Things I Didn't Know

"Things I Didn't Know", or "Wikisurfing U.S.A."

So today at lunch I got bored and commenced to surfing through Wikipedia, looking up one thing and clicking on an internal link to leap to another article, eventually Googling a term to find a picture, and from there leaping onto other interesting finds. I thought some of y'all out there might enjoy following along today.

I started by dropping into my chair and exclaiming "uff da". Now, I had no idea what that phrase means; I just remember reading it in the title of a book long ago. So I look 'er up on Wikipedia and discover it's a Norwegian phrase used in the Midwest to mean "I am overwhelmed." Interesting.

At the end of that entry, they suggested a link to "oy vey". Why not? Everybody loves Yiddish. From that entry, I learned there was a Jewish James Bond parody called "Oy Oy Seven" (I'll have to track that down sometime) and that there's a sign that reads "Oy Vey" on your way out of Brooklyn.

"Oy vey" was a favourite phrase (apparently) for the Japanese character on the 1960s show McHale's Navy, so off we go! I had no idea the comedic show was based on a dramatic movie, so that was interesting. A brief trip to Joe Flynn's page added to my knowledge of character actors.

On McHale's Navy, they piloted a PT boat, and would sometimes refer to the commander of another PT Boat, PT109--that boat was, in real life, commanded by none other than John F. Kennedy. So off we go to the PT109 page! I had never heard the exciting tale of JFK's naval exploits, so that was pretty cool. Stranded on an island behind enemy lines in the Pacific, he carved a message on a coconut and sent it back to the Navy via islanders on an outrigger canoe.

The article said that Kennedy preserved the coconut shell and it was now in the Kennedy Library in Boston. Well I HAD to see that! And thanks to the internet, my lazy ass can see it from the slothful perch of my office chair.

Oddly enough, that picture was on this page, which is part of an insanely detailed website devoted to Jeopardy, with complete listings of all the questions and answers for each show, along with incidental remarks from smarmy Alex Trebek and the contestants, and even a "Game Dynamics" graph that charts how each contestant progressed through the game. While you're at this site, check out the guy's amazing glossary of Jeopardy-geek terms. Back to the coconut page though, the great find there was the category "Food A LaFontaine" which featured voiceover king Don LaFontaine reading dramatic descriptions of foods--and the page has links to mp3s of the actual readings! Yay!

So back to Wikipedia we go to look up Don LaFontaine's info, as I realize I've never actually read his biography. That page gives us the information that LaFontaine has actually appeared multiple times on Jeopardy, so a quick jump back to the J-Site gives us links to more mp3s from those appearances! You've got to check out the nursery rhyme previews...they're fabulous.

A search for Don on YouTube gives us stuff I had seen before but which is still great to revisit, like his Geico spot, a short magazine piece, and the now-classic "Five Guys In A Limo". There's also stuff I hadn't seen, like this Today Show piece, an amusing appearance on the Frank Caliendo show, and a parody of Don done by Pablo Francisco. And all that reminds me of the fabulous trailer for Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian which features another voiceover giant, Hal Douglas.

And now back to work.

The Art Of The Physical

So I was thinking today...and I came to the conclusion that one of the reasons I like pro wrestling so much is that I enjoy over-the-top physical presentation. I can enjoy subtlety as well, such as the clever punnery of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue or the wordplay of the "Four Candles" sketch by The Two Ronnies, but generally speaking I seem to be entranced by the spectacular. I've been thinking a bit about that sort of thing lately, as it relates to my enjoyment (or lack thereof) of live musical performances. I've never been much of one for concerts--I always tend to find my attention drifting and critiquing the sound mix or examining the decor of the building. Even when I was a schoolkid attending the North Carolina Symphony, I found myself wondering how the giant chandelier was held up by such a thin chain rather than paying any attention to the performance going on in front of me.

Most bands I've seen just don't give enough for me on stage. Perhaps I'm shallow (probably), but I just can't enjoy myself unless there's a big physical presentation accompanying the vocal performance. I need style, showmanship, and charisma. That's why I enjoy people like Cab Calloway or Kiss, and the best concert I ever attended was James Brown--they all knew how to put on a SHOW. Performers like James Brown or Ric Flair don't just go out there and do whatever the label on the marquee advertises (soul music, pro wrestling) they make their performance big and bold and something you can't take your eyes off of.

