Flew up to Oregon with ol’ Joe Hartzler to meet up with ol’ Chip Conrad and do an improv show. It went well, considering half the audience were straight laced church people and half were drunk people who kept yelling out “Vagisil.” And the fact none of them had ever heard of improv before. But we eventually got em and I think they had a good time.
Then Chip drove us out to this park and we saw this waterfall, which doesn’t look big, was was actually like 160′ tall. Crazy. I took a bunch of shots on my iPhone and combined them to make these. They get a lot bigger when you click them.
From an email exchange:
Me: “So when are we going to have the kind of relationship like Vincent Chase has with Eric?”
Manager: “A relationship where one guy is pretty but lacks talent and the other guy is a douchey hanger-on? um, I think it’s already there”
Awesome.
Also, mom, this references a tv show you don’t watch.
President Gerald Ford used to play center for University of Michigan. He rocked it. They went undefeated a couple seasons. As President, he used to have them play the school’s theme song instead of Hail to the Chief. He was voted a collegiate all star, too. Oh and in a golf tourney he hit a hole in one. What I would like you to take away from this is that he was an accomplished athlete.
Then he fell down a couple times, I guess.
So Chevy Chase made fun of him as a bumbling fool and we all kind of remember him as a bumbling fool. Then Chevy went on to make some very funny movies, so that, like, made Chevy’s side of the argument that much more compelling.
I bet Ford was piiiiissed.
But then Chevy went on to make many, many horrible movies. And then he tried being a late night talk show host and was even worse than Jimmy Fallon and Magic Johnson. And I feel the most awesome part of it was that, while impersonating Ford’s bumblingness, Chevy really hurt his back a lot. So he took pain pills and became addicted to them. Ford fell down but then got up, addiction-free, and signed the Helsinki Accords with Breshnev.
I’m not sure what the point of this is, other than Gerald Ford was President, and Chevy Chase is now trying a comeback as an ensemble performer in a very funny sitcom fronted by the Talk Soup guy.
Also, hi to Jen at ISI! Make sure people treat my dad with some respect, please.
William Henry Harrison’s father signed the Declaration of Independence. As a boy, William used to think he wanted to be a doctor. To help people. His people.
His father died. William was broke and couldn’t finish school. He talked to a friend of his father in the army. He joined the next day and was sent to fight the Indians. He met a girl and they eloped.
Tecumseh was an Indian leader. His childhood was filled with vicious attacks from Americans, seeking revenge from the actions of his tribe. His brother was a religious teacher among the Indians. He gained a following as the two waged a war against the Americans in Indiana, then known as the Northwest Territories. Tecumseh battled for land for his people; so did Harrison.
While Tecumseh traveled to find support from other tribes for the war, Harrison attacked his brother. The Prophet, as his brother was known, attacked in surprise. He killed many but was defeated. Tecumseh was known as a great leader. Enigmatic, well spoken and energetic.
Eventually, he was killed by Harrison.
The Battle of Tippecanoe, the New Madrid Earthquake, Prophetstown, the Red Sticks, and Grouseland. Do any of these names matter?
Years later, Harrison was elected President. He died 32 days later. A footnote. He became an exercise in Constitutional law and the cause of the 25th Amendment. What do you care? What do I care? What of the people he loved? What of the people he killed? This all moves on and nobody cares to look too far behind them. It’s hard to translate what it is you see.
I plan on being in Indiana in 18 months. Maybe I’ll rent a car and go see the plains where Tecumseh died.
The white guy is Hugh Scott, who’s super funny. The older guy’s name is Lee and he was a high school principal in New York for like thirty years. He can barely walk. But he was real nice. Not that people who can barely walk usually aren’t.
I’ve already done President Franklin Pierce, but didn’t like the first one. You deserve better. So, let’s try this again:
In 1853, President-elect Franklin Pierce and his family were traveling together by train. It jumped the track, rolled down the embankment, and the couple watched as their only son, Benny, had his head nearly torn from his body. He was eleven. Franklin and Jane’s other two children never made it past early childhood, and they lost their third just two months before his father’s inauguration.
