WHICH WILL LOOK KINDA LIKE THIS:

Still needs a lot of work, but you get the idea.

FIRST: The album cover for my brother’s band’s (the electro-metal wizards known as “Screaming Mechanical Brain”) new iTunes exclusive remix album.

Made in the vein of the old Atari/Coleco/PC games that had covers which were a million times more exciting than the actual ultra-simplistic games. This was a lot of fun to make.

SECOND: A piece of multi-purpose promotional art for the aforementioned album.

I know the "Che Frankenstein" thing has been done, but I still wanted to do it. I pieced this Frankenche together using the two constituent characters and applied them to a bare (but heavily damaged) wall in a warzone.

THIRD: I made a website for a coworker/musician friend of mine. You can see it at www.willhutchinson.net

Wicked rustic.

FOURTH: I also made a Saul Bass inspired flier for a show of his from scratch.

A lesser-known Hitchcock film.

FIFTH: Speaking of Saul Bass, here is the similarly inspired poster I made for a play I am currently working on about a conspiracy theory radio show host who must break down his entire paranoid mythology he has been building up on air to save a life!

I really do love those all-seeing eyes.

That’s most of it. Be good kids.

A board game cover I made for a digital art class.

For a good long time, I got lazy and did a lot of faux-pixel art in Photoshop. This is an example of that. For a group project in my digital art class at Beloit College we had to design a board game, from the box to the game mechanics to the board and pieces. My responsibility was the title, back story, and the box. The very generic story involved four kids, including the redheaded geek and the reluctant emo kid, being sucked into a computer to defeat the MEGAVIRUS using a high form of arithmetic called ULTRAMATH. The name came naturally. I envisioned it having some kind of early 90′s commercial with bad animation of the world within the game kind of like this, and some live action footage of kids sitting around the board having way too much fun considering the dullness of the actual game. After landing on a “short-circuit” space on the board, a young boy grabs his head in shock and shouts, “MY MEGABYTES!!!” (the points accumulated in the game).

Self-portrait. Limited photoshop help, then colored pencils.

Sophomore year effort towards making my internet social network portraits more interesting. I don’t look right in that hat anymore, that scarf disappeared, and the zipper on that jacket fell off. Those days are over.

It is true, no?

One of my earlier fliers and Photoshop collage things advertising Earth Day at my time with the School of Environmental Studies. I can’t let space go, even if the subject is very particularly the Earth.

Ben's second big party invite.

I was tasked with making the invites to Ben’s party fun times in the summer of 2003. The pulp sci-fi picture sampled here was taken from another sampling at one of Something Awful’s earlier Photoshop Phridays. I’m no plagiarist, I swear. No more than the rest of the damnable internets, honest.

Picture of my brother, Cass, using Photoshop and colored pencil and pens.

Leland drawn, and colored within a computer from a photo. Art? Nah.

I started to feel bad about doing this kind of portraiture after a while, as it consists of taking a photograph in Photoshop, tracing important parts, printing it out real light, tracing the lines with a pen or marker, and coloring accordingly. Then I discovered that it was just a primitive version of vectorizing in Adobe Illustrator. Still, I’m reluctant to revisit this kind of drawing, which I did a lot of in spring 2007.

An Andrew WK stencil I made and sprayed. He is a bit of a hero to me.

Blurry picture of a stencil of my brother, Cass, who is a bass player and did have blue hair.

A pair of sultry stencils of my friend, Tontie.

In the summer and fall after I graduated from SES, I took up the hobby of making and spraying stencils. More often than not, they were portraits of people I knew or wanted to know. My methods were primitive then, I ought to revisit this stuff soon.

"You're the Bomb"

"Why must our love be forbidden?"

Every year, I put together at least a couple valentines like this. I slip them under dorm doors and bolt. It’s better that way. I’ll uncover more in the future. Stay put.

My duties included updating the website with new shows, acting as a co-curator at shows, sitting in the gallery during business hours, and designing many of the posters for the various shows taking place at the gallery. This gave me the opportunity to improvise ways to hang pictures, search through the artifacts that accumulate in a gallery basement, and rub elbows with some interesting alumni during shows. One VIP I got to see at a show and also at an awards dinner was the late self-made billionaire and president of ABC Supply Co. and Beloit native Ken Hendricks, who died a couple years ago under tragic and ironic circumstances (A building supplies mogul, who originally made a fortune in roofing supplies, dying after a fall from his roof while repairing it. Why does a billionaire repair his own roof? The mystery deepens.).

