They Will Call Me "The Comber"

I have decided that I hate being a young man, and since I can't go back to being a kid, I shall retire and become an old man.

A beard shall be grown.

An AARP card shall be acquired.

And I will cash in my modest IRA savings and buy a condominium by the sea and a metal detector and spend my days beach combing for lost keys, rings, and teenage girls' cell phones.

My community will come to know me as the nice bearded fellow who spends his days treasure hunting along the shore. They will tell stories about me and ponder how I became the person I am today. "What do you suppose he did?" They will see my nautical tattoos and scars covering 70% of my body. And they will call me "The Comber."

One day, while I'm out sifting Kennedy half dollars from the sand, a young gentleman in a suit will approach me and ask for a minute of my time. I may refer to him as a whipper-snapper, or call him "son" even though he will be older than me.

"Your country needs your help, Mr. Crocker. We're reactivating you."

"You don't understand, son. I have strict orders from the President to never do those things again. I made a promise to my family."

"A promise means nothing when our national security is at risk."

I will close my eyes, steeling myself about what I should do next. Then, like an ancient sentinel of days past, I will rise slowly.

"Tell me."

Later, after a short ride in a black Lincoln Towncar, and being joined by a high-ranking military official, I will be lead down a poorly lit cinderblock hallway six miles beneath the earth's crust. Marines will salute as we walk past; government workers will press their backs against the wall to get out of our way; secretaries will be startled and spill coffee on their inky blue polka dot dresses.

I will listen to the Vice-President's plea, "Just one more mission, Mr. Crocker. Your people need you."

"Where is the President? I only answer to the President."

The quiet, craggy-faced, one-eyed man behind me will finally pipe up into the conversation. "Four hours ago, Air Force One went down over the island of Manhattan, which as you know, was turned into a maximum security prison facility. We need you to fly a glider in, under the cover of night, and bust him out."

"No way in hell. Why don't you send in the marines?"

"Can't do that, Jeff. We've received strict orders from one of the gang bosses, to not try a military incursion to bust him out. But if we send you in alone, in the darkness, you're our best chance."

My emotions will be a mélange of anger, hatred, and disgust and my twisted grimace will not betray those feelings. Everyone in the room knows how dangerous I am.

"They are going to execute the President 20 hours from now. You're our only hope."

"You leave me now choice; I'll do it."

SNAP!

I CHASED A HIT-AND-RUNNER THROUGH THE STREETS OF LONG BEACH LAST NIGHT

AND THEN-

Exclusive Content

I rarely censor myself, but I'm starting to think it might be a good idea.

For awhile now, the only videos I've had up on MySpace have been VideoGame Theater, Schrab's Death Cab for Cutie video, and Robot Butler.

Recently, to start putting more content on Crockeronline.com, I've been going through all my old videos from high school and college. Sooooooo....I posted a bunch of those videos. It was fun seeing a bunch of this old stuff to see, ahem, how far I've come, but I'm starting to see a glaring difference between the three recent videos and these five old ones.

Therefore, faithful CrockBlog readers, you're more than welcome to peruse the new videos before I delete them. Or feel free to tell me why I shouldn't delete them. Or don't.

Rising Tide - Made in 2004 for Channel 101. This is quite possibly the most delightfully ridiculous thing I've ever made. It's really something amazing and if you like Abba, you're in luck.

Cleats - My first animation. Made in my dorm room, freshman year of college. "The first thing I made with a beginning, middle, and end." Also, it's stupid.

CK Jedi - I think we shot this my junior year of high school? Senior? I can't remember. Quite possibly one of the most under appreciated Calvin Klein Star Wars parody commercials in the world. Chris Hagerthy and I made it. Starring Mark Isler and Sabrina Blum.

Graphite Clouds - Another dorm room animation. This was part of an audacious, ambitious, animated short film about a squadron of British pilots in P-57 Mustangs[sic] that go on a bombing run over Belgium[sic] only to discover a giant King Kong robot gorilla dressed like Hitler about to attack France. So they have to destroy it and...save the day? Win the war? Important to note that when i thought up this story i had never done any drugs.

