I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

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.

“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’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.

I’m seeking an office for my next video project. I am not blessed with a day job at present (nor have I ever been at one long enough to have filming priveleges), so I rely on people on good terms with their bosses would do me the very great honor of helping me out.

Contact me via the email link on the upper left.

Yesterday I redid mrghost.net. There are still some broken links and bugs, but less than there were before.

To facilitate the massive amount of fame and development deals just around the corner, I have re-exported all my 102 videos and put them on YouTube.

A reliable source told me that all agents and managers on the left coast do all day is watch videos on YouTube to find tomorrow’s stars. The infintesimal improvement from my personal Codec compression and the ersatz Channel102 compression will make all the difference.

If you’re dumb, go here: http://www.youtube.com/mrghost

Shot. Cut. Exported. Submitted.

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.

There are so so so many things right with this video I don’t know where to begin.

Thank you, France. Thank you, late-80s-into-early-90s. Thank you, Timbertoes. Thank you, magic rocks.

I take everything I said about you, Michel Gondry and every thing else you’ve made in your entire filmography. This makes up for everything.

I started work on this late last night and it’s in a rough state. It still needs labels/captions and some of the elements need to be redone. I think it’s too illustrative to use as an infographic, so I might strip it down to just 3 colors and see if that helps.

The big hold up for my next video project is getting a venue to film in. We’ve hit multiple stumbling blocks and all of our leads have vanished.

We asked Union Hall in Brooklyn to film there and despite initial enthusiasm from a bartender, the bosses gave it a thumbs-down.

So, we’re half-way through the month with only 10% of it shot and no set for the main scene.

(what we were looking for)

Did some writing late last night and got a working version of Mitch Magee and my next 102 script “Being Glenn” which I’ve been threatening to write for a couple of months. It’s only mildly antagonistic towards the audience, being totally amoral. Every character is a horrible person.

It will be in February at the soonest… it requires a hard-to-find location (stuffy wood-paneled library/den), hard to find actors (one or more 11-15 year old boys), and some costumes we have to order.

I’d like to do a rush show and get it in this month, but even that seems a long shot. Jackie Clarke wrote an interesting/weird/audience-antagonizing script called “We’re Perfect” a while ago for her and I to play sisters in. It’s extremely bizarre and the main theme is “revolting.” Sort of a John-Waters-directs-Cremaster thing. We’re the only speaking roles but it requires several locations in a house and outdoor shooting… and a dog eating a corpse’s face.

If anyone has leads on patrician manicured dens, dogs, and young actors (with neglectful parents who allow them to be in morally repugnant comedy videos), you can send me an EMAIL through that new link on the left there. Hate mail also welcomed.

Still hammering away at the 102 site. Here’s as far as I’ve gotten on the front page:

(Further screenshots as the site develops are on the 102 Forum)

This is the direction we’re going in for the 102 logo for 2007—

Still hammering out the particulars of the site relaunch.

Battle of the color blocks!

Dumb audience! This time last year, my co-production of The First Steps was the “top failed pilot” at 102 (top loser, you mean) and killed by three stupid votes.

Now, yesterday, the same thing happened again with Good Taste. Good Taste, aside from being a million times better than First Steps, seemed to go over better than some shows that placed above it in the laughs-per-minute tally. My conclusion—Audience be stupid. And they hate fine dining. And mimes and ghosts.

Now off to make my movie-of-the-week heartstring tugger Being Glenn, about a child molestor who works at an elite New England prep school.

First, the bad news… there will be no Captain Conspiracy this month at 102… despite that graphic telling you otherwise below. For reasons why, ask me in person as they are potentially slanderous and not fit for googled blog entries.

The GOOD NEWS is GOOD TASTE, my other 102 submission is IN, but definitely probably a hard sell for the audience, unless a particularly snobby New York Times Sunday Styles-reading crew packs the audience. So, if you like ME (and the New York Times Sunday Styles section), you should come and vote for it blindly.

CHANNEL 102
Monday, Nov. 6th, 8pm at Tribeca Cinemas ($5)

Channel 102 has never done any promotion at all. There’s been a sudden upswing in interest in raising the profile of the site and the screenings and I volunteered to make business card sized microflyers that would be equally useful for show creators to promote their own shows and for fans to pass on to their friends.

I also still hate the 102 logo… I’d like to do a new one that doesn’t at all reference “TV Guide”

I used two of Pantone’s colors of Spring 2007 as well. I wanted to be all trendy-like. It’s Fashion Week.