cd, and as Patton mentioned an item, I would haul it out and present it to Jason. It was a hilariously fun evening.

You can check it out here. Probably won't make too much sense if you haven't heard the album (which you should go out and buy, 'cause it's great). Go through it photo by photo to see the comments (or turn on comments in the slideshow).

I'd like to thank the following people for helping out on this immense project: Andy Neal at Chapel Hill Comics for donating the Hal Jordan figure; Nathan The Temp at work for giving me syringes and a beta blocker; my mom for making the grey drapes, giving me the wonderful fireflies, and going wayyyy above and beyond the call of duty for punching out most of the roses; Town Attorney Ralph Karpinos for the coat hanger used in the Dukes of Hazzard diorama (as well as the egg for the cupcakes, which I ended up not using when I ran out of time and just bought cupcakes); Arek Kempinski for donating the ancient cellphone; Carol Abernethy for going to CostCo for me; my buddy Ray Hunley for mailing me the Harlan Ellison; Johnny Fabulous for donating the HP Lovecraft; Town Manager Roger Stancil for going to Fayetteville to get me the Tony Roma stuff; Jeff Scronce for doing the incredibly artistic and fabulously repulsive Cirque du Soleil drawing; and to Katie Shutrump, Joe Stanton, Becky Whittemore, Jeremy Griffin, Callie Peck, Zannie Gunn, and Collette Henderson for posing for the cover of Rape Stove: The Stove That Rapes People. I couldn't have done it without you folks.

Hey, I'm Famous

Looks like the OMEGA documentary I participated in is finally becoming a reality. I'm actually even in the teaser video! More videos are here, and you can preorder the dvd set here. I haven't seen it yet (dammit, where are my free copies!?) but it looks to be pretty damn cool. I filmed all the intros for the various segments as Scott Sullivan, and then did a sitdown interview as Ted Hobgood, done in the center of the empty Southern Pines National Guard Armory, where OMEGA was born.

For those of you who don't know about OMEGA, it's the pro wrestling promotion that I used to work for as announcer, commentator, graphic designer, costumer, etc, etc. It was created by Matt Hardy and Tracy Caddell in the early 1990s as the East Coast Wrestling Federation, which then became the New Frontier Wrestling Alliance (a name I was proud to have come up with!) and finally OMEGA. This small wrestling group from rural North Carolina put on some of the best shows in the country, and our tapes were traded all over the world. People came all the way from New Jersey to see our shows. We produced more homegrown wrestling superstars to make the bigtime than any other independent wrestling organization in America. I never made it big, but I'd like to think I had a small part (albeit a very small part) in helping the guys realize their dream.

I'm really looking forward to checking this documentary out.

DUAL DUEL Night One

Yesterday was Night One of the DUAL DUEL, a little three-day two-person-team tournament I'm producing for DSI. It was an incredible show, and very personally satisfying. Everybody seemed to really appreciate what I did, and many folks came up to me afterwards and thanked me for the production. I tried my best to go around and thank everybody as well, as the groups all had really high energy and everybody seemed to be excited about participating. It was a good feeling.

But between that and Project X (more on that later) I'm exhausted, so that'll have to do for the description of the DUAL DUEL Night One.

Here's the video.
Here's the six new team identity screens.

Revisiting PTSIAM BTTF

So way back in February of this year, PT and I did a very special episode of PT Scarborough Is A Movie for the annual DSI Improv Festival. We produced a little surprise intro to the show, where we bluescreened PT into his favourite movie, Back To The Future. I just came across a few stills of that session, and thought some people might be amused or interested to see a glimpse of how we did it. It was pretty simple, actually; just required some pre-visualization. I had the whole thing in my head, and I just had to match it up in real life.

Here's the final product.
Here are the stills: one, two, threeeeeee!

Basically, I printed out a screen capture of the scene we wanted to drop PT into: the shot of the flaming tire tracks after the DeLorean has come back from its test mission. That let me approximate the right camera angle to shoot PT from. Then I went out to a couple of fabric stores to find a good shade of blue fabric. I cut it in half and sewed the two lengths together to make a big square, and we just went down to my recycling area and threw the fabric over the back of the enclosure, pushpinning it down where it was draping wrong.

Then I just had PT plop down on the fabric and say his lines. For the cigarette-lighting part, we first tried to actually light the cigarette on a Jesus candle, but ended up using the shot you see here, where he already had the ciggy lit and just mimed leaning over to light it. After it was all in the can, I took it all into Final Cut and got rid of the bluescreen via advanced technology and selected my takes. The scene we were supering PT onto is only about three or four seconds long, so I spent a little bit of time reversing and overlaying it over and over to get a usable length out of it. There's actually a license plate spinning around on the ground, but we planned the shot so that PT would be obscuring.

I think it turned out dandily.

We need to get PT back on stage again. I miss his performing genius.

DUAL DUEL is coming...

Next week, in fact. Check out the teaser here.

Hey, this might be a good time to test Blogger's new video uploading feature.

Cornering El Gigante

This past weekend, my ol' buddy Ray (famed for his appearances in two episodes of I'm Sorry, I'll Draw That Again) came down for a whirlwind visit. Ray is my oldest pal, and whenever we get together, we can just fall into our old ways and hang out and talk about the geekiest things possible and laugh until we cry and our faces turn red.

We could only hang out for a few hours, but in that brief time, Ray, his brother Dave, and The Great Keijiro (appearing without his trademark mask) all conquered the monstrous El Gigante burrito at Bandido's. Then, wearing their championship t-shirts, they wandered over to the DSI Comedy Theater, where I secretly arranged to have Ray shanghaied and pushed onto stage, where he performed some comedy improv in the game "Four Corners" during ComedySportz. Check out the adventures de Ray here.

