THE COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN

Working in the visual arts, I have seen a lot of really cool things. This is by far the coolest image I have ever seen in my life. We all might as well give up and call it quits. Why bother trying to compete? There is nothing we can do to top this.

MERRY BOXING DAY EVE!!!!

I'm bloated.

TERRIBLE MISTAKE

John Dryden, Jared MacKenzie and I were at a downhill mountain bike festival recently and decided to have a little fun and surprise everyone with a dramatic entrance. Unfortunately, it didn't get the laughs we were looking for at all.

JET POWERED BIRDMAN SUIT

This is just under a year old but it's new to me!

EGGNOG

Last X-mas, I saw this happen in the convenient store attached to Andrew Duncan's old apartment building. It involved two (perhaps homeless) junky-types. The kind of guys who live in seedy hotels.

Artoon by your pal Beadle!

SHOES

"Cars this" and "Cars that!" ENOUGH! The movie Cars wasn't any good! The designs were poor and booooring. Sure the animation was stellar and the tech behind it made it look incredible, but overall this thing raced to the finish line in dead last (insert your moan here). I feel sorry for old John Lassiter. Not only does he have to follow in Brad Bird's incredible footsteps (insert your second moan here), but he had to do so with a heap of a script and devastatingly poor designs. Maybe it's just sour grapes. After all, it's a complete rip off of the script I wrote and submitted to Pixar eight years ago entitled "Shoes."

Shoes is the story of a high-performance running shoe named Dash Krofft ("coincidental" that Pixar has a movie with a character named Dash isn't it?) who is the fastest and best running shoe racer in the running circuit. One day, while traveling to his next meet, the cocky and self-absorbed Dash finds himself lost and needs to spend the night in a small town called Treadsville (or as Dash calls it, "Deadsville").

There Dash is introduced to a whole bunch of other friendly locals; an old army boot, Sgt. Tongue, a flip-flop surfer dude named Jammer, Wavy & Gravy are the comic relief as an aging pair of hippy Birkenstocks. He also meets a really nice high-heeled babe by the name of Bernadette. Dash is pleased to meet these fine folks, but feels he'd better call it a night so that he can hit the road early and get to his track meet on time.

Unfortunately, on his way back to his hotel, he passes by a hooker boot by the name of Pumpy Ho. She asks him if he "wants to get unlaced." Dash politely refuses and continues on his way. Pumpy Ho doesn't take "no" as an answer and starts giving him sass to the point where he gets down right rude to her. She then calls on her pimp, the platform shoe Mr. Groovy, to lay a smackdown on this tripper. Dash, being the runner that he is, is off, outrunning Mr. Groovy easily, but in his haste, he finds himself on the wrong side of the tracks getting shit-kicked by a bunch of wing-tipped gangster shoes. Luckily, he is saved by an old work boot by the name of "Steel Toe" Joe and a worn out hobo/prospector loafer by the name of Ol' Stinky. Joe & Ol' Stinky arn't very smart but they're tough and friendly old coots and the three end up going to a pub for a drink. It is in the pub where Dash finds that something's bothering him; a syringe in sticking into his side. Joe surmises that Dash must have pricked himself with the discarded junky pin while getting shit-kicked in the back alley.

Next morning Dash needs to get to the track meet, but feels that he'd best get to a hospital ASAP to see if he's infected with anything. He has to wait in the town for a week while waiting for the results. The people are all real hospitable and warm and caring. Even Mr. Groovy comes by Dash's place and tells him that Pumpy Ho will treat him like a real men's shoe if he wanted. Dash thanks Mr. Groovy for his fine offer, but feels he should first hear what the results are before hookin' it up with anyone, including Pumpy Ho. Mr. Groovy respects this. Eventually, Dash's results are in and it's negative. The results are positive. He's got a shoe version of AIDS. His running days are over and he ends up living the rest of his short life in the hospital there in Treadsville (or as Dash calls it "Deadsville.")

So you can see why I'm kinda mad at Pixar for stealing my script outright and changing the shoes with cars. Which is stupid--how can the cars even talk or move or anything without a person driving them?! I give Cars 2 thumbs down.

MOOSE HUNTING WITH THE BOARDS OF CANADA

My mom's uncle, Al, lives in Anahim Lake, BC and is a true outdoors kind of guy. Close to 80 if not more, Al still lives in a small log cabin and is a real story-teller. In the 40's and 50's he was a hunter but in the 60's he traded the gun in for a 16mm Bolex camera which he has given to me. He taught himself everything he needed to know about shooting film and editing and used this camera to document life in Anahim. Not too long ago, my mom's cousin, had Al come to Vancouver and transfer his various films to video. They put an earnest soundtrack to accompany the films and Al did a voice-over narration/commentary to the films as well, and when you hear Al speak, you hear a story-teller. He's a natural.

