Blog Archives
Michigan Film Incentives in Jeopardy
Here’s an article posted on my friend Mark’s website about the Michigan film incentives. The sad thing is, at the town hall meeting I thought the turn out and passion was so overwhelming that there was no way this thing wouldn’t work out in our favor, but apparently Snyder is standing firm unfortunately. Anyway, check out Mark’s article. Also, I’ll be a guest on his podcast soon. He’s a pretty awesome comedian who I met in Lansing last year.
She Don’t Like Firefly
My buddy Mikey Mason recorded what may be the ultimate geek love song. Warning, the song does contain a SPOILER! But really, if you don’t know that Wash dies, then you probably don’t like Firefly.
Arsenic Lullaby Creator, Douglas Paszkiewicz
I’ve been fortunate enough over the years to become friends with some of my favorite creators of art. I spent the formative years of my adulthood hanging out in a Richmond, Virginia factory painting foam penguins with Gwar. Most recently I not only got to become friends with Arsenic Lullaby creator Douglas Paszkiewicz, but he invited me to do voices on the animated version of his work.
Arsenic Lullaby is a book I’ve been reading long before I was a comedian. I’m fairly certain I discovered it right near the beginning when I wandered into Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan asking for something dark and void of superheroes. I was hooked and picked up every thing I could find ever since.
Many have tried to explain Arsenic Lullaby, few have succeeded. I’m not even going to try. Saying it’s an intensely dark Far Side doesn’t do it justice. Like South Park, the brilliance of Doug’s work is that on the surface it’s brutal and hilarious. Just beneath the surface, it’s brutal, hilarious and quite a smart, satirical commentary. I wish one day I can become half the writer that Douglas is.
I was fortunate enough to sit down with him outside Milwaukee at a comedy club a couple of months ago. The club owner just finished yelling at me because he was upset about the playful tongue in cheek ribbing I gave his club. Douglas and I kick things off reminiscing about his start in show business on comedy stages not too far from where we conducted this interview.
Chaplin’s: A Club
After twenty five years of business, Chaplin’s Comedy Club closed its doors for good. Chaplin’s is allegedly the place where Jeff Foxworthy riffed on stage and discovered his entire “you might be a redneck” routine. It’s been bothering me that I’m the last person to headline Chaplin’s Comedy Club.
In the year leading up to becoming a comedian I experienced live comedy three times. The entire main stage cast at Second City Detroit horribly embarrassed me by improvising a musical number about how horrible it would be to be on a date with me. Maybe that’s why I have a love/hate relationship with improve to this day! At that moment of sitting in the front row, I vowed that if I were ever on stage I would never humiliate someone like I was humiliated. Well…so much for that!
Tutu Much Mikey
Here’s the infamous Ford Explorer commercial.
A couple behind the scenes notes first. I’m probably the most uncoordinated person I know and am totally unable to flip a coin, catch it and plop it down on the back of my hand. That scene took many takes. The fact that it was freezing and I was shaking didn’t help much at all.
Cut out from the end is me trying to get out of the truck while wearing the fairy wings. I’d either forget to take off the seat belt or the seat belt would get caught in the wings. This was being shot at the end of a very long and cold day. No one was happy with me. I had so much to do in what looks like a simple shot. I had to pull up quickly to my mark in the truck. Put the truck in park. Take off my seat belt. Exit the vehicle and close the door. Walk embarrassingly down the street in my little tutu.
It all looks so simple!
Ex Machina
Imagine a world where a costumed vigilante saved one of the World Trade Center towers and how the people of New York not only turn him into a super hero, but also their mayor.
I don’t normally like super hero books. The only time I can really get into them is if they’re a different take on a super hero. Probably my favorite “super hero” series was Top Ten which was basically the Justice League meets NYPD Blue. It was about a world where a super hero police department was created to police super heroes. Powers is sort of the same idea, and another fine book.
