Officer-Bob.com Starts His Shift

I was born in Chicago. I’ve lived in this town, this state, this country for forty years. I’ve been making artistic choices of one kind or another for more than twenty-five of those years. More often than not, these choices were about balance.

I became interested in balance when I learned what exactly happened in the world that gave me - of all the billions of the earth - the options I have. What happened was empire. Empire is my counterbalance.

I have spent my life in the interior of the world’s most powerful empire. I am surrounded by proof of this in the form of an unending stream of immigrants, a parade in which my own ancestors marched during the 19th and 20th centuries.

If the imperial character of my home ended there, I might even be a fan of empire. Of course, it does not, and I am not.

This empire, as all before it, breeds its own demise in the form of rampant authoritarianism, official corruption and intellectual stagnation. My friends and I have always tried to stand in opposition to these things, to varying degrees of success.

Officer Bob is one such attempt. It’s a black humor protest of the widening acceptance of senseless force and corrupt officialdom. It’s a counterbalance and a spit into the abyss of history awaiting us.

What I’m trying to say is Officer Bob will never, ever appear on Oprah.

Officer Bob #2: Physical Fitness

In which our constable explores the role of physical fitness in today’s policing environment. Added bonus: watch for the “Ask A Pirate” t-shirt.

Flash nerds: Are you doing character anim with bitmaps and want to cut your SWF size in half? Check this out: this time around, The (Heather) Smith experimented with a new asset building technique. When she did the character builds, instead of bitmapped objects, she used mask vectors - that show the texture beneath. The aim was to reduce SWF size / load time by reducing the number of real assets in a rendering. The series’ art direction as it stands is a good opportunity for this thanks to its use of paper cutouts with more or less consistent textures in the original designs.

As a method for reducing the size of the SWF, it was a big success. Both episodes come in at about one minute length but #2’s SWF came it at 628K where #1 was 1.3MB.

Sure, the dev environment acted weird with all those masks on the stage, but weird behavior is to the Flash dev environment what bling and grills are to rap videos.

Big up yaself to to japnm for the quick audio post.

Where’s That Music Coming From?

The guys at the always-excellent animation blog Cartoon Brew celebrated their fourth birthday today and dredged up a link from February about the improbable Sponge Bob Square Pants Musical Rectal Thermometer (pictured above, business end presumably at the left).

While a complete assessment of the tuneful device’s impact on the development of human dignity won’t be in for years, it’s safe to say that the price of parental failure to closely read operation instructions just went way up.

The Agonies Of Earbud Jesus

Photographer Antonio Perez’s Good Friday coverage in the Chicago Tribune shows a closeup of a crucified Jesus, portrayed by one Rafael Melendez.

Apparently, in order to extract maximum emotion from Mr. Melendez, at some point after crucifixion, his personal stereo or cellphone earbud was removed. It can be seen dangling on the ends of Mr. Melendez’s hair, at the bottom right.

Some may take this as an opportunity to mull over the role of showbiz in worship. Others might simply wonder how much of Mr. Melendez’s pained visage is good acting and how much is reaction to what was playing on the other earbud.

In other words:

What Was The Big J Listening To?

Poll: What Was Jesus Listening To?

• ‘You Have Killled Me’ - Morrissey
• ‘Easter Parade’ - Fred Astaire
• ‘Te Quiero’ - Flex
• Sprint Customer Service hold music
• White Sox broadcaster Ken Harrelson

Status:

Meet Officer Bob

Once, the internet served a different purpose than it does today. When the boys in the 1970s Pentagon basement finished the military communications project that eventually became the web, the last thing on their minds was the global distribution of porn and smart-ass cartoons.

Luckily for all involved, I don’t make porn.

Meet Officer Bob, the first in a series of titles forthcoming from Aught-Seven a cash bonfire satirical new media studio begun by myself and an enigmatic malcontent named Chris Kreb with pixel-wrangler par excellence Heather Smith.

Bob voice: yours truly (wrote it too) with art direction and animation by the lovely and talented Heather.