Anyway, what inspired this post was discovering some performances of the Nicholas Brothers I hadn't seen before. If you don't know the Nicholas Brothers, they were brothers (amazing, eh?) who were the most astounding dancers of all time. Their physical acrobat skills would've earned them a place in the history books, but the addition of their amazing showmanship and absolute style makes them into entertainment legends. This is the most famous performance of the brothers, dancing to Cab Calloway's orchestra in the movie Stormy Weather. The climactic scene of them doing the splits over each other's heads is just stunning--and then they just get back up again! Here's a later performance in colour that has some jaw-dropping moments. This is the performance I hadn't seen, a song and dance routine that shows they had the moves way back when, and great singing voices to boot. Now that's a show.

More Wild Wrestling From Japan

So I got several positive responses to my last post about President Ramu, the little girl from the Japanese wrestling promotion 666 who beats all her opponents with her demon-possessed supernatural power. While discussing Ramu with Vanessa down at Chapel Hill Comics, I brought up another one of my favourite characters from one of Japan's wackier wrestling promotions, namely a fellow who goes by the name of Danshoku Dino. He wrestles for a promotion called DDT, the Dramatic Dream Team, which has more nutty gimmicks than any other wrestling group on the planet.

Dino is my fave though. He is flamboyantly gay, and seems quite obsessed with grabbing his opponents' nuts. He is the master of the testicular claw, and his finishing move is the Danshoku Driver, which involves stuffing his opponent's head in his oh-so-brief tights and then delivering a piledriver. Those of you who are familiar with Japanese wrestling may remember stories of how Bruiser Brody, the 6'8" 285 pound monster, would make his entrance by roaming through the crowd swinging his trademark chain and making everybody run for their life. Well, Dino makes his entrance by roaming through the crowd trying to kiss whatever men he can get his hands on, making them run for their life. Hilarious. And don't get me started on how funny a good Danshoku wristlock can be.

You can check out a match with Dino taking on Akira Tozawa here (part two is here.) He does basically the same bits when he visits the Dragon Gate promotion for a six-man tag match, but it's a fun match to watch when you realize that his opponents are Anthony W. Mori and BxB Hulk, who are basically a couple of boy-band-type pretty boys who are typically marketed towards young women, but that Dino just salivates over (they're joined by Super Shisa, the masked guy). To add to the amusement, Dino's own teammate is Magnum Tokyo, who is a sort of exotic dancer character famous for moves like "The Viagra Driver". They're joined by Naoki Tanisaki. Check out that match here: Part the one, Part the two.

Hilarity.

Expanding On FaberFabe

So my buddy Nick Faber recently blogged about a song he wrote. For some reason, the sparse Kraftwerkian tones and catchy rhythms resonated with me, and I felt one of those epiphanies that you always read about, where the crazed oil painter has a burning idea in his soul, and the Muses will not be satisfied until he whips his brush across the canvas, emptying his energies in the creation of his masterpiece. So I had this idea for a music video I wanted to make, using antique clip art. Four days later, and here we are. With the permission of Mr. Faber, I present "Clap My Hands": the music video.

This was fun to make. Used my new copy of Photoshop to edit the pix, cutting out backgrounds and separating out parts and whatnot. Used Soundtrack to translate the mp3 into a usable AIFF. Final Cut Pro did most of the video editing, with a few bits (like the writing scene above) animated in Motion. All in all, a fun project which I'm fairly proud of. And all inspired by the fine creativity of one Nick Faber. Thanks, Mr. Fabe!

My New Favourite Wrestler

Professional wrestling has a new superstar, and she's an eight-year-old Japanese girl named President Ramu.

I'm not sure of her whole story, but can tell you that she's with a promotion called 666 out of Japan, a group associated with DDT (Dramatic Dream Team, which is probably the most wackily entertaining wrestling around today.) Ramu, who is cute as the dickens, is also possessed by a demon, which is what gives her her supernatural strength and combat ability. She's pretty much unbeatable as far as I can tell, and is positively adorable. She's the master of the Shining Wizard and the 619, and the Undertaker WISHES he could deliver such a devastating chokeslam.

Check her out here and here, and in this great match. Here's a translated copy of her Japanese Wikipedia entry, and here's her blog, also translated. (Which indicates that her name should probably be "Lamb", although I like the sound of "Ramu" better.)

Oh, and if somebody can get me an Iron Maiden 666 Ramu t-shirt (as pictured above) I will love you forever. Ramu rules!

The CageMatch 50th Show Extravaganza

Well, history has been made. And I'm exhausted.

I don't think I've ever put as much effort into a single project. The day after CageMatch 50, I just collapsed and did jack diddly for the entire day. But on to the report!

