coe·la·canth-V.2.5

Brain

2009-11-08T08:36:24Z

I am currently reading 'Postcards from the Brain Museum,' a book about the history of the study of the human brain, and how scientists through the ages tried to find physical characteristics within the brain to show genius.

It's fascinating and has a story in it so weird and intriguing I think I may use it as the basis for a new feature length film idea. I'd describe it now, but it's too early to elaborate further. Needless to say my own brain is now gripped with this idea....about brains.

...

MY TOOTH FARTS

2009-10-29T21:01:15Z

Here's a new short film I made about confusion....

MY NAME IS POTATO!

2009-10-25T23:54:32Z

Perhaps the most adorable and inexplicable music video ever. I love it.

NEW BHPS COMEDY VIDEO! "RAIN!"

2009-10-25T19:02:05Z

"Ours is not an existence but an utterance." -Charles Fort

2009-10-23T08:05:56Z

"Ours is not an existence but an utterance." -Charles Fort

I am currently reading the collected works of Charles Fort, having found his all-in-one book in a handsome 1950s edition hard-cover at a brilliant used bookstore who had a supernatural/unknown section so vast it actually broke down into shelved categories (ie a shelf for ghosts, a shelf for werewolves...).

I've always had the utmost respect for Fort but until now had never really read his work. It's wondrous. For those who don't know he was the first person to heavily collect information of strange phenomena and curious events unabashedly, looking for, if not answers, then patterns. Fish falling from the sky and the sort...It is from his name that we get the adjective 'Fortean.' One has to respect people who have become adjectives.

Strange and vast things are always afoot, one step sideways from the vision we see as reality. I wish I could tap into this more frequently. But day to day doldrums take up far too much of my time these days. I am very busy, but at a standstill! I am in the midst of a new animation, but can't animate anymore until I get some new footage from NYC and on top of this I already have my next paid music video/animation gig, but that song won't be fully mastered till the end of the week...So I have projects...and yet nothing to do.

So, without work, I just mope around. A typical day consists of me waking around noon, puttering around on the computer for a few hours and then, having literally nothing else to do, trying to go back to sleep again, usually to awake from restless dreams around six, where I have dinner, and then...putter about on the computer for a few hours.....

Sometimes it feels like there's nothing outside of my little apartment. That it's all a hazy mirage set up in this dusty desert. Things I took for solid real people, friends, relationships, have drifted away like particles of sand on a stormy beach. The saddest thing for sure about the post-college time is the realization of how many people one took for true friends, were but friends of convenience, and how, with the closeness of classes gone, these friends too leave, for their own attempts at life or work or who knows. It's terribly frustrating to miss people whom at the same time you don't want to actually be with, considering how they are now treating you or have utterly cut off all contact from mysteriously.

It makes me feel like I too don't truly exist, if I can be thrown away so quickly, discarded, unwanted. My mind reels. Always this disconnectedness! Living alone certainly doesn't help this. But I wanted to live alone. Though maybe it wasn't the best idea.

However, for all those lost and gone, there's always a few true blue friends who seem to have stood by, who call randomly and release me from my mental machinations.

And so it is with a sense of great relaxedness that tomorrow I will go about building a miniature hospital room set for a friend's pilot comedy show. Actual footage of people shot against green screen will be composited into my miniature set. Isn't that cool?

Aren't I real?

Autumnal Dance

2009-10-17T06:12:28Z

I had some left over paint from what I was using on a shirt for my Halloween costume, so I started brushing it crazily onto some paper without any thought.

After a little bit I saw what looked like some dancing creature, so I added some elements to it.

Consider it an Autumnal Dance from a Leaf Critter.

'Killer Buyers' back from the past?

2009-10-14T21:35:09Z

The summer before I went to Prague I became involved in a documentary with Amanda Sorvino that was to expose the horrors of horse auctions and slaughter...I haven't ever really talked about it online since for the project went insane, fell apart, and became literally dangerous for all of us involved. I wouldn't even be talking about it now, but it would appear that the old rough trailer I cut together for it (As I was the cameraman and sole editor for what would have been a feature length film) that Amanda still had has been put online, as if it were still a real thing that is still happening.

For the record, it is not happening. However I thought I'd post this here to set this straight, so as to acknowledge that yes, this was done by me, and, in a true sense, this is just the tip of the iceberg...An iceberg no one will ever really see, for many, many reasons. Be aware, this trailer is dark and sort of grim, considering the subject matter.

The Origins of the BHPS!

2009-10-13T03:04:49Z

New BHPS comedy video!

Garf

2009-10-08T05:53:52Z

All this California warmness is taking a toll on my mind. Sure, it's finally getting 'cool' here, a la in the 70s, but still. I miss Fall something awful! I miss the cool mysterious wind, the changing colors of the leaves, the crackling sound of those leaves underfoot...I miss the quiet night silence and the small sounds of crickets.

There's no sense of mystery within the weather here. I miss rain, moody rain. I miss grey skies! The only time the sky here is grey is when there's a brush fire.
Sure, california makes up for the lack of fall with the amount of horror/halloween movies the theatres show here, but still...

