Author: Tim

An animator, video producer, Lego artist, and author—I am moderately skilled at a lot of different things.

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Giving The Animation Show the “411”

I’ve been really busy with another E411 the last few weeks and forgot to post this, but The Animation Show continues to be completely awesome and gave me an interview on their site!

Tim Heiderich informs on “Emergency 411”!

So if you want to know more about the boundless genius who thought of animating monochromatic stick figures, check it out! They’re actually really good questions (and if not for me, read the rest of the interviews to find out how the pros do it). And while we’re at it, the cartoon that was inspired by the worst opening act in music’s history:

There’s more on the Emergency 411 MySpace my YouTube page.

Evidently John Cooper Clarke

ControlBetter late than never I discover John Cooper Clarke. I went to see the new Joy Division movie Control at the Nuart theater in Santa Monica with some friends this weekend. Now I have a fairly self-evident shallow taste in music, and had originally written off singer/songwriter Ian Curtis as a morose, proto-emo spaz, but if I was trapped in a loveless marriage, had a kid, and was fighting grand mal seizures while trying to get my band going at age 23, yeah, I might not be able to hold it together, either.

Anyway, that’s enough of a pity party for a man who achieved more than I ever will by his early 20s.

In addition to hearing more Joy Division than I ever had in one sitting (“…you mean there’s more besides ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’?”), I also got to hear the dry monotone of a Manc poet barreling through a poem about “Chicken Town.”

Continue reading “Evidently John Cooper Clarke”

Can I get two tens for a five?

I love an obvious scam. I know it’s coming, but I’m willing to let it go as far as it can just for the experience of it, only to back off before any money changes hands. I guess I’m a bit of a con tease.

I was heading to The Cat & Fiddle on Sunset Blvd. when a scraggly man asked me if I had change for a $10. I didn’t have any singles, but I did have two fives. That’s cool, he said. Why he would need two fives was beyond me, but a stranger asking for money raised enough red flags that anything else suspicious is just icing on the cake.

“Man, it’s so hard to get change in this town!” he said, stretching to reveal he’s going commando under his uncomfortably low-riding camo shorts.

I pull two fives from my wallet, clumsily letting a third fall to the ground, just to see what’ll happen. Alas, he tries nothing. I hold my fives out and grab his ersatz ten.

“Oh… I accidentally washed it.” he grinned from behind cracked teeth.

His ten looked about as convincing as this:

Wake up, Sheeple!

There it was on matte ink-jet paper, JPEG artifacts and all. “No.” I said, “You printed this out.”

And then I handed it back to him.

Didn’t tear it in half, didn’t crumple it up, didn’t just take this shady ten spot from his counterfeiting ass, just handed it back to him. Sorry, and good luck with the next mark!

I’m such a rube.

The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love

I’m not going to front. As anyone who’s read the Music section of my MySpace page can attest, these rap songs are my hip-hop bread and butter. White bread, that is.

The Top 10 Rap Songs White People Love

Given that, it will surprise exactly no one that I performed “It Takes Two” at karaoke a few nights ago, or that I wrote some quote-unquote erotic fanfic about “Bust A Move” on Weak Nights.

As spot-on as some of these selections (and honorable mentions) are, I would gladly trade “Whoomp (There It Is)” — a song I knew barely qualified as music even when I was in high school — and “Hip Hop Hooray” for Neneh Cherry and her Buffalo Stance. Where is the love, white rap enthusiasts?

And I would love to listen to “Hey Ya”, but it’s just a little too …you know.

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E411 in the Berkeley Art Center’s Small Film Festival

E411 drops inEmergency 411‘s Atomic Bomb and Skydiving shorts will be showing all four days at the Berkeley Art Center’s Small Film Festival!

If you’re in the Berkeley area and have eight bucks, unchain yourself from that old growth redwood, pack up some cruelty-free, organic granola and ride your recumbent bike over to catch Emergency 411 as well as a ton of other great short films!

And as always, E411 is more than happy to become your MySpace friend, even if no one else will.

For more information, visit:
http://www.berkeleyartcenter.org/web-content/pages/filmfestival.html

“You need to smile more.”

“You need to smile more.” she said, walking up to me.

I was staring at my hands, weathered from a day of manual labor to which they were unaccustomed, as independently-owned gasoline pumped into my car.

