I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Read Part 1 here
You know, when I first started blogging a jillion years ago (on the Improv Resource Center) I used to write entries like this on like, every damn thing I did. It was exhausting. Probably even more so for you, dear reader.

I also neglected to mention in part one I had to pass up tickets to see Doctor Atomic with Silvija which I had been looking forward to for, like, a month. (Doctor Atomic is a modern minimalist opera about how Robert Oppenheimer gets an atom bomb dropped on him at Los Alamos and becomes an immortal superhero and goes to live on the moon.)

I also failed to add the braggy footnote that Amy Poehler once played me in the “Hospital” episode of the third season (#303) of The Upright Citizens Brigade TV show. At the time, it hurt my feelings because it was a pretty unflattering impression, however accurate. But now I can brag about it. Brag brag braggity brag.

—

The doorman at the place asks Jack “These guys all with you?” “Yeah, sure” he says, not even looking who he’s waving in. It’s a big Times Square restaurant/brewpub/bar which is already massively packed. There’s nowhere to sit, really, and if you do sit there’s waitress service. If you look for a place to stand, you’re constantly getting out of the way of waitresses shuttling past with trays of four dozen beers on them

Mitch and I beeline for the back bar and decide the occasion and our social discomfort calls for bourbon. I hadn’t eaten all day and had already had a week of insomnia behind me, so I decided to ride the poor judgment train all the way to the station. The bar is not an open bar and it actually costs a goddamn fortune. Luckily Mitch gets it due to me buying him a drink the last time. I sometimes think our friendship is almost entirely based on an elaborate network of entangling who-owes-who-a-drink alliances and if one of us ever went on the wagon our relationship would resemble Europe 1914. (That makes little sense). Although my memory is woogly, I don’t think I actually paid for a single drink all night… thanks chivalrous/enabling party peers!

Will Hines writes: “The only thing I care about is who hit on who, who made out with who and who was doing what drugs”

Unfortunately, I can’t really answer any of these. As far as I saw, none of these things were happening, which in the case of the last one seems really odd coming from UCBT where the motto has always been “Whenever two or more are gathering in my name, spark up a doob’.” (I don’t smoke marijuana… does my wooden dated slang give it away?) Of course, we were in a public place and any coke-snorting or meth-eathing or opium-dosing was probably done in a back hallway or something. I didn’t see it backstage either. Bobby actually said before we left that when his parents came for a visit, they kept saying how clean everything was and how nice the people were—they had images of Belushi in their heads. But he also said that parents-visiting-behavior was kept well up because everyone had been in that position before.

I can tell you famous people who were there though. I mean, other than the SNL cast and Jack McBrayer. I was talking to Rich and his wife (and told them dropping their baby’s crash helmet was a big branding misstep… it was her hook!) and he says “Oh, meet Jenna and her boyfriend.” And I shake hands and say hello and only ten steps away from the table get “Oh, that girl from The Office is called Jenna… that must have been her.” Near the end of the night I was standing within earshot of someone saying “I’d like you to meet Eddie Izzard….” who I also would totally not have recognized. I’m celebri-stupid. Horatio Sanz was there and we chatted briefly (he was a UCB regular)... he’s lost a ton of weight and looks totally different. Lorne Michaels was in the back room eating. There was a guy who probably wasn’t famous but he was really, really tall. Did I miss anyone?

I shook hands with John Slattery and said hi to Elisabeth Moss (who hugged me before she left, so it went better than last time). I talked to Michael Gladis for a while at the front bar where someone kept handing him tequila shots which he was trying to politely decline. I took one off his hands, but it may have been one of the worst decisions of the night since I was still tasting it three days later (blecch). I was cagey about talking to Jon Hamm who was totally holding court up in the front. He was taking pictures with people as they approached to pay homage to his beatific wonderment etc.

