The Legion of Justice Heroes

So a few months ago, my friend Sylvia invited people to come partake (in a few months, ie, last week) of a murder mystery party. Sylvia doesn't buy these in a box from a store; she writes them up from scratch, creating all the characters, their motivations, their interrelationships, EVERYTHING. I don't see how she does it.

Anyway, she had a fairy tale murder mystery party a year or two ago, and it was amazing, great food, great backstories, and people had an amazing time fleshing out their fairytale characters and acting like complete nutballs. (Aaron and Fiona as obnoxious-accented Hansel and Gretel were particular standouts.) I participated in that one, and was an old man whose mission was to get rid of a magic amulet before midnight. I palmed it off on Bryan Barnes, and he aged like 120 years in seconds (and then we had a hilarious slow-motion chase around the theater.)

ANYWAY anyway, a few months ago, Sylvia invited me to do the superhero thing, but I was feeling all "wah-wah, whine-whine" antisocial and obnoxious, so I politely declined (even though I had had a ball at the fairytale one).Turns out Aaron couldn't make it either (as he had to infiltrate some conservative sect and steal their liquor and down pillows or something...) so Sylvia cast him as the superheroes' sidekick (who I dubbed "The Amazing Wonder Keck") and asked me to film a simple scene of him being tortured; something for the heroes to fight for.

Well, you know me: always happy to help a friend out when I can, and if it involves video and campy superheroes, well, always happy to make it eighteen times more complex and giggle the whole time doing it. So I volunteered to do a kidnapping scene as well, and we brainstormed and created some visual gags, some taunting scenes, and the mandatory use of Burgess Meredith Penguin Gas. (which turns out to be fun & easy to do in After Effects!)

I also decided to attempt to make a Superfriends-style animated opening as well, and wanted a Legion of Doom group of villains. Somebody came up with a name that I vetoed, with me saying I wanted a "Man From U.N.C.L.E." style acronym. Aaron, being a smartass, said "why don't you just go with A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.?" Me, being a smartass, said "yeah, right, why don't YOU come up with a cool name that long, with those letters?" Aaron, being a genius comedy writer, came up with one in like four minutes, and it got included in the video (and I made us buttons!). I had fun coming up with all the villainous characters; they were supposed to be illustrated, but got axed due to time constraints. The heroes DID get illustrated; Sylvia sent me Facebook pix of the various folks involved, and I drew my best attempt at them, costumed as their hero. I would draw one person, show it to Jason, and he'd show me what could be improved to make it actually look human ("You got the boobs wrong AGAIN.") Pencils were scanned into Photoshop and cleaned up, then imported into Toon Boom Studio for inking and colouring. I had already designed all the logos for the heroes and the villains in Illustrator. I also had a great time writing the voiceover script for the animated opening, trying my best to channel Ted Knight.

The live action stuff was filmed over at Casa Keck (after kicking Fitz out, for secrecy reasons). It was insanely hot that day, so filming exteriors whilst wearing longsleeve black "Goon" shirts was less than pleasant for me and Miss Toth, but we had a blast. Got in some good visual gags and some blooper material. Moving inside, we set up my new chromakey screen and suspension stands from Digital Juice (which were AWESOME--I wanna do more chromakey work now!) We filmed the restaurant scene in front of Kit's colelction of Multiple Man sketches, which made it look like a sort of superhero Sardi's, which I thought was funny. We also managed to include our fabled Old Bay Seasoning (in-joke.) After we finally beat Aaron until he learned the actual name of the superhero group name, and after I learned how to fake out to the camera so you could read my shirt, we had that scene in the bag. I had found some great cotton batting that looked like oversized comedy rope to tie Wonder Keck up with, so that looked funny. Aaron got into character quickly, and adlibbed most of his stuff. I took several takes to ramp up my own energy and get into the part (the early takes on the blooper real are painfully low-key.)

Breaking all the equipment down and heading home, it took a week or two to find the time to log all the footage and get it roughly edited, then another solid week to add the music, supers, graphics, and special effects (did I mention the Penguin Gas?) Matching the virtual table movement to the zooming and panning of the camera was difficult, so it looks a little rough--but darn good enough for a one-shot party, I'd say! The important thing was the comedy. Sylvia did a bang-up job of making a ludicrously large plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and Aaron made an annoyingly hilarious pesky sidekick.

Finally it was party day! We headed over to Sylvia's gaming friends Will and Allison's house (they were very awesome, with a cool place, and I need to hang with them more.) Kit arrived about the same time we did, and everybody else managed to arrive by twenty minutes later (by which time, Kit had not yet entered the house. Everyone else was scared to go out and find out why, so I was delegated to go check up on him. If you know Kit well, you wouldn't be worried--he was just putting together a rather complex outfit.)