Besobaru

Japan rules. Even their baseball is better than America's.

The Dark Dream

So I had this weird dream last night. It was about a movie that starred The Simpsons and Calvin and Hobbes, but it was a dark horror movie in the Cthulhu vein. It took place in a small New England town, and the town square (a sort of grassy open meeting place that would hold flea markets on the weekend) was covered overnight with weird thrown-together shacks that looked like the folk art of the damned. One had little cages that were full of small toys, one of which had hundreds of little rubber gorillas in it. People disappeared, there were rumours of mysterious killings and women giving birth to hideous creatures, but it was discovered that a small girl held the key to the mystery. That girl turned out to be Maggie Simpson. Occasionally, Calvin would chime in with some learned witticism as the lynch mob trudged through the snow. One of the most frightening moments in the movie came after the wedding scene, when a woman married the priest of He Who Must Not Be Named, in an attempt to save herself. But after a Christian church service that attempted to exorcise the spirits of evil, the bride appeared at the back of the church hall, only she was now just a bridal gown wrapped around a sheaf of cornstalks. Ooooo...

Somewhere in there I was going back to college, living in a towering dorm with an absent roommate, really hungry and sleepy, and my mom cleaned up my room.

This is what happens when I eat too much pizza after being in the sun too long.

How I Spent My Saturday

This weekend I did a lot of stuff, and had my camera. Here's how I spent my Saturday.

Went to Mom's house in Burlington to celebrate her birthday. Fixed her computer and gave her cool presents, like a Lego backpack and the pictured fan that spells words as it spins. We also went out to an antique mall and Big Lots and all that sort of stuff, but we had to stop at a local veterinary hospital that had hilarious huge inflatables of a tick and a mosquito. It was particularly ironic that these were lit up by floodlights which were covered by dead bugs.

We ate at the Blue Ribbon Diner, which was pretty amazing. I'll definitely be returning. Lots of good food choices. Apparently, each month they have a different burger, and this month featured this amazingly titled item. Believe it or not, I decided I had to get something else, that being the "Knife 'n' Fork Chuck Burger". Not as cool a name, but check out that description! "Black Angus Chuck Burger on 'Texas Toast' topped with cheese, bacon crumbles, a little brown gravy and an onion ring on top. Served open-face with 'gravy fries'" Well, I was sold. That whole description sounds like a Patton Oswalt routine. Had to do it. Here's what the masterpiece looked like.

Back to Carrboro to do some shows at the DSI Comedy Theater, saw a really great Cajones set and a decent episode of Match Game. Then off to Casa Ward to play Scattergories. Fiz SitKimmons and I were a team, and we smoked the fuck out of everybody. Mainly because in the final round, I volunteered Hollywood Hulk Hogan and Hunter Hearst Helmsley. It was fun to be around everybody, especially Eitan, who made it into just about every picture. Finally met the lovely Kathleen, who did not sing "Take Me Home Again", but was fun to be around. Katie was giggly, Joe was amusingly caustic, and Tommy tragically died and was marked by his assailant.

Oh, and Jeremy got his revenge on me by using my camera to take a picture of his man-staff.

Sunday had no pictures, but Brantley and I brunched, I shopped, I napped, and I lazed.

Flea Market Wackiness

So this weekend I went out to do some flea marketing with my friend Jess, and we came across some nutty things, which I thought I'd share with you courtesy of the fine folks at Flickr.

Actually, it all starts the day before when I saw a cool crack in the sidewalk that looked like a directional arrow, pointing straight down the street.

Okay, onto the fair. We got there and discovered that the Dorton Arena was hosting some sort of Christian inflatable party activity demonstration fair. Oh YES! Music was provided by, of course, Heaven. The whole arena was full of these giant bouncy amusement thingamajigs. Jess and I were quite amused by the inflatable church, thinking that there should've been a sign that read "If the chapel's a-rockin', don't bother knockin'." For some reason, I just loved the roller coaster with the stiff-backed inflatable people jammed into their ascending car. The best one, though, was the huge Steroid Man that invited you to jump up and down under his crotch.

Elsewhere at the fair, we had the loneliest employee in the park, trapped in her giant orange pac-man. I waan't quite hungry enough to have a giant neon fried Twinkie. I think the most artistic shot of the day came from some lovely painted mermaids. My favourite product was the extremely creepy chimp-dominated Noah's Ark, accompanied by the pitiful Cleopatra.

But the photo of the day has to go to something Jess pointed out at a booth selling crappy purses. Yes, please.

CageMatch 8-9-07

We had another CageMatch last night. Not much to say about the production side. I had a devil of a time coming up with a screen for the challengers, 1-2-3 Ingestion. Lordy, these names. The video was a simple affair, focusing on Elaine's stupendous achievement of five CageMatch wins. I amused myself by using incidental music from "Battle Of The Planets" and a remix of Europe's "Final Countdown". I also chose an amusing entrance theme for 1-2-3 Ingestion, "Eat The Rich" by Aerosmith.

The identity screen is here, the video is here.

We also premiered the new CageMatch Loser Pin last night, via a special appearance from PT Scarborough as famed Smitty's Bar postal deliveryman Shoney "Postie" Taylor. PT was hilarious, as usual, and it seemed like people were really happy to see him on stage again, so that was cool. Elaine gave a boffo show and won their sixth title, a measure equaled only by the now-legendary Siegel-Prov.