Having been here since January, in this constant warmness, makes me feel like I am in some sort of stasis. It's nerve wracking.

I have a new stop motion music video to start though. I just need to buy a blue sheet to use as a background blue screen (yes blue, not green, for one of my monster puppets is green), and as always, before starting a new project, a strange sense of fear and worry comes over me, a sort of stage fright if you will.

I dunno. As much as I love animation (and oh, I do), after this music video I feel I want to set aside animation for a little bit, and work on some live action stuff. I feel so cooped up working on my little projects....Sure they are paid, and sure they are for real bands, but being able to do them completely alone in my own apartment, well, I dunno, it doesn't feel real.

Not that much does though anyway!

Charlie in the Desert

2009-10-03T21:53:05Z

The other day I drove out to the desert with a friend to scope out some vistas for an upcoming project. Such a beautiful, desolate place! There is NO sound there, save when distant cars drive by on the one road. Literally, no sound. Staggering silence for miles and miles. Beautiful.

Inner Eye

2009-09-30T09:23:04Z

I couldn't sleep. Then this image popped into (or, you could say, out of) my mind, so you know I just had to draw it.

The Hut Sut Song!

2009-09-29T03:32:15Z

This is aaaaamaaaaaazing!

Infinite Jest!

2009-09-28T05:04:20Z

I literally just finished reading 'Infinite Jest' a few moments ago....'Infinite' Jest being the David Foster Wallace one thousand and seventy nine page tome on the horrors of life, drug addiction, and tennis, all set in Boston and Cambridge, all around exactly where I used to live and go to College.

And FREYOW! The book was so long and dense that there were parts I just detested reading, and found horrifically boring, and then long parts which seemed brilliant and amazing in their horrific lucidity. In the end I came to truly respect and like it, but still. It's a woofer. And was nowhere near as fully interesting or entertaining to me as, say, any Thomas Pynchon novel, though that's an unfair comparison. 'Infinite Jest' is an entirely separate thing, a work of tortured genius, for sure. So tortured that DFW could never outdo it and ended up committing suicide, which is something which is very sadly not surprising, considering what the book is about and revolves around and especially in consideration of how exhaustively detailed it is and yet in the end....Well, I'm not about to spoil anything.

Needless to say I am glad I read it, for I admittedly enjoy reading difficult books and the feeling of mental accomplishment that comes with them.

Best part is now that I am done with 'IJ' I can read....other books again!!!

In no order at all, here are the books currently awaiting my reading (or re-reading!) in a large pile within my apartment or within my bookshelf:

'He Walks in Two Worlds: The Story of John Myers" by Maurice Barbanell, 'Trying to Save Piggy Sneed' by John Irving, 'The Mansion in the Mist' by John Bellairs, 'Vaudeville!' by Gaétan Soucy, 'Moving Pictures' by Terry Pratchett, 'The Illustrated Man' by Ray Bradbury, 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut, 'The Elephant Man' by Christine Sparks, 'Atmospheric Disturbances' by Rivka Galchen, 'The Joy Wagon' by Arthur T. Hadley, 'The Strange Case of William Mumler Spirit Photographer" by Louis Kaplan, 'Moby Dick' by Herman Melville, 'Postcards from the Brain Museum: The improbable search for meaning in the matter of famous minds' by Brian Burrell, 'Prague' by Arthur Phillips, 'Between Two Worlds' by Nandor Fodor......

...to name a few!

Ah, I don't think I've been this excited to start a NEW book in a long time!

A meeting of the Minds

2009-09-25T00:49:22Z

Inspired by the amazing visual framing of the film 'Du Levande' (You, the Living). I just saw the film randomly the other day and it blew my mind with its slow, purposeful surreality and sad beauty. Amazing film!

Down to the graveyard with popcorn in my hand...

2009-09-23T06:53:22Z

So this is an image from a dream I had the other night. The drawing does not give justice to the scale at all, in fact it minimizes it to fit onto the page...

Here's what happened in the dream:

I was walking through a dirty, run down street in a sketchy area of LA with two others at night. I was showing them around, trying to impress them I think. We all rounded a corner, and blam, just like that we realized we were standing on the edge of an immensely steep cliff that fell straight down before us into a huge chasm in which a cemetery sprawled out for miles, out onto the horizon-line in front of us. It was endless.
Tomb-stones and monuments jutted out at odd angles from the dark ground and gave off a luminescence of their own. They shined like candles strewn over a large cake.

I noticed small handles at the edge of the cliff, and realized that there was a miles-long old rusty metal ladder, which had been built into the edge, allowing people to climb down into the cemetery. So...Of course I wanted to investigate, explore. I began climbing down the ladder, with my back to the cemetery.

Suddenly I realized I was holding an old-fashioned circus (red and yellow striped) popcorn container in my left hand...Making it very hard to climb down. However I wouldn't give up the popcorn, no matter what the others above on the ledge yelled out to me.

