I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

A completely hilarious sequence from our Hugh Bue shoot two weeks ago, unfortunately marred by the microphone breaking up. Have to cut a lot of this down for the final project.

It’s hot as hell in my room, though rather pleasant when I went outside. I’d imagine my computer is putting out most of the heat.

I’m editing two different pilots right now. Editing them myself, totally, for the first time since film school so I’m trying to remember how to do this crazy thing.

The first pilot we shot on Wednesday at Mitch’s studio. It’s called Welcome to My Study and here’s a salacious still to get your heart racing for the next 102, which we plan to submit it for.

I’ll say this for the show… it’s extremely odd. It has a great theme song that Mitch wrote and Joe McGinty arranged/recorded for us. The set built in the studio looks amazing. Mitch couldn’t be creepier in the role. Look forward to it not being voted back at this month’s Channel 102… if indeed it even is shown.

The other pilot, tentatively titled Hugh Bue until I come up with something more documentarian, sounding is going to have a lot more shooting dates in its future. The concept is a recluse sci-fi author comes out of retirement to publish his first new novel in 15 years. We shot the publisher’s office scene last weekend. The show is almost completely improvised which is going to make it a double black diamond “difficult” cutting job.

Here’s Anthony Atamanuik doing what he does in this clip of raw footage (specially filtered through YouTube’s propriatary “make everything look like shit” compression:

So, my 3-day weekend will be spend tanning in front of Final Cut.

Whenever I want to sent an e-card… which is pretty frequently… I always rush over to CatholicGreetings.com because they have the best ones.

Religious art, specifically Catholic art, from a historical perspective was the benchmark of terrific back in the Renaissance but it’s been on a slippery slide since then and in fact, is almost completely sucky. Saints Cards (used to great effect in Santería and Voudou) have a certain retro-tacky wonderfulness (even the Go-Gos agree), but post-1950 it’s a lot of lazy stock images of out-of-focus nature and painfully sincere colored-pencil drawings of prostrate tow-headed children.

Anyway, back to CatholicGreetings… aside from the dozens of John Paul II e-cards (the best!) they link to a saint-of-the-day archive and I was clicking through and found this:

September 26
Blessed Delphina (St. Elzear and Blessed Delphina)
(1283-1358)

This is the only Franciscan couple to be canonized or beatified formally.

Elzear came from a noble family in southern France. After he married Delphina, she informed him that she had made a vow of perpetual virginity; that same night he did the same. For a time Elzear, Count of Ariano, was a counselor to Duke Charles of Calabria in southern Italy. Elzear ruled his own territories in the kingdom of Naples and in southern France with justice.

Elzear and Delphina joined the Secular Franciscans and dedicated themselves to the corporal works of mercy. Twelve poor people dined with them every day. A statue of Elzear shows him curing several people suffering from leprosy.

Their piety extended to the running of their household. Everyone there was expected to attend Mass daily, go to confession weekly and be ready to forgive injuries.

After Elzear’s death, Delphina continued her works of charity for 35 more years. She is especially remembered for raising the moral level of the king of Sicily’s court.

Elzear and Delphina are buried in Apt, France. He was canonized in 1369, and she was beatified in 1694.

These people sound like a total drag. I’ve bolded the relevant sections. First off, she waits until they’re married to tell him about her “perpetual virginity,” what a tease! He swears too… sure, buddy. Now, on to their holy lives… they sound like first rate nags and nagging specifically those lower in station and in fact, in their total control, to do what they want—poor people eating their food and their servants.

Finally, the wife is the one who started this “let’s be virgins” thing and then does “works of charity” for 35 years after his death… he gets made a saint right away and 300+ years later she’s only “beatified” (For my non-Catholic homies, there’s three levels to being canonized: venerable, blessed and then, saint). Anyway, perfect case of sexism in the workplace… work harder, longer and make 2/3 the paycheck.

Wall to wall Dutch freak show posters at circusmuseum.nl

Go back to the main page and be loudly carnival-barked at in Dutch.

I’m up for some office design job and after talking to two different recruiters, I got the impression my site’s front page was confusing. I uploaded a new one quickly, which I’m not in love with but it is a stopgap. I had a much more ambitious illustration in mind, but I found that small self-portrait half-done in my folders and slapped it on.
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I’ve been reading a lot more this year (along with not cutting my fingernails* ever it has been the most consistant lifestyle change for 2007; an unmade New Year’s resolution I fell into).

Will loaned me Ubik, which I finished in a couple hours. It was pretty good but less insane that I was expecting. The hook is the premise of “half-life”, and in the intervening years it’s been ripped off by everything from Vanilla Sky to Red Dwarf. I’m going to try jumping into the really strange Philip K. Dick and see how I do.

Mitch got me The Philosphy of Andy Warhol, after I got him Confessions of a Window Dresser. It was a bit like reading a blog… rambling and scattered thoughts. The more blog-like it was the more I liked it. There’s a chapter where he goes to buy underwear at Macy’s with his friend which is pretty charming. There’s another huge dense section where some obsessive-compulsive friend lists her cleaning routine for 25 solid pages. My heart goes out to the “superstar” who had to transcribe that conversation.

Will had also leant me George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London which has been making the rounds… a dozen of his friends and acquaintences have all read this book now. On my Easter train ride down to DC I had head Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, which had referenced the Orwell book, so it was a serendipitous coincidence that Will offered me the source material a couple weeks later.

I also read Absurdistan and Climbing The Mango Trees last month. They were ok.