After the show, a bunch of us moved over to Speakeasy and celebrated Joe Stanton's birthday. Much fun was had by all, Zannie and Becky danced to the live tunes of Big Fat Gap, and I kicked Zach Ward in the balls. Zach and I also made plans for the upcoming Dual Duel tournament in September, which should rock (if people actually form two-man teams and submit them...). I love tournaments. Brackets rule.

Yes, I Bought An iPhone

Well, I was planning to wait until the price dropped and they worked the kinks out, but after an upsetting trip to the dentist, I decided I deserved a present, and bought myself an iPhone. Yeah, it was expensive (I got the 8G model); yeah, the per-month charge is expensive (another $20 on top of the $40 I'm already spending); yeah, AT&T sucks (but I was always happy with Cingular, and couldn't find a provider in town who I liked more); BUT I bought one anyway.

I like it. Lots. My number one love is that it just WORKS. I've had smartphones before (a Treo and a Kyocera Palm), but they were clunky, the applications didn't work consistently, and the interface was atrocious. The iPhone is very smartly designed, and works like you expect things to work. The touchscreen is phenomenal. The apps are quick, useful, and fun to work with. The interface helps you do what you want to do instead of getting in the way of what you want to do. And my biggest bane from my old phones is nowhere to be seen, as the iPhone syncs beautifully with my computer, sharing calendars, contacts, pictures, mp3s, movies, and just about everything.

The camera is pretty damn phenomenal for a phonecam, taking clear 1200x900 pictures (that get reduced to 640x480 when emailing the pictures from the phone; the full rez versions get synced to iPhoto when you dock the iPhone). I didn't like the software-based keyboard at first, but I'm quickly getting used to it, and it's certainly the best on-screen keyboard I've ever used. The Google Maps interface rocks, and was immensely helpful while wandering through NYC this past weekend. I also had the Manhattan subway system map stored in my Photos application if I ever needed that. There's a dedicated YouTube program which can be amusing, although there's a lot of YouTube videos that haven't been formatted for the iPhone yet. Hell, I even check on my one share of WWE stock every once in a while with the Stock app.

What it doesn't do: to my knowledge, the Notes program doesn't sync to anything openable on the host computer, which is pretty surprising. The camera is stills-only, so you can't take video (which is also pretty surprising, since you have tons of onboard storage space). There's a big omission in that there's no To-Do list. And currently, the iPhone doesn't do Flash, so you can't watch cool animations or see some features of websites. (This is why not all of YouTube is accessable yet.) All of these can be easily fixed with a firmware upgrade, and I'd be willing to bet they will be.

One of the most glaring omissions, for me anyway, is that this thing is an iPod AND a phone and YET, you can't use your own mp3s as ringtones. This smacks of some stupidass agreement that Apple made with recording companies or AT&T or something, and it pisses me off. There's a third party app that fixes this error, but I haven't tried it yet for fear of fucking up my phone. The onboard ringtones are great, and there's enough other toys to play with in the iPhone, but for an iPod phone to not let you use custom mp3s as ringtones is outrageous.

But overall, is it worth it? Hellz yeah. I wanted a phone that worked and worked well, that would sync cleanly and work smoothly on a day to day basis. I didn't need the iPod functionality--I have an iPod for that! But now that I have the iPhone, I notice I am just listening to music or watching videos when I might not otherwise do so. The speakers in the iPhone are pretty decent, and you can just set the thing down and listen without the need for earphones. The video screen is huge and crazy sharp. People are really impressed when I show off the ripped dvd of DON that I have on there. It's a lot smaller than the Treo I used to use, and unlike the Treo, it doesn't crash or run out of juice randomly. The iPhone actually fits invisibly into my daily life, as a good tool should.

I heart my iPhone.

What Not To Do At A Wrestling Event

So in the latest issue of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, they're talking about a lucha show in Los Angeles that drew a huge crowd. This part amused me:

Probably the funniest story of the night is one that nobody saw. Someone tried to mug Kayam and Enigma de Oro after the show in the parking lot with a gun long after almost everyone had left the area. You have to understand the two were wearing their masks and in nice suits, so the scene had to be something right out of a Santo movie. Both guys simultaneously attacked the gunman and tackled him to the concrete, and held him down until security came.

Can you picture that? Hilarious.

NYC Trip 2007

So last Friday, me and PT Scarborough Is A Tourist went to New York City to visit our ol' buddy Ethan Kaye Dot Net. Herein lies our tale. All my photos can be found in a set here, or you can click the individual photo links as they appear in the report.

We started early on Friday the 27th. Very early. PT showed up at my house at 3:15 am. (I was amazed he made it on time--fifteen minutes early, even!) PT had been up all night, and would go on to stay up for about 42 hours. Anyway, we had to be at the airport at 4:00, so off we went. When we went through security at the RDU airport, we emptied our pockets, took of our shoes, dumped our carryons onto the belt, etc. I get through first, and as I'm filling up my pockets, I notice like three of the security people reaching for aerosol cans and spraying them about. What is this, I think, some sort of bomb-detecting spray? Then I notice they're cans of Lysol at about the same time I hear them say "something is smelling up the place bad!" As a joke, I point at PT and say it was him. Obvious thing to do at the moment, right? Well, it was him. He had to take his shoes off and send them through the xray, and apparently he's been wearing those same shoes since spring with *no socks*. Oh god...the smell just wafted through the whole security checkpoint. It was like the stench of a dead hobo. I can't describe it. I started laughing like an idiot, but it was foul. When we got into the city, Ethan and I made PT go to a shoe store and buy new shoes, then walk out to Union Square park and change shoes and socks out in the open (we could still smell them in the open air and moved away a bit). We then told him to just throw his old shoes in the garbage; they weren't coming back to the apartment.

