I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Historical reproductions of Medieval erotic pottery and brothel token/bachelorette favors:

Ellesh’s Closet

Thank you, internet.

As you mave have seen last night or at channel102.net we decided to retire Cakey! The Cake from Outer Space early and stop making the show by self-cancelling with a seven minute episode (coincidentally the same time as the other puppet show and our rival for the top slot Puppet Rapist did the same thing).

I really like making these 102 shows… it’s the first thing I’ve worked on in a while that I really get into and get nervous about when they’re screened. However, we haven’t taken any time off in a year—we jumped from one show to another without stopping—and the strain of doing (for us) a really technically involved show was wearing on us. Since we’re only a three person crew… who all kind of live together and shoot in the apartment, it was getting really claustrophobic.

I think both Kirk and I had a lot of other Cakey stories to do (Duncan becomes a superhero, Duncan joins the football team, Cakey runs a-foul of a paranormal expert, the science fair, etc.), but they just took so much time to shoot and edit. Our actor for “Dad” is moving to LA next month as well.

I don’t really want to be “out,” but maybe we’ll individually trying working with different crews or on our own projects. Or not do anything, who knows.

Thanks for following Cakey.

The whoopie cushion was at the clients’ request.

I’m positive the television commercial for antidepressant medication Cymbalta (“Depression Hurts’) uses a string and piano adaption of a Hootie and Blowfish song.

I’m depressed that I noticed that.

I started working an in-office freelance job this week and got my first wad of payment on Friday. It’s a weird feeling to go from near-starvation rent-panic to suddenly being flush with cash.

My job is relatively easy stuff—I make a 2 page website and style sheets for a different topic everyday based on the domains the company has registered (ranging from cheerleaderwow.com to redstatespectator.com). I did three this week—megaotaku.com plus the ironic bookends drunkcollegevideos.com and cutebabyvideos.com.

They wanted me to use my own laptop but I lack both a wireless card and a bag for my computer—I don’t really take it out of the apartment ever. This afternoon and bought both but I’m pretty stymied by installing this AirPort Extreme card. It came with multiple booklets and a CD of software… none of which actually tell you how to install it and talk mostly about the AirPort basestation which is a different product all together. Seem a little retarded, Apple… If I’m buying cereal, I don’t expect the label to have the nutrition information for milk on it.

There also multiple warnings that if I install this airport extreme card and my computer actually needed a non-extreme card… it will burst into flames. How do I know if it needs extreme or unleaded? Apple’s website says “I dunno… some use one and some use the other. And they all have the same name and look exactly the same.”

At least the bag worked right away.

I started working—it’s a freelance but on-site doing website programming. Nothing really spectacularly interesting.

My new #1 fear—“sun stars”

Horrible sun stars

I got this randomly generated Google ad in my gmail today:

“Super Fart Spray – www.MadhatterMagicShop.con – Retail or Wholesale, Great Prices Horrible Smell in an Aerosol Can”

What search term showed up in my email to cull that one from the database?

I hadn’t put any new art on my site in several months. So I corrected that and put up 6 new/old things that I already posted in this blog.

Purchased in the last 2 days for Cakey! episode 4 –
Hershey’s Syrup
Two tubs of generic Cool Whip
Generic Cocoa Puffs
Men’s Henley (size 4X)
Yellow American Apparel T-shirt (found at a street fair—$2!)
Medical cloth tape
Fishing Line
Shaving Cream
Red Food Coloring
“The Cake Bible” (loaned to us)
Syringe and Stethoscope (loaned to us)
Contact Paper
Clear double-sided adhesive squares
(an impulse purchase, not actually needed for the show)

I recycled a sheet of felt, paint, 2 feet of plastic aquarium tubing and a torn sheet I had earlier.

We shot for 4 hours yesterday and knocked out two scene. We’re shooting tomorrow morning and hope to knock out one big scene and a special effects shot.

This is going to be one dilly of a king-sized show.

My best discovery on YouTube recently is “Ayaka’s Surprise English Lesson,” which is the Hawaii-born, English-fluent (kinda) member of Morning Musume springing English lessons, conversations, and quizzes on other members of the band. They almost always go badly… and adorably.

Search “Surprise English” and you get 10 pages of the one-minute segments.

I started coaching improv again after not doing any for quite a while. I’ve had some practice groups of students and then a bunch of more experienced players.

I’m always kind of taken by how difficult a lot of “concepts” behind improv are to put into words and explain in a simple way. A thought I have periodically is to write a blog that would cover improv basics. But I have enough difficulty remembering to post in this blog, so starting another is a losing propostion.

Another thought I had was making instructional comics that would demonstrate improv concepts in a story and blast people who do tiresome and shitty improv. The grandpappy of browbeating info-tainment in comic form is, of course, Jack Chick.

I’d have to make them two panels wide and one panel tall and have characters errupt with “HAW HAW!”

Every time channel 13 reruns the American Masters biography on Bob Newhart, I end up renting a lot of episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. I don’t think it’s particularly hilarious, but I get obsessed with them. It’s so… weird.

Even Cakey, when it was a far wackier idea, was going to have lots of incongruous Bob Newhart references in it. All that remains from that idea is the title typeface.

Obviously, a big part of it is the rocking Lorenzo Music-penned theme song, which is a summer jam and a half. I also like to see Suzanne Pleshett before she morphed into the vessel of the voice nightmares are made of. (Marcia Wallace pointed that out in her commentary track… S.P.’s voice has dropped 5 octaves since the 70s.)

I think it’s also strange that every bit part actor on the show later became cartoon voices. I only just realized after hearing the commentary track that one of the therapy group patients is the Country Crock voice-over man. And I just realized RIGHT NOW the old lady in the group used to play Dobie Gillis’ mom.

Regardless of all this, look at the menu for this DVD

Isn’t the most awful thing you’ve ever seen? It looks like the illustrator drew the bodies in Illustrator and then slapped overexposed screen captures of the faces onto the oversized blank heads. Somehow, even using a photo for the face, that looks nothing like Bob Newhart.

The first season DVDs didn’t have this… just minimalist drawings of the inside of Bob’s office in brown, burgandy and harvest gold. It was downright classy.

The flip of the DVD (there are 5 episodes of either side of the disk, you actually have to flip it over to get to all of them—seems bizarrely old fashioned like it’s a goddamned laserdisk or something) has similar “portraits” of Jerry and Howard.

In the words of that gorgon from the deep…

“OH, BAAAHHHHHB!”