I digitized his films recently (unfortunately from a VHS copy) and will post selections of these films soon. I have three of them. One is on the Anahim Rodeo, another is on a beaver hunting trip via vintage ski-doos and the third is on a moose hunt. When I say they go hunting, it's not just for the sport of it. These hunting trips are for survival and making a living. When they kill a moose, they take every single part of that moose out of the woods with them.

For this post, I've edited the moose hunt footage down to 5 minutes (from 20) and put it to "Dayvan Cowboy" by The Boards of Canada.

click image for Quicktime (05:00 - 11.2 mb)

I'M SUPER FESTIVE

Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm a HUGE CHRISTMAS person. For me it's everything about the CHRISTMAS. I love the Jesus, I love the Santa, I love it all! There's nothing in the world that's better than receiving the presents except for one thing: the DECORATING. I'm all for it and as soon as BORING OLD HALLOWE'EN is over, I am outside preparing the house for the CHRISTMAS! When it gets closer to THE DATE, I usually take an unpaid week off of the work so that I can set it all up.

Every year, I go down to my favourite Canadian Tire with my Canadian Tire "money" (this year I had $86.00) and spend it all (as well as some of my real money) on, yup, you guessed it, the CHRISTMAS decorations. I go bananas over the stuff. This year I spent $400 (including the 86 CT bucks) on new stuff that never existed before! I also got some more LED lights (I have to tell you, the LED lights are saving me a fortune on my electrical bill--this CHRISTMAS, I've calculated that I'll only spend approx. $600 for the electricity as opposed to the $5200 that it used to run me). Last year I broke my pelvis after falling off the ladder after getting fully electrocuted by an electroactive wire and Monkey and Craig had to come over and finish the job for me (I paid them 10 Canadian Tire bucks/hour). This year I was more safety conscious and it went really smoothly with nary a shock nor tumble (WOOT!) so sorry Craig & Andrew, but there's no work or hot cocoa for you this year!

BOOM BOOM SABOTAGE EXTRAS

Here's a link to GoogleVideo where you can GO BEHIND THE SCENES to the Tony Hawk in Boom Boom Sabotage movie that I co-wrote and directed. These puppies are available only on what is called "the web."

http://video.google.ca/videosearch?q=boom+boom+sabotage

There's 5 little spotlights on various aspects of the movie:

1. Spotlight on Mike McKinlay
2. Tony Hawk's motion-capture shoot
3. Visual Development
4. Art & Design
5. "Street skating" motion-capture shoot

There's also the original teaser trailer and the first animation test footage that was done about 5 or 6 years ago. The test footage was originally created for a major studio who was interested in buying a series but they had concerns about how good the motion-capture would be and asked Mainframe to show them a technical test. Unfortunately, some executive from MF thought that it should be fully rendered instead of giving just the requested tech test and by doing so, the buyer took one look at it, figured that this was how the final product would look and said "NO THANK YOU!"

BIGFOOT OPERA

WEINER BOY

Hey, speaking of Craig McEwen, in the early to mid-nineties, he and I had a company called Weiner Boy. We wanted to make cool music videos, live show visuals, audio soundscapes, commercials, etc. We started to collect stock footage and various sound recordings etc. We decided the best way to promote ourselves was to give millions of stickers away to anyone and everyone. Our logo and the rascally weiner mascots were designed by Geoff Coates--in fact Geoff did everything you see here with the exception of the salty old sailor.


Craig and I loved these two hellions! Everyone loved these buggers! Everyone loved WEINER BOY! They'd take the stickers and laugh and feel good. Things were going great for our new little venture and things seemed like they were on the up and up! A few weeks later, after handing out millions of these stickers, we started getting phone calls. But they were not good phone calls. The voices on the other end were angry and venomous!

"YOUR STICKERS DON'T STICK!
WHAT KIND OF FLIM-FLAM DADGUM
OPERATION YOU TRYIN' TO PULL?!?!"