So we get to our plane, and it was TINY. Only 13 rows, two seats on one side and one on the other. We were in the last row. PT sat by the window, which was odd, since he's aerophobic. Still, he enjoyed the view. We just zipped up to NYC in no time, then got a very nice cab with a very nice driver that dropped us off directly in front of Ethan's apartment. Ethan's apartment, by the way, was nice. Good location, with a 24 hour bodega two doors down, a pizza place on the other side, great restaurant next door (named "Toast"), and a train stop on the corner. Wow. And inside it was spacious and clean and cool and looked basically just like his Chapel Hill apartment.

Our first stop was a restaurant called, oddly enough, Jackson Hole. As we were making our way there, Ethan went on and on about how big their burgers were, yadda yadda yadda, whatever Ethan. Well, he was right. These things were huge. Hopefully, PT will upload the burger pix he took while we were there, and I'll include a link in an addendum. They claimed these things were seven ounce burgers, but there's no way. Like ten ounces, maybe. And delicious. Ethan urged me to try a bialy, which was good, but I was really craving a real New York bagel. (By the way, the spellcheck didn't like the way I first spelled "biali", and suggested "labial" as an alternative.)

We then jumped back on the subway and started our tour through the city, basically shopping like madmen. Our first task was the aforementioned replacement of PT's shoes. I wish I had taken a picture of him changing shoes, but there were unsavory characters about, and I didn't want to flash the iPhone. I lose track of what we did when, but I think we went to The Strand at this point, and to a comic book shop or two. We stopped by Virgin Records, and I bought Patton Oswalt's new album (which you should all buy) and some stuff for my mom. In the evening, Ethan tried to take us to a barbecue restaurant. It smelled great, but we have barbecue in North Carolina, and I wanted New York food. So fortunately, they were full up and we just had a pizza from the place near Ethan's. It was delicious.

The next morning, Ethan had a show at UCB at 7:30 am, but he left at 3:30 am to watch some shows and warm up. We didn't have a key to the apartment, so PT and I were locked in jail until Ethan returned around 10:30 or so. After a while, we realized that one of us could leave, and the other could buzz him back in. So PT Scarborough Is A Smoker was chosen to make the bagel run, and upon his return I finally had the delicious New York bagel I had been craving. Ethan came back with his parents, and we had a nice visit with Annie and Danny before seeing them off. We then headed for The Village for some GREAT fun. We hit MORE comic book stores, including my favourite, the two-story Midtown Comics, where I bought a great Don Bluth animation book. Went to my new favourite store in the world, Toy Tokyo, which is just PACKED with cool Japanese toys. I could've spent hours and many hundreds of dollars in there. I bought several blindbox toys which were pretty cool. Ethan then took us to an INCREDIBLE vintage toy store a few doors down which had all sorts of crazy shit on shelves and in cases and hanging from the ceiling. Another place where you could spend a bundle, but I was overjoyed to find a Mego-style Mils Mascaras figure for only $10. Sweet.

Lunch on this day was one of the huge highlights of the street. I asked my native New Yorker friend Carlo where I should go in NYC, and the first thing he said was "Dumpling Man". One look at the website and their cool logo made me want to go, but once I saw the menu page, I was hooked. You order your dumplings, and women behind the counter make them, completely by hand, fresh for you. I got some of everything, and scarfed it down. Cheap, fresh, delicious, my kind of place. Didn't hurt that there was a hot tattooed chick behind the register who I got to smile for me. PT and Ethan seemed to dig it too. Even Evil Ethan liked it.

We found a cool niche dvd store where I found the copy of H.O.T.S. I had been looking for for years, a memory from the early days of Skinemax. We also hit a really nice dirty book store with a grand selection of dvd titles, including some really kinky themes I hadn't seen on dvd before. Dinner was at the restaurant right next to Ethan's apartment, a place called "Toast". It was pretty good, and we all flirted with the waitress. Ethan will be making his move soon.

The next morning was the start of our hellish trip home. We got up at 7:00 am for an 11:00 am flight. Waiting for the 1 train took about a half hour of standing in the early morning heat. Then there was construction on the line, so the train was very slow. When we reached Penn Station, we had to book it to make it to our connection to NJ Transit to take the train into Newark. That was a nice ride, but boy is New Jersey a trashhole. And PT wasn't looking too good this early in the morning. I thought the train took us to the airport, but it turns out we needed to take ANOTHER train to the airport proper. The airport area looked like a war zone or somewhere Swamp Thing might live. Take my advice and avoid Newark. The check-in person was actually really nice, but the security sucked. We waited an hour to get through the security checkpoint, and they were rude and ridiculous. I may never fly again, due to the stupid security checks.

So then we got into our gate area, and there was NOTHING back there to do. There was a sandwich place, a "Dick Clark's American Bandstand Bar", and a coffee stand. No bookstore, no newsstand, no shop of any kind. What a hole. We waited an hour for our plane; turned out it was the same tiny one we flew up on. We even had the exact same seats, in the last row, next to the huge loud engine. So we wait a bit before taxiing out to the runway, wait in line for a while, then get out of line to make room for other people. Apparently, there was some weather between Newark and Raleigh that was a problem. So after a looooong time of sitting there, the captain finally gets on the blower and informs us that we've been given a new flight plan, but don't have enough fuel, so we have to go back to the terminal and load up again. All of this, and the row in front of us was two parents and their baby and toddler. Devils. Then back in line, wait for a while, and finally take off. We were supposed to leave at 11:00. We left at 2:00. That's THREE HOURS on the runway. Fuck. And PT was freaking out, because a) he's plane-o-phobic and b) it had been hours since he had a cigarette.

