Update on the ShadowMachine/Robot Chickenart show this weekend in Hollywood! My wife Nikki’s allowed me to share some pics of the other figurines (besides the Kate Beaton Fat Pony) that she’ll have on display:
If I were in Austin this weekend, I’d check out the live premiere of The Intergalactic Nemesis, which might be described as a mashup of theater, radio drama, silent film and animation. This video will give you an idea:
The stage version of The Intergalactic Nemesis projects the comic book artwork panel-by-panel while three actors perform the voices, one foley artist creates the sound effects, and one keyboardist plays the score, all live.
This looks like a really neat thing to sit in a theater and enjoy! I’m a big fan of taking the trouble to seek out unique experiences like this. I saw something similar once here in L.A.: a touring, contemporary silent film called Brand Upon the Brain!, which had been shot as a pastiche of 1920s silent films and which was shown in the theater with a live orchestra, sound-effects crew, and narrator (in my show, Daniel Handler). It was a terminally weird movie — about sucking people’s brains out, and so on; sort of bizarre-for-the-sake-of-bizarre which is a very hard thing to make enjoyable for a paying audience — but the spectacle and the craft of the music and the sound-effects and the whole bit was enthralling in itself. I didn’t even like the movie and I didn’t regret seeing it.
So I definitely recommend checking out The Intergalactic Nemesis if you’re in Austin this weekend! The show comes highly recommended by some of my Austinite friends who’ve seen these folks perform before. Performances are this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 3 & 4, at the Long Center. Tickets are here!
If you can’t make it to the live show, the full-length radio drama is also available as free downloadable MP3s!
I really enjoyed this video from the White House Poetry Jam, which — until I saw this video — I had no idea was even a thing.
And while we’re on the subject of raps, here’s a piece from College Humor, who (in my opinion) do some of the funniest, most well-produced original comedy videos anywhere.
I have done a guest comic for Dinosaur Comics today! Ryan North is getting married (to his fiancée) this weekend and he asked for some fill-in help for the occasion. Everyone else leaped on the wedding and honeymoon fill-in positions but I just made a comic. I am already married, you see!
If you’re not familiar with Dinosaur Comics or its established canon, check out this episode in which characters are handily introduced all round, this episode about the phenomenon of island dwarfism and certainly also this follow-up! Not only will reading these fine and hilarious works give you a firm working knowledge of Dinosaur Comics but they also conveniently are exactly what you need to understand the specific references in my guest comic.
Congratulations Ryan and Jenn! I wish you both at least five years of happiness. I have learned the secret to a successful marriage, and I will tell it to you right here because we are friends and I want you to be happy until such time comes that I can somehow profit from your sadness. If that day never comes, then I want you to be happy forever!
