IF YOU DON'T HATE PAUL REISER AFTER SEEING THIS PICTURE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU

I guess one reason I hate him is for the fact that he thinks everyone's dumb enough to fall for his fake hair.

AAAND!!! If you are gonna give yourself fake hair, why do it this way? Why not give yourself a nice human style?

THE SAD LITTLE ZOMBIE

Here's a poem I wrote. Maybe someday I'll put it to music.

-THE SAD LITTLE ZOMBIE-

The sad little zombie,
He's a sad little guy.
His mama yelled at him.
Now he wants to cry.

She been in the kitchen,
Cooking all day.
Working fingers to the bone,
To put food on his plate.

It's a big juicy head
With noodles and beets.
The eyes are fried crispy,
And it still has it's teeth.

"It sure looks delicous,"
He cried to his ma,
"It's crispy and juicy,
And not very raw."

"Then why don't you eat?"
She mournfully said
"I worked and I slaved
And now I'm so dead."

"Don't feel bad mama.
You're not a bad chef,
But if I eat one more bite,
I'm gonna heft.

My appetite was spoiled,
I must admit.
For my pals and I
have been snacking a bit.

Earlier today,
while we were outside,
A school bus turned over,
And all the kids died."

His mother's face changed
As she listened a while.
Her frown dropped away,
Revealling a smile.

"Stop Right there, Honey.
No need to explain.
If I'd been there with you
I'd do the same.

When opportunities arise
Be resourceful and wise.
Take advantage of blessings
Or they'll go to the flies.

I've taught you well.
You didn't waste all that meat.
Poor zombies in China
Have nothing to eat.

You made a sunny day
From dreary old cloud.
I'm not mad at you.
In fact, I'm so proud."

I HATE PAUL REISER

I've hated Paul Reiser for about 2 decades now. I can't really put my finger on what I hate so much about him. I've seen his shows and comedy routines on tv, and they were okay; nothing really hateable. I can't figure it out. I just hate him. It's possibly based on his looks, more specifically his hair. Maybe.

I know it's wrong to hate people, especially when there's no real reason to hate them, but if I were stranded on the side of the road and he came along and fixed my car and gave me some money, I'd still hate him.

Also when I tell people I hate him, they usually say, "You know, I've never really thought about it before, but now that you mention it, I believe I hate Paul Reiser too."

ANOTHER SONG AND MORE ANIMATION

Some of this animation was already posted before, but not all of it. There's a new song here too. I have about 3 seconds of footage on my motorcycle. I rode it for years, and that's the only picture or video I have of it. It was a Yamaha Maxim XJ 650. I think it was a 1981 or 1982 model. It had a drive shaft instead of a chain. I never had a lick of trouble out of if and I regret selling it.

I sold it because when I moved to my current home I didn't have a garage to keep it out of the weather. After I sold it I used the money to build a garage. Then I didn't have a bike to keep in it. What a gyp!

My brother and I accidentally discovered something on the guitar solo in this recording. Out of laziness we didn't want to plug in some more wires and set up the electric guitar for the solo, so we held a microphone right next to the strings on the electric, about 2 inches from the pick action. An echo effect was added. We thought it sounded like an early Beatles guitar. (Just the solo guitar in the middle, not the rhythm. )

REEEEEALLY HUNGRY ELEPHANT

You know how they say "There is no wrong way to eat a Reese's" in the commercials? What if it were like this? I bet this would be considered a wrong way.

SONG and CLAY ANIMATION

Here's an old clay animation I made in the 1980s when I was 13. It stars my brother Kevin as the boy, and my mom as The Mom. For a kid not yet 7 years old I felt like Kevin did a darned good acting job. My mom went the vaudeville route. After the 1st couple animated sequences in this video I learned to keep my lamp in the same place for each frame, which cut down considerably on the blinking.

The song was written and recorded 7 or 8 years ago. The song is longer but It fades out early to match the length of the video. I looked through my songs and this was the closest to the length of that video. Kevin (who is the boy in the video) is playing bass on this song. The song is about being lazy and reveling in it.

MY NIECE MIMI'S POOPING GERBIL DRAWING

Mimi is my brother's daughter. She's 5 years old. When I saw this drawing my heart became filled with joy. Notice how the final poo has a shiny glowing aura? That's classy! You can see more of Mimi's art at her mom's blog by clicking on the image, or by clicking HERE.

DISTURBING . . . BUT TRUE!

BATTLING CLAY - animation

This is one of many clay battles which occurred on my back patio when I was in high school. One person could make these movies alone but it was always more fun when my cousin David and my brother Kevin were involved. Usually the projects would last for as long as they kept our interest. When we lost interest, we would kill all the clay guys off and go watch cartoons or ride our bikes.