If anyone (who I see regularly) wants to trade books, drop me an email.
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*I think long colored fingernails, of all the traditional feminine beauty wiles, seem to be the least related to natural signs of health and youth and more to needless ornamentation. So I love them the most. But I have been suffering nail-hubris by keeping them so long and manicured, so the gods struck me down by having my thumbnail crack down the middle into the skin part and it hurts like hell.

I would like to get money to make/write comedy things. This has been an abstract goal for a while, but that every company in the world who witnessed YouTube being sold for ten billion trillion dollars is now launching “original content” for an audience that will never watch it I figure there’s no reason people shouldn’t be hiring me.

So, I need to go about finding these jobs since in about a year or less the companies will realize that there’s really not a way to manufacture “viral” content and fire everyone. (I survived the dot-com bust and all I got was this lousy pink-slip party.)

I applied for one call for content creators and got branded a “promising candidate.” Now, rather than interview people, the person in charge sent a Nerve personals-style “questionaire” of asinine questions asking me to analyze some horrible YouTube video and The Departed as well as shit like “What’s the wittiest comment you’ve ever made?” and “what adjective would you friends use to describe you?”

I realize the process of looking for work should be full of petty incidents of humiliation, but I’m fucking insulted. I am a “promising candidate” not some schmuck off the street. I sent video files. I thought maybe I was being hypersensitive, but another friend got the questionaire and said it make him want to shit in the guy’s coffee.

I’m on the fence between ignoring it or writing “fuck you” type answers to every one.

Finally, Stephen Fry can wake you up every morning without {insert vaguely homophobic overture here}.

http://voco.uk.com/

I got send this months and months ago… loved it, lost the link and only just found it again.

I’m pretty tired of pop-culture references in video shorts. I find them tedious and usually not having much to say besides “Hey… remember this thing that people used to know?” Fatal Farm has something to say… and it’s “Look at this crazy bullshit we shoehorned into this pop culture reference. Are you insane yet?”

Fatal Farm’s TV Themes

I highly recommend Dynasty, Designing Women, and Happy Days.

“Sexual Intercourse: American Style” Retrospective Screening

102 Episodes 1-7 will be shown back to back up to the premier of the brand new finale, featuring ME in a small role. You can also purchase the DVDs of the show that I helped make (and complained about earlier in this space).

THIS Thursday at 9:00 PM
Union Hall
702 Union Street @ 5th Ave, Park Slope Brooklyn

R train to Union or Q2345 to Atlantic

I have no copies of the original of MWTG #5. I had a DVD of it… now I don’t. It’s vanished!

Yesterday was Cinquo de Mayo, The Kentucky Derby, Boy’s Day (Japan), Free Comic Book Day, etc.

Silvija and I saw LoveMusic.

Then, Mitch and I saw Hot Fuzz.

It was a busy day.

I might elaborate later.

Google Ads just asked me if my nose job was making me look too Caucasian… Well, does it?!

http://www.asiansurgery.com

(Why does my gmail prompt stuff like this?)

Celebrating mascots (mostly for BBQ) that cheerfully throw themselves onto grills and beg for you to love them—
http://suicidefood.blogspot.com/

Pimp That Snack

Take a snack food. Make a version yourself that’s 100 times the normal size. Note the Cooper Black font and butterscotchy color in the logo to denote DELICIOUS.

This is a British site, so most of the snacks are on the obscure side. But I found one that can be enjoyed by decent candylovers from both sides of the Atlantic—GIANT ROLO.

I don’t know how “make it bigger” actually counts as “pimping,” either in the “make a car look tacky” or “middlemanage women to have sex for money.” Is it related to the chocolate? Is that racist to even ask? Fuck it, I like candy.

I’m trying to write every day this month… let’s see how I do

Happy May Day, comrades! Every day we’re getting closer to throwing off our shackles and garroting the bourgeoisie in the name of the workers!

Yesterday was Channel 102. I didn’t have a show in this month, but I silk-screened 102 shirts because work is freedom. I had the screen made at Pearl back in December and didn’t do anything with it until the morning before the screening. I kept meaning to make shirts, but it’s a Texas-sized mess in a Manhattan-sized apartment.

I made 11 of them before using up the last of my ink and sold them all (mostly to people I know) except for a single extra-large. XL was surprisingly unpopular at the screening, despite its popularity everywhere else. I’ll make more when I buy more ink and more blank shirts. I need a better store for blank shirts. I got them at Pearl and they were still $4 a shirt for just plain cotton black shirts. I don’t want to buy a bulk lot, but there’s gotta be a better price than that. I also would like to try printing on more interesting shirts… patterned shirts or maybe over an already silk-screened shirt—I had an idea to screen the 102-logo over the heart on the 3/$10 tourist “I heart NY” shirts they sell on Broadway… thrifty and message-y.

Today I learned how to use DVD Studio Pro, which is the most unintuitive program I’ve ever used. Mitch and I have been trying to make Sexual Intercourse American Style DVDs for a while and it was absolutely murder trying to figure out how to do the simplest things. I taught myself to use Illustrator and Photoshop (many eons ago) by just noodling around it in and eventually figured out what I needed to do. Totally impossible with this program (or maybe I’m too old to learn new tricks… short on patience and long in teeth)...

Luckily a friend who took a class on it was on IM and he explained how to do pretty much everything… up until he left work at 5:00. So I got my menu working including “play all” which was surprisingly tricky. Added a text page with contact info and a cool looping video on the top. But… I have no idea how to actually put this onto a DVD and burn it. I clicked “burn” which would be the normal way to do it but that would be far too logical.