Much respect to Jelly Donut’s lastest reprise antics as the gansta rappin dude dressed in a giant jelly donut costume. He is hilarious. If you are not familiar with Jelly Donut’s work, first check out this humorous video on Jelly Donut for Current TV here. This will set the stage for the following clip better. Or maybe you think a rapping donut is funny as is. His latest video called “McCain Be Old” deserves your attention now.
What happens in the Pink Palace stays in the Pink Palace, but on this night I walked away with some jamming footage. This was recorded last weekend, 9/20/08 at one of the Pink Palace’s afterhours events sometime beyond the 3am mark. There was a full blown electro salsa party going on upstairs but the downstairs studio was where the live action was happening. Much props to the musicians. Manolo, ex Manicato band member, was there representing on the bass. Check out Manicato’s music too, they founded the Pink Palace collective. We were all jamming in their studio after all: http://www.manicato.com/
If you can sit through 9 minutes of jamming you wont be disappointed. I wish you could hear the bassist better. His name is Manolo, ex Manicato band member, and he was killing it that night. My homie Jaime was rocking out with some small bongos on the side. The drummer was on point, the bongo player was ridiculously good, and whoever the guy was who picked up the taborine was also good. The lights go off at one point and the music gets a little crazier.
In this video my friend Noah came over and showed me his latest DIY project. He installed an in-line Hydrogen-On-Demand system into his Jeep Cherokee. It apparently increases his miles per gallon and claims that he is spending less time at the pump, effectively saving money. After some anticipated curiosity on my part, he finally came over and showed me his hydrogen cell contraption. Upon first glance I thought “nice science fair project” but when the engine started and the reaction occurred - “watch out Flux Capacitor.” I take no responsibility for this information and I am not claiming it is correct. I am only relating to you what my friend Noah was up to.
When I made this movie in September 2006 I had different goals in mind. I wanted to work at Current TV, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt’s maven viewer created content TV network. I wanted to work at Current so much that I decided to make a movie and show them I had what it took. I had no idea that two years later this movie would inspire a journalism education program at an Oakland high school. Check out the original version in case you haven’t seen it yet.
With only 30 days left until the deadline of a contest that Current TV was running called, Seeds of Tolerance, I embarked on this project. The prize was 100,000 dollars - I was in for the ride of my life.
I picked this topic because I myself am an immigrant to the good ole U.S.A. and I felt it was my duty to explore this topic closely. I am so happy that I did.
I quit my job (I got it back when I returned), borrowed the equipment, secured the funding, and flew off to New Orleans with only two contacts upon arrival, a friends friend who lent me his floor to sleep on and Christian Roselund who ran Indymedia in the area and whom I met through email correspondence.
Blood, Sweat and Tears is the best way that I can explain these 30 days. Sourcing, shooting, directing, and editing. I was a one man show. I went up to scared immigrant strangers on the street, this is how I met all the subjects in my movie. My time in New Orleans was very short so every minute on the field was worth gold. I met heroes and downtrodden people. Then entire experience felt somewhat apocalyptic. Certain people will always stick out in my mind.
9 hours of footage later, I had to teach myself how to edit video. This took about 2 hours thanks to my audio editing skills. I’m not kidding. I am a natural at this. I boiled all the content down to 11 minutes to meet the contest requirements. I can easily make a 40 minute movie with the footage.
I did not win the $100,000 but out of approximately 380 entries, 8 movies were picked, 6 finalists, and 2 for television. This movie was picked for television - I got paid. Not much money, but the reward today is bigger than anything I could have possibly imagined back then.
Tomorrow, I will be giving a speech after the screening of my movie at Unity High School in Oakland, California. This website has all the details: http://www.unityhigh.org/gulfcoasttrip08
The aim of the fundraiser is to send a group of students to New Orleans and make 2 documentaries about this topic. You are all of course welcome to help out.
This is a much deeper story because it involves everything from the Detroit techno music label Underground Resistance and an old school Dj friend from back in the Ann Arbor days. However, you will have to ask me in person about this if you really want to find out more.