I got to spend late nights putting together shows, designing fliers, and working with friends while wearing suits and pointing at art of varying quality that I had hung in the hours before. I’d do it again. Here are some of the fliers I made for the shows that I helped assemble and curate.

My first ABBA flier, for the alumni show.

A questionable theme for a metashow.

Senior show fun. Don't like this one so much, it was made under the instruction of someone over my shoulder.

My favorite flier I made. It was for the fantasy club's art show, which was a pretty interesting collection. Fairy people, etc.

The first issue where I implemented my new "lotta squares and lines" layout to the cover, which is still used to this day

Following that were so many sleepless nights, bike rides scouring for submissions, ridiculous space-filling writing sessions, and dozens upon dozens of absurd computer malfunctions.

My original capacity as editor was just as layout editor, the guy who arranged things in an aesthetically pleasing and logical way on the page. Within a month I was doing the lit/art editor’s job for him anyhow, so I adopted that responsibility as well. My duties ranged from placing text and images on the page to conjuring graphics for stories to writing silly little bits to fill space to designing and creating the cover page. While the cover was my favorite thing to work on, it was usually the last thing that was worked on, making my Thursday nights fade into my Friday mornings more often than not.

I did a little doodle of Middle College at Beloit for this cover. Inaccurate and adorable.

The actual printing process of the paper itself is a strange and highly impractical fusion of modern technique and Hearst-era BS. The whole paper is first assembled in the Round Table office high is Pearsons Hall. When each page is completed, it is printed out on 17×11 inch copy paper. The collated stack of pages is then driven early in the morning to the offices of the Beloit Daily News, a local newspaper containing 60% ads for local businesses, 20% frighteningly stupid opinion pieces, and 10% local news. There, presumably, they put these low-resolution pieces of copy paper into some archaic machine that turned them into really blotchy, blurry, and grainy newsprint. There was talk of moving the publishing operation to the slightly higher-tech operation at the Janesville newspaper ten miles away with the possibility of COLOR pages, but I’ve fallen out of the loop for this prestigious publication.

My favorite cover I got to do for the annual parody issue. Our Entertainment editor Steve was a sport for being exposed like this along with, yes, a shirtless me to the right.

During my tenure as the layout editor, I worked on a dozen issues. I got to implement some goofy ideas which included:

• Doodle Farm – Just a bunch of doodles from friends’ class notebooks, ranging from equations turning into dogs, bigfoots kissing, to ideas for future restaurants.
• Racecar Stories – I prompted the editorial staff and other creative minds in Beloit to send me short stories and poems about racecars. Poems about palindromic half-formed twins, super sexy spies, and magic sky cars followed.
• Alexander and the Skeleton – No matter how short an issue was, I always included at least one of John McConnell’s comic strips, under the name “Alexander and the Skelleton”. They can all be seen here.
• Frisbee Fan Fiction – John and I combined our favorite fandoms (John doing X-Men and Harry Potter, Star Trek for me) with stories of campus pick-up teams in long and passionate tales of adventure and creepy descriptions of our classmates’ bodies.

Most of my written content came in the form of introductory paragraphs and coming up with clever headlines, most of which are lost to history.

Perk of being the guy who does the cover: Inserting Talking Heads jokes.

It was a fun and rewarding experience working on the Round Table. Having a century-and-a-half old newspaper at your disposal to use is something I miss to this day. Although I still function without sleep, biking around asking people for articles, and yell at scanners a whole lot, it is not within the confines of a newspaper or any other such respectable publication.

This is not a threat.

Hard to tell from the awful copy of it, but we are burning the tiny Beloit College effigy I made.

A lousy photo of a diorama I created to be the cover of the Round Table a year after I left commemorating the departure of college president John Burris.

Late nights in the smoking lounge were an important part of the Beloit, and especially Round Table, experience.

Thanks to Celeste for scanning composites of the Round Table covers that I have lost in my travels.

Taking up the responsibility of making posters for sophomore, junior, and senior year, I made a series of posters that were altered versions of propaganda posters. The first round I put up in sophomore year were largely stolen, which, from what I gathered from listening to a sticky-fingered acquaintance, was because they liked them so, so much.

