Keenness Unbidden

After the long, cold figurative winter of this long, cold factual winter, Our Diminutive Enterprise has at long last generated a new helping of its dreaded content. The thing's title was yet, last I checked, an amorphous and ever vermicular thing, somehow attempting to frame the subtitle 'Snow Fracturing' around a name sounding convincingly like that of some kind of "artist spotlight"-type TV special. I think in the end we evoked the BBC in some way in a bid to lend it an air of legitimacy. Anyway, it's there.

This one follows something slightly different from our usual approach to short-making, in that Kyle basically just galavanted out into the first substantial snow of the season, Ruggles in tow, and proceeded to film him in the process of dicking around in the cold for a few hours. After the fact, in true documentary fashion, he cobbled together what footage could be used to construct something approaching a coherent narrative, while we had the fun of working to come up with a narration that fit the scene and included the requisite funny or subversive elements. It was sort of a neat exercise to take a silent montage and try to make it something more interesting than an iMovie-style stock clip of a guy making, and subsequently unmaking, a snowman.

Actually, this seems more Windows Movie Maker's bag

I actually rather cotton to the finished product, for a few reasons. First, I believe this is the first of our skits that is filmed extensively outside; the sparse winter landscape affords us a slightly different looking video, and it serves as a fittingly bleak disruption of our fortnights-long stretch of inactivity. Second, with free time at such a premium that our other, more ambitious ideas need necessarily be put on indefinite hold, it's refreshing to have such an impromptu skit evolve purely out not nothing. The serviceable David Attenborough approximation lends a quasi-authentic documentary feel to this nonsensical tangent. It's also good for the ol' self worth that I can claim contributor credit to something other than logging yet more hours into motherfucking Civilization V for another month straight.

Now, I'm nowhere near pretentious enough to start dropping names of obscure artists just for the sake of it, but it's a non-issue because I'm nowhere near cultured enough to know a lot of them in the first place. But, this video having ended up as it did being a sort of mockumentary of a nonexistent artist, I fancy I should mention some of the actual artistic influences that have only recently begun to penetrate the benighted but safely insulated sum of my lifetime experience.

For one, it was in recent months that I became aware of the works of Kim Miru, who has instantly become one of my heroes. Her uniquely intrepid method of on-site photography did provide some inspiration for our own artists' (admittedly comparatively malevolent) approach. What with my enduring affinity for all things forsaken and dilapidated it is easy to see why I would be so drawn to Kim's work; her Naked City Spleen collection appeals to the parts of my brain long starved on a steady diet of mediocre web comics (at least since Achewood ended) and gambling addiction, and I'm happy to know it exists. It's a special kind of thing, and you should give it a look.

Further, on a recent and disappointingly Miru-less trip to the Leeum museum in Seoul, I did learn of another artist whose showcase immediately appealed to my sensibilities in a Way or two. While perusing the lower levels of a modern art exhibit floor, one of those big, blinking electro-mechanical signboard caught my eye. It was one of those old, programmable LED display boards that refreshes itself with a different image at regular intervals, like they used to have at sports stadiums before they invented those machines that transmit holographic shame simulators directly into your brian. The lonesome artifact roused itself with a grinding mechanical tumult, and with the pass of its refresh bar there was spelled out this message:

"YOU ARE TRAPPED ON THIS EARTH SO YOU WILL EXPLODE."

Naturally, I immediately took a shine to this sign, this message spoke to me. I can always appreciate a signboard ready to lay down some unsolicited truth. I looked into it and found the creator to be one Jenny Holzer, whose portfolio also spans the gamut from nifty to brilliant. I bet if Harold ever finds out about her, he too will have found his foot in the door to the wild world of conceptual art.

The End of Proper Villains; Say Hello to The Bidwillii Bros.

