Analyzing an entire generation is about as scientific as astrology. I’m more apt to trust a horoscope than someone who claims to be an expert in generation-ology, like the entirely biased experts in the field, Baby Boomers William Strauss and Neil Howe. I probably have more in common with my fellow Libra-Scorpio cusps than I do with the 70 million Americans born in between 1982 and 2001. The ties that bind a generation are constructed from the various narratives of their time: we’re summed up by the cultural, political and technological trends that surround us, whether we have anything to do with them, or whether they’ve been passed down to us from Baby Boomer marketers and impresarios, Generation X culture-makers and web developers.
There’s a faulty logic in assuming that whatever the Gen Y demographic consumes the most reflects an authentic picture of its generation: most of us have just started to mature to the point where our own work has become culturally relevant, where we are speaking to each other instead of being spoken down to. Furthermore, culture has become fragmented into micro-niches faster than market research can keep up with it. Over the next decade, I hope that Generation Y will start to define itself rather than let itself be defined by biased voices from the generations that have preceded it. The lasting damage of our elders’ bitter accusations of “entitlement!” will not be erased without hard work.
In terms of authorial origin, I can’t claim the video at the top of this post (which I appear in) is a step in the right direction. It’s basically a bullet-point rundown of the points outlined in Gen X writer Eric H. Greenberg’s new book, Generation We– a call to action for our generation to change the world for the better. While it may not come from an authentically Gen Y source, the book and the video have a good message, using our generation’s lack of an identity as a call to arms, asking us to carry on the project of liberalism that has finally arisen from the ashes in the 2008 election. Underneath its melodramatic earth-saving surface, the video manipulates our fragmented lack of cohesion to recruit us for the liberal agenda, which, as a supporter of those ideals, I believe is a good thing– yet, as a believer in the importance of our generation establishing self-sufficiency, I can’t help but feel weird about.
Regardless of its authorial origin or agenda, the effort to stimulate, address, or identify Generation Y as a whole is clearly something that young people are yearning for: the “Generation We” video has already been viewed 1.8 million times in little more than a week over MySpace, YouTube and Vimeo (reading the video’s comments on each of those sites is an interesting study altogether on the disparate demographics who log on to each of those forums). Sometimes I wonder if it will ever be possible for us to effect positive change throughout our next 15 or 20 years in the sun. Will we end up selling out like the Baby Boomers in the 80’s, or just say “Whatever” and enjoy ourselves like the jaded Generation Xers before us? Will technology give us the edge we need to change the system and its seemingly impassible roadblocks, or will it just lead us to solipsistic navel-gazing? Or will the entire system collapse under the shifting forces of the global market before we even have a chance to make our mark?
But most interestingly, whatever happens, will we ever truly take control of our destinies? Will we write our generation’s own story– or will it be written for us by a cynical group of our elders?
1 comment | Video | posted on November 1, 2008 at 5:06 pm
This video is a little something I cooked up at the end of the summer with my pal Johnny Rogers of The New Jedi Order collective. Check out my earlier post about D.B. Cooper for more information on the legendary skyjacker.
Words like “heartwarming,” “endearing,” and “inspirational” sometimes make me wanna ralph, but I’m not embarassed to say that those words describe the feelings this video instills within me. From the filmmakers behind the acclaimed documentary Beautiful Losers, this awesome short film about an art workshop Jesse Spears hosted for some local high school kids makes me wanna go out into the world and encourage people to become artists.
Jesse teaches art the way it should be taught, fully embracing the limitless possibilities of creativity with just the right dose of anarchy and indiscriminate positive affirmation. Maybe I’m just a complete hippy, but I do believe in the value of each individual’s uncensored self-expression. I think the goal of art education should be a therapeutic one: to lead the student to a place where they feel completely comfortable with the work that they’re making. As long as you’re genuinely happy with what you’re doing, there are going to be at least a few other people out there who feel the same way about your work, and then you’ve affected some sort of positive change in the world.