They took a long time to make but we never got bored with it. Sometimes you could actually see the sun setting in the backgrounds of animations that only lasted about 20 seconds.

The flashing gun blasts in this movie were created by taking a needle and actually scratching the frames of film. The clay guy's gun shoulder was animated to jerk back and forth, and then when the film was developed I looked at the tiny pictures on the film and did my best to scratch them in the right places. Scratching the film was my own original idea, but later I read in magazines other people were also doing it.

For as long as they took us to make, we expected our movies must last for hours and hours. It took about 2 weeks of waiting for the film to be developed. When we finally got the film back and got to watch our movies it was both thrilling and heartbreaking at the same time. It was fun to actually see the things moving around, but it crushed our spirits to learn all the work we did amounted to no more than a few minutes of screen time. It never failed, one of us would always say, "That's it? I seem to remember there being more."

POPSICLE STICK MAN STOP-MOTION ANIMATION

Here's another animation from back in my high school days. The jointed man was made with popsicle sticks, dowel rods, and wooden macrame' balls. I used white thumb tacks for his eyes, and yarn for hair. I used blobs of clay to stick him to the ground in the shots where he's off balance. I still have this guy and he's held up very well.

This particular stop-motion animation was quite frustrating at the time because my spotlight bulb burned out and a new one was $50 and I couldn't afford it on my $1-a-week allowance. I found this cheap $10 flash gizmo I could plug into the camera and it was supposed to flash each time I took a picture. It didn't. It would only flash when it felt like it. Maybe 60% of the time it would cooperate.

The nice thing about the old lamp was I could just leave it on and not worry about it anymore. This new flash thing was a horrible piece of junk. I think after this experience I didn't mess with the movie camera too much anymore.



Now with digital cameras it seems fun again. There are downloadable freeware programs which automatically string consecutive photos together into an MPG or AVI. Windows Movie Maker will do it, but the frame speed won't go any less than 1/8th of a second per frame. Ideally it should be 1/24th of a second or things look jerky.

Using a digital camera would give a much clearer picture and better colors. These movies I made in the 80s are all washed out and scratchy. That being said, I suspect after I made a movie with a digital camera I'd be tempted to change it to black and white and add artificial scratches.

MEMPHIS WRESTLING

As a kid I loved Championship Wrestling out of Memphis. My grandpa got me hooked on it. A lot of the greats started there, like Jerry "the King" Lawler, and Jimmy Hart. It was hosted by Lance Russell and Dave Brown. It was on every Saturday right after cartoons, and I never missed it.

It's hard to explain why it was so much more fun to me than the wrestling they show nowadays. They wouldn't do as much ring wrestling as they would street brawling in the parking lots and backstage, or during interviews. You could always count on something going impossibly haywire and walls falling down and desks getting destroyed, and blood blood flowing.

Watch this clip to get an idea of how things always seemed to go. It would usually start out civil and normal, but that never lasted. It would always eventually go wrong and then get worse and worse and WORSE. And just when it seemed like it couldn't get any worse, it got more worser.

BIG EAR SIGNAL

Here's an illustration for an album written and recorded by Tom Meigs. By day he writes and records music for video games. By night he fights crime incognito, and now he's gone and recorded an album just for the heck of it.

These songs are very reminiscent of the soundtracks to old sci fi movies from the 70s. There are a lot of old vintage Moog type synthesizers and space sounds mixed all through it. It's very entertaining, and for me, even a little therapeutic and comforting in the form of nostalgia. I like to let it play in while I draw. It's available on Amazon and they have samples for listening.



Here's the original uncolored ink drawing.

DESTROYER ROBOT

This was created on the computer pretty much the same way it would be created in 3 dimensions. I drew one block first. I made a block shaded 3 different tones on 3 different sides. After that the bulk of the drawing was finished.

I copied that block and started stacking pieces together the same way I'd stack real blocks together. There are a few non-block elements but it's mostly the same block either squashed or stretched.

MEAN BABY animation

I guess this is kind of old now. It was made back in the 90s. If you look at the brown smear in the picture on the wall that's my signature, "KS."

STRANGE REOCCURRING DOG INCIDENT

For the longest time I was buying pillows for Lucy's bed. After about a week they would get stinky. Mei had the idea of using old clothes instead of buying pillows over and over.

This happens a lot. Lucy will somehow manage to squeeze into a sleeve or a pant leg or any opening she can find and get trapped in it. I think digging and routing is a dachshund trait. These are Mei's old pants. Lucy calmly accepts her commonly occurring pant leg entrapment and pays no mind to it. She just inchworms her way over to her bowl to eat, and then inchworms her way back to her bed.

