Follow me on Tumblr

So, until Google and whoever makes Internet Explorer start playing, nice, you can

follow me on Tumblr

(go there now for photos and video of the Dia:Beacon museum last weekend)

because ever since I upgraded to Internet Explorer Version 6, the "publish" button on Blogger no longer works and I have to save all my posts, then go back into the list of posts, check the new one, and click "publish all" which is a pain in the neck. So I'll be on Tumblr in the meantime. Reset your bookmarks.

Also, THIS IS HAPPENING?! Really? How am I gonna swing this?

Concert footage

As promised, finally got my concert video of the Damien Jurado/John Vanderslice concert up. It's on the last post of the last page of the Tumblr video scrapbook mentioned in the next post. But ALSO, I noticed that several other people took video of the rooftop scene. Since we're all standing in a circle, I thought it'd be neat to splice a video of all the different perspectives at once. It was a neat experiment, probably would have worked better with more angles. But here it is, some of it is my footage, some other people's:

A Year in Sum

I just got back from the Book Expo. Exhausted. But it was a ton of fun.

Last year, I did a year's worth of photos and video summing up the year. I made one this year but I guess the video files aren't the right type because now it crashes every time I open it, so even though I was done making the montage, I can't share it with you!

Instead, I'm just rendering little bits of it and dropping it into tumblr. Totally not what Tumblr is for, but let's try it. I've finished it now, so have a look and see what you think of this format. Maybe the computer will be nice later and let me render the whole thing.

http://jerseyyear.tumblr.com/

.

Busy week

I know not a lot has been happening on this blog lately. But then lots of stuff DID happen this week and Blogger was out of commission for two days! So let me try to do a recap of this week: This week, I was invited to the Theatre World Awards in June, wrote a letter to Mark Wing-Davey (of Hitchhiker's fame), met Jerry Stiller, and saw both Damien Jurado and JohnVanderslice live in concert. Oh, yeah, and this took over my life today, but I'm not even going to get into that now.

We had a book launch for a book at work, and Jerry Stiller and a bunch of other famous people came to celebrate Jerry Orbach by reading from the new book. I shook Jerry Stiller's hand and thanked him a couple times. At one point, he pointed at me and asked my co-worker "Who's this?!" It was kind of odd, but funny.

Then, tonight I went to see Damien Jurado in Brooklyn. Technically, he was the opener. I didn't really care who the headliner was. He doesn't have a lot of stage presence since he just sits on a stool and plays guitar and sings, but he's sure talented. He had a woman sing with him for a while too (Melody, was it?). I'll post some video later. Here is someone else's video of him singing everyone's favorite song Ohio. Wished he would have played his harmonica. But still a really great performance.

Turns out the headliner was actually really cool. I hadn't heard of John Vanderslice before, but he's this really happy rocker who knows how to connect with his fans. "May is Audience Participation Month!" he said. Apparently he'd done a shout out on his email list or something asking for anyone who was going to be at any of his shows who would like to perform with him. So each night, he wrote their names on his hand and would call them up on stage. So tonight we had a beatboxer, a guy who sang and played tamborine, and a girl who sang. Their equipment kept crapping out on them, but I wasn't a fan of the synth sound anyway. The music was actually good. At one point, after tons of coaxing, he convinced his road manager to come out of the sound booth and crowd surf! Video of that to come. Then later on, John himself did some crowd surfing.

Haven't even gotten to the best part yet: he goes "Okay, let's sing the last few songs on the rooftop!" So he, Damien, and the band lead the ENTIRE AUDIENCE through the building, up the stairs, and onto the roof where all the musicians stood in the middle with fans crowding around close enough to bump into the musicians, and everybody else knew all the words and sang along. It was like some kind of weird cult, haha, but it was tons of fun. Definitely not what I was expecting. I'll post video later, but it was almost exactly like this.

Talking Funny

I'm not only interested in things that are funny but also things ABOUT comedy. I think the concept for this special below would be really interesting even if it was 4 professional comedians I haven't heard of. But all four of them being ultra recognizable makes it all the better. What's interesting most is the things that they disagree on.

Thoreauvian Flash Fiction

"As if you could kill time without injuring eternity."
--Henry David Thoreau

I'm starting a new writing project. It's a collection of flash fiction stories, all inspired by Thoreau quotes. I've written five already. They will go here once I revise and type them. For now, the website has the quotes which inspired the stories, but not yet the stories themselves. So you can read the quotes and wonder to yourself what inspiration came from that.

A couple timey-wimey reviews

First off, I recommend Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones. It's not time travel exactly, but still "timey-wimey" as Time Out NY called it. It's more to do with quantum mechanics--the mind and alternate universes and whatnot. It's basically 12 Monkeys meets Groundhog Day. It was better than I thought it would be. I was worried it would be too much like an action film, but it's more psychological and about character interaction than it is an action movie (which is good). There's a fair amount of refrigerator logic. Not that anything was wrong with the plot, but there are things that you realize later on. Definitely something to watch twice, not because it was confusing the first time, but it was enjoyable and you'll probably pick up a lot the second time.