My pal Ashley who was my sometimes TV buddy this season (I don’t have cable and went to people’s houses to watch the show) and had been romantically obsessed with J.H. since mid-season. She and Jack went up and chatted, mostly about St. Louis, and she came back flushed. “He is so handsome, I literally had to sit down after talking to him. I could not form words…” In her regular life, she is quite a talker so that’s huge. I do not find him quite so swoon-worthy (not my type, but he shouldn’t feel too bad about that), but I was still intimidated. So, some time and more dutch courage later, I did come up and say “Hi… I’m the one who does the pictures.”

Seriously, Matt Weiner all over again. Pulled into a massive hug. Those are amazing he says! Oh man, they look so perfect for the period! (I wish now I hadn’t gotten so blotto so I could remember it more.) Both he and his girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt were as nice as possible. Ashley took a picture (which I redrew above).

It’s about 4 AM now, people are thinking about going to the AFTER after-party. Most people are peeling off. It’s at a bar that’s on my way home, so I figure I might as well. Ashley and Jack say bye. I see Fred Armisen walking by and asked if he remembers running into me at the Sol Moscot on 14th St and waiting for our perscriptions together in the waiting room five years earlier and he said he did, asked where my glasses were and then said “You’re really cute, you know that.” Which I take as “adorable” and not “creepy.” It was delivered adorably, not creepily.

Mitch takes off. Sue and Lutz take off. I’m on my own so I split a cab with Michael down to Professor Thom’s in the East Village. “Remember the password is ‘Swordfish!’” someone is yelling. A Horse Feathers reference, how drole. Ok, fine, drunk guy. We take the cab down there and go up to the upstairs secret after-hours bar and a guy really asks for the password. Swordfish.

It’s dark and moderately crowded, but not with people we know really. Since it’s not a public bar, you can smoke in it, which is always kind of a time warp. My first few and most heavily-bar-going years in New York were pre-smoking ban so I view it with both nostalgia and revulsion. Much as I feel towards Catholicism. He’s very method; he smokes like a wheelbarrow.

After a while, Jon Hamm, Jennifer and Sudeikis (again… I THINK. I suspect I may have been subjected to a mind-control experiment and my programming goes off whenever I’m forced to recall whether Jason Sudeikis is involved… all previous information is erased) were there and we had drinks with them. I don’t remember what was discussed but there was yelling about art and then I said something about maybe being asked to do some work officially for the show and Jon went on an enthusiastic rant that ended with a hilariously salty “go for the gusto” encouragement that I can’t reprint and him telling me “Get a lawyer!”

Now, it never even occurred to me how weird this whole moment was that at 6 AM I was in a bar being bought a round of drinks by Don Draper and being yelled at. At no point in the entire evening did anything really seem odd or really overwhelming. I imagine my emotionally-deadening depression I carry with me was taking the edge off.

At some point after that I was in my house throwing up in the sink. I had a New Years Eve style hangover for two days afterward (compounded by the insomnia I already had and continue to have).

In short, a good time was had by all… the end.

Brandon Bird’s Site | Brandon Bird’s Blog

( This account is somewhat bowdlerized to keep some level of privacy to the participants… more so in part 2 when huge amount of alcohol is consumed and dignity is less prized. If you want the uncensored version, you have to be my friend in real life or get me similarly alcoholically compromised in the future)

So, thanks to the magnanimousness of Sue Galloway and John Lutz, I was invited to watch last week’s SNL from the writer’s room and then tag along to the afterparty. Lutz is a writer for SNL (and also appears as “Lutz” on 30 Rock, where Sue also appears as “Girl Writer”) It’s the second time I’ve gone (the last was a couple years ago when I think maybe Drew Barrymore was hosting but I don’t remember much of the show itself… it was more about “Jesus, this is the Writer’s Room of SNL and I’m sitting in it“).

