Just Because

Its been a while. Months and months and many more months. Several dozens of collections of hours between then and now.

So....




I've really chocked up a ton of hours down at the Regal Beagle. Janet has been extra annoying and Chrissy is still hot, but is soon to be replaced by that dumb chick and then Terry, also hot.

So....




So there's a couple from that classic turn of the century film, "Today Will Be Yesterday Tomorrow,"  starring the Flackman Bros, Martin and Max, and yours truly as the mythical Mystical Bill. Thanks again to Max for hooking me up with the clips -- the debt shall be repaid. In spades!

Oh, and sharp eared viewers will recognize that wonderful chestnut from the Troy Westfield Experience, "For A While," playing in the background (of your mind) during the second scene face-off with a nic-fit-quitting Martin. Its track number 11 in that album just to your right. Go ahead. Check it out. For once in your life, do what's right, I tells ya!

Til Little Nixon makes a comeback....

A Sound Christmas Thrashing

Yours truly gets punched in the face (twice) in a new web commercial for weheartfighting.com.



This website is dedicated to promoting Street Fighter 4, apparently, and also features a lengthy exposition about a guy dressing up as Santa Claus in full body armor, going out to what appears to be right around Penn Station in NYC, and getting his ass kicked. Repeatedly. Has Christmas changed? It has.

This commercial was produced by old school chum Yehuda Duenyas, (he's the guy with the pointy beard in the commercial who looks like one of the three musketeers), and also features many former Skidmore college classmates and friends; Ryan Bronze (the guy at the table saw), Ahna Tessler (woman annoyed at being followed and eventually punched), Steve Donnely (1/2 of a couple who are punched by a pirate), and Matt Kalman (the pirate).

Yehuda, Matt, and Ryan are all members of an absurdist avante garde theatre company called the National Theatre of the United States of America. They paint the stage with historical/hysterical monologues, big dance numbers, and lots of moving platforms, slamming doors, and a myriad of death-defying surprises. NY theater not to be missed.

Article about Start Trekkin on Trekmovie.com

Cool little write up about Start Trekkin in Trekmovie.com. I am featured in the opening picture at my snarkiest next to a Klingon performing Hamlet. Check it out.

Also, I just want to encourage humans to check out our website, starttrekkin.com, which is in the midst of being updated and awesome-ified, thanks to our producer and webmistress Lauren Hunt. She is awesome.

Some notes of interest are the media page, specifically the red shirt diary, (super funny) and a full length and fully improvised Start Trekkin radio play (which qualifies as ultra mega gazoinkagadoinkingly cool-- that's a space term, "cool"). Please tool around the sight while you are at it, it is getting doperer and doperer as the days grow short. Word up to outer space.

Start Trekkin NY: Ten Minutes Left of Money

Start Trekkin NY performed at the Big Apple ComicCon a few weeks ago (Mid November, 2008). For some reason, they will only book us to do a 15 minute episode. Not sure why, I think we could at least do a half hour without breaking a sweat or screwing up their schedule. At any rate, we've developed a cliff-hanger-type technique for little gigs like this, which hopefully brings in new fans and briefly entertains convention-goers. Someone was kind enough to film the sequence and put it online (thank you, stranger). Since you're here, you might as well check it out:

Nomadic Jazz document of mom and dad's aniversary/Izzy's b-day

Roger Fritz, rebel filmmaker and psychedelic video mage just hooked me up with a video he made of a party we had for my mom and dad's wedding aniversary, as well as my niece Isabella's birthday and her grandmother's birthday. It was a fun but fairly mundane event, except for watching Izzy eat an entire birthday cake, which was rather insane to watch, as she devoured it like a shark in a pool of blood soup. This video treat stars yours truly, the beautiful Laurelle, my sister Christine, brothers Andy and Mark, a Casilio, and the mad fool Roger himself, who seems to be wearing my hat. Go here to see more of Roger's work on the U tube. Don't forget to lose your ever lovin mind, man!



Perhaps this will be of interest to you,perhaps not,but Roger has provided me with two (yes, 2) other versions of this bizarreness, one with audible voices, but still heavy on the visual and audio effects, and one that presents, for the most part, the untouched original footage. I find it a fascinating study in the progression of his process blah blah blah just watch it, okay?

This is the one "with vocals"



And here is the "raw/uncut/savage" footage

Murals of the Past: Me and Andy's at John and Glo's

Brother Andy and myself painted a mural in the baby's room of friends John Reitan and Gloria M. (she has a crazy last name I don't rightly know how to spell) in preparation of the coming of their new girl, Georgia. This mural never got completely finished, but it is a rare documented Ristaino bros collaboration. I did the left side over to the right side tree, Andy did the bright green tree and all the cool little characters on the right side, even following my advice to turn a smudge on the wall into a parachuting hotdog. It appears this mural was painted in late October or early November 2006.

As Seen On TV

Hey. I know I promised a blog about the orbs in my last mural post, (for those 2 or 3 of you who've been reading these blog posts) but I wanted to post this TV pilot I hosted for my good friend Phil Armand (please check out his website). This show was created summer 2008.

Phil created this idea to enter into the New York TV pilot festival, and got some good responses from those who saw it, but unfortunately it didn't get anywhere. This hopefully will be the closest I'll get to selling my soul, in terms of content--the show is about me testing products advertised on television. I think Phil did a nice job putting the show together, it looks pretty good, moves smoothly, and there are some funny things in there. One thing of potential interest: aside from the voice-over narration, everything you see here is completely improvised. Enjoy:




Also for your perusal, I found the Net 10 commercial I made with Phil this past winter 2008: