I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I am not a member of the Writer’s Guild, but there’s currently a strike going on. I hope to be a member (soon) and I am currently unemployed, so I went out.

Today I walked the picket line at Chelsea Piers on the west side of Manhattan where they make Law & Order. I didn’t know they made Law & Order there until today. It was pretty cold out, something picketers in Los Angeles don’t have to worry about. When you’re picketing two things happen… trucks honk at you showing support (truck drivers like unions and they like honking) and people give you free cookies and coffee all day.

Do picketers in Los Angeles get free coffee? They don’t need it, it’s hot there. Maybe they get free sunblock or something.

The show-runners from Law & Order (a Show-runner is like a combo producer-writer that manages the day-to-day of making a show and as a result they’re kind in the middle of this writers vs. producers stalemate) kept sending out boxes and boxes of really fancy cookies and brownies for us. (Like from Elenis and Fat Witch… fancy!) Then as I moved from one area of the picket to another I saw The Belz handing out hot meatball subs to people on the line. THE BELZ

(Pictured: The Belz from Brandon Bird’s “SVU Valentines” Set, posted previously. Buy them all.)

The Belz did not call anyone “cutie” but he referred to his two dogs that had with them as “children”—“C’mon, children,” he said as he walked off. Dick Wolf was also there, also walking a dog.

We also had a big inflatable rat, but its eyes had been rubbed off. Everyone was really nice and a good time was had by all. The End.

I’ve been sick for a couple days. I even skipped work today.

Rob Lathan’s blog reminded me that there’s an Andy Kaufman award thing happening and that Mitch put Welcome to My Study in as his submission. So, if you want to see it again, here it is:

http://www.ziddio.com/oneVideo.zd?dispatch=fetch&artifactId=33437

It’s unclear as to how viewer ratings play into which 5 minute video is the Kaufmaniest, but you could vote for it if you want. I have to say the flash-video on the site is a lot crisper than the dreck on YouTube. And somehow, despite having NO ratings, it says Study has been viewed 22820 times, which I doubt is true.

If Mitch is a finalist, he has to perform live. Live Welcome to My Study?!

Matt DeCoster and Will Hines test their mettle by performing an uncompromising series of comedy sketches that they wrote for the arena of the UCB Theatre. It’s a battle to the death, except that no one dies and it’s funny and Matt and Will are friends.

Directed by Dyna Moe

Saturday, September 1st at 7:30 PM
(b/w Rob Lathan’s “Get Psyched!”)
UCB Theatre
307 West 26th Street
Cost: $8

Will Hines and Matt DeCoster in

Seven Fights: A Sketch Show About Winning

Directed by Me.

Monday, August 6 at 9:30

Free collectable keepsake programs for all!

Upright Citizens Brigade Theater
307 W. 26th Street

I “directed” a sketch show that’s having a work-out on stage this week. That means the sketches are all done but we haven’t had a lot of time to rehearse or nail down the cosmetic particulars of transitions and cues… we weren’t planning on debuting the show until next month but the opportunity presented itself. I made a party hat for one scene and a harpoon prop for another; my “directing” has mostly consisted of complaining and making them buy me sandwiches.

The sketches are pretty good—about half are from a show done a couple of years back and half are new. Two of the sketches are my favorites of all time from any sketch show ever, see if you can detect what they are.

It is appearing on Wednesday, July 11th, around 7pm at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. The cost is five dollars.

The show features Matt DeCoster and Will Hines. The title is “Seven Fights: A Sketch Show About Winning,” but the title doesn’t actually refer to anything in the actual show… it’s a bunch of sketches.

You should come and see it.

I’m directing a sketch show for Will Hines and Matt DeCoster and we had a meeting yesterday. It’s a lot of old sketches from their show “Chronicles of Riddick,” the performance of which was attended by less than 10 people at the Red Room. Five of them were their friends, five of them were random drunk people lured up from the bar who spent the entire show talking loudly and making cell phone calls. Brett Gelman (one of the “friends”) nearly got into a fistfight with one loud drunk lady, who later came back after the show to alternately complain about Brett to the performers (“he must have been related to you because he was laughing at stuff that was’t funny”) and damn them with faint praise (“Some of your stuff was OK. You could play at Funny Bones in Staten Island.”)

During our meeting, Matt DeCoster brought up his favorite online video series, declaring every creative decision made by the creators to be perfect in every way and that he’s watched every episode over and over. I was skeptical at first, but it does grow on you—
ZeroTV’s adaption of Mary Worth

I decided I want a cool robot costume. I made one more than ten years ago, and I think I could probably do a better job now. I don’t specifically have a show or sketch or anything to use it in, though I’ve discussed it with Silvija.

