The Gang's All Here.

Almost all of them, anyway. Some of them were lollygagging in the other room for the photograph.



This is the audience for the Pillow and Pillow Show, drawn by HARVEYJAMES (with a little TM after it, but I don't know how to type that).

Above is before they were cut out, below is after. As soon as they get their arms and heads and whatnot attached to their bodies they'll be all ready to see a show.


I'll get around to animating them any day now. It should only take about 100 more hours, after which we will have everything for the entire movie on tape! Hooray!

But now I have to do some schoolwork.

The Title!

I finally decided on a title for my movie:



This is the rough draft of the calligraphy, by my mom.

See also 1933 and 1935. There are a few more for which clips are not readily available.

Thanks everyone! Now I need more help...

I'm writing the credits for my movie, and it's making me realize how great everyone is to cooperate with my weird requests. So thank you to everyone who agreed to voice a puppet or help with writing or lend us a car or recording equipment. The credits are going to be really good, because I'm having my mom do them in calligraphy.

I made Channing accompany me to the San Francisco Main Library last night to find the perfect font (or "alphabet" in calligrapher-ese) and we also visited the skylight gallery on the 6th floor, where there happened to be a calligraphy exhibition on display. It was quite impressive, and I would recommend visiting if you're in San Francisco. It's free! And, as an added bonus, you can imagine you're me as a kid, because I was surrounded by calligraphy all the time. Some of the calligraphers in the show have even stayed with my family when they were in Memphis for calligraphy-related purposes.

Anyhow, I am hard at work organizing the details of the movie. I filmed all of the curtains and backdrops for the puppet theater.

But there's one serious problem! I don't have a title! Does anyone have any brilliant suggestions? I want something that's short and that doesn't give away the plot.

The main characters are names Paxinosa Easton and Ebenezer Van Buskirk, so naming it after them is probably out. In the meantime I'm trying to read up on gold rush slang.

A Big Weekend in the Movie Studio

AKA A Big Weekend at Home

So, I pretty much forgot to take any photos of the weekend's activities. I will add in some photos for those of you who hate words.

On Friday I actually wrote a script for the entire vaudeville show. Channing and Sunny (who was visiting for the weekend) helped me turn my brilliant ideas into a script, and added in some brilliant ideas of their own. I ended up eliminating the hilarious but dirty jokes that Keith helped me come up with, because I decided it wasn't worth it to limit the audience by including a few dirty jokes. Without them the movie is appropriate for all ages, so I decided to stick with the non-dirty jokes. Those jokes are really good though, so they will soon be available to members of the fan club!

That night we recorded the voices of Pillow and Pillow (Burke and Ty) until the wee hours of the morning. Okay, it was only like 12:30am. I had never met Ty before, but I wanted Burke to cast his co-Pillow so they would be comfortable singing and telling jokes together, and so they could show up at the same time. I think his casting worked out really well. We also ate this pie:



His name was Pyman, and he was delicious.

Then on Saturday I worked at my job, but afterwards I worked on fine-tuning some of the songs. Then I rolled up my hair in some rags in preparation for the next day's shoot. Here is the result of my test-curl, before I combed it out, which almost turned out (after I combed it, which of course I didn't photograph) better than the actual curling:



I was really excited because I used to have to get my hair curled a lot when I was a kid, and it never worked very well because I have really straight hair which was really long for most of my childhood, both of which prevented it from curling very well. I kind of want to start curling my hair all the time, but I'm not going to because I am lazy and because it is a stupid idea.

So on Sunday we set up the greenscreen and pushed all of our furniture to the edges of the living room.



We recorded my song first, because I wanted to do it as soon as I woke up. I was very excited. It's a version of the Mongoosnuffle Shuffle Rag, adapted so it fits with music. Mr. Tusks played the part of Mr. Mongoosnuffles, and he got the attitude right even though he doesn't exactly look the part.



Next Keith (a different Keith!) and Jessica came over to help out. We filmed the complicated giraffe song and dance, which required three puppeteers. And of course none of us know how to be puppeteers, so it was a bit difficult. I think it turned out fine, though. I'm a big fan of doing things I have no idea how to do. I made Keith and Jessica sing songs (the giraffe and beaver) as well, but I'm not sure how they turned out. I'm going to attempt to edit them today. Channing is kind of a confusing conductor, but I figured he would do a better job than me since he has some experience recording music. We recorded some backup versions just to be safe.

Later we filmed the Pillows and Barnaby lipsynching and dancing to their parts. This was hard just because these guys are hand puppets, which meant we had to lay flat on our backs with our arms straight up in the air in order to get them in the proper position.

