Woot Shirt, Sale Ending

The E-MAUL shirt on woot is on the chopping block, so in all likelihood you only have one day left to pick it up. As a vote of confidence: I received my complimentary shirts from woot and I think it printed exceptionally well. And the inimitable Mr. PK Hooker above seems satisfied (or enraged?) with his.

In other shirt news: The sale going on at the Forlorn Funnies Shirt Shop will extend through this coming Thursday, but after that, the prices go up to their previous levels. Shirt it up.

Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove

I don't know what's better: every single seconds of this, or the fact that every single second of this adds up to a nine minute and nineteen second long trailer.

(Thanks to PK for showing me the way of the laser.)

Pusy Gums Pwns The Physical Realm

DJ Douggpound and Pusy Gums Johnson. Together again for the first time. Little else can, or should, be said.

Just get yourself ready for the re-mix.

Stock Shock: Wilhelm, I Love You

After spending time with sound sculptor to the stars PK Hooker (will I point out yet again that he is the science behind Pusy Gums Johnson? Yes, I will) during this summer's west coast tour, I found myself paying more attention to sound design, sound effects, and sound editing in films. Specifically, I couldn't help but keep in mind the care that PK and his ilk take in creating completely original sound libraries for a film. Need a car door slam? Go out and record it. Need a hyena cackling, a monkey screaming, a pencil dropping? Record them all. All original, nothing from stock sounds. And this obsession with uniqueness made me all the more interested in a phenomenon I'd heard of called The Wilhelm Scream.

If you're already familiar with what The Wilhelm Scream is, then just go straight to the compilation film below and bask in the insanity or this recycled piece of movie sound history. If you're not familiar with it (though in all probability you've heard it in one film or another), you can read the history of what has to be one of the best movie in-jokes here.

Highway 1: Rubbing America's Tummy

When faced with the trek northward from Los Angeles to San Francisco, we were directed, by internet sources, to travel the utilitarian route of Highway 5. This road, we were assured in a late night sermon by our host PK, would rob of us one of America's great experiences and drive us past CAFOs (about which I'm sure I'll rant some day in the near future) that would induce (according to PK) at least twenty minutes of rasping screaming from the incapacitatingly awful smell alone, let alone the barren visual wasteland.

As appealing as all that screaming and stench seemed, we asked for more information about this alluded to American Experience. PK said all we needed to do was reach Highway 1, and we would see, and we'd understand immediately why we'd be sorry if we'd missed out on it. He also said we should roll down the windows and put on America (the band), just to round out the ultimate coastal driving experience. We were sold. But I promised him that, as this was adding on three hours to an already full day of driving, I was expecting something pretty damn mindblowing. (Not to mention my apprehension about driving on the side of a cliff for the better part of seven hours (though in my effortless and constant combination of over-calculation and paranoia, I reasoned that at least, as we were headed north, we would be on the inside track, closer to the cliff, farther from the abyss waiting for me to poorly negotiate a hard bend in the road on four hours of sleep).)

Finding the infamous Highway 1 took us a while, and resulted in a few false starts, as Highway 1 is a bit irregular south of Saint Louis Obispo. But once we were on it, we understood why we'd been looking for it, just as PK had guaranteed. Every corner we rounded seemed the greatest view mankind was likely to behold, until we rounded the next corner and nature one-upped itself. Mindblowing hardly does it justice.

Due to an iPod updating screw up (resulting in me inadvertently clearing out my iPod with not enough time to fully restore it) just before leaving Chicago for the book tour, I had no America on hand. I had no Neil Young, which seemed a decent runner up (despite his Canuck-ness). I scrolled through looking for Simon and Garfunkel to no avail.

But driving along and looking at the water, far beneath us, slapping the crag shore, the ending of "Harold and Maude" came to mind, or, more specifically, the music from "Harold and Maude." I looked through the paltry tracks and found, yes, Cat Stevens had made the truncated, seemingly arbitrary music library restoration. I put on Mr. Stevens and rolled the window down, but only half way, because even in the face of majesty and the boundless freedom of the sea, I am a colossal pussy.


Enjoyable as it all was, we were pressed for time and couldn't stop very often, certainly not as often as I'd have liked. But if we'd driven that stretch up America's coast without even once touching the water, I'd have regretted it, and I'm trying more and more to eradicate those "should haves" from my life. So at one of those innumerable best-vistas-ever, we drove to down to the sand.


Juliane took off her flip flops, rolled up her pant legs and walked into and out of the ocean's lip, anticipating the rise and fall from incoming waves, some porcelain sylph waltzing with a giant.

I kept my shoes on, and, as if winning something by technicality only, dipped my fingers into the water's thinnest advances.


Thanks to PK (and of course to Juliane) for an experience – however rushed or hesitant I might have made it – that I won't soon forget.

PK and the WB, Hillside Sushi and DJ Douggpound

I'm a bit behind in posting, given the amount of driving (something in and of itself worthy of a couple posts) that's been involved in the last few days, but I'll do my best to rectify that delay over the course of the next couple days...

On Monday, we explored Los Angeles as fully as our already pop-culture-burnt-out brains would allow. Our tour guide was the ever hilarious and sonically talented PK Hooker, with whom we were staying.( Mr. Hooker, whose day job entails working on little indie films like "Superman Returns" and "Transformers" has been previously posted about for his affiliation with the infamous Pusy Gums Johnson)

PK was kind enough to show us around his place of work. For most people, this involves a cubicle and would be understandably yawn inducing, but for PK this involves showing you the set of "Animal House." As we explored the facades of the Warner Brothers studios, it was disillusioning (though only mildly, given the amount of "making of's" I've seen over the years), walking from a (now graffiti covered) "Annie" street to the town center of "Gilmore Girls," then shuffling mere feet to the faux grit of Chicago, in the form of the external set of "ER."


The evening set in with a dusk dinner atop the hills, at Yamashiro, which has excellent food, but could serve macaroni and poop with the view you're afforded (and that's not to mention the architecture, replicating a palace near Kyoto). One of our ordered rolls was the "Darth Vadar," a dish that I'm sure would have been ordered ad nauseam by the crowd we'd left in San Diego.

Then it was down to lower altitudes and comedy courtesy DJ Douggpound (PK's roommate, whose day job, just as boring as PK's, is working on "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job." Douggpound was the glue between the comedy shards, one of which was the aptly named "Rapping Jewish Grandma" (I apologize if I'm getting her stage name wrong, but, then, just about everything about her act was wrong... and simultaneously the best entertainment of the night: Doug is to be commended for not losing his shit entirely while she "rapped" (if one can call it that) in front of him on the turntables). Awful. Magnificent. She was LA with a microphone.