MadMup.com

Being involved with the improv group has given me opportunities I probably wouldn’t have had otherwise. I’ve met people I would never have known, I’ve performed places I never would have been, and I’ve made (a little) money I never would have.

One of the members of the group works at the local TV station. He “produces,” which I’m still not entirely clear on what that means. What I do know, though, is that he also creates commercials for local businesses. He’s used other members of the improv group in some commercials and I always thought it would be neat to be in one.

About a month ago I got an email from him: “Hey, I have an idea for a commercial with a place for you – interested?” I tried to respond in a calm, cool, and collected manner and failed horribly. I think my response was along the lines of, “YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” with maybe a few more exclamation points.

He explained that his idea was a sequel to a commercial he’d made that was already running. In it, a college student has bought a CD player that turns out to be defective – it shoots CDs out of it like rounder, less-pointy throwing stars. The end of the commercial has him getting hit in the face with an ejected CD. The point of it is that… uh, the store sells used books. Or something. I’m not entirely sure. It’s a commercial for University Bookstore, so it had something to do with textbooks. In the sequel, I’d be playing the part of a sleazy shop owner that the student was trying to return the CD player to.

We filmed the commercial at the local TV studio, and it was neat to see behind the scenes. He gave me a quick tour and I saw the set where the newscasters… uh, cast the news. I also saw the control room and the editing rooms and even the extra sportcoats and ties they have available for the anchors.

Our “set” was the storage room upstairs. There wasn’t much room – the camera was set up on the stairs, there was a guy under the table the CD player sat on, and the two of us “actors” in a little area, crouched down so we could fit in the frame. After a few takes, someone came and told us that they could hear us in the studio where they were prepping for the 5:00 newscast. Whoops. We went outside and ran through it a few times and killed some time until they were done, then went back up to the “set” and got it on tape… after 15-or-so takes.

A couple weeks later at improv rehearsal I asked the producer how it went. “Uh…,” he started. “The good news is I brought you a copy!”

The bad news, as it happened, is that the business opted not to use the commercial. He didn’t know why, as they hadn’t given any reason. Since it was a direct sequel to a commercial they had opted to use and it used many of the same elements and addressed the year-end issue of returning textbooks, there was really only one reason they could possibly have had for rejecting it. It had to be because I was in it – I was the only changed variable, so it must have been the reason.

Ah, well. It was a fun experience, and I’m glad I had the opportunity. He’s said he’ll try to get me in something in the future, but I’d guess if he wants to stay in “the biz” he’ll realize his folly and steer clear of me.

I have two options for you to view the commercial if you’d like. First I have a downloadable file (4Mb, requires Quicktime to view). That’s a little higher quality, but the following YouTube video might be more accessible for the average user.

And there you go: an exclusive, never-aired and never-to-be-aired commercial starring yours truly.

Earlier this year I bought an iPod. At the time seemed like the best solution to my music-playing and –holding needs. And, really, the iPod’s a good device. The things I don’t like about the iPod are endemic to me:

• I don’t like the scroll-y wheel. It’s touch-sensitive and that’s cool and all, I just never liked it. I don’t like the “feel” of it and I don’t like using it.
• I don’t like that I have to change a setting in the main menu to randomize my music, and that my music is either randomized or not.
• I really, really don’t like that I have to use iTunes to manage the music that goes on the iPod. I know that I am in a very small minority here, because any time I mention that I don’t like iTunes people look at me like I have a hand growing out of my scalp and they say, “Really? I love iTunes!” I’m aware that people use it and like it. I’ve used it and know how to use it, I just don’t like it. I don’t like how it organizes my music, I don’t like how hard it is to get the correct album cover picture for individual songs, and I don’t like its layout. (As an aside, I’ve also had iTunes completely mess up two separate Windows installs, to the point where I had to reinstall Windows completely. For my iPod I actually used my G4 Mac and its iTunes so it would stay happy in its own environment.)

But, really, the iPod is a fine piece of equipment and I have no problem recommending it to people.

A couple of months ago a friend at work started talking up the Microsoft Zune, a soon-to-be-released MP3 player. I had heard about it, of course, but he was pretty fired up about it. I liked what I was reading about it, but already had an iPod, so what was I going to do about it?

