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.

CageMatch Report

Quick report, as today has gotten crazily busy. Here's the video.

Nothing particularly special this time. Lots of Photoshoppery, a little bit of stock video, and a bit of amusement sticking Mary's face on a piece of Catholic schoolgirl clipart. Had to change the script halfway through the process, as it was going to end by saying "Mano A Mary is well-grounded in improv comedy, but Banana Breakup will be flying high," followed by Ozzy Osbourne's "Flying High Again" off the album "Tribute". But it didn't rock hard enough, so I switched to the "breaking the law of gravity" ending with "Breaking The Law" by Judas Priest. Rock on.

Oh, and another triple-meaning audio intro this time! Do ya get it?

Open Letter To My Mysterious Benefactor

I've been meaning to do this for a long time--I think more than a year now--and keep getting distracted. But now I'm wired on stimulants and working through the night to finish a video, and decided I better go ahead and do this and quit putting it off!

Sometime last year (year before, maybe?) I mentioned somewhere (no idea where; thought it was here on the blog, but damned if I can find the post now) that if somebody wanted to be a nice person and buy me a present, they could get me "Autumn Thunder", the boxed set of cds featuring music from NFL Films. I love that music; uber-dramatic and ovr the top and everything I adore. I already owned "The Power And The Glory", but that's a single disc. This set had TEN CDS full of music.

Anyway, I mentioned it as sort of a joke. Who the hell would buy me a $100 boxed set of music? Well, somebody did. It arrived anonymously in the mail one day. I tried my best to figure out who had got it for me, but all my choices for kindness candidates denied it was them.

So now, far too long after somebody was amazingly thoughtful and giving, I take this time to thank you. You've made me both curious and happy, and have inspired lots of creative moments and CageMatch video drama. Many thanks.

-Your pal,
Ted

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!

From Government To Creativity

So I just sent out this mass email to the folks I like at work:

Pardon the impartiality of a mass email, but I wanted to make sure my nearest and dearest got the news all at once. Soon, I will be a free man. Yes, after six years with the Town of Chapel Hill, I’m a-movin’ on. My friend Mel has asked me to come work as a graphic artist in her t-shirt store, and it looks like it will be a fun and creative opportunity for me. Yippee and hallelujah, I say. I’ll be working on a Macintosh (and escaping my desk here before they install Vista on machine—don’t you dare try it, Cantrell!), able to listen to music while I work, be creative all day, AND helping out a friend. All for more money (and less insurance). Plus, I’ll never have to hear another phone call about how we’re all heathens for sponsoring Halloween, or explain to people that no, you can’t vote at Town Hall. I’ll be working at Bread & Butter Screenprinting in Glen Lennox, so I’ll still be around (and don’t you dare get your shirts printed anywhere else!)

So yes, I'm finally quitting my job at the Town of Chapel Hill. The job was never that great, but once Cal Horton retired from his post as Town Manager, the atmosphere of the place just died away and it just wasn't fun to come to work anymore. The duties I had been doing all along, like making coffee and filling up the copier, became really demeaning for someone who has a Master's degree. There was a tension in the air as everybody seemed to start grabbing for power and didn't want to work smoothly together anymore, and the whole atmosphere in the building just became oppressive. They kept tempting me with carrots of new positions and higher salaries that never materialized, and I had been wanting to move on for some time.

I'm not good at searching for new jobs, so I was just sort of languishing at Town Hall. But fortunately for me, my friend Mel suddenly had an opening for a graphic artist position at her screenprinting store, and we talked about the possibility of me coming in to fill the spot. I told her I'd have to think about it, but after telling a few folks about the situation, I felt such an amazing load lift from my shoulders that I thought, "ah, apparently the decision has been made, and I never noticed!" It'll be a much more fun place to work, more creative, and I'll be helping out my friend, which always makes me feel good. I like helping people.

Anyway, my last day at the Town Of Chapel Hill is May 29. (A Thursday? Well, that's what they asked of me...) Then on to better things.

CageMatch Report

Ah, I keep forgetting to put this up. My mind seems overwhelmed by pollen, so I've been quite absent-minded lately.

Anyway, here's the poop on the latest CageMatch video. Go watch it here, and then we will discuss.