Jesse Spears (pictured on the top right, smelling a buttercup) is one of my favorite artists. In addition to the blog she uses to document her endless creative output (Long Live Cartoon!) she also keeps a personal blog called Carnage Knockout, filled with sublime ephemera: snapshots of plants and pets, 911 calls, bubble wrap, and lists: like, “Things I Don’t Understand,” and “People I Want To Meet.” It was on Carnage Knockout that I first came across Wendy Morgan’s godly music video for the Gnarls Barkley song “Going On.”
Wendy Morgan is a Canadian commercial and music video director who’s made some great ad spots for Ikea, Girls Inc., and MTV Canada that are often bizarre or bemusing and occasionally even tackle the ungraspable nuances of Canadian national identity. Truthfully, Wendy’s MTV commercials are too good for MTV… though, who knows, maybe in topsy-turvy Canada, that sad vestige of a former pop culture powder-keg has managed to retain some semblance of watchability.
Regardless of MTV’s contemporary significance, its legacy lives on in cyberspace as the music video medium continues to thrive on a newly global scale– thanks in no small part to directors like Morgan. She’s crafted unaffected, imaginative videos for bands like The Unicorns and Dragonette– bands which don’t get any significant air time on the highly corporatized cable networks, but are now finding a home on the information superhighway.
I thought it would be fun to interview Wendy Morgan, but even more fun to let Jesse Spears do most of the work, since she loves the “Going On” video so much. Jesse came up with a bunch of questions, and I threw in a couple of my own, and we e-mailed them off to the jet-setting filmmaker, whose blog is replete with images from Jamaica, Barcelona, Italy and France. I’m enormously grateful to Wendy for humoring us by responding to this interview, and to Jesse for conducting it. I’ll pass things over to Ms. Spears for a proper introduction:
1. What was the crew like for the filming of the “Going On” video? Like, how big was the crew, and how long did it take and stuff.?
We shot for two days, prepped for probably five days, the crew was around 20 or so people I think, it felt pretty small in reality. The producer was Jannie McInnes of Revolver Films, the cinematographer was Max Goldman, who makes a ton of great videos, and I think he’s amazing.
2. How did you come up with the story of dancing Jamaican kids finding a portal to an alternate dimension?
Well, the original story that was written was: we do a musical-style approach with singing and dancing that takes place in Africa. But it made more sense to go to Jamaica, and I love dancehall style dancing, but you’ll notice there are no obvious Jamaican references or locations. I wanted it to be a nether world. The song sounded like dancing and celebration to me and lyrically, it talks about going on. I imagined the farthest you can possibly go is another dimension, so we’ll go there.
If such a thing exists, Dave White and Alonso Duralde are at least honorary members of L.A.’s unceremonious gay literati. With a book each under their belts (Dave’s blog-based memoir Exile in Guyville and Alonso’s edifying 101 Must-See Movies for Gay Men) and a steady flow of freelance gigs, this writerly couple of thirteen years has embraced Los Angeles’ reputation for easygoing nonchalance to the fullest, working from their West Hollywood home, typing out classy movie reviews in their underwear.
So it’s no surprise that Dave and Alonso would approach their fifth wedding (jam-packed with more legal recognition than ever– thanks, California Supreme Court!) with the same effortless amusement they do everything else, wearing t-shirts and shorts in a guerrilla-style (read: permit-lacking) 5-minute ceremony at the La Brea Tar Pits. Officiated by their Internet-ordained roommate, Aaron (known to readers of this blog as DJ Jefferson Bearplane), the vows were followed by an excursion to the farmer’s market at The Grove for a round of celebratory donuts.
I took the Gold Line up to Pasadena last weekend to catch just-breaking indie pop band Princeton at the Make Music Pasadena festival. Princeton is the saccharine bittersweet endeavor of twin brothers Jesse Kivel and Matt Kivel, who, along with their childhood friend Ben Usen, sing songs about the Bloomsbury Group in a deliriously dreamy orchestral style that recalls John Cale and The Kinks. It’s Edwardian British high culture by way of folksy LA beach pop. The members of Princeton were kind enough to tell us a little about themselves (and their love of donuts) in the video above.
This is the first video I’ve edited in HD, with many more to come! Watch the compressed version above, or click here to watch the video in all of its High Definition glory over at Vimeo.