And now to the Doctor Who series 6 premier. Didn't get anything done all day (except the doodle on the left) because BBC America correctly predicted we needed a series 5 marathon all day. Well actually I was at church for 2 hours setting up for Easter brunch, but the rest was just watching TV.

As River would say "Spoilers":

First off, the monsters: quite a scary, monsters that you forget about when you can't see them. So they've always been here on Earth and people just forget they've seen them? It's a bit like the quantum mechanics idea that your brain will not perceive anything it can't understand even if it's right in front of you, so there could be aliens all around you and you don't know it. It's also a bit of the weeping angels gimick where you have to keep looking at them, which makes them scarier because they look scary.

Second, Mark Sheppard is awesome, and it's really cool that he has a big role in these episodes. I wasn't expecting him to have an American accent since he's British and it's a British show. Oh, and how cool is it that his own father plays his older self? But, does Mark Sheppard only do TV shows that have both cowboys and space travel? Sorry, Firefly joke.

Third, nice new spin that it's not just that the Doctor and River meet each other out of order, but in opposite orders. I didn't really think much of the fact that the first time the Doctor saw River, it was the last time that River saw the Doctor. Now we know that the first time River saw the Doctor was the last time the Doctor saw River. So, that probably means that she's going to kill him, right? Hard days ahead, in prison for killing the most extraordinary man she's ever met. I hope they'll be a little more surprising than that.

I just read that there's going to be a movie called "Them" and I don't know who will be in it, but I do know the crew:

Written by Mike White (who wrote School of Rock)
Produced by Mike White and Jack Black
Directed by Edgar Wright (who directed Shaun of the Dead, etc.)
Based on a book by Jon Ronson (who wrote Men Who Stare at Goats)
Wow, that is amazing waiting to happen.

Podcast - Plain Ketchup - Celebrity Sleaze

Various 2

The first day of Spring, it was warm. The second day of Spring, it snowed.

I don't usually do memes, but I did this one when I had 35 minutes to kill. So check it out here If the video stutters, click the "YouTube" logo in the bottom right of the video screen.

Author event on Friday was super fun. Photos here (they're they last ones in the album)

I own this t-shirt now.

Second interview for the podcast last week with Michael Palascak. Super cool. Stay tuned for those animations. In the meantime, Michael on Letterman:

The Men Who Stare at Goats

I know I normally post my book reviews on my other blog, but I don't feel like it, so there. This is a review of the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson, and it's great timing because I just found out via Twitter (Jon Ronson is on Twitter: @jonronson) that he's just updated jonronson.com. Even though I am a big fan of goats (totally disagree with the military in this book who says that forming an attachment to a goat is nearly impossible), it's not the goats in the title that drew me to this book. It was listening to Jon Ronson on Robin Ince's Utter Shambles (listen here) and then later on Robert Llewellyn's Carpool (watch here). I had seen the trailer for the movie and was undecided about if it was too cheesy. But listening to the author, I became interested in how absurdly funny the American military was in the '70's according to the people Ronson interviewed.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a story about the US government and military trying to use paranormal forces to their benefit, especially different kinds of psychic powers: walking through walls, reading minds, seeing the future, stopping the hearts of animals ("affecting livestock from a distance"), and brainwashing. However, their inability to completely master any of these things mixed with the bureaucracy of it all makes it hilarious. For example, the military had a psychic spy team, but since they didn't technically exist (according to the books), they were not given a coffee budget and were most cross about being the only branch of military to have to buy their own coffee. Throughout the book, Ronson--the writer/narrator/journalist--digs deeper and deeper, discovering how much of this secret effort lies under our American history (9-11, Heaven's Gate, Guantanamo Bay).

I have not seen all of the movie, but I did see about half of it on YouTube. I was shocked to realize that nearly everything in the movie is in the book--very little made up. The things they did make up were trivial:

• Ewen McGregor's character is supposed to be Jon Ronson but is not named Jon, is American instead of British, and has this whole cinematic backstory about his girlfriend leaving him for his one-armed editor.
• They changed character names and combined some of the characters because there are a lot of characters in the book. However, pretty much all their actions and a lot of the dialogue is word-for-word from the book.
• The action adventure part of the movie was obviously exaggerated and in some cases made up. George Clooney's character (Lin) is in the book called Pete, and he does beat Jon up using his Predator weapon and by knocking him to the floor (sharp edges!) and all that--that's true--but they were not meanwhile being held prisoner in the desert and all that drama.

Ronson does an excellent job making the real sound ridiculous. Not that these people needed a whole lot of help from a journalist to sound crazy, but Ronson uses phrases like "when he was busy staring a goat to death" or "Guy, next time you go to Fort Bragg with a hamster, can I come?" This wouldn't make a very good fiction story. I'm not a fan of realistic investigation novels that were made up, but as non-fiction, it sounds made up, it's that insane.