I was resistant to jump into Ex Machina. It’s part super hero book, part political thriller. It’s Superman meets the West Wing! Comedian Jackie Kashian has turned me onto a handful of comics in the past and has yet to steer me wrong. Awhile back she introduced me to Y: The Last Man written by Brian K. Vaughan. Y was on the short list of books that actually brought me to tears. Oddly enough, just talking about Y in a bookstore recently with my friend Jeff nearly did the same thing again! So while I wasn’t initially interested in reading Ex Machina, which I dismissed as Supermayor, I decided to give it a shot based on Vaughan’s writing and Kashian’s recommendation.
I was blown away right from theget go. The storylines bounce back and forth nicely between mayoral duties and super feats.
The lead character Mayor Mitchell Hundred isn’t stiff and boring, he’s impulsive, imperfect, witty and fun. He makes me feel like how I imagine I’d handle suddenly becoming mayor based on celebrity status as opposed to genuine qualifications. He never does what’s right politically, he always does what’s right as a human…and fortunately it seems to just about always work out in his favor.
Mitchell’s best friend and head of security Rick Bradbury is loyal and devoted. He’s exactly the guy you’d want having your back. The rest of the mayoral staff from Deputy Mayor Dave Wylie to Journal and January Moore are just full rich characters. By the end of the series, I ended up much more involved in the politics of the book than the present day super stuff.
That’s the only complaint I have with the book. I jumped in because Vaughan said right from the start that it was a finite series. It was covering Hundred’s term in office and that was it. While I loved the flashbacks showing Hundred’s adventures…well…misadventures as The Great Machine, a lot of the present day Great Machine action didn’t hook me too much. I can’t really say more without giving away big spoilers.
Vaughan writes comic books like operas. I’ve read three of his books and each one ends on kind of a downer. I love that. Pride of Baghdad…there’s another Vaughan tear-jerker! If you haven’t guessed, I don’t write these things out in advance. I try to write as coherently as possible and keep it some sort of sensical thought. The point is, I love Vaughan’s work. Tony Harris’ art is crisp and dynamic. I love the artists like him and Alex Ross who use real life models in order to create realistic shots that make you feel like you’re reading a movie. You never see something on the page that couldn’t be captured with a camera in real life. I think that helps ground the book in reality.
It really is a great series. If you’re a comic reader and you haven’t checked out Ex Machina yet, I really hope you do. It’s not a long series. It’s 50 issues collected in 10 Trade Paperbacks. The politics aren’t daunting or overwhelming at all. They’re very accessible. Like a Ramones song, this book is short enough to leave you wanting more!
Chatting with Landau
Me and Dave at the Deadpan Benefit Show in 2010
I spent a good chunk of the past couple of years traveling around as far south as Florida and as far west as Oregon with my friend and fellow comedian Dave Landau. Dave has been one of those bright stars in the Detroit comedy scene who started shining a light on the rest of us when he gained national exposure on Comedy Central’s Live at Gotham and two seasons of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.
Dave and I sat down together in a hotel in Brookfield, Wisconsin during a week that started with the audience taking an intermission to smoke crystal meth in the parking lot and ended later ended with us not being able to get into our hotel rooms because the owner of the comedy club either forgot or assumed we would just be driving eight hours home after having performed three shows all day long for him.
I’ve traveled with a lot of comedians, but Dave has consistently been my favorite. We share the same incredibly dark sense of humor and through working with him so much and wanting to see if I could make him laugh, I started bringing more and more of that to the stage. We’ve battled personal demons together. We’ve changed more than a couple flat tires…all on my car unfortunately. I feel like we did a tour of duty together and when our discussions weren’t horrifically dark and not fit for human ears, they were informative about our chosen trade. I wanted to make sure I got the chance to share some of Dave’s words with the rest of you.
Not Bad meaning Bad but Bad meaning Good
This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen.
I love a great bad movie and this one looks like it’s the Citizen Kane of movie turds. This thing was playing at a theater in Farmington Hills just three months ago and I missed it! Saddest face! Prior to seeing this masterpiece of a clip my favorite bad action scene was a Cynthia Rothrock car chase in which she caught up to the bad guys she was after, blew past them down the road to some hotel, took the elevator to the top floor, took the stairs to the roof, tossed a rope over the side so she could shimmy down to street level and then – while dangling from this rope – karate kicked the bad guy’s car as it zipped by, making it flip over like eleven times and burst into flames. GLORIOUS.