After that there were only three minutes left on the tape and we were tired so we decided to call it a day.



There is still one more song to film, and a few incidental things for transitions and backgrounds, but the vaudeville show is almost complete! After that's done we still have to film the entire ending of the movie, but it feels really good to have such a big chunk of footage out of the way.

Now to start editing...

PS - Rachel, I'll be sending out your fan club materials tomorrow.

The Poo Paw Team

Here's the team behind the soon-to-be classic song Poo Paw, which was recorded last night:



Mike is the golden voice behind the sort-of-golden cat, Michelle wrote the lyrics, and I forced them to do this.

The song is turned out so well! It's the first one I've recorded for the movie, and I'm really excited to do more in the next few days. Sorry, but you will have to wait to hear its brilliance, but hopefully not much longer!

Here's Barnaby, almost ready to film his dance on Sunday. He's eagerly awaiting the completion of the track so he can get his lip-synching down perfectly.



Big thanks to everyone. I would especially like to thank Mr. Tusks for only occasionally having the terrible hygiene problem that inspired the song.

Now I'm off to get some last minute supplies!

It's Curtains

Curtains for a vaudeville theater! This is one of many backdrops for the very fancy theater in the golden retriever movie.

I think I might make a shirt out of this after I finish filming the puppets.

To make it, first I sewed the two fabrics together with lots of seams to make the pattern below. Then I cut out the appropriate amounts of the top layer to make the pattern. Easy!


Mr. Tusks was helpful as usual. Is it getting really boring to post a photo of Mr. Tusks sitting on my sewing every time I sew something? If so, perhaps you can send him a letter to convince him to stop doing it. Until then, here is a photo of Mr. Tusks sitting on the curtain while I was sewing it.


I just got some fringe to finish up another curtain, which is one of the last things I have to make before filming. I also have almost all of the actors lined up to play the various puppets. We're planning to film on June 7th, which is less than two weeks away. I have lots of little things to finish up before then, but I think I should have plenty of time to get it all done.

Pillowcases

Those who have already joined will recognize these as parts of the Pillow Pals Membership Packet. Or Membership Pillowcase.

I'm in the midst of finals (and procrastinating) right now. I'm really looking forward to being finished with the semester so I can get to work on the moviemaking again. Most of the puppet scenes are almost ready to be filmed, I just need to focus on getting them done.

I have three more essays to write today, so I guess I'll get back to that.

Airnuts Professbud, Child Star

I'm working on a vaudeville child star costume for myself. It now has puffy sleeves. I just need to attach all of the pieces together and maybe make an enormous bow for the back. This will undoubtedly take me 18 more weeks. I'm going to be wearing this in the golden retriever movie. Not as the golden retriever. I'm actually playing two parts, making this movie a perfect combination of Air Bud and The Nutty Professor, two movies I have never seen.



I made a wig to go with this dress, but it looked like a combination of a macaroni and cheese head and a fake dreadlock hat wearing guy. It was really bad. So I'm going to make a fall out of doll hair. Does that make sense to anyone who is alive in 2009? It is a partial wig thing.

I keep thinking "Why did I get rid of that half-used packet of doll hair that I had three years ago?" even though I have since moved four times and never until now needed half a packet of doll hair. This seemed ridiculous for an entire week, until I went to the art supply store to get a new packet. Unfortunately I went to the art supply store that is always out of everything, so they were out of blonde doll hair. They had black, white, and auburn. There wasn't even a space where the blonde hair was supposed to be. I guess I will order some from the internet, even though that seems incredibly stupid.

I recently read this book, which is about vaudeville child dance star and pack rat Doris Eaton Travis, who went on to appear in the Ziegfield Follies. She then outlived every other Ziegfield girl there ever was. She's now 104, I believe. It's a really interesting biography because it takes advantage of its subject's huge collection of newspaper clippings and photos and whatnot to tell her life story in collage form. The story is also pretty interesting with or without the wacky format. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in graphic novels, collage, or famous people from the 1920s.

St. Louis Art Show Fun Time

Snowfakes will be playing on Thursday, May 7th in St. Louis as part of this:

Chataqua Art Lab
MAPPING THE MULTIVERSE
May 2-8, 2009
Temporary art and technology project
founded by Eric Repice and Sarah Paulsen
Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts space
3151 Cherokee Street, St. Louis, MO, USA

More info later. And here at Sarah Paulsen's blog.

Moon, Cat, and Bunny, LLC

The first membership packets for the Pals of Pillow and Pillow were sent out today. It's not too late to join if you haven't already.