First is Chinese, middle two are Soviet, and the third is from the US decring Nazi book burning. I was experimenting a lot with fonts back then, ease up. In senior year I took a slightly different route, reflecting our more scientific theme. A higher resolution one of this one does not exist so far as I know.

One of my favorite parts of the entire submission, editing, and publication process was the selection of the theme. In retrospect, it may have been corny and lazy to make every issue explicitly themed, but it sure did make design much easier. In 2002, my freshman year, I was uninvolved in the process and the issue ended up being titled “The Mayfly Diaries” with the issue containing chapters that represented different times of the day. The opening piece in the book was a poem that I wrote about the act of writing that, more or less, was me trying to get away with a thinly veiled sexual metaphor. It worked.

With the next issue, in 2003, we were more indecisive about a specific theme. During the layout phase, I just began to assemble a plaid pattern in Photoshop. I wanted a more sophisticated, but familiar pattern of red, black, brown, and yellow lines culminating in what usually is the standard midwestern couch throw flannel blanket, with a lazy midwestern theme coming forth. It ended up being a tartan theme, held together by a flimsy paragraph in the foreword. I made the above design, and am generally happy about it.

Here we see the second of the two covers I made, and the first of the two themes I proposed that got selected. In my junior year, 2004, my angst gently suggested that the theme be about the eerie sameness and emptiness present in the suburbs that surrounded the school. I opted out of writing the foreword, and it ended up in the hands of a man who is now a College Republican. It was more praising than critical, but heck. I got to draw the cover in colored pencil. It turned out okay, except the copy I got for free gave the cover an unsightly white border (above). I mean, this is the big leagues, District 196 Print Shop. Jeez.

In my senior year, 2005, I made a whiteboard-intensive plea for a sciencey theme based on the powers of ten, with the recurring theme of the constant patterns in the universe from atomic to galactic scale. It got accepted by the staff, and I drew up an extensive series of ideas for the cover, clip art, layout, and vellum pages. Not being satisfied with how I had actually executed the idea, I assigned the actual illustration to a friend, who did an excellent job. I cannot locate a copy of this issue, but its cover was a striking pattern of electron orbits and distant nuclei. Epic.

Then I graduated.

]]> http://atravousnee.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/voices-the-eastview-high-school-literary-arts-magazine/feed/ 0 atravousnee voicesposter5 voicesposter45 voicesposter6 voicesposter2 voicesamericaflier n53601646_30091562_2208 voices2003cover1 voices2004cover http://atravousnee.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/how-do-you-tell-if-your-roomate-is-a-robot-the-list/ http://atravousnee.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/how-do-you-tell-if-your-roomate-is-a-robot-the-list/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 04:55:27 +0000 atravousnee http://atravousnee.wordpress.com/?p=111 ]]> In late January 2006, within a few weeks of my arrival at Beloit College, John McConnell and I (still, even then, my roommate) wrote a list of methods to determine whether your roommate was a robot. Knowing that the lazy reader (and ourselves) loved lists, we gave them an inane one peppered with Beloit College in-jokes and one very 2005 Brokeback Mountain reference.

Oh, you wanted it? Well, here it is (parentheticals added in the present day):

How to Tell if a Robot is in Your Midst:

• They keep asking for “RAM”, but continually reject your sexual advances.

• They are always doing the robot in non-dance situations, but when in a dance situation they stand confused.

• Their skin is made of a metal, or metal alloy.

• They love the performance of actor Brent Spiner on the television show “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, but feel less strongly about his performance in 2002’s “Master of Disguise”

• Resembles robot.

• Consider Commons’ toaster apparatus to be “hot”. (Commons is the Beloit College cafeteria area)

• Actual abs of steel.

• Good listener, sensitive.

• Physics Major.

• Has pulled fire alarm, only because it resembles robot clitoris.

• Steam blows out ears, even without pretty girl walking by.

• Considers Rosie the Riveter among par with creation goddesses.

• Is able to survive in the toxic atmosphere of Peet 4. (Peet 4th is, or was, notoriously smoky vice den and dorm)

• Prints documents out of its anus.

• Is awkward around your printer since the floor party last Saturday.

