Author: Tim

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

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Make tonight a Weak Night

When I was at UCLA, probably the most significant thing I did was partake in a student-run television show some friends and I aired on campus TV. Sad, I know. Well, several years down the road, those of us left have endeavored to capture lightning in a bottle a second time, and the result is called Weak Nights:

Visit Weak Nights

I have to say that, much to my chagrin, my user profile on the site is a family tree that does not branch. Instead of making videos, I’ve been spending my time programming the site you’re waiting to look at in that new browser tab. So go there, click around and see the totally amazing videos my friends have produced. And if you’re going to comment-spam, just remember the person who made it all possible.

</dying of embarrassment>

My friend Todd is usually up on current technology trends, so I was excited when he sent me an article from my hometown’s very own newspaper, The Free Lance, about a new portable entertainment device! I couldn’t wait to find out more. Apparently it’s a machine called an “iPod”.

It’s a little contraption – about the size of a deck of cards – but it can almost literally put heaven and earth at your finger tips.

Almost in disbelief, I checked and re-checked, but there was no denying it: this article was dated today.

What other gems did this article offer up? It continues:

A podcast is almost like an electronic version of a magazine or radio show that people subscribe to for free. The term is a combination of the Apple MP3 player “iPod” and the word “broadcast.”

So this will be helpful if you ever need to explain what a podcast is to your grandma. To learn more about iPod, find the whole mortifying story here: Becoming Pod People

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MobiFest gets the Emergency 411

A year ago, I had submitted an episode of my cartoon series What Would Jesus Do? to The Animation Show, in the hopes I would join the ranks of this generation’s top animators, perhaps through a clerical error. And since I’m not currently rolling in that sweet religious satire money, it’d seem Mike and Don didn’t think all that much of what I had to offer.

However, roughly a month or two ago, I got an email saying my Jesus video was in fact a finalist in their competition, and that was reason enough for them to invite me (and I’m sure several hundred of my peers) to compete in their latest venture: MobiFest.

And so I spent the next four weeks keeping myself very busy, furiously animating as well as working my other jobs. What I had at the end of it was the first two of what should be a continuing series of just-in-time info on what to do when you find yourself in a heartstopping situation.

I also ended up with a bit of flak from management for sleeping at work the day after I finished, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, here are the videos:

Emergency 411: Building an Atomic Bomb

Emergency 411: Skydiving

Patton Oswalt gives a Rotten Interview

Ha! You like that? See what I did there? The website is called rotten and Patton Oswalt gave an interview with them. I thought it was worth posting just so I can keep some of his advice handy:

I do wish people were able to evaluate comedy beyond simply the crowd reaction, beyond the people going, “Woooooooo!” and be able to tell when the hooting and hollering is coming from someone pandering, and saying something everyone already agrees with, as opposed to a comedian getting that reaction from saying something startling, and original, and unexpected.


This is why the articles in the Rotten Library continue to be some of the most enjoyable, insightful things I read anymore. I won’t delve into the various and sordid articles among the Rotten Library arcana, because part of the fun is finding out just what their mystery writers chose to cover. But to their credit, where else can you go to find articles on gnosticism, Krakatowa, D.B. Cooper, and the occasional cherubish, comic book-obsessed comedian?

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Emergency 411 Video

Skydiving

Emergency 411 gives you the info on what to do when falling from a plane… without a parachute.

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Santa’s Little Helper Redux

I don’t know what it was, the long-winded description of the “jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit” clapping, or the idea of Marmaduke howling a blood-curdling scream, but this selection from Joe Mathlete Explains Today’s Marmaduke brought tears of laughter at the explained antics of an oversized dog:

Marmaduke responds to a jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit’s entreaty to fetch a stick with either a massive yawn (which is how he signifies his boredom) or a blood-curdling scream (which is how he pumps himself up for a round of stick-fetching). Marmaduke’s owner-man responds to said jug-eared, clap-happy dipshit’s entreaty with a hint regarding the futility of the ridiculous little man’s enthusiasm

As for the title of this post, there was a friend of mine who got the same perverse glee rewinding a 5-second clip of Santa’s Little Helper jumping up onto Homer’s belly for a good 20 minutes. Dogs are just funny like that.

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Another dimension. Another Dimension. And now that you mention, another dimension!

Rob Bryanton, for his new book, Imagining the Tenth Dimension offers up a quick Flash tutorial that takes the viewer from the first to the tenth (and final?) dimension, and the viewer’s brain from a functioning organ to complete mush: www.tenthdimension.com

…in the biggest picture possible, we could say that the 4th dimension is a line that joins the big bang to one of the possible endings to our universe.

Now entering the seventh dimension, we’re about to imagine a line that treats the sixth dimension as if it were a single point. To do that, we have to imagine all possible timelines which could’ve started from our big bang, joined to all the possible endings of our universe — a concept which we often refer to as infinity — and treat them all as a single point.

So for us, a point in the 7th dimension would be infinity — all possible timelines.”

I could understand 10 dimensions, but 11 would just be silly. Once you start tacking on extra dimensions to string theory, you start to get into the dangerous territory of “Meme-Theory”, in which the different ways of conceptualizing the known universe all start getting their own dang dimensions.

A Kinda Patton Christmas

A couple of raisin cakes thought they’d filter the spirit of giving through Patton Oswalt’s CD Feelin’ Kinda Patton. Yes, they even included an issue of Piss Drinkers magazine and the ever-popular Carvel’s Kris Kringle Pummeled Cake.

There’s a part of the album where Patton talks about Robert Evans’ autobiography, and he says “if you can find the book on tape, GET IT.” So I thought I would try to do just that, and get it for Jackson for Christmas. Well, once I got that, I started thinking about Stella D’Oro Breakfast Treats and all the other items Patton mentions, and thought about how funny it would be to get them all

See it all in their Flickr photo set found via Pop Candy, by way of Todd.

Internet by Tim Berners-Lee

(Just want to make sure I gave adequate credit.)

R2-D2: intergalactic badass

Todd recently forwarded me a link to a reinterpretation of the Star Wars trilogy. This reinterpretation manages to incorporate the prequels in a novel way that ultimately flips the whole series on its head.

“If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.”

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

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Best Underappreciated Comic Shops

Just a quick bit of pimping myself; I wrote an article for LA Weekly’s Best Of issue. I thought I’d link to it, just so LA Weekly can get a few extra cents of ad revenue. It’s a gripping 312 words!

Some comic shops are more like museums. A curator decides which artists to stock, there are some very expensive pictures hanging from the walls… and I’m afraid to touch anything. When I mentioned this to the clerk at Burbank’s stylish House of Secrets, she told me to, by all means, touch.

Best-Underappreciated Comic Shops