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

Seuss Wars

Ok, so my sister is brilliant. At many things, really, but in this case, writing. I knew she could write amazing Stephen King-esque horror stories, but had no idea she could write clever nostalgic comedy stuff. (I thought *I* was the comedian in the family--she's stealin' my act! If she starts doing wrestling announcing, she'll get no combined Birthday/Christmas presents this year!)

S'anyway, I saw a blog post somewheres about a guy who was doing Star Wars illustrations in the style of Dr. Seuss. They were pretty excellent, and I thought my sister might dig 'em, so I sent her the link. She guffawed and promptly sent back a couplet of how she thought a Dr. Seuss Star Wars book would start off. It was PERFECT! Funny, clever, and dead-on Geiselesque. I told her as much, and basically begged her to write more. And she did. Here is what she has so far:

Our story begins on an ordinary day,
With a boy in a galaxy far, far away.

The boy's name was Luke - no more than a teen,
He lived on a planet they called Tattooine.
His parents - so tragic! - they both were long dead,
Young Luke was an orphan (at least that's what they said).

He lived on a farm with his uncle and aunt,
Luke wanted to leave but they both said, "You can't!
"We need you for this and we need you for that!
To bring in the crops and to hunt the womp rat!"

So Luke waited and stayed and he stayed and he waited,
And helped with the work on the farm (which he hated).

At night he would stand and gaze over the dunes
At the one setting sun and the two rising moons.
He would sigh as he'd think to himself, "It's not fair,
That I'm stuck on this rock while my friends are out there!"

But destiny had a few tricks up her sleeve,
Luke stood, gazed, and waited… but soon he would leave.

Not so far away from where the boy stood,
Was raging a battle of evil and good!
Imperial forces with their mighty hand,
Were crushing the Rebel Alliance's band.

The rebels had stolen the plans - newly minted -
To the worst weapon mankind had ever invented.
The Empire wanted to get their plans back,
So they gathered their troops and went on the attack.

The Stormtroopers, gleaming insidious white,
Swarmed through the whole ship, just to fight, fight, fight, fight.
The rebels, outnumbered, outgunned and outlasted,
Had only two choices: give up or get blasted.

But one of them wouldn't let herself concede
Without first performing one most crucial deed.
This rebel - a princess! - before they could shoot her,
Hid the plans deep inside one small android's computer!
And with it, a message, of limited scope:
"Help me, Obi-wan, you are my only hope!"

With the droid and his counterpart now on the run,
The princess was hit with a blaster (on stun).
And though she resisted, the stormtroopers made her
Confront their feared leader, the evil DARTH VADER!!!!!!

And the two little droids? Where are they next seen?
You guessed it! They both wind up on Tattooine.
The droids - R2-D2 and C-3PO,
Cannot both agree on which way they should go.

The two turn their backs and go opposite ways,
Though they meet up again in a matter of days.
They're captured by "jawas" (they're like roving peddlers,
Who travel around selling scrap to the settlers).

And who do the jawas encounter? No fluke!
None other than our Uncle Owen and Luke.
(When shopping from jawas one thing to avoid,
Is the "big bargain" or "fixer-upper" android.
C-3PO was a steal for a translator,
But they got an R2 with a bad motivator!)
In the end it worked out, R2-D2 was sold,
And Luke spent the evening polishing gold.

She admits she was getting a little off track towards the end, but overall, this is BRILLIANT!!! She gave me permission to post this, and said she'd write more if she got positive feedback, so PLEASE comment on this post or email me or something. I want her to write the whole episode!!!!!

"We need you for this and we need you for that!/To bring in the crops and to hunt the womp rat!" HA!!!!

Voice Recognition Star Wars

While doing the photographs for the latest Patton Project, I came up with one of my more brilliant ideas. I had put on my favourite movie, Star Wars: A New Hope, to play in the background while I took pictures. Then I decided to Twitter about it, but in a unique way: I used an iPhone app called "Vlingo" that can translate your voice into text and then post it to Twitter. I figured I'd see how it handled my favourite Star Wars quotes. It's not exactly 100% accurate (especially when doing Darth Vader and Ben Kenobi impressions), but that was the main point: let's see how the text gets mangled.

