unwiredben

This was one of my favorite clips that we would show from time to time on The Show With No Name. It's James Brown interviewed in the mid-80s by Sonya on CNN; he mostly responds with song lyrics, screams into the microphone, and just seems very off kilter. It's good stuff.

(By the way, if you've not heard the news, here's L.A. Style's announcement of the event from 15 years ago.)

Tonight was the next-to-last Show With No Name, and it also was my last show. Next weekend, I'll be in Munich, Germany, preparing for the big PalmSource developer conference, so I'm missing the final installment. The show wasn't that notable, outside of a very funny clip of David Lee Roth drunk in front of a stadium concert audience. I did like the opener: "The Emmy for poontang goes to yo' mama." which was a riff that Charlie did off my "Swift Boat Veterans for Poontang" idea. Late in the show, Charlie spent a couple of minutes thanking me for my contributions to the show. I responded by pushing the CGs on and off the screen a few times; it was a sweet moment. I really appreciated that a couple of my friends, lizardprincess and tangoglenn, came by to see the last program. It was good to have fans in the room with me.

This chapter of my life is now over. I still plan on hanging out with the SWNN people; they've been good friends over the last nine years. We'll probably do occasional projects together; there's talk of another SWNN Live at the Alamo program in December. Still, the regular Sunday night sessions at the studio are gone. My weekends are free again.

Tonight's show continued our march toward oblivion on TSWNN. I brought along a guest to the studio who faithfully sat behind me in the control room shivering from the air conditioning overload. The topic of the night was a Fox 7 news report on two girls who were begging for money on road median in bikinis; Cinco made up stripper names for them, and a caller theorized that the police were there because the girls weren't in the beggar's guild. This got expanded into a theory that most of the beggars were actually hotties inside, if you scrape away the skin and the crazy!

Besides that, we had the trailer for "Bad Girls Go to Hell", the 1965 Doris Wishman exploitation film. Other clips included the hard-to-pronounce CCR lip-syncing their song "Bad Moon Rising" on the old Johnny Cash show; a WWII cartoon called "The Ducktators" with its unflattering representations of the German, Italian, and Japanese people; Hunter S. Thompson shooting machine guns with Conan O'Brien; and one of Richard Pryor's best gigs from the Ed Sullivan show.

As I occasionally do, I brought a guest to the show. To quote her blog entry from earlier tonight:

Then I got to be in the behind-the-scenes room of The Show With No Name and it was fun, but I shouldn't have touched any of the keyboards but I did because it was about time for my next "dumbass thing you wouldn't have done if you thought about it first for even half a second" stunt but they didn't kick me out and I even got a shirt, which I'm not sure I was supposed to get but by the time anyone noticed except B., who gave it to me, I was already holding it.

She's cute when she's self-deprecating, but I think the late night antics led to a full stop deficit.

This was a show that sounded good at the meeting, but ended up puttering away at the end.

The intro was a rehash on the standard Lance Armstrong one-ball joke that we've used for the last two years. At least it won't be used next year. Charlie started the show apologizing about being all hopped up on back pills last week, making Cinco curious about the pills effects. After a miscue on the tape deck, we finally showed the trailer, George Romero's "The Crazies", and when we returned, Cinco had a big bottle of red pills delivered to him, and started to chomp away at them, taking way too many pills, and eventually chugging them Cookie Monster style.

Next was the clip of Letterman trying to deliver a fruit basket to GE, a funny bit that probably inspired Michael Moore to do his stunts in "Roger and Me". We came back to find Cinco all drenched in sweat and talking really, really funny. Charlie suggested taking these blue pills, which magically erased his sweat and started making him all hyper. We played a great clip of the Beastie Boys from when they were 19 playing on a New York public access show along with their friend Kate (later to be part of Luscious Jackson).

On returning, the whole pill-popping stuff just never came back, and we started ragging on callers that were requesting their favorite clips before the series ended. Cinco had a nice rant about "The Show With No Name: The Next Generation", and how it would be set in a future where rock-n-roll was outlawed and people had to fight to party, but then we killed any momentum by going into a 24-minute long ESPN Sportscenter outtakes clip, which was funny, but just goes on-and-on-and-on.