Some time ago, we showcased a skit, one of many of ours fitting snugly in the "abortive joke" sub genre. In it was featured a man of vague ethnic parentage whose undefined but seemingly dearth-influenced culture, we decided (owing to one of our better but purely accidental instances of impromptu backstory), places inordinate emphasis on over-sized objects as a form of humor; shoes, stock animals, pinecones, and so on. Regarding the latter, our stock fish-out-of-water foreign character posed the question to his erstwhile conversational partner: "What kind of tree is making such huge pinecone?"

Well apparently, life imitates our meager art: there are, we have discovered, indeed such things as produce massively oversized pinecones, and they go by either the mundane name of bunya pines, or the aggressively delightful name of Araucaria bidwillii. With this revelation in mind (and surely, there will be little else that will be able to occupy it for the near future), I am announcing the official renaming of The Proper Villains to The Bidwillii Bros.

Expect varied and drastic measures to promote ourselves under the new and improved monicker; a haunting trademark will soon adorn coffee mugs, t shirts, and soon too, hopefully, everything from cell phone skins to feminine hygiene products. So frenzied shall be the attempt to propagate our name, for naught but the sheer love of the featured word, that I predict there will be no recourse ultimately but to stage a massive press conference, wherein our brief but forgivable careers will culminate in a stunning and audacious live-broadcast wherein we stand at three points on a stage and simultaneously shoot each other fatally, to ensure that we never live to dishonor the name.

The sincerest fact of the matter is that we, like in all endeavors, conducted no research nor cogitated in advance on any significant portion of the script, such as it was. Indeed, even on those few days where we can devote our spare time to rewrites and editing, most of it is occupied by Nick having to comb each page for and to remove the many passive-aggressive barbs I unvaryingly direct at our director and actors in each script, subtly slipped into the slug and action lines on every page. Think, INT.- JUSTIN'S FETID APARTMENT or Suddenly, Kyle's corpselike visage assails the screen. It's pretty great.

A minor aside is how happy I am that, after nothing short of hours of cajoling, I finally managed to compel Écouter Kyle to begin an otherwise innocuous scene with a stifling moment of black lead-in, followed by a Law & Order-style metal-clang "shocking" sound effect, something I have wanted to accomplish for ages. Basically I'd start a kid's show like that.

Sadly, there was to my infinite chagrin, no eerie turn-of-the-century harmonica-laden blues music featuring a gravel-voiced old black vocalist to play in the background, which I thought would be somehow ideal for this scene. At least, until the "troubles" begin at about 2:25, at which point we were delighted to find that Final Cut Pro supplied us with an ideal stock recording of a humming bird supping on a flower's nectar. Perhaps someday, should we be supplied something suitably public domain (probably very doable, given the anachronistic nature of my mad master vision) a director's cut type edition can happen.

I'm not really sure why the "big pinecone" guy made his debut as part of this strangely meta joke about editing one of our own films, but I can only assume it was a desperate conflation of several ideas caused by the pressure of having absolutely no time to devote to these things. What other mischief I might have deemed an ideal vehicle for the guy I'm not sure, but I distinctly remember at one point entertaining a primitive scenario wherein this character had some kind of voyeuristic obsession with watching people prepare pancakes, so maybe having him vapor-lock in this oddball non-sequitur is just as well.

Good night, and good luck.

--Keith R.

The story of how I fought myself

I remember it was a Thursday night or if you count the days by when you wake up then it was more like a long grudging Tuesday just refusing to end. I had just gotten together with the brain trust and found that the self appointed one video per week might not be getting made. You see Nick was still catching some flack from the brand defamation suit that he received after putting up "The Night Train" video and had back to back court case appearances. Keith was wholly convinced that this could only be a sign of bitter things to come and decided we should just cut our losses and try to put the whole video ventures behind us. It had all left a terrible taste in my mouth and mixed with a bit of insomnia I started to convince myself that it was all going to be up to me.

I literally had only one idea going in there, and it was more based on the concept of my own self-hatred and the wish of harming myself on camera. The only problem is we make comedy videos, I can't just go in front of the camera and just punch myself in the face over and over again. But when I thought about it more and more, I thought, "What if it's not me beating the shit out of me, but me beating the shit out of me?" A difficult concept to wrap one's mind around but I assured myself that it could be done and set out to do just that.