It was also Amy Poehler’s last scheduled show as a cast member, which is poignant since she was one of my first teachers at the UCB Theatre (and the only other SNL party I went to was in her first year when she let us in… eight years ago? Jesus!) When we got up to the room a couple other people from the Theatre were there and they told us that Amy had gone into labor before dress, was rushed to the hospital and they thought (though were not 100% sure) that she had delivered already. The baby’s name was Archibald, which was weighed mentally but not up for discussion because of the love for and fear of each of us feels for her. (She can shoot lasers from her eyes.)

At the aforementioned Barrymore show, the room was pretty empty. That time we watched the dress and the show and as soon as dress ended, all of the writers piled in manically and quickly rewrote massive portions of the show, dropping 25 minutes worth of material and then setting it all up again for a new audience. This time we were just there for the real show and the Writer’s Room was packed. I was kinda surprised Jon Hamm was such a draw, but then again the media elite of New York City would probably be his peeps. Not personally his peeps, but his fan-peeps, I mean. Media-elites loved The Division.

The Writer’s Room sits above the stage, like two stories up, with a window that looks out on the audience risers, stage right. I spotted one audience couple that came in vintage dress… adorable (and uncomfortable). I had seen Rich and his wife and a couple other show guys in the lobby on the way in (Bobby had gotten them all ringside seats, I think). You can watch through the window up until the show starts, then the curtain has to close, at you watch the show on a big screen over the long writer’s table. But, because of the proximity to the stage, you hear the sound from below you live and in front of you on the TV which creates a spacial distortion. Better than Acid.

Some script drafts from dress were on the table, as well as a running order and a lot of smelly half-eaten hummus platters. Gross, SNL Writers, show some pride in your workspace! Actually, a couple of the writers were looking extra classy in suits, themed for the occasion. Lutz among them… he had a very shiny tie that was purple and silver (as was my dress, so we were required to get married by sartorial law to the displeasure of his girlfriend Sue). His tie looked like it should have had expensive chocolates inside. I over heard a writer saying that they had done their writer’s pitch meeting Mad Men themed, everyone in suit and tie. Adorable, SNL Writers!

It was weird seeing Jon Hamm so animated in the monologue, but he went over really well. A writer said he was really surprised that a lot of things that went flat in dress (which also has a different full audience and is taped) were killing in the live show.

At this point there’s like maybe 50 people in the room watching. Writers walking in and out. Lots of girlfriends and wives. A whole contingent from 30 Rock. Andy Secunda. My agent. Then Coldplay comes on and the room CLEARS. They’ve all gone down to see Coldplay on the floor. I guess they weren’t there to see Don Draper. Who knew? Coldplay?

It’s during the second Coldplay set that Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and his wife walked in with Jason Sudeikis (my memory is clouded whether it was him, but he had a really nice suit, too) giving them a backstage tour. Immediately Jack McBrayer (who you may know as TV’s Kenneth from TV’s 30 Rock and is a massive Mad Men fan) and a couple other people leap up and start shaking his hand and getting into an animated conversation.

I feel kinda awkward and want to say hello too but since I’m not involved with either the Best Comedy or Best Drama Emmy-Winning program, I don’t want to bust in. I make a pleading face to Jack and he said “Oh, sorry. Let me introduce you.” He turns to Matt and says “This is my friend Dyna…”

And Matt flips out. “Dyna MOE!?”

Seriously, I have not been greeted with this much enthusiasm by a member of my actual family (but we’re Nordic and profoundly sad). He pushes Jack out of the way, grips me in a bear hug, kisses my head and talks a mile a minute about the drawings I’d been doing on Flickr.

I’m pretty un-huggy in general. And he’s a hard man to do a scene with. He keeps setting me up for lines, but then moves on to the next thing before I can answer. He wants to know my real name, which confused I give (should have said “January” since he bought that once). Then he keeps using it on me, which is more unsettling since only my mother and the IRS call me that. He jokes that I use a fake name ‘cause I’m a stripper and he used to be a stripper. Then he said his son loves the backgrounds and put one on the family computer. I say “Oh, the one with the velvet pants and the top hat?” “You heard about that, huh… no the one who plays Glen.” I didn’t have my bearings enough to ask if he put the Glen wallpaper on. He started talking about architecture and then grabs a pink post it, writes his email on it and tells me to send him my phone number so we can continue this. They move on with their tour and I sit back down. Much like being attacked by a leopard or run over by a speeding motorboat, it happens so fast it’s hard to register.