If you have the time, take in Part One of this clip montage, which features our Bollywood Terminator chasing down a mosquito that had bitten the female lead, getting into an argument with the mosquito and a gang of his mosquito buddies, and then forcing it to come back with him to apologize to her. There’s also an extended fight scene that reveals that the Terminator’s fists are apparently made from empty Coke bottles. I need this movie in my life.
Star Wars customs
These are perhaps two of the greatest Star Wars custom action figures I’ve ever seen! This guy, JackofTradze, does amazing work!
Check out the rest of his work!Hey kids…Podcasts!
Here are five of my favorites:
How Did This Get Made?: This is a brand new podcast, just two episodes old, but absolutely terrific. The League’s Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas, Diane Raphael (Flight of the Conchords) and a weekly guest break down exactly what’s terrible about the terrible movies we love to hate. So far they’ve skewered Burlesque and Nicolas Cage’s Season of the Witch. They’ve talked of expanding the show to include DVDs and television shows, sparking my secret hope that they’ll take on The Cape.
The Bugle: Featuring the Daily Show’s criminally underused John Oliver and his long time comedy partner Andy Zaltzman, this is a satirical commentary on the news of the day. If you like the Daily Show or Colbert Report, The Bugle is square in your wheelhouse. Even if you don’t; if you enjoy British humor, give this a spin. And it’s worth it to dive into the back episodes, their string of podcasts covering the 2008 elections in particular were hilarious.
WTF: The great thing about this podcast is that the host, Marc Maron, is just as interesting as the people he interviews. Maron and his guests get into the highs and lows of being a comedian and the business of stand-up over the last two decades in a way that is incredibly frank and always gratifying.
The Nerdist Podcast: This is the second podcast I really got in to. Chris Hardwick has thoroughly entertaining conversations about comedy and showbiz, but with a nerdy slant, with everyone from his fellow comedians to MMA fighter Mayhem Miller to Ozzy Osbourne to the Muppets. The variety of guests and Hardwick’s palpable enthusiasm for comedy is what makes the show so enjoyable.
The Pod F. Tompkast: Hosted by Paul F. Tompkins, this is a variety show of a podcast, featuring ‘The Undiscovered Project,’ an ongoing series documenting the making of a movie shrouded in secrecy and ultimately hidden away by the very geniuses that brought it to life; clips from Tompkins’s various live comedy shows, the occasional phone conversation with comedian friend Jen Kirkman and assorted other shenaniganery. Sadly, it’s a monthly podcast, but it never fails to amuse. Cakeboss!
Chew on this!
I have a hard time remembering from one month to the next what’s happening in a comic book series. Much to the dismay of my “dealer” Brian at Detroit Comics, I’ve been switching all of my reading over from single issues to collections. It’s easier for me to follow an entire story arc in one sitting than straining my brain to remember what happened a month ago (or longer in the case of most comics).
I’ve never been a huge fan of superheroes unless there was some sort of different take on them like in Astro City, Watchmen, The Boys or Top Ten. More so than not being appealing to me story-wise, I don’t have a lot of interest in a never ending tale that goes on and on and on. When I was growing up, my mom watched Days of Our Lives. The story lines that I’d watch throughout the 80s with Patch, Calliope, Roman, Marlena and all the others are just a footnote in the overall DooL universe. I like my stories to have a beginning, middle and an end. Most, if not all, of the comics I’ll write about on this site are either ones that had a run of about 60 to 70 issues or are currently running, but the creator has announced a definitive end.
Chew is currently running, but creators John Layman and Rob Guillory have announced that they’re only planning on a 60 issue run. Image is publishing the book and is doing a great job so far of putting out collections about as quickly as the monthly series itself. Issue 15 came out last month along with the third collection that contains that issue.
Comedian and friend Jackie Kashian recommended Chew to me. She steered me right earlier with Ex Machina, which I’m sure I’ll praise soon enough on here. Her batting record stands strong with another great pick.
Chew is the story of FDA investigator Tony Chu. Tony is a cibopath, meaning he can tell the history of anything he eats…except beets. The story is set in an alternate universe where because of the Avian Flu, chicken is outlawed and traded illegally more so than drugs. It’s a face paced story, with great jokes which while clever are funny first. Guillory’s art is whimsical and stylized in a way that fits the tone of the book perfectly.
What made Preacher my favorite comic book series of all time was the great cast of characters and how they related. Chew is setting up to be just about as strong. Chu’s love interest is food critic Amelia Mintz who is able to write about food with so much description that it can make the reader taste the food, which Tony digs since he’s on a diet of beets and “evidence”. There’s a huge cast of well drawn and written supporting characters from Mason Savoy, Tony’s first partner in the FDA; to the half cybernetic faced John Colby, Tony’s current partner; and even Poyo, the prized cock fighter.
Jackie and I aren’t alone in digging Chew. In its first year, it’s already won the Eisner Award for best new series along with two Harvey Awards. There’s also talk about it being developed into a television series. I’m on the fence about that one. I’m sort of let down by Walking Dead so far, but more on that in a later post. If adapted for television, I think Chew could work as an animated series.
Anyway, if you’re looking to jump back into comics, or you’re just looking for something other than capes, I highly recommend Chew.
Phoo Action!
I was semi-aimlessly searching the web last week and wondered what Spaced co-creator and star Jessica Hynes had done recently. Lo and behold, I found that she was one of the writers on a Jamie Hewlett (Tank Girl, Gorillaz) created television show called Phoo Action.
I’ve been a fan of Tank Girl since the comics and I’m probably one of three people alive who really liked the movie. I like to imagine that the other two people who liked the movie were the stars Lori Petty and Ice T. Phoo Action looked intriguing so I went about researching.
I’m a huge fan of British television. The aforementioned Spaced is one of my favorites and if you’re a fan of Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, you owe it to yourself to see where the Simon Pegg/Nick Frost/Edgar Wright relationship began. I think the original Office is far superior to the American one. The Mighty Boosh is bizarrely wonderful. I have no doubt that the upcoming American version of Being Human won’t be able to hold a candle to the original.
I get flack for my television tastes where they’re mistaken for snooty. That’s not the case at all. I like my television like I like my comic books and video games…I like for them to have a beginning, middle and an end. When I find out that a comic is planned to have 60 issues or so, that’s perfect. If someone complains that a video game had a good story, but was only 8 hours long, I’m sold. British shows seem to have a story to tell and they only do enough episodes to tell that story. They don’t care about hitting 100 episodes to get that syndication money. The television show that Christine and I wrote (Deadpan) is planned for three seasons, about six episodes each season. We have the entire story mapped out already.
One of the things I discovered during my Phoo Action research is that the BBC seems to let the audience vote on which shows get launched once pilots are made. In the US, networks order about 20 pilots each season, with only about 6 of those making it to the air. Sometimes if you’re lucky you can find an unaired pilot on the internet, like the one for the infamous Ben Stiller created Heat Vision and Jack starring Jack Black and Owen Wilson.
Unfortunately, even though the pilot for Phoo Action aired and won a handful of awards, enough people didn’t watch to merit giving the show a full season. Coincidentally, that year Being Human was picked up instead.
Here’s the trailer for Phoo Action.
If you look, you can find the entire pilot episode online. I even managed to see it on my iPod. It’s a lot of fun. It’s one part Tank Girl, one part Green Hornet, a dash of the Aquabats, and a pinch of the Gorillaz all mixed up with some Carl Weathers on top! I really enjoyed it, but like I said, I have a predilection for these kinds of things!
Homeless Man with a Golden Voice
Honestly. Two years sober. He’s done his time. Hope someone hires him!
Off the Mike 