Everybody seemed to really enjoy themselves. The videos played quite well through the XBox 360, and seemed to add to the mood (screaming during the Troubalert klaxon has now become an ongoing bit). Kit's character, Vector, had size-changing powers, so Kit creatively (and amusingly) replicated that by having a series of different-sized action figures to represent him. Fiona made for a hilarious FDR Lass: "We have our four freedoms: Freedom of speech, freedom from fear,...and the other two freedoms." The guy playing DYRE (think Incredible Hulk) was fabulous. At first, I thought he was an utter buffoon and a shallow actor, as his Hulk-ish character was pretty simple. But then he reverted to his "Bruce Banner" identity (by putting on a suit and tie) and revealed his brilliance (both his character's brilliance and his own brilliance at playing the character!) The plot ended up going in directions we couldn't have imagined, with an explosive ending. Sylvia did an amazing job giving everybody fun characters to play with interesting motivations, and creating a world for them to live in. (And she invented an awesome supervillain off the top of her head: The Great Molesto.)

Oh, and I have to mention that Will infused his own liqueurs, which is awesome, and he was kind enough to let me try his basil liqueur, which was satisfyingly evil-looking with it's cloudy swirls of dark green--it tasted amazing.

So here's the stuff:

Videos are here (now including bloopers from the filming!)
(it's a playlist, so you can either watch them individually or let them all play through.)

Stills from the video production are here.

Pix from the party itself do be here.

Enjoy!
-Ted

CageMatch and Banana Breakup

I'm woefully behind on my blog/video updates. I did CageMatch a few weeks ago, and then the Banana Breakup Extravaganza last week.

First, CageMatch. Not much to say here, except that I didn't have much of an idea for the video, and didn't get an opportunity to meet with the 4DDI guys, so the whole thing was just based around one of the members not being able to make it. I had the Beer graphic already laying about, basically, so that was easy to throw in.

The Banana Breakup video was a lot more satisfying. Got some time with Kit and Eitan to do shots and video before the show, so there was a lot more raw material to work with (and the BB boys are always so fun to work with as well.) The opening shoutout to Biff Hobgood was Kit's idea, and very funny to us since we knew it would be over most people's heads. (If it's over your head, check out the Biff Hobgood surprise return video.)

I really wanted to do a decent (if quick) overview of Banana Breakup's history, so consulted my files, went through all their past videos, and selected some clips to use. (One bonus: Joe Jones made his return to the theater after several months off, and Kyle Chorpening was there as well, so they both saw the shotout to Panthro.) Then we went into the whole "BB vs BB" bit, which was amusing. By the way, nobody really knew we were presenting the show in a faux CageMatch format, so the whole video thing was a surprise. I loved the way the still of the masked BB turned out, photoshopped with a "photocopy" version of the picture overlaid on itself and tweaked a bit to give it that hyperreal look. The "good" BB reply was hilarious, with Eitan's "honesty and wits" and Kit's "tonight at dawn" ad libs. I was also quite happy with the "flaming faceoff" animation at the end. And was quite pleased with the song I picked for the end, The Donnas covering Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself." The ersatz Hall of Champions was a surprise for the boys, in an attempt to make 'em laugh.

Stills, as always, are here.

PS: the live show included another surprise: Scott Sullivan performing a Banana Breakup rap live on stage. From a rapping standpoint, it was a humiliating failure, but from a comedy standpoint, it was a decent success, as 40 year old guys fucking up a rap onstage while dressed in a blinged-out t-shirt and hat turns out to be pretty laughworthy.

Inspiration From Teddy

So I had a hard time being productive today. (It's been a rough week.) I finally decided to go lie down for a bit to clear my head. Ended up picking up my copy of Don Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion" that my mom had gotten me for Christmas, which had been sitting next to the bed untouched ever since.

Excellent book; ended up spending the bulk of the afternoon consuming every page and panel. Towards the end of the tome, Unca Scrooge meets up with President Teddy Roosevelt and (as part of the tale) Scrooge recalls words that Roosevelt had told him years earlier (which, in reality, is a paraphrase of a real quote of Roosevelt's):

"Don't live by the doctrine of ignoble ease, but by toil and effort, labor, and strife! The highest forms of success comes to the man who shirks not from danger or work, and who therefore wins the ultimate triumph."