The rest of the show goes pretty well (and I already wrote about the Mad Men parody sketch a couple entries down). Now we’re going to the party. I end up following a bunch of people down to Bobby’s dressing room (‘cause I hadn’t been down there before)... it’s a lot like the Conan dressing rooms, actually, but it’s the same building so that’s no surprise.

The party is at a place down in Time Square, and I walk out with a bunch of people, who it occurs to me as we walk first into a pack of autograph seekers (many of whom appear to be terminally ill and in wheelchairs) and then into a pack of paparazzi are actually famous television stars (but I haven’t really let that sink in since they used to just be pals). Bobby gets detained by the autograph hounds; Rich and Jack hug hello just outside the door and the paparazzi go bananas.

Ashley and I, non famous television stars, wait a bit and Mitch Magee jumps a barrier. He was very anxious to be smuggled into the after-party. I told him I’d call once we were there (there is some security, you have to “come in” with someone) and evaluate it. He just showed up because he was bored. The four of us walk the 5 or 6 blocks to the party. Jack, being the charming devil he always was, passes a huge bus-shelter 30 Rock ad and said with surprise “Hey, that’s me!”

NEXT TIME …Part 2: The Party

In celebration of Halloween, I bought candy corn today.

It’s more of a garnish than a candy. Two or three on top of a cupcake is heaven. Eating any more is like tasting your own death.

That goes twice for “mallocreme pumpkins”

The Barack Obama show airs tonight…

New York Magazine has an article making fun of it. But the best thing about that article is this picture which gives me another item for my “Newhart” category on this blog.

For a fairly big part on Flight of the Conchords.

I know in my heart to not get too anxious or invested since this is a fairly big cattle call since the part really is “Female. 20-30.” Wide net they’re casting.

But, the casting people went through some trouble to track me down… first emailing Doug Moe thinking his email was mine. I wonder where they know me from; if it was UCB wouldn’t they have gotten by email directly?

Anyway, it’s an honor just to be nominated.

Remember a month ago when I wrote about that awesome Honeycombs lip-synced performance I found on YouTube?

I just now found out where it originated—from the jukebox movie “POP GEAR” hosted by butt-of-QI-references Jimmy Savile. It’s a 1964 British Invasion cash-in… just a ton of lip-synced performances with truly bizarre camera swoops and blocking. Since Mad Men is jumping to 64 next season, I can only hope this gets put into the style-inspiration-file.

See the Jimmy Savile intro and the standout Honeycombs performance first… it’s the best of the bunch for all the reasons I wrote about last time. I kind of want to re-enact and re-shoot it Gus Van Sant Psycho style, but it would never be as spectacular.

Then you can jump further in to Peter & Gordon to see what Mike Myers based Austin Powers’ looks on. (And they do a killer Lennon/McCartney number to boot.) Peter (the red head/Austin Powers original) is like a one-two punch of spectactular ugly with the orange bowl cut and the clunky glasses and then he smiles sweetly exposing teeth you could saw through a 2 by 4 with and it’s the perfect comedy triple. Schwing!

And some humanitarian-historian uploaded the entire movie to YouTube. In Eight Parts.

This blogger added his own commentary a year ago but also serves up the missing “Gold Pants Dance” which just looking at it will give you a yeast infection. And pink eye.

Another killer track from ‘64—

This voice baffles and allures me. When I first this song I thought it was a pre-teen Mexican boy. Based on this blurry and dimly-lit footage (it’s like Sasquatch evidence), it appears to be a West Indian girl? Maybe you’d like in better in Czech.