Today I made this enormous moon guy. He's not finished yet. I have to add craters and facial features once the paint dries.


Then I worked on outfitting Barnaby. Doesn't he look dapper? I kind of hate this plaid, but it's the vestiest fabric I have, so I'm going with it. At least it matches the shiny material for the back of the vest. Plus I have such a huge amount of fabric that I can't really justify buying more.


I'm having trouble finishing anything today. Except the granola bars. I didn't eat them all, but I did finish making them. In fact, I should probably eat some more before Channing gets home.

I found out that audio recordings of the Oz books are available for free online. I've never read them before, so I thought I'd listen to them while I work on other things to prevent myself from checking my email 1000 times to see if my group project-mates have emailed me. The reader of this one is okay. Some of his character voices are slightly irritating, but at least he's known how to pronounce all of the words so far. I'm up to chapter 6. I think there are probably other versions available, but I'm satisfied enough to keep listening to this guy. Usually when I listen to audiobooks I fall instantly asleep, or try to fall instantly asleep but instead stay awake for excruciating chapters being annoyed that the person driving the car wants to listen to a stupid old audiobook. I guess it's better if it's a story I want to hear.

When I was learning to read my parents made me cassette recordings of my favorite books, like the one about the guy who rode his bike into a tree. They even used the toy xylophone to alert me that it was time to turn the page. Maybe it's just hard for other audiobooks to live up to that.

Speaking of nerdy things that are online for free, the Library of Congress has a youtube channel and a flickr page where you can look at lots of great stuff from 1904, or whichever olden year you prefer. I'm actually doing one of my final projects for library school about the LOC flickr project, so I spent a long time looking at the photos while attempting to do my research today. Life Magazine also has a huge archive of photos online in a somewhat less browseable format. Full episodes of the PBS series Art:21 are now available on Hulu. It's one of my favorite shows, although sometimes it's incredibly boring. It depends on whether the artists featured seem like genuine passionate people or like people who've spent a lifetime looking up words in a thesaurus trying to justify their artwork. Thanks to the internet, you can just skip the boring pompous people. I kind of like watching them, though, because sometimes it's fun to get mad at the tv. Actually, I think I usually just fall asleep until an interesting part comes on.

I'm really excited that Easter is coming. This year might be the year the Easter Bunny comes to ask for my hand! If you don't know what I'm talking about, this informative video will help you understand.

Did you know that Channing has a video blog where he (sometimes, unless he is taking a break) posts a story every day? The video above is from that (on a day when he was taking a break). So if you want to see Channing talking, usually about things that are funny, you should go watch him.

You Can Be a Pillow Pal

I've been working on some fan club materials, and I woke up this morning with the idea to do a promotional video/infomercial so I would have more than one person to send them to. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. It reminds me, in the best possible way, of the class projects I used to do in middle school.

Don't you think Channing is the most photogenic and best boyfriend ever? I guess there's a slight chance you don't know who Channing is, so I'll go ahead and say that he's the Pillow fan in the video.

You should join the fan club. Email palsofpillows@gmail.com

-Fan Club President

boat and beaver

I finished that beaver puppet I was working on, and finally got around to taking a picture. 

Now I'm building a boat. It's almost finished, I just have to attach the mast and the sail at this point. Mr. Tusks was less helpful than usual on this project, which was great. 

Below is an experiment which involves me saving a bunch of trash, as do most of my experiments. Can you guess what it's for?

mail

I love mail. I get really excited to check the mailbox every day even though I almost never have any reason to be expecting anything. When something does come, besides a coupon for a store I never shop at, it's really wonderful. But I also love the other half of mail, which is making it for all of my lovely friends.

About six months ago, I started documenting the things I sent out, because I tend to spend a long time on them and then sometimes (hardly ever) they get lost, which is terrible. I also thought it would be fun (and useful) to keep track of what I sent to people, so I would know if sending more Garfield cartoons would be an annoyance or a delight. A lot of times I get too excited while making the mail and I seal up the envelope (usually I make the envelopes out of magazine pages for added fanciness) before I take a picture of the contents. Sometimes I even mail it without taking a picture of the envelope, so I sometimes get a message from someone saying "thanks for sending that thing" or "I'm such a bad friend, I totally owe you mail" and I've forgotten that I sent them anything at all. Not a perfect system, but at least now I remember SOME things I send out.

So I thought I would share a few pictures from my mail documentation project, to encourage you to send me something. (Just kidding. Sort of.) You can click on the photos to enlarge.