Walking through walls: Both the book and movie begin with a military officer trying to walk through his office wall, failing, and being frustrated that he couldn't do it.
Invisibility: When the military failed to learn how to become invisible, they learned to just be unseen
Sticky foam: Like in the Incredible Hulk, the military created a sticky foam that they spray and it solidifies. They only used it once: to stop a riot by creating a wall between them at the food, which only lasted about a minute before the riot climbed the wall, and the foam was abandoned.
Goat staring: Supposedly, Guy Savelli killed a goat once by just staring at it. They had something called Goat Lab in the military, which was a secret shack where they had to de-bleat and lock in place a bunch of goats to keep them from giving away its secret location. It was meant as a way to teach people how to save the lives of dying humans by practicing on goats, but ended up as a place for people to practice psychic powers of stopping hearts. Ronson suspects in the book it may have been a sick goat.
Visions: Visions of something or someone near the comet Hale-Bopp fueled the Heaven's Gate cult and their suicide.
Brainwashing: They used music as a method of interrogation. In one method, they blasted music non-stop for days--the same song over and over--Metallica and the I Love You song from Barney--in Iraq prisoner holds. In the other method, they played the song once and at a normal volume. One of these was Matchbox 20 (hey, I like M20). Here, they suspect, may have been subliminal messages, or an attempt at them. This was done in Guantanamo Bay. The strangest thing was that the writers to some of the songs they used to torture prisoners wanted to cash in on the royalties, no sympathy for the people being tortured.

The book starts out fairly simply: Ronson wants to track down who stared a goat to death and if it's possible and how the government can use that power. But it spirals into really serious stuff. In fact, one of the people he interviewed had to video tape him while they talked (this is the guy in the movie who has the video of him staring at his hamsters until they fall over and who said the Lockness Monster is really the ghost of a dinosaur--both true stories). Ronson didn't know why he had to be on video tape at the time. But later, he found out, he had been one of six people to call him that week asking if he could stare a goat to death. The other five had been al qaeda.

My only regret is that Ronson was not able to wrap up all of the mysteries that he presented. And maybe he left in all the questions that he couldn't answer because he wants people to know that there is more to investigate and we should keep our eyes peeled. But at the same time, in a narrative, I expected that any questions he brought up would be answered. So when we don't find out who the mysterious Ron is, and we don't find out what happens with the guy with the hamsters at the very end, I feel a lack of closure. But maybe that's why Hollywood came in to fill in the gaps.

Overall, very enjoyable. I'm also interested to hear what Ronson's got to say about memory and about madness in his other writings.

Media Announcements

1. Independent Film Channel announces it will air Rhett and Link's new TV show on June 24th. Commercial Kings. Link to announcement.

2. Terry Pratchett and Terry Jones are creating a TV series based around the Watch in Pratchett's Discworld series. Is this for serious? If they're using the real characters from the books, including my favorite character in anything ever, this could be my new favorite show. Link to announcement.



3. They've already cancelled Outcasts in the UK. Lame. I hope we still get it here on BBC America.


4. Someone is finally making a Good Omens mini series. I think Terry Gilliam was supposed to direct this film a long time ago, I believe but he just sort of...didn't in that Terry Gilliam way. His films are brillliant...when they get done. Instead, the production company Prime Focus is doing Good Omens. It's a cult classic, and most people consider it the best thing that came from Pratchett or Gaiman, but I like a lot of their solo work better. I still want to see it though. I want to know who they've cast for Crowley and Aziraphale because this has been a subject of much discussion on the interwebs for over a decade now. I think Terry Jones is working on this one as well. (There are too many Terrys in this post!)
Link to announcement


5. I missed watching Stephen Merchant on Graham Norton last week, but I watched it on YouTube. He's doing a standup show in NYC on December 20th. Exciting. I've also just noticed that I missed the Graham Norton episode in February with Brian Cox. Really must pay attention.

Various things

The first being the new clip from our podcast:


Also, I saw the movie Paul that I've been waiting a long time to come out. It isn't bad, certainly. Some of the humor is a little too low brow for my taste, but it was definitely still funny. They cater a lot to the American audience that likes that over-the-top dumb humor, but there's some good subtle stuff in there too. Like there's this one scene, and I don't know if I remember it just right, where they're having an emotional crisis, and one guy goes, "Do you want tea?" and the other guy goes "No!" and the first guy goes "Yeah, they don't do good tea here [America]. They leave the teabags in."

Also, while I'm animating, I am listening to a book on tape: The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. Haven't seen the movie yet, but it doesn't seem to be available as a download or rental on iTunes or Amazon yet. The book is really funny. It wouldn't make for good fiction, but it's great as non-ficiton. I'll do a proper review of it when I'm finished.

British telly

Doctor Who premiers on BBC America on April 23.

