Thanks to my friend Brian who uploaded this video:
I directed this video for Thor four years ago as part of payment for him being in my short film "Graveyard". The budget was only $100 and $75 of that went to the rental of the space. The other $25 was spent on tapes and timbits for the crew.
Thor never used the video because he was bummed that I'd cut him and his band.
Some of the folks in the video:
•I'm the dude with the jean jacket vest, sweats and glasses. •Brian is the dude who plays 2 guitars at once. •The dude with the puppet is Robin Bougie (NSFW). •The lady on the accordian is Anna Bon Bon. A great musician and friend from my college days. Also, probably the NICEST person in the world. •The dude right at the start of the video is Alexis Mazurin, a CBC Radio 3 host who, sadly, passed away in 2005. •The guy in the fuzzy blue suit is Darkest of the Hillside Thickets frontman Toren Atkinson. •The short girl with the axe and frizzy red hair is Shera from Blood Meridian. •The blonde girl in black (with the whip) used to work at the same bookshop as me. On the set, Thor asked her out on a date. They got married a couple years later.
One of the main reasons I moved to Vancouver was to get into film. I used to volunteer on student and indie productions, before moving on an making a couple shorts of my own (with much, much less funding).
The first indie film that I worked on was Hitler Meets Christ, back in 1999. It stars and was written by Michael Moriarty, who I had a boner for because of the films he'd made with Larry Cohen in the late 70s and 80s. It was my first celebrity encounter. Moriarty is much taller than you would expect (about 6'4") and was always in the bag by about 10am (for the few days that I was on set, anyway).
Anyhow, the film was shot over a couple weeks and has been in limbo for about 7 years. It's finally being released, making it's debut at the 17th annual Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose on Friday, March 2.
The description reads:"A surreal tragicomedy based on the Emmy Award winning actor's controversial New York play. Two men meet in a train station. One believes he's Hitler, the other, Christ. Their unusual pairing brings together two of the most controversial figures in human history. Hitler Meets Christ is a feature length release starring Michael Moriarty and Wyatt Page."
All this talk about the whole Mooninites scandal in Boston got me all reminiscing about a similar prank gone awry in Kelowna back in 1994.
A bunch of students from the college I was at distributed 1500 stale buns around Kelowna city park the night before an easter egg hunt. I wish that I still had the newspaper from back then, which screamed "COPS HUNT BUN WHACKO!" and featured a picture of one of the buns split open, spilling forth nails and screws and pins (a photo staged by the paper). It really was priceless. Luckily, the dude who organized the whole thing has recently posted the news reports on YouTube. Maybe not as crazy as the whole "Post 911/Mooninites" thing, but still fun.
Noah, who is featured in the video, was one of the people involved in placing the buns (if I remember correctly). Also, and this is hard to pick up on without seeing the newspaper, I still really enjoy the subtle way in which the news report seems to accuse the local paper of lying when they printed the picture of the nail riddled bun.
After work, I take a bus, a train and another bus to get home. For all the shit people talk about it, the Vancouver transit system is actually pretty decent. Sure, it may not be without its flaws, but it's still ok. I get around.
Anyhow, after getting off the train and waiting in line for the bus, I got stuck beside one of these dudes whose sole conversation topic is how shitty the transit system here is. (I've sat through far to many of these hour long rants on the train.) While waiting for the bus, he said to me, "It's like we live in a goddamned 3rd world country. The transit needs to pull its head out of its ass. There is no goddamned reason that we need to be standing around here for 10 or 15 minutes for a friggin' bus."
Whatever. Waiting 10 minutes for the bus is no big deal. I mean, it sure as fuck isn't like starving to death in Ethiopia. Hell, I'm not sure how it's even equatable.
The best part was that when the bus finally did come and sweep us away, dude got off after the second stop. A walk that MIGHT'VE taken 10-15 minutes. Can you imagine what might've happened if the bus didn't come? Sweet fuck, it'd be a major cannibal holocaust down at the Port Haney West Coast Express station.
"Hate Song Minicomic, Fred Grisolm. $3, 24 pgs, www.hatesong.com
Vile, just absolutely vile. Yet I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off through the three issues of this web comic collection. Hate Song pokes fun at white trash types in a manner similar to Trailer Park Boys or Fubar, coupled with surreal absurdity that often takes it into more disturbing realms. Witness tales of mail order child brides, psychic blowjobs, bowel movement obsessed “scientists”, scat porn, Goth snipers and creepy weirdoes galore. It’s certainly not comics as literature or art, and it may offend a fair amount of people, but into everybody’s life a little bit of nasty humour shall fall.