At least the show ended on a high note with the outro, a clip called Big Bill Hell that's an auto dealer commercial FROM HELL!

The next live show is August 8th; we shot some intros for another taped show that will air sometime before then and feature some great long clips. After that, we probably will try to do a couple more live shows in September, including the big season finale show.

Last night's Show With No Name was entertaining, but it also marked the beginning of the end.

The intro was a bit of brilliance from Cassie: "I like hobos, but I can't eat a whole one." Charlie mentioned that he'd put out his back, and was all loopy on Doan's pills. We started off with the trailer for "The Godfather". It had a remarkable visual style of taking lots of still shots from the film and zooming in and out while doing cross fades. It's not too hard to do this now; Macs even come with a screen saver that does this; but for 1972 this was really innovative.

After that was Pee-Wee Herman being interviewed by Letterman on the release of "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure". It's a good clip; Dave comments that if Pee-Wee gets too big, he's going to have to dress that way forever. Cinco got to use his props after this, doing a product demo of Sticky Spit, a spray that makes your spit sticky, which turns out to mainly be useful for making post-it notes. Next was the controversial 2 minute edit of the Cameron Diaz video that's been floating around. We noted that we might be violating a court order here, but in the end, there's not much to be excited about with this. It just wasn't very interesting, and the 30 minute video is really, really boring.

We closed with a reairing of the "Corey Haim: Me, Myself, and I" video, a cult classic, and an interview that Jon Stewart did with Craig Kilborne at the end of Craig's Daily Show run. The outro was Andrew Dice Clay going crazy on CNNfn, which is always good fun. Cinco also got in another sight gag, pulling out the desk calculators to compute the number of erections that we created due to the Diaz clip, versus the numbers lost by showing Corey Haim.

Towards the end of the show, there was a big announcement. We're not going to be renewing our series this fall, so the last Show With No Name will air sometime in September. I think we're all getting a little burnt out on the show with its current format; we still like working together, but we've probably done just about as much as we can do with a live access show. However, at our post-show screening, we came up with a bunch of great ideas for two more live shows, plus some taped material.

So here's one request: if you've not yet voted in the Best of Austin 2004 poll at http://www.austinchronicle.com/feedback/bestof/, please cast a ballot with "The Show With No Name" listed as your choice for best "Locally Produced TV Show" and "Public-Access TV Show". We'd also like to see Charlie Sotelo get best "TV Anchor" and Cinco Barnes make best "Sportscaster", but that's not as realistic. A nod to "Bryan Poyser" in best local filmmaker would also be appreciated; he's the Show's director, and also made the excellent narrative work "Dear Pillow" that played at SXSW in March.

I was thinking about the nature of the TV show I work on, Austin Community Access's "The Show With No Name", and I realized that what we've been doing since 1995 is making a televised blog. Here's my analogy:

What is a blog? It's a temporally-organized set of postings, usually linking to other websites, that includes commentary on the linked item. Often there is original material as well. A common feature is a method for readers to post comments on the topic.

What is "The Show With No Name"? A weekly television show that features clips of other programs, along with commentary from the hosts, some original prepared materials, and callers that comment on what's airing in the show.

So, the big difference is that we do our communication using the language of video, and rather than pointing to other shows, we reproduce their contents inline within the program. Structurally, the two forms are pretty similar.

So, what do you think? Did we event this whole thing, or are weblogs just a mutation of an archetypal form of communication that's been around for a while.

Before last Sunday's show, I'd come up with a bunch of really sick jokes about poor Nick Berg, the American who was beheaded in Iraq. I do feel bad about the situation, but they would just pop into my head, and I had to tell someone. Last Sunday's show title was a reference to one of the more obscure ones: "Did you hear that we're exporting our drug culture to Iraq? They just opened their first head shop."

The show was good. Bryan was off doing film stuff, so I took the directing helm tonight, and mostly kept up with Charlie and Cinco's conversations. Fortunately, Leslie was nearby running the CGs, and was good company in the control room. Our clips varied a lot; there was a really creepy LBJ political ad that juxtaposed a little girl pulling petals off a daisy with the countdown to nuclear annihilation. We had a live performance by Guns 'n' Roses from the late 80's, which led to a funny discussion of how music from that time just wasn't any good. Finally, we had the Austin access TV premier of "I Am Stamos", the short I mentioned during my SXSW 2004 coverage. Our outro was an Internet clip of the Jesus Christ action figure, transferred from Flash animation to DV tape with only a couple of hours of codec hacking.