So from then on, it was no big deal. At least the view was pretty. We flew home, got out of the airport, we got into PT's car, and journeyed back home. All in all, a fine trip. Good to see Ethan Kaye Dot Net again, nice to roam about NYC, and fine food and shopping. We agreed it was a good vacation, but PT summed up the airline experience nicely with this.

CageMatch 7-26-07

So we had CageMatch last week. Normally, this report would've been up the next day, but six hours after CageMatch ended, I was on my way to New York City. (Post about that coming soon.)

The video came out nicely. It's here. The storyline was that a great team had returned, but they were going up against a team who were trying to reach the lofty goal of becoming five-time champions. I separated out the graphics for the Caligula logo so I could fade those in bit by bit for dramatic effect. Remi drew a cool alternate logo for Caligula that I really loved, so I used it in front of a creepy optical illusion video I nipped from YouTube. I bought the trophy picture off of iStockPhoto, and was rather happy with the way I lettered it. The music at the end is Drain Sth, whose lyrics I love so much, I extended the ending longer than I normally would.

Revealing Visual Effects

This should be of some interest to readers of this blog who are interested in video editing and visual effects. Nastuh Abootalebi is an effects artist who has worked on such films as Run Lola Run, and this site is his online portfolio.

What's really cool about the videos he includes here is that if you click on them, you'll be presented with a side-by-side comparison, with the original shot on the left, and then his processed final shot on the right. It's quite illuminating to see just how some of these shots were staged and changed. I found it rather inspiring.

Tomb Raider Animated

I've always loved Tomb Raider. My type of game; lots of exploring, lots of puzzles, a little fighting that's not too difficult, all in all a nice mix. Now Turner Broadcasting has commissioned a series of animated shorts called "Re/Visited", where different people interpret the whole Lara Croft mythos. The first one is masterminded by Peter Cheung, the guy behind the groundbreaking Aeon Flux series. Pretty cool, eh? One feature I really love is how the opening for the show displays the pencil tests and animatics for the animation; very inspiring.

The videos are premiered on the Gametap site, but you can also view them on YouTube (and save them if you use something like the fabulous Video Downloader for Firefox. Then use iSquint, and you can watch them on your iPod or iPhone.)

CageMatch 7-13-07

Time passes, and we have another episode of CageMatch. This week, we didn't have a challenger signed up until late Sunday, when Kit allied himself with Marc Kennedy and somehow came up with the name "WhatCHU Got To Say About That?". Actually, their name was "WhatCHU Got To Say About It?" but I screwed up while making the logo, and it was too late to fix it.

Anyway, let's just say that the name didn't inspire any immediate themes in my mind as regards the promo video. I mean, what sort of dramatic situation can you build out of a generic question? So I mentioned this to Kit, and he came up with a number of possible suggestions. I didn't act on any individual one, but seeing them en masse did give me the idea for a video theme: that I couldn't make up my mind what the theme was.

So the first two things that popped into mind was the song "Fire" by Ohio Players, making Kit and Marc into firemen, and then "Cold As Ice" by Foreigner and making them into hockey players. But once I found the Foreigner cd, I cracked up at the idea of making it an all-Foreigner video.

The other songs are related to the team name: we start off with "Say, Say, Say" by Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, and end with "Walk Idiot Walk" by The Hives, which starts off with a nice scream and the appropriate lyrics " Well, Is it true what they say about it/You wanna do what I do and I doubt it."

We only had like four people in the audience last night, so the video wasn't exactly received with a huge ovation, but that's life. Also, Tommy Dynamite was away in Chicago, and Kit was supposed to be doing tech but obviously couldn't, so I ended up teching the show. Remi did a great job hosting CageMatch all by his lonesome, starting off with a hilarious dance sequence to his own intro video. His "evil billionaire" thing came off really well this week, and I really liked the way he got over the gambling part of the character, betting on the teams and whatnot.

Ah, almost forgot the links. Here's the video, and here's the identity screen.

Shut Up, Jay

Patton Oswalt discusses which movie you might want to watch this summer: his movie Ratatouille, or Daniel Radcliffe's Harry Potter.

I could watch this clip over and over again. In fact, I have.

CageMatch 6-28-07

Another night, another CageMatch. This week's challenging team called themselves "Threadless". I was really stuck for a way to translate that team name into a dramatic video. What can you do with "Threadless"? Well, the only thing it sparked in me was the Three Fates of Greek mythology, so I went with that. Only problem is, there's quite a dearth of Fates imagery out there on the web. Really only one painting that I could barely find a usable size of, a sculpture which horribly Eurocized, and a sand sculpture. So I ended up using the first painting and the sand figures, and then filmed my own segments of the Town Manager's Executive Assistant toying around with some thread. Those filmed segments turned out great, and I sepia-toned and mirrored them to give the impression that it was more than one person. Oh, and I finally figured out how to bring images from Photoshop with transparency to Final Cut. (Turns out the trick is to save them as a 24-bit PNG.)

The logo for Threadless was a challenge as well. My immediate thought was to use empty spools, but someone else said they thought needles would be more immediately recognizable. So off I went in a search of a good high-res closeup of the eye of a needle. Harder than it sounds, but eventually I found one. I also got some needles off of a stock photo site, and used them in the background as well as a flying needle that slashes a picture in two late in the video.

The musical intro this week (the part that you hear during the initial DSI identity logo) is my most obscure reference ever. Any ideas?