As it happened, some of us techs met for lunch on November 14, the day the Zune was released. Ryan (the aforementioned friend) and I were talking about going to Best Buy after work to play around with one and the question came up, “Are you going to buy one?” At this point I must say I was interested in getting one, but I didn’t really see how I was going to work it. Ryan was planning to get one for Christmas, and even had his wife talked into it already. I said, “If I could find someone to sell my iPod to I’d probably get one.” Ryan’s answer: “eBay!!!” (This isn’t just his answer to this, it’s pretty much his answer to just about anything. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had stock in the company.) I, of course, don’t trust eBay and don’t want to mess around with it, and that doesn’t help me get a Zune that very day.

At this point another tech spoke up and said, “I’ll buy your iPod from you.” Sweet! We worked it out that he’d get me the cash after work, and after his cash and the nice little Best Buy Rewards discount coupon I had, I didn’t end up having to spend any of my own money on the Zune. Super sweet!

The Zune comes in three colors: white, black, and brown. I had no interest in white and was planning to get the black. My iPod was black and it seemed to make the most sense to me. Enter Ryan:

“No, dawg! You gotta get the brown! That’s the distinctive color! It’s what all the cool kids’ll have!”

I’ll never be exactly sure why, but I let him bully me into the brown. The salesguy said there was only one brown left, a bunch of black had sold, and that NObody had bought a white one. Okay, fine. Brown it is. Done & done.

I’ve had my Zune for almost a month, now, and I have to say: I love it.

• I like the bigger screen. Yes, it’s the same resolution as the iPod screen, but it’s bigger. Album art takes up the upper two-thirds of the screen when the song is playing, and it’s easily visible. I don’t know if it’s exactly a golden rectangle, but it’s in that direction and I wonder if that’s part of why it’s so pleasing to me. Pictures and videos are actually shown in widescreen (you hold it so the controls are on the right), and look really, really good.
• I like the simple menu interface. When you go into an album or an artist list, you are giving the option at the top of the list to “Play all” or “Play shuffled.” I really, REALLY like that. (For some reason, though, it doesn’t give you the “Play shuffled” option when you look at a playlist. If I want to play a playlist shuffled, I have to do the same thing I did on the iPod – change a setting in the main menu. I hope this gets changed in a future software update.)
• The click wheel is just that: clicky. I like that, too. I must respond to tactile interfaces, as The radio dial in my car has a “click” feel when I turn the knob and I like that as well. The Zune “wheel” actually functions more like the arrow keys on a keyboard, and its specificity is right up my alley.
• While it’s not a big deal, I also like that I can set any picture I have as a background for the main menus.
• The software used to manage content is basically a slightly different version of Windows Media Player, so it’s familiar and easy (for me) to use. It seems to me that it would have been easy to just use WMP for the content management – in fact, I would have preferred it. Oh, well. I still much prefer the Zune software to iTunes.

One of the big selling points for the Zune is that it has wireless capabilities. Right now that means you can send pictures or songs to other Zunes, but there’s hope for more functionality later. The music transfers have a 3-day/3-play policy – after one of those milestones is hit, the receiver can’t listen to it any more and would need to get their own licensed version. There’s been a lot of griping that it’s only 3-days or 3-plays, but I think it’s a neat feature for introducing someone to new music. Pictures don’t have the time limit on them. This transferring is the basis for Microsoft’s adline for the Zune: “Welcome to the social.”

I have yet to play with the wireless transfer, but have seen real-time videos of it working and it’s speedy and easy to use. “Oh!” you say. “You can test the wireless transfer when Ryan gets his at Christmas!” A fantastic idea, certainly. What better way to put the player through its paces than by testing it with another tech? There’s only one problem: it’s hard to test things with someone who’s a welsher. Ryan’s decided he’s not getting a Zune and instead has ordered a Creative Zen. Hoser.

I don’t really care, though, because I really do like my Zune. I might never transfer music to anyone from it and I might only use the FM radio feature to show other people it can be done, but it holds all my music and the rip of Garden State I did looks really, really good on it.

I’m just a little bummed that there was no ice cream involved.

My friend Kat has gone back to school this year to pursue a Graphic Arts degree. She already has one or two other degrees, but after working in a design-related job for a few years, she’s decided she wants to be more formally educated in the subject.

“Good for you!” I said when she was planning her collegiate return. “It’ll be tough and you’ll be busy, but good for you. I’m all for it!”

It was easy for me to back her decision because

a) I wasn’t the one going back to college.
b) It didn’t really mean any extra work for me.

While a) is still dependable and trustworthy, b) has decided to laugh at me and poke me with sticks while dancing around me singing, “I lied! I lied! Ha ha, I lied!”