The tiny envelopes got put inside of a pinata with a bunch of other letters for a birthday present. In case any of you are wondering, my birthday is September 22nd. 

Guess how big the leek was!

This morning when I was brushing my teeth, the faucet broke. The water stayed on all day until the plumber came when I got off of work at 3:00. I read a newspaper article that said really obvious things about how bottled water is stupid, and I felt bad.

I really did get an enormous leek (plus a normal-sized leek) in the CSA box. It's as big as my arm, which is massive! We got rutabagas, too! I have never eaten one, so I'm pretty excited about that. Carrots=carrot cupcakes. We have been waiting two weeks for them because we were so busy that our last carrot bunch went soft before we could use them.

I went to the store and spent 40 cents on a lemon. Mr. Tusks followed me for two blocks when I went, until I scared him into the street. I was trying to scare him back toward the house, but I guess my scaring was too vague. Every time I go outside I feel like I have a thousand tiny cuts inside of my throat, because there are floral items in the air. I got some hate mail and some love mail. The love mail was way better.

I made a vaudeville beaver puppet last night while I was waiting to hear from my partner so I could work on my school project. I haven't added the teeth or eyes yet, but I think I will finish those parts tonight. I haven't settled on his costume yet.

While I was waiting (this was like 6 hours of waiting) I also mended those four garments he's leaning on, so now I will be able to wear them in polite society.

I do have ever so many appointments with polite people nowadays. For example, sometimes the bus driver is polite. Depends on which one you get.

Next week is spring break, which doesn't really mean much. Slightly less schoolwork, maybe.

Now I have to take a shower because I sprayed myself with hollandaise sauce when I was making it in the blender.

Here is a picture of a dogtor from the internet. He has hands just like the pig-faced lady:

This proves that 2009 is exactly like 1837.

Party Plannaz

Here is the video Channing and I made for this year's True/False party. As the description on the youtube page says: "When we were asked to make this video we knew it would either get lost and not be played, the projector would be missing a cable, or it would be projected through 15 layers of cut up clear trash bags upside down and backwards onto the floor. And we thought the "idea book" that Monica and Ogechi sent us was exploitative/not especially inspiring/featured the same ideas as the 2007 T/F "tribal rave" party. So we just made a video making fun of Monica and Ogechi and their idea book, and it was played through the garbage bags and no one saw it until now."



The party was really fun. Thanks to Monica and Ogechi for doing lots of work to make it happen.

I think we decided that this video was directed by me and edited by Channing. And I made the Casio-mashing score.

some reading materials

Work on my golden retriever movie project has slowed way down, hence less photos of cats wearing vests and giraffes in boats. But I have a good excuse, which is that I started library school. I have no idea if I already blogged about this, so I will just say that I'm really busy and it is really interesting. Today I went on a field trip to the archives of the California Academy of Sciences. We didn't get to see the rainforest, and it wasn't the "wet collection" (dead things in jars) but we got to see some books and maps from expeditions from 1568 or something like that, some of which featured beautiful engravings of whales and seals and birds. I'm not sure what area of library science I want to get into, but I'm leaning toward some sort of archivist position. I'm really into old stuff and looking at pictures, so I think that an archival career might just be for me.


Another thing getting in the way of me completing my masterpiece is the True/False Film Festival. Channing and I are in the process of editing a video that's going to play at the Friday night party. We'll be in Columbia for four days or something like that, so now I have to try to do lots of schoolwork in advance so I don't get behind. I don't know if we're actually going to see any movies. I told Channing to reserve tickets for the ones he wanted to see, and I think he forgot. I'm hoping to have a full schedule of hanging out with people I haven't seen in a long time and eating ice cream, so it doesn't really matter to me if I see any movies.

I did manage to make an ocean set for the golden retriever movie yesterday, but Mr. Tusks was trying to sit on it, so I had to put it on a high shelf before I got to photograph it. But it looks exactly like this:


Also, it is raining a lot, which is great because there is a drought.

Sometimes I Hate Art

The first Friday night of every month is a big art gallery open house time in Oakland. Of course, the galleries are all open at other times, but if you want to go and see other people who are going to galleries and talk to them or just not feel weird about being the only person standing in the gallery, the first Friday night of the month is the time for you to go.