The video is here.
The Threadless logo is here.

As for the show itself, both teams did quite well. Remi was great as Evil Billionaire Troy Sterling in his second outing. He came up with a great angle about Scott Sullivan being late on a house payment, and Sterling buying the mortgage out from under him, offering to bet the house against the hosting job in CageMatch. It was a rough crowd, but a good number of people got into it and laughed along. (And Sterling once again bet on the wrong team, so he got his house back. Yay!)

Sunset Crow

I stumbled across this video this morning via one of the zillion blogs I follow. It's amusing for a number of reasons.

1. It's by Mike Nesmith, a former Monkee who tried to tried to have an arty solo career. He's generally seen as a pioneer in the music video business, as his videotape Elephant Parts is regarded as the first music video product on the market. Here, Nesmith sounds like he's trying to do something in the Frank Zappa vein.
   
2. The video is remarkably dated, and has all sorts of classic 70s/80s images, like video mirroring, four-wheel skates, and backgrounds of trash bags with fans blowing over them.
3. The song is the basis of a legendary running gag between myself and my friend Ray. We had our own lyrics for the chorus, which make no sense to anyone but ourselves, but which I immortalize here for posterity:

Lucy and Ramona, and Sunset Crow
People on the street, trying to go for po
People on the street, going pretty slow
Lucy and Ramona, and their buddy Sunset Crow

I thank you.

Living Like Millionaires

So we had this sort of employee appreciation thingamajig at work last week. I usually skip those sorts of things, because I'm horribly antisocial and laden down with depression, but at this particular event, there was free barbecue, so I went to get a takeout plate. While I was there trying to figure out how to get my free food, I filled out a little ticket for door prizes. I never win anything, but what the hey, right? So I get my meal and depart.

Later, back at work, the Town Attorney shows up with a box and informs me that I was a winner--of some mangy-looking plants. Woohah. So I quickly give them away to people who will not kill them with neglect, as I would. Then they inform me that there were wrestling tickets as one of the prizes, but that I didn't win them, Gordon the British Guy From Planning did. Well, that's cool. I'm not too big on going to WWE shows anyway.

Ten minutes later, Gordon calls me up, says he has no idea what pro wrestling is all about, and asks if I would accompany him to the show and explain what's going on. Cool, I'm always up for a free show and camaraderie as long as I don't have to navigate the parking lot of the RBC Center. So on Sunday, off we go to see a house show of WWE Raw. Well, when we get there, we discover that we don't just have free tickets, no, we have our own luxury suite. A lovely young woman in a red jacket leads us past all the dregs of society in their rasslin t-shirts and their beer guts, and ushers into our private box with leather chairs and our own bathroom. We feel like kings.

Then while we're there, my phone buzzes, and it's a message from Matt Hardy letting me know that he's left two ringside tickets for us at Guest Services. So we let our lovely red-jacketed hostess know that we've decided to take different accomodations for our sporting enjoyment, and move down to front-row center at ringside. Matt and Jeff's father, Gilbert, is there, and people are recognizing him from a recent newspaper article and taking pictures with him, which I found hilarious. I walked over and sat in the seat next to him, and he turned to look at me as if I were another autograph seeker, then jumped and smiled when he realized it was me. I've always gotten along well with Gilbert, and soon he was rattling off dirty jokes as quick as he could.

Back in my seat, I was explaining how the sport works to my friend Gordon and pointing out the different wrestlers and what they were doing. A little while into the show, this big guy comes along with his stripper girlfriend and plops down into a seat next to me, taking up more room than he really should to show off how tough he was. I didn't know who he was, but recognized from his body type and the way he moved that he was a wrestler. So all night, he's jostling for space and acting tough, and we never spoke. Then after Matt and Jeff's match, they run around the ring slapping hands with everybody, including him. When they see me, they give me a big hug and we exchange a few words. After that, the tough wrestler guy says, "Hey! How do you know the Hardys?" I explain I worked with them for about six or seven years as an announcer, commentator, costume maker, publicist, etc, etc. in the early days. Heh. He gave me more room after that. My friend Gordon was amused.

Here's the view from our luxury suite. (click to enlarge)

Gordon sitting in our leather luxury seats:

This is how much closer we got with the seats Matt got us:

Looking back at our box seats. (If you click on the picture, you can see the suite outlined).


All in all, Gordon and I were pretty amused at the chain of events of the evening.

CageMatch 6-14-07

Another episode of CageMatch has passed us by. Let's take a look.

First we have the promo video. Went for a good cheap sex joke in there. My voice is particularly thick in this week's video, as I've been sick all week. Did this one on Tuesday, when I was still mighty cough-y. Nothing special about this video, except the appropriate music and beginning sound.

Had to add another two screens to the Hall Of Fame video, as we had a new champ and I had forgotten to put Community Bike in the original. Every time I add somebody new, the pause for each screen grows shorter, so soon I'll need to come up with a different format.

Then we had the debut of Troy Sterling. This went over like gangbusters. Remi is great in the role. He was tip-top obnoxious. We had put about $100 into materials for the character, including a blinged-out watch, lapel pin, and horrible belt buckle; some stock video clips for the intro; and a 1000 watt halogen light grid for the bluescreening. For the intro video, Remi wanted to use The Gorillaz' "Feel Good Inc" as an entrance theme. I really like the song; it's quite infectious--but on it's own, it doesn't make for good entrance music. It's not thick enough, doesn't have that energy to make people sit up and take notice that something big is happening. So I mashed it up a little (in my crude way) adding some hits to each beat, using samples from Pink Floyd's "Money", MC Dollar Bill's "Living Lifestyles Of The Fresh 'N Fly", and a clip of cards being shuffled. Then I segued into ABBA's "Money Money Money", which turned out to be a good decision, as the audience really got into it and were clapping along. I let the "feel good" beats pop up a couple of times during the ABBA song, and might add more for next time; it seemed to work subtly.

