Category: General

Don’t you hate it when cool publishers lose thousands and thousands of dollars because their distributors go belly up? It happened to Green Ronin (publisher of our Spaceship Zero game book), and now it’s happened to McSweeney’s. The latter is having a big sale, and they have lots of excellent products, including these two squid shirts:

get it [here]

get it [here]

Wholphin is a quarterly DVD magazine featuring short films, documen- taries, animation, and instructional videos that have not, for whatever reason, found wide release. Recent issues of Wholphin have included films by Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Miranda July, Miguel Arteta, Errol Morris, and Steven Soderbergh, and per- formances from John C. Reilly, Selma Blair, Patton Oswalt, Andy Richter, a monkey-faced eel, and many others.

I suggested to Quirks and Quarks radio show that they could and should use our track “A Marine Biologist” for the next segment they have that involves marine biology. Their response was polite but disheartening:

Despite the fact that you are the first band to ever use the phrase “peer-reviewed journal” in a rock song …. it’s not really our style. But thanks for thinking of us.

Don’t they realize that 78.4% of their listeners like to rock out? Those are the findings from 37 double-blind trials!

But we did get a mention on the official blog of The Scientist: Magazine of the Life Sciences. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53202/

Last night I finally had a face-to-face meeting with Dr Chris Harvey-Clark [link], marine biologist, zoologist, veterinarian and underwater photographer/videographer. We talked about quite a few of the possibilities. He’s got tons of amazing footage, has been all over the world, shooting whale sharks, Greenland sharks, great whites, etc, plus cuttlefish, chambered nautilus, and much much more. He also knows someone who has a warehouse full of bathyscaphes! And he has one of those old timey diving suits, with the 70 lb helmet, which I’m sure we’ll use for lipsynch closeups.

We discussed what we’d do if we had an unlimited budget. The band would be playing underwater, with sharks swimming all around us. Of course we’d have to have junk instruments and it takes real diving prowess to stay underwater and in one spot without floating around like a yutz. But other, more realistic, options are to shoot the band in front of a big bluescreen, or even a big blank wall, and throw us into a marine environment with special effects. Hopefully we can get a day to film inside a bathyscaphe, all huddled together in a dome looking out at the wonders of the sea.

Good times, and some good burgers too. Now I need to have a meeting with Mike our co-director/editor/producer and get the ball rolling, and try to squeeze some footage out of the other marine biologists I’ve contacted. So far lots of interest, but no footage provided. I’ll try to take care of that presently.

Oh yeah, Chris also has footage of a sperm whale being cut open, and the internal gases causing intestines to explode out of the flenced gash in its stomach. EXTREEEEME MARINE BIOLOGY!

I went to see Lovestruck Tuesday night, kind of expecting the Lovecraft angle to be all that was going for it, but my expectations were pleasantly obliterated. Good writing, deftly performed, and lots of laugh out loud moments. You don’t need to have any Cthulhu Mythos knowledge to enjoy the play – I think anyone who’s seen an Evil Dead movie will get it – and it’s a good deal at $10 I think. I mean how many times do you get to see Cthulhu theater? This could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, I strongly suggest you see it before the run ends. Last show is this Saturday. [click here for more information]

I know you can get “A Marine Biologist” anywhere, but this daily “live” podcast called Radio Free Cthulhu features the track. Also I did a tiny jingle for them which you will probably be able to pick out. I had Brodie send me some of Mario’s wankage that was cut from the album so it’s kind of a Thickets track. Sort of.
Click on http://radiofreecthulhu.com/node/11

Lovestruck: A Romantic Comedy Set in the Horrific World of H.P. Lovecraft
– Original work draws on elements from three classic short stories by psychological-horror auteur H.P. Lovecraft. The play wrenches the themes of ‘The Dunwich Horror, The Rats in the Walls, and The Call of Cthuhu’ from their comfy setting and thrusts them into the blood-curdling realm of romantic comedy. Presented by Enlightenment Theatre Society – UBC’s Dorothy Somerset Studio – Opens tomorrow and continues until June 16th. $10/$8 at the door at www.lovestruck.thatchickensite.com

So, who wants to go?

Today I learned how to tie a necktie. Now all I need to do is get a 9-5 job, get married and have a baby and I’m on my way to being a respectable citizen!

In fact it was for one of two auditions I went to today. The one requiring a tie was for some kind of demo video for a chair that you can buy to go with your home theatre system that I guess moves and jiggles around like a ride.

I met Taytay at the Comicon on Sunday and there was a huge fan there. I stood in front of it and luckily Taylor had his camera ready to go. I thought these were a vaguely amusing insight into my personality.

PS I got that shirt at a Chilliwack thrift store for summat like $3.