Credits and thank you’s:
Eddie & Johnny & Larry for letting me crash in your places, and Kieran Walsh for hooking that up.
Alex Outhred for funding
Gregory Kellet and Ian Kellet for the Camera and the tips - good juju!
Elsa Wenzel for support and research help
“CESAR” for putting up with me in his editing suite.
Christian Roselund, Ed Holub, Eva San Martin, Luz Molina, Jorge Lopez, Damion, Claire Didier, Lamar LeBlanc, Albert at Common Ground, and the immigrants themselves who put themselves at risk to help me make this film.
Thanks to Cornelius Harris for passing it on and thanks to Daniel Zarazua for inspiring the youth to take further action.
I recently wrote about the movie Idiocracy with Luke Wilson and urged some of you to get it. Well if you ever actually saw it you will recognize the fictional Brawndo softdrink from the future. Well, 20th Century F0x and Redux Beverages LLC teamed up to make the real life Brawndo which is available as of December 15th. It is a peculiar move by the studio to allow its production, considering they pretty much slipped this instant classic movie straight to DVD under the noses of the public, but that is another topic.
Tasteless joke, or marketing genius?
Redux Beverages LLC, from Las Vegas, is the same company that delivered us “Cocaine” energy drink, a product that was pulled off the shelves for FDA violations regarding its name. The brainchild behind these edgy-branded direct marketing schemes is a man with an impressive and respectable resume named Clegg Ivey. One day he just though it would be cool to name a soft drink “Cocaine.” Brawndo’s contents by the way: 200 milligrams of Caffeine, Taurine, Inositol, Guarana, and of course Electrolyes - no high fructose or corn sugar (huh?).
The hands that shook in order to make this deal happen include Omni Consumer Products Corporation, whose company slogan is: “We do what we must, because we can.” In other words, “we will b-slap you with our slogan if you front - and name our soft drink ‘Cocaine’, because we must.” Their website is suspiciously void of much information.
I lean towards marketing genius. Check out their shopping cart website which allows you to also join Brawndo on Facebook and MySpace. The underground buzz created by this movie, and now this drink are making people attempt Brawndo diets and blogging the experience. If Brawndo becomes the next Coke, we are headed one step closer to Mike Judge’s vision of the future.
I watched “Idiocracy” (2006) starring Luke Wilson last night and I thought it was brilliant. I feel compelled to tell everyone how important it is to watch it. I hadn’t heard of Idiocracy until recently. It apparently slipped under the cracks and spent maybe a few days on the big screen, however, it screams “hit comedy.” Have you heard of it? I am not the only one late on this movie either. Another blogger on November 23rd 2007, just over a week ago from now said:
“I have watched the movie Idiocracy 3 times in the past week with 3 different groups of people. The appeal of this movie is startling and surprisingly broad.”
I would give you the link to his blog but he almost tells the whole movie so trust me, I’m player helping. This is that blog if you really want to search for it.
It is a satire on corporate driven American culture that takes place in the year 2550. The human characters, whose IQ is a 10th of ours, have been “dummed-down” by the corporate/entertainment media. Director Mike Judge throws an anvil at our corporate hyped media culture and its sponsors with this flick. My first day after watching it, I noticed people on the street that reminded me of characters from Idiocracy, and that is a bad thing.
I was not the only one affected this way too. The same blogger from above put it this way:
“The next morning after watching this movie, I woke up and watched the Packer game, and realized how regardless of Idiocracy’s exagerrated ridiculousness, we may not be that far off from such a world if we’re not careful. Watching a football game is an endless string of sponsors (Coors Light NFL on Fox, sponsored by ______, ________, and the official sponsor of _______) and advertising plugs, of which I can’t even remember. There was an official beer of the NFL, an official car, everything! Somehow in real life, it wasn’t as funny.”
I read this article today about this year’s top interet searches and it made me think about it in a similar way. We live in ridiculous times ladies and gentlemen.
The peculiar thing about this movie is the way 20 Century Fox handled its release. You be the judge, watch the movie, its message is powerful in my opinion. I’d say Fox would have “reasons” to not want to support the release of this movie- by contract they were obligated to release it however.