My Orbit commercial finally aired, during the MTV Movie Awards last weekend! Since I don’t have cable, I had to wait to see it on my friend’s DVR last night. It’s so weird and awesome to see myself on TV in this capacity. For the past two years, I’ve done a lot of extra work, but the last time I had a significant “role” on television was way back when I learned my expert dramatic chops: in my infamous Bounty commercial.
My roommate in the spot is played by Ian Crossland, a lovably intense young actor, musician, and deep thinker with a notable YouTube following.
The commercial was directed by the amazing Perlorian Brothers, who’ve been the creative force behind a boatload of hilariously weird commercials that you’ve surely seen and enjoyed (yes, the Perlorians almost exclusively deal in the rare breed of TV commercial actually meant to entertain its viewers) without knowing there was a unique authorial voice (well, a duo of harmonizing, discordant voices) behind them. There are some fun interviews with the Perlorians available at ‘boards and HaveAnIdea, which are online trade publications for people who are unusually obsessed with the advertising world.
Fun Fact: This commercial was shot in an Ambassador Hotel-adjacent penthouse that Ronald Reagan spent much of his life in.
British videomaker Nima Nourizadeh is happy to shatter your suspension of disbelief. Distorting music video conventions, Nourizadeh frames his colorfully compelling clips with a playful sense of self-awareness. “I’m interested in how videos are made— what’s outside the frame,” he says. “I find there’s something quite nice about letting people in on what’s really going on.” In a post-Laguna Beach world, where fortunes are made by manipulating audiences to believe that what’s fake is “reality,” Nourizadeh’s videos throw a spotlight on the cracks and crevices of MTV’s counterfeit glamour. Whether it’s revealing a disinterested film crew standing just outside the frame of a heartfelt ballad (Lily Allen’s “Littlest Things”) or deconstructing the illusory enchantment of green screen technology (Hot Chip’s “Over and Over”), Nourizadeh is fascinated with the filters of artifice that irrevocably separate a music video’s performance from its audience. “I don’t want to hide anything,” he says. “I’m very much into people connecting with me, and showing them the rougher side of the video.”
With a couple dozen videos under his belt, Nourizadeh regularly works with artists who straddle the ambiguous divide between subculture and mainstream, ranging from Aussie indie poppers Architecture in Helsinki to British grime-rapper Lady Sovereign. They’re the type of artists who once upon a time (in the ancient era before broadband Internet) would have struggled to find an audience—to say nothing of video play. MySpace and YouTube have opened up a world-wide stage for small-time musicians, and Nourizadeh’s jarringly unconventional videos reflect that sudden change in the status quo.
His clip for “A Cause Des Garcons” by Yelle—who gained immense popularity on MySpace—feels like a professional production of a silly childhood musical fantasy. Revealing a soundstage decked out in cartoony ‘80s set-design flair, the video shows Yelle’s hairdryer and moisturizer springing to life to show off their impressive dance moves and prepare the unassuming star for a fashion magazine cover shoot. It plays like something Yelle might have dreamed up while singing into a hairbrush before the Internet catapulted her into international superstardom.
It was a trifecta of tremendous videos that first clued me in on Nourizadeh’s brilliance: Chromeo’s retro-CGI polygon orgy, “Bonafide Lovin’,” Hot Chip’s schizofrenetic Bat-dance homage, “Ready for the Floor,” and finally, the unsettling Jodorowsky-inspired spectacle of Santogold’s “L.E.S. Artistes.” When I realized all three of these stunning videos were directed by someone who doesn’t (yet) have his own “Director’s Label” DVD, I had to find out more about him. I was lucky enough to catch Nourizadeh while he was in L.A. on one leg of a whirlwind transcontinental video-shooting tour, working on a Flight of the Concords video (“For the band, not the TV show,” he clarifies). He graciously took the time to explain how he ended up where he is.
“I actually studied fine arts,” says the director, of his academic roots at Central St. Martins. “So it was quite far away from what I’m doing now. I always sort of lent more towards a commercial style, and I remember my teachers telling me, ‘You’ll do really well in the commercial world,’ which was intended as a bit of a diss— but I remember thinking, ‘Cool. Brilliant.’”