On Saturday, February 9th, we had our FIFTIETH CageMatch show. The show started on April 1, 2006 when Scott Jennings invited me to join him as cohost of a show that would pit two comedy teams against each other in a wrestling-themed event. In the early days we (somehow) managed to do a show every week, but that got ramped down to every other week eventually. Now, more than two years later, CageMatch hit the fiftieth episode milestone. Scott's moved on now to huge new projects, but I have to thank him for letting me join his show and eventually produce the program, as well as making it so much fun for me to be a part of. When he created his perverted, disgusting character, he said he needed a perverted name, and asked if he could use "Hobgood". The rest is history.

And speaking of history, you can check out a fun little video I made to open the CageMatch Fiftieth Show Extravaganza right here. It features a look back at the people and events of CageMatch from the early days to the present, and is fun to see all put together like that. The promo video for the show proper is here. On Saturday, I had a huge 24"x36" poster in the lobby to add a bit of special flavour to the event. You can see a thumbnail of it above, or check out the whole thing here. When I arrived at the theater, there was a fabulous huge sign/sculpture/display made from wood and chainlink fencing on an easel on the loading dock. We had quite a time accusing this person and that person of making it--turns out my mom had made it for me and secretly set it up earlier that day! That was a fabulous surprise.

Anyway, the show went great. We had a sellout crowd, and even had to set up extra seating to accommodate folks. Bill Henderson started the show as CageMatch President Jack Tunney, reading a very short proclamation that he still managed to stretch out into a complete drama. After the videos played, I got a very nice reaction when I mounted the stage. Then Remi Treuer as Evil Billionaire Troy Sterling came out to a nice chorus of boos. One of the highlights of the night was the debut of Mrs. Troy Sterling as portrayed by Callie Peck. God, she was fabulous. She really worked hard to put together an amazing costume and makeup, and had the over-mothering henpecky Jewish wife character down pat. She was just fantastic. I'll have to do a supplementary post with pictures of her and Troy.

The show proper was pretty amazing. Panthro brought it as only they can, coming down to the stage with a twenty-person choir to back them up for their opening number. Flavor Shot came right back and put on an amazingly hot professional show of mp3-inspired comedy. At the end of the show I got to break character and thank a lot of people, including Siegel-Prov for being such a fun team to work with (Dan Siegel was in attendance, which was cool), and Ralph "I'm Jon's Father" Karpinos (who was also there) for pushing me to do improv in the first place. Then we traipsed off to Zog's to hang out, which I thought was really cool, as that's the bar we used to hang out in in the old days, and it just has such a nicer atmosphere than Milltown or Speakeasy.

So that was fun...fifty shows. I'm quite proud of the fact that we gave eighty-one different people an opportunity to perform on stage, and hosted forty-three different teams. And that doesn't count the special show we did for DSIF7, or the 3x3 Tournament, or the Dual Duel, or the completely fictional world tour. We'll be back with a show on February 27 after DSIF8, and then I'm going to take a break for a month or so to work on a couple of other projects, like the trailer for Rape Stove, the Lego animation Le Batman, and a music video for Jackson's "Cigarettes On The Ground". Stay tuned for more fun.

Coming Up In Mere Hours

CageMatch's fiftieth show is tonight. I've been producing this show since April 1, 2006, and have been doing videos for every single show since #3. Hopefully, tonight's show will be a successful extravaganza. I'll certainly have a report up on Sunday, and videos posted and whatnot. Right now it's coming up on 1:00 am Friday night/Saturday morning, I have about 3/4 of one of the two big videos done, and I'm exhausted. I've created a photo pan and smoke trails in Motion, morphed the end of a video into a different picture, and applied tons of holy effects to an imported video clip. Tomorrow, the really painstaking project: condensing fifty shows into one four-to-five minute retrospective video. I have the script written, and I have most of the music picked. Assembling all the footage is the big fight. Oh, and I also have to do a new Hall of Champions and scrolling credits. No problem.

But for now, sleep. If I don't see you at the show tomorrow, cross your fingers for me. I promise not to rip my knee out of its socket this time. Miss ya, Biff.

I Want To Win

Hey, anybody feel like trying to help me win free software? There's this free Mac email newsletter I've been subscribing to for YEARS, and occasionally they do giveaways. For the first time in a long time, they're actually offering up some software I'd like to have. The cool thing is, if you enter the contest, and YOU win, then I win too! Just use this link to do it.

Don't worry about these folks; they're good people, they don't pass your email addy around, and the newsletter is well worth subscribing to if you're into Apple. (They won't even automatically subscribe you--you have to say "yeah, I wanna do that.") So even if you don't use a Mac, help me win!

Oh yeah, the software is Freeverse's Sound Studio, a nice little audio editing program that would help me with my video work. So help a brutha out.

