HAUNTED CGI

Sometimes I see something that makes me think that I should just pack it all in, buy a dump truck call myself a "ya-hoo" and sell giant dried sea-cucumbers to passer-by tourists on the side of the highway. This is one of those things.

click image for link

Then there's Warhammer: Mark of Chaos. After watching this I figured the best thing for me to do was to call myself "granny" and learn how to macromay and make really interesting toilet paper cozies and whatnot to sell at various craft fairs.

click image for link then go to the Selected Works > Warhammer Intro

Well, I'm depressed. Wanna see what I can make with my computer? Check it out!!!!

NEW MUSIC!

I've been trying and trying to find something new to listen to that makes me say "YEAH! THAT'S HAUNTED!" for quite some time. I've tried soooo many bands in the last few years that are supposed to be "the bomb" but AHhhhhhh, balony! Wolf Parade have something going on that I like, but they're still not it! Let's see...Spoon's last two albums pale in comparison to Girl's Can Tell. Sebastien Tellier just released Sessions which is great but come on, it's not fucking rock & roll. Neither is Boards of Canada! Sure I like the new album, but I could really fall asleep listening to them despite how great they are. It's just not rockin so therefore I haven't been! UNTIL NOW!

For about a month or two I've been completely stunned into stiffness with TAPES 'N TAPES. They've got it all! Catchy hooks, unexpected turns, plot-twisters, crazy instrumentation choices, great lyrics, and just awesome fun. Move over Arcade Fire. People seem to say Pixies but there's more raw unpolished musical experimentation going on here. Not one single song on their first lp The Loon is skippable. It's god-damn time someone came out and stirred shit up for me. I was getting depressed to tell you the truth!

Speaking of stirred shit and music; Chris Cunningham, after 6 years of not doing music videos, came out with a great new video for UK band The Horrors not too long ago and despite how simple it is, it has inspired me greatly and has got me thinking about getting back into making them rock videos. And hey! I discovered how awesome The Horrors are! I can't wait to hear more stuff from them. If you have the 7" let me know so I can come over to your place, launch a squid right into your face and take it from you. Their My Space site has a track called Count In Fives which is fantastic!

DEEP DARK SECRET

When Andrew Duncan and Melanie Snagg said they were getting married, Craig McEwen got to work. Using his powers of sleuthing, Craig knew that Andrew must have shot a bunch of video when he was a kid, so he called Andrew's childhood friend Mike for some dirt. Mike delivered. Craig phoned me one day and said "You have to get over here right now. No questions. Get here immediately." I hung up the phone and raced over. When I got there, Craig looked like a ghost and I asked him if he was alright. He gave me a beer and told me to sit down and shut up. Then he pushed play. We both sat there with our jaws wide open. Hours of footage. Brutal. It was a train-wreck and we knew we had to do something with it.

We decided to raid Andrew & Mel's photo albums and build a story that would lead up to our video treasure. We edited it together a week prior to the wedding and played there in front of hundreds of family and friends. Here is the video.

click on image for the Quicktime (08:19 - 6.3 mb)

Before the Deep Dark Secret was finally revealed, we asked if anyone had any idea as to what the secret could be. No one could guess. Andrew didn't have a clue so we continued on with the video's secret. As soon as the first frame filled the screen, Andrew made his way to the door and left. He didn't want to come back and it was up to Greg to convince him to return for the rest of the humiliation.

SCORE!

Check out the latest sasquatch aquisition! Found this at an antique mall in Fort Langley. It's made out of plutonium or maybe even pewter. Don't know, don't care. It's a sasquatch souvenir from Harrison Hot Springs which, by my sources, dates back to the late 1560's. His face looks like he's a real hippy thinking to himself "Oh yeah, man, like I'm totally trippin' these tourists out...like they don't know if I'm real or not...well, keep on truckin' or whatever man!."

Good score. Good score!