We did a great opening bit involving Remi and Eitan Lees, where Troy Sterling bet $100 against "6 year old birthday boy" Eitan's giant lollipop, that Eitan couldn't bounce a ball 20 times in a row. This, of course, is a remake of the classic Million Dollar Man angle. I had to convince Remi to do this, telling him it was one of the most remembered bits in wrestling history, and would guarantee he got over as a heel immediately. Everybody played their part well, and it went over like gangbusters. It was so great, I put it up on YouTube.

Pictures are here.


For shits and giggles, let's look at the timeline for this week's presentation:

* Four weeks ago:

• Ordered bling paraphenalia off of eBay

* Three weeks ago

• Got together with Remi to shoot some video for the teaser video

* One week ago

• Spent most of the week at work (in between working) designing the "TroyBucks", fake money with Remi's scowling face on them, along with quotes like "I am important; you are just poor". These were for Troy Sterling to throw into the crowd during his entrance.

* Last Saturday

• Got together with Remi, bought some 1000 watt floodlights from Lowe's and a belt at the flea market.

* Monday

• Out sick from work; spent most of the evening revising the Hall of Fame video.

* Tuesday

• Out sick from work again. Spent the afternoon and evening Photoshopping photos of Elaine and the "girls are made of"/"boys are made of" pictures. Recorded the voiceover and music bits, and edited the promo video up to the tournament screen.

* Wednesday

• Back to work. At work, selected the Tory Sterling pix I wanted to use and Photoshopped those, taking out the backgrounds and meshing them with a money background I bought off the web. I added a few photo flares to the bling items as well. Tried to colour-correct them as best I could.
  
• Got home at five and leapt into finishing the promo video.
• Spent a looong time agonizing over the music for Troy Sterling, trying a number of different angles and experiments in Soundtrack. Finally changed the tempo of the two songs to a median 129 and mashed 'em together. Went through all the footage Remi and I shot on Sunday and digitized the clips I thought would work. Pulled them into Final Cut along with the stills and the backing music and spent a few hours editing it all together. Actually managed to get alpha channeling to work on the title graphic. Somehow managed to do all this in time to set up the show dvd and burn it while I slept. Got to bed about 1:00.

* Thursday

• Got together with Eitan and bought a Spongebob bouncy ball and an eyebrow pencil.
• Met with Remi and Eitan to discuss plans for the bits we were going to do. Got back to the theater and set up tech for Tommy, helped Remi with his wardrobe, and did Eitan's freckle makeup.
• Did the show.
• Went back home and digitized the beginning of the show, with Remi's entrance and the bit with Eitan. Mixed that down in a YouTube-friendly format, and mixed down the Troy entrance video and the promo video.

* Friday

• Got to work and uploaded the videos to YouTube and the pictures to Flickr. Went to the DSI Forums and typed up my "News From The Cage" report.
• Typed up this here blog report.

Oh, and I won a door prize at the Employee Appreciation Day. It was plants. I gave it away. A British guy upstairs won tickets to the WWE Raw show at the RBC this Sunday. He called me up and asked me to go with him. Sweet.

CageMatch 5-24-07

Elaine logo
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood

This week's CageMatch featured two videos, one for the intro to the show, and the second as a promo for a new character we're introducing to the show.

The concept for the intro was to be pro-female (since the challengers were an all-female team) basically taking the fairytale image of women as subservient and helpless, and trying to hype up the ability of women to be just as skilled as men. Nothing too fancy here graphic-wise; just a lot of stills shown in different ways.

The most amusing thing is that it's actually hard to find fairytale pictures of damsels in distress. Searching on Google images for relevant terms brings up a lot of fantasy/scifi paintings of strong, assertive women kicking ass (and searching for "knight in shining armor" brings up a remarkable amount of man-on-man porn).

The Elaine logo is made with old 1940s/50s Frederick's Of Hollywood ads. Those things were always so sleazy; I loved 'em.

Shades of Grey

Good lord, how much do I like this animation short? It has so many great attributes. 1) It's entitled "3X Super Robot Heartbreak". Coolest name evah. 2) Amazing use of limited colour--mostly just a few shades of grey. 3) Kickin' music. 4) Giant robots. 5) Subtle, slick, creative animation effects 6) Nice, crisp story.

All made by the fine folks at Black Brow, who have a higher-quality version of the flick on their own site, as well as some other offerings which I shall peruse when I get some time tomorrow (hopefully). Oh, and the creators' blogs (linked off the above site) look promising as well--very cool guys.

Ba Da Bup Bup Ba DAHHH!

If you were watching HBO in the early Eighties, this program intro will be ingrained deep in your memory. It always promised excitement, entertainment, and the then-revolutionary idea of seeing recent Hollywood films from the comfort of your own home.

Even if you weren't watching HBO in the early Eighties, you might find this little documentary to be rather interesting. It shows how the above intro was created, and shows how much more complicated and expensive it was to produce a short clip that today could be done on a home computer in a few weeks with software off the shelf. Here we have miniatures, acetate-based optical effects, motorized tracking cameras, fiber optics (!), an airbrushed mural, actual construction of a simple three-d logo shape, and what now looks like the most primitive computer ever produced. I found it fascinating, and somewhat inspiring. (And you gotta love the horrendous lyrics for the song they used for the documentary--although I still love the uberdramatic music used in the intro itself.)