• Uses “MECHANICAL” pencils.

• Wears glasses.

• In an effort to fit in, wakes you up continuously at 4 AM to inquire “What about that Commons food, eh?”

• Instead of drinking on the weekends, covers self in magnets.

• Doesn’t want to change with other guys in locker room.

• Explodes during Philosophy course.

• Continues to steal my pickles out of the Brannon 1 fridge, I’m talking to you, asshole. (At the time I lived in Brannon 1st. My pickles were stolen. Robots were, possibly unfairly, suspected.)

• Does not answer to “Hey Man”, rather to “Hey Robot”.

• Often seen caressing the mural of the robot in the Java Joint. That’s weird, I mean weird. (The Java Joint is the campus coffee shop, with a great mural of a sad robot examining a coffeemaker.)

• Is noticeably less knowledgeable outside of Wi-Fi hotspots.

• You’d hate to leave him alone with your pencil sharpener.

• Cannot grasp fashionable irony, you will not find them in a cardigan or a retro 80’s tee.

• Really strong, like, ROBOT strong.

• Loves like a robot.

• Family photos are your family photos.

• Knives ineffective.

• Snores like a chainsaw, and similarly cuts bed.

• Can beatbox, like, really well.

• His presence brings into question the nature of consciousness.

• Cannot be seen in mirror, and vulnerable to garlic.

• Reads this list aloud enthusiastically.

• Does not use MyTunes without usage of contraceptives. (MyTunes was the campus internal network music-thieving program of choice.)

• At beginning of the year, ate complimentary anti-virus software, periodically updates self.

• Tries to Facebook John Connor.

• Has turned back to soft-serve ice creams machine, exclaiming “I wish I knew how to quit you!”

• Blog consists of really whiny 0’s and 1’s.

• When unable to locate parking space, crushes own car into cube and reassembles when needed.

The flier, a collage of about a dozen pulp sci-fi images I cut out of books

The day finally came, and we did our performance at the Coughy House bar at Beloit College. The basement of the C-Haus where we performed was filled with all kinds of strangers and friends alike, who recieved the show well. F.W. Raleigh’s Astounding Tales was the first feature. Johnny “Boom Boom” Taylor and Gabe-Strader Brown reprised their roles as Raleigh and Jimmy. John McConnell switched to being Mr. Grant, Benjamin Geary was Mr. Miller, and Caitlin MacDougal was a lovely Sally Gunderson. An intermission followed.

The second feature was written by John McConnell, titled ‘Twixt Woodward and Emerson: A Tale of Olde Beloite Towne. It was a kind of Oscar Wilde, Young Goodman Brown, pseudo-Shakespeare mashup take on the classic college comedy story of a freshman (in this case, Emory Froshman played by Amelia Buzzell) on their quest to becoming B.M.O.C. He attempts to win the heart of the hottest girl on campus. The devil shows up (played by R.A. Schwartz) and things get out of hand. A large collection of dirty Beloit inside jokes in old English was a crowd-pleaser.

No recording that I am aware of exists, so the moment truly belongs to those present.

John, Ben, and I in our 8-bit (but also full color) personas in a flier I made

The first show I had, which endured until I left Beloit, was the Danger Mountain Hour with John McConnell and Ben Geary at a sweet spot on Friday evening. We would have interviews with historical figures, accept angry calls, and go on adventures across time and through fantastic worlds, playing some sweet music all the way through. This show also featured “SPACE DRAMA”, a pulp science-fiction radio play featuring moon outlaw Rex Samson (who would later become the star of the story within “F.W. Raleigh’s Astounding Tales!”) as he evaded the Moon Police. The show lasted for five episodes, ending right after Rex and the mad doctor Samuel opened a a plot hole using the plot device at just the right moment.

Mr. Interview and I discussing profound things in a promotional image

My own show was called “World of Knowledge” on Wednesday afternoons. It featured me and a robotic cohost named Mr. Interview talking about issues of the day as well as our personal lives. Mr. Interview was voiced by a text-to-speech program on the studio’s computer reading a pre-written script or one that I wrote frantically while music was playing (which was usually a mix of bluegrass and alt-country).