Those words seemed to be appropriate for my current situation, and I reproduce them here in hopes that they might touch other people as well. I have several friends who are very successful in their chosen fields, and they got there through dedication and hard work, pushing aside any obstacles in the pursuit of their dream, while always keeping their eyes focused on their goal. I envy these friends of mine. I know they are a different breed of person than I am, and I cannot duplicate their way of living and believing, but I can hope to emulate them in some small way, and sometimes it's through wise words like those in the excerpt above that help drive people like myself who don't have the natural attitudes and abilities of those rare people who truly know how to live life to the fullest. It's even more helpful (for me, anyway) when it comes via a comic book.

Oh, also, "Inoki Bom-Ba-Ye".

Green eyes and big admiration go to Matt, Larry, and Zach. Keep doing great things; in addition to your own success, you inevitably inspire others.

Twitter T. Tweet

I'm on Twitter now, much though I have resisted it. You know the name.

Good Eats

My buddy Jackson cooked up a particularly delicious meal for me on Friday. Here we have a pork chop in wine sauce, baked beans, mustard, and Potato Cakes a la Jerry Golliher. DEE-licious! Best meal I've had in months.

Dave "The Man" Weaver

Life is good. I've given away two big desks that were cluttering up my back room, and the room is spacious for the first time since I moved in six years ago. I've got a new computer/video-production desk in a box behind me that I plan on assembling today or tomorrow, and will spend the rest of the week starting to put together my new production studio. I feel good. I knew that I would. So nice. So nice.

Anyway, that revelation wasn't the reason for this post. What prompted me to whip out the scanner and upload some photos to Flickr was the discovery of this ancient printout. I found it in a random stack of papers somewhere in the depths of my cluttered back room. It happens to be a dot-matrix printout of a poem my old college buddy Dave Weaver wrote in November of 1986, and "emailed" me via the semi-proto-internet we had on campus. (see the end of this post for a transcript.) Dave was a card; a funny guy from Urbana, Illinois with a talent for learning Chinese and playing bass. Actually, he could play lots of instruments, and was always trying to play his music for his friends. Problem is, our crowd was into punk, hardcore, and rockin' out, and Dave tended to write heartfelt emotional music, so most people didn't really want to hear Dave's latest creation. I, on the other hand, loved Dave's music. So much so, that when Dave borrowed my old Fostex four-track and let me hear his demo songs, I pressed him to allow me to engineer an album of his original tunes, which we did during Oberlin's Winter Term one year.

Since I needed to have a pic of ol' Dave on this post, I dug up a few pics from my archives and scanned 'em in. If you really want to shudder, go check out a few of the others I found in my "Oberlin College In The 1980s" Flicker set. I know I wasn't a Don Juan back in those days, but I can't believe my friends actually allowed me to run around loose looking quite that bad. You can also see our old dining hall, and even a shot or three from the TIMARA studios, where I worked on getting my electronic music degree.

I've lost track of all my old Oberlin buddies. My original roommates and best pals were Roger "The Party Mutant" White (who was an ethnomusicology genius who introduced me to Motorhead, Judas Priest, and James Brown; I think he's married now), Jeremy "Jer-Bro" Tompkins (who was a Bio/Chem double-major, which is ridiculous at a top-rank school like Oberlin, I used to have great fun typing his papers for him as he dictated to me, and got me drunk for the first time, as well as many times afterwards.), and my good buddy Tom "Thomas C From Across The Sea/The Might Of One And The Libido Of Three" Manion (who always insisted Cleveland was America's North Coast, shared my love of surrealism, and loved The Floyd more than anybody. Last I heard he had packed two dufflebags and gone to seek his fame and fortune in the theater world of NYC). I also shared great times with Pat Wehner from West By God Virginia who drank and watched Twin Peaks with me, Jim "I'm An Actor" Thompson who would always be willing to stand up during poker games and recite horrendous paragraphs from porn novels I had clipped out for him, Jonathan "SuperJew" Silverman who was the life of every party and invented the rewording of the Run DMC lyric "not bad meaning bad but bad meaning HOBGOOD!" which he would scream out no matter where the song was playing, Kathy Thompson and Cathy Gale who I had massive crushes on, Matthew "Hello" White who was just the nicest guy you'd ever meet and was embarrassed at the birthday rap I wrote for him (he was born on 5-5, the fifth of May--as he liked to tell us), Larry "The Axe-Man" Axtell who cohosted a wrestling radio show with me and fled from Oberlin to join the Ringling Brothers Clown College, and Mike Soohoo who was head of the Asian American Alliance and taught me how important it was to not to overuse the word "hate". Two quick bits about Mike Soohoo: he made the mistake of telling us a story about how he had been teaching at a summer camp before the semester, and how the kids made fun of his name, calling him "Soo Who?" and "Soohoobaru". Oh, how we used that against him for the rest of the year! Mike and I also had an ongoing war over which of Prince's rejects were hotter: Appolonia or Vanity. (I was a big Vanity fan. I have all her records!) Oh, and so many others I'm forgetting: Casey, Terra, Jon Fine, Douglas, Jenny Seltzer, Marti, Kevin, Reid, Harm Farm, Bitch Magnet, Jenny Douglass (who I had a crush on in sixth grade, and then was surprised to discover at Oberlin!), and my brain can't cope with the hundreds of othes I knew and loved to be around.