Outcasts is coming to BBC America! But it just says "coming soon." When BBCA, when? This is the first reference to "from the makers of Life on Mars" that I've seen. Which makers? Matthew Graham isn't involved (though he is writing a couple episodes of Dr. Who this season) and Ashley Pharoah isn't involved either. So...not really the makers of Life on Mars, then really? But Danny Mays is sure to give a smashing performance.
http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/426/index.jsp

Idiot Abroad season 2 has started production.
Speaking of Karl, how about a round of Rockbusters?

Dirk Gently movie review

This review is not full of spoilers but you still might want to watch the movie first. It's about an hour long. Here is the first part. They are all on YouTube until someone deletes them for copyright infringement.





Someone finally posted Dirk Gently on YouTube. Umm...I actually liked it. Was not expecting to like it at all. The plot line is very different from the book, and the character Dirk is played completely differently. However, it's actually pretty funny. Not to the degree of Douglas Adams, of course, but they've trimmed it down to be much much much simpler.

There is no alien or electronic monk or ghost. These are the things I liked about the book: it's a supernatural detective story, and I was annoyed that the movie didn't have ANY of that. But then they did bring in a timey wimey element, and that made things okay.

They took the real heart of the book and went in a different direction with it. They grabbed onto the whole thing about the interconnectedness of everything and made that the central focus. It's very easy to follow compared to the book. I had to read and listen to the book several times before I completely understood what all the different parts of the story had to do with each other. The movie is dumbed down but more digestible. However, the humor is subtle in that classic Douglas Adams way. There are a lot of physical jokes that they don't call attention to. (I like that instead of having a white board, he just roller paints his chalkboard white every time he wants to erase). Also, they grabbed onto the whole thing about Dirk and lost cats. That became the focus.

The biggest change is that in the book, Susan is the daughter of the wealthy Gordon Way who goes missing (and is the ghost in the story). In the movie, Gordon had gone to college with Dirk, Richard, and Susan, and is Susan's ex-boyfriend. Very different. But he still goes missing, so she's just as concerned about his whereabouts.

The secretary part is pretty accurate, but I'm sad they left out the part where Dirk is on the phone and Richard has to keep writing "You have no secretary!" That is classic. In fact, someone else has acted out that scene perfectly here at this video. <-- This video (completely unrelated to the BBC video above) is actually extra cool because the actor who is playing Dirk was a friend of Douglas Adams and is the inspiration for Dirk.

As for characters, I think Dirk is supposed to be a little bit older and is described as a podgy tornado. He is a bit devious and con-man in a way, but I always figured him for being legitimate with the unfortunate appearance of being a con-man simply because he actually believes in the interconnectedness. The backstory that they give him in the movie suggests that he is actually a con-man most of the time. Richard is played as more of a loser than in the book. In the book, he was very intelligent, not to mention employed. Here he's kind of a layabout. Susan's probably about the same. There were no Michael or Reg. Reg was so important to the story, it seems strange that he's not there, but since they left out the whole ending of the book (book spoiler alert) where it turns out Reg is responsible for sparking life on Earth, I guess it didn't matter. But no electric monk either. Perhaps this gives them room for more episodes to fit in all those details, building up to being more and more supernatural. The sequel book did include Thor the thunder god, after all. I did hear that this was meant to be a test pilot episode. So I hope they make more.

The Karl Pilkington Metaphor Matching Game

It's very simple. Try to match column A with column B based on the metaphors of Karl Pilkington. Doesn't matter if you don't know who he is (though you should). Try to guess. Or just enjoy mixed metaphors.



A .................................................................................................B

The Egyptian Pyramids are like .........................................an alien on the "Boswell" incident

Flowers on a cactus is like ..................................................a bit of weird art

Karl in Brazilian parade garb is like ...................................a restaurant only flogging ketchup

The stance of the Christ the Redeemer
Statue is like the stance of.................................................Andy Pandy on crack

Treat the world like ..........................................................someone testing out a Biro

Hummus as a meal is like .................................................a bungy jumper

Steve Merchant dancing is like......................................... a Kate Bush video

The Chinese alphabet is like .............................................putting lipstick on an ugly woman

Hazy sky of China is like ...................................................a head

Being naked for an operation
would make Karl look like .................................................a game of jenga that's got out of hand

Plain Ketchup Podcast Ep.1 Part1 - Front Matter

I command you...
Visit plainketchuppodcast.com
Be our fan: facebook.com/plainketchup
Follow us: twitter.com/plainketchup
Join our team
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Sign up for our mailing list
Buy t-shirts and mugs on our CafePress store

Atlanta

Went to Atlanta on business. Got to see Coke World and the Olympics park during downtime. Here are some photos.

And now it's into a ten-hour workday week (also known as catalog time) and cauking the draft out of my room. No wonder Jesus followed in the footsteps of God and not Joseph the Carpenter. Being handy is hard. The next curtain I accidentally cauk to the wall and I'm trading this tube of vinyl adhesive for a crown of thorns.

The Lee Camp Show

I went to Lee Camp's comedy album release party at the Tank with my roommate and her boyfriend. The night began with a futile attempt to find a Dunkin Donuts in Times Square which turned to sitting in an Irish pub for a while before the show.