Craig and I needed a quick fix, and QUICK! We decided that we'd need to do a re-release of the stickers but this time on a stickier material. Craig and I went out in full-force with our new batch of stickers:


Sticker collectors the world over are paying top-dollars for the old unstickable stickers and I've heard rumour of some being appraised at about $24 with peel-back backing still intact and about $12 - $15 without. Although the RCA sticker (seen below), was printed with the new stickierable material, they are fetching upwards of approx. $25,000 - $32,000 each (with the peel-backing still intact) because only 50 of these were printed and Craig and I each donated our own blood into the ink which was used to print these. We would have printed more but we were running out of blood and feeling light-headed. We promptly went to the bar and gave them all away.

Keep on truckin'!

Paul Boyd's take on Weiner Boy

Along with the sticker campaign, Craig and I produced these amazing fliers.


I love the Your reputation is 'INSURED' intentional typo. Craig and I then went on to create a fictitious history of Weiner Boy promotion (click on the images to enlarge):


Months after releasing these out to various places, Craig and I saw a Tab Cola commercial where an eccentric German exiles himself via a weiner-shaped zepplin. He disappears without a trace until many years later he is seen roaming the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest (where they use the infamous Patterson footage). It was trippy, hilarious, weird and very familiar.--HEY I FOUND THE COMMERCIAL:



Here is our first demo reel. It consisted of the stock footage we were collecting, some sound bites, footage from our first music video and some stuff from college film school. It was made using the Dvision TOASTER just before non-linear editing systems started to take over the galaxy.

click the hard-workin' gaffers for demo reel (05:31 - 12.5 mb)

CRAIG MCEWEN.COM

Craig McEwen's got a website and Halfsquatch advises all to give it a quick look. The art direction for the site is stellar and navigation is effortless. You can see the MK12 influence! Giv'er a looksee!

http://www.craigmcewen.com

Nice work Craig!

FINISHED!!!

I just finished the internet! What an amazing, just incredible read--from start to finish. If you get a chance, you should really pick this up and give it a read, however I must warn you, there are just a few things you should know before you get started on this EPIC! (MINOR SPOILER ALERT!!!)

1. It's a long read. I started reading in 1996ish and just finished up last night.

2. Ads. Though considered "a masterpiece," the internet, unlike the other famous classics, has many advertisements and "pop-ups" throughout. These pop-ups were very annoying at first, but by the end of the 178,639th chapter, I was actually finding them rather amusing and now, I wouldn't want the internet any other way!

3. The plot twist near the end came out of left field, blew my socks into orbit and threw my head into a tizzy. I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING! It'll shock you and maybe even amuse you. You're either going to love it or hate it.

4. Don't try and download the internet and then print it out on paper to read. This will not be efficient at all. You will just have to get used to reading the internet via monitor (or in my case monitors!).

5. Finally, the internet's not for everyone, as its narrative is disjointed and all over the place -- kind of like a Burroughs' novel or his stupid cut-ups. Though I enjoyed it (for the most part), I couldn't for the life of me, figure out who the hero was?!

I give the internet 7.5 out of 10 with a condition that the sequel must have a bigger role for a hero character or something.

TOY STORY REQUIEM

Here's a pretty good mash-up of two classic movies.

WEINERBOY CLASSIC

Decades ago, Craig McEwen and I had a company called Weinerboy (more on this soon). We did music videos, multi-media work, print and graphic work, editing, projections for live concerts etc. The one thing we were really into was stock footage and we amassed a whole basement full of various tapes and films. One day, Cossette Communications called us. They needed a quick, short video that would help them pitch something to some big client. They gave us 800 clams and wanted it done in 2 days. This was back before home computers were the super-powers that they are now and gear was crap (we basically had to give the 800 bucks to some on-line guy to deliver the final product) but we somehow did it. Due to the restrictions and tight deadline I don't think it was very good and we thought, "Well, they'll never call Weinerboy again!"

A few months later, we were proven wrong. They called us again saying "We need to pitch to some big client in 2 days and we want a video to accompany the pitch!" We took the job. Cossette wanted to draw a client to British Columbia and wanted the video to show how diverse and great the province and Vancouver was. Craig and I went to work and produced a little video. Again, really tight deadline, little money, very heavy crappy gear, a twisted ankle and no sleep. We delivered it to them and said "Well, they'll never call Weinerboy again!" and this time WE WERE RIGHT!