Either way, thanks to ideas planted by this French AIDS PSA (NSFW unless you work at Screw Magazine), I can only imagine it underscoring scenes of someone getting blown by a dude in an alley. Depending on Sal’s storyline, maybe they will use it for Mad Men season 3…

Add: Jesus, I feel like such an idiot for not even thinking of using this for the molestation scene in Being Glenn (Safe for work, not recommended for anyone)

So, a lot of people who read this but don’t know me in real life won’t know this, so a bit of background: New SNL featured player Bobby Moynihan is a UCB guy originally, as am I and as is Rich Sommer (in so much as we studied comedy there, performed there and know each other from there).

Bobby was in a duo (and later trio) called Buffoons which had a long running show which Rich Sommer would admit himself was a major fan of. Kind of obsessed with it, even. He was at every show, according to Bobby (who is a notorious exaggerator). It was a fucking hilarious show, but it was scripted—it was pretty much the same every week.

When the word came down that Jon Hamm was hosting SNL a couple months ago, before sketch one was on paper, and I was talking to Bobby about that he immediately said “I want to play Rich.”

He said after the show that he had a minor panic a minute before the sketch went up—“I need a wedding ring!”—and he ran around backstage trying to borrow one. He got one in time and ultimately, he admitted, it’s probably not even going to be visible on screen.

It could have been even more meta meta meta if very pregnant Amy Poehler (UCB founder) had played pregnant-but-denying-it Peggy Olson, but she went and had the baby right before the show. Nice job ruining everyone’s fun, Amy Poehler and Baby Archibald.

My mouth tastes like vomit and the tequila I intercepted for Michael Gladis.

Fred Armisen said I was cute.

Matt Weiner and Jon Hamm (seperately) hugged and kissed me unprompted.

So, Mitch wrote about Seattle so I have to write up my party adventures.

Rich sent an email saying he was gonna be in town to undisclosed recipients and we should meet him at this bar, Grassroots, which is right by my house. Like, two blocks away. I could roll there if I had to.

I already had tickets that night to see a terrible play with Silvija. Silvija gets free tickets to Broadway shows because of her job at Playbill and she is generous enough to share. I usually ask that we only see terrible things, but actually, most of what we’ve seen together has been pretty good… including two different shows that went on to win Tonys in subsequent years (“In The Heights” and “Spring Awakening”). We also saw “High Fidelity the Musical” which was pretty… not terrible, but definitely seemed dated within weeks of opening and I can see a high school in 2020 putting it on as a hoary 00s nostalgia show. I digress. The show we went to see we knew was going to be bad—the NY Times called it “A walking corpse of a comedy”—and we were all but daring each other to admit that we didn’t want to see it. But we did, and we didn’t leave at the intermission, and made it all the way to the uncomfortable, embarrassed curtain call. Taa daa!

So, now I had to get back down to my neighborhood and have a drink—which could have been disastrous, embarrassed and uncomfortable as well—with Rich and his other friends I didn’t know. He had been at the bar for almost three hours when I got there and was filled with liquid cheer. We talked about old comedy war stories, including the tale of Real Real World at the Mall of America which he had some perspective on as a native Minneapolian (term?) and the shady dude who ran the whole “festival.” Charlie Sanders was there and said that he was in the audience for that terrible show where we were booed off the stage since he was performing with his local group at the same event.

Anyway, Rich, after complaining about being cut from his second and third appearances on the Office, said “Oh, yeah the guys are coming.” It turned out he was flown out and put up by Bloomingdales (at the W, no less) to sign autographs with the rest of the Mad Men cast. It seemed very strange and was completely unpromoted as far as I had observed.

First “Peggy” came, right from her show on Broadway (“Speed the Plow”) in the theater next door to the terrible play I had just seen. She was dressed smartly in a crested blazer/straw hat combo and looked very Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I handed her a red wine across the table and said ‘I’ll blog about this,” to which she reacted not at all. Burn! I am uninteresting!