So I frantically and awkwardly climbed my way down into the graveyard, clutching the popcorn as I went....

Make of this what you will!

SCIENCE!

2009-09-22T04:49:52Z

Here's a well dressed man of science.

The Little Stinker is thinking!

2009-09-21T07:30:26Z

Drawn from a photograph of a very old, very stuffed, fetusy baby doll thing.
Note that I've attached a small version of the drawing here so as to save all you all from having an extremely large and grotesque picture of a pondering baby all over your subscription feed pages. Aha.

Once in a Charlietime?

2009-09-20T07:40:12Z

While at a dreadful social event a little while ago, one very funny good thing happened. A person whom I had only met once before, and truly do not know at all, said I reminded him...not of just David Byrne, but of the VIDEO for 'Once in a Lifetime.'

Now considering this video is truly one of the greatest videos ever made, for one of the best songs ever sung, and that David Byrne is second in my Music book only to Tom Waits, well, let me say this comparison did put a smile on my otherwise forlorn face that night!
Heheheh. I wasn't even dancing around or being weird that night, so the comparison really shocked me pleasantly, and reminded me of back East when I did this song at Kareoke once....complete with the weird dancing and gesticulations, and well, woof boy was that small audience at that Boston kareoke place very confused.

In other news I turned down some normal work because of prior animation work engagements. Does this make me insane, or real? I dunno. Stay tuned!

UMBILICAL JIM and CASSANDRA in new online contests!

2009-09-16T00:19:02Z

So Umbilical Jim and my music video for the song 'Cassandra' by Brit Boras are in two separate new contests within the same film site. Both could win 1000 dollars, so please register and rate them both at 100 percent!

The more views and ratings they get, the better my chances!

Umbilical Jim:
http://www.bigstar.tv/film-contest/visually-artistic/umbilical-jim/recent/1

Cassandra:
http://www.bigstar.tv/film-contest/music-video-2009/cassandra/recent/1

Check them out, and again, please rate!

Saint Vincent Price

2009-09-14T02:19:27Z

Because I like Saint Vincent, and Vincent Price.

GET ONTO THE BUSSSSS!

2009-09-07T02:55:28Z

This kid Likes Soul Coughing even more than I do!!!!

Also, unrelated but nice: The first live show of the BHPS, the new comedy troupe I am in out here in Cali, went very well! We had a nice audience and people seemed to really dig it!

Expect new videos online soon....

Yes.

2009-09-03T18:36:53Z

THESE ARE THE LAST DAYS?

2009-09-01T20:48:33Z

So yesterday while checking my mail (the usual junk) one thing caught my eye...It was a letter addressed to a previous tenant of my apartment, from some terrifying giant christian church organization called THE CRENSHAW CHRISTIAN CENTER FAITH DOME. That's right, geodesic technology ain't just for Epcott no more, y'hear?

I admit I was filled with a strange sense of the 'past' of my apartment, knowing it had once been lived in by an Uber-Christian. I also admit I was filled with a perverse pleasure knowing what horror this past tenant would be filled with seeing how I now had 'her' apartment covered in pictures of devils and monsters and goblins and skulls and octopi.

Now, this letter was obviously a mass-mailed form letter, so I took no concern in opening it up. And boy oh boy!

It began:

"Dear Valued Member (Oh you're so dear to us we don't even input your name into our mass mailings!):

I bring you a heartfelt greeting in the everlasting Name of Jesus."

(Okay, so far, so good. I mean, that's nice. It is normal...."

BUT THEN:

"...In these last days, it is clear that the strength of each believer will lie in actively operating as a member in the family of God."

Hoooooold on there, Crenshaw Faith Dome! Last days? Ah, fuck, you're crazy! This is some giant religious dome cult believing that the second coming is coming super fast. Ah, well, yes, the end is always coming, in a cosmologically true way. For time only moves forward. But still, this is religious nuttery.

Though still, if folks want to believe this, okay.....But then the letter goes further, and summing it up, it's just a plea for MONEY DONATIONS. The faith dome takes Mastercard, American Express, Visa, Discover, or checks.

And this is too much! If it is truly 'the end days' there would be no need for money, right? It'd be useless....Instead this 'church' should be sending out inspiring messages or organizing something or well...no.....

They just want to scare people into sending them money. Guilt them as well. And this is gross. And this is bad. And maybe....OH NO, maybe it's a sign of.....

THE END TIMES!

Whammo blammo hammo gammo

2009-09-01T09:38:01Z

It is September 1st. It is the first September of my life in which I am not returning to Elementary School, Middle School, High School, or College. No, this is not some big grand statement, or plea for attention. Just a fleeting thought, late in the night, surrounded by fire and smoke.

'Waltz to Montana' by Lo Fi Sugar

2009-08-24T02:50:33Z

'Waltz to Montana' by Lo Fi Sugar from Charles Pieper on Vimeo.

The official stop motion animated music video for the song 'Waltz to Montana' by the band Lo Fi Sugar.
(Been working on this since the end of May!)