Week #51 Poems for New York Times Headlines from the First Decade of the Second Millennium - Poetry Book

Here’s a project I’ve actually been working on for years but for some reason took me this long to post to the blog.

The title pretty much says it all. I’ve been writing short poems based on the headlines of the New York Times for the past nine years or so.

I figure this will be my last year since I wrote the first one in 2001, here it is:

6/4/01 “New York Greatly Altered By AIDS”

No more dancing in the streets

No more fucking at the turnstiles

Now all we’ve got is the straight dope

Hookers who faint at the sight of blood

And the soldiers who love them for it

I want to have one poem for every season of the last ten years. An even forty at the end. A perfect size for a book.

I’ve given up on this project a few times then picked it back up so I’ll have to go back and fill in a few seasons. Good thing we have the internet!

Week #50 A New Movie Musical (Possibly The Mishap Movie) - Movie

So, because there’s something very wrong with me (or possibly very right depending on your perspective) I bought a collection of old movie musicals on DVD from half price books (hey it was only $10 for 50 movies, that’s like 20 cents a movie!)

After watching a few of these I realized that most of the plots seemed to contain the same basic few steps.

Step 1: Two young men who may or may not be brothers head out into the world to make a name for themselves (usually at least one of them is a songwriter allowing for an easy pretense to segue into musical numbers.)

Step 2: They meet a wholesome, pretty, likable, witty young woman whom they both develop feelings for.

Step 3: They get some sort of opportunity for a big break. While preparing for it they meet all sorts of quirky characters who help them on there way.

Step 4: They have a falling out over the girl.

Step 5: In some way the girl manages to bring them back together usually aiding them on there way to success at the same time. (i.e. planning a big concert and inviting a major talent scout then convincing both the friends/brothers to play the concert without them knowing that they’ll both be there until the last minute.)

I’ve always liked movie musicals but most of the recent ones have left me a little cold. None of them seem like really unique pieces of art in their own right. Most seem to be either new stories with music from an established pop band (i.e. Momma Mia, Across the Universe) or movie musicals based on stage musicals based on films that weren't musicals (The producers, hairspray).

What I’d like to do is a movie with an entirely original plot as well as songs. A revisiting of the old form as described above but in modern times with modern sensibilities.

I don’t write music or know how to make a movie so this one probably won’t progress much past an idea unless someone else wants help out.

It did occur to me while I was writing this that this could be the perfect format for the Mishap Rock and Roll Movie I wanted to make. We could have have James Call and Ryan Beebe be the two brothers coming to the big city to make it big. How could we go wrong?

Week #49 The Spam Mail Coffee Table Book - Book

So this weeks project comes straight from the brain of the illustrious James Hughes Call.

The idea is to make a glossy, thick coffee table book that contains the best spam-junk mail sent to either his or one of his associates emails.

The book would be about 30 to 40 pages with the text from the Spam on one page and the an illustration inspired by it by Adam Beebe on the page facing it.

I think this would be a pretty awesome object to have exist. I’m not sure if any of us have the actual motivation or money to get it printed but I’m sure it will be mentioned in my book “Greg Travis James Call Greg Travis” and in James’ one man show we’ve been working on.

Even if we never make a large run it would be worth it to just make a few now that places like cafe press exist.

My favorite piece so far is one I just got the other day in my very own inbox:

show me the way

What's going on

I knew that I stuck my focus particularly on the local store that I failed to take you into consideration. But it's not very late for me as I saw through the http://docs.google.com/doc?id=dcdn4kwd_0dfb8mrfq you insisted about last time. For another time you are accurate...I was able to benefit from the same quality of tablets at a much practical charging.


Defined insurgencies Veteran hindsight opening Cascade Jersey, reporting mountain Intelligence Griffin or Revenge.
Read image release warehouses mis, escalate.



I'm look forward to talking to you later
Otman

Week #48 This World and After - Play

This coming summer Sleepwalkers Theatre is undertaking it’s most ambitious project to date:

This World and After

a trilogy of three plays all by playwright J.C. Lee making up our entire fourth season.

Each play deals with the end of our world in a different way.

The first: “The World is Good” is about a woman dealing with her brothers death while living in what very well may be the end times: the 1990’s.

The second: “Into the Clear Blue Sky” is about a your girl living during the apocalypse who swims to the moon to find her father in order to deal with a very personal event that’s torn her family and the entire world apart.

The Third: “The Nature Line” follows another your woman on her quest to birth a child in a post-apocalyptic world were any form of human contact is associated with death and destruction.

These plays are going to happen but we still needs tons of help. From finding someone who can act as a visual dramaturge to someone to build a giant seahorse and make doves fly out of a desk on the moon.

Let me know if anyone out there wants to give us a hand.

Week #47 History Choose Your Own Adventure - Websitr

Yet another idea I came up with while talking to James Call. This one we actually talked about in person, as he's visiting the west coast this week.

The idea's fairly self explanatory and has probably been done before in some capacity still it's too good of an idea not to write up.

The essential concept is to use the old "choose your own adventure" format but apply it to world history. The website would simply follow history then at crucial moments it would give you a series of options as to what should happen next. Like the "Nazis win the war" or "Bill Clinton is impeached" or "Alexander never left Macedonia"

Depending on what option you choose we tell you what would happen next and what the world would look like.

This is an idea that's really perfect for James but I think to make it really work it would have to be a huge website so we'd need a lot of people's help. It would be awesome if we could get Mike Webber to work on the site so it could look something like this.

Week #46 The Making of the Making of… - Movie

While looking online the other evening at the upcoming movies I was taken aback by the high percentage of them that where either based on another medium (usually comic books or video games) or a straight up remake of another film. The one that made me wonder if I was living in an evil alternate reality was the Robert Zemeckis motion capture remake of “Yellow Submarine”.

Having just ranted about this for a while my girlfriend Kirstin suggested that this weeks project be something about this subject. Her idea was a remake of a “making of” movie.

I liked the idea a lot and immediately thought the perfect one to do would be Heart’s of Darkness, the making of Apocalypse Now. We’d cast a full group of people to play Francis Ford Coppola, Brando, the weird tribe of people who had to play severed heads then we’d direct based it entirely based on a transcript from the original documentary.

Another more ironic idea would be to do one of a lesser known movie. Netflix’s first response to a search for the phrase “The making of” was “The making of Westword”. I’ve never seen that particular documentary but I’ve seen Westworld and I can only imagine how awesome the making of it was.

Another idea, to get even more meta, would be to do a dramatized film based on the making of “RKO 281”, the movie about the making of Citizen Kane. Now that would be far out!

Week #45 James Call’s World - Conceptual Art

So I didn’t have any idea what to post for this week so I asked James Call if he had any ideas this was his response:

"Yeah I think the backgrounds in Super Mario Brothers 1 and other famous video games should be filtered out (like, filter out blue or black, etc.) and replaced with congressional hearings, documentaries about torture, etc. I also think old episodes of Love Connection should be randomly interspersed in the middle of any given television show, especially news programming, like someone needs to invent a machine that does that. I also think occupying an entire city block and populating it entirely with cats and dogs - only humans allowed are caretakers, who can only visit - should happen.”

My idea would be to either work this into my ideas for project #25 (The James Project) or #37 (Greg Travis James Call Greg Travis).

Either way I think the best way to do it is to document these ideas as if James had already done them complete with pictures of there completion and critical/popular responses to them.