So this whole concept was dreamed up and executed in 24 hours. I've been busy working on a short movie for another project, and wasn't able to even think about CageMatch until Wednesday. Fortunately, it all seemed to come together rather nicely. Mano is Greek, and when I was doing the "Flavor Shot European Tour" video a few weeks back, I had intended to have one of the European teams be from Greece, naming them "Mano A Mano" and just putting two pictures of Mano's face up there. I ran out of time on that video, so I was pleased as punch to be able to do a flashback to the European Tour and use it as a part of the plot for this video.

I agonized over what to call the Greek team for this video...I made a list of all sorts of terms and names that popped into mind when I thought about Greece, and even asked other folks what they thought of when I said "Greece". Then I started thinking about Greek mythology, and looked at a list of Greek gods. When I got to Ares, the choice seemed obvious: good pun, Greece is also known for pottery, and I love the game "God of War". Thus was born "Ares Potter".

The rest of the video was pretty straightforward. I liked the two shots of the amphitheatre, with the voiceover about how the rioting crowd destroyed the place. The rippling effect on Flavor Shot that was overlaid on the soldier picture turned out rather nicely. I had to buy a screen-capturing program (ScreenFlick) to get Mary's video off the Rooftop Comedy webpage so I could use it in the CageMatch video. That part went over well. The final logo animation wasn't quite as fancy as I had originally planned, but I ran out of time.

The music at the end was a mashup of the Knight Rider theme and Eminem ('cause Mano A Mary is M and M). The opening sound was "Proud Mary" by CCR. "But Ted," you say, "you left out the other half of the team!" Nope--it wasn't the stereo version of "Proud Mary"....it was the mono version. (Man, I'm so clever!)

I got nice compliments from Mano after the video was shown. He said his mother would love it because it made him look like a good Greek boy, and that I used traditional Greek music. I thought that was darling.

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.

Cameron Antique Fair 2008

Just a quick post--me and mom went down to Cameron, a small town in rural North Carolina, to shop at their annual antiques fair, where all the residents rent out their front and back yards to folks who sell all manner of things, from treasures to crap. Half the fun is seeing the unique characters that are the residents of this fine backwoods area. As I did the last time we went, I've taken some surreptitious pictures of the folks to share with you, my loyal readers. So go through this photo set, read the descriptions, and vicariously enjoy my trip to the sticks.

Angry J. Jonah Jameson Meme

Okay, so I saw this meme and guffawed like a fool. Basically, it's sorta similar to Ethan Kaye's SuperMeme that we did a while ago. You take a comic panel of Daily Bugle editor J. Jonah Jameson that has the word balloons and tv screen blanked out, and you add your own substitutions for memetastic fun.

I had to join in. You can check out my contributions in this Flickr set.

You can join in too! The original memer was kind enough to provide a blank. Now, if you have Photoshop, you can also try using my blank, where I've layered the images and masked out the word balloons and tv screen to make it easier and quicker to churn these out. In either case, it might help to know that the tv screen is rotated 4.2 degrees.

(Oh, and Kit, I know I don't have to challenge you on this one, but just in case: I challenge you!)

CageMatch Report

We CageMatched again last night. I was amused by my concept for this week's video. Go watch it first and then come back to discuss.

Did you watch it? Good.

The whole thing grew out of the name of the challengers, War On Hugs. That made me think of the classic Bugs Bunny line, "Of course you realize, this means war!" I decided to work up to that as a punchline. So I needed to have a reason for War On Hugs to declare war. I cogitated for a while, and somehow (?) decided it might be funny to have Flavor Shot supposedly planting fake news stories about the other team. That gave me the opportunity to mock up all those nutty headlines. In the final video, the timing is a bit off for comedic purposes. It was spot on when I read it, but I forgot to add in time for the establishing shot of the individual papers and the crossfades, so the final bits ended up a bit rushed.

Then I used some war footage from archive.org, a little simple animation, and came up with the War On Hugs identity sequence. That went over real well at performance time. It goes by too quick, but the background behind the pictures of Flavor Shot is made from a painstaking arrangement of bullets. (Zach thought it was butter.)

My Mom Is Creative

My mom is very creative. She made this sculpture for the Town of Chapel Hill's Community Art Project. She calls it "Waltzing On Top Of The World At 62" (it's a self-portrait). It's made mostly from stuff she found doing archaeological digs of the old trash pits in the old cotton mill village she lives in (Glencoe in Burlington, NC). My favourite bit is the hair, which is made of old Coca-Cola bottlecaps and bent brads.