There also were two AMC people—Sarah and Vlad—at the bar, one of whom was very enthusiastic about my dumb drawings, which was nice, since I would assume there would be lots of cease and desists and cold-shoulders. But she was very pro-drawings.

Jawnee Conroy was there and confused many of Rich’s friends with his sincere believe that dinosaurs live in the center of the earth. Charlie Sanders and I discussed our favorite bad/amazing movies and gave each other homework to watch and discuss at a later date.

“Paul” and “Pete” came together a bit later and played some darts. We were all pretty in the bag at this point. “Pete” shared with me a number of things that irritated him at length… he has many pet peeves. I was surprised to discover we are the same age. I irritated many gathered with my many points of praise for Law and Order: CI, the upshot of which is now having to tell people I met famous actors from a TV show I enjoy and rather than ask them interesting questions about their fascinating lives, I wasted their time by pointing out the finer points of the 2005 episode “Collective” about the nerd-killing black widow (also featuring former UCB performer Bret Christensen plays an Anne-Rice-vampire nerd sex-in-coffins cult member). “Paul” appears in a different {and lesser} 2005 episode “Prisoner” but that’s neither here nor there. He took off for a while and Rich said he was trying to pick up NYU girls smoking outside.

Some other shit happened. I lost my wallet but didn’t realize it. Most everyone left. I tried to take the remaining people to Crif Dogs, but since it was a Wednesday and 3 AM, it was closed. I tried Sidewalk and a pizza place, but they were closed too, so I proved to be a terrible drunken guide and went home, leaving Rich and his friends to their own devices.

On Friday, a couple days later, Anthony Atamanuik texted me to say “the busty redhead from your show is at Roo Roo.” For those who don’t know Stony, that’s classy for him. Long story short, “Joan” is dating the brother of Stony’s girlfriend and he’s actually known her in that quasi-familial bond for years. She also was in town on the Bloomingdale’s junket but she skipped the bar the other night (as did “Ken” and “Sal” who I think were with her at a Jazz club or something to that effect… they’re all the “old marrieds” of the crew as Rich had left wifey and baby back in LA and living the swinging swingle life that night).

“Joan” was neither 9 feet tall nor floating through the halls of McManus like battleship despite what you have seen. Her hair is really red. No, I did not ask if she wears a fake ass in the show and that question is bizarre and says more about you than her, really. Jesus. Why are we friends? She is very normal and of normal height and was wearing normal people clothes and… gasp… WASN’T A DICK! (Not that you should assume anyone is going to be a dick but the level to which she was the opposite of a dick surprised me.)

She actually was super nice and super excited about my drawings, which was very sweet. She was also exhausted as she had been doing photoshoots and fittings nonstop the whole week she was there (as well as hanging out with boyfriend’s extended family). She was genuinely thrilled that all these fashion people were giving her clothes and had a bunch more meetings the next day. She told me some funny backstage shit which put some stuff in perspective (but is not for the internet). She talked about some other shows she had worked on. And just was exactly what you’d want in meeting a person from TV. Five thumbs up.

Thanks to the magnanimousness of our friends on the writers’ staff (drawings for both of you), I’m going to the Jon Hamm-hosted SNL on Saturday and the after-party, which I believe a lot of the Sterling-Cooper crew is coming out for. Heightened terrifying drunken antics to follow… and be drawn. I suppose! That! Hooray!

(I feel like an awful person for having written this. Am I betraying a trust? Is this indulgent twaddle of the likes that fell Rome? Are you happy, Mitch?)

Mitch said I should blog about getting really hammered with a small percentage of the cast of America’s most-lauded-and-least-watched television show and I said that comes off as very braggy and desperate and fanboyish. He said the people have a right to know. I said why haven’t you written about Welcome to my Study playing at a festival in Seattle where they PAID FOR YOU TO FLY THERE AND DO A Q&A.

He said he would write about that in his blog and I would have to write about meeting (five members of) the cast of Mad Men. So far, neither of us has given in.

