Two Totally Unrelated Things that Go Great Together

I'm posting at an exponentially faster rate. Unemployment is good for that. So while I have the time, here are two completely unrelated things that I thought might entertain you, as well as have some sort of significance in the strange and winding career that belongs to Phil Ristaino.

First, we have a video conceived and created by NTUSA members and Flackman Bros associates Ryan Bronze and Matt Kalman (aka Max Flackman). I agreed to participate in the making of this short Christmas video starring Ryan as Spiderman and Matt as Batman, surf buddies, and featuring the cheese-center-filled rock classic "Come Sail Away" by Styx, particularly significant to me because they were my favorite band (other than, say, the Beatles) when I was a youth (pronounced "yout" minus the "h"). I worked the camera for much of the shoot, in between sneezing profoundly, as the fall pollen had descended on Far Rockaway Beach on the outskirts of Queens or Brooklyn or somewhere in between and caused my nasal passages much dismay. Later in the shoot, myself and another actor Greg (last name slipping my mind right now, sorry Greg) posed as 60's style masked baddies, attacking the two heroes on amidst their holiday and being summarily dismissed by the crime fighting professionals.
Cheque eet owt:




It may be significant to note that Matt and Ryan went into cold New York autumn ocean waters fully costumed and both nearly drowned during the shooting of this video. If you look hard, you'll see one or two waves really kicking their asses, which, I admit, was pretty funny to watch in person.

The second part of this post is dedicated to me Ole Da, who hit the big 7-0 this October (happy birthday, DAD!) My older brother Carl opted to get my folks a new dish washer for Dad's b-day, and I was assigned with the task of creating the card for the gift.

Take a look:


Here's the inside:

Editor's note: Brother Carl's and his daughter Izzy's signatures and notes are missing from the card because I put all the other notes together in photoshop and express mailed the card to Carl for him to sign in time for the delivery of the dishwasher.

Just as an explanation, my parents have a house on a lake in Maine, and there is a family of bald eagles on the island, so I figured I'd put dad on the eagle a la Gandalf in the third LOTR film:

Dad's body is more or less a steal from a Jack Kirby silver surfer:


And here's me Dad:

Dad trippin balls

So there you have it. Two great things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Posting as an excuse to be creative... or BRAINS!

In honor of my brain-dead state today (just shot a spec commercial for doritos, where I spent 16 hours wrestling an invisible man for coveted corn chips, my body is still killing me two days later) I am posting photos from an old play from the early aughts or maybe even late 1999, (can't remember and don't care)(editors note: it was actually 1999, dummy!). This play I speak of was called Brains!, directed by fellow Skidmore College alum Yehuda Duenyas, and co-created and starring yours truly and actors extraordinaire James Stanley and Jessie Hawley (the latter also from Skidmore). These three performers are the core of the National Theater of the United States of America, an NYC based company who create epic original absurdities for the stage.

Hoody (Yehuda) describes this show on his website as, "a particle physics zombie show that premiered at Walker Space in 1999." This is pretty much true -- it was a movement intensive show, discussing particle physics, out of body experiences and framed in the scenario of three people trapped in a house with the imminent threat of a horde of zombies. Good, clean fun.

Consequently, if you go to Hoody's website, you can see these images as a slide show, y'know, just fer shits and giggles. Or you can look below (click on images to enlarge):

Me, Jessie, James, Hoody

While I'm At It...Start Trekkin NY at NY comicon 2009

Here's a fun series of videos. Taken with a friend's phone, these two performances from the 2009 NY Comicon were only able to be filmed one minute at a time (that's how long her phone could take videos). So what you are seeing are the bits of both performances that made it to digital documentation. Some fun bits in there - I am typically over the top. Good luck adding in the rest of the story you aren't getting here...think of it as a fun project, where you can make up your own stories and transitions to fill in the blanks.

Here ya go:

PhilRistaino.blogspot.com/Cafe Antarsia

New Stuff!

