I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Fish on Ice

“I Play HAM!”

(via a sampler of things)

Here’s what I’m recommending to you right now—MILKA M-Joy Crunchy Caramel. I just had one (YES, at 2 AM, you bastards) and it was delightful! “Crunchy Caramel” is German for “Toffee” maybe… they’re rock-hard little hailstones of sugar floating in the finest choco, made with the painstaking methodical attention Germans are known for (“Genocide doesn’t happen by accident, people.”)

Zartschmelzende Milka Alpenmilch Schokolade prall gef�llt mit knackigen Butter-Mandel-Karamell (17%) ein handlicher Snack f�r zwischendurch und unterwegs. K�hl und trocken lagern. Achtung: Kann Spuren von Erdn�ssen und Weizen enthalten!

A delight!

Your new desktop/full-back tattoo: {click here}

My server has been patchy lately… I’m having a hard time uploading files and can’t for like life of me figure out how to enable Flickr to post to my blog (despite their directions).

I went to a drink-up on Friday. Eugene not-so-subtley expressed a desire in a round-about way to have me do his portrait. I didn’t have a lot else going on this weekend, so I did.

I don’t know what this face/hand gesture mean but Eugene does it a lot. I think it’s a rapper thing. Rappers are so tough they pucker up to give you a big kiss and tell you “I love you” in sign language backwards.

We’re shooting the first scene of Being Glenn tomorrow. I have to buy a rake before 10 AM for it.

Yesterday I got called in by the producer of Gutenberg! The Musical!—now playing at the former home of Naked Boys Singing and The Marijuana-Logues—- to do… something. The whole thing was very vague. I got that he absolutely needed these flyers on the street by next week, but also some other advertising agency had already done them (I think). He wanted to have a “new concept” (logo?) for the show, but he had just put all these signs up and taken out huge advertisements in the Times and New York Magazine with the old “identity” which it seems like he made himself, but then he said “the text is fine, you don’t need to change it.” ???

I don’t want to be Oak Treed again, so honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing. I also am not quite sure what to change for something with no parameters… I undercharge too often and then I get ragingly angry with all the bullshit I have to put up with. I’m going to look up what it says in the Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (I don’t own this book… I can’t afford the $50, really. Though Amazon has it for $35, I see) and try and state a fair fee.

I just watched the first season of Creature Comforts, the UK version not the US one yet-to-be-released. It was fun… not really hilarious, but entertaining. I like the film short quite a lot. I wonder if it will be funny with American voices… all of the UK voices seem kind of “nice.” The worst of them just come off as dour or a bit full of themselves.

Americans are more aggressive in their hatefulness. They bully you into hating them. The one clip I saw of the US show (though Chad’s blog) I immediately wanted to throttle the people—

I look forward to the show though! I already know two of the people who did voices… and I only secretly hate them.

Would you rather have Boston Creme filling constantly dripping out of your fingertips or you have to roll everywhere?

Would you rather have grapes for toes or one finger be a banana?

Would you rather have every time you tried to put any thing put into another thing… like putting stuff into a bowl or a bag of garbage into a trash can… a big muscle dude come out and say “DENIED!” and block you from doing it or everymorning when you woke up, that same big dude would punch you square in the face?

Pick one: Would you rather have, every time you opened your mouth a ladle’s-worth of oatmeal fall out or every time you farted The Star Spangled Banner played.

Everytime you have a sexual thought about anyone or anything, a tiny one-inch man in a tuxedo will appear and announce whatever you thought of outloud or everytime you have a sexual thought about anyone… even if it’s passing or involuntary… they are instantly teleported in front of you.

Would you rather cry gummi bears or shit waffles? (and the waffles smell and look like fresh waffles and mostly taste like waffles so you can eat them but every 10th waffle is actually a shit.)

Would you rather have your eyes and nose switch places (two noses, one big eye) or your ears and mouth switch places (two mouths, one ear)?