This Might Make Me Like Politics

I'm not much of a political person; I never really was, and then went to a politically-charged school that really turned me off to the whole process. But this might make me get out there and vote for Obama.

Superheroes, animation, hot girl, catchy theme song, AND it's given me some ideas to use in my own videos. Well done, Barely Political!

I'm Famous Again

My pal Megan Stein invited me to go with her to the RBC when The Independent assigned her to do a writeup on the WWE show a few weeks ago. The article is in this week's issue, and here it is! Megan did a great job writing about wrestling for a popular press piece; I think she did a good job of capturing what went on at the show, without falling into the journalistic trap of demeaning what these athletic performers do.

Lessons In Creativity

I think several of the people I know read this blog might be interested in this article. Mark Kennedy (not to be confused with Marc Kennedy) discusses how his young daughter reacted to the 1977 Star Wars film, and then analyzed why certain parts of the movie worked so well. If you're interested in writing, editing, or storytelling, you might enjoy reading the article. Made me think about pacing and revelation.

CageMatch 1/24/08

Had another CageMatch last night. Was a pretty good show; missed having Remi there though. Did the final reveal of the XXXXX logo video, proclaiming CageMatch's Fiftieth show to take place on February 9. Espionage A Trois finally was defeated, and Zach Ward got his first CageMatch win in his own theater, so that was amusing. I was quite happy with the poster design for this show. The video was okay, but obviously a rush job.

One bad thing did happen at last night's show. When I ran down to do my normal leap up the stairs at the top of the show, I stupidly decided to try something new in mid-air, and ended up dislocating my left knee in a rather nasty landing that twisted my lower leg. I tried to cover for it, and I don't think the audience noticed for the most part, but damn it hurt. During each hosting segment, I limped up the aisle but tried to walk as normal as possible on stage. (The show must go on!) Ryan Blackledge was kind enough to help me get all my stuff to my car after the show was over, but damn, driving home in that straight-shift car was brutal. I ended up taking today off of work, which they weren't overly happy about. (Morale at the job these days is at an all-time low.) Fortunately, I've gone through the dislocation thing before (albeit a looooong time ago!) and have some braces and my Classy Freddie Blassie cane to get around with for a bit. I'm thinking it'll be okay in a couple of days.

Also got two great purchases yesterday. My Ultimate James Bond box set of dvds arrived (42 discs for $80, yes!!!) and the very kind John Loftin made a purchase on my behalf of the academic version of Final Cut Pro Studio (sweet!). So now I'll be able to make that really kickass dvd of all my CageMatch videos I had been thinking about. It should be ready for the 50th CageMatch Extravaganza (February 9th, folks!) Watch this space for sales information!

SuperMeme

Ethan Kaye came up with this funny idea: taking a particular amusing series of classic Superman panels and replacing the text. Go check out his versions first.

Then Jeff Scronce (nee Skronch) made his own, converting Ethan's hilarious idea into a meme. Go check out his stuff now.

Now that you've seen the innovators, you can go see mine:
Adam West
Motorhead
Star Trek
007
Superfriends

And finally, a blank version in case anybody else wants to give it a go.

EDIT:
God, this is far too addictive. Here's another one.

EDIT 2:
And yet another one.

A Bit More Fame

Mr. Erik Martin pointed me towards a mention my "Ten" video got on a thread on A Special Thing (a comedy forum.) This is not the first time I've been labelled as "a crazy fan"...HAW!

Kill All Invaders

So apparently the latest trend in online web games is the genre of "Tower Defense Games". Basically, in these games there's a little winding path wandering through your kingdom, and every once in a while evil baddies will start wandering down the path. You have to place little weapon-laden towers around the path in an attempt to whomp these nogoodniks before they make it to the end. There are a number of different weapons to choose from with a variety of effects. In addition, you can upgrade towers as time goes on.

For some reason, I find these little games engrossing. I'm normally not a big fan of strategy games, but this one is so linear, with just options for weapon choice, that I find it quite accessible.

I started off with Laser Defense, and it's probably still my favourite due to the wide variety of weapons. I like the "techy" feel to it too, what with the graph paper and the lasers and whatnot. Today I discovered Flash Element TD and its beta-test offspring, Flash Element TD 2. The first one is very fun, very nice graphics. Try that first so you'll have an appreciation of the second version. I'm still testing that one, but it has great promise. The creatures have better graphics and more amusing noises, and it looks like the weapons will be even cooler once you get to the upper levels. The second version also has a different mechanic, where instead of the creatures cycling through your pathway, they go to the end and try to steal a "flag" and bring it back. When you finally kill them, they drop the flag where they lie. I think TD2 (at this point anyway) is easier, but loads o' fun.

