I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Eric Skillman is the art director of many a Criterion DVD package. He has a blog where he talks about the process of designing the covers (and insides) of those releases. Interesting!

http://ericskillman.blogspot.com/

Kitty Romano made you some nice spaghetti. But it’s Ash Wednesday so you shouldn’t be eating it anyway because you should be fasting.

(Thanks to Vintage Style File for posting pictures of the full dress from “The Gold Violin” that they happened to have an exact copy off.)

I rewatched a bunch of old stuff recently (including this one). I forgot how funny some of the old Channel 102 shows are. And it’s telling how web videos have evolved in just a couple years (quick, loud, immediate) that the thought of having a scrap of narrative in them seems so alien already.

Continued in Part 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

I desperately want the genre of “adventure games” to have a comeback. Even though I knew it was going to be disappointing, I downloaded and PAID MONEY for this, mostly symbolically so someone will see that it made money and say “Let’s bring back adventure games.”

I finished it in less than two hours. And a lot of the backgrounds got messed up and were all artifacty.

I think I should be more discriminating and campaign for a return to good adventure games.

This is a funny, but usually restrained, UK comedy/politics panel show called Have I Got News For You. When Lord of the Hawkmen/Gimli {sic – not BB}/Augustus hosts it goes batshit crazy. (This is a couple years old.)

Most people are familiar with Melanie’s “Brand New Key,” thanks to its appearance in Boogie Night as Rollergirl’s theme music.

But, did you know it charted in England as a “reworking”/parody version by West-Country-themed combo The Wurzles entitled “Combine Harvester?”

Jump right to the chorus (approx. :50) to have your socks rocked off.

via Cartoon Brew

It’s Toy Fair week here in Manhattan and here’s my rallying cry for someone to pick up the mantle of producting Mad Men plastic crap. It’s a no-brainer, really, the hipster designers touting the show the loudest are the ones most likely to have 10 billion Kid Robot toys in their cubicles.

Minifigs, I believe, are technically the little people from Lego, but there’s a whole genre of blocky tiny toys (like Kubricks, Minimates, etc. ) many with a huge customizing communities. I don’t have the means or the wherewithal to make these a physical reality so I’m throwing it to those with the can-do know-how.

• I’d also add that if these were blind-boxed, the ultra-rare “mystery figure” would be Dale (not pictured).

Holy Cow!

The next calendar I design is going to be just like this one

Bill dug these up, so now the entire run of Cakey is up on multiple sites:

I heard this song recently and desperately tried to place what movie, if any, it had appeared in recently. (Love Actually? Some Rom Com maybe? {Rushmore—thanks Fountain.})

Here it is performed in a construction site, for good measure.

This just the kind of song that is simple and lovely in a way that makes it so attractive to asshatted souless producers looking to leave their mark by doing the most fucking terrible cover ever.

But that’s where you’re wrong. It’s the perfect song for producers looking to leave their mark by doing multiple versions of the most fucking terrible covers ever.

Some YouTube commentor/unquestionable authority said it was one of the most covered songs with more than 100 covers on record. I’m pretty sure Hawaiian War Chant has that record licked, but the armpit-sniffing guy from Dexy’s Midnight Runners hasn’t gotten around to covering it yet.

The second of the new batch. Welcome to my Study 8 will be up in three weeks. Then we have to film some more, maybe in mid-March (unless we have a falling out)

(alternate YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rAUybTmCB8)

I got a FedEx notice last week that someone was trying to deliver something, which is always a pain. They never buzz and they say you’re not home and then you have to go to the fucking tunnel to their depressing offices to try and get stuff. I’d move to a doorman building just for this alone. I usually tell them to deliver it to the ice cream store downstairs but it was closed all last week for mysterious reasons.

Anyway, that’s my issue. On Friday they just left it in the lobby so I got it. Here’s what it looks like in my living room.

And who’s it from? Cor Blimey!

I blurred his address/number and my address/number, but you can probably make mine out on that first one. I live up six exhausting flights of stairs, so I doubt anyone would have a burning-enough-desire to climb those to kill/stalk me, even considering how shoddily I treat people as a general rule.

On to the contents!

Inside was…

A DVD of Season 1 (which I didn’t have before. I have screeners.)
A Soundtrack CD
A nice note from Matt Weiner on snazzy stationary

A Mad Men cigarette case (thumbprinty)
A Mad Men coffee/whiskey mug
A Mad Men floaty pen (amazing!)

The floaty pen proved impossible to photograph well, but it’s the silhouette man from the opening credits "falling" against the billboard backdrop.

The Official Mad Men Calendar (though, mine’s better)

and it was all inside this cotton messenger bag

I wasn’t expecting anything, but now I have tons and tons of stuff! Thanks, Mad Men. Thanks, Matt Weiner—you’re a class act!

Guess what? It’s almost St. Valentine’s Day, the most holy day of the liturgical calendar!

If you have a special lady friend, and don’t know what to get her to manifest in material form your swirling and ill-defined emotions for her, why not get her THIS!

If you don’t have a special lady friend and keep striking out on your internet blind dates. Like things are going really well, and you’ve been emailing for three weeks and think you’ve finally found someone you’re on the same wavelength with so you decide to pony-up and meet in person for the first time. You meet at some dive bar and you decide to get a bite to eat and then back for more drinks until it’s getting pretty late and she needs to go back to Brooklyn because the L’s gonna be all fucked up so you invite her to your place, but she says no, she really ought to get going and then she won’t respond to your follow up email the next day even though she expressly said “We should do it again sometime”... you probably need to fix up your place anyway. So get something nice to hang on your wall, like THIS!

Or maybe you’re a weird fat dude with a beard and no chin who just likes to wank to cartoons of hot chicks… THIS!

Defenders of Stan takes place in a world where (almost) everyone has super-powers. These are late-night/daytime commercials that would be shown on TV in that world.

SuperLawyers #1 from Dyna Moe on Vimeo.

SuperLawyers #2 from Dyna Moe on Vimeo.

Tonight I am revisiting two old shows I thought I had put behind me.

At Channel 101, of which I have not been partaking much in the last year, we are saying bon voyage to the insanely long-running Defenders of Stan. I wrote and edited two “commercials” which will be edited into their finale (starring Mitch Magee, Bill Buckendorf and, most spectacularly, this plastic Thor helmet)

I will post my video (standing alone) tomorrow.

After 11 PM, there will be a reunion of most of the improv “Monkeydick” as a part of some anniversary thing. However, the two individuals most considered the “face” of Monkeydick over the years will not be performing. I am of course speaking of…. the Bosniak brothers. (This joke is only for the benefit of Will Hines)

Anyway, see most of Monkeydick at that show. It is of particular draw to any of my students who heard that I was good on this team; the out-of-practice shuffling, stumbling performance I plan on giving should disabuse you of that notion in no time.

Two interesting things I got in the mail this week:

One is the amazing, hand-crafted Don Draper bobblehead generously gifted to me by bobble-auteur “Mister Frothee” (he also works in the medium of “bath puppets” to show his range).

Bobble-Don is standing atop one of the “cast-and-crew” editions of the 2009 Mad Men Illustrated Calendar that showrunner Matt Weiner commissioned. (It’s been two months now, so I figure I can go public with it now. I was under a gag-order until Xmas) It’s larger than the Zazzle calendars (has no wire or hole), has some different art and includes Jan 2010.

Video coming this week