One of these will be removed from existance, which would you keep: The Beatles or ice cream?

(devised by Will Hines, Gavin Speiller, Erik Tanouye, Jackie Clarke, and Charlie Sanders)

Oh wow… Japanese monster page with sweet illustrations—Obakemono

I recommend starting with Shirime.

I got this dress in the mail today, I ordered it when I was hung-over, I think. I do a lot of hung-over online shopping.

The dress is pretty nice, though longer that I’d go for usually (as in, it covers my ass when I bend over to tie my shoe… a big part of my personal appeal is build around panchira).

It’s made of a weird fabric that feels like double-weight swimsuit material. It’s bengaline, which I had to look up—”A fabric having a crosswise ribbed effect made of silk, wool, or synthetic fibers.”

So, that settled. I need a place to wear it though.

Just finished this for a group in Chicago. The look was inspired by an old vaudeville poster—

I had a weird day. Almost a non-day.

I woke up at 1 PM and was really exhausted. Then I went out to Brooklyn to hold the boom mic for Mitch’s show. The only scene he needed was less than 20 second long and we got done in under an hour. Then we had lunch at Union Picnic (I had dinner there on Friday night and ordered the exact same thing again).

The cinematographer realized that the other 3 mini-DVs of the scenes they shot earlier were missing and perhaps he had left them back on his dresser in Connecticut. Mitch was scheduled to start editing tomorrow, so he needed all the DVs. Mailing them wasn’t going to work with tomorrow being a holiday, so the cinematographer said he would drive home and then back into Manhattan because he had movie tickets for that night. Mitch and I kept him company as he drove the two hours and thirty-minutes to and then from his house… which is basically on the Massachusetts/Connecticut border… in the rain. We just got back now.

I just saw David Lynch’s Inland Empire. I don’t want to say I felt like I was being tortured, because that diminishes the suffering of actual torture victims, but I felt like I was being tortured.

Me and the movie were playing chicken to see who was going to give first. I lasted the whole three hours, so I won but in actuality, no one won because I watched Inland Empire for three hours.

If you approximate what it’s like to see Inland Empire, get a 3rd generation VHS copy of Eraserhead and play it on a TV wrapped in cheesecloth 5 times in a row. I just saved you $11.

Firewiring Adobe Illustrator between old Mac and new Mac has been fraught with irritations. Right now, Illustrator crashes whenever I attempt to “merge shape” in pathfinder… which is pretty crucial to using it. Making illustrations without it is like writing a novel without the letter E, it can be done but it’s a pain.

I’ve tried clearing the preferences and re-firewiring the whole mess, but it looks like only a full reinstall from disks is going to remedy it. Bother.

Here’s a draft of an upcoming wedding illustration, drawn without the use of the letter E.
—-

I googled the problem and got this simple, completely arbritary fix:

Solution 1: Restart Illustrator with the Appearance palette hidden.

1. Start Illustrator.

2. Deselect Appearance from the Window menu.

3. Quit and restart Illustrator.

Ridiculously enough, this solved it.

I can’t believe I left this out, but this review in Village Voice brought it back—

“... spastic twentysomethings playing really spastic teenagers who inadvertently spit a great deal more onstage than I have to imagine Duncan ever did. (The lead actor in this thing is a one-man car wash.)”

The lead guy in Spring Awakening was seriously of the spray-it-don’t-say-it camp. The front row should be advised to come in raincoats with plastic tarps… like a Gallagher show.
—-

Just so there’s some new material in here, I alert you to a website that sounds like the premise from a lazy sketch show: HouseofCanes.com

Did some writing late last night and got a working version of Mitch Magee and my next 102 script “Being Glenn” which I’ve been threatening to write for a couple of months. It’s only mildly antagonistic towards the audience, being totally amoral. Every character is a horrible person.

It will be in February at the soonest… it requires a hard-to-find location (stuffy wood-paneled library/den), hard to find actors (one or more 11-15 year old boys), and some costumes we have to order.