There's LOADS more of games from this "tower defense" genre; just search your favourite local flash game site, and you're sure to find some fun.

Revisualizing Cinema

Nice post title, huh? Sufficiently academic, I hope. But seriously, I like the idea this guy has come up with for summarizing the overall look of a film. He feeds a movie into this program that takes a screengrab every second and reduces it to a mere 8x6 pixels. Then all those shots are strung together in one overall picture that lets you see how the film flows in terms of colour and overall look. By reducing the individual screens down to such a small size, you get sort of an average feel of each second, and looking at them en masse gives you a feel for how the entire movie ebbs and flows. Interesting idea.

Check it out on Brendan Dawes Dot Com.

Being Creative

So this is the first year I've ever had a New Year's resolution. I decided to keep a blog that simply documented every creative thing I do this year, whether it's a video or a wacky Photoshop of somebody's face on a wildebeest or something. Hopefully it'll be fun to see en masse as it grows.

So head on over to A Wretched Hive and check out the first entry for the year (my Amazon video review of The Ten!) and then add the site to your RSS feed so you can follow along at home as I add on new wackiness throughout the year.

CageMatch 12/27/07

The last CageMatch of the year was a non-title affair, as half of the challenging team was comprised of visitors from out of town, namely Corey Brown and the artistic director of the UCB, Anthony King. Since the title was not at stake, the storyline I came up with was that Oh Double-P decided that Espionage A Trois was getting a little lazy over the holidays, and so she brought in an elite team of former agents to give the squad a special training session. (Well, it amused me anyway.)

I haven't been in a very productive mood lately, so the video was cranked out in five hours the day of the show. Couldn't have done it without the fabulous performance by Corey Brown, who really understands my vision of CageMatch as an old-school wrestling show with an ongoing storyline. He gave a great promo that really made the video.

Check out the vid here and the identity screen shown above here.

Little Batman

Oh my fucking god, this is the best thing EVER. Some guy made an homage to the old 1960s Batman show, but with kid actors! The boy doing Batman is GREAT! The costumes are amazing, the attention to ridiculous detail is hilarious, and the Batmobile...my go, the Batmobile. I would've killed for that when I was a kid.

Check out Little Batman: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

I want to make movies now.

Random Stuff

* Just came back from filming for Beatbox in Chicago. That was fun. Very cool people. Wish I could've seen them perform in their natural element. Jenny and Neil particularly impressed me with their rap ability and presence. I can't get enough of Dave Ries in da b-boy stance. Zach was very kind to bring me along to work with the Beatbox folk.
* Rene Duquesnoy is a very good host. We had a faboo party in his palatial estate, got taken to some great places to eat, and generally shown the best parts of the city. And I sang Bon Jovi on Rock Band.
* Got to see Halsted Street. All my life, as a wrestling fan, I was always led to believe that this was the toughest place in the world, the only place that could've turned out such beasts as The One Man Gang and The Road Warriors. Imagine my surprise when Rene laughed and told me that was the gay district. (Which is where we had an amazing meal at a diner. They gave us bananas. Heh.)
* Found a great retro toy store that I could've spent major cash in. They had a Fisher-Price Airport new in a sealed box for $100. Geez. I was amazed to find they had a basket of figures and vehicles for a buck apiece. I bought all their wood figures, along with another Sesame Street Susan. Some of these looked brand new. Amazing.
* Had my first Chicago hotdog, as well as my first real Chicago pizza. Both were good, but the pizza was comparable to the frozen Home Run pizza (they were both quite good). The Chicago hotdog is a completely different animal though... delicious. We stopped at a real dive to get the dog, and I amused/disgusted Rene and Zach by eating a french fry out of the trashcan.
* I love the way Chinese restaurants celebrate Christmas. These blinky-light pastel musical trees on top of a restaurant in Carrboro amuse me.
* I took Monday off of work to recover from the trip. Turns out I needed it. I was completely wiped and wasted the whole day. I'm gonna need to be a video-making machine for the rest of the week.
* The security chick at Chicago's Midway Airport informed me that my driver's license had expired in October. Oops. They didn't catch that at RDU. (I'm glad they didn't--I would've been worrying all weekend about getting past security in Chicago!) Got a new license today, and it was very easy. The folks in Carrboro are courteous.
* Amusing thing heard at the Driver's License office: Two girls claiming to be sisters were there to get licenses. One said she was there to get hers reinstated after being revoked. The other said she was from out of state and her purse was stolen with all her id information. The DMV woman asked her if she had ever gotten a license in North Carolina, and the girl's "sister" replied, "She's gotten pulled over and got a ticket in North Carolina." Yeah, that'll help, baby.

