All original material, one music video per month for 2012. I’m cheating by starting January with an oldie but a goodie. The Project begins with this crusty old gem from long ago.

While in college I very much wanted to start a band. Unfortunately I had little to no musical ability, but that has never stopped anyone. The true unfortunate part was that most people recognized I had little to no musical ability. I was, however, somewhat successful at conning some very patient and decent friends to join my folly. The band I called “The Happy Shrimp Show” after a phrase that guitarist Jeff Dicken had scribbled on a note to me in one of our classes. This song, “Steve Johnson,” I had wanted to do for quite a while.

I had written the lyrics days before our “session” in anticipation. It was supposed to be under 2 min., very loud, and simply shouted or screamed instead of sung. We did two takes of “Steve Johnson,” before my voice went out and we could not record any more. The second take, with Ben Burck’s screwup, is still the best. I actually do not like the sound of my voice at the end of this take, and I think I sound like a jerk admonishing Ben for not ending when the rest of us did. The song sounds perfectly fine with the bass at the end, and should always have ended that way. I considered editing it out. But another part of me thinks this is also kind of true and important to include – that I was such a jerk. I mean to say that we SHOULD be making fun of me and thinking I was a jerk. Poor Ben.

The title, “Steve Johnson,” comes from an actual guy named Steve Johnson, not so surprisingly. Back in the summer of 1984, before I went to college, Tony Woollard and I had worked for a small company called D & L Computing. So had Steve Johnson, apparently, and he had left his name badges everywhere. Tony and I had taken to wearing them and addressing each other as Steve Johnson. The idea of Steve Johnson as a multiple identity that we both shared was interesting. The idea that Being Steve Johnson was some kind of weird privilege that you might be excited about was even better. Who was he? What sort of man could you become if you were Steve Johnson? The lyrics of the song go like this:

I wanna take off my pants
I wanna keep hamsters in my room
I wanna eat things off the floor
I wanna go outside without my mittens

(chorus) I wanna be Steve Johnson (x4)

I wanna lick a doggie chew-toy
I wanna watch “Mr. Wizard.”
I wanna find a lucky penny
I wanna have type O blood, baby

(chorus)

So now you can sing along.

The video was shot in an afternoon in the now razed house on Foster St., which held many bad memories, so it’s good it’s gone. I’m holding the accordion. The other actors are Tony Woollard, Charles Kilbride, and David Schulman – none of whom are making the sounds.

Film and Video, Music | No Comments »

The show is up at Negativland.com – go to the link below and listen!

http://www.negativland.com/ote/?p=1837

It’s a three-hour “talk show” about the non-existance of God. I play Dr. Otto Prieswell, a supposed neuroscientist. There are some gags, but I pretty much played it straight, and about 90% of what I refer to is actually true. The God Helmet is a real thing, as are most of the observations about science and religion. The God Helmet has never made anyone retarded, though, so I made that part up. When people want to goof off, we’re goofing, but a lot of people called in with some serious issues, so we ended up mixing in a lot of very real opinions. This ended up a lot more Andy Kaufmanesque than perhaps we intended!

The callers went nuts and kept us going the whole time which, for a show that happens from midnight-3AM, is pretty darn good.

Naked Rabbit Site News, Personal Appearances | No Comments »

I will be on Don Joyce’s “Over the Edge” radio show THIS WEEK, that is the evening of 12 January (Thursday). The show is on KPFA(www.kpfa.org) and it begins at midnight PST. I’ll be a neurosurgeon that night, so I may not have my own name. Tune in and, as usual, CALL IN the show! It’s “Receptacle Programming,” which means that when the phone stops ringing, YOU ARE IN THE MIX! Call me and stump me with neuroscience questions.

For those who miss it, it will be posted soon after at www.negativland.com/ote, as it usually is.

Naked Rabbit Site News, Personal Appearances | No Comments »

“Jetsam” comes from “jettison,” meaning that which is cast off, no longer needed, dragging you down, no longer of any use.

My apologies for dredging up old work like this again. As I go through the archives the occasional gem peeks out, and these were irresistible. A mere two minutes of animation exercises, strung together to a contemporary track I made for completely different purposes.

These were mostly made by hand, under the Oxberry Animation Camera at USC. There are some optical printer bits thrown in here and there as well. I could never use the optical printer as well as Karen Kennedy, but then again, who could? These pieces show some kind of mania on my part to animate everything I could think of – toothpaste, offal, milk, toys, fabric, zip-a-tone, bleach, rubber stamps, and even pieces of “Star Wars.”

It gets gory in the middle there. I’ve been told that part of this is upsetting. So there is your warning.

If you like this, please pass it around, copy it, reblog it, “like” it, and whatever else may work.

A much bigger project is coming this month, more details about which will appear in this space later.

Film and Video | No Comments »

Here’s an illustration I did for a TV pilot. They’re not going to use it, though, so I think it’s safe to post it here. When the show goes to series and becomes terribly expensive and famous we can all remember that I am in no way a part of it.

The original is about 16″ x 24″ or so, and drawn with ink on textured paper. All those stains and variations in color are part of the actual paper itself, making the drawing a bit hard to accomplish. This is because there was a possibility that the drawing would appear on camera, and would have to appear to be a historical prop. Which, as I’ve mentioned, it was not.

Later, there was discussion about adding color to the piece, which I was fairly against doing. The piece had to look as though it was contemporary for about the 14th century. Options in those days would have been pen and ink, oil painting, or some tinted, watercolored print. So I went with the hues you see here. I totally cheated on the green – that would have been terribly expensive in those days. The rest of the colors would probably have been easy enough to come across.

Even so, the piece you see here is computer colored. The original is just pen and ink, and is now in the hands of my friend the producer, who lobbied long and hard to have it included! She will take MUCH better care of it than I would have.

Sketchbook | No Comments »