I’d like to do a rush show and get it in this month, but even that seems a long shot. Jackie Clarke wrote an interesting/weird/audience-antagonizing script called “We’re Perfect” a while ago for her and I to play sisters in. It’s extremely bizarre and the main theme is “revolting.” Sort of a John-Waters-directs-Cremaster thing. We’re the only speaking roles but it requires several locations in a house and outdoor shooting… and a dog eating a corpse’s face.

If anyone has leads on patrician manicured dens, dogs, and young actors (with neglectful parents who allow them to be in morally repugnant comedy videos), you can send me an EMAIL through that new link on the left there. Hate mail also welcomed.

It came in the mail today while I was still in bed. I woke up (to an unnecessary amount of church bells) and it was in my living room.

Holy cow! Look at the size of it! Philip Seymour Hoffman’s head is the size of a Radio Flyer wheel or maybe the size of a bagel you’d get in the suburbs!

With the playbill for High Fidelity for scale. It’s two feet wide! Now that’s conspicious consumption!

(Although, Jesus, my digital camera is worse than most cellphone cameras. I can hear those pixels crunching.)

Thanks, Santa.

“God Bless Us, Every One.”

The best thing about Netflix is digging up 1-star and 0-star forgotten bullshit that for some reason have made it on to DVD. And (Unlike Kim’s, it won’t be some shaky 11th generation copy from VHS. I saw Superstar on such a bad dub you couldn’t tell Karen was a doll.)

To save you the trouble of actually watching a shitty (though impeccibly transferred) movie, I will give you the highlights of….

So, this was retitled to cash in 70s America’s love affair with all things “Smokey.” The original title was “The Last of The Cowboys” and the content reflects that a little better… a hamfisted, snail-paced ellegy for the past. With hookers.

The movie starts with a completely black screen with a quivering line and offscreen grunting. One of my biggest peeves with movies of the 70s and 80s when I was a kid was how night scenes would be too damn dark. Maybe it was our shitty TV or VHS tapes, but TGSR has the black-for-night jazz in spades.

Into the darkness steps a glowing Henry Fonda—age one million (but before On Golden Pond)—shuffling in a hospital gown holding giant wire cutters to a barbed wire fence. He liberates an 18 wheeler, “Eleanor.” The camera lingers on the name and then on a headshot glossy of the First Lady on the dashboard so we “get it.”

And then the credits, including this stunner—-

That’s where her Rocky Horror check went.

Flashback to the least restful hospital room ever.

I mean, this wallpaper could give you cancer. And it has. Hank Fonda is “Elegant John,” the world’s most reliable honest on-time trucker until cancer made him hock his truck for chemo. He’s wasting away and dreaming of one last great haul.

Luckily, his roommate, mustache guy here, advises him in a thick community-theatre-Yiddish-accent just how to sneak out and cut the wires on the truck impound etc. Basically, he describes the scene we just saw in exacting detail.

So, Elegant John drives around. Meets evil rival trucker and eventually needs gas. Enter Beebo, played my Robert Englund aka Freddie Krueger, a Mennonite (?) who is trying to get to Florida to go to motel management school. Beebo becomes his sidekick after Hank tries to rob him and drop him the desert.

(I got bored and stopped taking screenshots at this point, so bear with me)

Cut to: a wacky Anniestyle brothel where a variety of healthy, fun whores are prepping for a big night of fucking truckers. Like the Spice Girls, there’s one in every flavor. There’s a Southern belle, a dumb blonde, a zaftig Jewish intellectual, a complainy bitchy girl with a weird cartoon voice, and Susan Sarandon. Watching over them is world-weary Eileen Brennan (Mrs. Peacock from Clue, the Colonel (?) from Private Benjamin). Then suddenly, the truckers arrive and we get a very long softcore segment of The Great Smokey Gang Bang, also featuring the “comic relief” of the cross dressing john being mocked by kitty-cat voice .