When I suggested doing a video where we played robots, she said “Isn’t that kind of hack?” I disagreed. I think the hackiness of robots in comedy has gone full cycle (peaking in 2000-1) and now it’s more Zombie that are hack. (Despite my argument, I admit that robots still might be slightly hack so the material has to be extra good… and the costume has to be extra good.) On the pro side, Silvija noted that we both kind of talk like robots naturally, so we won’t have to modify our voices.

I will probably do a head in paper-mache using some kind of helmet as a base… maybe a cheap plastic mask stapled to the front to give it structure. If I could get a very cheap used bike helmet I’d use that. I did a short peruse of Halloween Adventure, but they didn’t have any plain plastic “helmets” to use. The ones they had were kid-sized—too small! I’m probably have to get a bodysuit to wear under it… which is just the slippery slope excuse I need to get into the confusing/claustrophobic “zentai” fetish!

So, I don’t want to do the tinfoil box with dryer vent arms—that really has been done to death—or anything really boxy. I checked the internet to see if there were any robot tutorials, but I haven’t found anything that fits the kind of robot suit I want to make which is on the more art-deco tip. Like somewhere between the “False Maria” from Metropolis and the Will Smith I Robot robots (I didn’t see this movie).

Here’s what I found online:

• The unholy union of “furry” and “robot” which I posted in my blog years ago.

• CloroxBot step-by-step which also uses stilts (people think robots are tall), but the real prize on the site is this insane cardboard Boba Fett helmet.

• A French-Canadian who makes Transformer costumes (in cardboard, no less) that actually tranform….
  ... but of course the Japanese still do it better

Someone start a comedy group under this name:

Make sure you have a really tall guy in the group who dresses like a cop all the time. Maybe he can do all your edits by lurching onto stage in this position.

A lot of comedians are teenie-weenie in real life.

Found while researching sideshow banners and posters for a Coney Island-themed CD cover I’m working on. If’n you’d enjoy that sort of thing, here’s two sites worth visiting:

Johnny Meah, Czar of Bizarre (contemporary artist working in the style)

Vintage banners (40s-50s) from the Hammer Gallery

Stay up all night 3 days in a row and you make shit like this.

I’ve often thought about doing funny valentines with my characters from various projects… variations on the pun-based innocuous crap that kids share… but never felt motivated to do it.

Thank goodness for Brandon Bird—

—and thank goodness for Law and Order Criminal Intent, too.

See more Law and Order Valentines on his site (but the rest of them are all SVU and that’s the worst franchise)

A really long time ago, I designed a Harold poster but never bothered to actually finish it… despite getting more email about it than anything else I’ve ever posted.

Seeing as its a Friday night and I have nothing to do, I buckled down and knocked out the finishing details and posted it to CafePress. I have no idea what the quality of their poster printing is, so this is an experiment… if I hear back that these posters are bullshit, I’ll find another distribution method.

Order “The Harold” Chart 11×17

“This Take-Five bar tastes like Take-Ass”—Mitch Magee 1/30/2007

I think I like this drawing style for the scene circles… white outline. Maybe with some shading matching the background color of the beat. I drew the thumbnails very quickly and with a mouse (it’s tiny in this preview so you can’t make it out)—a sad man with falconer’s glove and a hawk conversing with a little girl with a giant lollipop.

If that image describes 7 of your 9 scenes in a Harold (as depicted in this chart)... it’s not a very good Harold.

I’ve wanted to do some sort of edu-tainment graphic project with instructional content related to improv basics.

At first I was going to do something that was more a joke, on the confrontational/accusatory model of a Jack Chick tract with a title like “Your Improv Sucks” or “Bad Improvisers Go To Hell.” I still may do that, but the prospect of hand-drawing all those tiny panels (saying “HAW HAW!”) and looking up Bible quotations to site is too much work.

I do really like the Chris Ware/McSweeneys hyper-precise aesthetic of arrows and infographics, so I started doing a poster explaining a Harold, that is simultaneously arcane but accurate. (My palate is sampled on the left.)

I need to write copy and do spot illustrations in the circles representing the scenes themselves (tinted to match which beat they’re in). I need to find a better way to represent “connections” in the third beat.

I think I might do another poster on the elements of a scene, modeled on a child’s educational poster I had in college of “The Parts of A Tooth” mixed with my kitten metaphor on the nature of game.

_

UPDATE: The Illustrator file of this project has mysteriously become “corrupted,” so I lost it and have to start over from scratch. Ay yi yi.

Wikipedia lists TV Shows Cancelled After One Episode

Of most interest (aside from Jackie Gleason’s rant about You’re In The Picture, which everyone who cares about TV already knows about) is the British sitcom misfire Heil Honey! I’m Home, which even the title broadcasts suggests will be no good. Not “contraversial” or “tasteless” but tiresomely unfunny and punch-pulling which, since finding on YouTube, I can confirm—

Two satirical fish in a barrell… Hitler and “old sitcoms” (really not based on any particular sitcom but the platonic dis-ideal of them). Even Mel Brooks’ mining Hitler for laughs became tedious long before 1990 and this is sub-that.