It started with the star of Sirius XM's "The Alt Comedy Show" Mark Seman playing guitar and a kazoo (in a harmonica holder) and rapping. I don't think anyone was prepared for that, but it was quite funny, and there was a Light Bright.

Then, JR Havlan--emmy award winning writer for the Daily Show--did some standup, and despite not doing standup often if at all, was very funny, doing bits about Facebook and Blue Tooth and gym showers.

And then of course Lee Camp did an energetic 45-minute set of mostly material I hadn't heard before, save some things he's been putting on YouTube lately. However, just earlier today, I was thinking about an old joke he did about sweatshop workers stitching cries for help on clothing and wondered why he doesn't do that joke anymore. Well, tonight he showed a video of himself sneaking shirts into retail stores that say things like "My fingers really hurt" and "Help me." Very funny. There were also two other videos--one of him trying to convince people to have an obesity exchange program for children, and one of his phonecall to the governor of Texas office.

But mostly the show was fast talking, hard thinking, and energetic. As always, we leave with that "Yeah, we really should do something about our screwed up world" because it's a bit like motivational speaking comedy. If ever there's no laughter, it's because people are still processing what's just been said and you can literally hear the delay in the laughter, which is actually quite cool because it means people are really thinking and processing the ideas. It's not your typical "You know when" comedy or "Women, eh?" comedy.

After the show, I bought a CD from Lee, which he signed (below) and I gave him his free Plain Ketchup t-shirt for guesting on our podcast (above). He invited me out to the Irish pub around the corner afterward with some other people. So the three of us, having a good half hour before we had to leave to catch the last train home, went over to the pub. Lee's wife bought a round and we talked to her a bit. Then I got into a coversation with the opener JR. We chatted at length about Karl Pilkington. Not even kidding. He seems like a pretty cool guy. I gave him my card with our podcast URL on it before heading out.

On my way out, I said bye to Lee, and he reiterated that he thinks we've really got something here with the podcast, and how funny it was. I hope to God he's right. He gave some advice on climbing the comedy latter, and then I had to go catch the train. Really was a fantastic night. If you didn't got to the show, you certainly missed a good one. But you can watch some of the same content on his YouTube channel, like here:

Updated

yay greenscreen

I Really Like Your Pants

Hey, I know this is a one-in-the-morning post, but I'm not delirious. There's this new website called yourpants.org, and I'm not into forums, I'll be honest. The last time I used a forum was probably middle school. However, there is a folder of threads in there that simply asks people to post about whatever project they are cuurently working on. So I jumped on the opportunity to pitch our podcast to any artists who might want to join our ranks. Now, this might not sound like it would work, and normally it probably wouldn't. However, the important ingredient I have not yet told you: This site was created by and is supported by Hank Green, which means the creatively energetic (or energetically creative?) online community nerdfighters will be dominating this space, and nerdfighters love projects. I've already gotten 3 replies in 1 day, which is more than I got from a week of unsolicited emails to artists I admire. Long Live Your Pants and May it Bring Us Imaginative Friends. (Oh by the way, if you don't know who Hank Green is, go to Google, and just type "Is H" and before you hit enter, see what Google suggests for you.)
Okay, I just spelled "will" "whil" so I need to slaep... slep... sleep now.

RIP Don

One of the professors at UW-L has passed away from pneumonia. I never had Don LaCoss as a teacher, but I tried really hard to get into his class because everyone said he was their favorite but I never could because it was always the first section to get booked up. He was married to one of my English professors, so he'd come to our English Club socials like kickball. Here's his blog.

The above photo is the only one I can find on my harddrive, but I have hundreds of English Club photos. I've always liked this photo because Butterfield is sitting nonchalantly in the background holding a plastic pitchfork (It's Halloween.) The boy is Don's son.

Other people's videos

So...I was kind of far back at the Josh Ritter concert and totally didn't realize that the other guy on stage was John Krasinski. I wish I'd known that when I was actually there. I thought he was brilliant in "Away We Go." But it's okay. Someone has taken video of the entire segment where Rainn Wilson is talking (so it includes the part where he reads the new lyrics to the next Josh Ritter song!) and then John Krasinski comes out on stage briefly:



I found what the song was supposed to sound like when Scott was less drunk from their performance in Boston the night before. Here's that video.

Here's from the NY performance, the whole "The Curse"

Here are two videos someone did of David Mayfield at the Josh Joplin Concert: I Just Might Pray (you can hear the person with the camera singing along).





This one actually is my video. Someone has asked for the rest of this song, so I posted it. It's more of the drunk singer from the Josh Ritter concert.

Podcast Sneak Peek

Josh Ritter Concert

It's the weekend of Josh concerts. Josh Ritter performed at Terminal 5, which is this huge room, standing room only, with a couple of balconies. Very different from yesterday's tiny coffee shop/bar sitdown concert yesterday. Plus there were several thousand people there rather than the 30 or so at the 92Y in Tribeca.