I looked up, nonplussed. This unreasonably gregarious stranger’s opening volley reminded me of the Bill Hicks routine:

“You know it takes more energy to frown than it does to smile!”
“You know it takes more energy for you to point that out than it does to leave me alone?”

But since I’ve been trying to appear less misanthropic lately, I conceded and flashed her a wan smile. She smiled back.

Continue reading ““You need to smile more.””
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This is one role I don’t play

This is about the time I got my ass handed to me by Max Sterling.

Max Sterling asks, ‘Wha..?’To see him, you wouldn’t think much of the modest waif hiding behind tinted aviator glasses, but Max was an extraordinary fighter pilot and an ace behind the controls of his veritech. In spite of his amazing combat skills, whenever he was out of the cockpit our slight little hero looked for all the world like that servile, 98-pound weakling all us grade-school-aged Robotech fans felt like.

His modesty concealed a gift even he seemed oblivious to: he was probably the best pilot in the entire Robotech Defense Force. Through his mad skillz, he was quickly promoted to commander of the prestigious fighter group Skull Squadron. During the course of the first Robotech war, he even tames a sexy, ass-kicking enemy alien. And such a nice young man. Max Sterling was the role model that every skinny-armed nerd could look up to.

Continue reading “This is one role I don’t play”

At last! A practical death ray.

Hidden amongst the pop-up ads upon Flash pop-up ads, NewScientist reports that scientists at UC Riverside have found a way to use the decay of antiparticles to create gamma radiation millions of times more powerful than conventional chemical lasers.

If positronium atoms could be forced to merge into a kind of “super-atom” condensate, it would decay in bursts of identical gamma rays, which could lead to gamma-ray lasers a million times more powerful than standard lasers.

Um, I just said that. The thing that fasctinates me is that I had grown so accustomed to shiny red lasers being the next big thing in high-tech murder that I forgot they’re nothing more than a focused energy beam, and are only a small part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation at that. Electromatic radiation exists in a range of frequencies from radio waves to X-rays to gamma rays, and a gamma ray burst of sufficient energy is just as effective at breaking apart molecular bonds as a beam of high-energy visible light, if not moreso. The freaky part is it’s also invisible.

These induced gamma ray emissions are also known as the significantly more terrifying, but unfortunately named, Gaser. I don’t know what weapons will be used to fight World War III, but WW4.0 may see the ravages brought by the n00b-grenade, pwnz3r tank, or perhaps a LOLtomic bomb.

Oh, and the icing on the cake is that scientists are creating anti-matter to accomplish this. Finally, a sane use for positronium.

In other news, OldScientist is trying to develop a death ray using inclined planes and alchemy.

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The ‘Robotech’ movie?

I just about did my own Fokker’s feint when I read that Toby Maguire, something something… OMFG THERE’S A ROBOTECH MOVIE IN THE WORKS?

Yahoo News tells it:

A sprawling sci-fi epic, “Robotech” takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.

The article says that “The $686 million worldwide box office success of “Transformers” has inspired other studios to assemble giant robot movies.” proving there may at last be one good thing to come out of that confusing Michael Bay crapfest.

RobotechThis story may be a little premature, as IMDB doesn’t list the movie in Maguire’s actor filmography. Still, The Hollywood Reporter and MovieWeb are reporting that Warner Bros. has just bought the film rights, so there’s nothing to stop me from getting a giant nerd boner over the possibility of a big-screen Robotech!

For more, you can join the discussion over at the Robotech.com official site.

Robotech was my most beloved series as a kid, and the epic story would translate well to the big screen. Plus the dizzying dogfights between transforming fighter jets and giant alien invaders doesn’t hurt, either.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I… I have to go lie down.

You are the Puma Man!

For the ultimate in sports apparel and puma-related cinema, it’s the 1970s classic “Puma Man” tee-shirt! Finally, something for nobody. Here we have the Puma Man’s ridiculous “flying” power captured in a shirt up to seven or eight people will appreciate!

PUMA MAN!

This fashionable item is also available in cardinal, navy, charcoal and lots of other appealing colors and styles you aren’t going to buy anyway. Here’s that aforementioned flying ability in action on MST3K:

Say what you want, this can’t be any more derivative than the ten thousand “McLovin” tee-shirts out there. He’s got a name that’s like it’s only one word! Jesus christ.