Pictures are here, here, and here. And a long shot here.

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.

Time For CageMatch Again

CageMatch returned to the DSI stage this past week. The video was basically two parts: since we were off for over a month, I went back to an idea I had used before, and had the champions be on tour for storyline purposes to explain the absence. The second half of the video was mostly a pretape of Bill Henderson as General Rod Skaggs. I had him make a speech about the USA, sing "America The Beautiful" in two tempos, and rail on his opponents. I filmed him in front of a bluescreen and dropped him in front of some stock footage of a waving flag. The music is from the Patton soundtrack and Bill's own "Ballad of Rod Skaggs".

The video is here.
Graphics are here.

The Real Basil Fawlty

Thought about posting this on the DSI forums, but I thought more of the folks here on The Transmutation Effect would enjoy it. If you're a fan of Fawlty Towers, you'll enjoy this video clip of John Cleese on Parkinson. Cleese tells some amusing stories about the hotelier that was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty.

Big Night In Wrestling

I'm still sick, sitting at home unable to do much more than cough a lot and stare at YouTube. Normally, I wouldn't bother to share that with the blogging world, but I did think this little moment was amusing: I just realized that the biggest night of the year in wrestling is happening tonight, and I had completely forgotten about it. Instead, I've been getting major enjoyment out of watching the 1997 edition of All Japan Pro Wrestling's traditional Real World Tag League tourney. I've gotten more excited while watching this event than I have from watching anything WWE has put out in the eleven years since. I don't even speak the language, and I'm still popping hard for the near falls in these matches. The whole show is booked to perfection, making great use of both the amazing talent (Kobashi, Misawa, Williams, Kawada, Hayabusa, Shinzaki) and the not-so-amazing talent (Wolf Hawkfield? Kamala???) and the performances in the ring really draw you in and make you care about who's about to get pinned. No sledgehammers, no overblown egos, no cartoony blustering...just amazing wrestling action.

I haven't looked at the results yet, and am only halfway through the show, but I'm rooting for Hayabusa and Jinsei, although I'm sure they won't get the win. So I'll cross my fingers for Misawa and Akiyama. I love Kobashi to death, but just find it hard to root for a team that has Johnny Ace on it. Interesting that Bradshaw is in both this event and Wrestlemania.

I'll dig around tomorrow and see how they treat Flair's final show on Wrestlemania, but as far as being entertained, I'm sticking with the Japanese product, thank you.

I Almost Died

So I've been sick for over a month now, just picking up the various bugs as they go around--wouldn't want to miss anything! I'm not a big fan of going to the doctor, 'cause it always seems like you pays yer money, they thump you a little bit, and then announce that "it'll pass". Well, on Tuesday, the cough that has been a constant throughout all these bugs had gotten to the point where it was making my kidneys hurt, so I figured it might be time to go see a medico. So off I go, and the doc sez my lungs sound clear, maybe I just have a touch of bronchitis. I leave the office with a prescription for a Z-Pack (antibiotics) and some Hycodan, a codeine cough syrup.

At home, I finish up dinner and then slurp down some of the Hycodan, hoping that at the very least it'll knock me out and let me have a good night's sleep for the first time in days. Au contraire, monsieur! Where codeine usually has a nice intoxicating and tranquilizing effect on most people, apparently I'm in that oh-so-special one percent that has quite a different influence. Long story short, it made me jittery, unable to sleep, and caused some lovely delusions. The regular readers of this blog are fortunate I didn't call them at two in the morning to warn them of the impending invasion of UFOs made of chocolate chip cookie dough. I ended up being hallucinatory and panicky for about 30 hours, and was too tense to sleep for another ten hours or so. All night, I would start to pass out from utter exhaustion, and then would suddenly snap awake seconds later...experiencing this over and over again threatened to drive me absolutely insane, and for a while there, I couldn't imagine ever escaping the grip of this demon. It was like descriptions I've read of heroin addiction, except I never got to feel the cool part of the heroin.

Anyway, the Hycodan finally passed through my system, but I'm still exhausted even after sleeping for ten hours. My supervisor at work was kind enough to call and check up on me and give me advice that didn't occur to my fever-addled brain, like eating crackers to absorb the codeine syrup. She also told me to go ahead and take the rest of the week off to rest and recuperate. At the moment, I'm just tired and sniffling and coughing a lot. I'll take "generally yucky" over "hallucinating and thinking you're about to die" any day.