I found an empty room that had no one around within ear shot for at least 20 minutes and began setting up my camera and just filming myself swinging violently into the air and jumping and falling in all great fashions, all the while hoping that no one happened to walk by outside the door and inquire on what exactly it was I was doing. If the case had happened, I decided quickly that I would just tell them a story my father once told me, "I've seen thicker thighs on a buffalo, but that ain't never stopped me." Thankfully all who passed by were kind enough to either just keep walking or just too terrified to find out the origin to the disturbing sounds coming from within my room.

Once I finished filming all the content that I supposed would suffice I made the realization that absolutely none of the footage was shot with the intention of matching with another me. With exhaustion already creeping up on me after performing incredibly tiring feats for over 50 minutes and almost a week without sleep I decided that I would just composite other shots of myself on top of the other to make it seem like the actions made sense. I spent an entire day at this effort finally breaking down into small fits of rage and began taking to occasionally yelling at passing vehicles out my window. I had been awake too long and my body was just giving up on itself.

After waking up to the realization that I must have strangled myself in attempts to try and get myself out of this project I turned to my screen to see the looping footage of what appeared to be the movie I had been working on. To my astonishment, I was actually very surprised and not just a little bit proud of the accomplishment. As it was still 3am I had to call someone to see what I've made, someone who I could get approval from, so I called my friend Korey.

Korey and I have known each other for 7 years, we met under regrettable circumstances but have always been very good friends. Korey went to school for Film and Broadcasting so I always take it upon myself to get his opinion on something I've shot. Just as I suspected from the way I felt about the project, he told me exactly what I expected him to say, "It looks like fucking shit." I've made at least 4 movies and shown them each to him and each time he tells me exactly all the minute flaws that I know an average person would look over. But this is exactly why I call him, his attention to detail is so sinister and unforgiving that I knew he would tell me how to fix this project. In fact he was the one who made the important decision to change the soundtrack from a polka theme to a metal theme as it would make a more "ballz to the wallz" demeanor. After an hour straight of nothing but frame by frame scrutiny, I fixed the project to until he said, "It looks okay" which is honestly the best you can get from him and published the video an hour later.

So there you have it people. This is exactly how I made "Self vs. Self"

I hope you enjoyed my story.

Kyle C.

The Magic, In medias res

So there I sat, enjoying a quiet evening alone, taking a brief reprieve from catching up on my Kantian philosophy reading and seeing to it I was up to date on my dossier of upcoming birthday shopping. Suddenly there came my cell phone's all too familiar dreadful screeching vie for attention.

Now, it's not my fault that my luddite distrust of all technology made after 1970 has reduced me to a series of Pavlovian dread reaction to that which, for most of the civilized world, constitutes simple everyday stimuli. Basic, inoffensive events which have long since been assimilated into the daily course of affairs for people from all wakes of life. But this thing had something like, eight awful pop songs to choose from as ringtones, and no option at all to retrofit it with a traditional, neutrally oriented series of rings and/or dings. Not, at any rate, without having to transfer funding through whatever duplicitous network of future devilry these sorts of things rely on to facilitate their evil.
So, I settled on one of my vile default options, any and all of which are reduced to an aural pulp of electronically distorted amelodic bleed-over through the thing's inadequate speakers. The result being that every attempt of someone on the outside to initiate contact with me in the past 2 years has inadvertently incited an intolerable penetration into the very base of my limbic neural networks; this has, over time, exasperated my already self-destructive introverted tendencies into something along the lines of a borderline sociopathic disdain for all forms of human contact.

Fuck the future, is what I'm trying to say here.

