Der Pong Mit Der Ping

My friend Brantley directed me to this animated opening for a Japanese tv program, and challenged me to guess the plot of the show. I had no idea. This is offically the most bizarre anime I've seen. It's just chock-full of oddity.

PVC Skeleton

PVC Skeleton
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

My mom made this skeleton out of PVC pipe and a few Clorox bottles. She's so creative!!!

Click here to see it bigger.

Addendum:
Now mom is taking it to my sister's house. Click here to see it buckled in for the ride.

PCQOTD : 10-18-06

Plebian:
"I yelled to the cabby, 'Yo homes, smell ya later!'"

Erudite:
"Whatever you do, don't fall asleep."

PCQOTD : 10-17-06

Plebian:
"Everyone loves the king of the sea. Ever so kind and gentle is he."

Erudite:
"What is it, girl? Is Timmy trapped down a well?"

CageMatch 10/14/06

CageMatch chapionship pin
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

This was a good show. Both teams put on great performances and the crowd really enjoyed themselves. Special kudos to Monica for coming to perform even though she was terribly sick, and to Callie Peck The Tech From Heck for stepping in at the last minute to do a bang-up job teching the top of the show, hitting the special cues perfectly.

The video seemed to be rather well-received, which surprised me actually, as I thought it wasn't all that hot. It starts with a re-use of the Hostile Takeover pretape from last week, because Rene's performance amused me so much. (The crowd loved that part, too.) I had some Kraftwerk underscoring the whole recap part, to evoke that "cybernetic organism" feel that Rene started. The music swells up into a live version of "We Are The Champions" as I put myself and my cool button over. The crowd started laughing as soon as the Dolly Parton music started, and when the challenger logo was revealed, everybody popped hard. Very cool.

The pretape explaining the absence of Biff went over quite well too. Callie did a perfect job of cueing it up and adjusting the lights smoothly and on time, so it went off without a hitch. I was afraid people would miss Biff's ringtone, because they were laughing so much at his lame pickup routine, but they did calm down quickly enough to catch the second part of the phone ringing, and loved it.

All in all, a true success. I hope I can pull off my big plans for the next two weeks' videos. I've never done that level of animation, and it's going to be a big roll of the dice if my hands can do what my mind has dreamed up. Stay tuned.

video: Hostile Takeover vs Here Comes Dolly Parton
video: Where Is Biff?
this week's stills

I'm Always Up For A Meme

Super Corey
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

Jeff's doing a "I'll draw what you want" meme, and since he's been so kind as to draw something for me, I will join his meme and offer to Photoshop an image for people who request it. What would you like?

(Oh, and I started to link to Jeff's post, but since it mentions the drawing he's doing for me, it would ruin a surprise if the intended recipient were to see it. So those of you who know Jeff, go check out his blog.)

PCQOTD : 10-16-06

Plebian:
"Early to rise, early to bed. And in between I cooked and cleaned and went out of my head."

Erudite:
"We're in the air and everywhere."

This Can't Be Good

Food gone horribly bad. This was not a good idea.

Hot Dog Loaf

PCQOTD : 10-13-06

Plebian:
"Whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks."

Erudite:
"Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?"

PCQOTD : 10-12-06

Plebian:
"A mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper."

Easy Erudite:
"The best to you each morning."

Hard Erudite:
"Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."

PCQOTD : 10-11-06

Plebian:
"One, two, three, four, tell the people what she wore."

Erudite:
"Drop on the deck and flop like a fish."

Wacky Duck

wacky_duck_01_06
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

I have absolutely no context for this. I don't know what it is. I just stumbled across it and it amused the bejeezus out of me. Enjoy.

PCQOTD : 10-10-06

Plebian:
"Sometimes you feel like a nut."

Erudite:
"So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that youll wait for me, hold me like youll never let me go."

I Gotta Call My Momma

So I go over to my friend Jackson's for dinner last Friday. We had been talking about our favourite white trash food from when we were younguns, and discovered we both had fond memories of Chef Boyardee pizza. So Friday, we done had some. I wish I had taken pictures of it, so that those of you who haven't had the pleasure of this processed, sterilized foodstuff could understand how great it is. You open the box, and inside is a pouch, a tall can, and a short can. The pouch has the crust ingredients; just add water. The tall can has the sauce; pour it on! The short can has powdered parmesan cheese; sprinkle it over the sauce. You're done!

Jackson did a fabulous job preparing the stuff. Looked just like I remember it from when my mom made it for me. (sniff!) By the way, it don't look nuthin' like the picture to the right. Maybe if you added your own fresh cheese, but not unadulterated right out of the box. No, it looked flat and bland and unappetizing and that was PERFECT! It tasted just like my tastebuds remembered it. Fabulous.

Better yet, Jackson had an extra added surprise for me. When I was a wee youth, my favourite variety of Chef Boyardee pizza was "sausage". Well, they don't make "sausage" anymore, jsut cheese and pepperoni. I had groused to Jackson about the loss of the sausage version of Chef Boyardee, and dig this--he made sausage sauce BASED SOLELY ON MY DESCRIPTION. I had told him that the sausage sauce was almost granular, so he blended the hell out of some italian sausage in his food processor, mixed it in the Chef Boyardee sauce, and damn if it didn't taste and feel almost exactly right. Such an amazing friend, that Jackson Hall.

Captain North Carolina

Captain North Carolina inked and coloured
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

Here's the story of how this came to be:

Kit FitzSimons blogged about Marvel's "Civil War" and somehow the discussion posited that 50 Captain America clones would be stationed in the 50 states to keep order. Kit had the hilarious idea that they would all be named "Captain -insert state name here-", and I begged people to actually illustrate the various "localized heroes". So I tell my friend Jackson about it, and he surprises me with a pencil sketch. I can't draw for shit, but I tried my hand at inking and colouring Jackson's original art. And here we are.

There are three pix up here, the original pencils, the finished pic, and an amalgam.

Please, if anybody else wants to draw other state superheroes, go for it! And let me know, I wanna see!

PCQOTD : 10-9-06

Plebian:
"Missed it by that much."

Erudite:
"A small penguin who tries but can’t succeed-o."

Man, Ray's gonna be pissed if he's not the one to get this...

Learn Cricket The Vincent Price Way

I've watched cricket before, but never understood what was going on, until Vincent Price showed me the way. This is from a postscript segment of the PBS Mystery show, and the best part is that Vincent demonstrates the rules of cricket using vials of poison and skeleton keys.

Enjoy.

PCQOTD : 10-5-06

Plebian:
"The incredible edible."

Erudite:
"Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize y'all's neighbourhood."

PCQOTD : 10-4-06

Plebian:
"I don't know. Third base."

Erudite:
"California is a wonderful place to live, if you're an orange."

Snaggletoothed Freak

I'm famous.