Back To Basics

Went to the theater last night to see the premiere of a new show, "Al Pacino's Pictionary". Fabulous concept, featuring a couple at home inviting their cousin Al Pacino and an unsuspecting audience volunteer to their home to play Pictionary. Greg Brainos was hilarious as always as the overbearing Al Pacino, and the whole setup was just natural comedy. The gimmick of the husband and wife always getting the right answer in the first stroke of the pen was hilarious as well. And any time you get to see Zach Ward in a pencil-thin moustache: golden.

Afterwards, Brainos, Remi, and Eitan and I got some delish tacos from the taco truck and chatted on our own before heading off to join the rest of the DSI posse at Speakeasy. Probably should've just taken up Remi on his suggestion to hang out with him. The gang was playing foosball, and switching off teams and whatnot. It was fun to watch them, but then some bar guy we didn't know ended up on a team with Zach, and Remi and I got drafted to be the opposition. I'm not much on competitive games (I can't even handle faux-competitive warmup games) and this bar guy was crazy competitive. I was on goal, and you could see how pissed off and testosterone-soaked this guy was every time he whacked one past me over and over and over again with little ability on my part to defend. The whole affair brought me right back to elementary school when James Bigby laughed and nailed me with a kickball during PE after I made a pitiful kick that trundled up to his feet. Anyway, that was clearly the end of the night for me. Probably should've said goodbye to people, but then there would've been that lovely social awkwardness where you have to explain why you're leaving and people encourage you to stay and all that. Never good with that social stuff. And there was too much cigarette smoke.

I really wish that little kid in elementary school had toughened up or something.

Visiting The Record Shop

So my buddy Jackson sends me an email today labelled "A Challenge". Well, I always likes me a challenge, especially a graphic challenge, as this turned out to be.

He sent me to a blog called The Yellow Stereo, in which this guy PJ came up with a very cool idea: basically, you take a randomly generated band name, a randomly generated album title, and a randomly generated picture, and then use your graphic editor of choice (and your fine artistic skills!) to mock up an album cover! What fun!

PJ suggests you get your band name by taking the title of whatever comes up when you visit the Wikipedia random article page. Now I'll tell ya right now, I cheated a little bit on this first step, as I would generate a new page if I got the name of a famous person or of an actual band (I was really pissed when I got "The Great Kat" and then found out she was an actual musician. Is that a cool name or what?) For your album title, go to the random quotes page and scroll down to the last quote; the last four words of the last quote are your album title. (I soon discovered that I needed to refresh the page each time to get new quotes as I made multiple albums.) Then go to Flickr's Interesting Photos page and grab the third photo; that'll be the image of your album cover. (I'll go ahead and admit now that I actually was grabbing the fourth photo, as when I went to Flickr, the third photo had a watermark that was pretty sucky.)

Now make your album covers! Here's what I came up with...it seems to want to produce industrial minimalist bands or German techno-type stuff, but I did end up with a good metal band as well. First off, we have Overconvergent Modular Form, and their hit album "Like It Better Dead"

(click to see bigger)

Gotta love the OMF and their sweet trance beats. Next we have Segmental Blood Pressure with "As Simple As That"

They look like maybe they're one of those electronic cello bands that play modern interpretations of hard pop songs. Or maybe just Christmas tunes. On to Diasello and the haunting "Sweet Serenity of Books"

I like the name Diasello. I was quite fortunate to end up with a nice simple picture for that one, and had fun making the creepy, ethereal logo for the group in the sky. I'm thinking these folks are like latter day Clannad. Quite a polar opposite to our last group, the note-shredding guitar-wailing explosions of CYCLOTYPHLOPS and "My War On Terror!"

Rock on! And yes, "My War On Terror!" WAS the last four words on that quote, and yes, the exclamation point was part of the original text. Sweet.

In real life, overconvergent modular form refers to some type of mathematical space, segmental blood pressure is the bp of individual limbs, Diasello is a village in Greece, and cyclowhatever is some sort of blind snake.

So anyway, I challenge all my graphically-inclined friends to try this out on your own blogs and comment here with a link to your offerings. It is a CHALLENGE, I'm telling you!

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.