Immediately after the sex, cut to all the hookers getting arrested by the johns, who were all undercover cops there to bust them. (They had to have sex with them first to make sure they really were hookers I guess.) They’re given the order to leave the state ASAP.

Meanwhile, Elegant John and Beebo have discovered that with Eleanor reported stolen, they can’t get a “load” to haul, cramping the plan for John to make one last delivery before he croaks from his cancer. They decide to go visit the whorehouse where his old flame is the madam so he can get his cancer rocks off.

Once there, the hookers all make a lavish dinner for the visitors and with Porky’s style subtlty, make the virginal Beebo (and the audience) extremely uncomfortable. Elegant John and Eileen have implied sex (we only see “after”) and talk about this crazy world we live in and how things used to be better. John agrees to take the hookers on as his “load” (usually its the hookers taking the load, ba-dum-dum) and he will deliver them to North Carolina… where prostitution is legal? Where prostitutes roam free? Never explained.

So, hookers in the back, Beebo in the front, our heroes take off on the cross country journey. But, the evil trucker is still in the backround stirring up trouble and the APB on the stolen truck is spreading.

Enter the cackling, bumbling small town sherrif (played by Dub Taylor, the Larry the Cable Guy of his day) and his dummy son who catch Elegant John in a speed trap and then cart him and the hookers back to their small town jail. The hookers remove their duds and string them up on a clothesline in their cell (I’d take that out of cells to prevent suicide) and lure (literally with crooked fingers) the sherrif and his son into the cell. Now, in a normal movie, once they have them in the cell, they’d knock them out or otherwise trick them and lock them in. In TGSR, the hookers lure the cops into the cell, fuck them and then lock them in. Why give them a freebie? Because it’s the 70s and this is a crappy movie.

So, now it’s time for fun—

They stop off at a truckstop/bar where the hookers cut loose to “Still The One,” Elegant John and Eileen have a heart to heart and Beebo… does something. I don’t remember. The focus shifts to these guys—

The Lennon-glasses dude believes he had been abducted aliens and his sister is trying to convince him to come back east with them so he can kick his drug habit. Then the blonde dude turns around and said “I used to be an awesome DJ but the man kicked me off the air; I bet we could become a crazy duo… like some kind of white Cheech and Chong.”

Then the movie completely stops… the cops, the truck, the hooker, Elegant John are all gone and we watch Glasses and ex-DJ have this inane 100% realistic weed conversation outside the honky-tonk for like 15 minutes. I mean, at least Eleanor is in the background there to assure us that we’re in the same movie.

And then we’re back on the road. Suddenly the titular “roadblock” appears. A bunch of cops decide that if they block this bridge , they can stop elegant John. It’s 4 fake cop cars… a mere appetizer in a big-budget trucker movie chase. Ex-DJ and Glasses get on the CB and summon all the truckers, loggers, and blue color types to “help” Elegant John get through, though his 18 wheeler rolls over the 4 cars with pretty much zero effort.

Now over the bridge (but not yet in North Carolina), all the trucks full of strangers we’ve never met before all get out and dance ring-around-the-rosey. We’ve won! But… there’s 20 minute left in the movie. Back in the truck, back on the road.

Driving along, Beebo in the back with the whores. Suddenly the truck stops. Beebo races to the front and throws open the door, revealing…

...Elegant John’s still-warm corpse being snuggled by a weepy Eileen Brennan. Krueger takes over driving, the body crammed between him and (lady) in what I can only imagine is a very crampt, uncomfortable, and smelly position as he finished the “perfect run.” Switch to helicopter shot of Elanor driving along the seaside (?) as mournful Spanish guitar music plays.

Hooray for movies!

I awoke with an obsessive urge to draw a parrot.

Whoomp. Dere it is.

Whoomp. Redux.

...I can’t believe I spent 8 hours doing this.