It impresses me because she went in through the waist opening, and crawled all the way down the length of the leg, and out the foot opening. Then once her front feet were out there was nothing more for her to grip against, so that's where they settled. Sometimes I hear rustling sounds coming from her bed. I guess this is what's going on.

After I took some pictures I went ahead and cut her loose.

SKETCHBOOK PAPER-WASTIN'

More paper-wastin' here. I'm noticing when I'm not drawing Frankensteins or monkeys, I like drawing cavemen. I'm not sure if I like the cavemen themselves or the crude and primitive dinosaur-riddled jungle atmosphere they exist in.

They are enjoyable to draw though. You can get reeeeeal ugly with them, and the clothing is pretty fun too. Also I've always liked drawing ugly big feet and knobby toes. Characters with shoes deprive me of that joy.

GROG AND GROG

Welcome to Running Joke city! Maybe what was important to cavemen was the complete opposite of what is important to us nowadays. Maybe if they needed to hunt and kill to survive different things would have been considered to be ideal physical features.

I like doing these template-style comics. They could go on forever! But relax. I won't put anyone through that. Four is enough.

Grog and Grog #1


Grog and Grog #2


Grog and Grog #3


Grog and Grog #4

AMERICAN DANCE CRAZE

My friend Matt Hawes who I've known since the mid 1980s has a show on local public access called The Happy Show. He does a lot of silly, fun stuff with reoccurring characters. Sometimes he will dig out old song recordings I did back in the good ol' days, and fancy them up with video footage. In this particular case he even built an imaginary dance show around the song. Matt is playing all the characters in the video. He's quite a ham in front of a camera. As a side note he also draws very well, and owns his own comic book shop here in town.

FORBIDDEN LOVE OF FRANKENSTEIN (step by step)

First I made an ink drawing of Frankenstein in a wistful pose, and scanned it into the compooter. I guess it could also be used at an annoyed pose.


Then I added a layer of graytone shading.


And then I added a layer of color.


And then a background tone. I slide the hue controller lever on the skin tone to make it more putrid. Also I dulled down the color of the jacket so it wasn't so cheery. I added a faint drop shadow to make him pop out a bit.


And lastly I added a daisy I found on the internet. I mirrored and rotated it and changed the color and proportion. That way it's not the same as the original anymore. I don't know if that's important but it makes me feel better. What I probably should have done was draw a daisy. But that's for non-lazy suckas! Depending on the shape of your monitor the picture could possibly be used as a wallpaper.

Happy post Easter!

FRANKENPENCIL

I found a sketchpad tucked away in a pile of books and this drawing was in it. I have no memory whatsoever of doing it.

Hope everyone had a Good Friday, and has a good Easter. Remember, eggs are high in cholesterol and can kill you.

JONATHAN JIGGS HOMEMADE SONG VIDEO

I was just kidding about that last post. April Fools.

Here's a video I made with my brother back in the good ol' days. Maybe the late 80s or early 90s.

All the pieces are cut out of paper and controlled by hand off-screen. It seemed like an easy and fun project before I started but turned into an enormous amount of work. I surprised at the huge stack of paper parts I had when I'd finished.

My brother Kevin would aim the camera on the fly and do his best to keep my hands out of the frame. Sometimes though I'd reach in too far. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter if the hands are visible. It's not like I'd be fooling anyone anyway.

We didn't have computer video editing equipment back then so I filmed all the shots separately and edited them together by bouncing back and forth on 2 VCRs. You end up having to do some guesswork and wishing and hoping it will time out right in the end.



We didn't have a real video camera back then. Kevin had a kid's camcorder which filmed onto standard audio cassette tapes. It was the Fisher-Price PXL-2000. I think that meant it had a total of 2000 pixels. The video is a little blurry so I'll explain the plot.

There are 2 starving guys stranded on a life raft. They kill and eat a bird to survive. They don't realize the bird ate some fish which were swimming in toxic waste, so the bird meat kills them. The end.

The video doesn't really have anything to do with the song. The song is about a guy named Jonathan Jiggs whose plane crash lands on an island. While there he meets and island girl who he then falls in love with. Later he learns she is a cannibal when she eats his ear. He has to put her down and buries her by a pineapple tree.

Her corpse fertilizes the pineapple tree and makes the pineapples grow healthy. Now when he drinks his pineapple juice he likens it to kissing her. See? A love story!

MY LAST POST

Blogger says I am out of space so I guess that's the end of this blog. They said I was abusing the system with "larger than normal" picture files. I don't understand because I see other people with lots of posted pictures and they don't seem to get flack over it.

































April Fools!