The final complete edit is missing but I did manage to find a work-in-progress VHS copy. I've just included the opening to it as the rest is full of holes, time-code breaks, glitches etc. One part of this made me spew eggnog out of my nose and all over my VCR and I think you'll know what part I'm talking about. Now go grab some eggnog and a towel and enjoy!

click the atomic time-code for quicktime (01:00 - 2.3 mb)

WORLD OF BORECRAFT

Last year friends and critics, were ranting and raving on how awesome World of Warcraft was, so I picked up a copy and immediately got sucked into the world. I chose to play an Undead warlock named Iggy Dread. I made it to the 20th or so level when I finally realized how stupid and boring the game was. If you are unfamiliar with the game, it's a massive multiplaer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where, according to Wikipedia, "...players control a character avatar within a persistent gameworld, exploring the landscape, fighting monsters and performing quests on behalf of computer-controlled characters. The game rewards success through money, items and experience which allow players' characters to improve in skill and power. In addition, players may opt to take part in battles against other players, including both duels and fights against player characters allied with an enemy faction..."

Here's my version:
You run and run and run to various places on a map. When you finally get there, you fight and fight and fight and most likely, your character dies. When this happens, your character, is sent back to where you basically started and as a ghost, you have to run and run and run all the way back to where your "physical" remains lay in a heap. Once resurrected, you fight and fight and die and run and fight until you finish that mission. Once that mission is complete, you run and run and run all the way back to the point where you started and collect some money or an item. Lots of running. Lots and lots of running.

When I got into fights, I usually ended up doing the same spells or tactics; in other words, pushed the same buttons each time, every time. So you run and run and run, and then push the same buttons, and then run and run and run. BORRRRRRRRING! I can't believe I lasted as long as I did. I guess I was in a state of denial. The game sucked so bad that I started to find new ways of entertaining myself--bugging people. I swear I had more fun doing this in the one hour than all the weeks of playing the actual game combined.

STARCHILD

A while back, I met a man named Chad Deetken. He is a local fella who is an authority on crop circles. I met him through some sasquatch folk. Chad's a really nice guy and knows a number of people in the UFO community. One of these folks is a fella named Lloyd Pye. Since early 1999, Lloyd has been the caretaker of a very unusual skull -- the Starchild skull.

Lloyd Pye holds an "alien" skull

In 2001, the skull was shipped to Vancouver so that Chad could have DNA tests of the skull at UBC. I got Chad's number and called him, asking if he'd mind me shooting some footage of the skull. I went to his house in Kits and filmed about an hours worth of footage. While there, Tim the Yowie Man showed up along with Stephen Harvey, the main subject for Craig McEwen, Andrew Duncan's and my soon to be released sasquatch documentary. You'll see Stephen Harvey at the end during the credits. Listen to his thoughts and his wisdomous insight as he encounters the Starchild for his first time. I don't really have any clue whether this is an alien hybrid or not, but I can assure you that the skull is real, and it hasn't been fabricated out of other skulls.

click the x-ray for Quicktime (06:24 - 14 mb)

EDITH PRICKLEY

I hope I don't get any sass for posting this!!! My buddy Greg "Raspyboy" Richardson, got this extremely illegal snap of him & Andrea Martin. He was working with her on the extremely tight-lipped animated feature he's directing.

"Who cares if I only have a half-formed semi-gay smile....it's Andrea Martin! We recorded her on Monday for the new Barbie movie. It was funny stuff; I was asking her about the Mrs. Falbo's Tiny Town sketch she did with John Candy and she did the "Hello fish" thing she used to do at the start of that show - if you remember she did it in a comically deep and loud voice as she basically yelled at her fish in its little fishbowl. Good times."

Mrs. Falbow with Galoshes

In this exclusive Halfsquatch interview, I asked Greg about the other SCTV alumni he's had the pleasure of working with.

Greg: "I've now worked with Andrea, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Short. Though I never met the man, I risked my life once to steal a John Hemphill (aka Happy Marsden) continuity polaroid from the set of "Maniac Mansion" and gave it to you as a gift.

Halfsquatch: "Oh yeah. That was awesome. He was dressed up as "Lenny" from the episode "Raging Lenny." He was all beat up with black eyes. I loved that photo but I lost it.

Greg: You're an idiot.

I haven't met many people who really thought Maniac Mansion was any good. I thought it was pretty funny (though it was made for families so it was a bit "safe" and sometimes you'd have to watch some filler crap to get to the gold). Joe Flaherty and Eugene Levy not only acted in the series but they had a hand in its creation, the directing and writing (In the episode "The Attack Of Killer Keifer," the family is watching a terrible low-budget, sci-fi B-movie on television. The space hero uses a large hand-held magnet to pull an alien's raygun away (using fishing line) and says "Magnetism Zoltar! It don't get no better than this!") I have a copy of one of the episodes so I'll digimatize some scenes and post them. You'll smile, you'll see.