The blog Stickers and Donuts has interviewed me. This is the second time ever I have been interviewed for public consumption.

There is an Improv Wiki on the IRC, which some people might have missed since nobody goes to the IRC anymore (snobbish eyeroll).

I whined to Will Hines that I wasn’t in it nor was my seminal improv group Feature Feature and took it as a sign that I had been whitewashed out of the history of improv in New York. Then I told Max to warm up the Duesenberg.

He rose to the challenge/ took the bait and wrote one up.

http://www.pitbullarmory.com/dog-armor.html

(Site also features human armor, horse armor and taxidermy squirrel armor)

84 knockoffs of Shep Fairey’s Obama “Hope” poster (via Design Observer)

For all the haters who dogpile on “Obey” for being the work of a rip-off artist, seeing all the parodies/tributes/cash-ins lined up, you get a sense that it’s not that fuckin’ easy to do. Most of these look like shit. There is a lot of craft that goes into the image-appropriation blender that takes more skill than pressing “posterize” in Photoshop. (I think Fairey is fun.)

Personal favorites from the list:

Runner Up (and best crafted of the lot)

Hope by 21st Century Filth

Ridiculous Grand Prize:

(Mavis) Beacon of Hope by Lonely Sandwich

An ongoing series…

KAWAII!*
Terry cat
“Soft stuffed cat of terry cloth (pile cloth) of towel. It’s washable.”

KAWAI!**
5 feet girl doll with big breast.
“She is a soubrette.” (As well as a hybrid of Raggety Ann and a RealDoll)

*”cute”, mostly used in English to indicate Pokemon-style minimalistic hyper-cuteness
**”scary”

I just thought of an awesome Halloween costume.

Paula Poundstone. A sexy Paula Poundstone.

Maybe I can get a group together and we can go as the roster of the 1989 season of HBO One Night Stand. C’mon guys… who wants to be Larry Miller?

I am an angry person with a cold black heart filled with rage and despair, but there are two things I love: the inscrutable ridiculousness of the Japanese nation and wacky rock-and-roll exploitation movies.

I do not speak Japanese for real so I do not know what’s actually going on in this trailer. It features a fictional band called “The Tightsmen” that would be a good index of worst-case-scenario, unflattering haircuts. The Peppermint Engine is taking screenshots to their barbers as I type.

“Group Sounds” (GS) refers to mid- to late sixties Japanese “garage rock.” A weird chimera of matchy-matchy haircut/outfitted sunny lads and bizarro psychedelia that grew out of The Beatles appearance at the Budokan in 1966. The odd label was coined to minimize embarrassment (the leading killer of Japanese!) created by the pronunciation minefield “rock and roll.”

The Spiders tribute to psychedelia and being confused.

For actual information instead of my unresearched opinions, check out this bilingual resource site or The Video Beat! Movie Page of Info which also has ordering info for GSploitation films such as: WILD SCHEME A-GO-GO, BIG COMMOTION!, HI! LONDON, and HEY YOU, GO! (all of which sound like movie form titles). In the US, if you’re lazy, you’ll probably just have to make due with the high-art, low-rocking-out nonsense of Tokyo Drifter to fill your Japanese psychedelia tank.

But really, a movement is hardly worth discussing unless they’ve sold out and devoted their teen rebellion to selling things so here’s a contemporary commercial for sweaters and jump cut editing (and no GS, so my transition was pointless)—

But let’s go back a couple years and see what the kids were so hopped up about rejecting. A perfectly jazzy animated clothes commercial where dresses turn into hot air balloons and flocks of doves.

I’m probably not going to put every wallpaper here as I do them. You’re better off just going directly to Flickr to see them. I’ve already missed three of them from last week.

Here’s one

Here’s this week’s:

You can go back and find the others I’m skipping yourself. I want to blog about other things, like Russian Law and Order (the show, not the concept) and my class performance last night (they did pretty well!)