The opener was Scott Hutchison from the band Frightened Rabbit. More on him in a minute. Guess who came out and introduced Josh Ritter. Rainn Wilson from The Office. How random is that? You can watch part of his speech in the video below. He used a computer to predict the lyrics of the next Josh Ritter song.

I'd seen Josh Ritter once at City Hall, which is a sit-down theatre and I was in the last row in the balcony. This was a very different experience. They played a lot of the same songs, but were just as cool. The band is still awesome, but the one dude in the mustache didn't get a solo verse, which is unfortunate because he blew everyone away last time. The show was high energy and it was all very well-rehearsed. They even turned on the discoball for one song.

Twice, Josh read some things that people had sent to him to read out as a Valentines Day statement. They were mostly things like "Thanks for being the best person in the whole world" and "I love you even though you don't close your dresser drawers" and "I want to ride with you in a boat and feed dolphins." But one of them was an actual proposal--Yikes! I didn't know where they were, but I hope she said yes for awkwardness sake.

They did most of my favorites: The Curse, Girl in the War, Harrisburg, but they did not play Another New World. I heard some that I haven't heard before (I do not have all his albums) but the ones I didn't hear before were all so good, now I want to get those. That's what happened last time I saw him in concert: I went home and bought the songs I liked.

Okay, I have to tell you about the funny part now. So at the very end, there was supposed to be this big deal song where Josh calls out Scott, the opener, and they sing together, but for some reason, Scott isn't coming out. Josh is calling for him, and it's getting awkward, so he sings a different song. When he finishes, Scott comes out on stage and they sing their song. What we all notice part way through the first verse is that Scott is hammered. I don't mean just a little tipsy. Totally plastered, and it was the funniest thing. You can see Josh trying not to lose his composure. I'm 95% sure this wasn't faked. If you want to see a clip, it's at the end of the video below. And then when Josh and the band are doing the big encore song, Scott runs out on stage part way through, grabs a drumstick and starts hitting a symbol. The drummer and the other band members had to hold up their hands to stop him from hitting it when he wasn't supposed to. It was pretty hilarious.

Here is some footage I shot. Please watch. It starts with Rainn and ends with Scott.

Josh Joplin Concert

He's still got it. I honestly think this is the best Josh Joplin concert I've seen yet. I was skeptical because the venue is low-energy--a sit down at tables kind of venue, but the show definitely did not lack energy, even without a band backing him up.

What I liked most was the selection. The show started with two new songs I've never heard before, moved to some old Josh Joplin hits, one Among the Oak and Ash song, and then a REALLY old song. I simply could not believe that he played Talkin' Folksinger's Blues. I only ever heard that song on his Early Years CD.

But let me back up and tell you about the opener, David Mayfield (pictured: the guy with the beard) (click here for music video). Again, I was skeptical because I thought it would be too country. I like folk, but I really don't like country. However, he was teriffic. Crazy-good guitar skills! I have never seen anyone play a guitar by changing the tuning pegs instead of putting down fingers on the frets. He also put on this extremely awkward persona, so even though he'd 'let down his hair' while he was playing, when it was time for him to talk, he was hilariously awkward. For his last song, he starts singing "The sandy...no, that's not it." (Which, if you're not familiar with Josh Joplin's music, his most famous song "Camera One" starts with "The sandy haired son of Hollywood...")

David Mayfield played with Josh on pretty much all the songs--they're good friends as well as fellow musicians. They did a more rocking version of One Becomes Two. He hit pretty much all the favorites: Camera One, Dutch Wonderland, Gravity, Here I Am, I've Changed. His Cowboy was very cool: "You've got a hip hop thing happening there," David Mayfield said.

We also got the backstory on some of these songs. Nine years of listening to some of this music, I'm not sure I wanted to know that Cowboy was written while watching Baywatch. But the story about how Josh tried to wrestle his brother when he was little by diving off the bunk bed and breaking "lots" of ribs was priceless.

There were some people in the audience who responded to some of Josh's comments loudly, and Josh kept turning to David and going "Uh oh, it's getting interactive again." Also, it was funny that there was a very slow wardrobe change throughout the show. If you look through all my photos, you'll see that Josh starts with glasses, a hat, and scarf. And piece by piece, he would lose items one way or another until he had none of them left.

It sounds like there's a forthcoming Among the Oak and Ash CD, and maybe even a Josh Joplin CD, so I look forward to those.

Here is some footage I shot of the event. There are several excerpts. Please watch!

Podcasting and Music and STUFF

Lindsey and I recorded our very first interview for our podcast. Considering I'd spent the morning in a panic because my computer decided to just stop talking to the wireless router for the first time on the morning of our first recorded Skype interview, I thought the interview went really well. Lee Camp had some great stories about cliff diving and giant spiders and more, but you'll just have to wait until the episode comes out. I think Lindsey and I will become better hosts/interviewers as time goes on. We're recording the second half of the episode, with Luke and Nicole, later this month. We're still looking for some more drawers and animators, though I do have three other people contributing now. I also did a call out to any musicians who want to submit theme song, ending credit song, segment jingles, and background music.