I'm back to writing SWNN logs, rather than go to sleep... good for you, not so good for me. We were off-the-air for the last two weeks due to Cinco's schedule, and it looks like we won't be back on until the 23rd, so this was our only chance to stay current. It ended up being half-good, half-bad. The clips included the trailer for Sam Peckinpaw's "Cross of Iron", CNN footage of a Saddam statue in Iraq getting de-crotched, Van Morrison performing "Moondance", and Rob Reiner on Letterman show in the mid-80s. Nothing too great. We also had the footage of 2004 Funniest Person in Austin Branden Walsh's winning set, and we eventually talked to him. Calls were few and unfunny, but there was a brilliant piece early in the show where Charlie and Cinco made fun of John Stamos' career as long-distance-service shill.

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-04-23/pols_feature5.html

Article about us being kicked off the Austin Music Network, along with a very disturbing photo of Charlie. Must read.

I just saw Charlie's post to the Show With No Name community on Friendster... I thought I'd copy it here for the fans of the show who learn about it through me:

Well, it was bound to happen...

During the broadcast of last Saturdays show on the Austin Music Network, General Manager Louis Meyers received several calls of concern about the content of that show, including one from the office of an unnamed Austin City Council member. So in light of the current moral flinchiness, the program was pulled off the air in mid-broadcast and replaced with a program about Johnny Cash (who, by the way, has never been considered offensive.) The Show With No Name show is now suspended indefinitely until the coast is clear and a later time slot is found.

As I understand it, the episode contained two "hot-topics". We aired a 30-second viewer-submitted clip from an adult movie featuring a girl who the viewer felt looked just like me. The clip contained no nudity or language. We showed just enough to see the girl and to set up a shot of my head superimposed on her body, which I assure you is a wildly original gag. Later in the show, a caller asked us why we hadn't talked about the rumors surrounding Governor Perry. We responded by talking about the surprising speed at which the rumors spread, and how they changed over the course of the past couple of weeks (the show originally aired on ACAC in February.) We made no assertions, and in the end, the consensus was that the rumors were, in fact, just rumors.

So I'm sure you can see that we clearly crossed the line. Everybody knows that the only thing local musicians hate more than porn is a lascivious rumor. So Janet Jackson's boob claims another casualty.

But for now, we'll continue our live show on Channel 10. So to commemorate the occasion, this Sundays show will feature clips relating to censorship, community standards, and common decency run amuck.

The Show With No Name
Live on Sunday nights at 10pm/Ch10
Formerly rebroadcast on Saturday nights at 7pm on AMN-15

The title of tonight's Show With No Name is a reference to last week's show, as well as an inside joke; one viewer told Charlie that he was trying to read all sorts of meaning into our choice of a werewolf as the attacker of Miss Janet. In truth, it was just a toy that was lying around.

In all, tonight's show was quite funny. We continued our series of funny and disturbing moments from TV news with clips of CNN's coverage of the baby with a second head, a reporter talking about "stoned people", and James Brown being very incoherent. It was followed by a older Japanese man telling a story about bodily functions gone wrong, a very long piece on George Harrison, the classic clip of James Brown being out-of-it on Sonya Live, and the creepy pediatrician talking on "Regis & Kathy Lee" about Kathy Lee Gifford's breastfeeding habits. The callers really contributed tonight too, especially during our James Brown imitation contest. The show ended with another news clip, a caller on MSNBC that imitated a NASA official during the Columbia disaster and got off a Howard Stern prank.

This week was a prop-free show; the clips and our commentary on them made it work. We do have some funny shtick coming in the next few weeks, but its nice to have material that's strong enough to work on its own.