But goodness! How I have deviated from my intended subject. So yeah, my phone (fuck it and all things of its ilk- that's the last mention of it, I swear) rang, my world got just a little bit dimmer. For beyond the intolerability of relying on such a fiendish little monster for survival in our culturally ruinous generation of severely overpriced consumer pabulum (hail Satan), I know that any ensuing conversation to be heralded by this hateful fanfare will fall into one of two categories: the innocuous inquiry into the state of my Food Situation, or a summons to go and Do Something. The later category is somewhat vast, and may indicate matters related to work, school or our invidious side projects. This was one of those situations.

Sure enough, it was Kyle. Apparently he was in the process of editing Ghost Fucker.

"Goddamn Ghost Fucker's almost in the can," he rasped. His years of insatiable chain smoking had relegated his once pristine voice to an inhuman suppurating moan.

After a fit of god awful coughing and wheezing, he continued:

"Nick's up here doing ADR. Getcher ass up here; you botched more than a handful of lines yourself, you sad sack of shit."

Viewers, I have never counted myself among the histrionically inclined. The bits I managed to carry out for the ghost video were my absolute best effort, and those were only reached after a lengthy and arduous process of humiliating retakes. It normally takes something along the caliber of a life-threatening flash of terror to motivate my vocal projection beyond more than a few decibels of my usual, unassuming monotone. But then it's been some time since the prospect of a sudden death has elicited anything but a relaxed sigh from me.
However, seeing the situation for what it was, I realized I'd best go up to the "studio" (read: Kyle's extremely small bedroom) and try to rectify whatever egregious affront to the art of acting I'd most recently committed.

"Okay." I said. "Just let me finish documenting my charity donations for next year's tax forms and-"

"NO. You get your candy-assed dogsbody up here and fix your shit, NOW. Your fruity little philanthro- philantic-"

-he pressed on valiantly but the sentence degenerated into a fit of wracking coughs, just terrible to listen to-

"Just fuckin' get up heeeeere!" was all he managed to eek out, at last.

So, moments later I'm waiting tentatively outside Kyle's door. From within I can hear some manner of ghastly screaming, like unto a thing of apparition. It was only moments ago that he called me, and he said Nick was over, but still I was seized by the dreadful premonition that he was actually in the process of killing a prostitute, and I to be the one to catch him in the act.
Fortunately, as I pressed his door forcefully through the detritus snow of mysteriously unused cellophane wrap and months old A&W containers that coated his floor I saw that it was merely old Nicholas Ruggles, screaming as he was directed into a studio mic to provide the tormented screams of the ill-fated Danny from our masterpiece Ghost Fucker.

Nobody seemed to notice as I walked in. Curious, I watched as footage from the video played out on Kyle's studio-strength iMac, the sine wave diagram of Nick's aberrant screaming trailing back for what must have been a solid fifteen minutes of recorded space. Holy shit, I thought.
Finally, Nick ceased his tormented howling, which I suspect by this point had little to credit to any acting prowess.

"Am I done now?" he said.

Kyle sat, silently chewing on some Skoal, staring hatefully at the monitor, his eyes underlie in the eeriest way. At length, he spoke:

"Give me 30 more seconds."

"Fuck thirty seconds!" Nick screamed, or hissed, or came as close to screaming as he could through the tattered remains of his vocal chords.

"I've been at this for an eternity! It's FINE. You have plenty to work with!"

With that, he staggered away from the mic rigging and proceeded to imbibe voraciously from a bottle of what appeared to be imported water; the name on the label was in French or something. For the longest time, Kyle sat silent, motionless. He never took his eyes from the screen.

"It'll have to do" he said, at last.

I had been standing somewhat awkwardly off to the side this whole time. At the moment I was still wondering What kind of asshole buys imported bottled water? when Kyle suddenly turned and noticed me. His already hateful glare turned to pure malice.

"YOU!" he bellowed.

I snapped to attention as he rose out of his luxurious chair. Coughing violently, he gripped the edges of his desk for support as he lurched toward me. With one hand he supported himself tenuously, as with the other he levied a trembling, accusatory point of his finger in my direction.

"YOOUU! You shiftless-… NOBODY!"