Speaking of good scores, listen to this. In late November my mom passed away and the day after she died, my family was going through a bunch of things at my parent's house. My nieces found some tucked-away boxes with their names on them and inside were a bunch of christmas presents. My mom would have bought these gifts months and months prior. There was a bag with my name on it and inside was this:
The best tiki I could ever find! It's made out of solid sonowood ( i think) and stands about 12". She found it somewhere and was saving it for me for Christmas. It was so cool to see everyone open up these boxes and find all these awesome gifts from my mom. I have about 100 tikis and this is by far the coolest one I own. I don't even keep it with those other hobo tikis. No, he sits up here with me in my loftice with the bigfoots.

SMASH HITS!

This "documentary" focuses on what computer animators do when their network connection goes kaputz. Seen here: Mike White, complete with protective eyewear, preparing to smash some hits.

click on image for quicktime (01:33 - 3.4 mb)

STUART LITTLE 3: CALL OF THE WILD

So Stuart Little 3 is out on DVD now and I thought I'd share an un-rendered out-take with y'all.

KAMALA IN THE STRAIGHT

Kamala's making waves in the Georgia Straight...

http://georgiastraight.com/content.cfm?id=18407

INDIGENOUS CITY

The World Urban Forum is coming to Vancouver this week and Kamala will be speaking at the UBC Robson Square theatre on Wednesday, June 21st. I did up the flyer for her. The image is from a photo by one of the speakers joining her, Jeff Thomas, an urban-Iroquois photographer.

To kick off the event, Kamala directed a short-film for it. Beautifully shot by Kevin Burton and edited by me. Music by Kinnie Starr.

click on image for her film (02:47 - 5.9 mb)

KAMALA'S AWARD!

My beautiful girly girl Kamala won an award last night at the Greater Vancouver Urban Aboriginal Awards for Community Leadership. She was up against 12 other nominees some of whom (according to Kamala) deserved the award more than herself. For the past few years, Kamala has been instrumental in bringing to light the importance and value of the aboriginal people in Vancouver. The more voice the aboriginal community has, the more presence it is given, the greater the entire city becomes. Click on the first two images for video!

LAKE CHEHALIS

d hFor a few weeks, Jared and I had been scouring Earth from virtual-orbit to find the optimum camping spot. 3 requirements: 1) lake for kayaking, 2) away from civilization, 3) Sasquatch territory. We finally found it with Lake Chehalis. We set a date and stuck to it despite the fact that I had an incredible amount of work to do leading up to (and should have included) that weekend. While I worked non-stop for literally days and nights, Jared was out grabbing everything we'd need. Andrew Duncan joined us last minute and we were off. The weather was damp and drizzly but it made the terrain and our surroundings more dramatic and kept the people away. We had the ENTIRE LAKE to ourselves and it's a big lake. We found a spot and thought it looked prime but weren't sure if it was an actual site but we took it anyways. The ranger came that night and she told us we had "the best damn spot on the lake." Next day we busted out the kayaks scoping out the distant shore sniffin' for 'squatch. We also established a new organization called Adventure People! with our battle-cry "Living Your Dreams Come True!" If you or anyone you know wants to join Adventure People just let us know and we'll direct you onto the right path so that you too can be living your dreams come true.














Johnny floats 300 feet above Earth's surface.















Andrew enjoys the fresh air.
































We make an amazing discovery! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!?!? I'm not making this up. We found this "footprint" along a sand-bar. The rest of the area is all rocky and this was just one little patch of sand.














We discover another startling mystery!!! Someone has defiled this amazing campground with one of our gang decals! THE SNAKES!!! That IS one of our gang's decals! WHO DID THIS!??!?! HOW AWESOME!!! Seen here: Jared & Johnny, key-members of "The Snakes" give each other the "Snake-bite" gang-shake.


















The Xterra loaded to the rims with gear.














I'm a tool. I've always wanted one of these casts since I was a kid so I made one for fun. I used up all the plaster of paris making this bullshit wannabe so I couldn't make a cast of the "real" one we found later in the day. I guess the lesson here is to bring more plaster of paris. That or why make bullshit?

WITCHES' NIGHT

This is a few years old but it's a corker! It was Hallow's Eve and some buddies of mine were rocking and rolling and video taping their every move. I arrived later in the evening just as they were blasting off some fireworks and heading home. They wanted to edit their evening's escapades but didn't have a firewire cable. John Dryden, eccentric millionaire, had one at his home, 2 blocks away and was going to go home and get it. I grabbed the camera and followed him home.

