______ Between the Quacks ______

                                               Having a second childhood. This time for good.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Radiohead Remake

I like this Radiohead video. . .



I remember when I first moved to Santa Cruz from the east coast. I was so happy to be in California. But I hardly knew anyone. And I would get so lonely that I would often think, irrationally, of throwing myself on the ground. I always wondered how that would help anything. I mean, would the ground make me any less lonely?


Why are we all faced with such a terrible aloneness? Everyone avoids it. TV. Cell Phones. Caffeine and busy busy busy. Talk talk talk. Radio. News. Conflict. Thinking. Thinking. More Thinking. More caffeine. Thinking about thinking. And struggling for love. Searching desperately for love.


Lately I’ve been struck by some strange other kind of love. Not one of needing and craving, but . . .well, more like something I’ve already got. It’s sort of unbelievable, but its there. I’ve spent a lot of years delving into my own aloneness. I used to live next to the cemetery where ee cummings was buried, and took walks every day around its center, a silent, lonely lake filled with geese, surrounded by a hundred ancient tombstones.


I try not to always caffeinate or busyate, frustrate, or indulginate. Sometimes I feel bad and don’t do a damn thing about it. And it does feel bad. But I just let it.


And now, lately, it feels like some of the clouds have let up. And I have this strange feeling of, well, of something being alive. Like this remake of the Radiohead video.



Like some secret world is dancing all around me. And it's a party I do not want to miss.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Crazy?



Here's something I'm excited to post, because you've probably seen it before. It's Gnarls Barkley doing 'Crazy' at the 2006 MTV music awards. They're inspired and empassioned and talking about the what's more out there. And he's duded up like Darth Vader. I don't mind that it's popular. Jesus. I love it. I swear, I wish everything I was into was mind-numbingly popular and everpresent. That everyone I met thought I was, well, just pretty average. That I lived in a Pleasantville where every single person was on some crazy, unbelievable personally-fulfilling trip through the wild, wonderful, mystical unknown. Honestly, I think everyone is. They just keep it all inside hidden, like treasure.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Da

The change keeps coming. Where is it all coming from? Some strange intense period of development. I finally picked a first name, and now apparently I've re-named my animation company too. So much for fear of defining myself. Its happening.



For those of you who don't know, I've been working on an animation project for the last couple years. Before that, I wrote and directed the unusual, avant-garde sketch comedy show "Ants, Plants and Bob!"



I played an ant. Among other things.



I have been searching myself and my artistic self for years, adrift. Writing. Seeking. Exploring. Adventuring.



After "Ants, Plants and Bob!" met with some success in Northern California I had a dream which prompted me to do something I never thought myself capable of. Move to LA.



Where I felt like a bit of an alien.


But now I've hooked up with a couple guys to do animation, and things feel



...friendlier.



I still get grumpy sometimes.


But I feel a lot of direction.


Anyway I've had such a hard time categorizing what I do, naming it, containing it, until I realized something quite simple. It is da.


That we live in da and that I want to keep living in da and giving to the da. And so I've chosen a new name for our animated venture, and I guess, a sort of nick-surname for myself...Davey Da.


And I haven't slept. I've been so feverish with imagination. We have a website planned out and we are designing images and starting to put things in place.



This is me with Lou Pieper. Brilliant artist. Dumb look on face. He designed the illustrations in this post from my writing. We have tons more and are planning boatloads of animation, which we will release under the name Davey Da.



I couldn't begin to tell you exactly what da is, but let me leave you with a few things I've written of late...




The Da is not too serious. Nor too boring. If the Da was two hours,
you would not be snoring.




The Da isn’t witchcraft
But it feels like magic
Makes you high as a kite
Horny as a rabbit
Its out in the streets
Fresh as a tomato
Wiser than Forrest Gump
More Sexy than Plato

Let Da into your house
And into your bath
Sprinkle some on your eggs
Share your private stash
Do not forget Da
Don’t be lost and alone
Use Da. You’ll have plenty extra minutes
on your phone.
Da is yours to have and to hold
But not to own.





The Mighty Da
It speaks through Davey
Tony, Bob, LaTisha, Amy
The mighty Da is written in stone
And water and windex and paper and baloney
The Da is in the wind
Winding through the prairie
The Da lives in the fur of dogs
that are hairy

The Da loves TV
And loves sunset strolls
Has an excellent driver
Gets drunk in its Rolls

Where won’t you find the great, wonderful Da?
It’s hard
because if you look,
it’s lookin’ right back atcha.



Do you know when you find something exciting, maybe after years and long years of searching, of suicidally boring law school, of lots of sexy women having no interest, of stumbling around dressed like a chicken, dressed like an ant, but searching? Always searching. And then, you know, its like a light turns on. And...yes. This one is yes. The Fit is Go. I think maybe I am finally starting to know who I am. And where I am headed.

Sunday, July 16, 2006

Strange Change

Did you see After Hours? Its about a normal guy who, by complete happenstance, gets thrown into one insane situation after the next.


That's how everything has been for me this week. Topsy turvey. Unplanned. Felt and not thought. Leading me I don't know where.


It all started with a two hour drive to a strange party...


General_58

Where I met a general from the interplanetary Manticorian Navy.



From there the unexpected strangeness kept increasing itself to be more unexpected and stranger still.


Different_2

Now I feel different.


I don't know what it is. I guess, you know, unexpected events change things around.


Alien_1

Make you feel kind of alien to yourself.


But its ok. I am starting to adjust.


Light_1

Starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.


So bring it on, world. Bring on more. Yes, make me alive and bring it on. Unexpected strange night turns of fate, delights, surprises. Bring them on.


Dave_and_zilla_1

Because things haven't gotten weird enough for me. Things still haven't gotten weird enough for me.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Name of the Dave

Oooh its takin’ me a while to start this blog. And do you know why?


Scared_2

I'm scared.



Chicken_2
I'm chicken.

Because even greater than my second greatest fear of all time, parking garages, is my first. . . defining myself in any sort of permanent way. In some ways this fear seems to have gotten worse over the years, ‘til I’m fretting for hours over e-mail names and pictues to put up, sitting in a white walled room. Not an insane asylum. My room. But I just can’t seem to put any cool stuff up. It seems like such a commitment. Just like the guy in Sex, Lies and Videotape. Wants to see, but not be seen. To observe, but not affect. This cannot stand.


Everything has been changing lately, evolving, growing. I’m soon to make public an animated short (after, you can imagine, hours and countless hours of revision). I started this blog. And finally, I have chosen a name.



Yes. A name.



Here is the Evolution of my Name. . .



First, David.


David. DAVID. Clean your room David. This is David. David come here. David? Where are you David? David is so smart. David said something so funny about his penis the other day, didn’t you David. David, say something funny now David.



David spoke not a single sentence until junior high. Then spent seventh grade dreamily, crushily gazing at the two foxiest, feathered haired pre-high school girls you could possibly imagine...Sandy and Kerry. There wasn’t much good going on around me back then beyond feathered hair. So I gazed.



And I think they kind of noticed. Because one day on the playground, from afar, they called over to me seductively, teasingly, “Daaaaavvvveeeee” I did not answer. I blushed for the entire rest of the school year.



And when I got home that day, and my mother started in with DAVID, DAVID, DAVID I issued a proclamation.



“I am now Dave.”



No one took notice. They were all oblivious.




Mimi_1_5

Except for my Mimi.



I must have signed some letter to her "Love, Dave". And then that became her mantra, and with her wonderful quivering, coffee for breakfast voice, she corrected family member after family member. "Heee’s Daaavvvee now. Heeee’s Dave.”
For the next eight years, “Heeee’s Daaaaaaavvvvvvveeeeeee.”



Terrific, thoughtful, organized Mimi. When she locked in data, it was locked in. She knew what I loved, at least what I had loved when I was seven. And once the data was locked in, it seldom changed.



“Daaaaavvvveeeee, your bed's in here. And look what Papa and I got for you, Fruit Loops. The Fruit Loops you love.” I was 22.



The name Dave stuck with me until my first day of college. At the University of Wisconsin - Madison, in the dorms, where the partying does not even wait til you put your clothes away. A gregarious blonde curly haired kid named Mike flung himself into my dorm room and said “who are you?”



“Dave.”



He thought for a minute. “Dangerous Dave.”



And that night, at my first college party, he introduced me to the kegmaster. “This here is Dangerous Dave.”



Half elsewhere, Kegman muttered “Dangerous Dave the Wave.” Mike’s world stopped. He climbed the keg, stopped the party and announced...”EVERYONE... THIS IS DAVE THE WAVE!” You would not believe how this inexplicably stuck. For the rest of college I was Dave the Wave. Wisconsin beer dudes shouted "Dave the Wave!" Roommates called me "Wavey". In my most fortunate moments, women whispered to me by the only thing they knew me as, "Wave."




But those wonderful Wave years along with any other fun in my life ended. In law school.




Bulawtower_1

I was imprisoned, depressed, in this building for three years.



Once again I was a David. Or worse. A Mr. Something potential esquire nothingness the first. Whoever I was then, never was I more of a complete stranger to myself.



And since then I've been walking through the desert for years, hearing different names and not knowing which one to answer to.



Until I recently realized one thing...in their most playful moments my best friends call me Davey. And it always makes me smile. My big loveable black belt budster Doug leaves me cartoon inspired messages, “Daaaavvvveyyyy, its Goliath.”



My wonderful, artistic muppetty pal Donavan calls me up to grab noodles and carouse Japan town sounding like some fun, ten year old creature of the 70s, “Daaavvveyyy...It's Donnie!”



And so that’s it. I’m giving up a life as a man. As a serious artist. As responsible. As normal. As any kind of grown up I had ever pictured.



And I’m going with a name that brings m'some joy. Davey.



And I’m going to put some stuff up on my walls and in my life and leap and not look and say some things and not even try to wonder whether its coming out right.

Friday, July 14, 2006

Hot Air

Oh No.  Look!  I missed the annual air guitar competition in New York.  This is terrible.



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Now I can only sit idly by dreaming of taking on William 'Ocean' Litz.





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Rockin' head to head with Mike Torpey, "The Godfather of Air!"





Capt1401bed8e70e40a480d603d51ff046b5musi_10

Hangin' up top with Hot Lixx.





Capt93009da017ba4a6287aa7ce2248cb7a4musi_6

Workin' the crowd with the 'Zombie'.





Captabc22cc343db4d75a872d0829c39cc21musi_3

Showin' love to the champion of champions, Hot Lixx Hulahan.







But next year it'll be me. "You hear me Hulahan?  I'm coming for you! Do you hear?!"













Captd2d1fba6fd8943a1a09baf6f0ac24ddamusi_5

OK, I'm going. To practice.