Well, not really. I've recently rediscovered this footage from a play I performed in called Cafe Antarsia. It was a musical of sorts, more of a play with music, complete with middle eastern musicians and score. The theme of the show was essentially the occupation of Turkey on an island in Greece near the turn of the twentieth century. (Can you believe we live in the 21st century? I never really considered that until now. Whoa....)




I play Kariogiosis (spelled something like that), the half Greek, half Turkish weasel who sort of inspires unrest and keeps the peace in sly ways, always to further his own survival. That's me with the red fez running around and yelling in the strange, poetic dialogue the playwright invented. This might be the first footage I've found that demonstrates what its really like to do physical performance art. This show was directed by fellow Skidmore alum and old pal Ian Belton, and performed at the Here Arts Center in NYC circa 2005. I believe Cafe Antarsia the band is still a going concern, and you can find out more about them here.

I also want to encourage whomever stumbles upon this blog to check out my new website of sorts, PhilRistaino.blogspot.com. This is my attempt to begin to organize and catalogue my various art forms into a more accessible clump or clumps. Funny enough, I find in some ways by assembling whatever I can from the past, I'm still only scratching the surface of past works, and really wish there was much more documentation of all the plays I performed in over the last 15 years or so. Oh well, theater has always been what I consider the most ephemeral of art forms....

Laurellefe makes fairy magic in the park

I thought I had lost these images when my external hard drive bit the dust, but thankfully I was wrong.

One day, the lovely Laurelle Rethke and myself took some photos in a park on the river on the west side of NYC somewhere around 55th st (maybe 57th?). I took the images and turned them into some surreal scenes to enhance the fairy magic that Laurellefe (her fairy name) seems to conjure as she wanders across the city that lost its soul. So, she's, like, giving it the soul back. Cause she's a woodland creature, right? A magic fairy princess...ok, I'll shut up, but trust me, its true. She talks to rocks.

Click to enlarge:I even turned one of the images into an album cover for the Beatles "Love" copy I ripped for my sister: Consequently, my name meaning "love," you could say that the album is called The Beatles "Phil."

But you wouldn't say that, would you?

The "Phil Sessions" for Bones Rodriguez' "Kirk's Guide to Women" blog

Supreme gentleman and now a member of Start Trekkin NY improv, (of which I am, alas, no longer a member), Skidmore College alum John "Bones" Rodriguez has written Captain Kirk's Guide to Women. A tome of sexy proportions, Kirk's Guide takes you step by step through the seduction of the space-lady of your affections by following in the footsteps of the master himself, Capt James Tiberius Kirk.

In promotion of the book, Bones invited myself and a couple actresses over to play dress up and shoot a little film. What resulted hath been dubbed "The Phil Sessions" over there on Bone's blog.

(Note : the sound quality is a little overdriven on these shorts, so please forgive the fuzzy dialogue.)

(Double Note: "Kirk" means "Circle." Take a moment to consider that perhaps why Kirk is so successful is because he represents the perfection, the wholeness, the self-fulfilled, and the very symbol of the divine female, the manifestation of all matter in the universe.)

(Special Triple Feature Note de El Shabbaz!: If you look carefully, you will be witness to the extra special cameo of the Sid Barrett of the 21st Century, the now mythical Dave Smits.)

New Illustrations for Vision Into Art

Just wanted to commemorate my brand new move to San Francisco, CA with a post of some recent art I completed for the multi-disciplinary arts consortium that is VisionIntoArt. Some time this year (I'm having trouble remembering when) I designed and created two album covers for their two new cds, "Sounds" and "Travelling Songs."

Here's "Travelling Songs":

and here's "Sounds":

Also, I was asked to do a couple new illustrations of two members of the company. Do check them out:
Hopefully they will be added to the roster of over 20 member illustrations I've completed for this group. (You can go here to see the rest of them.) I believe they are updating their website, which will include all the illos I've designed for them. That site can be found here.