"I'm going to a party tonight!"
(02:45 - 5.8 mb)

BEYOND THE FOUL LINE

I took Kai bowling yesterday and I think someone spiked our cream sod'rs.

click image to play movie (01:45 - 3.5mb)

MY BIGFEETS

Here's just some of my Sasquatch collection. Maybe one day I'll post pictures of all of them outside in a forest-setting so that you will get the chills and your marrow will turn to ash.


Japanese yeti takes on a classic pose.


8x10 glossy of Andre The Giant as the Bionic Bigfoot.


Britain's updated Action Man comes face-to-stinky-face with THE YETI! This is the "Arctic Raver Mission: The Search For The Yeti" I'd love to have the original 60's/70's version where the yeti is a plastic blob that's about knee-high to "Joe." If you ever see one of these knee-high yetis, RUN! Don't even think twice! Just get the hell out of there!!!!!

This is a vinyl dudesquatch that I got in Austin, TX. He's kind of a take on the Bionic Bigfoot from the Six-Million Dollar Man.

A hand-made plasterish Dr. Who Yeti from Britain, a Japanese vinyl Ultraman yeti creep and three plastic 'squatches from the far and icy shores of Nanaimo BC. I wish I still had the bags for these buggers. Craig? Do you still have yours?

Terrible. Just awful. The posing on this guy is grotesque and terrible. His splayed hands, terrible leg proportions, stupid face, huge right big-toe makes me want to destroy this "action figure" every time I look at it. TERRIBLE! BOO-URNS to the creators of this disasterpiece.


From Mezco's Cryptozoology line of figurines. He comes with a footprint and wears a loin cloth. If that doesn't up the "Wow!" factor I don't know what will!


This stupid fucking Bigfoot action figure comes with "ink-padded" feet so that you can make your own tiny footprints. One of the cool things about bigfoot is the fact that his feet are huge? Why minisculize your product by drawing attention to how small his feet actually are in comparison to the real thing? This figure's a dime-a-dozen and can be found pretty much anywhere. I found mine in Charlie Sheen's fridge beside his vodka-pickles. I thought to myself, "What's it doing here? Should I steal it? What if Charlie catches me? If he catches me he'll wanna punch me out!" Then the thought of us fighting in his kitchen got me excited so I swiped it! He was busy having three cigarettes in his gazeebo and didn't find out so we didn't fight. It's a rather dull and kind of boring story really. Nice gazeebo though. I'll try and steal that next.


This is awesome. I had this when I was a kid. It's an AMT snap-together model kit that's still shrink-wrapped. I can still remember the glow-in-the-dark goop, skull femur and maniacal eyes and teeth and when you lift the bigfoot off of the swamp-base, there are footprints in the "mud."


This japanese muscle-bound fuck-face caught me off-guard and I only had enough time to snap off one picture before it headed off into the fake hobby-shop woods!

This is a vinyl from Bigfoot One whose stuff is really awesome! I need to buy some more of his art. Here's the one and only print of his I have (which I still need to get framed dammit!!):



I remember watching the Sid and Marty Krofft Power Hour just for Bigfoot & Wildboy (also known as the poor-man's Chewbacca and Luke). I bet that costume stunk as bad as the real creature. I haven't tried this puzzle yet because I don't want to take it apart to find I can't get it back together again.

I spent an evening with Jim Belushi about a year ago and he had a bunch of these Jeep ads laying around as coasters on his milk-crate living room table. He was sitting in his lazyboy (trying to read the manual to a new washer/dryer combo unit he just picked up) when I asked him if I could have one. Over the half-lit cigar the Belush says to me "What are ya? Some kinda mooch?" When he fell asleep I took one.

USELESS FLIM!!