I told my mom last week that my fondest Christmas memory was when I was nine and she made me an advent calendar out of hollowed-out walnuts that she rubber-cemented back together with crackerjack toys inside. So yesterday she showed up where I work and brought me a NEW walnut advent calendar---made from the SAME walnuts she used thirty years ago!

The walnuts have the numbers 1-24 written on them, and you open up one each day to find a prize inside. This version has little folded-up strips of paper inside each nut, which might be puzzles, word scrambles, or pithy quotes. I particularly liked the quote for the first day, which was as follows:

Some days, doing "the best we can" may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn't perfect--on any front--and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.

-Fred Rogers

I can certainly relate to that...I get frustrated when things don't turn out as perfectly as they do in my dreams, whether it be an art project or a video production or the love for a girlfriend. It helps to sit back and remember that we can only do so much, as outside factors like time, resources, or the independence of other people can sometimes hinder our dreams. In any situation, we can only do our best.

Another Poster Design

Designed another action/thriller poster this week--this for the next Espionage A Trois show. Joe Stanton and John Loftin are "Extraordinary Rendition", and they have done several great shows together, starting with their excellent performances in this year's Dual Duel. I love the outfits they came up with for this photoshoot. Crazy tough bastards.

The backdrop behind the Extraordinary Rendition fellows turned out nicely. The whole backdrop of the poster is a gradient that goes from a midnight blue at the top and bottom to a slightly lighter blue in the middle. So on top of that, I threw a pic from iStockPhoto of a room with lots of plumbing and dials and whatnot ('cause we kept talking about waterboarding when we were doing the photoshoot). The room looked a little too antiseptic and pristine, but I fixed that. I had taken some closeup pictures of a train that was parked near the theater, and used a shot of a stained and rusted patch behind the engine to overlay on the room, which gave the PERFECT effect.

Remi looks fabulously evil, Jeff Scronch provided a fabulous photo of Espionage A Trois and Oh-Double-P, and even Scott Sullivan made the poster this time around!

FYI, I got copies of the Silence Is Golden poster printed at Zazzle, and they arrived yesterday. They're 20"x30" HUGE, and look AMAZING.

I'm Famous Again

It's been a weird couple of days...some great stuff, some surprising stuff, some wistful stuff... premieres, revelations, regrets, a lot of laughter, far too many tears, and more alcohol than usual. Overall, I think everything is going to be fine. There's lots more projects on the calendar for the near future, with special CageMatch shows, a dvd I'm producing, a music video I'm directing, and of course, Christmas and all the hoopla and merriment and family wackiness that surrounds that. So I have hope that things are going to be good.

The latest bit of positivity is that it turns out that Patton Oswalt DID see the Kinda Patton II: Werewolves and Lollipops project I did for Jason a few months ago. And now I have my own page on Patton's website! Chekkit out here. (Dig that animated header!)

And also this weekend, my friend Matt sent me a copy of the documentary they did on our old OMEGA wrestling promotion (as detailed here) and I've watched a few minutes of it. It looks like it's going to be really, really good. Tells the story of how a bunch of kids from rural North Carolina got together and made one of the best independent wrestling federations in the country. And best of all, I host all the segments of the documentary! I'm in the extras too, talking about how I met the boys and got involved. I haven't watched the whole thing, but I'm told Matt puts me over hard, which would be really cool. It's nice to have one's contributions recognized.

I also just got a dvd in the mail from Mr. Erik Martin that he wants me to produce a promotional video for, so that'll be fun. And this Friday I'm going to try to start work on a music video for Jackson's great song, "Cigarettes On The Ground".

Gotta stay busy, or you'll go insane. Believe me, I know.

Alcohol

If you really apply yourself, Woodchuck amber cider will get you fucked up,

Crazy Voicemail

So the other day I heard the Assistant to the Mayor laughing his head off. Turns out he was listening to a voicemail left by a guy who was very irate. We had to listen to it several times before we figured out what his beef was. Turned out he was upset at some referee call in a middle school basketball game or something. We thought the call was hilarious because:

1. It's an amusing thing to get nuts over, a basketball call in a school game.
2. Overreaction is always funny.
3. Cursing is funny.
4. We don't run the school system. And most importantly:
5. He was trying to call the City of Durham. We ain't Durham.

Enjoy the call here.

CageMatch 11-29-07

This week's CageMatch video is done in the style of a spy movie commercial, as if it were the sequel to Espionage A Trois' first blockbuster movie. Here it is.