See, a Graphic Arts major starts off in art classes. While I have been the subject of a few “30-second sketches,” it still wasn’t really any extra work for me. But then, a few weeks ago, I got this call:

“Monkey?” (Everyone’s “monkey” these days. I’m not sure how it happened, but it’s there, so what can you do?) “Monkey, how would you like to go to an art showing with me?”

(If you touch a pill bug, it will curl up into a little ball. If you suggest weird things to me, one eyebrow will raise and one will lower. They are the same sort of involuntary, programmed reaction.)

“An art show, eh?” I said. “I’m not so sure about that…” All art shows, as I’m sure you are aware, are pretentious and ridiculously self-important. There are no exceptions to this rule. I had no desire to go see a Barbie doll tied to a panda with tooth floss as a way to represent the subjection of women in China. I had no need of a “students whose work means something” injection. My immunity was plenty built-up, thank you.

But Kat can be very persuasive, and she was going to get extra credit for going to these things. So I went. And… it wasn’t that bad. There were even several pieces I enjoyed. In fact, I had many different reactions to the many pieces, so the showing had the desired effect. On one I liked the colors. On another I liked the emotion expressed. This one was juvenile, thrown-together, and ridiculous, but that one used layers in an interesting way. Honestly, after we left, I admitted that I had actually enjoyed it.

You know what that means, right? It means I get to go to more showings. The second one we went to was similar to the first one – several different artists, some good some not so much. The third showing was one artist, sort of a graduate thesis kind of thing. While I could appreciate the thoughts and feelings behind her paintings, I didn’t really care for the paintings themselves.

The fourth showing was actually the same night as the third, in the room right next door. This was an undergraduate show and looked like one. Remember my fears of going to a showing of “students whose work means something”? Yeah, that’s what this show was. The room was dark, there was a DJ doing the whole techno-music-with-turntables thing, and there were all sorts of ridiculous “pieces:”

• a girl sitting under an umbrella with big plastic raindrops labeled “war” and “hunger” and what-have-you suspended over her
• a guy tied with thick ropes cutting himself free with an ACTUAL BUTCHER KNIFE
• a girl knitting yarn using 10-foot knitting needles
• a girl standing on… something, wearing a 6-foot hoop skirt
• some sort of segmented, jointed dragon-thing hanging from the ceiling
• a guy dressed in all black, bound, gagged, and blindfolded lying on the floor under papier-mâché scissors suspended from the ceiling

That last fellow almost got himself kicked a few times just while we were there. Lying on the floor of a darkened room doesn’t seem like a good career move, but should get him nice and used to suffering for his “art.”

As soon as we walked into this one, Kat grabbed my arm and warned me not to “make fun of this one until we left.” It was difficult, but I did my best. Afterward she agreed it was ridiculous and I reminded her that this was exactly the sort of thing that caused my eyebrows to do what they do. She had gone specifically for the grad student show, but felt we really couldn’t pass up the right-next-door freak show while we were there.

This past Friday we went to a show that had three parts to it: a collection of one woman’s paintings, a collection of technical drawings from a few different people, and some wire-and-glass sculptures done by two women. This was a return to some sort of normalcy for me, and I went back to liking some and not liking others. I particularly enjoyed the computer-rendered technical stuff, which wasn’t too surprising.

After that show there was another one downtown that we went to. Most of the shows are named, I just can’t remember what they’ve been named. This one, though, was named “Blink,” and featured a few works of an electronic nature. One piece had participants defending Earth from alien attack by singing karaoke (Kat participated, saved the Earth, and got a patch/badge for her troubles). Another piece was a big balloon that flashed when touched. And the biggest piece was BioHEX41, complete with the two “artists” dressed in DEVO-like outfits surveying people on their eating habits and moods before having those people “interact” with the sculpture and recording the results (the results were a series of flashing lights, and it seemed to be interesting to them that my results included flashing red lights near the “tail”). While this exhibit was in the direction of the freak show, it was more enjoyable – most likely because the participants seemed to be having a bit more fun, and also because it was electronic in nature.

Art is a funny thing. To some, the best art is realistic, recreating humanity at its best and worst. To others, the best art is abstract, recreating… man, I don’t know. I’ll never be a Pollock fan myself, but I sort of understand that other people can be. In the end, I’m learning that art is about extracting some sort of reaction, and thoughtfulness, revulsion, and amusement can, in this case, sometimes be equal.

But I will always believe that there’s a reason some will be “starving artists.” It’s because they should be. Weirdos.