Twenty years earlier, Pierce was a war hero known for his apetite for partying. He had just been elected as Congressman. Jane was very religious, a shy and frail girl. Although she had always hated Washington, she married the young career politician and instantly badgered him to resign. This would go on for decades. She was a fierce proponent of temperance; Franklin was an alcoholic. They both contracted tuberculosis, and would have bloody coughing fits throughout their lives.
It was a surprise to nearly everyone when Franklin was nominated for President, a true dark horse candidate. Neither Jane nor young Benny wanted Franklin to win the presidency, but Franklin convinced his wife that it would be helpful to their son’s future success. Upon Benny’s death, Jane’s tenuous hold on sanity was broken, and she spent her years in the White House wearing black and hidden away in the residency, writing constant letters to her dead child, a shadow of her old self.
Saddled with an ever dividing nation, Franklin’s drinking became worse. After his term ended, he remarked there was nothing left to do but drink. Jane eventually died from tuberculosis. Franklin, on the wrong side of history and disdained for his politics, died from a rotted liver and was buried next to his wife and three children.
So I’ve been working on a screenplay the last few weeks about my time in school. I went to a tiny, very conservative little Bible school in the plains of Wyoming in the mid-90’s. It’s been an interesting journey trying to piece together things from years ago… trying to find themes in my life.
It’s also been a journey remembering who I was and what I valued all those years ago. The struggles of a 19 year old. It’s strange… I am still very much that kid and yet very much am not. Here I am driving my little hatchback around LA imagining myself to be this hipster urbanite actor-type, still trying to connect myself with the friends from those days, now scattered around the world as missionaries and pastors and popping out hundreds of babies. I wonder what they must think of me now, if they are impressed or disappointed.
I spent 13 years in the ministry. Not as a priest, as most people understand that term, although for a couple years I was a preacher. For a couple stretches I was interning at churches or working part time at a church while doing other things. A lot of the years I was traveling in an improv group, just trying to be funny. But even then we were playing many churches, seeing twenty thousand youth group kids a year. And there I was still working out what it was I thought I had figured out years ago on the prairie, taking time out each show to share what I understood to be a message of love and hope.
At the school, the message of love and hope was there, but it was also infused with a thick layer of guilt and rules and a strict sense that God works through perfect morality, which I could not live up to. (I didn’t realize then that no one could and it was all sort of a group-induced fairy tale.) It was a time of moments of breathtaking freedom during just crushing years. Maybe that’s not actually how it was. Maybe that’s how I grew to remember it. It doesn’t help that a 19 year old kid is already the victim of paralyzing self-doubt and insecurities. Much less the idea being reminded daily that the Creator of the Universe, the God of Isaac and Abraham, Yahweh, the Judge of all men’s souls knows I masturbated and WAS NOT PLEASED.
It’s been so nice the last couple years to finally take off the mantle of “professional religious guy.” I still very much value those years and value the great things I got to be a part of. But it is rad to just be able to live, and not live on a pedestal. (Cause sooner or later you’re going to fall off that thing and you’re either going to have to act like it never happened or disappoint a lot of people who really dig following people on pedestals.) And it’s been nice to feel that I can finally begin the journey of figuring what I do and do not believe. It is scary, though, but nice. It is a secret burden of people in ministry that they are made into guardians of doctrines and truths that they never really get the freedom to decide if they buy it or not. You get paid to preach the Trinity and the hypostatic union and original sin, kid, not to understand it. You sort of get handed a big book of theology with the w-9.
Anyways, I just discovered that the Google Maps van, for some reason, made it’s way through La Grange. There are a lot of new buildings, but all the old ones I spent my years in are still there. And it’s strange to see the new students walking around, just acting like they own the place. I wonder if they struggle with the things I once did. I bet a couple, at least, sure as hell will.
I feel the title says everything and that I don’t have any thing to explain to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to drink lots of water and fall asleep.
when sounding like A, like neighbor and weigh.