Nourizadeh fell into the music video racket when his brother, a house music producer, asked him to cut together some footage he’d shot to match one of his tracks. “Doing music videos wasn’t ever what I intended to do,” he says, “but I felt like I could get some clues to directing. I could learn the craft a bit.” Establishing a video collective dubbed “The Imaginary Tennis Club” with two close friends, Nourizadeh got the ball rolling by approaching up-and-coming bands at their gigs to propose collaborations. “These days I find bands coming to me that share my aesthetic,” he says. “It’s a nice change of pace.”
After going solo in 2005 with the Tennis Club’s amicable disbanding, the director hit it big with the lovingly satirical green screen-themed clip for “Over and Over.” Like a magician who can’t resist explaining his tricks, Nourizadeh uses the video to demonstrate how easy it is to manipulate the viewer with simple special effects, rendering the cold reality of a blindingly green room both lyrical and hilarious— without dismissing the excitement and energy in Hot Chip’s tune. “Boasting great performances and tons of little jokes for the taking, this video is nearly as infectious as the song itself,” noted one not-easily-impressed Pitchfork writer when the clip was included in their “Top 25 Music Videos of 2006” list.
One of Nourizadeh’s greatest strengths as a filmmaker is his ability to translate personal concepts and preoccupations across a wide gamut of styles in videos created for a smorgasbord of incongruous artists, without ever distracting his audience from their music or veering into obnoxiously heavy-handed territory. He never falls out of sync with the artist’s style or their song, even when he’s busy juggling Jodorowsky homages with explorations into squib mechanics, using a legion of horrified hipsters expelling neon orange blood from their chests.
An avid collector of art books that reference film, fine art, and even computer-generated imagery, Nourizadeh garners much of his filmic inspiration from still photography. “Because it’s a pure moment that’s been captured—it’s just a still—you can really examine everything in it. I can look at why it’s been composed in that way, I can really consider the lighting. It gives you something that watching a film, or other videos, doesn’t.” Pressed to list some of his favorite photographers, however, the director explained that he tries not to become overly attached to the work of any individual artist. “I just look through random reference books,” he says, “and in some ways, I prefer not even knowing whose work it is—’cause that effects how I perceive their work. I can’t think of where exactly I get ideas from— I know it’s a combination of all these things that have accumulated over the years, on a completely subconscious level.”
For Chromeo’s “Bonafide Lovin’,” however, the video’s point of reference was crystal clear: “Dave 1 [Chromeo’s vocalist] was really into anything from the 80’s or early ‘90s— so we started going through a bunch of videos we liked from that time, and Dire Straits’ ‘Money for Nothing’ came up. And we both just suddenly went, ‘Fuck, that’s a really good video!’” Astonished by the visual similarities between the Laurel & Hardy-inspired CG characters in Dire Straits’ seminal video and the real-life appearances of Chromeo’s Dave 1 and P-Thugg, Nourizadeh quickly realized it was a match made in heaven, and set to work incorporating the song’s lyrics into his concept.
“For the actual animation of it, the hardest part was making sure the animators were really thinking that we don’t have today’s technology. Everything had to be made from a series of block shapes. If you wanted something that had a curve in it, it was about stepping blocks so it would appear to have a curve, rather than actually giving anything that rounded shape. In today’s standards, people are trying to make everything so photo-realistic. Everything’s gotta have a polish on it—but you don’t have to do it that way.”
I’d noticed a link between two of Nourizadeh’s videos and couldn’t resist inquiring about the deeper meaning of it all: “Ready for the Floor” and “L.E.S. Artistes” both feature the startling image of people being doused with buckets of paint thrown at them from off-camera. The director set the record straight on this strange coincidence: “With the Hot Chip one, it was a specific effect I was going for, and it turned out great,” he says. “With the Santogold video, it worked as well, because it fit with the concept of making a really gruesome scene. Dumping red paint over someone not only looks good, but it also looks quite graphic. And I knew I was going to get really great reactions from the girls, cause it was freezing that day. It was pretty authentic, I think, I how horrified they were.”
Mystery solved—just a jazzy visual effect coupled with a pinch of everyday cruelty. “I was actually thinking of doing it again, in the Concords video,” he says, laughing. “I thought, ‘That’d be pretty cool, if I had a signature bucket shot in every video.’ It’s good to be aware of what is good eye candy—what we actually enjoy looking at. And that’s one thing, copious liquids—people enjoy watching that. I’m just finding those things, over time… I’ve got one, so I’ve got to find a few more.”