More titles are on their way, along with the requisite titters, chortles and yucks. Austinians: If you happen to spot Heather at SXSW Interactive this week, it’s best to not ask questions: simply offer decongestants and beer. She might favor you with a sticker…

The Abiding Appeal Of Comedy Underpants

I love the National Lampoon from the 1970s. And I also love the defunct DeKalb, IL rock band named Shorty (who more or less went on to become U.S. Maple). But what I didn’t know was that these two cultural forces, separated by generations, had common ground when it came to comedy undergarments.

First: the ad clipped from the back pages of the February ‘77 issue of NatLamp:

Informative booklet!

Fast-forward 17 years and see these underpants in action in the jaw-droppingly brilliant ‘94 Shorty video “Coopie n’ Me”

Comedy Speaks: Kind Kindly Points Out Venerated Chicago Comedy Tradition Has No Clothes

When I heard veteran character actor Richard Kind (pictured) publicly suggest last week that there might be, maybe, a little bit, something sort of wrong with abject worship of Chicago-style improv comedy, the resulting silence in the room was a little tense.

While the crowd at the Chicago History Museum’s “Comedy Speaks” program wrestled silently with Kind’s blasphemy, I felt like applauding. Improv is a sacred cow in Chicago, and perhaps for reasons of guilt over Chicago’s traditional treatment of cows, it enjoys a support base around here that is fairly called fundamentalist. Chicago improv fans are a fiercely loyal and vocal group of enthusiasts who endlessly laud the form and point to its many famous and beloved graduate practitioners as proof of its inerrant genius.

The unfettered fervor for improv Kind was opposing usually comes from actors who don’t want to face up to the fact that improv comedy, like psychotherapy, is a best-left-private development exercise and is usually senseless torture for discerning audiences. To do it humorously requires rare performers who are funny as opposed to plentiful performers who act funny. The reason there are at least six hundred Jimmy Fallons to every Jeff Garlin is because many, many people can mug for laughs but only a few people think or emote in a naturally amusing way. It’s the tiny minority of performers who can be funny by showing how they are as opposed to showing what they can do, and that is the precise difference between the great Eugene Levy and the shut-up-already Mike Myers. As well as the difference between a Bill Hicks and some Pi Kappa Phi brother from Northbrook who thinks he’s hilarious and won’t stop trying to prove it.

To be fair to Kind, he was not trashing the form in toto, but he did express impatience with The Harold, a particularly irritating long-form improv invention of legendary Second City director / ImprovOlympic founder Del Close. The Harold takes normative improv games to artificially extended lengths, (and sometimes into TV series and improv-training franchises.) Kind, bless him, finds the Harold “masturbatory.”

Masturbatory! And he wasn’t hustled out of the room and into hiding!

Well, it’s a form of progress.

Were You Expecting To Laugh This Hard At Smokey Robinson? I Wasn’t.

Presenting the comedy verite’ blog gold of Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians

(Link swiped from Can’t Stop The Bleeding)

Where’d All These Dudes Come From?

Seeing as the spike in traffic at RW370 is due mainly to my October 5 posting of this YouTube clip showing a Van Halen stage mishap, it looks like we’re knee-deep in dudes around here. Sup, dudes?

The thing about dudes is most of them can appreciate a mullet and a pointy guitar, and so can I. Once, I wrote some comedy for a gear website and I appreciated all over some 80s and 90s back issues of Guitar Player. Scientific tests prove it’s nothing less than dudertainment: Eddie Van Halen fans are, on average, 65.4% more receptive to comedy based on guitar string ads. So dudes! - enjoy these selected humor pieces in the Gearwire Gallery:

Saigon Kick unaware of their limited future

A dude, his lady and a broken axe

Jag Panzer’s Joey Tafolla gets raves in The Shred Zone

Damn Yankees shill for Tom Morello’s effects pedal

One for the brits

Testament guitarist bravely gives his life for science

The Ocular Penetration Restriction Act of 2007

When Republicans emerge from the nation’s men’s room stalls to turn their attention to legislation, there’s no limit to what can be achieved for the American people. You don’t have to tell Rep. Benjamin Sinclair (R-Ohio) — just another patriot obsessed with the safety and security of these United States.