And generally many many other instances, such as “weird.”
And atheist. And seize.
Leisure. Either. Sheik.
Deity. Codeine.
Einstein.
Counterfeit.
Theism.
Foreign. Receipt.
Perceive.
Height.
Caffeine.
Seizures.
Leisure. Kaleidoscope.
Protein.
Forfeit.
Rottweiler.
Seismograph.
Inconceivable.
Screw it.
Hey! Here is something I made for Molly Jenson, a super unbelievable, lovely, totally rad friend of mine who makes wonderful music. She is great. Please please visit her myspace or website and buy all of her awesome music. i think she’s playing Hotel Cafe very soon if you live in LA.
I’m pretty proud of this. A big JOB WELL DONE goes out to Noah Lamberth (Director of Photography and “Hank Floyd” genius) for shooting the thing.
I made this about a year ago when I was messing around with stop motion and don’t think it’s on the site anywhere. I just found a ton of polaroids in some boxes so part 2 might be coming up soon. Hope you like it.
President Zachary Taylor loved working them cotton fields. Check that- he loved his 100 slaves working them cotton fields. He was briefly distracted from his first love by a quick 40 years killing Indians and Mexicans. He ended up picking up a couple other loves along the way: nationalism, Whiggery (it’s a phrase. I don’t know what it means, but I’m assuming it has something to do with most of the guys I graduated with in Tampa Bay.) and apparently being generally sloppy.
He was only President for about a year, due to his forgetting to live. The big legacy he managed achieved came just a few days before when threatened literally murdering any southerner who wanted to secede. Which was an awful classy move from a gentleman who, as I stated earlier, OWNED A HUNDRED SLAVES. It was during those wonderful days when people weren’t necessarily opposed to enslaving other people, but rather would go to WAR over the issue of states’ rights. Which seems to be the moral equivalent of arresting rapists not so much because of the rape, but a strong stance against dresses being torn.
Eleven dead years later, the Civil War erupted and Taylor’s kid was a general for the south. Crazy rebellious teens.
So, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of this Obama guy yet. Apparently some Kenyan runs our country or something. I’m not sure. I don’t listen to the news.
I showed this watercolor a couple weeks ago to my roommate Brad (hereforth known as Roommatebrad) and asked him what he thought. He replied that he thought it was good, “but the mouth looks kind of wonky on the left side.” At which point I realized he has never looked at my website, which is full of generally wonky recreations of presidents. This hurts my feelings. So, Roommatebrad, to prove my point, if you read this sentence and respond to it in the next 3 months and show you give a darn about your best bud Barak, I will owe you a dollar. An American dollar. On top of all the other dollars I owe you.
Oh, and as a snarky political comment: It’s kind of funny how a ton of people spent 8 years coming to the conclusion that you should never put your hopes in a politician and then did just that. OOH BURN I GOT YOU GOOD ZING!!
My family had a set of Time Life books all about the Wild West. I think they were given away at some point after I left home. I found one of the books from the series years later at a thrift store and snapped it up.
There’s something about looking at the faces of these grizzled old men, the kids trying to look tough, clutching their rifles. Photos of young men with the noose around their throats, waiting the minutes to their execution by some forgotten sheriff. This was how they chose to use their brief time here, riding and fighting. I guess I don’t understand. It’s one thing to sing about being something like that when you’re listening to Bon Jovi. It’s another to actually live as one.
What do I know? They have their picture in a Time Life book, and here I am staring and wondering if I should throw some orange into their violet beards. Think someone will do that for us in a hundred and fifty years? I guess those condemned men achieved a greater effect with their time than I will.
Shot this with some funny guys, who are making this series about guys hunting illegal Canadians in LA. The two best parts were shooting this fake machine gun next to a power plant without getting arrested and walking around my street with two guys wearing ICE outfits. I’m sure my all-immigrant-neighborhood was completely comfortable with that.
BTW, that’s Chris Marrs, who was in my Microsoft fighting commercial. Watch all of the series. They are GREAT!
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