Other podcast news:
Lindsey is setting up our Kickstarter page, so soon you will be able to donate money to us and get "fabulous" prizes. If you have suggestions of fun things we could give away to our donors, please let me know. We're still brainstorming!

I downloaded an MP4 converter, which means we should be able to get our show on iTunes for only $15/month (this is why we need donors, by the way). You do not know how thrilled I am that we do not have to upload gigantic AVI files and pay a fortune.

T-shirts and stuff. A variety of Plain Ketchup STUFF is available for purchase on our CafePress site. However, Lindsey and I are looking into cheaper alternatives to order stuff in bulk so we can give our donors, volunteers, and special guests fun things like t-shirts. I have just ordered one from Vistaprint, and I will assess the quality when it arrives.

Widescreen. Podcast is goin' widescreen, my friends. This means a small retooling of the website since I didn't design it to be wide enough to fit widescreen videos. But this does mean that we can make a full magazine spread in a 720x405 screensize. Being a MagCast, this is important.

I am also creating a drawing tutorial for anyone who wishes to submit artwork to us. Watch the progress here.

If you visit our Bios page on the website (plainketchuppodcast.com), you will see that I've cut our character intro (auditions) animation into parts to serve as cast bios.

We are also looking into both Google Adsense and Google Adwords.

Also, it's pretty much agreed I have the coolest family ever:

Auditions and Speech

Brand new animation! I would post it here, but YouTube has a new embedding code called an iFrame and everytime I try to post it here, the internet browser shuts down. Sooooo....you'll just have to go to the link.







Also, I saw the King's Speech finally. I was skeptical because of all the hype, and I'd be the first to tell you if it wasn't worth all the buzz, but I actually really liked it. Whether it's the best picture of th year, I don't know, but the cinematography was BRILLIANT. It's such a beautiful movie, totally worth seeing in the theatre. Also, the acting was great. I don't have anything against Helen Bonham Carter, I've always liked Colin Firth's roles, and I simply love Geoffrey Rush in all his movies. Oscars all around. Speaking of Oscars, if this film wins best picture, that's two years in a row for Guy Pearce, isn't it?

Showtune Showcase

One of my authors (left) was showcasing the songs that he wrote/composed in NYC tonight. Singing the songs to his accompaniment was a cast of talented performers including Mark Linn Baker--yeah the curly haired one from Perfect Strangers (below on the left)--who sang a song based on a word that someone auctioned the song to be about. That word? Defenestration: The act of propelling oneself out a window. What luck! This is one of my favorite words. When I go to improv shows, I always make sure I have words to say in case the actors ask me for a theme. Those two words are always defenestration and ladle.

This was such an amazing show. It didn't even matter if you hadn't seen the plays because you pick it up from the context in the songs. Some gave me shivers and some were hilarious. And Birdland's food is excellent as always. Thumbs up across the board.

Plain Ketchup

I've been animating our 10-minute character introductions for Plain Ketchup, our podcast. It's pretty funny. It's basically American Idol for standup comedians, and we are all terribly unfunny.

Have you seen the new update? We have a e-store on Cafepress.com! You can buy shirts, bags, etc. with our logo on it here.

Also, are you following us on Twitter? You don't have to have a Twitter account to read our tweets. You just have to go to http://twitter.com/plainketchup

Georgia on my mind

Today it was decided I am going to go to Atlanta for the first week in March. Actually it was decided a long time ago, but I somehow didn't get the memo. But that's exciting! I'm a big fan of traveling, especially to places I haven't been.

Also, I've been watching Russian movies lately. I really don't know why. So far, my favorite is The Irony of Fate, The Sequel, which is directed by Timur Bekmambetov. He is now officially on my list of favorite directors. I didn't even know this was his movie. I just started watching it and I was like "Hey, I recognize this style!" I'm not a fan of rom com, but I was laughing out loud at this one. This guy breaks into this woman's apartment and when she comes home, he pretends he's drunk and got there by accident. Actually, I'm not really sure that's true. His father's friends got him drunk on purpose so that he would wind up accidentally in this apartment, and his first act is to use pepper spray as deodorant. You can watch it on YouTube here.

New podcast animation is coming along. Very funny. And I'm collecting artists and animators to help. Any good drawers want to be part of the ketchup team?

Weekend January

Had a super weekend. Went to the Met Museum of Art with a friend and looked at photos and instruments (no balalaika, what?). Ran into some people I'd seen a couple days before which is a ridiculous coincedence considering the size of this city and the minute number of people I actually know. A friend came to town causing me to meet lots of people I'd never met before. I videoed his keynote speech at the writers digest conference (see left), and I may be appearing in his web series...thing. I also put some art on my wall (see below) that I found online.

Also, Michael Palascak who said he'd guest star on our podcast was on Letterman this week (See below). Plain Ketchup now has a Cafe Press where you can buy stuff with our logo on it. Yay. Oh, and Idiot Abroad premiered in the States on the Science Channel--funny stuff.