The Show With No Name's experimental streak continued tonight with show #261, "Adventures in the Third Dimension". The show had two main points; the Mars mission, and 3D effects. The clips had little to do with the theme and were mostly B-grade material, but our host segments really shined. The centerpiece was Cinco using the show remote to transform Charlie into red/blue 3D imagery. This actually worked out better than expected. Leslie made great props, including a red Mars rock, the 3D switch, and the red/blue glasses with an American flag and the SWNN logo. We did the studio shots of Charlie using two access cameras with gels placed in front of the lens, and Bryan and I designed a scheme where we would cross-fade between the two cameras, but we could still switch to the non-3D CincoCam. The highlight of the sequence was Charlie reaching into the 3D field and grabbing popcorn that Cinco had in his lap, although I'm partial to the 3D strangulation of a caller who read her "poetry" on the air.

I really like where we are headed with the show right now. The comedy is working pretty well, and we've got a lot of ideas for new shows, especially with the expansion of us into new markets. I think we understand our own format well enough now that we've been freed up to see how to play with it, and that's keeping the show fun for the whole crew.

By the way, several crew members are going to be busy next week out in Park City at the Slamdance film festival. Our director, lead cameraman, and production designer are all going to be there supporting their film, "Dear Pillow". The film will also be playing South by Southwest in March; I saw a early crew and friends screening, and I thought it was really well done, so I'm hoping the screenings out there in Utah will go very well.

I just checked the Austin Music Network listings on my TiVo, and 7PM tonight lists "The Show With No Name". Finally, the TV show gets its own listing that people could add to a season pass. There's no description for the show, so we'll have to get that rectified. I'm not sure that they'd want to include all of our show titles; some of them can be a little off-color, and children might we reading the TV listings. People might be confused to see "#254: Vladimir Poontang" on their wish lists.

The big news is that The Show With No Name will now be rebroadcast on the Austin Music Network. We've got a slot on Saturday nights at 7PM where a tape of the previous show will air each week. To celebrate this, last night's show was about Cinco trying to make it big in the music business, and it featured disco balls, guitar wizardry, and a really awful clip of Corey Feldman on Howard Stern's WWOR show from around 1991. We also had a short film, "The Ballad of Little Roger Mead", which tells the tale of a little boy with a talent that no one wants to see. Of course, the show closed with the pathetic Nikki Rose singing about how rock stars get ten girls at a time.

AMN has a pretty good reach. It already is seen from Georgetown to San Marcos. They also have a Quicktime video stream, which means that TSWNN can be seen by people out of the area. I just tried it out, and after about 30 seconds of buffering, you got fairly good audio and acceptable streaming video.

We are told that they will soon be on cable systems in San Antonio too. The Show With No Name media empire continues to grow. First channel 10, now channel 15. Will channel 20 (KLRU's national PBS feed) be next?

Well, we took a few toy gun props, a few lame jokes about the capture of Saddam, and a middling bunch of clips and did another TV show last night. In all, it was fairly low energy, but there were high points. I won the intro pitch, and we went with Cinco singing "Spiderhole, spiderhole, live in there / like a mole", which would have worked a lot better if we'd gotten the graphics on the screen in time. I've got to get a control room checklist written and distributed to make sure we check and set everything and don't make silly mistakes. The movie trailer was "Red Dawn", an appropriate, newsworthy choice, and we followed up with Hunter S. Thompson shooting guns with Conan O'Brian, a SWNN classic. Due to Ozzy Osbourne's ATV accident, we showed a clip of him performing on a New York public access show from the 1970's, wearing a homemade Ozzy t-shirt, prompting us to one-up him with our own improvised "Cinco" shirt. The dud clip of the night was a very long appearance by Jay Leno on Letterman's show around 1986. Leno looked a whole lot younger, but that didn't make his material any fresher. The outro was the disturbing girl-being-hit-by-pie-repeatedly clip from our Alamo show.

On reviewing the show, we saw that it suffered from the white flash glitches that have been plaguing us for a few months. Those seem to be introduced between the ACAC studios and the cable headends; the access technical guys can't figure it out. The problem seriously affects my Tivo's recording of the show, usually causing the video levels to be miscalibrated for the rest of the recording and making the file useless. It also just looks bad, and causes the audio to cut out. If only we had a budget that wasn't measured in the dozens of dollars.

#259 is next week, then we're off until 2004. I'm going to be off in Georgia that night, so expect it to be a really good show.