With any luck, Nourizadeh will be able to pull out some of that eye candy in an aesthetically indulgent feature-length project sometime in the near future. “Doing videos is great, because it’s short, but it’s so intense. The amount you have to do is really such good preparation for making anything else,” says the filmmaker. “It’d be great if by the time I’m 35—I’ll give myself another five years—I’d have made a feature.” Let’s just hope Nourizadeh never stops coloring outside the lines.
In the early days of the 21th century, when Bush II was taking his first spin around the block, two music videos threatened to detonate the formal dancing world’s arcane infrastructure like a proverbial crate of Semtex. With the 2001 video for “Since I Left You,” sample-happy Australian electronic group The Avalanches presented us with a uniquely 9/11 vision of two blue collar workers escaping their cramped mine shaft confines to discover a glorious Flashdance-esque world of splendor. One man would find his Camelot, breaking down stereotypes and reveling in his new environment– while the other would fade back into the harsh pain of reality, unable to act upon his desires. Clearly, there was still work to be done.
By the end of the W.’s first term, however, the results of such efforts to revolutionize classical dance through indie pop music videos had been upgraded from lukewarm to red hot with Kings of Convenience’s 2004 clip, “I Wanna Dance With You.” Norwegian superstar Erlend Øye not only challenged the conventions of a dance style that originated in the 15th century, but managed to win over first a classroom of stoic pre-adolescent ballerinas, and eventually an entire auditorium full of finely dressed connoisseurs.
As demonstrated through the thematic, aesthetic and chronological links between these two videos, we understand that the early 2000s were a time of quiet upheaval and unrest that challenged the status quo and refused to accept any form of explicit complacency.
Someone I know recently told me that I was too obsessed with the 80’s and the 90’s. This person, someone who generally has a pretty good eye for design, just didn’t get it. Well, for everyone else– here’s Gnarls Barkley’s awesome new video, which “…centers around the fictional public access TV show ‘City Vibin’ and is set in the early ’90s.” (Yahoo News)
Why aren’t there shows like “City Vibin’” on the air anymore? We’re stuck with shit like “Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann.” It’s not too hard to see the appeal of those early 90’s days of yore, is it? A note to all epileptic viewers: MTV U.K. banned this video after its funky high frame rate animation failed the Harding Test– watch at your own risk!
+ Via Viewers Like You [contributor Max Erdenberger was the video's lead designer/animator]
I’ve been researching medical journals on photosensitive seizure triggers and used all of them in this music video. PSS is interesting because you might not even know you have it until you begin convulsing.
Don’t try to tell me there isn’t romance in the silent pulse of a satellite signal. Don’t try to dissuade me from falling in love with the mysteries of a VCR. It’s true that local access programming can hold a reservoir of indecipherable meaning. Untraceable puzzle pieces are lying in wait, somewhere in the abandoned zeros and ones of the information superhighway. Meet me in cyberspace. “The secret messages are calling to me endlessly,” is all I have to say.
Awesome. Post a casting ad on Craigslist for all types of actors to deliver “edgy, balls-out” political messages, film the auditions, and post the results on YouTube. Starry-eyed hopefuls and seasoned nutjobs pouring their heart into x-rated political ad copy equals a rollicking Internet laugh riot!
The simplest, but most captivating entertainment of this decade has come from exploiting Hollywood’s down-and-out dreamers for comic value– in you need proof, just turn on VH1. Maybe it’s the Bush administration that makes us want to laugh at people failing. We project our anxieties and frustrations on Britney Spears and the losers who try out for “American Idol,” because it’s a lot easier to impeach them from the halls of pop culture (and the chambers of our hearts) than it is to affect any real political change. Bush could care less if we hate him, he’s the most annoying kind of asshole boyfriend– he never even stops being a jerk long enough to acknowledge our anger. But the bastards of pop culture crave our attention like needy sycophants, so it’s a lot easier to take out our rage on them. In this cultural moment, we’re the child-abused high school bully, pantsing the homos in Drama Club.