Golden Globes

A lot of press is fake, but man, does the press about the Golden Globes really hammer it home. They are lying through their teeth to say they are shocked at how Ricky Gervais did not take the awards ceremony seriously enough. The only reason they hired him is because they knew he'd be offensive, and he's been announcing for months that he planned to be more offensive than last year. I admit, I was expecting it to be MUCH more offensive. I've seen his standup (Carnegie Hall!), I know what he's capable of, so the fact that the press is pretending like the HFPA and celebrities are in a huff about it is a terribly poor lie. They did the same thing last year, said that McCartney was upset when he wasn't. He's not actually in trouble--it just makes for a more interesting story, and maybe the HFPA like that because it gets them press and separates the offensive things said from themselves, even though they hired him knowingly.






I liked Colin Firth's speech, but Geoffrey Rush should have won an award :(

New Years Special - Plain Ketchup

It took two weeks to animate this. I hope you enjoy it.

Comedy

1. I've realized that an animated podcast really is the perfect medium. Today I rememberd when all the students at NYU were required to invent a magazine. I thought up one that was about comedy--interviews with comedians about their craft, etc. (okay, much like Punchline, the online magazine). My idea didn't get picked and nothing became of it. Then I read What The Bleep Do We Know, which has nothing to do with comedy, but is laid out in a really cool way, and I thought it would be cool to do a book on comedy with all the sidebars and stuff like this book. But now I see that you can interview someone, keep the actual audio of the interview, and make it more fun to watch than just a documentary. The only thing is animation takes a really long time, so I am now trying to recruit animators and drawers to do a little here and there to help get the episodes out faster.

2. I started reading a book called Satiristas, which is a book of interviews with comedians about comedy. It's so good! Each interview is only a couple pages long, so you never get tired of a subject. I've only read about four interviews so far, but it's really fascinating stuff, even if I don't know who the comedian is.

3. I went to a comedy show today--not a standup or improv show. It was scripted, and there was a little audience involvement. It's called "The Annihilation Point." It was a corny sci-fi spoof. They basically take all the twists in all the sci-fi movies and combine it into an hour and a half long story. It was much better written than I expected. I could tell you some jokes, but most of it is in the delivery. Here's my favorite though:

Person 1: Explain a time paradox to our audience.
Person 2: Okay. It's like...say I have this red notebook. If I go back in time and paint the notebook blue, then what color would this notebook be?
Person 1: Blue.
Person 2: No!!! Purple!

There is some footage online. I think it's 2 years old. But it is the same actors:

Meat in my Teeth

I don't think I've posted this on my blog yet. Please make this video go viral. Cheers.

Things I watched today

1. Looking for Ms. Locklear
This is Rhett and Link's independent film/documentary. I hadn't seen it yet because it costs like $15 bucks. But now it's available as a rental for $2 from YouTube. I hadn't heard of rentals on YouTube before. It makes me nervous. It's fine for now because the things that are going up are going to be things that wouldn't have gone on YouTube anyway, like this film. But watch that slippery slope. Either YouTube will start making us pay for a little more inch by inch or people will realize that they can make money by charging people for their YouTube content. And then no more good free videos.

But the movie was really heartwarming. R&L meet a lot of interesting (and weird) people on their quest to find their first grade teacher. They end up getting involved in a political movement on their journey.



2. Ricky Gervais Show season 2 episode 1
You can watch it here:

This episode includes Karl's movie pitch which is hilarious. And someone has actually put together a real trailer for it:


3. Splice
I saw this when it first came out, but I got it on DVD. They had a special director behind the scenes bonus feature, which I liked because Vincenzo Natali is my favorite director. But no commentary? There are so many undertones to the movie, I hope they don't get lost on people.

Twitter

Please follow Plain Ketchup on Twitter. I'm going to try and stick in a lot of funny one-liners that I (and Lindsey) can come up with.

http://twitter.com/plainketchup





.

Actor Pete Postlethwaite (1946-2011)

I have to say that I was still holding onto the dream that Pete Postlethwaite would be Sam Vimes someday. (Sam Vimes is my all time favorite fictional character.) Terry Pratchett, creator of Sam Vimes, said that even though the Discworld artist Paul Kidby depicts Vimes like a Clint Eastwood, he always imagined him as a Pete Postlethwaite, which I'm sure is what inspired the illustrator for Pratchett's kids book, Where's My Cow (see below).

Speilberg said he was the best actor in the world. Inception will be much sadder now.

Winter Break

Actually, yes you can still have Winter Break even when you are out of school...if there is a blizzard and all the flights are cancelled. I went home for Christmas and ended up staying a week longer than intended. It actually worked out though because I got to have Christmas on Christmas, New Years on Christmas Eve, second Christmas on New Years Day, record a podcast, and watch 26 hours of Lost with my brother.

Meanwhile, Lindsey and I are plotting to take over the world with our possible new LLC.