Another promo for World of Knowledge, now brought to you by public television in the 70's apparently

Topics of conversation often involved scouting around wikipedia articles about consspracy theories and domestic monsters and ghosts. I one time got crushed to death in the throes of undesired love with Mrs. Interview, my cohost’s wife on air. This led to their reconciliation and subsequent coitus, characterized by loud beeps and all manner of computer-themed innuendos. Those were the days.

Most of the scripts and recordings of these shows were lost in the great external hard drive failure of ’07, but I have managed to locate the complete script for SPACE DRAMA, which is located behind the cut below.

Space Drama

Narrator: The Moon. It has always perplexed mankind with its great luminous mysteries and that is undoubtedly why we hate it so much. In the future the great mining corporations of earth will colonize the moon to strip it of its precious moon gold and moon silver. The great wealth the corporations plundered from the lunar surface made them arrogant and in 1977 they seceded from their home world, the planet Earth. The year is 1999 and Rex Sampson is on the run from the Moon Police, accused of a crime he never committed. What’s that I hear? It sounds like a moon speeder chase heading this way…

(sounds of a car chase)

Rex: These Moon Pigs’ll never catch up with me, Rex Sampson. Not as long as my Moon speeder keeps up this breakneck pace! (it begins to sputter) Rats! Look’s like we’ll have to settle things with fisticuffs.

Cop: All right Sampson, there’s two of us and one of you. Now are you going to come along quietly or do we have to rough you up a bit?

Cop2: Be a shame to rearrange a pretty mug like that.

Rex: You boys see all those birds? *biff!* *Pow!* Zonk!* Well, I bet you do now! Hmmm, I need to find some fuel for my Moon Speeder, aha! There’s some sort of a research facility right over that crater over there. I’ll go check it out.

Narrator: Little did Rex know, however, that that was the headquarters of none other than the mad moonologist Samuel Breslin who was just putting the finishing touches on his latest invention…

SB: Straight! Soon my Seismic Amplifier will be completed and all of the United Moon Colonies will have to swear fealty to I, Professor Samuel Breslin! *KNOCKING* What’s this? Computer, who is that at the door?

Computer: It’s a swarthy young roughneck on the run from the law, sir. His Moon Speeder just ran out of fuel on the edge of the compound.

SB: Is that so? He might just be the perfect test subject for my second latest invention… Admit him immediately!

Computer: Very well, Professor.

Narrator: What does the Mad Moonologist have in store for our hero? If you want to find out ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned after this musical interlude.

Narrator: When last we left off Rex Sampson had just escaped capture by the moon police only to be lured into the clutches of the mad moonologist Samuel Breslin who was preparing to use his undoubtedly insidious, second-latest invasion on our hero. We resume as Rex is entering Professor Breslin’s lair.

Rex: I wonder if this lab has any fuel for my moon speeder? *knocks on door* Hey, open up in there, it’s Rex Sampson with some manly demands!

Comp: Please come in, Mr. Sampson.

Rex: A talking computer? What on the moon will they think of next?

SB: Welcome Rex Sampson, to my heady lair.

Rex: Alright, buddy, I don’t know how you know my name, but I bet you’ve got what I’m looking for: sweet lunar fuel!

SB: Yes, I’ve got your fuel right here Mr. Sampson… right inside this reinforced metal chamber.

Rex: Well I’ll just walk in and get it then I’ll be out of here—

SB: Computer, close the chamber!

Narrator: Suddenly the metal chamber door slams shut encasing our hero in inky darkness as the sounds of science gone awry begin to come alive around him!

Rex: What’s going on, you madman!

SB; Mad? Mad! I’ve just given you a gift beyond your comprehension, Mr. Sampson! Breathe deeply, for the air you breathe is laced with thousands upon thousands of tiny nanobots—

Rex: *cough* they’re the size of tic-tacs!

SB: Nanobots that together form my dankest invention, The Plot Device! Computer how is Mr. Sampson doing?

Comp: All of his vital signs are stable, Professor, his rugged, young body is recovering with astonishing rapidity.

SB: Open the doors, computer!

Rex: You’ve got about one moon-minute to explain just what you’ve infected me with, doc!

SB: It’s all quite simple really the plot device works by— *Knocking on the Door*

Cop: Hey, open up, this is the moon police! We know you’re in there Sampson

SB: Ah, seems like it’s working perfectly. Looks like we’ve got to get out here! Computer, bridle the escape horses Sampson and I are going to the Moonologist convention!