This one took a lot of planning. It started with the name of the fictional movie, "Silence Is Golden", which resulted in the poster design. Then I found a Garbage song entitled "Silence Is Golden", which was perfect, since Garbage has done a James Bond movie song before. That inspired the whole feel of the video.

I decided to do the voice differently, based on an old radio promo for "Live And Let Die". I wrote the script last week, and recited it for days before I actually recorded it. We did a pretape for the Secret Agent Headquarters segment two weeks ago, and I got a little time with Zach on Tuesday at lunch to tape his segments. Had to go out and buy Goldfinger and Man With The Golden Gun on dvd for the weapons segment. Took some pix of my sister on Thanksgiving for the "shh" silhouettes seen above. Tommy's jacket was the wrong colour (a light tan instead of black) so I recoloured that in Photoshop.

I was particularly happy with the introduction sequence for each character in Espionage A Trois. Those pretty much turned out exactly how they appeared in my head. Great pictures taken by Jeff Scronch.

Some framegrabs are here.

This Is Tonight

Silence Is Golden poster
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood

Poster for the 11/29/07 episode of CageMatch, featuring Espionage A Trois defending against a man whose actions speak louder than his words, Silence DoGood!

I'm actually going to order some 20"x30" prints of this. Sweet.

Rappin' Disaster

Okay, this is probably the most embarrassing thing I've done since...well, the LAST time I recorded a rap. And that was a loooong time ago, when my friend Tim and I wrote a rap about "Fratty Baggers", the fratboys who would hide their beer in paper bags like winos---not because they didn't want you to know they were drinking, but they didn't want you to know they were drinking cheap beer. (Bad for their rich image, I guess.)

Anyhoo, this little ditty was born out of a email that one Jeff Scronce sent around to me and a coupla pals. Jeff linked us to this site, featuring a guy rapping about the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It was amazingly stupid and funny. Ethan Kaye then responded by saying

Sounds like that old-school 80's hip-hop. "My name is XXXXX
and I'd like to say..."

Well, for some reason I found that inspiring, so in the next fifteen minutes or so I wrote the following lyrics:

My name is *FEMA*, and I'd like to say,
I can rap about disasters in a *MILLION* ways!
Hurricanes, tornados, and a big ol' flood,
Fema gonna be there in yo' neighborhood!
Dolin' out cash for b-boys and b-girls
Helpin' y'all while the turntable twirls

The F is for "Fresh", 'cause we're cool like dat,
The E is for "Excitin'", 'cause we're the hot cats,
The M is for "Da Most", most from coast to coast,
And the A is for "Awesome" like butter on toast!

Wave your hands in the air, 'cause you know we really care!
Whoop-whoop! Whoop-whoop!
The roof! The roof! The roof has been repaired!
Whoop-whoop! Whoop-whoop!

Problem is, when I got home, I was still thinking about the stupid thing. Aaaaaaand I ended up recording it.

And here it is! The cool thing about Box.net is you can either download it or play it right in the browser! (You can also get the file here.)

Facts About Goldfinger

I recently purchased the James Bond film "Goldfinger". That got me to thinking about the character who has lent his name to the title of the movie, namely one Auric Goldfinger (pictured here). I thought it might be nice to make a concise list of Mr. Goldfinger's distinguishing characteristics, as spelled out in the film's theme song.

KNOWN FACTS ABOUT AURIC GOLDFINGER:

• He's "The Man"
• Possesses "The Midas Touch"
• Also possesses "A Spider's Touch"
• Has a cold finger
• Possesses "Web of Sin"
• Can speak "Golden Words"
  
• Known to utter lies
• Can deliver "Kiss of Death"
• Has heart of gold
• Heart is also cold
• Loves only gold
• Only gold
• No, seriously, he loves gold

CageMatch 11-8-07

I haven't worked this hard on a video since Night of the Living Improv. Check out the Espionage A Trois video here, and then come back for discussion.

Back? Excellent. So this took a lot of preparation. Once I learned of the supacool name of the team for this week (which happened Oct 22) I started planning. I knew I wanted to do the James Bond "travelling circles"/gunbarrel beginning, but using all three group members. So we set up a pretape session to get that footage. I went out and bought a stack of guns for them to use. The one problem with the shoot, which I didn't consider, is that the white backdrop doesn't go to the floor, so I couldn't show them full-body, like in the real Bond footage. Ah well.

So I actually wrote out a full textual storyboard for this video (which I usually don't do) due to its complexity. I loved the pan up the shot of Panthro, making them look menacing. And the fade-up of the three champion pins, followed by the fade-up of the three silhouettes worked perfectly. The growing effect of the silhouettes to fill the screen with black worked beautifully as well.