We've lived in Oakland since August, and fully intended to go to this art murmur nonsense pretty much every month. But things always seem to come up, usually things like me wanting to go to bed at 6pm instead of going to art galleries. Yesterday we finally went and it was not great. Sometimes I get really enraged at art galleries. This time I just felt sickened. Rage and nausea at viewing art pretty much always comes from the same source for me: the art being crap. There was definitely some good stuff going on. The World's Smallest Post Office was there, for example. But the cool things were vastly overshadowed by tons of art that I felt like I'd seen before and wasn't impressed by the first 20 times.

As you may know, I used to paint a lot. I loved painting. And every painting I made was on the back of cardboard from whatever food box I had just emptied. I spent hours and hours on each elaborate piece of cardboard. When I was in Boston I worked as a model in art classes, and the instructors would always ask me if I was an artist, as most models tend to be. I could never describe the art that I made, so I started carrying some of my cardboard canvases with me and showing them to those who inquired. When I did show them to people, they were always impressed (or at least did a good job of acting that way) and every single one of them told me, in horrified tones, "you can't paint that on cardboard." Because it's not archival, which means all of my paintings are going to rot and the paint will fall off of them after a while. "Paint on canvas" they said, "and you could do really well with these." But I can't paint on canvas. It makes this scratching noise, and the lines are never smooth enough to satisfy my ocd. I can't paint on masonite, either, even though it's a smooth archival-quality surface, because it's too expensive. Even decent paper is too expensive. I kept painting for a while, but eventually I stopped, because thinking about the cardboards warping and rotting and the paint falling off got me discouraged.

So, basically, the feeling I got from the art galleries was "I wish I had money so I could buy masonite." But, more specifically, "I wish I had the money that these people who are doing a shitty job with their art supplies have."

Maybe after I get a real job I will take up painting again. I'm not sure, though. Right now I don't really even have any desire to paint. There are so many things that seem more exciting. So for now I'm going to continue making videos, because it's much cheaper (sort of) and they last forever no matter what shit you use to make them.

We got our own greenscreen last night, so now we can finish filming the golden retriever movie whenever we please.

Chicago MG Fest

My video Snowfakes will be screening in Chicago next Saturday, January 24th as part of the multi-city Motion Graphics Festival. Snowfakes will be playing during the "Mashitude" event, which looks really interesting. It's an installation showcase, which sounds like much more fun than a plain old video screening. I wish I could go, but alas! I am far from Chicago, and since they just informed me of this today, it's short notice for me. But if you're in Chicago, I would definitely recommend checking it out if you can stand to go outside without your limbs being frost-bitten off.

Also, Channing and I will be jet-setting (or, um, Geo-Prizm-setting) to LA in a few weeks to be dancers in an episode of this show:

We are very excited.

Barnaby Bathes

He had some loose furs after he was sewn, so he had to take a bath. He still has quite a lot of loose furs, to be honest, but there's plenty of bathing time left before he goes on stage/film.



He's named for my childhood bff cat Barney Anne Foster-Stiltsken, to whom he bears a striking resemblance. I changed his name to Barnaby because he's a boy and Barney is clearly a girl cat's name. Barney was named after Barney the Bear when I was like two or however old I was when I decided to start talking. An example of Barney the Bear's work:

Barnaby A. Stiltsken

A cat in progress.

I wish you non-seasonal happiness

We didn't go out for New Year's Eve. I have a somewhat irrational hatred for this "holiday" as it is so terribly arbitrary. Maybe it's just because I'm constantly making resolutions that aren't year-based. Or because I think it's just an excuse to get drunk, and if you want to get drunk why do you have to wait until December 31st anyway? Or maybe it's just that my heart is three sizes too small.

But I love Christmas. See:


Yesterday we sent 31 variously-sized pieces of mail, including some New Years Cards which I felt it necessary to make instead of printing more Christmas cards after Christmas was over. I'll post a photo after the packages start to arrive. There was a terrible line after us when we left the Post Office. Channing said "that was really fun, but it would be more fun if someone mailed us back." Which some people sometimes do, and it is indeed very fun.

One of the packages was this tiny baby hat, which is not completed in this photo:

It's for a tiny baby, so it didn't fit on my head once it was done. But I think I may have made it far too big, so it might not fit her until she's five or something. I've never made a hat for a human before, so it would have been easier if I'd had her to try it on instead of using an approximately baby-head-sized mixing bowl.

I stuffed my giraffe.


And I had this amusing holiday dream, but it's taking 1000 hours to upload, so you can just look at my youtube channel in a while if you want to hear me talking about Jimmy Durante kittens. (Update: it finished! )

Maybe we will paint the living room sometime in the next four days. We are finishing up the "small" home improvement projects now, so maybe we'll have leftover energy for moving on to the main project. Maybe tomorrow would be better.