In 1994 or so, Craig McEwen and I got ourselves jobs as "gutters" for Woodwards. We moved office furniture, equipment, filing cabinets etc from various floors down to an "auction floor" where Woodwards sold whatever they could. While working there, Craig ran up to me, white as a ghost, and uttered these words: "I FOUND THE MEDIA ROOM." He ran off and I immediately followed him up the dead escalators. Through the empty department store we ran, passing the defunct nurse's station/hospital wing until we arrived at a door which read "MEDIA ROOM." Craig lead me inside and there, before our eyes sat shelves of 16mm sound projectors, opaque projectors, over-head projectors, slide projectors, trays and trays of slides, projection screens, cameras, filing cabinets full of 16mm film, and a little box which read "USELESS FLIM." F-L-I-M. Craig and I love "useless flim." We piled everything onto 4 or 5 palettes, and asked our boss what a fair exchange in wages for the collection would be. He told us that he would look into it. Craig and I were willing to part with 2-weeks worth of wages EACH in exchange. A few hours later our boss said, "Gimme 10 bucks each and buy me some beer at the Cambie after work." We accepted of course and made true on our end of the deal. We eventually moved all this gear (and cockroaches) to Craig's parent's basement for storage. For years, a decade pretty much, Craig and I have made little mention of our "treasure trove" but it wasn't until earlier this week that Craig and I had to move the "gold" out of his parents' house and into mine. LOOK AT IT FOR DEAD BABY CHRIST'S SAKE!!!!!

This is just a sample. Here's an old-timey security camera that I am going to hook up to my iPod:


I will soon do a comprehensive cataloguing of this film. They are mostly wierd salesmen training films from the 50's, 60's & 70's and there are some really bizarre titles that intrigue me to no end. Here are just some of the titles:

I am going to have to break open one of the projectors and start digitizing the film. Stay posted because I'll be soon archiving our gold.

BIGFOOT, MY GRADE 1 PROJECT

In grade one, I had to do an assignment where we could do research on anything we wanted. I chose Bigfoot of course. My mother, thankfully, saved pretty much everything I ever did. My scanner is buggered right now so I photographed the pages.

10 out of 10!!! That's 100%!!! Top marks!!!
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The bigfoot on the right here is holding a car's motor. This picture was inspired by the Six Million Dollar Man action figure. On the box it showed Steve Austin lifting a motor.
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Toni Death. There were neighbours up the road named "Death" but they pronounced it "Deeth."
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Here's my skilled rendering of the famous Patterson footage!
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My teacher corrected my word "fur" to "footprint" which is wrong. I do remember a story from some TV show (probably Unexplained Mysteries) where a man found little patches of fur stuck to branches on the trees.
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This story was "made up." All the characters, the plane, "jeep" and "boat" are from Fischer Price's "Adventure People."
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Clearly you can see the differences between the monkey, gorilla and bigfoot. There's no mistaking them!
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I remember seeing a picture of what I now know as the "Minnesota Iceman." Sometime in grade 1 I did a science fair project. I took a teddy bear and put it in a box, covered the top with "plastic wrap" and said that it was a bigfoot trapped in ice. I got a "worst place" ribbon.
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I remember the billboard clearly. It was huge (maybe 20 feet high?--perspective is weird when you're a kid) and it had bigfoot holding a huge rock up over his head. I really wish my dad took a picture of this sign as the bigfoot in it looked really fucking cool. I think it was at a campground in B.C. called Bear Lake.
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My friend and I did find some footprints but they weren't sasquatch. We just really really wanted them to be.
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The bearded guy is my favourite but I think the coolest guy would be the guy with the tape recorder and check-mark above his head. The guy in the green shirt is alright (a little bit shifty) and the guy in the blue shirt is a complete ass.
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This man needs medical treatment stat!


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These trucks are really cool and I'm going to buy one sometime soon.
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"siy" = shy. "cild" = killed. The weird one on the right is sitting by the lake having a drink. He's going to be on everyone's t-shirt next week.


This is the back cover. It wraps over to the front cover with a sasquatch walking up the hill into the trees. The guy here is plugging his nose and saying "What's that smell?"

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What's amazing is the teacher's random corrections. There are so many spelling errors throughout but she only chooses to point out a select few.

I also had the opportunity to meet with one of the world's leading Bigfoot experts John Green at his home a few years back. I had brought this "book" for him to look at. It was pretty cool to have John Green reading my bigfoot "research" in his backyard. I have some video of this and when I dig it up, I'll post some of it.