I actually came up with the voice recognition idea a little way into the movie, and missed a few of the quotes at the beginning, so I've gone back and added a few at the beginning and a few I missed in the middle, but all have been Vlingoed. See how many you can recognize!

1. "Long time ago and galaxy far far west"
2. "We do"
3. "is this a calls lecture where is the am about to go"
4. "There's 1 set to stun"
5. "I'm going to regret this" (score!)
6. "Call die before she tells you anything"
7. "Don't get to the with may"
8. "Call Tuesday to it is you did his you'll"
9. "web search George"
10. "Poser program for etiquette and protocol"
11. "Can you speak bocce" (wow!)
12. "Is going to Austin to pick up some parking burgers"
13. "the start to unit have a bad motivator"
14. "Bank of America, well that is going to feels so good"
15. "hi and see 3 PO Ching side alterations"
16. "You're the 1 Canobie for my only hope"
17. "We are just crazy old Matt"
18. "Is going to check the baby"
19. "It's around us Patrick source pines the galaxy picked up"
20. "Dangers your Starfleet command at not just the Playstation"
21. "The ability to destroy upset insignificant next to the power of the folks"
22. "Send people always ride single file I need the number is"
23. "I find your lack of state and disturbing"
24. "Quantum on the way to the force become a gym I love my father"
25. "Most Isley spaceport you'll never find out more rigid hive of scum and put it in a"
26. "Google need to see if this application"
27. "At the joy joy looking for"
28. "We go serpentine here"
29. "This s*** the bed Kessel run with 12 parts sex" (it put in the asterixes itself...)
30. "traveling to Harbor Stacy like bustin crops bored"
31. "Loof for another topic American retarded than they move systems"
32. "That's no moon it's the space station" (very close!)
33. "Who is more for lish the folk all the fool who doesn't"
34. "What an incredible snow you discovered"
35. "I got a bad feeling about this" (hey! It got another right!)
36. "Mike is that walking carpet on my way"
37. "I love you I was about the monitor now I am the masta"
38. "Your power is all week old Masson"
39. "you call twins or if you strike me dial I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine"
40. "Story show together c'mon very whole together"
41. "Baseballs I will Pratts and mighty 16 back home"
42. "May the force be with you" (another match!)
43. "Google power to front deflector screens switch l power to front deflector strains"
44. "Evacuate dynamo the trials I think you overestimate their chances"
45. "It because like beggars canyon back home"
46. "You suck balls look" (I SWEAR that's what it came up with)
47. "you are a queer can know what day is going to go home"
48. "Call jott kid that was in a million"
49. "Remember the force be with you always" (close!)
50. "Calorie!"

And that's the end of "Voice Recognition Star Wars". I hope you had a lovely time. I'll post the answer key in a few days.

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.

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.

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.

Ba Da Bup Bup Ba DAHHH!

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

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

Frosted Maggots

This site entertains me a great deal. I love it when people reinvent or reinterpret old characters or stories (like Kit did today for his ISIDTA entry), and this idea was stellar: Von Kreep made his "Cereal Killers" challenge, where he asked artists to illustrate spooky cereal boxes. Most of them were done in the classic cereal box art style, which as Cartoon Brew points out, is some of the most inspirational art out there. Good stuff.

And speaking of Cartoon Brew, if anybody wants to get me a present, I just looked at the Cartoon Brew author's new book, Cartoon Modern, and it's fabulous. Thanks!

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.

Candy Rapist

This is the kind of insane children's programming PBS had us watching in the 1970s. No wonder I turned out to be such a twisted freak. More evidence is here and here.

Also, Morgan Freeman used to be cool.

This one is my all time fave though.