“Hey, how was your weekend?”
“Pretty good. How about you? Do anything special this weekend?”
“Not really, a couple of friends came over and we wrapped my entire body in three rolls of duct tape and then they cut me out of my clothes with scissors, leaving me shivering and naked in my living room.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
(Dramatization based on the photo essay entitled: Duct Tape Dummy)
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:
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
Alfred Hitchcock mosaics from the tube station nearest his place of birth in London.
I’m not sure what’s more boss… that these exist or that I found it on mosaic-centric website caalled “The Joy of Shards” or the credit in the bottom of the page to “Grout”, the newsletter of the British Association for Modern Mosaics.
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?”
I highly recommend Dynasty, Designing Women, and Happy Days.
Google Ads just asked me if my nose job was making me look too Caucasian… Well, does it?!
(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/
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.
Finally, someone got around to recording 79 covers of my favorite song.
(and also popcorn-song.com)
So, what’s been keeping me from hanging myself lately? Well, I’ve actually become terribly addicted to this British comedy/quiz show, which is of the model of those “Whaddya Know” and “My Word!” NPR crap. There’s hundreds of episodes on YouTube in 5-9 minute chunks and I’ve watched 3 season’s worth
I’m surprised to see the creator of “Sniglets” on this show (and many original Who’s Line players, now 15 years older and crappier looking), who apparently has become the toast of British comedy. I also learned that Matt Groening has commented in interviews that the character of Moe on The Simpsons was inspired by Rich Hall. (On Inside the Actor’s Studio, Max Azaria said the voice was an Al Pacino impression done with extra rasp)
My other apple-a-day keeping Final Exit at bay is the 1950 hit “A Smile and A Ribbon” by sister singers Patience & Prudence. It was a plot point in the comic Ghost World (and the movie as well, I think, but I don’t remember) and the flip of the 45 was the even creepier song “Tonight You Belong to Me” which was featured in The Jerk and also apparently is on John Water’s new CD. Anyway, “A Smile and A Ribbon” is the song for this pretty great British Lottery commercial and for the longest time, the only copy of the song I could find online… artificially crackled and tinny sounding as it is.
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—
See more Law and Order Valentines on his site (but the rest of them are all SVU and that’s the worst franchise)
I became aware of Errol Morris with the documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control. The movie is about four men: a topiary gardener, a robotic scientist, a naked mole rat specialist and a wild animal tamer. Turns out that there was a fifth man, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. interviewed for the film. Uh, what’s the short story of Leuchter? He began by trying to create more humane capital punishment devices and ended up hired by holocaust deniers to prove the holocaust didn’t happen.Morris felt like FL didn’t fit in the mix. His wife summed it up, “Hitler is not a spice. Once you add Hitler to the soup, it becomes Hitler flavored soup.”
from loosetooth.com
Your new desktop/full-back tattoo: {click here}
Oh wow… Japanese monster page with sweet illustrations—Obakemono
I recommend starting with Shirime.
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.
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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
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