Jackass Batman - Made in 2001 for Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon's Super Midnight Movie Show(predecessor to Channel 101). The theme was "Batman." Starring members of the Long Beach State Crew team and my college roommate Randy Fukumoto. I'm still pretty proud of the visual effect I made for this.



note that there are NO LINKS to any of the videos. they're there, but if you want to see them you have to go looking.

Another Screening

About a year ago, I worked on a feature length, independent horror movie called "Suffering Man's Charity." For you all Crock Blog veterans, you'll remember I posted my production journals of the experience. HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I can't recall if I ended up writing about the resulting espionage, lawsuit, and squabbling that developed during post-production but I am reluctantly happy to announce the the G.D. movie is finally being released and screened tonight at SXSW.

You can look at bits relating to the film(actually we shot on high-def) at www.sufferingmanscharity.com.

Crocker's factoids about the movie:

• While Alan Cumming learned the cello for the role, he never actually played it in the movie. I know this because I was cueing all the cello music.

• The house we shot in was...shall we say...lived in. It was the filthiest, smelliest house I have ever encountered in my entire life. Absolute squallor. Disgusting. My mother's worst nightmare. It came with seventeen feral cats, three strug-out addicts, and within spitting distance of the 10 freeway.

• The lawsuit following this movie was resolved this past Monday, after more than a year of deposing and perjuring.

• Alan Cumming, who stars and directed the film, spent two weeks storyboarding every shot in the movie during prep. The storyboards were lost on Day 2.

• There is one big stunt in the movie that involves a blow job and a garbage truck. It was 45 degrees at 3 AM on DAY 1 when we shot this. I had a cold the rest of the week.

• Not really trivia, but I can't imagine this movie is going to get good reviews despite having a pretty good cast. (if anyone can corroborate this with reviews, please feel free to pass them along)

My friend Chris worked on Pirates of the Caribbean 2 for three months in the carribean and as a wrap gift, he got a custom folding knife with a nice wooden handle burned with the name of the movie.

For my work on Suffering Man's Charity, I got a bottle of "Cumming;" Alan Cumming's cologne for men, the box art of which just has pictures of Alan in various forms of undress and assorted poses with his dog, Honey.

So if any of y'all are making your way to South by Southwest today and want to get in a screening before pummeling your eardrums and liver all night, I would recommend "MONKEY WARFARE."

Have a good weekend and rock on!

Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight!

Scott Chernoff is a TV watcher over at Jimmy Kimmel Live. His job is to watch The View and American Idol every single day and cull clips for Jimmy's monologue.

A couple days ago, I turned on the TV and caught one of the greatest moments of Huell Howser that has ever existed, Scott taped it to VHS from Andy's DVR, brought it into Kimmel this morning, and tonight it's going on the air!

From Scott:

"After 14 months of bringing in Huell [Howser] clips, this is a major triumph for me. Now my job is complete."

So stay up or set your TiVo's and get ready to ride the Highway to Huell.

Kick

Often times when i'm working on a project, I get on a kick*, where I'll be obsessed with a certain style or design or effect.

When i was working on VideoGame Theater i got on a huge kick of using old school NES style type face for everything.

When I was making UltraForce I had been watching Terminator so when i made the title for UltraForce, it came out almost identical to the Terminator title.

Now, I just recently became obsessed with copyright-free, old-timey, etchings, collected in amazing, huge books you can buy for twenty bucks at Borders. On top of that, I've been watching A LOT of Terry Gilliam animation, which incorporates said images. So when this pot documentary comes out and all the graphics look very very very very very familiar to the opening sequence of Life of Brian- don't be too surprised.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm starting to get nervous that I'm going to start just dropping in banners that say, "sir robin" and "sir gallahad" or "Directed by Terry Jones."

Still, it's not that bad to be taking influence from Gilliam, rather than, "Yeah, I've been making a lot of my stuff look like closed captioning. It's really influential to me."






* technical term