His knees buckled. Falling to the ground, he turned and opened a low drawer on his heinously cluttered workstation. Rummaging through with grim urgency, he spared as much of his attention as he could on me, shooting downright venomous glares as he coughed more and more violently.
Finally he found his prize; spitting out his chew he slapped some kind of portable breathing apparatus onto his face. He took a few deep, deliberate draws of life-giving air through the filter, strength seeming to return to his maligned body. The blood left his face, returning him to a nearly human complexion. At last he stood, and looked at me.

"What can I help you with, boss?" I offered in as sunny a tone as I could manage.

On some level I knew it was hopeless to try and bring levity to this particular situation. Nick could be heard in the background, clearing his throat so as to help his threadbare voice find purchase on any attainable tone. Pulling the mask off his face only briefly, Kyle hissed:

"You goddamn hashed a line at the 2 mark, you piss bag!"

He paused to take a few deep breaths, both because the reaper was pawing at one thoroughly overdue payment and so as to calm himself down.

"Get on the mic and FIX IT."

"Okay?" was the best I could offer. I couldn't recall which line he was referring to specifically.

Kyle sensed this, and shook his head in disgust as he ambled over to the computer.

"It's the one where you say, or were SUPPOSED to say, anyway, 'Danny did you see the- OH SHIT!'"

I recalled the line. "Okay," I said. "What do you need me to do?"

A seemingly rage-induced coughing fit seized him as he tapped away at the keyboard, cycling through the esoteric windows of his editing program.

"Say it again, and this time try not to completely fuck it up!"

He cued up the clip, played it through once. Indeed, the line delivery was pretty spastic. The last few words garbled together so that it sounded pretty indecipherable. He reset the video, turned on the mic and shot one of those bitter glares my way. Holding the rebreather to his face, he prompted me to begin with a point of his severely shaky finger.

"Danny," I began, though already I could tell I was fucking it up, "Did you see the… OH, shit…!"

All told, it was a pretty miserable read. I gestured that I'd like to try it again. Kyle merely turned, struck a key, saying nothing, and turned back on me. I began again:

"… DANNY!" I belted with way too much force to be convincing. "Did… did you see the… OHSHIT!"

Again, even I could tell it was a bad read. From behind me I heard Nick let out an exasperated sigh. Kyle turned silently to face the monitor again, the only sound was that of his labored breathing.

"AGAIN." he said.

I repeated the line. This reading prompted Kyle to get up out of his chair and pace back and forth a few feet before stopping, and with an alcoholic's rage he began punching the wall.
As the abuse of his masonry went on, Nick said "Just say it normally, don't think about it so much." Sage advice, but easier said than done, I'm afraid.

When Kyle finally calmed down, he resumed his position at the computer, set up the recording track once again.

"Just keep saying it over and over UNTIL YOU GET IT RIGHT."

He hit 'record.' This was it.

"DANNY DID YOU SEE THE- OH SHIT. DANNY, did you see the- OH, SHIT! Danny? Did YOU SEE THE- Oh, shit…"

Again and again I tried, and again and again I failed ignominiously. Finally, after what seriously must have been like twenty takes, we got something that was useable. Sub-proficient, but useable. By then Kyle had mangled his precious rebreather in his hands, his jaw was still contorted with seething rage.

"That will HAVE. TO. DO." he said, refusing to look at me or Nick.

"Okay," I said. 'Well, I guess we'll leave you to your magic!"

"Get the fuck out of my room," was all he offered in response.

Nick and I took our leave, our only hope that work was done on this particularly challenging project, and I hoping that I would not have to soldier my way through too many more lead roles. An aspiring wordsmith though I like to think of myself, I am a far cry from being the doughy white guy equivalent to a Takarazuka top star.

I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into the making of an amateur comedy video on the internet. I hope somehow these videos will generate enough revenue to buy Kyle a new rebreather, those things cost literally like two hundred dollars.

Good night!

~Keith R.