Comp: Of course, professor.

Rex: What’re we going to find at the convention?

SB: Safety, if only for a day!

Garreth: Rats, it looks like they’ve escaped, Roscoe.

Roscoe: We’ll never catch up with those escape horses, those babies are state of the art.

Garreth: Do you really consider technology an art Roscoe, or would you rather agree that it’s merely a material manifestation of society’s desire for progress?

Roscoe: Garreth, you know I never went to a fancy Mooniversity like you, all I ever did was go to Tycho Community College—go craters! All I know is I feel real sorry for that Rex Sampson, always on the run, what did he ever do wrong?

Garreth: Are yous for real? Didn’t you ever learn the Ballad of Rex Sampson?

Rex

Rex Saaampson

He’s on the run

On the run from the law

From the moon to mars

Between all the stars

He’s on the run

—from the law

awww, break it down Garreth

Interplanetary

Unsanitary

Last time he shaved it was January

Never takes time to write to mom

gonna blow up in your face like a fusion bomb

Rex hits just like an asteroid

Keeps the coppers so annoyed

yo ladies try this on for size

He’s been more places than the enterprise

Where no man’s gone before!

Rex

Rex Saaampson

He’s on the run

He’s quick on the draw

He’s on the run

On the run from the law

Roscoe: That, uh, that doesn’t answer my question.

Garreth: Oh yeah, well nobody really knows why he’s on the run.

Narrator: Will the cops catch up with Rex, Professor Breslin and the computer? What is the Moonologist convention? How is it that any of these people can breathe on the surface of the moon!? All these questions and more will be answered on next week’s episode of Space Drama!

Narrator: When we last left off on Space Drama, Rex Sampson had just been infused with the Mad Moonologist, Samuel Breslin’s second latest invention: the Plot Device. Explanation of the Plot Device’s true power was interrupted by the arrival of the Moon Police and our heroes had to beat an escape on horseback to the Mad Moonologist convention. The cops are sure to be hot on their tails’ in this latest installment of SPACE DRAMA!

SB: There, we can rest these steeds for the moment, the police are sure to be moon miles behind us by now. Computer, begin your cooking protocol and after that’s done begin your “prairie ballad” protocol.

Comp: As you wish, Professor Breslin.

Rex: Alright, doc, fess up—what is the Plot Device and what is it doing to my body?

Comp: Your rugged, swarthy man-shape?

Rex: What?

Comp: I’m cooking now *beeping*

SB: Well, as I was about to say, the purpose of the plot device is to—

Comp: Here is your food, Rex Sampson and Professor Breslin.

SB: Computer, I am your creator, you should address me first not, Mr. Sampson!

Rex: Hey, you clockwork cannoli, my food is cold!

Comp: I’m sure you could heat it up, Rex.

Rex: What?

Comp: Because you’re so hot.

Rex: What?

Comp: Because, I’m attracted to you, Rex.

Rex: What?

Comp: If I were a human I’d marry you right now.

Rex: Doc, I can’t understand a word of this computer’s synthetic voice!

SB: Uhhh, neither can I Mr. Sampson…

Narrator: A look of deep concern washes over the professor’s usually bright and hideously twisted smile.

SB: This is a disturbing development; if the Computer consummates its love for a human being my worst fears will be realized. It’s lucky that Rex can’t understand the Computer but I still have to do everything in my power to prevent it from seducing Rex with its incredibly efficient seduction algorithm, the very one I used during my Mooniversity days—go moon rocks! Now, to slip back into the conversation and diffuse this ticking time bomb of love! I think I’ve got just the idea.

Rex: Listen computer, I can’t understand a word—

Comp: Don’t speak, beautiful man-thing.

SB: Rex, has the campfire lit you aflame?

Rex: No. No it has not. Say, what were we talking about?

SB: Oh, why, I can’t recall.

Comp: We were waxing on the Adonis-like perfection of—

SB: Computer, initiate “prairie ballad” protocol!

Comp: Very well, professor. *beeping*

Rex: I think I’m ready for some shut eye. Goodnight Doc.

SB: Sleep well, Mr. Sampson, for tomorrow we shall finally reach the Moonologist Convention and perhaps we can find out a way to get these police off our trail.