I studied all the Bond movie gunbarrel sequences to try and make mine fairly accurate. The travelling circles worked well; those are just internal shape generators in Final Cut, keyframed. I went out and bought a copy of Diamonds Are Forever, and captured and altered the gunbarrel with VLC and ImageWell. Then I worked on the blood sequence, to make sure that would be ready. I pulled the sequence from The Spy Who Loved Me into Flash and rotoscoped the blood frame by frame with the paintbrush. I tested it as a multiply overlay in Final Cut, and it worked great. I was saving the walkons for last.

Next on the list of things to do was to select the music. I have far too huge a library of spy music, but went through all the appropriate stuff, agonized over it, and decided on a track called "Destroy Silicon Valley" from View To A Kill for the moody opening, then the gunbarrel music from Thunderball, and the Bond theme from Dr. No. (I also used a version of the Bond theme as interpreted by wacko jazz saxman John Zorn for Espionage A Trois' entrance at the show.) I recorded the voiceover, spent a heck of a time getting the gunbarrel music to repeat three times, and exported it to disc.

Then I had to tackle the logo. We had taken the shots at Katie's house the same day we did the walking sequence video. I took a bunch of shots, and wouldn't ya know it, had to use three different ones to get the look I wanted, as no one picture contained good looks from all three folks. That was a bitch, balancing out the different lighting and gamma to get everything looking like one shot. Lots of masking on the bedspread. I added in the headboard from some puffy headboard company's website, and overlaid it with a brown tint to make it look like the fancy sort of bed James Bond would make sweet love in. The wall is a texture from a clipart package we have at work. The cigarette in Katie's hand was just a rolled-up piece of paper. I added the smoke in and played with it until it looked accurate. Kit kindly provided the martini glass, and Colette provided the cock-shaped toothpick. I just loved the expressions on everybody's face, especially Katie looking so secretive and sly and seductive. You can see a better view of the E.A.T. identity screen here.

The biggest battle was the gunbarrel sequence itself. I wrestled for hours trying to get the circular travel mattes and the gunbarrel pics and the walking pretapes all lined up. Not much to say about it really, except that it took about six hours to do. I ended up exporting Kit's bit to an image sequence and going through it frame-by frame, hand-editing out the background, and then pulling it back into Final Cut to make into basically what amounted to animation. I really wanted to have a circle follow Kit as well, but my brain was dead at that point, and I just couldn't figure out how to get it to overlay the background gunbarrels while still letting Katie and Tommy shine through. (I finally figured it out as I was dropping off to sleep, but by then it was too late.) I overlayed the blood rotoscoping, had a lot of fun doing the circle animation and identity reveal, and thought that turned out quite nice, very evocative of the classic Bond look. The lettering for the identity screen was done in LiveType and imported into Final Cut. I tacked on the end sequence, and Bob's your uncle.

Everybody seemed to dig it, and the Espionage folks were most appreciative. That felt nice.

Thanks for dropping by. We'll be back with more video nuttiness after Thanksgiving.


Oh, and the opening sound? Add a comment to this post if you figure out the dual meaning.

Give 'Em Hell, Harry

Harry Truman tells us what we're NOT going to do about communism. The past echoes to us here in the present. Makes you think.

See the video here.

CageMatch 10-25-07

Another CageMatch, another dollar. Not my dollar, but a dollar nonetheless! Here's the video; watch it, and then come back for info.

Okay, so I went with a Halloween theme, since this will be the closest show we do to the holiday without going over. (Please have your pet spayed or neutered.) Most of it is stock footage from the Animation Factory, but I thought I used it fairly cleverly. I composited the first bit out of a still from AF, the DSI logo, and an animation from AF. The funny thing is, the animation had a moon in it, and I needed to line it up in the sky with the DSI logo. But that made the animation off-center, so if you watch it closely, the bats actually fly off the right side and disappear behind an invisible curtain. I didn't think it was too obvious, so I left it in.

The second song is one of my favourite Kiss numbers, "I Love It Loud". I extended the first drum bit so I could talk over it, then timed the speech so it went right into the lyrics. I thought it was amusing that I say "It's Halloween, and the possibilities are *frightening*" and then Gene Simmons starts off the song with "Stand up, you don't have to be *afraid*". It all makes sense in subtle ways.

The Gladiator identity is just a screen from a video game, together with a lightning background I dropped in, and a text logo I made with some pattern overlays and a distortion filter. You can see it better here.

How cool does PT look as The Emperor?

Can you identify the beginning bit and the link therein?

Shots from the show itself are here.

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.