For posterity, here's the text of the poem Dave Weaver wrote off the top of his head to amuse me:

Ted, Ted, he has no fear
Born and raised with a pack o' bears,
Bigger than you ever did see
Can eat his way through a factory,
Faster than the lightning strikes,
Slyer than the Devil's tikes,
Ted, Ted, he has no fear.

Ted, Ted, the ladies' man,
Got one in the closet and one in the van,
Take his cane and overcoat,
Show them gals the roundabout,
Don't look now, he's looking fine,
Big leather hat, he wines and dines,
Ted, Ted the ladies' man.

Ted, Ted, the master o' rap,
Can put you down better than tiger trap,
He knows the ins and out of the world,
The city stops when he says a word,
He can do the numchucks and the figure four too,
You better watch out when he's comin' after you,
Ted, Ted, the master o' rap.

For the record, I did tend to wear an overcoat and suede cowboy hat, and carry a cane as an affectation. What can I say, Oberlin was a pretty alternative college, and I was a big dork. I did literally sleep in a closet for a semester, as our dorm room had a huge walk in closet, and we converted it into a second bedroom. I never had a "lady" in there though. And I can "do the numchucks" as well as the figure four. Watch out, Chuck Norris.

The Mariner's Revenge

If you're not doing anything for Halloween, my friends and I are putting on a play I wrote based on a song by The Decemberists. It was all Jackson's idea, and will be performed by The Fenario Players with live music from The Dead Canaries and a special appearance by PT Scarborough. Anyway, the party starts at 8:00, and the play will be performed later in the evening, once everybody is warmed by alcohol consumption. It's at Fenario, a house at 2321 NC Hwy 54 W. Call me for details.

The Wrath of Grapes Is Complete!

The movie I've been editing for the past month-plus is finally complete! I got together last Monday with the rest of the folks who created "The Wrath of Grapes", and we had the world premiere. Everybody seemed to like it. Ryan Locante's performance as the cyclist was the biggest hit. Jackson showed up for most of the film, but I don't think people really realized how much he contributed until we watched the rough cut later (without the soundtrack). Also on hand were the star, Nick Borgerding, Megan Stein, Joe Stanton, and our host Lisa Palmisano. We all worked together to create the film, born from a long-distance suggestion by Austin Nava. The whole thing was brainstormed, written, storyboarded, costumed, and filmed in twelve hours. Then I took a little longer to edit it.

Now you, too, can enjoy our little ten-minute film. If you haven't seen the trailer (and why the hell haven't you?), you can view it here if you'd like. The finished film is here, and the outtakes are here.

Done? Excellent. I had fun editing this together. The opening logo for the movie was created by Ryan, and then I tweaked it a bit. He also came up with the logo for Scrambled Video Eggs and 80 Acres Productions. I took the latter and came up with the idea of flipping and animating the clouds in the background, which made it look even cooler.

I agonized over what to do with the opening interview segments. I wanted to set them apart from the rest of the film, but when I tried them in black and white, they didn't have the contrast against the intercut logos that Ryan made. Then I tried doing basically a duotone in a dark shade of green and a light shade, along with a sort of "stamp" effect to reduce everything down to two tones. Loved the way that turned out.

This was the first live action semi-dramatic type project I've tried to edit, and I now have a greater respect for movie editors. When I do the CageMatch videos, they're all played out in my head already, but with this project, I had to think of dialogue and dramatic effect and camera angles and all that. I did most of the original camera direction when we filmed, but still had a lot of work to do back on the computer trying to figure out how to place the different cuts and scenes. I had a lot of fun doing it though.

One bit that took a lot of work that nobody would notice is editing out the "talkover" in the filmed scenes, either where I was verbally directing actor and thus ruining the audio of the shot, or other people were talking in the background. Luckily, I remembered to record a little bit of the amibent noise at each scene, so I had stuff to dub over and replace the tainted bits. Took a while, though.