Jawbone

jawbone for RyLoc
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

I haven't drawn in a while; just haven't really been inspired. I don't think it's in my destiny. Anyway, Ryloc sent out a call for art from his friends, with a very specific description: to wit, a guy in a suit in a dark alleyway, having just torn off his own mandible.

No, I don't understand it either, but if you know Ryan, you know you don't need to understand it. I was glad to do it for him.

Thieves Not In The Night

To The Unknown Thief,

Thank you so much for stealing my iPod out of my car while I was having lunch today. You've taught me a valuable lesson: that I should learn how to really lock my new car, and that I shouldn't park in the thug-ridden parking lot of the downtown McDonald's here in Chapel Hill. You've also opened my eyes in a quite tangible way that my longtime hometown is not the peaceful and safe village it used to be, and is now littered with scumbags, gang members, and criminals.

I will now try and learn how to tighten my belt and budget my money, so that I can afford to divest myself of the $500-plus it will take to replace the various components you took from me. Oh, and I hope you enjoy the library book you grabbed as well.

Thanks loads,

Ted

Call For Animators

Respondez-vous, mein comrades!

I need one more creative personage to join me on this mighty quest. This article gave me an interesting idea. I love the idea of collaboration; it inspires me much more than just doing crap by myself. And I always loved that game where you fold a piece of paper in thirds and one person draws the head, the next person draws the body, and the last person draws the legs (known formally as "The Exquisite Corpse", although for some reason, we didn't use that name when we were eight). And I've always been amazed by the Zoom Quilt, the way that different people worked on the same project without seeing what the other folks were doing.

Anyway, working on the premise of that first article, I thought up an interesting potential project. My friend Jackson has agreed to write a piece of music that's 1:30. Then I'll take that music, and animate my interpretation of the first thirty seconds. Then I'll send the final frame of my animation (or maybe a second's worth?) to the next person (who will be the world-famous animator and meme cretor extraordinaire Nick Faber), along with the full copy of Jackson's music. Faber Fabe will animate the next 30 seconds and pass it on, and the third person would do the same, returning it to me to assemble the pieces into one amusing pastiche for release on the worldwide media giant that is The Wuh-Wuh-Wuh.

And the name I have chosen for this project?
MONOTUNALITY + TRINIMATION = QUADLABORATION
(and maybe just "Quadlab" for short.)

Let the trumpets sound and the angels cheer.

So anyway, I'm looking for a third animator to complete our Quadlab team. Lemme know if you think you have what it takes to be the final component in our triumvirate of power, glory, and animation. You can use any method of animation you want: hand-drawn, Flash, stopmotion, rotoscoped, whatevvah. The only requirements are a promise to actually do it, and a desire to be part of something fun. RSVP to ME ASAP and we'll C-H-A-T. I really wanna make this happen.

Jumping

It's always particularly amazing when you find great things that have been around for years, but have just not been within your sight. Today I discovered a wonderful short film by anime/manga pioneer Osama Tezuka, the creator of such timeless Japanese classics as "Astro Boy" and inspiration to generations of artists. This short is not done in the traditional anime style, so even if you don't particularly enjoy the big eyes and stylized action of typical Japanese animation, you might enjoy this. I find it to be a captivating unification of style, persepective, and discovery. Enjoy Osamu Tezuka's "Jumping".

The Man In The Rubber Mask

For when you want to conceal your manliness, wear one of these.

It's A Longshot

My friends who are fans of filmmaking will enjoy this one. Just discovered a new blog called Daily Film Dose, through a link to this entry on "the long take". Fascinating analysis of several films that have used a dramatic, long, continuous take in their films to establish mood and atmosphere. Lots of good information and links to clips; also plenty of good material in the long comments section.

I'll definitely be adding Daily Film Dose to my list o' feeds.

Rasslin Ridiculousness

If you're a wrestling fan, you owe it to yourself to watch YouTube member Maffew's Botchamania vids. They'll make you laugh, they'll make you cringe. It's basically a collection of the worst gimmicks (a la WrestleCrap), worst botched moves (lots and lots of Sabu), crappy promos (Sid Vicious, anyone?), and stupid fans running into the ring (and hopefully getting their ass handed to them). This guy basically has all the clips you've always heard about, and zillions more, and he mixes 'em into entertaining videos. Highly recommended. Watch them all.

Oh, and for those of you who aren't wrestling fans, this is my latest musical discovery (always far too late, am I) via Never Mind The Buzzcocks--it's Kaiser Chiefs doing "I Predict A Riot". And for comparison and contrast, here's a version by one of the crappiest manufactured girl bands ever, Girls Aloud.

StopMotion StreetFighter

Corey Brown will like this. Nick Faber will as well. Other folks might too.

Indie Filmmaking On The Cheap

I'm blogging about this article so I can remember to read it later when I have more time. It's on indie filmmaking, and it looks intriguing. Keep clicking the "next" link at the bottom of each article, or go to various sections via the table of contents sidebar. (Oh, and view it with Firefox and Adblocker, or it'll drive ya nutz.)

At the very least, the checklist that's part of the article led me to Apple's Shake, which I may buy instead of the Adobe's After Effects. (Shake is $499, After Effects is $999, although there's not much point in getting AE alone when you can get the new CS3 Master Suite for $2499, which gives you a wealth of media creation software.) Oh, but that AE "puppet tool"...mmmm. Which one to buy?!?

Oh, and I'm told I need to watch "El Mariachi". Anybody have that on dvd I could borrow?