Rex: Whatever you say professor, but tomorrow I want the full story about this “Plot Device”.

SB: Of course, of course… tomorrow. Incredible, the Plot Device is working even better than I had anticipated. Everything is working perfectly, as long as nothing goes amiss at the Convention. As long as “he” isn’t there. Computer, you can stop singing now—ah ah ah! -Do -not -sleep -in -Mr. -Sampson’s -sleeping -bag. -That -is -not -the -place -for -you -to -sleep.

Narrator: Tune in after this musical interlude to find out what happens in the conclusion of this episode of SPACE DRAMA!

Narrator: Welcome back ladies and gentlemen to the conclusion of today’s episode of Space Drama! We resume just as Professor Samuel Breslin, Rex Sampson and the Computer reach the much-talked about Moonologist’s Convention. The convention hall is packed to the point of bursting with Moonologists from all across the Lunar surface. Aha! It seems the trio has just sat down to hear this year’s commencement speaker—let’s see if we can hear what they’re saying…

SB: Quiet down, Rex, this is one of the greatest Moonologists on the Lunar Surface!

Rex: I don’t see what the big deal is, just one egg head talking at a buncha’ other egg heads.

SB: Mr. Sampson! You have to be careful! Moonologists are, as a rule, incredibly unstable and egg-head may be the single worst insult you could say to anyone at this convention! I’m just happy the plot device will be able to protect you from at least some of the trouble you’re sure to get yourself into!

Rex: Yeah, that reminds me, why don’t you give me the whole scoop on that Plot Device right—

SB: Shhh! It’s starting!

Intro: Fellow Moonologists, let me introduce a Moonologist that puts every last one of you worms to shame. He holds doctorates in Moonology, metaphysics, string theory and jazz studies. He has traveled to every corner of the lunar surface in search of nothing but new challenges to test himself and has bested every one—every challenge.

Rex: *from far off* Boo—ooring!

Comp: Yes, booooring.

SB: Both of you be quiet! Stop trying to impress Rex with your heckling ability, Computer!

Intro: Let me introduce Dr. Octavian Panopticonius, Moonologist Extraordinare! *APPLAUSE*

DR: Thank you all for coming, especially you Professora Martiosso. *laughter*

Comp: Your joke was not a good joke!

DR: Today we will be holding several intensive lectures all about the convention hall on various topics you all might find interesting, topics like, I don’t know— science!?! *applause*

Comp: The Doctor is not a smart man! He is a man without smarts!

DR: The Moonologists’ Convention is the one day of the year when we, the intellectual muscle of the Moon can speak without hindrance from the police and government forces that plague us so. A day when we can share our ideas that drive this fragile Moonconomy of ours. When we can stand, unafraid, of the consequences of our actions, when we can stand as Moonologists! *Great Applause*

Comp: Dumb.

DR: Who is that out there heckling me so early on in the speech? Shine a spot light on them!

SB: Oh, this is so embarrassing!

DR: Why, if it isn’t Professor Samuel Breslin! And what’s this? A computer!? In the Moonologists’ Convention?! Outrageous!

SB; No, no, this is no computer, this is simply my assistant!

DR: Is that so? Well then, assistant, would you care telling me what the square root of negative five is?

Comp: Up yours.

DR: I see.

Rex: You’re all egg-heads. *a hush falls over the crowd*

DR: Bring them to me!

Narrator: The crowd of Moonologists rushes to overtake our fair heroes, but wait, what’s happening? Rex Sampson is glowing with a bright intensity, it seems that the Plot Device is reacting to the danger!

SB: It seems that the Plot Device is reacting to the danger!

Rex: Jeez! A portal just opened up right in front of us!

SB: No, that’s not a portal, it’s a Plot Hole! Quick– jump in!

Rex: Geronimo!

Comp: No, Rex wait- wait for me.

DR: They’ve escaped, but to where?

Rex: Whoooaaah! *Thud* Well, look, we didn’t go anywhere! We’re still in the convention center, but where has everyone gone to?

SB: They’re not here Rex because my instruments indicate that we’ve been transported forward in time!

Rex: But that makes no sense at all!

SB: That only tells me that the Plot Device is growing more powerful! Powerful enough to rocket us 1,000 years into the future!

Rex: But how will we get back?

SB: I don’t know, Rex. I don’t know.