It’s exhaustingly self-destructive behavior, like Democrats fighting between themselves– we froth at the mouth for producers to roll the cameras in front of normal people, mainly so we can make snarky comments about them. We manifest our political rage in cultural self-hatred expressed through reality television. But it’s more complicated than that: we also want the illusion that conventionally undeserving people have a shot at the limelight, and that every once in a while (Sanjaya, Flavor Flav), they seemingly break through. We have a tenuous connection with our own cultural reflections, lampooning ourselves while quietly rooting for our allegedly undeserved success.
Does that matter? It doesn’t make these videos any less hilarious, does it? I think I lost my point here. The videos are from “Sunday Knight Productions,” a fake ad agency that promises “cutting-edge, paradigm-shifting, earth-shattering marketing solutions.” They put a lot of work into their satirical website, but the humor of b.s. corporate-speak was kinda played out even before Tim & Eric started doing it. Just check out the videos: it’s funny when people are sincere.
I wish there was a video for the ELO song “Yours Truly, 2095,” to help me illustrate my point. But the one below, for “The Diary of Horace Wimp,” will stand in just fine. I have a hypothesis to relay: Karen Carpenter and Jeff Lynne are cosmic lovers that will be reunited in 87 years with a galactic collision that will either take humanity to its next stage of evolution, or destroy the universe.
Supporting Evidence:
1. The album Time by ELO. A futuristic sci-fi concept album which tells the (true?) story of a hero (Jeff Lynne) who is taken to the future (2095) but longs to return to his ancient lover– an ethereal vixen who remains trapped in the golden age of 1981 (”Remember the good old nineteen-eighties / when things were so uncomplicated!”). In the future, he is provided with a robot that appears identical to his former lover in many ways, but ultimately cannot provide the same lovin’, as she is in fact a soulless IBM. See also: Wong Kar Wai’s 2046.
2. The Carpenters’ 1977 cover of Canadian prog-rock group Klaatu’s desperate cry for interplanetary contact, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” (see video above). The video says it all: Karen, floating through space on a grand piano, pleads the aliens to take her. If 160 musicians and the soul-piercing gaze of Ms. Carpenter can’t cut through the depths of space to reach our anti-adversary interstellar buddies– then what can?
3. Karen’s highly mysterious death in 1983 from “irregular heartbeats” at the age of only 32. How a young, vibrant star like Karen could have died so unexpectedly remains one of pop culture’s great mysteries, along with the still unresolved murder cases of Biggie and 2Pac. How come they never found the body? It’s because she’s still up there somewhere, on the spaceship ELO. She’s waiting for Jeff Lynne to meet up with her in the year 2095, where he’ll unfortunately mistake her for a robot, and set forth a tragic 4th dimensional feedback loop that holds the potential to obliterate the Universe. See also: Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.
Our only hope for salvation is for Jeff Lynne to accidentally impregnate the robot, and allow the foetus to come to fruition (whether that will happen depends upon the cryptic, also unsolved meaning of ELO’s “Livin’ Thing“), creating a Star-Child that, according to Mayan calendar prophecies, will save humanity.
He’s trying to figure out how much time remains until he’ll be released from his extended captivity, currently confined within the boundaries of one long, tired hospital corridor. A jaded hospital guard with slicked-back hair is leaning back in his chair, keeping a watchful eye on us to make sure we don’t help Corndawg escape. The place is air-tight– sealed on each end with heavy card-access-only doors, and filled in the middle with crumpled Doritos bags, goofy nurses dancing lurid, grotesque dances, and a pungent locker room odor.
“If you think about it, it really starts to drive you nuts,” says Corndawg. “I’ll just be lying in bed and thinking, ‘Why am I here? This is a place for sick people. This whole place was built to help sick people… but I’m not sick, and that’s why I’m here… wait, why am I here?’” Corndawg is here, in this cinder block Glendale medical center, because he’s participating in a medical research study for some giant pharmaceutical corporation, trying out a new cholesterol pill. He’s here because he’s trading his body for money in the name of medical research, and it doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. They give him one 5-milligram pill and then he stays under constant observation for nine days while they make detailed notes on the side effects. And then he walks out with $2,300 in his pocket.