The scene where Ryan was riding his bike was hilarious to film, and I think it shows in the final cut. He has such a unique flair for facial acting and body movement, plus his costume was fabulous. It took me a while to figure out that I needed to show the crash in slomo and repeat it over and over to get a good bit of comedy out of it. The three "flying through the air" shots, by contrast, are three DIFFERENT takes, and are just Ryan jumping off a park bench. The closeup of the grape fouling up the bike's gears was shot later, but happens so quickly, you can't tell there's even a grape there.

Megan's scene was fun. It took several takes to get the final "trip on the fallen grapes" shot, but the one used was fabulous.

Lisa's scene in the van was hilarious. The very idea that grapes could blow up a car was funny. We forgot to shoot an insert shot so you could see he was actually putting grapes in the engine, so that angle is actually my hand and my little Honda. The scream was shot earlier in the day, and if you go back and watch it closely, you can tell it's a different location. The explosion and fire was done in Motion, and I was lucky enough to find a burned hulk of a similar vehicle on Google. The hilarious "gas pump as evil mustache" shot was Ryan's idea, and he shot that.

The "family flashback" scene was probably the most fun. It took some careful thought at filming time to set that up. Somehow the camera moved during the shoot for "Ma Myrd"'s bit, so that had to be adjusted in post. The whole scene was shot three times, with vocal stand-ins, and then composited with masks. It looked crappy at first, but a simple bit of feathering on the masks and it clicked together beautifully. The fade from Young Myrd to Present Day Myrd was shaky, but I added a slowed-down growl at the transition that made it flow nicely.

The bluescreen for the grape-throwing scene was really primitive, as we had horrible lighting, and there was a window *behind* the screen casting light onto it. In my death, there wasn't nearly enough blood on my forehead, so I put more in in post. You can tell if you look closely--I couldn't match it up well enough where I moved my head slightly. (It's hard to be dead and push karo syrup out your mouth without moving!)

The final scene was a bit daunting, as I had to insert the mocked-up Raisin Bran ingredients label in post, and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. There are several jokes hidden in that bit. The whole scene was capped off with that incredible long scream by Nick.

Even the credits were harder to do than I thought they'd be. I really need to spend more time learning Motion. Maybe after Rape Stove is finished. (The shoot is this Wednesday!)

So anyway, this was probably the most complicated video project I've ever worked on. I'm pretty proud of it though. Couldn't have done it without all the other actors who were all involved with the writing and creation of the movie---definitely a big group effort. And the movie wouldn't have been a tenth as effective without the soundtrack born from the musical minds of Jackson and Scotts. All in all, a big success, methinks.

The Wrath of Grapes: The Trailer

So a few weeks ago, my friend Ryan Locante invited me to join in on a project he had devised. He came up with an idea he called "Scrambled Video Eggs", where a bunch of folks would get together, divide into teams, get a suggestion, and then have 24 hours to script, produce, film, and edit a short film. Well, only a handful of folks showed up, so we just made up one team, and decided to leave the editing until later.

The personnel assembled were Ryan, Megan Stein, Nick Borgerding, Joe Stanton, Lisa Palmisano, and myself. Our suggestion came from the great state of Ohio and one Austin Nava. We started brainstorming, and with such a diverse bunch of minds, we came up with some wacky ideas. We ended up making a movie about a guy who really hates it when people eat grapes, so much so that he murders them...using grapes.

I've just finished editing the trailer, with music from the fine folks at Fenario Sound Recording. You can view ninety seconds of thrills and chills here. The full movie should be finished within the week, and I'll notify you loyal readers when it's up. Enjoy!

Gryphon Doors Shirts

So my friends Kit, Katie, and Tommy put together a great act that they did the past month at DSI. They created avatars in Rock Band, dressed like their characters, and played Rock Band songs live but whilst singing parody lyrics. Amazing and great. I thought they deserved concert tour shirts, and so made this up for them. Eitan Lees was always roughly treated by the cruel (and British) Kit FitzSimons as he ordered Eitan around as a lowly roadie, so Eitan got a special shirt that reads "ROADIE" in humongous letters on the back.

See if you can figure out the reason I called it the "Double D" tour.

Best Picture Ever Taken Of Me At DSI

This is me rocking out with Eitan Lees at the first night of the sheer awesometicity that was Troy Sterling's Air Guitar Madness.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hut One, Hut Two, MY EYES!!!

Some of my friends posed the question, "Can Blind People Play Football?" I think they answered the question quite well in this video. Nick Faber is daring, and Austin Nava is partially fearless and partially crazy. I love those guys.