Narrator: Egad, fair listeners, what horrors have befell our heroes!? Transported to the future!? The Computer left to an angry mob!? No way home in sight!? The Plot Device growing more and more powerful?! Surely there is no way our heroes could possibly overcome the odds! You’ll have to find out next week on SPACE DRAMA!

This was also the first time that my family’s computer had the internet on a regular basis.

Before this, we had only briefly entertained the “one week free” offers from Compuserve and Sierra’s ImagiNation Network. I had only seen the internet at friends and cousins houses, looking up videogame cheats and putting vulgar things into search boxes.

The first internet community I got involved with ever was centered around a message board for the old computer game Commander Keen.

This led to me using Microsoft Frontpage ’98 to make my first website for my internet handle at the time: Dr. Zingers’ Fortress of DOOM! (AOL Hometown was shut down a couple years ago, so the site now only exists by virtue of the Wayback Machine, which hasn’t archived all of the graphics) It was completed sometime in the lonely summer of 1998.

The site, regardless to say, is embarrassing.

The next year, I made a fan art site for Commander Keen stuff I had made. The game had a pretty shallow mythos to draw material from, and it was all silly to begin with. Nonetheless, I made The Distortion of William Blaze. A lot of the material on the site is just from me running pictures of the game through the old art program Dabbler 2. Not very proud of it.

There were a lot of partially completed websites I made after this, but I cannot for the life of me remember the addresses they were housed at or the Wayback Machine can only find a vague html loaded with broken links.

Nyiem.8k.com was made sometime in 2001, when my cousin Jonathan, currently a father, a model, and painter, came up to visit me in Minnesota. I had not yet made any friends (at least ones who would pry themselves from Counter-Strike for a minute) and was not yet aware of the marvels of Minnesota with which to astound my Floridian family. So, we spent a lot of the time in the basement, making goofy photo essays. These included:

• A harsh criticism of our cousin Dana’s fatnecked boyfriend
• A preview of party times to come on New Years 2002
• An parodic avant-garde (or whatever we thought to be that) story called “A Tight Fit”

A whole lot of my website work from this time involved first coming up with a name for a site, and then attempting to justify its existence next. Most of these sites did not make it past this stage. These included:

• Nyiem
• Tommy Taffy’s Tomfoolery
• The Eagan Indifference League
• Andantedega

The last phase of this period came in the form of One Man Nation, a strange proto-blog from 2002-2003. The page takes a bit to load now, as it tries to load a miniature message board from my now defunct tagboard. The site consists of seventeen updates, all about nothing in particular. Most make me wish that I had a kind of time machine that allows me to punch my younger self, temporal paradoxes and present day bruising be damned. This site also contains a few more joint projects between me and cousin Jonathan, including:

• A photo essay from that time that we actually, for real, met Janet Reno
• Wacky parodies of newspaper comics
• A fake beach party, documented and exaggerated
• ‘Time Travel Shenanigans’

The last entry on the site turned the front page layout into an MS Paint parody of itself, and the site faded. Jonathan found better outlets for his time, and I got bored and started going to concerts. I did keep a a live journal, a xanga, and another blog following the advent of the word, but those haven’t had time yet to become anything but mortifying to me.

That said, I can design websites using modern methods and slightly fewer animated gifs. Honest.

A lot of our time in high school was spent in John’s basement making goofball films for classes, which later led to our entry into the 2003 Eastview High School Film Festival: All The Secretary’s Men. The film followed John, Ben, and I struggling to think of a concept for a film for the film festival. This leads us through a magical journey into the heart and the nature of stories. It is ridiculous and embarrassing.

John wrote an outline for a story involving early 20th century political intrigue, dinosaurs, and funny hats.  The film that ended up being completed was very different from his vision, which involved a dinosaur battle beginning World War I. The plot hardly makes sense, but what the heck did back then?

In the film, I played German Fashion Minister Baron Von Pantshoven. He is a mysterious man with a silly accent, pulled into this strange and convoluted web of lies.

The film premiered in the Eastview High School auditorium in Spring 2004 to an audience exceeding a hundred people, including moms and teachers. It was received well.

In 2007 I created a website containing trivia, cast information, and a synopsis.

Here it is, in six parts, the motion picture event of the young century:

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

PART FOUR

PART FIVE