Check out new strips at the website where you can order the books as well as potential products of the issue, which are 1” pins made to look like main character Orest’s diminutive nipples. Wear them with pride and live the rock. (Matthew Daley)"
Found out about this only by chance - I was checking their site to see when the next issue was out and saw "Hate Song" all up on the front page.
My iPod is slowly limping its way to the great electronic graveyard in the sky. It's been freezing up and other such nonsense and I'm getting pretty frustrated. However, there is that sick electronic-coveting side of me that is sort of hoping it dies so that I can get a new MP3 player with video. This side of me seems unable to grasp that I can't afford a new MP3 player.
There are a lot more MP3 players to choose from now and I'm trying to work my way through them and figure out which is the best. Is iPod still the way to go? A friend has been trying to sell me on Creative, but I haven't heard much about it other than from him. Zune looks interesting, but I haven't heard any first hand experiences.
It's probably going to be a couple months before I can afford one, but want to start looking at them now.
Adobe's customer service center has to have the worst hold music in the world. It's like John Tesh and Micheal Bolton got together and had a retarded, Deliverance baby. I would gladly take a hillbilly ass-reaming if it meant that this music would stop.
For about a year now, I've been working (off and on) on a series of interviews with people who meet other people for Casual Encounters through Craigslist. I've been interviewing people straight up, as well as covertly interviewing a few people by placing fake ads. This is one of the "top secret" projects that I've mentioned a couple of times in the past.
The whole thing will be collected and released early in 2007 as "The Casual Encounters Project" - following in the footsteps of Robin Bougie's (LINK VERY NSFW) "Ex-Revenge Project", "Incest Project" and "John Project". Bougie will be writing the forward to my entry into the series.
Along with the interviews, I will be printing illustrations based around photos I've received. The illustration will be black and white (as will the zine), but I coloured this one up for fun - wanted to experiment a little with colouring with desaturated colours. I'm pretty happy with the outcome.
This is based on a photo of a guy who responded to one of my fake ads. I'll be printing a lot of our back and forth conversation as he had a lot of great stories -- although I suspect that about 80% of the things that he was telling me was total bullshit.
I have about 8 sketch books laying around the house, each with about 4-10 pages filled with half-assed sketches, strip ideas (in 20 words or less), grocery lists and math problems (helps me relieve stress). This week, I have made a vow to actually fill one of these books by the same time next year.
I've decided that I'm going to sketch AND try to out together a short comic with no advance planning. I will just add a couple panels a week, going with whatever mood I am in. Freeflowing and shit.
Since I'm not updating Hate Song through here anymore (the LJ Feed is here), I figure I may as well use it as some sort of sketch blog. Hopefully this will keep me on track with actually doing sketches.
A few of you may have heard me mention a top secret project I'm working on...Well, here it is:
I am full-filling one of the goals I set for myself when I was younger and writing a superhero comic. I've hoooked up with Damian C, an excellent artist (as evidenced above), but am in need of a colourist.
So, if any of you out there colour, or know of folks who do - shoot me an email at fredhate(at)gmail(dot)com. I would love to see some samples (attachments or links). I'm looking for nice, simple colouring. Nothing that is too overrendered or textured, but can still relay a nice sense of atmosphere.
I'm going to be pitching the 6 issue mini-series to publishers in the new year. Failing that, New Reliable Press will be releasing it for next spring/summer.
I've been thinking for a little while about making a Hate Song hip flask and offering them for sale through the store. After a little investigating, I've finally found a couple places that sell flasks and can do the engraving at a reasonable cost.
UPDATED: Now it is skull only
It's a 6 oz. flask and I would have to sell them for about $25 ea, although I'm thinking about having a pre-order sale on them for about $20 ea.
Here's the question to you -- would anyone actually buy these? I'd love to have them, but would hate to have to toss out hundreds to get them printed, and then not sell any.
So, what do you guys think? I have even just 10 people who are interested in preordering, then I will likely go ahead and do it.
Just a quick heads up about the weekend long sale I'm running:
HATE SALE! To celebrate me finally getting all caught up on my orders, I’m throwing a sale. For this weekend only, everything in the store has been discounted. Shirts are only ten bucks, minicomics $2 and original art is only $15.
So, I've decided to ditch the whole $10 a month sponsorship ad-thing* on Hate Song in favour of trying out Project Wonderful. So, right now can get yerself some advertising on Hate Song for free (until it gets itself all bid up like).
Go to it people!
*ads that have not yet run their course will be left up until they expire.
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