Also the premise is really confusing… is it 1930? 1950? Why are they all American—the funniest thing about Hitler is his stupid shrill German (or accented) voice.

(If you particularly hate yourself, part 2 is here.)

This is only confirming my desire to make my sitcom parody “Hitler’s Pizzeria” (temp title), but I’m so grateful youtube exists so I can find stuff like this.

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!”

I tried to wait until I had a decent sound or video clip of this to prove my point, but I couldn’t figure out how to capture just 5 seconds off a DVD (Thanks a lot, Handbrake) and ended up with 25 minutes of extra material I don’t want.

My project of the last three months or so is to watch tons of Ancient Roman Epics & Dramas. Tons and tons of them. From the ridiculous (ABC’s miniseries Empire) to the divine (wonderful I, Claudius).

I am struggling my way through the supra-gigantic cast o’ thousands Hollywood epics at the moment. In the midst of Spartacus I was honored to unearth the most amazingly wooden, inappropriate delivery on film:

“I don’t know how… I can… ever repay you.”

It’s early in the movie—the very last scene of chapter 5 on the DVD —when these nobles come to the Gladiator school. One of the men is Laurence Olivier, the other is an underplaying Paul Lynde doppleganger*who was hit with a stupid stick.

He fares a little marginally better with his other lines, but he seriously sounds like developmentally disabled adult doing an impression of PeeWee Herman in the movie-within-a-movie in PeeWee’s Big Adventure (“Paging Mr. Herman…”).

Ridiculous Larry-esque.

*I looked up his relatively short filmography and his only other role of note was as one the coded-homo murdering couple in Rope. Typecasting?

Tonight is the LAST Instant Cinema. After 20 months (as the crow flies), the show is closing up shop. Be there or be missing it. The picture above pretty much summarizes what you’re going to see, but for the less visually-stimulated, here follows the boilerplate –
See everything you’d expect from a movie improvised live on stage—dramatic camera angles, tense editing, high-flying action sequences and tender denoument. Never-before-seen movies created from audience suggestions that span every era, every style, and every genre, but always better than anything you’d see at a multiplex.

Thursday, December 29, 2005 9:30 pm $5—Free for UCB Students
(appearing with B-ROLL) at the UCB Theatre, 307 W 26th St

Hannukah in Santa Monica
written and performed by Tom Lehrer

When it comes to my novetly song needs, I go straight to Tom Lehrer. I don’t think he’s really gotten his due by the post-Electric Company generation… mainly because of the dominance of “Weird Al” Yankovic since the 80s and the fact that humorous novelty songs are… kind of… retarded.

There was a 3-CD box set put out in 2000 which contained all his albums, the Electric Company songs (which were kind of indistinct from the usual Sesame-esque edu-tunes that came before and came after on things like Between The Lions ), and four or so previously unreleased tracks—including the linked one above.

What I didn’t realize is that this song was recent—written in ‘90-91, the recording is either ‘97 or ‘99… I don’t have the CD in front of me… and it was written for Garrison Keillor’s American Radio Company of the Air (the weird non-Prairie Home Prairie Home Companion… does anyone know why it changed its name? And then changed back?). Weirder still, I was at the premiere (or second-to-premier) performance at the Kennedy Center in DC when I was 14. My main memories of the night were that even far away in the mezzanine, Garrison Keillor looked like Frankenstein’s monster and that song.

In the liner notes of the Leher CD quote the intro given as “This song was created in response to there being no good Hannukah songs. It wouldn’t occur to the gentile composers to write them, and the Jewish composers were busy writing Christmas songs.”

When home, I also found out my brother had Mr. Lehrer as a teacher at Santa Cruz for a math lecture… that he dropped.

(MP3 found on April Winchell’s site. I could fill up entries for the rest of the year with clips from this site, but I’ll leave you to explore on your own. Porkchops.)

When in the mood for comedy, please attend:

FREE TO BE FRIENDS
DECEMBER 16 & 23 at 8:00 PM

Prepare yourself for a dance back in time to 1972 with song-spewing children’s show hosts, Betty and Joan, who are armed with nothing but their agendas and their, uh, genders.

Written and Performed by
Julie Klausner and Sue Galloway
Featuring Neil Casey
Directed by Dyna Moe

I will quote the mass-email—“Even if you have already seen it, you should feel free to tell your friends “to be” there.”

Additionally, a week from Thursday, catch—
THE VERY LAST INSTANT CINEMA
December 29 at 9:30 PM

The improvised movie show is folding up the tent after a 20 month run.

Both shows are here—
Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre
307 W. 26th Street (at 8th Ave.)