Since 2004, Corny has completed eight of these studies– and it’s at least partially how he funds his free-wheeling lifestyle. He talks to my roommate Liz, who’s smuggled him in some fresh carrot juice from Yum Yum Donuts, about where the best places to visit in Portugal and Spain are. In the past year alone, Corndawg’s been back and forth across the U.S. (often traveling on motorcycle with little more than his laptop, guitar, and trusty airbrush gun), down to Argentina, and overseas to Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. “It provides a nice cushion for an artist’s life,” he says of his intermittent medical studies. “It’s nice to not have to hitchhike or hop trains, when you can say, ‘Oh, I have an extra thousand bucks– I’ll buy a plane ticket.’”
Aside from the stuffy sterile surroundings, the conditions of Corndawg’s nine-day imprisonment aren’t so bad. He has his laptop and cell phone and he’s been watching the second and third seasons of “Lost” in back-to-back marathon sessions. Once an hour he’s allowed a brief respite from the fluorescent lighting– a few moments of fresh air on a secluded hospital balcony. Corndawg recommends avoiding the longer studies, however. In an 18 day study he once partook in, the effects of confinement began to set in quickly. Without exercise and meaningful human interaction, he sunk into a deep depression and slept 12 hours a day (actually, I probably should have asked if those feelings might have been related to the medication they’d had him on).
“Lie as much as possible on your screening tests,” he says– it’s a surefire way to guarantee eligibility. “Just answer ‘no’ to every question: ‘Have you ever fainted?’ ‘Oh, never!’ and then play dumb if they confront you about it later.” He also warns against radioactive tracers. “Those stay in your system for 30 years.” Likewise, he mentions, it’s not a hot idea to undergo the spinal tap tests. A couple brazen girls on the floor are undergoing double spinal tap tests, which require them to lay completely still for 48 hours straight. “It’s gruesome. They got up today and they were just stumbling around, on the verge of passing out.” But, he notes, they’re getting paid $500 a day.
Over the course of our conversation, Corndawg draws alternate analogies for his medical trials: at times he calls them a prison, but the next minute they become a vacation: “Sometimes I’ll fly out to a distant city, planning my trip around a medical study, and it ends up paying for itself.” That seemingly contradictory coupling accesses the heart of capitalism– his studies are just another way of exchanging time and personal risk for wealth and freedom. Corndawg’s willingness to bring it to such romantic extremes is either valiant or ludicrous, but it seems to be working out pretty well for him.
the Internet this month, for good reason: it’s a recipe for genius. First, re-enact (with eerie accuracy) a classic “Garfield” comic strip using green screens, hairpieces, and a full-grown man in a terrifying Garfield costume. Then slap a masterfully edited absurdist music video on the end, and you’ve got yourself comedy gold. I can’t believe no one’s thought of this before! It’s like David Lynch’s “Rabbits,” with a Web 2.0 sense of humor.
“Lasagna Cat” also brings to mind the much simpler, but still hilarious comic strip deconstruction blog, Marmaduke Explained– a daily analysis of the cryptically terse single-panel comic strip “Marmaduke” and its its frustrating canine puns.
Because the Internet’s lack of spatial boundaries has rendered the format of newspaper comics obsolete, artists can now express themselves in full thoughts, rather than snippets fragmented by the fiscal restrictions of the printed page. Hell, these days they can afford to make full animations or videos available to a mass audience, expressing their blasé distaste for Mondays or their doe-eyed love of lasagna. So “Lasagna Cat” and “Marmadue Explained” are comedies of antiquity, laughing at holdovers from the recent low-tech past.
The makers of “Lasagna Cat,” an L.A. based group called Fatal Farm, are definitely going places. Check out the Reimagined TV Themes project– their reworking of the “Duck Tales” intro as a Myspace child abduction nightmare reaches new heights of hilarity.
the Internet this month, for good reason: it’s a recipe for genius. First, re-enact (with eerie accuracy) a classic “Garfield” comic strip using green screens, hairpieces, and a full-grown man in a terrifying Garfield costume. Then slap a masterfully edited absurdist music video on the end, and you’ve got yourself comedy gold. I can’t believe no one’s thought of this before! It’s like David Lynch’s “
